The Changeling Sea

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  She dragged her eyes away from the ship, herself away from the harbor. She wandered through the village with its distant afternoon sounds of women chatting across walls as they worked in their vegetable gardens, children playing in the trees, calling to one another. Her rambling took her, as always, to her mother’s gate. The hoe was still standing in the weeds. She stopped, glaring at it. Where were the furrows, the seeds for spring? Her mother had to eat.

  She grabbed the hoe, ignoring the pale, listless face at the window, and attacked the rain-soaked ground.

  Several hours later, she sat on the wall, dirty, sweating, aching, and surveyed her work. There were mud streaks even in her hair. A great pile of weeds lay to one side of the garden; the dark, turned path in the middle was ready for potatoes, cabbages, carrots, squash. The sun was lowering behind her, filling the yard with a mellow light. A sweet sea breeze cooled her face. She ignored the sea for a while, then gave up, turned to it. The boats were homing toward the harbor on a streak of silver fire.

  She gazed at it, her heart aching again. She felt a touch on her shoulder; her mother stood beside her. They both watched silently. Peri’s tangled head came to rest against her mother’s shoulder. The sea, it seemed, had lured them both into its dreaming. Maybe there was no way out of the dream; they would be caught in it forever, yearning for a secret that was never quite real, never quite false…

  “Well.” She stirred from the wall.

  Her mother said softly, “Come in and eat, Peri.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not hungry. Get some seeds. I’ll come and plant them.”

  “At least,” her mother said in a more familiar tone, “wash before you go.”

  Peri drew water from the rain barrel, poured it over her hair and arms and feet until she was clean and half-drowned. She shook her soaked hair over her shoulders and drifted back out of the yard, through the village, to the beach. She followed the tide line, not looking at the sea except once: when she neared the spires and lifted her head to see the blinding light sinking down between them, showering its gold over empty waters.

  She ducked her head again, trudged to the old woman’s house. She opened the door, and found Kir, sitting on a stool with his feet on the window ledge, watching the sun go down.

  He rose, went to her as she stopped in the doorway. He put his arms around her wordlessly; after a moment her hands rose shyly, touched his back. She closed her eyes against the light, felt him stroke her hair.

  “You’re wet,” he commented, “this time.”

  “I was gardening.”

  “Oh.” She felt him draw a long breath, loose it. Then he loosed her slowly, looking at her with his strange, clear, relentless gaze. “I’m leaving for a while.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I saw the ship.”

  “My father—” He stopped, a muscle working in his jaw. “My father is taking me to visit a lord and lady in the North Isles. They have a daughter.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “How do you know?”

  His eyes left her, strayed toward the final, shivering path of light across the sea. “You know why,” he whispered. “You know.” His lips brushed hers, cold, yet she knew he gave her all the warmth he had. “If I could love, I would love you,” he said softly. After a moment she smiled. “Why is that strange?”

  “If you could love,” she said simply, feeling as if she had taken an enormous step away from herself, and into the complex world, “you would not choose me to love.”

  He was silent. She moved away from him, sat down tiredly, and was instantly sorry that he was no longer close to her. He paced the room a little, looking out. Then he stopped behind her, put his arms around her again, held her tightly, his face burrowed into her hair. She took his hands in her hands, lifted them to her face. She said, “Promise me.”

  “What?”

  “Stay safe, where you’re going. Don’t drown.”

  She felt his head shake quickly. “No. I wasn’t trying to, that night. I was swimming beyond the spires, trying to follow the light. But the faster I swam, the farther it drew from me; I followed it until it was gone, and I was alone in the deep water, in the darkening sea…I think—I think for the first time that night my father—the thought occurred to my father whose child I might be. I saw him look at me with changed eyes. Eyes that saw me for a moment. He does not want to believe it.” He paused; she felt his heartbeat. “That night you pulled me out of the sea…before that night, I had never cried. Not even as a child. Not true tears. You made me remember I am half human.” He moved to face her as she sat mute; he knelt, lifted her hands to his mouth. She drew a breath, felt herself pulled toward him helplessly, thoughtlessly. Something fiery brushed her closed eyes, her mouth; she lifted her face to it. But it was only the last finger of light from the setting sun.

