Billy: Messenger of Powers

by Michaelbrent Collings

  “Do you want…?” Billy began, then stopped. His voice was coming out, but it sounded different. Again, he realized that as he spoke, no breath was coming out of his mouth. It was trapped within him somewhere. And so the noise he was making did not come from air passing through his voice box. It came from somewhere else within his body, just as the song of a whale must do. And like the whales, Billy’s voice now had a sonorous lilt to it, the hint of music unsung.

  “Do you want,” he tried again, “me to follow you?” he asked the blue fish, which was still watching Billy.

  The fish rolled its eyes. Apparently, no matter where you were, the sign for “Well, duh,” was the same. It swam a few feet ahead of Billy, then turned its head to wait.

  Billy had never been much of a swimmer. His best swimming had been done when he had accidentally been invited to a pool party in fourth grade, and everyone there had decided that he would make a great ball in a pickup game of pool volleyball. And even then, he had mostly just done something that could hardly be described as swimming. More like a kind of desperate flopping. So he had no idea how he could possibly keep up with the swiftly swimming fish.

  But to his surprise, when Billy reached out to paddle toward the fish, the movement was fluid and practiced. It was as though he had been transformed into an Olympic swimmer. But more than that, because with one kick he shot forward ten feet, moving at a pace impossible for any human to achieve.

  The blue fish didn’t give Billy time to ponder this newest magical development, though, as it shot away full speed. Billy swam after it, easily keeping pace, feeling like he could even swim faster if necessary. He was amazed, and felt for the first time in his life as though he could have been picked first for a game of underwater Marco Polo or some other poolside game.

  But where are we going? he wondered.

  He asked the question aloud to the blue fish, but the fish seemed not to hear the query, apparently intent on just getting to where it was going. Soon, however, Billy spied a large crack in the coral that was piled like a living mountain beside and all around him. The blue fish sped directly at it. Billy was worried for a moment that he wouldn’t be able to make it through the fissure, since the gap seemed a bit too slim for him to squeeze through. But as he swam toward it, the crack opened wider, the coral on all sides pulling itself away to allow enough room for him to pass through easily.

  Billy swam through the doorway that had been created, and then found himself somewhere he was quite sure no other human had ever been. He was inside a coral mountain. He knew that coral reefs were created by the skeletons of dead coral, piled high in interlocking pieces, solid through and through and tough as rock. But this coral reef was different. It was hollow.

  And it was beautiful. The place Billy now found himself was like a great hall in some amazing palace. Rubies, diamonds, and emeralds the size of a person’s head were inset all over the coralline walls. The walls themselves glowed with the same slowly strobing inner light as the jellyfish had displayed, rendering the inside of the mountain into an ever-moving exhibit of all the colors of the spectrum.

  The blue fish was still swimming ahead of Billy, so he had little time to take in all the beauty around him. But he did glimpse that there were numerous window-like holes in the coral mountain, allowing him to view the open ocean outside. He saw enormous shapes outside the mountain, lumbering forms that moved with surprising fluidity and delicacy through the sea.

  The whales, he realized. The whales who brought me here. They’re still nearby.

  As if in answer to his thought, Billy heard whale song echoing in through one of the windows to this undersea palace. The music was more beautiful than it had seemed before, touching Billy’s heart deeply with the otherworldly perfection of its graceful melody.

  He ripped his eyes away from the scene outside with difficulty, and realized that the blue fish was gone. He looked around the vast empty space for it, but couldn’t spot it anywhere.

  As Billy looked around in confusion, the whales rumbled forth another stanza of music.

  “They like you,” said a voice. “It’s why you’re alive.”

  Billy turned to the voice, and though he didn’t gasp—he still wasn’t breathing as far as he knew—his eyes bulged out of their sockets at what he saw.

  It was a mermaid.

  At least, he thought that’s what it was. But where most mermaids—or at least, all the ones he’d heard of in stories—had tails like a fish, complete with fins and scales, this one’s tail was quite different. The fins were there, but instead of scales, the mermaid’s tail seemed to be made of millions of tiny pieces of coral, all hooked together in an intricate maze of color and life. Some of the coral glowed, some of it shot forth tiny tentacles to grab at particles of microscopic food, some of it spread forth long leafy arms, then just as quickly withdrew them.

