by Chris Howard
Somehow that made complete sense. Don't let him know your name.
She scowled on the inside, the tightening of her focus down to a pinpoint beam of thought. Don't think your name. He controls my muscles, the entire physical side of me but I can still sense everything. I can still hear. I can feel the Pacific against my skin—his sk—our skin.
But can he feel what I feel—emotionally feel? Does he even know I'm here? Does he know ... I'm scared?
Aleximor, no sign that he heard her thoughts, pulled off her torn dive gloves and pushed them toward the back of the cave.
Corina grasped at every stray thought, but held them close like cards in a cheater's game. Don't think your name. Even as she thought it, she felt her mind's automated response, bringing up her name, Cor—
Her thoughts skidded to a stop.
She didn't like the way he stared at her hands. He stretched them out, fingers spread stiffly. She knew he wasn't admiring them. She felt his scorn. He tilted them up, studying them. There was a word, a concept rising in his thought before it reached his lips. She felt the idea, like a bubble of air in syrup.
He said something in his language that meant, “remarkable,” but it was the “remarkable” someone would use to describe an insect that secreted acid as a defense mechanism.
He tugged off the rings, two of them, one with a small diamond that had been Corina's mother's. He let them go in the water, and looked back at his hands, long slender woman's hands with blue-painted nails—blue because it looked good against her cello's fret board.
Aleximor moved his lips, and a soft whisper came from his mouth, sweet and high, the sound almost like the sense of touch. She felt it as a smooth pressure against her skin, and deeper, in her bones. Corina shivered on the inside. He already knows how to control my voice. She tried to follow the words he sang.
"Dee-ah-zo-mah"—something. “Pah-rhee-steed..."
She got a sense of the meanings of the words from him, something about weaving—which was unexpected—the loom ... connecting her ... making her whole.
Fear derailed her attention from the words, but her musical sense followed the sounds a minute longer, then lost it. It was something with rhythmic rising and falling, a poem that he half chanted, half spoke. It had a pulse. His voice went lower—almost as low as her voice could go—and the words came faster. Corina wasn't quick enough to pick them out individually.
He curled his new fingers in a flash of short-trimmed blue nails, tapping his palm in time with the song. He pushed his hands through the water in a swimming gesture. Bringing them back in front of his eyes, he spread the fingers as wide as they would go.
Dance? A ritual dance? Corina waited for something to happen.
A slow, even warmth seeped through the skin of her hands as if she held them under a heat lamp.
Aleximor strained the muscles and tendons, trying to spread his fingers wider.
Corina's mind cycled over the same question: What's he doing?
He stared at his new hands. She stared at them through the eyes he now controlled. There was a faint glow around them, as if some faraway spotlight was trained on them. The warmth felt good. There was a gentle tickling between her fingers like someone running cotton along them.
The warmth turned to burning. The tickling became scratchy, a wire brush on her skin.
Aleximor's new body shook, and he lost his focus on his host's hands. The glow blinded him. Tears welled up and splattered the inside of the dive mask. He squinted against the pain, finally slamming his eyes shut.
Corina screamed in her thoughts. Her skin stretched, oozing and bubbling between her fingers, the pain made worse by blindness. The burning raced up her arms, running along her tendons like streaks of fire.
The heat faded. The burning between each finger died away.
Aleximor the Bone-gatherer opened the eyes of the body he now owned and blinked away the tears.
He studied his hands. They had been her hands. Now they really were his. Long fingers, her blue fingernail paint, and sheer webbing that stretched between each one.
What—
Corina stuttered every thought that attempted to get into focus. What have you done? I'm a monster!
"Nearly Seaborn,” he whispered softly.
Corina's panic hit a wall on his words.
He looked down at his feet, snug in her black fins, and then back up to blink and stare out from the mouth of the cave into open water, trying to focus on something.
He tilted his head down, disappointed. “No more."
He mumbled something in his language, but Corina understood what he meant, something like, “I will have to make her stronger.” She got the feeling that it would not require lifting weights or swimming laps.
He bent down, dug around the floor of the cave among the branches of hydroids and solitary coral cups, and picked up Corina's rings.
Clutching the rings in one fist, he played with the big belt clip at his waist. He spent a few frustrated minutes pulling and squeezing the clip, but couldn't figure out how to open it. Then he noticed a picture of her, his new host, in a transparent plastic pouch stuck to the arm of the strange suit.
He yanked on the zippered pocket and it ripped away from the Velcro strip along her forearm. He opened it into his palm. He fingered her rings. He touched the keys, key-ring and remote—now full of seawater and useless.
Bastard! How am I going to get into my car?
He picked them up gingerly by the ring as if he was afraid of them.
"Charm?” He whispered in her voice. He ran his thumb along the serrated edges of the keys, fascinated and cautious at the same time.
He carefully slid everything back into the pouch, and then he picked out the rectangle of flexible material. He stared at her driver's license. His breathing quickened. He smiled with Corina's mouth, a tight twist at the corners of her lips, a smile she only used when something really pleased her.
He pronounced her full name slowly, rolling the Rs.
"Corina Lairsey."
