by D M Wozniak
This seems like a fevered dream. Outside the windows, I see rays of light coming through the blue, the absolute silence and intimacy of this place, all pressure and sharp angles. The stunning beauty before me.
I enter her, bringing her body into mine and pressing the two of us up against the angled table. She brings me a rush of youth. Time and age are like the water and fish. The logic of the world says that they belong here, but they are absent.
She turns us around so that she is in control. Before, our bodies were dry because we were in the pocket of air—but now, due the table, beads of saltwater curve and run down her body, dampening her blonde hair. The blue of the water reflects off of her pale skin as she moves her hips.
Meanwhile, the sphere shrinks, water rushing around us, coming up from the floorboards. It’s the incredible pressure at this depth. The dynamic voidance is not holding.
I grasp my voidstone. The sound of the wind replaces Marine’s ecstasy, helping me focus before the membrane collapses entirely. I feel pain and pleasure at the same time, as I extend myself further.
When I let go, my eyes are not focused on her, but past her, through the curvature of my membrane, past the shattered window panes, and into the cerulean distance.
A mile or so away, a scar of darkness crosses the bottom of the ocean floor. A black stroke of a brush against the color of the reef and sunlight from above. A sliver where everything is swallowed up.
Blackscar.
I close my eyes as my body tenses. There is a fringe of darkness here as well, in the back of my mind. In-between the two of us, husband and wife.
An irrational fear.
Does she only love me because of my power?
Do I only love her because of her beauty?
All too soon we are done. The membrane collapses. Water floods into the room from everywhere, except the perfect, shrinking sphere surrounding us.
I grab her, floating across the floor’s decline toward a jagged, blue field. Part of the hull had been breached years ago, the wood splintered away and rotten.
My fingers tingle as we float in the center of the room.
“Are you alright?” Marine asks me, as she covers herself.
“Perfectly,” I lie.
She smiles, tracing the gold chain of my voidstone necklace before looking past me, eyes opening wide.
“Dem,” she whispers.
“What?”
“Look,” she adds. “But don’t make any sudden moves.”
I turn slowly and peer out through the jagged hole.
The sea bed below is alive with pink coral and swaying plants with filtered sunlight dancing across the rocky surface.
“Do you see it?” she asks.
“See what?”
She slowly points past me. “A Pygmy Seahorse. By the coral.”
“No.”
“It’s really small. Usually they are camouflaged, so they are impossible to see, but not this one. It must not feel threatened. A very rare sight.”
Suddenly, a gray seahorse appears against the reef, floating between strands of seaweed.
“I see it.”
She nods, her eyes fixed on the small creature. “We need to capture it. A specimen for submaster Mander.”
“Let me try something,” I say as I grasp my stone.
The silence of the depths is replaced by the wind, as I see the indivisibles in front of me. The tightly-packed sea, currents teeming with invisible life.
I move past the dynamic membrane, into the blue, which isn’t blue at all. Only a colorless black here.
There it is, the seahorse, drifting in the currents around itself. Hovering like we are. All I need to do is force the seawater surrounding it to be looser than the rest. Another dynamic membrane, but not made of air.
I start to create the membrane, but then it’s gone.
The seahorse disappears in the void.
I let go of my stone in disbelief.
“What happened?” Marine says, turning to me.
“I...” My eyesight adjusting, I look in front of me, and see that in the real world the creature has also vanished. “I saw it right in front of me. I was moving in, about to trap it with a membrane, and then its indivisibles disappeared.” I alternate my vision between her shocked face and the empty reef. “What did you see?”
She points. “It suddenly turned pink.”
“Turned pink?”
“It’s camouflage. It looked exactly like the reef, and I saw it!” Her excitement deflates in front of me as she adds, “But only for a moment. Soon I lost it against the background.”
Like the waves above us, another surge of excitement flows out of her. I feel her grasp me tighter, as she pulls us forward with her other hand, using the wooden exterior of the ship as leverage.
“We need to find it.”
We float through the breach, into the endless waters of Xi Bay.
Coming near the pink coral and lime-green seaweed, we search for the creature. We try to move around, looking from different vantage points, but after a while we realize that it’s hopeless. The seahorse is gone.
I sigh.
She shakes her head, and I turn toward her.
“Do you understand how incredible this is? When I was in the void, I couldn’t see it. Not just here, in the real world, but in the void as well. Can you imagine the applications to voidance if we’re able to understand what just happened?”
She smiles. “Let’s come back here every day. We have to catch one alive before returning to the citadel.”
I smile, infected by her excitement. “Absolutely.”
Glancing upwards toward the rays of sun, there are two silhouettes of small boats upon the surface. The pinnace that brought us out here from the shore, and another one as well.
I point upwards. “We have company.”
She glances to the surface, and then back to me in confusion.
“There’s a second boat,” I clarify.
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “We’ve been gone much longer than I promised the rowmen. Perhaps they sent out a second boat to make sure everything is alright.”
