Mindbond

by Nancy Springer

  I also, called and called! Memory rushed back into me. I had been myself as I had been born, Dannoc the man on a rock, naked, alone, angry, afraid. I felt it all again, remembering, and I knew Kor felt it as well.

  I see. All edge gone. When the change came, I forgot at first, as you did. I, also, was very hungry and caught many many fish. Rueful amusement in Kor’s tone. If I had been able to, I would have liked to have laughed with him. But we could not laugh together anymore, not in that human way, and there was cause for fear in me.

  Kor, the devourers! Eleven of them passed over, bound inland. Toward the Hold, I thought.

  Mahela’s minions! It was a statement and a curse.

  I hope their errand was not to Istas.

  I hope their errand was not to Tassida.

  A jolt of jealousy, as always when he spoke of her. No matter. He knew worse of me.

  What can we do?

  Can you turn to a man again? Wryly. He knew as well as I did the answer.

  Not likely.

  Neither of us would soon walk in human form. I, perhaps never again. The thought scarcely troubled me. We would be fortunate merely to live.

  There is nothing for us but to go onward, then.

  Onward, to Mahela’s realm. Wherever it might be. And whatever strange perils might meet us on the way.

  There were no lengthy preparations to make, no provisioning such as was needed for human journeyings. We rose to breathe, cast a glance toward the land mass that glimmered in moonlight, toward dark fir forest sprinkled with the season’s first snowfall. Beyond their forested flanks, just a whisper of my beloved snowpeaks. We looked, and then we sank and swam away westward, the shoreline to our tails, our faces turned toward the open sea.

  The white female kept pace with us for a while. But when we had ventured beyond the shoals where the herring schooled, she began to circle in distress and make small noises in her throat.

  What is it? I asked her. Can you mindspeak? Though I did not expect it of her, and I was not surprised when only silence answered me.

  I do not even know her name, I said to Kor.

  Likely she has none.

  She has human form. She came to me, comforted me when I badly needed her. I am sorry to leave her.

  I touched her nose with mine. She gave a watery chirrup and tried to lead us back the way we had come. When we refused to follow but went onward instead, she trailed after us for some time, calling, her reluctance holding her farther and farther behind, until at last we lost sight and sound of her.

  Chapter Nine

  But it is beautiful, my mind murmured to Kor’s in awe, and for his own part he was silent, a hush within him that I could feel. If the wonders that lay beneath the sea were all new to me, to him they must have been a longtime dream seen in waking. Everywhere, marvelous creatures, the many fishes with flanks brighter than our swords, and something that shot by like a blunt spear, trailing long legs, and animals like great floating bubbles of many colors. Odd things. Yellow worms. Gilled sea snails, their shells coiled like a wild ram’s horn. Flowers that moved, sea daisies, sea asters, orange and blue and purple. And tiny bright things like snow motes drifting upward as if falling through a shimmering green—sky? It scarcely seemed to matter what was up or what was down. The undersea was vast, and as fluid as my new sense of time, and full of shifting shadowlight, and deep, and green. Wet, chill, and green, as if it were always springtime there, greener than any mountain springtime, any aspen grove, any grassland … We saw a swimming snake and caught its musky odor as it flickered past, gone in an eyeblink. We saw a shell lash out with a whip and stun a small fish. Shells shaped like swans’ wings, open and probing with something that looked like a tongue. Something all in spines, like a hedgehog. We saw strange plants swaying like dancers in the currents. We saw the prickly orange moss on the rocks. We saw sea butterflies with pink wings flying through the water.

  The land is dying, Kor thought to me, and the sea is full of life.

  Heartache in that. But I felt giddy with wonder. Yellow legs, webbed feet dangled below the surface: a gull was resting on the waves. I darted up beneath it and butted its tail with my nose so that it disappeared with a satisfying squawk. Gleeful, I hurtled back toward Kor, angled my flippers, rolled and nipped his back.

