Walking on Water

by Matthew J. Metzger

  Why so determined? What ship would risk all hands for an insignificant prize like theirs? They were a sloop, not a merchant ship. An enemy, certainly, but were they no longer in the practice of taking prisoners?

  “Sink her, or she sinks us!” the captain roared as he gestured wildly at the soldiers clinging to the netting and firing blindly into the darkness. “Her gunners! Remove her gunners!”

  Janez shook his head, staring. They had to make contact. They had to board her. The Ente had joined them, but her crew was a boarding crew, unskilled at gunnery and captained by a man more attuned to close warfare. They would be better boarding.

  “Here.” He thrust the eyeglass at a midshipman before launching from the quarterdeck. His boots slipped on the boards—blood—and he near-skidded into his captain. “Board her!”

  “What?”

  “Board her! Signal the Ente round to her port side, and we can clutch her between us!”

  “Are you mad? A frigate! She’s a frigate!”

  “She will not yield!”

  The captain stared wide-eyed at him. Shot whistled past them. A ball careened into the deck, a splinter flying up and neatly severing a man’s fingers.

  “Board her,” Janez said. “She will sink us if we do not board her.”

  There was doubt there.

  And then the captain seemed to shake himself. The men were watching. He squared his shoulders—and the order came.

  “Hooks! Bring us alongside. Mr Dietrich, signal the Ente to assail her starboard, and board her if they can!”

  In the smoke and sunlight, both ricocheting off each other in a blinding darkness, heaving the battered Vogel around the enemy’s bow and up her pockmarked port side was a dangerous game. They collided once, the guns bouncing inwards. A boy fell, screaming, into the void between the two ships, and the sound cut off with a sharp crunch as the wooden hulls kissed once more. Janez slid towards the broken railings and caught at the ropes to steady himself.

  And braced.

  The almighty crash as they collided once more coincided with a terrible howl from the enemy guns. Two simply exploded, the gunpowder and ball caught between wood and metal, and the smell of burning flesh, the cry of death, rose over the chaos like a reminder. Janez flinched, even in his newfound deafness, like a newly launched loblolly boy without the faintest idea of sailing.

  Focus!

  “Now!”

  His sword swept down; the hooks flung outwards and clattered into the torn deck and shattered railings, some catching and some not. The heave of ship to ship was immense—in his bones and under his feet, Janez could feel an answering pull. The Ente had seized her from the other side. The rush of men to cut the ropes was confused.

  They had her. They could have her.

  “Board!”

  The soldiers swarmed. Musket fire answered, and Janez leapt the gap with a roar that came from some primal place deep inside, fuelled not by king and country, but by brotherhood. His sword crashed with that of some faceless, nameless man fuelled likely by the urge to protect his own family, yet Janez fiercely did not care. They meant to sink him. And he would not be sunk!

  But even with the Ente and her men, this was no sure thing. The guns boomed and rocked below them, the enemy frigate determined to sink her captors while their men ravaged her decks, and Janez ploughed amongst the guns, slashing at their masters.

  Something caught.

  One of the Ente’s guns roared, and a ball ploughed through the railing past him. Janez howled as a splinter—two inches thick and seven long—was driven into his thigh. He wrenched it free with a gasp, and bitterly ground down the urge to fall. That meant death. They would cut him down, and Alarik would never forgive him.

  The caught thing was around his boot.

  And too late, he realised.

  As the great gun slipped, strangely silent, through the ragged maw gouged into the ship’s side, its rope coiled around Janez’s ankle and dragged him with it.

  For a moment, he simply hung.

  Hung in the smoke between two great walls.

  He could hear—very faintly, through a distant memory, and very long ago—a woman’s humming. It sounded like Mother’s, yet he knew it to be Sofia. Sofia, humming to his newborn nephew.

  The only heir left to Alarik’s throne.

  Janez sent up a brief prayer, a brief apology, some desperate hope that his childhood priests and tutors had been right, and he had some soul that could ascend and wait to meet his family again, for some reunion, for some forgiveness.

