by Ros Baxter
Suddenly the black furrow of hurt and concentration that had been creasing Carragheen’s face cleared, and it was plain that he’d worked some things out. “Ah,” he offered. “Now I see, now it all makes sense. I think maybe they were with me.”
Oh no, please no. Not bad enough that he was a cheating husband, now he was going to tell me he’d been having some kinky action with three choirgirls. I’m just not quite that liberal. “No, no, Rania, not that. But the girls were here one night, perhaps five days ago. They were using The Pool. Together.” He was thinking. “They came to me the next day, told me about Imogen. I didn’t know. But they did.”
My mind was racing. Something about The Pool blocks the effects of the mind thing.
“I told the girls, the… Throaty Three… to do nothing, I would investigate. I told them not to talk to anyone. A warning they clearly ignored. I didn’t know who to tell. There was only one person I knew who might have some answers.”
Carragheen’s dark, beautiful face twisted and puckered, and I knew what he was about to say before it was out, and my gut reeled as the knowledge crystallized in my brain.
“You were the one who told Cleedaline.” I was sure I was squeaking more than talking.
Oh, Ran help us, please say no, please say no.
Because if Carragheen told Cleedaline, then that was what started her on the road to me.
“Yes, I did,” Carragheen confirmed, his voice low and scratchy. “I knew her. We crossed over during watch-keeping. She was smart, and she loved Imogen. I thought she might have some leads.”
“Loved?” Lecanora shook her head and looked at Carragheen, then at me. “Past tense?”
I sighed. “Cleedaline’s dead. Murdered. In Dirtwater. And they tried to get me too.”
Carragheen had his head in his hands. “Even after you told me, in your town, about the dead blonde… I hoped it was somehow a mistake, that you were wrong. But I think somehow I already knew. You see, after I’d left Cleedaline, and come back here, I’d had a… feeling that something was wrong.” He gestured to me with those long fingers. “That’s why I came to your town, Rania. A strong feeling-”
Something about the way he said strong feeling reminded me to ask him some more about that part later. ’Cause my ‘strong feelings’ had been pretty wild lately.
“- a strong feeling that she was in trouble. So I… blind-ported to her.”
Lecanora gasped. Blind hydroporting is the most dangerous thing a mermaid can do. It involves hydroporting to an unknown place, following a mental connection (usually a telepathic link) and hoping your cells will locate the closest body of water. If they don’t, you simply get lost in the cosmos, scattered into the very water droplets in the air. Forever.
“Had she telepathed you that she was in danger?” Lecanora was trying to understand.
“Of course not.” Carragheen shook his head heavily. “You know you can’t link with people so far. I was just following the feeling of her. But, like I said, it was a strong feeling.”
I glanced at Lecanora and saw her shaking her head at the peril of it. “Why?”
He shrugged, an eloquent thing, meant to be casual, instead looking somehow like a man standing at the gallows.. “It was my fault. I went to her. I did not understand the danger when I did. I sealed her fate.” He looked at me, eyes rimmed silver. “Tell me. What happened?”
I’ve never been a master of delivering bad news gently, tactfully. I quickly filled them in. The thing, the weapon of sound. The terrible, brutal silence.
Carragheen’s head snapped up as I described the weapon.
What was that on his face?
Lecanora’s angelic face scrunched with the agony of considering such violence. Carragheen’s was awash with guilt. Even though I wanted to stab him in the heart, habit and training kicked in. Okay, so maybe there was something else as well. I could feel the sharp edge of his pain, and maybe my heart wasn’t totally ready to let go of him yet.
“You couldn’t have known,” I assured him gently. “No-one could have. We don’t even know what this is, or who’s behind it. Or why.”
Carragheen spent a few moments with his face in his hands. When he looked up, his face was a mask. His beautiful indigo eyes were dark and determined. “I need some time alone.”
