by Grace Draven
Had he returned to oversee his abandoned demesne, drawn inexorably back to the Gray as everyone who ever lived within the sound of her surf was? Or did someone else come to Castle Banat, some visitor with a wish to enjoy the flat beaches and placid shallows that stretched below the bluff? Had Jolen returned?
The thought made Zigana’s heart flutter. Her half sister lived and moved in a world so different from her own. Zigana’s brush with aristocratic life was limited to the hazy memories of childhood when Jolen had been given permission by her father and her nurses to play with Zigana in the surf or the kitchen gardens that took up one side of the castle bailey. She had no concept of court life where rumor had reached even this far that Jolen was renowned as one of the jewels in the Pricidian court. Or had been at least—until the rebellion. Rumor had also spread to Ancilar of her disgrace and that of her husband.
“Ziga! Where’s my water?”
Frishi’s shrill command broke through her musings, and she lugged the full bucket back to the cottage. True to form, it seemed as if half the village women had wedged themselves into the parlor, batting questions back and forth between them as they conjectured over who was moving into the castle. She plunked the bucket on the table and fled outside to help Odon package cooked shrimp for the villagers who stopped by to buy enough for their evening supper.
“Coward,” he said with a grin.
“Prudent,” she replied as she counted coin and passed two packages of shrimp to one of the few women not squeezed into Frishi’s parlor. “And I don’t see you in there answering questions.”
“A lone man in a house packed to the rafters with women is either dead or begging to die. I’m neither.”
“As the gods will it,” a customer chimed in, nodding his head sagely and with an expression that told of sheer terror at the thought of being trapped in the scenario Odon described.
Next to him, his wife snorted her disdain and bashed his elbow with hers. “Don’t think you’re safe even if it’s just one woman in the house, you old cark.” She took the package Zigana handed her and pushed her hapless spouse down the road.
“I thank the gods every night that I married Frishi and not Klotild,” Odon said and wiped his brow in obvious relief.
Zigana watched the couple as they disappeared into an alleyway off the main path, Klotild haranguing her spouse the entire way. “I thank them too,” she said.
Her gratitude didn’t spring from the same reason Odon’s did. Frishi had been heavy with Lord Boda’s child when Odon married her. He was a good husband to Frishi and treated Zigana as his own. Boda might have sired her, but Odon was her father in every way save blood.
They even shared the gift of water-sight, though Odon’s could be traced back to his mother while no one knew from whom Zigana had inherited hers. She knew nothing of Boda or his family except what Jolen had told her, and that had been precious little and told from the perspective of a young child. Frishi, unlike her usual verbose nature, was singularly tight-lipped about Lord Boda, even when Zigana had grown to womanhood and questioned her about their relationship.
The water-sight had been a fortuitous gift, one that made Zigana’s illegitimacy a thing of little import by comparison. She was accepted in the community and valued for her gift, just as Odon was. Bastards weren’t usually so fortunate.
Supper that evening consisted of soup and Frishi’s unending speculations over who was moving into the castle. They ranged from the mayor of the neighboring village of Nodaski to King Sangur the Lame himself. Odon sopped his bread in his soup and ate in silence as he usually did. Zigana made one valiant effort to steer her mother’s train of thought away from the castle. “Did you hear anything strange last night, Mama?”
Frishi’s raised eyebrows assured Zigana she hadn’t. “I don’t think so. Strange as in how?” She glanced at Odon who stared into his bowl as if divining the future from the swirl of the broth.
“Singing? Humming? The sound of a woman’s voice talking?” Zigana flinched at hearing herself say the last. Frishi’s short huff of laughter confirmed how ridiculous it sounded.
“A woman singing or talking to herself? In the middle of the night?” She snorted. “Did you filch the wine before you went to bed last night?”
Odon interrupted. “Solyom’s been telling folks he heard Trezka calling to him from the sea, and Zigana and I both heard singing from that way in the small hours.”
