I think of Chloe and smile when I find I can picture her again. Whatever Lorrel and the Pelk have done to me, however they’ve overwhelmed my will, they have not conquered my thoughts. Still, I moan when I think how lost I was in Lorrel’s embrace.
Curling my claws into fists, I strike my head once, then again and again. How could I have allowed such a thing to occur? I rake a claw across my chest and welcome the aroma of my fresh blood flowing. How can I expect Chloe to forgive me? I rip myself again. What right do I have to ask for her help? I dig furrows down my right thigh. Letting my blood flow and the pain throb, I stare into the dark and moan.
But after a while, my blood clots on its own and my pain lessens and I tire of my self-pity. Whether or not Chloe will ever be able to accept what I’ve done, I know I owe it to her and to my children to find my way out of this place. I owe it to Henri to make sure no Pelk female ever can overtake his life the way Lorrel has mine.
I suck in a breath and stretch my body and concentrate on healing my injuries. I am Don Henri’s son, I think. If he could find his way out of this place, then so can I.
It takes me only a few minutes to heal my wounds and soreness. Standing up, I feel my way forward, shaking my head at the blackness around me. As well as my kind can see in the dark, we do require some light, if only just a flicker of it. When I stumble into the seaweed drapes, I fumble with them until I finally find the center.
Parting them, I step out from my alcove and find the srrynn’s safehold virtually deserted. Only a few glowholes still give off their feeble green light. The seaweed tents of the night before have all come down, and only a few Pelk still seem to be sleeping in their now open nests.
I smile at a thin shaft of bright daylight that burns through the gloom near the cavern’s far right side. Weaving my way around nests and the piles of nautical junk the srrynn has collected, I make my way toward the light.
Halfway there I come across the bulk of a large creature sleeping in an open nest under a seaweed blanket. Since I have seen no other Undrae among us, I kick its rear haunch and mindspeak, “Derek! Wake up, you lazy creature!”
He moans, digs further under his blanket, and I kick him again.
“Damn it! Have some bloody mercy,” he mindspeaks, throwing off the blanket, sitting up, holding his head with both front claws.
“You got me into this. The least you can do is help,” I mindspeak.
He looks at me with one bloodshot green eye, motions at a large gourd by the side of the nest. “Look, old man. Why don’t you pass that to me?”
Liquid sloshes inside it as I pick it up and hand it to my brother-in-law. He upends it and takes a long swallow before he lowers it. “There now. That’s a bit better.” He holds out the gourd to me. “Care to take a draw of it?” he mindspeaks.
I shake my head and he shrugs and takes another swallow before he puts it down. “Remarkable stuff you know. Different from ours.”
“Our what?”
He snorts a laugh. “Dragon’s Tear wine, old man. What else do you think would make time more bearable in a dark hole like this?”
“I thought you were happy here,” I mindspeak.
“I was happy in Coconut Grove. You bloody well fixed that.”
I glare at him. “Get over it, Derek. You were wrong. You were beaten. No one said you couldn’t go on and have a life somewhere else.”
“Just Pa.”
“My God, you’re older than me. You could have just gone.”
“Just tell him to piss off? That would work. Sure. And you think the bugger wouldn’t tear me from limb to limb?”
“No one says if we get out of here that you have to go back to live with them in Morgan’s Hole. You could go look for an Undrae mate.”
“Look, old man, I could get killed doing that. You know how many males they attract when they’re in heat. Here I get plenty of food and plenty of quiff. . . .”
He pauses, looks at me with both eyes. “Come to think of it, I’m surprised you’re already up. I heard the circle last night—and the rest. You’ve had some of your own, haven’t you?” He makes a show of smelling the air. “Righto! Quiff for sure.”
I frown at him. “Give me a break, Derek. You know how I feel about Chloe. I’m sick over what happened.”
“Give yourself a break, old man. Do you think you could have resisted? No one can withstand the force of their songs. Sybyli told me in the old days dozens of them would form large groups called Syrees. They’d gather near rocks or cliffs and wait for ships to sail near them. Not one of those ships ever resisted the lure of their bloody songs, not a single, bloody sailor ever escaped.”
