Chapter 30 #4
But not out loud... in my head . A rush of images—memories, sounds, even tastes—ran through my mind. The heaviness of a pitch-black seabed and the different,
subtle flavors of salt. The song of whales and clicks of dolphins. Chomping through a wooden hull and being summoned— trapped —by a net of blood. I clamped my hands over my ears, but it did nothing to stop the cacophony of noise, underwater visions
flashing before my eyes as a shining spectral ribbon of bright yellow scales, like a rope covered in fish skin, blossomed
between me and the marid.
“Oh, absolutely the fuck not,” I said, staggering to my feet. The ribbon flickered in and out of sight like a sunbeam crossed
by a cloud, but now I could also feel it, a hook in my heart. “I do not wish to be connected to you!” I slashed at the ribbon with the meteor blade, but it did
nothing, passing through the ribbon as if it weren’t even there.
The marid seemed to share my feelings. It roared and swayed, skittering about like an angry drunk.
With a crackling sound and a rush of acerbic air, its giant blisters began healing over.
The crust of jagged barnacles and dead coral that had fused the ship pieces to its head broke off, falling to the beach.
It cried out again, then clearly fed up with all our human nonsense, it rushed toward the sea.
The movement flung me backward. I slid madly down the slippery wet shell like leaves rushing along a swollen river. Desperate,
I lashed out for anything to break my fall, but there was nothing. Not even my blade would stick in its shell as the ocean
came up faster and faster...
I crashed through the water hard enough for my vision to flash black, part of my body probably wondering if we might just
give up and go into the void this time. Still wearing my armor and several heavy weapons, I submerged instantly and sank fast.
Swim, you idiot! After all this, drowning would be an almost embarrassing way to go. I tried to fight for the surface, but I was too dazed
to coordinate my limbs—to even figure out which direction was up in the crashing midnight water. My lungs burning, I kicked and I kicked but a wave caught me, dashing me into the sandy bottom.
It refused to let go, spinning me around and around—
A pair of arms grabbed me.
I could offer no fight and little assistance as I was hauled to the surface, but then air , precious and sweet. I gasped, coughing and choking.
“I’ve got you, sister,” Majed panted, treading water at my side. “I’ve got you.” He cut the straps holding my armor in place,
dragging the jacket and chain mail over my head.
“I thought you were lying,” I wheezed. “About still being able to swim like that.”
“See what happens when you underestimate me?” he asked, breathing fast, though his voice was tart as usual. “Should have taken
me ashore in the first place. We might have never gotten to this point at all.”
I was too tired to argue. Dalila and my shipmates helped us through the surf.
I could still sense the marid in the back of my mind, feel the tug in my heart as I crawled onto the beach to find the rest of my crew.
Literally none of them had fled into the cave as I had commanded.
Terrible pirates, they were. No sense of self-preservation.
And speaking of no sense of self-preservation. “I need to go after Falco,” I said hoarsely.
“It is too late,” Raksh replied, his voice somber. “They will be beyond the door by now. And even if what dwells there, in
the place between realms, doesn’t kill them, it has already started.” He jerked his head toward the sky.
I followed his gaze. At the very edge of the full moon, a delicate shadowy bite had been taken.
The eclipse had begun.
“Amina, what is he talking about?” Dalila demanded.
I stared at the moon, swallowing the lump in my throat. I wanted to lie down in the wet sand and sleep for a hundred years.
New strength be damned, I was exhausted and battered. I’d lost most of my borrowed weapons, all of my armor, and a lot of
my strength. I was fighting magic I did not understand on half information about lunar patterns, and my blasted knee was beginning to pulse yet again.
More, I had already saved my crew, had I not? Maybe Raksh was right, maybe whatever was beyond that door would kill Falco
before he possessed the Moon and used it to wreak God only knew what horrors on my people. Maybe this wasn’t magic that risked my daughter, who had always seemed so preciously mortal.
But I could not take that gamble. And if I was being honest with myself, I could not leave Dunya to such a fate.
I rose shakily to my feet. “I need to try.”
Tinbu grabbed my ankle—or rather attempted to from where he was lying on the sand, having Dalila tend his broken leg for the
second time. “We will go with you.”
I gently shook free. “Forgive me, my friends, but you cannot follow me into this.”
“Nor can I,” Raksh warned sharply. “No threats this time, Amina. What dwells beyond that door is a prison for beings such
as myself, a trap that can never be unsprung. I would rather be enslaved by Falco than damned for eternity.”
“Then I go alone.” I raised my hand to stop my friends’ brewing protests and crossed to retrieve my sword from Yazid’s body.
I would take that and the meteor dagger, praying they were enough. “I’m sorry, but I’ll be faster without you. I’ll explain
everything later, I promise... but Falco is no longer the only one touched by the supernatural.”
Majed gasped, but before any of them could stop me, I ran. My body protested, but as I had on the peris’ island, I flew upon
the sand and into the cave, sprinting faster than any human had the right to.
The door called to me like the ghost of a lover, a haunting I did not want and yet couldn’t deny. I had planned on taking
one of the lamps from inside the cave but did not need it. Whatever magic ruled this place glowed brightly in my new Sight,
illuminating the twisting tunnel. The door tugged at my heart like an invisible grappling hook, pulling me deeper and deeper
until I once again stood before the bronze entrance with its grisly scenes.
It had been left wide open.
A faintly cool breeze whispered past, laced with murmurs that seemed to fade the more I tried to parse them out. With a prayer,
I stepped through and the world turned over.
The dank air of the cave, the brass door, and dripping water... all gone, replaced by a black void darker than space emptied
of its stars. There was an unearthly screech in my ear, and I yelped, stumbling back.
By all rights, I should have stepped back through the bronze doors onto stone steps.
Instead, I stepped onto creaking wood, the darkness giving way to shadows and a smoke-choked night sky as though one by one veils were plucked from my eyes.
I was outside, the moon a bare sickle, the cold stars hidden.
I instinctively steadied my feet as whatever I was standing on rose and fell, like the chest of a sleeping beast—after my encounter with the marid, this was not a feeling I was keen to experience again.
But it wasn’t a monster: there was the knocking of the ocean against a hull and the crackle of burning sailcloth.
A boat , I realized, for there is no world I know more intimately than the deck of a ship. But not just any boat. With rising horror,
I realized that I recognized this ship.
I recognized this night.
And there, chained to the ship’s mast where I had burned him so many years ago, I recognized Asif.
“ Amina ,” he wept. “Please help me.”