  He had not even kissed little Ingrid goodbye.

  Then the water clapped shut over his head, and—

  Chapter Five

  CALLA DID NOT mean to sleep, but she had done so, drifting off waiting for her sisters to do the same. But she woke early, while the night-crabs still explored the gardens below her window, and so without second thought, she slipped away.

  Swimming alone was one of Calla’s greatest pleasures. Alone, she could dispose of decorum, and wear clothes if she wished. Alone, she could control her hair and coil it up without a scolding. Alone, she could pretend she was perfect, without a single thing amiss, and that Father’s frown and Meri’s mutterings were nothing but a dream.

  Alone, she could simply be.

  Calla had never been like her sisters. As she’d shed her baby-blue fragments and grown her darker adult scales, and her skin had deepened to the subtle aquatic green of maturity, she’d felt more different than ever. She was exposed, not only because of her nakedness, but also her bare back. Sometimes, faintly, she wondered if the fin that rose from her father’s waist to the base of his skull did not make him stronger and bolder, did not ground the mermen in a way absent from the mermaids. Why did they have it, and not she? Why could she not obtain that? Why must she swim bare breasted, and they don seaweed shirts over their spinal frills?

  “You don’t want one for yourself. You want your husband to have one,” Meri had said, the one and only time Calla had given rise to such thoughts. But that was not quite right, either. The frill itself was ugly and rough. She liked the smooth bareness of a mermaid’s back, although that, too, undoubtedly would horrify Meri. So why would she want it, and hate it, at the same time?

  She’d only once said such things, but Calla knew others thought her to be an odd one. Even little Balta, only just turned green herself, had begun to treat her with suspicion. Father kept closer watch on her than the others. And the mermen that came to flirt and court and try their hand at obtaining a king’s daughter, and perhaps siring the future clan leader, always avoided Calla, as though they sensed her not to be a real mermaid at all.

  Somehow, she was evidently strange.

  But if evidently strange could get her to the sky and touching clouds, then she would show Meri. If she could break off a piece of cloud and bring it back, then she’d have her proof. Father would apologise, and Meri would stop commenting all the time as if she knew better than Calla.

  But first, she had to get there.

  Straight up was the obvious choice—the shortest distance, and no chance of getting lost—but as the darkness eased to a pale grey, Calla became disoriented anyway. So high from the ground she had lost sight of her landmarks, and all around was the same uniform, uninterrupted grey. She swam until her tail ached—yet there was still no end. Perhaps the sky never came? The sea was hostile and rough so high; she could feel a push at her very being that she had never felt before, like a great hand wished to drag her—somewhere. Anywhere. Then she saw it.

  A great blot on the sky, still so very far away.

  It was so very much larger than she had ever seen before. A cloud. A great cloud, immense and black above the paling grey.

  She could—oh, she could, couldn’t she?

  Arms outstretched, she struck out for it even though it was yet leagues away. With a new goal, a landmark at last, the weariness abated. She could breathe. She could see the cloud, and it was just like the one in the courtyard. I
t had a ribbed, bubbling surface. Little marks. Barnacles—again? Were barnacles magical, that they could touch clouds?

  Closer, closer.

  And—

  Oh. Calla drew up under the cloud until it was so vast it blotted out the sky itself, and she took a great gulping breath. Her heart beat bloody music against her chest. All she had to do—was touch.

  She reached.

  And breathed out in ecstatic joy as her fingers brushed the rough surface of the cloud.

  Oh, it was beautiful.

  Rough and alien, just like the one in the courtyard. And yes, there were barnacles. It lived, too. She could feel it shuddering under her webs. She could hear, from very far away, the booms of its heart. They lived! It let her touch it, like a gentle great whale.

  She was the only mermaid to have ever done this.

  Wouldn’t Meri be silenced! Wouldn’t Balta be jealous! Nobody had ever done this before. Perhaps—just perhaps—Father might stop this insistence on singing lessons that she loathed, on forcing her to screech in her high, painful voice. For who cared for singing when she was the first, the only, to have touched the sky.

