Breath of Earth

by Beth Cato

  The selkies surrounded the bubble, their eyes on Ingrid. Oh God, they were all going to touch the shielding. What would her pain do to the earth? Was saving her worth the potential destruction?

  But if she died, would that cause something far worse?

  Ingrid didn’t want to die. She gave them a curt nod. “Cy. Hold me up while—”

  Even expecting the pain of their power, it burned. She screamed. The sound bounced back at her, foreign and strange.

  Blackness swarmed her eyesight but she knew she couldn’t let the cold consume her, couldn’t let go of those last traces of heat. The magic of the sea felt so different from what she knew. It flashed a palpable taste on her tongue—sweet salt, overbearing, gagging. Cy’s presence, physical, emotional, was the only thing that moored her to consciousness.

  With everything so hazy, it took her a moment to realize they were being hoisted up. Bubbles of movement trickled past as a beam of sunlight glinted against the shielding around them.

  She had prayed for help, and it was as though the selkies had come to rescue them. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  The selkie woman’s eyes, so impenetrable and black, met hers then flared in alarm. Bubbles flooded by in a veil as the selkies wiggled frantically toward the surface.

  That’s when Ingrid sensed the earthquake.

  It felt different when filtered through the water. The tremor rocked the bubble and brought heat in sharp contrast to the salty cold. She half closed her eyes and let bliss quiver through her. This was the power she knew and craved, even if it was tainted by the thickness of the sea.

  The selkies wailed, and it wasn’t a sound of joy. The earthquake pained them as if they’d been dropped into a fire. She knew, their powers of earth and sea twined as they were. Marine magic pierced the bubble and gouged her with a thousand prickles. She screamed, her own power rising in response.

  Fierce cold smashed into her, and weight, and the full brine of the bay.

  CHAPTER 11

  Whatever power the tremor brought her, it hadn’t been enough. The bubble was gone. So was oxygen, warmth, and Cy’s secure presence at her back. Water welled in her throat, her chest. All she knew was blackness and pain. Then suddenly—light. Piercing.

  Was this death?

  Something slammed into her back. Again, again. She retched, her throat afire as if all of the bay was being expelled from her lungs and stomach and various other internal nooks and crannies. Her fingers dug into sand. Dry sand. Her face burned with grit. The weight of her dress dragged her down.

  “Ingrid. Ingrid. Stay with me.”

  “Cy.” His name emerged with another eruption of seawater. He was alive. A warm, broad hand girthed her waist, while another hand held up her right shoulder.

  “It’s all fine. We’re on land. Get the water out.”

  She let her eyes close. The sunlight glowing through her lids didn’t bother her. Sleep. Sleep would be mighty fine right now.

  “No.” Those strong hands shook her. “Stay awake, Ingrid. Christ Almighty, you’re too cold.”

  The earth shivered. Power filtered into her as if the ground itself tried to warm her. Not with a deluge—she wasn’t in excruciating pain anymore. Cold, soreness, and exhaustion rooted in her very bones. Somehow, the earth differentiated between them all, only responding to agony.

  Her body shifted and she turned around and floated upward. An arm hooked beneath her buttocks while another had her back. The body next to hers was cold, the warm ground far away. All the world turned to ice.

  “Help! Help!” Cy yelled. “Over here!” The next words puffed heat against her nose: “Stay with me, Ingrid. We didn’t go through all that for you to die here. Come on, stubborn girl.”

  As though straining to lift a steel beam, she worked open her eyelids to see Cy looming and blurry above her.

  “Not girl.” The words slurred. “Woman.”

  “You . . . you . . .” His laugh was sharp. “I will never understand you.”

  “Good. Mys-tery. Lasts longer. Where . . . we?”

  “Hey!” That was a different voice, distant and drawing closer.

  “I think we’re on Goat Island,” said Cy.

  Goat Island, located halfway between San Francisco and Oakland, smack-dab in the middle of the bay. Ingrid’s awareness bobbed like the tide as she was carried inside a building. Another voice rang out, feminine and shrill. The heavy dress was peeled away. A fire crackled. Water boiled. Ingrid found herself wrapped in blankets, hot-water bottles heavy against her. Heat trickled into her skin. It wasn’t the warmth of the earth’s power, but the radiating force of life itself. A small spout was held to her lips as a hand tilted back her head. Molten lava poured into her sore throat. She choked and spat.

