12. Nine Fathom Deep He Had Followed Us

The whispering awoke Ridley in the full stillness of the night. He blinked up at the dark rafters, his eyes slowly adjusting until he could distinguish their shadows from the deeper ones of the attic roof. The aetheric bonds holding him across the chest and waist, anchored to the floor below the simple cot, crackled when he tried to turn farther to peer into the corners. Too bloody dark, he thought, fear rippling along his vestigial tentacles, and he squirmed unhappily beneath his dirty tunic. How he longed for a bath in the sea... Oh yes, a bath, and a swim...down and down and down til I can’t see the light of day no more, down where my Dearie was born, and maybe swims now, poor love...oh, but take me from this place, this dirty musty junkheap, why am I here? Where’s Mikael? Mikael said go to his home, and so I did, dinn’t I... More rustlings, soft susurrations within a rusting steamer trunk, made him jerk his head and whimper. Ghosts, all attics have ghosts! Worse than ships, they is...

When Ridley Fogchaser was ten, his uncle and only parental figure had bound him out on a ship for the New World, hoping it would both ease his own burden in feeding so many mouths, and perhaps teach the lad the value of hard work. Whether it was fair or no, the captain told Ridley upon reaching Boston that more was still owed on his passage, and so he stayed on board when the ship took on more cargo and sailed the treacherous route around the southern continent. Ridley saw hurricanes, and brutal calms under tropical heat, and near-wrecks of his own ship as well as the skeletons of schooners which had failed to navigate between the wintry southern gales and the jagged rocks. He endured every deprivation of the sailing life in those months-long voyages, and yet, when the ship docked in San Francisco and Ridley scampered off as soon as the captain was too far in his cups, the boy almost immediately signed aboard another vessel and sailed for the far Pacific islands. He couldn’t explain it to any man who’d never loved the sway of a deck beneath his feet, or the sting of the salt in his face, but life at sea suited him. The Cataclysm had spared his ship – he was first mate by then, of the trading schooner Ecclesiast – for some purpose. There had been signs. Ridley Fogchaser believed ardently in signs. And in ghosts.

More whispery noises in another part of the attic worried him. He knew this was Mikael’s house, but suddenly the thought that his lover’s ghost might have returned here sent a shiver along his flexible bones. He began to murmur a half-remembered prayer. “Yea, though I swim through the shadow of the straits of Death, I won’t fear no evil, no, for thy arms and thy beak they comfort me...” He shut his eyes, straining against the bonds the sorcerer had put on him. “Bloody Dust-magicker, why’d he go and do that, I wasn’t no harm to him nor his lady...nor his...sister...”

Sister. The word instantly conjured the face of the girl, the tiny, sickly thing: her white face haunted by the immensity of the broad dark bed burying her. Little sister. There was a...Mikael said...sister, autumn sister, what was...

Dearie touched his face.

Ridley stiffened, motionless, feeling the soft, cool tip of an immense arm caressing his cheek, his lips; the wriggling growths above his mouth reached hungrily for the kraken’s comforting suckers. Obligingly, soft kisses trailed along his lips, his hands, underneath his tunic. Ridley moaned, surrendering eagerly, and his bonds hissed and spat sparks as Dearie brought him swiftly to shuddering, jerking bliss. Tears trickled down his cheeks. Oh my Dearie, my Dearie dear, you’ve come back! I knew you couldn’t leave me, no, knew you would return for me, oh take me with you into the deep, the briny deep your home, your heaven...love you so much...

The soft touches withdrew, and slowly Ridley’s heart quieted, joy suffusing every ounce of his blood. He blinked past his tears, seeing only darkness upon darkness, the glow of the aether-bonds his only illumination, but he could feel his kraken above him, majestic, sweeping the air in cool patterns across his flesh. When his thoughts cleared at last, calm and content and assured of his own death, the kraken gently pointed out to him the ends, the knots in the energy restraining him. Ridley inclined his head, and looked, and suddenly saw the intricate weave of the strings of greenfire, the pattern.

He giggled. “It’s a Chinese puzzle, innit, my pet? Oh yes, I’ve solved me them a time or two. I see it now.” Encouraged by the feeling of pleasure and pride he received from Dearie, he snaked the tentacles on his chest (were they longer now? how nice!) through the bonds and began untying them, unweaving them, ignoring the sizzle where tender moist flesh encountered powerful Dust-energy strands. Within just a few minutes he was able to sit up and tug loose the threads like so many silk cords in a kite-fight. Then he was free. Then Dearie spoke again. It told him things. Lots of things.

