The Sea Is Ours

by Jaymee Goh

  Immediately I find myself thrust against Ngọc as Guardians press their backs to us. My tray tips over spilling hot tea onto my chest and I howl at the scalding water, falling to my knees at Ngọc’s feet. The Guardians spring into motion, forming layers of protection around Ngọc.

  Their movements are so fast that dizziness besets me. Above me Ngọc’s arms cross into a protective stance. The air moves around me and I feel something graze my side. The Guardians dance in rapid spins, jabs and thrusts, slashing at a force I cannot make out. The shine of blades I have never seen them carry send sparks into the air.

  In the distance, I hear my mother scream and I attempt to dart out from under Ngọc towards the sound of her voice only to find myself slam against an invisible barrier. For long moments I claw and pound at the blue aura that surrounds Ngọc.

  Only when I feel Ngọc’s body fall hard against me, am I finally able to move. Then it is the circle of Guardians that serves as my obstacle. Around me, Guardians continue to clash their swords with an enemy whose face and body I can only glimpse, metallic gears in segments on their limbs and their naked torsos. I cradle Ngọc in my arms, quivering in fear at the bloodshed all around us.

  Then a Guardian howls, landing on the deck in front of me, leaving me face to face with a person whose chest and torso is torn, frozen gears underneath flesh instead of muscle, tissue, and blood. The person lunges at Ngọc, moving faster than I have ever seen anyone being move. I crouch, bracing myself for impact.

  Light surrounds me and I feel the brace of a death grip on my arms. I cling tighter to Ngọc, feeling its softness give way to a cold hard outer shell incapable of responding to my embrace. Pain rips through me as if I’m being torn molecule by molecule and darkness engulfs me.

  ~*~

  When I awake, I am laying in a corner of an unfamiliar dark room. Voices swirl around me, echoing indistinctly. I attempt to rise but vertigo grips me as a sharp pain throbs in my head. My stomach begins to rumble dangerously and bile rises in my throat making me keel over, vomiting to my side.

  I hear scuffing near me. Above me are stalactites and I realize that I must be inside a cave. I feel the splash of cold water on my face, startling me. Beside me kneels a woman, gears and pulleys curl within her right eye, sliding down her neck and shoulders to her torso, the blue and red of veins snaking around the gears. I reel at the sight of her, hitting my back hard on the rock wall behind me.

  Sounds of a blade slicing into metal come from behind the woman where, on a table lit only by a few torches, lies Ngọc, still as death, a man hovering above it with a round swiveling blade in his hand. I call out to Ngọc, but my own voice comes out hoarse, barely audible.

  The man at the table turns towards me, diving down towards me faster than I can catch my breath. He pulls my head back and stares at me, his eyes boring through me. On the left side of his bare torso are gears that run the length of his chest and down his left arm. He shakes me violently and I attempt to push back at him only to find my wrists and ankles bound.

  “Who are you?” he asks me, “why can’t we map you?”

  “What?” I respond, confused.

  Then the sharp sound of blades begin again and I can see that the woman has resumed their attempt to cut into Ngọc’s chest.

  “What are you doing to it?” I demand.

  The man shoves me against the wall. “Why can’t we map you?” he yells.

  “Map me? I don’t know what you are talking about.” He strikes me hard, flat across my face. I spit at him in frustration, unsure of whether I understand his odd accent correctly. I draw back and flail my body attempting to strike at him, but I only manage to tumble over, sliding down the slippery rock floor causing my rubbery bindings to tighten.

  Waving an impatient arm my way, the woman calls out, drawing the man back to the table where together they pry open Ngọc’s chest. Sobs I cannot control pour from me as Ngọc’s beautiful braided vines and gears are torn from its innards leaving its hull barren, protruding with jagged edges of cut metal.

  Over the next few days, frustration and anxiety begins to build between my captors as they dig with more and more ferocity into Ngọc’s chest. Watching its dissection piece-by-piece kills a part of me. Its chest is now completely bared, its side panels torn aside to reveal a thick inner metallic cylindrical core.

