The Hundred: Fall of the Wents (40 page)

He had a moment of regret: He had given up the chance to live forever and to outlast seasons and years and his friends. He would die like everything else did, one day.

He released the spheres, opening his hand into the black waters, and they were instantly swept away by the sucking, swift current that dragged them down into the gulf. As they vanished through the gap into the hidden deeps below, he finally heard their song—a great peal of low and high notes rung together. The force of the sound sent a shock through him that tingled all the way down into his gut and up through his antennae. The creatures of the ocean paused in their play and work and were frozen by the sound that disturbed their home. All seemed to wait expectantly.

Then Tully felt great bubbles rushing up around him, streaming upward from the crevasse. He swam in a panicked frenzy, buffeted by the rising and chaotic pockets of air, to reach the door of the craft. The other sea creatures swirled around him, their phosphorescence blinking and scattered, disturbed by the upswarm of bubbles. Tully swam into the hatch. Aarvord sealed it and Tully was safe beyond the domed glass window.

*

Hatch, Hindrance, and Fangor were witness to what occurred next, as they crouched on the stony beach by the water’s edge. Above, in the air, the circling cloud of Hundred hovered over the surface of the water. And, then, the waters rose, raining up from the oceans to the sky in a fine deluge of droplets.

“Look!” said Fangor. “The sea is raining! I have never seen such a thing, no I have not.” The rains rose higher, defying gravity, and the storm of Hundred fell completely silent. The shadow lurched, as if in terror, but it could not escape.

“It is their end,” said Hindrance.

The water reached the Hundred
and seemed to slow down and hover there for an instant. Then the water enveloped them, every droplet capturing a soul from the horde and pinioning it, tight within a prison of moisture, as it fell back to the ocean’s surface.

Now that the shadow was broken, other small creatures that had been swept up in its fury and accidentally trapped fell loose and free. Some of them were small birds from that other world, and they flew haphazardly through the air, dumb strangers in a world millions of years from their own. A few were small creatures such as snakes and rodents, who twisted and plummeted down to the sea among the huge drops of water that encased the human souls. Some hit the surface and drowned quickly; others recovered their wits and began to swim to safety. Their arrival in this new world was a strange thing, for they would perhaps breed others of their kind and change the course of history in small ways.

“The rain has caught them,” said Hatch. “Look how they fall.”

The Boring Bees that had become part of the shadow were trapped as well, and they fell as swiftly as the human souls. The rain did not free them as it had the other small beasts.

The human souls now trapped within the water droplets in the air were wan and pale like ghosts, bleached of their density and fury. They fell quickly and were hungrily snatched under the surface of the sea.

The rain reached its zenith and swallowed all. Now it was falling back and back into the ocean in a torrent—an unending stream of captive souls. They fell much too fast for Hindrance and Hatch and Fangor to see their facial expressions, but there was an ineffable sadness in the air. All of them had experienced gloomy days of rain, but this was the saddest rainfall they had ever felt in their bones. Yet it was also beautiful. The grayness of the constant winter had broken open, for the first time in days. The sky above the falling droplets was crystal clear and blue, and the snowdrifts along the edge of the sea glittered and sparkled.

“Look,” said Fangor, who was stunned by what he saw. “The light shines through the souls of the Hundred and makes color wheels!” And it was true. The chorus of falling droplets made wide prisms in the air, and scattered slivered rainbows of light that dazzled their eyes and made them blink. The metallic bodies of the Boring Bees also caught the sun and gave off sharp stabs of light.

“One may hope,” said Hatch, “that these poor souls find some happiness in their last moments.” The Shrike had lived an ugly life without any beauty or joy whatsoever—until he had met the little Sand Louse, who had taught him to fly and given him hope.
This sad end to the cloud of spirits was the most heartbreaking and wonderful thing he had ever seen.

Hindrance was reminded of the falling and death of her own kind, the Wents. She rode a fresh wave of sadness and regret. She felt a burgeoning anger as well, but it was an emotion with which she was not familiar. It did not sit well with her and so she shut it out. She watched.

