Given to the Sea

  “What was his name?” I ask.

  “If he had one, he never shared it. Your father came to us half mad, a child from the woods. A Tangata had been at him, bit clear through his leg. But when our healers tried to tend to him, he lunged at them like a wild animal himself, wouldn’t be touched. He couldn’t understand them when they said the wound was festering.”

  “He didn’t speak your language?” Dara asks.

  “No, fierce one. The Feneen have cast-offs from all the peoples, and all the languages as well. Whoever birthed that poor boy kept him alive long enough for him to learn to fend for himself, but whatever tongue he learned in the cradle had long since gone from his head.

  “I know that people say we’re monsters, and worse. And yes, some of us aren’t easy to look upon, and there’s more than one whose wrongness is of the head and not the body, but pity runs deep in our kind. Pity for those whom the rest of the world chooses to cast away.

  “We fed him as best we could, but he came only close enough to take the food we laid out, then retreated into the woods to eat it. Eventually, his wound was so rotten a fever laid him low, and a healer found him one morning, out of his head. She brought him in, cleaned him up. Even as he grew into a man, he wouldn’t let anyone touch him.”

  Ank looks at me as my skin tightens against my own bones, shrinking into myself as I learn why I am the way I am. Though the Feneen’s words are heard by everyone, we both know they are meant only for me.

  “Your mother came to us looking for a mate, and knew her business well. She was a bold one, lined up all the men and inspected them, asking what their defect was if it was not obvious. Your father was skulking in the shadows, curious about what was happening, but unable to understand any of it. She spotted him and he ran off, like a deer with its tail in the wind.”

  Ank smiles to himself, lost in the memory. “She insisted on him.”

  “Seems a poor choice,” Dara says. “I’ve hunted many deer. They’re leery of a leaf falling, and impossible to get next to.”

  “For Khosa’s mother, that was the whole point.”

  “Why a Feneen at all?” I ask. “If my mother was so bold why not take her choice of any man?”

  “She was more than bold, child,” Ank goes on. “She was bitter about the fate that sent her to the waves and demanded her child do the same. There was no escape for her. Yes, she could slip her Keepers and visit the Feneen, but her will wasn’t strong enough to control her own feet, and they would lead to the sea, eventually.”

  “Yes,” I agree. “Eventually.”

  “She did her part,” he goes on. “It took many moonchanges to draw your father to her, and in the end, a bottle of wine overcame his dread of touch. You’ve got him in you, and you won’t be bred, which was as your Mother wished.”

  I feel a sinking in my belly, as if a cold stone from the sea has found a place there before I danced into the waves.

  “Your mother knew any baby born of her with an extra limb or a missing eye would come right back to the Feneen and land her in someone’s bed to get a healthy baby before she went to the waves. So she picked something that would bide its time, hide in the small things. And here we are—she’s gone to the sea, and you the only one left, a taint in your blood that means you’ve no inclination to make another.”

  My strength goes out from my knees, and I sink to the cave floor slowly.

  “Oh, Mother,” I say to no one at all, my voice echoing hollowly. “Mother, you’ve ended the world.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Khosa

  THE WETNESS OF THE STONE FLOOR SEEPS THROUGH MY skirts, but I hardly feel it. My mind can see only a madman, shying away from people, and a girl with a glint in her eye and a determined heart.

  I had hoped it would be better, a story of caring and trust, an echo of the bearable pressure of Abna’s hand on mine, affection that grew from conversations like the one I’d shared with Vincent, or even a flash of desire as I have felt for Donil. Instead my mother picked my father with cunning, and won him over with a wine bottle.

  I am meant to fail at the only thing I was born for.

  A numbness sinks in, not of the chill in my skirt or the heavy air around me. I know this feeling, following in the wake of strong emotion. I slip away from my surroundings, my body left behind as my mind recoils from whatever I have felt, slipping deeper into myself so that I can be affected no more.

