Shizuko tried to smile at Hercule. If nothing else, he was the man her heart had settled on. If this was to be the end of her life, at least she could make her ending a good one. Still, she tried one last time to rouse him from his madness. “You rescued me from Old Chen’s pet, but you want me to fight dragons?”
“Not fight,” he said eagerly. “Just evade it. There’s only one here. And it cannot move until it has its devices in hand. Just bring the pearls to the surface and I’ll do the rest. Will you do this for me, Princess? Please?”
They’d reached the waterfront—nearly deserted because everyone else had sense enough to seek high ground. Shizuko looked out at the bay. Still calm, although that might not last long. But death certainly waited for anyone foolish enough to dive during an earthquake. She looked up at Hercule. His hopeful smile was so unlovely, so beloved. For you, Hercule-chan, I will fight dragons.
She nodded.
He led her into a rough-shingled boathouse and as her eyes adjusted, she saw a brass railing jutting from the water, gleaming dully. Hercule stepped onto a floating wooden platform and unlocked a low hatch near his feet.
Taking his hand, Shizuko let him swing her over the water to join him. She’d heard of these diving ships, these submarines, though she’d never seen one. This felt more and more like a dream. She welcomed the sensation. She’d died in nightmares often enough, but her dreams were usually pleasant up until the end. Numbness was better than fear.
She followed Hercule, climbing hand over hand into the little craft. It was calm here, bobbing just below the surface of the water. The thick wooden hull dampened the noises of her tortured city tearing itself apart. And Hercule was here. At the end of things, there was no one she would rather be with.
Hercule strapped his feet into pedals that he would use to turn the propeller shaft. He pushed until tendons stood out in his neck. Then, slowly at first, so slowly, the craft began to inch its way toward the far wall of the boathouse and he eased them out into open water. A school of silver fish darted past the porthole and Shizuko put up her hand, marveling.
“I should have brought you here before, Princess.” Hercule’s crooked smile reflected in the thick glass. “I thought you hated the sea.”
I do, she didn’t say. Or at least I did. Her mind felt clearer than it had in weeks. Months. Since long before the nightmares had made every hour of darkness a torment. She heard herself ask, “What do they do? Your devices?”
Panting, he said, “The creatures are vast, vast enough that the air of our world would crush them, were they to emerge from the seas. We think the devices protect them somehow.”
“And if I find them? What then?”
“Then I’ll carry them far away. Far enough that it might be a generation or more before they make their way back to the sea. They can’t be destroyed, or even hidden for long. We’ve tried…”
Panting hard, he added, “But you and I could start over, if you wanted. If you wanted to come with me.” Then he suddenly stopped pedaling. Silt billowed up around them from the seafloor. “We’re here,” he said, breaking the silence and relieving her of the need to answer him.
The tiny craft drifted and Shizuko took a deep breath. Now that it was time to do this, she felt less certain. She stepped out of her robe. If Hercule would just look at me, I would go away with him now. We could live happily ever after, far from the madness that haunts us both.
But he kept his face turned away, careful not to spy on her nudity. As carefully as if she’d be returning for it, she folded her robe and set it aside. He might care for her, but he would not leave, believing that the world would perish if he did so. Even mad, he was a better man than she deserved.
She strapped the diving knife he offered around her thigh, since its leather sheath was sized for his huge arm. The water was shockingly cold, driving the breath from her lungs. Drowning might not kill her after all. Perhaps the cold would simply stop her heart. So be it.
Hercule lowered the brass helmet over her head and mouthed something she couldn’t hear through the thick brass and glass. It looked like he said, “Good luck,” but luck was for people who hadn’t failed. Luck was for heroines out of a children’s story, not for her.
Shizuko let the weight of the helmet carry her down. Even near the surface, the water was clouded by sand and seaweed, and the light grew dimmer as she descended. A patch of brightness caught her eye, but it was already getting harder to breathe. She tugged the air tube three times as Hercule had instructed, and pedal-driven fans whirred overhead, forcing air into her helmet. A trail of bubbles escaped to the surface. Shizuko chose not to watch them go.
