Dreams of Distant Shores

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Yes, you are.” Her fierceness startled him. “You loved me. You loved my past. But how else could I draw your eyes to my living and endangered sea except to show you what you expected to see? You saw this face. You felt these hands. These you wanted.”

  “Want,” he said without hope. He shook his head a little; the barnacle floated free. “I’m only human.”

  “You must be more than human.”

  “How?”

  “You must be part of me. You owe me. I want your life.”

  He swallowed nothing, felt the blood beat in the back of his throat. For a turtle? he wondered blankly. For a whale’s life? He moved finally, reached up to touch his glasses. “Yes,” he said with an effort. “Alive down here? Or do you just want me dead?”

  She was silent; finally he saw all of her, the pearls in her sea-tossed hair, the flowing, tide-swirled garment that constantly shifted, revealing, concealing. He watched, mute, while she considered. “If I let you choose,” she said at last, “which would you choose? A life in this waste, cleaning my sea with a shell, or death?”

  He started to speak, stopped. She watched him, her face as hard and cold as Adam’s, while the sea showed him a quarter moon of breast, a slender knee. “Was what I did that terrible?” he asked helplessly. “Just following your song? We have always loved the sea. We leave ourselves in you constantly. A sunken galleon, an amphora, a billion barrels of oil, our bones. We can’t separate ourselves from you. You still flow in our blood. You feed us. You rage at us, wreck our cities, drown our children, and still we come past safety to stand at the edge of your fury to watch all your deadly beauty. Without you, we will die.”

  “You are killing me.”

  “Then we will die. And I will,” he added on a breath, “here, now, if you want. Or I will clean up the waste with a snail shell if you promise me—”

  “I will not bargain.”

  “No. But I can ask. If you will sing to me. The way you sang in the cave. As if the world had begun in that place, and I was listening to the first song ever heard. As long as I can listen to you, I would choose to live.”

  Something happened to her face, and to his: he felt it, a tear that was not a pearl, and saw on her face the faint suggestion that it was not carved of stone. He began to hear the song again, faint, mingling with the currents within the moon shell. He met her eyes, saw the storm in them, as ancient and as new as tide, as her song, as all her intricate faces. He whispered, “You choose my fate. It seems fair. We have shown you yours.”

  “Yes,” she said, and turned her head, as at the touch of an unexpected current moving through the sad, dark waters.

  Megan walked into the chamber.

  EIGHT

  Her eyes were red, her hair was full of pearls, she wore gleaming fish scales and thin slippers of scale. She cast an eye at Jonah almost as cold as the mermaid’s; her glance snagged on the moon shell, on the kelp rope around his wrists. She tried to turn away from him, then saw the expression in his own eyes. A tear fell from him, and then a pearl. He whispered, stunned, “Megan?”

  She stopped. He saw her swallow, saw the red deepen around her eyes. Then she shook her hair over her face, and turned away from him to the sea queen.

  She had vanished, leaving only a dozen bright butterflyfish that had been clinging to her hair startling through the water. Jonah said again, “Megan?”

  She folded her arms tightly, showed him a white, set profile, and then three quarters of her face. Then she showed him her full face, for nothing about him had the look she expected, of a man fed oysters and pearls from the sea queen’s fingers, who could barely remember the unenchanted world. “You look awful,” she said abruptly. “You look as though you drowned. You’re growing moss in your beard. You’re growing a beard.”

  “I should have used a razor clam,” he said weakly, feeling human tears sting again. “You look beautiful. You should always wear pearls in your hair.”

  “They’re tears,” she said stonily, and twitched behind her hair again. He watched her, wanting her familiar thin, secretive face, the blue-gray eyes, lovely and easily startled, behind her glasses. She came out finally, frowning at the kelp.

  “What’s that for? And why are you wearing that shell on your ear?”

  He lifted his hands, removed it finally. “There was a storm—”

  Her eyes widened a little. “I know. I saw it. Adam said it was her doing it. She.” Her hands tightened a little on her arms. “Your mermaid.”

