Fathom

by Cherie Priest

  You are too heavy to swim well, Arahab observed. You are too tightly made to be washed away with kelp and crabs. You were not made for the water, but you can endure it, I believe. Whom do you call master, if anyone? Not the gods of fire; you are too cool. Not the lords of the air, for you are too dense. That leaves the kings of the earth. . . . She hesitated. But they are long since buried, and they care little for ways of men.

  “They may still have custodians,” Nia said carefully. In the rear of her skull, in the homing pigeon part at the base of her neck, she could feel Mossfeaster creeping up along the shoreline, hanging back in the trees and watching the scene closely.

  She could sense, but not quite hear, his impatience.

  They might, but I do not know of them. Arahab backed up and squinted at Nia, who still crouched beside Bernice.

  Bernice’s good eye—the one that hadn’t been smashed into the side of her head—opened, and with the first vestiges of her healing mouth she whispered. “I can tell you how to beat her.” The words tripped and slid around on her gums.

  “And a fat good job you’ve done of it,” Nia breathed back.

  “The shell,” she burbled. It was stuck to her hand, molded to it.

  “I know.”

  “No, you don’t,” Bernice said. “Take me with you.”

  Arahab retreated into deeper water, but it was not a withdrawal. She was only digging herself in, settling down in friendlier territory in case she wanted to rise up. Bernice’s ruined mouth warped itself into a grin. “She’s afraid of you.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “She’s afraid of what you might be.”

  Whether or not the water witch could overhear their talk, Nia did not know, but Arahab moved a few yards more out to sea. Too cool, she said again. Too cool to come from the fire gods, and too willing to wet your feet.

  “If she was sure of that, she would’ve killed you already.”

  “Shut up,” Nia said.

  “If you help me”—Bernice failed to shut up—“I can run.”

  The fire gods didn’t send you, did they? They might have made an emissary such as you—designed to resist the water, as you may well be. My . . . Arahab glared down at Bernice. They have committed an offense against the little Vulcan, I know. I do not fear you, small stone child, be assured of this much. But I am also aware that there has been a transgression, and that it may lie on my hands, by association.

  Mossfeaster was retreating.

  The creature had come to the very edge of the trees, but it could hear well enough to grasp that any interference would only tip the situation against them. Nia knew it, too, so she was glad that she was being left alone. She didn’t understand what was happening—not perfectly—but she knew that Arahab’s uncertainty could only help her.

  Over by the edge of the sand, where the packed earth was strong enough to support the ambulance that Bernice had stolen, the engine hacked to life.

  “Take me with you,” Bernice begged again, sounding stronger and less desperate—but looking only marginally better. “I have the call.”

  How far was it to the ambulance?

  Sam was gunning the engine, using the roar of the big machine as a summons, trying to remind Nia that yes, he was there, and yes, he was waiting for her. But could it move fast enough?

  From underneath the billowing curtain of her altered, tangled hair, Nia watched the water. She watched the ambulance. She watched Bernice, whose chest was rising and falling again—not breathing, exactly, but pumping back to life.

  If it didn’t work, she’d never survive to get a second chance.

  Nia took a deep breath, whether she needed to or not. “You deserve to be left,” she said to Bernice, who was floating now in the water as it rose. It climbed back up as Arahab retreated. “You deserve that, and worse.”

  “Probably,” she agreed. “But I can still help.”

  “And you’re going to. Like it or not.”

  Nia didn’t know for certain how fast she was or how strong she might be, but she seized Bernice’s hand—the one with the shell healed irretrievably into it—and she jerked with everything she had. She’d almost expected to yank the hand clean off, and although the prospect nauseated her, this was no time to get the vapors.

  Bernice came flying out of the water, trailing her own arm like a kite.

  Nia lunged, jumping as far as she could with the deadweight behind her, and she made it to dry sand in one long-legged leap. But that wasn’t far enough, and she knew it. Her cousin thudded against the ground behind her, useless, but close to weightless. She was bulky but not very heavy, so Nia thanked heaven for the small blessings and dragged her onward, back into the trees.

