Ninety Days of Water

We had washed the worst of the muck from our clothes and scrubbed the mucus from our wounds. I was feeling raw as the wind snatched at my still-slightly-damp robes, drying the sleeves, the intricately folded front panels, and finally my collar and hood. The sounds they made as they flapped and fluttered around my face masked the drumming I could just detect on the edge of hearing. I stiffened in the wind, listening for the rising tempo, which was difficult to distinguish from my heartbeat. I noticed that there were other noises too. Though barely discernable, they were clearly syllables. Someone was chanting.

'Can you hear that?' I asked Fletch.

'Hear what?' He paused, stiffening too so that his broad chest became a wall, buffeted by the wind.

'It's like singing.'

If it had been up to me, we would have turned around there and then. I had my suspicions about the unfamiliar voices, and the strange, melancholy way they complimented the sucking of the tide. I wasn't keen to meet more people like the sea-woman, which was part of the reason for my dragging us along the heights; far above the raking of the waves on the sand, the swirling water and the obstacle fields comprised of stranded jellyfish.

My skin still shuddered at the memory of their stings, and ached with the aftermath. I scratched my forearm absent-mindedly, working at the angry, red rash that had sprung up there. Everything about me had been rubbed raw that day, including my temper. The sea, which had recently become such a dear friend to me, seemed to exist now only to throw salt in my wounds.

Fletch, however, had only had a tantalising glimpse of the mysterious stranger. He had not been there to hear her threats or her acidic tone, as though her tongue corroded words. He had not seen up close the toxic shimmer of her skin, and its many vibrant warning colours, which were like the yellow on wasps or the bright violet of barbed walkers- a sign to stay away. To him, she must have appeared from the distance like a glimmering jewel, and he longed to pluck her from her plain surroundings the way children grab at the insectoid walkers the first time they encounter them, but never the second.

'Really?' His voice increased in pitch, so that the second syllable was torn away. 'Let's see it, then,' he decided, and, to my horror, took off in pursuit of what I could only assume he thought was a short-cut.

It was all I could do to keep up with him, stumbling across the loose stones and serrated protrusions that guarded the cliffs from the sky. I scurried like a rat along the battlements as Fletch moved in leaps and bounds, judging gaps and finding footholds as though he were born to scale such formations. Then again, I thought, perhaps he was. I still couldn't recall where he had grown up, or even whether anyone had ever told me. He might well have won his stature and his strength among the steep gullies of the Heights, or in the notoriously hilly the Valley of the Giants, where boulders strew the ground like marbles, and the flat-topped 'tables' were strides high.

He did not seem to pay attention as he skipped from stone to stone. He didn't even wince as his sandaled feet landed on points of rocks thrust up like teeth from the earth, merely throwing out his arms for balance, and then shifting with the same momentum to another spot.

I tried to imitate him, badly. Not only had my own boyhood of ducking low kicks, shuffling to avoid attention and being underfed poorly prepared me for such graceful exhibitions, but my brief crash course in beachcombing had not taught me to spy all the invisible paths in the landscape. I would swing my arms awkwardly, lurch forward, discover with a cry one promising stone to jump to, and then find myself reeling in my new position, surrounded by options I was not quick-thinking enough to assess.

Fletch stopped and was waiting up ahead, his robes falling down to cover his feet so that the point he posed on so naturally might well have been the base of his person, anchoring him to the ground. The muscling wind did not seem to bother him, as it bothered me. With every wobbling step or timid skip I took, I feared that it would push me over, and that I would be unable to prevent my fall as I toppled over the cliff. Handholds would slip by me as I plummeted, just as footholds eluded me when I hopped, and I would see none of them until it was too late...

I swallowed nervously.

I considered turning back, but the path behind me was no clearer than the one ahead. I swore that it had shifted, for it was completely unrecognisable. I could not even tell which stepping stone had been my last. A thicket might as well have knitted itself closed behind me, or a door locked. If I endeavoured to go back, I would struggle on my own.

'Are you coming?'

My companion sighed impatiently. He seemed also to have learned the art of letting his voice glide on the wind, rather than having it flounder and be snatched away. Again, I was not so adept. I shouted an assent, but it was muffled by the same gust that had been his messenger, so that I was forced to nod and make a few hurried, shaky jumps by way of a reply. Just when I had been so sure that I might find comfort in a life by the sea, I decided that her very breath, saturated with her scent, was determined to spite me in every possible way. Even my robes seemed to expand and drag me backwards, while Fletch's carried him forward like sails.

