by Diane Duane
“Good idea,” said S’reee, brushing skin briefly and reassuringly with Nita. “Introductions first, though.”
“Yes, please.”
S’reee led Nita off to the north, where several of the singers were working together. “We’ve been through the first part of the Song already this morning,” said S’reee, “the name-songs and so forth. I’ve heard you do yours, so there was no need for you to be here till late. We’re up to the division now, the ‘temptation’ part. These are the people singing the Undecided group—“
“Hi, Hotshot,” Nita sang as she and S’reee soared into the heart of the group. The dolphin chattered a greeting back and busied himself with his singing again, continuing his spirals near the surface, above the heads of the right whale and a whale whose song Nita hadn’t heard on the way in, a Sowerby’s beaked whale. She immediately suspected why she hadn’t heard it; the whale, undoubtedly there to celebrate the Forager’s part, was busy eating — ripping up the long kelp and redweed stirring around the shattered deck-plates of the wreck. It didn’t even look up as she and S’reee approached. The right whale was less preoccupied; it swam toward Nita and S’reee at a slow pace that might have been either courtesy or caution.
“HNii’t, this is Tlhlki,” said S’reee. Nita clicked his name back at him in greeting, swimming forward to brush skin politely with him. “He’s singing the Listener.”
Tlhlki rolled away from Nita and came about, looking at her curiously.
When he spoke, his song revealed both great surprise and some unease. “S’reee — this is a human!”
“Tlhlki,” Nita said, wry-voiced, with a look at S’reee, “are you going to be mad at me for things I haven’t done too?”
The right whale looked at her with that cockeyed upward stare that rights have — their eyes being placed high in their flat-topped heads. “Oh,” he said, sounding wry himself, “you’ve run afoul of Areinnye, have you. No fear, Silent Lord — HNii’t, was it? No fear.” Tlhlki’s song put her instantly at ease. It had an amiable and intelligent sound to it, the song of a mind that didn’t tend toward blind animosities. “If you’re going to do the Sea such a service as you’re doing, I could hardly do less than treat you with honor. For Sea’s sake don’t think Areinnye is typical…
“However,” Tlhlki added, gazing down at the calmly feeding beaked whale, “some of us practically have to have a bite taken out of us to get us to start honoring and stop eating.” He drifted down a fathom or so and bumped nose-first into the beaked whale. “Roots! Heads up, you bottom-grubber, here comes the Master-Shark!”
“Huh? Where? Where?” the shocked song came drifting up from the bottom. The kelp was thrashed about by frantic fluking, and through it rose the beaked whale, its mouth full of weed, streamers of which trailed back and whipped around in all directions as the whale tried to tell where the shark was coming from. “Where — what— Oh,” the beaked whale said after a moment, as the echoes from its initial excited squeaking came back and told it that the Master-Shark was nowhere in the area. “Ki,” it said slowly, “I’m going to get you for that.”
“Later. Meantime, here’s S’reee, and HNii’t with her,” said Tlhlki. “HNii’t’s singing the Silent Lord. HNii’t, this is Roots.”
“Oh,” said Roots, “well met. Pleasure to sing with you. Would you excuse me?” She flipped her tail, politely enough, before Nita could sing a note, and a second later was head-down in the kelp again, ripping it up faster than before, as if making up for lost time.
Nita glanced with mild amusement at S’reee as Hotshot spiraled down to join them. “She’s a great conversationalist,” Hotshot whistled, his song conspiratorially quiet. “Really. Ask her about food.”
“I kind of suspected,” Nita said. “Speaking of the Master-Shark, though, where is Ed this morning?”
S’reee waved one long fin in a shrug. “He has a late appearance, as you do, so it doesn’t really matter if he shows up late. Meanwhile, we have to meet the others. Ki, are you finished with Roots?”
“Shortly. We’re going through the last part of the second duet. I’ll catch up with you people later.” The right whale glided downward toward the weeds, and S’reee led Nita off to the west, where the Blue drifted in the water, and the beluga beside him, a tiny white shape against Aroooon’s hugeness. “Aroooon and I are two of the Untouched,” said S’reee. “The third, after the Singer and the Blue, is the Gazer. That’s Iniihwit.”
