Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  She tries to put her whirling thoughts in order.

  Nancy is from her world. That fact alone is staggering. Has she concealed this from Ophelia out of fear? Does she think Ophelia is a spy from the North, from this Render? According to Doctor Capricus, Nancy keeps her origins secret even from her own daughter. That seems inconceivable. Very well, Ophelia thinks, put it aside for now. She’ll talk to Pim later . . . about that, and this other terrible thing. Pim, turning into a dragon? No. It’s ludicrous.

  The next piece of information pounding at her brain is that apparently, in the past, there have always been two Chosen. Lovers.

  Could what happened between Nancy and her man be so terrible that the whole system is out of whack? Ophelia has no love. Rowan could have been, maybe, but . . . No. It’s too painful. And in any case, he’s not here.

  So is her presence in Antilia all for naught? There is no way to know. Nancy seems to think that her crazy plan—to send Ophelia into the land of the dead and bring them back to defeat the Northern Render—is going to work. But what of this shadow, this monster, this unknown creature that is Pim’s brother? What happens if he survives, and he and Pim meet?

  One thing’s for sure. Everyone in Antilia talks of cycles. And everyone seems to believe that the last healing, the one Nancy and this Render were responsible for, was botched.

  No wonder Ophelia sensed guilt in Nancy. All this death—this war—she probably thinks on some level that it’s her fault. No wonder she wants to stop this murderous Render. And once, she loved him.

  But she’s using Ophelia. No matter how pure her motives are, she is using Ophelia. And she’s not telling the truth.

  Well, Ophelia, what are you going to do about it?

  The wind rises. The boat begins to heave.

  At first the choppier motion doesn’t bother her and she thinks, I’ve beaten it—I’m not going to be sick! But then, gradually, she starts to feel a little uneasy—like everything happening outside her is less important than a gradual shake and instability at her core. And the crew has a way of thundering by to fulfill orders that are opaque to her, and she fears she is in the way. It is not a very big vessel—maybe sixty feet long—and the deck spaces are really rather tiny.

  She senses him before she hears him, The Gor. His hooves make the slightest sound on the deck, but it’s not that which alerts her. It’s the feeling she gets when he’s around, and maybe—just perhaps—a faint whiff of his scent. That musky, masculine, somehow lovely smell.

  He crouches next to her, folding his goat legs to one side so he, too, sits on the deck. He looks at her for a long time, not blinking, until she looks away. His face is darkly human, but his eyes have a horizontal pupil, making it hard to understand what he might be feeling. He’s smiling; always he’s got this sardonic smile. It drives her nuts.

  “What?” she snaps.

  He looks out at the following sea. His horns spiral around his great curly-haired head like a mountain goat’s, beautifully crenellated. They are black at the root and then go through deep purple to a translucent ruddy red at the tips. She wonders if they’re warm to touch.

  “Tell me,” he says suddenly in his thrumming voice. “Give me a telling,” he murmurs, almost a groan, and he’s looking at her again with his strange eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” She crosses her arms over her breasts. Being around him feels almost like being naked.

  “Sing me a new song. Or,” he leans closer, “tell me one of the stories.”

  “What do you mean, the stories?” She resists the temptation to lean away from him.

  He reaches out and takes her by the wrists, pulls her arms from her body. She can feel her pulse, jumping under his long, brown fingers. “One of the great stories, from your world. . . .” He is pleading with her.

  Her mind reels. She can’t think, he has made her animal, she wants to be stupid. “I . . . I don’t know any.”

  “You do. Ophelia.”

  The way he says her name reminds her of how beautiful it is. Far from the irritation of its flowery silliness, the rotten boys in junior high, I’ll feel ya! Her name, her namesake.

  “It all began when Hamlet’s father died.”

  “Ah!” He’s teased her arms apart, he is tracing spirals on her palms with his thumbs. He does not take his eyes from her face.

  “And his mother marries his uncle. Hamlet sees his father’s ghost, and the ghost says . . .” She feels thrilling up her arms and through her torso. He won’t stop looking into her eyes.

