Children of the Storm

other choice, other than to wait for Peterson and to die.
        She kissed Alex, then Tina.
        “Come on, then,” she said.
        She started forward, her head bent so that the rain did not blind her, and she was happy to see that the children had either copied her posture or had come to it naturally. That was a good sign. Maybe not good enough, but something, anyway.
        The first few steps were not so hard at all, even with the wind driving them a step sideways for every three steps forward, and she felt that, if she could reach the shelter of the palm forest, they might find the going just easy enough.
        Every now and again, she raised her head to be sure they were still moving in the right direction and, as they neared the edge of the long lawn, she turned to see if Peterson was after them yet.
        He was nowhere in sight.
        Her heart leaped at that, and she got them started, even faster, for the shelter of the big trees.

BOOK FIVE

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    TWENTY-FOUR
        
        Seawatch was at the point-end of the island's first hill, perched on the brow, with its lawn extending across the crest of the hill until the palms began on the far, downward slope and continued for the length of the island's spine, or at least until they were cut down to form the grounds around Hawk House more than a mile away. As Sonya led the children down that first small slope, slipping and sliding in the wet grass, moving toward the start of the palm thicket, she was surprised to see that the tiny glen at the hill's base was awash with brackish-looking water. The rain kept her from looking very far to either the left or the right, but so far as she could see, this slopping, choppy stream continued. She could not, or would not conceive that this might be part of the sea, that the storm had driven the waters this far in from shore, and so she assumed that what lay below was simply the rainwater which had run off from this hill and the next.
        Though the stream appeared to be no more than a foot or two deep, its surface was deceiving, for it came nearly to her hips. If it had had any currents in it, she might have found it impossible to carry both children across, which she managed, now, in two trips.
        Climbing even the gentle slope of the second hill proved a supreme challenge, for they all three slipped and fell repeatedly, as if they were on a greased ramp. At last, when they did reach the top, they were into the thickest growth of palms and cut off from at least a third of the wind's battering ram.
        The going was still not easy, not by any stretch of the most vivid imagination, not anywhere so easy as Sonya had hoped that it would be when they got this far. Even at two-thirds its real volume, the wind was staggering and, when it gusted by an additional twenty and thirty miles-per-hour, it tore through the trees like fusillades of cannon fire, knocking them against the boles of the pine trees and, sometimes, driving them uncontrollably to their knees in the mucky earth.
        And, if they gained an advantage from the windbreak effect of the trees, they had to suffer another torture they would not have been faced with in open land. The wind, already with a voice like a herd of mastodons, made the brittle palm branches rattle and scrape until the resultant din was almost more than human ears could take. She hoped that she would not have to tell Alex or Tina anything important, for even with her mouth to their ears, they would have trouble hearing her above the chorus of chattering fronds.
        Occasionally, but less often than she would have liked to because the effort required and the time lost made it dangerous to do very often, she turned clear about and looked to see if Peterson was anywhere in sight, her heart in her throat each time, sure that he would be there, frighteningly close, still holding his knife.
        But he was not.
        They were alone.
        After one of these pauses, she turned to go forward again and leaped in fright when a coconut and several palm branches crashed to the earth five feet ahead of them, torn from their moorings by the wind. Had they taken another two steps, one of them might have been killed or received a skull fracture from that coconut.
        Now, in addition to Peterson and the wind and the rain and the slippery ground, she had another thing to worry about.
        They stepped across the fallen boughs and