by Chris Howard
“Ah, there you are, Parresia,” he said pleasantly, letting his gaze drift inquisitively to me. “I say. Who are you? You’re a Thalassogenês, aren’t you?”
“Not just anyone from the sea, Theupheides,” said Parresia. “This is Lady Kassandra, an Alkimides, heir to the throne.”
“The Wreath-wearer,” added Limnoria.
“Oh my! And who is that?” Theupheides gasped, throwing his head back to take in the giant wall of water with teeth that stood behind me.
“I am King Ephoros.”
“Oh, right.” Theupheides paused to give Ephoros another look, then a bow of his head. “Pleased to make your acquaintances.”
He looked at me for another curious second, turned back to Parresia, and then went on as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
“Anyway. I met this strange gentleman on the train, Parresia. I thought you might like to know. A Mr. Fenhals. I finally got his name after badgering him for an hour. A tricky man, Fenhals, but you know me and how I can badger someone.”
Helodes and Limnoria rolled their eyes and nodded.
Parresia shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“After a nice bus ride up from Galveston, I took a sleeping car on the train out of Longview, you know, the 7:05, a beautifully smooth ride through Texarkana, Malvern, Little Rock that eventually winds its way up to Chicago. The Windy City,” he said solemnly. It was almost comical but he sounded serious. “I love saying that. Anyway, I went up to the sightseeing lounge and met one of the seaborn there. At least I think he was, a very peculiar gentleman. I missed the 3:06 stop at Poplar Bluff and so I waited to get off with the strange man at 8:09 in St. Louis. I made my way to the river first thing. It took me a bit of work to find you, but here I am.”
“Wait. Back up,” said Parresia, now scowling. “What does this have to do with our last conversation?”
“Mr. Fenhals told me he was going to teach at a school in Nebraska, and that he was on his way there now. That’s when I thought of you and the questions you’d asked me. You said you and your sisters were doing something up this way. I thought you would be interested in this Fenhals character. He seemed a little crooked.”
I held my breath for a stunned second, recalling Matrothy’s remarks about Mr. Henderson. “Did this seaborn, Mr. Fenhals, say what he was going to teach?”
Theupheides turned. “I asked him, you know, and he started to answer but something stopped him. He didn’t like my question. He grew suspicious, clammed up and I couldn’t get much out of him after that. I’m not certain, but I think he started to say, ‘philosophy,’ which you seaborn use to mean what everyone else calls ‘science’.”
My breathing quickened with the last word, even though I knew he was going to say it.
Kings and dead armies, my father’s a prisoner in a tomb, some crooked seaborn Mr. Fenhals is going to replace my favorite teacher. Half the world was caving in on me.
And the other half didn’t look like it was going to stay up much longer.
I was standing in a motel room with naiads, powerfully magical river witches. One of them sent me the dream of my father and another created a rainstorm to send it. I let my gaze shift to the others, the one still crouching by the TV, Olivia, then to Helodes and the jolly man who didn’t seem to fit in with this group at all, but looked more like someone’s grandfather who was rich enough to spend all his waking hours riding trains across the country, bothering other passengers with unwanted conversation.
My nerves were pushing at the edge and raw. Every sense came in unfiltered, stirring thoughts into the mix. River witches conjuring weather out of thin air, playing tricks with my dreams, playing both ends? Was Matrothy in on this? Was someone—the king—controlling Matrothy? Was the director going to bring in this Fenhals guy to replace Mr. Henderson...for teaching us about water?
“I need to go,” I said at last. Focus on why I’m here. My father needs me, and I need to find my world.
Theupheides bowed to each of us and said. “Me too, or I’ll miss the 11:20 out of St. Louis. Farewell ladies and gentleman.” He bowed to Ephoros. “Good luck in all your ventures.”
With that, he returned to the bathroom. He tugged on his hat, made a couple remarks about the “beautiful gold trilithon you ladies have set up,” stepped into the running bathwater and vanished.
