“...escape the pressures of the sea

and spill their blood for homes to be...”

Lensih Ndwahvi Lohki VI

2:1:1:2/5, III:IX

Spring announced herself with a breathy gust of warmth across the starboard bow. “Kanata can’t be far off,” Larin exulted into the sweet breeze sweeping the rail. “These kelp forests are just a few days north of Port Myre.” With gratifying ease, she coaxed a frond to grow up from the surface and snapped it off to show Jorn.

“You shouldn’t waste your magic like that,” chided the speaker, cradling the slimy leaf in his palm.

Vivacious after a mere week at sea, the girl laughed. “It was only weak in Kholl.” Jorn had to admit he’d never seen her so radiant, except in that strange moment when she’d saved the baby green. “Plants live to grow, when the landscape’s fertile. It’s easy here.” Plucking the kelp from his custody, she grew a gangly vine from its broken stalk and tossed it overboard. “I kept telling you I–”

“Vetc!” A frantic shout boomed down from the main mast, and a clamor of warning bells shook the hull. In moments, the entire crew surged across the deck, tying down sails and securing tarred canvas across the hatches.

Jorn’s paltry Allanic failed to translate their panic, but Larin blanched. “Mother! There are waves coming!”

“Waves?” Eyeing the cloudless sunset and miles of smooth ocean around them, he scrambled after Larin to the stern of the ship. There, the edge of the world had raised its hackles and charged, the sea drawn into vast ridges hurtling fast for them. “What is that?!”

“It’s the mers,” breathed Larin, seizing the rail as early chop rocked the deck. “Somebody’s angry.”

“Angry,” he echoed, stricken and pulling at her elbow. “You should get inside. I need to check on the dragons, then–”

“Jorn, that will smash us to pieces! Do you think it’ll matter if we duck inside?” Into his unnerved silence, she chattered, “The mers don’t do this. They don’t just sink ships for no reason. They can’t – they’re... they – they told me this, I think!” The deck plunged out from beneath them, then lunged up to drop them to their knees. “The mers at Dynde, they said – I think maybe I can stop it!”

Hauling Larin back to her feet, Jorn implored, “How?”

She scraped through years of portents the mers had taught her, seeking the one about rough seas. When lost through sight of death untold works not to see the seen unfold, she riles the sea... “That’s it! Okay, uh – it goes, uh... sh-she riles the sea for sacrifice of homebound student stolen thrice – that’s me, the student. Then–”

Jorn snatched Larin around the waist before the pitching deck knocked her backward. “Sacrifice?!”

Winded as he pinned her to the rail, she gasped out, “Who by the grace of lessons taught, reminds the lost of truth forgot – so I talk to her, right? I talk her out of it?”

“Talk who out of what?”

“The waves!” Fighting through her panic, she drew a slow breath, the sharp salt spray robbing her focus.

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“Hey! You two!” From where he grasped the rail on either side of Larin, Jorn watched a shouting sailor approach. “Get back to your room before it’s too late!”

Larin ignored him, so Jorn answered in his broken Allanic, “Nats. Nazuca, naseto.” Boggled by the flat refusal, the rattled sailor flung an arm at the tsunami and yelled his warnings louder.

Struggling to tune him out, Larin reached into the sea with her magic, extending herself through the undeveloped consciousness of the kelp beds around them. Within the collective awareness of the swaying forest, she sensed presence and nearness, animal life of a certain form, and agitation – she’d found the mer.

The location fixed in her mind, she urged the kelp to converge and grow, flushing the being to the surface. “Jynraja!” she cried, and the sailor behind them gaped at the tangled mer struggling in a tower of seaweed. “Ryinyadurak jynraja vyehlwnkagyo!” Though he didn’t speak the mer language, the sailor threw a rope around Jorn to secure them to the rail. Leaving Larin to plead for their lives, he vanished belowdecks with the rest of the crew, and waves battered the ship while the affronted mer righted herself. “Jynraja sehnvyiwivyarikoliji!”

Reared upright like a snake atop the kelp tower, the mer glowered with the fierce gold eyes of her race. She glittered from face to tail in royal blue scales, her sparse navy hair shorn close to her earless head. “Ohdusikahlode?” Purging water as she spoke, her gills flared at the sides of her neck and sealed against the air.

“Ohruwidalohdeisya!” cried Larin in desperation. A wave crashed across the pitching stern, and the cold sea dragged them along the rail. “Please, spare us!” she spluttered, and Jorn cinched the wet rope tighter around them. “What has this ship done?”

“I have seen it!” wailed the mer, webbed hands on her face in despair. “A field of death! Evil swarms the land – and this ship brings the swarm!” She cast an accusing finger at Larin and shrieked, “You can do no harm at the bottom of the sea!”

More water slammed the deck, crushing Jorn over Larin as it drained. Ribs bruised, she gasped in terror, “No, lady! There is no evil aboard this ship!”

“I have seen!” the mer screeched, clutching herself and rocking on the kelp. “Do not deny the sight!”

With the next rush of water, Larin’s cheek hit the rail and hot blood pooled around her tongue. “I’m not – I don’t!” sobbed the girl. “Lady, you know it all will come to pass no matter what you do–!” Another wave dragged them back along the rail, the rope jerking them to a painful halt. “You know that! Your actions are accounted for in all you’ve seen!” It was the first axiom the mers had taught her. Everything came to pass, regardless or even because of those who’d foretold it.

“How is it you know the inner workings of the sight?” A terrible wall of water drew them up and closed over the ship, snapping battened lifeboats from their lines. Jorn’s sodden knot slipped in the onslaught, and they smashed into the galley wall as the ship broke the surface, water streaming off the deck.

Ripped from Jorn’s grasp, Larin swirled overboard, clinging to the rail for a fragile moment until the deluge plunged her beneath the roiling sea. “No!” Jorn howled, scanning the churning debris for some sign of her.

Clawing for air, the girl shrieked out, “Dynde! They taught me–!” Dashed by another crushing ridge of water, she slammed against a doomed lifeboat and tumbled in the foam. The mers, it seemed, had been wrong. She wouldn’t talk her way out of this. They were going to die.

Unsustained, the towering seaweed relapsed into the depths, and the sinking mer contemplated Larin’s claim. The most distinguished scholars had tended Dynde for millennia, and they wouldn’t have wasted their time on a land-dweller. Yet the girl’s knowledge resounded – to undermine the sight would concuss the entire fabric of existence. This evil ship, she realized, had to reach its destination.

At a slash of the mer’s webbed arms, the waves collapsed and the horizon leveled. Slipping from the loose tangle of kelp, she vanished beneath the calm seas and left the crippled ship listing in the red sunset. The moment Larin’s unmoving form broke the littered surface, Jorn dove from the stern and paddled for her, relief flooding him when she began to cough. The left side of her face was a purple mess, her body mottled with bruises and scrapes, but she gulped down great starving breaths between her fits of choking.

Jorn wedged her onto a chunk of splintered lifeboat, floating beside her until the ship’s skeptical crew emerged from the hold. Their manic cheers rang through the evening air, and Jorn shouted to them for help before relenting to his own exultation. “I guess you talk her out of it after all.” Squeezing Larin’s hand, he relished the gentle pressure she returned, her weary chuckle drifting back to him like a secret on the breeze.