The Devil and the Deep

by Ellen Datlow

  She pushes the covers back, listening to the slosh of the water outside and feeling the world bob up and down. Ana sits, stretching her arms until her muscles loosen and her joints pop. Her tattoos glow, luminescent against her brown skin. Sometimes the prince forgets himself and her skin becomes a wave-born undulation of seaweed fronds and coils of limbs, spirals, and nautilus chambers, infinitely unfolding and keeping him caged. It’s been happening more frequently lately, the prince suffering nightmares Ana only remembers in fragments on waking.

  She wonders if it means the magician’s cult is hunting her again. Or if the King Under the Waves is waking. Or both.

  Ana pulls on the wetsuit hanging in the miniscule shower. The neoprene smothers the faint light so she can almost forget about her tattoos. At the door to her cabin, she pauses, touching the twenty-year-old framed newspaper page hanging there.

  The grainy photograph shows the prow of a ship, jutting from the water, rescue crews surrounding it. The story underneath relates how the ship ran into an unexpected reef, tearing open its hull. How all sixty-seven passengers—mostly refugees—were killed, along with the crew. The story doesn’t mention the way the metal sounded, screaming, or the chanting she’d heard that had summoned the reef from the depths. It doesn’t mention the children that were stolen. It doesn’t say anything about Ana, or her mother.

  Ana emerges onto the deck, where the wind picks strands from her hastily gathered ponytail. Theo turns from the rail with a grin.

  “What’s the word, cuz?”

  Ana manages a wave, feeling the weight of her uneasy sleep.

  “The word is good, cuz. The wreck is right where you said it would be.”

  Ana peers over Theo’s shoulder at the image on his tablet showing the ocean floor in bright blots of thermal color.

  “Private vessel. Probably scuttled for the insurance payout. How did you know? Is it the, you know …”

  Theo wiggles his fingers and makes a woooo sound.

  “Shut up.” She snaps the words out harder than she means to, then shakes her head. They’ve been through so much together, from the streets to this boat, to saving each other’s lives more than once. It’s been years since she was a stick-thin teenager and Theo threw his arm around her shoulders. They’re not family by blood, but they might as well be.

  Theo’s grin is back a moment later. That’s the way it’s always been between them—Ana, surly and afraid of herself, Theo smiling, words sliding right off him.

  “It’ll be a good haul,” Ana offers by way of apology, putting up a fist for Theo to bump.

  Theo knows more about her than anyone else, other than the prince. More than she wishes he knew, and less than he thinks. She hates keeping secrets, but it’s for his own protection. Which is why he doesn’t know about the thing waiting in the wreck beneath them. The one useful scrap she’s been able to glean from the prince’s restless nightmares—a box, dreamed into existence by the King Under the Waves, worked like sand inside an oyster shell to make a pearl.

  The man who bought it at auction had no idea what it was. Now that man is dead.

  That’s another thing Theo doesn’t know. How Ana drifted in the waves and let the prince unfurl from inside her. How surprisingly easy it was with the prince’s help to convince the man with the yacht to sink his boat for the insurance money. Sink the boat, and himself, and the box, which had been giving him nightmares about things without eyes, without bones, all mouths, crawling dripping out of the sea. Things that flopped and squelched across the deck. Dead and rotted things rising out of the deep.

  Overhead, the sky blushes a muddy color between brown, purple, and gray. Ana checks her gear, and Theo hands her the dive computer, which she straps to her wrist.

  “I’ve got it all programmed,” Theo says. “Time, depth, everything. You won’t even have to think about it.”

  “Thanks.” She manages a smile, pulling up the hood of her dive suit.

  “Antonin promised us sixty-forty this time.”

  Which means Ana will get fifteen to Theo’s twenty-five—it’s his boat—but she doesn’t care. The box is all she cares about.

  Theo’s expression changes, and it’s like watching storm clouds roll in. His eyes, which are normally a color like rich, polished cherry wood, go almost as dark as black coffee. He squeezes her shoulder.

  “Be careful down there.”

  “I always am.” She tries to sound reassuring.

