Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35

by Galvin, Aaron

  “You’re not the ones bleeding out,” said Chidi through gritted teeth.

  “No,” said Marisa. “But if death were to come for me, I should welcome such a noble sacrifice as the one your friend here offered up to save you.”

  “And I would let you trade places with him,” said Chidi, new tears brimming in her eyes. “I would trade places with him now, if I could.” She glanced at Bryant as if he might have some answer for her, some word of reproach for her to fly against, or else a comforting word to provide some semblance of a reason for all that had befallen them. Instead, she found tears in the eyes of Bryant also. Chidi broke, then. “I’m tired of seeing everyone I care about die . . ..”

  Marisa nodded. “And yet for all that you have lost, all that you will still lose, I tell you now that it will be your pain to drive you to save so many more, Chidi Etienne,” said Marisa. “All the tragedy you have endured, all the pain witnessed and experienced . . . all to make you who you are, so that when your moment arrives—”

  “Stop,” Chidi spoke up, her body and voice both shaking. “Stop talking to me. This is your fault.”

  Marisa sat back as if Chidi had slapped her, questions plain upon her face.

  “You brought us out here,” Chidi condemned her. “You said that Allambee had to come with us. That he had a purpose for being here. The same as Girard had a purpose too.”

  Chidi did not dare to look toward the cabin’s quarters, not wishing to see the former coyote guide’s corpse still impaled by one of the Orc spears, his body still pinned against the same captain’s chair he had steered from.

  Marisa snorted. “You weep for Girard too?” She challenged Chidi. “He being one of those who profited on the backs of Selkie slavery, the same as any owner did? One who might even have sold us all, if the price were right.” Marisa frowned. “Aye, our Selkie boat captain had a purpose in life, Chidi. One that lined his own pockets, and prayed only that he one day might have what he imagined as a glorious, final last stand - a captain, lost at sea, going down with his ship. Do not ask me to weep for a loathsome creature such as he was.”

  “And Allambee?” Chidi asked. “What did he ever pray for, except to meet his father?”

  Marisa’s gaze flickered at the stinging implication Chidi made. “Is it not said even the wisest cannot see all ends, Chidi? Hmm? You lay the fate of this boy at my feet and yet were it not for his actions this night, if not for Allambee Omondi being among us to fend off the Orcs, you would likely be dead already.”

  “I wish that I were, then,” said Chidi. “I would rather it finally be me the one to die, rather than I have to watch any more of the people that I love suffer in my place instead.”

  Marisa nodded. “It may well be you receive your wish too, someday,” she said quietly. “But it will not be this night, Chidi.” She nodded toward Allambee too. “Nor would he trade places with you if given the same choice again here and now.”

  Chidi’s cheeks warmed. “You don’t know that.”

  “Do I not?” Marisa asked. “I think that I know more of this boy than you could begin to dream of, Chidi. More of his bravery, his dreams, aye, and all his choices and secret prayers too. For all that you feel for Allambee Omondi, do not think to lie to yourself and imagine that you alone are wounded and grieving at the sight of him laid low before us now. In time, it may well be you gain some little understanding of how such a noble sacrifice as this boy made tonight can echo across the whole of time.”

  “Easy to say when you’re not the one dying,” said Chidi.

  “Ask me on that fated day if ever you see me fallen beside you, then, Chidi Etienne,” said Marisa with such conviction in her voice as to make Chidi doubt herself. “Ask me on that dark day if I would change all my choices and my circumstance for a different outcome. For I tell you now, if my visions prove true, if my actions serve to save all those that I love from the foul things that I have seen and believe from my night terrors? Aye, then, Chidi. The answer I will give you on the day of my own death will be that all of my choices were worth every sacrifice and more.”

  “How?” Chidi asked. “How can you say that when people die because of what you decide?”

