by Ros Baxter
“The meeting is tomorrow night, but we’ll lose a few hours traveling. We’ll leave in the morning. We need a few hours sleep before we travel again.”
It made sense, even though my body itched to be back. I knew hydroporting close together was dangerous. It didn’t only sap your strength, it could kill you. I remembered Carragheen, disoriented in the shower after hydroporting twice in quick succession. And I knew I would need every ounce of strength to do what needed to be done once I got to Aegira. Now that I had more information, and more leads. There was finding Imogen, of course, and trying to solve this riddle. But there was more as well. I needed to face Carragheen. I needed to find out what he knew, and why he’d been deceiving me. One way or another, he was gonna talk.
Even if I had to kill him.
Somehow I knew that this confrontation would take the greatest courage of all.
So Mom was right, we should sleep first. A little. But if I could manage to sleep at all, which I seriously doubted, I’d be doing it at the hospital. Close to Doug.
“Okay, Mom,” I conceded. “Dawn then.”
She nodded, and I wondered what the Queen was asking her to do. Why did Imd want her there? I wondered how the Queen was faring, back in Aegira, whether the poison was leaving her system. Whether Lecanora had been able to keep her safe. Whether the Princess was safe herself. I wondered what the herald had shared with Mom, if anything.
“Do you know what she wants?” I wasn’t sure if Mom would tell me, even if she knew. “What do you think the meeting is about?”
“I don’t know much,” Mom acknowledged, and I could tell she was telling the truth. “But I do know she is bringing the whole of the leadership grouping together.”
“Hmm.” I nodded, digesting. The whole leadership grouping. So Zorax would be there.
Good. I was gonna nail that little worm to the wall.
But Mom had already moved on. “Now, Ransha, I have a lot to do. There are things this town needs while I’m gone.” She motioned with her head to the papers spread out in front of her. “I need to take these down to the chambers.” She looked me up and down. “And I suppose you have things to do, too. Can I suggest you start by cleaning up? I’ll help you dress those cuts.”
For the first time, I looked down at myself, focusing on what Mom was seeing.
Benito, too, looked as though he was following every word of our conversation.
I realized it was bad when he gave a disgusted-sounding whimper as he looked at me.
Traitor. You don’t look so hot yourself, I thought, taking in the blood matting the back of his fur where he’d crashed around in the back of the van during the impact.
But I recognized Mom had a point.
She fetched warm water and antiseptic, and bathed and sterilized the cuts on my arms and face. It felt good to be tended to like this, and I could tell Benito agreed, as he almost purred this guttural sigh in the back of his throat as she tended to him as well.
But then it was time for Mom to go, although I didn’t want her to.
I wanted her here with me, safe within the perimeter of my vision. Even though I knew I couldn’t keep her safe, not really. At least not until I worked out what was going on and who was behind it. So I insisted she take Benito with her, and she agreed.
I could tell she was already getting attached to the mangy beast with his crooked smile.
Come to think of it, he kind of reminded me of Dad.
When they’d left, I peeled myself out of the clothes I’d worn to Williamstown, in the accident, at the hospital. It seemed like a lifetime ago that I’d stood in Cleedaline’s apartment.
As I fiddled with the shower to get it scaldingly hot, I thought back over it all. Cleedaline and her tattoo, looking for me. And Zorax.
As I let the water sluice over me, I knew I was going to have to hunt him down, back in Aegira. Once I’d spoken to Carragheen, once I had surer footing. But the only lead I had to find Imogen was the dark place, the cave outside Aegira.
The thought of going there made me chill inside.
And then the vision came.
Something about water, I thought, remembering the last time, as I’d stood streaming on the bathmat. Water seems to dislodge the visions, activate them or something. This vision was clearer than ever. It was like I was getting better with practice. And I felt surer of myself as I reeled beneath its power, as well. Less rocked, less afraid. I was starting to see this gift as my friend. At first it was just dark, but I could feel, rather than see, that there was something there, in the darkness. I waited a few seconds, groping with my heart for what it was. I concentrated on the blackness, searching with my heart rather than my eyes or my brain.
Then I saw her. Imogen.
She was swimming fast, and she was afraid. She was being hunted, like a skittish fish in a fisherman’s sights. She was swimming really hard, and she couldn’t quite work out what it was that had her, that was chasing her. I realized that I was seeing the moment of her capture. I was seeing what happened to her.
I was in the thrall of the vision, but also inside myself. This was like a message from another place and time, sure, but I had some agency in it. I could seek, and try to find. Like today in her apartment, looking for the book. I zeroed in on Imogen’s heart, and the force of the feelings I got to share almost doubled me over. She was so afraid. I could taste the fear, bitter in her mouth. Her ears were singing, her heart was bursting in her chest as she zinged, zig-zag, through the water, trying to evade whatever was following her.
And through it all, she was thinking about love.
But who was it that she loved?
Was it Cleedaline?
