Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  I had bigger problems. Where could something that big go in a hurry?

  Not to mention vanish in a flash and leave behind total chaos.

  I stared around the hall. All of the beds had been pulled away from the walls, some were angled and stacked together along the center of the room.

  Blinking a couple times didn’t seem to work. I had to rub my eyes, not sure that I was seeing things right.

  “How did—?” I started to ask about the beds, then shut my mouth. Play dumb. Don’t make eye contact. There’s a chance the predator has already killed today.

  Matrothy took another step down what remained of the aisle, wrinkled her nose, and sniffed the salt in the air. “What is that smell? It’s like...something I’ve smelled before. I know it.”

  Matrothy’s searchlight gaze moved around the room, over the beds and windows. A slow worried frown formed on her face as she took in the disaster area, but after a minute of silence, the old grimace returned. She was nearly all the way to her usual bitter angry self when she noticed a pattern in the way the beds had been arranged. Then she exploded.

  “What is that!”

  The first thirteen beds spelled out “HA HA!” with Deirdre’s bed and nightstand positioned as the exclamation point.

  Matrothy hit some record depth of rage, her fists clenching, her knuckles whitening. She blew foamy spit from her mouth. More saliva squeezed through her grinding teeth, sucked in and out with her breath. The director lunged. I ducked, but she got me by the ear.

  “Who are you talking about, girl? Who is this ‘him?’”

  I tried to pull out of Matrothy’s hold, fingers digging into her wrist. “No one! I don’t know.”

  “Who is it? Where are you hiding him?”

  Matrothy scanned the room. Her voice dropped to a cold whisper. “Tell me now, Kassandra.”

  “I—I really don’t know!”

  “Did he help you do this with the other girls’ beds?”

  “No.”

  “Who is he?” Matrothy pulled my ear harder, started shaking me. “Spit it out! Who is he? Who is he! Who. Is. He!”

  My head was pounding, and there was a rushing water noise closing on us—but still far away. Matrothy yanked down, threw me to my knees, and she lost her grip.

  Then there was a loud slurping noise.

  I bent over, one hand pressed to my ear—hot and stretched by the feel of it.

  Matrothy was screaming from far away. Deranged monster. I hope you fell out a window.

  When I looked up, Ephoros was back, stretching over most of the room again, spanning half the far wall and wearing a grin, his teeth a tight row of icicles the circumference of tree trunks.

  And there was Matrothy, floating in the watery space about halfway between the floor and ceiling.

  Oh my god! Ephoros ate the director!

  “Put...Stop...Don’t!”

  I danced around with my hands on my head, stuttering the first parts of several demands that apparently made no sense. Ephoros ignored me. He curled around to glare at Matrothy in her unfashionable vest, struggling inside the wall of water—his stomach.

  “I believe you are referring to me,” he rumbled. “You made use of the pronoun ‘he’ and its objective case ‘him’ several times. I am he who rearranged the beds. It was an amusing trifle to entertain the princess. I had no idea she was under the care of such a vulgar...whatever you are.”

  Ephoros studied the struggling Ms. Matrothy with interest, teeth clicking and water sloshing along his shoulders.

  “I do not know what it is about you, but you are not what you appear to be.”

  Matrothy’s shrieking was crackly and weak, her eyes bulging from her face.

  Ephoros straightened—as much as he could in the hall—and vomited his wriggling breakfast onto the floor. Matrothy flopped about pathetically like a gigantic landed fish, mouth gaping, sucking in air, her body covered in thick clear slime, whatever Ephoros used for digestive juices. She wiped it off her face and the goop stuck to her fingers, pulling away in ropy webs.

  “What is your name?” Ephoros boomed down at her.

  Matrothy spent a minute struggling to get to her feet, and when she didn’t answer right away, he nudged her playfully with a giant watery finger. She slipped and fell flat on the slimy floor, her legs splayed.