He was hiding something. Something more than being married, I mean, which, let’s face it, was enough for one day. I’d been in enough tight spots to know when a guy’s planning to go kick some ass. I could ask, but I already knew he wouldn’t tell me. I could see that he had decided it was too dangerous. His wolfish smile had disappeared, leaving a deep frown that was somehow almost as appealing. I had to squash the urge to kiss him, remind myself that he was off limits. And an A-grade asshole for not mentioning it seven miles up.
I forced a smile. “Take some time. We’ll be back, Carragheen.”
Lecanora raised an eyebrow at me. She wasn’t finished with him. But I stopped her.
Let’s go. There are easier ways to skin a cat, babe.
I watched him skimming over the buildings and by-ways of Aegira, and followed a careful distance behind, quieting my mind, just in case he could hear me. Carragheen’s home was in the south, far from the northern Gadulan precinct, and we were heading further south still. We were both swimming fast, lengthening our bodies like we’d been taught to do to speed our stroke. Half human, half fish.
Carragheen started to hum, a signal that he planned to cover some distance, and I did it too, quietly, the note speeding me further, a distant cousin of song-traveling.
The city below made me catch my breath as I passed over. Exquisite proportion, beauty, balance. I couldn’t help but imagine how it would feel to be swimming with him, instead of shadowing him. If things were different.
I shook the thought off. I couldn’t understand the pull of this man.
The homes of Aegirans are low and voluptuous, and although they are made of materials so advanced the land-dwellers would kill to get their hands on them, the roofs are strewn with flotsam collected during sea travels. They’re history lines. Even on this covert mission, the voyeur in me drank in the stories. I caught sight of one roof and learned the family traced its lineage right back to The Awakening. I also saw they were food production experts, responsible for some of the innovations that helped a community so large to feed its people sustainably.
Gleeda bugs and other illuminating creatures offered light throughout the city. Aegirans have the technology to light up their nation like a birthday cake, but they prefer natural light, and the effect was like passing over a fairy kingdom. Among homes decorated with driftwood, stones, corals and seagrasses, there were some strewn with gold, diamonds and other precious jewels. All have equal value, prized only for their appeal to the owner.
In those roofs I saw the paradox of Aegira – innovation and idealism.
And I thought again: God help these innocents if the land-dwellers ever find them.
As I watched the city slip along below me, I registered a warm tingle that was unfamiliar. I tried to dissect it, work out where it was coming from. This was wicked scary stuff I was doing, this tailing. Warm fuzzies sure as hell weren’t the appropriate response right now. But there it was, some kind of safe glow, reaching out from my chest, right down to my toes.
Home. The word echoed into my brain. I rejected it. No, not anymore.
But there was no denying the pleasure I was getting from watching this place from above. As a child, I’d spent whole days just swimming over, watching it, getting to know it, when we’d come here for extended periods of time. I knew this city. Part of me belonged here.
Suddenly, something arrested me on my journey. I almost stopped, almost lost Carragheen’s trail. I strained into the city below with my eyes, watching the twinkling lights and trying to discern what had set off my radar. All looked as before – dark, twinkling, perfect. But it was as though there was something missing – a black spot I couldn’t see.
Something was not right.<
br />
Something was not as it had been when I left here, thirteen years before.
I thought about all those break-ins I’d investigated in my first days as a cop, back in NYC. All the people who’d said “I knew, even before I saw the things missing. I knew someone had been in my home.” I’d never got that, till right now. Because that was how I was feeling.
There was something amiss in my home. Something there that shouldn’t be.
What was it? What was down there?
I filed the thought away. For now, I had to do this. I had to follow Carragheen.
My brain was so fired with trying to disentangle the signal from my radar that I barely noticed when the city lights gave way to the dark of the ocean floor.
But then, suddenly, we were flying, skimming like torpedos through the syrupy ink of the deepest place on earth. It was darker than midnight but my half-Aegiran eyes adjusted quickly.
And it was quiet.
