by Jean Lee
The lights looping the top of the theater’s walls blink once, twice, three times. Clicks and squeaks dart back and forth outside the door.
Charlotte strokes Liam’s temple with her thumb. “Hey.”
This time, Liam’s forehead wrinkles, and his eyes, calm and bright, find hers. The crooked smile turns Charlotte’s insides way, way too squishy for the situation, so before he can speak she presses a finger to his lips and says, “I think they’re coming in.”
Liam nods, then lifts her hand away from his face so he can place the blood dagger in her palm. “Harness.” He rolls to his feet to find the bench where harness and tunic tatters still lay.
Something scrapes along the door—the lock, maybe.
Liam hops over the benches and wraps the harness straps over Charlotte’s shoulder and across her diaphragm. The leather smells of old metal, older blood. How many battles has this harness seen? Charlotte wonders as she shifts the shoulder band a little. The softness of it…unexpected. Like Liam GAH. Not now, Charlie!
“Damnation, it’ll still be loose,” Liam mumbles as he futzes with the buckles on the straps, “but the sight of you wearing the dagger may make them reticent to use force.” His hand lingers in Charlotte’s braid as he wraps it round her neck so he can slip the blood dagger into the sheath between her shoulder blades. “So long as you keep some manners, that is.”
The door begins to open.
“Yuh huh,” Charlotte says with a crack of the neck.
“I mean”—the door opens. Liam does a quick look there, then back at Charlotte—“I mean it.” He blows a stray curl from his face to observe the guard.
Captain and Obsidian Mouth enter first, without weapons, followed by two more guards, these armed with bone spears and green ropes. All wear chainmail, but only Captain’s criss-crosses over her chest—a girl thing, Charlotte figures, since Obsidian Mouth and the other guards just have a hole in the chainmail for their heads and belts holding the chainmail in place on their torsos. Captain’s gait looks as weighted as those stone-like eyes of hers, double-blinking as she furtively glances behind her. “Queen Avo and her High Sage will see you now.” Her mouth shrinks to such a thin line Charlotte thinks it totally gone until she whispers, “You better have good reason for what you did.”
Charlotte scoffs. “What, you mean running for our lives?”
By the look on Captain’s face, that’s not what she means at all.
Obsidian Mouth nudges Captain with his fin, then points at Liam’s bare chest. One of the armed guards lifts a pus-bloated seaweed leaf with his spear. Captain folds her fin over it and studies it intently. “Earth’s Heart preserve…” Her words fade when she faces them. “Even the hardest of us require a day or two to recover from a netting.”
“Indeed, Captain,” Liam says, “but clearly, you and I are very different breeds.”
A pause. “Clearly.” She motions towards the door, leaf still in fin. The bubble’s membrane juts out a few feet from the door. She ushers Liam and Charlotte to stand next to the membrane, then dolphin-speaks to a few librarians dressed in thin, jelly-fishy-shimmery coats. They practically run through the membrane to stare at the table and poke at the other leaves, clicking furiously. The armed guards close the door, exit the bubble’s membrane, click a little, put their fins out like they’re going to pop the bubble, Oh Shit—
Yet the bubble remains solid. Their fins give off a slight green light as they press on the bubble. At first it looks like nothing’s going on, but then Charlotte follows Captain’s nod toward the Study Room door:
The bubble is pulling away from it.
They’re shrinking the bubble to fit around us. Huh. Kinda smart.
When the bubble is big enough to hold Charlotte, Liam, Captain, and Obsidian Mouth, the last clicks a signal for the guard to push them away. The bubble lifts from the floor, which means no flat surface to stand on. All four widen their stance, everyone’s feet just barely touching another’s, to form a peculiar square inside the sphere. Charlotte’s right foot’s stuck next to Obsidian Mouth’s. It’s flippin’ cold and damp like a tin plate left outside the tent all night, making Charlotte want to shiver and never stop.
They move at a slow angle upward over the central area, over its fallen wall, over the hole, still churning its darkness. Weirdest escalator I’ve ever ridden. Damn, that vomit smell’s from the pussy seaweed Captain’s carrying. Don’t add to it, Charlie, or you’ll be bathin’ in it.
