Through the Whirlpool

by K. Eastkott

  Pulling herself onto her board, she began to paddle furiously, expecting to hear the craft behind her again. But when she threw a glance back, the launch had turned and resumed its course for the river mouth. Strange that there had been no pursuit. Thinking over events later, she could not imagine what might have been more important to that crew than settling their score with her when they had her there, trapped in the water. It could only have been some shady job they could not afford to delay.

  A shadow blocked the sun as she lay on her towel. Squinting against the light, she peered up. And her heart stopped. Unused to seeing the blubbery body out of uniform, dressed only in beach shorts and a tee, one arm wrapped around her board, Jade could still not mistake the sadistic glint in those eyes. The older girl may have let her prey slip away the week before, but this time Jade knew she would not be so lucky. No escape… and Kyle right beside her.

  “What do you want, Rena?”

  Bluff it out, Jade was thinking. Yet Rena’s muscled arms looked like they could do some serious damage.

  The older girl scowled: “You, Weasel. I want you!”

  Embarking

  When Kreh-ursh arrived at the beach, seven of the blue-robed shahiroh—the sea callers, those most powerful chanters among the sea nomads—were standing in a group. A short distance beyond, his village’s proudest possession, the great canoe, was pulled up at the tidemark. The length of fifteen men lying end to end, and so wide a sailor could sleep across one of its benches, it dominated the sand, dwarfing the beached fishing canoes alongside. Capricious magic flowed from the intricate designs in its high, carved prow and stern, tingling with life, demanding respect.

  A crew of forty or so Shahee, or sea nomads, clothed in their customary green, stood beside it. At a distance from them, six pale-robed candidates, all weighed down by packs and blankets like himself—four girls and two boys—huddled into cloaks against the dawn chill. As he approached, only Geh-meer broke her tense concentration to flash him one of her brief smiles. The others just looked nervous, unwilling to talk.

  “Ready?”

  “I don’t think so. Is it too late to pull out?”

  She smiled again. “You know you wouldn’t. We’ll be fine.”

  Her words, sparse as they were, comforted. Once on the island, they would be alone, bound to silence—mental and verbal—reliant only on their own skill. If and when they returned, the celebration would be memorable, but that was a world away, on the far side of this test.

  It had been a harsh year: climbing jungle slopes; swimming tiring stretches against the current; cutting, shaping, and carving heavy logs; being tossed together in a flimsy canoe on treacherous Shah—the wide sea. Together the eight of them had fought to master the sea nomad’s five skills. Mind speech, the most important of these, was how his people spoke to each other, the Shahee sea nomads with easy precision, but the shahiroh sea callers as true adepts. Next, candidates had to know how to read the sky and waves for the information they could reveal. Wavecrafting, the third skill, meant shaping ocean currents, literally bending water. Akin to that was windcalling, harnessing the rhythms of the air to do one’s bidding; finally, though not least, came woodworking and carving, learning to feel for the life within growing things, especially the trees, and mold it to one’s purpose.

  These five skills, along with adherence to the life code, or unwavering respect for all living things, was the backbone of Shahee heritage. Shah, the eastern sea, was their home. Though voluntary, sea-nomad-becoming should be undertaken only when one was ready, and Kreh-ursh would rather perish than fail this test. His future, he knew, was with the Shahee, his people. Any other alternative was unthinkable.

  On the shingle above the high tide mark, a crowd had gathered. Kreh-ursh spied his parents and waved, then stopped, unsure if that seemed too childish for this moment. Then he saw her, another figure standing apart, her loneliness like a shout against the strong group feeling shared by the village. Their eyes met. She tried to smile, but merely prompted his own tears to swell. He swallowed, biting back guilt, rage, many things he could not express. However, he showed her, pulling the scarlet leather pouch from his tunic so the boy’s mother would know: Kaar-oh might yet complete sea-nomad-becoming, symbolically, if not in fact.

  “It is time!”