I could feel Imogen wonder if this was the end, wonder if she would ever see her love again, whether they would ever lie together, strung out on ecstasy and music and the heat of each other’s bodies. She was thanking Ran for the times they had together, worried about appearing ungrateful as she died, because she knew, in the deepest parts of herself, that whatever was chasing her was winning. She could feel the truth of it. That she couldn’t keep up. That the hunter was playing with her, that soon he would have her. And that it would spell the end.
Then she felt it. The cold, slippery grip of the hands upon her. She was strong, and struggled mightily against the frigid iron of the grip that held her, but it was no good. She was caught. And then she was bound, her hands and feet tied with the strongest of weed vine.
She couldn’t move, and someone was trying to bind her eyes. Before they did, she flicked her head, tossing and shoving this way and that, to try to see who it was. Who was trying to imprison her. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t see anything except a huge, dark shape.
She’d been out, swimming and looking for answers, in the darkness beyond the city, alone and unaccounted for, when it had happened. Now, it seemed, she would die alone as well. She wanted to cry out for her mother, but as she tried, it happened. At first she thought they were strangling her. She clawed at her throat, her mouth, tried to rip the thing away that was blocking the passage of air and sound, but as her fingers connected only with her throat, she realized she had it wrong. It seemed incredible, impossible, but it happened.
They held something to her lips, and as she screamed, her mind forming the cry uttered by a thousand lost and terrified souls, a cry for home and mother, the thing stole the cry from her.
After that, she kept trying. She cried, and yelled, keened and bellowed, but the sounds were small and pathetic. They had taken the sound of her voice and her heart.
The rest happened quickly. She was dragged through the water, silent and terrified. Through the darkness, to a place she could not name, even if she had the voice to speak it. The journey was one long agony of confusion and terror. Why her? Where were they taking her?
There were no lights, no signposts to mark the way. Only ever-deepening blackness.
And grief for her voice, which had gone, perhaps never to return.
By the
time they arrived she was numb with the fear and perplexity. When they rolled her inert form onto the sandy floor, she lay still, and didn’t even look up at them. When they left her alone, she was glad of it. She felt different, lesser, disabled. All that was her, that made her who she was, had been taken. She didn’t know why. And she didn’t know by whom.
When the vision receded, I was shaking and spent. I knew with the certainty of whatever this new thing was that Imogen was still there on that sandy floor, quiet and alone. I didn’t know what had happened to her since, but I knew that to her, there seemed to be little difference.
She could not even imagine that someone could come for her.
Things like this were not possible in the place of her birth, her coming of age.
In the place where she made the sounds that made the people weep.
Whenever she tried to connect mentally with those she knew, with her lover, there was no reply. They were far away, and something more. She could see they did not know that she was gone. She could not imagine how it was that they did not miss her, could see the space where she used to be. She started to wonder if she had ever existed, and why she existed still.
I was sitting on the floor of the shower, shaking and weeping for Imogen, searching the things I’d seen for clues as to where she might be. And all I could come up with was the cave.
She must be in that cave. The cave that Carragheen went to.
It had been dark, in the vision. And it had gotten darker and darker as they traveled there. There was a sandy floor, and it was far away from where her thoughts could be detected.
It wasn’t much; there are lots of dark places at the bottom of the sea.
But it was all I had and I was going with it.
I was out of the shower and trying to piece it all together, wondering why the hell this grisly thing was happening to me, why I had been chosen to know about this, to look for Imogen, when the second crazy thing happened.
She came.
Ran. The mother of us all.
One moment I was wiping myself with a towel, trying desperately to scrape away the fear and self-doubt left by the vision. The next I was staring into the face of the Goddess, standing not two yards in front of me. She really was beautiful, although she looked impossibly sad.
My first thought was that she looked like Imd, the Queen, in that there was a warmth to her blondeness. Her cheeks had dimples, and her hair was ringlet curly. She reminded me of an advertisement for butter, or yogurt, she looked so pure and so vital.
But, somehow, she also looked dark and serious. A woman on a mission.
“Daughter of Lunia,” she began.
“Ran?”
I wasn’t sure of the right etiquette. How should I be addressing her? Goddess mother? Your Highness?
I was never good at protocol. The Mayor of New York City once inspected our precinct and I dropped a pretzel on his foot. I felt another such moment coming on.
“Yes,” she confirmed, her voice constantly changing in tone and pitch, like scales on a glockenspiel, like the ever-changing tune of the ocean.
She walked closer to me and touched my shoulder, and in that moment she was real, flesh. This was not a vision. She was here.
We were two women, not goddess and supplicant.
“I need to tell you something,” she offered, her hands held prayer-like in front of her. “For my daughters, for all my daughters.” She paused. “Do you know their names? The names of my daughters?”
I searched my unreliable memory for the names of the nine Aegiran queens, each of whom had ruled for a thousand years. Aegiran children learn the names of the nine queens from the cradle, but I was always a recalcitrant student.
“Um… Angeyja,” I stammered.
“Yes,” she whispered, tears in her eyes. “My eldest. The first. The one they call Sorrow-whelmer. Because of the sadness she endured.”
