Magic Rises

a power word. I could command it to die, but Ud , the killing word, usually failed, and when it didn’t work, the backlash crippled me with pain. The stronger the magic, the less pain, but this magic wave was weaker than most. The killing word would hurt like a sonovabitch.
    I couldn’t afford to be crippled right this second or I’d end the day as fish food. The only other attack word I had was kneel . The serpent had no legs.
    The serpent reared, rising from the sea, its mouth gaping. A moment and it would slam into me, like a battering ram.
    The small man spat a single harsh word. “Aarh!”
    A torrent of magic smashed into the serpent. It froze, completely still.
    I lunged at it and thrust the knife into its spine. The serpent shuddered. I sawed through its flesh, nearly cutting it in two.
    The serpent jerked and crashed backward. I kicked free.
    The creature convulsed, whipping the sea into froth. I swam away from it, to the ledge, gasping for breath. The small man slumped against the stone. A small dribble of bloody spit slid from his mouth.
    He’d used a power word and it worked. Thank you. Thank you, whoever you are upstairs.
    I held on to the ledge. The small man leaned over and held my hand, helping me hold on.
    The serpent flailed and thrashed, until finally a full minute later, it hung motionless in the water.
    The man petted my hand, wiped the blood from his lips, and pointed up. Above us, about seven feet above the stone shelf, a narrow hole split the wall, a little less than a foot across. Not nearly wide enough for both of us.
    The man held his hands together, as if praying, and looked at me.
    “Okay,” I told him. No reason for both of us to be trapped.
    I moved along the ledge to its widest point. A whole six inches of space to work with. Oh boy. It took me four tries to crawl up onto it—my feet kept slipping—but I finally managed and hugged the wall.
    The man grabbed my shirt and pulled himself up. Feet stomped on my shoulders. Forget thirty pounds, he was more like fifty. He should’ve weighed one third of that at his size. Maybe he was made of rocks.
    The man stood on my shoulders. I locked my hands and raised my arms flat against the wall. He stepped on my palms and kicked off.
    I slipped and fell backward into the water. I broke the surface just in time to see him scramble into the hole and vanish.
    I was all alone. Just me and fourteen feet of fresh sushi bopping on the waves. I was so tired. My arms felt like wet cotton.
    Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole hobbit episode. I’d hit the water hard, ended up with a concussion, and started seeing small magic men in riding boots.
    I forced myself to swim. Hanging in the water didn’t accomplish anything, and I was too exhausted to keep it up for long. Another trip around the cavern confirmed what I already knew—no escape. Sitting here waiting to be rescued was a losing proposition. Even if Aunt B and Keira did somehow manage to find me, I’d spend hours waiting for them to get a rope long enough get me out. The chances of the small man returning with a detachment of Pomeranian cavalry to liberate me were even slimmer.
    The serpent had to have come from somewhere. There simply weren’t enough fish in this small cavern to keep it alive, and unless they fed it a steady diet of Abkhazian hobbits, it had to move freely between the cavern and the sea.
    I swam to the wall where I’d first seen it and dove deep down through the crystal-clear water. Fifteen feet down, the mountain ended and a ten-foot-wide tunnel stretched before me, leading out. I had no idea how long it was.
    To dive into an underwater tunnel of unknown length, possibly drowning, or to stay in the cavern until I wore myself out, possibly drowning? Sometimes life just didn’t offer good choices.
    I breathed deep, trying to saturate my lungs with oxygen, and dove under. The tunnel rolled out in front of me, narrowing until it was barely four feet wide. I kept going, kicking off the walls. I once heard it was a good idea to not think about holding my breath while holding it. Yeah. That’s like not looking down while crossing over a cliff. Once someone says, “Don’t look down,” you’re going to look.
    The walls were closing in on me.
    What if I swam out into the nest of sea serpents?
    My heart hammered in my chest. I’d run out of air. I swam, frantic, desperate, fighting the water for my life.
    The ocean was turning dark. I was drowning.
    The tunnel’s walls