Tides of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  “Tavra?” he whispered, but not even the princess answered.

  Chills raced up Amri’s back as a drumming, like a thousand thick fingers, drilled along the hull right behind his head. He stood, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders as if it would protect him from whatever was out in the water, padded across the cabin, and peeked out onto the deck.

  A water spirit that lures childlings into the sea . . .

  The night was frozen, the light of the Waystar refracting against the sky so it appeared three times as bright. Like a star, beaming down from the mountain cliffs that surrounded the city, as if calling out to the Vapra below. Calling silently, with its voiceless song.

  Amri walked out, staring up at it. It had guided ships into the wharf, had brought travelers north as they came to meet with the All-Maudra. To see the beautiful Ha’rar, a place whose name was known as far and wide as the Gelfling race had traveled. A place now as vulnerable as Domrak. As silenced as a Silverling in the body of a spider.

  He jumped at a splash off the side of the boat. The waves lapped against the hull, disturbed by whatever was in the water. Amri followed the sounds with his ears. It was something big, bigger than a Gelfling, clunking against the boat as it circled. Amri tightened his grip on his blanket and neared the edge, looking over.

  The waters were black and impenetrable. He saw his reflection, lit by the Waystar, and wondered if this was what the darkness was like to daylighters. Mysterious and frightening. Filled with everything and anything, terrible and infinite.

  Amri gasped out as a shape broke the waves. A long back with an even longer tail, silvery and dark. It collided with the hull and the entire ship rocked with an echoing CLUNK, and Amri grabbed hold of the rail to keep from losing his balance. He raced after the shape as it submerged again.

  “Naia! Tavra! There’s something out here!”

  He neared the other end of the ship and saw the creature again. He grabbed a coil of rope, cursing as he tried to remember a knot—any knot. Why weren’t his friends coming? Why hadn’t they heard all the clunking?

  At last, he got a slipknot out of the rope. Hands shaking, he waited. The waves came again, the water shimmering, and he threw the rope. It landed in the water just as the creature breached, snagging it. Amri’s hands burned on the rope as it caught the thing, dragging the line as it dived with an incredible strength and speed.

  “Naia!” he shouted. She didn’t answer. She didn’t come.

  A loop of the rope came racing up behind him. Before he knew what was happening, it caught him around the ankle. He lost his footing as the line shot over the side of the rail, tangling around his legs. Then he was falling over the rail, crashing into the frigid ocean water below.

  CHAPTER 22

  Amri knew better than to scream underwater, but he couldn’t help it. The shock of the cold water snapped at him like the jaws of a monster, charging into every limb. Bubbles poured from his lungs. When they popped on the surface, Amri wondered if his friends would hear his cry for help.

  “Oh. Hello, there.”

  He clenched his last breath in his teeth. He looked around, trying to find the owner of the voice, but the water was murky as ink.

  A blurry shape rushed below him, sweeping against his leg. The rope that was tangled there fell away, as if all its knots had been dissolved by magic. Amri spun in the current as the creature, huge and inconceivable, disappeared back into the depths of the water.

  His lungs should be burning by now, he thought, pressing his hand against his throat. He remembered what it had been like in the Wellspring, his vision getting steadily foggy, saved only because he had been there with Naia. This time, floating in the ocean that felt like space, he felt none of those things. He didn’t even feel the cold anymore.

  “Am I dead?” he asked.

  The water filled his mouth, but he didn’t drown. He turned when he saw movement, but the creature that circled him, long and streamlined, was always just out of sight. It swooped through the thick water, giving scant glimpses of its long tail and powerful limbs that propelled it through the water as easily as a bird in flight.

  “Not at all,” it said, as if the waters themselves had spoken.

  “Um . . . am I going to die?”

  “That is a strange question.”

  Amri squinted as the thing passed again, close enough that he felt the currents of the water it displaced. He reached out, touching flowing cloth and soft hair. The creature’s voice was familiar, though he couldn’t place it. Salty like the sea, strong and everlasting.