  Ah, but no. She’d touched a cloud.

  A wide beam of mad joy on her face, Calla pressed both hands to the cloud in a fervent kiss and ducked down to swim along its great belly. If she could touch the cloud, then she could touch the sky. She could. She would.

  Something boomed.

  In a moment, Calla froze. She tensed up small, tail to chest. Ready. To—what? Flee? She was exposed out here. No weeds, no gardens, no rocks. Nothing. The sheer stupidity of her actions came to her all at once, in a seizure of terror, and she prayed fervently to the seas that it was nothing. That clouds were simply loud.

  The boom came again, and then the darkness above her swayed open, and light broke in. Not one cloud, but two. A storm? Was this what storms looked like, so far above—

  The water shivered, and something fell out of the sky.

  A—

  Calla’s eyes widened as the little creature drifted downwards. An arm was flung out, streaming a dark trail of blood. Hair, gold and gleaming, fanned out around its face. But it was no merling. It was—

  She uncoiled. Followed daringly as the tiny broken creature spiralled gently down like an abandoned kelp dolly.

  A skyman.

  Oh, but it was!

  It had the upper body—broken, so very visibly broken—of a merling, tiny and delicate, with hair as pale as sand. But there was no tail. Instead, two more strange little arms dangled loose, with club-like hands wrapped in strange fabrics. Calla reached out in morbid curiosity—and then recoiled, and the little body drifted away into the dark.

  A skyman. No, a skyling. They were—they were—

  “Real,” she breathed, turning stunned eyes to the sky. They were up there. And the great boom and shudder of the clouds…were they what had killed the cloud? How could something so tiny kill something so—

  The water broke with a terrible sound, and a great pointed rock fell from the sky, seaweed streaming from its nose.

  And caught in the weeds, a skyman.

  A real one, and—alive! It thrashed and wriggled like a fish on a spear, those four arms all writhing and—and—slowing, and—

  Hadn’t Mother said that skymen could walk on water, but not breathe it?

  He—he was caught in the weeds. That was why he couldn’t just walk up to the top again. He was going to suffocate.

  Calla threw caution to the currents and shot after the rock. It was crashing down with a terrible purpose like some ugly great orca, intent on eating this strange creature; Calla was sure of it. She bashed at it with her hands, but it only kept swimming down, so she caught at the rough seaweed and tore, trying to rip it from the skyman’s—limb. It wasn’t an arm, this close. It was so much thicker and longer. Harder. The strange fabrics clothed no hand, as Calla could not bend the wrist to slip it free like a hand would.

  But the weed was not tied, only twisted, and she wrenched it open. The rock-whale didn’t notice, plunging downwards, and the skyman drifted beside her.

  “Walk!” Calla urged and pushed him upwards a little, encouraging. “Go on. Walk!” How did they walk? What even was walking? Mother had said it was like crabs, but crabs scuttled. How could a four-armed skyman scuttle? Unless…

  She eyed the strange hands and pushed them up, too. The arms bent in the middle, but the wrong way. The elbows were on wrong. Like—

  Like crabs. Legs. These were his legs.

  “Walk,” she insisted, pushing them both. He rose a little in the water, and then she saw it. Dazed blue eyes, staring upwards. The feeble twitch of unwebbed fingers.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  Calla looked up desperately. Perhaps—perhaps—

  Oh, hadn’t she been about to touch it anyway?

  Decision made, she seized the creature under his arms and struggled for the surface. He was heavy and awkward, limp like dragging a seal carcass. Was he dead? He couldn’t be dead. She hadn’t meant to—

  Bright light.

  She took a deep breath, expecting impact—

  And—

  Cold.

  The—

  There was—

  Calla tried to breathe, and her gills screeched and clawed for water. Terrified, she ducked under and gulped in air. The sky ended! It just ended!

  Was that what skymen breathed?

  Tentatively, she heaved another great gasp and then pushed through again. Water slapped at her face in waves. Something stank, sharp and awful. Her face was icy cold, and two huge, hulking clouds swarmed around them. Deafening crashes and screams echoed from them. Fire spat from their bellies, like volcanoes in the deep.