I was focused on tailing Carragheen without being detected, but I still clocked the quiet. I could hear the soft noise my body made gliding through the water, like an echo in a cave. Like the sound of your heart in your sleep.
Where were all the creatures whose tiny noises made up the music of the deep sea bed?
Goose pimples broke out on my arms, and my heart knocked painfully in my chest.
Carragheen halted abruptly, and stood up, treading water in one place. He placed a hand to his temple, near his ear, and my eyes strained to see what was ahead.
I could just make out a distant rise on the ocean floor.
My brain kept returning to the night at the morgue, and like a kid waking from a nightmare and calling for their Mommy, I realized I was wishing Doug was here.
Doug, who always had my back. Who mightn’t tell me much but didn’t tell me lies.
I shook my head to dispel the stray thought.
I couldn’t see much, but I could hear even less. It was more than silence, it was a total absence of sound. It reminded me of something I once read about this concentration camp. An account by a survivor who went back years later and found that no animals would go near the site, long after it had been rehabilitated. No birds would fly over. It was a place of death, and agony, and all that drew breath knew it.
My senses were straining so hard, trying to work out what was wrong, that I almost didn’t notice that Carragheen had pushed forward toward the green-grey mound. I struck out, but it was hard to see. I could just make out the soles of his feet.
And then, like a punch to the solar plexus, my sight went black.
This time the vision was very clear. I saw her, Imogen. And I could also feel the warm, live presence of her somewhere deep inside myself. Like she had possessed me.
She was trapped. I could see her perfectly, her eyes light blue and wide. I couldn’t see where she was but it was very dark. And cold. She was trying to cry out but for some reason she couldn’t. Was her mouth bound? She was alive, but why wasn’t she calling out? It was hard, like trying to direct the lens in a dream, but I could feel the jagged bite of her fear.
And then I realized that she was afraid for me. She was trying to warn me. I could feel the message pulsing from her into me, into the very heart of me.
Go, go, go. Swim, Rania, swim away.
Then, quickly as the vision came it was gone, and I was groggy and lolling on the seabed, still a good hundred yards or so from the mound that I now assumed to be some kind of cave. My head felt heavy, lifting it seemed impossible. My arms and legs were fuzzy, like the worst case of pins and needles you ever had.
These things really take it out of you.
I gathered together the loose pieces of my wits and tried to move, but it took long seconds. I still tasted the terror of the vision in my mouth. My limbs felt dead, like I’d been laying on them in the wrong position for too long. My brain was full of cotton wool, seaweed. My eyes, which had been starting to adjust to the deep, were having a hard time focusing in it again after the other blackness of the vision. Panic filled my brain, saturating my responses, making me helpless.
I felt rather than heard the sound, like a song’s first, long note. High, perfect.
It was familiar, and I shook my head and tried to recall where I had heard it.
A crippling swathe of pain exploded in my head, in all my senses. It was like before, the first time, at the morgue. But worse. I was sure I was melting. As soon as it struck, plunging into me with an unseen, vicious fist, I knew I could endure this for a few seconds only before my head shattered under the shocking, electric edge of the pain. My stomach convulsed as nausea flooded me. In the few seconds before it completely annihilated me, left me sick and ruined on the ocean floor, I could see the end of everything.
My life, such as it was.
My dreams, although I wasn’t sure what they are.
The end of any chance at love. The end of brownies with Mom.
The Seer was wrong, the end is now.
And then I looked up and saw Mom’s face, and I knew I really was dying.
She was hovering above me, a golden vision, singing into my face and looking just as she did singing at the wedding. Heavenly and untouchable. Except that she was touching me. Picking me up in her strong arms, and swimming with me.
As I fell into the blackness that I assumed was the end of it all, I registered brief surprise that this was how the end comes, swimming off into oblivion in your mother’s arms.
Chapter Eight
Poison and Alliance
Carragheen’s Pool
The pinpricks of light hurt my eyes and I resisted opening them.
Death should be more peaceful than this.
