by Rin Chupeco
“I will not tolerate such talk, Cathei,” I said sharply. “And I will appreciate it if you let the rest of the crew know my distaste for it.”
The woman looked abashed. “I’m sorry, Your Holiness. We don’t believe that, I swear. It’s just that there’s talk.”
“But as there’s talk, you’ll no doubt ensure they keep their mouths shut in favor of keeping their tongues.”
“Your Holiness,” Noelle said, admonishing.
“People don’t think much about the truth when the lies sound more interesting, Your Holiness,” Slyp grunted. “Few people believe me when I talk about life before the Breaking, for instance. Things were different before, that I’m old enough to remember. Trees as far as the eye can see. Birds of all kinds, and squirrels and butterflies and badgers every spring.”
Nebly let out a derisive laugh. “Butter what?”
“What is spring?” I asked.
“It used to be when flowers bloomed all over the land, Your Holiness. Lovely to see. You only appreciate things like those when they’re gone.”
“Sounds like an old wives’ tale,” Nebly said, not without envy.
Goddess.
I almost hadn’t noticed it; it was so dark that it blended well with the shadows, even with the light of Gracea’s patterns floating around us. It was an elongated body with limbs too thin to be natural, creeping so close to the ground I could have easily disregarded it as some strange mist, or an untethered silhouette. On my knees, I froze, waiting as it approached me.
“Your Holiness?” Noelle asked uncertainly. They couldn’t see it. “Is something wrong?”
“Don’t move. All of you.” I knew it wouldn’t hurt me—they’d never harmed the goddesses that came before. But I didn’t know how they would react to outside interference.
It had horns just like the last two, but on its head were a pair of glittering beads, made of the same blue stones.
Like the others, it waited.
It knew I had to be willing.
“Yes,” I whispered. The first galla gave me visions, and the second greater strength in the gates, but for every gift, a terror; for every radiance, a sacrifice, and I had no idea what they had taken from me in return. What abilities would this one offer me? And what would it demand in exchange?
“Your Holiness?” Cathei quavered, staring past the creature she couldn’t see.
It shifted closer without moving, and I felt the faint brush of fingers against mine.
Color poured into my vision; herbs and plants of malachite hues, more vibrant than the sad-looking vegetation we tried to cultivate in Aranth. Threads of patterns danced around me; I’d channeled terra patterns before, but these were different. For a moment, I saw the wildlands the way they were before the Breaking: lush and vibrant, filled to bursting with flora of every shade of green.
But then my arms broke out into poison; brown filth stole up my wrists, clung to my shoulders. I cried out, trying to fling the toxins away from me, but in another second they had disappeared, and my hands were clean again.
Be satisfied. A divine power of the underworld has been fulfilled. You must not open your mouth against the rites of the underworld.
And then it vanished into nothing.
New energy thrummed inside me, eager to find release. I stared at my hands and thought I could actually see them crackling a bright, verdant hue.
“What’s going on?” I heard Gracea call out, but I ignored her and placed my hands on the soil. Back in Aranth, where floods were common enough that dry streets were a rarity, the ground was too wet for farming or ploughing, and we kept our meager plants potted aboveground. But here? The ground was neither too dry nor too wet, and while I knew nothing about tilling the soil, there was something curled up inside of me saying that that didn’t matter.
I reached out for those strange new patterns, let them wind themselves around my core. When I pushed all those energies outward, I felt a new gate flare behind my eyes—one I’d always known I had, but had never used before—not blue like water or clear as air or even the gold-and-silver of an aether-gate, but a soft, bright green.
The ground underneath me broke apart between my knees and sprouted. A slender vine poked its way out from the soil, lazily wound past my thighs, and reached for the dark skies above. More joined their sister, curling up and around, hungry for the clouds. Some of the crew cried out and stepped back as the earth beneath us blushed green, the brown, broken soil soon overrun by what I knew was grass while more plants burst into life, swelled heavy with flowers and fruit, and opened.
