The ocean was made for me.

Even dragging Isla’s weight beside me and being unable to use my left hand, I moved us through the water with as much effort as it took to walk on solid ground. My aura trailed from my free hand, propelling us deeper with every kick. The sunlight dappling above on the surface of the water washed out most of the azure glow.

Diving us down towards a small opening in the ocean floor I had found on one of my nightly swims, I tapped my fingers on Isla’s side to get her to open her eyes.

She fluttered them open against the water before they went wide. With unfocused and directionless spasms, Isla tried to swim away from me in a sudden panic. Bubbles of her precious air rippled out of her nose and careened for the surface.

I spun myself to face the direction she desperately was trying to move away from and saw what had startled her.

A dark shape moved through the water. It swam closer, growing larger with every passing second and unobscured its details as the distance between us closed.

Jagged white teeth, black emotionless eyes, a shape that was meant to cut through the water at terrifying speeds, Isla had opened her eyes and seen a shark.

Not just any shark, she had seen the God of Merrowcrest’s coast.

A beast so old, he was probably a father when the Mother’s were babies. If he so willed it, he could have bitten the little beach town off the coast in one or two bites. I had seen mountains smaller than him.

Jotuza.

The closer he swam, the more Isla panicked. I didn’t blame her, I hadn’t entered the ocean for a month after my first meeting with him. He moved close enough that I could see the hundreds of old scars spread across his snout. Isla’s panicking ceased as she was shocked into stillness. I looked at her and held my finger up to my lips, hoping the shushing gesture would be enough to tell her that she needed to be calm.

Swimming towards Jotuza with my arm extended to the mouth that could swallow both of us whole, I pressed my hand against his rough skin and pushed him to the side. Letting a current of my azure aura flow out of my palm as he passed, I willed some of his scars closed.

A payment for allowing me to enter his territory.

The massive beast took my direction, turning from his curious path and continuing past us. I pulled Isla as close to me as our bodies would allow and brought her hand up. Her fingers brushed against Jotuza’s body as he faded back into the darkness beyond our sight.

Isla tapped me, a surprising smile on her face. She held up her hand and said something that was lost in a sudden blur of bubbles. As soon as she realized she had just released the last of her air, panic came back into her eyes.

Isla couldn’t swim.

I could.

Streaking through the water, we passed through the rocky opening that had been our destination. I held Isla’s front tight to my own so the rough walls would not scrap her skin. We passed through the twists and turns of the dark passage with nothing but the azure glow of my aura to light our way. A moment later, we breached the surface and I pushed her off me and onto a sandy bank where she fell back, desperately trying to catch her breath.

I stood in the shallowing water and leaned over her. “What was so important that you would give up your breath to say it?”

“I thought,” Gasp. “Shark skin,” Gasp. “Would be smooth.” She answered me, the rising and lowering of her chest gradually settling.

I pulled her up by her shoulders and helped her sit up. “Here, you will catch your breath quicker like this. I’m proud of you, you know? I didn’t think we would run into Jotuza, but you handled it better than I did the first time.”

Isla raised her arms above her head, taking slow and deliberate breaths. “That thing has a name? And it is just out there? Do people know?”

Her long hair was wrapped around her neck and face in half a dozen places. Gathering it into my hands, I pressed the water out of it and watched it drip down the small ridges of her spine that could be seen on her bent back. “He isn’t a thing. His name is Jotuza and he is a gentleman.”

“Haimi. Sharks cannot be gentlemen. That’s ridiculous.” She insisted, almost breathing normally.

“I don’t know about that,” I left her on the bank and went to the basket I had left in the place earlier that morning. Opening it and unpacking it, I continued. “He could have gnashed us into chum if he wanted to, but here we are.”

“Where is here?” Isla asked, standing up and looking around where I had brought her.

From a natural sky light, just large enough for someone to lower a basket through, the sun lit the small cavern in a rippling glow. A sandy mound that was more than likely pushed through passage we had swam through when the currents were right, acted as the ground. The air was cool and dry, perfect for a picnic.