“HNii’t,” Aroooon’s great voice hailed them as Nita approached.
Nita bent her body into a bow of respect as she coasted through the water. “Sir,” she said.
That small, calm eye dwelt gravely on her. “Are you well, Silent Lord?” said the Blue.
“As well as I can be, sir,” Nita said. “Under the circumstances.”
“That’s well,” said Aroooon. “Iniihwit, here is the human I spoke of.”
The beluga swam away from Aroooon to touch skin with Nita. Iniihwit was male, much smaller than Nita as whales went, though big for a beluga.
But what struck her more than his smallness was the abstracted, contemplative sound of his song when he did speak. There were long silent days of calm behind it, days spent floating on the surface alone, watching the changes of sea and sky, saying little, seeing much. “HNii’t,” he said, “well met. And well met now, for there’s something you must hear. You too, Senior.”
“The weather?” S’reee said, sounding worried.
“Yes indeed. It looks as if that storm is not going to pass us by.”
Nita looked at S’reee in surprise. “What storm? It’s clear.”
“For now,” said Iniihwit. “Nevertheless, there’s weather coming, and there’s no telling what it will stir up in the depths.”
“Is there any chance we can beat it?” S’reee said, sounding very worried indeed.
“None,” the beluga said. “It will be here in half a light. We’ll have to take our chances with the storm, I fear.”
S’reee hung still in the water, thinking. “Well enough,” she said. “Come on, HNii’t; let’s speak to Areinnye and the others singing the Undecided. We’ll start the group rehearsal, then go straight into the Song. Time’s swimming.”
S’reee fluked hard and soared off, leaving Nita in shock for a moment. We won’t be going home tonight, she thought. No good-byes. No last explanations. I’ll never set foot on land again…
“Neets?” Kit’s voice said from behind her.
“Right,” she said.
She went after S’reee to see the three whales singing the Undecided. Areinnye greeted Nita with cool cordiality and went back to her practicing. “And here’s the Sounder,” S’reee was saying. “Fluke, this is HNii’t.”
Nita brushed skin with the Sounder, who was a pilot whale; small and bottled gray, built along the same general lines as a sperm, though barely a quarter the size. Fluke’s eyes were small, his vision poor, and he had an owlish, shortsighted look about him that reminded Nita of Dairine in her glasses. The likeness was made stronger by a shrill, ratchety voice and a tendency toward chuckles. “Fluke?” Nita said.
“I was one,” the Sounder said. “I’m a triplet. And a runt, as you can see. There was nothing to do to hold my own with my brother and sister except become a wizard in self-defense.”
Nita made a small amused noise, thinking that there might not be so much difference between the motivations and family lives of humans and whales. “And here’s Fang,” said S’reee.
Nita found herself looking at the brilliant white and deep black of the killer whale. Her feelings were decidedly mixed. The humpback-shape had its own ideas about the Killer, mostly prejudiced by the thought of blood in the water. But Nita’s human memories insisted that killers were affable creatures, friendly to humans; she remembered her Uncle Jerry, her mother’s older brother, telling about how he’d once ridden a killer whale at an aquatic park in Hawaii and had had a great time. This killer whale edged closer to Nita now, staring at h
er out of small black eyes — not opaque ones like Ed’s, but sharp, clever ones, with merriment in them. “Well?” the killer said, his voice teasing. “Shark got your tongue?”
The joke was so horrible, and somehow so funny, that Nita burst out laughing, liking this creature instantly. “Fang, is it?”
“It is. HNii’t, is it?”
“More or less.” There was a kind of wicked amusement about Fang’s song, which by itself was funny to listen to — sweet whistles and flutings peppered liberally with spits and fizzes. “Fang, are you from these waters originally?”
“Indeed not. I came down from Baffin Bay for the Song.”
Nita swung her tail in surprise. “That’s in Canada! Fifteen hundred miles!”
