The Changeling Sea

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Peri’s face was scarlet. “There is no country!” she shouted, and her mother’s secret, dreaming face faded away, became the weary stranger’s face once more. “There is no magic country in the sea! Stop watching for it!”

  But her mother was already watching again. Peri ran out of the house, slamming the door so hard that a flock of sea gulls sunning on the roof wheeled into the air, crying. Her mother’s face in the window was still as a sleeper’s, hearing nothing in her dreams but the tide.

  Two

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Peri climbed the cliff above the old woman’s house. There was a moon-shaped patch of sand ringed with gorse at the top; on her days off she could sit in the sunlight and brood at the sea, yet feel protected from the world within the green circle. The gorse was beginning to bloom here and there, tiny golden flowers that made her sneeze. But so far her magic circle was ungilded.

  She wrapped her arms around her knees and watched the white gulls wheel above the great weather-beaten spires of rock. Clouds scudded across the sea, making a mysterious weave of light and shadow on the water beyond the spires. Peri frowned at the mystery, chewing a thumbnail. What lay beneath the color and the shadow? Fish? Or some secret world within the kelp that sometimes floated too near the surface of the sea, disturbing those who dwelled on land? What would stop it from troubling her mother? She chewed a fingernail next, then took the finger out of her mouth and drew a spidery design in the sand.

  She studied it critically, then drew another one. Hexes, the old woman had called them. She had bent soft willow branches into odd, angular shapes, and then wove webs of thread within them. Hung in doors and windows, they kept malicious goblins and irritating neighbors away. They protected cows from being milked at night by sprites. Perhaps, Peri thought, a few hexes floating across the sea might trap its strange magic underwater. She would make them out of tough dried kelp stalk, row out over the deep water to cast them. She would have to check her father’s boat for leaks, get new oars, see if the rudder had been cracked. She had not looked closely at the Sea Urchin since the fishers had cleaned the sand and seaweed out of it and moored it in the harbor. Someone had covered it, or it would have sunk under the weight of the heavy winter rains. It probably dragged a crust of barnacles on its bottom…

  She drew another hex, a crooked, crabbed design. The wind tossed a gull feather into the circle. She stuck it behind her ear, then broke off a couple of feet of a wild strawberry runner that was gliding across the sand, and wove that absently in and out of her hair. Her dress—her oldest one—barely covered her knees. It was loose around the waist and so tight in the shoulders the seams threatened to part. In the gorse circle, it didn’t matter. She stretched out her legs, burrowed her feet under the warm sand, and devised another hex.

  I wonder, she thought, if I have to say something over them to make them work. Then she stopped breathing. A feeling skittered up her backbone. She turned her head slowly, warily, to see who was watching her.

  The dark horseman from the sea gazed up at her, mounted at the foot of the cliff. She caught her breath, chilled, as if the sea itself had crept noiselessly across the beach to spill into her circle. Then she blinked, recognizing him. It was only the young prince out for a ride in the bright afternoon. The dark horseman was Kir. Kir was the dark horseman. The phrases turned backward and forward in her mind as she stared at him. A wave boomed and broke behind him, flowing across half the beach, seeking, seeking, then dragged back slowly, powerfully, and, caught in the dark gaze of the rider, his eyes all the twilight colors of the sea, Peri felt as if the undertow had caught her.

  Then his face changed again: the king’s son, out for a ride. She blushed scarlet.

  “Girl,” he said, abrupt as one of the rich old lords who came to stay at the inn, though he was not even as old as Mare, “where is the old woman who lives in this house?”

  Peri dragged her hair back out of her eyes; the strawberry runner dangled over one ear. “You know her?” she said, surprised.

  “Where is she?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where?”

  Peri felt a sudden tightness in her throat; her brows pinched together. Too many people gone at once…“She went away and never came back,” she said, her sorrow making her cross. “So if you want a spell, you’re too late.”

  “A spell,” he repeated curiously. “Was she a witch? Who are you? Her familiar?”

  Peri snorted. A waft of pollen from the gorse blooms caught up her nose and she sneezed wildly. The strawberry runner fell over one eye. “I clean rooms at the inn,” she said stuffily. “Where do you work?”

