Riverlilly

by William Young

  Chapter the Seventh,

  The Third to Last Day,

  In which ill-tidings roll in like bad weather.

  I. And One More Thing

  At the end of the room sat a white lion with a mane composed of dangling green moss and urchin-like seaflowers. Brocades of shimmering lace were draped over the lion’s back, interwoven with patterns of chromatic jewels. His eyes were jet black orbs, his nose a black seashell, his claws curved sabers, serrated like lobster pincers.

  “That’s not exactly how I imagined a horse would look,” Ceder whispered to Jai.

  The lion sat on a wooden dais a fin above the finely raked sand. Astray climbed onto the dais and crouched at the lion’s feet. The lion lowered his head, grinning hideously to bear teeth as long and thin as whale baleen.

  Jai and Ceder took an instinctive step toward Astray, but Cliff rolled in front of them and came to a sharp stop, signaling that to approach the platform now could be a fatally unwise decision.

  No sooner than Cliff stopped them, but Astray rose to his back legs and caught his claws in the lion’s mossy mane. The cub ripped down forcefully. The lion shook him off and snorted, gnashing his teeth.

  “Will he bite?” Ceder asked Cliff.

  “I don’t think he would have an easy time chewing on a glass ball,” said the jesterfish. Ceder shot Jai a concerned look.

  Dodging an irritated swipe of the lion’s forepaw, Astray leapt into the mossy mane again and jerked it down without mercy. The larger beast whipped back and let out a bellow that lifted the petulant cub into the air like a speck of spittle stuck to his lip.

  Astray hung to the mane by one claw. The lion ran out of breath and the plucky cub shot his free paw into the dangling moss and tore back with all his strength. The lion instantly snapped his jaws at Astray and if the cub’s tail had been more substance than shadow he would have lost it, but he managed to spring away just in time. He landed in Ceder’s arms and for once she was ready to catch him without falling down.

  The lion lowered to his belly with a wet squish and fixed his black eyes expectantly on the children.

  “Go on then—kneel,” Cliff ushered Jai and Ceder.

  Without thinking to ask a rational question, the children found themselves dropping to one knee and bowing their heads deferentially. They also found that once their heads were bowed and their eyes lowered, it took more nerve than either of them could muster to look back up to the lion’s hungry grin.

  The only movement the beast betrayed was the rise and fall of his back as he breathed, purring with a hum as low as the tide. The children smelled lime and lichen in his musk. Then he opened his cavernous mouth and retched out a spraying mess of water and foaming saliva, and one more thing—a dead, green fish.

  II. Consumed

  “Ha! So they caught him!” said Jai, for the white lion had evidently consumed and now regurgitated what could be none other than the elusive and indecorous Wishfish.

  “And he really looks dead, this time,” noted Ceder.

  “Where’s the King?” Jai turned to ask Cliff.

  “Where’s the Queen?” Ceder added, leaning over the jesterfish’s glass ball.

  Cliff regarded them with a lofty expression and shrugged his tail, as if to say they would have to figure out this part of the ceremony on their own.

  The children turned back to the dead, green fish. “I think we should try to wake him up,” said Ceder. “He might still be alive.”

  “I’d just as soon leave him for dead,” said Jai, “if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Say you’re going to eat him, like you did at the well,” urged Ceder. “See if that works again.”

  Jai looked at the puddle of lion phlegm in which the fish lay. He looked at the lion—if it desired, Jai thought, the beast could gobble him up in one lazy bite. Finally, he looked back at Ceder. “You say it.”

  She sighed, annoyed. “Fine. Excuse me, mister fish—” her voice was the epitome of humility, “—but I think my friend Jai, here, is planning on eating you.”

  “Shut up,” Jai hissed, elbowing her, but she got the words out.

  The dead, green fish did not respond.

  “What now?” Jai asked Ceder.

  “Maybe we should try touching it. Just a poke, to see what happens?”

  “Sure. Good idea. I’ll use my knife. We’ll see—”

  Before Jai could finish, before Ceder could remind him that he did not even have his knife with him, the lion stirred; the roar that emanated from his gaping maw blasted Jai onto his back in the soft sand and filled the entire room with spine-tickling reverberations.

  When he sat back up, Jai’s shaggy hair was windswept and his eyebrows were disarrayed. Covered from head to foot in the lion’s saliva, he blinked several times like he was waking up from a strange dream.

  “You’ve got to learn to watch your mouth,” hissed Ceder. “Did you already forget what happened with the Wishfish?”

  “I’ve never heard of a Wishfish, but he sounds like a handsome guy,” said the not-quite-so-dead fish, smiling widely, making his fleshy whiskers curl up like shriveled worms. “I am the King.”

