Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  Telkhines is the first house of the Thalassogenêis—Seaborn.

  I have begun her language training, Andromache.

  All seaborn are descendents of the first nine houses. Some have been added through curses in later centuries.

  Praxinos elaborated on Andromache’s statements. The Telkhines were not originally from the sea, but put there through a powerful curse. They already had earth magic that comes from the core of the planet, and their secret was knowing that the earth subsumes all magics of the sea. They drew much of their power from combining the two. This is what enabled them to gain supremacy over immortals, god-descended beings, like Ephoros. Poseidon and his offspring are blind to the earth, or are only interested in its destructive powers, earthquakes and so on.

  Andromache cut right in. Obviously Praxinos had left out important points. When the Cloud-Gatherer sent them to the bottom of the sea for their alleged arrogance, Poseidon stepped in and planted in each of the cursed Telkhines a seed from the ocean force. Poseidon felt it was wrong on his brother’s part to punish so completely the people who had always honored him.

  After a brief scuffle over who was originally at fault, the two of them continued with types of magic. ...Abyss magic draws power from the well of darkness at the ocean’s depths. This is a dark branch of ocean magic.

  But practiced by many serious mages in my day, added Andromache.

  The Oceanic and other water magics vie with earth for seeds, for growth, and air magic is based ultimately on the oceans.

  There is Terrain magic, Core magic, Lithic...

  ...the Ether, includes musical magic.

  The Thin, The Etheric, which includes weather and sky magic.

  And finally, there is the inferno, pyromancy, the powers over fires and molten earth, the liquid form of everything once solid. You will never ever perform these.

  A combination of earth and oceanic magics, Praxinos put in. Very powerful but it always consumes the mage in a short time. Simple fire magics always lead the novice deeper into the inferno. A trap many of the Telkhines fell into.

  ...and from there, there is no return, said Andromache with a cold voice.

  The hall door banged open and Matrothy stepped inside.

  Chapter 14 - Matrothy’s Warning

  I felt my skin tightening around my bones with every step the director took toward me. She came in slow—unusual for her, looking side to side at each set of beds and at who sat on them, prowling down the center aisle, sniffing the air and stopping and giving every girl she passed a study. Like a predator. There wasn’t a girl in the hall moving, all of us staring at Matrothy.

  When the director reached me, she became herself again...sort of.

  She pointed. “You.”

  I kicked backward over the blanket, got my back against the wall. The book fell to the floor with a papery slap, and Matrothy took four strides down the space between the beds and bent down over me.

  I had my hands up. They were open as if pushing something away. I curled them into fists. Andromache—in my head—could really come up with some nasty curses, but I couldn’t think of one, nothing working right in my head except the need to fend off an attack.

  “I just want to tell you that it is your fault that Henderson will be punished,” said the director in a quiet cold voice.

  Matrothy’s acidy breath attacked me. I could barely breathe.

  “Henderson...He will be dealt with, teaching you things he was told not to. He taught a forbidden subject because of something you said to him, stupid girl. It is your fault that he will be punished. He even raised your grade and put a note next to your name, something about how you wanted to know about sound working underwater. Water, Kassandra? Now why would a stupid sick-in-the-head girl like you want to know about the science of water?”

  I didn’t know what to say. This was the last thing I’d expected.

  I sent one thread of thought racing through some of the day’s events, looking for anything that might make Matrothy’s actions understandable. Mr. Henderson had acted funny, almost as if he was teaching his last class. Maybe he’d known something would to happen to him if he taught us about water. And what was the argument with Matrothy the day before really about? What to teach and what not to?

  The whole thing was weird. Henderson had checked the hallway to see if anyone was spying on us. He’d kept his voice low. And he’d erased everything on the board at the end of class. But none of that explained why water was a forbidden subject to teach. Didn’t even make sense. Sure, water was interesting and did some amazing things. You drank it, showered in it, it fell from the sky as rain and there were oceans of it out there somewhere. What more could be said about it?

