He got to his feet; so did the sea-dragon. Peri, huddled beside the hearth, wanted to rifle through the book for a vanishing spell. Kir and his father seemed at a loss for words.
The king said finally, “The mage told me you would be here. That this is where you come.”
“Sometimes I come here,” Kir said. He stopped to swallow drily. “Sometimes I just watch the sea.”
The king nodded, silent again. His eyes moved in wonder and disbelief to the sea-dragon. Kir’s hands clenched; Peri saw the sudden pain in his face.
“He is your son,” Kir said abruptly. “Your true son. Take him and give me back to the sea.”
The king was wordless, motionless for another moment. Then he reached Kir in two steps, his big hands closing on Kir’s shoulders.
“You are my son.” His hold rocked Kir slightly, then loosened a little. “You are so much like your mother,” he continued huskily. “So much. I tried not to see it all these years. I didn’t understand how it could be so. You have her eyes. I kept finding her face in my mind when I looked at you. Yet how it could be so…?” His gaze shifted beyond Kir again to the sea-dragon. “And this one, this son, wearing the face of the young queen, the woman I married, and was only beginning to know when she died.”
The sea-dragon moved to Kir’s side, uneasy, Peri guessed, in the sudden, bewildering tension. The king’s eyes moved, incredulous, from face to face, one dark, one fair, both reflections of a confused past.
“What are you doing?” the sea-dragon asked tentatively, startling the king.
Lyo said gently, “He doesn’t know many words yet. Peri has been teaching him at night when he takes his human shape.”
“Why only at night?” the king demanded. “Why does she still keep him in that shape? Is there a price I pay to take him from the sea? Is that it?”
Lyo, crossing the room to the spell book, knelt next to Peri. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I think you should ask her.”
The king’s shoulders sagged wearily; he seemed suddenly dazed, helpless. He looked at Peri again where she crouched beside the fire, trying to hide behind Lyo, and she felt all her untidinesses loom at once: her wild hair, her callused hands, the patched quilt she had wrapped around her faded nightgown.
“You are my son’s friend.”
Peri’s face flooded with color. She could stand up, then, as if the king’s word gave her and her frayed quilt a sudden dignity. The sea-dragon curiously echoed the word, “Friend.”
The king picked Peri’s cloak off a chair and sat down tiredly. “The mage brought me a ring,” he said. “My own ring. He told me who had thrown it into the sea. And who returned it from the sea.” He studied Kir as he sat, as if, once again, he saw long pale hair braided with pearls floating on the tide. His voice gentled. “I thought you had fallen in love with some fisher’s girl.”
“I did,” Kir said tautly.
“I thought that was what troubled you. I hoped it was only that. The mage said, if I wanted to do something wise for once, I should ask you what you want. He said—”
“How did you know?” Kir asked Lyo. His voice was very tense; the sea-dragon stirred, disquieted. Lyo looked up from the hexes scattered on the spell book. He spoke calmly, but it seemed to Peri that he picked his words very carefully, as if he were devising a spell to avert a storm.
“Odd things draw my attention. Happiness, sorrow, they weave through the world like strangely colored threads that can be found in unexpected places. Even when they are hidden away, most secret, they leave signs, messages, because if something is not said in words, it will be said another way. In the city, I heard some fishers from a tiny coastal village wanting a great mage to remove a chain of gold from a sea-monster. Even before I saw the chain, I knew that the gold was the least important detail. What was important was the link someone had forged between water and air, between a mysterious place deep beneath the waves, and the place where humans dwell. And when I saw the sea-dragon, when I dipped behind its great eyes into its mind, I knew…”
“What did you know?” the king asked softly.
“Why it was drawn to the fishing boats, to every human voice. Why it rose above the waves to watch the land. And then I began to suspect why the king and his son came here so early this year, and why the prince was seen so often at odd hours of the day or night, riding that dark horse to the sea…I didn’t know then how much the king or the prince or the sea-dragon understood. I still don’t know why it was finally permitted to be seen above the water. But I freed it, I turned the gold chain into flowers partly to disturb the sea, to send a message back to it. And partly because while gold will not float, periwinkles will. And then I tried to teach the sea-dragon a few things. It—he—found his own shape—I don’t yet understand why or how. And he found Peri. Does he have a name?” he asked the king, who shook his head. The king’s face was very pale.
