Sword Sirens

by Edmund Hughes

  He took the rope out and handed one end of it to Kerys, not bothering to tie it this time. He tested the water with one foot, feeling it soak his leather shoe all the way through. It was a soothing sensation rather than an unpleasant one, even if the cold was enough to make him shiver.

  “I’ll go first,” said Ari. “Hold tight to the rope and stay close to me.”

  He stepped into the river, which was up to his knees just off the bank. Before going deeper, he had a thought, and took the time to shift the bag of sarkin flower Milo had given him out of his trouser pocket and into his pack.

  The two of them made slow progress, swaying slightly to keep their balance in the river’s unyielding current. Kerys made cute little noises as they progressed deeper, and she inhaled sharply as they reached the point where the river was up to her waist.

  “Dormiar’s skin!” squealed Kerys. “The water is really cold.”

  Ari looked over his shoulder at her. She still held the rope, but she’d drawn her arms across her body, just under her breasts. He couldn’t help but notice that her nipples were visible against the cloth of her dress.

  “I can tell,” he said with a grin.

  “What’s that supposed to…” Kerys glanced down at herself, and then glared at him. “Aristial Stone—”

  The last syllable of her sentence was cut off as she set her foot down on a rock that was too slick for her to maintain her footing. Ari watched in horror as Kerys fell backward into the water and lost her grip on the rope.

  “Kerys!”

  He reached for her a second too late and felt his fingers graze the edge of her shoe as the river immediately began carrying her along. Ari gritted his teeth and pushed forward, flailing his arms in an attempt to give himself the momentum to catch up with her.

  Kerys let out a scream, followed by a choking cough as she apparently inhaled a breath of water. There were rocks behind her in the distance where the river dipped downward into a small waterfall. She was being swept along toward them, completely unaware of it, on track to strike them head first.

  Ari kicked hard against the riverbed and made another grab for her. He got a hold of her dress and held it tightly enough to arrest her momentum. Unfortunately, Kerys’ arms were above her head, and stopping her didn’t stop the river from dragging her pack along in the current.

  It came loose from her shoulders and bobbed up and down a couple of times before disappearing over the waterfall. Ari gritted his teeth and dug his feet into the rocks as he pulled Kerys back toward him. He felt her dress rip slightly, but he managed to get a grip on her ankle with his other hand and pulled her into a tight, desperate hug.

  She was still coughing when he managed to get them both across to the other side of the river. Her dress had a tear that ran from the bottom hem up to just above the knee, and she was shivering from the cold.

  “It’s okay,” said Ari. “You’re safe now.”

  “My… pack,” she said, through chattering teeth.

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Ari. “You’re alive. That’s all that really matters.”

  Kerys hugged her arms across herself and met his gaze. She looked so scared, and so tiny.

  “They were right,” she muttered. “Jarvis and Byron. I am just dead weight, aren’t I?”

  Ari sat down behind her and pulled her into a reverse hug. It was as much to warm her up as it was to comfort her.

  “Forget about what those dirt suckers said,” he told her. “You’re not dead weight. You’re smart and capable. And there’s a good chance that we’ll be able to find your pack if we follow the river further down.”

  “We won’t have time before the sun sets,” said Kerys.

  “Well, we’ll do it when it comes back up, then,” said Ari. “Tomorrow.”

  He gave her a squeeze and stood up. Kerys stayed on the ground.

  “Your nipples are showing again, you know,” he said.

  Kerys let out an offended gasp and stomped to her feet.

  “The plan hasn’t changed,” said Ari. “Let’s set up camp and eat dinner. I still have my pack, so it’s not like we’re completely helpless.”

  “We’ll only have half as much food,” muttered Kerys.

  “That’s true,” said Ari. “But I somehow get the feeling that the Chosen of previous years didn’t starve to death out here. It doesn’t matter if we have five pounds of food or fifty if it turns out that there are other, more pressing threats that we haven’t encountered yet.”