“What? Oh, a great many lengths, yes. I didn’t swim it, HNii’t. Any more than you and Kit there went where you went last night by swimming.”
“I suppose,” she said, “that a wizardry done like that — on such short notice, and taking the wizards such a distance — might have been noticed.”
Fang snorted bubbles. “ ‘Might’! I should say so. By everybody. But it’s understandable that you might want to indulge yourselves, anyway. Seeing that you and your partner won’t have much more time to work together in the flesh.”
Fang’s voice was kind, even matter-of-fact; but Nita wanted to keep away from that subject for the moment. “Right. Speaking of which, S’reee, hadn’t we better start?”
“Might as well.”
S’reee swam off to a spot roughly above the wreck, whistling, and slowly the whole group began to drift in toward her. The voices of the whales gathered around to watch the Celebrants began to quiet, like those of an audience at a concert.
“From the top,” S’reee said. She paused a few seconds, then lifted up her voice in the Invocation.
“ ‘Blood in the water I sing, and one who shed it:
deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it—
weaving the ancientmost song of the Sea’s sending:
singing the tragedy, singing the joy unending.’ “
Joy… Nita thought, trying to concentrate. But the thought of whose blood was being sung about made it hard.
The shadow that fell over Nita somewhere in the middle of the first song of the Betrayed whales, though, got her attention immediately. A streamlined shape as pale as bleached bone glided slowly over her, blocking the jade light; one dead-black, unreflecting eye glanced down. “Nita.”
“Ed,” she said, none too enthusiastically. His relentless reality was no pleasant sight.
“Come swim with me.”
He arched away through the water, northward toward Ambrose Light. The gathered spectators drew back as Nita silently followed.
Shortly they were well to the north, still able to hear the ongoing practice Song, but out of hearing range for standard conversation. “So, Silent Lord,” Ed said, slowing. “You were busy last night.”
“Yes,” Nita said, and waited. She had a feeling that something odd was going on inside that chill mind.
Ed looked at her. “You are angry…”
“Damn right I am!” Nita sang, loudly, not caring for the moment about what Ed might think of her distress.
“Explain this anger to me,” said the Master-Shark. “Normally the Silent Lord does not find the outcome of the Song so frightful. In fact, whales sometimes compete for the privilege of singing your part. The Silent Lord dies indeed, but the death is not so terrible — it merely comes sooner than it might have otherwise, by predator or old age. And it buys the renewal of life, and holds off the Great Death, for the whole Sea — and for years.”
Ed glanced at her, sedate. “And even if the Silent One should happen to suffer somewhat, what of it? For there is still Timeheart, is there not?… the Heart of the Sea.” Nita nodded, saying nothing. “It is no ending, this song, but a passage into something else. How they extol that passage, and that lies at its end.” There was faint, scornful amusement in Ed’s voice as he lifted his voice in a verse of the Song — one of the Blue’s cantos — not singing, exactly, for sharks have no song; chanting, rather. “ ‘… Past mortal song—
“ ‘—that Sea whereof our own seas merely hint, poor shadows sidewise-cast from what is real— where Time and swift-finned Joy are foes no more, but lovers; where old friend swims by old friend, senior to Death, undying evermore— partner to Songs unheard and Voices hid; songs past our knowing, perilously fair—‘ “
Ed broke off. “You are a wizard,” he said. “You have known that place, supposedly.”
“Yes.” Timeheart had looked like a bright city, skyscrapered in crystal and fire, power trembling in its streets and stones, unseen but undeniably there. And beyond the city stretched a whole universe, sited beyond and within all other worlds, beyond and within all times. Death did not touch that place. “Yes, I was there.”
“So you know it awaits you after the Sacrifice, after the change of being. But you don’t seem to take the change so calmly.”
“How can I? I’m human!”
“Yes. But make me understand. Why does that make your attitude so different? Why are you so angry about something that would happen to you sooner or later anyway?”
