The Tree of Water

by Elizabeth Haydon

  Because to the Nain, there is nothing more important than being good at your job, and doing it well.

  Maybe this mission will redeem Coreon in the eyes of the Lirin-mer. Maybe he will be seen as a great leader. Maybe he will be the Cormorant someday, who knows.

  He certainly would make a better one than the current fellow.

  Finally, after more days than we could count, we came to the end of the forest. The lush growth of kelp began to thin, then grow sparser, until it was just occasional clumps of seaweed and schools of fish passing through.

  And a lot of sand and empty water once again.

  It’s hard to put in words how we knew that we had reached the desert’s edge.

  In spite of that, each of us did know it.

  The drift changed first. We had been swimming so long that it took a while to notice. Tired as we were, we missed the early signs, like the seaweed growing paler, the schools of fish fewer. The sun beat down on the water’s surface, creating great patches of moving sunshadow, which made it hard to see into the distance.

  And yet, when we were at the desert’s edge, we all knew we were there.

  All four of us came to a halt at the same time on a sandy ridge as smooth and clean as a beach in the upworld, without a shell in sight.

  The bottom of the ocean before us was almost completely free of plant life. There were no wrecks visible, no coral reefs like the one where we met Coreon, just silence and empty blue water as far as we could see.

  And, for some reason, that water felt heavier.

  * * *

  “Look at all the nothing.”

  Amariel’s thrum echoed in Ven’s ears. He took a deeper breath of the elemental air from the bubble around his head. He remembered the last time he had heard her use those words.

  She was describing a place her father had taken her, a sea beneath the sea.

  And she had described it as the most frightening place she had ever been in her life.

  “What do you know about this place?” Ven asked Amariel and Coreon.

  “Just what the Cormorant told you.” Coreon’s thrum was steady, but high. Ven wasn’t sure if that was a sign of nerves, or if his undersea voice was just unsure what its pitch wanted to be. “If you want to find out if the Tree of Water still exists or is just a legend, the only one who may know is the Sea King. You have to cross the desert if you want to get to the Summer Festival.”

  “It’s so quiet here,” Char said. “I don’t feel any thrum at all, just the drift. Maybe it’s completely empty, like the vast deserts of the upworld.”

  “They say no desert is completely empty,” Ven said. “They just look that way. I once heard tales of a great desert from a storyteller who came to the town square outside my father’s factory in Vaarn. I was working in the front office that day, so I got to hear some of his tales through the window. He said that there are as many creatures living in that wasteland as there are stars in the desert sky. By day the desert animals hide in caves from the sun, but at night they come out looking for food.”

  “Well, it’s the same in the sea,” said Amariel. “Only it doesn’t have to be night here. The Sea Desert is so vast that you never know when you might come upon one of the great predators—the big sharks, octopi of enormous size, even—”

  “Megalodon?” Char offered helpfully.

  The merrow’s eyes widened. She balled up her webbed fingers into a fist and punched Char in the forehead.

  “Don’t even think his name, especially this far out in the Deep.” Her green eyes glittered as she glanced all around the emptiness. “You still don’t get it, do you, Chum? The sunshadows shift very easily here. Thoughts can carry a long distance.”

  “Yeah, but there’s nothing around here,” Coreon said. “While it’s true you can run into one of the big predators, you can also go for days without seeing anything. My dad says that as long as you stay quiet and low and don’t flap around a lot, they don’t even see you. Merfolk and sea Lirin cross the Sea Desert all the time without a problem. Members of my clan have gone to the Summer Festival every year, and we haven’t lost anybody in a really long time.”

  Char swallowed, rubbing his forehead.

  “That’s encouraging,” Ven said. His thrum didn’t sound much like he meant it.

  “Well, most of the time a big predator is like a storm at sea,” Amariel said. “You can usually hear and feel it coming. The bigger something is, the louder the thrum it makes. Does anybody feel something like that?”