  The clouds were—

  Swarming. There was movement all along them, like fish on whalebones. Skymen. So many, many skymen. The clouds spat fire again, and another fell with a screech into the water.

  Calla’s mouth opened soundlessly.

  The clouds were attacking each other. And the men—the men were—

  The cloud on the courtyard was no whale. It was an orca. A terrible, murderous beast! And these skymen—so many tiny skymen all over the clouds’ great, white faces—were trying to kill the pod.

  She ducked back under for another breath, and then back up. The skyman in her arms coughed and raked in a great gasp. He could breathe here. This was his water.

  What to do with him? She shook him, wanting him to get up and walk, but he simply drifted there with her. He was hurt. And if she gave him to the cloud, the cloud would spit fire at him and kill him.

  So—what to do?

  She turned this way and that in the water, looking for somewhere else, and spied a dark mass far away over the churning sky, low and long like a bank. Perhaps that was where the skymen came from? They had to have nests and homes, too, didn’t they, to be so like merfolk? Perhaps if she took him there—

  He stirred feebly in her arms, and Calla struggled to keep them both above the sky. She could never swim so far with him. She looked around and caught for a drifting scrap of cloud. It did not want to go beneath the sky, but she forced it, pressing it under the man until he floated on it, head and torso clear of the waves.

  And there he lay, bathed in bright light, and gasped.

  Calla grasped both hands about the cloud-cutting and began to swim.

  It was hard work. Skymen were heavy, and she kept having to duck below the sky to breathe. His legs drifted beside her head, one bleeding sluggishly, and he nearly slid back below the sky once before she righted him.

  But every time she looked up, the bank grew closer.

  In time, it formed into a green and yellow cluster, like bright coral. As she drew yet nearer, she could see tiny shapes moving on the edges and great windows in pale stone. They were nests carved into the bank. They lived as merfolk did. They lived.

  The sky punctured into their nest in a circle, and Calla dared not enter it. Instead, she pushed her char
ge onto a spray of dark rocks beyond the yellow stone. She could hear people shouting, though she didn’t understand the words. They would come for him. They would find him here.

  She turned to slip below the waves and escape the dangerous rocks—and fingers wrapped around her arm.

  Warm.

  Calla froze and found herself staring into blue, blue eyes. The skyman was awake. And—oh, so—so very—

  “Geh nicht,” he said, all ajumble and alien.

  “I—I don’t understand,” she breathed, and that beautiful face frowned.

  Mother had never said they were so beautiful. So—so much like merfolk. His skin on her arm was warm, like a southerly current, but so lacking in water that it felt strange and rasping, rough yet smooth all at once. His face was pale and marked in tiny dark spots over a straight nose. Bright hair streamed from his head, heavy and hanging down. Like—like her own. It didn’t float up here, above the sky, and it was a brilliant, reddish-gold she’d never seen before.

  She reached and touched it. It was clumped, soft, and slipped through her fingers.

  And he kissed her.

  Her arm jolted as if he’d struck her instead. But his fingers touched hers. Unwebbed and waterless. So alien, so strange, yet such a gentle, tender kiss she’d never felt before. She wavered. How was she supposed to breathe below the sky, now, when she knew skymen were walking above it, looking like this? Feeling like this?

  “Geh nicht,” he breathed again, and the kiss tightened. Their fingers rubbed. “Bitte―”

  “Hier drüben!”

  Calla jerked. Skymen. Swarming over the rocks. They were coming.

  “Hilfe!”

  She wrenched her arm free—and it hurt, how it hurt, the cold water washing that wondrous kiss away as she plunged below the surface and struck out, diving blindly into the depths until there was no sound but the thunder of her heart in her chest.

  Then—only then, with the sky impossibly high above her once more—did she stop.

  Drifted in the deep.

  And clutched the hand he’d kissed to her chest, as though she could preserve the feeling forever. He’d been so beautiful. He’d spoken to her. They were—courageous and wonderful, so very beautiful. Mother had only told the half of it.