  Kir had moved to the window. She sat back, blinking, watching him watch the tide withdraw. Then, before she could feel anything—love, loss, sorrow—he looked down at her again. You know me, his eyes said. You know what I am. Nothing less. Nothing more.

  She got up finally, took bread out of the cupboard, butter, a knife. “I’m lucky,” she said, and heard her voice tremble.

  “Why?”

  She turned to look at him again, his hair black against the dusk, his eyes shades of blue darker than the dusk. She swallowed. “That you are only half like your mother,” she whispered. “Because it would be very hard to say no to the sea.”

  His eyes changed, no longer the sea’s eyes. He went to her, his head bent; he took the butter knife out of her hand, held her hand to his cheek. “Yes,” he said huskily. “You are lucky. Because I would rise out of the tide bringing you coral and black pearls, and I would not rest until I had your heart, and that I would carry away with me back into the sea, and leave you, like me, standing on a barren shore, crying for what the sea possessed, and with no way but one to get it.” He loosed her hand, kissed her cheek swiftly, not letting her see his eyes. “I must go. We’re sailing on the outgoing tide. I’ll be back.”

  He left her. The house seemed suddenly too still, empty. She sat down at the table, her eyes wide, her body still, feeling him, step by step, carrying away her heart.

  She stood at the open door hours later, watching the moon wander through an indigo sky, watching the path it made across the sea constantly break apart and mend itself: the road into dreams, into the summer isles. She listened to the sea breathe, heard Kir’s breathing in her memories. A tear ran down her cheek, surprising her.

  “What have you done?” she asked herself aloud. “What have you done?” She answered herself a few moments later. “I’ve gone and fallen in love with the sea.”

  “I thought so,” said a shadow beside her doorstep, and she felt her skin prickle like a sea urchin’s.

  “Lyo!”

  He moved out of the shadow, or else ceased being one. The moonlight winked here and there on him in unexpected places; he smelled of sage and broom where he must have been lying earlier.

  “Where did you go?” she demanded amazedly.

  “Up the cliff.”

  “How? How did you get there from the Sea Urchin on open sea?”

  “As quickly as possible.” She saw one side of his mouth curve upward in a thin, slanted smile. Then, as abruptly, he stopped smiling; his face was a pale mask in the moonlight, his eyes pools of shadow. “More easily than you left the sea.”

  She was silent. She gave up trying to see his eyes and sat down on the step, chewed on a thumbnail. Then she wound her hair into a knot at the back of her neck and let it fall again. “I thought I had more sense,” she said finally. “Do you know what being in love is like?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s like having a swarm of gnats inside you.”

  “Oh.”

  “They won’t be still, and they won’t go away…What are you doing here? I thought you ran away.”

  He chuckled softly. “I’m waiting to
be paid.” He sat down beside her; she felt his fingers, light as moth wings, brush her cheek. “You were crying. It’s a terrible thing, loving the sea.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, her eyes straying to it. Waves gathered and broke invisibly in the dark, reaching toward her, pulling back. They were never silent, they never spoke…Then she looked at the magician out of the corners of her eyes. “You know about Kir.”

  “I know.”

  “How? How could you know something like that?”

  He reached down, picked up a glittering pebble beside his feet and flicked it absently seaward. “I listen,” he said obscurely. “If you listen hard enough, you begin to hear things…the sorrow beneath the smile, the voice within the fire-dragon, the secret in the young floor-scrubber’s voice, behind all the talk of gold…”

  “Gold,” she said morosely, reminded. “Don’t let the fishers see you still here.”

  “I won’t.”

  “At least you tried. At least you showed them some magic.”