  Ven closed his eyes, trying to concentrate. The constant drift had become part of his brain, or so it seemed. The invisible bubble of air around him hissed or whistled from time to time when something swam too close to his ears, but most of the time the ocean had a background of low, musical swishing and very little sound, except for the slight thrum he had heard as they submerged, and that had been in the back of his mind ever since.

  Here, at the vast edge of nothing, all of that background noise was gone.

  “Not me,” he said after a few moments. He looked at Char and Coreon. Both of them shook their heads as well.

  “Well, then let’s go,” Amariel said. “I want to get to the Festival as soon as we can—I know the games have already begun, and I would hate to miss the hippocampus races. If I go all the way across the desert and they’ve already awarded the Grand Trophy, I’m going to spit.” She eyed Char darkly.

  “Well, we certainly wouldn’ want that,” Char muttered.

  “No, indeed,” Ven agreed, smiling. Heavy as the water felt, his mood seemed to be lifting. The sun in the upworld was high and bright, and the desert was empty and quiet. True, the white sand and absence of sea life meant no cover, no place to hide, but it seemed that nothing was around to hide from anyway. “Let’s be on our way.”

  “Remember that most sharks and other big predators only eat when they’re hungry,” Coreon said as they started out over the sandy ridge above the clean ocean floor. “Even if one comes into view, it doesn’t mean it’s hunting. The best thing to do is not to panic. Panic makes your heart beat louder, and creatures tend to jerk in fear. Those sort of vibrations can catch the interest of a perfectly harmless predator that was otherwise minding his own business.”

  “Easy to say,” Char said. “It’s kinda hard to control your heartbeat.”

  “Maybe it’s best if we stop talking and just think positive thoughts,” Ven suggested.

  “I’m all for stopping talking,” said the merrow. “Especially Chum. I’m always for him being quiet.”

  “You know, you’re not the only one that can spit,” said Char.

  “I’d like to see you try it underwater.”

  “Knock it off, you two,” Ven thought, trying to keep the annoyance out of his thrum. “You’re putting us in unnecessary danger. Think about the Summer Festival, and we’ll be there before you know it.”

  Amariel nodded curtly, and, with a great sweep of her multicolored tail, she started off into the patchy light of the Sea Desert.

  They swam in the nearly silent sea all afternoon, only seeing signs of life every now and then. The sun beat down on the watery surface above, casting loose beams of light into the depths that they tried to avoid whenever they could.

  From time to time a large fish would appear like a shadow against the sun overhead, only to swim off into the murky dark, uninterested in them. Coreon pointed soundlessly as a large one with a long, saw-like nose glided by.

  Char’s thrum appeared in Ven’s head.

  “Reminds me—do you still have your jack-rule?”

  Ven patted his vest pocket and nodded.

  Char nodded in return, and the question in Ven’s head disappeared.

  “We’re getting better at speaking in thrum,” he thought. His legs were growing tired, and his throat was dry in spite of all the water around him. “When we finally stop for the night, Char and I need to go up to the surface and eat some of our provisions, and have a bit to drink.”

  “
Amen,” Char echoed.

  “You both certainly are a lot of work,” said Amariel. Coreon snickered but said nothing.

  As the day wore on, the patches of sunshadow grew fainter and fewer. The heavy water grew even more quiet and green as the sun began to set over the rim of the world.

  “We should find a place to sleep.” Amariel’s thoughts rattled the silence in their heads. “Night will fall soon, and the predators can smell a lot better in the dark than we can see. Keep your eyes out for a shipwreck or some rocks at the bottom. We are too deep now, too far from shore, to find the kinds of skelligs we rested on before. Who knows—we might even find a piece of the Athenry. It would be funny to find the broken bones of a ship we have a key for.”

  The three boys nodded in wordless agreement.

