The Changeling Sea

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  The king made a soft sound. Waves rolled toward them, curled into long silver coils and broke, shuddering against the sand. Water frothed around Kir, twisting his cloak; he pulled it off, tossed it like a shadow into the tide and moved deeper into the sea. A pale, wet head appeared and disappeared in the surf. A glint of pearl, of bright fish scale…Lyo tossed another hex. This one hit the sand, made a shivering maze of light that the tide could not wash away. The figure in the surf moved toward it. Her shoulders appeared, and her long, heavy, tide-tossed hair. Her robe, carried for her by the currents, dragged down as she walked on land. The tide loosed her slowly.

  The king moved to meet her. He stopped at the edge of the wide, burning web. A wave rolled over it; she stepped through the water, unerringly to the hex’s bright center. Kir, still in the surf, had turned toward her. Lyo tossed him a hex; it grew under his next step as he turned back to wade out of the water to his mother. But instead of aiding him, the hex seemed to trap him, bind him, helpless and bewildered, in the heart of the maze. Lyo murmured something; Peri, one cold hand at her mouth, shook him with the other.

  “Lyo!”

  He muttered something else, exasperated, then quieted. “Shh,” he said, both to himself and Peri. “Wait. The sea is working and unworking its own spellbindings.”

  The sea-woman’s wet hair flowed to her feet; her shoulders were bowed under the weight of pearl. Her heavy-lidded, night-blue eyes seemed expressionless as she studied the king. Then she said something, and Peri heard Lyo’s breath fall in relief.

  “What did she say?”

  “She said ‘You’ve changed.’”

  “It happens,” the king said, “to humans.”

  She spoke again. Peri looked at Lyo, opening her mouth; he stooped suddenly and picked a shell out of the sand.

  “Here.”

  “What should I—”

  He tapped his ear patiently. “Listen.”

  She held it to her ear and heard the voice of the sea.

  “Then,” Kir’s mother said, “I have been angry for a long time.” Her voice was distant, dreamlike, passing from chamber to chamber within the shell.

  “Yes.”

  “I did not realize how long it was until I felt my son’s desire to come back to the sea. Is it long, by human time?”

  “Yes,” the king said softly. “Many years.”

  “Then many years ago, for many nights, I waited for you in the tide, and you did not come and you did not tell me why.”

  “You were like a dream to me. I had to turn away from you, return to my own world. I should have told you that.”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have told you that turning away from you was like turning away from wind and light. But I had to leave you. Can you forgive me?”

  She lifted her hands slightly, opened them, as if letting something unseen fall. “I took your land-born child because I wanted you to have my child, our child. To love him as you could no longer love me. So you would look at him and remember me always.”

  “I did,” he whispered.

  “But I took your other son. I was angry, I made my anger into a chain, and changed your bright-haired son into something you would never see, never recognize. Can you forgive me for that?”

  “How can I not, when I helped you forge that chain? All the twists and turns in it, your fault, my fault…”

  “I kept him so long in that shape I nearly forgot what he was. Only the chain remembered my anger. Then one day the chain stretched beyond my magic and broke the surface of the sea. I could not hide your dragon-son any longer. He swam among the fishers, until their eyes turned to gold. And then even the gold vanished, my chain disappeared…”

  “So you let the sea-dragon take his shape on land?”

  “No. I did nothing. The magic was out of my hands; it had become confused, unraveled. I had begun to hear my own son calling me, calling me, and I looked for him, but I could not reach him. All I could do was to disturb the fishers with small sea-spells, hoping they would go to you for help, and that you would find me.” She sighed a little, a soft, distant breaking wave. “And you have finally come.”

  “To give you back our son. And to take mine out of the sea, bring him into the world where he belongs.”

  “I hope I have not kept him too long, that it is not too late for him in your world.”

  “I don’t think so. But,” he added, his voice low, weaving in and out of the sound of the breakers, “I have loved your restless sea-child, and taking him, you take another piece out of my heart. If there’s a price to pay for his passage into the sea, that’s all I have to give.”

