Watawa took his time in answering, his one eye gleaming before he spoke. As your father said before . . . aye, and Ishmael too. The shaman’s words came as a whisper, but Garrett heard them like a thunderclap when the one-eyed mystic squeezed his shoulders with all the sinewy strength within him. You must go to the pearled city, Garrett Weaver. Fly there with all the speed you can muster to deliver word of all that you have witnessed this night. Of your father’s death at Ishmael’s hands . . . aye, and of the Sancul offer for a Salt alliance with our people too.
I can’t, Garrett said without thinking. How? I-I don’t know how to get into the city alone. Or where the city even is from all the way out here! How would I—
Watawa quieted him with another squeeze. You must find a way, Garrett Weaver, he said, his voice strengthening, his lone eye blazing. You have the blood of both worlds, Salt and Sand, in your veins, my young friend. Aye, the twin product of both our collective peoples too, a child born of shared love between enemies with the hope of a better tomorrow. Not for one race alone, but for all who swim beneath the Salt. If not your voice, Garret Weaver, who else to deliver such words?
I can’t, said Garrett, his eyes stinging at the thought of such a task, his mind searching for any excuse. Even if I could reach the city, the Orcs won’t listen to me anymore than the Tigress and these other Nomads would.
They will, my friend, said Watawa. They must. Aye, you must make the Merrow king and your fellow Orcinians hear you, Garrett Weaver. For I understand clearly now that the worst of my dreams is soon to be made true – that the Sancul are the monstrous shadow of my dreams. They come to cover this world in eternal dark. And as your father warned our council, I have no doubt the Deep Dwellers will not stop until they bring all Salt Children and the world itself to heel.
Garrett blinked away the blurry stain upon his eyes. I don’t know how to do this though. Why would any of the Orcs or the Merrow king listen to me?
Because you are your father’s son, said Watawa. The noble, brave son of the Pod Mother also. The grandson of Orcin Blacktide and nephew to the fearsome Blackfin too. Tell any and all the Orcinians you meet in the City of Pearls about Ishmael’s betrayal and know that they will believe you, Garrett Weaver. And when you win the trust of Orcs and Merrows with such a message, then let you tell them of those greater monsters you have witnessed lurking beneath the Salt also. Watawa’s thumbs needled into Garrett’s shoulder blades, his voice tinging with pain. You must make them believe, Garrett Weaver. For as I swim here now, I tell you the fate of all Salt Children lies with you to convince all that you can to join in turning back the dark tide to come. For if we Salt Children do not join and rise together now, then I fear that all shall fall forever more.
But how? Garrett wept under the thought of such a charge assigned to him. Even if I agree to tell the Orcs, what if the Tigers come after me? Or Ishmael too? How am I supposed to find my way alone, Watawa?
Watawa’s cheeks twitched. As anyone does when they are lost, Garrett Weaver. You must follow others who know the way until you can find yourself again. The shaman released his hold over Garrett’s shoulders. And first, you will follow me. He took hold of Garrett’s hand. Now come, my friend. For I fear we have little time to hasten you away from here and onto your harder journey ahead.
31
CHIDI
Chidi swam toward the boat where Bryant and Marisa Bourgeois awaited her. Breaching for air, she discovered Bryant using a bucket to wash the boat clean of that which formerly stained its deck. Is that your blood, Allambee? She wondered. Or one of the Orcs who came for us? Girard’s, maybe?
Chidi’s mind tormented her with questions of the dead as she swam around the runoff. Her heart warned the answers did not matter, not now that all those she wondered after were dead anyway. So many gone, she glanced to the darkened water behind her.
She no longer heard the screams of Allambee’s killer, the Orc named Arsen, but the torture he no doubt endured beneath the waves haunted her memory.
Upon the boat, Bryant had noticed her arrival and ceased cleaning the deck.
With the bloodied runoff halted, Chidi used the opportunity to gather her speed in the water, then leapt on board. She slid for a moment, then stuck her flippers hard upon the deck to slow her momentum before running into Bryant and knocking him over.