  He felt a little bad about pointing out to her that they still didn’t have a firm grasp on the nature of the danger they were in, but Kerys took it in stride. She nodded and walked alongside him as they headed into the clearing and up to the top of a nearby hill. Ari found a section of flat ground and passed her his kellowack.

  “Do you mind setting this up?” he asked. “I’ll look around the nearby area for some loose wood for us to make a fire with.”

  “Sure,” said Kerys. “Just… don’t go too far.”

  Ari pulled the red-iron knife out of his bag and nodded to her.

  “I won’t,” he said. “If anything happens, give a shout.”

  Kerys nodded. She was still soaking wet, but she’d already set about unfolding the oiled leather of the kellowack. Ari hesitated for only a moment before heading off into the trees. It felt good to have the pack off his shoulders, and he’d been dying for a chance to explore freely since he’d first begun to feel comfortable on the surface.

  There was a constant chorus of sound in the forest that was unlike anything in Golias Hollow. Birds chirped, insects buzzed, and the wind made the leaves and branches of the trees hiss with a soothing rustle.

  The dense foliage overhead formed a ceiling of sorts, too. It didn’t come close to reminding him of the comfort of having a shelf of rock overhead, but it gave him a similar sense of limitation. The surface was strange, but not indecipherable. He felt like he could get used to it, and perhaps even thrive, given enough time.

  One of his footsteps landed on a branch, which let out a sharp snap. He saw movement in a nearby bush and almost tripped in his rush to pull himself back. The knife he held was barely as long as his hand, and it felt woefully inadequate as he watched a creature surge across his field of view in the forest ahead of him.

  It was brown with tan spots and slightly larger than a cave-goat. It ran away from Ari, rather than charging him down as he’d expected it to, and he made out the details of its thin, hooved legs and horned head before it disappeared into the trees.

  It took his heart a minute or two to calm down, during which time he collected as many dead branches as he could. Kerys had finished pitching the kellowack when he returned and was in the process of weighting the corners down with rocks.

  “The wind keeps tipping it over,” she explained. “It was never a problem down in the Hollow, but up here, it seems to happen pretty often.”

  “Maybe that’s what the histories meant by the tainted wind?” said Ari. “The bane of tents and blower of shirts.”

  “You’re hilarious,” said Kerys, rolling her eyes.

  She stood up from behind the tent, and Ari noticed that she’d made a change to her dress. She’d removed the section that had ripped when he’d grabbed her in the river, which kept the hem even, if a little ragged, though it now fell only to mid-thigh, rather than to her knees.

  “You’re staring at me again, Ari,” said Kerys. Her voice had a teasing note in it this time, and when she met his gaze, Ari was the one who blushed.

  “Guilty as charged,” he said. “Hey, look. It’s starting to get a little darker out.”

  “It’s called the sunset,” said Kerys. “People used to make time to watch it, back when they lived on the surface. We should give it a try.”

  Ari set the branches down in a pile and followed after Kerys as she found a spot for them to sit down on the edge of the hill. A few puffy, dark clouds had coalesced in the sky, and he felt as mesmerized by them as he was by t
he orange and purple hues of the burning sun as it drooped over the horizon’s edge.

  “It’s really beautiful here,” whispered Kerys.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  He felt himself wondering why anyone would ever consider abandoning a place so expansive and abundant with resources, even for a cozy hollow. It was a thought that he chose not to voice as he considered the implications.

  People would have only left the surface if there was a reason to leave. A damn good one, at that.

  “What’s on your mind?” asked Kerys.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Liar.”

  CHAPTER 9

  They watched the entire sunset, and the colors left Ari wondering why everything seemed to be so much more beautiful by default on the surface. It was dark as he made his way back over to the center of the camp to start the fire, which he found comforting.

  Kerys assembled dinner from their rations, picking out a small portion of each of the different foods they’d been allotted. They didn’t have any plates, but there was a large, flat rock next to the kellowack that she swept off as well as she could before setting their dinner down onto it.

