“What is that?” he asked.
“You have a true water spirit in your midst,” the yacuruna said, watching Muireann with a bemused wonder. “A healer, like me. And a trickster, also like me. You remind me of a woman I stole away once, when I was very young. She had no place on the surface and did not know, before I found her, that there are worlds without end if you look for them. She became a mermaid and protected the river for many years.”
“I’m not a mermaid,” Muireann said. “But I’m glad I remind you of someone you miss.”
The yacuruna looked around the empty, palatial room, their wide, inhuman face sad and lost.
“I miss a great many people these days,” they said. “But you didn’t come here to keep an old river spirit company. You came here something else.”
“A weapon,” Artem said.
“That’s where you’re wrong, warrior,” the yacuruna said. “We did not accept a weapon in our midst. We are healers, as I said. You’ll find no weapons of war here.”
“If I’m this nauseous for no reason I’m going to be so mad,” Yuri said, his voice distant and uncomfortable.
“It’s a focus,” Barnabas said. “Or a holy object. Right?”
“Close enough,” the yacuruna said. They shuffled over to a wooden chest, obviously worn down by the sea, its clunky, aged look standing out from the surreal luxury of this place. The yacuruna unlatched the crate and opened it. A warm, orange-gold light seeped out.
Barnabas removed the bandana from his eyes, and Muireann quickly darted over to cast her spell on him as well. She cast a baleful look in Yuri’s general direction, but he’d flopped down so far away he was barely part of the conversation anymore. Barnabas more solidly on his feet, watched the yacuruna hoist an object from the crate with a greedy interest that made Artem uncomfortable.
“This is the Eye of Dreams,” the river spirit said. Resting gently in their hands was a sphere, perhaps the size of a cantaloupe, a glowing cat’s eye of amber-colored stone, split down the middle with a dark vertical shadow in its core. The yacuruna looked at Barnabas, then Echo, then handed the Eye gently to Muireann.
“This is what we were sent to recover,” Echo said.
“And this is what we were told to keep safe should this day ever come,” the yacuruna said. “I’m just glad one of us was still here to give it to you. We have no stake in the battle for the oceans, but the world belongs to all of us, river and sea, stream and gulf. The heroes of yesteryear came to us because we had nothing to gain by holding it.”
“Is there something to gain by holding it?” Barnabas said.
The yacuruna pointed at the magician in a scolding manner.
“All magic grants a boon, and all magic has a cost,” they said. “You, little wizard, are more than aware of that. I can smell it in your blood.”
Barnabas went very quiet, taking a respectful step back from the spirit.
“Do you know who has the other tool that was used to bind this threat before?” Echo said. “We were told we’d need the Needle and the Eye.”
The yacuruna shrugged.
“I’m afraid I have no answers for you there,” they said. “We took what was given to us, and kept it safe, and hoped no one would ever need it again.”
“I’m sorry that we bring the bad news that your hope was not met,” Echo said.
The yacuruna waved her off impatiently.
“No good comes from hoping. It comes from doing. And I sense you have much doing left in all of you,” they said.
“Spirit,” Muireann said. “I have a question, if I may be bold.”
“The bold shall inherit the world,” the spirit said. “Ask away.”
“What happens to this city if you’re gone?” she said. “I know that may sound disrespectful, or morbid, but you are all alone here, and this place is a wonder. It gives me such fear to think it could…”
“Be abandoned forever?” the yacuruna said. “Little ondine, I will find a successor. I will find several. My days are spent searching for someone the surface does not want, who does not want the surface in return. Someone who will become a yacuruna and keep our stories alive. That is the only job I have left.”
“All the beautiful things in this world are disappearing,” Muireann said.
The yacuruna favored her with a sad, mournful smile.
“All the more reason to make sure we preserve them,” they said.
Artem watched in surprise as Barnabas put a gentle hand on Muireann’s shoulder. I suppose she’s speaking about them, Artem thought. But also about Echo’s people, and about Yuri’s newfound tribe. I saw the cracks in the walls of New Scythia, Artem thought. Time comes for us all. Even my people. I don’t want to live in a world without wonder, as much as those wonders make me angry sometimes.
“Is there anything we can do for you, spirit, in return for keeping the Eye safe?” Artem said.
The yacuruna paused, thinking, pursing their lips. Then they spoke.
“You know how magic works,” they said. “Tell people of the yacuruna. Talk about the cities of crystal, hidden in the reflections of the surface world. Myth only ceases to exist when the last minds forget us. That goes for all of you. Be not forgotten, and help others to not forget. That’s all I ask.”
“We’ll tell the world your story,” Echo said. “May your search for others like you be successful.”
“May your fight be successful as well,” the yacuruna said. “I sense my search will be far easier than the war you have ahead of you. Be strong. Be brave.”
They turned to both Muireann and Barnabas, tilting their head.
“And you know my name,” they said. “If one of you should fall, call on me. If I can, I will lend you the healing magics of my people.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Barnabas said.
“I don’t offer it often,” the yacuruna said. “But you’ve convinced me of your cause. Now get your poor sick friend out of my house. You have a world to save, little menagerie.”
