by Jeff Wheeler
To make matters worse, he had gone into the sea, he’d sacrificed himself, thinking that no one cared if he lived or died. The only way he could justify his action as being different from hers was if no one actually cared about him. For all his advice and storytelling lessons earlier, he hadn’t really understood anything at all.
But then, neither had she.
Too late, Itziar’s magic ate through the defenses and absorbed the spell. She dropped to her knees and took a few deep breaths, pushing away the pain of the wound in her shoulder. The leader had said Corentin would be useful. That meant he should be safe until they got what they wanted. She had also said they were looking for what was theirs and what was owed. Itziar assumed that what was theirs was Nalu, but she had no idea what they felt they were owed. Still, it was more information than they had to go off of before. Maybe Nalu would be more forthcoming with his explanations now. Itziar turned her steps and trudged toward the path that led from the beach to the mender’s house.
She arrived at the same time as Kirsi, who came up the path from the village. Kirsi did a startled double take. “You disappeared from my house. I thought you might come here. Did you go for a swim first?”
Itziar ignored the question generated by her soaked state. “I’m sorry, Kirsi, I thought I could fix things.”
Nalu opened the door, looking half-dead, which was a fair piece better than the last time Itziar had seen him. “Did the mender find you?” he asked Itziar, explaining, “He said he was going for a walk, but it was rather late for that, and so I thought he might have gone looking.”
Kirsi simply stared at him, speechless for once.
Itziar ignored her confusion and answered Nalu, “Yes, but”—she rushed on despite their expectant faces—“the child-snatchers found us both. They came from the sea.” Suddenly, she felt very tired and took a step forward to lean against the door frame for support. Corentin’s wards sang to her, a crackling nonsense song, beckoning her to draw on them to heal her wounds.
The little color that remained drained from Nalu’s face. “They took him? No!” He took a few steps back to where he could collapse on the bed. He looked up at Itziar and asked, “Why did you let them take him?”
Itziar and Kirsi joined him inside, while Itziar clarified, “I didn’t let them. He took me out of play. They said he could be useful, and I just assumed they wanted information on what they’re looking for. But why are you acting like it’s more than that?”
Nalu closed his blue-green eyes and responded. “Because I was sent here to kill him.” He put his face in his hands. “This whole thing is a mess. I stayed because I couldn’t figure out how to fix it, and now ... and now, it doesn’t matter.” He looked up without a glimmer of hope on his face and told them, “He’s probably already dead.”
That seemed to release Kirsi’s tongue, and she protested, “I don’t understand any of this. One of you tell me what happened—from the beginning.”
Nalu took a deep breath, saying, “Okay, but the mender won’t be happy if Itziar bleeds all over his workroom.” He gestured toward her shoulder.
He waited until Kirsi retrieved the necessary supplies to dress Itziar’s wound before he began to speak again, “The mender—his real name is Corentin.” Itziar’s stomach sank, and it had nothing to do with the cloth Kirsi was using to clean out her wound. She had convinced Corentin to tell her his real name because she thought no one could possibly still be after him. They had been on the beach when he said it, close to the sea.
Nalu explained, “Corentin was once a powerful weather-witch who would summon storms for any crew that flew no flag but one of their own. He brought destruction to the waves like you’d never seen before or since. Our people got caught in the crossfire or driven from our homes by the battles that raged on the surface of the water. We swore vengeance on the storm-summoner, and we almost had it. After he was convicted, we made sure he dropped into the sea, rather than hang, but fishermen rescued him before we could claim what we were owed. A few years passed before we heard whispers that he had taken up residence on this island. But we didn’t know who he was—we assumed he would have a family, perhaps young ones. They sent me to capture or kill him.”
The uncharacteristically quiet Kirsi tied a bandage around Itziar’s shoulder and under her arm, while Nalu paused to study his hands before explaining how he had carried out his role. “I passed a night or two in the village but saw no one powerful enough to be this legend. I was about to dive off the bluff and return to my people, to tell them the rumors were false, when a few kindhearted fishermen saw me and thought I was trying to end my life. I allowed myself to be taken to see a man they called the mender, but I thought it best not to speak. I was afraid someone would recognize my accent, and realize what I was. I tried to slip away a few more times, before I realized who the mender was, but each time he caught me. By the time I put the pieces together, he seemed too kind and broken to kill, only a fragment of his former self. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed.”
Itziar frowned and asked, “How does your people taking the children fit into this?”
Nalu shrugged. “Either they’re trying to find me, or they were hoping to draw him out. I’ve had no contact with them since I left, and they didn’t know who he was then.”
“I think Corentin might have figured out who they were after just now on the beach. He got me out of harm’s way and sacrificed himself,” Itziar explained, muttering “Idiot” under her breath. “I can’t believe I was considering taking advice from a guy who turned around and did the same thing he was advising me not to do.” Itziar reached over to put her hand on Nalu’s arm.
He flinched away, then looked at her apologetically and said, “Sorry, but I’m not eager to experience that again.”
