“We don’t owe her,” Chidi stumbled for some sort of defense against his line of thinking. “If anything, she owes us for helping her escape from the Knoll before the Sancul came to drown everyone else down there.”
Bryant barked a laugh. “Yeah? Well, if you believe that we just stumbled across Marisa down there and helped to free her after everything you and I have both seen, Chidi, then I got a whole bundle of tricks myself to sell you on.” He snorted. “No, I don’t believe for a second we just stumbled across, or even helped her at all, partner. I think Marisa does see things . . .”
Chidi trembled at the conviction in his voice. More than a thimble’s worth of fear too.
Bryant went on. “I don’t know how Marisa does all the things she does, but there’s a lot of other things in this world I don’t rightly understand either. Don’t mean they ain’t true.”
“What are you afraid of, then?” Chidi dared to ask him.
“Not what I’m afraid of, partner,” Bryant replied, unflinching. “It’s what I know.”
“Which is?”
“She judged me right,” Bryant drawled. “‘Cause I don’t much care for what she ain’t telling us either. Marisa leads me to Henry Boucher and gives me a chance to put that bastard in the ground for what he did to my wife and baby? What he’s done to you too?” Bryant shook his head. “Whatever Marisa Bourgeois wants to charge me for that, why, I reckon that’d be worth it.”
“Why do you sound so worried, then?” Chidi asked.
The former marshal chuckled. “Wouldn’t call myself an old man yet, but my last partner, Edmund? He always said I ain’t far off it. Said if not in body, I’m near enough an old man. To his mind, at least.” Bryant squinted in Chidi’s direction. “But you there, girl? You been through a whole lot of muddy mess so far in your life. I like to think you got the rest of forever to make up for all the things Henry and the Salt have done to you. Now, I’m happy to pay what’s owed, long as it’s me that’s paying up, see? Make no mistake though, partner - I wouldn’t see the hope of better days ahead stolen from you. Not for nothing.”
Chidi blushed, not knowing how to respond.
Bryant went on anyway. “I mean that, Chidi,” he said quietly. “Way I look at it, ain’t no point in promising a person the world and all else they dream on and chase after. Not if they ain’t around to see and enjoy it in the end. You get me?”
Chidi forced a smile. “If what Marisa showed me is true, if what she said about us being able to help stop all the bad from happening and give me the chance of seeing my family again too? Even if I only see my parents for a moment, Bryant, just a second to tell them I love them and have been fighting all this time to get back to them . . . then, all of that will be worth whatever Marisa asks of me too.”
Bryant sighed. “Well, I guess that solves that then, huh? We’re really doing this. Following this crazy runner to whatever it is she’s got planned for us?”
“I guess so,” said Chidi.
“All right, then,” he said. “But just so we’re clear, partner . . . if all this comes down to who pays up on whatever tab she’s running us? It’s her that pays it.” Bryant nodded in Marisa’s direction. “All these plans of her go south on us, she can front the cost for all this fate nonsense and leading us on to wherever her own damn self. ‘Cause me and you? We’re riding off into the sunset at the end, partner. Leaving this whole Salt mess behind for nothing but pastures and woods, peace and quiet, far as you can see . . . and all of it far from the Salt. Agreed?”
Chidi chuckled. “Agreed,” she said, then looked away from the Selkie marshal.
Ahead, Marisa Bourgeois had turned back, watching and waiting for them upon the dock that led to Girard’s boat. Her gaze bore into Chidi’s, the aura of solemnity that the elusive, mystic runner carried about her jolting Chidi even from afar.
Chidi turned back to find Bryant’s eagerness suddenly tempered too.
“C’mon, partner,” he said, starting forward again. “We best catch up before she boards that there boat and freaks the kid out too.”
Chidi followed.
2
KELLEN
To judge the continued pained cries echoing throughout the now wholly underwater cavern, Kellen surmised the last of the slaughtering in Orphan Knoll continued without him. He ignored the ongoing wails of the dying and those holding to the futile hope of escaping their Sancul hunters. For all the clamor and reigned chaos throughout the Knoll, Kellen found his focus on the remains of another killed by his hand.