  Race! I challenged, and shot off, streaking through the green world—it was hard to remember that ocean had ever been an enemy to me. I could not laugh aloud for joy, but my body did—I flicked my wrists and twisted, spinning in the water. Kor sped after me, bathed in the bubbles of my passing, his nose straining somewhere at the level of my midriff. It was an even match, and he could not gain on me any more than that. But in a moment he veered away toward the surface to breathe.

  Enough! You are larger and stronger, as always.

  I popped up beside him, head out of the water, and looked at him in daylight that seemed stark and strange to me now, light filtered only by cloud and mist and air. I half expected to see his human face. His whiskered seal visage told me nothing.

  Why do you say that? I asked.

  Simple truth. He sounded peevish. Something ailed him.

  It is not! You are as strong, and most often more deft. I am an oaf next to you.

  Women of all sorts must prefer oafs, then.

  So it irked him, the matter of the sea maiden. Had he somehow sensed how great my pleasure in her had been? Is it my fault, I demanded, if you want only Tassida?

  At the mention of her name he ducked under the water and began swimming again. If he had been thinking, he would have taken satisfaction in the fact that I was hard put to catch up with him.

  Kor—

  Let me be.

  Kor, you fool, you are jealous of me! I cannot believe it.

  That slowed his headlong pace. We swam side by side, flipper by flipper, slipping through the greendeep with scarcely a ripple.

  Why should I not be? he asked at last. Vexation was gone, but the heaviness in him was worse. For my own part, I could scarcely grapple with the question. He, the king whose mercy had saved me, he, who had died and come back to me …

  You know what I deem of you, I mindspoke him at last, which you have forbidden me to say.

  That’s your folly. Harsh.

  I lost my patience. And it is your folly that you are yet a virgin!

  Curse you, Dannoc, it is not my choice! It is—fated on me.

  Then you are more than man, as I have told you many a time.

  He lunged at me and bit me in earnest. His teeth tore through the skin of my shoulder. Blood stained the water and salt burned the cut, but such a cold anger was in me that I did not strike back at him. The wound was not great—I would let him writhe for the giving of it.

  Ai, Dan … Already he was sorry.

  I kept silence.

  Forgive me. I am full of spleen. Anguish in his tone.

  So the sea is salt with the tears of a seal king. Mahela’s venom must have been in me already, that I should speak to him so cruelly. But the words stung him to truth.

  Ai, why not? Think what life will be mine. No lover will ever come to me. Even Tassida prefers you.

  The statement hurtled me out of anger into joy, and I hated the joy, for I knew he would feel it. And I hated him for feeling it, his gift to me, my joy which I would have hidden from him if I could.… Then came doubt, and joy faded. Kor would not lie, but jealousy might have nudged him astray.

  Don’t draw the long bow, Kor, I told him roughly.

  No long bow. Mere truth. You do not believe me? But I sense what is in her, as plainly as I sense what is in you. And I have felt her heart turn to you many a time. His tone was bleak, hard. Never more so than this time past.

  My vexation was lost in astonishment. But she as much as told me she would never have me, up there amidst the yellow pines.

  And you have looked on me with envy because she speaks with me easily but flees when you come near. The more fool you, Dan. Mahela take your cock, do you not see? She
is afraid of you because of—because of …

  He could not say it, but suddenly I understood him completely. Because of my cock, I finished for him dryly, which Mahela is to take.

  Well, you know what she did to Calimir, Dan.

  Comforting thought, I retorted, and felt a smile in his mind—he knew I had forgiven him. When he mindspoke again, he seemed very calm, no spleen or self-pity left in him.

  Something has been done to her, sometime, that has made her afraid. But she is not afraid of me.

  Because she felt none of the passion of a lover toward him. Joy welled up in me again, then overflowed into sorrow—for him. Ai, Kor, it is in me to wish you had never been made to know my feelings. Or hers.