  “Are you a Mystic?” he asked.

  “Hmm . . . I am pretty mystical.”

  The phrase was familiar. Amri had said it to Kylan and Naia about urLii, so long ago when they’d all visited the Tomb of Relics together. The first time he’d brought them to somewhere familiar to him. A place in the caves that was in his domain, far away from their world. Where he’d been home and they’d been strangers—and all he’d wanted to do was leave.

  His lungs were still unstarved for air. He treaded the water, wondering how long it would take him to reach the surface, and what he would find when he got there. If he really was dead, would that be the end? Was this strange, glittering water the only thing keeping him from passing on?

  “I’m gonna go,” he said.

  “Wait.”

  The creature came closer, a multi-limbed monster hovering before him. Its face was almost close enough for him to see, its countenance still uncomfortably familiar. It lifted one limb, reached it close enough to Amri that he could see the texture of its skin, dark and satiny.

  “You are a Mystic,” he gasped. Tavra’s song of the water spirit echoed in his mind, bringing with it the vision of the lanterns guiding the way up the coast. “You’re the one who lights the lanterns? The water spirit?”

  It came closer, swirling the waters, enshrouded in a black-and-silver streaming mantle that folded and unfurled with the water. Amri’s heart hammered when he saw its face, for a moment seeing the shrewd eyes of skekSa the Mariner.

  “Are you skekSa’s opposite?” Amri gasped.

  “Opposition is a falsehood. Like day and night—convenient words, but only part of the truth. For there exists such a thing as dawn, and also dusk. All phases in the turning of the spheres. I am merely a swimmer of the seas.”

  “So you are a Mystic! Are you here to tell me how to help the Vapra?” Amri asked. In the past, the Mystics had come to their aid when they had needed it most. He hoped as much as he could hope that this was one of those times as well.

  “You already know how to help the Vapra,” the swimmer said, echoing his intonation so it was like hearing his own voice bubbling back at him.

  “So you’re not going to help.”

  “A compass is nothing without a ship.”

  “Then point me in the right direction!”

  “I already have.”

  Amri tried not to show his frustration, as if it might scare the Mystic off. urLii had been like this, too, though back then if Amri had known he was a Mystic, he might have tried harder to learn from the absentminded old creature that frequented the Tomb of Relics. Amri swallowed his pride and spoke slowly and calmly.

  Think, Amri!

  “The lanterns and the Waystar led us here. But Ha’rar is a daylighter place, and the Vapra are daylighters themselves. I don’t know anything about the city, or the snow, or the mountains. Just like I don’t know anything about the sea or the desert. How can I possibly know how to help the Vapra? You should be speaking to Tavra instead of me!”

  “I am speaking to whom I should be speaking. To the Shadowling that brought a song from deep caves to an oasis lake. Tell me, what is the difference between the waves of the sea and the waves of the sand?”

  The Silver Sea. The Crystal Sea. Amri thought of Onica’s ship and Periss’s sand skiff. The
way the Crystal Skimmers had leaped through the desert dunes like the hooyim of the ocean. Before he replied, the swimming Mystic continued:

  “What is the difference between crystals of stone and crystals of water?”

  “Crystals of water?” Amri asked. Then he remembered. “You mean ice?”

  “Deatea. Fire. Deratea. Air. Kidakida. Water. Arugaru. Earth. Four words with one center sound. Four elements with one central heart. Water becomes steam. Is that not air? And then it burns. Is that not fire? Dawn becomes day becomes dusk becomes evening becomes night. Becomes dawn once again. Where does one end and the other begin? Is there such a thing?”

  Amri’s mind spun. Maybe he was drowning, after all. A swirl of bubbles rose, clouding the water between them. Amri shuddered, thinking of skekSa’s behemoth ship. The bubbles came with more force, obscuring the Mystic’s face. His time was ending and he still didn’t have answers.