“I stumbled into it by accident a few days ago,” I said, letting her help me flatten out the blanket over the sand. From the basket I pulled two bottles of wine and both halves of a long sandwich that had been cut down its middle and filled with cheese and smoked meats. One piece of my picnic remained at the bottom of the basket, wrapped in a handkerchief the same azure shade of my aura. “It was filled with these big black oysters.”

“And you thought that made it a wonderful spot for a date. Why couldn’t we just go have dinner at Sara’s like usual? There are much fewer Jotuzas there and it doesn’t require me to enter a realm I am powerless in.” Isla said, taking a seat and uncorking one of the bottles of wine.

I pulled out the last piece and sat opposite her with my legs crossed, ignoring the nervousness that teemed just below my surface. “Because this is not a usual date. I have something important I want to ask you,” I unwrapped the handkerchief and showed Isla what I had made. “I opened one of the oysters up, looking for a snack, and found these little pearls in them. The same color as your aura, see? Milly helped me string them up.”

Isla gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.

“Do you like it?”

“Haimi, I love it,” She said, taking it from me and wrapping it around her slender neck. “Oh, it fits perfectly,” She smiled, craning her head down so she could see the nine golden pearls resting against her collarbones. “Is this - your question. . .Do you mean to?”

“I do.” I nodded to her.

Isla launched herself across the blanket and wrapped me in a tight embrace. “Yes!”

The nervousness within me vanished and I let her momentum carry us down. Before I felt the sand under my back, the feeling of her holding me slipped away and I felt myself fall from the little cavern with a smile on my face.

The next instance, I opened my eyes and saw a jumbled mess of books strewn out about me.

Shaking my head, I pushed myself off the floor. “Isla?”

I tried to stand. My foot slid back and over the empty white pages of one of the books. Like I was caught in a rip current, I felt myself being dragged into it

Snapping jaws, murderous growls, sickening whines. Every gap and trail I cut through the dark forest was filled with the canine cacophony.

Wolves, why did it always have to be wolves.

“Lady Ferrolaine!” One of the Imari trackers that I had hired to help me hunt The Houndsman shouted from behind me.

All around us, I could smell them closing us in. Running us into a pinch point like frightened elk. Taking long and violent swings at anything that slowed my escape with my aura bladed hand, I yelled back. “Yes, what is it?”

“I’ve never hunted dogs that could disappear, is there some lady magic you could do to fix that?” The tracker shouted.

I cut down a low hanging branch that blocked my way and struck out with my hand a moment after it had fallen to the first floor. My blade met flesh and with a high pitched whine, the invisible wolf that had almost crushed my ankle between its jaws faded into sight. “How do you hunt what you cannot see, gentleman?”

If they answered, I never heard it. Before I could pull my aura from the slain beast, I fell to the forest floor and darkness enveloped me.

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“With your nose!” I growled, coming back to myself on my hands and knees. Out of breath and my stomach twisted in knots, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Any moment, fangs would sink into my skin and I would be torn limb from limb by the unseen canines. Invisible wolves, what idiot thought that to be a good idea? I crawled forward regardless, not willing to let myself become pieces of meat.

My hand came down on the soft white pages of a book. What in the devil was a book doing in the middle of The Houndsman’s forest? For the second time in too short of a span, I never got an answer. My eyes were drawn to the empty pages underneath my fingers and the knots in my stomach twisted tighter. The nausea brought me low and I closed my eyes to keep from vomiting, feeling like I was being pulled into the ground.

If I could see what was happening to me. . .If it had not been for the low light and the sheet draped over my legs. . .

All that kept me from giving up was the rough skin of my husband's massive finger clutched in my hand.

“Push, Ten-Moons! Hezbelthorag is with us!” Gresh growled, unaffected by my death grip.

I screamed, feeling like I was being torn in two from the inside. The Mother’s, I need The Mother’s. I pleaded silently, unable to form words.