Kissing me fully on the lips one more time, she cups my short beard in her hands before pulling away. “Thank you, husband, for trying to capture my Pygmy. I am sure you will be successful the next time around.”
We slowly rise. The waters become lighter as my eardrums pop.
When we reach the surface, I drop the membrane, and Marine screams out playfully as the waters drench us both with collapsing waves.
We’re both laughing as the servants throw out a rope ladder and we climb aboard the pinnace. But when I see the second vessel, which is close enough to ours to climb aboard, my laughs are silenced, as are hers.
It contains five northern soldiers in full regalia, despite the intense southern sun. They are standing at attention.
“Master voider Democryos,” says one of them, stepping forward. He has four stripes on his shoulder patch.
“Yes, commander?” I ask. A rowman hands me a white towel and I dry my face of salt water. I step to the edge of the pinnace and look out at the other vessel with my hand over my eyes to shelter them from the harsh sun. Despite being on different boats, the commander and I are close enough to touch if we reached our hands out. But the waves make him rise and fall at odd intervals.
“You are needed back at the citadel,” he says.
I shake my head in disbelief, looking back at Marine. Behind her are the glistening waters of Xi Bay, and far in the distance the hazy, colorful shoreline of Winter’s Baiou.
I turn back to the soldier in defiance. “I am on my honeymoon, commander.”
He takes a deep breath. “His Majesty, King Andrej IX, is dead.”
Giving in the Tent
I wake up in warm darkness.
“It’s okay,” says a recognizable voice. “It was just a dream.”
I turn to the curved silhouette next to me, barely
discernible against the rustling dark blue. For an instant I’m still in Temberlain’s Ashes.
Chimeline.
“It wasn’t a dream,” I say, my voice hoarse. “It was a memory.”
Lying on my back, I lift my head slightly as I make out my surroundings. For a moment, I am disoriented as I remember yesterday’s bedroom in the mansion with the thin pink drapes, briefly thinking that I am back there.
No. I’m in a small tent, the fabric around us not quite taut as it ripples in the night breeze, almost like the exotic waters of my dream. I half expect to see brightly-colored fish swim past her.
Exhaling, I lower my head back down to the hard ground, and then utter a moan of displeasure. Even though there are blankets under and around me, the ground is hard and uneven on my back, odd curves everywhere.
Chimeline’s soft and warm body is the opposite. The curve of her hips presses into my side like a long-lost piece completing an unsolved puzzle.
“I should leave,” she whispers.
Just as these thoughts of contentment begin to seep in, Chimeline rises to a sitting position and pulls the blankets with her, demurely clutching them in one hand. We’re wearing underclothes.
My body shivers violently without her warmth or the covers. It’s the remnants of my latest brush with voideath.
She seems to sense this. After a pause, she nestles back under the covers with me, and I wrap my arm around her.
“Tell me about it,” she says after some time.
“About what?”
“Your dream.”
“Memory.”
“How can it be a memory?” she says, her face upturned on my shoulder. “I heard you in your sleep. You said that the king was dead.”
“It was Andrej IX,” I reply. “Not his idiot son.”
“Oh.”
“He was a great man.”
She stays silent, and I hear the voices of Colu and Blythe beyond the tent. They seem to be arguing—Blythe’s clear and high voice contrasts with Colu’s, which is deep and gruff.
“Tell me about it,” she repeats.
I sigh, feeling a desire to avoid all discussion about my past with Marine. The shipwreck of my life. But I want to keep Chimeline here next to me, and if this is what it takes, so be it.
“We were in Winter’s Baiou,” I answer.
“You dreamt of Winter’s Baiou?”
“Yes.”
“Because that’s where we’re going?”
“Maybe.” I purse my lips in the darkness, wondering if there is a subconscious connection. “I’ve been there before. The place holds a lot of memories for me.”
“With your Marine?”
I nod. “Although she’s not my Marine anymore.”
I crane my neck upwards toward the creased ceiling of the tent. “It was a memory of our honeymoon. A very happy time, until I acted like a fool by returning to the citadel prematurely.”
“Why?”
“The old king had died. I had responsibilities.”
She stays silent.
“I left Marine there with one of my submasters, to return a fortnight later. She was so desperate to capture a rare type of seahorse, and I knew that it would be a while before we would head that far south again. At the time, I thought it was a great thing that I was doing, not thwarting her dreams. A noble sacrifice. But I should have turned away that commander. I should have stayed in Winter’s Baiou with my wife and ignored the new king. I had broken a very recent and important promise.”
“But you are a man of principle,” she says.
I shake my head. “Principles can be wrong.”
Shifting in the darkness, I weave my arm underneath her as I try to get comfortable.
For a moment, the two of us lay in silence. Chimeline seems lost in thought, the hint of a wrinkled nose upon her face. It’s so charming, I can’t help but smile.
But this smile fades as I listen to Colu and Blythe argue outside the tent. I can’t make out most of their words, but they seem to be discussing Prainise. And murder.
“What happened?” I ask quietly. “After I passed out.”
“You were dying,” she says, eyes suddenly wide. “Your body was shaking, and you were cold and gray.”