“What are those?” One of the devoted, Miel, gasped.
“Trees,” Noelle whispered in disbelief as one bounty-heavy plant trembled and yawned before her gaze, revealing round, plump berries that swayed tantalizingly in the still air while my rushlights danced around them, casting them in an unearthly glow.
Gates and patterns, I knew, were utterly dependent on the environment around them. People who were born Firesmokers, for example, could not wield such abilities in a city made from sea and storms.
But we were no longer in Aranth. We were much farther east in the world, where even Water and Ice were not so violent in their composition as we were used to, where life that we could never nurture in the city could find a way.
The plant that had woven itself around me broke away but continued to grow, higher and higher until it became a magnificent tree, like those I had only ever seen in drawings, in books of ages long past. I watched the leaves climb over its branches, immersing them in a cloak of emerald.
The crew of the Brevity stared at the tree, and then at me. There was a disturbance in the back of the crowd; Gracea had finally worked up the nerve to leave the ship, and at the edge of the gangplank, she gaped at me as well. With her was Lan, whose mouth fell open as she took in the miracle I’d performed.
“Spring,” Nebly whispered.
“They’re not poisonous,” I murmured, proved it by plucking one ripe berry from a flourishing bush. It tasted sweet in my mouth. I reveled in the crew’s awe. I could sense a spike of fear among the others as well—I reveled in that, too.
An odd buzzing had settled behind my ears, but I ignored it. I was Odessa of the wildlands now.
Chapter Twelve
Haidee of the Dolugongs
I THOUGHT I’D PLANNED FOR all conceivable contingencies while I was refurbishing Arjun’s driving rig as a decent dirigible/sand jeep, but I had failed to take into account Arjun himself, because the boy would not stop moaning about anything and everything.
He complained about not having enough room inside the now-airtight compartment for the both of us.
Then he started griping about how we were traveling at a much slower pace than we had on land; I had chosen to sacrifice speed for survival by converting one of the engine pipes into an air purifier.
Lastly, he said the echoes were horrible; the sound bounced back and forth between the walls of the rig, making even the barest of whispers sound like ringing threats, all made more terrible because Arjun wouldn’t shut up even knowing that.
And while it was true that I’d had to forgo a bit of comfort to make sure there was enough metal fully encasing us in our little sand bubble, and while it was true that we were not as quick as before in exchange for better defenses against the potential threats that might come after us as we sailed merrily along this Sand Sea, and while it was also true that I had failed to take into account the flutter echo from being in so confined a space, it felt like this was far too much criticism for the otherwise reasonable measures I had taken to ensure we would still be alive once we’d reached the other side of this dust-ocean, and I said as much.
He grunted. The sound pinged against the opposite wall and scored a direct hit somewhere within my inner ears. Words followed. “Well, your elbow is still currently somewhere inside my left shoulder blade.”
“You’re a terrible partner,” I said, trying my best to wriggle away. I hadn’t slept well
in the cramped space, but admitting that would mean he’d been right about me being too privileged to rough it for long. Arjun was terrible and those cannibals (cannibals?!) chasing us were terrible and whatever Sand Sea creatures swimming around preparing to eat us were also terrible. I just wanted to find a way to repair the world and bring life back to it and not have to deal with all three. “Are we still traveling in the right direction?”
He squinted through the glass. The mirage was still missing. “No idea, but I know we haven’t turned around. You were supposed to be keeping a lookout for the specter.”
I scowled. “I’ve been making sure there were no holes for any sand to get through. You’re the one driving!”
He harrumphed, then tried to lift himself up for a better view. The rig was half-submerged, in the same manner as a boat might float along an actual sea, so we could still take stock of our surroundings. “I can’t tell if there are any more creatures poking out of the sand nearby.”
“Well, excuse me for working a miracle in just under three hours.” He hadn’t even thanked me!
