“Cannot bear, cannot bear!” I mocked furiously, interrupting. “What you cannot bear, you are bearing.”
Kela had crawled out of the low doorway and stood before me, blinking. I held out the pelt to her.
“I am just a stupid Red Hart, and I cannot make the change. Here, be a seal, go.” Even though I was angry with him, as I said it I knew I was dooming myself never to be with Kor again, and my voice broke.
A small sound like a whimper came from Kor’s whiskered mouth as he looked at his mother. She smiled, reached out, and touched him briefly. Then she turned to me.
“Why, Dannoc, what a generous heart is in you,” she marveled. “I am sorry I have called you unkind names.”
She took the pelt from me. I stood and bowed my head, trying not to feel the pain, not now when Kor would sense it in me, not now when they would need courage. After they were gone would be time enough to grieve, unto forever.… I could not mindspeak, not in any way that would make sense, for only one thought was in me, throbbing like a heartbeat. Kor … Kor … Kor.…
Kela flung the pelt around my shoulders, smoothed it down tenderly with her shell-tan hands.
I was a seal, my buckskin clothing falling away behind me, and I knew only that I must breathe at once or I would die. I shot skyward.
Ai, the night sky powdered with stars! True, crisp, unwavering, airy depths such as I might never again have seen … There at the surface, under that sky, as I was drawing in great gulps of sweet air, Kor joined me.
They say, Sakeema speed us. My mother and Tyonoc—they say they will rejoice with us forever. They have their hands at their mouths to keep from shouting. And as if they were in my own body I sensed the muddle of emotions in him, pride and terror and awe and the ache of leaving two loved ones behind us in Tincherel, ache such as I also felt. But mostly terror. Dan, not another moment, now. Come.
We sped homeward.
Chapter Fourteen
We swam just beneath the surface so as to take less time about breathing, and we swam at the limit of our speed. Swiftly as I cut through the water—and joy and fear make a mighty goad—Kor swam every whit as swiftly. Sometimes I strained to keep up with him.
Dan, how much is left of this night? Can you tell?
With a seal’s fluid sense of time, I could not tell, not even by the stars. Seals are odd folk. I did not know even what season it was, and I had no sure sense of how long we had been journeying or how long we had stayed with Mahela. But a seal’s inwit was serving Kor and me, drawing us back toward the Greenstones so that we could never be lost in the vastness of the sea. I could sense those sea stacks so clearly that it almost seemed I could see them, far, far ahead. The sense held the course of our flight arrow straight.
The night seemed all too long, before, I told Kor.
And now it seems all too short. When Mahela awakens and looks for me—
May she sleep well, I petitioned whatever powers mindspeak can reach.
She might sleep well and late. A grim triumph in Kor. By my body, I believe she might.
We sped on in silence, scarcely pausing even to breathe. Seawater felt lovely, liquid, uplifting, a goodly substance now that we were using it for swimming in and not to fill our lungs. Starlight, sweet breeze, and the shimmer of seawater—such peace, and the ripple of our passing scarcely broke it. Terrible to think that it would not last another day.
Mahela will be mighty in wrath, I mused.
True for you, Dan. Kor was gently mocking me. I nipped at his neck, surging next to mine.
I hope she does not think to visit it on—
Your father, my mother. Ai, Dan, I hate to think it, too. But—
Yes. I knew, as he did, that they were better off in defiance. My father was a man again, and a king, in his own mind. Kela had acted as befit one who had been king and leader of her people.
Dan—what I said to you—about leaving you—
Never mind that. We are here, are we not? Kor, I am ravenous.
As I had meant it to, that took his mind away from melancholy. You dolt, he complained, do you never think of anything but your belly? There is no time to eat!
We must eat for strength.
We must make the best distance we can, first, in the time that remains to us!
Easy for you to say. Mahela fed you.
Mahela may keep her food.
