ALANIE HAD NEVER seen a kraken, and yet she swam among them.
She tumbled in the fast black flows of Moriabe’s currents and nested in tangled writhing piles of kin beneath the ancient shells of massacred cathedral crabs. Alanie felt the grit of sand on her skin as she buried herself up to her eyes for ambush, and she tasted blood in her mouth when the kraken fed.
Sometimes the kraken songs were so loud that they drowned Alanie’s ears with their feeding joy. When Sinolise instructed Alanie as to which belongings they would take to their new home, Alanie could only stare at her mother’s lips and guess at the woman’s words, for kraken voices crashed and foamed inside her skull like surf off the breaks.
At other times the kraken voices were only whispers, as when they pursued narwhal pods beyond the icy northern horizons, their voices faint as fingers on Alanie’s coverlet. But more and more the kraken were with her, sometimes close and sometimes far, tidal in their company, but never gone entirely.
When Alanie rode the cart to her new home, kraken rode with her, amused at the wheeled conveyance piled precarious with her and her mother’s belongings, and when the kraken saw the chinkstone and thatching of Eliam’s hall, with its storm-shutter windows and heavy wooden door, they murmured to themselves as to how it might be pried open for the food within.
But they were most impressed when they spied Eliam’s sheep in his lush green fields – they marveled at prey that waited so contentedly to be slaughtered.
The kraken watched and listened as Alanie was taken into her new father’s household, but they recoiled and flooded Alanie’s sight with black-ink flight at the sight of Eliam’s son.
Elbe was a boy of Alanie’s age, and yet his eyes were those of a Graybane warrior’s, returned from shoreline slaughter, and they seemed to laugh and mock her when he called her sister. A ghost of a boy, haunting the dark silences of his father’s hall. Elbe’s ancient knowing eyes clung to Alanie as he shadowed her through the echoes and stone of Eliam’s manor.
Bluebacks beget bluebacks. Eels beget eels, the kraken murmured. Beware. Room after room, hall after hall, Elbe stalked behind her as Alanie explored the kitchens and libraries and examined her spare clean room, where no lock barred her door. Always Elbe’s knowing eyes followed her.
At last Alanie paused in Eliam’s great hall and stood staring up at hunted trophies upon the walls. Byre elk with barbed ivory antlers, and snarling grey wolves, and the heads of mountain apes arranged by tribe and mounted in studied lines. Snow-lion pelts sprawled across granite flagstones, three times Alanie’s length, and their white lush furs smothered her footsteps as she walked from kill to kill.
“In winter, he goes to the edge of the Scarp,” Elbe murmured in Alanie’s ear, standing so close that she flinched and drew away. “He hunts with bow and knife,” Elbe said. “He likes the chase. The look of a heart draining in the snow. I’ve seen him stand and watch a stag bleed out for hours.”
Alanie shrank further from the ghostly boy, but Elbe ignored her retreat and instead pointed to the dead and told their tales.
Eliam ranged forests where wind pines towered and forged through waistdeep snows where none but snow lions laired. He followed blood-spattered trails, relentless, undaunted by the worst of Wanem’s ice-blind storms and careless of the Scarp’s avalanches. Eliam ran his prey until at last it collapsed exhausted in the drifts, ribs heaving with its last living breaths, finally willing to give up life and flight, in favor of rest and death.
“He likes surrender in his toys,” Elbe said. “He wants their welcome when his knife finally cuts them true. He likes to see them lift their throats to him. In the end, they all lift their throats and make his cutting easy. They’re like your mother that way. So very desperate to please.”
Alanie blanched at his words and turned to flee, but Elbe seized her arm and yanked her close. His lips pressed to her ear. “Make no sound,” he whispered. “Make not a sound. Listen to me while you still can. Listen like a rabbit, for surely you are prey. Do you not hear their trysting? Listen silent, sister, listen close. Already my father consumes your mother. If we slip to his chamber door, we’ll hear her as she groans. But she is not the prey he most desires. I’ve seen his eyes on you, Alanie. You are the one he desires to hunt.”
