Chapter 17 #2
“What curious details to leave out of all her little admonishments about me. Especially as someone bound to help you. That stone is both why and how your mother was born. Selah stole it from me and used it to give Arielle a reason to keep my daughter hidden once she betrayed me. Your little intergenerational trauma is actually her doing. Surprise.” Ursla waved it off.
“Now: Do we have a deal?” Ursla extended the bag to her but snatched it back when Yemi reached for it.
“Be sure. My magic is not fit for half hearts. Selah does you people these little favors because even the seed she stole from me would crush her if she didn’t let it out from time to time.
I wouldn’t give this to you if I thought you were weak, but you are, after all, human. ”
At once, Yemi was hesitant. Every time her mother had mentioned her temper, every moment of indecision, of confusion on this trek with Nova, flickered in her mind. It raced, searching for one of Ursla’s infamous loopholes, the catch that had proved the downfall of countless desperates.
Desperate, Yemi thought bitterly. Despite herself, she—a queen—had become one of them.
Her wandering eyes fell on a row of nautilus shells, small and pearlescent amid the shelves of odd but less luminous bric-a-brac, and her grip tightened on her spear.
Legend told of shells used as vessels to secure the promises and sacrifices the unfortunates offered as part of their deals.
It was likely one of them was her grandmother’s, once holding the piece of her she’d given away in exchange for a future above water.
True as her version of events may have been—and there was every possibility that it wasn’t—the witch had still intended to make Arielle suffer for her dream. She’d made them all suffer. How, the question was, did she intend to make Yemi suffer now?
Nova.
“The Rakeland farmers,” Yemi said coolly. “We were attacked on our way to Sol. Was that you?” She had to be sure.
“Less me than those who paid their tribute for the chance to get their hands on you just once,” Ursla responded, unbothered.
“I could kill you for that,” Yemi hissed.
“Could you?” Ursla snapped, eyes flashing.
At once, the swaying kelp adorning the wall behind Yemi reached out like so many tentacles and wrapped themselves around her, pulling her body taut and threatening to crush her the more she fought to free herself.
Before long, she was barely able to breathe, let alone twitch her outstretched hand to activate her spear.
“I so often regret being gracious,” Ursla sighed, crossing the room on her tentacles.
She gripped Yemi’s face roughly with long, bony fingers but didn’t have to force eye contact.
Yemi gave her plenty of that, defiantly, on her own.
“Your problem, child, is that you’re so caught up in what you believe you are owed, it has never once crossed your mind that anything you desire should be earned.
I somehow owe you reparations because I gave your grandmother what she wanted?
The humans in your charge owe you allegiance for being born?
That is the difference between you and your mother, the entitlement.
Why she was cherished and you are… you. So you had to scrap a little to find me.
Exercise that iron will of yours physically in order to achieve a goal rather than have it handed to you.
What route to a god isn’t laced with some sort of peril? ”
Yemi sneered. She’d have spat if it were possible. “You’re not a god. You’re a witch who’s been on an unchecked power trip for a few hundred years.”
Ursla flinched violently and recoiled, eyes wide, nostrils flaring as if she was a word away from snapping Yemi’s neck with a flick of her finger.
“I don’t care about any of that,” Yemi added quickly. “Call yourself whatever you’d like. Take your throne. I will take mine, and we will be blessed to never have to deal with one another ever again.”
The water around them grew warmer, the room darker. Even the kelp ceased its twisting as if afraid to draw the witch’s attention, before it inevitably released Yemi.
“Come with me.”
Yemi trailed Ursla back to the entrance of her den, ever watchful for signs of a trap and wondering if it might be preferable to simply end her.
Run her through with the spear and head home less than empty-handed, assured there would be no more of her meddling in Ixia’s affairs.
But it was Ursla’s magic keeping her alive at this depth.
She couldn’t risk losing it so far from civilization. Ursla had to know this.
They came to a halt again out in the open water.
The witch steadied herself by wrapping tentacles around a disembodied rib buried in the glowing sand beneath them and drew herself upward to a full and regal height.
She stared forward at the eerie black sea and breathed so deeply, Yemi noted that the bend of the kelp and drifting sand had stopped their listless flutter and were now drawn to her like a current.
Then Ursla pulled her shoulders back, chest ever expanding, nostrils flared as if she intended to inhale the entire ocean.
Yemi shielded her eyes as sand streamed toward them.
Ursla pushed her hands forward as she exhaled and Yemi watched as the sands reversed direction.
She braced herself against a rock to keep from being pulled out into the black where the rest of the sands were going.
In the flash before the sand’s light died away completely, Yemi made out mammoth shapes that looked like… More ships? She squinted into the fading light.
Ursla flicked three fingers upward, and three columns of sand took the forms of giant glowing rays that took off into the darkness, illuminating what was confirmed to be a ship graveyard stretching as far as Yemi could see.
Unlike the vessels beneath Abyssa, many of these were decayed, some still flying the tattered colors of nations around the world.
Drifting around and above them, though, were little blue lights.
Hundreds—or was it thousands?—bobbed there like fireflies, neither feeding on the carcasses of vessels nor seeking shelter in them.
“What are they?” Yemi asked breathlessly.
“The least fortunate souls,” Ursla replied.
“Lives lost, traded, squandered. Most were given the choice between me and oblivion; they chose elsewhere and still ended up here.” Ursla turned to her with a sinister smile.
“You see, my pet, I am inevitable. My armies are the world’s dead, which means your armies are the world’s dead.
And there are more dead than in any one nation’s military.
What these creatures wouldn’t give to walk in the sun again.
You can give them that chance. They will fight for you with that stone. ”
She released the vial and let it drift between them, and Yemi, knowing she was being taunted, let it float there.
“Retrieve the stone and steep it in this tea infused with my blood. The stone will melt, and you will drink it for a single day’s command of these armies.”
Yemi grimaced. Of course the magic involved blood. “How will you get it back if I drink it?”
“The last time we need bother one another will be when I come to retrieve it. That will be unpleasant for you, but… well, small sacrifices.” She shrugged.
Ursla watched Yemi carefully as her exhausted mind ran through the risks and rewards of their partnership. Was there such a thing as winning the sea witch’s games?
“Selah will not let the stone go easily. She can sense when it’s compromised. I don’t know how to combat that magic.”
“My, but you do think of everything.” Ursla wrapped herself around Yemi, spindly fingers gripping her shoulders in what would have felt like the world’s most suspicious hug even if Yemi were used to being touched.
“Once you have the stone in hand, look her in the eye and speak these words. Feel them. Put intention behind them, and she will see the last hex she placed elsewhere returned on her own head: Enim si witch ahth emot nured ner.”
Ursla spoke the words quietly, her lips brushing Yemi’s ear, and there was an itching sensation as if the words were physical things stitching themselves to the surface of her brain so she wouldn’t forget them.
Yemi squirmed out of Ursla’s grasp and finally snatched the vial out of its menacing hover, concluding that there would be time to choose whether or not to use it.
Ursla sighed, satisfied, if bored. “For what it’s worth, I don’t like you,” she said in a voice that told Yemi she’d worn out her welcome yet again. “But my daughter wasn’t my first betrayer. I see the honor in what you’re doing to protect your mother’s legacy.”
Yemi said nothing. But this was the first time she’d felt her motives were truly understood. Nova had never even said as much.
“Your legs will return when you touch the beach. You won’t enjoy it. Sunrise on the third day after you’ve returned to land, I rescind my offer. You have until then to make your choice.”