Instead, she turned toward the vague brightness she’d glimpsed on the seabed. Probably just an odd reflection from the ship. Drawing closer, she noticed it glinted as blue as the sky at noon. The water in the bay was green and thick with life. That rich shade of azure was as out of place as starlight.
Now her feet touched the seafloor and she walked slowly, weighted down by the helmet even as the water buoyed her up. As she approached, the silt cleared slightly and she saw the tide-jewels burning white and blue in the muck, each half the size of her fist. They’re beautiful. She reached out for them, even though she was still half a city block away.
She stared at white Kanju. Empress Jingü used this to stop the tides from coming in so her army could invade an island. Blue Manju swept the ocean back into place afterwards, drowning their pursuers. They’re real. They’re here.
But if Hercule’s story was more than a delusion, then there must also be a dragon lurking unseen in this dim underwater world.
The seawater went to ice where it touched her skin and she looked around nervously. A sea turtle drifted past, placidly curious. Beyond the turtle, a school of greenlings flickered in and out of a kelp bed. On her other side, a crimson octopus came close enough to brush the jewels. It went past, then turned, pushing at them again, unusually deliberate in its motions.
Like the soldiers in Tamatori-hime’s story, I think this one already belongs to the Sea Dragon. Shizuko’s skin prickled.
Another octopus came forward, as big around as a man’s torso. Then another and another. They surrounded the jewels, guarding them, nudging them across the seafloor.
Warily, she crept closer. Twenty jô away, she spied a rough outcropping of rock, barely visible through the floating silt. She wondered if a dragon laired somewhere within, though she couldn’t see an opening large enough. But the outcropping was the only place big enough to conceal something as vast as what Hercule had described.
Maybe it’s gone. Or still sleeping. Or dead.
Carefully keeping the distant rocks in sight through the shifting clouds of silt, Shizuko moved toward the jewels, but her mind fought her, overwhelming her with memories of the blind terror etched on her sister’s face. She forgot to breathe.
And then she saw it.
The dragon wasn’t lurking in some crevasse within the rocks, it was the rocks. Once Shizuko looked away, her peripheral vision filled in all the things her expectations had erased: an open beak crowded with jagged teeth, She’d mistaken it for a colony of anemones. On the other side of the outcropping, she glimpsed a tangle of stony protuberances growing near what must be eyes. Eyes the size of fishing boats. An entire fleet of fishing boats.
Hercule said it slept! her mind gibbered. The creature appeared immobile. But Hercule didn’t know about its army.
She looked around wildly, then took deep, calming breaths. Panic would do her no good. I can do this. I only have to get the jewels to the surface before the tako push them to the rocks. They may be willing, but their bodies are unsuited to this task, and the distance is great. It will take them many hours.
She dragged her attention away from the rock outcropping to plan her approach to where the tako guarded their prize. The glowing pearls left trails like snail tracks as the tako inched them away from the outcropping, toward a ring of spiky rocks as high as her head.
&
nbsp; Away from the outcropping?
Frantically, she looked between the octopuses and what she’d assumed was their destination. Then her body recoiled involuntarily, all her muscles clenching in shock when she finally grasped the immensity of the creature she faced.
The distant outcropping was the creature’s head. Which meant this spiked horror was something like a hand, bristling with claws. Her mind rebelled at the creature’s size. The jewels were already in its palm. If the creature closed its hand, the world would be lost, and all Hercule’s confidence in her would have been misplaced.
Another failure. He shouldn’t have expected more from me.
The nearest tako watched Shizuko with its alien, black eyes, daring her to approach. She accepted its challenge without allowing herself to think about it. If she retreated now she’d never find the courage to return.
As if sensing her terror, her weakness, the dragon turned its full attention on her. Rational thought fled as every bit of shame and rage and grief that Shizuko had ever felt was magnified, stretched, distorted, then thrust back into her mind to cripple her. Not real, she insisted. Not true! I’m sorry, Keiko!