Ridley sat and listened to the dead kraken in perfect calm, in perfect darkness.

Then he picked up the wheel of a broken safety-bicycle where it languished by the trunk, and cracked it over his knee. He did not flinch as he stabbed one of its wide, flat spokes directly into his chest, into the bulging flesh between the writhing arms. He shoved a hand into the hole, prising it open wide enough to withdraw the crystalline rock he’d carried safe on Mikael’s behest these many weeks. Though no light fell upon it, it glittered.

Immediately his head felt clearer. Ridley knew what to do next.

The attic stairs creaked slightly as he descended, but he felt no fear. The sense of the sorcerer, the one who’d bound him but also fed him tasty crab bits, had departed from the house some time ago. He didn’t feel the man here at all now, only the lady and the girl. Little Sister. He had some things for that one, oh, didn’t he now. Wonderful things. Ridley had to stifle another giggle.

An oil lantern glowed in the upstairs hall, showing him two doors ajar not far from each other. The Krakenpilot cautiously pushed open the nearer one, and stood in the doorway a few minutes, regarding the soft rise and fall of the sleeping lady. Her hair, freed of its pins and ribbons, spilled across her pillow, reminding Ridley of a sea-fan. For a moment he fancied he saw it waving in the current. Her face contracted in worry, shadows filling it and then slipping away again, as the waves of her dreams washed her gently. She was enough like Mikael in the brow and soft cheeks that Ridley almost went to her, thinking of touching her face. Then she mumbled something, and rolled on her side, and sighed as she relaxed again; the curves of her breast and hip were nothing like the spare, lean frame of Mikael. Ridley turned away, and walked to the other door.

It eased open silently. Dim, shifting streetlight pattered up through the trees and the lace curtains. Embers glowed in the hearth, but the tiny figure in the massive bedstead appeared white and still and cold. Alarmed, Ridley hastened to her. Her labored breathing at least reassured him the girl was alive. Standing over her at the side of the bed, he trembled.

Suddenly her eyes opened. She stared at him, and her eyes filled with the same terror he’d often seen on the faces of the natives, when he and Dearie had dropped upon them, the kraken screeching, tentacles flailing, Ridley whooping as savage a cry as any Comanche. Ridley quickly leaned over and covered her tiny mouth with his hand.

“Shh, now,” he whispered. She struggled feebly. He seated himself beside her, and with his other hand pressed her shoulder into the thick featherbed, tenderly. “Don’t fuss so, Little Sister,” he said, but it was clear from her terrified eyes the girl didn’t comprehend him. He paused, and with the clarity granted him by Dearie’s guidance, realized the growths around his mouth and the beak beneath his lips were hindering his speech. With great effort, he shaped them, and at last managed to say words which sounded more like English to his slowly adjusting ears: “Hush yourself; I have to talk to you. I won’t hurt you.”

The girl subsided, too weak to continue struggling. He was afraid she would try to scream. Carefully he spoke again. “My name is Ridley.” He released her mouth, then her shoulder, anxiously holding his breath while she studied his face with suspicious, dark eyes, like a sparrow in a trap.

“What kinda name is that?” the girl demanded, her voice hoarse and high. Her indignance made Ridley grin, and she recoiled. He waved a hand before his mouth, trying to show her he was amused, not hungry. She edged herself up against the pillows, wary. “You’re a monster. Do monsters have names?”

“I’m not a monster!” he objected. “Don’t you know them hides under the bed?”

“You did!”

“Fair doos,” he agreed, surprised. “But that was to keep clear o’ the coppers, like. I’m...I was...a pilot.”

“How come you’re talking now?”

He pondered this. His memories of entering the house, of first encountering this beautiful little girl, were blurry as though he’d been into the rum. Hadn’t he spoken to her then? He’d recognized her right away. He’d been awestruck, that much he knew. “Well, there’s things you need, y’see. And I have a job, now don’t I? An important job now, oh yes, Dearie said.” He nodded earnestly, showing her how serious he was about this charge, but she frowned.

“You’re not supposed to be here. Miss Holly said...”

