Dream Storm Sea (22 page)

The water swayed with colors above their embrace. Hiresha was relieved to know she could not die of pleasure.

He said, “I hope you won’t think you’ve changed me. Women always want men to change and never forgive those who do.”

“A change in wardrobe hardly qualifies.” Her dress straightened itself over her.

“I mean when I leave the Feast. Wild magic is the key to ridding myself of my title.”

Hiresha saw no dishonesty in his face, but she could not so quickly believe him. “Do you mean you’d replace one indulgence with another?”

“Enough wild magic would sever my bond.”

“How long would it force you to state the obvious? My perceptions are too keen to tolerate that.” She spoke half in jest, half in hope.

“A few days of wild magic and I’d be done. The urge to Feast would return, but I could leave it aside for you.”

They stood facing each other, the ceiling under their feet slick with algae and sharp with mussels. The tops of their heads dimpled the water’s surface. Magic bound her hair flat against her back. A sense of unreality flowed over Hiresha that had nothing to do with their relative location.

This must be the dream.
Her sense of detachment caused her spells to slip, and the tops of their heads dipped into the water. Knowing she could not allow the dream inversion to end, she forced herself to focus. Their feet returned to the ceiling. Her hair squeezed out the water, each strand returning to its proper place.

She said, “I’m not certain I should like you to loosen your reins on the other Feasters.”

“My successor has restraint and strength in her.”

“And her name?”

“I named her Celaise. A powerful name makes a powerful woman.” His hands coiled around hers. “Does it not, Hiresha? My ‘Queen of Jewels.’”

She said, “More than a few choice syllables are needed for power.”

“But a name is a flag, a monument to a person. No one would smell a rose if it was called a ‘slug.’”

The red diamond orbited between them. Hiresha said, “I never thought I would say this, but I’ve come to enjoy arguing with you, Tethiel. As long as it’s not over anything of import.”

“Only the dull argue over serious subjects. Nothing of any importance is worth arguing about.”

The enchantress and the Feaster left the water caverns without incident. In the atoll, the Murderfish’s blood had darkened the coral walls. They saw no kraken-sized corpse. The top of the atoll shone in a circle of light. Hiresha and Tethiel traveled upward with caution.

They surfaced. The sun rose between two distant thunderstorms, and the morning sky was the color of pomegranate stains. The light tinted the larger sail of a boat. The smaller sail formed a black triangle. Both ruffled with feathers. The figure of Emesea waved from the prow.

The enchantress could not help but notice a second boat beyond the first. It swayed in and out of sight. The image of the nearer boat filled Hiresha with anger. She gathered herself for a leap.

Tethiel’s fine clothes were peeling away in wafts of black smoke. He said, “I’m skeptical that face-smasher of a woman could’ve built a boat of such sleekness. Are you a shipwright, my heart?”

“In point of fact, the Murderfish made that boat. Can you see its tentacles curving in the shape of the hull?”

Tethiel’s chin twitched back for another look. “So, you’re saying it would not be the most hospitable of vessels.”

The Murderfish had mimicked
The Roost
to revolting perfection. Hiresha knew then that they owed their lives to her dream inversion.
Without my lucid sight, we would’ve swum to the kraken. We would’ve climbed onto arms that looked like wood, and we would’ve been constricted to the consistency of slime mold.

She said, “I prefer the timbers of my boat not to end in a venomous beak. Come.”

They vaulted over the waves and toward the true Roost. The Murderfish withdrew its tentacles, and the false boat appeared to collapse into the waves. Hiresha dove into the water and watched the kraken swimming into the distance.

On
The Roost
, Emesea eyed Tethiel. She said, “Not as many sucker marks on him as I thought. Did she not like your taste?”

“I pride myself in my bad taste,” he said.

The warrior adjusted the sails.

“We mustn’t go to land,” Hiresha said. “Not until the kraken is dead.”

“Go toward the shore,” Tethiel said, “and we’ll find the kraken.”

“Not until the evening, I hope.” Hiresha regarded the location of the sun in the sky. “Soon I must sleep. And awake anew.”

Hiresha opened her eyes to see the kraken hugging their boat. It felt like fishhooks tearing through her palms until she remembered. Everything came back to her, swimming alongside Skyheart, fighting the Murderfish, and her night with Tethiel in the scorpion caves. The memories spiraled about each other, each seeming as real as the other. The enchantress wondered why they seemed so clear now. During the time wearing her red dress, the hours previous had seemed but a haze.

Her magic straightened her blue sari.
In this facet,
Hiresha reminded herself,
I’m journeying arm in tentacle with a kraken to find dragons. How utterly reasonable.

Emesea was brushing a length of seaweed over the kraken’s arm. Streaks of chartreuse spread over yellow hide. Emesea said, “Ticklish, ain’t she?”

A tentacle set a wooden chest on deck. Bronze scrollwork reinforced the edges, though some had bent outward from the box being forced open. Boards had been cracked, water leaking. An orange eye of an octopus peeked out.

“Gifts,” Skyheart said with its skin, “for the Lady of Gems.”

Hiresha had slept under a barge canopy repaired with mangrove branches. She went to the chest and lofted off the lid.

“Treasure?” Emesea asked.

“Of a kind,” the enchantress said.

A brown shell, sea glass, bright pebbles, a glint of gold, and an octopus with curly arms and a head resembling a plum, it all filled the chest. The creature fit in Hiresha’s palm, tentacles wrapping between her fingers. She stroked the softness behind its eyes, and bumps rose under her touch.

“They are good to eat,” Skyheart said.

“The gifts are lovely,” Hiresha told the kraken, while a more petite creature tugged her fingers up and down, “and most thoughtful, yet—”

“Eat the eyes first.” Skyheart lifted the octopus toward Hiresha’s face. “Too many humans throw out the eyes, and they’re the best part. The waste makes me so angry. Eyes are too small for me to enjoy anymore.”

