Free Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven by Mercedes Lackey Page A

storms?” He was making more notes. How could that possibly be of interest to him?
    “Aye.” She contemplated mischief herself, and sternly reminded herself that she was not to arouse suspicion. “Don’t fish, don’t eat.”
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw, to her astonishment, a bit of rope snaking towards his left foot. It slipped around his ankle. He didn’t notice, he was so intent on her. Or maybe the pain of his hand kept him from feeling the slithering rope at his ankle.
    “Does anyone else go out when it storms?” What was he trying to get at? That her father was doing something nefarious under the cover of storms? How daft was that? “The other fishermen in the village. Do they fish in the storms too?”
    Again, she shrugged. “Course.” She moved off again, towards another patch of kelp. “Don’t fish, don’t eat.” He started to follow. “Village bain’t rich.” Surely he had seen that for himself. Surely he had seen the number of deaths by drowning in the parish records.
    The rope suddenly tightened around his ankle as he started after her; taken completely by surprise, he went sprawling on his face. And before he could notice what had tripped him, the rope whipped itself away and sped up the sand, to lie, all harmless-looking, too far to have been what caught him.
    He came up with a face and fancy uniform full of sand, sputtering, and looking around for what had caught him. He glared at her, but she was too far away to have done anything to him, and what could he accuse her of? Say she was a witch and had bespelled him to trip? A right fool he’d look. Claim she’d planted some sort of trap in the sand that had managed to disappear as soon as he’d fallen? A greater fool he’d look then!
    She resisted the urge to say something—although she could hear giggling from where the rope was.
    His notebook lay a yard away, pages fluttering in the wind. She made no move to pick it up or give him any other kind of help.
    Her basket was full, so she decided this was a good time to make him follow her again. She hiked it up on her shoulder and headed for the house. She didn’t look back—but she did hear him fall twice more.
    That delayed him enough that she was able to get the fire startedbeside the bare garden and throw the kelp on it, then hang the kettle over it to start the laver boiling to make the fuel do double-duty. Kelp smoke was… fairly noisome. And as delicious as the laver was after boiling for a day, when it was boiling it was just as noxious. To her gratification, somehow, no matter where he stood, he found himself downwind of it. He waved at it ineffectually, coughing.
    He probably wants to ask me why I’m burning kelp and boiling seaweed, and he can’t get a breath long enough to get the words out. Does the wretched fool think laver grows in a garden? He’s a Welshman; he has to have eaten laver-bread.
Now she was highly amused, and some of her temper cooled. Clearly, clearly a city man, and one who’d never had to make what he could buy. The kelp ash was invaluable in the garden, and for making soap, and for scrubbing pots and the hearthstones. She’d have to wash the ash to get rid of the salt before she put it on the garden, but it would keep down the weeds between the rows just a treat, besides nourishing the plants. But he wouldn’t know that. And she was not going to tell him. Let him ask in the village.
    And clearly he had no idea where laver came from, nor how it was prepared. He probably didn’t even know that the thin brown sheets she’d picked off the rocks
were
laver. As for the samphire, well, from the look of it, he’d think of eating grass before he’d think of eating samphire.
    She’d told him that her mother had died going kelping, she’d shown him what kelping was, now let him try and figure out
why
anyone would go kelping, then burn or boil the kelp.
    The smoke almost seemed to be chasing him. Before long, his eyes were red and weeping, and he