Dream Storm Sea

by A. E. Marling

  Bubbles that clung to the walls flowed to Hiresha’s mouth, gathering into a pocket of air. The enchantress lacked the jewels for the more complex spellcraft of splitting water. Instead she Attracted the vital essence of air that was suspended in the sea. It never felt like enough, and her lungs throbbed.

  A small pain compared to what Tethiel must be feeling from those stings. She could tell another fisherman’s bane lurked around the bend by the luminescence it cast over the swaying anemones. She peeked, and claw spines reached for her eyes. Hiresha kicked back, enchanting her diamond with an Attraction trap. She dropped it then thrust her arms out for a handhold.

  The scorpion scuttled into view. Blobs of light oozed beneath its transparent carapace. The diamond landed on its back and flared.

  Anemones flattened toward the jewel, some red tendrils tearing off. Hiresha felt herself being dragged to the scorpion. Her hand slapped against the cave wall, and she enchanted the stone to anchor her. A sea urchin tumbled past her arm. Its fuchsia spines crackled with magic that arced to her with a jerking shock of pain. Yet she held on.

  Her heart bounded. The terrifying wonder of where she was and what she was doing suffused her with whirling giddiness and churning amazement. Each second threatened to spiral her into a faint. Her concentration held.

  The trap enchantment stopped its pull but still pinioned the scorpion in a curved tangle of claws and stinger. The fisherman’s bane was larger than a man, and it blocked most of the passage. She had to scrape between the bristles of its underside and the wall’s barnacles. In the crawlspace, she saw another scorpion wiggling its way toward her. The prongs of its claws stretched longer than porcupine quills.

  Hiresha slapped a hand on the scorpion’s plated head, above the tiny feeder arms. An enchantress’s power in Repulsion was her weakest, and Hiresha’s touch hit with no more strength than a man’s punch.

  It still cracked the carapace and gave her the time to squeeze out of the chokepoint. When the scorpion reoriented itself enough to curve its stinger toward her, she was ready. She Attracted her diamond from behind her. A crimson dart punctured the first trapped scorpion and cracked through the tail of the second.

  Fluorescence spread from the wounds in smoky tendrils of green. Hiresha remembered Emesea’s warning of their blood, and the enchantress sped deeper into the caverns. A glance behind showed the glowing phlegm bubbling against stone, and anemones blackened.

  The next brightness came from no scorpion. A fish resembled a moon with fins. It gleamed amid a garden of coral. Cow-like black eyes took no notice of her as it kissed a patch of fuzzy orange sea growth. Bubbles from the algae shook loose and rolled across the ceiling. Air filled the top of the cavern.

  Hiresha searched further passages for the next hint of neon light. The fisherman’s bane could not have dragged Tethiel much further.

  And it couldn’t have had time for more than a nibble. Her stomach roiled.

  She wove around the larger stalactites and crashed through the slender ones in her haste. Veils of vermillion seaweed parted. Air pockets on the ceiling shone like puddles on a bright day after a rain.

  A glimpse of green was a smaller scorpion—only arm-length—swimming toward a greater light. Hiresha bolted past to find a swarm. The scorpion she had seen before had carried Tethiel to its brood. Hatchlings beat the water with their tails. They gripped his skin with their needle claws.

  He could not seem to do more than twitch, but his eyes flicked to Hiresha. Still conscious? Hiresha was relieved but also sickened for his sake. He would have had no choice but to watch himself carried deeper underwater, waiting to be eaten alive.

  Hiresha could not waste time fighting all the scorpions. But she could wait for the perfect moment, for their tails and pincers to line up for a throw that sent her diamond through them all to land on Tethiel’s chest. She did not even lose focus when the scorpion behind her stung her shoulder.

  The diamond’s enchantment Burdened Tethiel with the weight of a solid-lead statue. He slammed through the swarm. To her surprise, fuchsia spines burst from his skin. An illusion, she guessed, but it gave the scorpions pause and the time she needed. The gem now Lightened him, and Hiresha pulled on her connection to it, towing Tethiel into her arms. The magical quills retracted back into his skin as she grasped him

  He winked at her. Or perhaps it was a spasm of an eyelid.