The boy drew away, and to Alanie’s surprise, she saw pity in his eyes. Pity of what was to come. And the sight of his grieving eyes frightened Alanie more than any of his words.
“We’re not so different, you and I,” Elbe whispered. “We see the monsters others deny. We know what comes knocking at our chamber door. Run now, sister. Run and never look back.”
“But my mother –”
“– is weak and wants to feel his teeth.”
He pulled her to the manor door. “Don’t make me earn a bloody back for nothing. Run, Alanie. Run for the ocean and follow the cliffs to the bay. Find a ship and sail, and remember that my father has never failed to catch his prey.”
Still Alanie hesitated, but the kraken whispered in her ear.
A young blueback is easy to catch once its mother has sipped of Moriabe. So soft in our beaks. So easy to drag deep. Drown the parent first, then dine on the child. Sea or land, the hunt is the same. The hunt is always the same. First the parent, then the child.
Alanie fled.
She fled across green fields and rolling hills, sobbing with fear and running still. When she reached the sea, Alanie bore north, following the rise and fall of white marbled shores. The sun sank toward the ocean as Alanie ran. Shadows lengthened and fields reddened. Moriabe wrapped the sun in her quilt, turning day to night, and still Alanie ran. She plunged through black pine forests and scrambled up and down ragged cliffs, and still she ran, her breath burning in her lungs and her legs turning weak. Her guts knotted, and still she ran. When she broke through the last of the forest and saw the burning lanterns of Serenity Bay and the white cliffs of the town luminous under the moon, she fell to her knees with relief.
In the end, it was for naught.
Eliam caught her on the Prince’s Pier begging for work or berth or pity as the morning sun broke above the white cliffs. He seized her wrists in one strong hand and dragged her away from the docks, joking with the sailors and warehouse owners that children were always headstrong. He tossed her over the back of his horse as easily as tossing a sack of oats, and when still Alanie fought, he struck her face until her lips broke and bled.
When they arrived home, Alanie’s mother stood at the manor door, wringing her hands with concern. But when Alanie fled to her, Sinolise struck her for a defiant child and returned her to Eliam’s waiting hand. The boy Elbe watched with his ancient warrior’s eyes as Eliam led Alanie into the manor, and said nothing at all.
Later, Elbe stripped his clothes to show Alanie what his father had wrought on his skin, and she traced the wounds of his bloody battles with her fingertips. The boy’s flesh hung from his ribs in tatters and the coral knots of his spine showed through the shredded meat of his back.
But by then, Alanie hardly cared, for her own back was bloody as well.
ALANIE HAD NEVER seen a kraken, but they called out to her often. When Eliam whipped her bloody, the kraken thrashed and disappeared in clouds of blackest ink, calling for her to flee as well. When Eliam pinned Alanie in the kitchens and fumbled at her skirts, they lashed out with poisonous tentacles and snapped sharp beaks and called for her to fight.
And Alanie did flee, and she did fight. She fought until she was exhausted. She fled once and once and once again, and each time Eliam dragged her back, and finally she fled no more.
Eliam hunted too well, and his belt bit too deep.
The kraken recoiled at being hunted down. They lashed out at the monster that pinned them, and each time they shrieked that they had warned her about the beast who stalked her.
We told you, they said. We told you how the hunt was done.
Moriabe’s children were not creatures to be preyed upon. They reviled the monster wh
o ran them down, and they were with Alanie less and less. They went distant hunting for narwhal pods or else sank deep in Moriabe’s blind trenches. The kraken nested in the wreckage of the sailing ships they’d broken and slept beneath shifting seafloor sands, and when Alanie called for them, they sang, We are of the sea, and you are of the shore. We are Moriabe’s children. No one hunts our kind.
My father hunted you, Alanie retorted, but the kraken only laughed. It was we who hunted him, they sang, and their voices were faint and fading.
ALANIE HAD NEVER seen a kraken, and she heard their voices not at all. So silent were they that Alanie began to wonder if she had been simply mad, fooling herself into believing that Moriabe’s children had spoken to her in the wake of the storm that had reshaped her life. She called to the kraken and she cursed them and she cajoled, but nothing moved them, if indeed they had ever been moved at all. Alanie was alone.
