The Ever After

Chapter Fifteen: By the Sea

"I'M STARVING."

May slowed to a stop and let her sack slide down from her shoulder and onto the sand. Without a sun above them to show the day passing, she couldn't tell how long they'd been walking, but it seemed like it must have been three hours or more.

"How long do you think we've been at it?"

"I don't know, but I'm exhausted." For the past several minutes Pumpkin had been lagging behind, moving as if every inch pained him. Now he plopped down into a sitting hover above the sand.

May sighed. Pumpkin didn't know much of anything. She wondered if it wouldn't have been better to leave him back at Belle Morte. Then she felt guilty for the thought.

She pulled out her water bottle and swished it around in front of her. She'd drunk out of it many times already, but the level of water hadn't gone down even an inch, just as Arista had promised. She still couldn't quite believe it. She took several huge gulps, then wiped the cool bottle across her sweaty forehead.

"Hey, do you see that?" Pumpkin asked, pointing forward. There was a black line on the horizon. "Do you think that's it?"

"I don't know."

They both walked another few minutes, and after a few more, they arrived at the sea.

The body of water that stretched itself out before May and Pumpkin wasn't so much an ocean as it was a giant oil slick lying lazily across the horizon. It looked like something that might have dripped out of a car, except that it was endless and vast, so big that they couldn't see any end of it, and it filled May with a sick kind of dread. Up to this point everything she had seen since the portal had had a slight glow to it. The sea was the opposite of that-it was a complete absence of glow.

"I guess I didn't know how black, black could get," May muttered softly.

"Mmm-hmmm," Pumpkin agreed.

May wanted to say that the water was also, somehow, enticing. It took effort to tear her eyes from it and look around to figure out where they were. She looked left, then right. To the right was more desert. To the left, cliff met with beach, creating a narrow strip of sand beside the water. Like the sea, the strip seemed to go forward endlessly. It looked desolate and lonely.

She gazed out at the sea, which lapped at the sand lazily with oily little sighs. It was actually hard not to look at.

She must have been staring for a while, because when she tore her eyes away, Pumpkin had laid out a feast in front of her-honey, pomegranates, three tiny cakes decorated with tiny coffins. He'd arranged it all in the shape of a smiley face, and was now lying down a few feet away, resting, his body hovering an inch above the sand.

"Oh, thank you, Pumpkin."

Snort. Pumpkin was already asleep and snoring.

May gobbled up all of the food that had been put out for her, almost guiltily, since Pumpkin couldn't have any. When she was finished, she brushed the crumbs off her bathing suit and stood up, rejuvenated. The water pulled her eyeballs back in its direction. It looked so cool and dark. Maybe she would just dip a toe into the water.

Kicking off her shoes, she padded across the sand. She was just a few feet from the water's edge when she came to a stop. The water glistened and winked at her. It almost seemed as if, just to accommodate her, each gentle wave was reaching toward her softly.

"Umph!"

She felt herself being yanked from behind, and then she was on the ground, a tangle of legs and arms that sorted themselves into Pumpkin's and hers.