Time seemed to slow down for a moment and the three observers watched until the last of the water had fallen back down to the surface of the sea, taking the Hundred with it. Then there was a great silence. None said a word. It was over. The sunlight danced over the ocean. Except for a few swimming beasts that still struggled toward the shore, it was as if the Hundred had never been there at all.

*

Down below the surface, Tully, Copernicus, and Aarvord watched the falling of the Hundred down to the Deeps. The glowing creatures that had assembled to watch and guide their passing lighted their way. They fell down like snow or rain, slowly at first but then faster, drifting in the swiftly-pulling currents into the darker places. There was something of sadness in their falling, plaintive faces, and their hands reaching out for hope—and something of goodness and joy, too. The Boring Bees, trapped among the falling, did not show any emotion at all. Although—one turned, for a moment, and in its dark eyes Tully thought he could see a trace of certainty. Of smugness, or knowingness…Tully could not say. Then the bee was gone and the chill Tully had felt in its little gaze was gone.

The Whale Becoming shut his massive jaws and blinked his eyes. He too felt the sadness of the Hundred’s passage, for they would come no more to the air and the light.

In the falling they could see children, and old people, and young adults, all wondering why their time had finally and suddenly come to an end. There were no doubt the chosen children among those who had destroyed their chance at life, and their falling was the most painful. They had had their time to be alive, and, now, it was gone and done. There might have been hope for them to find their place on the Earth again. A few of them caught Tully’s attention so keenly that he was pained. Must they all be lost, for what some of them had done? A small boy, his hands purling water before it like ropes, and a girl with her face showing surprise and loss. Her mouth opened in an
O
of astonishment. It was clear that she could see them watching her falling. Soon she would be gone in the inky blackness of the deeps. And then she
was
gone.

“No,” said Tully.

Copernicus heard him, and tucked his head up under the Eft’s chin, as if to comfort him.

“You didn’t know it would be so hard,” said Copernicus. “I did, because I knew them. But now I know that the children were not these things.”

“They may yet come again,” said Aarvord suddenly. But it seemed to Copernicus and Tully both that the big Grout was not referring to the children, but to the race of the humans.

The souls had vanished into the deeps. Not a trace remained, and the shoals of fish and other creatures began to emerge from the hiding places they had sought during the deluge and to look around. Soon, the Sea Eggs and the Kettlefish and the Efts were swimming to and fro in calm waters. The sun shone down in great beams of light that rippled in the ocean’s movement, and motes and bits of flotsam and sea grass danced in the currents.

Tully felt deeply sad, thinking of the lost beings so far beneath the water, and cut off from all hope of finding life again in new bodies on the earth. Would they simply burst like bubbles left too long in the air, and be whisked away into a watery nothingness? Or would they be trapped there for centuries in the darkness and heaviness of the ocean, biding their time? After all, the Whale Becoming had been born there and had risen again in a new form. He shuddered. It had been terribly easy to forget that the Hundred had meant ill things, now that they were gone. He longed for home and the light above.

*

Aarvord worked the controls, and the craft rose, up and up to the surface. It broke into the light of a clear day. They came out of the hatch and their friends were waiting for them.

Tully stepped out on the deck of the craft. He reached inside his vest, as he had always done to touch the metal sphere that had hung around his neck since he was a child. He was a child no more. His familiar necklace was gone, without even the cord that had bound it.

But in one of the pockets within his vest he found something soft, and pulled it out. For a moment he did not recognize it, as it was creased and darkened with decay. He spread it out flat on the palm of his hand and remembered it for what it was: a blossom that had fallen from Elutia’s face on the dark night when they had fled with the Veldstacks. The white petals were almost black now, and curled, and when he touched them with the tip of his finger they collapsed into his palm, released from the pith at their center, and blew away on the new fierce wind from the sea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Prescott earned her M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of New Hampshire, and lives in New York state with her husband and three sons.
The Hundred: Fall of the Wents
is the first in a planned trilogy.