  On they swam. The hazy shafts of light disappeared when the sun turned orange at the horizon, causing the water to go gray as the dusk deepened. Ven could tell that both Amariel and Coreon were growing nervous by the quickening of their heartbeats, but neither said anything until Amariel’s thoughts burst into their brains.

  “We need to swim faster. If the sun sets before we find shelter, we’ll have to take our chances out in the middle of the desert floor.”

  All of their tiredness was suddenly gone.

  “Set the pace,” Ven thought back at her. “We’ll keep up as best as we can, but do what you have to do. Don’t wait for us.”

  The boys doubled their strokes, dragging their arms and legs through the drift as fast as they could.

  Finally, when the light was all but gone from the sky, Amariel stopped for a moment, hovering in the water.

  “Wait here.”

  She sped away into the gray sea before them, returning a few moments later.

  “Shelter up ahead.” Her thrum seemed a little nervous. “It’s not pleasant, but it will do. Follow me to the surface so you can eat and drink, and then we’ll settle in. I can feel some big things in the distance, and I want to get out of their way as quickly as we can. Follow me.”

  The merrow spun away toward the air of the upworld.

  Char and Ven exchanged a glance, then obeyed. Coreon followed close behind.

  * * *

  We took our time going up to the surface, as Madame Sharra, the Cormorant, and even Amariel had cautioned us. It took everything we had to keep from swimming up too fast, because as frightening as it is to have a predator above you, it is vastly more scary to not know whether you have one under you or not.

  When we finally broke the surface, the air of the upworld stung our lungs. It felt thin after the richness of the air we had been breathing from the elemental stones, and both Char and I began to cough. As a result we swallowed a good deal of bitter water before our lungs adjusted and we could begin to breathe normally again.

  * * *

  Four heads bobbed above the water’s surface.

  Ven looked around. There was nothing but ocean waves for as far as he could see. The sun was little more than a toenail of light at the edge of the horizon. Stars hung in the colorful clouds, rose-pink and aquamarine in the evening sky.

  Amariel held out a packet of kelp and Coreon handed over a flask of fresh water.

  “Land-livers. Sheesh. Hurry up and eat.” The merrow’s voice was cross. “See, if you had let Asa cut your gills, we could have done all this below in shelter.”

  “Yeah, but at least this way we don’t have any scabs, any last drops o’ blood,” Char muttered between bites of seaweed. “Therefore, no blood to attract any passing sharks.” He chewed, made a hideous face, then swallowed as if he were choking.

  “No, you’re right,” the merrow agreed. “No scabs. Just four rather obvious floating objects at the surface. Hurry up.”

  Ven was gulping water from the flask as quickly as he could. He passed it to Char, who took it and drank greedily. Then he gave the flask back to Coreon.

  “Come on,” the merrow urged. “The longer we’re up here, the farther we’ll drift away from the bones.”

  “Bones? You found a shipwreck?”

  Amariel shook her head. “Not exactly. Ven, take my hand—Chum, grab hold of Coreon. You won’t be able to see well enough to swim on your own now.” She seized Ven by the shoulder and dove, dragging him with her.

  The water closed over his head before he could catch his breath.

  * * *

  Deep in my memory I recalled something like this that had happened not all that long ago. On my fiftieth birthday when the ship I had been inspecting, the Angelia, blew up, I was thrown into the sea without warning. I must have hit my head—I remember almost nothing.

  Except sinking into green waves, down, deeper into the depths.

  Then the grasp of a webbed hand under my shoulder.

  And being dragged through the water, though I couldn’t see anything.

  The coolness of the air as I broke the surface.

  Being thrown on a piece of drifting wreckage. Shivering in the cold night wind.

  The cry of an albatross, the giant white bird that had circled above me as the ship went down.

  And, before I passed out, green eyes staring at me from the water’s edge.

  The same green eyes that were now scanning the bottom of the ocean desert in the last rays of light, looking for the shelter they had found a few moments before.

  * * *

  Ven could feel Amariel’s thrum being directed at Coreon.

