Changer (Athanor)

by Jane Lindskold

  He begins detailing current household water use, then demonstrates how, even with the water-conscious guidelines for new landscaping and plumbing, new construction (including a planned golf course) will severely tax the water table.

  Chris notes that although neither tall nor conventionally handsome, Arthur Pendragon looks like a man accustomed to being followed. His blue eyes glow as he makes his points; his gestures are economical and eloquent. The city officials dim into insignificant bureaucrats beside his charm.

  When the meeting adjourns, Chris works his way through the throng to where Arthur is handing out flyers.

  “Thanks,” Chris says, accepting one. “I’m with the Journal. I was hoping you’d let me have an interview.”

  “So sorry,” Arthur says, “but I don’t give interviews.”

  Chris drifts back, certain from the firmness of Arthur’s tone that arguing would get him nowhere. Very well, if Arthur won’t talk to him, there are other methods for learning his secrets. Not all of them are polite, and a few are of dubious legality, but since when has that stopped a crusading reporter?

  Crafting the spell that will enable the Sea Queen to reside on land takes ten days. During these, Lovern is hardly seen by any but those assigned to wait upon him and carry his messages. In addition to the selkies, Duppy Jonah has deputed two octopuses to assist the mage. These are athanor creatures, wise in their way, dexterous beyond humanity’s best dreams.

  “At first I felt as if I had Cthulhu at my side,” Lovern confesses to the Changer during one of his rare rest breaks some days into the project, “but now I know I will miss them when next I do a work of this complexity. I call them Odd and Pod.”

  “Have they a language you can speak?” the Changer asks.

  “The selkies translate, but we have worked out hand signals that do almost as well for smaller jobs. Odd is the quicker to comprehend, but Pod can perform multiple simultaneous tasks in a fashion I quite envy.”

  “And how goes the work?”

  “Well, but it is complicated. Given the penalties for failure, I do not dare be sloppy—as I might in a jury-rigged spell for myself,” the wizard admits. “Moreover, I do not wish to offend the Queen, so I have consulted her about how she wishes to look as a human.” He sighs at the memory. “She was quite particular, but I believe she will be satisfied.”

  The Changer smiles understandingly, for he knows that Mother Carey’s knowledge of human concepts of beauty is gleaned largely from statuary and paintings. She had consulted him and had fretted when she found that he could not take female form. Thereafter, she had settled for what the selkies could show her and for making reconnaissance swims to beach resorts.

  Lovern continues, “I’ve called Arthur, and paperwork will be waiting for her at his Florida estate. Plane tickets, too. I’m to call when I can better estimate when I’ll be finished.”

  The Changer flicks his merman’s tail. “Then I should be away and leave you to your work.”

  “Bide,” Lovern almost pleads. “Odd and Pod are fine assistants, but they cannot chat, and I am still out of favor with Duppy Jonah. The selkies treat me as their master’s mood dictates.”

  “If I won’t keep you from your work,” the Changer says, “then I will stay. If I delayed you, then, brother or no, I should be out of favor with both King and Queen. Today, they have gone somewhere together. I believe they will miss each other greatly.”

  Lovern nods. Almost unwillingly, he, too, has been touched by the love between the two monarchs. “My spell is ‘simmering’ for lack of a better word. My assistants rest, but I am restless.”

  “Eat, at least,” the Changer advises. “If you cannot sleep.”

  “Will you join me?”

  “Certainly.”

  They adjourn to a garden where sea plants grow strange fruit and small fish swim freely. Here Duppy Jonah has stored a variety of human foods. The wizard transfers a plastic package of pickled three-bean salad and a small canned ham within his protective aura.

  “I would give much for a hot meal,” he muses. “My magics keep me dry and warm, but this dim-lit place chills my soul.”

  A fish held pinched between his slightly webbed fingers, the Changer shakes his head. “You should shift shape, then you would not be fighting your environment.”

