by Chris Howard
"Not losing this." She spit the words with a mouthful of blood.
She swung her legs up, pushed off the dragon's back, and slammed her heels down as hard as she could, her right harder, body lifting away in a twirl.
She reached up, caught the buckle of chain at her wrist, and held on as it dragged her through the sea, gaining on the dragon, the loose end sliding around the monster's thick neck.
Nikasia let go, grabbed the chain's other end coming around the column of thick muscle and scales. She tugged, spread her legs and pulled her body in to straddle the dragon's neck, digging in her heels to hold on. The regeneration of her left arm was nearly complete and she had a much safer hold on the situation.
She leaned in, hugging the monster's neck, her chin against the rigid plates. She touched the dragon with her tongue, tasting its power, its rage, and managed to put some respect into her hoarse voice. "You're mine, lovely."
The dragon slowed as if considering, and then shot straight up, doubling her speed. Nikasia closed her eyes and pulled the chain harder, unlocking it from her left arm to hold each end like reins. Rolling shafts of blue light, the glow from the surface moved over the dragon's back, sparks catching polished scales and spikes along the spinal ridge.
"Take that line, Tommy, the one for the anchor."
The boy looked through the square glass panes, to the boat's stern, at his father, giving the anchor rope a tug. "This one?"
Dane Maitland kneeled over the side to pull back the lid of the cooler with a bluefish flicking back and forth in the water, gave his son his New England quiet-dad nod, and pulled the whole thing aboard, saltwater running down his jeans. He shoved it in a corner, and hopped along the narrows to the bow to help bring up the anchor, moving surely around his son to get to the line, bending his knees with the surge, the deck jumping and dropping four feet with every roll of the waves.
"Why is the ocean angry?"
Maitland pulled the rope, hand over hand, saltwater splashing his face. Calm. stay calm. "Not sure. Checked the five-day this morning, clear out here for the next four." He glanced up at the sky, a black watercolor smear at the horizon, heavy wet storm clouds moving fast, tops cutting through heaven; underneath they tumbled over each other, granite thundering into the Atlantic.
He looked down at his hands, stopped them in mid pull, and let the rope go, zipping over the side into the water. He grabbed Tommy by the shoulders, turning him toward the stern, running his fingers along the life-jacket's clips. "Good. Get in the back, hold on."
Maitland unsnapped the knife holster at his belt, pulled it out, flipped it open and cut through the anchor line. Not enough time to bring the anchor aboard and secure it. He had a vision of the heavy iron wedges swinging open, rusty metal squeal, butterfly flipping through the windshield, killing Tommy. Better to let it go. He'd buy another one.
The knife flew from his hand.
He turned instinctively and grabbed the frame across the top of the windows. The bow tipped vertical into a trough, like going over a cliff of seawater. His shoes slipped, came away into the air. He held on, and Tommy screamed. Cold water washed up Maitland's back, over his shoulders, slicing icy along his face..
"Tommy!" He couldn't hear his voice, just the raw shudder of noise in his own head. He said them anyway. "Hold on." The storm swallowed every sound in a choppy roar. He kicked forward, pulling his body over the windows, grabbed the wheel, swung his legs into a foot of sloshing water.
And Tommy held on, staring up at mountains of ocean, his mouth gaping, showing all his teeth. He shrieked something. There was pain of loss in his face—not the loss of his own life, but the loss of his father's. Maitland heard his son's voice through a sharp space of silence, "Don't leave me!"
He shook his head, never.
Clark Gerdes held his coffee cup an inch from his lips, mouth open, staring at the roll of storm white across the video panel, the northeast Atlantic, a field of still blue, and a knot of clouds emerging in the middle of it. Fingers of turbulence drifted into the Gulf of Maine.
Gerdes closed his mouth, noticed the mug in his hand, and placed it on the console. "Yeah, but which world?" He whispered the words, a hint of humor, dark and still madness in the depths. The coffee mug was blue, a planet's circle with a child's coloring of oceans and unrecognizable continents, islands and smears of white cloud high in the atmosphere. Big letters, "World's Greatest Dad" in purple and yellow cartoon letters wrapped the smooth surface. Clark Gerdes. He was the World's Greatest Dad. The picture on the mug was an earth-like world, blue oceans, green and brown land. Just not continents in shapes he'd ever seen. Sure, he was World's Greatest Dad. It just wasn't this world. That was the funny thing.