  “Because I have some understanding, Chidi. Little though it may be, I hold to some glimmer of choices gone wrong and what might be changed for good, if one were brave enough to face any outcome.” Marisa again reached down to stroke Allambee’s brow. “Anyone can and often do claim they would perform heroic acts,” her voice softened once more, devoid of the fiery knowing she had called down upon Chidi. “Such folk are rarer still that make noble words reality. It may well be that we weep for Allambee Omondi by the time this night is done, but I tell you now that the boy I came to with such an offer that he might aid the world and help his father too? That were a warrior who readily agreed to my words. Aye, and that he would do over and again, no matter the cost to himself. For that is the ultimate price of truest love, Chidi Etienne. When doom and darkness approach, there is but one question you need ask . . . one question to answer . . . one choice to make to save all that you hold dear.” She looked deep into Chidi’s eyes once more. “How far are you willing to go to protect and save the ones you love?”

  As far as I need to go. Chidi thought to herself, her mind swarming with thoughts of all those lost before and taken from her. But I’m not the one paying the price right now.

  She pictured her parents stolen away then, and little Sasha too. She thought of Racer and all the countless others slain at Henry’s hands. And when she gazed upon her injured friend, his face pinched in pain, Chidi understood that she would soon be to add Allambee Omondi’s name with all the rest who had gone before. All the names and faces of those she had loved and lost before. All the memories of their scattered fates that Chidi Etienne carried with her always.

  Don’t let him die. She closed her eyes in begging prayer again. Please, whoever you are, whatever you want . . . don’t let him die because of me. Don’t let anyone else die because of me.

  Bryant’s voice called her to look upon reality once more. “Chidi . . .”

  She opened her eyes at the sound of grunting near the boat’s rear, of someone climbing the ladder to board. Chidi’s breath caught in her throat as the newcomer climbed the ladder to join them. When his face was revealed, Chidi found herself confronted with another ghost of her past. “Watawa . . .” She spoke his name in disbelief as the mystic Nomad joined them on the deck and knelt beside her. When their gazes met, shared grief lived in his one good eye at the sight lain before them all.

  Watawa glanced away from Chidi, then placed his hands over Allambee’s body, keeping them an inch away from touching the injured boy’s skin and wounds. The shaman’s hands hovered over the boy in sweeping gesture, and Watawa’s good eye closed, his brow wrinkling as if he felt and absorbed some small part of Allambee’s pain. For a moment, Chidi swore that the burden of life in Allambee’s body was lifted, his wheezing breath turning to a sigh of contented peace as Watawa continued.

  The boy’s face contorted once more, however, when the one-eyed Nomad ceased such movements.

  Marisa stirred. “What do you see, Open Shell?”

  Watawa met her question with one of his own. “You know me?”

  “Aye,” said Marisa. “I have seen your face in my own dreams. Felt your eye searching . . . and heard you calling out with deeper questions to match my own.”

  “Were you given answers?”

  “Little more than you,” said Marisa. “But enough to know that you are favored among the light. A wounded one, broken by the horrors of this world . . . and yet still seeking for wholeness.”

  “Are we not all of us seeking for such?” Watawa asked.

  “One would hope so, would they not?” Marisa asked ruefully. “Have you brought the boy’s father?”

  Watawa squirmed under her stare. “How am I to know who this boy’s father is? I have never seen his likeness before. Not even in my dreams.”

 
“No,” said Marisa. “But you know that my words are true. As does he.” She looked to the dark water just beyond the boat’s edge, the waves still choppy and shielding all that swam beneath.

  “It seems to me that you are gifted greater sight than that granted unto me, Silkie,” said Watawa. “What need have you to bring me into this poor boy’s affair?”

  “Because as broken as you deem yourself to be, Open Shell, you are still among the favored few to rise against the darkness.” Marisa smiled when Watawa sagged beneath her claim. “I wished to meet with you, if only for a scattered moment in time. Oft times the purest in heart are such disbelievers in themselves that they will not recognize the truth of their own light. Much as you sense the light in the others, I have found it helps to hear such goodness as those others see it in us also. Aye, if only that we might take the tender seed of encouragement and see it nurtured for all those other times of dark and doubt.”

  His shoulders straightening, Watawa clenched a fist and held it against his breast. “You honor me . . . and yet I do not know your name to thank you for such kindness.”

