by Chris Howard
He stared at her, breathing hard, half his mind telling him to run, but the rest of his thoughts were fuzzy, his bones hurt from the cold, his clothes heavy on his body. "What do you want?"
"I don't do anything for free." She kneeled down, leaned over him, slid her fingers under his chin, and lifted his face to hers. Then her lips opened over his mouth, and she was inside him, her tongue touching him, tasting the salt. She was warm, a spill of warmth in his mouth, and she pushed it inside him. The heat spread into his throat, into his head, down his arms and legs. She let him go, licking her lips.
Jill sat up, gave his face a slap, and it stung, just on the wrong side of playful.
Then she smiled, and said happily, "I just cursed you."
"Cursed?"
"Despair, Jordan. A curse called despair."
He looked lost. "I don't know what that means."
"Desperation? Dashed hopes? Melancholy? It's the loss of hope, Jordan, all hope. A little something from some girl you once screwed."
He trembled, his skin going cold; he felt her slip away. "But I'm sorry. I said sorry, Jill."
"I know you are, Jordan."
"I still think of you...sometimes. Miss you. Will you ever forgive me?"
"No, that's just my curse. It's starting to sink in. Think of it like tea steeping—it's not hot water anymore and there's no going back to hot water, or maybe it's like a stain that won't come out even with bleach."
"What are you talking about?"
She stood over him again, smiled, folding her arms, and her spiky crab armor crinkled. "When you kiss a woman, any woman, you will think of me, you will want me, beg to have me, but you will never have me again." She waited while that took hold in his mind, and she saw the questions surfacing, looking for a way out, forgiveness, redemption, another chance. "The Sea, she only ever gives you one chance, unless one of her sisters happens by. Then you get two. Forgiveness? Never. The Sea does not forgive, Jordan."
Jill walked into the surf, and never looked back.
Kassandra kissed Bachoris goodbye on a cliff high over the Atlantic coast of Maine, a line of thick pines standing against the wind, a wide space of barren rock jutting out from the forest as if it was afraid to creep too close to the edge. The morning sun came in foamy yellow through clouds low on the horizon.
Bachoris went back to the car, leaning on the fender, folding his arms against the chill, and Kassandra walked away, right to the edge, held out her arm, one finger dipping delicately into the sea a hundred feet from shore. She closed one eye and the world in her vision flattened, taking away depth. The tip of her finger poked a hole in the waves.
Kassandra pulled her finger up with a drop of water that she licked away. She opened both her eyes, and the world had depth again—and there was a whirling rush of water where she had touched the surface of the Atlantic, a growing ship-swallowing maelstrom, a dark hole opening like the eye of a cyclone.
She walked back toward Bachoris, eyes on the ground, her bare feet skipping lightly over the stones, and she let her armor crawl to life over her body, slipping gloves over her fingers, a high collar with yellow bands that moved and flashed. She held out her fist and it curled around her trident. She stopped, bowed to Bachoris with a sad smile. Then turned to face the ocean, bowing again, this time with a courtier's flourish, and held the trident high.
She let it slip through her fingers, a cold hiss against her gloves and armor, and the earth rumbled when it hit the rocks; the forest shook behind her, rattling pine cones loose, dead limbs snapped and crashed to the ground.
Kassandra paused a moment, and then brought one leg back and planted it, shifting her body into a throwing stance. The trident weighed more than some worlds. She tossed it in the air, and caught it underhanded, leaning deep into her stance. Then she hurled it into the sky, her body thrown back by the force, her feet kicking up stones.
Then she was running, Bachoris whispering goodbye, a tickle in her ears that made her smile reappear. She sprinted for the end of the cliff, her feet coming down and bounding away, pulling her faster. She caught the edge with her toes, and flew into the sky after her trident, soaring out over the jagged rocks at the cliff's foot, twirling slowly in the air, her back to the ocean.
