Free Alive (The Veiled World Book 1) by Vanessa Garden Page B

him on his journey to the Land of Resting Souls.
    She nodded. “Cool. But I’m still keeping one of these.” She dropped one and tucked a single dull blade into the front of her dress, between her breasts. I wasn’t sure how it stayed there, in position like that, and was going to ask if she had some kind of a belt in there, when she took a hold of my hand and jumped, pulling me into the water with her.
    Icy cold water clouded my head. I was going to die. Scrambling, my arms clawed my way up to the light, until my head pierced the surface.
    My arms flapped against the water, desperate to keep my head up.
    A firm hand clamped around my arm.
    “Calm down. Just stay calm.”
    Amber wrapped her arm around my neck, positioned herself behind me and told me to float on my back, which, after trying several times, I did. Salt water stung the inside of my nose, and not to mention my as yet unhealed wounds from the salting the guards had given me.
    “Stay calm, everything will be okay. You’ll stay afloat and I’ll swim with one arm and get us to shore,” she said between breaths.
    Breathing in and out, I willed my heart to settle into a steady rhythm, but it was difficult to do when visions of my brother’s still, pale face slipping below the surface of the river he’d drowned in kept appearing inside my head.
    “You’re doing great,” she shouted, her teeth chattering against my cheek.
    The aeroplane was getting smaller. She was doing a good job, we were already several metres away from the plane.
    “I need to get…one of those bronze medallion things,” I spluttered. She shushed me for distracting her.
    A couple of minutes later she said, “I can touch the ground with my feet, but only if I put my head under. Soon you should be able to stand.”
    I heard shouting from the shore and twisted around to see.
    “What’s he on about?”
    Amber stopped swimming and I clawed at her arm again only to see Jacob waving his hands about, shouting at us and pointing at something behind us.
    “What?” I shouted, and at that time realised that I could, in fact, stand. I took hold of Amber’s shoulders and set her on her feet.
    He was saying…oh shit, he was screaming, “Crocodile!”
    “Get out of the water!” Jacob shouted. Two guards were with him, waving at us, but I knew they wouldn’t get into the water because they couldn’t swim either. Not many from the kingdom could.
    Amber screamed and raised her knife, her eyes frantically searching the water.
    I turned just in time to see the crocodile’s head disappear beneath the water. It surged forward, creating an arrow shape in the water, an arrow that was pointing right at us.
    “Get to shore!” I shouted at her, relieved to finally be able to assist her in some way. I flipped my knife out just as the beast grazed my belly and continued towards Amber. She couldn’t die. There was no way she was going to die today. Not after surviving the Change .
    There was nothing else to do but lunge at it and stab at it with my knife. The creature thrashed beneath me, bowling me over when my knife finally struck through its tough exterior to spear flesh. The knife slipped out of my grasp, it was so deep in the beast’s flesh.
    “No!” I shouted as Jacob dragged me away. I couldn’t leave my grandfather’s knife behind.
    I shook him free and threw myself at the shore, my hands seizing hold of the knife and yanking it free. The crocodile snapped at me, and I rolled out of the way, saving my face by an inch. The lifesaving device I wore burst against the blade and deflated almost instantly. The sound seemed to have frightened the creature because though it snapped its jaw once more, it then sank back into the water until its body, then its head, and finally, its beady eyes, disappeared beneath the surface.
    Two shadows loomed over me and when I shielded my eyes with a hand and looked up, the two guards stood smirking down at me. Heaven forbid they thank me for saving a prized