“It is … beautiful,” Aisa whispered. It truly was. The tattoo that masked her face was a simple design of blue and purple points that curled around her eyes and nose. Two fanglike spikes ran down her cheeks, and the line of seed pearls marched across her forehead. Back when she was a slave, she had worn scarves to mask her face from her owner. Then she had gained the courage to walk about in public with a naked face. Now she had both a mask and a face at the same time, and it was a wonder.
Aisa looked at the trio of women, and at the two men who hovered a few feet away. “Thank you,” she said.
“You are our daughter come home again,” Markis said. “There is nothing else we could do.”
“And now,” Grandfather said, “we should discuss this power of the shape.”
“Oh!” Aisa came upright. “Yes! I got it from Grandfather Wyrm.”
“Your friend can only change to one other shape,” Grandmother observed. “Can you change to more than one?”
“I do not know,” Aisa admitted. “I do not know if I can even change back into a human.”
“We will not have you attempt it down here,” Grandmother said quickly. “Humans are weak, and the pressure would kill you before you had a chance to drown. I think you were able to change into a mermaid because it is in your blood—your half-blood, if you like. So perhaps you need an example to get started.”
She plucked a bright yellow fish from a passing school of them and handed it, squirming, to Aisa. “Here.”
Aisa accepted it with hesitation. It wriggled in her grasp. “What should I do with it?”
“Eat it. Take its form into yours.”
She paused, then crammed the fish into her mouth before she could lose her nerve. It wriggled all the way down. Aisa shuddered.
“Good,” said Grandmother with a nod. “Now think of the fish’s shape. Its color, its fins, its gills. Imagine your shape changing. Take that shape for yourself.”
Aisa imagined the fish. It seemed she could feel its form, but it was more than that. She knew it, too. Understood it down to the tiny parts that made up its muscles and skin and scales. Her body slid and shuddered, and suddenly she was floating in the water, able to see in all directions at once. Her mouth was enormous, and she hung sideways, ready to bolt forward at a thrust of her tail. She had become the yellow fish, but Aisa-sized, and there had been no pain.
Her new family scattered, then recovered themselves with murmurs of amazement. Imeld hung back. Ynara clapped her hands in glee. “That was a wonder, Aisa!”
Aisa slowly rotated in the water, enjoying herself hugely. The fish shape wasn’t hard to understand, though she felt the loss of hands and she had no voice. Her mouth opened and closed ceaselessly while life-giving water rushed through her gills. She wondered what Farek, her previous owner, would have thought of this, and gave an inner smile at the thought of him running for the mountains in a panic.
“Now change back,” Grandmother said. “Imagine your mermaid shape. Let it call to you.”
Aisa tried to close her eyes and discovered she had no eyelids. Well, that was all right. She would simply stare into the distance while she thought. It was easier than she imagined. One moment, she was a fish, the next she slithered back into her mermaid shape. The moment she did, however, exhaustion pressed her to the sandy sea floor.
“That … was tiring,” she gasped.
“The old stories said magic takes power,” Grandmother said, helping her float to a table. “You should eat.”
At the mention of food, Aisa realized she was ravenous. Grandmother brought her cut fish and roe and algae salad and something spiky that had a soft center. Aisa gobbled it all down, not caring that it was raw and finding it all delicious. She felt better but still tired. Through it all, Imeld still hung back, but Aisa was too tired to take much notice.
“Can you … show us how to do it?” Ynara asked.
Aisa pushed herself upright and nearly floated away before she righted herself. “Yes, of course! That is why I have come. If you have a talent for the shape, my blood will let you use it. Once you have changed shape at least once, your blood will let others use their talent. If you have no talent for the shape, you will still pass the power on to your children. But I warn you—the first change may be painful. It was for Danr.”
“What do we do?” Ynara asked.
Aisa thought a moment. “Give me a knife.” They did, one made of a pink shell, and Aisa held it above her arm.