  He nuzzled the side of my face wordlessly. We swam on awhile in silence, eating fish as we found them, rising for air from time to time. I no longer wanted to frolic. My head hurt from the quarrel or my own troubled thoughts of Tass. There were no more birds’ legs dangling overhead while we swam, and the vastness that faced me above the surface of the water when we rose to breathe bore down on me like a weight if I let myself take note of it. There was no land in sight anymore, not even a low dark rim, anywhere. Nothing in all directions as far as Kor and I could see but restless water that seemed gray under gray sky—and the sky loomed empty forever. Such endless sea and sky were like nothing I had ever envisioned, nothing I had ever dreamed. They awed me.

  Toward evening the sun broke out from behind clouds, making a pattern of pale rays like the fluting of a scallop shell.

  It is no use thinking of it, any of it, I told Kor, somber, daunted. Of Tass, where we stand with her, what she fears, any of it.

  Yes. If we can return alive, then there may be occasion for such thoughts. He understood me, he felt what I felt. We are very small. Though no smaller than we had been as men.

  I wish we could handbond. Flippers are of no use for that.

  Instead I felt the fleeting touch of his nose at my jawbone. Dan, I had forgotten how weary you must be. It was a long vigil for you. Sleep.

  How?

  Lie on the breast of Mother Sea and sleep. She will not take care of you, but your own body will.

  So I lay on my back, cradled in the swell, nose above the water, and I found that my flippers twitched and twitched of their own accord to keep me level and floating. It was an odd feeling, giving myself over to the rocking and the washing of the waves. Being so small, I had no choice but to trust the sea as I trusted Kor. Such a vast, cold mother. Yet oddly restful, once I became accustomed to her.

  Kor lay by me.

  How will we keep from drifting away from each other? Nightmarish thought, that we might become separated amid all the vastness.

  Our bodies will tend to it.

  Our flippers lightly touched, keeping contact. We slept. Kor drowsed more than slept, I think, for I felt as if in a dream his watchfulness, his gladness that he had me with him in this immense and daunting place, his shame when he thought of the cut on my shoulder—though he knew it did not pain me, for he would have sensed any pain of mine. Between waking and sleeping I felt his being, or dreamed that I did—I told myself I dreamed it. And then I swam to deeper, dreamless sleep.

  Sense of danger awakened us both at the same time. The sky had gone dark, a wild wind rising, cloudbank hiding moon and stars to the westward. Waves tossed us high. Lightning flared.

  To the deep, Kor directed, and he dove, swimming toward the storm to pass under it. We had no choice, for that way lay Mahela’s realm. I followed.

  Beneath the vast water, beneath the commotion of the waves all was calm. But we could not stay there always, we had to breathe, and when we surfaced we fronted all the fury of the storm. Rain fell so thickly it seemed to crowd out the air. Thunder jarred us to our bones, yet we scarcely heard it amid the roaring of wind and waves. Whitecaps rose in jagged peaks that made me think crazily of my mountains, spindrift flying like snow seen in lightning glare—but there was snow, thunder and lightning and snow! Ice pelted at my face. Thrashing water hurled me into the air as if I were no more than a stick of driftwood. Thrown high, I came down somewhere far from Kor, dove as if demons were after me. Then worse panic struck me. I knew I had lost him.

  Kor!

  No answer. I circled back up toward the stormy surface.

  Kor!

  Here …

  My heart thundered in my chest. Something had hurt him, I could tell, but I could not find him to help him in the blackness, the watery chaos.

  Kor!

  No answer.

  Kor! Sakeema, bond brother, pod brother, answer me!

  Don’t … call … me … Sakeema.…

  Closer. Lightning flicker showed me a dark form—I sped toward it. I found him by his scent, then, and bore up his weight on my back. He was floundering, stunned, stirring but not much able to help himself. I took him down to the calmer waters below us.

  I said it to rouse you. What happened?

  Lightning happened. He sounded stronger.

  A broad band of the sea before us turned bright yellow-green. I felt a tingle run through the water.

  Go deep. Kor started to swim on his own. It’s worse near the surface.

  Even as we dove the sea flashed. We swam in liquid light, a thrill in it that bordered on pain but became ecstasy, a bone-deep excitement. Nevertheless, it frightened me, for if it became stronger it would kill.

  We are swimming through lightning! I sensed in Kor the reckless surge I also felt.