  “Nor do you need to know my name for your gratefulness to carry, Open Shell,” said Marisa. “Your actions in venturing above to serve all those beneath who cannot ascend speaks far greater to your worth than any humble words of thanks would do.”

  Watawa nodded, then looked away from her and back to Allambee instead. “What then for this boy? If you mean for us to move him, I have my doubts it be in his interests.”

  To Chidi’s mind, Allambee’s pain seemed to ease once more as Marisa stroked his brow over and again to remove the sweat beads.

  “No,” Marisa continued in answer to Watawa. “What lies beneath the Salt is this boy’s greatest interest. Say rather, his meeting of the one who waits for him there.”

  Watawa looked on Allambee once more. “From the tales I have already heard below of his stand against the Orcs, this is no mere boy. This one here is a born warrior.” He glanced at Chidi next. “An aumakua by all accounts. One who has shown great honor to his people and his father.”

  “Then let us help them to finally meet,” said Marisa, moving to take hold of a tarp end they had lain Allambee upon. “Aye, that his father and his people might sing his praises and his name.”

  As Watawa moved to take up another end, Allambee winced and groaned at the movement.

  “Stop!” Chidi cried out. “You’re hurting him.”

  “A little pain for a greater purpose,” said Marisa, continuing to keep her hold of the tarp end.

  When Watawa also refused to drop his end, Chidi looked to Bryant for aid. With his sigh, she took it as a signal he was of two minds about the situation.

  Marisa ended any debate by speaking to him before Chidi could. “What would you do, David Bryant? What offering made? What pain endured, if the chance were given you to meet the child you lost? To hold that child in your arms . . . aye, if you could but glimpse their face for a few precious moments?”

  That’s not fair. Chidi thought when seeing Bryant’s mind made up even before he too reached for another of the tarp ends. You’re using his pain against him.

  “Bryant,” she said. “You don’t have to do this . . .”

  “I do, Chidi,” he said. “And you ought to as well, ‘specially with all the times you heard this boy talk about his destiny and meeting his daddy. If Allambee’s gonna die today, we can at least help him to see that one wish through.”

  Chidi’s muscles tensed at that, her vision blurring even as she found herself reaching for the tarp end at her feet to help the others in sharing the load. Pulling the tarp taut, they acted as one to lift and then maneuver Allambee’s body as gently as could be allowed to the furthest reaches of the boat. When Chidi stepped to its edge, she looked upon the silvery, shadowed tails and forms of all those swimming below in wait.

  Chidi gasped when their fingers broke the surface. A dozen hands slowly rose to accept the one offered to them. And when the transferring came, Allambee passed from those upon the boat to all those awaiting below, Chidi gazed upon the face of her fallen friend once more. She prepared herself to say goodbye, all of her experiences both ashore and beneath the Salt warning that she would never again see the face of Allambee Omondi in the above again.

  The tarp teased away beneath her grip.

  Chidi refused to let go.

  Allambee’s eyes fluttered open at the last, finding her gaze among all the rest gathered on the boat. His hand reached for her, closing on her wrist. “Chidi . . .” he said, his voice barely audible among the Salted chop and the wind whistling off the watery surface. “Chidi . . .”

  “I’m here,” Chidi wept, kneeling to kiss his hand. “I’m right here.”

  Allambee’s grip relented his claim of her. “Stay . . .” he whispered. “Stay with me, Chidi . . .”

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, Chidi felt the gentle hand of Watawa upon her shoulder, his soft voice in her ear. “Come with us, child. And quickly . . . for the green waters sing his name . . . and soon he must heed the call, like all the rest long gone before.”

  Chidi wasted no time in donning her hood as the other Nomads took Allambee’s body fully into their charge. Not knowing what lay in store for her beneath the Salt among the Nomads, Chidi found herself glancing back at Marisa and Bryant too.

  “Go with him, Chidi . . .” Bryant whispered. “We ain’t going anywhere without you.”

  Nodding in reply, Chidi briefly locked eyes with Marisa Bourgeois. Then, Watawa was nudging her onward toward the Salt before he dove in.