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Chapter Seven
One of the Seaborn
How is it possible that I am breathing in the sea while I write these words? (I write these words with an inky substance that holds to a pen, but at the touch of a sheet of pressed “paper” transfers from tip to page, adhering to it.) The answer must be tied to my other biophysics questions: I do not feel the immense pressure I ought to at this depth, and I do not feel the low temperature. I feel it, but not as discomfort. I sense the cold rather. What have they done to my ears? I swear to you—I can hear things moving in the sea a mile away!
—Journal of Michael Augustus Henderson
* * * *
Corina screamed as loud as she could think about screaming. Nothing came from her mouth. Nothing. Not a damn noise in her throat, not a twitch in her lips. She was a prisoner in her own body, paralyzed, while the thing inside her had full access to the controls.
For a stunned second it occurred to her that thoughts weren't made of the things they represented. Loud wasn't loud in her head. Blue wasn't blue. She imagined blue, but blue—when it was stored somewhere—had no color. Then it occurred to her that she could imagine an angry yell, just as she could imagine a bright pink sea or rich field of purple grass. The thoughts themselves might not be the things they represent but she could envision the representations. The colors and loudness somehow came through in the imagining.
Say something, asshole!
She stilled her thoughts, waiting for some kind of response.
He was either really good at ignoring her or she wasn't getting through to him.
Okay. Size up the situation, girl. Someone is in my head, controlling me. I feel what he feels, but he doesn't seem to feel what I do. He can act. I can't. I can't move, speak, do anything but think and feel.
She smelled—or tasted—the ocean. But only when he uses my senses.
There was also a weird sourness she had sense
d when he first got into her head, like something old and rotting, something that had once been alive. It was faint now, but still present.
She sensed other things about him. He's old, hundreds of years old ... and he isn't quite alive.
What else? She had a web of skin between her fingers like some sea monster. It wasn't hideous. Not really. The skin was thin, nearly see-through, a gossamer sheet between each finger, but the idea of webbing itself was monstrous.
And my body is breathing. My lungs are working. I can breathe ... underwater? She focused on his slow even respiration. The idea made her mind stumble and left her thoughts in questioning pieces. But the pressure? Temperature?
Diving was technical. She knew how it was supposed to work, and it wasn't like this—this was like a blind alley.
She couldn't read the dive meter on her wrist. He'd focused her eyes on the main buckle for her BC—buoyancy compensator, the vest-like thing that held all her gear, the tanks, weights, and computer—trying to figure out how to un-do it.
She guessed that her depth was forty meters. She didn't feel the pressure. She might as well have been above the surface, out in the air.
She could hear clearly. Too clearly. She heard the shrimp clicking in the rocks all around her, things moving among the coral cups and sponge formations. She heard a soft susurration from the mouth of the cave, like the surf on a calm night.
Is that ... the surface? I can hear it from this depth?
Aleximor touched her dive mask, tapping on the lenses, delicately at first, then thumping them until his head hurt. He made a few wondering noises but left her mask in place.
She followed his eyes and felt his movement. What's he doing now?
He wiggled around at the mouth of the cave, kicking and trying to look over his shoulder—my shoulder.
Then he finally unbuckled her BC and tanks and dropped them to the cave's floor. Her watch was next, tossed into the cave behind him. He stared at her fins for a minute, but he left them on.
I'm ... not rising. I'm neutrally buoyant.
Corina's anger prickled. What else has he done to me? My hearing, my hands, my body. The human body is supposed to float!
Without warning, he tore off her mask. The muscles in his neck tensed hard for a few seconds, then went loose. The gush of cold against his face startled him. He blinked a few times slowly, getting used to the seawater around his eyelids.
She couldn't make out anything clearly coming through her dilated pupils, just big fuzzy black shapes, the lighter wedge of the cave's opening, and the ragged rows of coral and sea-sponge silhouetted against it.
Why me? It sounded pathetic and she hated herself for thinking it, but it flowed through her mind anyway. First, Alan Yeater. Now, I get possessed by some total wacko merman in a deep sea cave?
She raced to head off any mind-derailing fits of weakness. Solve this, Corina.
She stopped her thoughts in a panic. Her name sounded strange. Was he doing something, taking her away, making her fade?
Then it occurred to her that this state of inner imprisonment could go on a long time, maybe forever. This asshole's hundreds of years old. He's not yet dead. She flipped the thought around, looking at it from all angles. What is he? He's not ... human.
His name suddenly came to her. Aleximoros ... Aleximor. He had named himself. It meant “warding off death.” He had given himself other names, but two hundred years ago—maybe more than that—he had given himself this one.
"Rest assured, Corina Lairsey,” Aleximor said in her voice, in her gloating tone, in English. Perfect English. “That I will not keep you in there for long."
Coincidence? Or can he hear me? Can he hear me clearly, or does he get the same hints of thoughts I'm getting from him?
Aleximor peeled off her hood. Her ponytail thwacked him in the shoulders. Startled, he jumped off the cave floor, bumping into the ceiling.
He ran his hands over her hair, fingering the arrangement, an elastic band at the back of her head. Then his hands went down her wetsuit, stopping at the waist and hips, rubbing the wetsuit material, pushing into it. He slid one hand over the material along his arm, feeling the difference between the violet striping and the black.