“I named my son after my wife died. My changeling child. Kir. I don’t know if I ever saw my wife’s true child. I named the child I saw Kir, and I remember thinking how dark his eyes were—a twilight dark—and thinking they would change into his mother’s summer eyes. But they never changed.”
“And, in the sea, before she gave him to you, Kir’s mother must have named him something. So Kir is twice-named—”
“Why would she have named me,” Kir breathed, “to give me away? She must have hated us both—to chain him like that, to give me away—”
“She gave you to me,” his father said sharply. “She knew I would love you. I loved her.”
Kir was silent, his hands opening, closing.
The king rose slowly, stood in front of him. “Is it so terrible?” he asked painfully, “with me on land?”
“It is terrible,” Kir said numbly. He lifted his face, so that the king could see his sea eyes. “I can’t help it. I can’t rest in this world. In the restless tide I can rest. I can’t love in this world. Not even Peri.”
“You have loved me,” she said, her voice shaking.
“No.”
“Yes. You have cared about me. You have thought of me.”
He gazed at her, mute again; his face changed with a flicker of light. He reached out, touched his father lightly, pleadingly. “Please. You must let me go.”
“How can you—” The king stopped, began again. “How can you be so sure that when you are in the sea, you will not long just as passionately for this land?” Firelight caught the glitter of unshed tears in his eyes. He swallowed, then added, the words coming with difficulty, “If you didn’t want this so badly, I would never let you go.”
“Please. Will you—will you talk to my mother?”
The king’s eyes slipped away from him toward a memory. The harsh lines on his face eased, grew gentle, as if he might have been watching the soft blue sea on a summer’s day. “Once,” he whispered, “I could understand her strange underwater language.”
The net of fire sprang around them once more. Lyo, toying with the hexes, had created such a tangle that they were cross-hatched with flaming threads. The sea-dragon murmured, “You are making the world into fire.”
“It’s not water, is it,” Lyo said curiously. “Nothing that can exist in water…Strange, strange…”
“What are they?” the king asked. “Another message?”
“Yes. They’re Peri’s hexes. Kir’s mother returned them like this, changed into moons and moon-paths, fire-paths.”
“Why?”
“For us to use.”
“How?”
Lyo shook his head, entranced, it seemed, by the weave of light. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know.” Kir stood close to his father, watching. He seemed, Peri realized, finally becalmed; already he looked more like his mother, as if he were relinquishing his human experience. He found her looking at him wistfully; he gave her a sea-smile. She swallowed a briny taste of sadness in her throat. Already he was leaving her.
The sea-dragon stirred restlessly: The tide cal
led him, luring him out of his shape. “Peri,” he said and she nodded. “I must go.”
“What’s to be done with him?” the king demanded of Lyo. The lines on his face deepened again. “Both my sons live in half-worlds. I will not lose them both to the sea.”
The sea-dragon went to Kir, his fingers groping awkwardly at the clasp at his throat. Kir stopped him.
“Keep it,” he said gently. “It’s cold outside. I’ll come with you to the tide’s edge.”
The sea-dragon shook his head. “No. Stay.” They were all silent, hearing the tide as he listened to it. He smiled his untroubled smile, as if the rolling waves, the fish, and crying gulls were things he also loved, along with all the words he had learned, and Peri’s human touch. Peri opened the door for him, put her arm around him in farewell. He started to take a step, then turned to look uncertainly at the king, as if struck by something—a web reflected around him—that he finally saw but barely understood.
“I want—” He struggled with the thought. “I must see you again.”
The king’s face eased with relief. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Yes.”