“Wait!” Now Imeld shot forward and put her hand under Aisa’s arm. “Should we do this? Do we have the right?”
“What do you mean?” Aisa asked. Was this why Imeld had pulled back?
“Look.” Imeld gestured at the underwater city. The merfolk were going about their lives on the sea floor and up along the canyon walls. “This single action will change everything we know. The very word power will have a different meaning. Wars will be fought, red blood will spill. The children swimming over there will grow up in a world completely different from the one we had. This moment will change history. This moment will change everything. And those people there do not know it. Do we have the right?”
Aisa considered this. A little girl chased her brother up the canyon wall in a game only they understood. Imeld was right. How would her actions change their lives, and how much right did she have to change them?
“The Stane took the power from us a thousand years ago,” Grandfather said. “They changed everything for everyone, without the right. We cannot change it back, but we can set it right. The Kin need the power of the shape so we can be on equal footing with the other six people.”
“And Grandfather Wyrm said that the Kin may be able to stop the Tree from tipping every thousand years,” Aisa added. “It will be a change, but for the better, I hope.”
Aisa started to bring the knife down, but before she could move, the knife transformed into a sickle and Aisa was wearing a cloak of autumn leaves. Her arm swept around and the sickle sliced through a faceless merfolk’s neck. The head dropped to the sea floor like a cut flower as the water gushed with blood. But it was more than one merfolk. Other people—Kin, Stane, and Fae—died under her sickle as well. And the city around her changed. The algae took on new colors. Schools of fish and pods of whales changed direction. The tree that made up the merfolk city shifted so that the branches looked like roots, the roots looked like branches.
Can you wield the sickle without flinching?
And then it all disappeared. Aisa dropped the knife.
“No!” she moaned. “Not again!”
Ynara was there. “Sister? What is it?”
“It is the worst of my life,” she said.
“Tell us,” she said. “We are your family.”
Aisa looked at them, strangers who had become her new family. Perhaps it was because they were family, or perhaps it was because they were strangers, but she found herself telling everything. She told about the Iron Axe and the Battle of the Twist and the bloody visions that followed. And she told how Danr had come to change his shape, both because he wanted to escape fame and his half-blood status and because he thought she feared the consequences of marriage to a half-blood, when it was actually her fear of what he had done. And she told of Pendra bringing her to the garden of Ashkame. And she told of holding a sickle that caused bloody death. From behind her new face, she told it all, and when it was done, she drooped to the sea floor, weakened by the telling.
After a moment, she became aware of arms around her, of strong tails sliding beneath her, lifting her up. She felt more buoyant now that the words had left her. Her family drifted back and let her go.
“So much for one young person to bear,” Grandmother murmured. “You have seen more in two years than many see in ten lifetimes.”
“What do I do?” Aisa half choked. “I have learned that I am a half-blood, I have the power of the shape, and the Gardeners believe I could walk their rows one day.”
“Perhaps it is because you have done
all these things that the Gardeners are looking at you,” Ynara pointed out. “You are a powerful woman and you have seen much of the world. You have faced down Death and Grandfather Wyrm. You have been to the world of the Stane and of the Fae and of the Kin. You have walked among all races of the Nine People. You have been the lowest slave and now you are becoming the highest sorceress. You know the world, Aisa. Who better to become a Gardener?”
“Hmm.” Aisa straightened at such words. “I had not thought of it that way. But all this responsibility. I am not strong enough to make such decisions.”
“You are one of the merfolk,” Grandfather said. “The strength is in your blood. You only have to believe it.”
“But you must also talk of these visions with your young man,” Imeld said. “It will hurt you both if you keep the truth from him.”
“It will hurt him if I tell him,” Aisa said. “And so the words never come. I am too weak.”
“You are merfolk. The strength is in your blood,” Grandfather repeated. He handed her the knife. “Let us begin with the power of the shape. It runs in our family, so share your blood with us.”
“It will change history,” Imeld whispered.
“As it must,” Grandfather said.
