The Changeling Sea

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  KIR CAME WITH THE NIGHT TIDE. Peri, sleeping restlessly, listening beneath her dreams for a wash of pearls across her threshold, woke slowly to the full, hollow boom of the breakers. The moon, three-quarters full, hung in her window, distorted, veined with crystal; it reminded her of the tiny, mysterious moons the sea-woman had woven into the hexes. It fashioned magical shapes out of the night: pearly driftwood and tangled seaweed, a prince mounted on a dark horse at the edge of the tide.

  Peri, tide-drawn, pulled a quilt over her shoulders and opened her door. The moon eyed her curiously. She walked across the cool, silvery sand, the ebb and flow of tide singing in her head. As she neared the dark prince, his face turned away from the sea to her. He said nothing, simply held out his hand for her to mount. A wave foamed around her feet, coaxing; Kir pulled her up out of the water. He put his arms around her, his cheek against her hair. They sat silently, watching the water arch and break against the stones.

  “I missed you,” Kir said finally. He sounded surprised. “I thought of you in the North Isles.”

  “I thought of you,” Peri whispered. She stopped to swallow. “Kir—”

  “I saw the sea-dragon last night—was it last night? In a storm. It followed us for a long time.”

  “Kir, I have something to tell you.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “I saw your mother.”

  Kir said nothing; the words, she realized, must have made no sense to him at first. Then she felt the shock of them through his entire body. “What did you say?”

  “Kir, strange things have been happening to the fishers, they see mermaids, hear singing, they get lost in sudden fogs—”

  “Peri,” Kir said tightly.

  “That’s what happened to us—”

  “Who? What are you—”

  “Lyo. The magician. He rowed us out there, beyond the spires, to look for your mother, to speak to her for you. A cloud came down over us on a cloudless morning. And your mother stopped our boat.” A wave glimmered around them, pulled at the dark horse, melted away. “She had your eyes. And your father’s ring.”

  He gripped her almost painfully. “It reached her—”

  “She got your message. And she got mine. She gave me back my hexes.” She could hear his breathing now, shaken, unsteady, and she twisted anxiously to face him, breaking his hold. “Lyo says she is angry at your father. She threw his ring into the boat. Lyo says she still loves your father.”

  “Lyo? The magician who turned the gold chain into flowers?”

  “Periwinkles.”

  “Peri—” He stopped suddenly, his tongue stumbling on her name. “Periwinkles…I thought that was an inept thing to do. Until now. Did my mother—did she—”

  “She sent a kind of message to you. I tried to ask her about you, and she nearly pulled me overboard, giving me the hexes. I don’t understand it.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said raggedly, “why it was you who saw her and not me. I have been waiting so long.”

  “I know.” She pulled his arms around her again, feeling a chill that only he could give or take away. “It should have been you. But Lyo said we had to go out—”

  “Why?”

  “Because she left a black pearl on my doorstep.”

  His voice rose. “Why your doorstep? Why you?”

  She swallowed, holding his hands tightly in hers. “Kir, there’s something else. But you have to wait.”

  “I have waited,” he said, his voice dangerously thin.

  “I mean, just a few minutes. Then you’ll see why she left the message at my door. Please.” She pushed closer to him, feeling the cold again. “Please.”

  “Is she coming here?”

  “No. I can’t make her come and go. Just…wait. A few minutes. Tell me what you did while you were away.”

  He was silent; she sensed, like a gathering tidal wave, his anger, frustration, bewilderment. The sea roared around them, tugging at Peri’s trailing quilt. The dark horse stirred restively, protesting. The reins flicked up; Kir guided it out of the water.

  “I met a lady in the North Isles.” His voice sounded haunted, weary. “She was the daughter of a lord there. She was very pretty. Her hair was not a tangled mess, nor did she walk barefoot in the sand by moonlight.” Peri eased against him, her eyes wide; his hand touched her hair, smoothed it away from his mouth.

  “Nor,” she whispered, “did she scrub floors.”