  He pops the fish into his mouth (where the teeth are somewhat more carnivorous in shape than would be found in a mouth otherwise so human) as punctuation.

  “I wear shapes,” Lovern says, admitting more than he would in other circumstances, “but I strive not to wear the mind. The bodies can offer me freedom I would not otherwise have, but I dislike the sensation of otherness invading myself.”

  “It is not otherness,” the Changer says, “if you surrender to it. Then it is self.”

  “The one who hunted you in the form of a golden eagle surrendered to that otherness and so lost his prey. Had I been the hunter, I would not have made that error.”

  “Nor would you have flown with the eagle’s full abilities, and the raven still would have bested you.”

  “Perhaps. It is an interesting problem.”

  “Someday, if you wish, I will show you I am right.”

  “You and Duppy Jonah name each other brothers,” Lovern says somewhat tentatively. “I have wondered why.”

  The Changer does not seem troubled by Lovern’s bad manners. “He is the first one of our kind I recall. So am I to him. We are not drawn to each other as mates—both being essentially male—nor do we feel as parents might. Therefore, the only term that fits our mutual affection is ‘brother.’ It is a label evolved when such things became possible.”

  Lovern is intrigued by hints of times so long ago that even language might not have existed. “And how long ago did you meet?”

  “Long, long ago.” The Changer stares at the wizard with eyes that remain coyote yellow. “I have watched the Earth herself shift form, seen oceans recede, continents split, watched her shrug earthquakes in temper or merely to stretch.”

  “That old… I had suspected but never was certain.”

  “You younger ones make too much of age. Age is not power, it merely is experience.”

  “Experience is a power in itself!” Lovern protests.

  “Perhaps.” The Changer snares another fish and chews it thoughtfully. “But for all my age, I cannot do magic as you do, nor can I command loyalty as Arthur does, nor can I weave as Vera does, nor create devices as the Smith does. My experience has only given me a mastery of shapes borrowed from other creatures.”

  “Can you shape creatures that are extinct?”

  “I can.”

  “Have you never wished to?”

  “I have, from time to time, as need demands.”

  “You are… fertile.”

  “Often.”

  “Have you never thought to restore a lost species to the Earth by taking a mate who could also take the shape?”

  “No. Change is part of the Earth’s life as much as of an individual’s. It is not my place to halt change.”

  “But you could undo errors.”

  “You mean human-caused extinctions?”

  “Yes.”

  “And would you also have me bring back the mastodons, the dinosaurs, the great sea creatures? Where would they live in this human world?”

  “Humans would be delighted!”

  “Only for a time. Then the novelty would wear thin. A poor man in Africa who sees his fields trampled by elephants and rhinoceroses does not delight in the creatures as does an American safe in his suburban lair, his welfare unthreatened.”

  “True.” Lovern digs a last grape from a can of fruit cocktail. “You are quite thoughtful.”

  “I have had a long time for thought.”

  Lovern chuckles. “Then experience is a power—even if only in that it gives time for reflection.”

  “Perhaps.” The Changer grins, his teeth still holding flecks of recently eaten fish. “But I have seen many who have lived lon
g and reflected little.”

  An octopus jets into the garden, snags a fish with two arms, and signals to Lovern with two others.

  “That is Odd, telling me that the enchantment is ready for its next stage. I beg your permission to depart, ancient.”

  “I grant it. Good luck with your workings.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alone in the garden but for the little fish and the plants, the Changer shapes a course of creatures not seen within the oceans for more millennia than the whole human race has known.

  Would the human race welcome these? Would his own people? Returning to his merman’s form, the Changer’s expression is wry.

  He doubts it.

  In darkness, in wetness, in cold, and in solitude, one waits. His only stimulation, other than the unpleasantness of his surroundings, are thoughts and memories.

  Perhaps when Mimir had set his second head in this isolated place he had already divined something brainwashing experts in centuries yet to come would learn: A person left absolutely solitary comes to cling to whoever breaks that loneliness. Comes to cling, even to love, after a fashion, the only companion of all his days.