  At the shahiroh’s cry, Kreh-ursh, Geh-meer, and the other candidates walked down to the water’s edge. The wet sand felt cold underfoot. The Shahee placed themselves on either side of the heavy vessel, and, as the shahiroh began to chant, they added their voices. Sacred syllables spilled into the crisp dawn. Energy rippled from the chanting sea callers to the great canoe and back again. Unseen currents hummed, reaching deep into the marrow of bones, yet uplifting, calling upon all those present to believe in the event about to begin: sea-nomad-becoming, the foremost rite of their tribe.

  The shahiroh scrambled aboard, calling the seven candidates after them, guiding each to a separate bench, isolated from their companions.

  Seaward, the sky was pale aquamarine torn with pink-tinted clouds. A marine bird screamed harshly. The Shahee began to heave at the canoe, which slid slowly out into the morning surf. This was a sight Kreh-ursh had often seen in the dawn, but always from the beach: sailors wading waist deep into the waves, spray cascading, drenching backs, shattering itself against the wooden hull.

  At another command, the Shahee scrambled aboard, and paddles were grabbed up with bangs and rattles. There was a sharp smack as fifty blades hit the water in unison. The heavy canoe reared against the breakers, straining for the open sea. Soon they were sliding between rocky headlands, leaving the enclosed harbor behind. As the canoe struggled to the top of the first long ocean swell, Kreh-ursh could not resist sending a silent farewell to his village, to his parents and friends... but especially to that woman alone on the shingle. The horizon, paling to celestial blue, was now glimmering white-gold, echoed by the rolling banks of kree-eh that sucked in the growing light, reflecting it back through the waves. Then a bright sliver of the sun’s disk slipped above the edge of the world. The great canoe, paddles flashing like fins, surged across the sea toward the sunrise.

  Rena

  “Been looking for you, Weasel!”

  As Jade jumped up to run, Rena dropped her board, and her weight crashed into Jade like a toppling tower of bricks. Jade struggled, yet the older girl had her, twisting an arm behind her back. Jade shrieked in pain.

  “Come on, Weasel. Let’s go and have a talk back there in the dunes. Uufghh!” Kyle had swung his boogie board at her back.

  “Stop it, bully!” He was hysterical, his voice high-pitched with fear.

  “It’s okay, Kyle. We’re just playing.” The things you say. Rena ignored him then. Twisting Jade’s other arm behind her, she frog-marched her up the sand. Jade knew she was done for. The best she could hope would be to end up like Miguel, with a broken arm or worse. What an idiot! Why get on the unsociable side of someone with three times your killing power? If only she could teleport, find herself on a different planet. But they were closing on the dunes. She was in serious trouble. Teleporting did not exist. Soon Jade would not exist either. Kyle’s dumb screaming in her ears would be the final thing she ever heard.

  Then a piercing whistle ripped through the summer’s day, knocking a couple of surfers off their boards. For once, Jade felt relief—the one person around here who could roast and spit Rena as easy as look at her. The older girl let go of her arms, throwing her down. She spat out:

  “So you had to bring your mom with you for protection, did you? Well, stay scared, Weasel. I’ll get you soon. And it’ll be worse than when I took care of your South American buddy.”

  Jade, rubbing her arms, couldn’t resist: “I’m sure you will: you and your mates. That was so brave, what you did to Miguel—three of you against one guy half your size.”

  Rena walked back and picked up her board. She turned and smiled at Jade, but there was nothing friendly there. “Promise you, then, Weasel:
when I deal with you, it’ll be just you and me.”

  She looked for a moment at Jade’s mother approaching down the beach. But the closer Joan got, the more Rena shrank into herself. She had lost her prey this time. Before Joan got anywhere near the spot where the three of them were standing, Rena turned on her heel and slouched away toward the other end of the beach. Jade realized she was shaking and sat down quickly to hide the fact. She stared at the sand, trying to pull herself together, remembering to say, while their mother was still well out of earshot:

  “Kyle, one word to Mom about that, and you’re history, okay?”