Finally, we arrived at the end of the treacherous stretch that, he confirmed, had been the 'short-cut'. I feel to my knees in exhaustion, thanking the Eight Gods for the smooth face of rock in front of me. I did not care to factor into my gratitude the fact that there would need to be a return journey. Only once I had recovered my breath did I realise that the wind raced more fiercely across the exposed hilltop, and that the ground below seemed far closer without a rugged barricade to screen it from view.

The voices were also closer, and sharper. Fletch had led us in the right direction, if reaching them was his goal. In light of our recent ordeal, which had left him rosy and beaming as though it had been an exhilarating jaunt, I was now convinced that it was nervousness, rather than perceptiveness, that had made me hear the music first. No doubt he, his chest inflated with fresh energy as he savoured the nauseating view, was too distracted by the plenitude of wonderful things around him to notice something as commonplace as the chanting of unknown numbers of vicious sea-people.

In that moment, only one thing could have been worse than the deep-throated rumbling of that music, so near to us that it shook the ground, and that was the ominous howling of the empty air when it stopped.

They've noticed us, I thought, so maybe they're leaving. Fletch was thinking something much more accurate.

'Look!' he said excitedly. 'They're coming over!'*

I groaned. It was partly an expression of agony, made on behalf of my smarting skin and freshly throbbing feet and ankles. Partly, however, it was the sound of the ghost of optimism fleeing my body, for I saw, of course, that Fletch was right.

There were six of them, and each more alien than the last. Foremost was the woman I had encountered earlier, with her flat, fish-like face and wide lips, her hair a wild mane in the vortex. Her skin was more bluish in the daylight, and the seashell at her throat gleamed. This time, she grasped a knobbly staff, made from what I could only presume to be a dried club of kelp roots, in one of her webbed hands, and brandished it like a weapon.

A male stood beside her, only a little way behind. While his head was as smooth as a pebble, it was cleaved by a spiky fin that stuck up like a rooster's crest or a fan of knives. He was bare-chested above a skirt of weeds, and the girth of his arms, the set of his shoulders and the tough look of his sinews would have impressed the hardiest of men. Indeed, as I thought this, Fletch made an appreciative sound. The sea-man's deep blue skin was marred by various splotches and stripes like long knife-wounds, so that he would have been well camouflaged drifting just below the surface of the water. These inky markings were even less tattoo-like, and more apparently natural, than the brands we sorcerers wore.

The others were less recognisably human- or humanoid, I corrected myself, for they could not have been human, even under the most effective glamours. Some had fins for ears, or round, bulging eyes set into the flat sides of their faces. Others had scales, more obvious than those implied by the glittering, amphibian skin of the sea-woman, which I guessed might be slimy to touch. Still more had actual ears, but with coins as large and elaborate as compasses set in them, while others had malicious claws or tiny tentacles in place of fingernails. These last seemed to wave of their own accord, like feelers or antennae.

One of the denizens, whom I suspected might be female, wore a netted coif over a wriggling, purplish mass of tendrils in place of hair. Perhaps to keep it wet? I mused, before a more chilling thought slipped into my consciousness... Perhaps to keep it tamed.

Before I could further fuel my ill-ease, four things happened all but simultaneously.

The sea-woman, whom I had by then deduced was the leader, stepped forward and struck her staff against sharply against the rock. Where it landed, it blocked the path of the crested male, who had begun to lunge forward. Before he had done this, however, Fletch had also stepped forward, with a hand extended diplomatically. The fourth and final thing that happened was that a projectile blob of something green and lumpy, like regurgitated seaweed, sped through the air, coming to land a mere finger's length away from my companion, who shuffled back.

The green bile bubbled and hissed as it ate into the cold stone, dissolving until all that was left was a rough crater. This was what I supposed the sea-woman had meant when she threatened to spit at me. I saw surprised to see that, while she had a distinctly menacing look in her eyes, it was not aimed at either myself or Fletch.

The male whose way she had barred was fanning his gills in vexation, and held his lipless mouth in a snarl, baring something that might have been fangs. With a small gasp, I realised that, in fact, our predicament was far worse. They were not a single set of fangs, but at least two sets that I could see, protruding from staggered ranks of white triangles like the teeth of the miniature sharks in Lightshale's saltwater ponds. I could not tell how many lines there were in total, only that there were too many.

In a voice that sounded like the seething of storm-tossed waters tormented by lightning, the sea-woman began jabbering away at the male. The others watched, retreating from what might have been an argument, but was more likely to be an admonishment. They did not intervene in their leader's dispute. Most likely, they did not want to bear her wrath.