  Close by, a man burst out in raspy laughter. “Aye, she’ll make it. Whiskey’s the stuff of Christ and Lazarus.”

  The drink created a cozy ball of warmth in her gut that seemed to fizzle out her ears. Ingrid blinked away the crustiness of salt and sand as she took in her surroundings. White walls, fairly austere. An askew print of an English country scene—a sheepdog, lambs, and a Porterman above.

  “Ingrid?” Cy’s voice was soft.

  Her fingers probed the blanket. “Cy. The oilskin. Where—”

  “Shush. Everything’s fine.” In other words, don’t draw attention to the parcel. She had enough wits to recognize that.

  She blinked at him as he came into focus. “Your glasses are gone.”

  He touched the bridge of his nose as if checking again himself. “Ocean waves are strong like that.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Cy. Can you see at all?”

  He bowed closer to her, so close he could have easily kissed her. “I have to be about this close to read something, and the rest of the world is a mite blurry, but it’s nothing to fuss about. Here. Have another drink.”

  No argument there, though she was a bit disappointed that he didn’t sit quite as close again.

  She sipped more whiskey as Cy conversed with the lighthouse officer and his wife. It seemed she and Cy had washed up on the southeast corner of Goat Island, within sight of the peninsula.

  “No surprise to me, that earthquake knockin’ you outta a boat,” said the man. “That wave was particularly high, ’twas.”

  “Haven’t even seen any of our cats since it happened,” added the woman.

  A thin blue fog clung to the ground. The color was weak but contrasted with the white walls. Ingrid wormed a foot free of her swaddling blanket so she could dip it near the floor. No energy pull. Frowning, she tucked her leg closer again.

  It’s like the earth was tense with readiness of her pain, but wasn’t provoked enough to vent power. Had her near death done this?

  “We need to get back to the city,” Ingrid said, voice raspy.

  “You can’t! You both still look like drowned rats, and with that wind off the water . . . !” The wife scowled. “You’ll catch your death of pneumonia, dearie.”

  The city would catch a lot worse than that if Ingrid didn’t figure out what was going on, but now one thing was absolutely clear: she had to assemble her meager belongings and leave with Lee as soon as possible.

  “We really do need to get back,” said Cy. “Our families must be all afright after seeing us go overboard.”

  The couple protested mightily, but Cy’s smooth ways won them over. Ingrid had privacy to pull on her wrung-out dress and squeaking boots. Cold lingered in her skin, the sort that didn’t just come from exposure to the bay.

  A fisherman on a stopover to the island was kind enough to ferry them. Ingrid kept a wool blanket wrapped around her, but it didn’t quite block the fierce wind off the water. The fishing boat bounced across the waves, its vivid red triangular sails rippling. The reek of fish drenched her senses.

  The oilskin-wrapped box was tucked in the curve of her lap. How she had held on to the box in the water, she didn’t know. She prayed the contents hadn’t been destroyed by the harsh expos
ure.

  They docked near the airship frontage South of the Slot. “Grazie!” Cy called to the fisherman as he scooped Ingrid up in his arms.

  She pressed her forehead against the stripe of buttons down his shirt, not wanting to see the curiosity of onlookers. She couldn’t miss that the trace of colored fog was here, too.

  “I can walk,” she growled. She had to say it, for the sake of her pride.

  “You can fall, too.”

  “I’m not an invalid.”

  “Ingrid,” he whispered, the word almost lost against the rumble of wheels. “You walked me underwater. You don’t need to prove your strength to me.”

  She closed her eyes briefly, rocking against him, and smiled. Her strength. She’d been told she was strong as she hauled laundry, as she shifted dormitory mattresses—but this was different.

  “What happened after the bubble burst?” she whispered. “The selkies . . .”