  “It’s too thick, it’s impossible to cut through,” I hear one of them say.

  “Maybe there is a way to bring jzan soul to prominence,” the other replies.

  Their arguments are punctuated by moments when I am dragged to the table and thrown over Ngọc. Their movements are as swift as the Guardians, and every time I am moved, I feel as if I am being torn from the inside out, my vomit becoming filtered with my own blood.

  “Open the chamber!” they demand, pointing to Ngọc’s chest.

  “I can’t!” I say over and over but their eyes show only disbelief before flinging me against the wall.

  ~*~

  Days I cannot track pass. Perpetual darkness shrouds the cave. Dehydration causes my lips to crack while hunger continuously tears at me and I have soiled on myself more times than I can remember. My stench must have become ripe because one day I awake to being dragged across the cave floor and thrown into water. I startle awake to find myself drenched and sitting in a pond of water in the shadows of the cave. In its depths I see what looks like an opening into an underwater tunnel.

  Underground caves! Near our fishing village, we had an entire vast network of them. From time to time I swam through them. I had never swam more than a mile—but if that was the only route of escape I had…

  A thought comes to me. I cannot move as fast as they can, I can never outrun them, but I can swim. I can swim as far as my strength can take me. And I can disappear into the water, into mud, into dust. I have done it time and again in the war—and when I fled my country.

  I begin watching Ngọc with more vigilance. The woman often takes to napping, laying her head on the table, as the man continues to tinker with Ngọc. From time to time he too would doze, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. Then they’d wake and circle around Ngọc, fervid expressions on their faces.

  On the fourth observation of this cycle, I decide to act. I wait until the woman lays her head down in exasperation. The man always follows soon after her. When he lifts his legs to the table and his chin comes to rest on his chest, my heart begins to beat wildly in anticipation. When I hear his light snoring begin, I roll quickly to the table and reach up to slip my bound arms around Ngọc’s neck.

  Pulling Ngọc towards me, I brace for its weight, but it is not as heavy as I predicted; it has been severely hollowed out. With it resting on me, I writhe to the edge of the pond and slip silently into the water.

  Through the opening of the tunnel, I swim like a dolphin, my arms and legs still bound, holding Ngọc at my side in a choke- hold. Where the tunnel will lead me, I do not know. How much I will have to swim before I find air, I do not know. At this point, I no longer care.

  I swim as far as I can, allowing the opening to pull me. Darkness surrounds me and my lungs begin to burn but still I swim. My instinct is to go upwards so I undulate my body, pushing water around me as much as I can until my head hits the top of a rock ceiling. I search for air pockets and find several small ones where I swallow mouthfuls of air.

  Time begins to fail me and after a while I begin to feel as if an eternity has passed as I meander through the water endlessly, desperately searching for air pockets. I do not know how long I have been swimming, whether it has been hours or days—I only know that my endurance is beginning to fail me as the slow creep of panic begins to inch its way through the membranes of my lungs.

  A few more circles through the tunnels and I begin to get dizzy, feeling as if I have been turned around, afraid that I would swim back into the cave that I escaped from. Time and again I find myself slamming my fists at finding the same pocket of air—feeling the crude mar
kings I had scratched with my own nails on the rock ceiling.

  Then the moment came, as I knew it surely would—when my bound ankles cannot pump any longer, when my arms begin to resist pushing through the water, when I am too weary to hold my head high enough to breathe. I feel myself sinking, Ngọc still locked in my arms. Weariness from somewhere deep in my bones overcomes me.

  Stranded in a large air pocket that I seem to keep coming back to, I begin to sob. My bound fingers feel all over Ngọc’s shorn jagged parts. There is no button that I can push, nothing to flip, nothing to switch on or off. Frustrated, I throw myself against it, banging its head against the top of the air pocket.

  “Wake up damn it!” I sputter, water beginning to seep into my lungs. Then I laugh. I laugh at the absurdity of my journey. At the flight in the dead of night from our fishing village, at the days lost, dying of starvation in the South China Sea, to being rescued and stationed in an island paradise by the oddest people I had ever met, to being taken by an air serpent and machine people and bound wallowing in my own filth in a dark cave with an automaton made of pieces of a clock and leaves. I laughed at how ludicrous it all was.

