by S McPherson
‘Thanks, Tessa,’ I murmur, getting to my feet and swiping my hand over the crystal, silencing her and our connection to Coldivor.
I look around, finding Nathaniel and Sakiya with Derek in the distance. They’ve managed to separate him from his friends, the three of them now under a tree, their backs to everyone. I notice how rigid Derek’s once relaxed stance has turned, how he’s wrapped his arms around himself. I glance back at Victoria; she hasn’t moved, just stares blankly at her mini carrots and the card wedged in her hand. I wish I could offer some words of comfort, some way of saying that this news is incredible, a good thing, but I have nothing. Though it may be incredible, it isn’t good. We haven’t shared the information just to have a good old counterpart convention and dabble with magic. No, this summons is for a war, a battle against an evil we don’t even understand. These dormant abilities now seem to me to be less of a gift and more of a curse.
I shove the crystal ball back under my jacket and follow Jude as we amble across the mown grass and towards the tree where Nathaniel, Sakiya and Derek still huddle.
As we approach, I hear the voice of a young man coming from inside the ball.
‘It will be an honour to meet you, to fight alongside you,’ the voice says. I gulp. How much has Derek been told? ‘Until then, my friend.’
‘Until then,’ and Nathaniel waves his hand over the device.
Jude and I stand to one side, close enough to hear but not so close that we impose. I note a twitch in Derek’s jaw.
‘They told me I was crazy,’ he murmurs, ‘all those times I thought I saw things that weren’t there.’ He shakes his head.
‘Anything someone cannot understand is crazy to them,’ Sakiya spits, ‘too closed-minded to invite in possibility.’
‘You aren’t crazy,’ Nathaniel adds, pushing the ball back into his satchel, ‘you’re a Travisor.’
‘Travisor,’ Derek repeats, seeming to test the word out, his eyes appearing to trace the lines and nicks in the bark of the tree. ‘Now what?’ and he looks from Sakiya to Nathaniel. His eyes pass over Jude and me and I smile as encouragingly as I can muster.
‘Here,’ Sakiya hands him the card, ‘the details are on the back.’
Derek runs his fingers over its smooth surface, admiring the way the font seems to shine and shift in colour as light hits it from different angles.
‘We’ll see you there.’ Nathaniel pats Derek on the shoulder then turns to leave, Sakiya on his heels and Jude and I close behind.
‘I’ll see you there,’ Derek calls after us, and my stomach knots. I don’t know if it’s with excitement or trepidation.
BORN OF WATER
It’s bitingly cold then startlingly warm as Milo tumbles into unknown depths of water, cradled in what feels like the cleavage of a wet bosom as water sloshes him this way and that. Above, sun glistens down in streaks that ripple like shimmering snakes. He reaches for it but the surface only seems to grow farther away.
Milo splutters, his mouth begging to open and let in air, air that doesn’t exist around him. His arms stretch out, searching for that beckoning sky as his lungs burn. There’s no way out. He escaped Diez’s clutch only to enter a realm where he’ll surely drown.
A flask knocks into his elbow and Milo gawks, eyes stinging, heart pounding as he watches the items from his satchel float away in the grasp of a silent thief; his flask of water, the sticks of snickleberry, spare clothes, all gone.
Milo kicks his legs, willing himself after his lost items but the edges of his vision darken. Slack, his hand at last coils around his flask, urging it into the bag despite his slow limbs. The feel of his brain being yanked through his ears renders him useless. Against his will, Milo’s eyes close, tugging him into unconsciousness and then…air. A cool and soft caress covers his face, whilst the rest of him remains bathed in the watery cocoon.
‘Breathe,’ a voice hisses, as cool and sharp as the air that stings his drying face. ‘Breathe.’
Milo obeys, stunned to find that his lungs expand, screaming as they’re filled with oxygen. He coughs and clutches his aching chest, then his eyes burst open.
Blinking, his breathing no more than rapid gulps of air, Milo takes in the bubble he now sees envelopes his head. He blinks and blinks again, his eyes slowly conjuring pictures, making sense of blurry features that ripple on the other side of the watery membrane—a face, he realises.