  “I’ll trade you my dried mushrooms for your candied fruit,” said Ari. “I know how much you love them.”

  Kerys would have normally rolled her eyes on that, but her complete attention was devoted upward. Ari followed her gaze, frowning a little as he took in the bizarre tapestry of lights and dots arrayed across the sky.

  “Those are stars, aren’t they?” he asked. “And that’s… the moon. I didn’t realize it was so bright. But what in Dormiar’s name is that?”

  He pointed a finger at the second large, glowing disc in the sky. The moon that he’d been taught about, Lumas, was clearly recognizable as the largest feature of the night. It was full and shining a slightly reddish white color. However, it had also a companion, a smaller moon that Ari had never seen any mention of in the histories.

  “I don’t know,” said Kerys. “That’s a little unnerving. Ari, that shouldn’t be there.”

  She shook her head and hugged her shoulders. Ari leaned to the side slightly, as though it would give him a better view. The second moon, if it was what it appeared to be, stood out against the black of the Void as a mixture of blue and green. It was pretty, and even though it was smaller than Lumas, there was something about it that caught the eye.

  “Let’s give it a name,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We discovered it,” said Ari. “In a way… it’s ours. All the people we left behind in Golias Hollow have zero knowledge of its existence. We can call it whatever we want.”

  He was smiling, but he wasn’t really sure why. He looked over at Kerys and saw her gazing back at him with a slight gleam in her eyes.

  “The Stray,” she said, in a soft voice. “The Stray moon.”

  “Kind of breaks the naming format,” said Ari. “Lumas is just Lumas. Not ‘The Lumas.’”

  “Oh, you be quiet,” said Kerys. “That’s its name.”

  They kept talking about the sky as they ate. Ari listened as Kerys explained the idea of a constellation to him and pointed out several to him.

  “That looks nothing like a trident,” said Ari.

  “The shaft is pretty obvious,” Kerys said.

  “Just because something has a shaft doesn’t make it a trident,” said Ari. “Obviously.”

  Kerys shot him a look from across the rock.

  “What?” said Ari. “You know I’m right.”

  “Mud and blood,” said Kerys, with a slight smile. “You are just too much sometimes.”

  Ari shrugged. It was starting to get a little chilly, and he ran his palm across his knuckles.

  “It’s pretty,” he said. “All of the stars are. They remind me of glowmoss a little bit.”

  Kerys had finished eating her food, and she moved to the other side of the rock to sit next to him.

  “The stars are ancient,” she said. “And the moon. Well, Lumas, at least. The histories we had in the Hollow all acknowledged the fact that Lumas and the stars have been the same in the sky for as long as we’ve been keeping records.”

  Ari nodded slowly.

  “I’m glad we got the chance to see them,” he said. “And I also hate the fact that we got the chance to see them.”

  “I know that feeling,” said Kerys.

  There was an odd tension in the air as they finished dinner, and Ari didn’t need to guess at where it came from. He didn’t say anything as Kerys did a pointless circle of their campsite and their singular tent.

  “We only have one kellowack,” she said. “It’s my fault.”

  The conflict in her expression was enough to make Ari feel sorry for her, and he understood where it was coming from. The kellowack was more than just a tent. It held a significance in the society of the Hollow, as many young newlywed couples would opt for spending their first nights together inside of one set up in one of the public caverns rather than in the nooks of their families.

  There was no real way for two grown adults of any size to sleep together in a kellowack without being in direct contact with each other. Ari had no problem with that, given that the second person in the equation would be Kerys.

  And Kerys… was blushing so fiercely that he could see her red cheeks in the near dark. Ari fought off the almost overwhelming urge to tease her. She’d been through a lot over the past day. They both had.

  “I can sleep outside,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

  Strangely, Kerys looked conflicted. Her face was still flushed, but she slowly nodded her head, holding his gaze.