  Such love had Mimir’s Head felt toward the man who had once been called Mimir. This same man who had later been called Merlin, Ambrose Hawk, Richard Wilson, and many other names—the most recent of which is Ian Lovern.

  This strange love had been colored by the fact that Mimir’s Head was, if not precisely the child, most certainly of the making of this enigmatic wizard. The Head did not call Mimir Father, but he knew by the very blood that ran in him that he was of that other’s engendering.

  Had Odin, whose eye had provided the other elements for the Head’s generation, lived past Ragnarokk, then this filial loyalty might have been diluted. But Odin had been slain, and soon after the Head himself had been imprisoned.

  At first he had clung to his memories of his brief life in the world outside of the cold, wet darkness. He recalled sunlight and birdsong, the tramp of hooves on the turf, the warmth of a fire. All of these were recalled as by one muffled beneath a cowl, an experience that foreshadowed his current imprisonment, but they were sweet memories indeed when that phase was replaced solely by mental stimulation.

  The puzzles the wizard set his creation became meat and drink, sunlight and birdsong, to the imprisoned Head. He sought to please his master, initially out of some vague belief that success would bring a reward, later because it was the only amusement he received.

  Then came the day when the wizard, then called Merlin, changed. At first the change was a sense of cheerfulness or lightness of spirit. He was not unkind to his creation, but his visits were more brief, his questions more perfunctory.

  Through careful gleaning, the Head learned that Merlin had fallen in love with a woman called Nimue, an athanor sorceress. For her, Merlin did what he had done for no other. He allowed her to see the Head, but once, but briefly, the astral audience shading everything pastel blue and silvery white.

  The Head never forgot her. He dreamed of her, brooded over her, envied Merlin for his time with her even as he hoped that the romance would last and the lady be brought before him once again. Then came the day that Nimue, having learned all she could from Merlin, piqued because he would not give her the secret of the Head, turned her lover’s own magic against him.

  A faint astral scream was the Head’s only warning before his solitude became absolute. Later, he learned that he had been alone for hundreds of years. Merlin had the painful comfort of Nimue’s teasing visits, his own occasional piercing through to the outer world. The Head had nothing but cold, darkness, wet.

  During that time he did not grow to hate Merlin. No. He pitied him. Hate came later when, having won his own freedom, Merlin did not set his tool free as well. Long imprisonment had damaged Merlin’s pride, made him distrustful of any relationship where he was the weaker, but it had not taught him empathy.

  Then did Mimir’s Head begin to hate. He began to realize that to Merlin he was nothing more than a useful Thing.

  The Head took his vengeance in small ways; he gave advice that, while not wrong, withheld some crucial bit of information. Meanwhile, he found ways to cause Merlin to set out small markers that led to the Head.

  Had he possessed a heart, the Head would have hoped that Nimue would track him down. Still, the fiery trickster Loki was hardly less welcome. Now the Head had a companion other than his master. He welcomed every visit and when, after subtle prompting on his part, Loki brought Nimue into their circle, the Head’s ambition grew.

  The price the Head demanded for his participation was his freedom—and not merely from his cistern. He craved the freedom of a body of his own. The others agreed, research was begun, and ever so slowly the pieces were put into place.

  Now, he could sense the tumblers in the lock that held him. After centuries of darkness, he would see the light; after centuries of cold, he would feel warmth. After centuries of patient hatred, he would have his revenge.

  Far from their palace where Lovern labors and the Changer waits, beneath the icy waters of the Arctic Ocean, Duppy Jonah and Mother Carey swim. They are humpback whales here, massive bodies well suited for this cold, cold water, tiny eyes seeing far more than a human might imagine.

  Swimming around icebergs, beneath the fragmented ice sheet that covered the waters below, they revel in the crystalline beauty of this isolated part of the world.

  “But even here,” Duppy Jonah says, “even here we can see the marks of human carelessness.”