“I understand.” Itziar cut him off tersely, shifting back so he was out of arm’s reach as she explained, “I was only going to ask if you would be willing to show me where your people are likely to be keeping him and the children. I’d like to make this right.” Her expression softened slightly as she told Nalu sadly, “Or at least as right as I can.”
“I don’t think you can get there without my help,” he told her cautiously.
“And you don’t trust me.” Itziar said what he wasn’t willing to say, adding, “It’s okay, I wouldn’t trust me either. Corentin didn’t.”
“Hey”—Kirsi turned back from where she had been returning the bandages to their shelf—“you’re a Guardian, Itziar, maybe you should start trusting yourself.”
Itziar closed her eyes against the painful memories associated with that word. With her eyes closed, she felt the salt-on-skin call of Nalu’s magic, a shadow of what it had been previously. Beyond that, surrounding the house, the warding sang its sweet song.
Eyes flying open, Itziar told them, “I might have an idea. If I absorb Corentin’s warding spell, it will take me some time to convert it into something I can use, and I won’t be looking for more power until then.” She told Nalu more confidently than she felt, “You should be safe.”
“How long would that give us?” he asked.
Itziar shrugged and admitted, “I don’t know.”
Nalu held her gaze for a few moments before saying, “Well, then I guess we’d better get started.” The try not to kill anyone this time was implied by his lack of enthusiasm. Gone without a trace was the blind confidence she had put her faith in last time.
Itziar nodded. She clearly had no ability to rein in her magic, so she thought it best not to say anything. She opened the door and crouched down, placing both hands on the threshold. She’d broken this spell once before, and it was relatively easy to find the resulting fissures where the notes of the song weren’t quite right for each other. She didn’t just break the ward this time, she drank it in. While it wouldn’t be enough power to allow her to shift to her dragon form, it should keep her satiated for the time being. She turned to Nalu and said, “Let’s go.”
“Please just bring th
em back safely,” Kirsi called as she followed them out at a more reasonable pace.
Itziar and Nalu ran for the shore with Nalu slightly ahead to lead the way. He steered them south of the beach where Corentin had been taken. Instead of smooth sand, the beach became rocky there with large fingers of rock jutting out into the sea. Nalu picked his way among the sharp points on one such outcropping.
“You’ll want to hold your breath,” he advised. “I don’t know how long the swim is for a human.” With that, he shifted forms, becoming a translucent light blue with shifting shades of green and brown. After only a slight hesitation, he wrapped his arm around Itziar’s waist and swept her into the sea.
His power, which seemed to increase in this form and with their proximity, called to her, but she closed her eyes, held her breath, and concentrated on converting the power she had stolen from the wards. Itziar could feel Nalu’s arm around her, pulling her against the current while the water streamed past them.
Her lungs began to burn for lack of air, and she was just starting to wonder if she should try to signal Nalu somehow when they broke the surface. Rock arched over their heads to form a cave with no entrance. Lighted by a few torches that sputtered in the stale air, a slab of rock jutted out on one side, forming a dry area just above the water level. A cluster of children huddled on it, as far from the water’s edge as they could get. Itziar didn’t see any of their kidnappers, but she supposed that with such difficult access, they didn’t need to guard their captives. She saw no sign of Corentin either.
She exchanged a worried glance with Nalu. “There’s another chamber,” he told her. “I didn’t think they’d use it because it gets more of the high-tide water. I’ll show you the entrance—it’s a shorter swim.”
When they ducked under the water, Itziar couldn’t see a thing, but Nalu took her hand, and helped her to feel the place where the rock fell away to form another tunnel. They resurfaced, and Itziar told him, “Get the children out. If Corentin’s in there, I’ll find him and bring him back here.”
Without waiting for his response, she dived back under the water. The tunnel was shorter, but the darkness was so disorienting that Itziar had time to wonder whether she could have made a wrong turn and would never surface.
Finally, she spotted a watery light up ahead, and when she reached it, she found herself in a smaller chamber with one sputtering torch. Corentin sprawled on a small shelf of rock with one hand dragging beneath the surface of the water.
Itziar swam over, but ran into some trouble when she attempted to pull herself out, forgetting about her wounded shoulder. She ended up just sort of rolling sideways onto the slab.
Itziar sat up and scooted over slightly to get a better look at Corentin. She could see his chest rise and fall, so he wasn’t dead. “Corentin? Mender?” She prodded his upper arm with a finger.
He groaned, tried to say something, and started coughing. “I thought I left you on the beach,” he commented when he recovered. Only then did he open his eyes.
“Yeah, well, I thought you told me sacrificing yourself was stupid,” Itziar retorted. “How long had you known what they were after?”
He shook his head without making any effort to sit up and told her, “Not until they called me storm-summoner. Only someone from my past would know that about me.”
Itziar thought about how they had named her false-dragon and wondered if she should be worried about what they knew from her past.
Corentin slowly sat up, moving as though it was painful. “Did you find the children?” he asked, looking around.
Itziar nodded. “Nalu is getting them out. It will take some time.” Itziar tried to remember how many missing children there were, but she couldn’t recall and she hadn’t bothered to count when they were in the other chamber. “We need to get you back so Nalu can take you out when he’s done with the children,” Itziar insisted, nudging him toward the water.
