by Ros Baxter
Of course; she was a siren. Obfuscate.
Lecanora turned back to Rania and smiled. ‘Let us discuss that later, dear one.’ Then she returned her gaze to the waves and made the noise again, the call, low in her throat but high in pitch.
Lecanora saw him before Rania, her eyes keener from a lifetime under water. First it was just a single dorsal, skimming the darker waves, further out.
‘He’s here,’ she called to Rania. ‘Do you want to come?’
Rania looked at her gun lovingly, scanned the beach and shrugged. Lecanora knew it would be hard for her to say no. This was one visitor who held a special place in Rania’s heart.
‘I don’t have another suit.’
Lecanora eyed her steadily. ‘So?’
Rania rolled her eyes, and tugged off her mid-calf black boots. ‘C’mon then.’
In under a minute they were paddling beyond the breakers, and Rick was with them.
‘Whassup, girlfriends?’ The dolphin who had spent too much time eavesdropping at human seaports. stood up in the water, a familiar twinkle in his eye. He dipped his nose a little towards Lecanora. ‘Princess,’ he squeaked. ‘Nice costume. Although, I hate to tell ya this, but you look like an extra on Jersey Shore.’ Then he gave another, less formal nod to Rania. ‘Hey, toots.’
Lecanora felt her hackles rise. She shot a thought into Rania’s brain: It is unseemly, the way he adopts the human vernacular.
‘Hey, Princess,’ Rick said. ‘I may not know what you’re saying, but I sure as hell know you’re talking about me.’
Lecanora felt herself blush. ‘I am sorry. I did not realize your telepathy was so keen.’
Rick snorted that cute little dolphin snort. ‘It’s not, honey. You just have a crap poker face.’
‘Cool it, Fish Face,’ Rania snapped at him.
Lecanora felt a powerful wave of envy roll over her at Rania’s easy way with everyone, human and fish alike. Rania had always known what she was, always known where she belonged. Lecanora was only just learning.
‘What do you need, friend of Aegira?’ Lecanora was not sure how to address the dolphin now that he had ascended, so she went with the endearment her mother, the queen, had used in the royal chambers recently. ‘You called me.’
‘I needed to check you had arrived. Your mother asked me to. And…’
‘And?’ Rania’s voice was arch.
‘And the Seer, also, wished to ensure it happened.’
Rania made an irritated noise in the back of her throat at the mention of the Seer, and Lecanora remembered that some of the girls, including Rania, had been to see her when they were sixteen. Something blinked in the back of Lecanora’s brain, trying to find a connection.
Rania seemed too busy being annoyed to notice. ‘Again, Rick. What’s with all the interest from DC?’ Dolphin Central had developed a sudden and recent interest in events in and around Aegira. Normally they liked to keep themselves separate from the affairs of lesser creatures.
‘I’d love to tell you babe, but no can do.’ Leconara was always astonished at the way Rania and Rick spoke to each other. It was like a whole other language again. She knew Rick’s real name, and it was an exquisite blend of squeals and trills. But he seemed to find Rania’s nod to Rick Astley completely endearing.
Lecanora watched Rania treading water in her pants and black T-shirt, but she stood almost still in the water as she faced the dolphin. A lifetime in Aegira had perfected her balance to razor point. ‘Do you have it?’
Rick swam closer, standing in front of Lecanora and beginning to make a deep hacking noise at the back of his throat. Lecanora held out her hand, and he nuzzled it. She felt the smooth sheen of his nose against her hand, and when he retreated, a slimy green glob lay in her palm.
‘Small portions, Princess,’ the dolphin advised. ‘Hourly. He will heal quickly, but he must continue to take it for some time.’
Rania made a strange noise in the back of her throat, and Lecanora wondered again about her link with this Land man. Who was this Doug that he touched Rania so much, and yet she did not love him, as she had told Lecanora several times now, ‘in that way’? What did that even mean? In that way. How many ways were there to love? Lecanora zeroed back in on Rick, noticing that he was doing a nervous little jog on the spot. ‘What is it, friend?’
Rick pointed his nose to the sky, avoiding both sets of siren eyes. ‘Be careful,’ he said.