He stared upon the crushed and rended corpse of Orphan Knoll’s former favor bookie, Roland. The same Nomad slaver who had once lorded over and defiled Kellen when he had been but a Selkie slave, fighting for his life.
Kellen grimaced. You got what you deserved, Roland.
The sight of the dead Nomad brought him some little comfort. His experiences in the Knoll reminded him that there would be more owners to fall beneath him in the future, if Kellen had anything to say about it. You didn’t like being on the other end, did you, Roland? Kellen thought, his cheek twitching at the remembrance of how easily it had been for him to crack the Nomad’s limbs with his claw-tipped tentacles, and then to rend his victim apart with barely an ounce of his true strength.
Because you and all other Salt Children are weak. All lording over Selkies like you were the ones to create them. Kellen told himself, opening his eyes to the underwater world and the present once more. But the Sancul are the true masters down here . . . and I am one of them now.
While the other Sancul had swam off in search of new victims to sate their hunger and their sport, Kellen had yet to leave the gladiatorial fighting pit circle he had fought within as a Selkie slave. Hovering over the arena sands, his tentacles lazed up and down to tread water and hold his position steady. Moving, he used one tentacle to reach for the arena floor, its end curling around like a funnel as it delved into the sand, then raised the grouping up for Kellen to inspect.
So much blood used to soak this sand . . . he thought, allowing the sand to fall, watching it blow like dust in the wind, the particles caught in the underwater current of his own making. And the Salt washed all of it clean.
His gaze tracked with the sandy trail as the particles flowed away from the pit floor. The particles carried toward the tunnel gates that Kellen had been forced to walk through innumerable times. Kellen would never forget being chained alongside his fellow slaves, never knowing if he would cross its threshold again. All who walked through the gates left to fight, or die, in the blood-stained sands of the gladiatorial arena.
But no more. Kellen thought, propelling himself away with a swish of his tentacles. Now, you are all free of this place.
The movement of his mammoth form kicked up a wave of white sand, reminding Kellen of the dust storms he used to watch back on land. The thought had him longing for the shore then, even as the haunted voice of Marisa Bourgeois arose with Kellen’s mind with the prophetic words he should never again walk ashore.
Kellen sneered at the memory, even as he knew Marisa’s words for truth with the loss of his legs. For all his want to prove her wrong, his thoughts turned to the prophetic words of another he had met beneath the Salt. How am I to rise, Hypnos? Kellen wondered as he swam, his tentacles again stretching out before him to guide him along the way. How to rise, and why? Why should I rise toward the surface if I can never walk the shore again?
Far before he reached the dungeon gateway, Kellen sent one of his tentacles toward them.
Or have I risen already? He wondered as his tentacle closed around the frigid, iron bar. Is that what my drowning the Knoll was about, Hypnos? Rising from the abyss to find and kill monsters like Roland, Ishmael, and all the other Salt Children? All the ones who abuse your brother’s creation? Or is there some other way to rise?
Kellen imagined the strength with which he grasped its bars like taking hold of a weight and forming a white-knuckled fist to heave it away.
And why wo
uld I ever want to go back to the shore now anyway? Why go home when I can rule down here? He jerked the gate free of its hinges, tossing it aside to descend and thud against the empty stone-made audience bleachers that were never to be filled again. Or so Kellen told himself as he entered into the dungeons that had once held him prisoner.
Kellen frowned as he swam over the dark, watery hall in search of any Nomad slavers yet to suffer his wrath. For all his searching of the dungeon levels, Kellen found none living for him to torment. The initial, curious thrill of the hunt that led him inside the dungeons turned sour at the discovery of drowned Selkies instead, the dead trapped inside the same cages that had held them in life.
Most had morphed into their Salt forms in what Kellen imagined as a final, desperate effort to cling to life, the prisoner’s seal bodies possessing the ability to hold their final breath far longer than any human lungs could do. A few had kept to their natural, human forms all the way to the end. Of those, Kellen glanced away when accidentally locking eyes with one of the corpses, the man’s eyes wide and glassy as they stared back at him in empty condemnation.