Frishi shuddered. “Trezka is dead,” she said, stating the obvious and widely known. “Maybe she’s haunting Solyom.”
Zigana sighed, and Odon went back to divining his soup.
Her mother brightened. “Maybe there was a late-night party at the castle! A welcoming celebration for the tenants. Solyom might have heard that.”
Zigana rose and took her empty bowl to the give it a quick dip and rinse in the wash bucket. She loved her mother, but Frishi, once latched onto an idea, pursued it with singular purpose to the exclusion of all else. Until she discovered who had moved into Castle Banat, every supposition regarding anything in the village would lead back there, even eerie dirges resonating from the Gray in the middle of the night.
As she readied for bed that evening, she peered out the sliver of window in her attic room. The view faced the bluff and the blacker silhouette of the castle cast against a moonlit sky. The golden glow of light filled a solitary window in one of the upper stories. The shadow of a figure suddenly blocked some of the light, and she wondered who looked out at the night tide and if they saw something there that didn’t belong.
She left the window to crawl into bed. The sheets were chilly on her skin, and Zigana huddled under the blankets, shivering. It was late summer, and while the days were balmy, the nights had grown decidedly colder. She slipped into sleep, lulled by the far-off rhythm of the surf and something else. Ancient, inhuman and beckoning.
She dreamed. Sunlit days and Jolen running ahead of her on the beach, beautiful as a sea sprite and just as elusive. She turned and waved to Zigana, long blonde hair snapping in the wind like strips of a tattered flag.
“Come catch me, Ziga!” she called out before sprinting away, laughing. Zigana raced to catch up, her joy of the chase turning to panic as Jolen plunged into the sea, falling under the crush of tall waves that pounded her into the sea floor.
Zigana screamed, the scream of a panicked child instead of a woman. “Jolen! Jolen!”
But only the Gray replied, as the Gray always did, in an endless tumble of waves.
V---V
They found Solyom’s good luck charm on the beach the following day but no Solyom. Odon’s cousin Elek spotted the charm first and sent one of his son’s back to Solyom’s house. The boy reported back as the trawlers readied their nets and cast jaundiced gazes on the surf as they waited for Odon and Zigana to give their yea or nay to that day’s trawling.
He barreled through the salt grass, kicking up sand as he plowed over the dunes toward his father. “Empty house,” he said between gasps. “And the front door is half open.”
Another shrimper pointed to a spot in the shallowest of the surf, where the water trickled over the sand. “There! The tide’s caught something.”
Zigana watched from her place by Gitta as the woman picked a soggy scrap of white fabric off the beach. A nightshirt by the look of it, with a tattered hem and worn sleeves.
“Is it Solyom’s do you think?” Odon asked, quiet enough for only Zigana to hear.
She shrugged, a sick feeling blossoming in her belly. “I hope not.” She dreaded reading the water today. Last night’s dream had left its mark. She awakened in darkness tinged a verdant green and her pillow soaked with tears. The image of Jolen drowning was so strong, she had to tell herself several times it was nothing more than a dream. They had both survived childhood, and her sister was a titled, married woman now.
Still, the horrifying image of the tide rising to crash down on her sister refused to recede, and Zigana abandoned her bed for the window. Even from the sec
ond story, her view of the beach was hidden by the barrier of salt grass. Only the bluff rose in the darkness, and that darkness shimmered a pale emerald. Unnatural and out of place, as if called up from the cold deep by forbidden magic. She didn’t hear a voice singing or speaking, but when she placed her hand on the window pane, the glass vibrated beneath her hand in a consistent three-beat rhythm, as if a heart pulsed somewhere in the waves, coaxing her to leave her room, her house, just for the chance to hear it better.
“Come play with me, Ziga.”
Jolen’s voice, child-like and pleading, echoed in her mind, so full of yearning that Zigana whimpered. She yanked her hand from the window, and the voice disappeared abruptly, along with the need to race down the stairs, throw open the door and run for the beach.