  He knows what she is, knows she could dive without her suit, if she chose. Maybe that’s what worries him. The clouds lift, and Theo flashes brilliant white teeth again.

  “Bring back the goods, cuz.”

  Ana tugs her mask into place, gives Theo a thumbs up, and tips backward into the water. The visibility is low, the world muted greens and browns. She switches on the light clipped to her shoulder, and the ghostly outline of the downed yacht appears below. The designs on her skin shiver with restless hope.

  If this works, maybe she can bring the prince home. She can finally be alone inside her skin. The idea thrills and terrifies her.

  She’s only “seen” the prince once. When she first began dreaming of the box, she started diving before the sun rose, staying down longer and longer each time. Unnerved by the dreams, the prince had been silent, sullen. The time when he would tell her fairy tales had long since passed, so it was Ana who reached for him, screaming inside her own mind while her lungs burned and ached for breath, demanding an explanation and a way to make the dreams stop.

  And he’d appeared. A skull, furred with algae and barnacles. It looked something like a goat’s skull, and something like an ichthyosaur, rolling loosely atop a body that made no sense. A ribcage, an impossible coil of blue-gray limbs unfurling and unfolding in constant restless motion. A voice like crashed ships, and eyes burning blue flame even underwater. Her prince.

  WE ARE ::::

  It was the first time she’d heard him speak aloud. She hadn’t understood the word, but she’d known it for a name, grinding against her like splintered bone. She didn’t understand how he could be inside and outside her body at the same time, but he was.

  WE ARE :::: OUR FATHER IS :::: WE ARE LOST.

  Ana had wanted to laugh and weep all at once. Part of her still does as she kicks her way to the wreck. If she stops for just a moment to think about her life—the ship, her mother, the thing inside her, the marks on her skin—she will start screaming and never stop.

  She pulls herself through the yacht’s open hatchway. A startled fish darts away as she enters the main cabin. There’s a bed built into the floor, cabinets above it, drawers beneath it, and a desk built into the wall. Ana starts with the desk. The prince is awake, shivering, and his movements make her clumsy. The bottom drawer is the only one that’s locked. Ana unsnaps the dive knife from her belt and wedges the point into the gap between drawers. She wiggles the blade as deep as it will go, then smacks the hilt. The lock pops open.

  Whorls and twists and coils move across her skin as she lifts the box free. The outside is carved with intricate designs both achingly familiar and utterly strange. Home. Ana flips the lid open. Inside the box is a labyrinth, not carved, but grown. It glows faintly, the same sick-bright shade of blue-green as the marks on her skin.

  Home. Home. Home.

  Ana sits cross-legged on her narrow bed. Outside, waves slap the hull. Theo is off with Antonin. She is alone with the prince, and the water, and the box. She traces the raised pattern on the lid, following coiled ways doubling back on themselves. The box is a map. Beneath her skin, the prince twitches a multitude of limbs.

  “Do you want to go home?”

  A jumble of longing and fear answers her; the words traitor, weakling, and flaw hammer at her from the inside. Snatches of fairy tales, the story of a prince driven from his home, imprisoned within a human body; the story of a girl, torn from her mother, made into a cage for a monster.

  Unmake me.

  The words echo inside her skull. Whateve
r the prince wants, it’s not this half existence. Ana opens the box. In the dim room, it no longer glows, but draws light into itself. A maze within a maze, haunted by tiny flickers of motion.

  The tattoos on her arms and legs lash, uncoiling across her belly and down her spine. Limbs and teeth and a skull and eyes like blue fire. Ana grips the box tight. She feels the suffocating weight of flesh, rotting around her. Around him. The thunder of blood not his own, constantly pounding in his ears.

  It’s too hot. Sweat prickles beneath her armpits. She has to get out. Clutching the box, Ana staggers onto the deck. She’s at the rail without even thinking about it, then up and over, into the water.

  The shock of cold slaps her awake. Salt water surges up her nose, she tastes it at the back of her throat. Light from her tattoos seeps into the water. It occurs to her she isn’t wearing her dive suit, her mask, her regulator. She shouldn’t be able to see so clearly. Her lungs should be screaming for air.