  The sting had set her own shoulder on fire. She reached behind, Attracted the venom from the puncture, and she hurled the greasy glob into the eyes of the scorpion that had pierced her.

  Hiresha kicked her way with Tethiel ahead of a tide of scorpion pincers. A flick of her jewel carried them away. His skin scalded her from the venom within him. She held on, with sensations of opal pleasure flashing through her in flecks of pink, lime, and mauve.

  Underwater, her laugh sounded distant and bubbly but no less joyous.

  They returned to the room with the moonfish. The glowing disk had giant fins on its edges and stumpy ones on its flat sides. If the smaller fins were thought of as ears, the fish took on the appearance of a floating head with an expression of open-mouthed bafflement.

  The red diamond flew above the moonfish into the garden’s air pocket. The gem drew them to the ceiling, and Hiresha rested Tethiel on a patch with fewer spiny urchins and more starfish.

  The enchantress first Attracted the sea from his lungs. He gasped, his brow streaming with salt water and sweat. Next, she rolled him over and found the puncture marks on his back. Her magic leeched the venom out. It floated above her palms in a sphere of fluorescent red. She split the toxins into harmless pieces then let the glob fall into the water.

  Tethiel’s breathing eased. He regained his nighttime splendor with a mane of spidersilk hair and eyes like black pearls. “This cannot be a dream,” he said. “It’s too unexpected. This can’t be real. You’re too radiant.”

  “Your brain can’t be much damaged,” she said. “You’re as nonsensical as ever.”

  “I was underwater an age. It couldn’t have been longer than minutes. The stings felt like fiery carnivals of efreets. I thank you for dousing them, my heart.”

  The corner of his lips curved and spiraled in an impossible grin. Hiresha’s own glitter of happiness crashed against her anger. “The Murderfish knew the scorpions would eat you alive. It brought you here for that torture.”

  “She is a most thoughtful terror.”

  “Speak of the Murderfish only in past tense. I could never allow something so cruel to live in the Lands of Loam.”

  Vertigo shook her senses, and the color palate of starfish twirled about her while remaining in place. Such disorientation surprised the enchantress. True, her magic had made the ceiling their floor. More than that, she felt as if in another place and another time she had come to a very different decision about the kraken.

  “Man must love his monsters,” Tethiel said. “Only by kissing death can we remember the taste of life.”

  “That, or make a point to appreciate. Whichever comes easier.”

  Above them, the moonfish swam upside down among coral of chartreuse veins and creepers of crimson. Clouds of pink minnows turned a more sickly hue when scorpions entered with tails wriggling. Hiresha doubted the fisherman’s bane would see her through the reflective surface. To be safe, she placed the red diamond on the water. The liquid would harden to crystal if any unwelcome claws or stingers tried to force their way through.

  The enchantress worried for the moonfish. She was in no mood to see the puffy-cheeked creature torn apart, but the scorpions paddled past without so much as a claw twitch.

  Tethiel crouched beside her, gazing at the coral garden. “If this isn’t a lull within a nightmare, then do tell. How’re you doing all this?”

  “Using a trick you taught me.” Despite their safety, Hiresha’s muscles stayed tense. Tethiel’s nearness was a comforting coldness, like sitting beside an ice sculpture on a sweltering day. “I can enchant because I believe I may b
e asleep. For all I know, you’re a falsehood.”

  “I’ve often wondered the same about myself.”

  “Now tell the truth, if you can. Did you expect me to become a Feaster?”

  The question had niggled at Hiresha, and it hung between them like a pendulum axe. The enchantress braced herself for the pain of Tethiel’s answer.

  “Once, I feared you’d Feast.” His eyes were a black purity as if his pupils had dilated all the way to his lashes. “But mine is a magic for the desperate. You’ve no need of it, my heart.”

  Relief seared its way up her arms and spine to meet at a flaming intensity in her chest.

  He touched the red diamond above them. It stuck in the water. His straight and sharp finger lowered to rest at the center of her brow. It seemed to brush against the bone of her skull.

  He said, “You’ve made truth of my lies and become everything I’d hoped.”

  “Yes, since now I am a paradox. By dreaming I awoke.”