Clear of the ground floor, they pass the next level with an assortment of reptile displays. Two librarians argue over a snake unfolded, its stomach open, the partly digested rat within just as split and peeled back as the snake.
“What’s with them?” Charlotte asks.
“The predatory habits of land animals is a vital study here,” Captain says. “All land animals.” A sly look toward Liam.
“But where is here? It’s not the ocean.”
Obsidian Mouth raises his fin to smack Charlotte on the mouth, but Liam thrusts his forearm up first, blocking him. His stormy glare says enough.
Captain’s mouth swims from one side of her face to the other. “There is a gathering of large lakes not far from Lake Aranina. We are in one of them.”
Charlotte blinks, taking this in. “The Great Lakes? But tons of people live by them, they’re used for all sorts of stuff. How do you go unnoticed?”
Two more guards wait at the third level’s ledge with rope-nets at the ready. “I told you, we do not harvest the starlight on the lakes.”
“Is it Lake Michigan?”
“No. So many boats litter this lake’s floor that no wandering eye will ever discover the Library. The dome only lights for approaching Stellaqui, not humans in their iron whales.”
Iron whales? Oh duh, submarines. “Lake Erie.”
“Shut up.”
They cast their nets, and the bubble is drawn to the edge, its bottom vanishing silently into the level’s floor as the guards slowly stretch the bubble until it touches ceiling and back wall both. Charlotte moves her feet over this edge of…canvas? It looks like canvas. A thick, red rope sews it taut to the beam beneath.
“How many leviathans died to make this Library?” Liam asks coolly. And the canvas Charlotte stands on, so much like a cot, she realizes to be skin, that rope a vein, the beam a bone. Yet it doesn’t smell dead—too old, maybe, or everything just smells lake-ish and she can’t catch it.
“Ask her,” Captain snarls with a curt nod towards Charlotte. “We only ensure those killed by humanity may still serve the sea.”
“Would ya knock off blaming me for everything?” Charlotte throws her hands up, nearly popping the bubble and definitely swatting Obsidian Mouth’s ear in the process. “Jeez, a girl can’t defend herself worth two shits around here.”
“Char-lotte,” Liam softly sings through his teeth.
“Lake Huron. Lake—”
Captain’s fin-smack tastes terrible.
Liam tisks her. “I warned you to behave yourself.”
“Shut up,” Charlotte says while intensely scraping her tongue of fin-funk.
Display cases are stacked to the far right and left, forming a sort of room about three patrol cars long and two cars deep. Besides the two guards at the ledge, four more stand at different corners, their urchin-ish helmets and spears sharp, their stature attentive. One curiosity—a sea turtle, alive and whole between the two corner guards on the right. It’s got to be the size of a kitchen table, if not a little bigger, with bottomless black eyes. Unlike Lady Orna, though, the eyes don’t seem empty of emotion. In fact, Charlotte feels like it blinks at her with a sense of wonder. The old merman sitting on top of it just adds to the surrealness of it all. His eyes are veined with bright teal, and his scaled chest and arm-fins are blotched red. His legs are mottled teal. And I bet that’s my fault, too.
Queen Avo sits on a vertebrae bench with a table before her, her fingers quietly drumming upon its glass as her tail fin taps off-beat on the f
loor. She’s flanked by two large display cases—one of a bear split in such a way its halves seemed to be locked in a duel together, and the other of a bald eagle, one of its wings severed to be dissected perpendicular to the body split open from its underside.
Liam pales. Charlotte’s ready to spit something about patriotism and Homeland Security, but then her eyes catch what’s under the queen’s drumming fingers: human ribs. Four fingertips press against the edge of the glass. Further in, a single blue eye stares over half a stubby nose and red mustache. Half a mustache. Half a lip, sliced and pulled back to reveal yellowed teeth. Tongue opened like some fucking banana…
Between the vomit odor and the sight of every element of a human male—every element—split and peeled apart, Charlotte counts her breaths, one two, steadies her posture, three four, grips the harness because Liam’s hands are folded behind him and by god she’s got to hold something, five six, asks the one shakeless question…
“Why do you balloon the eyes like that?”
The guards share a look.