  “There is no price.” Her voice shook. “His desire is his path. But you must free him.”

  “I send him freely back…” He paused, his eyes on her moonlit face, the pearls glowing here and there with a muted, silky light. “I was so young then, only a few years older than Kir, when I first saw you.”

  “I remember.”

  “It seems strange that, looking at your changeless face, I am not still that young man, walking beside the sea on a summer night, when all the stars seemed to have fallen into the water and you rose up out of the tide shaking stars out of your hair.”

  She smiled her delicate, careful smile; this time it had more warmth. “I remember. Your heart sang to the sea. I heard it, deep in my coral tower, and followed the singing. Humans say the sea sings to them and traps them, but sometimes it is the human song that traps the sea. Who knows where the land ends and the sea begins?”

  “The land begins where time begins,” the king said. “And it is time for Kir to leave me. Is it too late for him in your world?”

  She turned her head, looked at Kir for the first time. Kir swayed a little, as if she or the undertow had pulled him off-balance. But still he could not step out of the web. She turned back to the king, her smile gone.

  “I can hardly see his human shape, he is so much of the Undersea. His body is a shadow, his bones are fluid as water.”

  “Is it too late?”

  “No. But he must leave your time now. No wonder he sang at me like the tide.” Her shoulders were dragging wearily at the constant pull of the earth; even her hair seemed too heavy for her. “I must go now.”

  “Take him.”

  “I will. But you must free him.” She lingered; waves covered the web under her feet, withdrew. It seemed to Peri that the king moved, or the sea-woman moved, or maybe the tide swirling about them made them only seem to move toward one another. For a moment, their faces looked peaceful. Then the woman said something too soft to carry past the web. She turned, stepped back into the sea, and melted into the foam.

  Kir gave a cry of sorrow and despair that stopped Peri’s heart. He turned, struggling against the web to follow the tide. But still he seemed trapped; he could only stand half in air, half in water, buffeted by waves that drenched him from head to foot but did not change him.

  “Do something,” Peri whispered. Tears slid down her face. “Lyo—”

  “Do something,” the king said, his voice sharp with anguish. “She said we must free him. Free him.”

  Lyo stared at the hexes in his hands. “They’re so unpredictable,” he murmured, baffled. “Peri, when you made them, did you say something over them? Or when you threw them into the sea?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said distractedly. “I shouted at the sea—”

  “What did you shout?”

  “I don’t know. Something—I was angry.” Then she stopped. The world quieted around her, so hard was she thinking, suddenly. A lazy spring tide idled behind the spires…a malicious sea to be hexed. And like Kir’s mother, she had woven her anger into a shape…She felt the cold then, a chill of night, a chill of wonder. “I did it,” she breathed. “Oh, Lyo, I did it.”

  “What did you do?” he and the king said together.

  “I hexed the sea!” She drew wind into her lungs then, and shouted so hard it seemed there must be wind
ows and doors slapping open all over the village, people putting their sleepy faces out. “I unhex you, Sea, I uncurse you! I take back everything I threw into you out of hate!” She stopped, wiping tears off her face, then remembered the rest of her spellbinding. “May your spellbindings bind again, and your magic be unconfused. Open the door again between the land and the sea, and take this one last thing that I love, that belongs to land and sea, to us and you!”

  The last of the hexes whirled across the water. They struck the great web hanging between the spires, the doorposts of the sea. Strands sagged, tore, revealing stars, half a moon, ragged pieces of moon-path. A wave hit Kir, knocked him off his feet. It curled around him, drew back. When they finally saw him again, he had surfaced and was sputtering in the deep waters beyond the surf.

  He did not look back. He dove deeply, heading toward the spires; when he surfaced again, it was with a seal’s movement, sleek, balanced, graceful. He dove, stayed underwater far too long, so long that those watching him had stopped breathing, too. Another strand of the web loosened, fell like an old rotting net unknotting as it dried. The white fierce light of it was fading as the web burned itself out, thread by thread, in the sea.

