Free A Passionate Magic by Flora Speer Page A

longer beach.
    Not being certain when the tide was going to
turn, she decided against walking to Trevanan on the beach. She
would go there another day, using the narrow road along the top of
the cliff, for she was determined to meet the healer, Agatha. For
the present, the little cove with the stream was remarkably
interesting. She was sure the plant she saw growing near the base
of the cliff was golden samphire, which was valuable for pickling
and for preserving food. There was more of the same plant growing a
bit higher on the cliff face.
    Emma hurried forward and began to scramble up
the rocks, plucking the samphire as she went. Soon she discovered
other herbs. She scratched her hands, broke two fingernails, and
scraped both of her elbows, but she hardly noticed. Like the place
Blake had shown her on the moor, this particular cove was a
treasure trove of useful plants. Before long her basket was almost
full. She set it down on the sand so she could slip into a crevasse
in the rock and better reach one last, well-grown specimen of
samphire. She squeezed a little farther, stepping into deep shadow
and the cold water of the stream, and suddenly she was in a
cave.
    Light filtered through the opening, and there
was more daylight ahead of her shining from somewhere deeper in the
cave. Evidently the stream in which she was standing had created
the cave by the action of its water over many years, for the stream
ran along one side of the cave before gushing out under the rock at
the entrance. Emma stepped from the stream onto a floor of damp
sand. All around her the smooth rock walls of the cave gleamed with
moisture.
    Beyond a bend of rock just ahead of her, Emma
could see daylight reflecting in the water. She could not resist;
she had to find out what lay in the next chamber. She moved quickly
along the upward-sloping rock.
    The inner chamber was much larger than the
outer one, the roof much higher. It was well lit from a natural
opening in the rock far over her head. Emma decided this part of
the cave must be above the high-tide line, for the walls were dry
and dry sand covered the floor.
    There were footprints in the sand. A single
line of prints led from the shallow streambed directly to the rock
wall, and there they stopped. It was as if the person who made the
footprints had arisen from the water to walk right into the
rock.
    The hair on the back of Emma’s neck began to
prickle.
    Within a heartbeat she was in the outer
chamber again, hurrying across it, squeezing past the rock at the
entrance, tearing her gown in her haste to be away from the cave.
She stumbled into daylight, into bright, clear sunshine, and she
fell to her knees on the beach, gasping for breath.
    When she was able to stand again she saw that
the tide was noticeably higher. If she delayed in returning to the
beach below Penruan Castle, she would very soon be trapped in the
little cove, stranded there until the next low tide with whoever –
whatever – had left those footprints in the cave.
    Grabbing her basket, she raced for the strip
of sand surrounding the outermost tip of rocks, sand that grew
narrower with every wave that broke upon it. She was almost at the
seaward point of the rocks when she heard a seagull screeching.
Pausing in her flight, she looked up. The seagull wheeled far above
her, screeching again as if to mock her irrational fear. For she
was being irrational. No one was in the cave; perhaps no one had
been there for years, or for centuries. She had sensed no living
presence in those silent rock chambers.
    She took a deep breath of fresh sea air,
chuckling at herself for her foolishness, and glanced up at the
gull again, watching as it winged its way over the cliff, heading
inland.
    There on the cliff top, perched dangerously
near the edge, was a figure clad in white. Ghostly white draperies
blew out around it, streaming on the wind. Something gleamed blue
and silver in the sunlight, as if the figure was wearing a talisman
on its