Rania was quick to pounce. ‘Whaddya mean?’ She flicked him on the fin with one long finger. Lecanora was sure it would have hurt, and Rick made a sharp squeak at the violation. But Rania showed no sign of remorse as she paddled close to his face. ‘‘Fess up, or it’ll be a nipple cripple next—if I can find a goddamn nipple to cripple on you. What do you know?’
‘Nothing,’ Rick said quickly, turning back to the horizon. ‘I just have a hunch.’
‘A hunch?’ Lecanora looked at Rania quickly. She looked like she wanted to twist Rick’s dorsal right off. The thought made Lecanora shudder, but Rania blasted on. ‘What damn hunch? You need to give it up, buddy. Is someone here? Did they follow us?’
Lecanora sighed and sliced quickly though the water to Rania, placing a hand on her arm, and dragging her carefully backwards, away from Rick. Then she touched the dolphin gently in the space slightly above his eyes. ‘Thank you, friend,’ she said, smiling warmly at him.
The he was gone, the faint pinkish hue in the waves the only sign he had been.
* * *
‘How far now?’ Lecanora was surprised by how much she wanted to arrive at Rania’s home and see Lunia, their mother, again. She’d only had a real mother for a few days, and it was still miraculous that it was Lunia, the mother of her childhood best friend, Rania.
‘Jesus, enough already. You’re like a kid; how much further how much further?’ Rania smiled at Lecanora so she could tell she wasn’t really angry. She motioned to the gas station coming up on their right. ‘Last chance to stop and get an ice-cream?’ The tiny weathered station had seen better days. It clung to the edge of the small town they had just sailed through. ‘Not much between here and home. Just a lotta cliff, and a whole lotta rock.’
‘No.’ Lecanora shook her head quickly. ‘I do not want to stop. I do not want an ice cream. I want only to be there.’ And it was true. She felt the longing to be near her mother again fill her up, pushing at the outer edges of her patience.
Rania flicked her eyes across to Lecanora’s, and nodded. ‘Okay, then, but you’re missing a real treat. Betcha never had a Licksicle before.’
‘Licksickle?’ Lecanora frowned, wrapping her lips around the strange syllables. ‘Is that the name you give to the ice-cream?’
Rania nodded, fiddling with the CD player and filling the car with guitar and the sounds of a whining Land woman. The notes were terrible, off-key and jarring, and Lecanora wrinkled her nose. ‘Why do things have two names?’
Rania sighed. ‘Whaddya mean?’
‘Well…’ Lecanora didn’t really care, but she needed to fill the hole of wanting, of anticipation, that seemed to want to drag her in. ‘I mean, you called it an ice cream, and then you called it a Licksickle. Why does the food have two names?’
‘Well…’ Rania scrunched up her face, and squinted into the oncoming sun. ‘Ice cream is like…the actual name. And Licksickle is the brand name.’
‘And what is a brand?’
Rania sighed again, rubbing her forehead, and pulling the wheel slightly to the right to let a long black sedan get in front of her. The big, dark car ricocheted forward as she allowed it passage. ‘It’s…’ She shuffled in her seat. ‘Well, I guess it’s…’
Lecanora felt a buzz in her inner ear as Rania attempted her explanation. Her half-sister talked on and on about something called marketing and brand differentiation. Lecanora’s finely honed antenna buzzed, but she couldn’t decide if it was the confusing concept, or something else.
No, there it was again.
She flicke
d off the music, held up a hand and silenced Rania as they circled slowly to the top of a hill, ragged cliffs falling away on either side of them towards green-black forest.
‘Well sorry, Miss Princess Thing, if I can’t explain it just exactly how you want—’
The Princess made a warning noise in the back of her throat, like a dog about to growl, or an injured whale. It silenced Rania immediately, for a second. Then, ‘What is it?’
‘Can’t you hear it?’ Lecanora unbuckled her seat belt and stood upright in her seat, balancing perfectly, oblivious to the drag of the car’s upward climb. She stood high on her toes and strained her whole body forward, compensating intuitively for the velocity and incline, listening, in Lantara. ‘Something is there.’
Lecanora watched Rania cock her head to one side, and then the other. ‘No.’ She paused. ‘No, I can’t hear it.’ Another pause. ‘Is it bad?’