  “I hope it was a good lesson, because you have cost your teacher everything. I hope you enjoyed it.”

  “But—”

  Matrothy cut me off. “Agatha hates all you brats. If she didn’t, she would be next.”

  “Who?”

  “Vilnious!”

  I shook my head, trying to say “She doesn’t hate us” but the words wouldn’t come out.

  “In a way this is her fault also. She let you go to science class today after I told her not to.”

  “I don’t understand,” I found my voice but it was faint. “Mr. Henderson didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Matrothy leaned in even closer until her nose almost touched mine.

  “I don’t trust your science,” she breathed. “I don’t like it.”

  I held my breath.

  “I don’t like you knowing about it. If I don’t like it, it’s wrong.”

  Just as I reached the point of breathe or pass out, Matrothy straightened and walked away without another word.

  I slid down on the bed, thinking that that was the strangest talking-to I had ever had.

  Matrothy was always bitchy, spiteful, belligerent and violent, but this change in her, the unfeeling, unpredictable robot, made her more monstrous. It was like someone else talking through her mouth and controlling her body.

  Nicole and Jill both wore the same expression, staring at me from across the aisle, a sort of wide-eyed headshake that probably meant, “What was that about?”

  I shrugged and shook my head, mouthing, “I’m not sure.” I turned to watch the director as Deirdre approached her at the door.

  “Ma’am? Do you want me to make sure everyone gets to the showers?”

  Matrothy turned and stared at Deirdre as if she didn’t recognize her.

  “Yes.”

  I saw the uneasy look on Deirdre’s face as she swung away from the director toward the rest of the hall. Even Matrothy’s favorite wasn’t sure how solid the director-will-back-me-up ground was.

  “Get in line!” Deirdre shouted with her eyebrows going thin and hunched over her eyes. “Showers. Now!”

  The nine-to-sixteens girls meandered toward the front of the hall, chatting and giving Deirdre defiant looks.

  They had seen what had happened as plainly as she did—and Deirdre wasn’t nearly as effective as Matrothy. Her abrasive shrieking lacked a solid foundation of violence. If the edge in Deirdre’s shouting was as threatening as a garden claw, Matrothy’s was a wood-chipper—and not one of the portable backyard ones, but the kind that had to be towed in on a truck, that some guy with goggles, work gloves and lots of tattoos fed whole trees into.

  Nicole had been talking on Jill’s bed when the director came in. I hopped off mine and joined them in line, Jill shaking her head at Matrothy’s odd behavior, waving me into a huddle.

  “She wasn’t wearing her vest. She always wears that stupid vest.”

  The three of us nodded.

  “And when was the last time Matrothy came in here without slamming the door against the wall?”

  “Yeah, I got that too,” I said. “I didn’t notice she was here until she was past Deirdre’s bed. It was not hearing the door banging that surprised me.”

  The three of us moved closer as the conversation dropped i
nto Top Secret territory. Nicole gave some of the nearer girls a scowl to drive them off.

  “What did she say to you?” Nicole whispered.

  “Something’s going to happen to Mr. Henderson.” I let the words pass my lips slowly, every one emphasized as if it was the craziest set of words I could string together. “I don’t know what she meant. She said it was my fault.”

  “He was shaking yesterday after Matrothy left.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “She kept repeating herself. You saw her.”

  “Yeah, it looked like she was going to cut your throat.”

  After a moment’s pause to let the decision settle in my own mind, I nodded. “I have to warn Mr. Henderson. She’s a psycho. She’s going to kill him.”

  “He’s gone home, hasn’t he?”

  Some of the dorm administration and custodial staff lived at the school, Matrothy, Mrs. Hipkin and others, but none of the teachers had apartments, and even Mr. Cutler, the administrator, drove in every morning from somewhere.

  I bit my lip. “Henderson looked really fried today, like he’s not sleeping enough.” I wanted to leave St. Clement’s, “Use the water” to go to the oceans, but I couldn’t leave without warning my science teacher.