  The ambulance honked furiously, because she was running away from it.

  She wanted to scream for Sam to follow her, to meet her on the other side of the trees, away from the water, but there wasn’t any time for that. If he couldn’t figure it out for himself, he’d have to stay behind.

  Bernice flopped along behind her, dragged rag doll–style across the uneven terrain and toward the trees. Nia couldn’t believe how light she was, and how little effort it took to move her. Deadweight or no, Bernice dangled and skipped like a toy on a string.

  Nia couldn’t afford to give any thought to her cousin’s comfort, so she didn’t. All she knew for certain was that the water’s edge was getting farther and farther behind her; and she didn’t give a damn if Arahab was too stunned to act or if she was afraid to act, so long as they stayed out of her immediate reach.

  Sam, still honking the ambulance’s horn, was finally turning the vehicle around. It was moving roughly, stopping, starting, and stalling. He’d done much better with the fire engine. But it was coming around all the same. It was crawling back up onto the road and honking past the gathering crowd. And although Nia didn’t have time to look over her shoulder and double-check his progress, she could hear the rumbling motor over the sound of the frantic crowd, and just over the roaring splashes of something in the water.

  There it was, yes.

  There Arahab was, unstunned, furious, and ready to move.

  Behind her, Nia felt a piercing spray of water that had been flung with the force of a hurricane. It cut against her back and bludgeoned her shoulders with driftwood and fish, and Bernice yelped at the stinging force of it.

  But with one more tremendous leap, and one more hurtling throw, Nia flung herself into the trees and brought Bernice banging along in her wake.

  She wanted to stop and declare victory, having escaped the edge of the water; but there was a horrified little part of herself that knew that no spot in Florida is very far from the edge of the water. And when she began to think of it that way, when she remembered back to some ancient schoolbook lesson about the world being three-quarters covered with water, it was hard not to feel a creeping, awful terror as she ran, cousin in hand, from a creature so powerful that she commanded the seas to bend to her will.

  So she kept running. She didn’t stop, even when she couldn’t see the water through the trees anymore, and even when she began to pass houses and trip over the paved stretches where sidewalks met the streets.

  Not until she heard Bernice crying did she slow down, and even then, it wasn’t out of compassion; it was because she realized that there was no water in sight.

  She slowed down and—since she was in the middle of a small, heavily overgrown neighborhood—picked Bernice up in her arms and carried her as easily as a puppy. Back into the woods they went, back between the trees and away from the houses, where Nia could pretend that no one was watching from above or below.

  “Put me down,” Bernice demanded petulantly, and Nia tried.

  But Bernice couldn’t stand very well, so she sagged back down against Nia’s supporting shoulder. Nia stuck one arm behind Bernice’s back and worked one hand under her shoulder, suspending her as if she were a dress on a hanger.

  “I can walk,” Bernice protested, but since this clearly w
as not the case, Nia didn’t let go of her.

  The battered shell still hung from her hand, swinging beside her hip. It anchored itself to her disjointed joints, swaying with all the grace and weight of an anchor.

  “You can’t walk. We’ll stop for a minute,” Nia said. She didn’t know where she was, anyway. East, as far as she knew. She must have taken them east, because she’d been running away from the water. Yet again, that was the bulk and the whole of her cunning escape plan, and now it looked ridiculous.

  Bernice thrashed herself free of Nia’s support, and Nia let her go. Her knees buckled and folded. She slumped to the ground, and Nia dropped down beside her.

  The forest swelled above them, treetops so dense they cast shadows like thick lace curtains. All the trunks were skinny and rough, and palmettos carpeted the ground with their spread-fingered fans of sharp, fibrous leaves. Birds twittered and squirrels chattered, and a smooth-skinned snake screwed itself into the ground to escape them.

  “Let me see you,” Nia said, positioning herself in front of Bernice.