Rania was already fumbling in the glove compartment. She extracted two small packets and tore them open with her teeth. ‘Siddown,’ she commanded, grabbing hold of Lecanora’s leg and yanking her back into her seat as the sports car crested the hill. ‘Princess, listen to me. Should I stop? Should we turn back?’
‘No,’ Lecanora said, closing her eyes and focusing on the tiny sound that had punctured her consciousness seconds before. ‘Maybe. I…I don’t know.’
‘Quick, stick these in,’ Rania barked, throwing the open packet into Lecanora’s lap. ‘I’m going to floor it. If it’s the sound weapon, we know it’s got limited range. We need to get beyond it.’
Before Lecanora could ask what it meant to floor it, Rania jammed her foot hard to the floor and the car leapt forward like a shark, screaming down the hairpin bends on the mountain. The unfamiliar sensation made Lecanora’s already fragile insides tilt and shake. ‘Rania, sister, is this safe? I think we should—’
‘We need to get ahead of it,’ Rania said, all the color draining from her face as she held tight to the wheel and shepherded it around the bends with one hand while she rammed the little plugs into her ears with the other. Lecanora copied her, shoving the hard plugs deep into her ears. Rania had told her about the sound weapon, about what it could do on The Land. Lecanora knew it had killed Cleedaline, and that Rania’s friend Doug lay broken in a Healing House in Dirtwater because of the power of the thing.
Lecanora had also seen its power underwater firsthand. It reached for the ears, the source of sound, and through them it meted out unimaginable pain. Insane pain. It wrapped tentacles around the brain. And then it killed you, reduced you to mush and nothing.
It had almost destroyed them all.
Even with the things in her ears, Lecanora felt the intensity ratchet up. It was like a horrible thing was knocking at the door of her brain, trying to get in. She pushed harder on the plugs, feeling the climbing speed of the car, and the thrumming in her ears, which built unbearably.
Rania was watching the little needle on the instrument panel on the dash carefully, and gripping the wheel with white-knuckled hands. She pumped her left foot and her right foot down in turn in an attempt to keep the car in control as she urged it forward along the razor-sharp corners. Lecanora focused on the road ahead, watching green and brown slide past them in a rush, blurring into a thick line of color.
It was transfixing, the rush of color and the slow build of the sound in her ears. It was almost comforting. She felt herself slide into an easy, warm place.
Rania waved a hand in front of Lecanora’s face. ‘Princess!’ Lecanora turned to face her half-sister, trying to remember why Rania looked so worried.
Hum, Rania commanded with that other voice; the one that spoke directly to Lecanora’s mind. It’s doing something to you. That freakin’ sound is hypnotizing you or something. Hum with me.
Lecanora tried to make sense of Rania’s words. Hum?
She felt Rania’s irritated sigh, deep in her brain. The plugs aren’t going to be enough, Princess. We need to drown it out from the inside. Hum with me.
Hum what? Lecanora could not think of a solitary thing to sing right now. How was it possible? A whole life lived in a community of song. A repertoire of a hundred thousand choruses, verses and melodies, and she could not think of a single thing to hum as the world rushed past her in a dizzying spin. And the backdrop to it all was the icepick tapping at her brain, hammering to get in and wreak havoc there.
Then she heard Rania’s voice in her head.
Singing.
Rania’s angel voice.
Who would have thought, who would have ever thought, that a girl like Rania would have a voice like that? It was low and deep, for a mermaid. In Land School Lecanora had once heard an old recording of Edith Piaf—sounding like pain and pleasure strung together in a low, slow mesh. That was how Rania sounded now, humming a tune into Lecanora’s head that she knew so well: The Song of Two, the Aegiran equivalent of The Wedding March. The melody comforted Lecanora even as it beat back the fierce edge of the probe at the door of her brain.
She picked it up and hummed it back, full and high, the soprano to Rania’s vibrato, right into the deepest place she could find in Rania’s brain.
And then the tempo changed altogether. Rania screamed as another sound joined the one they were battling. Or rather, this time it was an absence of sound. The engine of the car died. Another person may not have noticed the shift in the sound, among all the other noises battling for attention, but Rania and Lecanora looked at each other as the solid, reliable thrum of the engine died. They were both so attuned to sound that they felt it like it was happening to them, to their bodies. The engine had not just died, it had been stopped by the thing. The weapon of sound. The car had been unable to withstand the onslaught.