The surface came at her fast, and the world went black. She was inside the core of the cyclone, chasing her trident, the flash of her crown pulsing around her. She reached up and poked the high-speed spinning walls, and they collapsed behind her, bubbling around her toes. She caught her trident, closed her eyes and she was into solid water, blowing out the last of her air, racing down the vertical drop of the continental shelf and out over the deep flats, south and east. She went between the water, and vanished in the dark of the deep ocean.
Bachoris waited for the Atlantic's surface to settle, unfolded his arms, his fingers playing with the edge of the car's hood. He watched and waited, sorrow in his eyes. The waves rolled in their eternal motion, and there was no sign of the Sea or her passing. He got back in the car, turned, and drove along the road through the trees.
Kassandra emerged just south of the Nine-cities, swung around the walls at high-speed, and spiraled up the apex, running her finger along the smooth shielding spell and smiled. She pointed her toes, tucked in her trident, and slid right through the Queen's Protection.
A dozen guards came out to meet her, bowed when they saw her crown and who she was, and formed up to lead her inside for an audience with the queen. She returned a bow and followed them through tall open swim ways, and up into a high chamber that caught the light of Helios' Twin from any angle and directed the light to a diffusion ball in the room's center. Kassandra stared up, smiling at the design; the whole room glowing like the inside of a seashell.
Nicole kicked into open water, a quick burst of swimming across the room right at her, off her throne before her guards had finished announcing her sister. Kassandra leaned to one side, unsure of the angry expression on Nicole's face.
"Nicole?"
The queen planted her feet right in front of her, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her hard, her face an inch from hers. "You never told us anything. " She gave her a shove, waved her hand dramatically. "You did all this stuff, all this planning, battling, everything like a damn chess game, and you never really told us a thing."
"What's this about?"
Nicole clenched her jaw, tilting her head, looked as if she was about to slap her. "Don't play stupid. Never dying. Goddess. Immortal? Ring a damn bell?"
Kassandra drew in a long pull of water, released it, a liquid sigh. Her shoulders dropped. "How did you find out?"
"Eupheron."
"Shit. Should have known." Kassandra nodded. "What did Jill have to do to get it out of him?"
"What do you mean? He told her—wanted to. She was looking for a curse, something really nasty—non-fatal, but cruel enough to make anyone wish that it was. He's into that sort of thing, and somewhere in the discussion he turned the talk to living forever." Nicole's tone went sarcastic. "Guess who's name came up?"
Kassandra ignored her, staring off into the pink and yellow glow of the throne room. "That doesn't sound like our Jillian. She still wants Eupheron? Last time I asked her, she wasn't sure she wanted someone that wild inside her head."
"Well, she left a day ago, and it looked to me like she and Eupheron are getting along swimmingly. He's her best friend. Have you seen her lately?"
"Why?"
"She does look wild. Dangerous wild. She's a siren."
"We all are." Kassandra started to smile, then Nicole shoved her, shook it off her face. "What? Jill getting tough's a good thing."
"Okay, we're not talking about Jill. You were immortal. You were going to live forever. How could you give that up? You're a goddess."
Kassandra shook her head. "I have arrived, Nicole. I don't have to be what I was anymore. I have found everything, pushed everyone enough. I'm done." She looked away with a distant smile, her face calm, a sharp amused pull at one co
rner of her mouth. "I'm really good at planning and playing games with people's lives, and that's about it. I am not a goddess, Nicole. I don't deserve to be. But I will be the mother of one."
A year passed, three, nine years, and the Sea returned to New Hampshire to visit her old home, her friends, her family.
Jill—with Zypheria and Michael helping—made a sand castle, an exact replica of the Nine-cities, complete with floating wedge shaped cities of wet sand, and a shimmery dome for the Queen's Protection. Jill wanted to create a small burning orb for Helios' Twin, but thought it might attract too much attention.
Bachoris and Agenika sat across from each other on a beach towel, bent over the chessboard, into their ninetieth game of the day. He didn't play Kassandra anymore because she beat him with her eyes closed—literally. Agenika curled a strand of hair behind one ear, tapping her chin thoughtfully, and moved a rook.