The Selkie marshal came for her slowly, reaching for her mouth and nostrils to free Chidi of her seal form. When her changes had reversed, the wind whistling about her human ears, Chidi cowered upon the dock. As Bryant knelt at her side, the tears Chidi could not formerly cry in her seal body now brimmed in her eyes and then spilt down her cheeks.
Bryant said nothing of her arrival, nor did he question what she had seen below. Quietly, he sat beside her and welcomed Chidi into his arms, hugging her close.
Chidi lost all manner of resolve then, sowing all her grief and fears into his shoulder. Long after she had no more tears to cry, Bryant remained with her.
“He’s gone,” Chidi managed to whisper. “Allambee is gone.”
“I know,” said Bryant. “Just us and Marisa now, kid.”
Chidi pulled away then, her face warming at his mention of the mystic Silkie. “Where is she?”
Bryant’s reply was not to come, his voice lost to the echoed footsteps of one padding free of the captain’s cabin.
Marisa Bourgeois stepped out to join them. “I am here, my friend . . .”
Chidi felt the need to rise and fly at Marisa then, to claw and tear at her face. For Allambee’s fate, and for subjecting Atsidi Darksnout to reunite with his son for only a moment before watching him die in his arms too. “You knew!” Chidi condemned her. “You saw that Allambee would die all along . . .”
Marisa would not deny it.
“Why?” Chidi’s voice broke. “Why did you lead us out here if you knew that all of this would happen.”
“Because I hold to some glimpse of what may occur hereafter, Chidi,” said Marisa. “Why such sacrifices must be made.”
Chidi’s face broke into a new wave of tears at the soft and quiet manner with which Marisa of sacrifice. “Stop,” Chidi said to her reply. “Just stop . . . I don’t want to hear anymore from you. Not ever again.”
“Not even if it helps to save your own family?” Marisa asked.
Chidi rose then, standing even as Bryant attempted to keep her from it.
“Chidi, wait . . .”
“No,” she replied, leaving him behind, striding across the deck to stand within striking distance of Marisa Bourgeois. “You talk about my family as if I’ll see ever them again, but you said the same to Allambee and . . . I-I loved him too.” She pointed toward the water and Allambee’s final resting place. “I loved him like he was my family. Just like Sasha and Racer, and so many others before them too . . .”
Marisa frowned. “You speak to me as if I do not mourn the loss of them also.”
“Do you?” Chidi threatened her. “I don’t see you weeping for them, or the things you’ve done.”
“We all of us mourn in different ways, Chidi Etienne,” said Marisa. “For some, they put their grief on display for all to see and gawk over. Their tears rain as bountiful as the Salt, falling as frequently as waves upon the shore. Do you judge their tears worth more than yours? Aye, or others like you that shield themselves against such pain by running, hiding, or burying it altogether?” Marisa looked past Chidi then, her gaze flickering toward Bryant. “And what of those others who gladly swap their sorrow for anger instead? Those trapped by their pain, or the guilt of surviving when others did not? All to instead use such grief to seek out their own cause, even if the pursuit means chasing such ends to their own detriment. Whatever the reason, all such measures are meant to numb, or else delay, the true root of their pain,” Marisa offered Bryant some little nod before refocusing on Chidi. “Do not judge me harshly because you have not found me weeping over those taken from this world, Chidi. I too have suffered such losses as you have endured.
I too have made my own sacrifices and will make still more to see this effort through. Or shall I show you some of them too? Some of my own ghosts?” Marisa raised her hand in offer for Chidi to take hold. “Would you like to hear as I do? More voices of the dead and others soon to be? Aye, the voice of all those that linger within me, so that you might add them to your memory also?”
Chidi recoiled, remembering the minor glimpses of visions Marisa had shown her in Orphan’s Knoll and upon the beach shortly thereafter. “No . . .” said Chidi. “I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t care what you’ve seen, or what you say will come. You brought Allambee out here knowing he would die for it.”
“And what would you have done if in my position, Chidi?” Marisa asked. “If you were given a vision of death for one, aye, but all whilst knowing there was the glimmered hope of salvation for many others as a result of the sacrifice made?”
Chidi’s face twisted. “I would have kept him safe,” she said. “Told Allambee to stay behind if I had known he would die.”
