Child of a Hidden Sea (2 page)

So she'd done what felt right, as usual, without thinking it through.

“I'm sorry. You're in shock, and I'm babbling. Suboptimal behavior, my brother would say.”

Kick, kick, breathe. “I guess after twenty-four years, I figured she'd want to know her daughter was alive. But that's stupid, isn't it? She got rid of me. I should have known she'd blow me off.”

Should've known she wouldn't see anything worth getting to know.
“Anyway, I saw you—” She skipped the part where she'd slept in her car for three days while watching Beatrice's house. She wasn't about to admit—even to an unconscious maybe-aunt—to practically stalking her biological mother. “I thought I'd try again. But those guys attacked you, in the alley—what was that about?”

You snapped
, said a calm interior voice.
The terrible things your biomom said drove you over the edge. All of what happened afterward—watching the house, weird guys attacking this unnamed maybe-aunt—it's a nervous breakdown. Or do they call them psychotic breaks?

Kick, kick, breathe.

Maybe when your advisor called and tried to push you into setting a date to defend your thesis, you couldn't deal. Finding Beatrice, the mugging and now this … maybe it's
all
a delusion.

“If I'm insane, I'll wake up in a clean, safe hospital sooner or later,” she said. “My family will come, I'll take some antipsychotics and doctors will promise us it's gonna be okay. Right?”

A furious, inhuman cheeping. A bedraggled moth had landed in the hollow of the woman's belly. A small shadow splashed after it: one of the bats Sophie had heard earlier. It came up, triumphant, in the puddle of brine and blood, with the insect caught in its jaws.

The bat hitched itself past the knife, across her aunt's breast, over Sophie's wrist. It continued up her sore arm, climbing from the unconscious woman's face into Sophie's hair, pulling itself to the highest point it could find.

The bat settled on her head, munching on its catch and preening seawater out of its wings.

Sophie groaned. If this
was
a delusion, her subconscious mind was going all out to make it seem real. Pieces of carapace and drops of wet bug juice pattered on her forehead.

Just don't crap on me, Dracula,
she thought.

And then:
I don't know this species, either
.

“See, that's proof! Seagoing bats, glowing moths—come on! I don't care how real it feels, it has to be a delusion.”

Munch, munch, munch.

“This is profoundly mediagenic. Somebody would have shot this. I'd have seen those moths migrating a thousand times. On IMAX, no less.”

From the bat, a spitting sound. The glowing tip of the moth's posterior bounced down her face.

“I've never lost anyone—not on a climb, not on a dive,” Sophie said. “I've been in trouble before. You'll make it.”

The body in her arms stiffened, then coughed.

“Those moths are going somewhere, and I'm rationing my energy. The sun's gonna come up and I'm going to make it to shore. Some shore. With you, maybe-Aunt. That's a promise.”

The woman's eyelids fluttered. A second later, her weight shifted, lightening the load. Sophie felt a burst of acceleration; she was kicking.

“I don't know for sure,” she said, “but I think that might make you bleed faster. Just float, okay?”

The woman sputtered some more; the kicking stopped. Her hand crawled to the knife, probing. She hissed, obviously pained.

“Dinna seyz Fleetspak?” she mumbled.

“What?”

“You speak Anglay…?”

“English.”

“Thought I'd imagined—Anglish only?” Her voice was thready.

“I can do Spanish, I guess, or a little Russian—”

“Who are you?”

“I'm—ow!” The bat on Sophie's head had taken wing, yanking hair as it launched itself at the flying buffet above. “Hey, is that land?” The trail of lights in the sky was accumulating into a bright mass on the horizon.

“Stele Island. Moths … lay … eggs on the cliffs.”

“I don't know Stele Island—is this the Caribbean? The Mediterranean? The Gulf?”

“Stele Islanders,” the woman repeated. “Boats'll be out. The moths bring up deepfish … swim another mile or so, they'll catch us.”

“Only a mile?” Sophie felt a surge of relief. “No problem.”

“Who are you?” the woman repeated.

Okay, Sofe, for once in your life don't blurt out everything at once. Keep it simple.

It was what her brother, Bram, would have told her. Sophie blinked back tears as her detachment shredded. “I'm Beatrice's daughter.”