  He opened his mouth, then paused, his expression unfathomable. His horse shifted restively. There were pearl buttons on his shirt, Peri saw, under his black leather jacket. A ring on his forefinger held a stone that trembled with the same twilight shadows in his eyes. His brows were dark, slightly slanted over his eyes. The bones of his face made hollows and shadows that seemed, in spite of the hearty sunlight, as pale as pearl, as pale as foam.

  “I sweep stables,” he said at last. “My mother keeps sea horses.”

  Peri stared at him. A long, dark breaker swept endlessly toward the beach; it curled finally, turning a shade darker just before it crashed against the sand. The prince glanced back at the sound; his eyes, returning to Peri, seemed to carry, for a moment, a reflection of the sea.

  “There is no land under the sea,” she said uneasily. “There is no land.”

  His brows closed slightly; his eyes drew at her. “Why do you say that?” he asked abruptly. “Have you seen it?”

  “No!” She bored holes in the sand with a twig, scowling at them. She added reluctantly, feeling his attention still pulling at her, “My mother has. In her dreams. So I am laying a hex on the sea.”

  “A hex!” He sounded too amazed to laugh. “On the entire sea? Why?”

  “Because the sea stole my father out of his boat and it bewitched my mother so that all she does now is stare out at the water looking for the magic country under the sea.”

  “The land beneath the sea…” A yearning she knew too well had stolen into his eyes, his voice.

  “There is no magic country,” she said stubbornly, feeling her eyes prick with frustration.

  “Then what does she see? And what are you making a hex against?”

  Peri was silent. The warm wind bustled into her circle, tossed sand over her hexes, tugged her hair back over her shoulders. The prince’s expression changed again, became suddenly peculiar.

  “It was you then,” he said.

  “What was?”

  “In the old woman’s house, a night ago. You were standing in the doorway with the firelight in your hair, beneath your feet.”

  “Then it was you,” she said, “watching the sea.”

  “For a moment I thought…I don’t know what I thought. The light was moving in your hair like tide.”

  “For a moment I was afraid. I thought you rode out of the sea.”

  “How could I? There is no kingdom beneath the sea.” He watched her a moment longer. Then, silently, he dismounted. He left the black horse flicking its tail at the sand flies, and found the trail through the gorse to the top of the cliff. When he broached Peri’s circle, she shifted nervously, for her private sand patch seemed too small to hold such richness, such restlessness. He stood studying her hexes, still silent. Then he knelt in the sand across from her.

  “What is your name?”

  “Peri.”

  “What?”

  “Peri—Periwinkle.”

  “Like the sea snail?”

  She nodded. “When I was little, my father would spread his nets in the sand to dry, and I would walk on them and pick the periwinkles off.”

  “My name is Kir.”

  “I know.”

  He gave her another of his straight, unfathomable looks. She wondered if he ever smiled. Not, apparently, at barefoot girls who worked at the inn. He traced one of her designs lightly with
his finger.

  “What is this? Your hex?”

  “Yes.”

  “This will terrify whatever watery kingdom lurks beneath the waves?”

  “It’s all I can think of,” she said grumpily. “I’m trying to remember the old woman’s spells. Is that what you wanted from her? A spell?”

  “No.” He was still gazing at the hex. His face seemed distant, now, aloof; she didn’t think he would tell her. But he did, finally. “I wanted to ask her something. I met her one day long ago. I was standing out there watching the sun sinking down between those two stones, and the light on the water making a path from the stones to the sun. She came out to watch with me. She said things. Odd things. Stories, maybe. She seemed—she seemed to love the sea. She was so old I thought she must know everything. She—I came here to talk, I wanted to talk. To her.”

  His eyes had strayed to the sea. His ringed forefinger moved absently, tracing a private hex in the sand. Peri’s eyes moved from the sandy scrawl to the stone on his hand, up to the black pearls on the cuff of his jacket, to the fine cream-colored cloth of his shirt, then, cautiously, to his face. It looked as remote, as expressionless, as the great spires weathering wind and sun and sea. His lashes were black as blackbirds’ feathers against his pale skin.