“Because I’m too young for this,” Nita said. “All the things I’ll never have a chance to do — grow up, work, live—“
“This,” Ed said mildly, looking around him at the green-burning sea, the swift fish flashing in it, the dazzling wrinkled mirror of the surface seen from beneath, “this is not living?”
“Of course it is! But there’s a lot more to it! And getting murdered by a shark is hardly what I call living!”
“I assure you,” Ed said, “it’s nothing as personal as murder. I would have done the same for any wizard singing the Silent Lord. I have done the same, many times. And doubtless shall again…” His voice trailed off.
Nita caught something odd in Ed’s voice. He sounded almost… wistful?
“Look,” she said, her own voice small. “Tell me something… Does it really have to hurt a lot?”
“Sprat,” said Ed dispassionately, “what in this life doesn’t? Even love hurts sometimes. You may have noticed…”
“Love — what would you know about that?” Nita said, too pained to care about being scornful, even to the Master-Shark.
“And who are you to think I would know nothing about it? Because I kill without remorse, I must also be ignorant of love, is that it?”
There was a long, frightening pause, while Ed began to swim a wide circle about Nita. “You’re thinking I am so old an order of life that I can know nothing but the blind white rut, the circling, the joining that leaves the joined forever scarred. Oh yes, I know that. In its time… it’s very good.”
The rich and hungry pleasure in his voice disturbed Nita. Ed was circling closer and closer as he spoke, swimming as if he were asleep. “And, yes… sometimes we wish the closeness of the joining wouldn’t end. But what would my kind do with the warm-blood sort of joining, the long companionships? What would I do with a mate?” He said it as if it were an alien word. “Soon enough one or the other of us would fall into distress — and the other partner would end it. There’s an end to mating and mate, and to the love that passed between. That price is too high for me to pay, even once. I swim alone.”
He was swimming so close to Nita now that his sides almost touched hers, and she pulled her tail and fins in tight and shrank away from the razory hide, not daring to move otherwise. Then Ed woke up and broke the circle, gliding lazily outward and away as if nothing had happened. “But, Sprat, the matter of my loves — or their lack — is hardly what’s bothering you.”
“No,” she burst out bitterly, “love! I’ve never had a chance to. And now— now—“
“Then you’re well cast for the Silent Lord’s part,” Ed said, his voice sounding far away. “How does the line go? ‘Not old enough to love as yet,/ but old enough to die, indeed—‘ That has always been the Silent Lord’s bus
iness — to sacrifice love for life… instead of, as in lesser songs, the other way around…”
Ed trailed off, paused to snap up a sea bass that passed him by too slowly. When his eyes were more or less sane again and the water had carried the blood away, Ed said, “Is it truly so much to you, Sprat? Have you truly had no time to love?”
Mom and Dad, Nita thought ruefully. Dairine. That’s not love, I don’t love Dairine! — do I? She hardened her heart and said, “No, Pale One. Not that way. No one… that way.”
“Well then,” said the Master-Shark, “the Song will be sung from the heart, it seems. You will still offer the Sacrifice?”
“I don’t want to—“
“Answer the question, Sprat.”
It was a long while before Nita spoke. “I’ll do what I said I would,” she said at last. The notes of the song whispered away into the water like the last notes of a dirge.
She was glad Ed said nothing for a while, for her insides gripped and churned as she finally found out what real, grownup fear was. Not the kind that happens suddenly, that leaves you too busy with action to think about being afraid — but the kind that she had been holding off by not officially “deciding”: the kind that swims up as slowly as a shark circling, letting you see it and realize in detail what’s going to happen to you.
“I am big enough to take a humpback in two bites,” Ed said into her silence. “And there is no need for me to be leisurely about it. You will speak to the Heart of the Sea without having to say too much to me on the way.”
Nita looked up at him in amazement. “But I thought you didn’t believe— I mean, you’d never—“
“I am no wizard, Nita,” Ed said. “The Sea doesn’t speak to me as it does to you. I will never experience those high wild joys the Blue sings of — the Sea That Burns, the Voices. The only voices I hear cry out from water that burns with blood. But might I not sometimes wonder what other joys there are? — and wish I might feel them too?”