Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals (29 page)

Djoveeve was waiting for her near a rock. The rock was covered with feathery tufts of blue-green algae amongst which nestled several mollusks known as fire limes, named so for their green color and the little bubbles of boiling water that they spat, little round beads of steam that scalded on contact anyone or anything that got too close. Pernie had learned about those the hard way a few months back while trying to connect telepathically to an elephant seal lounging on a rock a few hundred spans offshore. She pulled away from the rock as soon as she saw them, her toes wriggling reflexively as she thought about how that had felt on the bottom of her feet.

“Here,” came the gentle thought pushing against her mind. “Share my thoughts, little Sava.”

“I am,” she replied.

“Look here by this anemone. Just in front of it.” She was pointing to the space in the water only a finger’s width away from the reach of a deep purple anemone. “Come closer and watch how the tentacles sway with the currents. Look carefully and see how the pattern breaks. There is a delay as our sweet little friend is constantly trying to keep up.”

Pernie swam right up next to Djoveeve, whose long gray hair floated wildly around her in the water, making her look rather like an unkempt silver anemone herself.

Pernie peered closely into the anemone, staring down Djoveeve’s gnarled finger and looking for a break in the pattern. There was nothing. Just lots and lots of little purple strands.

“It’s moving,” came Djoveeve’s thought. “You have to see carefully. You must be patient and watch. Put away what you think you ought to see. Put away what you expect. Keep those images out of your head. Just shut down your inner voice and
see
.”

Pernie stared into the place where Djoveeve pointed, the woman’s sticklike finger slowly moving down, apparently tracking the invisible shrimp as it made its slow getaway, working down the rock beneath the anemone and seemingly headed toward the sand.

Pernie tried to stay with her, watching as hard as she could, but her air was running out again, and she had to go back up. She burst above the surface and took a few long breaths, before pulling in as much air as she could and going back down again.

Djoveeve was still pointing, though she was moving along the bottom now, lying on her side as she pulled herself along, stirring up little clouds of sand each time her elbow or hip grazed the bottom.

Pernie swam up opposite her and turned parallel, facing her, barely the length of Pernie’s arm separating them. She stared at the space in the water near the woman’s fingertip, a hand and a half above the seabed. There wasn’t anything there.

“Stop looking for the shrimp, little Sava,” came Djoveeve’s thought. “Start looking for what’s wrong with me.”

That didn’t make any sense. Pernie didn’t need to send the thought with words; the face she made conveyed it clearly enough.

“Look at my finger. My hand. Look through what you are trying to see at me. Watch what shouldn’t be about me. See what is there, not what you believe should be.”

Pernie tried again. She watched the woman’s finger carefully. She tried to imagine how big the shrimp would be. It was trying to look like a part of Djoveeve, like it had looked like the anemone and then the rock. Like it had looked like the sand.

She stared through the empty space and watched the movement of Djoveeve’s arm. The way her stomach wrinkled and movement of her breasts. There were lines in all of that, shapes and forms, shadows and spots of sunlight beaming down. Then she saw it. A double line of fingernail, and the shadow of the old woman’s rib. But it was gone right after.

“I think I saw it!” Pernie sent to Djoveeve as she peered even harder through the intervening sea.

The color shifted on Djoveeve’s inner arm, the blue veins visible and the little dimples in the soft flesh not quite rippling right. Pernie squinted and moved closer. The line of her shoulder seemed a little too brown, just for an instant, and the sunlight that sparkled on a rippling wave above flashed twice right in a row. Pernie’s hand shot out and snatched the little shrimp even as her little lungs began to burn for having held her breath too long. But she caught it. It wriggled in her hand.

She burst up out of the water and let go a
whoop
, holding her arm high. When Djoveeve surfaced right beside her, she whooped a second time. “I got it, I got it!” she yelled.

Djoveeve’s smile was just as wide as Pernie’s was, and the woman laughed happily as Pernie let her hold the little captive and measure it with her hand. “Why, look there,” Djoveeve said with pride, “yours is even bigger than mine.”

Pernie would have clapped for joy, but they were in water too deep to make such things easy. And besides, she wanted to get more of them.

“I want to find more,” she said. “I think I can see them now.”

“You can, indeed. But we must get enough for us both, and I am in quite a mood for sweets. Let’s not be lazy. I can eat quite a pile.”

“And how will we make them sweet? What is the trick of the treat?”

“You will see, little Sava. But first, let us fill up my bag.”

With a smile so wide it seemed as if it might just run right up and clip her ears, Pernie dove back under the waves again. And for the next few hours, she and Djoveeve had a wonderful time, spotting the invisible. By the time they were done, Pernie was nearly as good at catching them as Djoveeve was. It was only the fact that the old woman could hold her breath for what seemed eternity that gave her any advantage at all.

When at last Djoveeve’s bag was full, the two of them marched out of the surf together, each with a hunger worked up for all the work they’d done.

“Now for the magic,” Djoveeve said as she dumped the bag’s contents into the sand. “But you’ve got to have a good imagination to make it work.”

Pernie winced upon hearing the word. Imagination. Hah. She knew there wasn’t going to be any magic now. Grown-ups always called lying “imagination,” and at ten years old, she was tired of it.

Djoveeve saw the look on her face and shook her head. “You have to have faith sometimes, little Sava, or life is misery. You must learn when to believe.”

“Seawind said I shouldn’t trust anyone. He says you have to assume everyone is your enemy, and that all words are lies. He says the truth is in the in-between, in the movement of eyes and the beating of their hearts. He said I should listen to their hearts if I want to hear the truth.”

“He is right. You should. In that way, listening to your enemy’s heart is like seeing the sugar shrimp. A calm face can’t hide an excited heart, once you know what you are looking for. It is seeing the difference between what is real and what is meant to deceive.”