Don't go all motormouth on her, she's injured …

“Daughter, Beatrice?” The woman's face pinched; her mental processes probably muddled by pain or blood loss. “No. That daughter? How old are you?”

“Twenty-four. I didn't mean any trouble, I just wanted to meet her. My parents are traveling and I wanted to track down my birth family while they were gone. Without hurting them, see? But Beatrice went mental when she saw me.”

“'Trice can be…” the woman mumbled. “High strung.”

“I kinda noticed. I told her, ‘Fine, I'll go. Just tell me about my dad and I'll bug him instead.' That was when she lost it.”

“Your. Dad.”

“Do you know him? Did he die tragically or—” Sophie quailed from a picture-perfect memory of the horror on her birth mother's face.

Beatrice recoiling, like I was poison …

She couldn't quite ask—had her biological father been a rapist? Instead, she changed the subject. “Then those guys jumped you.”

The woman eyed her dully.

Told you, Sophie. You always feel this need to overshare.

Deep breath. Try again. “Sorry, miss—you are my aunt, right? I mean, you look like Beatrice.”

“Gale, child … name's Gale.”

“I just wanted to know where I came from. Gale.”

A cough that was very much a laugh. “And here we are.”

“What do you…” But Gale had passed out, once again becoming dead weight.

Just swim, Sophie. It's a delusion, remember? Kick, rest, kick, all in your mind, Kick, kick, rest. An aunt who's a street-fighting ninja?
Wizard of Oz
windstorms that dump you in the ocean? Has to be a delusion.

Please, let me wake up in hospital. Is that a bedsheet?

No such luck. She'd caught a thread of seaweed with her arm.

She pulled free.

Another tangled her feet.

The weeds were moving.

Up and down the glimmering path of winged bodies on the water's surface, green-sheathed bubbles were rising, bean-shaped floats dotting a growing thicket of stems. Seaweed: it formed a carpet, highway-wide and blistered with the buoyant, air-filled pods. Bristly stems clung to Sophie, winding around her legs, around Aunt … Gale?

The weeds raised both women, the camera case and all the fish who'd come up to feast on the moth migration. Water streamed out of Sophie's hair and her dress and she shivered, suddenly chilled. Gale's weight came off her arm. The pain in her shoulder ramped up a notch.

The fish, lifted out of water, thrashed as they suffocated. A pelican landed on the cushion of weed and plucked one of them up.

Brown pelican
, Sophie thought, pelecanus occidentalus,
perfectly ordinary. Maybe this is the Gulf of Mexico. But how?

Entangled, afloat, apparently safe, Sophie stared at the tons of gasping fish as insects dropped in a twinkling rain around her and bats chittered above.

A jerk—something was towing them.

She kept her good arm locked around Gale, in case any of this was real. The way things were going so far, whoever was reeling them in would probably decide to throw them back.

CHAPTER
2

The first thing their rescuers said to Sophie was the same thing as Aunt Gale: “Sezza Fleetspak?”

They were out in small wooden sailboats, rickety eighteen- and twenty-footers with patched sails, whose crews were frantically hauling in the rising seaweed and its catch. A bucket brigade of adults sorted the thrashing fish; anything shorter than arm's length went over the port side. The larger ones they clubbed to death and transferred below.

Pre-adolescent kids clad in undyed, lumpy sweaters worked at stripping the moths' wings, trimming off their glow-bulbs and dropping the bodies into vats that stank of hot vinegar. Guttering motes of chitin flickered at their feet, which were mostly bare. A third group sliced the seaweed into arm's-length strips as they hauled it up, popping off the floats and storing them in crates. Nothing was wasted.

No garbage,
Sophie noticed. The dense mattress of vegetation should be full of plastic grocery bags, water bottles, and other refuse; the oceans were full of floating and submerged trash.

“Fleetspak? Sezza Fleetspak?”

The grizzled woman directing these words at Sophie was already examining Gale's wound, tearing her jacket and shirt aside to reveal the knife, embedded just under a rib.

“English,” Sophie replied. “Español? Français? Russki? Anyone?”

Blank looks all around.