Alone she learned to bar her bedroom door with cedar chests, and alone she took the whippings for her new defiance. Alone she learned to ghost the halls, as silent and careful as a rabbit, alert for the wolf that stalked her. Alone she learned to survive as best she could. Her eyes became sunken and ancient, and she became watchful and fearful, but she survived.
And still she remembered the kraken and how they’d called to her. And no matter how much she hated herself for seeking their voices, still she tried.
Alanie, Alanie.
She remembered the first time she’d heard their song, and so she waited, implacably patient, hoping to find them once again, waiting for one of the great storms that brought the kraken to the surface. Waiting for Moriabe and Stormface to clash in a lovers’ quarrel, just as they had when her father had seen the kraken in his own time.
Alanie waited and survived, and at last a night came when Wanem lashed the manor’s shutters with wind and rain, and Moriabe’s waves rose high. That night Alanie dreamed of kraken in the deeps, and in the morning she ran across the rain-drenched fields to the cliffs, to look out across the blue calm waters of Moriabe’s quilt as it shimmered with golden sunshine.
Alanie scrambled down rocky trails to the beaches far below and picked her way across the kelp-draped stones to the water’s edge. She waded out amongst crystal tide pools, stepping barefoot past anemones and bluestem clams. She hiked her skirt as Moriabe’s waters rushed and foamed about her knees, and she closed her eyes and listened, straining for the taste of blood in her mouth and the rising strain of kraken song.
She listened for her name.
Alanie. Alanie.
If she listened close, she imagined she could hear them still, their voices tumbling in the surf. If she listened close, she could imagine great vast creatures swimming in the depths of Moriabe. She could imagine that Eliam did not squeeze her wrists until they bruised and pretend that Sinolise never turned away from a daughter pressed against a kitchen block. Alanie could imagine and pretend, and listen for the sound of kraken, and hours could pass. The sun could climb in the sky, and gulls could wheel and bank and hunt, and dolphins could cut the far blue waters, but if kraken called her name, their voices were drowned in foam and surf.
When Alanie at last opened her eyes, the rising tide had soaked her to the waist, and Elbe squatted on the shore, his knowing eyes upon her.
By reflex Alanie searched the cliffs, afraid he had been followed, but she spied no sign of Eliam.
“I thought you might keep walking,” Elbe said.
Alanie waded back to shore and spread her skirts to dry. “I was listening to the ocean.”
“My mother said the same. And then one day she walked out into the heart of Moriabe. She walked out into the waters, and when it became too deep to walk, she swam. And then she kept on swimming. Father was in a rage at that. Nothing escapes him on land, but she was in the sea. He called to her and shouted. I watched him waving his arms and raging, but he was too much the coward to swim after her into the deep ocean. He stood on the shore and screamed and screamed like Wanem, and she kept swimming. And then she stopped, and Moriabe took her. In the end, it was easy. She ducked her head and sipped of Moriabe, and it was done. And I was alone with him.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“And tell you the one true escape?” Elbe laughed. “If you go swimming, sister, then there is only me. There aren’t enough cedar chests to block a door that he wants open. What wouldn’t you do to keep from hearing that man’s knock? What wouldn’t you do to keep his attentions focused elsewhere?”
“But you told me to run, when we first met.”
“I hoped...” He shook his head. “I liked your eyes. You did not look like someone hunted, then. I knew your mother wouldn’t save you, but I thought, perhaps...” He shrugged. “I was a fool. My father never fails to catch his prize.”
They were quiet for a while. At last Alanie asked, “Why do you not go swimming, too?”
“I tried once. Soon after. I couldn’t breathe the water the way she did. I’m a coward, I think. I swam back to shore. He whipped me for it. He was terrified that he would lose his heir. He keeps a boat close now, to row after me in case I try to follow her.”
He was quiet awhile and then said, “I know that everyone says that the great storms are caused by Moriabe’s and Stormface’s love quarrels. But I think they’re wrong.”
“Oh?”
“I think Stormface is like my father.”
“And what is Moriabe, then, if Wanem is such a creature?”