  “The ghost says . . . ?” His voice is urgent.

  “It says that the uncle, his brother, murdered him. Murdered him for his crown, and for his queen. To become king at Elsinore.”

  “Yes.” His fingers stroke her palms, gently, teasing. He stops. “Keep going.”

  Again she has the sense that he is pleading with her. Something inside her wants to answer his longing. They’d studied Hamlet in high school, God, the teasing she’d had to endure. But she can do this, she can tell a potted version of the story to The Gor. “Hamlet thinks he’s going crazy. But some of his friends see the ghost, too. And he believes the words of his poor dead father. So he goes around pretending he’s crazy. Mad. ‘I’ll put on an antic disposition,’ he says, as a way to fool his uncle into revealing his treachery.”

  “Ah!” His eyes widen with delight.

  “And Ophelia . . .”

  “Your namesake?”

  “Yes, she loves him. And he loves her. But so great is his need to expose his uncle that he uses her. He’s really cruel to her.” She’d had to read the scene in class with this guy, Morgan, a serious theatre type who’d really gotten into it. She’d liked the complexity of it, especially the part where Ophelia has this monologue about how sad she is to see Hamlet fallen so low: “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” She hadn’t been able to match Morgan’s theatre chops, but she’d liked reading the scene all the same.

  “More,” The Gor says, insistent. He’s moved one hand to her leg, she can feel the heat of his palm through her skirt.

  Why am I letting him do this? Do I like it? She does, she does like it. There is some reason why she should not be doing this . . . It almost comes to her, tall and shy and gangly he is . . . was. He is not here. No one is here but The Gor and his body and his tremendous need, calling something out of her.

  He is waiting.

  “And Hamlet kills Ophelia’s father. And so Ophelia goes mad.” He is so close. Carefully she reaches out and takes hold of one of his horns. It is cold, of course. She turns it gently like it’s the handlebar on a bicycle and he lets her: twists his head, exposing his throat. With her other hand she reaches up and, trembling a little, she strokes the side of his powerful neck.

  “She picks a bouquet of flowers, and she goes down to the river. She walks into the dark water. Her clothes spread wide, out around her, her white dress . . .” Ophelia doesn’t know what the girl was really wearing, but she’s always pictured a white dress, floating on top of the water like wings.

  He pounces. She tumbles to the deck and he’s on top of her, huge and dark, he could kill her easily. He’s hovering above her, full of need. He’s waiting.

  “You know the rest!” she gasps.

  “No . . . I do not.” He bends close and whispers in her ear. “Tell it.”

  “Everyone knows that story. . . .” What is the matter with her? Smart, careful Ophelia?

  “Please,” he whispers, “keep telling.”

  It’s the first time she’s ever heard The Gor say please.

  He pulls back, folding his body away from her. “Please,” he says again. It’s this he wants, she thinks. The other stuff—the sexual stuff—is only a side effect of how he simply is. It’s the story he wants.

  Ophelia opens her mouth. “And Hamlet’s mother says she’s drowned,” she hears herself saying. I’ve always hated that, she thinks. Why the hell does Ophelia have to drown, anyway? Why does she go off her nut? Why co
uldn’t she . . . She rushes on. “And then the uncle’s plans to poison Hamlet go terribly wrong. He poisons his beloved queen, and she dies. And Hamlet, too, is poisoned, but before he dies he stabs the new king, he kills his evil uncle. They all die. Hamlet’s last words are, ‘The rest is silence.’”

  The Gor sits back, a long, slow breath leaving him.

  “But Ophelia,” she continues, “as she slowly sinks beneath the water, all her grief and confusion become like the foam on top of the sea.” Her heart is beating fast; she’s going to screw with Shakespeare. “And she drifts downstream, closer and closer to the ocean. Her body changes. It becomes grey and sleek. Her legs join, her hands become flippers, and only her large, dark eyes stay the same.” He has leaned back against the planking, his eyes are closed. His face is peaceful. His lips, when he’s not making fun of her, are full, lovely. She takes a deep breath. “And so Ophelia became a selkie. A woman who is also a seal. And sometimes, when you meet the selkie, you can see tears—all the sorrows of Elsinore—still trickling down her dark, animal face.”