  “Jade, you’re always thinking I’m gonna go running to Mom. I’m not gonna say anything, but why is she after you? Have you done something wrong? Did you go up to the lab site? I bet you did, you and Darren and that Miggy-lorito zee-senyorrrito!”

  Their mother was getting closer.

  “What’ll you give me if I don’t tell Mom? Jaa-ade… girls who are grounded aren’t allowed to go surfing…”

  “Whatever, you can use my bike… for a week.”

  “A month.”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Hi, Mom!”

  “Okay, a month!”

  Joan dropped her things on the beach beside them. “Was that girl one of your friends? She looked a little rough.”

  But Jade was already up and running for the waves, board under her arm, relief sending a rush of adrenalin through her body. While their mum was cool on many fronts, some things you just didn’t tell parents.

  Kyle came charging into the surf behind her, holding his boogie board out in front. He tripped as he hit the water and fell flat on his face in the shallows. Jade laughed. His board was way too big for him, and he had no idea how to handle it, but anything Jade had, Kyle wanted. He had whined and whined until their mother bought him a board. She headed out into the waves, her brother in tow.

  The feel of the dragging water around her was refreshing as she paddled out. She loved the exhilaration, sun hot on her back as she rode her board up a wave and crashed through the fringe of foam at its crest, falling down the other side and heading on to the next.

  It was only as she was paddling furiously in, building up speed to surf that first good wave at just the right point, that her attention was caught by something in the silver-blue slope down which she slid… Something flashed and the world went black… She was careering down a dark glass funnel into the ocean’s entrails… the wave racing faster, curling tighter, tighter still... A boy’s laughter echoed as the universe groaned and swallowed her whole.

  The Rift

  Taashou entered the sandy cave, leaning on Lehd. Every year the mountain cost her more; this year had been the worst. She longed for a relaxing soak in the mineral baths of the community, but that could come later. There was work to be done.

  “Who saw the rift? How do you know? You were with me up on Kaa-meer-geh. You saw how quiet the mountain was.”

  Yet before Lehd could answer, another voice spoke up:

  “It hasn’t come through the mountain, but it is definitely the rift.”

  Out of the cluster of shahiroh standing in the cave’s center stepped the man who had spoken. He was older than Taashou yet stood straight and fit despite a certain haggardness of features. His only clothing was a tight-fitting suit made of brown kelp. It even reached up into a hood that melded seamlessly into the skin of his face. He wore gloves and boots that extended into stiff, finlike appendages.

  “Daakohn.” She smiled despite her weariness. “Daakohn-bhah-ehl-bhah-her, you are the only person who could make such a claim and have me believe it. I’m glad you are back.”

  “I won’t stay. My mount misses me already, but it’s good to see you, Taashou.”

  “So the rift? But how? If not through the mountain, for what purpose have we been camping on this barren lump of rock for so long? Kaa-meer-geh was the point of melding.”

  “This time it has come through the sea.”

  “It cannot be the same!”

  “Taashou, no living person on this world knows it as I do. Every molecule in my body shrieks at the recognition. It is the same for my mount.”

  Taashou looked around at the bare cave that was their home, had been since Daakohn had come back to them all those years ago. Openings around the walls led to rudimentary sleeping chambers and storerooms, with torches and blubber oil lamps for lighting. For meetings and meals they stood or sat on mats in this wide space. But that was it. The red mountain offered little more.

  “So how?”

  He shrugged.

  “I know only that the rift has reappeared. This time it has come as a sort of tunnel through the sea, or whirlpool.”

  “A whirlpool? I wonder if that will be any more tolerable than through fire?”

  “It is the worst experience any living creature could bear. Fire or water, nothing in this world prepares you.”

  “Prepare… if we could. We cannot even know…”

  “It explains the imbalance we have felt in the ocean all this spring.”