Chapter 33: Slouching toward Bethlehem
The leviathan walked, and it dreamed.
All around it, minions looked to the creature like a god as they swarmed around it like parasites. The creature walked on trunk-like legs, like a human’s but malformed, too thick and squat, ending in flat, webbed feet tipped with black claws. Its sagging belly, heavy with the sloth of a thousand years of slumber, wobbled lazily, the weight of it like an island unto itself.
Too many eyes dotted its face, an uneven, unbalanced number, red irises encasing golden pupils of different sizes, more like blisters than eyes. They blinked at different times, seemingly at random, ensuring that at no point would the eyes all be closed at once. Whether that eternal alertness made a difference to the creature was impossible to tell. If it saw everything, it gave no indication it cared. A beard of tentacles hung inert around its mouth, drifting on the current like fronds of seaweed.
The great beast stopped for nothing, never pausing its relentless, heavy stride. It neither ate nor slept, and paid no mind to passing creatures or ships, as though the matters of the world around it made no difference to it at all.
Its minions were not so passive. They devoured anything living that crossed their path without pity. Schools of fish, great creatures of the deep, ships full of human beings, nothing escaped their hunger. They left nothing living in their wake, blood only briefly staining the water before drifting way into the deep blue.
The ancient being did not need to rest. It had rested already for hundreds of years. Slumber was a thing of the past now. But it did dream. It dreamed of the voices of those who would call it a god, singing in temples along a distant shore. It heard the cries of those who have waited for it to awaken again for generations upon generations. Its minions, as stupid and feral as they were, could feel the building excitement, the orgiastic thrill of each footstep, closer and closer to its final destination.
The old one could feel the places in its flesh where it had be
en wounded before. Scars deeply healed over, imperfections in blackened muscle, places where its body no longer moved the way it once did. Would a god live with scars of battle? Perhaps not. But it mattered little to those who awaited the being’s return. It would find its worshippers, and they would feed their master, make him fat and strong on the living of the surface world, and then this monster would level anything that stood in its way.
Before the great slumber, it had cults across the world. Temples half-submerged in dark places, where those who sought the creature’s favor would lay gifts for it, where they would sing its name and ask for its favor. Words meant nothing to this elemental being, though. It read intent, and feeling; it sensed want, rage, desire. But its concerns were for something else, some forgotten place, memories of a world that does not exist anymore.
Like any immortal thing, the creature had almost no thought toward the mortal world, beyond what the world could give it, how it could be used. And now, the creature hungered for something that could not be eaten. It wanted not for flesh the way its minions chewed their way across the Atlantic Ocean. Its hunger was something else, something profound, and dark. One might call it evil, if morality meant anything to undying beings of might like this one.
It continued its slouching gait across the sea, toward those who would die in its name, never knowing how little it cared for them. It wanted to return to its place in this world, an undying titan, feared and revered, wordless and inscrutable.
Its worshippers awaited. It would not disappoint them.
Chapter 34: You stole from who?
The journey back to the Endless was relatively incident-free, which, Barnabas noted, was becoming an increasingly infrequent occurrence.
The yacuruna had been shockingly generous. They surrendered the Eye to Echo’s group easily and without argument, when Barnabas had expected a fight. They even explained a bit about its magic, which Yuri and Artem visibly tuned out while Echo strained to understand. Barnabas had exchanged a knowing nod to Muireann, who clearly understood everything the yacuruna had said about the orb, the words and gestures that would need to be performed to awaken it, to “open” the Eye, so to speak.
We’ll have to compare notes, Barnabas thought, still not quite sure what to make of the ondine’s abilities. She seemed to be entirely instinctual in her magic—everything she did stemmed from the innate abilities that came from being an ondine, where Barnabas, though possessing a natural inclination toward magic because of his mother’s heritage, had to bungle his way through spell books, old scrolls, and dangerous practice attempts to get it right. He was almost jealous of her, and at the same time proud of what he’d accomplished with so little worthwhile instruction.
The serpent had taught him a bit, he thought, back on the Island of Unwanted Things. I can’t take all the credit. I did have a malevolent, almost-immortal snake handing me spell books since I was a kid. Still, it was hard to understand things like the somatic gestures many spells required when your teacher didn’t have limbs.
He and Artem rowed the dinghy out to the Endless together, Muireann sitting at the end of the little boat quietly, looking back at the river wistfully. Both Yuri and Echo had chosen to swim back on their own, and Barnabas could make out the streak in the water where Echo darted ahead, leaping onto the deck without missing a beat. Yuri, moving less like a rocket and more like the shark he resembled, left almost no trail in the water, which Barnabas found unsettling. For someone who, in human form, was a walking disaster of clumsiness, it felt exceedingly unnatural to watch the boy move like a true predator in the water. It caused a level of dissonance Barnabas didn’t particularly like.
They reached the ship and found Echo staring off into the distance, her arms folded defensively. Barnabas left Artem and Yuri to haul the dinghy back onboard and joined Echo on the deck.
“What are we looking… oh, that’s interesting,” Barnabas said.
“They’re headed right for us,” Echo said.
