Salt Kiss (Lyonesse #1)

twenty-eight

By the time one of the Azores comes into view on the horizon, green and mountain-peaked, Isolde and I have created a little ocean routine.

In the mornings, I go to the dojo with her and do whatever she needs—hold her bag, wave a rubber knife or rubber gun while she practices disarming me, do push-ups and squats with her and cheerfully win whatever unspoken calisthenics competition we’re in (although not by much). Then we split off, and sometimes I treat myself to a massage and sometimes I go to the basketball court and sometimes I go to the library, which has the now-predictable shelves of poetry and murder mysteries about crime-solving cats and Edwardian Egyptologists and Lady Sherlocks with accompanying Mrs. Watsons. It also has all of my favorite fantasy novels—ones I read as a kid and forgot about and ones I’ve reread a million times, and it even has new books that are simply perfect for me.

I read about quests and dragons near the library’s glassed-in fireplace, and sometimes I read up on the deck with the wind ruffling my hair, and sometimes I read at the prow, braced against the railing with sea spray flecking the pages.