Voyage of the Snake Lady by Theresa Tomlinson Read Free Book Online

cold, numbingly cold; so cold that it did not seem worth even trying to open her eyes. Perhaps it was best to just slide slowly back into the numb, comforting blankness again. She lay there for what seemed a long while, all energy spent, strangely contented; perhaps she could just stay here and sleep forever.
    Somewhere in the distance she could hear a young girl sobbing. The sound disturbed her enough to make her wonder why the girl’s mother didn’t soothe her; but then with a faint sense of alarm the thought pierced through to her brain that she knew that cry. She began to understand that she herself might be the mother of the girl, and painful though it was, she ought to get up and soothe her daughter.
    At last with a huge effort she managed to open her eyes. Bright light sent a sharp pain shooting through her head, so that she quickly snapped her eyelids shut again. When she tried once more, the assault of the light was not quite as powerful, but she still could not focus properly. She blinked hard, shifting the gritty crust that had formed, and at last her eyes began to work again. She was covered in wet sand and seaweed, and there were other sandy, weed-strewn lumps around her that might be her companions. She still had her quiver strapped to her thigh and her knife in its sheath, stuck in her belt.
    “Oh Maa!” she whispered. “Where have you brought us to now?”
    The sobbing came again and she managed to lift her head, turning blearily in the direction the sounds came from. Tamsin was there and the hopeful thought came to her that if her daughter was sobbing, then she must be alive. Myrina pushed herself up on her palms for a moment, and before her arms gave way she managed to see that Tamsin was crouched farther up the beach, hunkered down beside a rock, her hair matted and wild but her lungs good and strong.
    Tamsin was silent for a moment as her mother flopped down again into the gritty sand and seaweed, but then the young girl let out a long, lonely howl of distress that sent energy shooting through Myrina’s veins. She pushed herself up again and this time she managed to struggle onto her hands and knees. “He—here,” she gulped. “Snake Mother’s here! Come to me . . . Little Lizard.”
    Tamsin scrambled to her feet at once at the sound of her mother’s voice. She ran to her, arms spread wide. “Snake Mother,” she cried. “I thought you’d gone!”
    “No, no,” Myrina gasped, hugging her so tightly that the wet sand that covered them both grazed their skin. “Where’s Phoebe?”
    “I don’t know.” Tamsin shouted it, as though her mother were stupid to ask.
    The noise they made seemed to rouse those about them; almost at once the sound of groans and coughing filled the beach. Vague lumps of soggy sand moved and shuffled, women struggled to their feet and shook themselves, until familiar shapes appeared from the gray featureless grit, though some of the lumps did not move at all.
    Myrina looked about her desperately. “Akasya, is that you? Where is Coronilla?”
    Akasya looked about wildly. “Coronilla!” she cried.
    Tamsin took up the cry. “Coronilla!”
    A hump of sand farther up the beach moved a little, then Coronilla rose to her feet, shaking herself like a dog. “Don’t worry,” she growled. “You can’t get rid of me.”
    Akasya ran to her, smiling.
    Myrina spied a large sand lump down by the sea that moved and struggled, trying to roll over. She ran to help. “Kora—thank goodness! What happened?”
    The fisherwoman sat up in a shower of damp sand. “What happened? What happened? We ran ashore!”
    “Where’s our ship?” Myrina asked.
    Kora struggled to her feet. She shook her head and pointed to the wreckage that littered the beach and floated in the sea. “It broke up, you stupid woman! It could be worse—Maa has a rough way of dealing with folk.”
    Myrina might have smiled if her mouth had not been so stiff and numb. Kora’s rugged words raised her spirits