Then, the pain seeped out of me and gentle greetings came from the midwives between my legs.

Gresh roared in triumph, leaning down and planting a sloppy kiss on my forehead. “You’ve done it, Ten-Moons. You have made me a Fatier!”

“The baby,” I whispered to him weakly. “It’s not crying.”

One of the midwives spoke, her voice quavering. “My King, she is not breathing!”

Gresh’s face darkened into a hardlined scowl. He raised his wrist to his teeth and tore through the skin with his teeth. “Give her to me.”

“My king, it is too late,” The midwife cried. “She is already cold.”

Steaming blood running down the hand I had been clutching only moments before, Gresh shouted. “Give me my daughter!”

My visions swam and all I could understand was momentary glimpses of what followed.

A baby, my baby, cradled in one of her father’s massive hands, unmoving. Gresh raised his wrist above her mouth. Hot blood splattering down her cheek as he rolled his fingers to force more out.

My strength failed me and my head slammed back onto the mound of pillows beneath it. The low light of the room dimmed and disappeared as my mind slipped into the void.

Just before I fell away, I heard the most blessed sound a new mother could ever have filling her ears.

The baby, my baby, let out a strong and sudden cry that I carried with me into the dark.

The dark gave way to light while the echoes of my daughter's first cries still rang in my ears.

I rolled off of my side. White hot pain tore through my middle and came to a point where my legs met.

Thunk.

“Gresh?” I cried out, falling limply onto my back. A sob wracked my chest as I stared up at what looked like an infinitely tall series of bookshelves. The Mothers, I needed The Mothers. Where were the midwives? Where was the bed? Where was my daughter? “Gresh?”

My head lolled to one side, and my tears rolled down my face and into the open pages of a misplaced book.

Darkness reclaimed me, my ears filled with nothing but quiet.

“Over here, Dear. We are about to begin!”

I hurried over to where the other sorceress had formed a loose circle around the massive clear crystal.

“You’re a navel right? Just walk right up and lean into it, it’s easier that way.” The foreman told me, dropping to the ground. She pressed the soles of her feet against the crystal, sending skin colored refractions through the internal facets.

The sorceress to my left chimed in as she rolled up her shirt and pulled her head through it. “If you wear your shirt like this, you won’t have to fuss around with it the whole time.”

I hesitated.

The foreman encouraged me. “Don’t be bashful now. There is a sorceress of the third by the name of Dandy that insists she can channel more when she’s naked. None of us mind, it's about whatever gets the job done.”

Hoping I wasn’t on the wrong end of a joke being played on the new girl, I pulled my shirt over my head and leaned into the crystal.

“Alright,” The foreman yelled from her seat on the ground. “Draw, focus, flood, whatever you have to do. I’ve got a date after lunch and don’t plan on missing it. So, give it everything you got!”

I worked my aura up within me and brought it to my navel.

“Ready?” The Forman called.

“Ready.” I said, my voice lost in the answers of the other sorceresses around the crystal.

“Go!”

I pushed my aura out of me and into the crystal, a trickle of my lemon power spreading into it like dye dropped into water. All around me, every shade of yellow, from the color of dark mustard to nearly white, began to fill the clear space and swirled together in a brilliant kaleidoscope.

“Hey, new girl!” A sorceress called from somewhere on the other side of the crystal. I could see her interrupted outline pressing her palms against the vessel.

“Her name is Fennel,” The foreman shouted before looking up at me. “Right?”

“My name is Fennel!” I shouted back, feeling more alive than I thought I ever had before. Pushing my aura and mixing it with those of my sisters, doing something worthwhile for The Mother in Yellow, I was a part of something.

The sorceress yelled back. “Nice tits!”

Everyone laughed.

Maybe it was the high from using so much of my aura or maybe it was because I did not want to be embarrassed, but It didn’t not feel like they were laughing at me.

They were laughing with me and I found myself laughing with them.

A part of something.

Thunk.