  Something tickles the side of her neck. Before she can slap it away, it becomes a burning pain, like a knife slit across her skin. She chokes on a scream, thrashing. She wants to drop the box but she can’t; it’s seared to her hands. The skin at her neck parts, and she’s breathing through gills.

  Her pulse jack-rabbits. She is a child in a room filled with tanks. She is a teenager on the streets, and a man with garlic-scented breath is threatening her. There is other skin beneath her own, slick and smoke-colored and drowned; her muscled limbs could tear a man apart, have torn men apart. Her teeth, needle sharp, have tasted blood.

  There was a woman named Zarah, once, with burnt-wood skin, who smelled like oranges and dark chocolate and cloves. They drank, and danced, and Zarah called the marks on Ana’s skin beautiful. She traced them with the tip of her tongue, and Ana could almost pretend she was human. Until she woke to the sound of Zarah screaming and the bed drenched in seawater. When Ana tried to reach after Zarah as she fled, the arms that reached were slick-black like oil, and she fell in a squirming mass on the floor, seeing the angry, puckered marks on Zarah’s legs and back and arms.

  What is she? A monster who will hurt those around her if she lets her guard down. Zarah. Theo. Even her mother, the first person the monster took from her. Rage floods her, and when the tide of it recedes, it leaves Ana hollow and cold. She’s still clutching the box, and she flips it open under the waves.

  A voice booms; the words are thunder and bells tolling on drowned ships and ancient stones cracking under battering waves. They roll through her like lightning, writing directions on her bones. Corridors unwind around her. Massive statues loom at her from niches, larger than the pharaohs and even less human. The walls are stone, emitting light the color of a star, but they are also made of the body of a vast creature long-since decayed. Ribs arching, a nautilus, spiraling endlessly down, the echo chamber of a skull.

  At its heart lies her father and a choice, and Ana wants to back away, but she hasn’t even moved. She’s still hanging motionless, her throat slit with gills, breathing underwater while the prince cowers inside her.

  A shadow darts at the corner of her eye. Ana turns and it surges toward her, gray arms unfurling. Squid. Octopus. Shark. None of the words fit. The face is almost human, but the skull slants sharply upward, the eyes are flat back, and when the near-lipless mouth opens, it reveals rows of needled teeth.

  Traitor.

  Ana shoots upward, her head breaking the waves. She hauls in a gasping breath, and for a moment, she chokes on air as the gills fight her and her heart stutters and threatens to stop. She claws for the boat’s ladder, expecting webbed hands to close on her ankles at any moment.

  Shaking, she collapses on the deck. Her skin seals itself, the flesh smooth as though it never opened. She’s no longer holding the box, but the word continues to pound inside her like waves against the shore. Home. Home. Home.

  She can’t help but obey, but if she does …

  Traitor.

  Ana hugs her knees to her chest. In the space between her ribs, between her skin and bones, the creature sharing her body curls small as well. Together. Afraid.

  “Once upon a time, a child sailed upon the waves.” Ana lies on her side under a pile of blankets.

  Theo found her on the deck when he returned. He put her to bed, made her hot tea, fussed over her until she insisted all she needed was sleep. But sleep is the farthest thing from her mind. Her whole body is wired. The prince keens inside her.

  When she was alone, when she was afraid as a child, the prince told her stories.

  “Once upon a time,” she says, “there was also child under the waves who was very ill.”

  Of course, she wasn’t there the first time the prince was placed inside a human body, but she tries to imagine it, and make it into a better story. A happier one. She makes it into a fairy tale, like the ones he used to tell her. Inside, the prince calms, listens.

  “And there was a wicked magician who tricked the King Under the Waves into thinking a human body would cure his son.”

  Ana’s muscles relax and un-cramp. She’s able to roll onto her back, but she doesn’t stop talking.

  “The child who sailed upon the waves had always been in love with the ocean. He dreamt of it every night, as though his blood was half seawater and his heart a many-chambered shell. This heart called out to the King Under the Waves, its every beat a siren-song, a beacon.