"Like some other world." His whisper lost its way, stumbled by chance on mapped territory—his experience, and slid right into his normal management voice. "Carey, start analysis, northeast Atlantic, Gulf of Maine. Everything we can get."
Gerdes pointed at the giant wall panel, the ghost storm folding in on itself, fingers of cloud curling into a fist that punched the ocean.
"They're on." Carey's fingers rolled lightly, efficiently over the keypad, his eyes fixed to the panel. "Coming up now. Feeds from all online northeast stations, land, sea, subsurface."
The control room—always humming—came alive, a dark room in a building on the University of Maryland grounds that contained NOAA's Satellite and Information Service, Air Resources Laboratory and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
"Clark, you want something in the air?" It was Julie at the comm with a "you'd better" look on her face, her fingers already keying in numbers.
He nodded, picked up his coffee, sipped, and stared up at the wall-sized storm display.
Nikasia bit down hard, locking her teeth to avoid biting off her own tongue. The dragon fired from the sea into the Thin, flattened surface waves, tucked in her fins, skidding through heavy Atlantic swells, and dove straight down.
She kept the sea inside her, choking on it above the ocean, stirring anger under the surface. "Do not make me hurt you, dragon."
Nikasia reached one hand above her head, fingers twirling. Songs lined up in her soul, released one at a time, long cutting notes that joined into a rolling ocean surge, low and high, peaking with a heart rip of tones. She released a second song that mingled with the first, but much lower and choppier. Bolts of lightning followed them through the dark. Nikasia called them to her, pointing, directing violence with her free hand. Her voice fell, driving a slow undercurrent of sound, a sea-devil's dirge.
A punch of vaporized ocean drove like a fist out of the dark, into the dragon's side. Scales shattered, a fog of blood in the water, bone chips flipping like propellers, lost in their wake.
Nikasia called on the ocean, unbraiding its currents, tight winding slips of seawater twisted and released. The Atlantic answered, enraged, a boil of storm clouds over the surface. The ocean's jaws opened, spilling waves like mountains, black jagged ship-eating teeth.
The dragon surfaced, tired, rolling on her back, sliding clumsily into a deep trough. Foam rolled down the wave face over the paler belly scales, mottled purple with bright green threads. Nikasia climbed around to the softer side of the monster's throat, locking the chain with a song.
She let the sea spill from her mouth, emptied her lungs, spit a few times, and cleared her throat. "Dance is at an end, my dear giant scaly friend."
Nikasia staggered up the underside of the dragon's neck, between the fore fins, braced her legs apart at the highest point, and lifted her arms to the storm, singing a hymn of the conqueror. Her song carried through the clouds, the heavy spray, followed the swells in rings to her storm's edge, netting the shape of every soul in her range and returning to tell her of her destruction, her command of this part of the sea, her victory over a dragon.
Her skin went cold.
A stab of sorrow in her side; a piece of her own song came back flat and sharp like a knife through her ribs. She grunted
, bent forward, blood slick and warm in her throat. Out there in the dark clouds, mountains of seawater, a father and his son were lost in the ocean, their boat tipped vertical into the waves, sucked into the deeps by her spells.
Killing someone's father. I am no better than that Rexenor monster who killed mine. Killing this boy's father, it's like I have set my own death in motion. She felt her drive for vengeance in another, the son, a boy. I am a monster to him, father killer. And only one path opens from patricide, never ending pain and kill rage.
Nikasia felt the shudder of purpose in the scales under her toes. The dragon shifted and Nikasia jumped for the chain, caught it and swung her legs open, locked them around the neck.
The dragon went deep, struggling against its wounds to soar through the water. Nikasia screamed curses, pulling the chain like an orca's reins, trying to steer the monster back to the surface.
"The father dies. It is my doom!" Tears slipped along her cheeks, blurry tendrils in the sea as she screamed. "I cannot!" She cried the words. "Please. I cannot do it."
