MakeMeWet by Nara Malone Page B

her knees, igniting a fire in
one that sent her hustling backward.
    “Fuck!”
    The bite of salt in a bloody wound intensified the burn of
unshed tears and a tightness in her throat.
    She sucked in her breath and plopped down
bare-bottomed—cold, gritty sand feeling too real to be a dream. She could add
two more items to the list of things she knew, she’d lost her clothes and
injured her knee.
    “What the fuck happened to me?” she shouted at the sky. “Why
am I naked?”
    The slap of water against sand, the rattling of wind through
wild grass the only response. What did she expect? It wasn’t as if she believed
in any divine beings. And while it might be handy if a little prayer would set
the world straight again, everything had a price. Magick had cost her too much
already.
    The foamy edge of a breaker swirled around her toes and slid
back down the sand into the heaving sea. She hugged herself and looked up and
then down the beach. There had to be an explanation that made sense.
    Naked in a public place screams dream. A dream you can’t
wake from screams…what?
    Death.
    She shoved the thought away, choosing to treat the situation
as real. For now. Breath in. Breath out. Slow and steady, doing mental
multiplication to steer her mind from the pain. Dread settled like a weight in
her belly. But she was done crying. Time to solve problems.
    More important than her lack of clothes was how she’d
injured her knee and how badly.
    A puffiness around her kneecap, something felt more than
seen, suggested damage more than skin deep. If she could feel pain this
intense, this must be real. But it was impossible for this to be real and for
her to be where she was.
    The last step she’d taken had been to shut a balcony door.
Had something happened at that point? Could she have died—fallen from the
balcony or been crushed by a falling tree?
    What those doors and that balcony had been attached to?
    Panic made her stomach heave and toss like the ocean. Her
chest felt too small for her lungs. She hugged her knees to her chest and put
her head between them, concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths.
    She couldn’t feel nauseated if she were dead.
    She was fairly certain on that point.
    For the last half of her life, she’d been sure death was the
end of everything. So, what did that leave?
    The cottage nestled on a shelf between sheer cliffs and
boiling ocean looked just like the one where she had lived with her grandmother
as a child. Just on the other side of the jetty, to her south, the cliffs
curved back again and sheltered the tiny village of Wolf Harbor. Around the
north point, cliffs rose straight from the sea.
    Those were facts as true now as they had been when she’d
left Maine fourteen years ago. Facts were good. If she concentrated on facts,
she might be able to make sense of where she was. When life tipped out of
balance, facts could be counted on to tip it back.
    A long, mournful howl drifted from the cliffs above. It
sounded like a wolf. A chorus of canine voices joined in.
    Maille shivered and listed the facts she was sure of aloud.
Made it an incantation to banish vulnerability.
    “Fact—there are no wild wolves in Maine.”
    When a doctor wanted to determine if you were in your right
mind what was the first thing he asked? What day is this?
    That answer tumbled out automatically. “The first day of
fall, Mabon.”
    “Fact—on the first day of fall, on any day in Maine, the
ocean is not warm as bath water.”
    “Fact—my knee is burning like a son-of-a-bitch and I can
barely think past that.”
    But she had to think. Had to remember. For now, the only way
forward was to step back through the past.
    The image of another door took shape. A door she’d opened
just before the balcony doors. A wave-shaped crest, gold embedded in ebony,
mounted in the center. And the knob was old-fashioned faceted crystal that
caught the light and sent a rainbow arcing across the floor.
    And before the rainbow door, a pair of