Shizuko screamed, forcing a gurgle of bubbles from the rim of her helmet. Now the dragon swiveled enormous eye stalks toward her, slowly but inexorably. It’s already awake. Hercule was wrong! The jewels flared brighter. Shizuko had to reach them before it managed to close its fist. But she felt the prickling on her skin that meant something stalked her—something swimming close with predatory intent.
She held herself perfectly still, unsure if this was another trick. The dragon’s slow attention drifted past her. Then a hand grabbed her ankle just as Keiko once had, holding her back.
Shizuko whirled with Hercule’s knife in her hand, ready to cut off Keiko’s hair, ready to end this horror once and for all.
Only it wasn’t her sister; of course it wasn’t. A blue tentacle as thick as her calf gripped Shizuko’s leg hard enough to bruise before she yanked it free. More tako rippled through the water, their sly threats filling her mind, and she knew, suddenly, what had inspired Hokusai. Slowly, as in a nightmare, Shizuko struggled to keep moving toward the tide-jewels. Did the dragon’s attempts to reach the pearls cause the quake? Or did the quake awaken the dragon? It didn’t really matter.
Even if she died thwarting this thing, it would be her best ending. Not to humor Hercule’s delusions, nor to atone for failing her sister, but to cheat this thing of the world’s pain for even a day would be something to be proud of. And there are things worse than dying. Tamatori knew this. As do I.
Her unwieldy helmet forced Shizuko to lumber when she needed to dart like a minnow. The nearest octopus grabbed for the umbilical-like tubing connecting her to the world above, and Shizuko made her decision. Pausing only to gulp one last series of rapid breaths, trying to flood her body with oxygen to fuel her through what must come next, Shizuko unbuckled the chinstrap and let the helmet drift free.
The clarity the helmet’s glass panes had lent her vision was gone, but she could still see the brightly burning tide-jewels, could make out the blurred outlines of tako writhing closer with every beat of her heart. Slashing wildly now with her knife, she closed her eyes and lunged through a break in the ring of tako surrounding her. Ignoring the tentacles twining around one foot, she drew close to her target. There! She thrust her arm between the jutting claws just as the tako dragged her backward. Although her fingertips grazed the jewels, contact with the dragon nearly shattered her before she could remove them.
Its attack destroyed her reality as easily as the quake had destroyed her city. Blindly, she grabbed at the jewels, but now her fingers squelched, as if she’d scooped up a handful of unimaginable filth. She nearly dropped the pearls before recognizing the trick. Then she held fast, trying desperately to shore up what was left of her mind as she worked her arm free.
Gripping the jewels tight, she saw the outcropping was merely tumbled rock again. Nothing to fear now that she’d retrieved them. Yet her breath was almost gone and the surface was a tiny circle of light far above—so far that she’d never reach it in time. All around her, the tako clustered, waiting.
Soon she’d have to exhale her last air, and she would begin breathing water, unable to resist the impulse to fill her lungs. Shizuko kicked hard but dozens of tiny tako surged forward, tangling in her hair. Larger ones drew her limbs together, weighting and stilling her thrashing legs. One darted close to the jewels in her left hand and she stabbed wildly with the knife. A cloud of ink unspooled behind it, but her attacker escaped.
Shizuko knew her hands would relax soon: a shell diver’s last catch was always lost, and Shizuko’s hands were growing cold. She was already dead—she knew that. No one could steal from the sea-dragon and live. But if she died before expending her last breath, her corpse might float the tide-pearls to the surface where Hercule could retrieve them and take them far away. Oh my love. I am so sorry I doubted you. So sorry I wasted the time we had. I should have told you how I felt…
But she was out of time. Jabbing the knife beneath the heavy leather sheath, she gouged a deep hole in the muscle of her thigh. Pain was just a thing to be endured, but her body shuddered uncontrollably and the knife drifted from her limp hand as blood poured out of her, stealing her last warmth and writing her ending on the water as if with a tako’s ink.