  Maybe a test trip, out into the oceans, find my world, and then back again, just to see how it worked...if it worked. No. My inner voice was clear and commanding: Stick with the plan. Find the lithotombs, find my father. No playing games.

  I looked at Nicole. “You have to warn Henderson.”

  “Will do,” said Nicole with a glance at the clock up at the hall’s far end. “Tonight? I doubt he’s still here. I can probably get by the admins with a forgot-my-homework excuse and run for the school wing to see.”

  Nodding, I said, “Henderson’s been reading books on the ocean and water science instead of sleeping.”

  “But I don’t think Henderson...” Jill’s gaze shot left, toward impending trouble.

  Something hit me in the back, two strong hands, fingers spread, threw me into Nicole, and both of us fell to the floor in a tangle.

  “Get in line.” Autumn, towering over us on the floor, had shoved me.

  Nicole pulled free, jumped to her feet, her fists up.

  “We are in line.” Then she called Autumn several discerning names that had the nearest girls putting their hands over their mouths in shock.

  Autumn was taller, heavier, but Nicole had a lean, muscular build, slender waist, broader shoulders.

  “Back of the line, Garcia.” Autumn cracked the knuckles of one fist with the fingers of her other hand.

  It took a few seconds for most of the surrounding girls to figure out who she was talking about. We rarely heard Nicole’s last name.

  “We’re in the middle of a conversation,” I said, stepping forward. “So I don’t think she’s going anywhere.”

  Autumn looked at me, her lip curling down. “You’re already at the top of the list for who the director hates.” With a glance at Nicole—some uncertainty there, Autumn poked me in the arm. “Trying for extra credit?”

  No one moved. The three of us stared back at Autumn for ten long seconds, arms folded, before the bullying friend of Deirdre turned with whatever dignity she could assemble and walked away.

  Autumn couldn’t beat us all up. It was questionable she’d survive alone against Nicole.

  Autumn, Cornelia and a couple other bitches surrounded Deirdre in sympathy, sneering and doing little offended headshakes and snapping, “How dare she” over and over.

  Yeah, yeah.

  We watched them walk away, Deirdre in the lead, on their way to the showers.

  “I hope she...” I wasn’t sure what I hoped happened to her, something bad for sure.

  Cursing silently, I watched them move to the end of the hall, file into the bathrooms, and close the door. Even halfway down the line of twenty-six girls, the shower water would be ice cold by the time it was our turn.

  Not that we weren’t used to it, but it wasn’t fair, and I watched the bathroom door a moment longer, thinking that it would be good for them—call it character building—if the water furnace stopped working and they had to suffer through a cold shower...or better, what if it started nice and warm then went suddenly icy...

  “You all right, Kass?” Jill grabbed my shoulders.

  Oh, god, that hurt. I bent down. A sharp pain drove through my head, like someone jabbing around inside my skull with a skewer.

  My legs shook, a rushing sound in my ears drowned out the sudden shrieks from the bathroom. Deep inside, I felt a tug of whirling black water against my legs, tasted seawater in my mouth. A spiral of moving water rolled around me. A room with tunnels and a wide lightless pit in the center flashed by in my thoughts, then vanished.

  And Deirdre and her three friends were screaming, so loud it sounded as if they were being tortured.

  The word spread. The water heater wasn’t putting out hot water.

  Nicole laughed, and I took a few more deep breaths, shrugging off Jill’s help. I felt weak but the good news helped me ignore it. Once in my life, there appeared to be justice in the world. Matrothy was apparently cracking up and Deirdre Milhorn had to take a damn cold shower.

  The funny thing was—and the three of us laughed about it when it was our turn in the bathrooms—that the water heater mysteriously started working when I spun the knob. I ended up taking one of the few hot showers in my life.

  Chapter 15 - Andromache’s Sword

  An hour later, Matrothy kicked open the nine-to-sixteens hall door—that’s what it seemed like. The door slammed into the wall, knob punching into plaster. The normal impulsively belligerent director was back.