“But they were humans. I am of the Blood.”
“So am I. So was your bloody father.”
I sigh. “I just need to get out of here,” I mindspeak.
Derek looks around. “So? There’s not a soul here to stop you. Mowdar and the men are all out on a dolphin hunt. My wives and the other females are above gardening or tending to other chores.”
“Aren’t there any guards?”
“What for? As long as they have the antidote, we might as well be chained here.”
“Have any of your women mentioned anything about a way to neutralize the poison?” I mindspeak.
He shakes his head twice. “I only know I live in fear of not getting the antidote before the poison starts to burn.”
Derek stands, picks up the gourd, drinks from it again and mindspeaks as he puts it down, “Come on. Now that you’ve woke me, I’m hungry. We might as well go above and see what the women have found for us.”
We walk toward the light streaming into the cave, stopping when we come upon a large pile of clothes. They look well worn and I wrinkle my nose at the musty smell they give off.
“Don’t look down on them, old man. We need them to go above,” Derek mindspeaks, shrinking, his scales smoothing, his wings compressing, sinking into his back. I shift shape too, smile as I feel the familiar form of my human body.
Even in his human form, Derek measures inches taller than I, his body broader, his muscles larger and better defined. Still, with our emerald-green eyes, our mutual choice of blond hair and our square-jawed good looks—Derek lacking only my cleft chin—I wouldn’t be surprised if a stranger took us for brothers.
We rummage through the pile like two women at a weekend department store sale, Derek holding out shirts and pants for my consideration, I doing the same for him. In the end we both choose shorts and tank tops—a red one for Derek, and a black one for me.
“Don’t bother searching for shoes or sneakers. The Pelk don’t like to cover their feet,” Derek says and smiles. “God, it feels bloody good to talk out loud to someone again. Even in their human form these people only mindspeak. You’d think they’d want to learn English—so they can go into town sometimes—but Sybyli says Mowdar forbids them from having much to do with human ways. It’s too bloody Undrae, she said.”
Narrow steps have been carved into the cavern wall, and I follow Derek as he makes his way up them. I squint at the glare of the daylight that comes through the hole in the cavern wall at the top of the steps. Derek squints too, ducking when he reaches the hole and squeezing through it. I follow, blinking when I come out from under a large rock into a bright, small clearing surrounded by mangrove trees—each one clustered just inches from the next.
Looking up, I see that the sun has yet to reach its apex. “It’s early still,” I say.
Derek nods, stretches, inhales a long breath, “Good go that, waking me up. I always feel best up here.”
I look around the small clearing and see only the knee-high arched roots and the rough, reddish brown branches and dark green leaves of red mangrove trees clustered so close that it looks like an impenetrable wall of green, thirty feet high, encircling us. “So where did everyone go?”
Stepping onto the gnarled reddish gray arch of a nearby mangrove root, Derek grabs a branch and pulls himself into a tree. “There are no paths on
the ground. They travel through the branches.” He points forward. “The lagoon is this way. By now they should have some fish for us.” Then he gestures to the right. “The gardens are that way. None of them are very large. They trim away branches so sunlight can hit the ground. Pretty smart of them, huh? Everything they do above, they do to avoid discovery. That’s why they come above in their human forms, wearing clothes. It makes problems less likely in case some bloody human wanders by or flies overhead.”
After going only a few yards I begin to recognize why Derek steps on certain roots, grabs particular branches and knows when and where to turn. The bark on the top of the roots and branches we walk on has become smooth and glossy from the constant traffic of Pelk feet. Likewise, smaller branches, higher up, used for gripping have lost most of the leaves and the brown berries and long green seed pods that dangle from their undisturbed neighbors.
Traveling through the trees reminds me of the jungle gym I played in at school as a child—only springier. I have little trouble keeping up with Derek’s pace, and within minutes we find ourselves in the branches of a large mangrove, overlooking the lagoon that Lorrel and I swam through the day before.