  She gave her skirt a sudden tug, trying to pull it over her callused knees. She closed her hands to hide the dry cracks on them. But nothing stayed hidden; she sat there with the king’s son in full daylight, with workworn hands and red knees, in an old dress bleached so pale she’d forgotten what color it had ever been. She sighed, then wondered at herself. What did it matter, anyway? What was the matter with her?

  The prince heard her sigh under the sigh of the tide; his head turned. He asked curiously, “How will you get these hexes out of the sand and into the sea?”

  “I’ll make them out of twigs and dry seaweed. I’ll bend them and bind the ends, and weave the patterns inside with thread. Then I’ll row out in my father’s boat over deep water and throw them in.”

  “Will you—” He stopped, looked suddenly away from her. He began again, his hands closed tightly on his knees. “Will you give the sea a message for me? Will you bind it to one of the hexes?”

  She nodded mutely, astonished. “What message?”

  “I’ll bring it here. When will you lay your hex on the sea?”

  “On my next day off. In six days.”

  “I’ll bring it when I can.” He glanced at the sun, then over her shoulder at the summer house on its smooth green perch high above the sea. “I must go. I’ll leave the message in the house if you’re not here.”

  “I won’t be,” she said as he rose. “I mean, I’ll be working.”

  He nodded. “But I’ll come again,” he said, “to see you. To find out what your hex did to the sea.” He smiled then, a bittersweet smile that made her stare at him as he picked his way back down the cliff. Mounted, he glanced back at her once, then rode away: the dark horseman, the king’s son, who was going to knock on Peri’s door like any fisher’s son, with a message for the sea.

  She found his message on her table four days later among the hexes. The hexes, irregular circles and squares of sticks and seaweed, with jagged spiderwebs of black thread woven across them, carried, Peri thought, a nicely malevolent message. The prince’s message was unexpected.

  It was a small bundle of things tied up in a handkerchief so soft that its threads snagged on Peri’s rough fingers. It was bordered with fine, heavy lace; one corner was embroidered with a pale crown and two letters: QV. Not Kir’s initials. Puzzled, Peri untied the ribbon around it.

  She sat fingering the small things within, one by one. A short black lock of hair. Kir’s? A black pearl that was not round but elongated, irregular, tormented out of shape. Another lock of hair, black, streaked with gray. A ring of pure silver, with initials stamped into it. KUV. Kir? But who was Q? Then she dropped the ring as if it burned, and huddled on her stool as if the king himself had come into her house.

  Q, K. Queen, king. King Ustav Var. Kir’s father. That was his graying hair lying there on her table.

  She tied everything back up, her fingers shaking, averting her eyes, as if she had caught the king in the middle of some small private act—counting the veins in his eyes or contemplating his naked feet to see how the years were aging them. She stuffed the handkerchief into an empty clay jar on the spellbinding shelf and slammed the lid down on it.

  There was no way, she had to admit finally, that she could row out to sea in the Sea Urchin by herself. Her back and arms were strong from carrying buckets of water and loads of wood, but it took more strength than she possessed to control heavy oars in open water with the sea roiling and frisking under her boat. Just getting out of the harbor with the hard waves feathering into the air above the breakwaters would be a nightmare. She’d lose the oars, she’d have to be rescued, teased and scolded by the fishers. Even the women who fished—Leih and Bel and Ami—were twice her size, with muscles like stones and hands hard as fence slats with rowing calluses.

  But how could she get the hexes out so far that the sea would not simply spit them back at her?

  She thought about the problem, her brows pinched tight as she worked. Carey was chattering about things she had seen unloaded from the king’s ship: carved and gilded chests, milk-white horses, gray dogs as tall as ponies, with lean flanks and slender muzzles, and silver-gray eyes, looking as glazed and panicked as fine ladies from being tossed about on the sea.

  “And their collars,” Carey breathed, “studded with emeralds.”

  “Emeralds, my foot,” Mare said witheringly. “Glass, girl, glass. This isn’t such a wealthy land that the king would waste emeralds on a dog. Peri, your hair is in your bucket.”