  “Adam.”

  “He showed me how to get down here.”

  He blinked, aware suddenly of some shark-shadow of danger. “He did.” Her eyes challenged him; he drew breath, asked anyway, “How did you get here?”

  “I walked,” she said stiffly.

  “What do you mean, you walked?”

  “I drew the stairs into the sea and walked down them. Adam told me to do it that way.”

  “In return for what?” he demanded. “He doesn’t hand out things for free.”

  “You have some nerve asking. Walking is not how you got down here.”

  He was silent, remembering: a kiss, a pearl. “No,” he said softly. “I followed the siren’s song. I’m sorry.”

  “For what? That you followed it? Or for me?”

  “I couldn’t help it,” he pleaded. “That’s why it’s called a siren’s song.”

  She was silent then, feeling the blood gather again behind her eyes. She whispered finally, “I know. I heard it.”

  “You—”

  “Out there. In that terrible sea. I was out there, alone, and you were in the white tower with the sea queen singing to you, and you didn’t know I was out there, and I knew you wouldn’t have cared.”

  “Oh, Megan.” He held out his hands, trailing kelp leaves and yellow bladders. “Look at me! What does this look like?”

  “Something kinky,” she muttered darkly. But she frowned at him uncertainly, more puzzled now than angry. “If—” she said finally, “if it wasn’t for that, then what? What did she want you for? Didn’t you make love to her? Isn’t that what mermaids do? They drag you under, into the magic sea, and trap you there, if they don’t kill you first.” Her face smoothed suddenly, froze; she took a step toward him. “Jonah?”

  “Yes. That’s pretty much how it goes.”

  “Wait—” She stared at him, breathing quickly. “Wait. She trapped you in this tower? She can’t want to kill you. That doesn’t make sense. Adam said—”

  “Adam,” he said between his teeth.

  “He said I had to ask permission from the sea queen to take you back with me. If I still want you. He wouldn’t have said that unless there were a way.”

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Still want me?”

  “Oh, Jonah, I’m here. What do you think?”

  For an instant, he was uncertain. The shadow loomed overhead, turned toward him with sleek, deadly grace. Then it swam out of eyesight. He bowed his head, said bleakly, “I don’t think she’ll let me go. I’ve promised her—whatever life I have left.”

  She put her hands over her mouth. “No,” she whispered.

  “That sea out there.” He paused, swallowed, still staring at his hands. “I didn’t recognize her.”

  “What?”

  “She—there were things I could have done. Should have done. Things I should have realized. She brought me down here to see, and I couldn’t see anything at all, only her. I hardly even heard the whale, and it nearly fell on top of me. I just wanted it to be quiet so that I could hear her song again. Did you see it out there? The whale?”

  She nodded jerkily. She was crying suddenly, noiselessly, her eyes wide behind her glasses, her mouth still hidden behind her hands. “Yes. I saw it.”

  “She’s very angry with me. That was her song, too, she said. The whale’s song. I just—” He shook his head slightly, dislodging a tiny snail. “I just wasn’t listening. I wasn’t seeing. All I could see was this
tower. All I could hear was her voice. So.” He drew a long breath, looked at her finally. “You might have made a trip for nothing.” He paused; she still gazed at him wordlessly, weeping tears from one eye, pearls from the other. He added, “But thank you,” fixing her in his memory one last time: her long pale floating hair, her lean body, mysterious beneath its dark shimmer of fish scale. “It was more than I deserved. Considering.”

  “Oh, Jonah!” She had crossed the distance between them suddenly. “Why didn’t you help the damn whale?” Her fists pounded at him a moment. “It wasn’t that hard!” She stopped beating him, and pushed herself against him, her arms around him tightly, her face against his neck. “She can’t keep you. It’s not fair. Maybe there’s some way—” She drew back abruptly, tugged impatiently at the kelp around his wrists, unweaving the long golden ropes, while he stared, his face still, at the top of her head. “Maybe if I talk to her. Or Adam does. He told me to come here and ask, so I’ll ask—Where is she, anyway?”