  “So the King became a storm. He found the ship where the child sailed, and fell upon the deck, shattering the mast. He tore the ship in two, ignoring the screams and the prayers of those on board. He found the heartbeat, scooped up the child, and drew him under the waves, but he did not drown.”

  The story is prettier than the truth, even with the drowned sailors and the ruined ship. There are no needles, no blood, no pain, no terror. But right now, this is the story both she and the prince need to hear. Her tattoos still.

  “There was a child under the waves, and a child above them. One loved the sea, and one loved the land. One sank, and the other rose, and after that moment, neither was alone again.”

  “Here.” Ana slides the tablet showing a map and the coordinates for where she needs to go across the small table in the cramped galley. Theo turns it, frowning.

  “That’s open ocean. There’s nothing for miles around.”

  “Ships wreck in the open ocean all the time.” Ana shrugs, looking away.

  Of course it’s not a ship she’s looking for, it’s a palace, a lost kingdom, but how can she explain it to Theo? How can she tell him a box in a dream and a voice inside her head are calling her home to a place she’s never lived, and she doesn’t know what she’ll find when she gets there?

  “Hey.” Theo’s voice is soft. She looks up even though she doesn’t want to. “Tell me what’s going on with you?”

  His voice is gentle, and there’s that concern in his eyes again. He peers at her to see beneath the hard edges. They’ve never really talked about it, but Ana knows Theo lost people, too. Why else would he have thrown his arm around her on the street that day? If sometimes she looks at him and sees home, then he must see it when he looks at her, too.

  “I …” Ana falters. “I need to go there, and I’m not sure I’ll be coming back.”

  It’s as close to the truth as she can get. The voice tolling through the waves, calling her home, is not a kind voice. She doesn’t know exactly what’s waiting for her, but she knows she can’t go on like this, afraid of herself, afraid for the prince, afraid of what she might do to someone who gets too close. If she ever hurt Theo …

  “Then don’t go,” Theo says.

  “It’s not up to me anymore.” A note of desperation breaks her voice, and Ana hates it, trying to push it back down.

  Even now, she can feel it, a tug at the center of her belly, pulling at a part that both is and isn’t her. Two lost children, one sailing on the waves and one alone and frightened under them. Maybe they’re not all that different. Maybe, by now, they’re one and th
e same.

  “If you’re in trouble, and I could help, you’d tell me?” It’s only half a question.

  The way Theo asks it makes him seem like the younger one between them. For the life he’s lived, Theo has remarkable faith in the world. He has faith in her, in them together. Ana shakes her head, tears frosting her lashes, but not falling.

  “Promise,” she says, and it isn’t entirely a lie. He can’t help her. This time, she’s on her own.

  Theo watches her for a moment longer, like she’s a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. Finally, he rises, leaving her alone in the galley. Ana cradles a mug of coffee between her hands. Heat seeps through the ceramic, but her skin remains cold.

  The wave builds, and holds, waiting a moment before breaking.

  Ana watches the horizon. The sea and the sky are almost the same color, a pale, washed-out slate. The wind tugs at her hair and her jacket, the nylon making a snapping sound like a sail.

  The engine’s growl drops to a purr, then a hum as Theo eases back on the throttle. There’s a splash as the anchor hits, followed by the long sound of the chain unwinding. Theo cuts the engine altogether.

  “This is it,” Theo says.

  Ana looks at him, really looks at him, as she hasn’t in a long time. He squints, deepening the lines at the corners of his eyes. There are a few early strands of gray in his hair, though he isn’t even thirty-five.

  There’s a sudden image in her mind, Theo, older, with his arm around a woman’s shoulders; she’s nearly a head shorter than him, thick at the waist, hair blowing in the wind as they watch a pair of children run.

  “If I don’t come back …” She looks away. It’s easier when she does. “Go somewhere far away from the sea,” she says. “Go inland. Find someone to love. Live a good life.”

  She makes herself look at him then, and smiles, a crooked thing. Her tattoos sway, restless.