That must have struck his conscience a little, because he winced. “Look, I can turn around. I’ll find us some new spot to beach at without any Hellmakers nearby.”
“No. There’s no time, and you can’t guarantee there won’t be more cannibals. I don’t even see any place where we could dock. As for the mirage, I’ll chase it to the end of the world if I have to.”
“Fantastic.”
“I can still drop you off somewhere.”
He glared at me. “I’m not going to leave you alone. You’d have been eaten by sandsnakes without me around.”
The rig rocked, swaying precariously as something pushed hard at us from outside. I found myself smushed to one side with a startled Arjun practically on top of me. “Get off!” I hissed, shoving at him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, trying to right both himself and the vehicle. “What the hell was that?”
I saw a quick flash of a scaled tail lifting up from the sand in front of us before disappearing from view.
“What are you doing?” Arjun yelled when I unlocked the hatch above us.
“Keep your voice down,” I snapped, clapping one hand over the ear he’d just roared into. “They’re not going to hurt us.”
“Not going to hurt us? What are—”
But I’d already pushed the lid away, popping out into the open and breathing in a huge gulp of fresher air. The Sand Sea continued to stretch on for miles around us, with no shore in sight.
Beside the rig, a gray head poked cautiously out of the sand, revealing large, bright golden eyes, a long smooth snout, and furred feathery ears on a head with a texture not unlike a rock’s. The snout parted to reveal small, pebblelike teeth, and the creature chittered excitedly at us. Another peered out of the sand-water, and then another, and then more until we were mobbed by a dozen of the critters, all calling out to each other and to us.
“What are those things?” Arjun sputtered.
“Dolugongs!” I said happily, as one of them leaped gracefully into the air, showing off its coarse, elongated body, two flippers, and a disproportionately large tail, before diving back down into the fine gravel. The others followed its lead, and soon the whole pod was leaping out from the sand.
“What’s a dolugong?”
“Well . . . their hides are as hard as stone to help them survive the desert by minimizing their water—”
“In two sentences or less.”
“Uh. It’s like a giant fish, but not exactly.”
“That looks nothing like a fish to me.”
“It has some characteristics of one. Big flappy tail, flippers, and gills. But it can also breathe above water—above sand, in this case—”
“How can they breathe sand and water?”
“That’s going to take more than two sentences, buddy.”
Arjun looked unimpressed. “How do you know they won’t hurt us?”
“We’re not their prey. They feast on smaller worms and bugs that burrow underneath the Sand Sea. They can defend themselves, and they can attack if they think we’re a threat, so I don’t advise throwing things at them.”
“Not even thinking about it. Tell them to quit pushing us.”
“They were probably just curious.” I barked back at the dolugongs, trying to mimic their pitch and sound. One of them chirped back a reply; it brought down its tail, and a small wave of sand spilled into the hatch.
“On second thought, maybe just stop talking,” Arjun grumbled, shaking sand out of his hair.
A higher-pitched whine came from another recently arrived dolugong, more frantic than the rest. Three of members of the pod swam ahead to meet the newcomer, who was swimming in small, panicked circles. “Wonder what they’re doing,” I whispered to Arjun, who grunted again.
The others were now also agitated. They swam rapidly around us, emitting quick bursts of yelps before dashing off.
“Follow them,” I said immediately.
“Like hell I will.”
“They’re in trouble!”
“You’ve mastered their language that quickly?”
“I don’t need to. I recognize the sounds of creatures in distress.” I hated to beg, but he was the one driving. “Please?”
He made a small snort of disgust, but obediently shifted gears so we were following the group.
“Thank you.”
“Save your gratitude till we’re sure they’re not leading us to some kind of trap.”
“Have you always been this suspicious? This cynical?”
“Not cynical. Sensible. One of us has to be.”