  The newest speaker was also one of the shahiroh, clad like Taashou in blue, yet twenty years or so her junior. “We have felt the pull, but it was just a strangeness. We could not define it…”

  “That could not be,” Taashou answered the man. “There is a natural equilibrium that establishes when the rift opens. Your strangeness comes from another source.”

  “I agree with Bel-geer,” said Daakohn, “I too have felt it… a lessening of life, or of the life force. It is pulling strongly at Shah. Taashou, I was seventeen when I experienced the rift and knew nothing of its nature. Yet I who then was the youngest am now the oldest, and I feel that this time it is different.”

  “Have you located the region?”

  “Somewhere about two to four days northwest of the Sacred Isle—with a good wind.”

  Taashou was silent for a moment. Then she spoke:

  “Seven of our young people have just been summoned to their initiation. We must protect them during their ordeal. Once sea-nomad-becoming has finished, we will turn our attention to this.”

  “That may be too late,” Daakohn warned.

  “I have made my decision.”

  “We may not have such a luxury of time as you imagine.”

  “It is the risk I take.”

  “The risk all of us bear.”

  100% Efficient! No Emissions!

  Jade was hurled and bumped upside down, head over heels, every which way, sand and salt in eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. Finally, she was scraped, rolled, and washed into the frothing shallows, buckets of sand filling her shorts, a gallon of sea water down her throat. She could have, should have, handled that wave effortlessly. She got up warily, checking to see who might have seen her get dunked by such an easy wave. Rena was now down the other end of the beach with the older surfers. This time at least she had been spared.

  It was that vision of a watery abyss that had overcome her, spiraling down into the horrific dark... a sort of waking nightmare. She knew it had something to do with her dream on the beach, and with that colored algae that had slopped into the water around her from Rena’s launch. A kind of whirlpool, only faster, darker... and that groaning. It had been triggered by colors. She had seen a brightly colored spot on the beach: her mom, wearing that ridiculous swimsuit, looking like an unfinished Rubik’s cube somebody gave up on.

  She looked out to sea. That was when she noticed the clouds. Like no weather pattern she had ever seen. The entire sky was swirling around, as if some huge basin of cloudy liquid had just had the plug pulled and was spiraling down the drain. Except that this was upside down, and those clouds looked like they were being sucked up into the sky. Below them, on the horizon, the three towers of the experimental biofuel station almost seemed to center and anchor the billowing formation over their particular patch of sea.

  Farther in, she caught a flash of bright orange. Kyle was paddling into the path of a huge wave that threatened
to eat him whole. He turned his board just at the wrong time, valiantly attempting to catch it. The wave towered high above, menacing and immobile. Then it came crashing down, an avalanche of foam under which he disappeared. His orange boogie board shot vertically up out of the water like a rocket from a submarine launcher. A few seconds later, his body tumbled up onto the beach in a swirl of surf. Well, at least she was not the worst surfer out that day. She called to him:

  “Kyle, I’m going inshore!”

  “I’m not. There’s a whole pile on their way. Look.”

  “Nah. Those are tiny. Don’t go out beyond your depth, okay?”

  Jade waded in, ran up the beach, and threw herself down on her towel. Now she could see her mom’s horrendous swimsuit up close.

  Joan beamed: “Do you like it?”

  It was the grossest thing Jade had ever seen. Radioactive green. Purple and orange lizards, or alligators—she could not tell which—swarmed across it. Every second animal was wearing a bright yellow sunhat, or holding a bunch of pink flowers. Just looking at it brought on her queasiness. She looked away.

  “Yeah, it’s nice, Mom. We can tell the lighthouse keeper on Point Mauri he’s out of a job. We’ll just get you to stand up there every night and shine a torch on you.”

  Joan hit her with her red and purple floppy sunhat, frowning mock angrily: “Such a charming girl I’ve raised!”

  Jade closed her eyes and lay back, then giggled: “You could even double as an outdoor disco. Only thing missing are the strobe lights!”

  Her mother ignored her: “This’ll interest you. We’re in the news!”