Pillars of the Deep

by Harper Alexander

  Not only that, but when it came down to it, imagining him thrashing his way through the dangers of the Deep had been a little bit of a turn-on.

  A turn-on that had me toying more and more with another coinciding, reckless idea. The seed had been planted before Inaja stirred the pot, but now the idea wouldn’t rest.

  And so I conspired to react in a way that probably no one expected of me.

  Maybe surviving the sharks had infused me with a false sense of invincibility, liberating me to confront the ocean head-on, or maybe it had made me realize you only live once and there were things I wanted, ink it, and I was tired of tiptoeing through life denying myself the freedoms everyone else enjoyed, tired of keeping myself from getting close to anyone, tired of being ‘safe, secure little Sayler’ who had never experienced anything but other people’s long-dead history.

  Would I never have a story or make history of my own? Memories, tangy and rich, at the very least, if not history?

  Oh, yes I would.

  Just as Pastel reached the ocean floor I scooped him back up and deposited him back on my shoulder, silently thanking the pit for its assistance and skimming back toward the city.

  * * *

  He came to my turret after the ball, all bedazzled in his signature silver and aqua and radiant with the invigoration of the festivities.

  Or the restlessness to be free of them.

  I was perched in the stained-glass windowsill, watching the aurora turn from one color to the next, though I couldn’t tell exactly what thanks to the multi-colored lens that served as my looking glass. Pastel was feeling up the different panels beside me, seemingly enchanted by the way the aurora appeared through the mosaic of panes, his tentacles fissuring absently outward through various avenues of the ribbing.

  “Did somebody send for sevelt?” the regent’s voice throbbed at the entrance to my tower, referencing the taffy-like candy that Pastel loved so much. I glanced over my shoulder, finding Coda laden with seaweed pouches, which he deposited on the mildewed stones of the floor.

  “That’s all sevelt?” I wondered off-handedly what symptoms a sick octopus would exhibit.

  “And a delicacy called ambrosin, which was the spotlight of tonight’s dessert buffet. Not for the octopus.”

  “I’m guessing you have not chosen a bride, then, or you’d be lavishing her with these gifts.”

  “Ah, alas,” Coda confirmed, “no sign of the lady heir as of yet.”

  Eyeing the pouches of sweets, I uncurled myself from the windowsill and glided toward the entrance. Seeing my interest, Coda unwrapped what he had brought for me, revealing spongy little glazed things that resembled cobalt-blue donut holes, with a few more moon-like craters. Coda slithered into the tower as I reached him, and it was suddenly very crowded, the water a delightful shade warmer. I reached for the treat and took it between my middle and index finger, slipping it slowly through my lips.

  Cinnamon-spicy and sweet, with strong hints of coconut.

  Not bad.

  Pastel sidled across the chamber to inspect the goods, and Coda unwrapped the sevelt and swished a piece toward the creature. Snatching it out of the water, my turquoise minion gobbled it up, moving greedily closer for more.

  By the time Coda turned back to me, I’d worked up the nerve to out my crazy request.

  “Take me to the deep ocean.” Just like that, I laid it on him.

  His silver eyes sparkled with surprise. “You wish to see the Deep?”

  “I have not found what I’m looking for down here,” I explained, referencing his words from our little meeting in the ballroom. “I have to go deeper.”

  He considered me with a look halfway daring, halfway grave. “You may not come back.”

  “Please. I was called down here for something. And it is in my bones to long for the lost layers of the world. Show me what no one’s eyes have seen before.”

  He could easily refuse. What I asked was reckless. Possibly a suicide mission. But I was hoping he was just as hot-blooded to return to that cauldron of thrills and larger-than-life mystique as I was to glimpse it for the first time. After all, he had attained his greatest glory there. Wouldn’t there be a part of him that itched to go back? One did not forget his glory days, or easily extinguish the nostalgia nestled at the core of those fateful memories.

