“I tipped left again. I could feel it.”
“But not so much as before.”
“You pulled it off,” Riley told her. “Do it again.”
“Okay. Okay. Don’t help me this time. If I fall on my face, I fall on my face. But I’m going to get this bastard.”
“That’s the spirit.” Riley slapped her on the shoulder.
She did it again, wobbled again, nearly overbalanced, but pulled back.
“Together,” Annika decided. “All three.”
“Oh boy, okay.”
“Tight. A fist in the belly.”
Riley nodded. “On three. One, two, three!”
Sawyer stopped at the edge of the lemon grove. “Check it out.”
With Doyle, he watched the three women spring, roll, spear up. “The brunette’s got speed and form,” Doyle commented. “The blonde’s got game, and she’s coming along. But the mer-girl? Makes it look like a stroll on the beach.”
“You’d think there’d be an adjustment for her—moving in water, on land. But either way, she just flows.”
“Great legs.”
Doyle started forward again as the three women discussed something with Annika gesturing with her hands. And stopped to watch when Riley shook her head, but backed up. And laced her hands into a basket.
Annika ran toward her, jumped to hit one foot in that basket, and as Riley pushed up, flew into a perfect backflip to land in what Sawyer thought of as the Superhero Lunge. Low, one knee bent, the other leg cocked out, one hand resting on the ground.
“I should be taking videos,” Sawyer added.
Then Annika spotted them, leaped up to run forward.
“Come practice with us!”
“I could practice the rest of my life and not pull that off.”
“I can teach you.”
“Bet you could,” Doyle put in, “but we need to take a hike, get a better sense of where we are, our position, our weak spots.”
“Agreed.” Riley nodded, then looked up at the wide blue sky. “But that’s a big weak spot.”
“We’ll need to be ready for it.”
“Bran’s working on it, and could probably use a break from that. I’ll go tell him we’re heading out. Ten minutes?” Sasha asked.
“Works for me.” Sawyer smiled at Annika. “You’ll need shoes.”
They set out with light packs, taking the narrow road up its steep incline first. The day, already warm, offered a baking sun over their bird’s-eye view of sea and sand, of houses jogging down the long slope in their soft roses and whites and umbers.
As they walked, Sawyer drew maps in his head. He was good at maps—had learned at his grandfather’s knee. The compass—a gift, a charge, a legacy—required knowledge of place and time. The hand that held it, the traveler, needed more than luck and magicks.
They passed groves of olives, of lemons, and he added them to his mental guide. The gardens, the houses with shuttered windows, the ones with windows open to the air.
From their high view, Riley pointed toward the mainland.