The reason for the dolugongs’ anxiety soon became obvious. A baby dolugong had found itself stuck at an outcrop between two large rocks, and despite all its wriggling, it couldn’t free itself. A thick mesh was draped over its body, limiting its movements. Another, larger dolugong, possibly its parent, circled the trapped baby, crying. I knew the little calf could die under the baking sun in less than an hour.
“Draw us up as near to it as you’re able to,” I commanded.
“You’re not seriously considering—”
“Do it!” I raised my voice, and Arjun grimaced. The rig veered closer to the struggling baby.
I lifted the hatch and clambered out, ignoring Arjun’s outraged squawk. “Hi there,” I called out softly to the calf, who looked petrified at the sight of me. Its parent drew closer, ululating threateningly, but one of the other dolugongs yapped at it. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to help. Will you let me?”
“It can’t understand you, you know,” Arjun grumbled behind me.
“It’s your turn to shut your rathole.”
The baby was too tightly wedged between the rocks for me to extricate it without potentially injuring it, so I concentrated on the boulders pinning it into place. I gated some Air, working at it until it was as thin as a needle and as sharp as a sword, and began chipping away at the left stone’s surface.
“You’ll take all day.” I hadn’t even noticed Arjun climbing onto the rig’s hood with me.
“It’s the safest way,” I grunted. “Fire might injure it.”
“Not necessarily. Let me try.”
I shot him an apprehensive look, but he set his limb against the slab and his eyes blazed red. Smoke curled at the end of his wrist, followed immediately by a bright blue flame that seared through the rock at a much faster rate than I could.
“What’s that?” I gasped, fascinated despite myself. I’d never seen fire that color before.
“Dunno.” It was burning with knifelike precision, slicing cleanly through the rock without leaving any jagged edges. Any of my mother’s sculptors would have killed for such accuracy. “I’ve always been able to do it. It’s hotter than regular fires and eats through things quicker, too.”
The rock was loose in no time at all—it toppled off, and we watched it sink down until it disappeared from view. Arjun lifted the heavy net off
the squirming baby dolugong as it slipped back into the sand, where it reemerged beside its now-calm mother.
“And you didn’t want to follow them,” I murmured, out of the need to be contrary but without any of my previous annoyance.
“It’s every man for himself out here. Or goddess. Or dolugong.”
He glanced at the cluster surrounding the freed dolugong calf and shrugged. “But the last thing I wanna do is separate a kid from its mother.”
“Ah. I’m sorry.” His clan were mostly orphans, he’d said. I’d never realized that for all my talk about my own mother, he’d never had one himself.
His smile, more genuine now than ever before, warmed me. “Don’t be. But what’s this mesh doing out here in the middle of nowhere? It’s definitely man-made.”
I frowned. “I’m not sure, either. Could it have . . . floated here, somehow?”
“Not likely. Things stuck here don’t just float to other places. Sand doesn’t move like water does, and there aren’t any currents here. Can we get back to heading west? The damned mirage is nowhere to be seen and—wait.” His voice rose when the dolugongs made an immediate beeline for him. “What are they doing?”
I hid my grin, watching them swarm him. One leaped into the air behind Arjun; a flick of its tail sent him stumbling off the rig and into the center of their herd, where they had gathered together like a breathing, moving mattress. With loud screams of pleasure, they began carrying him, circling around me at a speed that not even the rig could manage. “What does it look like? They’re thanking you.”
A sputtered yelp of outrage was his reply.
“I’m never going to help those damned fish again,” Arjun fumed much later, shaking more sand from underneath his collar, and I couldn’t stop laughing, even as the rig sped toward the horizon, flanked on all sides by a pod of grateful, happy dolugongs.
We passed strange structures the farther west we drove, the dolugongs occasionally nudging at our vehicle as they swam alongside it. There was debris that could have been buildings once, stone monuments buried and broken. “Well, think about it,” Arjun pointed out. “This wouldn’t have been all Sand Sea seventeen years ago. Maybe the Sand Sea didn’t even exist until the Breaking upended everything. Could have been villages here. Cities.”