A ghost of his past named Kellen a coward then, reminding him that no true man would hesitate to look upon the face of death. Especially those made of his own choices.
Kellen forced himself to look at the corpse again, holding its stare until he could tame the ghost of his past into submission once more. You should be thanking me, he thought of the dead Selkie man behind the bars. There are worser ways to die than drowning down here . . .
Moving on, Kellen’s mind ticked off the Selkie types he passed by, noting them each for their varied designs, each of them reminders of others he had fought and won against during his own Selkie life. Harp. Leper. Lion . . . He paused in watch of the drowned Sea Lion, its body and limbs as limp as a puppet without its master to give it life.
Kellen thought of his high school friend, Marrero, then, his one true ally in the fighting pits. The last he had seen of Marrero, his friend had been aboard the same boat their owner, Ishmael, had flung Kellen from. He winced at the pained memory of that which had come after – a bleeding end and seeming death sentence for his defiance.
Kellen reached through the bars with one of his tentacles, tapping the Sea Lion. The movement he had given the animal sent the corpse into a slow spin. And on and on it goes, he thought.
Kellen stayed to watch until the Salt’s stillness overtook again, the Sea Lion left to float endlessly on until time and rot, or scavengers, came to claim the flesh from its bones.
The corners of his eyes stung then, his jaw quivering, hands trembling.
Despite knowing the dead Sea Lion was not Marrero, Kellen could not help but imagine the dread and panic caused among those trapped inside the cages before their end. A tidal wave of memories opened in him, the onslaught like a hammer to his psyche. For all the Selkie dead inside the cages, his mind replaced their faces with those of others he knew and loved, of those he fought beside and bled with. Still others he had killed for the sole reason of keeping his own life.
In place of the dead, wide-eyed prisoner, Kellen saw the pale face of another high school friend, Bryce Tardiff, after both were brought into the Salt, both taken down the Gasping Hole in Crayfish Cavern. Kellen choked too at the memory of the Selkie taskmaster, Tieran, attempting to throttle him in Orphan Knoll. How Tieran had failed, if only because Henry Boucher had come to Kellen’s aid. He gritted his teeth at the memory, reminding himself again that he no longer needed to fear Tieran either, Kellen having exacted the same intended murder on his would-be killer instead. Still, despite all his knowing that he no longer needed to fear any of those former ghosts, Kellen could not fend off their haunting of him.
Leave me alone. He prayed of all his ghosts. Kellen reached for his ears as if he might muffle the rising, dying screams and pleas of all the lives that he had been forced to silence in order to survive. Please, just leave me alone.
The voices of his friends and foes joined as one in his mind, along with all the anonymous others that he could not place from his fighting days in Orphan Knoll. No, Kellen Winstel, their collective voices whispered unto him. We will be with you forever.
Kellen fell forward then, reaching for the bars with his human hands, desperate for the frigid iron if only to remind himself that he yet could feel something. Stop! He begged the ghosts of his past to quiet and return to the dark chest of forgetfulness he meant to bury them in. Please!
But the ghosts of his past would not relent. Their screams came as a rising wave of agony, and his imagination the shore they meant to thunder and crash upon.
Kellen’s tentacles closed around the cage bars, bending and crinkling the iron prisons. Leave me alone! He cried, adding his own screams to the phantom, haunted ghosts of his memory, crying out against all those long dead voices shouting in equal measure back at him.
With no one living to rage against, Kellen exacted his anger against the cages that held his victims instead. He ripped the bars and walls free of their holdings upon the floor, not caring that such movement disturbed the bodies of those who had been trapped within. For each bar removed, he flung them aside like toothpicks. The bars were caught by the Salt, each quietly floating in descent. He wished they had clanged about, as he had intended them to do, if only to help the quiet the phantom calls in his mind.