  Something rises inside of her. It feels like triumph. And then the smell of him hits her again, the way it had at the coliseum—musky, masculine. I’ve been waiting for this, she thinks. She doesn’t know how it happens, but she closes her eyes and leans in and then his mouth is on hers and they are kissing.

  He tastes sweet and dark, like wine. He’s making a noise deep in his throat like an animal. He is an animal, of sorts, and being with him makes Ophelia want to stop being smart, stop being good.

  She struggles—not physically, but in her mind.

  They both pull away at the same time.

  “Thank you for the telling,” he says simply. He gets to his feet and trips away.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Down The Long, Dark Wave

  It gets darker and colder. Waves start getting white at the tops. Ophelia listens to the voices of the crew, male and female, human and other. They don’t sound like they are worried. But the sky is dark, and it’s probably only about three in the afternoon.

  She hasn’t thought about what time it is in so many days.

  She sits there and does not think of The Gor. She does not think about Pim’s and Nancy’s lies. She will not. She sits out on the deck until it is almost night.

  —

  Something is in the cabin. It’s big, an animal, the size of a horse.

  No, it’s two people.

  Ophelia remembers “the beast with two backs” in Othello, a description she’d always thought rather funny. But that’s what this is.

  The Gor, and Pim.

  Ophelia takes it in, in a split second. Pim’s face is like a saint from a classic picture: eyes rolled up to heaven, mouth open. She doesn’t notice the opening door, doesn’t notice Ophelia. Stripes ripple over her skin, or scales; no, it must be a trick of the light. Pim cries out. If Ophelia didn’t know what was happening it would sound like someone was hurting her. Her head jerks with each motion. And her eyes catch the light like a cat’s.

  Ophelia sees all this in the space of a single breath. She backs out onto the deck and softly, softly, closes the door.

  “Damn!” she hisses to herself. “Fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck!”

  She pads away from the cabin, forward to the bow—yeah, getting the terminology now, so smart, so very smart, Ophelia—sits where she sat with Captain John Canoe. It’s cold. She wants her bed.

  They looked like they might be some time about it.

  “Everything all right, Chosen?”

  To her relief it is John. She stands. “Uh . . . yeah. I was going to bed but . . . How are things with the ship?”

  “Fine, for now. The wind is holding steady. But it will get fierce, tonight. Listen.”

  The wind is a constant battering presence, with lots of pitches in it.

  “Hear it?”

  “What?”

  “That high sound. Like a scream, far off.”

  She can hear it. It makes her skin crawl.

  “It will get worse.” He puts his arm around her. “Are you cold?”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “You have the lamp.”

  Ophelia looks down at the lovely little thing in her hand. “Yes. Nancy gave it to me.” Anything else she wants to say—some babbling confession to this lovely man—sticks in her throat.

  “You were going to your cabin, but . . . ?”

  She feels her face heating and is glad of the dark. “Oh, nothing.”

  He chuckles, deep in his throat. “Pim and Gordon.”

  “You know?”

  John Canoe shakes his head, his face a white blur in the dusk. “He is incorrigible, that one. His kind are . . . irresistible.”

  Ophelia takes this in. “You mean all satyrs . . . ?”

  “They are what they are.”

  “Is Pim . . . his girlfriend?”

  John Canoe laughs. “Everyone is his girlfriend. Man, woman, whoever consents.”

  “Oh.”

  He pauses, then says, “If he gives you trouble, you tell me. I’ll take care of him.”

  This is so sweet, like something an older sister or brother or even a father would do. She feels herself soften. “Thanks.”

  “You are careful with your heart.”

  Is he sensing it? The small, irrational hurt and rage that is rising inside her, the slight and growing humiliation she feels when she thinks of having kissed him, that creature, that man-thing who is right now banging her friend? “What do you mean?”