We swam on, arguing companionably, gulping a few fish that had risen to the darkened surface to feed—it was not enough, and I said so. After a while I turned the friendly quarrel toward the matter of who was faster, and we turned our flight into a race. It seemed less tiring, so, and we went the faster. I wish I could say truly that I let Kor win, but I cannot. He won despite me.
See? I am weak and starved, I grumbled to amuse him.
Excuses, he retorted with a spirit that gladdened me.
Dawn came. We rushed on, weary but knowing we could not yet rest.
The beauty of daytime sky! Every time we breathed I rejoiced in it as if I had never seen sunsheen on water before, or wind traces on high wisps of cloud, or the way the blue of high sky washed pale toward the horizon. Empty sky, empty surface of the sea no longer felt too large to me, but welcome, cleansing, as if I needed to be purged of something.
There was a sweet taste in the air. Something yellow, like pollen, floated in swirls on the quiet surface of the sea. Odd little purses in strings bobbed in the water from time to time, and moon-colored bubble shapes in masses or strings, or single small globes like floating pearls. It took me a while to understand—the things were eggs, fish eggs or eggs of other undersea creatures, spawn, new. life—no wonder the air seemed so sweet! It was spring! Winter had passed while we were gone, and the seasons had come around to a new beginning.
Spring! I told Kor, absurdly happy.
Sometime near halfday I tasted a scent of food in the water. Below us in the undersea twilight, somewhere, nameless numbers of greenling bodies schooled.
Many many fish! I exclaimed, barking aloud, and with a twist of my body I dove. Weary as I was, still I took pleasure in the suppleness of my strong seal form. Also, being a seal brought out the mischief in me, so that I had not waited to confer with Kor. With a yelp of protest he dove after me. The greenlings were a great shimmer off to the southward. I kinked sideward and shot that way, Kor hard after me.
A shadow crossed the sea.
Hunger forgotten for the moment, Kor and I slowed, looking upward and back the way we had come. Eight shadows were speeding over the surface where we had been swimming a moment before. I suddenly felt cold.
Devourers!
We could not see them, for we were well under the water by then, but it had to be the fell servants. I knew of nothing else that flew so large and so swiftly.
Mahela has awakened, I added.
As quickly as they had come upon us, they were gone. They had not seen us.
Sakeema bless your stomach, Dan. Kor sounded shaken. If we had dived a moment later …
He left the thought unfinished, swam after the small schooling fish again. I caught up to him as we reached the stragglers.
Eat well, he mindspoke me.
We both ate well, following the school until the day was waning, letting ourselves be led far to the southward of where Mahela’s minions might expect to find us, staying undersea for as long as we could before cautiously surfacing to breathe. We saw no more of the devourers, but the fear of them clung to us.
How are we ever to sleep? I wondered. Now that my belly was full, it seemed I felt my weariness the more.
By turns. Kor sounded tired as well. Go ahead, Dan. I will watch.
No, you. I have not had Mahela to satisfy.
He saw the justice in that, relaxed on the surface of the waves, and slept at once. I watched the clear glow of the sunset, swam circles around him to stay awake, watched dusk deepen and stars appear, caught myself dozing, watched the gray and purple of the west turn black. When I truly could not stay awake any longe
r I roused Kor and took my turn. But neither of us saw any devourers that night.
We were tired, for small spans of uneasy sleep do not abate weariness very much. Though we pressed the pace the next day, and the days after, as much as we could, we were always tired, one of us always on watch, always feeling pressed, pursued, sometimes snappish with each other, never satisfied with the distance we had come. But we saw no more of the fell servants.
I wonder why they have not found us, Kor mindspoke me uneasily.
The ocean is vast. And we turned aside from the course they expected us to take.
Yes, but … Dan, even that first day, when we saw their shadows, they could have been searching for us beneath the water as well. They can fly almost as swiftly undersea as above. And if they had been …
We would have been food for their maws, I responded lightly, or as lightly as I could, thinking of a thing so grim. So rejoice that they were not. The brutes are stupid.
Kor did not respond to my flippant tone. Mahela is not stupid, he said darkly. She is toying with us. She has some cruel surprise in store for us.