Kassandra wandered away, dancing across the wet sand, watching a little girl at the edge of the waves, stopping a minute to watch the two of them play together, child and the Atlantic. Kassandra smiled, stepping over a clump of dying seaweed, made her way across the dry stretch high along North Hampton Beach, and leaned against the low concrete wall, just down from a woman with her face in a big textbook.
Kassandra let a minute pass, and then looked over at her. "What are you studying?"
The woman lifted the book to show Kassandra the cover, gave her a distracted look, and didn't respond. She was halfway through a college chemistry text.
"You go to UNH? What's your major?"
The woman straightened, cleared her throat, and gave Kassandra an appraising look. "Dual. Marine chemistry and physics."
Kassandra nodded, and the woman went on as if in justification, as if to head off the next question. "Not biology. Everyone always asks me why not marine biology."
"Really? What do you tell them?"
"That's not where the power in the sea is."
Kassandra's smile was slow, taking in what the woman was wearing, a t-shirt several sizes too large over a dull black wet suit. Sandals on her feet, a gold ring on her pinky. She had pulled her thick dark hair into a curl and jammed a pencil through to hold it up. Small pearl earrings in her ears. There was something very beautiful and functional and serious about her. But there was energy in the air around her, rolling off her body, something in motion even as she leaned against the concrete wall. Then the right word came Kassandra: something hydrodynamic about her.
Their eyes met and Kassandra showed her a tiny piece of her soul.
The chemistry book slipped from the woman's hands.
Kassandra held out a finger as if she was about to say something, and then turned and shouted to the little girl right at the edge of the ocean, "Posey, no! Leave it alone." She glanced at the UNH student. "There's a dead seagull there." Then back to the girl at the water's edge. "Come here. Mommy wants you to meet someone."
The girl in a shimmery silver swimsuit who may have been eight or nine years old, ran up, stopping right in front of the woman with the book—the book hovered a foot off sand, and the girl grabbed it, looked at the open page number before closing it.
"Page three-seventy." She handed the chemistry text to the woman.
"Thank you." A stunned whisper.
Kassandra bent toward her daughter. "I would like you to meet an old friend of mine. This is Shelly Mallozzi. She goes to the university. She's studying the sea."
"No finer pursuit." The little girl bowed. "Pleased to meet you, Shelly Mallozzi. I am Lady Poseidonis."
"Tell Shelly what mommy does."
The girl twirled happily, raising her arm. "All that? It's hers." She pointed at the ocean. "You are studying the sea? My mommy rules it all. The oceans belong to her. She is the Sea."
Shelly gripped the book, her fingers white, but she looked into Kassandra's eyes, dark pools with nothing but the deep end. She leaned forward, and fell in.
Kassandra whispered, her voice gentle as a tide coming in. "I can show you many beautiful things, Shelly. Cliffs of ice blue at the world's end, the Nine-cities on the Atlantic's floor, fire in the ocean's heart. Is there anything you would like to see? Anything I can show you?"
Shelly let the book fall, and held out her hand to Kassandra. "The cliffs, the city, the fire. All of it. I want to see it all."
Table of Contents
2 - The War-bard's Daughter
3 - New Sirens
4 - Alexandros
5 - Bachoris
6 - The Boot and the Vents
7 - Nikasia's Chain
8 - The Untrusting Book
9 - Nothing Left For Me
10 - Strange and Wonderful
11 - The Vents
12 - Connections
13 - Mortal
14 - Barenis
15 - Monsters
16 - The Book and the King's Trusted Eight
17 - Gifts from the Sea
18 - Mirrors
19 - Dining with the Sea
20 - A Morning Visit
21 - Dangerous Types
22 - King's Monster
23 - Sailing
24 - The End of the World
25 - Soul Stuff and Open Wounds
26 - Thursday Night
27 - World Without Water
28 - The War-bards
29 - Scissors
30 - The Old Sirens
31 - Storm Eating
32 - The New Dead Army
33 - Coronation
Epilogue