Pelk women in their human forms busy themselves on the lagoon’s beach, some carrying baskets full of lobsters, crabs and flopping fish, others simply sitting in the sun and weaving seaweed nets. They wear a dizzying array of mismatched shorts and pants, T-shirts and blouses, a few even decked out in long skirts. Other Pelks swim nude in the lagoon, diving and surfacing with even more crustaceans and fish. After searching through them a few times now, I realize that Lorrel isn’t among them.
“Look at that, old man,” Derek says, tapping me on my shoulder and pointing to a large rock jutting over the water a dozen yards from us. I stare at the pale green iguana basking in the sun and think how much I’d like to do the same thing after spending so much time in the dark chill of the underground.
My brother-in-law stares with me. “My God, I’m tired of fish,” he says, leaning out from the branches so he can be seen from below. “Sybyli! Tantra! Delsi!” he mindspeaks.
One female on the beach and two of the swimmers stop what they’re doing and look up toward him. He points to the iguana.
The Pelk on the beach shakes her head and returns to her work. The two in the water look at each other. One dives, the other swims toward the rock. “That’s my third wife, Tantra,” Derek says.
I nod, examine her. She is the smallest of the three but thicker, her wet black hair hanging only as far as her shoulders, her breasts larger than Lorrel’s, almost pendulous. The girl slows as she approaches the rock, her eyes only on the iguana. The beast stares at her too, his leg muscles bunching as he prepares for flight.
Tantra stops, treads water and begins to sing. Derek chuckles and says, “You’re in for a treat, old man. I bet you’ve never seen anything like this.”
The notes of her song waft up to us. To my relief they don’t affect me. But the iguana tilts his head and relaxes his muscles, his eyes transfixed on her. She approaches slowly, returning the iguana’s stare, singing the entire time, climbing the rock and finally sitting next to the beast, water dripping from her naked body, spreading over the stone, darkening it everywhere that turns wet.
Through it all, the iguana remains immobile. I want it to break free of her spell, to pull back, to turn and run. I know how it feels to have music penetrate both mind and soul.
The Pelk girl puts a hand on its head, strokes its neck with her other hand, the iguana’s flesh quivering at her touch.
Drawing a breath, I consider shouting a warning. But for what? In the end, the iguana is just another beast to be preyed upon. Who am I to say this one should live, when I’ve killed so many myself?
Tantra’s song turns deep and soft. She shifts one finger into a claw and draws it across the iguana’s neck, a red line appearing as the beast’s flesh parts open, blood welling up, flowing across the rock and dripping into the lagoon. The iguana shudders once and collapses.
The Pelk girl stops her song and looks up to Derek. “That’s my girl!” he mindspeaks. “Wasn’t that magnificent?” he says to me.
Shaking my head I mutter, “I was that iguana last night,” but Derek either doesn’t hear or chooses to ignore me. He clambers down from the tree and I follow him.
By the time we reach the rock, Tantra has cut off the iguana’s tail and sliced it into two halves. She stands and holds them up to Derek. He takes one and motions for her to hand me the other. “What about her and the other two?” I say.
Derek laughs, takes a bite from his section. “She’s given us the best part. It’s their tradition. Why would I complain? They’ll eat the rest of the body and be glad for it.”
Tantra’s stomach, certainly not as flat as Lorrel’s, protrudes slightly and Derek rubs it with his free hand. The Pelk girl smiles at him. “My child grows inside here, doesn’t it girl?” he mindspeaks.
Tantra puts her hand over his. She trills out a laugh. “Your child grows here. . . .” She points to Derek’s other wife on shore and to the other in the water. “And there, and there!”
Then she looks at me and points toward the mangrove forest. “And your child grows in Lorrel’s stomach over there!”
My child. I look toward the forest and frown. I’ve been so busy damning myself for my betrayal of Chloe that I haven’t thought at all about my new son and how he can possibly fit in my world.