  What has drawn his wrath is frozen garbage, carried here by currents from who knows what distance. The organic parts have rotted or been eaten. Cans, bottles, plastic bags, metal drums slowly leaking poison, the faint taste of oil in the water all speak of humankind’s continuing naive belief that the Earth’s ability to absorb waste is infinite.

  “They are not evil,” the Sea King says, “not all of them, but I prefer the days when the ships were of wood and the trash that remained was somehow beautiful.”

  “I will do what I can to make Arthur understand that our continued isolation from humanity cannot persist,” Mother Carey replies. “I will also meet with the South American contingent. From what I have gleaned, they are actively furious about what the ‘developing’ nations on that continent are doing.”

  “We let North America be taken without protest,” Duppy Jonah agrees. “Now there are plains where once there were forests and the streams are saturated with fertilizers that fill the still waters with algae. True, some communities seek to mend what was done, but a patched sail is not the same as a whole one.”

  Mother Carey rolls with ponderous grace. “I shall have them call me Amphitrite above. Mother Carey is too soft a name.”

  “Too soft for any but sailors,” Duppy Jonah agrees. “They know the power of the Sea Witch.”

  “And of the siren’s song,” she agrees, “but the land-born have become forgetful. Look at the arrogance with which Lovern came here. You soon set him to rights.”

  “I did and I am satisfied with what I have done. You also must use the threat of rising seas, hurricanes, and storms. Let Arthur recall that we have kept our peace by choice, not from inability.”

  “I will.”

  “And I’ll miss you terribly.”

  “Shall I stay then?”

  “No. Go. Just come back to me.”

  “I will.”

  By June 18, Lovern has prepared the spell that will permit Mother Carey, now Amphitrite C. Regina, to shapeshift from a mermaid into a human being. They gather on an isolated island in the Florida Keys to test the potion.

  “It’s in this vial,” Lovern explains, holding up a container holding about a half pint of milky liquid. “Drink it off, but sit down first or your tail shifting may unbalance you.

  “Your human shape will last three weeks or until you shift it voluntarily. At that time, you will revert to mermaid form, so I suggest that you be near an ocean—and there aren’t an
y bordering New Mexico.”

  “Three weeks should be enough,” Amphitrite says.

  She and Duppy Jonah rest in the sandy shallows of the island’s deepest cove. The Changer, now in human form, stands waist-deep, watching silently.

  Amphitrite turns to her husband, who takes her in his arms and presses her to his chest. They speak, but whatever they say is covered by the polite susurrus of the waves against the sand. Then, still partially in the water, she seats herself decorously and drinks off the potion in a single, long draught.

  “Rich tasting, like whale’s milk,” she says brightly. “When will the effects begin?”

  “They have already,” Lovern says, holding out a hand mirror scavenged from a wreck and polished bright. “Look.”

  The others do not need a mirror to see what is happening. Her skin has lost its pearly tint, pale blues and pinks replaced by a golden brown tan. As if autumn is come to a woodland, her green hair becomes golden blond, highlighted with touches of red. Finned tail splits into legs, long and shapely, like those of a professional model.

  Indeed, what she resembles most of all is a fashion doll come to life, but her sea-green eyes glow with an intelligence beyond any doll’s—or most humans’. Standing with a steadiness that is surprising, given that she has never stood before, she views her nude body with unself-conscious pleasure.

  “What do you think, dear?”

  “I prefer you as an orca, a seal, a mermaid,” the Sea King grumbles proudly, “but you shape a fine human.”

  “I think so, too,” she agrees. “A bit top-heavy, but that is all to the point.”

  No one dares chuckle, lest her pun is unintentional, but Lovern stands taller with pride at what he has wrought. “You recall how to change yourself back?” he asks.

  “I do,” she says, “and I shall not forget the words, nor am I likely to speak Phoenician accidentally.”

  “Good.” Lovern now includes Duppy Jonah in his steady gaze. “Now that I have fulfilled the first part of our bargain, will you permit me to retrieve my property?”