A female one with large multi-coloured eyes as round as globes, a female face that stares back at him. The area where a nose should be is blank and smooth, though, the mouth two thin lips tinted green and blue, and at the base of the jaw are gills that flap in rhythm with the water’s current.
Milo studies the face: cold, calculating, the only light and colour coming from those eyes, eyes as vibrant as a rainbow.
‘Good,’ says the voice, though the lips don’t seem to move. Something flashes behind the face and Milo at last takes in the rest of the creature. A grey and bare torso, seeming as hard as rock, leads down to a thrashing cerise tail, riddled with scales that shimmer like rare jewels. Wings instead of arms fall from the creature’s shoulders, arching and curving inwards. The feathers are as colourful as the eyes yet duller shades of red, pink, blue, green and yellow. The creature cocks its head and its stringy red hair, moves with it.
‘Do you know where you are?’ asks the creature, a trill of amusement ringing through its lilting tone.
Milo shakes his head, unable to find his voice.
‘How have you come here, human?’
Milo gulps.
‘Answer me,’ the voice coos, this time as melodious as a harp, and a grin parts the frail lips, revealing gleaming sapphire stones in place of teeth.
‘You seem to have an advantage,’ Milo says slowly, his voice sounding hollow, echoing within the membrane. ‘You know what I am, yet I am at a loss.’
The creature barks and swims around him, caressing him with her tail.
‘Your realm has never spoken of us? The many creatures of Rijora?’
Rijora: the land of the Rijjleton Guards. No wonder they are able to travel realms without the aid of a gethamot or gethadrox. They are born of water, the most powerful substance on earth according to Tranzuta.
Milo only shakes his head, unnerved by the press of the creature’s bosom on his back.
‘We,’ she chuckles, and wraps a wing around his shoulders, ‘are the Meriamtess. You no doubt know the bipeds of our race, the Rijjletons.’
Milo nods. The Meriamtess wriggles closer and her gills tickle the side of his throat. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet a human.’
Milo gently tries to tug himself free, but the wing is steadfast, as good as any chain.
‘How did you get here, human?’ she purrs.
‘A device I made.’ Milo’s heart pangs like a snapped elastic, his satchel flaccid and empty at his side. The gethadrox. It floated away. His eyes widen as he scans the expanse of rippling blue around him. In the distance, more creatures swim, varying in shape and size, though he cannot see clearly enough to make them out. And far below, what look like giant shells are nestled in a bed of golden sand, their pearlescent coat refracting the sunlight and sending shards of light bouncing through the water. No sign of the gethadrox.
The Meriamtess shimmies around to float in front of him, her lips skirting the bubble covering his face. He tries not to flinch, relieved at least that she has finally lowered her wing.
‘Are all humans so soft?’ she pouts.
Milo barely acknowledges her; his eyes still study the water. ‘Thank you for saving me,’ and he inclines his head and goes to swim away, although treading water without her embrace proves quite difficult. Another bubble forms beneath his feet. Milo wobbles on top of its slippery surface as it dips and squirms beneath him. The Meriamtess bats her short and brittle lashes, making a scraping sound as they meet.
‘You’re welcome.’ Her sapphire teeth flash.
Milo hesitates, not knowing where to begin. ‘
I don’t suppose you could help me find something?’
Her wings widen, flapping at the invitation. ‘Only if you do something for me first,’ she giggles.
Milo raises an eyebrow in question.
‘Hold onto my wing.’
Wary, Milo reaches for one of the multi-coloured feathers, his fingers feeling cold as his hand glides through the water. He notices now how what he thought was water is incredibly smooth, as if mixed with oil and threads of silk. And his clothes feel surprisingly light.
‘Hold onto my wing,’ the creature repeats. Her eyes smile but her tone has returned to the brisk cool it once was. Milo grips one of her pink feathers. It’s not as soft as it appears, more like frozen rubber. He forces his face into neutrality.
‘What do I have to do?’
She chuckles then swoops downwards and Milo reluctantly flings an arm around her taut waist to keep from falling. The membrane crushes into his face and he sucks in shallow breaths. The mellifluous water seems to part as they spiral through it towards the hardened sand, everything a blur of blue and wisps of white.