I did not like hearing this from him, for I felt a need to keep spirits up, courage high. Arrogance, even, seemed better than the despair I remembered from the Mountains of Doom. I dare say she will search for us yet a while, I admitted. But—
Yet a while! Dan, do not delude yourself. You know she is relentless, and I know it better. She will stalk us until we die.
Perhaps. But …
He went on as if he had not heard me, as if a lash drove him. I half believe she laid those pelts on her bed for no other reason but this, to prolong the game and her pleasure in taming us, to give her a chance to show us all her powers. She plans to break us in her own sweet time.
It was a danger worse than the threat of death. And he was right, of course, but it was not truth that chilled me so much as his tone. I began to know then that she had laid her touch on him in a way I could not help or understand, and I shut my eyes in a protest too deep for words.
The devourers will be waiting for us at the Greenstones, Kor added starkly.
Are you so sure? I challenged, though not harshly—arrogance had left me.
I am reasonably sure.
Then I think it behooves us to come ashore elsewhere.
It scarcely matters. They will find us wherever we come to shore.
Not fitting speech, Kor. Quakebuttock, some would have called him. Coward. But I knew he was no coward, and though I wanted to rail at him in anger, heartache would not let me. Not yet.
On toward evening of that day, whatever day it was, we both slept and kept no watch—whether more in daring or defiance or despair I scarcely know. And we slept long and deeply. Sakeema be praised for that slumber, for it was our last respite of that journey, and we were sorely to need it.
We awoke to dawn thunder and a glimmer of lightning in the west. On the hunt for fish, we swam off eastward. But before sunrise we had given up thoughts of fish. Thunder cracked more sharply, and lightning flared. Storm had grown closer behind us, as if it were following us.
We scudded eastward, just beneath the waves, as clouds scudded above them, small gray clouds torn ragged and sent slantwise before the force of the wind. Hiss of rain. Waves grew higher. This squall flew faster than we, and gained on us. We could not outrun it.
Let us try to flank it to one side, Kor mindspoke me. North or south?
North.
We breathed at the tossing surface, veered to our left, and dove. It was not such a great storm—we could see a lighter gray sky beyond it to either side. When we surfaced again, many minutes later, we expected to be well out of it.
Instead we came up into what might as well have been night, and into the midst of a tempest. Waves that flung us bodily upward into a roar of wind and swell and rain, into a blackness that blotted out the day, blankness shot through with greenish lightning. I took one startled breath and dove, and Kor, praise be, was beside me.
Double back the way we came.
We swam westward, back toward Mahela’s realm, for all we were worth. The storm had been traveling eastward, at speed. We should have come up behind it.
Confounded, we came up in the black heart of it once again. Or the black and yawning maw … The tempest wanted us, it shrieked, it held us in its clutches and sucked at us hungrily and shook us in great random hands as if it would gnaw and tear us apart. Sea took us to its billowing bosom and tried to drown us. Air was a chill blast that screamed. I fought my way downward at last to the calmer water beneath the swell, but I could not at first find Kor, not until he mindspoke me. He was southeastward somewhere, and I shot toward him.
This way, arrow speed!
We hurtled along with desperate haste, sure that this time, at last, we would outflank the storm. And we stayed under until great clay chimes began to ring in our heads. One moment more and we would surface to breathe—
A blaze of light, a flaring before my eyes—for a moment I thought my sight was failing me. Then I felt the tingle. It had been lightning sending a greenish flame through the seawater.
No!
Kor sounded not so much frightened as furious, aggrieved. I was frightened.
We went up, for we had no choice, and lightning turned the sea to greenfire all around us, nearly stunning us, and hail pounded our heads. Day was gray-black, nearly as gloomy as night beneath heavy cloud, and the waves were raging.
We struggled down and found each other and swam off again, eastward, doggedly.
This accursed squall is following us!