  Ephoros’ mouth closed on one side and his brows connected into a frowning expression. He waited for Ms. Matrothy to get to her feet again, then he dropped one massive finger right over the top of her. It went to the floor, enclosing her in a column of water.

  The director’s arms snapped to her sides and her body went rigid. Her eyes stared ahead stupidly. Ephoros whispered something in another language, a long string of words that made the water prison undulate, and then he lifted his finger away.

  Matrothy, dripping wet, without one look at me, walked briskly to the door, opened it, stepped out and closed it behind her.

  “She will remember nothing of what just happened.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Ephoros sighed. “I have sent her to clean her teeth.” He shook his head distastefully, water going everywhere. “Did no one teach her to care for them?”

  Even more monstrous than I thought. “Who are you?”

  “I have told you. You may call me Ephoros. I have other names, but that is one that I have used for many hundreds of years.”

  “And...the princess?”

  “Am I not speaking loud enough?”

  “Oh, come on. Me?”

  “You are the Wreath-wearer.”

  I looked up at him, curling my lips on one side. It didn’t sound like something I wanted to be. “The what?”

  “The one who is wreathed. The one who wears the gift of Poseidon.”

  I continued staring, my mouth dropping open. My tongue was picking at my teeth all by itself.

  God of the sea? That Poseidon?

  I shook my head. “Uh...?”

  “You are the daughter of Ampharete, a princess of House Alkimides, the royal house of the Thalassogenêis.”

  He looked down at me and I gave him my totally lost look.

  “Your father was a lord of House Rexenor, but he disappeared not long after you were born. I would never tell anything but the truth to the wearer of the Wreath.”

  The way he said the word it was clear that it came with a capital W.

  “W—What’s the Wreath?”

  “It is part of you. It is a circlet, a victory wreath fashioned of the plants of the sea. I can see what the gift giver himself used to craft its outward manifestation, woven seagrass, intricately branched pink Maerl, darker bands of Sebdinia, but most others will only see its radiance, and only you will be able to use and see the Wreath’s inner manifestation. Your mother must have given it to you before you were able to receive it...hmmm...when you were an infant.”

  My brain stalled on the first part of his answer, unable to get more out of it than the Wreath was made of different seaweeds, and then the mention of my mother brushed all the other thoughts aside.

  “My mother,” I whispered, biting back a wave of sickness. “Is she alive?”

  Shaking his head sadly, “No. You cannot unwear the Wreath. Once it is given, you wear it until you die.”

  “There was a voice in the lake yesterday—talking to me, almost like a dream. It was a woman—not the witch, someone else. She couldn’t tell me her name. She told me to breathe, and then I could breathe. Underwater.”

  “That was not your mother. Ampharete died giving you the Wreath.”

  “Why?”

  “That is the way it is done. When you pass on the gift, you become a part of it forever. Your mother is still part of you. If your mother had spoken to you, you would know. You would hear her in your thoughts. She would talk to you as I am talking to you. She would tell you her name and your history. There are many others in there, forty or more generations of Alkimides. It can only be passed to one of the royal family of your ho
use.”

  “But what is it? I can’t see anything.” I ran my fingers through my hair and in the open space around my head. “I’m not wearing a...wreath.”

  He looked down at me a minute, then nodded his head. “You seem old enough. Perhaps you are not yet strong enough. In time, you will be able to see it and feel its weight and strength, and you might also be able to speak to Ampharete and to many of the wearers of the past. It has powers that are unknown to me. Only the wreathed know what they can really do.”

  I ran my fingers through my hair again, pulling it behind my ears.

  With a few hand waves, Ephoros rearranged the room, sliding the beds and nightstands back where they belonged.

  “You really knew my mother?”

  “For too short a time.”

  “What...what happened to her?”