  “You are not one who loves easily. When you give someone your heart, you give fully. You are to be honoured for it.”

  Ophelia bends her head. A feeling is rising inside her, something she doesn’t want to bring to the surface. Rowan is in another world. He probably hardly thinks of her. From his point of view she kissed him and then ran away in a snit. Then cut him off dead and disappeared. He was done with her a long time ago. He’s probably with someone else now, telling them stories and making them fall in love with him. Beautiful, fine, lovely him.

  She remembers kissing The Gor. And somewhere inside her chest is an ache, a sadness, like she’s lost something. Integrity, that’s the word. Ophelia stands on the deck and mourns over her integrity like a beloved childhood toy a dog has mauled.

  John Canoe doesn’t say another word. He puts his arm over her shoulders, comforting. They stand as the ship pitches and mows, bumping in concert against the railing and tilting away. It’s dark and cold and the tears slipping down her cheeks mingle with the salt on her cheeks from the ocean spray.

  Chapter Sixty

  Breaking

  At first she swears she smells it in the cabin, a sex-smell. But after a time that doesn’t matter anymore. Ophelia is sliding down the long, dark wave of seasickness once again.

  This time, however, even from the depths of her private misery, Ophelia can tell there is something wrong. The boat pitches so much she is almost falling out of her bunk. Shouts, cries, the sound of feet running along the decks. The wind is screaming like a tribe of banshees, and underneath it is a deep thrumming note, like something from a bottomless pit. Through it all, now and again, she hears the deep voice of John Canoe calling orders. Every time she hears him, she feels just a little bit better, before sliding down the sick wave again.

  Even Pim is sick. She’s wedged into the bunk above, and Ophelia can hear her retching. They haven’t spoken since Ophelia walked in on her and The Gor. Being sick is a good cover for not being sure you want to talk to your friend. For not being sure your friend is your friend at all.

  Time goes by.

  The noises coming out of Pim are starting to change. She’s growling, like when she had that fit back in the city. Ophelia thinks dully that she never asked Pim about that. She doesn’t know if Pim has had an episode like that before, or if it was new. Is it happening again? If it is, Ophelia doesn’t think she can help this time. She couldn’t sing right now if her life depended on it.

 
Is Pim turning into a . . . monster? It’s hard even to think the word. Dragon.

  There’s a rending crash above and shouts, cries. The motion of the vessel changes, she heels over to one side, sluggish. A wave smashes into her and she jerks, water sluices across the cabin floor. Another. “Cut the rigging, get her free!” John Canoe is shouting; it’s the first time Ophelia’s heard a note like that in his voice. The boat’s not rising to meet the waves, she’s down like a punch-drunk boxer in a ring.

  Pim is saying something, but it’s coming from a long way off. Her legs are coming down, she staggers and falls onto the cabin floor. “. . . help us.” She’s gasping. She looks awful; she looks as bad as Ophelia feels. “. . . with me.”

  Pim takes Ophelia’s arm and is pulling, pulling, trying to get her up. She’s shaking her head, her long ears twitching, eyes half-closed. Growling. “Now!” she says.

  And everything lurches and twists.

  Another great wave has hit the boat. The cabin shudders, and there’s an awful groaning sound.

  The wood at the ship’s heart is breaking.

  Here ends part one of the chronicle of Ophelia and Rowan in Antilia. Part two tells of how they come into their power, and journey to the final stand against forces of untruth and hate in

  Antilla - Seer and Sacrifice

  Acknowledgements

  This book was a long time in the writing, and countless people and other works helped me as I went. So many have given me ideas, energy, enthusiasm, and support—family and friends, Peterborough to Newfoundland, in the spec-fic community, and beyond—that I can’t mention you all; I sincerely hope that I’ve communicated my gratitude as we go along and that you know who you are (if you have an inkling that you are one of these people, then you are, and please insert your name here!). Thank you to the Canada Council of the Arts for funding the work of writing this book. To ChiZine Publications—Sandra Kasturi, editor Leigh Teetzel, and all the CZP team, thank you!