“And Atla, Fury. Eistla, foaming waves. Ah…” I was getting close to the outer limits of my knowledge of the line. “Eyrjafa, the sand strewer”. I gave up. “I’m sorry, mother. That’s all I have. Apart from Imd, of course, our Queen. Dusk.”
“You have done well, beloved child. The others were Jalp, and Greip. And Iarnsaxe, you know her as Ironsword, my littler fighter. And then Ulfrun, the She-Wolf. And yes, you are right, now Imd.”
I watched her, cataloguing a mother’s grief. The daughters she loved, taken from her, forced to live alone, and rule the creation of their parents without them, and without each other. She looked hollowed-out with longing and sadness.
“What do you think it all means?” She almost seemed to be asking herself.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Then she was all business. “Of course you don’t, and you have your own peril on the horizon as well.”
She knew? She knew about the Seer’s words?
“None of us can know what any of it means, not really. But goddesses have some insights. That’s why I’m here. You see, I believe that it’s about you.”
“What is?” I don’t need this, please don’t tell me this, I can’t be responsible, not any more responsible than I am.
But she went on. “The prophecy of earth and sea. You know it? When Ran’s line ends, only one world can be, and the bloodtide will only be stopped by the swellsong of the three.”
I felt an ocean well up inside me. Of course I knew the freakin’ prophecy.
“Rania.” Ran paused. She was infinitely gentle. “You are one. One of The Three. That’s why you’re having the visions. That’s why you’re right to look for her. For Imogen. I can see the connections. Imogen is part of it, part of stopping the bloodtide. Part of what you need to do. To save the world, and yourself. You must not give up.”
“But you don’t get it.” I wanted to disagree with her. No way can I be one of The Three. “I’m not even a real Aegiran. Only half, you know.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Ran said, her fingers to her perfect bow lips. “No-one was ever half anything. And if anyone ever was, it wasn’t you. You are strong and brave. You will save her, save the last of my daughters. And our world. And if you can’t, no-one can.”
“But what about the others? The rest of the Three?” I needed something here.
Sweet mother, couldn’t she tell me something?
She frowed, ever so slightly. “I don’t know. If I did, I would tell you. I can only see things much as you can. Piece by piece. But I know this. One you know. The other will come to you. But trust your visions. They are truth. They are not imaginings of a fevered mind.”
“Is this a vision? You? Now?” My head was spinning. I felt dizzy and light.
“No, Rania,” she said softly. “I’m here with you, for a moment. But it costs me to be here. I won’t be able to come again, not for some time.”
“What should I do?” I was grasping at straws.
“Find her,” she commanded, and in the command was all the imperious confidence of the first queen. The Goddess Queen. “Find her and then do the other things that will be asked of you. Only then can you stop the bloodtide.”
I sighed, feeling shades of Mrs Tripe. No way would nagging make this woman tell me more. “I just wish I knew who to trust.” I said it almost to myself, thinking of Carragheen.
She was dismissive. “Of course you know. The way women always know things. With our hearts.” She looked right into me and my brain went back to that kiss. The one I’d been trying so hard not to think about. The one with the man I couldn’t trust.
I blushed and she laughed. “You know, Rania, when I met Aegir, I could have gone to him immediately. It was as if I had always known him.”
My heart leaped with joy. Is the Goddess telling me I should trust Carragheen?
But I squashed it, shivering inside with guilt about Doug. “You don’t understand, the toll this is taking. And not just on me.”
She frowned a little, then her brow cleared with understanding. “Ah yes, the land-man. Fear not, Ran
ia. He will recover, with your help. And his part in this is not over yet. We will need the help of more than one land-dweller before we end this.”
“He’s going to be okay?”
She smiled cryptically. “You will see to it.”
I was so strung out I was ready to snap. “Is there nothing else you can tell me?”
She stopped for a moment, considering the request. “There are some long buried secrets. The magic one, the one you call Mrs Tripe. You tried to find out about the secrets from her. Perhaps now is the time for you to know them. Talk to your mother. Knowledge is strength.”
And then she was gone, and there was only a small puddle where her shimmering vanilla warmth had stood seconds before.
Oh, crap.
Chapter Twelve
Love and Guilt
Dirtwater
I decided as soon as Ran left that this was the end of Mom’s secrets. I mean, if the goddess mother could trust me with what she knew, surely my mother could as well.
Somehow it’s all linked up. Mom and her past. Imd. All that was happening now.
I just couldn’t work out how.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror trying to decide if I looked any different now I was officially important. One of The Three.
Why me? How could the dolphins have known about me, all those millennia ago?
How could they have foreseen me? How could they even have known I would be born?
And how could they possibly think I could stop the bloodtide, whatever that was?
I looked into my own eyes in the mirror and thought again about how different I was from other Aegirans. Why would it be an outsider who could deliver them?
And if destiny picked me, who were the others? One I knew, one would come to me…
I thought about all the people I knew who were maybe having visions. Cleedaline? Maybe, thinking back on the incident with the rip in The Eye, Lecanora? Maybe Carragheen, (although Rick had insisted he wasn’t one of The Three)?
Did visions make you one of The Three? Did you need to have visions to be a paid-up member? I banged my head against the steering wheel.