  “Very well,” Codexious agreed. “I will take you to the fringes. But no further. I have earned a certain respect with the beasts there. But I would not wish to put it to the test surrounded by their ilk.”

  Excitement brimmed inside me. My chest swelled with it. Heat flushed my neck and cheeks and sparked a keen flame in my eyes.

  Apparently just as keen as I–unless there was simply no time like the present–a shadow of mischief spread over Coda’s face, and he jutted his head invitingly toward the open sea beyond my turret. “Shall we?”

  Just like that?

  A grin played with my lips, half flustered, half giddy. I opened the sack of sevelt so Pastel would stay occupied, and he didn’t even notice us slither out of the turret. It was strangely natural for me to reach for Coda’s shoulders just like when he’d taken me to the geode caves and underwater waterfalls, knowing we’d get there far faster at his finned clip and that it would be his agility and stamina that saw us there and back safely. I would do well to stick very, very close.

  And then we were off, into the Deep.

  * * *

  We swam for what felt like two days, descending past drop-offs, delving into the indigo murk. I felt like I became fused to Coda’s back and shoulders, so long did I cling to his body. If I thought Atlantis had demonstrated how vast and fathomless and uncharted the ocean was, diving to the Deep doubled that.

  At long last we slowed, angled downward and slipped like worms into a jagged, tight crawl-space of rock. I clung tighter to Coda as the rocks hemmed us in, claustrophobia sealing around me. It was like the physical, fossilized version of the wormhole that had whisked me through the ocean and spat me out in the Atlantis dimension, a wormhole from an even far more ancient world, the magic of the passage having long since ground to a halt and become petrified.

  I closed my eyes as Coda worked his way through it, feeling the graze of rock now and then against my back. His fin had essentially gone stagnant, nothing but hand-holds and slippery maneuvers pulling us along. The water darkened as we went until even my adjusted mer-sight couldn’t make out the strangling passage around us.

  And then we were through, emerging to a pitch-black openness that no sun or aurora could ever reach.

  I caught my breath, my gills fluttering shut, feeling myself cower closer against Coda’s back. Was this it?

  Was this the Deep?

  Coda reengaged his fin, but it took me a moment to sort out up from down and forward from backward and to realize we were not delving deeper into the black, but treading water upright.

  Was this as far as we would go? Was he waiting for something? Could he see and hear and sense things that I couldn’t?

  What moved through the blackness before us?

  Around us?

  A creepy-crawly sensation shivered all up and down my body. I wondered in the back of my mind what could possibly have compelled me to want to come here, but there was no going back now.

  That is, I could only hope there would be ‘going back’, but we were here now and I might as well accept I’d asked for this and get on with what I’d come for.

  Slowly, I relinquished my hold on Coda’s shoulders. My hands and arms were stiff from adhering to him for so long, and I worked my fingers to return blood flow. Trusting that Coda would object or pull me closer if the need arose, I let a small space drift between us just so I could breathe in the Deep and present myself as my own entity come to commune with its essence.

  I am Sayler, daughter of Vel-Di’yah, wayward child of the sea and the air, I mentally announced myself. I have heeded your Call, and have come to beseech the powers of the Deep for enlightenment.

&nb
sp; Would there be a response, in any shape or form? Or would I be left ever hanging, questioning what this whole thing had been about, forever stuck between the sea and the sky with no clarity as to where my place was in life?

  There had to be something here, something–

  All at once, Coda’s hand connected with my shoulder, ramming me back into a bluff of rock that I hadn’t even known was there. I was startled for all of one instant, and then his motives became clear. As he pressed in close to me, his chest brushing mine, an enormous serpentine creature pulsing with veins of light snaked out of the darkness and ripped past. Like a long-tailed train it continued to reel by long past its initial emergence, a glowing, ruffle-like spine suggesting it might have been some form of eel, rather than the general sea serpent I first mistook it for.

  A giant, electric eel.