  “But I’m a Grottan,” he called desperately. “I don’t know anything about waves except that I’m scared of the ocean. I don’t know anything about the daylighter world except that I’m clumsy at walking in it!”

  You’re not clumsy at walking. You’re clumsy wearing shoes.

  Amri reached out, but he couldn’t find her. Not anymore. More and more air came from below, the breath of Thra perhaps, and he surrendered to it. Rising higher and higher until . . .

  “Amri!”

  Amri’s eyes flew open. Naia leaned over him, shaking him by the shoulders. When she saw he was awake, she leaned back.

  It was still night. He was lying on the deck of Onica’s ship, wrapped tightly in the blanket he’d brought out. His hair and clothes were not wet, though he was damp with melted snow. He blushed as Naia touched his shoulders, his cheeks, his neck, as if making sure all his parts were still intact. When he noticed what she was doing, her cheeks turned pink, too. She punched him gently in the shoulder.

  “What were you doing out here?” she hissed. “It’s so cold!”

  “I thought I heard . . .”

  Naia pulled him to his feet. A thin layer of snow had fallen, coating the deck. The waves that sloshed against the ship were silent, even. There was no swimming creature lurking below.

  They went inside. The others were still asleep, and Amri sat at the table, while Naia put water on the fire.

  “I had the strangest dream,” he said. It tasted like a lie. It couldn’t have been a dream, could it? He stared at the bundle of herbs in the center of the table, cold and dormant in the clay bowl. He shook his head. “Must have been a dream.”

  Naia brought him a cup of hot water and sat beside him. “What about?”

  He told her, trying to speak quietly enough that they wouldn’t wake the others. The cabin was small, though, and by the time he reached the end, Tae and Kylan were up. Even Onica came to listen, standing in the doorway, hands folded.

  Amri finished and waited for them to agree that he had imagined it. That his mind had been opened by the fernsage smoke and brought him a vision that was a collection of his hopes and fears.

  “The longer I’m awake, the more like a dream it seems,” he said.

  “Even if it was a dream, that doesn’t mean it’s not important,” Onica replied. “Do you have any idea what it means?”

  Amri blushed. “You’re the Far-Dreamer. Aren’t you supposed to be the one that knows . . .” Even as he spoke, he thought of what the Mystic had said. Dawn to day to dusk. Being a Far-Dreamer didn’t mean it was her responsibility to know everything there was to know about dreams. Perhaps he had been putting too much stock in titles.

  You already know how to help the Vapra.

  He stood, pushed the cabin door open again, and went out into the night. It was the daylighter world out there, with the ocean to his back and the mountains of Ha’rar straight ahead.

  But what were the mountains, if not miles and miles of stone and rock?

  “Amri, where are you going?” Tae called after him. “It’s dark out there, and dangerous! The Skeksis—”

  “—can’t see well in the dark,” he said over his shoulder.

  He didn’t wait for the others, scampering over the side of the ship onto the icy wharf. They didn’t need to come along. Even so, he heard Naia coming after him as he retraced his steps back to the stair that would take them up the cliffs back into the city.

  “You forgot your sword,” she said, handing it to him.

  “Thanks.”

  He slung it at his hip, even though he didn’t need it. Not this time. He marched up the stairs, and she fell in line behind him. She didn’t ask what he was doing or where he was going. Didn’t protest or try to tell him to stop. Her silence was determined, comforting. Once again, when he would otherwise have been alone, Naia was beside him.

  They reached the street above. Though the hike from the wharf to the city was a long one, the Waystar grove on the bluffs above seemed no closer than before. A night wind blew, putting out some of the fires in the lanterns that hung under the Vapra eaves. It was so cold, not even snow fell, and that was good. The colder it was, the harder the ice.

  Amri leaned down and pulled the straps off his sandals. Naia stood by and watched, hand on the hilt of her dagger. Ready to protect him from anything, even as he did something she didn’t totally understand. He tried not to worry what Naia would think of him, acting like a Shadowling in the middle of the Gelfling capital. He couldn’t worry about it. He had to be who he was.

