Page 119 of A Shore Thing

“And why is that?”

“She’s a botanist.” Kit gritted his teeth. Had Deighton learned nothing about his traveling companion but the fact that she contained the female organ? “Botanists can discern subtle distinctions in trees.”

“Mrs. Pendrake can pick out a tree she saw from the top of that mountain? In the midst of all this?” Deighton’s disbelieving gesture brought home the point. The flooded valley seemed alien, even things that should have been familiar difficult to recognize in their strange new context. Chickens were roosting on chimneys. A pink armchair drifted by.

“She can,” said Kit. He wasn’t sure of that either, but he needed to believe it. He needed to believe that someone could interpret this devastation and tell them what to do.

“There!” Muriel had stopped to point. She stood fifty feet away, in water as high as her waist. “That’s the one.” She cast a bright glance at Kit, expression torn between hope and fear. “The big sessile oak.”

“He’ll have got himself up into it.” Deighton lurched faster, trying to run. With a grunt of frustration, he shoved his cap inside his coat and dove.

Kit did the same. The current was pushing him off course as he swam, and objects he didn’t care to identify battered his legs and arms.

What if the boy hadn’t got himself up into the tree?

He wouldn’t think of the alternative, that tiny bobbing figure swept away, slipping down beneath the choppy waves.

Deighton reached the oak first, grabbed a branch, and hauled himself up. His head and shoulders disappeared in the dense foliage.

Kit heard him halloing, saw the leaves shake as he climbed higher.

“He’s not here,” he shouted down to Kit. “Dammit all.” He sounded almost shrill. He climbed higher, higher than any little child could climb. Kit rolled onto his back in the water, looking up into the gray sky, blinking against the rain, lighter now. He let the current tug him.

“Griffith!” Deighton was screaming now. “Griffith!”

Kit tilted his head in time to see him jump. He had a long way to fall. The resulting splash slapped Kit in the face, and then Deighton was rising up from the water below him with the violence of a kraken.

The ensuing struggle dunked them both.

Kit wrestled himself free of Deighton’s grasp and shot to the surface, choking. “What in the bloody hell are you doing?”

“Saving your life.” Deighton treaded water furiously. “You were immobilized by cramp.”

“I was floating, on purpose, to check the direction of the current. I think…” Kit didn’t want to say it. The current was sluggish and slow, but a tired, cold, terrified child could hardly have resisted. The current would carry them to wherever he’d fetched up.

Kit let the current tug him again, away from Deighton and the oak, and bumped an obstruction that didn’t give way. It was an enormous branch that must have curved down from the oak’s trunk, so that most of its length was underwater, except for the leaves and smaller branches at its distant tip. A thin arm was hooked among them.

Kit did feel a cramp then, in the soles of his feet, and he felt too all the hope and all the fear he’d seen shining in Muriel’s eyes.

He swam, the strokes jerky and frantic. At last, between the green leaves, he glimpsed a small, wet, bone-white face. Water lapped the boy’s chin. His eyes were half closed, and his lips were blue. He was alive.

“Thank God,” breathed Kit, and sank—just for one wet second—with relief.

Deighton towed the boy to the knoll where the hamlet’s stunned residents were gathering. He swam a one-armed backstroke, bracing the boy protectively against his chest. Kit followed, grimacing, trying to shake the spasms from his feet.

A woman broke away from the huddled crowd when she saw them. She stretched out her arms, a wail emerging from her throat.

Deighton staggered through the shallows, and the woman raced toward him, a fierce blur wrapped in a sodden shawl.

“God bless you,” she gasped, as she gathered her son to her. She was smiling at Deighton through her tears. “God bless you.”

Deighton stared. The woman’s attention was drawn immediately back to her son. She soothed and cuddled, bundling him in her shawl.

“At your service,” mumbled Deighton, far too late. He looked at Kit, who’d hobbled over to stand at his side. There was something soft and awed in his face that he schooled quickly into a surly frown.

“Let’s go,” he said, and stalked back into the flood.

The sun was breaking through the clouds, and light glared on the water. Boats had appeared, sculled by grim-faced men. The rescue effort was underway in earnest now. Rescue would eventually become repair, and these Cornish folk would rebuild their lives, together. Kit hesitated, wondering if he had a further role to play, or if he was intruding on other people’s pain. No one paid him any mind. On the knoll, the mother knelt, rocking her son with her lips in his hair. Some women, and men, stood conferring, and some were striking off in different directions.