  Nor was that the most interesting thing about the mermaid. Her eyes held that distinction. The eyes had no pupils, and the irises were deepest blue. They were the color of a pure glacier floating in the Arctic Ocean, a blue so deep and true that it spoke of the very Essence of all that was Water. The color of the Blue Element in its rawest form, swift and powerful as all the waves of all the seas.

  The mermaid smiled, and her teeth were pointed as a shark’s, spiny and shining like razors. But in spite of her alien appearance, she was quite beautiful. She was beautiful in the way that a tidal pool could be beautiful, or in the way that a manta ray could be beautiful: entrancing, but with more than a hint of danger within it.

  Her skin was a light green, the color of seaweed, as was her hair, which hung down about her in a pale green mane that covered her from neck to belly. She had arms, muscular and strong, which waved lazily back and forth in the tiny currents here in the sea palace.

  “Who likes me?” Billy finally managed to say.

  “The whales,” answered the mermaid. Like Billy’s, her voice was tinged with that hint of song, that music that Billy was rapidly coming to expect as a part of the deep blue around him. “I don’t usually save air-breathers. Those that I see are usually already gone, drowned in the depths of Blue. And those who aren’t, I let be for Blue to take. But the whales spoke for you.”

  “They spoke for me?” asked Billy, confusion clear in his tone. “What do you mean?”

  “Artemaeus spoke for you,” said the mermaid. She nodded, and Billy looked over his shoulder to see the huge head of a great blue whale poking in through one of the windows in the coral palace. It met Billy’s gaze stolidly with its own, and then slowly dipped its head.

  Billy’s mouth gaped open. It was the whale he had seen in the wall! The one he had seen in the Hall of Convergence, where one wall was water and the other was fire. The whale he had seen with Mrs. Russet when on his way to the Test of Five.

  “Ar…Artemaeus?” he stammered. The whale dipped its head again, then pulled away from the window and swam quickly off, disappearing from Billy’s view in an instant. “Where did he go?” said Billy.

  “Not far,” responded the mermaid. “Tell me, what is your name?”

  “Billy Jones,” responded Billy. Then, almost hearing his mom’s voice in his head giving him a mini-lecture on manners, he said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you. And what’s your name?”

  The mermaid smiled that beautiful and sharp smile, clearly amused by him. “I have no name,” she said. “I had one once, but gave it up to become what I am. So now I have no name but Blue, because Blue is me, and I am Blue.”

  Billy wasn’t sure he really followed what she was saying. “Your name is Blue?” he asked, confused.

  The mermaid laughed again. The sound was like raindrops on a roof: soothing, yet energetic. “No, I have no name,” she said again. “But if you wish to call me Blue, I will not object.”

  “Okay, Blue,” said Billy uncertainly. He looked around. “You saved me?”

  “Yes,” said Blue simply. “Though I prefer air-breathers not to enter my domain, Artemaeus is
one of the old ones of the deep. He is wise, and he said you were special, Billy Jones. So he saved you from the sharks, and then sang to me and asked me to let you be here with us in the deep.”

  She turned suddenly at that, and began swimming away.

  “Wait!” shouted Billy. “What do I do now?”

  The mermaid turned back to him, those blue eyes of hers bright and piercing. “Whatever you wish. Swim. Eat. Play. Be happy, for you are a visitor to the Earthsea, a guest of Blue.”

  “But wait,” Billy said again as Blue turned once more to leave. “I can’t just stay here! I have friends. They need my help.”

  “I can help you assist them if you wish,” said Blue. “I haven’t anything else to do today. What ocean are they in?”

  “They’re not in an ocean,” said Billy. “They’re on Dark Isle. Trapped by the Darksiders.”

  “Not in the ocean?” said Blue quizzically. “Then why would I help them?”

  “Because they’re my friends,” said Billy.