Moaning despite her resolution to save all her air for its buoyancy, she pushed the jewels deep into the wound. Weakly, Shizuko cinched the sheath tighter, though the water around her ran red.
And then the blood rushing from her body ebbed and stopped. Tides of water, tides of blood, she thought dreamily. Kanju stops them all.
The pulse throbbing behind her eyelids slowed and stopped. She was happy not to drown, it was supposed to be an agonizing death, but her body was merely growing languorous, even as it floated toward the light of the world above. Find me, Hercule-chan. She tried to open her eyes, but her life had already ebbed away and her ending was upon her.
* * *
Hercule crouched on his little craft’s tiny deck, gripping the rail with one hand while blinking tears from his good eye. She had to be out there somewhere.
When the ocean had gone unnaturally still, he knew she’d done it. Despite everything, his little Princess had bested—at least temporarily—the creature below. But then her air tube had gone slack. Unthinking, Hercule had leapt into the water to rescue her, only to flop helplessly as stars spun through his mind and his body convulsed like a dying fish. He’d dragged himself back onto Ictinéo’s deck, weeping with misery and the terror that would not release him, even now.
Then his good eye cleared, and he saw her—a curve of white against the dull gray water. Her hair moved like seaweed, as limp as her empty hands.
He let out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. If she had found the devices, she hadn’t been able to hold onto them. Which meant the alien would regain them and the world would end. His eyes slipped closed. It was over, then, but at least he could bring her poor body in to the land for whatever time was left to them. He knew she’d never liked the sea.
He moved his craft closer, then let it drift until he could lean out and grab her wrists, lifting her up as gently as he could. Enteroctopus dofleini tangled in her hair and even twined around the blood-stained sheath at her thigh. He ripped the vile creatures off and hurled them back into the water.
Blood-stained…
He fought back a sob. He’d told her the dragon could not fight back. She was so small, she would have bled out quickly. His good eye blurred again. Shizuko’s cheeks were still pink, as if she lived, but he held her close enough to know that she did not. Somehow this was the hardest to bear, that she should look so undamaged.
But the unspeakable thoughts that had plagued him since he’d arrived in this city were gone. Shizuko’s poor thigh bulged grotesquely beneath the sheath. With a start, he wondered if she might not have been trying to staunch the flow of blood a
fter all.
“Oh, Princess.” A fierce elation swept through him as he unbuckled the sheath and the blood-washed devices tumbled into his hand. Heavier than lead, the smooth spheres seemed too small to be so important—rather like Shizuko-hime. “I’ll take these so far from the sea that they’ll never make their way back,” he promised. For although the tides affected everyone and everything—oceans, stars, the ebb and flow of blood in a person’s veins—it was easier to be wise when the sea was far away.
“The blood in a person’s veins,” he whispered, staring at Shizuko’s flushed cheeks. Steeling himself, he lifted the ruined flap of muscle in her leg and peered inside. The big artery was nicked, but not severed. He had a medical kit here somewhere. He rummaged in a cupboard and found it, pulling out a needle threaded with waxed black cotton. He placed a line of tiny, neat stitches in the artery itself, trying to hurry, though of course she was far beyond pain.
Setting tide-ebbing Kanju as far from her as he could, he muttered a quick prayer and gently pushed tide-flowing Manju back inside the awful wound. If Kanju had stilled her heart, causing the tides of her blood to ebb before she died, then maybe Manju could start them flowing again. He sat back on his heels, hardly daring to hope.
He didn’t have to wait long. Shizuko spasmed and coughed. Blood pulsed from the gash on her leg, despite his stitches. “Too much,” he muttered, and pulled Manju free. The awful flow of blood slowed to a steady trickle, which meant his stitches were holding, but he wasn’t finished yet.
When he set the heavy needle into her flesh, she screamed. Grimly, he held her down and tied off the first stitch before placing another and another. He did not stop, even though she screamed, for her pain meant she might yet live. Finally, she fainted and he was relieved not to be causing her more pain. Still she breathed. Still she breathed.
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