  “There. At the bottom, right ahead of you.”

  In response, the sea-Lirin boy stopped and hovered in the water, holding Char’s foot. Ven could feel the dismay in his response.

  “Oh. When you said bones, I thought you meant a shipwreck. You—you actually meant, er—bones.”

  21

  A Cage of Bones

  * * *

  Sometimes I forget that humans can’t see in the dark.

  I forget this because normally I can.

  Nain have the ability, like foxes and owls and other animals of the night, to see heat in darkness. When that heat is within a living thing, what Nain are seeing is the energy caused by a beating heart, by the blood spinning through a warm body.

  We can also see another kind of heat in the darkness, however.

  Because Nain are children of the Earth, we can see parts of the world that are alive. Aboveground in the dark, this can be the sap flowing in trees or the sparks left behind in the ashes of a campfire. It’s like we carry our own daylight with us. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be human, and to be all but blind at night.

  Within the Earth itself, deep in the mountains or tunneled below the ground, the world is even more visible to Nain. We can see the life within pieces of stone and rock, objects humans view as lifeless. Some stone is cold, almost dead, like basalt or marble. Some is warmer, like coal, with more energy still inside it. I’ve even seen rivers of boiling metal, liquid gold that flows with life. Like all Nain, inside the Earth I can see almost as well as I can in broad daylight. The Earth sings to me, the way the coral sings to Amariel.

  But here, in the watery world, I can only see when the sun is in the sky above the water. Even when the day is bright in the upworld, with clouds reflecting the light back at the sea, my vision below the waves isn’t very good. I imagine it’s a little like being a bat, or a human in the dark. When the light is gone, I am almost blind.

  Especially in this place, this desert, where even those who were born to live here can’t see very well.

  So in the sea I have almost no chance of seeing something that is actually dead, like Black Ivory.

  Or lifeless bones.

  Even when they are giant bones.

  * * *

  “Ven, take out your air stone. I need some light.”

  Amariel’s thrum was quiet, as if she was trying to whisper. She stopped in the drift and hovered there, still clinging to Ven’s shoulder.

  Beside her, Coreon and Char came to a halt as well.

  Carefully Ven reached into the pock
et of his vest. His fingers trembled as he touched his great-grandfather’s jack-rule. It was his greatest treasure, the last gift his father had given him on his fiftieth birthday not so very long ago. He dug around the measuring tool until he touched what felt like a smooth, round stone. It hummed in the skin of his fingers.

  Please, please don’t lose it, he thought to himself. We’re fathoms deep now, and I’ll never be able to find it in the dark before my air runs out.

  He gripped the smooth object and brought it forth from his pocket.

  Then almost dropped it as a burning blue light stung his eyes.

  He could feel the startled thrum of his friends as they winced in pain as well.

  “Geez, cover it,” Amariel commanded. She pinched his shoulder sharply.

  Ven cupped his other hand over the stone.

  The blinding light dimmed to a blue glow. It hovered hauntingly in the water around them, casting ghostly shadows at the edge of their vision.

  Amariel’s strong hands seized Ven’s waist. She swam around behind him and pushed him forward, like a giant Nain-shaped lantern, scanning the ocean floor.

  A few moments later, she stopped.

  “Here,” she said.

  Ven held the air stone in his clutched fist up a little higher.

  Then he gasped.

  At first it appeared as if they were in a giant broken cage the size of an immense building. Large curved bars in lines on both sides of them reached up toward the surface, black and pointed like enormous fence posts. It looked as if they had been neatly planted in the sandy white floor of the sea.

  Except they were attached to a long knobby road that Ven could tell almost immediately was a spine.

  A spine they were almost standing on.

  A spine that was longer than the widest wing of the Crossroads Inn.

  He could feel Char trembling beside him, and turned to see his best friend staring at an upside-down skull, bigger than a wagon, partly buried in the quietly shifting sands.