The Enchanted Quest by Frewin Jones Page A

thing. A tingle in her fingertips. No more than that. Imagination, perhaps. Wishful thinking.
    She opened her eyes. The ebbing tide was drawing them toward the mouth of the river. She could see the curve of the bay. Flecks of white on water. An arc of gray surf where the waves were breaking on the sand. The hunched dunes of Weir.
    Hymnal—a dark ridge against the sky.
    She puckered her brows, staring at the hilltop town. It looked as though the hill spiked with rooftops was sliding away beneath the clouds. She blinked and looked again. No! Of course—it was the clouds that were moving. Moving ponderously westward.
    And then she felt a cold wind on her face and in her hair. She lifted her face to the sky and smiled.
    “Thank you,” she said.
    “The wind’s come up,” said Connor, stooping to loosen the ties that held the reefed mainsail to the boom. “That’s what I call a piece of good luck.”
    “That’s what I call prayers being answered,” said Tania.
    “Ha!” exclaimed Rathina, her eyes bright. “You called upon Eden, then! ’Tis good she can aid us so. Master Connor, set the mainmast, if you have the craft. And the jib also. We must make the most of this mystic wind.”
    Connor gave the two of them a bemused look. “Everything has to be magic with you people,” he said, shaking his head.
    The two sisters laughed aloud at his disbelief.
    As Connor released the last of the leather thongs and hauled on the halyard to raise the sail, Tania turned her eyes to the darkling west.
    Now their journey had truly begun.

Chapter Eight
    The Blessèd Queen plowed the ocean, curtained in a fine salt spray. The choppy waves were capped white and foamed with lacy veils of spume.
    Tania still was not quite used to the jolting as the prow was shouldered upward by the waves and then dropped—up and drop, up and drop—but she was at least able to brace herself when she saw the frothing crests of larger waves approaching.
    It was not yet dawn, but away behind them the fleeing mountains of Weir were lined with a frail silvery light. The east wind was still blowing strongly into their triangular sails, and above them the clouds were being torn to scurrying shreds. Patches of black appeared through the clouds, and in the far gulfs of heaven stars glittered frostily.
    Tania watched Connor rig the sails, wanting to help but knowing he had no time to teach her. Being of no use was frustrating, especially as Connor and Rathina clearly had their hands full.
    Rathina was at the stern, the tiller under her arm, her black hair blowing all around her face. Judging from her narrow-eyed expression, keeping a steady course was hard work in such a wind.
    Tania leaned out of Connor’s way as he looped the bowline from the jib sail around and around a cleat set at the prow.
    “The trick is to tack to about forty-five degrees from the wind,” he told her as he secured the rope. “Normally you’d use the boom to change the angle of the mainsail to the wind and then tack from port to starboard to keep a straight course. But as we aren’t aiming for a specific place, there’s not much point in doing that right now.” The sloop dropped suddenly into a deep trough between waves and he stumbled forward, turning quickly to sit down against Tania on the triangular prow seat. “Whoops! Sorry about that,” he said, lifting his arm to wipe the spray off his face. “I haven’t quite got my sea legs yet.”
    “It is fierce,” she said. “I’m impressed that you can stand up at all. If I tried, I’d probably topple overboard in about ten seconds.”
    He smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I took a lifeguard course a few years back.” He gazed into her face. “I’d save you.”
    Tania tried to shift away from him, but the seat was too narrow for her to avoid the pressure of his body against hers. The moment when she had almost allowed him to kiss her back in the inn was gone. Elias Fulk’s interruption had saved her from making a