I open my mouth to call for my mother, for it is her hand clutching mine, but the furious water wrenches her away and I am drowning in the churn of the flood.
My head hit a corner and my knee scraped up splinters like a nest of prickling burning bites. I fought, but fear tore out my courage as water streamed through my parted lips.
Then Vai’s arms held me, and he dragged me out. Foam popped at my nostrils. My head breached. I gasped in air. Vai hauled me up. I hung on him as a dead weight, for I was a quivering frightened drowning child who had lost her papa and mama to the flood.
He carried me over the wreckage of the under-space, slipping and sliding. Kofi had already gone up with the old man. Distant shouts barked a warning.
Another huge wave slammed into the building, shuddering the structure half off its stilts as the entire building groaned. Water gushed into the under-space, rushing up to engulf everything including us.
My ears popped as the temperature dropped. The wave crackled into a ragged, rippled curtain of ice, stopping just short of washing over us. Above, water poured down through the hole on top of us and slapped into the ice wall, hissing and grinding.
Vai was shaking all over, his skin as cold as winter. He had his free arm outstretched. In the curve of his forefinger and thumb, he was holding a necklace chain with a round metal ring like the eye of a spyglass. Within the ring was a circle of what looked like cloudy glass. He released the ring, and the chain dropped limply against his wet singlet.
“I can’t use that a second time,” he said in a hoarse voice. “You’ve got to stand, Cat.”
The rippled curve of the ice wave began to pit and sink as a fresh swell surged up below.
“Ja, maku!” Kofi stuck his head down. “Hurry, yee jackass. Another wave coming.”
I was not a jackass. I jumped; Kofi caught my hands and hauled me up as another man cast down a net for Vai. I had used the last of my strength. Kofi threw me over his broad back and ran, me retching as water chased us across the avenue.
The tearing baleful wind, most frightfully and dreadfully, ceased.
I wriggled and slipped, and landed on my knees as pain pierced into my brain and every joint in my body screamed with a bone-drilling ache. The sky turned yellow. I looked up into the eye of the Angry Queen. The spirit of the hurricane was a woman, a vast looming face with a brow of thunderclouds and a mouth of lightning. The curve of her arms was the tearing circle of the howling winds. Here, under her face, the world lay still.