  I hear Vincent and Donil saying my name, but my ears are hollow recipients of the words being spoken, caught and stored for later when I can process them. My hands rest in my lap, thumb and forefinger rubbing a fold of my skirt for comfort. My tongue is slack, and my teeth have caught the inside of my cheek. They clamp down, pressure holding my mouth shut against the scream that wants to erupt.

  My eyes have found their own solace, a pattern in the rock above Ank’s shoulder. They run over it, my mind jumping at this new distraction, this logic amid the rushing inside of me. I follow the rise and fall, a picture forming that I’d not expected. A hand was pressed there once, faded ink left behind that barely holds the outline now. But it’s there. And another—my eyes skip to the next, deftly comparing the two to see if it’s the same person, or many. A game played by a wandering child or something meant to be seen by more than a proud mother.

  Conversation continues; the fire pops and sends a spark that alights on my hand. It sputters into nothing. The pain is not worth my attention as I go to the wall, fingers tracing the drops and curves of what could be dismissed as shadows forming patterns I know, pictures I have looked on for quite some time.

  I grab a stick from the fire, holding the flaming end aloft as I follow the walls of the cave, out past the glow of Ank’s fire. There is a tug at my waist as the scarf meant to protect me from the sea pulls tight, but I push on, and the resistance falls away. I know Donil has followed me, but I don’t look back.

  “What is it?” Donil says, as I press my hand against the rock.

  “We have to go,” I say. “I need to get back.”

  He doesn’t question me, only nods. “Vincent,” he calls toward the fire.

  I’m already leaving, with or without them, my feet slipping over rocks and my ankles bruising against their sides. Donil is beside me, his hand still wrapped in the scarf that loops my waist.

  “Is it the sea?” he asks.

  But I have no speech, no room for pain, no ears for hearing. There is only an image in my mind, and the deep conviction that though the sea may get me eventually, I won’t be alone.

  CHAPTER 25

  Vincent

  WE RIDE ALL NIGHT, LEAVING ANK AND THE GLOW OF the fire behind as the tide finds its way to the horses’ hooves. The moon sinks, the sea enveloping even that as my mount tires. Dara is beside me, her face grim and determined as she watches the end of Khosa’s scarf flutter behind her, long pulled from Donil’s hand in this mad dash for home, this run driven by something none of us understands, but we had no chance to question.

  Donil keeps his horse between Khosa and the sea. I hear him call to her once or twice, but she shares nothing, only spurring her mount to go faster when it flags for even a moment.

  We break into the city, the clatter of hooves against stone bringing people to their windows before sunup, curses littering our path. Khosa is the first into the courtyard, jumping off her mount and falling into a pile beside it while the horse heaves for breath. I rush to help, but she’s already gained her feet and goes ever forward, her dress dripping sea spray, her soaked scarf dragging behind her.

  “What the depths is wrong with her?” Dara hisses at my side, keeping pace with us as we follow Khosa through halls still sleeping, the first of the servants making their bleary-eyed way toward fireplaces that hold only cold ash.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “Maybe something Ank said? Donil, do you know?”

  He shakes his head as we foll
ow Khosa deeper into the castle, following the wet trail she leaves behind. “She saw the hands on the cave wall, and it sent her into this . . .”

  “Madness?” Dara supplies.

  “She’s not a lunatic,” I spit back as Khosa wrenches open the double doors to the library. We follow to find her spinning in circles, eyes to the ceiling, muttering to herself.

  “For certain?” Dara asks.

  “There!” Khosa halts, pointing at a map that hangs from the vaulted ceiling. “Do you see it?”

  “What?”

  “On the cave wall, there were paintings,” Khosa says, shoving her hair out of her eyes.

  “Vincent and I saw hands, last time we were there,” Donil says, watching her carefully.