Derek looks at my face and nods. “Bloody inconvenient that—how quickly our women conceive. Let one of them decide it’s time, and the next casual romp you have with them ends up in fatherhood. At least when humans do it, they have a sporting chance of remaining unencumbered.”
“I like being a parent,” I growl. “I just would prefer to share that experience with my own mate.”
“Well, you don’t owe this one anything.” Derek takes a bite from his share of the iguana’s tail. “The way I look at it,” he says, chewing as he speaks, “is we were forced into this. So whatever has to be done about our children is the damned Pelks’ problem, not ours.”
I nod and Derek takes another bite from his meat. My stomach growls and I eat some of mine too. Closing my eyes at the sweetness of the meat, savoring its firm texture after the soft meat of fish and lobster, I think about the boy and the name, Dela, that Lorrel has already chosen for him.
She has already begun to act as if I have no part in any decisions about the child. So why should I care? I can think of no reason why Derek’s words aren’t true. Yet, no matter what, my blood will run in the child’s veins. “I don’t know,” I say, as much to Derek as to myself. “The child hasn’t done anything to me.”
25
After I finish enough to fill my stomach, I ask Derek for instructions on how to find Lorrel. He grins at the half chunk of meat still left in my hand and says, “Bringing your woman a meal?”
“I need to talk to her. Being nice won’t hurt anything.”
He shrugs and gives me directions, pointing me on the way. I leave him at the lagoon and climb into the mangroves by myself. The directions seem simple enough, just a matter of following the path of smoothed roots and branches until I come to a new, small clearing, where I’m to cross the ground and find the trail on the other side.
But as I circle the clearing, to make sure I don’t mistake any natural markings for the shiny, worn signs of a trail, I find two trees to choose from. I go back and forth from one to another, examining their roots and branches and, in the end, I take the right one just to see if it leads me anywhere.
Almost as soon as I’ve traveled long enough for the clearing to be out of sight, the path begins to fade. Peering at the roots below me, I slow and take only a few more steps before I stop. “At least I know what tree I should have taken,” I mutter and turn.
Something rustles the branches to my right. I stare through the leaves and see the rust-red body of some sort of creature moving past me. Placing the chunk of iguana meat on t
he Y of a branch near me, I grab the branches to my right, yank them apart and see the animal.
I gasp and it freezes, its green eyes wide, its mouth open as if it’s shrieking, though it makes no sound. “Away go!” it mindspeaks, and I almost fall from the branches.
The beast’s scaled body, similar to my natural form, except much thinner and reddish colored, can’t measure more than a yard. Its skinny tail, curled at its end and within my reach, looks to be about as long.
Its mouth still open, sharp white fangs showing, it begins to move away. “Wait,” I mindspeak, reaching out with one hand and seizing the curled tip of its tail. “Please.”
The creature hisses and freezes again, its tail twitching in my hand, trying to pull free. “Undrae, hold not me!” it mindspeaks.
“Will you stay?”
“Hold not and again ask.”
I open my hand and the creature yanks its tail out of reach and backs up a few more feet. “Now stay I,” it mindspeaks. “Not many time.
“What—who—are you?” I mindspeak, staring at it.
The animal spreads its wings as best it can within the confines of the branches. Far more delicate than mine, they appear almost translucent, glowing deep pink where the sunlight strikes them. “Teacher not had you? Guess not castryll mine?”
From its size alone, it can only be a member of one castryll. “I assume you’re a Thryll. But what makes you so sure I’m Undrae?”
“Much hear and see we Thryll, I Clieee. Too big for Pelk and too small for Zal be you.” The Thryll stares at the chunk of iguana meat on the bough next to me. “Not fish that be. Fish Pelk eat. Undrae be you.”
I pause before I answer. Because of the way it speaks, I have to concentrate on each word and rearrange them in my mind. “Do the Pelk know you’re here?” I mindspeak.
The creature spits toward the ground and hisses again. “Fish eaters. Nothing here know them of Thryll or Clieee. Kill us if they do. Now go I.”
The Seadragon's Daughter Page 17