Frankie finally focused — it was only a cat, even if it was Sylvanas.
ElsBeth looked down at Johnny. He didn’t look like he was breathing, and panic clawed at her. Then she remembered what the lifeguards taught them on Beach Safety Day.
“Robert, help me roll him over.” They tugged Johnny onto his side and ElsBeth pounded his back. She whacked him hard, over and over.
“Are you trying to kill him?” Hillman-Jones howled.
Johnny’s chest heaved, and a great gout of seawater gushed from his mouth and onto Robert’s expensive boat shoes.
“Eewww, that’s disgusting,” Frankie said.
Johnny coughed and spat, but he was breathing. ElsBeth was so thankful she’d paid attention at Beach Safety class. This was as good as magic.
But it was all too much for Sylvanas, and he jumped off the bunk. He snagged a bag of turkey jerky on his way down, and set out to investigate the goings-on. At his own pace.
ElsBeth knew Sylvanas wasn’t going to rush into anything. Unless it involved doughnuts, or a few other select items.
“How did that cat get aboard?” Robert asked.
ElsBeth said nothing. She could see that Sylvanas was on a mission and was not to be interrupted, by her or anyone else. She was just glad he was here with them — even if he was someone else to worry about.
ElsBeth took a deep breath, and had a new thought. She was just a young witch and this weather was a powerful enchantment.
She looked again at Johnny and took another deep breath.
But if anyone used magic and one of her friends got really hurt ... she was not going to put up with it. She had to get to the bottom of this.
She climbed back into the stinging storm, more determined with each step.
Chapter 4
Magic and Science
Back on deck ElsBeth looked South Wind square in the face. “Why?” she demanded, and two very different things happened at once.
One was an earsplitting crash, which could have passed for thunder but ElsBeth knew better. It was some kind of magic. The other was her grandmother’s voice, carrying lightly through the storm on its own breeze. “ElsBeth, remember. Sometimes it’s OK to break the rules.”
These were followed by an echo that sounded like her familiar, Professor Badinoff. “Think, ElsBeth. We can’t be with you now. You must think for yourself, just as I taught you.”
And if she felt before that she was only a young witch, alone against powerful magic, she felt even more at sea now.
ElsBeth really wanted to talk with Grandmother, and Professor Badinoff, but that was not going to happen. So just to let them know she was OK, she thought the loudest thought she could, and sent it to them as directly as she could, “I HEARD YOU.”
Now she had something serious to think about. Her grandmother had never before said she could do magic by herself — that was the “Big Rule.”
Most of the time this had been fine by her. ElsBeth knew magic could be tricky and you could make a real mess of things if you didn’t know what you were doing. The “Big Rule” didn’t seem so Big now, though, and didn’t even seem like a Rule.
She wanted to think for herself. She knew this meant more freedom, and was how she’d be able to make her own future. She just didn’t expect more freedom to feel so much like ... more responsibility. And she thought her future was supposed to be ... in the future.
ElsBeth got herself wound up in these worries, and for the moment she forgot about the strange thunder-like sound from the sky.
***
Sylvanas, however, had not forgotten. When he was up on deck in the storm he’d felt a ghostly presence behind South Wind … then disaster had struck. Sea spray had splashed his beautiful black self.
He vowed now horrible revenge on the being behind all this. Sylvanas would not let anyone who dared get him wet go unpunished. They would be sorry. Oh, yes, they would.
He stalked the ship, searching for signs of magical interference. He had trouble focusing, though. He felt a little “off,” and he began to wander and weave from rail to rail.
The turkey jerky, he realized, was full of preservatives. “I’ve been poisoned,” he mumbled, and negative thoughts whirled through him. He wasn’t used to artificial ingredients, and he worried how he would survive the day without Hannah Goodspell’s excellent cooking.
***
ElsBeth tried again to reach South Wind but could not get through. One of her best skills, though, was calming the winds to protect fishing boats in storms at sea. She’d practiced this with Grandmother from the widow’s walk on the roof of their home.
So she did the best thing she could. She turned away from her friends, and “singing” a little above the range of sound, she cast a spell to settle the wind just above the deck and make them all safer.
A short moment later Lisa Lee called out, “I calculated the probability of this unusual new wind pattern and found it more than ninety-nine percent improbable. This means,” she added, to be clear, “it’s basically beyond any accurate scientific measurement or explanation.”
ElsBeth smiled.
***
The crew was quiet now, catching their breath from the shock of the storm and the strange, sudden calm on deck.
Lisa Lee stood up. Her glasses glistened with drops of seawater as she glanced around and announced, “I think we’re following the Gulf Stream north.”
Maybe worried that someone would make fun of her, she quickly continued. “Did you know Benjamin Franklin tried to get the English to use the Gulf Stream, after the Revolutionary War, to speed up mail ships from England to America?”
She got a few curious looks but no reply, so she answered herself. “Yes. American mail ships could save two weeks on each trip over to England — when they used water temperature, water color, and the speed that bubbles travelled in the water, in order to follow the Gulf Stream. They wanted to get their return mail from England faster, too.”
Veronica, who’d been staring at a broken fingernail, seemed to come back to life. ElsBeth knew Veronica liked history, and secretly liked science, and had really enjoyed the talk by the Environmental Scientist at the military base on the Cape last year.
It did seem odd, though, coming from Veronica, who pretended interest in nothing but fashion and boys, but the words “What do you think about using ocean energy to replace a lot of the oil we use?” escaped through her pretty mouth.
Lisa Lee looked at Veronica like a long lost sister. “My favorite subject.” She pushed her glasses up on her nose and began to explain the unique designs she’d