“Voideath,” I mumble.
“I was scared. I wasn’t sure if...” She clears her throat. “After what you did in the road, we came back here.”
“Where’s here?”
“The same campsite from dinner.”
I nod.
“By then, the fire was dead and Colu said it would take too long to find more wood and get it warm enough for you. The wind was picking up, and then the effulgent—”
“Blythe,” I remind her.
I see her smile in the darkness. “Blythe was very concerned. He said that we had to warm up your body using one of ours, or you would die.”
“He was right.”
“I'm just glad you're doing better,” she says.
“I'm not just doing better,” I say. “I’m alive. You saved me from voideath.”
“I did nothing but stay here with you.”
A wisp of her dark hair falls across my face. With my free hand, I hook it behind her ear.
“Sometimes I think that’s the only thing I really need.”
I recall the moment on the balcony. When I felt myself slipping away—lost in the darkness of the void. The darkness that has become my life. And Chimeline was there, pulling me back.
Our faces are close enough that I can hear her nervous breaths. Her chest rises and falls on me.
“Someone's coming,” she whispers.
There’s a crunching of boots, followed by a rustle from beyond the thin tent fabric.
“Is the master voider awake?”
It’s Blythe.
I barely see his shadow beyond the rippling wall. He stoops down on the opposite side by the entrance where the two sides of loose fabric are tied together in one bowstring. His head is bent downward and his hand is on his chin, almost in prayer.
“Yes,” says Chimeline loudly. “He’s doing much better.”
“Blessed be the Unnamed. Tell him that Colu and I are preparing a meal now. We will break our fast with the sunrise. We have much to discuss.”
I clear my throat and reply. “Thank you, Blythe.”
His shadow nods hesitantly, before he stands up again and walks away.
Chimeline clears her throat. “Maybe if you get dressed and sit by the fire, you will stay warm?”
I nod.
She sits up as before, bringing the covers to her while reaching for a small pile in the corner. I briefly look away to give her some privacy, until I sense that she’s mostly done.
Gone is her recently-repaired, white lace dress. It’s been replaced with loose, camel-colored pants and a white shirt that wraps around her waist with two long ties.
A clear voice calls out from the distance, easily understandable through the thin tent fabric. “Master voider,” Blythe says amidst the clanging of metal upon metal. “Breakfast is almost ready.”
“Coming,” I call out.
I look for the rest of my clothes.
“Oh. Here, Dem. They were mixed with mine.”
Chimeline reaches into the corner again. But along with my clothes, I feel something, cold and smooth that falls between the sheets.
She reaches for it, but I find it first.
It’s the glass vial.
I bring it up between my thumb and forefinger. It’s so dark in the tent that I cannot tell if the vial is full or not. But when I gently shake it, I can feel the liquid move about.
My heart sinks, all of my doubt returning. I had almost forgotten about the moonspit. Cleanthes’ paranoia replaces my former peace of mind.
I glance past the vial to Chimeline, trying to read her expression in the darkness. It’s almost impossible. A mix of sadness and concern.
“This, again,” I mumble.
She lets out a nervous laugh. “While you w
ere sleeping, I had asked the effulgent to bring me my other clothes from the saddlebag. That must have found its way inside.”
“You said it’s jasmine extract?”
She hesitates, and then nods once.
It’s the pause which cuts deep. It’s the pause that proves she’s a liar.
“Back at the plantation, the skullmen found it in your belongings and asked me about it,” I add, looking at the vial instead of her. Suddenly, I can’t meet her eyes, due to either anger or fear. “But they were confused as to what it was.”
I hand it back to her and grab my shirt, getting dressed. The entire time, I feel Chimeline stare at me in silence.
The world around her trembles in blue, but she’s a statue.
“I tried to explain to them that it was jasmine extract, but they were insistent that it was something else.”
Because I cannot stand in the small tent, I pull on my pants awkwardly, all the time waiting for an answer. Finally, as I finish lacing my boots, I glance at her. “They were insistent that you were something else.”
We seem to switch places. Now, it is I who is motionless, while she begins to shift uncomfortably, eventually folding her arms and looking around the tent instead of meeting my eyes.
“So I ask you again,” I repeat. “What is in that vial?”
“It’s not what you think,” she says softly.
“Probably not,” I agree. “But I still want you to tell me.”
Looking down, she shakes her head. In shadows of deep blue, her face is downcast and buried in her black hair, but I can still see the slightest of flinches.
“Chimeline.” I lean forward. I put my hand under her chin and raise it up until her eyes meet mine. “I trust you. You could've killed me any number of times. Just tell me the truth. Were you hired by the king? Are you an assassin?”
She trembles underneath my touch as a single tear falls from her cheek onto my palm. Her face is a veil of conflicted emotions.
“Are you?” I repeat.
Her chin quivers as new trails form on her cheeks. “Please, Dem.” She looks deep into my eyes. “Just let it go. None of it matters anymore. We’re far from the citadel. We have a new life now.”