  “You’re not the King,” Jai accused the fish, “you’re a filthy little thief that likes to play possum.”

  “Calm down, boy. Your words aren’t worth the water,” said the fish-who-claimed-to-be-King, eyeballing Jai’s tattooed forehead, then he shifted his attention in between the children. “Cliff, is that you?”

  “Yes sir,” said the jesterfish, rolling in between Jai and Ceder.

  “Our guests must be starving. Bring something to tide them over right away.”

  “Yes sir,” said Cliff. He swam a somersault to roll away, but his ball got no traction in the sand. “A little help?”

  The lion gave a cursory roar that blew the glass ball to a start and Cliff spun off on his errand.

  “Welcome to Coral Wing,” said the not-quite-so-dead fish-who-claimed-to-be-King. “Your every wish, if it is in my power to do so, shall be granted.”

  “Before you vanish, this time?” Ceder asked tersely.

  “Pardon me,” said the fish, “that was a figure of speech. I should know better than to speak lightly of such things in the Land of Lin.”

  “Why are we here?” Jai asked. “Better yet, why are you here?”

  “The sea was at war today. I thought it fitting I should be here. I am the Coralute, after all.”

  “What?” said Ceder.

  “I am the Coralute,” the fish repeated, “and if you do not yet wish to think of me as King, call me by this title instead.”

  “What’s a Coralute?” asked Jai.

  “Is that another name for con-artist?” asked Ceder.

  “Mind your manners,” said the fish. “My horse’s favorite snack is a straw-haired girl.”

  Ceder stuck her tongue out at him.

  “The Coralute is the highest military commander of Coral Wing,” the fish said stiffly. “It is the most powerful station in the open sea! I have been serving in this office for over—”

  “So you’re not the King!” Jai boasted triumphantly.

  “Correction,” said the fish, “I was not the King. Not before today. Not before an hour ago. Not before that twice-cursed wyrm arose and blotted out the very sun.”

  Ceder scrunched up her face, trying to think beyond what she heard. “So… the King and Queen left when Ghazahg attacked, and put you in charge?”

  “Precisely.”

  “And you expect us to swallow that horse-spit after the stunt you pulled at the wishing well?” asked Jai.

  “There is no wishing well,” said the fish-who-claimed-to-be-both-Coralute-and-King.

  “Oh yes there is!” Ceder jumped in. “We were all just there! Well, maybe there isn’t one anymore, since it turned into a turtle and swam away, but there was one! Don’t play dumb with us—you’re the Wishfish. You’ve got the same voice and everything!”

  “No, I haven’t,” sai
d the fish in a slightly deeper voice.

  “The King is a dolphin—a unicorn!—and the Queen, too,” said Jai. “There are statues of them outside this room! I don’t know what you’re doing here, but you’re not the King! Admit it!”

  The fish looked gravely troubled. “Alas,” he said, “there is much to explain. Please, give me a moment to think.”

  “We’ll give you a moment when you give us back our three flower petals,” Ceder countered. Jai thought this was an especially good comeback.

  The fish took a moment to think, whether he was awarded it graciously or not. At last he said, “Some fish cannot swim in deep waters. This is a sad thing.”

  Jai frowned. Ceder crossed her arms.

  “You must not confine your reality to what you see on the walls of a cave. To wit: there is no wishing well, and I am not the Wishfish. I am the Coralute, and I am the King.”

  “Do you just go around collecting all sorts of pretend names, or what?” asked Jai.

  Ceder thought that this was a much better retaliation than her own, but she added, “Confess, and we’ll go easy on you.”

  “Very well,” the fish resigned, “I am not the true King.”

  “We knew it!” cheered Jai.

  The fish shot him a glance that meant wait until I’ve finished. “What I have to tell you is not easy.”

  “Admitting you’re a liar never is,” said Ceder.

  “The King and Queen are dead,” the Coralute said flatly, “not but an hour past.”

  III. A Sudden Stroke

  Ceder felt as if the wind was knocked out of her. Why gave her a rare look of sympathy. In a stupor, she let Astray fall from her hands. Jai stood stock still, letting the leftover lion ooze drip down his nose as the fish’s words sank in.

  “Is it true?” Ceder asked softly.

  The fish looked at her long and hard. “You were lucky to have seen them before they died; it is—it was—a fantastically rare thing for them to take their original forms, of late. It may be a hundred years since anyone last saw a unicorn about the castle.”

  “But, Ghazahg fell,” said Jai. “The soldiers were celebrating.”