  “Ahhh,” sighed Blue, as if in sudden understanding. “Your friends are other air-breathers.”

  “Yes,” said Billy. “They’re Powers, they’re on Dark Isle, and they’ve been captured by—”

  A curt wave of Blue’s hand cut him off. “None of that matters,” she said. “Blue does not concern herself with things of the world above.”

  “But what if Artemaeus speaks for one of my friends, as well?” asked Billy.

  “Would he?” said Blue.

  “He might. I think he knows Lumilla Russet.”

  Blue shrugged, the movement barely visible through the floating mane of green hair that surrounded her like an aura. She opened her mouth, and sang. It was like the whale song Billy had heard, but shorter, and livelier. It sounded more…direct, somehow, as though the whales put poetry into their words, and Blue cared only about simple sentences and direct questions.

  Soon, an answering call came. Billy saw that it was Artemaeus, the huge blue whale’s head once again poking into the coral palace. The whale sang back to Blue, then disappeared into the open sea once more.

  “Well?” asked Billy.

  Blue shrugged. “He said that he does know Lumilla Russet, but he has no particular desire to help her. She’s rather rude to him at times.”

  “But she’s like that to everyone,” said Billy.

  “All the more reason to leave her to her fate,” said Blue in a wise tone of voice.

  Billy was desperate now, knowing that this strange creature was his only hope to help his friends. But he couldn’t think of a way to persuade her. She was simply too alien-seeming, too disconnected from the things that made him happy and were important to him.

  He decided to try a new tack. “Blue?” he said.

  “Yes, Billy?” came her strange, lilting response.

  “You said I can do whatever I want down here.”

  “Yes, you are a guest of Blue,” she agreed.

  “Well, what do you do down here? What do you like?” he asked.

  She smiled. “I catch fish, and I ride the currents, and overlook my domain. I swim with the sharks, and tear into flesh; and I sleep with the jellyfish, and light up the sea. I drift with the unborn eggs of fish in the tides, and I watch the oldest whales go to their graveyard to die. I am Blue, and I see those things.”

  “But what do you like?” Billy tried again. “I mean, do you read, or watch movies, or—”

  “Oh, Billy,” Blue laughed. “You are funny. I can see why Artemaeus likes you.” Then she stopped laughing. “None of those things you say are things of Blue. They are things of Brown, or Gray, or Red. These things have no place in my world.”

  “But, but,” Billy sputtered. Blue was now moving away, clearly bored by this conversation and ready to leave. She was no longer listening to Billy. He looked about, seeking some hint, some clue as to what to do next. But all he saw was the beautiful palace all around, with its coral, its diamonds and emeralds and plenteous treasures…

  “Treasure,” murmured Billy.

  Though he whispered it only to himself, the word had an effect on Blue. She stopped moving, immediately straightening up. She didn’t turn to face him again, but she did speak. “Treasure?” she said.

  “Treasure,” Billy repeated. Blue turned to him. He pointed at the giant gems that were scattered all around this beautiful place. “Diamonds, emeralds, rubies. Those are all things of the Earth—of the Brown—aren’t they? But you keep them near you. So some things about the other Elements are of interest to you, right?”

  Blue seemed to carefully contemplate his question. At last she said, “I would perhaps debate with you whether these things you call treasure are truly of the Brown, for so many of them find their final resting places in the Blue. But yes, we do like treasure.” Her eyes closed lazily as she spoke, as though she was thinking of some particular memory, something that brought both pleasure and pain at the thought of it.

  Then her eyes snapped open. “Do you have treasure?” she asked suddenly. “If you do, perhaps something could be arranged for your friends.”

  Billy’s heart leapt, then stopped leaping just as quickly. What fourteen year old kid had treasure? The nearest he could come was….

  “You can have my watch,” he said. He looked down at the birthday present his parents had gifted him with and saw, to his surprise, that it was cracked and destroyed.

  Blue swam over and grabbed his arm, none too gently. “Ow!” Billy howled, but Blue didn’t seem to pay any attention to this. “Broken,” she said. “It’s been crushed by the depths. It’s no treasure.”