  “No.”

  “Let me see how bad it is, and if I can help.”

  Bernice snorted, but wouldn’t lift her head. Her caramel yellow curls were sticky with a blue tarlike substance that must’ve been blood, or something worse. Her head was still crushed and dented on one side.

  Her arms were mending, though, and her legs were coming back together, too. The things that had been pulverized were knitting into solid bones again. Nia could see them under Bernice’s skin, the way the fragments sought one another and clung, and stretched, and hardened.

  “That must hurt,” she observed.

  “Everything does.” She was slurring less, and her lips were working better. In fact, it cheered Nia somewhat to notice that Bernice even had lips. Watching her talk without them had turned her stomach.

  “You look . . . it looks . . .” Nia hunted for words. “Not as bad as it did.” It was true, and it was encouraging. She still felt like she was damning with faint praise, as her grandmother used to say.

  Bernice managed half of a laugh, which made her head bob and her chin tap against her throat. She had not yet looked up. “You look . . . different. A little weird. No offense.”

  Nia withdrew and leaned her back against the nearest tree, which set her a couple of feet back from her cousin. She kept a wary eye on her, but she did not doubt that the other girl was too damaged to go very far. And besides, Mossfeaster was coming. She could sense it, and almost hear it. Soon, she would have a second pair of eyes to keep watch.

  And there was always the chance that Sam would catch up. Or not, she thought. With no direction more firm than “east” and no roads nearby that she knew of, she wondered if they hadn’t lost him.

  She was almost upset at the thought; but she was forced to admit that if he was altogether gone, then it would certainly be for his own good.

  Determining Differences

  What’d they do to you, anyway? You’re . . . you look bigger or something. You look harder. I figured you’d lived. I never thought you’d drown or anything; you know how to swim. Don’t you?”

  Nia said, “That was the point.” She’d led her there, into the water, trying to get away. She remembered it vividly, as if it had only just happened. As if it were still happening, somewhere in the back of her mind—in another place very close.

  “The hair’s kind of a mess, though.”

  “I know, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

  Bernice grinned. Nia could only tell because there was a twitch at the ear, and a tightening of the sprouting skin across her jaw. “I used to know a guy in the city. He could do anything with anybody’s hair.”

  She held up her hand, or she tried to. Her wrist hadn’t healed enough to hold itself out straight, so the bronze shell still weighed it down. Her skin was coming together around it; her bones were molding themselves to its edges.

  “I didn’t let it go, even when she tried to make me. I didn’t give it back. How am I going to get it off?” she asked. For a second, she sounded small and scared.

  “I don’t know. Are we safe, do you think?”

  “No. There’s no such thing as safe. Where do you think we’d be safe, huh?”

  Nia shook her head and drew her knees up to her chest. She wrapped her arms around them and hugged herself that way. “No place, I guess.”

  Nia examined her cousin’s hand, running her fingertips along the lumpy skin.

  Bernice held still and let Nia look. “She was going to use it to wake up something called Leviathan. He’s supposed to be an old god, asleep under the ocean. If he wakes up, he’ll destroy the world. But I didn’t let her. I saved the world, did you see?”

  “I saw.”

  The telltale crackling of Mossfeaster’s impending arrival chased away the last of the wildlife. Now the forest was silent except for the rustling assembly of the monster.

  “I should warn you . . . ,” Nia tried to tell Bernice.

  “You don’t have to warn me. I’ve seen it before, the thing that’s coming. Mother beat the shit out of him, over on Captiva.”

  “No, she didn’t,” Nia argued out of reflex.

  Mossfeaster shook its head, and a collection of leaves and dirt shook loose in a fluttering spray. “Yes, she did.” He looked at Bernice then, and said, “Though it’s worth your well-being to know, small traitor, that I permitted the abuse. On my own territory, I am stronger than she remembers.”

  “So what were you doing there, then?”