  “The soldiers do not know the truth. I will inform them when the time is best. As Coralute, I was second in command. Now, for the time being, I am King.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Ceder, fighting back tears.

  “Not ten minutes before you four appeared in the distance, His and Her Majesties led an attack against the beast in the deeps, hoping to stop it before it breached the surface. Those who made it back alive say the King and Queen were swallowed; they ordered everyone to retreat, then dove into the serpent’s mouth and it swallowed them, that confounded, great, mindless nightmare! It swallowed them like so much krill, not even knowing! And then, only minutes later, it doubled back and devoured its own tail—the titanic ass!—and already our scouts report that it is surely dead. Its body is melting apart a hundred tails at a time into mountains of green silt vast enough to reform the seafloor. Some kind of poison… Those glowing green tendrils… I don’t know what they were or where they came from, but if the King and Queen had waited just a moment or two more they would still be alive.”

  We will never see them again, Jai despaired as the keenly painful moment seemed to lag into infinity.

  Now how can our wishes ever come true? thought Ceder, for she had the sneaking suspicion that she and Jai had wished for the same thing at the well. But I still won’t tell anyone what it was.

  “That can’t be right,” whispered Jai, reaching for any shield at all to ward off his grief, “you’re the fish from the wishing well. This isn’t true.”

  “Heed my word,” said the fish, “the throne of Coral Wing does not acknowledge the existence of a wishing well, and never has: How would it do for every bird-brained fish in the sea to be always bothering someone who has important work to do—not as important as mine, naturally—but important nevertheless? It would not do at all. As the King of Coral Wing, I shall tell you this one last time and trust you to leave it at that: there is no wishing well, and I am not the Wishfish.”

  Ceder nodded acceptingly. Jai glared at the fish, frustrated by his non-answers. There was a long silence after that.

  The sound of clattering and clanking announced the return of the jesterfish. Cliff rolled into the room with a silver tray balanced on top of his glass ball. The tray held two goblets, a dish, and a thimble. He stopped in front of Jai and cleared his throat. “Ahem?”

  Jai lifted the tray from the ball, wondering why the castle bothered to employ a servant who needed help with everything he did. He set the tray in the sand and handed the thimble to Why, placed the dish before Astray, and lifted the goblets for Ceder and himself.

  “Thank you,” the Coralute said to Cliff.

  “Yes sir,” said the jesterfish, retreating.

  “Drink up!” said the Coralute.

  With rumbling stomachs, the children excitedly looked into their cups. Cliff had brought them all water. Plain water. Jai felt like throwing his goblet at the wall.

  “Is it possible the King and Queen carried the poison into Ghazahg?” Ceder asked in a sudden stroke of insight as she swirled the water around in her cup, reflecting the speed of her thoughts.

  “No venom in the sea is deadly enough to kill a creature that big, that fast,” said the Coralute, “but there may be something to your idea. Did you know that among the other powers of a unicorn’s horn, the foremost is a—was a—how to say it?—a certain sense of direction. They were never lost, could never be lost, no matter where they were. No, but it’s more than that. They had a… correlation… to the sea itself. I’ve seen them control waves with a look of their eyes, witnessed them guide lost fish home from afar. They could swim blindfolded through day or night and they were the only ones who didn’t need an arrow to find the… never mind. I never fully understood it. And never will.”

  Ceder idly ran a hand through Astray’s fur as she followed her train of thought aloud, “If the King and Queen knew about the poison, somehow, then perhaps they let Ghazahg swallow them so they could use their power to spread the poison quickly enough through its blood to kill it before it destroyed the castle.”

  “Why would it devour its own tail, though?” asked Jai.

  The Coralute shrugged. “There were reports of an unidentifiable fish—a glowing, green fish—near the wyrm’s hindquarters. Perhaps…” but he did not finish his thought.

  Jai felt he was missing whatever conclusion Ceder and the Coralute were coming to. “When Ghazahg fell, it looked as if the water came to life and dragged it—Ghazahg—under,” he said, unsure whether this held any significance.

  “No!” the fish gasped. The children both nodded, unaware what had made their host react so strongly. “To see the sea awaken from its eternal slumber and play a part, this is rarer still than a visit from a unicorn!”

  “But we didn’t know what we were seeing until it was over,” said Jai. “We were basically just trying not to die.”

  “Yes,” said the Coralute, nodding earnestly, for some reason strangely satisfied, “such is life.”

  “What do we do now?” asked Ceder.

  “Raise your goblets and drink to the Holy Sight of Silver, that the Spirit of the Sea may soon return to us. Then we’re going to follow the King and Queen’s last orders.”