“What about you?” Corentin asked, narrowing his eyes as he caught her phrasing.
Itziar wasn’t trying to hide it. “Too risky. We used your warding spell to protect Nalu from me, but it’s gone now.”
“I could make another ward,” Corentin offered.
But Itziar shook her head. “We were lucky it worked the first time.” Thinking about what she was saying, Itziar moved away to lean against the cave wall. “I should probably keep my distance from you too.”
“So, that’s still the plan? Go down with the ship?” he asked with less accusation than the last time. “This isn’t even your fight. You didn’t bring any of this here—I did.” His shoulders drooped in defeat.
But no one will make me pay for what I did, Itziar didn’t say what she was thinking. Instead, she told him, “Maybe we’re both wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something Kirsi said—that I need to trust myself,” Itziar reasoned. “Maybe just like we can’t put our faith in other people, we can’t let our past mistakes rule our lives. We choose who we are going forward.”
“Nice speech, false-dragon,” the leader of the child-snatchers said from the water. “It sounds like something someone with a guilty conscience would tell herself to sleep better at night.” The woman rose halfway out of the water, maintaining her translucent form.
Itziar turned to face her, drawing herself up to her full height. This time she was not unarmed. The power of the ward converted to her own use crackled around her. “No, just the thoughts of someone struggling to improve. Does atonement hold no balance against your judgment?”
“How can atonement make restitution for the destruction caused?” she retorted.
“But vengeance only leads to more destruction,” Itziar reasoned, following the logic as she shifted slightly to place herself between Corentin and the water. She didn’t have enough power at the moment to shift to dragon, but she was still in better shape than him.
“So be it.” The leader closed her eyes and brought both translucent hands slowly up from her sides, water dripping water, and it took Itziar a moment to realize that the water level in the chamber was rising with them.
“Itziar, they won’t stop until I’m dead.” Corentin clamped a hand down on her unwounded shoulder and insisted, “Save yourself.”
He might be in worse shape physically, but his power had recovered. Itziar almost didn’t hear his last two words as the crackle of his magic called to her. She barely noticed as the water reached her knees. With that power, she might have a chance to fight them. At the edge of her vision, she could see the set of Corentin’s jaw. His scrap of old shoe leather face had become very dear to her, along with the man to whom it belonged. Then again, with that power, she might kill him—and end this.
“You were right not to trust me,” she told him, placing her unburned hand firmly over his. Finding the rhythm of crackles that made her hair stand on end was easy—he wasn’t fighting her this time. She was a little hurt that he didn’t even seem surprised. As she began to siphon his power, his jaw tightened, and she had to maneuver backward to get her other arm around him in order to keep him on his feet.
Itziar felt the fast-rising water creep up past her waist. When Corentin finally fell at her side, his face drained of color, Itziar held his head above the water and closed her eyes, concentrating on converting his power. She didn’t manage to get it all before water filled the chamber, leaving her with only one last breath of air. But Corentin’s power, combined with that of his wards, was enough.
Itziar adjusted her grip on Corentin in order to hang on to him as she shifted to her dragon form. Lightning from the remains of Corentin’s magic danced across her slate-gray skin. She threw what power she could spare into a spell of destruction, aimed upward. She didn’t wait for the results, but beat her wings against the water, trying her best to shield Corentin from the rocks that plummeted around them.
For the first few moments, she thought they wouldn’t make it. Her wings were clumsy in the water, and the rocks kept sending her spiral
ing off course. But eventually, they broke through to the open air.
A crowd had gathered on the beach, and Itziar could see fisherfolk tearfully hugging their rescued children. She landed as far from them as she could without setting down in the rocky area. Placing the soaked and unmoving Corentin gently on the sand, Itziar shifted back and dropped down beside him.
Without hesitation, she picked up his hand. There was no danger of her leeching his magic—she already had it all. Her back was to the water, but she heard small splashes as the leader of Nalu’s people stepped out of it. The woman crouched down gracefully on Corentin’s other side, and Itziar made no move to stop her. She held one sun-kissed hand over his face for a moment before glancing up with sharp suspicion at Itziar. “You’ve killed him.”
Itziar nodded in agreement and said, “He made his choice. He was willing to die to save me and the children. Doesn’t that at least earn him atonement in death?”
The other woman considered for a moment before nodding. “Our debt is paid. We will return to our homeland and trouble this village no more.” With a soft swoosh of fabric, she was gone. Delicate splashes announced her return to the sea.
Itziar waited a few more agonizing heartbeats before she leaned over Corentin and brushed her lips across his. With that kiss, she returned to him what remained of his wards and his magic.
She knew it wasn’t enough.
She had used too much of it, she couldn’t replace what was lost, so she kept pouring power into him, giving him her own magic, and not just what she had to spare. Just like she had taken from so many others, she drew on the power that she couldn’t afford to lose. She didn’t know how much of her own power she could transfer, but she gave him everything she could find.
When she pulled away, the world was dimming around the edges. “You’re the mender, Corentin. Fix yourself.”
