Chapter 43 #2
His eyes traced the blue of my hair and skin. Understanding altered his expression. “They shouldn’t have been this prepared to fight us. Not yet.” He pulled the sea beast toward me. “You need to speak with Hylos. Get on.”
In one swift movement, I mounted.
He pointed east, toward the sun rising over the carnage. “Hylos is there.”
“It was Calypstra, she arranged all of this,” I said over the roar of battle.
Raylik shook his head in a disbelieving no, but said, “We should have known.”
A cannonball whistled between us, slamming into another siren, unnaturally indenting her chest in blood and gore. Her body was propelled into three others behind her.
“Hurry, Elowyn,” Raylik shouted, then raced toward the impact we had both just witnessed.
Which way, my rider? the creature sang.
It startled me, but quickly I sang back, To the siren king.
The sea beast chuffed and raced through the water. I leaned left, then right, weaving through sirens fighting and dying.
Then a familiar ship caught my eye. Black and blood-red sails in the distance. The ship that had stunned Hylos. The ship that could lull sirens.
No. No. No.
They all would be rendered incapacitated in mere moments.
Faster please, we must get to him. The beast let out a nicker and doubled its speed, my hair whipping around me in tendrils of red and blue.
Men and women fell around me from the ships above as sirens threw spears through the salted air that shattered armor and crunched bones. The air was heavy with the scent of iron from the blood that tinted the sea.
Then I saw Hylos, still in his chariot. He waved his hands, guiding orbs of water that raced above his army and shot into the sails. Ships were engulfed in his wake.
He turned his head to me as if he’d heard me coming, those hard, sapphire-blue eyes cutting into me.
His song roared on drumrolls, What are you doing here?
That ship headed toward us, it’s the same that almost took you. Hylos, they are coming for you. Your army will be lulled and taken, I sang back.
His eyes scanned the horizon until he spotted the sails.
With a steady hand and his power, he willed a large swell to rise. It grew and grew and rushed toward the ships. Then with another push, it toppled over, swallowing three ships whole before us.
Move onward! Hylos commanded his army. It obeyed, progressing toward land. An arrow whizzed past my head.
The steed below me reared, crying, Careful, rider.
But there was no time for care.
I watched Hylos, his face stern and without mercy, eyeing his target. Land.
There had to be something I could do. Some way to stop this. I had all this power coursing through me, yet knew so little about how it truly worked beyond natural inclination.
“Holy Mother, please help me,” I prayed to Nymphaea, who had taken me this far. “Please. I cannot do this alone,” I begged.
The battle raged on all around me. It was too big. Too great. I could not stop it. Not alone.
But then a song grew inside me, unfurling in my chest. No. From my chest. I listened to it carefully and soon it grew. Elowyn Blackthorn. The voice bellowed through me, You are a queen!
It was unmistakably my mother’s voice, but sharpened within my own. But how?
Then, another woman’s voice joined her. I’d never heard it before, but the very marrow in my bones knew it to be my mother’s mother, a woman lost to history altogether, whose name I shared.
Another woman shouted on with her, and it was her mother, who also bore the name Elowyn. Then her mother, and her mother, and hers rang true. A chorus of Elowyns wailed and cried and sang across time and space, demanding to be heard. To be known. To be recognized.
How? I asked the calling song. How can I hear you, Mother?
Music carries through centuries. Sung into the ears of babes. Hummed as one passes you in the street. It surrounds you. It is you. We are always singing to you, my love, but in this form, you can finally hear us clearly, and we sing to give you strength for what is to come.
Alongside them, I led our battle cry. The power of their hearts and minds saturated me.
And Nymphaea, the great Mother of all, cried with us too.
Cried for her children discarded, damaged, and forgotten in the sea.
For the women whispering prayers promising brighter tomorrows.
The women who sacrificed blood, sweat, and tears for the future.
Silently suffering, as my mother did, to ensure their children were safe.
You are not alone, Elowyn, Mother said. For you carry us all within your heart.
Another cannonball blazed through the sky, sizzling toward me in flaming red, but a shield of blinding white and water surrounded me. That song. I knew it. It was pestering and playful. Protecting me.
Thank you. I sent the song like a prayer to my moon-white friend.
Here to please, Princess. Down below was Morvyn, conjuring the structure protecting me as it clamored in a tricky falsetto.
Now stop this, he said.
I would.
Higher, higher, higher I rose on a jet of water as around me, song and vision took over, hand over hand, replacing Morvyn’s protection. The careful palms of the women who made me stood, encircling me hand in hand, in protection.
Together they raised their voices to the sky, and it burst into a swell of red around me, filled with their power, my power. Our power.
Louder. Louder. Louder. Our chorus sang, audible to all who touched our lives. But it also sang back at all who tried to erase us, discredit us. All who dared forget us. They could no longer ignore our voices, our existence. For together, it was so strong.
The dome of song and love that shielded me exploded, throwing Hylos and his soldiers behind me. Hylos’s power, like a fist, beat against it, but my song held true. Our song held true.
He needs to be farther away, child. My mother’s voice, clear as a crisp spring day, spoke. It was the most beautiful sound in all the world. I pushed back on that angry fist of Hylos’s strength, forcing him and his army farther and farther away until he was a whisper on the ocean’s salty breath.
Safe. I saved my brother. Just as my mother wanted.
Hylos, she wants me to tell you … and her song and mine intertwined like jasmine spiraling up an arbor as we both said, You may be happy.
Although Hylos was far away, a speck on the infinite sea, I felt his thrashing stop.
His pain stop.
Because he could hear our mother’s song. He could feel her there, with me.
So he sang back, I will try.
A piercing sound overwhelmed my senses with a scorching, wild tone. Panic set in. My mother’s song shattered, choked by that deathly toll.
The queen’s ship was directly below me. I hadn’t even noticed, too preoccupied with trying to get Hylos to safety.
I tried to fight against it, thrashing in the air, but I couldn’t; it was too powerful, too loud. The surrounding swell that was protecting me dissipated, dropping me from the sky. The sea was racing into view.
That horrible noise shrieked again, bursting my eardrums.
Then my world turned black.