  Peri twitched it out; a tangle landed soddenly on her shoulder. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, thinking of the pearls on Kir’s shirt, the silver ring.

  “I want emeralds,” Carey said dreamily. “And gowns of white lace and gold rings and—”

  “You won’t get them on your knees in the soapsuds.”

  “Yesterday when I brought clean towels to one of the rooms, a man in green velvet said I was beautiful and kissed me.”

  “Carey!” Mare said, shocked. “You watch yourself. Those fine men will migrate like geese in autumn, and you’ll be stuck here with a belly full of trouble.”

  Carey scrubbed silently, sulking. Peri swam out of her thoughts, glanced up.

  “Was it nice?” she asked curiously. For a moment Carey didn’t answer. Then her mouth crooked wryly and she shrugged.

  “His mustache smelled of beer.”

  “Green velvet,” Mare muttered. “I hope a good wave douses him.”

  The tide was low that afternoon as Peri walked home, so low that even the great jagged spires stood naked in the glistening sand, and all the starfish and anemones and urchins that clung to their battered flanks were exposed. It was a rare tide. Beyond the spires the sea dreamed gently, a pale milky blue shot with sudden fires from the setting sun. Peri, her shoes slung over her shoulder, watched the bubbles from burrowing clams pop in the wet sand under her feet. The air was warm, silken, promising longer, lazy days, more light, promising all the soft, mysterious smells and colors of spring after the harsh gray winter. The sand itself was streaked with color from the sunset. Peri lifted her eyes, watched the distant sheen of light beneath the sun fall on water so still it seemed she could simply turn toward the tide and follow it. Her steps slowed, her lips parted; her eyes were full of light, spellbound. She could take the path of the sun to the sun, she could walk on the soft opal breast of the ocean as simply as she walked on the earth, until she found, there in the great glittering heart of light, the golden kingdom, the kingdom of—

  She stopped, shaking her head free of thoughts like a dog shaking water off itself. Then she began to run.

  She flung her shoes in a corner of the house, snatched the hexes from the table, Kir’s message from t
he jar, ran back out, straight across the beach toward the spires and the sun illumining the false, tempting dream between them, as if they were some broken ancient doorway into the country beneath the waves, reflected in the light.

  She stood between the spires at the edge of the idle tide, going no farther than that because the sand sloped sharply beyond the spires into deep water. She lifted the hexes, tied together and weighted with Kir’s message, threw them with all her strength into the sea.

  “I hex you,” she shouted, searching for words as bitter as brine to cast back at the sea. “I hate you, I curse you, I lay a hex on you, Sea, so that all your spellbindings will unravel, and all your magic is confused, and so that you never again take anything or anyone who belongs to us, and you let go of whatever you have—”

  She stopped, for the hexes, floating lightly along the crest of a wave, had suddenly disappeared. She waited, staring at the water, wanting nothing to happen, wanting something to happen. A bubble popped like a belch on the surface of the water a few yards away. She edged close to the wet starfish-dotted flank of one of the spires. Had she, she wondered uneasily, finally got the sea’s attention?

  The water beyond the spires heaved upward, flaming red. Peri shrieked. Still it lifted, blocking the sun: a wall of red, streaming waterfalls. Two huge pools of fire hung where the sun had been, so big she could have rowed the Sea Urchin into either one of them. Long, long streamers of fire surfaced, eddied gracefully in the tide. And then gold struck her eyes, brighter than the sun.

  She gasped, blinking, and the round pools of fire blinked back at her. A sigh, smelling of shrimp and seaweed, wafted over the water.

  She edged backward, trying at the same time to cling to the rock like a barnacle. “Oh,” she breathed, her throat so full and dry with terror she barely made a sound. “Oh.”

  In the deep waters beyond the stones, a great flaming sea-thing gazed back at her, big as a house or two, its mouth a strainer like the mouth of a baleen whale, its translucent, fiery streamers coiling and uncoiling languorously in the warm waters. The brow fins over its wide eyes gave it a surprised expression.