But they persisted, and cool hands followed, trying to pry open my eyelids. I batted futilely at the disturbance, but my hands moved only inches.
Ran help me, I wasn’t dead, but I was even sicker than last time. And very, very confused. Where was I, and how did I get from there, the place I’d died, to here?
A familiar, sweet-as-honey voice laughed at my efforts but even through the laughter I could hear the sadness. “Ransha, you are back with us.” And then, sensing my futile efforts to speak, the voice switched to telepathy. It’s me, Lecanora. You are safe. At Carragheen’s Pool.
I’d forgotten that the Princess had been trained in herbs and healing.
She lay cool fingers on my aching eyes and over my screaming ears. I remembered my manners. Thank you.
That very un-Princess like snort again. It’s your own mother you should thank. I told you not to follow him.
I tried to open my eyes, but Lecanora stopped me with her cool hands. Don’t, Ransha. You are very sick. Wait a while. Don’t talk, try not to move.
Then I heard Mom’s voice, close. Rania, I’m here. Lecanora came for me, but I was already coming to find you.
My brain blinked and buzzed. How did you know where to look for me?
Mom patted my hair. I could find you anywhere.
My stomach fluttered and the question was out before I could fathom why concern about his wellbeing was so high up on the list of things torturing my injured mind. Carragheen?
Mom patted me again, even more softly this time. No-one knows, he disappeared.
Just like a man, I thought privately. A lying, cheating man.
Where was he going to when that thing struck me?
Was he responsible, for me, for this?
My heart rapped an angry drumbeat against my chest while my mind stuggled to make sense of it all. But if he wasn’t responsible, then he was probably dead, and if he was dead, it was definitely my fault. He might have been a louse, but he didn’t deserve to die because I got him caught up in this. I still wasn’t sure if this was just a dream. How did you save me, Mama?
She squeezed my hand. I sang to you. I arrived just as you were going down, it can’t have been more than a few seconds that it had you in its grasp. I was so scared. I’m sure if it had been any longer…
Get outta here. Y
ou sang to me? Now let’s get this straight. There’s this thing, right? And it’s so freaky and surreal that it knocks me down with its first squeak, some secret sonar weapon thingy. And you just sing to me, and it all goes away?
She laughed, and then I knew it for sure. I really was still alive. Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. It was a special song, a concentration of all my love and hope for you, with a dash of fear and anger thrown in. I don’t even know why I did it. The singing, I mean. It just welled out of me. I’m not sure I could do it again, honestly. But I saw you hurting, and it just came out of me. It seemed to protect me, from the sound. From the other song. And it let me get to you, help you.
My brain ached as it tried to connect. So that’s it? All we do is sing to fight this thing?
I don’t think so. I could feel the fear and uncertainty from Lecanora.
Mom agreed. No. Lecanora is right. I couldn’t have held it off long. I could feel its strength building. Growing. My song would not have been enough. It was just enough to stop it from affecting me for a little while, and to get you away.
Wow, this was some head trip. Go figure, Mom to the rescue. So what now?
Mom was in command of this little shebang. You rest.
Here?
She tutted gently. Yes, here. It was the closest safe place we could get you to.
Close, yeah. But safe? This could be the lion’s den. Or maybe the wolf’s den.
And I remembered. I had gone down near the cave thing. But what about what I had felt before that, skimming over the city? There was something here. Something was wrong here.
Very wrong.
But Mom was planning. Then we have to go home.
I almost choked. Back to Dirtwater? Seriously? I can’t move, and I need to find Imogen.
Mom’s internal voice was strong and clear. The kind she used when I was a kid to say “bedtime” or “no more Twinkies”. Rania. This thing is dangerous. I don’t know what it is. But I think the answers lie back home. With the one you call Blondie, and what she can tell us.
At Mom’s words, I suddenly felt like I was going to forget how to do the now-automatic skill of water-breathing and drown under all this ocean. Cleedaline.