Seaborn 01 - Saltwater Witch

by Chris Howard

  Looking up at Ephoros, I asked, “Will they march on the school?”

  “The king has started pouring his power and commands into them. I can feel it here. They are awake. Perhaps it will take a little longer to wake them fully.” He didn’t sound convinced, but added as if in justification. “They have not marched in fourteen years.”

  “What happened fourteen years ago?” But even as I asked, I knew the answer.

  “King Tharsaleos sent the Olethren against House Rexenor in the North...and Ampharete died after giving you the Wreath. And you were captured along with others close to your mother. I don’t know what became of her or the others. I was not there.”

  Ephoros turned away from me on his last words, startled by something. He grew to a monstrous height, surrounding me. Claws like tree trunks whittled to points sprang from his giant hands, not as long as Ochleros’ but still dangerously massive. They formed a sharp edged cage around me.

  I whirled with him, my sword and armor returning. Then I fought the accompanying weariness like a heavy blanket tossed over her shoulders. Took a minute, but I got it under control, leaning back to try to catch Ephoros’ eyes—and what he was seeing.

  “What is it?” I whispered, and then froze, my senses blisteringly charged, ready to react.

  “Something is here. I can feel it.”

  “The king’s power?”

  I was hoping it wasn’t something worse. Ephoros didn’t answer.

  What the hell is that?

  A bubble the size of a basketball drifted up from the seafloor to the top of the battlements. It stopped in front of me and a face floated into view. It was Parresia, the naiad from the motel in Mullen.

  “Girl! You dare so much! The deathless one in the lithotomb abyss told me where I would find you.”

  I blinked and shook my head, stunned by the naiad’s presence.

  Parresia pursed her lips and closed her eyes briefly as if she was trying to wrench her focus back to her original line of thought. “Something has happened at the school. One of your teachers—that science teacher—was taken captive by the seaborn. We are trying to find him.” Parresia’s voice faltered, and grew angrier. “Right under our noses! They used my river to do it!” She was enraged, but pulled her feelings under control. “The seaborn, Mr. Fenhals, the one Theupheides spoke of, arrived at your school an hour ago. You need to find out why he is there, and see if he has any connection with the missing teacher, Henderson. Be careful!”

  Chapter 21 - The New Science Teacher

  I didn’t know how tired I was until I found myself on the floor of the shower stall in the girls nine-to-sixteen department, cold, soaking wet and alone. A muscle in my neck tightened until it burned, and I coughed up water from my lungs all over the shower’s tile floor.

  My memory was coming back in spurts. Ephoros woke me up, and left me at the mouth of the Mississippi River. I had thought of—or brought into my mind’s focus—the dripping showerhead in the last stall of the second floor bathroom of the girls department, and the next thing I knew I was falling onto cold tiles, shivering uncontrollably, my teeth clattering.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  “Rutting hell!” I clapped a hand to my mouth. Where did that come from? I was cursing like Andromache now.

  “What have you done to me?”

  Yes, child? Andromache’s murmur swept around inside my head like a soft spring breeze, cheerful, innocent and impossibly haughty all at once.

  Bitch.

  I was so tired I felt like climbing into bed in my wet clothes.

  “I better not,” I said weakly.

  What is it you better not do? Andromache wasn’t going to make it easy.

  I crossed the space between the bathroom and my trunk, dripping water all the way, too exhausted to care about the slapping noises my feet made on the floor.

  “I’m too tired to talk tonight, but I want to know what you do while I’m asleep, both of you.” I used the angriest whisper I could summon, and then I yawned widely. “To...morrow.”

  I dropped my wet clothes on the floor in a pool of water, and my eyes closed in the middle of tugging on my pajamas. I mumbled as my head hit the pillow, something in ancient Greek, and fell into sleep at once.

  The alarms went off at 6:30, and I rolled over, grimacing. I just closed my damn eyes! My pillow was wet from my hair. It felt like two maybe three seconds had passed since I had crawled out of the shower. It had been dark when I went to sleep and now it was light, as if someone had flipped on a switch for a bright morning sun the moment I had closed my eyes.