Queen Avo raises a very, very thin eyebrow, setting her silver circlet askew. But she’s not the one that responds.
It’s the sea turtle.
“Your eyes intrigue us, what with their liquids and delicate threads to the brain.” Its deep voice vibrates like the strings of a bass. “Welcome to the Western Library, Princeborn and…human, I suppose?”
Charlotte sweeps herself low in a mock curtsy. “Miss Gill-less Meatbag, at your service.”
The old merman smiles, and he bows his head.
“How do you do, Miss Meatbag,” the sea turtle says.
Charlotte opens her mouth, even though she’s not sure how to explain sarcasm to a sea turtle, or merman, or whoever the hell’s talking to her, but Liam’s hand raises in front of her mouth. “You brought it on yourself.” He gives a grave bow to the queen. “Hail, Monarch of Stellaqui. I apologize for not greeting you in a more appropriate manner before. I am Liam Artair, of the House of Artair. The human Charlotte and I seek safe passage through your element to escape our enemy.”
The queen ceases her drumming. “And I am Avo, Queen of UnderSky, for all pooled waters are one beneath the heavens.” Her stone eyes narrow as she leans on one elbow, almost relaxing, and points a lazy accusing finger at Liam. “Princeborn of Velidevour are not wanted here.”
“Charlotte is a much nicer name than Meatbag,” the sea turtle adds. The old merman nods, smiles.
Damn, but those two set Charlotte’s skin all creepy-crawly. It’s not that she smells any malice from them. It’s an intense, over-powering odor of curiosity, and it’s aaaall aimed at her. “What are you two, a ventriloquist act? Who drinks the water while the other sings?” (This seemed safer than asking, “Who’s the dummy?”)
Liam ignores Charlotte and instead shows Queen Avo the black vine of thorns that wrap around his right wrist and up his arm like a painted disease. “As far as my own memory serves, I have never trespassed into your element before. And for the past three centuries, I myself have been a prisoner within the Wall surrounding River Vine and Lake Aranina. It is fortunate that curse has not affected your portals.”
The queen leans back, her body aglow with transformation. When she stands, her body shines with a dress woven of two materials: chainmail, and a white-ish transparent material that makes Charlotte think of jellyfish. She walks slowly around Liam, taking him in. “For now,” she says, voice distant, heavy. Captain hands her the puss-filled seaweed, and Queen Avo holds it up to their faces. “I see your magic has bled here in other ways.”
“Can you put that down?” Charlotte asks, hand over her mouth. “It smells like rotting carp and feet.”
Queen Avo’s weighted stare fixes upon Liam. “How did you do this?”
The air in the room floods with that same fishy curiosity smell of the sea turtle, and it’s all Charlotte can do not to vomit starlight onto the mermaid queen’s face. The old merman fin-pats the sea turtle’s shell like a child excited for cookies.
Liam shrugs. “I sang a lullaby.”
“A lullaby. Is that all?” Queen Avo’s nose-slits thin as she draws closer. She tosses the seaweed onto the human table. It breaks open, spreading gooey pus all over the glass above the man’s intestines. Her fin wraps around the pearl amulet at her neck, and dozens of veins in that transparent limb begin to glow. “Then perhaps,” she takes a long, slow double-blink, “you’ll be good enough to sing for me?”
Obsidian Mouth frantically shakes his head and points at Charlotte’s back. Captain shifts her weight for a lunge and dares to interrupt her monarch with, “I don’t think that’s wise, my queen.”
Liam folds his hands behind his back. The speckled curls bounce as he tilts his head to the side, a little dimple peeking out of one cheek. “I can show you nothing.”
“Come now, Princeborn, you know that isn’t true.” The queen lets go of the amulet. Now her fin holds swirls of light, like those upon the Library’s dome, but finger-size, thinning, brightening. She double-blinks. Sneers. “I have always wanted to see where the heart’s fire becomes the blood of your veins.” The light-swirls fade. Her fin unwraps to reveal needles, finger-length, thread-thin. They spin slowly in the air above the edge of Queen Avo’s fin. “Let us see what lurks beneath the skin.”
She means what she says, the Voice in Charlotte’s heart warns.