  “Perhaps,” he said, chuckling again. “I won’t expect to be overwhelmed by their thanks. But, not only can I turn gold into periwinkles, I can think as well. And what I think is this: There’s someone missing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s Kir. There’s his father, the king. There are two wives. Suppose this: Suppose they bore sons of the king at the same time. The son of the land-born queen was stolen away at birth and a changeling—a child of the sea—was slipped into his place. The queen died. But what happened to her true son? Kir’s half-brother.”

  She was silent, trying to imagine a shadowy reflection of Kir. A shiver rippled through her. Somewhere in the night, a king’s child wandered nameless, heir to the world Kir so desperately wished to leave. “Maybe he died.”

  “Perhaps. But I think he lived. I think he’s living now, the only proof of the king’s secret love. Does Kir suspect he might have a brother?”

  She shook her head wearily. “He hasn’t thought that far yet. He’s barely guessed what he is, himself.”

  “Why did he tell you?” the magician asked curiously.

  “I don’t know. Because I was always thinking about the sea and so was he. Because…” Her voice trailed away; she put her face on her arms, swallowing drily. “He almost drowned one evening. I pulled him out of the surf. Another evening, he left wet footprints all over the house. Because he needed someone to tell, and I was here instead of the old woman. Because I work at the inn, and he can come and go in and out of my house, and no one would even think to look for him here. A few weeks ago all I did was scrub floors. I don’t know how things got so complicated.”

  “They do sometimes when you’re not paying attention. Will you let me help you both?”

  “It’s all right for now. He’s going away to meet some lord’s daughter.”

  “He’ll be back.”

  “I almost wish he wouldn’t. I almost wish he would sail away as far as he could sail, across all the days and nights there are to the end of the sea, and never come back.” She saw Kir’s face in the dark, dark sea, felt his touch, luring her out into deep water with cold kisses and promises of sea-flowers and pearls; she saw him again, crying in the surf, clinging to her on land, as she would have clung to him in the sea.

  Her eyes had filled again with tears at the memory of his sorrow. Lyo said again, gently, “Will you let me help?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “But be careful. You must always be careful of the sea.”

  She still watched, long after Lyo had left her. The moon was over the dunes now, queen of the fishes in a starry sea. The tide had quieted; the long, slow breakers whispered to her of magic hidden in that blackness: the great floating islands drifted past just beyond eyesight, the ivory towers on them spiraled and pointed like the narwhale’s horn. Kir’s world, the world his heart hungered for, elusive as moonlight, as water, yet constantly calling…She felt the touch of his lean, tense hands, saw his sea eyes, seeing her as nobody else did, heard his voice saying her name.

  “Oh,” she whispered, her throat aching, the stars blurring in her eyes. “I wish you were human.” She blinked away tears after a moment. “No,” she sighed, speaking to the waves since she had nothing else of Kir. “If you were human, you would never have given me a thought. A girl who works at the inn. You would never even have known my name. I wish—I just wish you were a little bit more human. So that you wouldn’t always be turning away from me to the sea.”

  Something moved within the darkness. It flowed across her vision until it blotted out one star, and then another. Her skin prickled again; her eyes grew wide as she tried to separate dark from dark. Was it the sea country rising from the depths of the sea? Was it some dream island that shifted by night from place to place? Was it some vast, dark, high-riding wave? But the receding waves broke evenly, serenely against the shore. Still the darkness flowed until, by the outline of black against the stars and the foam, she realized what it was.

  She stood up slowly. The sea-dragon was riding on the surf, closer to land than she had ever seen it. Lyo had freed it, yet it lingered, alone in the night, missing the fishers. Had it been drawn by her lamplight? She found herself moving quickly, impulsively across the sand, drawn toward it, trying to see it more clearly. It swallowed more stars. One of the spires disappeared behind its back, then the other. Her feet dragged abruptly in the sand, stopped.

  It was coming out of the sea.

  Her throat made a whimpering noise, but she was frozen, incapable of moving. She could see the great eyes reflecting moonlight, the mountain of its back, the enormous fins along its body pushing it through the shallow water into the tide. “Lyo,” she said, but as in a dream, her voice had no sound. Was it coming out to die, she wondered, like the whales did sometimes? Or was it just coming out like the sea lions came out, to stretch its great body on the dry sand and sleep?

