48

TRUE THINGS

🙜

It was not the sea.

This pool of water was finite: it sang a simple song…

Ky’s ocean was infinite, a chorus of many all singing together as one—multitudes within a vast expanse of possibility. But this salty embrace was still familiar, and its kiss awakened memories already half-forgotten: seagrass waving around her ankles, ridged shells beneath her fingertips, claw-cracked oysters, the taste of those delicacies upon her tongue…

…and fishes swimming all around, silver scales shining in the moonlight, greedy for their share.

Deeper, sang the water.

Her heart ached for her ocean nest, but she would sink to the coldest depths of this pool. White-hot recollections of biting air and burning wind shivered together in her mind, and she wished to hide from them.

The still surface closed over her head, soothing her pain and gently tousling her hair. Ky sighed, bubbles rushing past her face, so that she would sink yet further.

The darkness was good; she craved the darkness.

It would hide her thoughts, shelter her battered body, while she remembered herself.

Deeper…

But just as the pads of her toes touched the slimy floor, something tightened around her wrist, calling her attention outward.

A hand.

Its singing pulse quickened and stuttered, drumming against her palm. She had been snatched like this before—many times—yes, she could smell the bitter fragrance of her sister even now…

Ky pulled away, but that hand would not let go. It did not force her to the surface, but neither did it reach any further. It simply held her.

She opened an eye beneath the water, the one which pained her least, and peered into the murk. The scent which she could taste, impressed upon her skin and trailing through the salt and gloom, was not her sister's sultry scent, of sage and bitter pine: instead, it was the heady musk of man.

Her lips parted and she drew that hand nearer.

Familiar.

And warm.

Deeper, lulled the salt and cold.

But those rough fingers squeezed her gently, a promise without words.

She shivered.

The touch filled her with an unquenchable curiosity, an innate longing for a precious and mysterious thing which she had all but forgotten, and she felt very strongly that she should not have forgotten it. When she recovered herself, she would surely remember to whom that heartbeat belonged; how they had come together to the embrace of this dark refuge…

At last, Ky relented, and wrapped her fingers round his wrist in turn.

❧

Ember…

Twisted forests, hideous laughter, and a tangle of crimson hair fled his mind in a whirl—and everything around him turned to darkness. He blinked rapidly, but the darkness did not ebb.

The summons returned, a breath cooling his ear.

Ember!

He bolted upright, fumbling.

“Ky?”

Two cold, wet hands gripped his wrist, thumbs smoothing over his palm and fingers winding with his. He shivered as a very real voice croaked: “I am here.”

The water rippled quietly. For a moment, he couldn’t speak—his throat was too tight, his breaths too shallow, and he could not find the words to explain his relief. Ky merely explored his hand with her nimble fingers, finding every cut and welt upon his knuckles.

“When I first awake, I think myself in death,” she whispered at last, her voice washing over him like rain after a drought, “But... your scent is here with me, and I am knowing it cannot be so.”

He lifted his other hand, searching for her face in the darkness, and then realized that he didn’t know what he would do once he had found it.

“Ember,” Ky murmured, folding their hands together and sparing him the trouble. “Where are we?”

“Someplace called the salt baths,” he said, edging closer. “Tried to tell you, before you ran away. I think people would come, sometimes, to wash themselves. We should be safe here… for now.”

Her response was not long in coming.

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“Thank you.”

Chills skittered across the back of his neck as she repeated herself in those strange twisty words which belonged to siren tongues alone.

“Of course,” he mumbled, suddenly compelled to speak his dreary thoughts aloud. “I—I can’t really even begin to describe to you how afraid I was—that you would leave me alone, I mean—in the dark.”

Ky’s grasp loosened, and then she withdrew. Ember ducked his head; he wondered why given voice to those worries, and then realized uncomfortably that he wished for reassurance. For her soothing words.

What must she think of me now? Sil’s gilded insults still echoed in his mind. Nothing but a little boy, after all…

Water rippled as Ky shifted along the ledge.

Stone scraped against stone.

A faint light appeared before him—dim at first, like a firefly. It flickered and swelled until he could discern thin fingers forming a cage about the golden stone. Light shone through the delicate skin between her knuckles, and then cast its soft glow upon her face; she blew quietly on the resin, stroking it with her fingertips, coaxing the light from within.