  I started with the first question that came to me, but like an overflowing pot on the stove, more questions boiled up, hundreds at a time, overlapping, joining to make bigger ones, some rising all the way to my lips. “How did I get here? In Nebraska, I mean. I...I don’t belong here do I? What are you really? You said Matrothy’s not what she appears? Who is she? Why does she hate me so much? I ran into a witch in a lake yesterday. Who was she? She attacked me by screaming at me and I did the same back to her. Who am I? Please tell me. Tell me I’m not a psycho.”

  He kept nodding his head at each question, and then when I stopped, he started at the top with my mother. “Ampharete was—”

  He went quiet, gave me a look full of sorrow and impatience, and turned toward the door.

  “What is it?”

  “I must go.”

  “What? You just got here!”

  “There is someone coming. Six someones by the sound. Hold out your hand. Open it. Quickly! Face up.”

  “When can I talk to you again?”

  “When you are alone. I can only remain above the ocean surface for a short period. I must return to the water and cannot allow myself to be trapped up here.”

  “But—”

  “I can remove myself from the memory of one thinling. I must not be seen by many, especially above the waves. Hurry!”

  “But—”

  What’s a thinling?

  “Do it!” He urged in the softest rumble he could produce. “Let the water drop slide back into the tear duct in one of your eyes. They are the gateways through which—”

  Ephoros vanished and a little bead of water that kept its spherical shape rolled into the center of my palm, and suddenly everything in the hall was dry. Ephoros seemed to have taken all of the water with him.

  I sat down on my bed just as the door flew open and a group of nine year olds entered. They looked around the hall, impressed with my cleaning job. A couple of them smiled thinly, but didn’t look over at me.

  Yup. Psycho drowned girl back from the dead. I almost smiled myself.

  I fell back on my pillow and let the bead roll into my right eye, wondering if it would work.

  Tears typically don’t return on their own once cried out, do they? I didn’t know much about crying but that didn’t sound right. I felt the hard water drop wobble into the corner of my eye, and with a jolt of pain that shot through my head, my eye sort of sucked it inside.

  Okay, that felt...weird.

  I blinked, focusing on the hall of the nine-to-sixteens girls department of St. Clement’s Education Center.

  Everything had nearly returned to the way it had always been.

  I was alone.

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember my mother’s song.

  Nothing came to me, but I hardly noticed. My mind raced with everything that had changed in my life, lake witches, breathing underwater, some wreath thing, and Ephoros, a king among the offspring of Poseidon.

  After dinner, Matrothy swung the door in and stamped her feet, every last tooth brushed.

  There didn’t seem to be anything different about her, but I couldn’t get a good look. Too much commotion in the hall.

  “Line up!”

  Everyone scrambled to get in line, dropping game decks, books, phones. We formed up, shuffling around and making room for a few caught out of line. The youngest and those with the fewest friends were usually the last to get in, or sent off to the back like losers in musical chairs. Deirdre Milhorn was first in line, as usual. The first few got the hottest showers.

  Matrothy walked down the row, making a real effort to glare—doesn’t she get tired of that?

  The bucket of bathroom cleaning equipment was swinging in her fist, and guess who she singled out for a bit of extra work tonight?

  “Kassandra! Back of the line. Take the cleaning supplies with you.”

  I just managed to hold in something abusive, grinding my teeth. Then snatched the bucket away from the director and went to the end of the line. The water would be ice cold by the time it was my turn.

  Matrothy made surprise visits over the next two hours, coming in without warning and standing by the hall door.

  And I moved closer to the bathrooms every twenty minutes, nudging the bucket of cleaning supplies along the floor with my feet. Fortunately, most of the girls took short showers.

  When my turn finally came around, I got the bathroom to myself, and of course, the hot and cold felt the same when I spun the knobs.

  Not that it mattered.

  The water temperature didn’t even make it through the soup thick daydream I had going. I couldn’t spare a thought on how cold it was, letting the water run through my hair, down my face. I let my gaze settle on the grid of pink tiles, while in my head I jumped back to Red Bear Lake and drowning and breathing underwater. Something inside me was building—a sense of wonder at the glimpse I had caught of a different world.