  “The surge of water from the earthquake hit us and the bubble popped. Peculiar thing, that. That first wave warmed you like a light bulb, and then the heat snuffed out. The next water was like ice. We began to plummet, but then the seals—the selkies—were there, two grabbing each of us.” He stopped, and traffic thrummed by for a moment before he walked on.

  “They touched us?” Ingrid craned up her head, voice soft in awe. Cy’s jaw was lined with reddish stubble. He dipped his chin so he could look her in the eye.

  “Yes, but that wasn’t a good thing, not for you.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “You were still unconscious and didn’t scream, but they held you up out of the water to breathe and you . . . you were hurting. From their touch. Your neck, your back, you were arched like a man in the thrall of lockjaw, like some circus contortionist. I thought . . .” He took in a shuddering breath. “They acted pained, too. You hurt each other, without even trying.”

  “Different magic. It hurt when they touched the bubble, too. I remember that.” She shivered from memory as well as cold.

  “Even unconscious, you never lost grip of that oilskin. I sure hope whatever’s in there was worth all this.”

  “Me, too.”

  He tripped, falling forward. She yelped slightly as he caught himself against a pole. “Sorry, I missed that curb.”

  Why had the selkies come to their aid right after her prayer? It was strange, especially since earth and sea magic clashed in such a painful way. The selkies had been outright eager to get her and Cy out of the water. Maybe Ingrid’s very presence in the ocean had pained them. Or maybe it was simple kindness on their part—selkies had been known to save drowning sailors, after all.

  Whatever their motivation, Ingrid still had a sizable stash of money with her things in the workshop. Next opportunity, she was heading to the fishmonger to buy a wheelbarrow of fish to throw to seals along the piers.

  Cy and Fenris’s warehouse was quiet. Cy set Ingrid down just inside the office, and it took all her willpower not to collapse into a puddle on the floor. She hobbled a few steps and sat down on a wooden bench.

  “I’ll start up the heater,” he said. “And get—”

  “Cy. I can stoke the fire.”

  “—coffee going and grab some food. I know how hungry geomancers get after working kermanite, so you must be about ready to eat a roc trussed up like Thanksgiving turkey. And. Um. Miss. You have to get out of those clothes so you don’t catch ill, and nothing of Fenris’s stash will fit your, um, body type. I . . . I do have some long shirts that might work, if you don’t mind.”

  Ingrid paused in the midst of prying off her boots to look at him in exasperation. “Do I seem like the sort of woman who’d prefer to freeze to death rather than wear a man’s clothes? Food and coffee sound like manna from heaven, and anything dry will do.”

  He tucked his chin, cheeks flushed, and scurried away.

  Ingrid let the wet blanket fall to the floor. Despite being shaky, she had plenty of practice in starting a fire, and soon enough she had the kindling ablaze in the little iron stove behind the desk. The thing looked like an artifact from Gold Rush days.

  After locking the front door, she set about removing her damp dress again. Shedding that dank weight made her gasp in relief. Like a snake working out of its old skin, she shimmied her legs from her ruined stockings. The water had made a snarled bird’s nest of her hair and stolen half the pins, so she undid the rest, wincing as she pried out the remaining bobbies. It’d be torture to brush it out later.

  There she sat, indecent in her bloomers and camisole. The white fabric certainly didn’t leave much to the imagination. She picked up the damp blanket again and draped it over her shoulders, and scooting close as she dared to the stove, she reached for the oilskin.

  Thank God that Mr. Sakaguchi had stored it in a pond. She pulled away the final layer of oilskin to find a familiar wooden box. More than once, she’d seen it on Mr. Sakaguchi’s desk over the years, but never paid it any heed, or wondered where it went. It was about as basic as a box could be. Polished golden pine, no ornamentation. It didn’t even require a key to open. With trembling fingers, she lifted the lid.

  There were two stacks of letters, each bound in twine. The top postmark read Hawaii-Vassal Territory. She worked the top envelope free and unfolded the sheets within.

  The top sheet was gibberish. A made-up alphabet colored in red, blue, and black covered the page, with very few gaps between words. Some kind of code? Frowning, she went to the second sheet. Mr. Sakaguchi’s handwriting was usually quite easy to read, but here he wrote in cramped, miniature script as he deciphered the message.