It’s different, Rania said, shocked into ending her humming. The weapon. They’ve adapted it. It can…
Lecanora finished the sentence for her half-sister. It can kill your machines.
Rania quickly snatched up her smartphone from its cradle, and shook it. Nothing.
Untethered from its engine, the car’s speed began to climb, flinging the vehicle forward like a rock catapulted from a slingshot. Rania screamed at Lecanora, ‘Buckle up!’ as she tried to control the wheel while the machine hurtled down the slope. Her foot pumped furiously on the brake. ‘Nothing works,’ Rania screamed. ‘We’re in a death dive.’
The car now had no check on its forward momentum. Lecanora watched as everything simultaneously sped up and slowed down. She saw the road drop away on corner after corner, and wondered how long Rania could contain the machine, unfettered.
Her stomach rolled and her pelvic floor weakened. She wondered for one horrifying second if the Crown Princess of Aegira was about to lose control of her bladder as well as very possibly losing her life.
And then, straight ahead of them, a hairpin turn loomed. Mere yards in front of it, the road dropped off into blue sky and rock formations silhouetted against a bright mid-afternoon sun. On the other side, the road clung to the cliff edge, and a rockfall littered the road.
Rania swore and grabbed Lecanora’s hand. ‘Brace,’ she screamed, spinning the wheel and yanking hard on a lever between their seats as the world collapsed in a tangled whine of glass and steel, and blood.
With what felt like agonizing slowness the car left the surface of the road, leaping from the asphalt before spinning back around on itself. It connected with the rockfall and went into a sickening roll, narrowly missing the sheer edge of the cliff but careening forward towards the solid wall of rock.
Lecanora saw the wall coming towards them in a series of fractured flashes. She heard Rania scream at her again to brace, and felt Rania’s strong hand push down on her head, trying to force it against her knees as the car rolled and rolled. Even through the plugs, the metallic wail of the roof connecting with the road assaulted her ears. Her head crashed against the side of the car and then hit the roof as the world spun and yowled. Lecanora tasted blood in her mouth and felt it slide down her face
, as slow as everything else was fast.
And then the impact came, and Rania’s screams stopped.
* * *
The car was gnarled, crushed by an unseen fist. Rocks covered the little that Lecanora could see of the where the windscreen used to be. Lecanora tasted blood and tried to turn herself for a better perspective on Rania’s condition. She couldn’t see her half-sister, but she could hear low, raspy half-coughs, in and out, as though her breath was obstructed.
Lecanora twisted in her seat, feeling her movement confined by something. What was this…? Ah, a seatbelt. Her brain processed thoughts sluggishly, as she computed the things she knew about the impact of shock on her body. Since the time she could understand anything she had learned about her body, the complex miracle of it, the combination of biology and magic. She knew about shock. It would make her fuzzy; it would impede her senses, and her responses. But one thought kept pushing through to the front of her brain. The danger had not passed.
She had to move.
She jiggled the seatbelt with shaking fingers, wondering at the crude thing. All this technology, all that they were capable of, and this was the thing they used to save people’s lives? She pulled at it, tracing the belt to its home in the clip. The clip was twisted and obstructed by the crushed-in side of the car, and the belt was trapping her. She pulled at the belt some more, and felt it tighten further around her, like an eel stick vine. She tore harder at the thing. It was surprisingly strong for such an innocuous strip of black plastic. She would have to break it.
What had Rania once said? An age ago, when they were teenagers…
You don’t even know how strong you are. You haven’t even scratched the surface.
Well, she was about to find out.
She drew in a breath and grasped the black strip between her hands. She breathed out slowly, summoning the goddess Ran, and the sisters of her mother, the whole line of the queens of Aegira. There is strength in history, she knew. She had been told it since she could remember. She named the queens mentally in turn as she directed each cell in her body to the task of breaking free of this death trap because she knew, suddenly and with certainty, that this was what it was. She and her beloved half-sister would die in this narrow iron coffin, unless she could break free of it and get Rania out.