His ears pop as they plummet towards the waters bed at a dizzying speed. He swallows and forces yawns but nothing quells the ebbing silence in his ears.
Milo clutches the Meriamtess tighter as she carries him through a web of luminous green weeds and a swarm of humming creatures with serrated fangs, raisin eyes and flapping fins. He hears her cackle, sending the creatures scurrying and the water—or whatever it is—shuddering with her every breath, but he cannot bring himself to let go of her.
Too fast. They’re going too fast, and the many structures dotted about the water’s bed rise up to meet him. Milo gasps as they narrowly dodge a pearl-coloured spire that stretches from a shell-shaped structure that glistens shades of rose and peach. The bubble wafts into his face, and though its purpose is to give him air, Milo feels suffocated by it.
Just as he’s sure he’ll let the Meriamtess go and handle his fate in Rijora alone, she comes to an abrupt halt.
Quickly, Milo lets go and regains his balance on the membrane she soon sets beneath his feet.
‘Over there,’ she purrs, directing his attention to a small mound in the shimmering bed. Milo slowly lands beside it and the bubble under his feet bursts. He expects to drift off, carried by the current, but instead his feet rest firmly on the soft and powdered bed. It feels more delicate than sand, swirling about his feet in tiny whiskey-coloured spirals. He crouches, rubbing it between his fingers; a fine powder, each grain achingly cold.
Milo lifts his gaze to the Meriamtess. She has been rather quiet since they arrived and he realises she has simply been watching him, her eyes ravenous. His stomach turns and he remembers the small blade in his satchel—if it hadn’t been carried away.
‘How does it feel?’ she asks, her voice taut with curiosity and fascination.
‘Cold,’ and he forces a smile as he gets to his feet. ‘You mentioned needing my help with something.’
The Meriamtess attempts to smile coyly but Milo is far from convinced. ‘Do you see that mound, there?’
Milo follows her gaze to a nondescript heap. ‘I see it.’
‘There is a stone nestled inside; a nacre.’ She manoeuvres closer to the mound, still hovering slightly above it, her thick tail thrashing. ‘It has great power, and any creature of Rijora, save for the Rijjletons, would kill for it.’ She fleetingly meets Milo’s gaze before turning her attention back to the mound. ‘It can give us a gift the Meriamtess have coveted for centuries, from the dawn of time, indeed.’ She slumps heavily onto the bed, a shower of its powder erupting and falling around her. Milo steps back, finding her grotesquely mesmerising as she curls her tail around herself, her wings waving at her side, lifting a storm of whisky-coloured dust.
‘What gift is that?’ he asks when the storm clears.
‘It gives us limbs.’ Her eyes glow, their every shade seeming to spin as if on a Ferris wheel, and then red takes over, seeping in like drops of blood. ‘One nacre grants one limb. But of course, now I’ve found it,’ she huffs, her wings flapping more violently, although she somehow remains on the bed, ‘I am unable to pick it up. Irony,’ she finally spits.
Milo looks back at the heap as she now glares at it. ‘You want…arms and legs?’
The Meriamtess eventually fixes her gaze on him, as if it’s a huge effort to look from the mound. ‘Yes. Like the Rijjletons, I long to travel to the realms I see in my sight. Unlike them, I see seven realms, one in every colour,’ and once again the wheels of her eyes spin like winding rainbows. ‘I want to explore them all, but these,’ she hisses at her tail, flicking her neck and sending her gills in a tizzy, her wings flapping, ‘will not let me.’
Milo weighs his options, seeking but finding no downside to helping this creature. He will pick up the nacre, something she is clearly unable to do, and give it to her, granting her one limb. In return she will help him find the gethadrox, ultimately getting him out of this place and back to Coldivor. Back to where he can breathe without a mask and where he can tell the Court about Diez’s plan. A plan that involves Dezaray and an orange moon.
‘All right,’ he says at last, and the Meriamtess sits straighter, as if a hot poker were at her back, her wings out and solid. Milo squats, once again pushing his finger into the cold and mushy sand but this time into the mound itself. He digs through it but for a while sees nothing, feels nothing, save the Meriamtess’s unwavering gaze. Then there’s a flash of white, of pearl, possibly the nacre? He detects a shift in the Meriamtess and his eyes flicker to her. That ravenous glow has returned as she leers down at the stone. Milo bunches his fist around it, pulling out a jewel no bigger than a button. It’s smooth, like a drop of milk wrapped in peach satin.