But she did.
Her fingers shaking, she opened her fists, released the chain, the dragon, everything she had fought for, let it go, and kicked toward the surface. The dragon vanished in the dark below her, listing to the right with pain.
Nikasia rose out of the waves, weeping, sliding on her bare feet down a steep wave face. She sang the storm to a halt, locked it inside her, pulled every current into bundles of three and braided them, gathered the braids into threes until the currents of the northeast Atlantic were bound, slowed to one deep thundering roll, and released.
Then she turned to find the father and his son, stiff orange vests keeping them afloat, the son sobbing, pleading for his father to wake up—the father on his face in the water, his skin cold, drifting with embers of life so low in his soul.
Nikasia dove beneath them, spun a song into a web that caught and dragged the father and son miles over the calm Atlantic surface to shore.
"Clark, we've lost the whole northeast net. I have buoys drifting free, reporting garbage data. Coast Guard's on its way."
Julie leaned toward her console, her fingers following something on her close-prox videos. "We have WeatherSight out of NAS Brunswick, ETA four and a half minutes."
Too late. Clark Gerdes couldn't say the words aloud. He heard her, shook his head, and started to point at the large video panel. Then his voice started up again. "It's gone. The storm's not there anymore."
Nikasia dragged the boy onto the beach, then went back for his father, a tall sun and wind weathered man, a fisherman, someone who loved the sea. It gave her hope. She sang three songs, layered them, harmonies that opened the man's mouth and worked his lungs. She slipped a hand over the father's face, forefinger and thumb pushing into his temples. He coughed, rolling on his side, choking up more seawater.
She leaned back, rocking on her knees, tears running down her face. She breathed one word, "Alive."
"Who are you?" A lost voice behind her. "Are you a monster?"
Nikasia spun, tried to stand, lost her balance, and fell to the beach. She turned it into a roll to her knees.
It was the boy, maybe eleven years old, his thick orange vest dripping, dark hair ropy in saltwater knots, sand sticking to his skin. He stared at her, wide blue eyes like the sky, survival shock in them. His knees were shaking with the adrenalin drive.
She invited his gaze, and stared right back, her will pushing into his soul. She eased back, a gentle look, like fingers slipping into the still cold of a tide pool to brush the tips of anemones—just there to touch, not enough to frighten anyone. There was a shadow, an ache in his soul heavy as lead. She felt his sense of loss—how close he had been to never seeing his father alive again, ripped from his life—and right in front of his eyes—by her storm. It was like a hole opening under her, sucking her into the crushing earth. She grabbed his name before his pain swallowed her alive.
She blinked, had trouble fitting into an unfamiliar role. Her sincere smile was slow. "No, Tommy. No, not a monster." She winked at him, hoped something joy on her face as she thought of something pleasant to say. "I'm a mermaid. I help children and their fathers when there's trouble in the sea. Your father will be well."
"You don't have a tail." He pointed at her feet.
Nikasia smiled. "Whoever said mermaids have tails never met one." She opened her fingers.
Tommy frowned at her, but turned his head, following her webbed hand moving past his face, her fingers gliding along his shoulder, up the back of his neck, his skin warm under the tips of her fingers.
She leaned in and kissed his cheek, her lips next to his ear. "Do not tell anyone about me, Tommy. Do you understand? Or I will lose my powers and not be able to help anyone." He nodded, and she gave his neck a playful squeeze, let him go. "Good." She stood and walked into the surf, turning just before going under. "You promise?"
He nodded. She blew him a kiss, and then she was gone.
Nikasia kicked hard, a steep dive into the dark, and she found what she was looking for just off shore. She felt the rumble in the dragon's lungs, the sea-draw quick, uneven. The monster was injured, and the chain had worked, bound the monster to her will.
She approached cautiously, swung under the dragon, coming up in front, just out of teeth range. The chain around the monster's neck glittered, a pretty collar.
Nikasia looked at the dragon thoughtfully. "I am Nikasia of the Kirkêlatides. I shall name you..."
"Barenis," said the dragon in a soft wheezing voice.
"What?"
"I have a name. Bah-rhen-ees." The dragon spoke slowly as if Nikasia would have trouble with it.