The path the new ship took left little question where it was headed, its prow aimed directly at the Endless. It was a gorgeous vessel, Barnabas thought, though a little too modern for his tastes, a massive yacht, state of the art, stark white in all the right places, chrome in the others, though it had clearly seen better days. There was visible damage, possibly from a storm or rough seas, that he could make out even from a distance.
A man stood on the prow, his body language imperious, defiant.
“We know him?” Echo asked.
“I don’t,” Barnabas said.
The others joined them, watching the incoming vessel.
“I do,” Muireann said softly.
Echo turned to her.
“What do you mean, you do?” Echo said.
Barnabas took that as a cue. He called out to his ship’s ghost crew to get ready to leave. To the untrained eye, there was no way an ancient vessel like the Endless could outrun something like the yacht headed toward them, but if they could get a little bit of distance between them, the ghost ship could disappear along one of the ocean’s faerie trails and escape. But they needed to get moving first.
Artem caught Barnabas’ eye. The magician nodded to him, and the Amazon loosened his swords, rolling his shoulders to stretch for a fight.
“This is trouble, isn’t it?” Yuri said, once again in his human form.
“I don’t know,” Echo said. “Is it trouble?”
“That’s the man I stole from,” Muireann said.
“The man whose… soul you stole?” Echo said, her voice hard, no nonsense.
Muireann looked to Barnabas for help. Barnabas shrugged.
“I thought you said you stole a bit of his life force,” Artem said.
“Soul, life force, it’s all the same,” Barnabas said.
“That was not what you said earlier,” Artem said.
“Magic is always open to interpretation,” Barnabas said. “More art than science, y’know?”
“He wasn’t using it,” Muireann said. “And he doesn’t deserve to have it back.”
She had an edge to her voice they hadn’t heard before. She’s ready to fight, Barnabas thought. I didn’t think she had it in her. Now I’m curious about how this goes.
“I’m going to need some clarity about what you mean by he wasn’t using it,” Echo said.
“I’m just working on the assumption that you mean that literally, and not that he wasn’t particularly good at music, or very spiritual, or something like that,” Yuri said.
“He had chosen to remove it from his own body,” Muireann said. “For terrible purposes. And I needed it. So, I figured, if he was just going to throw it away…”
“Wait, you literally stole a guy’s soul?” Yuri said. “Like that thing in your pocket his actual soul?”
“There’s no literal when it comes to souls,” Muireann said.
“That doesn’t reassure me,” Yuri said.
“You said he’s a bad person,” Echo said. “But he’s somehow tracked us all the way to the Amazon, and he really doesn’t look afraid of us. What are we talking about when you said bad person?”
“Anyone who surrenders their soul willingly is bad news,” Barnabas said, drawing the flintlock pistol from his belt and examining it, hoping the last few mystical repairs he’d performed on it would work. “Even I wouldn’t do that and I’m a terrible person.”
“Well, you’ve got a wizard, a warrior, a were-shark, and the future queen of Atlantis on this boat with you,” Yuri said.
“Ship,” Barnabas corrected. “I thought we were past you getting that wrong.”
“Ship,” Yuri said. “I think we got this.”
By now, the yacht was within shouting distance. The man, Muireann’s pursuer, was dressed in expensive clothes designed to look casual and careworn, his blond hair in an expensive cut, clearly grown out from a few weeks at sea. He had movie star features, piercing blue eyes, a confident stance—clearly, he’s not afraid of us, Barnabas thought—and wore a
knife on his belt but appeared otherwise unarmed.
“Nice ship,” he yelled over. American accent tinged with a British affectation. “I can’t tell if it’s an antique or just made to look like one.”
“Nice ship yourself,” Echo yelled back. “Looks expensive.”
“All ships are expensive,” the man said. “The cost of doing business on the sea. My name is Anson Tessier. You have something of mine, and you have the person who took it from me. Give me both and we can all get on with our day.”
Echo glanced over at Muireann sternly, then back to Tessier.
“We can maybe talk about your stolen property,” Echo said. “But we’re not turning over the woman. No offense, but I don’t think anyone who pursued a thief thousands of miles to confront them in person will just demand an apology.”
Artem sidled up beside Barnabas.
“His crew looks unarmed. And frankly, confused,” Artem said. “I don’t think they’re a threat. I honestly don’t know what he thinks he can threaten us with to make us turn her over.”
“Echo?” Barnabas said.
“I heard you, Artem,” Echo said softly. Then she yelled back at Tessier. “Well, I appreciate that you asked nicely. But you’re not getting her. No package deal. If you’re not interested in bargaining over the stolen object only, whatever it is, I think we’re done here.”
“I’m usually a very reasonable person,” Tessier said. “But I do always get what I want. I was hoping this wouldn’t turn to violence.”
“I find myself wishing things didn’t turn to violence almost every day,” Echo said. “And yet it just keeps happening. Unfortunately, that means we’re all pretty good at violence.”
“I’ll take that as your final answer, then,” Tessier said.
“Barnabas?” Echo said.
“Got it,” he said. He shouted out an order to the ghost crew to get moving.
Nothing happened.
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