Kor had courage to mindspeak what I had not wanted to think. And events proved him right. The storm battered and dragged at us for what must have been days—I could not tell, at the time, for day and night seemed the same beneath that lowering cloud, and I was long past counting even had I not been a seal, heedless of time. But it must have been days, more than a few days that the tempest chivvied and harried us and drove us before it. It beat us down and tossed us about and slapped at us with a sound like wild laughter. It hurled us apart and, an anguished time later, when I was weeping with despair, a seal’s salt tears, it flung us together again. It stunned us with lightning and blows, then rocked us awake, as gently as a mother, before it pounded at us with wind and wave once again. It whirled us in eddies when we tried to swim and rushed us along when we tried to rest. There was very little for us to eat—we grew weak with starvation and with struggling, and the time came when we ceased to struggle. When we ceased even to try to swim, but let the tempest have its way with us, as it had done all along. I thought we would die.
I thought we would drown, we were so weak, wallowing limply in the water, not even trying to surface for breath.
Mindbond, Kor.… Mortal danger. Drowning in fact, no time to be afraid of drowning in each other.
I—haven’t heart. So he, too, knew that fear, that engulfing closeness. Dan—is four times too many to be dead?
Say not so, Kor. We must—mindbond. Up—for air.…
I—I can’t face that she-squall again.
No more could I. Too weak even to grieve, to say farewell, I let myself drift down through the greendeep. To sleep, to rest, at last …
Something lifting, nudging me up. Prodding me toward the surface and into wakefulness. I struggled only when the storm clawed at me again and screamed in my ears. Then I drew quick breath between drenchings, opened my eyes, blinked through spray. Something sleek was bearing me up.
Servants of Mahela! Kor sounded furious. Wrath had given him new strength.
No, it is not the devourers. A strong, smooth, finned back, gracefully curved, took me under again even as I mindspoke. A dolphin. My flippers hooked over its fin in an awkward grip so as to keep me with it. Kor rode one much as I did, and many others bobbed all around us.
Minions of Mahela, all the same! Kor raged. She sent them to revive us so that she can torment us a while longer!
These dolphins are not Mahela’s pets, Kor.
They break the surface, they breathe air.
A considerable silence. The dolphins bore us eastward along with the storm, surfacing to breathe from time to time, or the storm followed along with the dolphins, or with us, always with us. All the time they conversed with each other in a way we could not understand, though I would have liked to, for they sounded cheery and brave. When Kor mindspoke at last, his thought was quiet with wonder.
Then there is yet good in the sea, after all.
After all that had happened.
They deserted us as suddenly as they had come, taking us up to the surface for air, then sinking suddenly away from under us. leaving us floundering in the raging waves.
Slime of Mahela! I was angry this time.
No, Dan, they brought us as far as they could. Kor dove, his swimming weary, labored. Did you not hear it? Breakers. We are nearly at the Greenstones.
How could he have heard breakers amid the roaring of stormwind and the lashing of whitecaps? But my seal’s inwit knew he spoke truth. I, too, sensed that we were near shore.
Shall we try to skirt it awhile? Stay away from the devourers?
I was nearly blind with exhaustion. Mindspeak helped me to stay with him.
We are as likely to—be smashed against the cliffs—as taken by them, wherever we come to land.
We tried it nevertheless, struggling northward, toward Seal Hold. But we were weak, and I doubt if we made so much as an arrow’s flight of headway. The sea had us in a strong grasp, and it hurled us and hurled us and hurled us toward the Greenstones. Above us, the storm shone and flashed and sang. We did not try to dive anymore, and we breathed between blows of the water. Once, flung atop a whitecap, I saw, for a spinning moment I glimpsed, the sea stacks and the distant shore beyond them, seen through a veil of rain. Home … and I was not even thinking of forest and mountains, but of a seal’s home, birthplace, landfall, solid and sometimes dry, and my throat tightened and my heart ached at the sight of it. Coming home to haul out and die.… I did not try to dive out of the pounding waves—I wanted to see it again, but a crushing wall of water fell atop me and buried me.
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