Sunny: Mona Lisa Craving

I felt his body surge forward as he scissor-kicked, moving us slowly through the water while the current tried to tear me away—how strong it was. I was like a deadweight, something he struggled to pull along.

“What can I do?” I asked.

“Can you kick?”

I didn’t answer him, just proceeded to do so. And it helped, gave added momentum to his one-handed strokes. He moved us across the frothy water at an angle diagonal to the current. Our progress was sluggish compared to how fast we were being swept downriver, but inch by inch, we cut across the stream. Miles passed by before we finally reach the river’s edge.

I felt his body twist, reach up for something, and we came to a jarring halt. The force of the water suddenly increased twentyfold, pulling my body past him, trying to tear me from his grasp. But he didn’t let go, and neither did I, even when I was swept beneath the water. I held onto that arm, felt the water rushing over me, heard the frothy force of it beating above me in that odd quiet-loudness that comes when you’re completely submerged.

I was no longer sandwiched between his hip and arm. Just held by his hand that gripped my shirt, nothing more substantial than that. It was really my hold now on his arm that kept us anchored together. If I let go, my T-shirt would likely rip and I would be pulled back into the rapids once more.

I didn’t let go. Not even when time passed and I still remained underwater, unable to breathe. His arm strained and trembled. Slowly, with hard and painful exertion, he hauled me out of the water. I took in an explosive breath as soon as my mouth broke the surface, gulped in both air and water, and started to cough.

“Grab the branch!” he yelled.

I blinked the water from my eyes, still coughing water from my lungs, and saw his lined, strained face, his arms bulging with the effort of hanging onto me, a wet and heavy deadweight still caught in the river’s powerful grip. He was hanging onto the trunk of a fallen tree half-toppled into the river, his white fingers buried into the thick bark. A thick branch jutted out a foot in front of me. I reached out and grabbed it.

“Both hands,” he shouted, “use both hands. Pull yourself up!”

I was loath to release him, to give up that security. What if the branch broke?

“Quickly,” he gritted, teeth clenched. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

I saw the truth in his eyes, in his trembling arms. I let go of him and grabbed the branch with both hands. It held.

I pulled myself halfway out of the water. But getting the rest of me out was like pulling myself out of quicksand. The swift current tugged insistently at me like a jealous lover, reluctant to give me up.

One great, heaving, yanking assist from the boy, and one leg lifted free of the water. I swung it over the tree trunk, and pulled the rest of my body slowly, painfully up. Once out of the water’s sucking grasp, I moved quickly. Scooting down the trunk, I started the process of hauling my rescuer out. Freed of his burden—me—he made a much quicker and more graceful job of heaving himself up and out.

I crawled backward until we were on solid ground, and then simply let myself fall off the trunk onto the wonderful still earth, feeling like one giant black-and-blue, aching bruise, which was probably the case.

I felt him lower down beside me and gave myself a moment to rest. A moment before I decided what to do next to my rescuer: thank him or kick him in the balls again. He might have just saved my life, but he’d been the reason for its peril in the first place. I hadn’t forgotten that.

The tingling sense of others—other Monère—stole across my senses and forestalled my decision. I staggered to my feet, and saw the boy rise to his also, silver dagger in hand. His holster was empty, the gun apparently lost. Which sucked, really, because we were outnumbered. I counted ten men closing in on us. Ten rogues, if I were not mistaken, Monère warriors cast out by their Queens, often banding together as bandits. Four of them had swords, the rest were just armed with daggers.

It was not just the worn clothes and hodgepodge assembly of their weapons that made me think of them as rogues. Nor the older feel of their strength, their power. It was the furtiveness of their movements, the meanness in their eyes, the disillusioned hardness in them, and the hungry, gleaming avarice that filled them when they spotted me, felt me. Queen.

“Friends of yours?” I asked.

“No,” the boy said. “Yours?”

“Nope.”

“Stay behind me.”

“Next to you would be better. Even up the odds a little more,” I said, coming to stand beside him, making it five to two instead of ten to one. More even odds, as I said.

Stubborn boy that he was, he stepped protectively forward, putting himself between me and the men.

“Milady, you seem to be lost,” said a gray-haired warrior. He seemed to be not only the oldest but the most powerful among them. Their leader, I presumed.

I wanted to say, Not lost, so much as kidnapped , but didn’t do anything so foolish. In cases like this, a lie usually served much better than the truth. Or in this case, a half-lie. “I fell into the river and was separated from the rest of my men. They should be along shortly.”

“Good thing we sensed you then.” The man smiled, and it made my flesh crawl. “We will protect you until your men come.” Substitute snatch and keep instead of protect , and you would have their real intent. His words were helpful and benign, but his actions were not. They surrounded us in a semicircle, the river at our back, leaving us no place to run.

“Stay back,” the boy warned them.

A gesture from the leader and his men sprang. They rushed the boy, all powerful warriors, experienced fighters. But he held them, unbelievably. Kept them from me.

The boy fought unlike any other warrior I’d ever seen. He fought as if he were moving in a lethal flowing dance, dipping and spinning to unheard music. He dropped to the ground and whirled with his dagger in a slashing sweep, making it look beautiful as he sliced across the lower legs of the five men engaging him to his left. Then he rolled to meet the men converging from the right, dancing with them in a wicked ballet of blades. The men slashed and thrust with brute force and chilling savagery while he dodged with grace and serenity, moving with a superior ease none of the other rogues had—that none of my men even possessed. They thrust, he parried, blocking and striking unexpectedly with his wide wrist guards, using them as both weapons and defense, whatever opportunity afforded him. Even the two rogues with long swords he danced with. He fought them off, and turned back to meet the other group.

It was an exquisite display of skill, of valiant heart, but numbers and weapons do count and usually prevail. The odds were overwhelmingly against him. He had injured some of the men, but had not taken any out. And the five he’d pushed back pressed back in immediately as soon as he turned his attention away. They circled behind him, waiting for their moment to strike.

I stepped away from the boy’s protection and engaged their interest, smiling, opening my arms to them, my message plain: You want me, come get me.

With eager, lustful gleams in their eyes they did.

“No!” the boy shouted, somehow aware of my actions even as he fought. “Come back, my lady.”

I could not obey him. Could not stand there and do nothing as they cut him down, which they eventually would. My palms throbbed, my power awakening as I called upon it. In a hot, flowing rush, it came at my beckoning, a living force pulled from the center of me, spilling down my arms, into my hands, into my Goddess’s Tears—the moles that were the size and color of large pearls embedded deep in my palms.