Chapter 12 #2
The wind vibrated as the whale clicked. It was a rapid noise, like a human dragging their fingernail over a plastic comb’s teeth. It echoed through the water, and far-off, something rattled in response.
Where? Where? Where was the boy?
There were large, black shadows that must be fish. Squid creatures darting and dodging. Tentacled things. Otherworldly, alien things. The current pulled, but it wasn’t as free as the wind, and it didn’t chatter this deep; instead, it moaned in a mournful bass note.
The wind longed to be free. It longed to soar and to run and to fly. Where was the boy?
The whale dove through the deep canyon crevices chasing squid. The canyon walls were forested in sponge and coral, but instead of leaves tossing in the wind, long, thin coral arms waved as the whale glided past.
The wind shivered. The saltwater stung and irritated, and the baleful pressure was as heavy as the center of a hurricane.
But then the wind heard a noise above the mournful bass and the whale’s clicking. It perked up and peered toward the coral forest. Could it be? Was it . . .?
Yes.
It was the siren’s song. The wind shuddered. Millenia ago, the siren had lived on rocks, and by using the wind to amplify their voices, they’d lured mariners to their deaths. They’d entrapped and entangled. They’d knotted and tied. What does siren mean? It means cord. Rope. A binding, luring thing.
Ages ago, the Bards had banished the sirens to the depths of the ocean in retribution for murdering a beloved child.
The wind hadn’t heard them for eons. But it hadn’t forgotten their voices.
Their song spun madness and wonder, desperation and lust, and unending, mindless desire. The sirens were ugly, squid-like, sharp-toothed, eyeless things. They fed on the tormented desire their songs caused. If a sailor was unlucky enough to be caught in a siren’s coil, they would never escape.
The whale’s shadow fell over the nest of them, and they shrieked, singing willfully at the beast. The whale ignored the sirens. The wind was invulnerable. A siren had no power over the wind.
But . . .
The wind leaped from the whale’s blowhole, spiraling through the water, catapulted by joy.
The boy!
The boy!
Its boy!
The wind shoved its air bubble, a tiny, desperate thing, until—Oh, please, please. Yes!—It burst against the boy’s prison, landing in the boy’s lap.
It purred. It rocked against him. It moaned and laughed and twined itself in his arms.
The boy was here. The boy was alive.
“Wind?” he whispered, and his voice was a cracked, desperate, hopeful thing.
The wind pushed at his cheek; rubbed itself over the rough beard covering his face. Tasted the salt of tears and the hungered pain lining the boy’s face.
Why was he crying? The wind had come, hadn’t it? The wind was here.
The boy sent the back of his hand across his cheek, wiping at the salty wetness. He sniffed and then smiled. “You came. I didn’t think you’d come.”
Of course it had come. The wind shoved at the boy. It was the wind. It was brave, fierce, loyal, and much smarter than a human boy who’d let himself be caged under the sea by sirens. How could the boy even think it wouldn’t come?
“Oh,” the boy laughed, rubbing his eyes again. “Don’t be angry. It’s only . . . Dad died?”
The wind sighed. It didn’t want to tell the boy about the man. It didn’t want to think about the man’s blood leaking out of him.
“Ah. The Smiths did it. I see,” the boy said, and the wind fell quiet. Then he asked, “Is my sister all right?”
The wind nudged the boy. He nodded. He looked around the prison the sirens were keeping him in. A water-bubble prison. A strange, pearl-like sphere. It was a powerful, coffin-like thing that kept the boy buried underwater so the sirens could feed off him.
How was the boy so careless as to have been caught by sirens?
“Careless?” the boy scoffed. “Me?” He rubbed a hand over the wind in a happy, laughing rhythm.
Then he sobered. “After Darin tossed me into the river, I didn’t have enough power to do .
. . anything. The figments and the water spirits dragged me down.
I ran out of air. Passed out. When I woke up, at first, I thought I was dead. ”
The wind sniffed the boy. He smelled like squid, seaweed, and salt. He poked the boy. He was too thin, too cold, and still solid. Not dead.
“No,” the boy laughed, “I’m not dead. Somehow, the sirens got hold of me. Dragged me here. Where is here, by the way?”
The wind huffed. Here was the depths of the ocean. Here was the worst, most watery place on earth. Here was where careless boys ended up when they chased after solemn ones instead of staying where they should.
“Right,” the boy agreed. “But I can’t get out.