Peri left the top half of the door open, leaned out to watch the vague, moonlit figure cross the sand. Unexpectedly, Kir came to her. He slid his arms around her, leaned his face against her hair, watching over her shoulder. The king stood behind them both. The sea-dragon reached the tide’s edge. He dropped Kir’s cloak and walked naked into the sea, a pale, moonlit figure that gathered bulk and darkness as it changed.
A twig snapped in the utter silence; they all started. The king said explosively to Lyo, “Do something.”
Lyo nodded, looking determined but a little blank. “Yes.”
“You need a full moon,” Peri said, remembering, and Lyo looked at her reproachfully. Kir’s arms dropped; he turned restively.
“It wouldn’t work for me.”
“It should work,” Lyo said. “Spells are in spell books because they work. Which is why—” He closed the book, sent it back, Peri supposed, to whatever bush he kept it under. Kir’s eyes clung to him.
“A gift—it says I need—”
“Ah,” Lyo said, shaking his head. “That’s for mages. You have your heart’s desire; that should be your path. You are the gift.”
“But she didn’t—she won’t—”
“I know. I don’t understand.” He slid his fingers through his hair, left it standing in peaks. “The hexes. She gave the hexes to us so that we could use them. They are vital, they are necessary.”
“How—”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “Yet. We can only try.”
“When?” the king asked.
“Five nights from now. When the moon is full. Meet me near the spires.”
Kir nodded wordlessly. The king dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Come home for now,” he said wearily, “while I still have a few days left of you. Your heart may be eating itself up to get into the sea, but I had you for seventeen years and when you leave me, you’ll take what I treasured most. If the sea needs a gift, I’ll give it.”
Kir’s head bowed. He went to Peri wordlessly, kissed her cheek. Then he lifted her face in his hand, looked into her eyes. It won’t be easy, his eyes said. It will not be easy to leave you.
“But I must,” he said, and left her.
“The magician is back,” Peri said absently, as she filled her bucket at the pump the next morning.
“Thank goodness,” Mare breathed. “The fishers will be able to work again.” Carey leaped a little with excitement, slopping water.
“Will he get us the gold?”
“I don’t know about the gold,” Peri said. “But I think he can stop the odd things happening in the sea.”
“But what about the gold?”
“He didn’t say about the gold.”
“But why didn’t—” She stopped, her eyes narrowing on Peri’s face. “Why did he come to you? Where did you see him?”
Peri heaved her bucket aside to make room for Mare. “He rowed out with me in the Sea Urchin yesterday. I think yesterday.” It seemed suddenly a long time ago. She added to Mare, “You can tell Enin that he’s back.”
“I will.” Mare’s eyes were narrowed, too, contemplating Peri as if she were beginning to see the misty, magical fog Peri moved in, where sea-dragons turned into princes at her feet, and kings knocked at her door. “Why do I have the oddest idea that you know far more than you’re saying about gold and mages and sea-dragons?”
Peri looked back at her mutely, clinging to her heavy bucket with work-reddened hands. Her shoes and the hem of her dress were already wet. Mare shook her head slightly, blinking.
“No,” she said. “Never mind. Silly thought.” She pumped water into her bucket. Peri gazed at the bright morning sea. She swallowed a lump of sorrow, thinking of Kir, and of life without Kir, without the sea-dragon. An endless succession of scrub-buckets…For the first time, she understood Carey. A path of gold glittered away from the inn, leading to…what? It was the goldless floor-scrubber the two princes came to; no gold in the world could have bought her that: the magical kiss of the sea.
“Wake up,” Mare said. Peri sighed and hefted her bucket.
Twelve
FIVE NIGHTS LATER, Peri sat at her window watching for the moon, waiting for Kir. Her face slid down onto her folded arms, she fell asleep and woke suddenly, hours later, drenched with light. A full moon hung above the spires; the breakers, slow and full, churned in its light to a milky silver before they broke.
She saw the rider beside the sea then, and her throat burned. Maybe, a tiny voice in her mind said, whatever Lyo does won’t work, maybe he’ll be forced to stay…But even staying, he would always be someone found at the tide’s edge, among the empty shells, looking seaward for his heart. Another horseman joined him: the king. They both looked seaward, down the dazzling path of light between the spires.
