Chapter 49 #2
The next wave came higher than the last. Enough to send a thin sheet of foam racing farther up the sand. A child darted toward it, shrieking in delight as the water chased his boots. His mother laughed and called after him.
Elizabeth’s heart gave a hard, involuntary beat.
The water surged again—farther this time, swift and gleaming, the foam hissing over sand that had been dry moments before. It struck the boy’s legs and nearly swept him from his footing before his mother lunged and caught him under the arms.
The fisherman stood upright now, shading his eyes and pointing at the fishing boat heaving on the horizon.
Elizabeth did not move… and the tide paused.
Not as tides do.
As if awaiting instruction.
Her breath stuttered. The air seemed to draw inward with her, as though the whole breadth of sea had leaned close to listen.
No.
She took a step backward.
The water followed.
Not forward in a uniform line, but in a narrow tongue, a darkened channel threading through the broader wash. It slid across the sand toward her boots, and then broke—dividing cleanly, curling around her toes without wetting the leather. The foam eddied at either side of her feet and retreated.
A space remained where she stood. Dry.
The next swell rose more violently. It did not crest and fall in its usual rhythm but lifted as though something beneath it had thrust upward. The anchored boat beyond the breakwater snapped hard against its rope. Wood cracked. A man shouted from the pier.
Elizabeth’s pulse hammered against her ribs.
This is coincidence. This is terror. This is fancy.
Another surge came. This one struck the small vessel broadside and flung it sideways against the stone. The rope gave with a report like a pistol. The hull scraped and listed. Two men on the quay ran for it, boots slipping on wet stone.
The fisherman’s net, half-spread upon the sand, was snatched and dragged several feet inland as though seized by invisible hands. He leapt to retrieve it, cursing, and nearly lost his footing when the retreating water tugged at his ankles with unnatural force.
A woman screamed.
The sound of the sea no longer filled the world; it seemed to originate within her. Each swell corresponded to the spear of terror in her chest. Each withdrawal mirrored the pull beneath her ribs. She swallowed, and the water drew back. She inhaled sharply, and the next wave rose.
It is me.
Just like the fire. The kettle. The rot in the grain bins, the roses in the trellis, and the crushing winter storm that had nearly flattened Longbourn.
She turned her head toward the breakwater. The men there were bracing themselves, hauling at ropes, shouting instructions she could not distinguish. One slipped. For a moment, his body vanished behind the rising wall of green-grey water.
Elizabeth’s heart lurched, and the sea answered. The swell bent. Not outward.
Around her.
The crest that had been driving toward the quay split as it neared the shore, its force shearing in two directions, racing along either side of the stretch of sand where she stood.
It left a long, trembling corridor in its wake, a path of relative stillness that widened and narrowed with the movement of her breath.
She took another step back.
The water drew with her.
She stepped forward—only a fraction, compelled by some horrid instinct to test it—and the foam rushed to meet her boots and then recoiled, as though rebuked.
The boy wrestled free from his mother’s grip and darted again toward the waterline in wild delight at the spectacle.
“No!” Elizabeth cried, though she did not know whether she spoke to the child or the sea.
The next wave did not wait.
It reared—higher than any before it—shouldering upward in a heaving mass that cast a shadow across the sand. The anchored vessel slammed full against the stones with a sound of splintering wood. A mast tilted. Someone shouted that a man had fallen into the sea.
Elizabeth felt the surge build inside her, immense and terrible, pressing against bone and sinew as if her body were only a frail vessel for something that had no patience with flesh.
Stop!
The command formed without words.
The water hesitated. It did not crash. It hung, suspended in a grotesque arch, trembling, as though straining against a leash drawn taut. Every eye upon the shore was fixed upon the sea.
No one looked at her. Yet.
Elizabeth’s knees weakened. Terror flooded her more violently than any tide.
If she lost control—if her thoughts fractured, if fear mastered her… what then? Would the harbour empty? Would the boats be dashed to kindling? Would children be dragged beneath the surf because she had walked too near the edge?
The suspended wave quivered.
A trickle of warmth slid beneath her nose. She lifted her hand and found it stained red.
The sea shuddered in answer.
She staggered backward, heart pounding, and the great wall of water collapsed—not forward, not inland, but outward, slamming back upon itself in a roiling crash that sent spray high into the air and left the shore in chaotic foam.
The man on the quay was dragged to his feet by another’s grip. The boy was seized again by his mother. The broken boat thudded uselessly against stone, half-swamped but not overturned.
The water retreated. And once more, at her feet, it parted.
Elizabeth stared at the narrow, obedient channel, the way the foam curved in a perfect arc around the hem of her gown. She had not commanded it. She had not known how.
A sound rose from her throat—not quite a sob, not quite a prayer. The sea rose… began its assault on the land when she confessed in her heart that she loved Fitzwilliam Darcy.