I saw that she had fins now, too. They had previously been hidden in her vine-like swathe of hair, but anger had made them flare up. They were delicately veined like the tails of fishes, and glistened like translucent traps for rainbows, but they were not beautiful when reconciled with the rest of her terrifying appearance. She loomed, as though she had grown larger all of a sudden. I wondered whether the dark clouds brewing behind her had amassed on her whim.

Fletch used the distraction to creep back towards me, so that we stood side by side, offering each other the illusion of security. I saw that he was staring, open-mouthed, at the male, who had slicked back the fin on his head. The fins, I decided, must be appendages these people -or at least those of them that had such- could contract at will. Was this then a token of submission? Quietly, I hoped that between the two monsters, the female would prevail, for she had at least warned me of her hostility. I also knew that she spoke my language.

For the first time that day, I got my wish.

'You,' she hissed furiously, abandoning the sulking male to seize me by the wrist. Her free hand thrust a claw towards the roiling clouds, which rumbled in answer. 'Spies?'

'No!' I denied, writhing but making no real attempt to break free. I knew that it was futile.

'We were just exploring, and we heard you singing, so we came to investigate,' Fletch blabbered, and I felt all the colour drain from my face.

'No,' I mouthed to him, hoping that my eyes and the creases I could feel forming above them conveyed the rest. No, no, no, I pleaded, silently.

I wasn't sure whether it was this admission of interference, the off-handed reference to 'singing', or simply the fact that Fletch had spoken at all that enraged the woman. In any case, she tugged hard on my wrist, dragging me fully upright, and nearly off the ground. Her grip was stronger than I could have expected just from looking at her, and I felt that at any moment, my bones might shatter. I could almost feel them popping apart under the strain my weight.

'You take our drifters,' she said, balling accusation and judgment together. 'You come back to our beach when I tell you to stay away. You are all the same.'

'We weren't there by choice,' Fletch protested. 'We didn't want anything to do with your horrible beach or your slimy drifters!' He shook back his sleeve to show her his sting marks, which only seemed to make her more irritated. 'They,' he pointed in the direction of the Tower, which now seemed hopelessly distant, 'made us do it.'

'Silence!' she shouted, using two of her claws to make a gesture that looked to me painfully similar to a pair of fangs.

She turned to me. 'Who is this?' she demanded, spouting the words so that they ran together. Again, they seemed to have been rote-learned. 'He is with you? From elsewhere?'

For a split second, I was torn in conflict as I searched frantically for a way out of the situation. 'Yes,' I whispered timidly.

Her eyes so narrow that they were cat-like, the sea-woman growled in a resigned way. Then, with a final, longing, or maybe anxious, glance at the gathering clouds, she further tightened her grip on me and pulled me forward. The next thing I knew, I was being half-dragged across the cliff, in line with the fleeing sea-people. A backwards glance showed me that Fletch had also been seized, and was thrashing in the grip of something that was more of a hook than an arm. We passed a collection of sticks which I assumed had been used for the chanting. They now lay scattered on the bald rock.

The ground, which now seemed much less smooth than it had done initially, was quickly vanishing underneath my feet and robes. As it banged my shins and scraped my knees it became a greyish blur, while the curve of the embankment reared up more clearly and dauntingly than ever. It was drawing ever nearer, along with the dreadful suspicion that there was nothing beyond it.

My stomach sank. It was suddenly so heavy that I knew, as soon as I was tossed or dragged off that ledge, that I would fall forever. The ocean would swallow me whole, and still I would be hauled further and further down, as effectively as if I was tied to an anchor.

'Please, no,' I begged, 'Please! Don't throw me over!' but only a high, cruel laugh carried back in response. I didn't even know which one of the creatures it had come from.

Could they survive such a jump? Surely, I thought, we must be hundreds of strides above sea-level. Were they made from stronger stuff than Fletch and I, with our fragile, human bones and organs? Did they suppose we would fare as well as they did? At this thought, my insides, which were still impossibly heavy, somersaulted.

This was the end, then. I certainly hadn't seen it coming. What would Gheltar say when I appeared at his gate, so easily defeated after having made so many pacts with his brethren? Would he throw me out?

That was my final thought. I had no time for any more, for as soon as it ended I found that the solid rock had given way to air, and I was falling, tumbling towards a wall of water that was the least of my concerns.



My first thought was that it miraculous that we survived- an initial glance and a headcount told me we had evaded the splinters that assaulted the beach like a pack of spears. My second thought was that I had drowned. It seemed so unlikely that I had escaped injury, and my lack of panic and breathlessness as the water ducked me down suggested that I was dreaming. It was only when I continued to sink, and caught sight of the sea-people swimming around me, that I realised our descent must have been cushioned by a magic they possessed.