  “Okay,” she said.

  They stared at each other for a period of time that stretched on for far too long. Finally, Kerys brushed off the bottom of her somewhat ragged dress and slipped through the canvas flap of the kellowack.

  Ari tended to the fire for a while longer before finding his pack and setting it down on the ground to use as a pillow. His sleeping pad was inside with Kerys, but he wasn’t uncomfortable. He was tired, and he knew that it would only take him closing his eyes for a couple of seconds to get to sleep.

  The sky looked ridiculous to Ari, full of bright, shimmering stars that each seemed to demand his attention. They made being outside feel like being in a cavern with no curtain for the glowmoss. Except, that wasn’t entirely true. The clouds, another feature of the atmosphere that Kerys had explained to him earlier, were thick enough now in places to cover the tapestry of lights behind them.

  “I think it’s going to rain,” said Kerys, from inside the tent.

  “Rain,” said Ari. “The artwork always made that seem like quite the event. I think I’d like to see it up close.”

  “It’ll be cold Ari,” said Kerys. “Cold and wet.”

  He shrugged, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “I’m made of tough stuff. I’ll live.”

  He let out a yawn and rolled over, feeling a little sleepy. Nothing happened for a couple of seconds, and then he heard the sound of the tent flap opening.

  “Aristial…” said Kerys, in a soft voice.

  He turned around and blinked several times in numb surprise. Between the dark of the night and the shadows of the kellowack, he could only see Kerys’ silhouette. But that alone was enough to tell him that she was naked, and she absolutely did have a wife body on par with the rumors.

  Her breasts were perfect, round mounds in the dark, dotted by nipples that were as hard as they’d been earlier in the river. There was a slight breeze, and it made Kerys’ hair flutter to the side. She held on to a single lock of it between two fingers, twisting and teasing it nervously.

  Girls back in the Hollow had a tendency to plump up once they left childhood, but this apparently had not been the case for Kerys. If she’d put on any weight in the past few years, it had all gone to the most interesting places, namely her breasts and her butt. Ari felt his cock stiffening and realized that he’d just been staring at her fo
r the last few seconds.

  “I know you switched stones because of me,” whispered Kerys. “Well, here I am.”

  Her words turned him on more than he would have thought possible. Ari shifted toward the kellowack’s opening on all fours, fighting to reel in his basic, primal urges.

  “Kerys,” he said. “Are you sure?”

  “We both could be dead within a day or two,” she whispered. “We might be scared, but we don’t have to be lonely.”

  Her logic was solid, even if Ari found it to be a tad unsatisfying. He resisted the urge to complicate the moment by asking Kerys about her true feelings or trying to explain his. Instead, he moved toward the kellowack’s doorway, and Kerys moved backward to allow him enough room to come in.

  There was almost no extra space inside. Kerys was sitting with a posture that was probably more lewd than she realized, with her knees and butt touching the ground and her legs parted open. Ari undid his belt and pulled off his tunic, which he’d only kept on to give him some cushioning between himself and the ground.

  He tossed it aside, followed shortly by his trousers, leaving only his underwear. Even in the dark, without being able to see the expression on her face, Ari could tell that Kerys was nervous. He reached his hand out slowly and pressed it against her cheek. She put her hand over his and leaned her head to the side as he brought his in closer.

  He kissed her. It was… interesting. Kerys didn’t really seem to know how she was supposed to move her lips, or even that she was supposed to. Ari pulled back a little, and then tried again, slower this time. Kerys let out a shaky breath as their lips broke away.

  “That was my first kiss,” whispered Kerys.

  “Really?” Ari said, with a smile. “I couldn’t tell.”

  He wasn’t exactly that much more experienced than she was, but he couldn’t resist such a prime chance to tease her. Kerys tried to slap his shoulder and he caught her hand. He kissed her again with more passion and let his fingers trace across the bottom edge of one of her breasts.