“I’m not about to dine on octopus in front of you.” Hiresha signaled the words. The other people who crowded the chest could not have contributed to the culinary discussion.

“Why not?” The kraken tilted the barge, perhaps for a clearer view of Hiresha.

Her mind understood that it was not technically cannibalism, since this octopus was a different species than the kraken. Her stomach did not.
This is like a human eating monkey brains.
The comparison in no way quieted her nausea.

Tethiel and Emesea leaned to stay upright on the uneven floor. Hiresha floated. The octopus did not seem frightened. It puffed air in and out of its head. When she set it on her shoulder, it matched the hue of her dress.

Tethiel lifted a coin from the chest. He held it between two fingers in a way that caught Hiresha’s eye. He said, “Only a man lost at sea can appreciate the true value of gold.”

The enchantress checked her smile. She should be upset with the Feaster in this dream facet, not pleased. How bizarre to remember that.

“Should we trust a Murderfish bearing gifts?” Tethiel asked.

Hiresha kept her voice chill. “Think of the kraken as a warrior maiden.”

“Always have,” Emesea said.

She lifted rope braided with gold thread.
Enchantment keeps it strong,
Hiresha realized. Its dye had faded from years underwater, but traces enough remained for the enchantress to tell that it had once been colored to look like a king snake.

The warrior looped the rope. “Now this gold I like. The kind that lifts sails and ties down men.”

Skyheart plucked a shell from the chest. Suckers attached to both sides and opened it like a book. The kraken’s eyespots formed into meaning. “This is a gem of the sea. For you.”

The shell outsized a clam’s, and no gemstone waited inside. Only a pad of yellow flesh wriggling with black feelers.

“An abalone,” Emesea said. “Delicious.”

“I’m aware what it is.” Hiresha ran a finger within. The outside of the shell had been drab. Hues of green, pink, and blue shimmered over the insides of the shell. Ripples of opal, texture of pearl. She could tell at a touch that it could not hold enchantments. Even so, she was impressed. “What I did not know was how strong these are. This shell could deflect an axe.”

Hiresha thanked the kraken. It urged her to extract the wild magic from the abalone. Color bubbled out of the mollusk. Hiresha tossed the glob of magic to Skyheart. The kraken tried to bounce it between the tips of its arms, but the sphere sank into its hide and was absorbed.

Three people attempted to make a meal out of the abalone. With a consistency of thick jam, it tasted of sea froth. Hiresha thought it refreshing and shared a bite with the small octopus. Tethiel stumbled away to gasp and gag. Neither was Emesea satisfied.

“You took out the best part,” she said to the enchantress.

The small octopus abandoned Hiresha, but she did not mind. It writhed its way off
Pharaoh’s Wisdom
. She signed a goodbye, though it did not seem to know the eyespot language.

Hiresha found herself noticing Tethiel flexing his hands on the railing. “Your fingers,” she said, “they’re healing.”

He bent two to wipe the corners of his mouth. “The dream storm washed the ache out of them.”

The barge sailed toward a less magical variety of storm. The clouds formed white tabletops with rolling bases of grey. Hiresha had an unsettling suspicion that she had seen these same clouds while wearing the red dress, now closer and swollen with moisture. If so, she had to think that meant she now lived a dream, and a twisting sensation made her wish to vomit out the abalone.

Skyheart did not startle her when it launched itself over the boat. In an arc of spotted tentacles, the kraken flew downward into the sea. Its head wobbled on impact, its arms flaring. Water blasted between its tentacles. The boat tilted, and all aboard were drenched and smiling.

Tethiel said, “Any man of meat can kill a dragon. But to befriend it? That is true greatness.”

“On that topic,” she said, “We are headed to find storm dragons.”

Emesea ran up the side of the mast and kicked off it in glee. She yammered on about how dragons were the love children of gods.

The enchantress thought the warrior would not be so eager if she knew those dragons would create a sea wall between her nation and the Oasis Empire. Worried of Emesea’s influence over the legendary sea serpents, Hiresha asked, “Do you suppose we might encounter your dragon?”

“Bet your enchanted butt we could.” Despite her words, Emesea’s tone softened, and she scratched her nose.

“You don’t believe that.” Hiresha had seen the lie for what it was. “Tell me why we couldn’t possibly meet your dragon.”

Emesea traced the coils of her tattoo between her breasts. “In a way, you already have.”

Hiresha said, “I don’t believe there’s anything equivocal about a dragon.”

“Sometimes our friends travel ahead of us into the underworld’s trials.” Emesea’s voice sounded quite like the murmuring surf of a distant ocean. “Their souls are gone, but their spirit can live on with us.”

“So the dragon in question is dead?”

Tethiel asked, “And you see yourself as a dragon of a woman?”

“I try to be.” The grin Emesea cast him did have more than its fair share of tooth.

Hiresha thought back to how Emesea had dove in after sea monsters and decided not to argue the point.

The warrior jumped as high as her own head and cried out. “And now we might meet her hatchlings. There were two eggs, each big enough to crush a terror bird.”

With the clouds towering higher and higher, Hiresha advanced to the barge’s prow. Barnacles crusted around peeling gold leaf. A mussel spit water at Hiresha, but she willed the liquid away.

Tethiel staggered to her side of the boat. He pressed his hand to his mouth and swallowed. “All know the constitutional benefits of a sea breeze, but men ruin themselves pursuing good health.”

Hiresha reminded herself that she was cross with him. His nearness sent sensations across her chest and legs of warm needle pricks, but they were of no consequence.

When he started to speak again, she jumped overboard. She had spotted the dragons.