  “Watching.” The creature came to stand in front of Bernice, then crouched down beside her. It lifted her hand into its own giant, loosely shaped pads and examined the shape and structure of the mutilated lump, melded beneath the skin like a peculiar tumor. “Imagine, if you like, an old machine with many parts. The old machine is solid, and in good working order—like the water machine Sam stole from the island.”

  “The what?” Bernice asked. She didn’t struggle against Mossfeaster’s inspection. She let the monster turn her hand left and right without complaining, even when the bones ground against the metal.

  “It was a fire truck,” Nia clarified for her cousin’s benefit. “It had big water tanks in the back.”

  “Oh.”

  “A fire truck, as you said. Imagine an old machine like that, and imagine that it has been left for many years. If you found it again, and you needed it to work, you might have to test it a bit first. You might press its buttons and pull its levers to make sure that everything has held together.” Mossfeaster traced a line around a spot where the skin was forming a tent across the shell’s opening. It was as taut as a drum, and when Mossfeaster tapped its thumb against the tightly stretched membrane, it made a hollow sound.

  Nia shrugged. “Sure.”

  “If any given part breaks or falls into disrepair, you would not have the means to fix it, so you hope for the best. And now, you must imagine that the machine is an entire planet, and that there are mechanisms in place that regulate the way it will operate.”

  Bernice had her head down, and Mossfeaster looked over it at Nia. With a twitch of its head, it indicated that it wanted Nia to come closer. She frowned, not gathering what it meant. Mossfeaster used its head to indicate Bernice, and then Nia understood.

  She crawled away from her tree and sat down beside her cousin. She draped an arm around her shoulder and carefully locked her elbows to pin her without alarming her.

  “Humans have laws and manners, water and wind have their currents and tides, and—I’m going to ask you to hold still, now,” it said to Bernice.

  “What? Why?”

  Mossfeaster didn’t answer, except to tell Nia, “Cover her mouth.”

  “Cover my—”

  Nia pushed her hand across Bernice’s mouth and was relieved to feel a thin cheek and not naked teeth beneath her palm. But Bernice struggled and bit on general principle. Then she began to shriek through Nia’s fingers as Mossfeaster tore the she
ll, one strip of skin at a time, free from her mutilated hand.

  As the creature worked, it continued to speak in the same casual tone. “Fire must have air and fuel, and rocks may stand or crumble depending upon their composition.” It ignored the hideous ripping sound of her slick, tight skin as it dug around, fighting the tendons and stringy muscles for possession of the object. “So, too, are the laws of those you cannot see. The old gods, the old kings and their kind—they, too, have their governing principles.”

  Bernice wrestled against Nia, but Nia was stronger and she had Mossfeaster to help. She tried not to look at the gruesome operation, but it was hard to turn away. Even as Mossfeaster drew the shell back and held it away from Bernice’s body, the meat inside her hands flailed in tentacle strips and tried to hold the thing. They stretched and begged for it, even once it was free altogether.

  When the shell was extracted, there was little left of the hand that had cupped it; but one piece at a time, the torn ends found one another and settled down to join again. The dark bile that passed for Bernice’s blood oozed back beneath the flesh and left long stretches of scars that looked like they’d been painted with pitch.

  And when the creature had finished, and it held the bronze thing up in its hand, the shell gleamed with sticky slime. Tatters of flesh hung from its ornate frills, and Bernice could barely glance at it without making a face that said she was going to be sick.

  “You didn’t have to be so rough about it,” she accused, massaging her damaged hand with her less-damaged hand.

  “Tools are for men and monkeys,” he said. “And if we did not remove it, you would have been dead or worse before much longer.”

  “Nuh-uh. I was healing. I was healing around the thing, yeah. But I was getting better.”

  “No,” it argued. “You were closing around it. It would have destroyed you from the center out, like its composite materials destroyed your lover. Don’t you know why Arahab let you pluck it from her breast? Even she can’t hold it long, not inside herself like that. I do not care for the sensation of it, either.”