  “Crushed?” repeated Billy, still surprised to see that his birthday gift had lasted such a short time. “What do you mean it was crushed by the depths?”

  Blue looked at him like he’d just asked her if she was sure that one plus one really equaled two. “You are thousands of feet below the water’s surface, Billy. No air-breather, not even a machine from the air-breather’s world, can come to this place without suffering destruction. The water is heavy here, and so it will crush and destroy the things of the air.”

  “Then how come I haven’t been crushed, too?”

  “Because I changed you,” said Blue. “That was what was needed when Artemaeus brought me to you. You had no oxygen left in your body, and no way to fashion any, so I changed you.”

  “You changed me?” asked Billy incredulously. “How?”

  “I made you more efficient. You don’t need air as much now, you can hold your breath for a very long time. And your organs are tougher, able to withstand the depths all around us. You are part of us now, Billy, one of the Blue. Just as am I, just as is Artemaeus.” Blue touched him as she said this, and her touch was electrifying, like sticking a knife in a light socket. She was concentrated Element, Billy realized. Somewhat like a Fizzle, only much, much stronger. Then she grabbed the wrist with the watch again. “At any rate, this is no treasure.”

  “Well,” said Billy desperately, “what kind of treasure do you want?” He thought of Mrs. Russet and her incredible powers; of the diamonds the size of cars that he had seen while traveling the Earthessence on Rumpelstiltskin’s stone chair. Surely arranging for one of those to be given to this weird creature wouldn’t be a problem, not if he could rescue Mrs. Russet first. “I could get you diamonds.”

  Blue smirked. She waved at the palace of coral and gemstones all around. “I have enough of such things already.”

  “Gold?”

  “There are mountains of it, already buried in coffers and safes on ships that have met their end in the Blue,” she said dismissively. “All these things of which you speak are of little interest to us. They fall to us, and we use them as we will. But if there were no more of it, we would not miss it at all.” She bent down and plucked a slowly-moving sea slug from the floor at her feet. It was gorgeous, a tiny animal striped with red, fuchsia, magenta, white, yellow. The colors were so bright they seemed unreal. Blue allowed the animal to crawl on
her hands as she said, “If there were no gems in our world, no gold in our sea, we would have the beauty of our own selves. We are not wanting of anything from the world above.”

  “Not anything?” asked Billy. He didn’t know what else to do.

  Blue put the sea slug back down, where it continued to crawl slowly around. When she straightened up to look at Billy, there was a sly look in her eyes that he didn’t like. “Perhaps there might be one thing, Billy Jones,” she said.

  “What?” he asked quickly. He knew he sounded over-anxious, but didn’t care. Anything this creature could give him to help him stop the Darksiders and retrieve his friends was desperately needed. She was his only hope, and the cunning look on her face suddenly told him that she knew it.

  “Come with me,” she answered, and swam to one end of the great hall in the coral palace.

  Billy swam after her, still amazed at how fast he could go. When Blue came to one end of the hall, another doorway opened in the coral, magically pulling back to allow her to go through it. Billy followed, and found himself in a much darker, murkier place than he had been in before. What little light there was here was supplied by a trio of glowing white lobsters, crawling on the craggy walls and ceilings. The room itself was almost bare. The walls were coral, just as the great hall had been, but all the coral here was bleached the same color: a clean, simple white.

  The floor was covered in sand, and the sand, too, was purest white. And etched on that sand was a picture of sorts. It was as though a master artist had come down here to work and realized he left his paints at home. So rather than go back and not do anything, he had simply drawn in the sand.

  “Swim softly here, Billy Jones,” warned Blue. “The sand is soft, and currents will fade its outlines.” She pointed at the floor over which they both now floated. “Do you see what it is?”

  Billy looked closely. It was clear that whatever this was, it had once been an intricate sand drawing, now faded by generations. “Who did this?” he asked as he looked.

  Blue shook her head. “I do not know. I do not remember. My memory fades before that time. It has been here as long as I have been Blue, and as long as Blue has been me.”