  Today was going to suck. I used all the strength I could summon to tuck my head down and bury it under the pillow. Still, I couldn’t shut out someone’s surprised shriek, followed by a string of sharp, high-pitched cursing, and then that was followed by a loud and detailed explanation of exactly what had happened. Deirdre had slipped and fallen on some water by the bathroom door and was letting everyone know about it. Blah, blah, like that concerned me.

  I tossed my pillow on the floor and rolled on my back. The sounds of just a few girls waking up were deafening.

  My head hurt. My eyes burned. The world was too bright. Too thin.

  Not everyone was getting up, probably because most of them had stayed up way past school night lights-out at 10:30 PM, enjoying the break from Matrothy’s tyranny.

  I sat up rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

  Jill looked over, eyes wide and startled, and shot from her bed. Nicole got up too, and made the connection between Deirdre’s bitching and the pool of water and clothes by my trunk. I glanced up in time to see Nic discreetly kick them under my bed, out of sight.

  “Kass!” Jill shouted in my ear, peeling away the blankets. “What happened?”

  Nicole punched me—not quite playfully. “We took turns, all night, guarding the water dribbling from the showerhead. And where the fuck were you?”

  Jill bit her lip, glancing up in thought. “I remember falling asleep sometime after three o’clock in the morning.”

  “And no sign of you.” Nicole folded her arms. “You really had us worried. I thought you wouldn’t return.”

  “I said I would.”

  Jill shoved me. “Come on, get up!”

  I levered my body over the edge, my eyes still stinging, and my hair, I could feel it standing out from my head, crusty with saltwater.

  “Saw them...” I slumped back to my bed.

  “Saw who?” Nicole grabbed me, shoved me around a bit, propped me up by my shoulders, and tried to make my hair neater by pushing it down around my ears. It just jumped back into its strange formation like a spring.

  “The Olethren.”

  “Who?”

  I blinked a few times, rubbed my eyes, and tried to shake the sleep out of my head. Then I remembered Parresia’s message. That shocked me to my feet, put me off balance, clawing at my blankets before I fell forward onto Elizabeth’s bed.

  Liz kicked a few times, sleepily, and I straightened, apologizing. I looked at Nicole, then Jill, and gathered them into a huddle to say, “There’s a new teacher at Clement’s.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A naiad, a river witch told me. Guy’s name is Fenhals. We need to move.” I broke away. Using my bed for support, I made my way to my trunk, digging around for something to wear. “Let’s find out what we can about him.”

  I looked up in time to see Jill and Nicole staring excitedly at each other—river witches! They raced back to their beds to see who could get dressed faster. They tugged on clothes, mismatched socks, shoes and then sprinted to the bathroom. Matrothy banged open the door as the two of them emerged, hair and teeth brushed.

  “Up! Off to breakfast! What the hell? What are you still doing in bed?” The director shouted and pounded down the aisle, punching the blanket-covered lumps of girls who weren’t awake yet. “Stop crying, Charisma. Get out of my sight!”

  Pressing down my hair, I tried to run by Matrothy. Not fast eno
ugh, not invisible enough. The director spun around, snarling like a damn dog.

  “Kassandra! Not you.” She marched up and smacked me in the back of the head. I was too tired to block it—although I did have a few choice Andromache words for her.

  But I kept them to myself.

  “Go brush that—whatever that is on the top of your head. Then you can bring up the laundry cart and gather the clothes for Mrs. Hipkin before classes start. Move it!”

  As I turned away from Matrothy, I made a face at Jill and Nicole, and then gave them an I’ll-catch-up-with-you-two-later nod.

  I heard them cursing something under their breaths. Amateurs. I was certain that it wasn’t anything like my cursing, which now contained words like, “pestiferous” and “miscreant,” and I followed that up with a sharp whisper of, “Andromache, you puking harpy. What have you done to me?”

  Manners, child, said the old queen of the Thalassogenêis. I have passed on a significant portion of my sword skills.