‘This?’ he asks, pinching the nacre between his finger and thumb, holding it up to her. She fiercely swims toward him, the sight so frightening that Milo struggles to keep hold of the stone. She gapes at it, as if it were the last remaining scrap of food and she hasn’t eaten in decades.
‘That’s it.’ Her voice is barely a whisper and her eyes rotate once more. Then, at last, they rest on his. ‘Feed it to me.’
Milo frowns, no part of him wishing to get anywhere near those stubs of sapphire she calls teeth.
‘Feed it to me,’ she snaps, ‘unless you’d rather I take it myself, though I guarantee your fingers will be taken with it.’ Her teeth flash and Milo wonders what it is, exactly, that Meriamtess eat. Deciding he’d rather not find out, he holds out the pearl.
She grins, then her lips part. She doesn’t take her eyes off Milo as he slowly moves the nacre closer to her lips.
When her mouth is open wide, Milo expects to see a tongue, but instead finds a gaping hole of black that whirls like trapped shadows. He releases the nacre and snatches his hand away as her mouth clamps shut around it.
Milo steps back as the Meriamtess throws herself on the bed, wings sprawled, eyes still closed and tail lashing at the sand. Part of her looks like a fallen angel, a larger part like a sea demon one would only meet in a nightmare.
‘Yes,’ she hisses, her voice sending shards of ice-cold rippling through the water and swirling around him. Milo takes another step back as one of her wings whips the bed, frantically, as if under attack, whilst the rest of her, save for her writhing tail, remains eerily still. Then something pushes through her shoulder, something white, sharp and coated in a pale slime that forms globs that then disperse in the water, only to be shattered by her beating wing.
The white shard grows, bursting through her grey skin and scattering clumps of flesh. Bone, Milo realises. Bone that bursts through her shoulder and lengthens to skeletal fingers at its end. The wing beneath rests and her tail stills.
For a while the Meriamtess doesn’t move at all and Milo wonders if she’s survived the change. He takes a tentative step towards her, and another, then another until he is staring down at that dull face, the only sparkle hidden beneath her closed eyelids.
Her chest heaves and Milo jumps back as a vicious cackle rocks the water, sending plumes of it shuddering from her open mouth.
‘Yes,’ she hisses as she pulls herself up into a sitting position. Her eyes spring open and she brings her new hand up to meet her gaze. Both her and Milo watch as flesh, pale as limestone, stretches over the tips of her fingers, slithering over the palm and down the bones in the arm. She yelps as golden talons shoot from her fingertips, but her smile stays wide, blue teeth gleaming.
‘Yes.’ When the arm is clad in beige skin, the Meriamtess runs the hand over her torso. ‘I am not soft like a human. I am hard.’ She looks to him, perhaps for confirmation, so Milo nods. ‘I can feel,’ she grins, running her hand over her shimmering tail, her eyes closing. ‘I can touch. My wings gave a mere shadow of this sensation.’ She trails her fingers back up her body, clutching her neck, her face, her wings.
Deciding he’s had more than enough of this, Milo takes a casual step back and looks around for someone else who might help. A building stands not too far away, a creamy twist of coral, studded with blue and green gems.
He looks back at the Meriamtess, now raking her fingers through the sand of the bed. He’s as good as alone, but has barely taken a step before the Meriamtess is in front of him, eyes blazing.
‘Where are you going?’ she enquires, her voice angelic as she tiptoes her fingers up his chest.
‘You seemed…busy.’
‘Yes,’ she giggles, now running her fingers down his arm, ‘you would be too if you were suddenly able to do something you never thought you would.’
Milo nods politely and makes to step around her, but she grips his arm, stopping him.
She barks with wild laughter. ‘I’m holding you, preventing you from moving with my touch.’ She pulls herself closer. ‘I can feel you: the hairs on your skin, the warmth of your blood beneath it.’
‘And I’m sure you have many more things to feel.’ Once again, Milo moves. ‘But I must be going.’
‘What about this?’