Deeper and deeper we swam, until the world swam with us. Truthfully, I less swam than was towed, for I had ceased struggling. My body in my drenched robes must have been equivalent in weight to a waterlogged sack. I lost track of which direction was up, although I could only assume for some time that the direction we pursued was down. The play of light across the underside of the water's surface, as well as the few, lancing beams that penetrated the brine when lightning flashed above it, grew fainter until finally the darkness smothered it completely, sealing the watery vault that would surely become my tomb.

I lost track of the time, too. How long could someone survive underwater? Through streams and jets of bubbles, I identified Fletch, being carried just as I was. He, however, was not so alert. He hung listlessly like a ragdoll as the weird denizen lugged him carelessly by one arm.

My heart lurched. Had he drowned, and thus become a less valuable cargo than I was? Would I soon drown, too?

I tried to look more closely. His long hair had come loose from its tie, and was floating like a veil around his face, which was sickly grey underwater. It did not look promising.

With nothing but blackness, bubbles and submarine blue all around me, I resigned myself to my fate. It was only in this state of utter hopelessness that I freed my mind to notice what was really happening around me. Firstly, the bubbles were hot. They alone must have stopped the open ocean, which when I thought about it must have theoretically been icy, from freezing me unconscious.

I also saw what was responsible for the turbulence, and for our phenomenal speed. A surprised globe escaped my lungs, and was instantly lost among the others.
The monsters had transformed. They were shape-shifters!

The upper bodies of the sea-people remained intact, but their lower sections had been replaced. I thought I knew, then, why they had chosen to wear such flimsy skirts of weeds for protection against the elements. Not only were they more rugged people than I had given them credit for, but, of course, the skirts were not a formal kind of clothing. They were designed to be torn and discarded, to make way for what would replace them. Were these the creatures' glamours, I wondered, or were they their true forms?

The glint of silver around the sea-woman's waist was now explained. What I had assumed to be some kind of belt, or a trick of the light, turned out to be much more complete, and definitely real. The silver formed a brilliant glove, tapering to a horn. It ended in a fluke that winked as it beat at the dim water.

The others also had the tails of various fishes, some more horrifying than others. The aggressive male was propelled by a set of suckered tentacles four times the length of his remaining body. They were patterned with angry rings that reminded me of the pulsing circles on octopi I had encountered in the tidal pools. These, I learned, thrummed a dangerous tattoo, for the small cephalopods packed a deadly bite. On my shape-changing captor, I could only suppose that they served a similar purpose, matching the markings on his arms and torso.

Another of the creatures had the streamlined, slippery body of an eel, and another trailed the long, dexterous legs of a squid. This had been the one, I saw, who with the feelers instead of fingernails. Now, her many legs spiraled through the water in a similar fashion, sending up clouds of pearl-sized bubbles to match the huge ones kicked up by the octopus-man.

Shapes began to emerge out of the gloom, and I saw a landscape swimming up to meet us, as vast as the emptiness had been. It started out as a stone-littered plain of packed, grey silt. Streams of water had formed dips and crests like the dunes of a desert. Here and there, blackened claws of coral reached for the far-off sky, as though this had once been a reef that had sunken. Further ahead, drowned strands of bottom-dwelling seaweeds, neither as green nor as leafy as the species I had come to recognise near the surface, waved mournfully in the current. Though this part of the seafloor was nearly lightless, they survived. I soon saw why.

The sea-people folded their arms across their chests and jetted, streamlined, through the weeds, which groped at them with rubbery hands. Bones of men as well as fish, I saw when I sneaked a downward glance, were clutched in their grasps, bitten green by the bile that had long since dissolved their victims' flesh.

Having passed them, I expected to arrive at some even more lightless, morbid place. I was surprised when our dismal surroundings opened out onto a colourful reef. Turning my head up, I traced long, distorted beams of sunlight like ladders leading far up into the watery sky. It was as though a heavy jungle had given way to a light canopy. Some of the beams were as narrow as coins, while others were boulder-sized bites taken out of the darkness. All danced prettily over the corals, presenting obstacles to fish, and spotlights for the very brightest specimens. Schools of flat-bodied, squid-like creatures cruised about like rainbow airships, blaring messages on their backs, for their skin easily changed hue and pattern. Octopi drifted on membrane parachutes, while beaked fish pecked at porous sponges like hummingbirds sipping nectar.