As the light brightened, he glimpsed a mottling of pale pinkish discoloration around her neck and shoulders, partially hidden by strands of black hair. More alarming were the faint vein-like patterns beneath the surface, like cracked pottery glazing. It reminded him starkly of the wicked siren, but these lines were fewer and softer, more silvery than grey.

Before he could remark on them—or decide whether to remark at all—Ky looked away from the stone and he was caught up in her glance.

“I am here,” she repeated, very firmly, holding the stone out to him, “and you shall not be alone, nor in the dark.”

Ember grasped it in quiet surprise.

Ky gingerly folded her arms on the ledge and leaned closer, hair pressed along her neck and floating around her shoulders in the cloudy water. Softly shattered, near to breaking, still somehow both sane and whole. Water plinked quietly in the back of the room.

“Ember… please hear me. When I am running away from you, then, it is only—”

“I know why you ran,” he said stiffly. “You were hungry. You didn’t want to hurt me. You don’t need to be sorry for that.”

Yet it was only with great effort that he dredged up each word; it felt wrong somehow, to say that she needn’t be sorry, after Sil’s gloating delight. The notion of that otherworldly witch skulking across the craggy peaks and lying in wait beside the gate chilled him to the marrow of his bones.

…I have to tell Ky about my dreams.

The thought turned his mouth sour with dread.

Yet his recent brush with death had persuaded him.

If something happens to me, before we get free of this mountain… she needs to know to be careful–to know that her sister is still out there looking for her.

He exhaled a shaking breath, closing his fingers around the glowing stone.

“Do you remember when I told you… about dreams? And you asked to sing for me?”

An irrelevant question—of course she would remember. But she merely stroked his bloody knuckles and pressed them to her cheek. The cold and damp of her skin soothed his welts. It was an entirely innocent gesture, but he wondered if she knew that it made his heart beat faster.

“Hmm.”

“Not long after we came to this mountain, after… well, you know… I found a place to hide. I think it was sacred to the men who lived here, once. Anyway, I saw something there—it was like a dream, but real. I think maybe it’s called a vision. And I met someone in that vision…”

Ky continued to ponder his welts, running her fingers over them and humming very quietly to herself.

Listening.

“Ever since that day, she has been coming to me in my dreams somehow. A sirena like you, with long red hair. Her voice is like that song we heard in the woods, near the mountain’s door. She is…” Ember ducked his head, ashamed without quite knowing why. “...very beautiful.”

The humming ceased.

Her claws pressed into his palm, and dark eyes glittered at him in the stone-light.

“She calls herself Silveli.” He watched Ky carefully. “That is your sister's name.”

He was surprised at the weight which lifted from him as he spoke those words. Yet in the next moment he felt ashamed for speaking them at all, for that same weight which had fled him seemed to settle upon Ky instead—her shoulders slumped and she dipped deeper into the bath.

“Yes,” she murmured, eyes downcast.

Ember waited for further comment or rebuttal, and was alarmed when none came.

“You don’t doubt me?”

One shoulder shrugged faintly.

“Why doubt my Ember? You are never speaking falsely to me.”

Her words were touched with an unexpected sorrow.

It struck him cold.

“Never,” he agreed, and winced, taken up by the remembrance of his rage in the garden—surely a flattering word or two would uplift her spirits. “But when you sing to me, I can feel your presence there. Your song keeps her away, though I glimpse her now and then; a shadow at the edge of my dream.”

She moved a little closer, the water swirling around her, but did not look up at him.

“Does she sing for you?” she whispered faintly.

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “The song I heard in the woods.”

More faintly still: “Does she speak of me?”

Ember nodded, but said nothing at first, carefully mulling over his thoughts before he freed them. He would make no mention of Bren—not yet. No, he would give her a chance to tell him what had happened; perhaps the truth of it was much different than the story Sil had spun for him.

“Yes. She told me that you ran far away, but she didn't tell me why. It matters little: I think she means to reach the other side of Sister’s Mountain before we do, and wait for us there... catch you, and take you back with her."

He swallowed the rest of Sil's sinister threats; he would spare Ky the guilt of that unless it should, by some grave misfortune, come to pass.

Then he pressed, “Why do you hide from them?”

Ky hummed nervously and turned his hands over, quietly playing with each of his fingers. He might have thought it strange from someone else, but it did not seem out of line with her youthful manner, so he allowed the contact, hoping she couldn’t see the corners of his mouth curling upward in the darkness.

At last she sighed so deeply he thought she would never reach the end of it.

“I do not tell you all the true things, Ember—there is more.”