“Moriabe...” Elbe fell quiet for a long time. “I think that when the great storms rise, she is fighting to defend her children. Moriabe isn’t like our mothers at all. She is something else. Stronger. Fearless. And when Stormface comes to her door as my father does to ours, she battles him and fights him, and she forces him to flee.” He nodded out at the blue waters. “And then, when she turns calm like this, it’s because her children are safe again. Moriabe defends her children – that’s what I think.”
Above them on the cliffs, Eliam called out, and Elbe flinched. Alanie looked up at the man who stalked her nights, and her skin crawled. She thought of Elbe’s mother, swimming out in the deeps, and wondered at parents who would do anything to save a child.
Eliam called out again, and Sinolise appeared as well, demanding that they return.
Alanie reached for her brother’s hand. “Come with me,” she said. “We’ll swim together. We don’t have to be afraid.” And though Elbe looked at her with terrified eyes, he followed where she led.
The waters rushed around Alanie’s ankles as she strode into the ocean. It swirled about her knees and clutched at her thighs and tangled her skirts. From high on the cliffs, Eliam shouted for their return, and Alanie’s mother begged for their obedience in her high frightened voice, but they were far away, and the waves were loud, drowning out demands.
A wave came crashing in, frothing up around Alanie’s ribs, and she gasped at the chill of soaking clothes. She kicked free of skirts and blouse, and pulled Elbe deeper into the waters. He seemed to struggle for a moment between the pull of her hand and his father’s voice, and then he, too, was tugging off his clothes, and the ocean rose to their chests, and they pressed on, and Alanie thought she heard Elbe laughing as if suddenly free.
The next wave lifted Alanie’s feet from the stones, and then she was swimming, letting Elbe’s hand go so she could stroke hard through the surf. She dived through an oncoming wave and surfaced on the far side, shaking her head to clear water from her eyes. Elbe surfaced beside her, swimming hard, and then they were swimming together, matching each other stroke for stroke, swimming with all their will.
Behind them, Eliam galloped down the path to the shore. His threats and demands echoed across the waters, but the ocean spread between them, blue and wide, and he stood powerless on the shore.
Alanie swam and Elbe kept pace, and then the ocean’s current caught them, and they were swept away from shore. Moriabe cupped them in her currents and carried them fast away from where Eli
am dragged his boat into the surf.
Alanie turned on her back, resting and treading water and staring up at blue sky as the current carried them. Beside her, Elbe was smiling. His eyes seemed almost young. The white cliffs of shore were distant now, but when Alanie checked Eliam’s progress, she found to her surprise that he gained upon them.
“He’s quick,” Alanie said, trying not to despair.
“He was born to hunt.”
Eliam used his great strength to advantage as he leaned into his oars, and his boat fairly shot across the waves.
“I don’t have the will to drown myself,” Elbe said quietly.
“You won’t have to,” Alanie said, wanting to believe it was true. “Just swim with me. All we have to do is swim.”
She tugged his shoulder and kicked off again, and Elbe cursed and followed. Stroke after stroke, they swam through blue glittering waters, rising and falling on Moriabe’s waves. Panting and paddling still. Kicking, always kicking deeper into the blue, until at last their strength gave out and there was nothing left to do but float.
The two of them bobbed on Moriabe’s quilt, flotsam specks on the open ocean. Alanie’s limbs felt loose and sinuous in the waters, limp and used. She didn’t resent the exhaustion, but wished she could have swum deeper. She wondered if she had done enough. She wondered if Moriabe truly cared for anything at all. She wondered if kraken were close or far. She wondered if she had ever heard their voices.
Eliam closed the distance, straining at his oars. On the waves, he looked small. Not the monster that Alanie had known on land, but only a tiny man in a tiny little boat, far out upon a wide, deep ocean, a man who thought he was a hunter.
Alanie narrowed her eyes as she stared at him, and then she lay back and spread her arms wide to float on Moriabe’s quilt, and she called to the kraken. Alanie imagined them in the deeps, lying in tangled piles of kin. She imagined them swimming sinuous through the dark shadow waters, and she called to them.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine Page 5