  Chidi followed the Nomad shaman into the water. The Silkie changes swept over her the moment she struck the surface. Chidi embraced her seal form, despite the warning from her primal mind to flee all that gathered around her. A lone Silkie among a slew of Nomads in half-human and a swarming school of Hammerhead sharks too, Chidi comforted herself with the presence of Watawa and the sight of another face that she well remembered from her time ashore.

  The Silent Hammer from the zoo . . . Chidi thought when Atsidi Darksnout took his fallen son’s broken body into his arms.

  The Hammer chieftain cast his harsh, if broken gaze upon her briefly. Then, Atsidi Darksnout bore his son away for darker waters. A host of other warriors flanked them, and all with tails matching both the father and the son.

  Chidi watched them vanish into the depths, uncertain of whether to go with them.

  Watawa swam alongside her, then stirred her to follow after the others once more.

  Chidi did, trailing the one-eyed shaman into the darkened depths and the Nomad infested waters where no Silkie would dare to swim otherwise.

  18

  GARRETT

  Garrett tread water alongside his Nomad father, Cursion White Shadow, their Great White Shark tails cutting their own currents as they swept back and forth in tandem like a pair of pendulums keeping time together. Peering through the blurry ceiling that was the surface of the Salt, Garrett watched Watawa aiding what he assumed to be several of the boat crew members above. Coupled with the blurry surface, the night sky shielded their identities from him, but he gathered that all were working as one to ease the injured, Nomad brave into the water and then into the awaiting arms of Atsidi Darksnout and his Hammer warriors.

  To Garrett’s mind, the Nomad boy looked dead already. The makeshift wrappings around his wounds were dark-stained, devoid of any original color that the cloth may once have held before it was wrapped around the ill-fated warrior.

  Atsidi Darksnout took hold of his son, clutching the boy’s broken and shattered body in his sinewy arms, his eyes gleaming as the warriors of his tribe swarmed around him in protecting watch. No sooner than they turned to descend as a single unit, the water churned with a pair of others diving in.

  Watawa was the first of them to shift, his human legs replaced by a Mako shark tail the moment he struck the water. The other diver was a seal with a design unlike Garrett had ever seen – the animal’s skin cream
-colored with a gorgeous pattern that reminded him of swirling ribbons. He assumed the seal to be one of the Selkie boat crewmembers, but, with their human face shielded by their Salted form, he had no way of knowing the Ribbon Seal’s true identity.

  The mere sight of the animal had him reflecting on his Silkie mother, Cristina, again. For a moment, he thought to convince himself that his mother had survived her own encounter with the Orcs in New Pearlaya. That she would have then coming searching for him too. Reality begged him to suffer the truth once more; that his mother was neither alive, nor did the seal swimming in front of him now have the same coat, or color, that his mother had worn. Mom was a Gray Seal, Garrett recalled, his mother’s Silkie skin paling in compare to the Ribbon Seal’s multi-colored and beautifully swirled design.

  The Ribbon Seal before him also took no notice of Garrett, nor those swimming with him and Cursion. To his mind, the seal had eyes only for the injured boy in the arms of Atsidi Darksnout. When the Hammer chieftain and his warriors left the remaining Nomads behind, the only non-Hammers to follow were Watawa the Open Shell and the Ribbon Seal that he motioned to swim alongside him.

  Cursion stirred too, then, reaching his arm around Garrett’s shoulders to embrace the healthy, living son at his side.

  Even as his mind wished it were Tom Weaver, or Cristina, to hold him, Garrett relished the squeeze his blood father, Cursion, gave him all the same. What will happen to the boy? He asked.

  Who can say? The high chieftain replied, squeezing Garrett’s shoulder once more before releasing him. But if the boy is truly the son of Silent Hammer, then I will pray for them both that he makes a recovery in full.

  Garrett looked to the blurry boat above.

  Where there had been three crewmembers helping Watawa to move the boy into the water, now Garrett saw only one remaining. By the height and size, Garrett estimated the person above to be a man, but he could not be certain. For a moment, Garrett considered venturing up to speak with the crewmember to learn of all that had happened before he and the other Nomads had arrived.