Aisa pressed the cool blade against her skin, and the world flickered. The garden stretched around her, and she stood in the center with the sickle. A number of plants were poised to die beneath it, but a number of others stood ready to burst into blossom once the first plants were removed.
Can you wield the sickle without flinching?
Then she was back with her new family under the sea. Her fingers tightened ice-cold around the knife. With a single, petty stroke, the Kin would regain their power, but some would die in the process. How many people now alive had no idea that their death was imminent? How many orphans would Aisa’s knife create? Her hand refused to move.
Can you wield the sickle without flinching?
She handed the knife to Grandfather. “You do it.”
An autumn cloak fluttered at the corner of her eye, and she thought she heard a disappointed sigh, but she ignored both. Grandfather took the knife with a gentle nod. Aisa looked away, and he made a quick cut on the back of her arm. She flinched. A red line of pain flowed up her arm, and dark blood floated into the water. Aisa avoided looking at it, but memories of the Axe still crackled faintly in her head. For a moment, she thought she saw Pendra turn her head away in sadness.
“Inhale!” Grandfather ordered.
Everyone leaned in and drew in Aisa’s blood. Even Imeld did so, though her face was set hard. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Imeld squirmed and shifted and changed. She cried out under the pain as Danr had. With a bloop she became a small walrus.
“Halza’s tits!” Grandfather swore, and Grandmother slapped his shoulder.
“Imeld!” Markis said. “After everything you said, you have become a shape magician!”
“Well,” Aisa said as Imeld flapped her flippers in consternation, “that would seem to be—”
Ynara choked. Her face turned blue and she went into convulsions. Her tail split into a dozen writhing tentacles, then mashed back together. Her face contorted and blurred into hideous, malformed shapes—a crushed seal, a shark’s snout, a dolphin’s beak. Her arms became fins and flippers and arms again. Markis cried out in alarm and swam to her, but it was over in seconds. Ynara’s mangled corpse drifted to the garden floor.
“No!” Markis grabbed his daughter by the shoulders. He was already weeping. “No!”
Imeld rushed back into her own shape and joined Markis, fruitlessly shaking Ynara, as if she might just be sleeping. “Ynara!” Imeld begged, her face white with exhaustion. “Daughter, please!”
Aisa had both hands over her mouth in icy shock. But before she could react further, Grandmother stiffened. She gave a low cry and writhed in the water. Her skin turned a pebbly yellow. Horns spiraled out of her head. A dozen eyes popped open all over her body. In moments, she sank dead to the ocean floor beside Ynara.
Grandfather dropped beside her. He held her deformed head in his lap and made a low wailing sound that burst into the full keening of a whale. Markis and Imeld joined in, and the sounds of their sorrow made the sea heavy for all who heard. Aisa backed away in horror. Ynara could not be dead. Grandmother could not be dead. It was impossible. These mangled … things could not be them, could not be the beautiful, free mermaids Aisa had only just met and swum with and received her face from. They could not. But they were. And her blood had brought it about. Shame and remorse suffused her, weighed her down with black stones. She didn’t deserve to live when they were dead.
You flinched.
Bitter tears gathered in her eyes and were washed instantly away by the sea. Hesitantly, she reached down to touch Imeld’s shoulder.
“Imeld—” she whispered.
The woman rounded on her. “You killed my daughter!”
The words punched Aisa in the stomach with an almost physical force. She backed away into a school of fish, which scattered. Their slippery bodies rushed over her skin and away. Markis and Imeld keened like orcas over Ynara’s corpse while Grandfather sobbed over Grandmother’s, and other merfolk swam hurriedly toward them from other houses to find out what was wrong. Aisa turned and fled.
• • •
“There is your ship, Aisa.” Grandfather, his eyes red from weeping, pointed at the bulk above them, but Aisa had already heard it crashing loudly over the waves on the surface. It was indeed loud and slow, just as Grandfather had observed.