  So closed down around my memories of the lake, I didn’t notice the eyes of three witches staring at me through the flow of water pouring from the shower.

  Not at first.

  Chapter 5 - The Three Spies

  “Are you blind? That’s the girl.”

  “She looks different in the water.”

  Three strangely dressed women stood barefoot in the bathtub in the room they had taken at a motel just outside Mullen, Nebraska, standing straight, scowling, crammed into the bathtub with the water from the high spout pouring in a smooth arc between them, splattering their bare feet and ankles.

  They were naiads, river witches, and they were sisters, all with the same bleached-pale skin and dark hair tangled like marshweed. One was short and plump and the other two tall and bony. The short one, Limnoria, wore a garish gold taffeta dress that crinkled and rattled like a potato chip bag every time she moved. The second sister, Helodes, had on a long pale orange gown, and the third, Parresia, very stately, the eldest of the three, wore a ratty old black frock.

  The head was off the shower and the water poured out smoothly. The curtain had been ripped down and thrown over the toilet. Water flowed steadily from the open pipe that stuck out of the tiles above their heads.

  Fastened to the end of it, just above the threads, was an ornate arrangement of three thick heart-shaped blocks of gold.

  The three witches stared into the water flowing past them, into a small bubble in the stream that smoothed into a polished transparent sphere. A girl’s face appeared inside the bulb, her eyes closed against a spray of water.

  “It’s Kassandra,” said the one in gold taffeta, and the other two leaned forward, their noses almost in the water, eyes fixed on the girl’s face.

  “You’re right,” said the one in orange, Helodes, in a low voice. The eldest, usually quiet, said nothing at all.

  They watched Kassandra run her hands over her face, pull back from the water and dunk her head under cold spray. The girl was taking a shower miles away in the second floor bathroom of the girls wing of the St. Clement’s Education Center.

  Limnoria frowned. “I thought she was afraid of water.”

  “Aquaphobia, it’s called,” said Helodes knowingly.

/>   “It’s hydrophobia, stupid.”

  Parresia gave her sisters a sharp look. Her lips tightened, but she remained silent and watchful.

  “She’s not afraid. Just look at her.” Limnoria tugged on one ear, accompanied by a rustle of taffeta. She looked at the eldest. “It would be so easy to choke her. I can reach right through—”

  “Not now,” said Parresia.

  Kassandra’s face drifted in and out of the sphere. She scowled, tilting her head so that the icy water sprayed into one ear, then her face lifted and she opened her eyes. A look of shock swept her face, and she withdrew again.

  The naiads froze.

  “Is she able to hear us?” Helodes’ startled whisper snapped the other two out of their paralysis. “Or see us?”

  “If she’s powerful enough,” said Limnoria doubtfully.

  “But that’s unlikely.” Helodes went thoughtful. “Does she even know what she is?”

  “How powerful does she need to be?” Parresia asked quietly, and as usual her question brought silence and thoughtfulness to the other two.

  Another minute passed before Limnoria spoke up.

  “Wouldn’t she need a trilithon?” She jerked her chin at the three gold blocks clamped around the pipe.

  Helodes smoothed her gown and nodded. “Maybe she made one.”

  “Like she’d know how.” Limnoria shook her head at the dimness of her sister.

  Parresia frowned and grabbed their shoulders, letting the water with the glassine bulb pour between them. Her gray eyes darted to the three gold triangular forms at the end of the shower pipe. Her eyes widened and heavy heart-shaped metal unsnapped and thudded to the bottom of the tub with a splash. The other two yelped and shuffled their feet. They looked at each other, surprised, and joined hands.

  “She’s still with us,” breathed Limnoria, satisfied with their combined power.

  “I feel the pathway draining my strength,” Helodes added with a nod.

  “But the three of us together can keep it open,” said Limnoria proudly. “What can this girl do by herself?”

  “She doesn’t know what she is.”

  “Are either of you going to answer my question?” Parresia’s fingers dug into their shoulders.