  Dear Old Friend, read the salutation. Impatient, she skipped over the two scant paragraphs to the bottom.

  As always, thanks for tending to the child. With sincerity, A. Carm.

  Ingrid froze. Abram Carmichael? Her father? She moved her thumb to find the date.

  June 16, 1905. Ten months ago.

  The box and letters tumbled onto the pile of oilskins on the blue-hazed floor. The cloth deadened the impact, but a thud still echoed throughout the room.

  “Ingrid!” Cy burst inside, but she didn’t look at him. She could only stare at the letter on the floor. The page and its words curled inward as if hiding in shame. “What is it?”

  “I . . .” She pressed both hands to her mouth.

  “Bad news?”

  “I don’t know.” She continued to stare at the floor. “The letter . . . It doesn’t make sense. My father. He’s supposed to be dead. This . . . he wrote it last year, in some code, and Mr. Sakaguchi . . .”

  Mama. She couldn’t have known. It’s not that she ever spoke fondly of Papa. In her brusque way, she accepted that he was dead and gone and she had a life to live. Ingrid didn’t even know what he was like; from what she gathered, Papa had essentially abandoned her and her mother before he died. All she knew was that he was a warden, well traveled, and how he looked as depicted in that portrait in the auxiliary. A portrait utterly destroyed as of yesterday.

  Mr. Sakaguchi never proposed marriage to Mama because he knew the truth. All this time, Papa was alive.

  “I set everything down when I heard that racket. I’ll be right back,” said Cy.

  He returned with a filled coffee carafe and the entire breadbox. His eyes politely averted, he set the box on the desk and the carafe on a woven mat. He opened a drawer and pulled out two coffee mugs, their interiors stained muddy with use. He filled them with steaming brew.

  “Drink. Eat.”

  Numb, she followed his orders, not even caring how the blanket shifted as she moved her arms to chew and drink. She absorbed the welcome heat of the mug in her hands and solidness of food in her stomach, but took no pleasure from taste.

  Cy came and went from the room. He set a tidy stack of clothes on the desk. “Something’s bound to fit,” he said. “I’ll wait just outside. Fenris fell asleep, wrench in hand, so I’m leaving him be.”

  Ingrid nodded. Fenris had been grousing around his pet airship before th
ey left for her house. Cy hadn’t even tried to talk him out of it. Ingrid expressed her opinion to Fenris with a pointed glare, to which he responded in typical male fashion by being a damned fool and ignoring her concern.

  As soon as Cy left the room, she changed clothes. Cy being so tall and her body so curvy, his shirt fit like an indecently short dress. She’d need to take care when she sat down. She layered on two shirts for warmth and found a pair of baggy cotton drawers, complete with a hatch in the back, that hugged her hips if she drew the waist really tight.

  All the while she stared at the letters on the floor as if they were a big spider.

  A soft knock sounded at the door.

  “You can come in,” she said.

  Cy joined her near the stove. He had changed clothes as well. The leather coat was gone—actually, she didn’t recall seeing it since they entered the bay. Brown suspender straps held up tan pants that fit his long and lanky form in a delicious way; her brain might be addled, but she’d have to be dead to miss that. A black shirt was tucked in at his waist, where the Tesla rod dangled from his hip.

  “You have glasses again,” she said.

  He adjusted the pince-nez. “I always keep a few spare pairs around. Working with machines as I do, damage to glasses is an occupational hazard. I wear goggles as often as I can.” His black boots nudged the oilskin mound. “Forgive my prying, but I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “So would I.” She sucked in a steadying breath and reached for the top bundle of letters. Paper crinkled as she worked the twine free. She skimmed over postmarks first. They had arrived twice a year, roughly. Quite a few traveled from Portland, Oregon; Papa must have lived there for an extended time. The more recent ones came from Hawaii. The man had gumption; both places had heavy Japanese populations and seismic activity.

  Cy reached into the box. “There’s one more letter in here. It’s addressed to you and dated yesterday.”

  She set it on her lap. The handwriting was Mr. Sakaguchi’s. Cy passed her more coffee. She took a long draft and, clearing her throat, read aloud for Cy’s benefit.