I backed up a step toward the bathroom. I wasn’t sure how to bring a meeting with river witches to an end without offending them, so I was going to follow Theupheides’ example.
But can I trust them?
“I have to look for my father first. That’s what I set out to do tonight. Then...then I’ll return to Clement’s to see if I can help Mr. Henderson.”
Parresia held up a hand. “Who’s he?”
“My science teacher. The director of the girls department said something really weird to me, that Mr. Henderson was going to be punished, and that it was my fault. I think she’s going to kill him.”
“You think this has to do with this Mr. Fenhals? Who’s the director? Is she involved?”
“I don’t know,” I said after a pause. “Matrothy—the director—has been acting weird, weirder than normal. She—” I pulled my words in. I didn’t need to tell them Matrothy had been beating me since I was a baby. “I’m not sure...but I think there’s more to it. Maybe it has nothing to do with what Mr. Henderson was teaching,” I whispered, my eyes drifting to the ceiling. “Maybe this Mr. Fenhals has been sent to Clement’s to let in the Olethren?”
I snapped back into focus at the hisses of rage from the naiads. The mention of the dead army of the seaborn drove them mad.
“Lady Kassandra?” Ephoros moved his arms closer around me as a firm knock came from the motel room door.
Chapter 18 - Saltwater
Parresia pointed at the bathroom. “Go. We haven’t been watching the local rivers as well as we should, looking south, all of us, instead of upriver. We will try to learn more about this Fenhals and Henderson and what the king is planning. I will reach you with any new information.”
I nodded as someone knocked again, this time harder.
“Helodes, see who it is.”
Parresia turned to me just before I entered the bathroom. “Lady Kassandra? The answer is yes. I trust you.”
My breath caught in my throat. I let my eyes fall closed, released all the tension in my body and opened them. “Thank you.”
I had won with words, not my sword or my rage or any other powers and faults at my disposal. I had talked my way through this. There’s a word Mrs. Vilnius used. Diplomat. I wanted to do...diplomacy. That’s the word I was thinking of. Diplomacy.
I bowed to Parresia and turned to go as a man’s voice came through the door, muffled but irritated.
“Ladies? Sorry to bother you this late. This is Gilbert Smolton, the manager. Can I please speak to you? It’s about the amount of water you ladies are using—more than all the other guests put together.”
I stepped into the running bathwater, pausing to look at three heavy blocks of gold clamped to the end of the shower pipe, each shaped like a heart turned in. They looked familiar. I stared at them a second more and then focused on the weight in my hand. I still held the sword and I gripped it tighter as I pictured the map in Vilnious’ classroom.
On to the Gulf of Mexico.
The motel bathroom spun like a merry-go-round and the sound of the door latches clicking and Helodes’ cheerful “Hello” were drowned in the rushing current that grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me in.
I released all of the breath in my lungs, drowning all over again, choking on the last of my air. There was a tight surge of panic, and then my body found its own way, relaxing when it was over and the water moved inside me like it belonged there.
I rocketed through smears of light and darkness. It was like being fired from an underwater cannon. I really wanted to open my eyes. The helmet made it easier this time, and I watched cloudy brown shapes whip past me.
; “Wha—” I started and choked on the surge of water against the back of my throat. I bent my head down, away from the speeding current and pulled in a breath.
I tasted something bitter.
Saltwater. I’m in the ocean. I made it.
“Do not speak until we stop,” Ephoros’ voice rumbled nearby. I glanced around, then my helmet slipped sideways, partly covering my right eye. Ephoros was with me, but I couldn’t see him.
The current slowed. The roaring faded, and then the same force that grabbed my shoulders and sucked me into the water pipe like a vacuum cleaner, shot me out on the other side. I soared headfirst through open water, gradually coming to a drift.
The first thing I did was fix my helmet.
The ocean slipped slowly by me. I was sinking a few inches a second, and I kicked to stop it. I slid the sword into its scabbard, fingering the two rings, and stared down at my waist for a place to hook it. I found flexible loops that opened and snapped closed in the last place I’d expected to find them, just above my butt, one hook higher than the other. My sword hung at an angle across my lower back, with the grip sticking out over my left hip.