She did creep down the stairs but only to check that Odon and Frishi still slept safely in their bed. She spent the remainder of the night in Odon’s chair, wrapped in a blanket, ears straining to hear any hint of the haunting dirge so that she might bar the door and sketch a protection ward at its threshold with some of the precious salt Frishi kept locked in her spice chest.
The sight of that nightshirt, dripping with saltwater and caked in sand, sent a shard of ice down her spine, and she leaned against Gitta’s solid shoulder for warmth and solace. The charm was Solyom’s. Of that, there was no doubt. The nightshirt could be anyone’s, but she knew—knew down to her gut—it too belonged to Solyom.
She left Gitta’s side and waded ankle-deep into the surf where she crouched and let the water flow across her fingers. Odon joined her, his own hands plunged to the elbows in seawater and wet sand.
Zigana closed her eyes and waited to “see.” The peculiar and unpleasant sensation that tainted the water yesterday practically fouled it today, and her gorge rose. Brief flashes of images skittered across her mind’s eye. Solyom naked on the beach, crying out his wife’s name as he entered the surf. A sing-song hum rose above the tide’s steady rumble; the funeral dirge she and Odon had first heard when the beach had glowed with greenish light. A spindly shadow, the size of a horse but thin as a cluster of rake handles skittered toward the old man, traversing the top of the waves like a spider climbing along strands of a web. She gasped and shook.
Odon’s hand on her arm brought her out of the nightmare image. They knelt on a daylit shore with the horses behind them and screaming gulls above them. Like any other day, only this one was different, and Zigana recoiled at the revelation of Solyom’s ghastly fate.
“Ziga, what did you see?” Odon’s easy voice calmed her, his sun-cured face a fine sight after what the waters had just revealed. “Ziga,” he repeated.
“Solyom walking into the surf. Something was out there, luring him with its song or the mimicry of Trezka’s voice. You?”
He shook his head. “Just the dirge and no images. But the water feels worse than yesterday and the hum sounded as if I listened underwater.”
His answer didn’t surprise her. For all that both she and Odon possessed the same gift, hers had always been stronger than his. She gazed at him and swallowed the hard knot in her throat before she could speak. “It ate him, Papa.”
He paled at her words. “Do you feel its presence now?”
She shook her head. “Only traces. I think it retreats to the deep with the sunrise. It’s a night hunter.”
“And it’s hunting us. Did you dream last night?”
She nodded. “Of when Jolen and I were children. She was calling me to come play with her in the surf, and then she drowned. I couldn’t save her.”
He patted her shoulder at her obvious anguish. “I dreamed too. I was trawling with Voreg, only we didn’t net shrimp. We kept dragging in dead villagers with milky eyes and fish and crabs spilling out of their mouths.”
Gods. His dream was far more grotesque than hers. She glanced at the group of shrimpers who stood nearby, swapping conjecture over who the nightshirt belonged to and if Solyom had finally gone mad over the death of his wife and willingly surrendered his life to the Gray.
“What do you want to tell them?” she asked Odon.
Part of her wanted to warn everyone to stay away from the beach at any hour, not just nighttime when it was especially dangerous. The sea, that mercurial entity that provided life-giving sustenance and dealt death with equal generosity, had been a constant in her life since she was born, and she had grown up understanding the balance of its mercy and its cruelty. Now though, a predator of unusual cunning and strange abilities had tipped that balance, and she was terrified.
Odon helped her stand. “We tell them we trawl. If something ate Solyom, it isn’t here now, so it won’t eat us or the horses. And families need food, so unless you think that thing is out there right now waiting to take a bite out of Gitta, we trawl.”
He was right of course. While she and Odon could sell or barter some of their surplus to buy things such as new nets or tack for the horses, other villagers depended on their entire catch to feed themselves. Odon often donated some of his more generous catches, and sometimes even that wasn’t enough to feed everyone in a family with numerous children.