  “No. She was sweet tempered and intelligent. We talked together, rode together. Sometimes we danced. My father was pleased. At night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I went down the cliffs over which her father’s house was built, and I stood on the rocks and let the tide break over me as if I were another rock. I waited for it to pull me in. But it never did.”

  “Kir…”

  “Nor did she pull me into her world. I wished she could have…And then we came home. From the day we left the North Isles until this moment I have not spoken to my father. I can’t. If I did, I would tell him he must let me go. But I have no world to go to, no place. So I cannot leave him.”

  “Did she love you? The lady from the North Isles?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps, if I had been different, I might be there now, still dancing, watching her face in the moonlight…” He touched Peri’s cheek, turned her face; she felt the brush of his cold mouth. She put her arms around him, held him tightly, her eyes closed against the sea, as if by not seeing it, she could protect him. His hands slid through her hair, pulling her closer; she tasted the bitter salt on his lips. Then he pulled back, murmuring; she opened her eyes reluctantly. His face was turned as always toward the sea.

  “What is that?” he breathed.

  A shape, huge, dark, bulky, was rising out of the waves.

  “It’s the sea-dragon.” Her voice shook. She felt her heartbeat, and a sudden chill that came from within her. The looming dark pushed closer to them through the surf; Kir rode farther up onto the sand.

  “What is it doing?”

  “It’s coming out.”

  He was silent. The sea-dragon’s eyes reflected moonlight, like two great, pale beacons. Its streamers tumbled in the tide, ribbons of light. Peri heard Kir swallow. “Why?” he asked abruptly. “Why does it come out?”

  She shook her head slightly, too nervous to answer. The sea-dragon pulled relentlessly through the tide, up the gentle slope of wet sand, until it had coaxed all its fins and streamers out of the grasping tide. It was so close to them that its eyes seemed level with the moon. Kir’s horse whuffed nervously at it; Kir held it still.

  Then the extra moons vanished from the sky. While their eyes still searched bewilderedly for them, a young man rose from his knees on the sand, asked curiously, “What are you doing?”

  Peri gathered breath. “He comes out,” she said unsteadily, “to learn words.”

  Kir was still as a stone behind her. Then he moved, and she felt the cold at her back, all around her. Kir dismounted; the sea-dragon watched him calmly. The moonlight picked up strands of his gold hair. As Kir grew closer, the sea-dragon’s expression changed; his brows twitched together. “What are you doing?” he whispered. He shivered suddenly, feeling the cold in his human form. “You are coming closer to me.” Then his face smoothed again, with a look of wonder such as Peri had never seen on it before. He pulled a word out of nowhere like a mage: “Kir.”

  Kir stopped. Peri saw him trembling. Their faces, in profile against the bright waves, mirrored one another. Kir’s hands moved; he unclasped the cloak at his throat, settled it over the sea-dragon’s shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” the sea-dragon asked again, pleading, Peri realized, for the sound of Kir’s voice, a human voice answering his in the silence.

  Kir spoke finally, his voice shaking, “I am looking at my brother.”

  Peri closed her eyes. She felt hands tugging at her, and she slid off the horse, hid her face against Kir, weak with relief. “You’re not angry.”

  �
�How long—how long—”

  “Since the night you left. It—he—came out of the sea then. The chain was gone. I never had a chance to tell you.”

  “No.” She felt him still trembling. “I should have guessed. The chain—”

  “Chain,” the sea-dragon echoed. He hovered uncertainly at the tide’s edge, watching them.

  “What is his name?” Kir asked.

  “I don’t think anyone gave him a name. He can only stay out of the sea for a couple of hours in the night, then he must go back to the sea-dragon’s shape.”

  “Does my father know?”

  “Lyo is going to tell him.”

  He looked at her. “Lyo,” he said flatly. “Lyo. Who exactly is this magician who likes periwinkles, and who isn’t afraid to tell my father something like this?”

  “I don’t know,” she said nervously. “Come to the house. I’ll make a fire.”