She opened her door, found Lyo on her doorstep. He, too, was watching the moonlight; his open hands were full of hexes.
He looked at her absently as she came out. “What do you think?” he asked. “One of them? All of them?”
“One of what?”
“The hexes.”
“Are you going to hex the sea again?” she asked, confused, and he smiled.
“I hope not.”
Her eyes went again to Kir; she sighed soundlessly, watching him, as he watched the sea…Lyo was watching her. He gave her shoulder a quick, gentle pat.
“Come,” he said, and she followed him across the sand. The beach between the house and the sea, between her and Kir, seemed to have stretched; the sand, strewn with driftwood and kelp, made her steps clumsy. She felt as she reached the bubbling, fanning tide, that she had traveled a long way to the dark rider, whose face was still turned away from her. Then he turned, was looking down at her; he slid off his horse and came to her.
He held her wordlessly; she blinked hot, unshed tears out of her eyes. He loosed her, held her hands, put something into them.
“What is it?” Her voice sounded ragged, heavy, as if she had been crying for a long time.
“It’s the black pearl,” he said softly, “that I will never dare bring you when I am in the sea.” He kissed her cheek, her mouth; he gathered her hair into his hands. She lifted her face to meet his dark, moonstruck eyes.
“Be happy now,” she whispered, aware of all the shining waves behind him reaching toward him, withdrawing, beckoning again. She added, feeling the pain again in her throat, “When I’m old—older than the old woman who taught me to make the hexes—come for me then.”
“I will.”
“Promise me. That you will bring me black pearls and sing me into the sea when I am old.”
“I promise.”
She lifted her hands to touch his shoulders, his face. But already his thoughts were turning from her, receding with the tide. Her hands dropped, empty but for the black pearl. He kissed her softly, left her to the empty air.
She stepped out of the tide’s reach, and bumped into Lyo. He steadied her. The king rode his horse past the tide line, up to dry sand, and dismounted.
“I don’t know if she’ll come,” he said to Lyo.
“How did you call her before?”
“1 didn’t…at least, not knowingly. We called each other, I think. I would walk along the tide line wanting her, and soon I would see her drifting behind the breakers, with her long, pale hair flowing behind her in the moonlight.” His eyes went to his son yearning at the tide’s edge. “If she can’t hear me now, it seems that she should hear him. That his longing would reach out to her.”
“Yes,” Lyo said gently. One of the hexes in his hands caught light; white fire blazed between his fingers. It pulled at the king’s eyes.
“What will you do with those?”
“I’m not sure yet…I’ll think of something.”
“You are young to be so adept.”
“I pay attention to things,” Lyo said. “That’s all.” His attention strayed to the sea; they all watched it. Something must happen, Peri thought, entranced by the glittering, weaving, breaking path of the moonlight across the water to…what? Something must happen.
Lyo gazed down at the moonlit weave in his hands. “Not fire,” he whispered. “Here it is light. Moons and moonlight.” He lifted a hex suddenly, threw it. Moonlight illumined it as it fell between the spires; an enormous, brilliant wheel of light cast its reflection across the water. Then the hex fell to the water, but did not sink. It floated, still shedding its reflection across the dancing waves. The angle of light changed. Peri’s lips parted. Someone had caught it. The reflection no longer slid with the moving sea; it flung itself between the spires, a great web clinging from stone to stone just above the water, hiding the moonlit path across the sea from the watchers on the shore.
Lyo grunted in surprise. The king said tautly, “Are you doing that?”
“No.”
Kir had moved toward the web; tide swirled around his knees. He seemed to have left them already. If the sea would not accept him, Peri thought, he would still be changed; even on land, the tides would roar, beckoning, louder than any human voice in his head. She hugged herself, chilled, marveling. Something moved through the fiery web between the spires, drifted beyond the breakers…
The Changeling Sea Page 11