Didn’t seem that convenient.
But I’m sure there’s a reason for that.
And now my hands were free. I looked down, paddling to slow the descent, surprised as my feet came to rest on something solid, like an invisible floor.
There was nothing see a thing below me, just the pure blackness of the deep ocean, and hundreds of feet above me, the pale blue rippling surface. The soft shimmer of light distracted me.
“Ephoros? Is that moonlight?”
I turned around and he was there, as large as I had ever seen him, his shoulders like rounded shadowy mountains.
I looked down at my feet again. I was standing on his hand in the middle of the sea.
“Welcome home, Lady Kassandra.”
I nodded, found myself grinning as wide as the sea.
This is my world. My world. I made it.
If anyone understood what I was feeling, it was Ephoros, and he let me soak in my freedom for ten minutes without saying a word.
“We are in the Gulf of Mexico,” he rumbled, looking around at the uniform blue that gradually darkened under us.
“How can you tell?”
He looked at me, puzzled. Guessing it wasn’t a question he heard often.
“Perhaps there are things I can see that you cannot, voices I hear that do not reach your ears? The ocean is alive, princess, and it tells us many things.”
Ephoros kept looking in one direction—what I thought was west, but then he pointed the opposite way and said, “That is our path.”
“To my father?”
He worded his answer carefully. “The prison of the Thalassogenêis is that way, in the Atlantic.”
He lifted me up to his right shoulder, and I took a step onto what seemed only slightly more solid than open water. My foot stopped firmly against Ephoros’ skin and I leaned forward, lifting my other foot up.
It was like balancing over an abyss on a tightrope I couldn’t see, but the water around me held me up, pressing against the soles of my feet. I dropped to a crouch and sat down on Ephoros’ shoulder.
“Hold on, Lady Kassandra. I will not let you fall, but we will be moving swiftly.”
I dug my fingers into the semi-solid watery substance that was Ephoros’ skin and we sped off.
I couldn’t tell if we were moving faster than the journey through the pipes. It was smoother and quieter, but the gulf was so vast that it seemed as if we were gliding along at no more than a slow walk.
A few things—maybe fish—flitted by us in blurred streaks of color. The water was nearly empty.
“Why don’t we just think about the ocean ahead and do the same thing we did through the water pipes?”
As fast as we were going, wishing yourself from one place to another and getting there almost immediately must be faster.
“That works well with rivers that flow to the sea, and are less tricky. But when you are out here.” He made a sweeping motion with one arm. “You must take the mischievous currents into account, the strong flows around the islands of the Caribbean, and the welling currents from the deeps, the temperature changes, floor events. They are both water, rivers and oceans, but the oceans cannot truly be mastered by any save one.”
“Who?”
“The one who gave your family the Wreath.”
Ephoros flowed through the blue, making his own current. He spoke for an hour about his family, and wars, and how he’d helped the Athenian fleet at Salamis. Crazy stuff. The deeper he went into the stories, the less he spoke English, and finally every word was in ancient Greek—or Hellene as Praxinos called it.
I picked out phrases and words, getting the theme of each of the tales but losing some of the details.
I yawned and stared around blearily. It must be well after midnight. And how deep are we? I was too tired to ask.
Andromache stepped through sword lessons, and I felt my hand clench and my arm twitch when the old queen told me to turn a certain way or make some motion to parry an enemy’s sword stroke.
As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered about the power I shared with the past Wreath-wearers, or with the Wreath itself, which seemed to be this sort of decision engine inside my head. What else is it? Can the past wearers control me? I seemed to be able to tune them out completely without much effort. Who will appear next? My thoughts were already crowded with the two of them and myself...and where’s my mother?
“Kassandra?”
I opened my eyes, but it was hard to wake up. My shoulders ached and my right wrist was sore. I felt exhausted, as if I hadn’t actually been asleep all this time but practicing sword fighting with Andromache.