  It was coming straight toward her; its fiery eyes saw her. She stepped back; it gave a mournful cry like a foghorn, and she stood still again. It can’t eat me, she thought wildly. It could roll on me, but I can move faster. What does it want?

  Its back fins heaved the bulk of it out of the surf. The tide played with its streamers awhile, rolled them up, stretched them out, delicate ribbons of smoke. Still it came, heave by heave, until only the long, tapering tail fin was left in the surf, and finally only its tail streamers.

  And then it was all out, one final streamer tugged out of reach of the tide. And not six yards from her. Her hands were jammed over her mouth; she was poised to scream, to run all the way to the village if it decided to sit on her house. But it stopped heaving, stopped moving completely except for a whuff of a huge sigh out of its mouth.

  Its eyes closed, red moons vanishing. And then all of it vanished.

  A young man, naked as a fish, knelt on his hands and knees at the end of the path the sea-dragon had taken out of the sea.

  Seven

  PERI MADE A NOISE. She still had her hands over her mouth, so it was a muffled noise. The sea-dragon’s head lifted. He stared at her groggily, blinking, the salt water dripping from his hair into his eyes. He shook his head wildly, and stared at her again. She stood like one of the stone spires, like something to which barnacles and sea urchins could drift against and cling. But he did not confuse her with a stone. He turned his head to look at the stars, the waves, the sand, and finally his hands.

  He touched his mouth with one hand. He said rapidly, experimentally, “One fish sat on a house, two fish ate a mouse, three fish—” His voice faltered. “Three fish…three fish…” He looked frightened, then desperate, as if he had forgotten some vital magic spell that was the lifeline to his new body. His eyes went back to Peri. She moved her hands after a moment; her bones felt brittle, like dried coral.

  “Three fish rode a horse.” Her voice seemed to come from somewhere else, out of the well under the gorse, perhaps. Her heart thumped raggedly. She felt as if she had stepped into some dream w
here anything might happen: Her head might float away and turn into the moon; starfish might walk upright onto the sand and dance a courtly dance.

  The terror went out of the sea-dragon’s face.

  “Three fish rode a horse. Four fish swam in the gorse.” It was one of the children’s rhymes Lyo had chanted to the sea-dragon. “Five fish climbed a bee.” The sea-dragon was beginning to shiver.

  “A tree,” Peri said numbly. “Five fish climbed a tree.”

  “Six fish caught a bee.”

  She took a step toward him, breaking out of the spell he was weaving about them both with his rhyming. “You’re cold.” He was silent at the unfamiliar word, watching her. In that moment, with his face still, uplifted to the moonlight, his hair dark with water, he looked eerily like Kir.

  She closed her eyes, suddenly chilled herself. The king’s missing son. He had crawled out of the sea, found his body and his voice and was kneeling stark naked under the stars counting fish in front of her.

  “Seven fish dined with the king.” His voice sounded strained again, uneasy at her silence. “Eight fish found a ring. Nine fish—”

  Peri took another step toward him and he stopped speaking. She moved again and he stopped breathing. This time he was frozen in the sand, watching her come.

  She reached him finally. He slid back on his knees to look up at her. His face, lit by the moon above the dunes, seemed unafraid. In his great, bulky underwater body, he would never have learned fear. Her hand moved of its own accord, another piece of the dream, and touched his shoulder.

  At her touch, he began to breathe again. His skin was icy. He still watched her, his face curious, very calm. But when she lifted her hand, something flickered in his eyes; he put his own hand where hers had been.

  She shivered again, glimpsing the complex, mysterious events that had hidden this king’s son behind those huge, inhuman eyes, in that body with streamers for fingers, fins for feet, and the rest of him home for any passing barnacle. “Down in the sea,” she whispered, “did anyone ever touch you? How could—how could anyone do such things to you and Kir? What makes people do such things?”