  They saw Kir at last, dangerously near the spires. He should have been flung against the rocks, battered in the merciless swells. But he slid from wave to wave, an otter or a fish, nothing human. He watched the web above his head, strung between him and the wide, dark sea. When another thread dropped toward the water, he reached up, caught it. He dove then, dragging the white, gleaming strand down with him. The great hex unraveled wildly between the stones, then fell, burning, into the burning path of the moon.

  They watched for a long time, but they did not see Kir again. Of all the crystal lights only the moon remained, still weaving its own web between the spires.

  The king turned finally. They had all tried to follow Kir into the sea, it seemed; they were standing in the surf. Peri found Lyo’s arm around her, holding her closely. She was numb with cold, too numb for sorrow, and felt that she would never be warm again. They stepped out of the tide. The king took Peri’s face between his hands, kissed her forehead.

  “Thank you.” He looked at Lyo. “Thank you both.” There was no great happiness in his voice, just a blank weariness that Peri understood. Kir was gone, Kir was…Then a movement in the surf startled her.

  It was the sea-dragon, coming out. “He’s walking,” Peri whispered. “He’s walking out of the sea.”

  He pulled a human body out of the swells, as patiently as he had dragged the sea-dragon’s great body out. Once he stopped to catch something in his hand: a bit of froth, an edge of moonlight. He reached them finally, shivering, his gold brows knit.

  “Kir is gone,” he said. The king took off his damp cloak, pulled it around his wet son.

  “Yes.”

  “I watched him. Now, I am gone.”

  “No,” Peri said, as the king looked at him puzzledly, “you have left the sea. You are here.”

  “I am here.” He looked at his father, his expression hesitant, complex. “Your eyes want to see Kir.”

  “Kir wished to leave. He needed to leave.”

  “You are the king who had two sons.”

  “Yes.”

  The sea-dragon’s shoulders moved slightly, as if feeling, one last time, the weight of the chain. “The sea did not want me. If you do not want me, maybe Peri will.”

  Peri nodded; Lyo shook his head. The king smiled a little, touched the sea-dragon’s face. “You look so like your mother. Her gentle eyes and her smile…That will help, when I explain where Kir has gone, and why you are suddenly in his place.”

  “And why I have no name in the world,” the sea-dragon said simply. He stood silently, then, looking at the sea, the cold, uncomplicated world he would never see again.

  “Will you miss the sea?” the king asked abruptly. “Will you stand at the tide’s edge, like Kir, wanting to change your shape, to return to it?”

  The sea-dragon met his eyes again. Something fully human surfaced in his face: a strength, a hint of pain, a loneliness no one would ever share. “I have left the sea,” he said. He held out his hand, showed them the hex he had rescued from the tide. The strange light had burned down to ragged black threads. But a tiny crystal moon still hung in the center, glowing faintly with an inner light.

  Lyo took it from him, touched the moon; it kindled a moment, luminous, fire-white. He lifted his eyes from it to gaze at Peri.

  “Do you realize what you did?” he asked. “You managed to unbind, confuse, and otherwise snarl up the most powerful magic in the sea.”

  Her face burned. “I’m sorry. I never thought it would work.”

  “You’re sorry? When you threw the hexes into the water and confused the sea’s magic, you caused the chain to stretch beyond its bounds, break the surface between land and sea, so that the sea-dragon could finally take a look at the world.”

  “But I trapped Kir on land, he couldn’t get into the sea.”

  “Peri,” Lyo said patiently. “You’re not listening.”

  “I am, too,” she said.

  “You’re not paying attention.”

  “Lyo, what are you—” She stopped suddenly, blinking at him. “I’m not paying attention,” she whispered.

  “You’re swarming with magic like a beehive, Periwinkle.”

  “I must be…I’d better watch what I hex.”

  “At the very least.” His eyes narrowed slightly, glittering in the moonlight, fascinating her. “Now tell me this. The night the sea-dragon dragged itself out of the sea for the first time, with you watching, did you happen to say anything to make it do that?”