  Sitting at her hearth, the two princes, one fair, one dark, looked startlingly alike. They were both of the same build, the same height. The sea-dragon, with Kir’s dark cloak clasped with a link of pearls at his throat, studied Kir out of eyes a lighter blue than his own. That and their expressions differed. The sea-dragon, who had endured years of rolling winter storms, and who had been unthreatened by them, thwarted by nothing but a chain, seemed much calmer. Kir’s face changed like the changing face of fire.

  Peri opened Lyo’s book, showed Kir the shifting, misty sea-gardens, the woman walking slowly away from them down the glittering path until the currents swirled through the kelp and the painting changed. The sea-dragon made a sound; Kir’s eyes went to him.

  “You know this place.”

  “When—when I was small, the chain was small,” the sea-dragon said carefully. “The chain grew bigger. But it always began here.”

  Kir looked at the page, his eyes hidden again, but Peri saw the hunger in his face.

  “It’s like moonlight,” he whispered, as the picture changed again. “You can see it, but you cannot hold it; it makes a path across the sea, but you cannot walk on it. I could look all my life and die before I found this place, and he is trying to escape from it.” The sea-dragon was listening to him intently, trying to comprehend. Kir’s eyes strayed to the writing beside the picture; the sea-dragon slid his hand over the words.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “A world I want.” His face eased a little at the sea-dragon’s expression. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand your words,” the sea-dragon said. “I don’t understand—” He made a little, helpless gesture. “Your eyes. You watch the sea. Even with Peri, you watch the sea.”

  Kir was silent, perhaps seeing himself on the shore through the sea-dragon’s eyes. “Yes,” he said softly. “I watch. I want to go there.” He tapped the sea-world with his finger. The sea-dragon looked pained.

  “You must not. You—” He shook his head, bewildered. Then things seemed to swirl together in his head into a picture; his eyes widened as he saw it. “Once there was a king who had two sons, one by the queen, his wife, and one by a woman out of the sea…You,” he said to Kir abruptly. “You.” He touched Kir’s face gently, near his eyes. Then he touched the woman with the starfish in her hair, whose heavy, blue-black eyes he had looked into beneath the sea. “You are the son out of the sea.”

  “Yes,” Kir whispered. “Yes.”

  “I am not.”

  “No. You are not.”

  The sea-dragon looked bewildered again. “Then why am I in the sea?”

  Kir’s eyes rose, met Peri’s. “Things happened,” he said finally. “I don’t understand all of them, either. I only know that you belong here on land, I belong in the country beneath the sea, with the woman who walks down those paths of pearl.”

  The sea-dragon was silent. His eyes shifted away to the fire; he gazed into it until Peri tugged at his arm, made him turn. He looked troubled, a new expression, one more movement into his human body.

  “Kir,” he said, his eyes on his brother’s face. He paused, struggling for words; then he reached out, grasped Kir’s shoulder. “I can see you. I can talk with you. To you. I come—I have come out of the sea to you. Stay. Here with Peri. In this world where I can see you.”

  “I can’t stay,” Kir said. His face looked white, stiff; Peri, watching anxiously, saw in amazement that he was close to tears. He moved after a moment, gripped the sea-dragon’s wrist. “You can see me,” he said huskily. “Peri can see me. No one else in the world can see what I really am. But I cannot stay with you here. I will die if I do not find my way into the sea.”

  “Die.”

  “Not live. Not see.”

  The sea-dragon loosed him reluctantly. “How?” he said, asking so many questions at once, it seemed, that Kir smiled.

  “I don’t know how,” he said. “Perhaps the magician will find me a path. He seems adept at finding things.” The sea shifted under his fingers then; he looked down at Lyo’s book as if he had felt the changing. “There are ways,” he said slowly, “written in here.”

  “Lyo said not to—”

  “Lyo does not need to get into the sea.”

  “No,” Peri said patiently, “but he said the spells are dangerous.”

  “Do you think I care?” he asked her as patiently, and she felt her hands grow cold.

  “You are not a mage.”

  “I can read,” he said inarguably, and did so, while the sea-dragon watched wonderingly and Peri got up and rattled pots and spoons, trying to distract Kir. She gave up finally, came to lean over his shoulder to see what he was reading.