“I am so sorry,” she said for the hundredth time. The grief over what she had done threatened to drag her down to the bottom and she could barely swim. “If I had known—”
“It was not your fault,” Grandfather interrupted firmly. “I spilled your blood, and your Grandmother …” His voice tightened in a way that broke Aisa’s heart in half. “… your Grandmother wanted it to happen. We knew the risks. Still, I do not know if Imeld will forgive it.”
“Grandfather, I am so sorry.” Aisa’s eyes were red, too, and her nose would have been running if she had not been underwater. “I do not know what to do. I wish—”
“Listen to me, granddaughter.” Grandfather took both her shoulders. His eyes were serious within his blue tattoos, and Aisa could see the wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth. “Change always brings death. It also brings new life. If you had shared your blood elsewhere first, the power of the shape would still have reached Ynara and Grell eventually, and their fate would have been the same.”
“I killed Ynara,” Aisa said.
“You rescued her,” Grandfather said. “If not for you, she would be a slave on land, a life worse than any death. Imeld and Markis will eventually come to see that. But for now, perhaps it is best that you stay away. Let me spread the power of the shape among our people.”
Aisa stared at him in disbelief. “After all this, you still think we should—”
“Of course.”
“But others will die!” Aisa cried.
“And if we do not regain the power, yet more will die.” He sighed, and bubbles floated about his head. “Nothing comes without sacrifice. The Nine and the Gardeners know that.”
“What is the point of being a Gardener if I have to sacrifice the ones I love?” she demanded. “Why should I do it?”
“Only you can answer that,” Grandfather said.
Aisa wiped at her eyes out of habit. “I need to catch the ship.”
“If you ever need the merfolk, take your mermaid shape and cry for us like the orca,” Grandfather told her. “We will hear you, and we will come.”
“How … how do I cry like an orca?”
“Every mer knows how. Shout your name as loud and high as you can. Shout it three times.”
Aisa did. To her surprise, she produced a high-pitched wail that spread in all directions. Grandfather nodded.
“We will see you again, granddaughter.” He embra
ced her, and her forehead pushed into his shoulder so she felt the new pearls press her forehead. “We are proud of you, the mermaid who changed the world.”
Catching the ship was simple enough. Aisa found she could swim more than twice as fast as it sailed. Remembering how Ynara had done it—the fresh sorrow renewed itself at the thought—she propelled herself straight up with great sweeps of her tail and leaped gracefully into the air. But she had never done this before, and found she had pushed too hard. Instead of leaping up to the rail, she catapulted right over it and flopped gracelessly onto something hard that collapsed under her.
“Aisa!” Danr, still human and small, was there. He pulled her upright, or tried to. She couldn’t stand, and he wasn’t strong enough to hold her upright.
Something squirmed beneath her. It took a moment to work out that she had landed square on the golem. It rocked about, confused. Several sailors and Captain Greenstone came running across the rocking deck. Sails snapped and creaked overhead in a now-familiar song, and a fat orange sun was dipping into the ocean behind them.
“I was so worried!” Danr pulled her into a breathless embrace. “You have tattoos! Are you all right?”
“Yes and no,” she said. The golem tried to wriggle out from under her. She let go of Danr and flopped back onto it, causing it to crash back to the deck again. Words tumbled out of her and tears threatened again. “Oh, my Hamzu. Ynara and my grandmother are dead, and it is my doing.”
Danr’s large eyes went even wider and the blood drained from his face. “Dead? How?”
This time Greenstone picked her up as easily as a doll, and the golem jerked itself upright, managing to look annoyed even without facial features. “All right, all right,” Greenstone said. “Let’s put you somewhere more comfortable, and we’ll get this sorted out.”
“Give me a moment, and I can walk,” Aisa said to her.
She concentrated, remembering her true shape, her birth shape. The power moved, and she felt herself start to change, but she was suddenly too tired. After three changes, a great deal of swimming, and all the awful things that had happened, the energy just wasn’t there.
Blood Storm: The Books of Blood and Iron Page 25