  Can you go faster?

  We had better go faster, or we will have to face the surface again.

  We sped onward until strength left us and our eyesight blackened for lack of air. Then we turned and shot up again, close together.

  Powers be thanked.

  We bobbed about, gulping air. The storm had somewhat abated, or passed us by, leaving the waves running high but rounded like hills. Snow still fell, melting into the dark water. At a distance lightning flashed.

  Mahela’s welcome for us, Kor remarked.

  It is as well we are in the open sea. If such a storm had caught us near shore, it would have dashed us against the cliffs.

  Yes. The seals know when gales are coming. When they leave the rocks, my people know it too.

  But the white one, then, the sea maiden—why would she not come with us?

  A pause. Then, The sylkies, the undersea folk, Kor told me in a quiet tone, they are fond of land, it seems. They do not care to venture far from the shore.

  And I remembered the tale I had recently heard, of the long-ago sea maid Sedna found battered on the strand after a storm. No comfort in that thought.

  We rested again after the storm had passed. The sea, so furious only a little time before, cherished us in her bosom and lulled us. When we awoke, we went on in the direction Kor’s inwit chose for us until we scented fish.

  A great shoal of smelt, so huge that other seals, feeding on the far fringes, were but greenish shadows to us. The seals had indeed left the rocky shore to take refuge in the open sea. I went closer to look, Kor trailing behind me, but the white seal was not among them, nor had I truly expected her to be. Intent on the smelts, the seals did not greet us, and like them we turned our attention to the fish.

  I darted and gorged happily. Many many fish. In a greedy ecstasy I shot towrad the center of the school, shouldering my way through sea that seemed made of fish, frightening them so that they scattered. Kor headed me off and nipped at me, annoyed because I was driving away his dinner.

  Dan, you dolt—

  His tone changed to one of terror and shock.

  Graymaw!

  I saw at the same time he did. A great shadow sliding toward us through the greendeep, a huge fish with its terrible jaws agape, rows upon rows of teeth like spearheads. Gray, indeed it was gray, and silent as brume, and the vast maw lay toward the underside of its head, so that it angled toward its prey. One seal, then another, gone before they knew it was there. The rest fled, scattering
, making green wildfire of the water—even at the distance we smelled their panic. The graymaw lazily sheared the back flippers off one, swallowed it as a dark tide of blood stained the sea. Then with speed no seal could match it hurtled after the others, struck as I might strike a pollock, tearing a seal to bits, tossing the pieces about the water. Blood billowed with the currents. Kor and I saw no more, for our bodies had taken charge of us and we fled in utmost terror, even though our minds had seen that the brute was veering away from us. It might have been a halfday later when we finally slowed.

  Blood of Sedna. Kor sounded shaken still. It might have been us, Dan, if it weren’t for your folly.

  Having nothing sensible to say, I tried to jest. A pox on graymaws! I was no more than half done eating.

  Hungry, Dan?

  A wry inquiry. Not really, I admitted. We journeyed on in silence. Gentle journey, Tassida had wished us. It seemed not likely.

  Perhaps Mahela knows how long we were on the way, but I do not. Day flowed into day for me, and most often I did not know whether it was day or night above the surface, for it did not much matter to us. We slept in either, swam in either, ate fish of all sorts as we went. Nothing of the human love for routine was left in us. Even the washings of the tides meant little. The sea was so deep we could no longer dive to the bottom, to gauge our way by what lay there, so we swam as if in a void. Once I blundered into a sort of spiderweb place under a floating bubblefish and was stung. My eyes swelled shut, and Kor had to lead me for a while.

  Our sense of time, then, was only “before Dan was stung” or “after the graymaw struck.” And presently I noticed that the sea fogs were gone, the days fine and sunny.

  A shallow, Kor mindspoke me one such fine day as we dove, the sunlight filtering down to us.

  We could see the bottom again, ocean’s landscape billowing up in hills to meet us, seaweed waving on those prominences like—I blinked. It was more like tall meadow grass, green and yellow, than any seaweed had right to be, and through it ran—a deer?