"Thomas thought you'd say no if I'd asked to come," Niamh began.
"Damn right, I would have," Lyse agreed.
"I'm sorry," Niamh said.
Lyse sighed and let her eyes drift across the landscape, taking it all in. They were on a flat, sandy expanse of beach. The crash of the waves a few hundred feet from where they lay was omnipresent and intoxicating. Lyse wanted to close her eyes and lie back down, let the echoing roll of the sea calm her down, wash away all the stress and tension in her body and brain.
Not gonna happen, she thought, and then she exhaled, trying not to let her anger surface.
Instead, she said: "You shouldn't have tried to come with me. This is something I needed to do on my own."
She pulled herself up into a kneeling position, the knees of her jeans turning dark blue from the moisture in the sand. "You had no right trying to stop me."
Niamh frowned, shielding her eyes with the heel of her palm.
"You think I was trying to stop you?"
"What else were you doing?" Lyse asked.
Niamh shook her head.
"No, I wanted to help you," she said, the bright sun making the freckles on her cheeks stand out against her pale skin. "I think Thomas wanted me to come with you because I can make stuff happen here in the dreamlands. He can, too, and he would've come instead of me, but he was afraid you wouldn't trust him."
"He wasn't wrong," Lyse said.
"It's a death sentence being here and not having the ability to make the world bend to your will," Niamh said-and Lyse realized she'd been mistaken. Niamh really had come to help. She felt foolish for not seeing Niamh's motives earlier.
"I wish I hadn't had to come here," Niamh added, grabbing a handful of pale white sand in her hand and letting it slowly trickle out through her fingers. "You think I want to tag along? Well, you're wrong. This place scares me. I hate it here in the dreamlands."
Lyse agreed. The dreamlands were out of control, unpredictable . . . scary. But she instinctively knew that they would lead her where she needed to go. She had to find the moment in time when The Flood-or the thing that appeared as The Flood in her world-came into its power. She had to stop that moment from happening before their universe was destroyed forever.
"I appreciate you coming with me," Lyse began, then stopped, realizing how lame that sounded. "Thank you."
Niamh seemed to accept this as if it were an apology.
"You're wel-"
Her words were drowned out by the crash of waves, appreciably louder now than they'd been not ten seconds earlier.
"What were you saying-" But the words were hardly out of her mouth before a cacophonous roaring overwhelmed her ears and she was enveloped in a wash of seawater. She sputtered, her lungs taking in the salty brine, and she dug her hands into the sand for purchase as the wave began to retreat, creating an undertow that tried to take Lyse with it as it returned to the sea.
She was able to remain on the shore as the wave dissipated, but just barely. She gulped down oxygen as she climbed to her feet, her legs shaking, her body drenched.
"Niamh?" She looked around for her friend, but she was gone. Only sand and surf as far as the eye could see.
She whirled around, eyes scanning for any sign of movement-and then she saw it. A small blue boat broke the surface of the water way out on the horizon, popping up from the depths like a bouncing buoy marker.
"Niamh!" Lyse screamed and began to run toward the tide line, the fingers of the sea reaching out to embrace her.
The small boat moved fast, slipping over the waves. As it got closer, she could make out Niamh's face, her hair plastered to her head with ocean water. She'd wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, her body shivering.
When the boat was close enough to approach, Lyse ran out into the water, the splash her shoes made swallowed whole by the crashing surf. As she clambered on board, she saw that Niamh's teeth were chattering.
"If I hadn't . . . I could be . . ." Niamh tried to say in between hiccups of tears. "I would be . . . dead."
Lyse didn't know how she'd escaped being dragged out to sea, but obviously Niamh hadn't been so lucky. The shock of it all had scared her badly.
"But you aren't and you didn't. You saved yourself."
Niamh nodded, the chattering of her teeth and the pale blue of her lips worrying Lyse.
"Can you wish yourself a blanket? You're freezing," Lyse added.
In less than a second, a heavy woolen blanket-that smelled like wet dog-appeared around Niamh's shoulders.