  The ruffle grazed across Coda’s back as the thing tore by, and I sent my alarmed gaze to his face, afraid it might be hurting him. But instead of pain, I found his eyes afire with a reckless adrenaline, flecks of electric light reflecting along the edges of his silver irises.

  Goosebumps prickled me from head to toe under the warmth of that look. It was the last place one might peg as romantic, but, bodies pressed together, both of us simmering with adrenaline, a wild spark ignited between us. For a moment it brought to mind the atmosphere of clubbing, back in the realm beyond the Surface. Crowded together in the electric dark, neon lights pulsing and strobing.

  But we weren’t in some superficial club, dancing without a care. We were in the deepest, darkest recesses of the mythological world, literally grazing a fast-reeling monster of death.

  Yet in that moment, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Coda to press closer, showing zero regard for the beast whipping past, and crush his snakeskin lips to mine.

  I mean, what else was there to do while waiting for the danger to pass?

  His kiss was fierce and desperate, this thing that the regent of Atlantis had resisted with unending discipline, but which Coda, rebel legend of the Deep, had perhaps wanted to do all along.

  Nothing about that kiss tasted like cotton candy.

  It was salty-sweet, smooth but definitely not soft. Coda was a prince of the wild sea, and he kissed like it, crashing into me like a wave. And just like being tumbled head over heels by a wave, not knowing which way was up or if you were cold from the shock or hot from adrenaline, the rush left me dizzy. My arms snaked around him, pulling him close with the excuse of drawing him out of the eel’s path. I felt his heartbeat against my chest, steady but inflamed, and mine crashed against him.

  There it was–safe, secure Sayler making tangy-rich memories sure to stick with me for the rest of time.

  I didn’t have any aspirations of swooping in and stealing the Atlantean crown, but things felt different in the Deep. There was a shift, a feeling of nothing down here counting on the official record, a failing to exist in the regular world.

  What happens in the deep sea, stays in the deep sea, type of thing.

  I had no interest in the crown, but I did have a soft, sweet spot for this glorious merman, and if he wanted to kiss me in the deepest-dark where no one would ever know, that was fine with me.

  A part of me wished the eel would never pass, that it was some endless giant and we’d be forever stuck in this paradox where the rest of the world didn’t matter and Coda’s lips were on mine.

  Where his lips were on mine and our faces were tangled in my hair and I could feel the icy silver kiss everywhere his scars touched my skin. They branded me, frost-hot, fissuring sensation all across my body.

  Then the length of the eel used itself up, pitch black clamping down around us once more. Coda’s kisses slowed and wandered until his cheek brushed gently against mine, and there we lingered, hovering breathless in the dark.

  I swallowed, utterly terrified of moving even an inch away from the safety of that bluff. Take me back, I wanted to whisper, but simultaneously wanted to loll there forever, savoring the unreal moment just a little bit longer, and then a little bit longer…

  Operating under a sense of abnormal confidence since we were immersed in absolute darkness and he couldn’t see me, therefore I could pretend it wasn’t really me at all, I trailed my fingers around to the front of his torso, up his chest and neck, and with the softest vise on his marble cheeks drew his face once again to mine. If this was it, all I’d ever get–I wasn’t done yet. Once we returned to Atlantis it would be back to the regular parties and the search for a queen and I would have no place in it lest he risk the greatest scandal of all time and I risk my life, but down here…

  Down here the prince of the sea wanted me, and I didn’t have to hide half of myself afraid he’d discover my freakish secret. I was only afraid of the moment we had to go back to civilization, and hide this.

  Because now that the wave had been released, I didn’t know if I could stop it from gaining momentum, frothy and powerful and cresting with breathless altitude high above the rest of the world, only to crash and burn upon the shore.

  Chapter 24

  Things didn’t exactly return to business as usual once we were back from the Deep. There were glances, fleeting brushes of wayward contact that I couldn’t help but notice more than before, expressions that meant something, moments charged with unspoken scandal.

  A look in his eyes that smoldered with secrets and told me exactly what he was thinking about.