  “Lights out!”

  Matrothy stood in the opening, her head hunched forward, her eyes bulging from her face. It made you want to look for a lit fuse. Looked like she was going to explode and take us all with her.

  Every girl in the hall scrambled to get pajamas on or skidded under their blankets if they were already dressed for bed. Trunk lids slammed, followed by the rustling of clothing being tugged on by fifteen girls at once. In two minutes everyone was quiet except for Deirdre’s sharp Kassandra-hating whispering.

  I wasn’t the only one peering over the folds of my blanket at the hall doorway.

  Deirdre made little sweeping gestures, her delicate fingers opening and closing in sequence with her whispered words, and then both she and the director turned their glares to me.

  Oh, crap.

  “Kassandra!” Matrothy curled one finger toward herself. “Come with me.”

  She sounded funny, almost slurring the words. Is she drunk?

  I slid out of bed, dug my feet into my slippers, and tried to take my time getting to the end of the hall. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and noticed Jill and Nicole gesturing, fingers making shapes, a whole wordless wide-eyed nodding and chin-pointing conversation. I’d guess it amounted to something like, This doesn’t look good.

  Who knows? The two of them have this elaborate and complex sign language, and no one, not me, not the director, no one really knew what they were saying sometimes.

  Matrothy, on the other hand, was perfectly clear. “Hurry up, you slug.” Then with a glare past me down the hall, “The rest of you, go to sleep.”

  She turned and shoved me across the entry.

  “To my office.” She pointed to the stairs to the first floor.

  Halfway down, Matrothy started in on me. “What’s wrong with you now? You’re talking to yourself in the cafeteria, and now in the hall? Mrs. Vilnious said you’ve become unusually quick with your math problems? That’s it with you, isn’t it? Unusual, abnormal, weird, mutant, a freak! An angry little freak who can’t keep her mouth shut!”

  I don’t know…having trouble opening it at the moment.

  It was as if my mouth was glued closed. This had already veered off the normal punishment tracks. Didn’t look good for me at all. I sucked in a sob
, straightened my back, walking as boldly as my legs could handle, silently cursing Matrothy for making me feel the urge to weep.

  We marched along the brightly lit central corridor of St. Clement’s, and I kept my eyes straight ahead because the director made little ticking noises whenever I glanced through open doors or down any of the hallways that crossed our path.

  When we reached her office, Matrothy grabbed my collar and pushed me through the doorway, snapping on the lights with her elbow.

  Almost in time with the door’s slamming against its frame, the director spun me around and backhanded me. Didn’t even see it coming. I staggered away and fell into a hard plastic chair.

  My fists came up shaking. The right side of my face was hot, and I turned away to hide it from Matrothy.

  Then I froze.

  One tear slipped icily over my skin and dropped to the floor.

  A quick crouch and I jumped back, sprang out of the chair, knocking it over. The director’s office easily fit inside the nine-to-sixteen’s hall and I wanted to give Ephoros as much room as I could. I pressed my back against a set of empty ceiling-high bookcases.

  A scary racing thought about Mr. Henderson’s talk of frozen water expanding, strong enough to break metal pipes. Would this little office explode if Ephoros expanded in here, or worse, froze? The thought of not being able to escape and being broken into a thousand bits stuck in my head for a moment.

  Then a scarier thought hit to me. What if I cry a tear and Ephoros doesn’t show up?

  The director, one hand over her head for another swing, watched me with contempt.

  “Crawl away. Like a rat in the sewer.” Matrothy took a step forward, not realizing Ephoros had appeared right behind her, mashed against the other three walls and ceiling.

  Backing up, pressing my body against the wall, I kept looking to Ephoros then back down at Matrothy. She took another step.

  Holding up a fist, “Get away from me. I’m warning you.”

  Matrothy stopped dead. Her eyes almost crossed as they tried to focus on the tip of a long black sword that had materialized in my outstretched hand.