  “I am unsure whether you expressing happiness or grief.”

  Ngọc’s voice startles me and I turn it over. Its eyes light up and for the first time in what feels like days, light painfully dilates my eyes. The gears along the side of its head, which had been sliced open, rotate a few clicks.

  “Ngọc!” I say, excitement and adrenaline rushing me.

  But then its jade eyes fade and I am left in darkness once again. My fingers fumble along its head, searching for the gears I just saw. Once I feel them, I manually rotate them.

  “It appears that we are situated in a very precarious position.” The air pocket illuminates with the green glow of Ngọc’s eyes.

  “We’re in an underground cave system. We need to find a way out.”

  I watch as the gears on Ngoc’s head rotate.

  “I can map us, but it will make our position known.” Its last words wind down slowly and I immediately rotate its gears.

  “Map us? What does that mean? They kept asking me why I could not be mapped.”

  “In our world, all living creatures exist in a vast Fabric.” I reach out to wind its gears before they slow down.

  “I am equipped to connect to a wavelength that is receivable upon the Fabric. It is not a direct link because only those who follow the jzan path can open a direct channel. I will use the organisms in this pond to relate us.”

  “Jzan Nguyệt will be able to receive it and locate us?”

  “Yes. You cannot be mapped because you are not from our world.”

  “Not from your world?” That same sinking feeling came back to me. Am I a ghost?

  “I can instruct you on how to enable it but once it is on, I will be open to both the Guardians and the Machinists.”

  “Machinists?”

  “Those that brought us here.”

  “What choice do we have? We will die down here.”

  “You will die.”

  I sigh.

  “But what I hold is of great importance. I cannot remain here lost in this cave.”

  “How do I turn it on? But first, tell me how I can get one of your blades.”

  ~*~

  After I enable the mechanism, Ngọc directs our course through the tunnel until we reach a river. Relief fills me as I roll onto my back and swim with Ngọc strapped onto my belly. Inhaling deeply, I can taste the difference in the air.

  “Who are they? The Machinists—they had machines in their bodies.”

  “They are not made of machines. What you saw were brandings that were inscribed on their bodies.”

  “Drawn on them?”

  “Yes, for their beliefs, in opposition to the Guardians’ markings.” I hear a hint of resentment in Ngoc’s words and I wonder if that is even possible for an automaton.

  “What are their beliefs?”

  The river narrows into an enclosed tunnel.

  “This is a question better suited for another time. This will be your last swim before we reach the opening of this cave. Beyond it is a waterfall.”

  “How long will I swim?”

  “Approximately two minutes.”

  “Two minutes Ngọc? I can’t hold my breath for two minutes!”

  “Midway through, the current will strengthen, increasing your speed.”

  Ngoc’s words are not reassuring. “I don’t have two minutes,” I say sadly.

  “If you activate my chamber, I will be ready to collect your soul.”

  I turn toward it horrified. It registers my horror without response. Closing my eyes, I prepare myself. I can swim, I tell myself. If nothing else, I can swim.

  Then I grab Ngọc and propel myself off the top wall of the cave. Making broad strokes, I scale the length of the tunnel as fast as I can. My unbound hands and legs move water past us with all the velocity I can manage. I cannot move as fast as them, I cannot see, hear, nor speak like they do, but I can swim.

  The current does begin to pull us forcefully, but not soon enough as the burning in my lungs begins to give way to darkness. Consciousness begins to leave me and my arms and legs slow down, unable to respond any longer. Just as water begins to fill my lungs, blinding light stings my eyes and air rushes at me, clear beautiful fresh air. Wrapping myself around Ngọc, I brace myself as we plummet down a waterfall.