I’ve tried. But every time I begin to conjure, they sing louder, and I go .
. . a bit mad.” His gaze turned inward. “I can’t even conjure a pair of earplugs.
” He laughed. “Not anything. They sing a dirge the second I begin, and . . . if I weren’t who I am”—a Ward, he meant—“I think I would’ve gone mad by now.
As it is, I’m feeling a little . . . on edge. ”
He barred his teeth, and the wind huffed at the wild, dangerous light in the boy’s eyes.
“You felt the earthquake?” The boy nodded toward the rocky cliff. “That was when Dad died. I was filled with so much power not even the siren’s dirge could stop it. Too bad I didn’t think. If I’d been thinking, I would’ve broken out.”
But how could the boy think in the middle of grief? How could he expect that in the seconds after learning of the man’s death, he’d be capable of rational thought? Humans were barely capable of rational thought on the best of days. The wind pushed at the walls of the prison, testing their strength.
“So. They killed Dad,” the boy added, but since talking about the man wouldn’t help the boy escape, the wind didn’t respond. His throat muscles tightened, and then his Adam’s apple bobbed as he stared down at his hands. “And I wasn’t there.”
The wind sighed and then stroked the back of his hand. The man had chosen his own path. The boy couldn’t have stopped him from walking it.
“Wind?” the boy finally asked. “Do you think you have enough energy to blow so loudly I won’t hear their singing? If you can, I’ll get us out of here. I have enough power now. I have enough power raging inside me to tear open the sea floor and cover it with lava.”
The wind perked up and spun around the small, seawater scented prison. It was humid. It was that strange, painful temperature where a being couldn’t decide whether it was icy cold or scalding hot. It was a tiny space filled with the hypnotic, droning wail of the sirens.
Even now, they sang, trying to bind the boy and suck the joyous, mad, wild spirit from him.
Sweat trailed down the boy’s forehead, dampening his wheat-colored hair and plastering his tattered, wrinkled shirt to his skinny form.
When the sirens’ wailing increased, the boy flinched, and the soft green of his eyes splintered and unfocused.
The wind snarled and tugged on the boy’s shirt, but when he didn’t acknowledge the wind, it knew what it had to do.
It could see now. If it didn’t have enough energy to howl, they would be stuck in this prison until the boy died and the wind floated alone to the surface in a tiny, breathless bubble.
So the wind gathered itself. It sucked in a giant, rage-filled breath, and it screamed. It howled. It roared. It shrieked with all the desperate passion that had filled it for the past two weeks.
It wailed at the loss of the boy. It shrieked its mourning note. It gusted and bellowed at the death of the man. It bled an earsplitting wild wind call and filled the prison with all its anguish and love. It shrieked for the boy. It drowned the siren dirge with the notes of its own song.
A song for the boy.
His beloved green eyes snapped into focus.
He grinned wildly and rushed to his feet. He held out both hands. The wind tore at his clothes, snapping them like flags. His hair flew around his head, and the wind buffeted him, lifting him off his feet.
The boy laughed, but the sound was torn away and lost in the wind’s roar.
The boy held out his right hand. Placed his thumb to his second and third fingers.
The sirens rushed the prison. They slammed against the wall, throwing themselves at the boy and the wind.
Their mouths gaped wide. Their teeth snapped as they screamed.
They couldn’t be heard above the wind. The boy twisted his hand.
The wall of the canyon exploded. A giant, rocky shelf the size of the Empire State Building slid off the canyon. It plummeted toward the seabed. The sphere-like prison spun like a gyroscope, barreling past the sirens, knocking them aside.
The boy laughed, and the wind screamed.
The canyon walls collapsed. Building-size cliffs slid through the water, crashing toward the abyss. Whales, sharks, and nameless creatures shot through the turbid waters. The prison rocketed through the violent churning.
The sirens were crushed under the sliding rock, their song silenced. The wind gasped for air, its shriek cut off. The boy laughed again, and the wind flicked his ear. They weren’t free yet.
“I know,” the boy said. “But your shriek. It was perfect!”
Well. Of course it was. It was the wind.
The boy’s eyes gleamed as he twisted his hand again.
The prison burst, shattering into a million prismed pieces.
In its place, the wind and the boy were surrounded by a giant, glowing whale.
They were in the belly of a whale. But not a whale.
It was a translucent, glass-like whale, rocketing to the surface.