  “There’s more, if you know how to look,” Khosa says, turning to a wide, low shelf and pulling aside scrolls. She unrolls five before she finds the one she wants, flinging it wide and heaving it onto the stone table in the center of the room. “There,” she says triumphantly, and looks at us as if a point has been made.

  It’s a map of the shore, faded with age. Even I can see that the city is much larger now, sprawling farther down the coast. The edges of the paper are dark with smudges from fingers long dead, the ink faded with time. No one has looked at this for centuries as it rotted here, obsolete. Now the four of us gather around it, wet and shivering, its musty smell filling our noses.

  “What are we looking for?” Donil asks gently, and I can hear that he hopes as much as I that there is some logic at work here.

  “Here.” Khosa’s finger stabs at the map. “The Horns.”

  Two fingers of rock, colored black and looming high, jut from the sea, a trail of smaller rocks leading inward to meet the shore like the curve of a sickle moon.

  “That’s not the Horns,” Dara argues. “They’re not half so tall, and too close to the shore, anyway.”

  Khosa nods as if she’s happy with what Dara says. “And look there.” She points to the ceiling again, where the hanging map has begun to undulate with the first of a morning breeze off the sea, the black ripples drawn long ago being given real life. “See the Horns?”

  I squint as the gray light of dawn breaks in through the window, illuminating two spires, shorter than in the earlier map. I glance between the different drawings.

  “I don’t understand . . . ,” I say, and then my eyes fall on the curve of smaller rocks. The map above shows fewer, the shorter ones no longer existing.

  “Khosa,” I say, my breath coming in shallow gasps. “What did you see in the caves?”

  “It’s barely there,” she says. “When they first painted them, they never guessed the tides would touch the ink, but it has. Slowly.”

  “What does the cave have to do with the maps?” Dara asks, no patience left.

  “I saw the Horns,” Khosa says. “Painted there, strong and tall. I’ve spent days in here, brooding over books and maps, memorizing shorelines, and all the while, that map stared down at me. I saw the Horns tonight, in the cave, unmistakably. There were people on them.”

  “Nonsense,” Dara snorts. “No one would go that far out to sea.”

  “You’re not understanding,” Khosa says. “The Horns were close by, and easy to reach by climbing from these rocks to the next.” Khosa trips her fingers along the paper beneath her fingers, alighting from the shore, jumping from rock to rock to land on the Horns.

  “If those are the Horns, then where have all those other rocks gone?” Dara argues.

  “They’re underwater,” Khosa says, still smiling as exhaustion finally overcomes her and pulls her down in a tangle of wet skirts. “Underwater and far out to sea, with the Horns barely peeking out at low tide.”

  She laughs, the sound jarring as the gray light of morning fills the library. “The waters are rising. My blood may mark me as the Given, but eventually all of Stille will drown.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Witt

  HOW IS THE SEA TODAY?” WITT’S UNPRACTICED EYES SCAN the horizon from the cliff outcropping, glad to be back among the stones of Pietra.

  “Sparing,” the Lure answers him as he reels in an empty line.

  Behind them the wind whistles in the cave where the Lure lives, his life dictated by the rise and fall of the seas, the duty of feeding his people a daily weight. Many such caves dot the cliff side, the sound of lines singing in Witt’s ears as hooks sail out to sea, most of them coming back empty.

  “Fish don’t want to be caught,” Witt says.

  “It’s more than that, begging your pardon, my Lithos,” the Lure says, rebaiting his line from the tackle box that rests by his side. “I’ve tried all the tricks, everything my father taught me, and his before him. Fish never want to be caught.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “They’re moving away. I watch the sea. I know how it flows when it’s moving over a school of fish. I can see the flash of a scale halfway to the horizon, but no one can see what isn’t there.”

  “I was told they had simply moved farther out?”

  “At first, yes.” The Lure nods. “Some of my fellows thought perhaps the Lusca had taken to eating them, but it’s human flesh they want, and we feed the beasts well enough as it is. Now the schools are out of sight entirely, gone from these shores.”