  A load blast ruptures the air followed by a flash of light that whizzes past us. Jzan Nguyệt’s airship appears and beside it, the Machinists’ enormous raven beast carrying several Machinist’s on its haunches. Both trail beside us as we plummet. Tumbling through the air, Nguyệt leaps from the ship to seize us, side-sweeping the blows of three Machinists who also plunge towards us.

  Guardians fling themselves from the airship after the Machinists who twirl in the air as they are falling. In flashes and streaks their blades meet as I am catapulted back onto to airship in Nguyệt’s grip, landing in a painful thud on the floor of the deck, my limbs still wrapped around Ngọc. Immediately I feel my insides resist the speed of the movement and I dry heave onto the deck attempting to grasp onto a reality that refuses to remain still.

  Pain cleaves through my mind, searing my body as the ship maneuvers towards the waterfall below the tumbling Guardians. Deflecting the Machinists, the Guardians tumble onto the airship and, before I can even register their appearance, the ship spins wildly and leans sharply to the left. A hand grabs me as I rocket down the deck and Nguyệt’s palm comes to rest flat against my forehead, flooding me with calmness, taking my pain—and my consciousness.

  ~*~

  When I awake, Ngọc is beside me, its face and chest barren. Jagged cuts jut from all angles of it where the Machinists’ blade has sawed through it.

  “We have arrived,” Nguyệt approaches me, bowing, “You have our deepest gratitude for returning Ngọc to us.”

  Around the ship is the sea and in the distance along a foggy horizon is the outline of a mountain with the vague rings of a city encircling it. Near it are a dozen or more narrow mountains that jut above the fog, some connected by a thin bridge.

  “It looks just like Vịnh Hạ Long,” I say, marveling at the beauty of the landscape.

  “You will have to tell me more about your bay one day, it rings familiar.”

  “Is that where we are going?” I ask, referring to the mountain directly in front of us, bracing myself as a brief wave of nausea washes over me.

  “We will return to our compound.” Nguyệt points upwards towards the right. I look up, confused, seeing only the sky and clouds.

  Beside me Nguyệt is flanked by several Guardians whose entire faces are covered with intricate drawings. Unlike them, only the left half of Nguyệt’s face holds a delicate pattern that twists and turns, weaving some unique tale. I want to ask what story is hidden in the drawings, but Nguyệt interrupts my thoughts.

  “Yạ, please accept our a
pologies for your troubles. It was our intent to acclimate your people slowly to our world, to find ways to address the limitations of your senses. I regret the difficult introduction you have all had.”

  “They are safe?” I ask, ignoring jzan inferences about my abilities, feeling a twinge of humiliation.

  “Yạ, yes, and awaiting your arrival.”

  “The black beast…”

  “Rồng, our living ancestor, from whom we are descended. In our world their transcendental form can only be achieved with the assistance of alchemy and the ocular tool.”

  “Their transcendental form?”

  “At a cost. Day by day this world ties them to human form.”

  “And the Machinists—they were tearing Ngọc apart—why?”

  Nguyệt turns to look at me, jzan eyes thoughtful with concerns that stretched far outside the scope of the question. I can feel the ship rise gradually and I cannot help but wonder if we are traveling slowly for my benefit. Chagrin fills me.

  “The Machinist have attempted many times to take Nan Ngọc. It is the chamber within nan body that they seek.”

  “The one that holds souls.”

  “Yạ, yes, Ngọc carries the soul of one of their deceased, a truly gifted alchemist and warrior. We believe they are attempting to secure certain reincarnation of that soul.”

  “That,” I hesitate, “Can be done?”

  “It cannot be done, but there are those that believe it possible. The Machinist believe many things that are not… Some among them believe that a world exists where machines dominate, a world completely unlike ours. They believe that we, that I, have abandoned our own there and that we are burdened with the obligation to search for and return to this world.”

  “What do you believe?”

  “I believe that our world requires all of our focus. And now that your people are among us, you too are a part of our world.”

  The clouds part and we pass a mountain of elegant green rice terraces. I feel as if I am returning home, nostalgia thick in my throat. Turning from the majestic countryside towards the mountains looming in the distance, I expect to see meandering rivers, urban roads and the signs of a civilization.