  “To find the path to the Undersea, find first the path of your desire,” the spell book said mysteriously, next to a picture of a young woman standing in the surf, looking out to sea. Her hair was long, windblown; her feet were bare; a tear slid down her despairing face. Peri stared. Would she look like that when Kir finally left her? Her eyes went back to the script; her lips moved; she tried to memorize the spell in case she needed it.

  “Call or be called,” the spell said. Then: “Many paths go seaward. The path of the tide, the seal’s path, the path of moonlight. The spiraled path of the nautilus shell may be imitated. Call or be called, be answered or answer. For those so called, this will be clear to their eyes. For others: You of a certain knowledge, a certain power, who wish for disinterested purposes to descend to the Undersea and return, it is imperative that a gift be taken. The gift must be of the value—or seem of the value—of the traveler’s life. It may become necessary to make the exchange in order to return to time.”

  “I don’t want to return,” Kir murmured, frustrated.

  “Wait,” Peri said, fascinated. “‘Possessing the gift, the traveler must then find the path of the full moon at full tide, at the point where the path of the moon meets land.’ It’s not a full moon.”

  “It’s almost full.”

  “‘There the traveler must reveal the gift to the sea and request, in fair and courteous voice, entry. Entry may be given by a dark horse appearing out of the foam, which the traveler will mount, a white seal, which the traveler will follow, by the sea queen herself, who will lead the traveler by moonlight to the country beneath the waves. The gift must be given at the time most appropriate for safe return. The journey is hazardous, not recommended unless all other courses are exhausted.’”

  “A gift,” Kir said heavily.

  “You gave her a gift: your father’s ring.”

  “It wasn’t worth my life. And she gave it back.”

  “You tried to give her your life once, too,” Peri said. Her eyes filled with sudden tears at the memory, at his hopelessness. He stared into the fire, his face sea-pale, bitter.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “she does not want me.”

  “I think she does. Lyo thinks—”

  “How would you know?” he demanded. “How would either of you know?”

  The sea-dragon, startled at his raised voice, said softly, “What are you d
oing?”

  Kir’s mouth clamped shut. Peri turned away, ruffling at her hair, wondering suddenly if she understood anything at all of Kir’s mother, of the strange world she dwelled in. The hexes on the spellbinding shelf caught her eye. She grabbed them desperately, scattered them across the spell Kir was reading.

  “Look. Your mother gave me these when I said your name. They must mean something. They must!”

  Kir stared at the webs of pearl and crystal and moonlight strung on odd bits of bent kelp. He held one up; fire beaded on it like dew. The round crystal in the center glowed like the sea-dragon’s eye. He breathed, “What are they?”

  “My hexes.”

  “They’re beautiful. How did you—”

  “She did it. I made them with black thread, your mother put the magic into them—” Her voice faltered. “Oh, Kir, look!” All around them on the walls and ceiling, the reflection of the hex Kir held trembled like a great, shining web of fire.

  The sea-dragon made a sound, entranced. Kir turned the hex slowly; the web revolved around them. His lips moved soundlessly. He lifted his other hand, traced a thread; the shadow of his fingers followed the fiery pattern on the wall.

  “But what?” he whispered. “But how?”

  There was a knock at the door. They stared at it, preoccupied, uncomprehending, as if it were a knock from another world. The door opened. The king walked into the firelight, into the web.

  Eleven

  HE STOPPED SHORT at the sight of the silent faces turned toward him, spangled with fire from the hexes. He had come plainly dressed; his long, dark, wool cloak hid darker clothes, but nothing could disguise his height, the familiar uplift of his head. He had given Kir his dark hair and his winging brows, even his expression; his gray eyes, unlike Kir’s, were fully human. They moved from Kir to Peri, and then were caught by the sea-dragon. Fire and shadow shifted over the gold hair, the light blue eyes; the king closed his eyes, looking suddenly haunted.

  Lyo stepped in behind him. He gazed in rapt abstraction at the tangle of fire on the walls. Then he saw the open spell book, and his eyes went to Peri, wide, questioning. Kir dropped the hex he held then, and the web vanished.