Giggles bubbles out of me as I sat up and wrapped my arms around my laugh cramped stomach. Tears streamed from my closed eyes and I felt like I would pass out if I couldn’t settle my laughing.

“Nice tits!” I wheezed. I couldn’t stop myself from slapping my hands onto the ground as I desperately tried to stop laughing.

Lightheaded from not being able to breath, a sudden force pulled me back down to the floor.

“Clarus, I have no choice.” I snarled at my familiar as I slid out from behind my cover and over the moss covered marble on my knees.

High above me, atop the jagged stone of a broken pillar, gray smoke billowed out of the sorcerer's baggy sleeves. The smoke obscured him and roiled through the air in rolling plumes that spread towards me like gassy tar.

Clarus, my familiar that looked like a hand sized dragonfly made entirely of glass, landed on my right cheek. “Nothing I can do for you if you miss, Lady Gael.”

“Do your job and I won’t,” I answered him, pulling my aura up from my foot in an arc with my hand. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose. An acrid scent ruined the clear air, but I found a quiet peace just as my lungs felt like they were going to burst. I exhaled, lacing my words with my aura and speaking the name that would cause me great pain and save my life. “Sunshard.”

My arc of aura blazed to life and flared into a bow the substance and color of wildfire. I rose to my feet and drew back the string of my living will, a coiling spiral of flame nocked between my fingers. “Do it.”

Clarus flittered his wings as I looked into the plummeting mass of smoke. The sorcerer unseen by my naked eye, my familiar's wings sped into a blur that smoothed into the illusion of a perfect surface.

My arm shook from the strain of holding Sunshard ready just as a clear vision of the sorcerer came to my sight. One hand still spewing the gray smoke, he lit a match off his boot with the other and threw it into the dark cloud.

Fire erupted in the air above me as it caught on whatever noxious fumes made the roiling plumes.

I loosed my fingers and sent my spiral of flame roaring out of Sunshard, literally fighting fire with fire. It snapped a hole through the sorcerer's pitiful assault and struck through my enemy.

I hit the ground and the last thing I saw was the flickering aura of Sunshard, my soul manifest.

Thunk.

A heavy shudder shook the ground underneath me. The sound of books snapping closed and fluttering pages filled the air. My eyes snapped open to the sight of dozens of tomes rising above me before they sank into the dark ceiling and disappeared.

I couldn’t care less.

The hard sound of a deliberate footstep echoed from somewhere near me. Some part of me thought it might be worth looking at who or what was approaching, but it wasn’t worth it. Laying on my back and staring up at the library that had miraculously sprung up around me felt nice enough that I didn’t think I would ever move again.

A shadow spread over me.

Thunk.

The dull sound of someone beating on a door found my ears. Warm rain splattered down onto me and the heavy heat of swirling steam filled my nose.

Why was I naked?

The pounding continued. I sat up and rubbed the water from my eyes, finding myself at the bottom of an empty marble pool.

“Let me in!” The muffled voice of a girl yelled from somewhere I could not see.

Fire rolled across the high ceiling and was choked out as it reached the edges.

“You stupid fucking cat! Let me in!” The voice came again.

A beast whose fur was every shade of blue that I knew to exist and some that I did not, appeared over the edge of the pool above me. With furious eyes and bared teeth, it spoke to me in a voice that shook me to my bones. “What is your name?”

“Ga. . .”

Thoughts, like a whirlwind had been trapped in a bottle and was uncorked at the moment, swept me away. My baby. . .where was my baby? Thank The Mothers Isla had liked my necklace. Nice tits! What was the name of the sorceress who liked to do her work naked? The wolves! They were all around me, I could smell it. Where in chaos had Clarus gone? I could hardly see. Blood, Gresh’s blood, running crimson down our daughter's pale cheek.

With his fur standing savagely on end, the beast asked his question a second time over the sound of the dull pounding. “What is your name?”

I gave him my honest answer, my aching head clenched between my hands. “I don’t know.”