  “What do you mean,” he asked slowly, “it wasn’t that hard?”

  “What?”

  “About the whale. You said it about the whale.”

  “Oh. I just used a piece of broken crab shell. It cut like a knife. And there. . . .” Her voice faltered oddly. “And it wasn’t—it wasn’t a real whale. I mean, it was until I freed it. And then it changed.”

  “Into what?” he whispered. She lifted her head after a long silence, met his eyes.

  “Adam.”

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he saw Adam standing beside his sister.

  They did look alike, he realized numbly. Some of Adam’s wildness shaped her beauty; some of her ceaseless, desperate love for her realm shaped his. Nereis put her hand on Adam’s shoulder, said to him as the butterflyfish darted back into the tendrils of her hair, “You did well. Far better than I did.”

  “You sang far too well,” he said gently. Megan, startled, had turned in Jonah’s hold. For a moment, her eyes clung to Adam, until he gave her a smile, bittersweet and without malice, that amazed Jonah. Then her eyes moved to his sister.

  Staring at the ancient, sea-formed face, she said, “Oh,” soundlessly; the word, caught in a round bubble, floated upward. She shifted closer to Jonah. “You’re not,” she said shakily to Nereis, “at all what I thought you would be. I thought you would be more human. If I had—if I had known—I would never have dared come for him.”

  “If I had known him better,” Nereis said, “I would have sung to you instead.” The sharpness in her voice sent a tremor through the water; the butterflyfish swarmed and flashed uneasily.

  Megan felt the tremor pass through Jonah. She drew breath, said helplessly, “I think I’ve bargained away everything I own to Adam. But if I have anything left—anything worth Jonah’s life—it’s yours. Adam told me I could ask you to free him. If you would let him return with me. If he wants to come. If you will free him. I’ll give you what you want.”

  “Why?” Jonah whispered. “Why, Megan? I vanished out of your life to follow a singer. A song. Why did you come for me? Why did you bother?”

  “You were part of a puzzle,” she said without looking at him. “The sea came into my drawings, it walked into your store, it flooded into my life and it took me like it took you—I wanted to know why. And. Because. I missed you.” She looked at him finally; her voice softened. “I missed you. I thought you might be missing the world. In tales, people do.”

  “In and out of tales,” he said starkly, “people die in the sea. I won’t let you sacrifice anything more for me. I’ve already promised my life to the sea. I won’t bargain away that promise.”

  “That,” the sea queen sighed, “is the first sign of hope you have given me. I want both your lives.” Adam glanced at his sister swiftly; she read his thoughts. “No. She is not for you. She is for me.”

  His mouth tightened a little. “You’re sending them back.”

  “How else can they help me?”

  “Can I bargain with you?”

  “No. You are far too subject to whim to make any human happy. Unless you want me to give you up, send you with them to live and die among humans.”

  He opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated. Megan was stunned by the expression on his face; so, it seemed, was the sea queen. Jonah’s hand closed suddenly on Megan’s shoulder. They said, the three of them, before Adam chose, “No.”

  He blinked, as if some chasm had opened and then vanished again in front of him. He looked reproachfully at Megan. She said, her eyes stinging in the brine, “You already have my heart. You’ll forget me long before I forget you.”

  “Perhaps,” he said softly, “you are right. But watch for me anyway in your drawings. I have a very long memory.”

  “And you also will leave your heart in the sea,” the sea queen said to Jonah. “You will return to land, but your eyes and thoughts and your life belong to me. I am dying. You saw that. For the rest of your life, you will stay within the sound of my voice, the sound of the changing tide. Your life is linked to mine. As I die, so will you; as I become stronger, so will you. You must help us both. For so long I watched you caring about the lost, forgotten life of the sea, when I was young and all life came from me. I sang to you because I need you to see me as I am now. You must find ways in your world to help me. I am no stronger than the most minute life in the sea. If you kill that, I begin to die. The smallest thing you can do to help me will give me strength to live. My song will be in your blood, in your dreams, in your past and future. If my life is short, so will yours be. When my voice stops, so will your heart, for I hold your heart in mine for the rest of our lives.”