  “For what? There is nothing else.”

  The Lure shrugs. “They’re fish. They don’t need land.”

  “Fair point.”

  Silence passes between them as the Lure casts again, the feathered bait he chose this time flashing red in the morning sun as it arcs out to sea. He has a practiced hand and a knowledgeable wrist, the slightest of movements sending the line far from the cliff side, never tangling with the gossamer strands of other Lures’ lines, which hang from the cliff like spider webs.

  Webs that catch little.

  The Lure watches Witt for a moment, measuring the irritation in the Lithos’s eyes before speaking. “I’ve got an idea about what the fish might be thinking, if I can speak freely.”

  “Please.”

  The Lure takes a deep breath. “I remember my old cave. Down lower. It was flooded out years ago, and I moved up here, more and more Lures joining me as time passed. Used to be the sea was far below; now I can count the chops even on a misty day.”

  “It’s no secret,” Witt says. “The Pietra have long known the sea is rising. We send out bodies in boats, so as not to use the soil for the dead. The Lithos before me had the foresight to clear out the Indiri before they guessed at the sea’s intention. Their land is ours, useless as it is to us now that we know nothing can grow where Indiri blood was spilled. What’s this have do with fish?”

  “They’re leaving the shores, my Lithos. Won’t come near us for even the tastiest bait. Sea’s been rising since before my time, but I’ve never reeled in so many empty hooks. This is something different, something more. Like the land itself is telling them to keep a distance for their own good.”

  “So you think the land is talking to the fish?” Witt raises his eyebrows.

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “You’ve never met an Indiri, then,” the Lure grunts.

  “Very briefly. I was there when they were cleared from the land.”

  “Then you should know better than most that just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean it’s not the truth. The Indiri carry the memories of their forebears at birth, right down to holding a sword and shearing a head from its shoulders.”

  “I remember,” Witt says. Children had fought alongside their parents that day, blades flashing just as quickly, tiny hands taking out unsuspecting horses at the knees as they rode past. Some of the Indiri had been as small as he was at the time, a line of Pietra boys sitting on ponies to watch the massacre, an advisor standing nearby to see who wept at
the sight.

  Witt hadn’t even flinched.

  “I remember things too,” the Lure continues. “I’ve had a lifetime to watch the sea, and I’ve never seen anything like this. The fish are leaving, and the Lusca come in more numbers. What we live on is going, and what kills us draws nearer, like they know more bodies are coming to the water soon. There’s something wrong in our world, my Lithos. And though I can’t tell you what, it stands true.”

  “Very well,” Witt says. “We’ve brought back sheep and seed from Hyllen. People may not like it, but they’ll learn to farm before they starve. We won’t need the fish anymore.”

  “And what of the Lures?”

  Witt smiles. “I guess we won’t need you either.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Vincent

  TELLING MY GRANDFATHER THAT EVENTUALLY OUR ENTIRE kingdom will be underwater falls to me. Our hasty arrival, Khosa’s wild cries from the library, and our wet footprints through the castle created a rush of whispers among the servants that I had no chance to stem before being called for. As I enter the meeting room and Gammal’s heavy gaze falls upon me, I’m reminded that though he is my grandfather, he is also the king. And though I had felt the beginning of something between myself and Khosa, gossamer threads of a web just being spun, I’m forcefully reminded that she is still the Given.

  “Vincent,” he says, “I woke to a bit of a clamor, and you at the center of it.”

  “I am sorry, Grandfather,” I say.

  “Sorry?” he repeats. “You took the Given out of the castle. And to the sea of all places. Tides, boy!”

  “It’s a blessing that I did,” I tell him. “She learned things in the cave where we met the Feneen, saw patterns where the rest of us saw only ink.”

  He pauses for a moment, my voice holding enough edge to penetrate his own irritation. “And what did she learn? Nothing good, by the look on your face.”