Free Finder's Shore by Anna Mackenzie Page A

offering. “It’s all ruins now, different to the ruins at Vidya. Older.” Ronan says nothing. My eyes follow a kittiwake, arcing in above our heads. “Maybe the world never stops changing.”
    Ronan rests the oars in a horizontal line above the water, drops falling from their blades. His hair sticks damply to his forehead, his shirt showing patches of sweat. Fresh guilt joins the old. “Do you want me to row for a while?”
    “How much farther to the inlet?”
    I scan the rocky toe of the headland. “Not far, I think. Around that outcrop of rocks.”
    “I’ll just rest for a minute.”
    The sea sways us gently. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I shouldn’t have gone without you.”
    Ronan nods and returns to the oars. We slide past a small cove nestled between rocky spurs then another that boasts a tiny pocket of sand.
    “How long would it take to walk from Skellap Bay to the inlet?” 
    “Two hours from Leewood to Merryn’s and another half hour at least from her farm. The old fishermen’s path up the cliff was quicker, but the top section has given way.” By natural means or not. Change comes in different forms.
    “We can’t risk staying long: not more than an hour.”
    I frown at his pessimism. “If there was someone in the trees, it was most likely Marn.”
    The lift of his eyebrow is all the answer Ronan makes, and it’s enough. If it had been Marn, he’d have spoken out. “It could have been Jed,” I allow. “He always used to spy on us.” And the first place he’d think to look for me, after Skellap Bay, would be Merryn’s.
    When the inlet comes in sight, its entrance marked by twin lines of waves that hump and curl on either side of a narrow band of flat water, Ronan shakes his head. “The tide’s turned,” he says. “We won’t get in till slack water.”
    “Can’t we at least try?”
    With a shrug, he pulls us closer to the channel entrance, the dinghy moving sluggishly against the thrust of the outgoing tide. Disappointment clags my throat. I can see that it’s hopeless. Ronan turns us with one oar and we’re swept back out to sea.
    “We’ll wait at the cove we passed,” he says, as he rows back the way we’ve come.
    I stare at the complex geometry of the waves where they crumple and rebound from the cliff’s jagged base.
    The pocket of shore where he beaches the dinghy is no larger than the vegetable plot at Leewood, its coarse sand crunching loud as he scrambles out. I follow reluctantly. With the sun blocked off, the cove is cold and cheerless, walled about by sea and rock. There’s a pungent aroma and the cliff above is streaked with white.
    “We’re below a rookery,” Ronan says, as if I can’t work that out for myself.
    We tow the dinghy up the shore and Ronan stretches the kinks from his spine. “I could use something to eat.” He looks around. “There might be enough wood for a fire.” What little there is will be brittle and quick burning.
    “The next slack tide won’t be till dusk,” I say. I can’t hide my impatience, or the skein of tension that the morning has woven about me. “Crossing the headland will take longer in the dark. We’ll be late for the rendezvous with Explorer .”
    Ronan says nothing as he scours the cove, gathering half an armload of sea-bleached branches. “What did you find out from Sophie?” he asks as he stacks them near the cliff.
    I toss a stick onto his meagre pile. “Only that Colm is still in charge, and greedier and more powerful than ever.”
    “What about your family?”
    His question pierces the carapace that hides my hurt. “Ty’s been sent away, apprenticed to a tanner.” He can’t help but hear what it costs me to say it. “Marn —” An image forms in my mind of the Council’s sham trial and the way Marn would have felt, losing Leewood. “Marn forfeited his farm because of me. He’s Colm’s tenant now.”
    The smell of the rookery makes my eyes water. I turn to stare out to sea. 
    “It’s not