“Never you mind that. I’m here now, Little Sister.” His eyes filled, and he blinked away the salty tears, tasting them with unhappy little fingers above his mouth. “I’m here now.” He took one of her tiny hands in his own, clasping it firmly. The girl stared at him, but didn’t pull away. He managed a smile for her. Weak, she’s so weak, lookit her all pale like a bleached whalebone. Oh, my Dearie, yes, I shall be yours, I shall make you most proud. Wiping his face with the sleeve of his tunic, he forced brightness into his voice. The words seemed to be coming easier now. “Shall I tell you a story, Little Sister? Yes. That’s what we’ll do, we’ll have us a nice little story before you sleep. Let’s see.” His mind cast about, fastening on a scrap of memory from long ago, before the kraken rose from the deep, before the rocks smashing into the earth and sea changed all of life, before, even, he had put to sea.

“Long, long ago, there was a wee princess with hair like wheat, and eyes like the grass,” he began, and stroked her soft, light brown hair back from that tiny pale forehead. “And her kingdom was a northern island in the middle of the deep, deep sea...”

The longer he rambled, the more the girl relaxed, despite his voice being ragged from disuse, and his memory so fractured he was sure he was mixing up several stories. He told her of the sea-unicorn, with its ivory horn; of schools of shimmering fish so vast they appeared as moving curtains in the ocean; of the lords of the deep, with shining huge eyes and many arms that could drag under the mightiest vessel, if the men aboard it displeased them. “And the princess was sent to their kingdom, these mighty lords, because her cruel father wanted her to pay tribute to them. Every year they sent tribute, so the lords would allow the men to fish in their rich waters, y’see.”

The girl wrinkled her nose. “What’s a tribute?”

“Like something you has to give away. Like taxes,” Ridley tried to explain, though he was unsure himself. “Anyways, this king, he thought if he gave the Deep Lords his little girl, she was so beautiful, and so sweet, that he’d have great fishing for years to come.”

“Could she swim?”

“Oh ye—“ he began, but saw her mouth shape into a worried purse, and amended, “No, the poor dear; she couldn’t at all, but that didn’t matter to the king, for he was a bad, bad man, now wasn’t he.” Searching for the right words, Ridley told her of the long voyage to the black, cold sea, where landfall was impossible and the clouds gathered night and day, forgetting that this child would never have known a sky which was not grey. He described the sea, and the shapes in the clouds, and the murky things moving always just under the surface, and the hard life of the princess aboard the ship, where she was made to polish brass fittings and scrub the deck til her skin was raw from the salt air. Memories crowded his mind, but he had presence enough to understand that not all of what he’d experienced was fit for female sensibilities, no matter how much Ridley himself had come to enjoy these things when he was older. As he talked and talked, still stroking her hair or her clammy skin, she fell completely silent, and her eyes closed. He might have garbled on all night, but the touch of Dearie inside his skull roused him.

Ridley quieted, studying the soft breath, the just-perceptible rattle in her chest. Time. His limbs moved restlessly under his tunic, and excitement built within. The enormity of the charge laid upon him made him prickle all over. Slowly he lifted his tunic, and brought out the precious, throbbing thing cradled in two of his young tentacles. The crystals sparked deep within the rock. Ridley took a deep breath, braced himself for the expulsion of energy sure to result, and with a strong hand broke off a small cube.

The release was horrible and immediate. His whole body jolted, and he choked, grabbing the blankets. His jerking legs awakened the girl again, and she tried to sit up, alarmed. With a low groan, Ridley pushed her down, pried open her mouth, and before she could cry out, stuffed the bit of rock past her tongue. She gagged, then swallowed, then stiffened, then went into convulsions. Gasping, Ridley held her arms, keeping her from flopping around like a landed salmon. The fit, thankfully, passed in a few seconds, and she slumped into the downy bed. He watched her anxiously until she began to breathe again, then released her.

Swallowing dryly, he offered a prayer to his savior. Dearie, it’s begun. Your Little Sister has begun, now she has, oh yes. And soon, soon, I’ll be with you.

He sat there on the side of the bed until the sky lightened. The kraken’s words brushed his thoughts, and he bestirred himself, pulling open the gash in his flesh and secreting the rock once more. Mikael had only guessed at the power of this element, his most lethal discovery in the Crater. He’d paid for this secret with his life and the lives of his crew, but here was simple Mr Fogchaser who’d gone from a life of sailing ships to riding a friend and lover more dear than all of mankind to him; lucky, doomed Ridley, keeper of the miracle, guardian to she destined to be Sister of the Deep Lords. It made him dizzy at once; fog filled his brain, and all clear purpose fled. Yet his ghost urged him on. The pilot chuckled at how silly he felt, rose and staggered back up to the attic and lay down upon the cot once more. As the sun shone dimly somewhere past the ashen sky, he snored, assured at last of the reason he had been spared when the seas boiled and the skies fell.