26. Sacrifice
26
Sacrifice
Celyn
L osing Safira's trust taught me the meaning of pain. I had never been injured, physically or emotionally, and I would have been happy never to experience such a thing. The very thought of her filled me with the desire to rage and to succumb to oblivion. She had plunged the daggers of her words into my soul, and I had responded with all the brutality I carried within me. I hadn't even chosen to follow such a path. I simply had , stepping into the same vengeance I wreaked on those who tried to steal me, forcing it on the one person I couldn't bear to lose.
Her terror only fed that rage, the same pattern I had followed so many times before. But then she closed her eyes, dull despair washing into me, and I finally saw what I was doing to her. I threw myself away from her, the horror of what I'd done grabbing me by the throat, and when she strove for freedom I gave her my shores.
She was lost to me. I couldn't even step onto the island without remembering the sight and sound of her, with such sharp wrenching in my chest that I had to return to my waters. The first time I tried, I collapsed to my knees, the force of my fall sending answering pain singing through my body.
She didn't come to me, and I couldn't go to her. When the boat touched my waters, I didn't even know it was her. Safira didn't so much as let her reflection fall onto my surface.
When she dove into me, throwing herself from the boat into my waters, I knew it could only be because of some great calamity. I kept my promises to her, keeping her safe beneath my waves, and when I saw the terror in her eyes at the sight of me I didn't try to comfort her. I went to the surface, to see who the power was that had so frightened her.
He was handsome, a lissome human with strong features. Earrings marched up his ears, and a ring shone in his lower lip and in one brow. He wore his long bark-brown hair in elaborate braids, pinned up in complicated designs. When I lifted myself to stand on my waters on two feet, his nostrils flared and his unnatural violet eyes narrowed.
I didn't let him claim Safira. Even if I hadn't given her a promise to keep her safe as long as she was in my waters, I would have made the same choice. A man's lifespan would match hers, the years eating her alive. I had lived for thousands of years; what was fifty more to me?
It was an easy choice. Stepping onto the shore and bowing my head for the sort of monstrous creature who would enslave a woman and accept me as a slave in her place, was far more difficult.
My connection to my waters was all but severed by the leather straps the man called to him and drew over my face. The binding held my entire self, bending me to his will. Any command he gave me I would be helpless against.
Fifty years, I told myself, as I knelt for my master.
He straddled my back, the contact disgusting. I remembered the way it had felt to have Safira astride me that first time, her thighs pressed against my back and sides as I carried her, filled with a joy that beat against my chest. I remembered, too, how it had felt to have her terrified, my agony fed by her fear as I showed her exactly what sort of thing she had been treating like a friend.
I heard her crawl out of my lake, forcing the water out of her body. The reins tightened, the bit in my mouth tasting sharp and bitter, pressing down against my tongue. I didn't look back at her. I couldn't bear to see relief in her eyes, or happiness.
Heels struck my sides, and I surged forward into a gallop, running across the surface of my waters.
Would she miss me? Would she look at the sun playing on my surface, and wish to speak to me once more? When the summer came, would she swim out into the water, and remember overwhelming me with the touch of her hand?
Fifty years, I thought again. If I was lucky, in fifty years my master would be dead, and I could tear the bridle from my face and let myself feel the horror and the agony of it all. I could return to my waters and never leave them again, never speak to another human, never trust.
A water-horse's lake is merely any other lake, if he chooses not to trouble you.
Maybe Safira would forgive me. Maybe she would still be there when I returned. I didn't care if she was old and lined with time. I wanted only to return, and be held in her arms again, and weep alongside her, from the shared pain of being bound by the same man.
Fifty years. I could survive fifty years.
I had never known the rain or the stone to be gods, but I pleaded with them now, in case Safira was right. Please , I thought, as the trees flashed past, the weight and heat of the man on my back burrowing into me like maggots on a corpse. Please let me see her one more time.