He had ditched her other gear. He might have been curious, but he was obviously looking for a way to take off the wetsuit.
Damn.
He had trouble with the zippers. He pulled down the one that ran from her throat to her waist on the right side. He frowned, watching her right breast squeeze past the zipper.
Corina's thoughts went tight and sarcastic. Right. Let's swim around the goddamn Pacific with my tits hanging out.
Maybe he understood. He tugged the zipper closed.
Aleximor made a disappointed noise, and Corina picked up his reaction to her body. Repugnance. He didn't care for it. He did appear to like her suit. He definitely liked her fins, because he kept lifting them up, tilting them side to side and staring at them.
He also liked her knife, strapped around her right leg. He fiddled with the safety snaps, and drew the blade out. He examined it closely, twisting it an inch from her nose. Finished with the inspection, he slid it back inside its sheath.
He sucked in a deep breath.
Corina tasted the salt in the inhale, like breathing in the clean ocean scent off the water after a storm. A hint of the sour taste remained.
Aleximor planted his feet in their fins right at the edge of the cave, and did a weird swaying dance.
Corina saw her hands twist up in front of her, curl into hooks and draw back. It was as if he was dragging in an invisible net. Every time he pulled, the invisible bundle of stuff grew in his hands, an accumulating glob of nearly transparent jelly. She felt it oozing against her fingers, pressing into her palms.
She made the connection with the invisible tentacles that had dragged her to the cave. He had sent them out to capture her ... or anyone diving in the bay.
The bundle was about a foot around when he squeezed it, compressing it until it fit inside his cupped hands. He turned it, and gave it one last push, using all the strength in his arms. Then he opened his hands like a magician who'd played some vanishing-coin trick on a group of kids.
Suddenly, he shot into open water. Corina didn't know the human body was capable of swimming that fast. He rocketed through the bay like a dolphin, ponytail whipping his shoulders, water streaming by him, roaring in his ears.
He angled steeply, following the descending line of cliffs for an hour.
Long after the last reaching rays of sunlight faded to pure black, he slowed and back-kicked while getting his bearings. He spun in slow circles, staring into what Corina perceived to be nothing but uniform dark watery space.
Still no sense of pressure, she thought. This must be well over a hundred meters.
Aleximor whispered something in his language. She heard it in her ears. She could just make out the meaning of some of the words and phrases, like an incompetent translator on a three-second delay.
He stepped through a dance, went through rhythmic tapping of his fingers against his palm and said something about glowing inside ... where the darkness abounds, encircling the earth. He mentioned a name, then another. Gods? Demons?
She didn't hear the rest. Her eyes burned—just like her hands when he had modified them. It felt as if he was sticking hot needles through her pupils. Her flesh tore and cooked, boiling in her head. He felt it, too, and couldn't bear the pain. He passed out and took her with him.
Corina didn't know much time had passed. The pain had fused her thoughts into a solid hunk of useless material.
When Aleximor finally opened his eyes, Corina could see, and small pieces of her mind seemed to work.
There still wasn't much hitting the retinas. The ocean was pure black, but he could see ... the violet stripe that ran along the arm of his suit. He saw color. A pale glow lit the water around him.
He floated in black space for a long time, maybe hours, and she made some
guesses about what he was doing.
Meditating? Resting? Hello?
She felt his control over her body reach some tipping point, and then fade.
He had fallen asleep. Corina felt stronger—her own strength, as if her thoughts were spreading out and taking some power back. She felt ... her feet, and they hurt as if she was walking barefoot on cobblestones. This was strange because she was certain he hadn't yet reached the floor of the Monterey Canyon.
If I'm in open water, then the stones under my feet must be in here with me.
She couldn't move her body and couldn't open her eyes to see if she was anywhere near the canyon's floor, but she tried anyway.
Light flashed in front of her eyes, a burst of blue. He had closed his eyes, but she saw motion and light in them, like a movie projected against the inside of his eyelids. A row of lights, wavering like torches. A narrow cave, a rough black diamond shape, cut in the face of a cliff.
Corina hauled up every thought in her mind, and she pinned them to the scene in front of her. That's the cave where they imprisoned him. Who imprisoned him?
The scene became slippery, and more imaginary, unfocused. The world shifted to a different place, but still deep in the ocean somewhere.
This is a dream. He's dreaming, she thought. Then she changed her mind. It's a nightmare.
It was as if the situation was reversed, and she was now looking out through his eyes, two hundred years ago.
She peered out through his almost closed lashes. She sensed something, as if he was concentrating hard to keep still, as if he was trying to deceive his captors, pretending to be unconscious while watching them.
His guards towed him through the water, through large stone doors and into the judging chamber.
Two men held his arms behind his back, and he floated in the water between them. One of them said, “He thinks he can fool a Rexenor. He's awake, lord. Wouldn't tell us where his stronghold lies."
The judge—lord?—grabbed the Bone-gatherer's long black hair, and yanked his head back in order to see his face. Since he no longer needed to pretend to be unconscious, Aleximor opened his eyes. A few strands of his hair drifted in front of him.