  Jai and Ceder downed their water in an instant—Jai scarcely registered the taste of ash—and slammed their goblets on the serving tray. “What orders?”

  The Coralute’s fleshy whiskers twitched. “They told me two children would come in a boat. I did not believe it, but here you are, and I have my instructions: I am to give you a gift, I am to give you a warning, and I am to send you somewhere and see to it you arrive there safely.”

  “How is it that everyone except Ceder and I seems to have known we were coming here?” Jai asked peevishly.

  “The hour is growing late,” said the Coralute, overlooking J
ai’s question. “We can talk as we go.”

  Without further bidding the white lion picked the fish up in his mouth. The wooden dais sank into the sand, revealing a hidden stairwell. The lion carried the Coralute down the secret tunnel and the children hastened to follow, Ceder holding Astray and Why riding in her ribbon. The lion led them through a dank section of the castle where the waveglass sculptures were few and far between.

  “I always thought people rode on top of horses,” said Jai.

  “People do,” said the fish.

  “I expected horses to look much different,” Ceder added delicately.

  “What were you expecting?” asked the fish.

  “I don’t know. Something less… fierce.”

  “I understand your confusion. This is a seahorse. There are animals that dwell on land, I am told, that look very much like our seahorses—they are called lions. In the sea these mighty beasts with their magnificent manes are an altogether different breed. Seahorses are loyal to a fault, and yes, very fierce.”

  “Sorid spoke of sea-lions, too,” said Jai. “What are those?”

  “Sea-lions are wild and reckless creatures. They roam the seafloor in herds, trampling up clouds of long-settled silt wherever they run. They, too, have unruly manes of mossy hair, like our seahorses. All in all, sea-lions most resemble what those on land commonly call horses. Yes, I can see why you would be confused.”

  They walked in silence until the children could bear the suspense no longer; they asked the Coralute what, specifically, the last orders of the King and Queen had been.

  “The gift, you will find in your boat,” the fish said cryptically. “The warning, I swore to tell you only as you were sailing away.”

  “And where is it you would have us go?” asked Jai.

  “Not I, boy, not I. If it were up to me, I would see you stay at the castle and enjoy the immeasurable comforts of Coral Wing. But when the King and Queen told me last night of Ghazahg stirring in the deep, and of your coming, they made me swear to have you escorted to the Oldest Fish in the Sea. It may seem like madness, when you are already safely here with me, but they always had their reasons.”

  “Who is the Oldest Fish in the Sea?” asked Ceder.

  The Coralute gave her a steely stare. “He is the guardian of the river, which is the only road through the Sands of Syn to the wild lands beyond.”

  “Land?” Ceder repeated excitedly. “Will we find people there?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” said the Coralute, fixing her with a penetrating stare. “All fish are forbidden to swim the river, all except the ancient Dwor fish, who is bound to make his home underground, away from the sea.”

  “Why is the river forbidden?” asked Ceder.

  “Don’t you ever read, girl?” cried the fish, annoyed at the relentless questions. “The Sands of Syn, they must never be disturbed!”

  “But what are the Sands of Syn?”

  The Coralute sighed, seeing there was no way around telling the children the truth. “The Sands of Syn are a wasteland on the eastern coast, red hills of ash as far as the eye can see. The river there is boiling hot, they say. And the Sands… well, you don’t need to know about the Sands, if you will promise me one thing.”

  “What?” the children asked as one.

  “You will not give any water to the desert. Not a drop. You must be impeccably vigilant that under no circumstance do you allow so much as a mist or a vapor to stain the Sands. Can you swear that to me now?”

  “Are you telling us the desert is going to ask for a drink of water?” asked Ceder.

  “It is not so polite as to ask,” said the fish.

  IV. Under Way

  They came to an arched doorway and passed into an indoor harbor that was protected on all sides by towering walls of tangled coral that grew so high as to disappear in a fog of darkness. At the edge of the enclosed lake was a dock, at the end of which was tethered their boat. A knot of tentacles erupted from the sea bearing limb-replacing wooden peg-legs or metal hooks attached to their tips. The tentacles wrestled with various tasks over the pink boat, preparing the vessel to sail faster than any eight deckhands ever could.

  “What is this place?” Ceder asked in awe.

  “A secret,” said the Coralute, “a place from which to depart in times of great haste. Your journey to the river cannot be hindered, and we must be careful to avoid drawing the attention of the Magician. He has some control over the Sands of Syn. If he learns that you are on the river, he will churn the desert into a deathtrap.”

  “Sorid already knows where we are,” Jai told the fish, tapping his tattoo. “He can find me anywhere I go.”

  “Except in the sea,” asserted the Coralute.