"I can hear you?"
"Do not make me repeat myself then."
"I mean...can others?"
"You have ears. They do not."
"None of them?"
"One other who lived in the oceans. At least one."
"Who is it?"
"My old tyrannos."
"That's the old word. You're a slave?"
"You are so young. What do you know of old? Or slavery."
"I know that you said 'old' master. . .like you have a new one."
"And not very bright." Barenis pushed rows of sharp bared teeth at Nikasia. "You are the new one, Nikasia of the Kirkêlatides."
Chapter 15 - Monsters
For one moment out of all the moments that made up her life, Nikasia forgot about killing Gregor Lord Rexenor. It passed quickly, but for that moment, she soared without care or purpose through the Atlantic on Barenis, a dragon of the sea. She drove the animal as deep as she wanted to go, then up to the cold surface, across ice sheets, into the still polar abyss, raising waves of silt, scattering silver shoals of fish, making sharks bolt in fear, laughing at the stories in the distant grunts and moans of whales.
The question had been gnawing at her thoughts for days, and Nikasia settled her insides, slowed her breath, and asked casually, "So, who was your former master?"
Barenis slowed, rolled halfway to twist her long neck around, eyeing her new master. "I do not remember. It was a man, a lord. Kindly. We soared through every ocean, far and deep, the top and bottom of the world, looking for...something." Her voice trailed off. "Always searching. I remember an end to the journey—perhaps finding everything for which we had been searching. He was happy. And then I lost him. Or he lost me."
"How long ago was this? Tell me what house he called his own?"
The dragon made a huffing noise, a snort with jets of water shooting between a pair of tusks at the sides of her mouth. "I do not—"
"Telkhines or Rexenor—no other has ever possessed splendid things like you."
Barenis dove, pulling north, her voice a surprised growl. "Rexenor. Yes, it was House Rexenor. I do remember."
"And a name?"
Barenis struggled with sounds, "Reh...so close. Rehg... Rexenor. I can only remember Rexenor."
Nikasia pulled tight on the dragon's collar, fury buil
ding. "You speak well, you have knowledge in your soul. You can remember your own name. How can you not remember another's—your master's?"
"I have powers, Nikasia of the Kirkêlatides, powers even beyond you, but I am an animal, with many of the limits of an animal. I cannot keep new memories of things, only ancient ones, or of words that can fit into the thought-flows I already possess—another language I can know. I remember my name, I was a Telkhinos so long ago. I know I have lost my humanity, I know that I have lost it—and want it desperately, but I don't remember what it was. I'm...lost. I dream of towers, floating towers, and looking down at other cities. I remember my father, the lines of worry on his face, betrayal. I betrayed him. I am one of the soul-empty, the forsaken."
Nikasia pursed her lips. "You are a dragon, something made by the Telkhines. Don't make it sound so dramatic."
"Quite the opposite—and not made out of nothing, but of someone. The soul-empty, forsaken, the dragons, the beasts we became in order to become immortal. I know the word death, but it has no meaning for me, I don't know if I even want it. Empty promises, empty rewards, empty of all meaning. I can speak in the languages I knew as a Telkhinos—and new ones I am taught, but so many of the words' meanings are lost to me.
"You're a..." Nikasia slid one finger along Barenis' neck. "You chose to become...this?"
"Many of us did—for the deathless promise. Some became other things, depending on the strength of their bleeds. I had good bleeds off my mother and father, both pure. I changed into a dragon, became this form, lost my human form. Others became lesser things, the phantoms of the lower world, whispers of tissue and luminous glands and teeth, luring in prey without eyes, living without new memories, only the dreams of life before the change. The greatest became the most sorrowful of them all, the Ocean Blackeners, one of the lords of the dark, a Basilichalkainos—giant monsters of the deep. There is one now—the only one I have ever tasted in the water in all the years of my life. It guards a prison of floating stone boxes. It was summoned by the seaborn king. I felt this monster, ancient, perhaps one of the original godly nine of the Telkhines turned into something not of this world, all his power concentrated in the soul of an animal, driven by an animal's urges, hunger like the oceans, hater of its own immortality."