  “Fine. I need those. What else? Where did these words come from, like mayhap, prithee...” I thought for a second. “...Peradventure and...morbific? Morbific? What the fuck—” I caught myself, holding back the words. “Why are you putting this shit in my head?”

  I gave Autumn a surly look as I passed her on the way to the bathroom. Deirdre’s bullying friend seemed to have discarded her shame with some sleep and knocked me into the wall. She probably wouldn’t have been that bold with Nicole there. Didn’t matter anyway. I didn’t have time for it.

  I wanted answers. Now. Without much prompting, Andromache tried to explain her reasons for teaching me foul language, something about arming me with more than a sword.

  Excuses, Praxinos laughed, and he and Andromache started shouting at each other.

  Damn, my head hurt.

  I had just sat down on the toilet in the end stall when someone called my name.

  “Kassandra?” It was one of the naiad’s and her voice was coming from...somewhere.

  “What?” It was one word, my mouth was open, and the simple question had come from it. it just didn’t sound like me.

  The raw irritation in my voice echoed in the bathroom. Is this what it’s like being a princess? Can’t pee without someone bothering me?

  I ducked to look under the panel that separated my stall from the next. No one was there. “Where are you?”

  “In Mullen, why?” Limnoria’s voice was coming from some source of water in the bathroom, but at the moment I didn’t want to know which.

  “What is it?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, but hurry.”

  “We’ve been searching for your father...and we found someone. Not your father. Sorry. It’s the man from your school, Henderson. He’s being held at some sort of outpost, a little fortified village in the Gulf. I don’t know what those seaborn are up to imprisoning the man, or how they even managed it. It takes powerful magic to make it so that a surfacer doesn’t drown underwater. Very powerful.”

  “Gulf of Mexico?”

  “Not far off the coast of the state of Texas. Tell us if you find anything.”

  “How? How can I talk to you?”

  “Into the water. Have you created your trilithon?”

  I frowned. A what?

  “What’s—Shhhh,” was all I managed to get out before some other girl pushed open the bathroom door.

  A trilithon, I thought. I immediately thought of the gold heart-shaped things clamped to the shower pipe in the naiad’s motel bathroom. Create a trilithon. The naiad said “your trilithon.” Is it something I’m expected to make for myself?

  I brushed my teeth, listening briefly for my mother’s song, which seemed to have died, never to return. I attacked my hair with a few comb swipes and headed for the stairs. Jill and Nicole had already gone on to breakfast.

  Following the stragglers, I let Andromache’s excuses and snapping remarks drift through my head as I headed out the door.

  ...Oh, fine! It was my way of exacting a little revenge for ignoring us—

  Praxinos’ shout cut her off. Do not bring me into this!

  —going after your father and seeing the Olethren and risking everything.

  “Yeah, yeah, I got that, but maggot-pie, harpy, fen-sucking weasel? Are these really appropriate? Appropriate! I’m using the word appropriate! What kind of fifteen-year-old uses the word appropriate?”

  The other girls gave me some odd looks. They really think I’m a wacko. Well, get used to it. The weirdness was getting worse every day.

  I have been listening to you complain about that wicked Director Matrothy. Andromache returned to using her tone of polite condescension. And you use words such as ‘monster’ and ‘evil’ and ‘mean’, which hardly convey the proper amount of hateful passion you must feel for the creature. And your chat yesterday with the naiads reminded me of dear old Paramythis, and how much fun we used to have in Brixham and some of the other cities in the West Country, especially down by the piers where the trawlermen—

  Andromache! Praxinos cut her off.

  ...the men used such colorful language, but that is only—

  I stopped her because a forgotten question returned.

  “Why do you speak English? Do all seaborn speak it?”

  Excellent questions, Praxinos answered me in his pompous manner, as if to tell Andromache it was time to change the subject to something important—like anything he was about to say. I can speak several languages, but we always go with the current sea power among the surfacers, which is why most of us speak English. Four or five hundred years ago it became fashionable at the court in the City to speak Spanish. Otherwise it has been the ancient Greeks—Hellenes—and the British and the Americans.

  Do not forget the Basques, Andromache put in quickly. Some of the finest sailors to ever master the waves.