  “You were always a paragon of unique impossibilities.”

  Her fingers ran down the labyrinth embroidery of his vest. The masterpiece needlework had stayed pristine even after days at sea. She could call it illusion, even if it felt real. She had similar doubts about her own happiness. It struck her as unreasonably powerful. Beside Tethiel she felt a painful sense of peace, an unnatural rightness.

  She asked, “If I’m not to succeed you as a Feaster, then why would you do something as ludicrous as follow me to sea?”

  The triangle tattoo glistened as if that part of his face were crafted of onyx. It and his eyes reflected only her. Hiresha assumed it another illusion that made her look so majestic, an empress with her eyes alight with possibility.

  Tethiel rested a hand along the line of her chin. Each finger felt like a diamond tinkling across her skin, sharp and brilliant against her jaw and neck.

  “My heart,” Tethiel said, “I’ll not stoop to answering that with words.”

  He kissed her.

  Hiresha had never felt more in command of herself and the world around her. And to this, she said yes.

  She kissed him back, and he tasted of bitterness sweetened by honey, of secrets kept safe, of hearth-fire smoke on a winter’s night.

  When Tethiel touched her, she felt it everywhere. Both a feathering that left her skin taut and trembling, and a scraping ferocity that made her gasp.

  Hiresha would never have countenanced such behavior as provost. Wearing a red dress, she felt more forgiving to a different perspective on the proper decorum of men toward women. Her former maid would've approved. Besides, Hiresha told herself, this is quite possibly a dream.

  His suit sprouted filaments like a thistle flower. Spines surrounded her but never pricked. The softness of his jacket and vest flowed across her chest. Embroidery wrapped around her; warm threads rolled across her arms and thighs then tightened.

  The water swayed with colors above their embrace. Hiresha was relieved to know she could not die of pleasure.

  He said, “I hope you won’t think you’ve changed me. Women always want men to change and never forgive those who do.”

  “A change in wardrobe hardly qualifies.” Her dress straightened itself over her.

  “I mean when I leave the Feast. Wild magic is the key to ridding myself of my title.”

  Hiresha saw no dishonesty in his face, but she could not so quickly believe him. “Do you mean you’d replace one indulgence with another?”

  “Enough wild magic would sever my bond.”

  “How long would it force you to state the obvious? My perceptions are too keen to tolerate that.” She spoke half in jest, half in hope.

  “A few days of wild magic and I’d be done. The urge to Feast would return, but I could leave it aside for you.”

  They stood facing each other, the ceiling under their feet slick with algae and sharp with mussels. The tops of their heads dimpled the water’s surface. Magic bound her hair flat against her back. A sense of unreality flowed over Hiresha that had nothing to do with their relative location.

  This must be the dream. Her sense of detachment caused her spells to slip, and the tops of their heads dipped into the water. Knowing she could not allow the dream inversion to end, she forced herself to focus. Their feet returned to the ceiling. Her hair squeezed out the water, each strand returning to its proper place.

  She said, “I’m not certain I should like you to loosen your reins on the other Feasters.”

  “My successor has restraint and strength in her.”

  “And her name?”

  “I named her Celaise. A powerful name makes a powerful woman.” His hands coiled around hers. “Does it not, Hiresha? My ‘Queen of Jewels.’”

  She said, “More than a few choice syllables are needed for power.”

  “But a name is a flag, a monument to a person. No one would smell a rose if it was called a ‘slug.’”

  The red diamond orbited between them. Hiresha said, “I never thought I would say this, but I’ve come to enjoy arguing with you, Tethiel. As long as it’s not over anything of import.”

  “Only the dull argue over serious subjects. Nothing of any importance is worth arguing about.”

  The enchantress and the Feaster left the water caverns without incident. In the atoll, the Murderfish’s blood had darkened the coral walls. They saw no kraken-sized corpse. The top of the atoll shone in a circle of light. Hiresha and Tethiel traveled upward with caution.

  They surfaced. The sun rose between two distant thunderstorms, and the morning sky was the color of pomegranate stains. The light tinted the larger sail of a boat. The smaller sail formed a black triangle. Both ruffled with feathers. The figure of Emesea waved from the prow.