“Well duh,” Charlotte mutters, rolling her eyes at the Voice’s words…that no one hears but her…which means, yes, her words out of nowhere get a few weird clicks and a “How interesting!” from the High Sage.
Queen Avo waves off the High Sage and taps the glass with her fin. “Place his arm upon the human study. Away from the mess, if you please.”
Liam closes his eyes. “You best step back, Charlotte,” he says calmly.
One guard butts Charlotte into Captain as he sidles up to Liam. “Put, those needles, away,” Charlotte growls. “Now. Your Majesty.” She cracks her neck.
Captain steps between her queen and the trespassers, fins outstretched in warning. “This will not end well, my queen, please.”
Now don’t hurt her, the Voice says, pressing upon the bellows, warming her belly, her chest, her fingers. You’ll only make things worse. Just stop her.
Liam inhales as the fins wrap around his arms. He buckles his knees.
One guard tries to lift him.
Liam lifts him instead. He whips him up and over and down into the head of the other guard with the resounding CRACK of two rocks striking. They lay together in a jumble of sea-legs and curses while the other guards rush to flank their monarch.
She gives them but one command: “Do not break too many bones.”
Captain: “My queen, please.”
“Remove yourself, Captain, or I will remove your title.”
“And then Iiiii will remove your frickin’-flipper-hand, Queen Crazy.” Charlotte pulls the blood dagger out of its sheath—how the hell does Liam make this look cool, gah, my arm’s so awkward for this—and holds the blood dagger at the sea-living lot. “Sewing circle’s cancelled. Pack your needles and let us go home.”
The old merman claps his fins. “Thank goodness,” the sea turtle says, “I thought you’d never show me the blade. Put the needles away, your majesty.”
8
Mystery Remains Rooted
Everyone, felled guards included, loses their voices for a moment.
The old merman struggles to stand. Even with the sea turtle’s head as a support, his pocked legs crumple beneath him.
The queen’s pearl amulet slowly loses its light, casting erratic shadows in the lines of her chest scales. “You dare order your ruler?” Queen Avo’s voice trembles.
Yet Charlotte can see that the needles are gone. Angry or not, the queen still obeys this dynamic duo.
“When she’s about to do something very foolish? Yes, I do.” The sea turtle’s black eyes turn from her to Charlotte. “I hope you’re not going to resort to similar an
tics.”
“No.” Charlotte throws the word out as fast as a kid caught with a bag of dog crap on a miser’s porch. “Coulda just asked.” She grabs Liam’s hand and pulls him away from all the guards and over toward the merman. “Let’s get you up.”
“What are you doing?” Liam hisses.
Charlotte gives him a dirty look. “He’s old. And his own people can’t be bothered to help him.” She waves the dagger around like an accusing finger. A pulse of sparks sprints up the blade and out the feathers, drizzling down in a single stream upon the skin floor between Charlotte and the queen. Smoke hisses where the sparks land. The ashen dots mark a line at the queen’s webbed feet.
The merman claps again. “So it does work outside its element!” The sea turtle’s beak curves into a grin of sorts. “Oh, this is most interesting. May I see it?”
Charlotte holds the blood dagger towards the merman, then the sea turtle, and then back to herself because dammit, “Who’s looking at this now?”
The old merman taps his chest.
“I am,” says the sea turtle.
“Let’s just do this first,” Liam says as he bends forward for the merman to wrap his fin about his shoulders. Charlotte does the same. The old merman’s nose-slits shrink and grow quickly, but his eyelids struggle to double-blink over the strange teal lines. “What happened to you?”
“Copper poisoning.” The sea turtle speaks behind them.
Dammit, humanity is to blame.
“My body grew too weak for Magic’s gift, our sea-cry,” the sea turtle continues. “So the pearl of my voice was placed inside my four-legged friend. He speaks for me...and occasionally himself.” His kelp-hair slops over Charlotte’s shoulder as he turns towards Liam. “You have a friend with whom you share your magic as well, I see.”
Liam’s face flushes so quickly he doesn’t even notice Queen Avo is kneeling, arm fin tracing the smoking boundary. “The High Sage does not exaggerate. Your fire destroys all it touches.”