  “No,” she said, surprised.

  “Think, Peri.”

  “Well, I was just watching the sky and the waves, thinking of Kir and wishing…”

  “Wishing what?”

  “Wishing that he could be…” Her voice faltered; she stared at the magician, not seeing him but the dark, star-flecked sea. “I said it. I said, ‘I wish you were just a little more human.’ But I meant Kir, not the sea-dragon!”

  “So,” the king murmured. “The sea-dragon, passing by at the moment, came out of the sea, a little bit human every night.” He was smiling, a smile like his sea-son’s, never quite free. “You have strange and wonderful gifts, Peri. You helped both my sons with your magic. Even more with your friendship.” He sighed. “I wish you could have been powerful enough to keep Kir out of the sea, but in the world and under the sea, there is probably not enough magic for that. At least you brought this one out.” He put a hand on the sea-dragon’s shoulder; the sea-dragon started.

  “You are touching me,” he said wistfully. The king’s face changed; he drew the sea-dragon into his arms.

  “Yes,” he said gruffly. “I am holding you. Humans touch. If they are foolish enough or wise enough. Come home with me now before you change your mind and follow the tide.” He looked at Lyo. “I’ll need your help with him. Can you stay?”

  Lyo nodded, his mouth pulling upward into his private, slanting smile. “Oh, yes. I have some unfinished business involving periwinkles.”

  “Periwinkles,” the sea-dragon echoed curiously.

  “Small blue flowers,” the magician said, and for the first time they heard both the king and the sea-dragon laugh.

  Thirteen

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS, to Peri, seemed as colorless and dreary as the water she dumped out of her bucket at the day’s end. The sky was a brilliant blue; the gorse, in full bloom, covered the cliffs with clouds of gold. The fishers went out every day; there were no more tales of singing sirens or ghostly ships. Peri, for the first time in weeks, could get a full night’s sleep.

  But she still woke late at night, listening for the sea-dragon; she still looked for Kir on the tide line; she still searched the sea between the spires, without thinking, watching for something unexpected, a message from the Undersea. She felt numb inside. All the magic was gone, nothin
g would ever happen to her again. Only the black pearl in her pocket told her that mystery had come into her life and gone, leaving her stranded at the tide’s edge, yearning.

  Mystery had stranded the villagers, too; they still longed, like Peri, for its return.

  “I thought you said the mage was back,” Enin said to Peri one afternoon, when she was putting her cleaning things away.

  “He is,” she said shortly.

  “Then where is he?”

  She shrugged, morose. “With the king, I guess.”

  Mare glanced at her oddly. “What’s he doing there? We hired him.”

  “Helping with his son.”

  “What’s the matter with Kir?”

  “Nothing.” She swallowed. “Nothing now. It’s not Kir,” she added, since everyone would know soon enough, anyway. “Kir went into the sea.”

  “He drowned?” Carey and Enin said incredulously.

  “No.” She took her apron off, bundled it up, hardly listening to what she was saying. “Kir went back to the sea. His mother is a sea-woman. The king’s son by his true wife was the sea-dragon. That’s why it was chained—the sea-woman was angry with the king. But she also loved him, which is why she gave him Kir. He came to my house at night in his human shape to learn words. The sea-dragon did. He’s with the king now.” They were staring at her, not moving, not speaking. She pulled her hair away from her eyes tiredly. “So that’s where Lyo is, probably.” She took the black pearl out of her pocket. “Kir gave me this before he left.”

  “Kir?” Carey’s voice squeaked. The rest of her was immobile. Peri was silent, gazing at the pearl, remembering the full moon, Kir’s hands in her hair, his promise to sing her into the sea. She lifted her head; faces blurred a moment, under tears she forced away.

  “He used to come and talk to me…” She slid the pearl back into her pocket and pulled her cloak off a hook.

  Carey whispered, “What’s he like? The new prince?”