  He tossed the sandals aside, letting his back curve to the shape he had tried so hard to straighten. Barefoot, he crouched on the frozen stone pathways, and for the first time, his fingers and toes tasted the street of Ha’rar.

  The vibrations reached him immediately, strong and clear through the dense rock and crystal ice that laced the stones of the city. He could feel the Vapra footsteps in their homes, pacing and fretting. Wondering what had happened to the All-Maudra and her daughter who had so quickly assumed the living crown and disappeared. He could hear the grumbling of the Skeksis in the citadel, whose ice and stone walls reverberated with their ugly voices and heavy feet. He could taste the ocean crashing against the cliffs, the endless waves that rolled in from the north. The gentle bobbing of Onica’s ship against the wharf.

  He could hear the trembling as clearly as he could hear the Grottan in Domrak—maybe even more so. From the street to the Vapra homes to the citadel, the ocean and the cold blue mountains. It was all connected, intertwined somehow. As if some perfect, pure mineral laced the entire city in a web of crystal, originating from a source high in the mountains that looked down on Ha’rar.

  Amri closed his eyes and pressed his ear against the street, listening. The song was different. It wasn’t mineral like in the underground rivers of the Dousan Wellspring. Wasn’t rock like the deep Caves of Grot. This was fluid, like the sea or the lakes or rivers. Clear and pristine. Diamond-hard, carrying the thousand sounds of the city from one end to the other.

  It was crystal, but not of stone.

  He opened his eyes and looked up, following the song of the crystal, this time with his eyes. Traced it all the way up the cliffs to the glowing white light that shone down from above. It was so simple, now that he knew. Now that he’d listened.

  Naia peered at him curiously as he pulled his sandals back on so he could get back to Onica’s ship without freezing the soles of his feet. The night faded as the dawn came slowly over the jagged horizon.

  “We have to get Tavra and Kylan to the trees of the Waystar grove,” he said. “I know how to send a message to the Vapra of Ha’rar.”

  CHAPTER 23

  They planned to leave that evening, when they could move under the cover of the night. Until then, Amri found a corner of the cabin and crawled under a pile of pillows, blocking out the daylight. He dreamed of the stone tree in the belly of Grot. He stood before it as it died, limbs like roots,
or roots like limbs. Knowing that if he could be breathed in by the ancient thing, flow into its veins and up its trunk, when he emerged on the other side, he would be a pink blossom on the slender boughs of the Sanctuary Tree.

  He heard whispers. A thousand voices, all as one. The shadows moved with infinite limbs. When he woke, it took everything he had not to slap away the spider tapping the back of his hand.

  “Is it time?” he asked.

  “Yes. Are you ready?”

  He nodded, staying under the pile of cushions in the dark for a moment longer. He imagined what it would have been like, if Tavra had been in her Gelfling body at this moment, huddled under a pile of Sifa quilts with him, talking to him from a finger’s width away. It was an amusing scenario, but for once he kept his mouth shut about it.

  “What about you?” he asked instead.

  “I came here to ask you a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “In case anything should happen to me tonight. Someday, when the fires are lit. When it’s safe. Would you find my sister Brea and tell her what happened? I want her to know that I didn’t abandon her.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll make sure you get to tell her yourself.”

  He sat up, emerging from his pile like an unamoth from a cocoon. Kylan looked up from where he sat at the table, holding his magic firca in his palms. Preparing for what he would do when they reached the Waystar, no doubt. Amri could only hope it would work.

  “Good evening! Here, this one’s got an opening for a sword,” Naia said, twirling the cloak over his shoulders. It was silver and white, which felt wrong to him. All the cloaks he’d ever worn in Grot were black, to blend in with the caves. But it made sense. They were about to be climbing up the ice- and snow-laden mountains. Silver would blend in much better.

  “Do I look like a Silverling?” he asked, pulling his hair out from inside the cloak collar.