What was this thing? A submarine thing? A creature-machine thing?
Oh, the boy liked making automatons, and giant robot things, and . . .
“We did it!” the boy shouted. “You did it!”
He spun his arms through the air, catching the wind and laughing.
“Wind! You are the best! You are the most wonderful, the most beautiful, the most . . .” He wiped his eyes. “Oh, Wind. What would I do without you?”
Well. Die, obviously. But the wind wouldn’t tell the boy that. Sometimes, you had to let a being keep its pride.
The water rushed past, and with their rocketing ascent, the gray twilight gave way to bright sunlight.
Soon, they were speeding past diamond-bright flashes of fish, schools of darting silver arrows, pink jellyfish clouds, and diving green sea turtles.
Air bubbles rushed past. Air! And then, the glass-like whale-thing spit them out, throwing them into the air.
The boy and the wind landed on top of a wave. It was a giant, cresting, speeding wave. The boy stood on a flat metal board, balanced like a bird about to take flight.
The wind gusted, rushing faster than a passenger plane. Faster than those airplane buses that flew in the sky, but not as fast as the hawklike jet. The wind rushed over the boy and beat against him.
Ahead—far ahead, but not so far that they couldn’t see it—stood the thin, dark blue outline of land. It grew closer with every breath.
“Oh bother,” the boy said, closing his eyes and rubbing his tired face. “I made a tsunami.”
The wind shrieked.
“Well, I didn’t mean to,” he muttered. The wind barely caught his words they were traveling so fast. “All right. Don’t worry. I just have to stop it.”
He twisted his hand. The giant wave sped faster. The boy made a frustrated sound. He twisted his hand again. The wave grew in size. The wind flicked the boy’s ears. The boy scowled.
“I think . . .” the boy said, his expression grave. “I think I need help. Where’s a Bard when you need one?”
The wind wondered if the boy was thinking of the citrus and pearl dust scented woman. She loved the sea and sang more beautifully than any siren. He was right. A Bard would know how to disperse the waves.
The wind rushed next to the boy, keeping him upright as they crashed through the Atlantic. He twisted his hand, but for every hill of water he dispelled, a mountain joined them.
Lightning split the sky. With every twist of the boy’s hand, thunder boomed.
He was pale, sweating, shaking. He was nearly drained again. It was just like the time the battle-hardened brother had nearly killed him. The wind moaned and held him up. Were they rushing to another death promise? Was this how it would end?
But the wave was smaller. It was slowing. Or was that what giant-fist waves did when they neared land? Did they slow right before descending and crushing?
The water piled high, wave stretching over wave, until the boy was standing on top of a frothing, raging hill of power. The white water roared, a beast with barred teeth and seething intentions.
The boy balanced on top of the beast, surrounded by the wind. It gusted and roared and kept him safe.
Blue-streaked lightning and roaring thunder cracked as they sped onward. Overhead, a weather plane shot past. The boy kept himself covered in illusion, invisible to human eyes.
Ahead, the city speared the sky. From far away, it looked like sticks set in the sand, just waiting to be knocked over by the tide. Fragile, impermanent city.
But before that, there were the concrete-barricaded beaches, the narrowing bight, the old lighthouses.
“Look,” the boy said.
Waves piled against the shores, crashing in building-high heaps. But he wasn’t pointing at the waves—he was pointing at the old, rusty, leaning lighthouse.
It was bloodred and rust-white, perched on a rocky shoal. It was a small, rust scented lighthouse the wind sped through now and again. A favorite of terns and seagulls. But . . . no–the boy wasn’t pointing at the lighthouse. He was pointing at the man standing at the top of the lighthouse.
“Alterra.” The boy grinned.
The wind shoved him, and the boy’s smile grew.
“He’s here.”
The wind moaned.
The solange-eyed one faced the open water, power curling around him. He stood with legs wide and arms out as if he were challenging the sea.
And there, behind him, stood his brother. Ah. So they’d both come. They’d both come for the boy.
“He killed my dad,” the boy said, a wild spark in his eyes.
The wind moaned again.
“How likely do you think it is they’ll try to kill me?”
The wind shrieked.
The boy laughed. He always laughed at the wrong things.
“Good. That’s good.” He held out his hands, his face hard, his eyes bright. “Then let’s hit them first. And let’s hit them hard.”
The wind screamed, shielding the boy as he rode his tsunami and hurled a deadly lightning sword across the sky.