Chap. 57 The Hurricane

Chap. 57 The Hurricane

The wind is rising. Why didn't we leave with the others?

I told you, it is unnecessary. This is just wind, they are afraid of it.

But it is different. It is going to get worse. It is a hurricane. They are dangerous.

Don't be silly. Just stay here in our weyr, we are too high for the tide. We will be fine.

But

You will stay with me here in our weyr. Have you ever been hurt by a wind before?

No. But I have never been in a hurricane before. Corvuth and the others have. They have said it's bad.

We will be just fine.

Jenmay was peeved by her dragon's insistence. Even Jianath? Silly dragon, just like everybody else.

I am not silly. I am afraid.

It was unnerving, she admitted, the empty weyr echoing with the sound of wind and nothing else. She'd never experienced such aloneness. It was just her and Jianath. D'nis had made sure she had plenty of food and water to keep her for the time they'd be gone. 

Still, it was strange, such silence other than the wind.  No singing, no laughing children, no women at work, no men doing the myriad things people did. 

Not one but her. 

All of them, scared to death of some wind.

Even worse, they'd willfully and openly disobeyed her orders. She was Weyrwoman! They were supposed to do as she demanded, without question.

But no. That rebel, D'nis, told them all to pack up and leave, afraid of what? A windstorm? He'd figured it out, he had, that she had no means to force him or the rest into obedience. These modern people, with all this nonsense of 'freedom' and 'rights', preached  by that abomination, Aivas! See what it had come to!

Well, she'd make sure he would suffer the consequences of rebellion when he came back.

 Once this wind dropped, she'd fly North and hire some Abominators, armed men who would make sure that her orders were carried out. Maybe she'd banish D'nis, to suffer being scored by Thread. Him and his dragon, both. No, she'd make sure he didn't come back. 

"I didn't waste a turn and a half of dosing that fool Danelle just to have D'nis interfering," she thought.

She squashed that thought, having forgotten, for once, to keep it from her dragon.  Not even Jianath would ever know. It was a secret buried deep in her heart.

She replaced it quickly with, "But didn't those flowers bring my Jianath into heat! Soon there will be eggs!"

The weyrfolk had worked feverishly to evacuate the weyr. They'd sealed the weyr's wells to keep them from being inundated and contaminated with sea water. The wells were so far from the shore, the fools!  They'd even dismantled some of the more vital wooden structures and stowed them deep in the weyr's tunnels. They might get wet, but they'd be there, ready for rebuilding once the expected floodwaters had abated. Structures such as individual homes, animal stalls, and beach weyrs, made of thatch and lightwood, had been left standing, abandoned to the expected  storm.  

The residents had taken virtually everything that could be moved by dragon or wagon.  The livestock had all been herded inland, every living thing save one steer who obstinately refused to be caught. It was the smartest animal of the entire weyr, other than her dragon, she reflected.

The wind was growing stronger by the minute. From her weyr's ledge, high above the Weyr's bowl, she could see the waves growing higher. The wind was uncomfortably warm, and heavy with moisture.  

She began to feel salt spray. This high up! The sky before her was black and roiling with  menacing clouds, and there seemed to be no sunlight, even at midday.  The surf began slashing the shoreline. 

The windspeed increased without let up. She was getting wet. From rain? Or the sea spray?

We should leave. There is still time

NO

She stepped just inside the cave's opening, where her gold was nervously gauging the wind. Behind her, she could hear the wind howling in the lower caverns and tunnels that led into the cliff. 

The sea. It comes.

She looked out to see a wall of water come rushing in. It was enormous and unstoppable. She watched as it tore the planks off the short dock, sending them flying and crashing into the cliff face. The beach weyrs were smashed flat, the debris adding to the swirling mass of wood and sea wrack flooding into the bowl. The weyr shuddered under its impact. The water rushed into the ground level tunnels, flooding them. Every ground level cave was inundated. She could hear the water roaring inside the weyr under her level.

This was no tide, it was the entire ocean, shoved before the still growing might of the hurricane. 

Jianath cowered before the press of wind, trying her best to fit as far back into their weyr as a gold dragon could. The wind pried under her tightly clamped wings, trying to force them  away from her body, as if demanding she fly. 

Jenmay felt the wind pushing her back. It was a solid wall, a relentless force, growing stronger by the moment. She went to her knees, and saw that the bowl of the weyr had vanished. Instead, she was looking directly down onto the sea. It was rising, quickly, having already filled the lower caverns. 

A battered pulp of something was in the middle of debris. 

She recognized it as the steer.

 She couldn't hear a thing other than the screaming wind. Rain slashed her face, stinging her eyes like sand. A plank of wood, smashed into the wall just beside her, showering her with wooden shrapnel.

The air was no longer breathable, being more sea than air. She was soaking wet, the wind pushing into her quarters, sending everything crashing into the back wall of the weyr. 

I can't back up any further. I am going to drown Jianath said, frightened.

Inarticulate, Jenmay realized she was standing in water. Her weyr was flooding…from the INSIDE.

One tiny thought crossed her mind. D'nis and the others had been right.

We need to leave. Now.

I cannot fly in this. I can't even get out. The wind is too strong. I am trapped.

Can you go between from here?

I have to be in the air.

Jenmay, clinging to the walls of the cave, went for the harness.

It was gone, buried somewhere in the mass of the wreckage that minutes ago had been her furniture.

Another board arrowed into the opening of the weyr, just barely missing her. The wind howled like a living thing, furious, terrifying in its intensity. 

She grasped her dragon's tail, and pulled herself up to the gold's forelegs. 

I am getting aboard, then jump out from the ledge and immediately go between.

I can't. The wind is too strong. It is pushing me harder than I can push back.

You must. I will be with you. Just go onto the ledge and go between. 

Where?

Singing Waters Hold

Where everyone else is. Where we should have been. You were wrong.

Stabbed by her dragon's insubordination, Jenmay didn't have the time to admonish her. It was astonishing enough that the gold had ever said such a thing.  

But it was too intense for that at the moment. 

Yes

She wrapped her arms around the gold's neck.

Go

With all her strength, Jianath crawled into the jaws of the hurricane. 

She said, I told Corvuth what you did to Danelle. And me.

She leaped, opening her wings.

It was the last thing she ever did.