  Jonah bowed his head. He heard her song again, sweet, haunting, within the sound of the tide; beneath it, within it, he heard his own heartbeat. He whispered, “You hold all of our hearts in your heart.”

  Water shaped itself against him; he felt her, the intimate tide, her song flooding around him until he could no longer stand. His mouth filled with her; she caught his swaying body, dragged him deep into foam and brine, a churning rush of water that slid over him, under him, searched him for buried treasure and fought him for his bones,and cast him finally, with a wild plunge and roil of froth, piecemeal on the sand, where he lay with his lips to the receding tide. Megan, borne ashore on a silken wave of foam, felt its pale fingers everywhere before it loosed her reluctantly to land.

  She rolled onto her back, heard the seagulls cry. She felt Jonah’s hand groping, touching hers. After a wave or two, she slid her fingers into his; their hands locked. After another breath or three, she opened her eyes to the cool purple and gold of the setting sun.

  Jonah raised himself on one elbow, put his arm around her, gathered her as close as he could, until only the most persistent waters came between them. Something cold touched his mouth; he stirred finally, opened his eyes.

  A black rabbit running under a quarter moon of silver hung from her ear. She heard his breath still, and raised her face blurrily. Salt was drying on her glasses; he had lost his. She pulled hers off, dropped them in the sand, and saw his eyes, turned seaward then, haunted, troubled, as if he were losing some great treasure beneath the waves, and would bail out the sea with a scallop shell to save it.

  The expression faded; he crossed the distance, came back to her. She kissed him swiftly, knowing he would be possessed, he would leave her like that, again and again, as long as she stayed with him. He kissed her back, awkwardly, tentatively. He shifted suddenly, as something hard met bone; he loosed her, turned a little, to push one hand into his pocket. He brought out a handful of pearls.

  “To remind me,” he said finally, a little bitterly, as he looked at them. She nodded.

  “I know. I have one, too.” She slid one of her fish-scale slippers off, shook it. A pearl, large and slightly misshapen, glistening with grays and purples, dropped between them; she picked it quickly out of the foam. She turned it in her hand, watching the colors change, for a long time bef
ore she felt his eyes.

  She met his gaze, saw him unsure, this time, what he had lost, or if he had lost anything at all, or everything. She smiled a little, unsure herself, half-human, half-mermaid with her pale wet hair, her legs gleaming darkly with fish scale, curled gracefully under her. Then she tossed the pearl back to a receding wave.

  “It was just a gift,” she said. “Like yours.”

  He blinked, his face easing, and leaned forward to kiss her again, before he said, “Mine are tears.”

  They rose finally, walked hand in hand out of the tide. He looked back once, and so did she, seeking the place where steps might have begun that led down to the land beneath the waves, where a sea hare might wait for her, carrying a dark pearl between its horns. She saw a little ribbon of foam, headed back to sea, turned purple by the dusk.

  Writing High Fantasy

  the formula is simple. Take one 15th-century palace with high towers and pennants flying, add a hero who talks like a butler, a wizard with fireworks under his fingernails, and a Lurking Evil that threatens the kingdom or the heroine, and there you have it: high fantasy in the making.

  And there we have all had it up to the proverbial “here.” How many times can you repeat the same plot? But how can you write high fantasy without the traditional trappings, characters, and plot that are essential for this kind of fantasy?

  So I am forced to ask myself the same question when I begin a new fantasy: How can it follow the rules of high fantasy and break them at the same time?

  THE HERO

  In writing the Riddle-Master trilogy, my impulse was to be as deliberately traditional as possible: a ruler leaves the comforts of his castle to learn from wizards how to fight a Lurking Evil that threatens to destroy his land. The hero, the magic, the danger are after all elements of fantasy as old as storytelling. But how do you give the Generic Hero—who only has to be high-born, look passable, and fight really well to be a hero—personality?