She returned to Gitta and set to tightening her baskets and setting up her nets while Odon signaled to the other shrimpers it was safe to trawl. The mare, usually still as garden statuary while she waited for her mistress to prepare everything for the shrimping, tossed her head and blew hard from her nose. She even stamped her front hooves, burying them deep in the sand. Voreg mimicked her dam, her mane sending up a cloud of sand gnats as she shook her head.
Zigana frowned. This was odd and yet unsurprising after what the waters showed her. The horses sensed the wrongness of the Gray as well. “They’re restless,” she told Odon on his return. “They know something is off.”
He braced a foot on the left trace and swung into the wooden saddle. Voreg snorted but held still. “Aye they do, but they’re still willing to go in. That tells me it’s safe.”
Odon was a cautious man, and she trusted his judgment. When he guided Voreg into the surf, she followed without question until the horses were chest-high in the water, dragging the nets behind them. This time she kept her legs submerged as far as she could in the water, senses straining to catch any hint of the sea spider’s return. Seawater lapped against her knees, leaving behind traces of imagery—the play of sunlight just below the surface, the flicker of fast-moving fish as they swam between Gitta’s legs and tickled her belly. The drag of the net made its own raspy music in a burbling chorus of shifting tide as it scooped up the shrimp buried on the sea floor.
These were normal things, everyday things the Gray showed her each time she trawled. No mournful dirge that promised peace but delivered violent death. Zigana slowly relaxed in the saddle, turning her eyes to the horizon where the line of the sea turned dark and held its mysteries close.
The shrimping was blessedly uneventful, though it didn’t stop the gossip about Solyom from running rampant among the shrimpers as they sorted their catches while the horses rested before their next trawl.
She brought her sieve and settled next to Odon. “We have to tell the village what I saw, Papa.”
He didn’t pause in tossing fish and angry crabs back into the water where the gulls waited to snatch at the bounty. “It’s best coming from council. I’ll tell them first, and they can share the news. Folks might not believe, but we’ll have done our part.”
She gaped at him. “Why wouldn’t they believe us? They trust us to tell them if the waters are safe.”
He did stop then. His expression, when he faced her, was grim. “Because it’s less frightening to believe Solyom went into the Gray of his own free will instead of being lured there by some monster that devoured his liver and cracked his bones with its teeth.”
Zigana swallowed hard and turned to stare at the sea. Under the sun’s bright light, it glinted like a polished mirror, its shallow waves ripples of glass that teased the shore. Somewhere out there, a thing stitched of claws and teeth and d
rowning dreams waited for nightfall and its next victim.
“See to your task, daughter.” Odon tapped her gently on the shoulder, and she returned her attention back to sorting her catch.
Conversation swirled around them, and she ignored most of it until someone asked “Who’s that?” She stood for a better look, as did Odon, and spotted a horse and rider cantering toward them. From this distance, Zigana couldn’t make out distinct features but the riding skirt identified the rider as a woman. She reined her mount to a stop where a pair of fishermen threw lines into the water. They spoke and pointed down the beach toward the shrimpers.
One shrimper gave a low whistle as the horse resumed its canter, drawing closer. “Now that’s a fancy piece there.”
“Which one?” a second man asked with a grin. “Rider or horse?”
“Both, though that gelding is so high-strung, he’s about as useful as a hat on a pig.”
His companion harrumphed. “The rich can pay for useless horses and hats on pigs. She has to be from the castle; question is, what’s a princess like that doing here?”
Sunlight glinted off golden hair, and Zigana squinted for a clearer view of their visitor. Her heart lurched under her ribs. “I don’t believe it,” she breathed.
She shoved her sieve at Odon without looking and strode toward the rider, moving faster with each step until she raced along the beach. She pulled up short as the horse halted a second time, throwing its shadow across the sand so that Zigana had an unobstructed view of its rider. The horse halted again, this time in front of her.
Fair of hair and even fairer of face, her half-sister peered down at her with a bright smile and green eyes as sharp and glittering as cut emeralds. Zigana gripped her wet skirts in both hands and prayed her eyes didn’t deceive her. “Jolen?”