Marisa cocked an eyebrow. “And yet you knew your friend, Racer, would die if he ran with you. That your owner, Henry, would make good on his promise to hunt you always and kill anyone that he found running with you.”
Chidi stepped back as if Marisa had struck her. “I didn’t know that Racer would die . . .”
“No?” Marisa asked. “What of Henry’s murdering the little Silkie girl, Sasha, when first you came into his service? Was his murder of her not enough to convince you of his threat? Or what of those others you ran with after the loss of Sasha also? Shall I name all of them too?”
Chidi clutched at her chest as a flood of still more faces and names rose from the recesses of her mind, even as she fought to bury them anew. “How?” she asked Marisa Bourgeois. “How do you know these things?”
“Much and more is what I know, Chidi Etienne,” said Marisa. “Just as you had some little knowledge of what would occur all those nights you ran from Henry Boucher with those others at your side. All with the hope you and they might find your way to true freedom again.”
“I-I didn’t know he would find us,” said Chidi, her voice weakening at Marisa’s claims, her anger doused in lieu of the mystic Silkie’s accusations. “I just wanted to get away from Henry. We all just wanted to be free and get away from him.”
“Aye, you did,” said Marisa. “And you were willing enough to risk condemning others with the thought you might earn your freedom even after you had escaped Henry’s reach.”
Bryant became a shadow at Chidi’s side. “Hey!” He barked at Marisa. “Leave it alone now. That’s enough, Bourgeois.”
“Is it?” Marisa flung back, more in acknowledgement of Chidi than a reply to Bryant. “By your face, Chidi, you act as though you have no understanding of what I mean.”
“What do you mean?” Chidi asked.
“The naïve, Merrow prince . . . Jun Gao,” said Marisa, looking to Bryant too. “The pair of you stood in that innocent child’s home knowing that you had not been led there for good intent by the Nomad brothers, Quill and Watawa. Yet still you stayed and helped the ones who took you there to accomplish their further goals of reaching the zoo. Of taking the boy inside to test his origins and bloodline.” Marisa settled on Chidi once more. “How many died that night in the attack upon the zoo, Chidi? How many lives lost for your continued pursuit of freedom?”
Chidi fought against the stinging in her eyes. “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” she argued, fending off the memories of holding a dying Selkie in her arms after the battle for the zoo had ended. She remembered Bryant too as he called the Nomad brothers to relay their victory and to bring the boy, Jun, inside the zoo premises. “We didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” Chidi argued, more to herself than Marisa. And yet when she dared to look in the mystic Silkie’s eyes, she found them gleaming too. “Quill and Watawa made us go. W-We didn’t choose to be there.”
“Da’ar is altyd n’ kuese, Chidi,” said Marisa.
Chidi bit her lip to keep it from quivering. “What was I supposed to do?” she asked, her chin drooping to her chest, unable to meet Marisa’s gaze any longer. “What would you have done?”
Marisa reached out to her, bidding Chidi to look up again. “As with all these former choices made, I would have begged the Ancients to make me as brave you were and are, Chidi Etienne,” she said, the sternness in her breaking for the moment. “I would pray that They would use me to continue bettering the lives of others along my journey. Aye, to ease their suffering, if only for my being there to walk and swim among those as desperate for aid and hope as we all of us have been and continue striving for now.”
Chidi sniffed. “You’re not making any sense . . . I don’t understand.”
Marisa smiled. “For all the trials you have endured, you still believe all that you have endured was meant to cause you pain, Chidi. That this world, its obstacles, and players; that all have been set against you. The odds stacked in the favor of others, and you the mindless pawn moved across the board without thought for your life and choices. What you fail to understand is that all of these things are meant to help you see.”
“See what?” Chidi asked.
“How you matter,” said Marisa. “Your choices, Chidi . . . your kindness . . . your words . . . aye, your heart.” The mystic Silkie beamed, even as she pressed the flat of her palm against Chidi’s breast. “Are you so blind still as to not see how your life affects so many others? How for all the guilt you keep within, Chidi . . . all the choices you would undo for their seeming failure . . . how is it that you still fail to see all the good and light you have produced also?”
