To Weave a Web of Magic by Claire Delacroix & Lynn Kurland & Patricia A. Mckillip & Sharon Shinn

Author:Claire Delacroix & Lynn Kurland & Patricia A. Mckillip & Sharon Shinn [Delacroix, Claire & Kurland, Lynn & McKillip, Patricia A. & Shinn, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780425196151
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 2004-07-05T14:00:00+00:00

AND that was how I ended up going on an expedition that would surely have enraged my father and disturbed my mother, had they known about it, as we headed out to view the sea. Gabriel's son and Ariel's daughter were respectable enough to please both of my parents, and my mother and father could have had no objection to the other two mortals who accompanied us, a girl and a boy about my age, siblings in one of the extended Harth clans. But they would not have been pleased to know that the troubled young angel Jesse was one of our number, or that he was the one who carried me from the Lesh house to a slaty gray cliff overlooking the northern ocean.

The flight took half an hour, for we were only about twenty miles from the sea. In deference to the summer clothes of the mortals, the three angels flew low to the ground,seeking out warmer air, but it was still a cold flight. I had been carried in an angel's arms before, many times, while I stayed at Monteverde and visited the Eyrie, but I didn't remember any flight being quite like this. Jesse held me close to his body, so that I was always aware of the heat of his skin and the tireless, effortless, almost automatic working of his wings. He didn't bother to speak to me, so most of the way I fretted that he was sorry he had invited me on the trip, sorry he had drawn me as a passenger—but as we landed and he set me carefully on my feet, he gave me a dazzling smile. It was full of mischief and pure uncomplicated pleasure, and I smiled back for all I was worth.

"Thank you," I said.

"I enjoyed it," he replied and turned away to greet the others.

We had come to rest on a high, rocky promontory attached to Gaza by a rough and nearly impassable strip of land. A few scrubby trees and dispirited flowers poked their way up through the hard soil, but for the most part, the cliff was hard, flat and unadorned. Its only claim to beauty lay in the view.

For it overlooked the ocean, and the ocean, from this place, was magnificent. It lashed and foamed ABC Amber Text Converter Trial version, http://www.processtext.com/abctxt.html

against the cliffs with no buffer of beach to impede its headlong motion. The water seemed to snarl against the rock, and then claw upward in white fists of foam. Farther out, the vast surface of the ocean seemed to boil with a perpetual internal rage; it sent up great jagged plates of water to war with oncoming waves and create a clashing of white-edged fury.

I was mesmerized. I could only stare out at the fierce continual combat and wonder at the forces that drove the water to such senseless passion. Why did it not lie calm, like the water in the ponds on my grandfather's estate? Why did it not roll in