  The enchantress could not help but notice a second boat beyond the first. It swayed in and out of sight. The image of the nearer boat filled Hiresha with anger. She gathered herself for a leap.

  Tethiel’s fine clothes were peeling away in wafts of black smoke. He said, “I’m skeptical that face-smasher of a woman could’ve built a boat of such sleekness. Are you a shipwright, my heart?”

  “In point of fact, the Murderfish made that boat. Can you see its tentacles curving in the shape of the hull?”

  Tethiel’s chin twitched back for another look. “So, you’re saying it would not be the most hospitable of vessels.”

  The Murderfish had mimicked The Roost to revolting perfection. Hiresha knew then that they owed their lives to her dream inversion. Without my lucid sight, we would’ve swum to the kraken. We would’ve climbed onto arms that looked like wood, and we would’ve been constricted to the consistency of slime mold.

  She said, “I prefer the timbers of my boat not to end in a venomous beak. Come.”

  They vaulted over the waves and toward the true Roost. The Murderfish withdrew its tentacles, and the false boat appeared to collapse into the waves. Hiresha dove into the water and watched the kraken swimming into the distance.

  On The Roost, Emesea eyed Tethiel. She said, “Not as many sucker marks on him as I thought. Did she not like your taste?”

  “I pride myself in my bad taste,” he said.

  The warrior adjusted the sails.

  “We mustn’t go to land,” Hiresha said. “Not until the kraken is dead.”

  “Go toward the shore,” Tethiel said, “and we’ll find the kraken.”

  “Not until the evening, I hope.” Hiresha regarded the location of the sun in the sky. “Soon I must sleep. And awake anew.”

  Hiresha opened her eyes to see the kraken hugging their boat. It felt like fishhooks tearing through her palms until she remembered. Everything came back to her, swimming alongside Skyheart, fighting the Murderfish, and her night with Tethiel in the scorpion caves. The memories spiraled about each other, each seeming as real as the other. The enchantress wondered why they seemed so clear now. During the time wearing her red dress, the hours previous had seemed but a haze.

  Her magic straightened her blue sari. In
this facet, Hiresha reminded herself, I’m journeying arm in tentacle with a kraken to find dragons. How utterly reasonable.

  Emesea was brushing a length of seaweed over the kraken’s arm. Streaks of chartreuse spread over yellow hide. Emesea said, “Ticklish, ain’t she?”

  A tentacle set a wooden chest on deck. Bronze scrollwork reinforced the edges, though some had bent outward from the box being forced open. Boards had been cracked, water leaking. An orange eye of an octopus peeked out.

  “Gifts,” Skyheart said with its skin, “for the Lady of Gems.”

  Hiresha had slept under a barge canopy repaired with mangrove branches. She went to the chest and lofted off the lid.

  “Treasure?” Emesea asked.

  “Of a kind,” the enchantress said.

  A brown shell, sea glass, bright pebbles, a glint of gold, and an octopus with curly arms and a head resembling a plum, it all filled the chest. The creature fit in Hiresha’s palm, tentacles wrapping between her fingers. She stroked the softness behind its eyes, and bumps rose under her touch.

  “They are good to eat,” Skyheart said.

  “The gifts are lovely,” Hiresha told the kraken, while a more petite creature tugged her fingers up and down, “and most thoughtful, yet—”

  “Eat the eyes first.” Skyheart lifted the octopus toward Hiresha’s face. “Too many humans throw out the eyes, and they’re the best part. The waste makes me so angry. Eyes are too small for me to enjoy anymore.”

  “I’m not about to dine on octopus in front of you.” Hiresha signaled the words. The other people who crowded the chest could not have contributed to the culinary discussion.

  “Why not?” The kraken tilted the barge, perhaps for a clearer view of Hiresha.

  Her mind understood that it was not technically cannibalism, since this octopus was a different species than the kraken. Her stomach did not. This is like a human eating monkey brains. The comparison in no way quieted her nausea.

  Tethiel and Emesea leaned to stay upright on the uneven floor. Hiresha floated. The octopus did not seem frightened. It puffed air in and out of its head. When she set it on her shoulder, it matched the hue of her dress.