Pernie made a bored face, one side of her mouth twitching toward her cheek. “I know that.” She looked impatiently down at the squirming pile of shrimp. Together they made a shifting pile that looked like water that’s turned to gel and filled with sand. They didn’t work very well together, Pernie thought.

“These little creatures are liars too,” the old woman said, squatting down near the pile. She picked one up, and Pernie watched as it tried to keep pace with the changing backdrop, its appearance changing rapidly as Djoveeve’s hand moved, matching in incredible succession whatever it was that lay behind it that would be in Pernie’s line of sight as she looked its way. That’s when Pernie realized what it actually had to do to hide from her.

“Hey,” she said as the idea dawned upon her. “How does it know what I am looking at?”

Djoveeve once again wore that grin of victory. She nodded, clearly pleased. “I had hoped you would see it for yourself. You are a clever girl, and Tidalwrath chose you well.”

Pernie didn’t care about stupid Tidalwrath. She was moving her head around, moving herself around, changing angles as rapidly as she could, moving her line of sight so that one minute the shrimp was between her and the sand, the next between her and Djoveeve’s arm, or her leg, or her hair. No matter where Pernie moved, no matter how fast, the shrimp changed immediately.

“So how does it know that?”

“These little creatures read your mind.”

Pernie frowned. “They do?”

“Yes. That is part of their magic. They are the best little diviners in the sea. They know what you see before you do. The only reason we can see them at all is because it takes them that tiniest fraction of a second to adjust their skin. There are no other creatures that can do that.”

Pernie nodded, happy to have something interesting to understand. “So what is the trick of the treat?”

“That’s where the imagination comes in. You see, they are also little transmuters, though they don’t actually know it yet.”

“How come they don’t know?”

“The same way you didn’t know you were a teleporter until you were frightened enough to make your first teleport. I’m sure you remember that.”

Pernie nodded that she did. She’d never forget that terrible day when the orcs came and tried to kill everyone. One of them had been about to cut Master Altin right in half. She hadn’t even known she was about to do it at all. She just, well, she saw the orc going, and then it happened. She was right there on the orc’s back, the distance between them just gone, as if it never was. She simply found herself there on top of it and began to stab the awful thing as fast and furiously as she could. How could she not have?

Djoveeve saw the glaze in her eyes and nodded, watching Pernie watch the memory. “That’s right, little Sava. And these tasty creatures work the same way. When they are worked up into a fright, they find their transmutation ability.”

“So what do they do, turn into a candy or piece of cake?” Pernie asked hopefully.

Djoveeve tilted her head back and laughed. “No, dear child, not quite. But it is something delicious in much the same way. And this is where your imagination comes in, for they are not shape-shifters like me. Their transmutation ability is not so good as that. At best they might be C class if they could be ranked. But that is quite good enough for this.” She laid the shrimp in her left hand and took her knife from where it lay atop her folded clothes. “Before you kill them,” she said, with a marginally wicked smile, “you must think of the sweetest thing you can. I always think of maple syrup, the kind that we had when I was a little girl, not much younger than you. My father had a grove of maple trees, and it was the best flavor of my life. Yours will be something different. Perhaps that birthday cake you are wishing for. So conjure that up in your mind, not the image of the cake, but the flavor of it. Remember it so well that you can feel it on your tongue.” As she spoke, her words came more and more slowly, her eyelids drooping a little as she allowed herself the memory. “Hold the thought there, and then gently find the place between the shrimp’s legs, where they meet at the belly. Feel for it with your thumb.” She spent a moment feeling into the invisible shrimp in her hand, probing with her thumb. “Once you have it, slowly push your knife into it, just like this. Not too fast. You have to let it feel the pain. It will flicker, then turn gray, and in that instant, you must plunge your knife in before it can camouflage itself again. You have to be quick, kill it quick, from there.”

She stopped speaking for a moment, letting her own memories come back to her as Pernie stared, openmouthed, watching. Then, sure enough, just like the flicker of a candle in a breeze, the shrimp turned gray and Djoveeve stuffed her knife tip right into its guts. She opened her half-shut eyes and smiled.

With a few quick strokes of her knife, she opened up the shrimp, stripped its shell, and cleaned its innards out. She presented it to Pernie, who still stood watching with her mouth still agape.

“What’s the matter, little Sava? Is it too cruel for you to do? I admit that there are not many who can make themselves do what needs to be done to the little things for the sugar secret to work. If you haven’t the stomach for it, I’ll prepare them. Though it will be maple and frostberries in them all. I just can’t seem to remember anything else well enough to make it work, and for whatever reason, only sweet memories do the trick.”

Pernie shook her head no. She had no qualms about torturing the little shrimp to make them sweet. Pain was a reality. Pain was how she trained her little, low-slung mount. She was rapidly beginning to realize that there was a great deal of good that came from pain. And she kind of liked doing it too.

She ran to where her clothes were and pulled her knife out of the sheath. She ran back and fumbled in the invisible pile of shrimp until she found a nice big one to try it on.

She missed the flicker on the first one, and she stabbed too quickly on the next. But by the third try, she had it, holding it just right, seeing the big pink-frosted cake Kettle had made for her last year and then tasting it in her mind. She tasted it as she twisted her knife into the wriggling shrimp’s little guts, pressing the point in just enough until the creature became briefly visible. She plunged the knife in the instant she saw it, so hard she actually stabbed through it into her palm. But it worked that time. She knew it because the creature turned pink just before it died.

“I think I did it,” she cried, staring up at Djoveeve hopefully.

“Let us find out,” the old assassin said. “Here, push it a bit farther down your knife, and take my shrimp too. Push it on there as well.”