  The aurora after we returned, Codexious came to me in a rush of excited bubbles, ushering me to follow him to the cathedral. We’d come up against a bit of a hump with our composition, and a fit of inspiration had come to him after our journey to the deep sea.

  He flourished the new string of music across the keys, the pipe organ revving with majestic tones. Something uncurled inside me, hearing it. Goosebumps prickled my arms and legs. Equal parts haunting and beautiful, the new motif struck me right in the epic feels. He was definitely onto something.

  “I think we should call it ‘The Deep’,” he said when he was finished, turning to see what I thought. “Our song.”

  I had to shake myself from the spell, clacking my mouth shut. What did he say? Oh, he wanted to name it after our… “Ah–yes. That sounds very fitting,” I stammered in a dazed fashion.

  “You like it?”

  “It’s perfect.”

  He grinned, his eyes flashing with aquamarine enticement.

  Inking Abyss, why did he have to come with a crown?

  Something played through the back of my head, an elusive echo of harmony. I chased after it before it could fade into nothing–and before Coda’s bedroom eyes could lure me down a different course. “What about this?” I suggested, brainstorming how I could weave it into his composition. I kicked over to caress my idea across the keys, playing mainly on the middle tier for the sake of the experimental riff.

  I didn’t even hear when he came up behind me, but suddenly his scale-burnished arms were sliding up to sequester me on either side as he reached to add in a harmony on the bottom tier. Without touching me, he ensconced me in his open embrace, and my heart stuttered at the breathtaking combination that waltzed from the unicorn pipes when we played the instrument thus.

  I didn’t think I’d heard a more stunning harmony in all of my life.

  Yet, so distracted by Coda’s enveloping nearness was I that I inevitably trailed off, unable to concentrate. He continued, prolonging the entrapment, and as the fingers of his right hand started a musical, stair-stepping descent down the keys from the outer edge of the instrument, I did a daring thing and let my fingers come to rest on the middle keys of his tier. Directly in the path of his progression, I invited–practically dared–him to touch me. But he slowed his progression, delaying each note longer than the last, taunting me with the deescalating tip-toe of his fingertips.

  Just touch me, ink it. I didn’t even recognize the sentience that took over my thoughts in situations like these, campaigning for stolen moments of blis
s. The girl that had been stifled along with my gills was realizing her appetite for such things, the initial testing-of-the-waters liberated and on the prowl for closer encounters.

  But Coda was maddeningly in control, here in the city where he had a role and a duty and certain airs to maintain. The music trailed off with one prolonged note, his fingers coming to rest alongside mine. One shift of my pinky, and I could be touching him, could feel that ultra-smooth texture that was his scaled sheen. But I kept it rigid, a single, sheer veil of restraint between us.

  “That was enlightened,” Coda breathed, praising the direction our masterpiece had taken. And then, knowing of my less-than-appeased position regarding the mysteries that had summoned me to Atlantis, remarked, “Maybe the Deep spoke to you after all.” After our kiss in the electric depths, he had whispered in my ear that we shouldn’t linger, and that I should secure whatever I had come for. He’d taken my hand and drawn me away from the bluff and allowed me to tread water for a good long minute in the tar-like silence. But at that point I couldn’t quiet the adrenaline, couldn’t curb the paranoia racing all up and down my body that another monster would lunge out of the dark. And so, after levitating fruitlessly in the void for a few tense minutes, I’d accepted defeat.

  The motives of the ocean remained a mystery.

  Disillusioned, I returned to Atlantis and had essentially holed myself up to sulk in my tower since, but Coda’s sudden bout of inspiration was infectious.

  There was, of course, this nagging little voice of mischief that liked to point out I’d gone to the Deep seeking the reason I’d been summoned to Atlantis, and by way of an answer I’d been soundly ensconced in Coda’s affections.

  It was ludicrous to speculate that that was my answer, and yet…

  “Maybe it has,” I agreed, a gentle murmur that trailed a fiery, daring comet tail.