“I haven’t though,” said Chidi, pulling away. “Allambee, Racer, Sasha . . . they’re all dead.”
“And still I say their lives were made better by your actions, Chidi,” said Marisa. “It was your willful acts and choices that led Lenny Dolan to rise against his owner, freeing you and others the night your Selkie crew took Garrett Weaver instead. Even thereafter, your later sacrifice that night reignited Zymon Gorski’s desire and his passion to carry on his noble work of helping to free others from likewise bondage also. Who can say many countless others will be influenced by those actions now?”
“Zymon was doing his work long before I came around,” said Chidi, motioning to the companion at her side. “Ask Bryant . . . he’ll tell you that Zymon was already doing the work.”
“Perhaps, he could,” Marisa said, then turned to smile at Bryant. “And what could you tell me that I have not long seen already in my dreams of you too, David? That you have preached to Zymon Gorski for all these many years now that he should show his face to the people and give them further hope?”
Bryant shook his head. “How do you know all these things, Bourgeois?”
Marisa would not answer him, her gaze refocused on Chidi instead. “And what of your standing against the Nomad brothers, Chidi? Hmm?” she asked. “For though you helped the Selkies to reach and take the zoo for your owners that night, you also defied one of the Salt’s most feared warriors too. When your master, Quill, thought to murder the Merrow king’s son, aye, an innocent boy, it was you that rose to defend the sweetling prince. You, a single seal to stand against the fearsome leader of the Unwanted tribe.”
“I didn’t,” said Chidi. “Wilda stopped Quill that night, not me.”
“And yet the old Merrow could not have arrived in time to save the boy had it not been for your choices to delay your master’s hand, Chidi,” said Marisa. “It were the same brave act that led Wilda to offer you that prized gift you now wear upon your finger.”
Chidi’s skin tingled, then. She looked down upon the simple ring and stone that Wilda had given her at the Indianapolis Zoo, wondering again what power, if any, it truly held.
“Aye,” Marisa went on. “Wilda offered it to you for the same goodness and light that even a proud and noble warrior as Atsidi Darksnout recognized in you this night also. Consumed
by his grief and darker thoughts of vengeance, all his old wounds laid bare and opened anew,” Marisa pointed at the necklace and shark tooth Atsidi Darksnout had given Chidi to wear, “even the Hammer chieftain could not help but acknowledge the goodness he saw within you, my friend.”
Chidi instinctively clutched at the tooth when she found Marisa’s gaze holding upon it. “What do you mean?” she asked the mystic Silkie. “What is this tooth really?”
“Another of the Ancient gifts we were meant to seek out,” said Marisa.
“One of the five pieces of two?” Chidi asked.
Marisa nodded. “I once wore the necklace and tooth that you do now. The mother of Allambee Omondi gave it to me as a sign to her great love that all that I told the Silent Hammer about his son was true. Ah, but that tooth did not then hold the power that resides within it now.”
“What do you mean?” Bryant asked. “How can something have power one day and not the next?”
“Ask the Creator of such things, David Bryant, not me,” said Marisa. “From my limited understanding of the Ancient riddles, the five pieces of two cannot be bought. Not forcibly taken, nor stolen. They must be freely given else they are no true gift at all. No real sacrifice made from one owner to the next.”
“I don’t understand,” said Chidi. “You gave this tooth and necklace to Allambee’s father before, then?”
“It was never mine to give,” said Marisa. “I was merely the messenger. The tooth by rights belonged to Atsidi Darksnout all along. A token reminder of the love he shared with the mother of Allambee Omondi. She had kept it close to her all these many years with the hope of returning it to her lover one day when he returned to meet his son.”
Bryant shifted. “How did you come across it, then? How did you find them?”
“I saw the light of Mother Africa upon her and the boy, Allambee Omondi, in my dreams,” said Marisa. “And so I went to her and spoke as I speak to you now – told her of my dreams, the past and future too. Of all the choices made that led she and Atsidi Darksnout together, as with all the forces aligned against them to keep the pair apart also.”
Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 Page 48