“Guess we can't communicate.” She crouched by Gale, taking her hand. The knife had a leather-wrapped handle, she noticed, and a familiar brand name.

The woman—the ship's skipper?—barked orders. One of the crew vanished below, reappearing a minute later with a threadbare blanket and a steaming cup. Sophie let him drape her—the wind was icy—and took a careful sip of what turned out to be hot fish broth, flavored with dill.

By now, the skipper had improvised a pressure bandage for Gale's wound. She picked through her pockets and found a small purse, made of reptilian-looking leather and worked with unfamiliar letters.

At the discovery, the woman stiffened: whatever the thing was, it was bad news. She looked at Sophie before removing it—as if seeking permission? Sophie nodded, holding out a hand. The woman passed it over.

“Looks like it might be watertight,” Sophie said. The pouch had a clamshell shape and pursed lips with interlocked zipper teeth. Sophie ran her finger over the closure, looking for a tab, and the zip separated, releasing with a sound that was almost a sigh.

She could feel the crew's eyes on her as she reached inside.

The first thing she pulled out was a badge.

It had the look of a police badge: shield-shaped, with a stylized sun stamped on it. It was made of an unfamiliar substance; it had the weight and hardness of metal, but looked like a polished piece of wood—fir, maybe, or birch. Ordinary Roman letters were pressed or carved into it. A couple of the words looked familiar—
arrepublica, athoritz.
Republic? Authority?

The sailors' attitude, already disapproving, seemed to darken.

At this rate, they'll chuck us overboard
. She turned her attention to the next item, a silk scarf so fine she could see through it, like a veil. It was an oceanic chart—currents and islands were printed on the almost weightless fabric. There were no familiar landmarks, no
X
to mark any particular spot.

There was a USB flash drive.

“Any chance there's a computer aboard?” she asked, but the skipper looked at the disc key without recognition. Sophie swapped it for the biggest thing in the purse, a cell phone, charged up and flashing “No Service”. She held it up and, again, got blank expressions.

The bottom of the pouch held some golden coins and a platinum Amex card bearing the name
Gale A. Feliachild
. There was a laminated picture of a younger Gale, standing with Sophie's birth mother and a teenaged girl. A cousin? Half sibling?

Beatrice's words came back:
Get out, go now—you can't be here—get away from me, you viper. No, I won't calm down, I'm not answering questions. Go, go and don't come back
!

“Is my being here something Beatrice did—she sent me away?” Nobody answered her.

Right, and how would she do that?

How much time have I lost?

Where on earth am I?

She fought down the panic by focusing on the pouch again. The last thing in it was a dried chrysanthemum, carefully wrapped in waxed paper. More than half of its petals had been plucked.

She opened the paper, catching a faint whirl of peppery scent and dust. Just a flower, then.

“No answers here.” She replaced everything but the cell phone, taking one last look at the photograph as she closed the flap of the watertight leather satchel …

… which promptly chomped itself back together.

Sophie let out a little squeak as the ivory zipper teeth sealed, the leathery lips of the purse tightening over them. She nudged her finger between them again, feeling for wires, and the movement reversed. It sighed, again, as it flapped open.

She closed the purse, and it zipped itself shut.

“Oh, wow. You guys seeing this?”

Sullen glares from the sailors. They were probably deciding whether to tie the anchor to her ankles or her head when they dropped her in the drink.

At least they'd fed her first. She tightened her grip on the blanket, and drank more of the broth. Her shoulder and wrist were working up a deep ache that matched the rhythm of her heartbeat.

The skipper reached a decision. She clapped her hands and the ship disentangled itself from the fishing effort. A teen used tattered white flags to signal to the next ship. Turning to port, they set sail for the island, whose cliffs were outlined in starry white by the survivors of the moth migration.

They made good speed—the wind, at their backs, was rising.

Sophie tucked the clamshell pouch into her camera bag, and held Gale's limp hand. Her pulse was faint but steady. She fought back a sense of wrongness as she did so, a weird feeling of falseness, as if she was pretending to be attached to this woman and all these people knew letter. Head down, she rested, breathing slowly, monitoring her surroundings and not quite dozing. The ship sailed around the moth-starred edge of the escarpment and into a shallow bay.