This was an underwater paradise.

I was so overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of colour and texture that I found myself at first unable to notice more than one small thing at a time- an angelfish with a yellow body and a black head, a bright, blue eel coiled around a clam as large as a suitcase trunk, and a toothy giant that was surely the fish equivalent of a bear. My attention focused thus, it wasn't until voices alerted me to their presence that I noticed the place was also full of sea-people. Whorled structures not dissimilar to Lightshale Tower paled in comparison to the wildlife, but poked out from behind nearly every coral-covered mound. Creamy bridges arced overhead, too thin and spindly to stand aboveground.

Our party stopped abruptly, floating to a standstill. The sea-woman, turned, swinging me through the water, and addressed the others. Her voice, I noticed, sounded much less harsh underwater. With a resentful backwards glance, the male who had spat at Fletch departed. I guessed that he had been sent away. He puffed himself out and extended his limbs in a lazy star-shape as he drifted away.

The others left, too, until only the sea-woman and one of her assistants, who held Fletch, remained. Then, that denizen, too, dumped his cargo on the ground and slithered away. Fletch fell in slow motion, sending up a corona of silt when he hit the sandy bottom. The sea-woman ignored him. Was he dead?

She set me down beside him. I leaned in for confirmation, but found her staff stabbed into the ground between us, indicating that I wasn't to touch him. I thought it hugely unfair, and guilt for my part in his death mingled with a sense of vindication inspired by my arrest. I tried to paw the stick away and was batted easily aside.

'Do not touch him,' she whispered, rather than hissed. I was shocked to hear a peel of tinkling, bell-like laughter follow her words. 'There are Watchers here, as well as many others of our people, and they each see everything you do. He is alive,' she assured me.

Then, her tone became more serious. 'Deghazin wished to kill you,' she said, 'but I would not permit it. There have been four trespassers to our shores this tide alone, but you two are not like the others. I can tell you will be useful to us.' She didn't explain how we would be useful. I didn't dare ask, nor volunteer any information, lest she change her mind.

'What's wrong with him?' I demanded, watching the way Fletch's hair fluttered about his face, as though he might be breathing, after all.

'Nothing,' was the unconvincing reply. 'He lives.' As if she felt sorry for me being kept in the dark, she added, 'I am taking you to our Council. They will listen to me, as I am a Captain of the Waves. What is your name?'

'Achevon,' I answered, before I could think the better of it.

'And him?'

'He's Fletch.'

She made a thoughtful noise. I was surprised that it produced no bubbles. Was she breathing water? If she was, then what was I breathing?

'I am called Vaghiiss,' she said.

This was enough to convince me that I could ask questions, even if I couldn't expect truthful answers to all of them. 'What are we breathing?' I thought it sounded stupid as soon as I said it. 'How am I alive? How did we survive the fall off the cliff? How is it that you can talk to me? What do you want?'

She shook her head, and I knew that I was not getting everything I wanted. 'You are not the only creatures who can manipulate the forces,' she said sternly. 'You breathe because we will it, and you hear me because I will that also.'

I did not need to ask whether my gift of breath could be taken away. A million other questions sped through my brain, as unfamiliar to me and therefore as difficult to process as footholds in the rocks had been when I was mid-leap over them.

Where are we? I thought. What is the Council? How many of these people are there? Why do their buildings look so curiously like ours? What will happen to us? Will we be killed, or merely kept prisoner?

I reflected on my fate up until that day. How unhappy I had been with my lot! How unjust I had thought my banishment to faraway Lightshale, where everything was always moist, where the water slapped sickeningly against the rocks, the wind howled and echoed, and there was never any peace. How cozy and dry the draughty corridors of the Tower now seemed in comparison to this place! How friendly the mages there had seemed compared to my present captors. At least they had only shunned me, and not threatened me with death...

I felt immensely sorry for myself, as well as remorseful. If I had not been so malcontent, or if I had been humbler about my punishment, I might never have wandered outside. I might never have fallen in love with the open sea, and deluded myself into thinking that it could return my feelings.

Of course, I knew by then that the sea was not lonely as I was lonely. It was only holding up a mirror for my emotion, the better to lure me in. There was no finer predator anywhere. With this bitterness in mind, the reef around me suddenly seemed lurid and gaudy, an assault to my eyes, rather than a jewel-bright haven.

I wished that I had never set foot on the beach.

I wished that I had never left my library tower in Blackmouth.

My thoughts were interrupted when Fletch began to stir beside me in the sand. I wondered what he would see, when he woke up, and whether he would be as miserable as I was.