  “Nothing can hide from the sun,” said Jai. “He told me so.”

  “Sorid Sunclaw may be able to see anywhere at any time, but he cannot see everywhere at all times. Fish in the sea, we feel the waves—the motion of all things at once—but the Son of the Sun must cast his sight over the far sea like a man casts a fishing line, and neither is he accurate nor patient. You will be safe.”

  Jai looked doubtful.

  “If he can summon the sun on a whim to kill whomsoever he pleases, would he not have done so already? You haven’t been burnt to a crisp yet, have you?”

  Jai thought about his shriveling stomach and the wreath of flames imprinted on his mind whenever he closed his eyes. He cringed at the vivid memory of the searing scarlet searchlight that had made his tattoo flare like a red coal. “To a crisp? Not quite yet.”

  The Coralute was visibly disturbed that he could not convince Jai he would be safe at sea. “You will have the finest escort,” said the troubled fish. “The Royal Seal itself shall attend you all the way to the coast.”

  They circled the harbor and filed down the narrow dock. The tentacles surrounding the wooden walkway withdrew below the surface; the last of the prehensile limbs to leave placed a pair of sturdy, white oars inside the boat.

  Astray sprang at once into the prow. Jai and Ceder were not so anxious to be off. They climbed in warily, not at all wanting to leave behind the charms of the castle so soon, but neither wishing to disobey the last requests of the King and Queen.

  Next to the new oars the children found a small dial made of waveglass. Ceder picked it up, examined it, then gave Jai a turn to inspect the delicate contraption. There was a frail pin inside the dial, spinning one way then the other with a mind of its own.

  “A compass,” said the Coralute. “Your gift from the King and Queen.”

  “Why is it spinning in circles?” asked Jai.

  “It points to water! In the Land of Lin, that means pretty much every direction you can name. I don’t know why they left it for you. I shouldn’t think you’ll have a very difficult time trying to find water in the sea or the river.”

  The octopus below the surface knew the look of a beast that yearns to be under way; when it saw the black cub standing like a figurehead in the prow, eight tentacles unwound the cords that bound the boat to the dock.

  As they drifted away the white lion shook his head so that the fish-who-was-King flopped back and forth, waving goodbye to the children, although anyone who did not know better might assume the larger beast was merely playing with his food.

  Cliff rolled onto the dock suddenly. Balanced atop his ball was the dish of water which Astray had been given in the council room. Jai and Ceder could not hear what words passed between the jesterfish and the Coralute, but they could see that the water splashing out of the dish was aglow pink—certainly not the same stuff they had all been given to drink. The Coralute gave Cliff a curt command and the jesterfish hurried back into the castle, whisking the dish of rosy water away with him.

  “You said you had one more thing to tell us as we were sailing away,” Ceder called to the Coralute.

  “And so I do,” replied the fish, scarcely loud enough for the children to hear. “Do not follow the fisherman!”

&n
bsp; The white lion tilted his head back and swallowed the Coralute in one gulp, then turned and walked out of the harbor.

  The Year One,

  The fisherman awoke in the middle of a desert of blood-red dunes. He did not know how long he had been asleep—several days, he guessed, or else his memory was already twisted; how else to explain falling asleep on one side of the sea and waking up on the other? He found it even more strange that he was so far inland. He had climbed into the pink boat during the hammering rain, he recalled, before he fell unconscious; if he had stumbled sleepily out of the boat when it reached the eastern shore, he could not explain how he had come to be so far from the sea but that the desert had swelled up and formed around him as he slept. He shrugged—it was inconsequential.

  Lightheaded, he touched his forehead. The hole was still there, as if a worm had mistaken his face for an apple and burrowed an entrance inside. It was also of no moment.

  He fumbled his fingers into the breast pocket of his vest. His compass was missing. He looked down. The cloth around the pocket was wet. It would be more difficult to find fresh water without the compass, but the fisherman was only thankful he had not lost more in the fight. He still had his fishing pole. That was usually enough. And he remembered! He still remembered everything. All was not lost. There is hope, his beloved had told him a thousand times and more. There is hope, she would tell him again.

  He knew that the river must cut somewhere through the sea of crimson ash but he could neither smell nor hear running water, and without his compass… Rather than guess at bearing north or south, he hiked east toward the rising sun.

  The fisherman ambled through the dunes for weeks, yet he never tired, thirsted, or opened his mouth to utter a syllable of grief or privation. He reached the mountains at the edge of the desert and passed over them with as little regard for the majestic scenery as if he was blind.

  He saw a forest in the distance and quickened his stride. He knew he would find the river there and amend his sorry future. All was not lost, not yet. There is hope.