Chapter Eleven #2
Eda smiled a wan smile as their eyes met, then released her throat to reach out and pat his hand, a little sadly. Kai barely felt it; he was numb with shock.
“But you didn’t know—no one knew. Only—”
Even now, her name tripped painfully off his tongue, but he pressed on; he had to, even if the shame gripping his throat grew stronger with every word until his voice was barely a whisper on the swill of the water.
“Only Avette.”
“Only Avette,” Eda repeated, the words soft and hollow all at once.
“I thought it strange when she approached me on the banks of the Laune. She’d never shown a lick of interest in any Merrow that wasn’t royalty—that wasn’t you.
But that morning, she was sweet as honeysuckle.
Told me you’d been regaling her with stories of the Merrow.
Gushed about our rich culture and fascinating folklore.
Told me she’d love to hear more. There was one story in particular that had moved her to tears; The Pearl of All the World, she’d called it. ”
Kai’s pulse stopped entirely, his heart a useless weight in his chest.
“What was the basis for that story, she wanted to know. I told her it was a myth, like any other. And later, when you disappeared for a day and a night and returned worn and broken, yet still insisted on dragging your weary bones ashore, I went to the Elder Council. We deliberated on the best course forward, but Avette took no such pause. I had come ashore to find you when it happened. When she happened to us all.”
He felt his eyes close against another heavy wave of shame. When he opened them, every gaze was on him, adding to that weight that pressed him down from every angle. He met Eda’s with difficulty.
“You never said anything.”
She patted his hand again.
“I did not think you needed reprimanding, sweet. It would not have changed anything, in the end. You were deceived, and you were working to set it right.”
But Kai was missing something; somewhere between Eda’s rightful suspicions about Avette and Daithí’s knowledge of what Kai had done, there was a fracture, a missing piece. Without it, the story didn’t quite hold water.
“How did you know?” he asked, and that single question held a dozen more. How did she know what he did for Avette, how he’d tried to fix it, about the sliver of truth in that old Merrow folktale, about any of it?
It was not possible to sigh at these depths, with no air to do so, but Eda’s shoulders heaved all the same. “As I’ve told you once and again, I know a great many things.”
Kai curled his fist beneath her palm, molars gritting painfully. Nonsense. More of this ceaseless prophetic and poetic nonsense.
“No, Eda,” he ground out, the water hissing so tight through his teeth that little bubbles erupted in their wake. “No cryptic Elder’s Council wisdom, no damned prophecies. How did you know?”
“You don’t get to be angry with her, Kai,” Os snapped. “Perhaps she guessed, as I did, because you are not and have never been subtle in your affections.”
Kai felt the room tilt as he reeled back, physically struck. That age-old argument loomed between them like a hissing beast, and now, it had grown claws. You lead with your heart, Kai. You walk chest-first through life without a scrap of armour.
The salt on his tongue soured, but Eda went on before he could muster a response.
“The point is, I knew,” she said, voice rising through the water. “I knew enough to warn the Council that something was coming. That just a drop of the Mother’s deepest waters could have the power to shape the world.”
“But unfortunately,” Daithí cut in. “The deepest heart of the Laune was not attainable.”
They all glanced up at their host, and Kai knew from the swirl of silence that he was not the only one who had half-forgotten where they were. Daithí clearly read the waters the very same way.
“I apologise,” said Daithí. He raised his brow, a distinctly human gesture so at odds with his strange features. “I thought you might like to know how I became a sea beast, but if you would prefer to bicker amongst yourselves—”
Kai bowed his head, and in his periphery, noted that the others followed suit, Eda reaching out a hand to gesture for Daithí to continue.
“We apologise,” she said, and Kai was glad to let her speak for them all; his throat had once and truly sealed, aching with regret. “These old wounds can be prodded another time. We would be grateful to hear your story.”
Daithí nodded, apparently placated.
“The deepest heart of the Laune, the Mother’s Cavern, was unattainable.
The Frost had slowed, but it had not stopped, and time was scarce.
Weeks of tunnelling through the ice had weakened those who sought the depths.
They had not the strength to bear the unnatural chill in their lungs, let alone the unyielding pressure of the depths.
One returned to us having lost her ability to hear.
Another lost his life; his heart simply stopped.
They laid him to rest at the mouth of the Cavern, as close to the Mother as they could bear to swim.
It was treacherous, and stories of their ordeal have become legend within our clan.
Their suffering was, after all, our new beginning.
They returned with little more than a hundred seaglass vials of the Mother’s waters.
Not enough for each of us, and certainly not the most potent, but enough to be worth it, we thought.
We created pendants and pins to be worn when we needed to call upon the waters.
Most of these, we distributed amongst the families.
Some, divided among the Elder Council. And the rest remained with those who retrieved them; a small token, we thought at first, a fair prize for all that they had gone through for us. ”
Daithí fell silent a moment.
“We were too busy, at first, building Nua Laune. We did not notice the subtle changes in ourselves or our community. But over time, we realised our mistake. This was not a prize, but a curse. It is—it is a perversion of the Mother’s gift.
Mere mortals are not made to withstand such proximity to Her power, even in this diluted form.
There was violence. Disorder—but only from those who wore the Mother’s waters.
They had become unstable and quite unlike themselves.
The pendants made us stronger, but hostile. They warped us.”
At a small hum of understanding, Daithí paused, black eyes swivelling to where Alun sat with his cheeks darkening beneath the blue glow of the overhead rock.
“I–Sorry. I just—that’s how you became …?”
Al trailed into abashed silence at the twist of Daithí’s lips; or perhaps it was the slight gleam of his fangs where they parted.
“Do you find me hostile, young one?”
Alun spluttered, small bubbles bursting from his babbling lips.
He shot a hurried glance around, face falling when he found only Oswalt’s palm over his face, and Kai’s own unhelpful grimace.
Privately, Kai had assumed the very same thing.
But Daithí swept Al’s stutters aside, the waters stirring around his hand as he waved it.
“I did not change because I wore an Adhlian pendant. In a way, the opposite is true. We agreed, most of us, to wear the pendants only when entirely necessary. The Elders would Wield the waters occasionally, for the good of Nua Laune. The heads of each family would Wield at their own discretion. But the select few who had claimed a prize for their ordeal beneath the Laune—they chose not to part from their pendants. Ever. Their decision, their experiences, had shaped them as the waters would eventually shape the rest of us. They became the Sealgair; our hunters. They live among us still, unchanged from the very day they returned from that hell that was once our home. The pendants preserved them. And that, you see, is the secret to my own longevity. At eighty years of age, I was inducted into the Council of Elders.”
He laughed, an oddly dry sound for all the water surrounding them.