Kellen did not stop until each and every former cage door had been released of the iron pins that held their Selkie denizens from escape and doomed them all to a drowning, Salted death. Panting for his efforts, his body trembling even as the Salt ran through him, Kellen heaved with the foretold knowledge that Marisa Bourgeois had imparted - that he too would never escape the Salt’s watery grasp. Though his body accepted the nourishing water passing through his mouth and lungs, his memory and mind rejected the liquid element for want of air in that other realm from whence he came.
The voice of Marisa Bourgeois stayed with him always: You will never escape, Kellen Winstel. The Salt has you in its sway now, its melody dark and deep.
Maybe I won’t escape this watery hell, he thought to himself, acknowledging his position, even as he raged against the memory of the mystic Silkie. But neither will the ones who did this to me. Kellen promised his ghosts and all of those yet lingering in the water around him, reminded of Marisa’s further words to him in the jailhouse of Tiber County. Of the monster he would become . . . and the countless others who would die in his transformation. As Kellen looked upon the Selkie dead, the tingles racing across his body warned that Orphan Knoll would forever stand thereafter as a haunted place of his own making. Kellen put the tingles to rest by repeating his singular vow. I’ll get the ones who put us all in cages. The ones who forced us into Selkie suits and trapped us all down here. He swore to himself and his ghosts, if only to quiet their voices. Next time, it will be them placed in cages and left to drown . . . or worse.
Kellen turned away to flee the dungeons. He hesitated when finding himself watched by another.
Still and quiet as the shadows that shielded her, the lady of darkness and deep watched him with the same kindly, greenish eyes that Kellen remembered his earthly mother having too. But are you really her? Kellen wondered when the Salt witch, Nyx, smiled at him in such a way as only a protective and loving mother could when looking upon her favored child. Are you really my Mom, Nyx? Have you been all along? Is that why you ran away from me and Dad? To come back here and wait for me to join you? The questions plagued his mind as the sorceress used her tentacles to leverage against the bars and find cracks among the stone walls and floor to pull herself closer to him. Or is my mom’s face just more Sancul sorcery?
The moment she was able, Nyx placed her hand upon his cheek, caressing it with her thumb. I’ve been watching you, my son.
For how long? Kellen asked, enduring her frigid touch.
Long enough, said she, her brow wrinkling. Aye, long enough to see the loss of your creation pains you now as much as it did in your life befo
re you left us.
Before? Kellen asked. You mean this . . . this has happened before too?
Nyx smiled as she looked across the Selkie dead. Oh, yes, my son, said she. These poor, fallen mortals are but a pittance in compare to the numbers lost in your first attempts at such creation.
Kellen shuddered. How many? He asked. How many did Moros kill in trying to give the Selkies a second life?
Nyx’s gaze and voice sharpened. Not Moros, my son. The creation of Selkies were your attempts, no? Her expression softened. Or do you not yet recall those experiments either? You’re former passion and life’s good work?
Good? Kellen thought, but did not say. No . . . he answered Nyx’s question. My mind is still confused. I-I’m still fighting to remember everything from back then.
Nyx cheered once more. Fighting, aye . . . as have you ever. Others may have forgotten your spirit, or even doubted it of late, but I have never wavered in knowing you should fight to return to me, my favored son.
Others? Kellen asked. You mean Erebus . . .
Though she replied quick enough, Kellen knew the truer answer when Nyx hesitated. Kanaloa believes in you, my son, said Nyx. As your father does also, though he will never say it . . . ah, but they do not share the same bond as a mother with her child. How could they? She chuckled, the sound as shrill as her icy touch. Fathers do not feel you within them from the earliest stage. Nyx took Kellen’s hand and placed it upon her belly. I felt you and your brother here from your first moments, my favored son. Aye, and dreamed of you both long before I ever had such stirrings of evidence within me. We are bound by more than the simple trappings of life in this world. Nyx placed her other hand upon Kellen’s breast, her palm and fingers shielding the scarrings on his skin. Our kinship knows no limits. Not in this world or the next. How else could you find your way back to me, and I to you? Each of us searching for one another through the shadowed boundaries between worlds, hmm? She smiled at him once more, both beautiful and terrible in equal measure.
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 2