Although most of her concentration was focused simply on keeping her footing, she tried to watch for any sign of fishing boats on the water below or for a pathway leading down the cliff. From what she recalled of Nicholas and Nan’s descriptions of the area, Dowerdu would be just past the first inlet of fishing boats.
She walked and watched, the rhythmic crashing of the waves the only sound, until suddenly another sound intruded, a syncopated counterpoint to the percussive thunder of the sea. A horse. Behind her. Close. Moving fast.
Mira turned to look just as horse and rider came upon her. She caught only a fleeting image, a cloaked and hooded figure atop a pale gray beast, enormous and galloping flat out. Then, the rider’s arm jerked, the horse swerved, and its hurtling bulk flew at her.
Her first thought, even before she thought to move, was that the rider’s movement was no accident. He meant to direct the horse at her. He meant to run her down.
The pathway was too small. As Mira scrambled to avoid the charging animal, she lost her footing.
Time slowed. Loose pebbles and dirt gave way beneath the soles of her boots. Her shawl caught on something and slipped from her shoulders. The heaving pants of the horse and her own rasping gasp of breath met her ears, and she smelled animal sweat and something else—something sweet and familiar—as the edge of the rider’s cloak brushed past her face.
And then the world turned upside down. Sky beneath her feet, waves at her back, a sense of unbearable disorientation. She was flying, she thought, flying without wings. There was no panic or fear, only a sense of weightless calm.
A heartbeat later, the instinct to live flared to life, galvanizing her into action. With all her strength she twisted about, arms outstretched toward the cliff face, hands grasping for any hold at all. Her forearm cracked against an outcropping, sending a blinding bolt of pain through her body, and her hands brushed the jagged rocks, abrasions burning like fire.
Then, as abruptly as her fall began, it ended, her body coming to rest with a jarring thud on a narrow ledge.
At first, she simply lay there, savoring the stillness and taking mental stock of her physical well-being. Her hands were raw, her right arm throbbed, and she felt bruised all over. But she seemed otherwise whole.
Slowly, she raised her head to examine her surroundings. She had fallen no more than fifteen feet from the pathway. And she had just caught the edge of the ledge… If she had not been reaching toward the cliffs, the momentum of her fall might have carried her right past this tiny salvation and to her death on the rocks below.
She gingerly pulled herself closer to the cliff wall. She could not move far along the face of the cliff, as the outcropping on which she rested was no more than five feet wide. She huddled against the rock, a margin of two feet separating her from the precipice on every side.
A rumble of thunder, clearly audible now over the roar of the sea, reminded her of the need to find a way off of the cliff and back to the pathway. But her battered and breathless body—and the fear that the hooded rider might be waiting for her above—kept her rooted firmly in place.
Then the rain began. Large fat droplets landing with solid plops gradually gave way to a steady barrage of water and finally to a torrential downpour. The wind increased and Mira curled up tightly, making herself as small as possible as the gale rocked her from side-to-side on her fragile perch.
As the storm raged, she allowed the tears to come, tears of physical pain and shock and fear, tears that melted into the rainwater and rushed into the sea.
The thought echoed over and over in her mind. Someone had tried to kill her. And, she realized, if the storm did not let up, and she did not find some way off of this ledge, the someone who had tried to kill her might yet succeed.
With a grim flash of humor, she chided herself for being so critical of magical intervention as a plot device. She could use a little magical intervention of her own, right then.
Magic. Mira’s hand flew to her throat, and a rush of relief filled her when her fingers brushed the delicate chain there. With fingers already clumsy from cold, she tugged on the chain to free the pendant hanging around her neck. As she huddled on the cliff ledge in the pouring rain, she caressed the small pendant, and, sheltering it with her hands, she released the tiny catch to expose the ivory jonquil inside.