I looked down at the tall castle-like forms of stone rising from the ocean floor. We were far away from the Gulf of Mexico and much deeper. There was no moonlight coming from above, but I could see the shape of the rugged ground below. It was like standing high in the mountains at dusk, no shadows, just a pale ambient glow.
We were in the mountains, but at the bottom of the ocean.
A brighter glow caught my attention and I twisted around.
“What is that light?” I pointed at blue glow on the seafloor’s horizon, too far away to make out anything.
“That is the Nine-cities of the Seaborn.”
“Is that my home?”
Ephoros nodded. “It will be.”
“But I’m free.” I pointed back the way we had come. “Let’s get my father and go home. I don’t have to go back do I?”
“You are less welcome in the Nine-cities.” Before I could speak or protest, he added, “And you have friends and allies at the school. Best friends. You would leave them behind?”
He already knew me well.
I glared at him. “When can I go to the Nine-cities?”
“You are its ruler. You will tell me when it is time.” Ephoros made a dismissive rumbling sound in his throat, trying to keep me on track. “Lady Kassandra, we are not going there...” His arm swung down into the yawning canyon in front of us. It opened up wide and depthless, and I heard faint noises, the clinking of chains and distant screams. “...but there.”
Chapter 19 - The Lithotombs
“Hold on with all your strength, Lady Kassandra.”
I leaned back on my hands, my fingers digging into Ephoros’ shoulder like hooks. I stared into the Atlantic abyss, no light penetrated from above, nothing stared back, and the muted glow that seemed to follow me, gave me about fifty feet of visibility and went dark after that. I made out dim craggy outlines of cliff walls and shelves, passing as we descended, but little else.
Is the glow coming from me or Ephoros? I knew there were fish that had the ability to light up sections of their bodies, but this didn’t seem to be the same. Was it...the Wreath? I am seaborn, I thought, and maybe the glow was part of being one.
Repeating it, I am seaborn, it sounded stra
nge and proper at the same time, like medicine that tasted good. I knew medicine that didn’t make you retch existed, but I’d only had it once when a doctor from Omaha came out to the school and gave me strawberry-tasting antibiotics for an alleged ear infection. Any other time I’d been given or force-fed the stuff, it was horrible, like rancid licorice or powdered sour cat-droppings, which of course is what anyone expects from medicine.
“How far is it?” I asked Ephoros in a soft voice. The world was so oppressively quiet, it felt as if I could bring down the stone walls just by yelling.
“Deep,” was all he answered.
Maybe he felt it too, and didn’t want to go through a lengthy explanation. If my voice could trap us under tons of rubble, surely his booming could cause the entire mountain range to slide to the seafloor.
I had just steered my thoughts to my mother again when Ephoros slowed noticeably.
“We must be careful, princess.”
“What is it?” I couldn’t see anything below us, but I tensed up, unhooked my left hand and made a fist with it.
“I can sense one of my kin, a brother perhaps. We shall see.”
I felt a ripple of tightening muscles pass through Ephoros’ shoulders. What was he readying for?
“Don’t you get along with your family?”
“It is not that...”
“What then?” I whispered anxiously.
Ephoros stopped and backed up against the cliff wall. A defensive position. Without thinking, I had the sword in my hand and I jumped into a crouching stance. For one stunned second I wondered what the hell I was doing.
Somehow the Wreath-wearers influenced or transferred knowledge or taught me through some accelerated method. I wasn’t sure which. Praxinos had managed to instruct me in ancient Greek, and now Andromache, afraid that I would be caught defenseless against the Olethren, had taught me something of the art of sword fighting.
Out of the side of his wide toothy mouth, Ephoros said, “Say nothing. Let me speak to him.”
Everything was a deep perfect black beyond the radius of the glow that followed us. But if I focused hard I could just see the soft sandy floor below Ephoros, but past that, there was nothing, not a single outline or difference in the smooth inky space.