  Right. The Bay of Biscay is as treacherous a stretch of sea as they come, but few of us ever picked up enough Euskara—the language of the Basques—for it to really catch on.

  There have been other seafaring nations but not like the last two, and both English speaking.

  So, English it has been. A little Latin. Before that, it was mostly some form of Hellene all the way back to the beginning.

  I reached the laundry room and was in the middle of dragging the basket into the narrow tunnel of a hallway when Mrs. Hipkin came up behind me.

  “Let me help you with that, dear.” The old woman met my eyes through her thick pink-framed glasses, and didn’t look away as most others did. She wore a dark blue St. Clement’s custodial staff uniform with her first name, Juliana, stitched on an oval patch in neat blue script. Her white hair fell to her shoulders, tangled and uncombed, shockingly bright against the tanned skin of her face and neck. But it was the boldness in her eyes that made me pause for breath. There was something familiar in her eyes, the way the light hit them, or their depth, but I couldn’t pick out what it was.

  I glanced down at Mrs. Hipkin’s hands to see if she had scar tissue between her fingers like me, but she wore cleaning gloves. She noticed my curiosity, grinned and motioned with her thumb over her shoulder. “Just doing some dishes. I’ll get the laundry after that.”

  I snapped out of a tangle of thoughts, whispering, “Matrothy... Ms. Matrothy... I’m supposed to bring this—”

  Mrs. Hipkin kept her grin and waved a yellow-gloved hand airily. “Just leave it. I’ll manage it later. It’s no problem for me to lift the old cart up and down the stairs.”

  I took another good look at Mrs. Hipkin. The woman maybe came up to my shoulder. “How do you get the cart up the stairs?”

  She leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered, “Everyone asks me that. Know what I tell them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Magic.”

  She said the word with all the drama and mystery of an illusionist about to saw someone in half, eyes widening until the full circles of her irises showed, and then she laughed and waved at me
again. “Go on to your classes, Kassandra. I’ll take care of the laundry. And Ms. Matrothy.”

  Our eyes met when she said my name, and I saw more than laughter in them, something bitter and sorrowful in them.

  Saltwater.

  I hesitated, wanting to ask her if she was on my side in all of this, but of course, Mrs. Hipkin would have answered, “All of what, dear?”

  I nodded, found a pretty weak smile, and ran off, down the shadowy corridor, careful to duck under the ventilation pipes. I remembered Praxinos’ words, that the king had spies everywhere, and that I would never have been sent to St. Clement’s without being watched.

  Who are you talking to? Praxinos said quietly in my thoughts.

  “Mrs. Hipkin, the laundry lady. There’s something about her. She’s always been nice and hasn’t lost any of my socks in a long time, but I never really noticed …what she’s really like.”

  I reached the top of the basement stairs, slowing to peek around the corner. The central hallway was crowded with the usual morning traffic, mostly students of the higher grades, but there were a few teachers, papers and binders under their arms, heading to the cafeteria for coffee or to the staff room if they already held a mug.

  “Mr. Henderson,” I whispered, watching the teachers move down the hall, chatting and gesturing, just another day at St. Clement’s. “Why does Matrothy hate him so much? Water? And the naiads want me to find him in the Gulf of Mexico. But how can knowing about water—”

  I stopped halfway through the question.

  Knowing about water what? Andromache asked.

  “Mr. Fenhals. That must be him,” I whispered back.

  I didn’t know every teacher at Clement’s, but the man walking down the wide corridor with Mr. Cutler, the school administrator, must be Fenhals. First, I’d never seen the man at the school, and second, there was something unpleasant about him. He wasn’t a parent. The place was heavy on orphans, but prospective parents weren’t allowed in the school wing.

  The man walking with Mr. Cutler looked like an aging cowboy with messy granite gray hair that stuck out in places, pressed down in others, as if he’d been wearing a hat. He was tall, very skinny, but there was strength in him, his body wiry with muscle. The skin of his arms and face, the only skin he showed, was darkened by the sun, big freckles decorating them like irregular brown ink splotches.