Dream Storm Sea (23 page)

Ribbons of scales, the dragons rippled up and down across the water’s surface. They twirled into the air, flying without wings, around and around and halfway up to the clouds. Energy crackled along their backs as they dove. The pair fell like waterfalls of mercury. Waves reached up and folded around them without a splash.

Hiresha would not have been so quick to run over the sea toward the dragons, if not for the brightness of Skyheart below. She signaled, “Do they already know your plan?”

“We’ve talked of floods and hurricanes.” The kraken spun underwater so Hiresha could see the meaning on all its tentacles. “I’ll tell them how it can gather a dream storm.”

Being referred to as an “it” upset Hiresha more each time. Humans should not be inanimate playthings in the kraken's mind. Or a dragon's.

The dragons had a youthfulness to their movements. They formed slender arches over each other. They bit tails in mid leap like kittens in play. The enchantress could well believe these dragons had belonged to Emesea’s hatch.

The enchantress asked, “Are they old enough to control a hurricane?”

“Is a human spawn ever too young to breathe? A dragon’s vow can be trusted. Even if a dragon can’t be trusted not to nip your tentacles.”

The enchantress met the dragons underwater. The kraken did the polite thing and introduced her as the Lady of Gems. Hiresha used the same eyespot language to offer each dragon a blue diamond. They ignored her. The enchantress decided to attribute it to shyness.

The dragons flew through the water, twining between the kraken’s arms. Frills lined their backs and their tails, membranes with the opalescent sheen of seaweed. Their scales reminded Hiresha much of the abalone shell, and light of different colors shimmered down them in bands.

When Skyheart explained the plan to give them the power of a dream storm, their frills sparked. Two sets of turquoise eyes turned to the enchantress, and she asked them to promise not to use the magic to harm Oasis City, with flood or with storm.

The dragons circled the enchantress. Fans of azure and teal skin surrounded their heads. The two never spoke, and they gave no sign. A knowingness still spread into the enchantress that the promise would be kept. And that the storm would be beautiful. The sea serpents sped away, and she had the sense of laughter like the fading echoes of thunder.

“They’ll meet us at the sea mountain,” Skyheart said. Two of its tentacles drifted below her. She rested a foot on each, which seemed to amuse the kraken given the magenta pigmentation that spread from her soles. “They also wanted me to warn it.”

Hiresha waited, drawing in a breath from the water. It tasted of salt.

“It mustn’t try to take the dream storm’s power for itself.”

“I hardly need more power. Only more jewels.”

“Even a sea snail would leap at the chance for a dream storm's magic. But if the Lady of Gems tried it’d be changed. It would be the Creature of Wild Magic.”

“You’re a most convincing kraken. After we discuss a few more details I believe we can seal an arrangement.”

The sea ahead of them was shadowed by whales. The behemoths hung vertical, sleeping. She and the kraken passed between a gateway of bobbing giants. Bubbles leaked from the whales’ mouths. Their aura of peace warmed the water.

The enchantress translated for Skyheart as best she could the concept that Oasis City had a religious tradition revolving around salt. People would need to take it from the shores of the new channel. Hiresha said she and her Spellsword Fos would likely be held responsible to keep the workers safe and uneaten from sea creatures.

“Kill and devour the terror crocs if it must.” Skyheart lifted two more tentacles. Their tips uncoiled like the stems of growing plants. “Just throw their wild magic back to the sea.”

Hiresha circled a whale. She sympathized with the awkwardness of sleeping in the open sea. The dozing giants reminded her of floating monoliths, of pillars holding up the water’s bright surface. She returned to face Skyheart.

“The final detail is of pronouns.” Hiresha used the signs for “little names.” “As octopuses have genders, so do humans. It isn’t done to refer to us as “its.” As the Lady of Gems, I’m a ‘she.’”

The kraken was looking at the enchantress with its left eye. With a puff of water it turned, and its other eye swiveled to regard her. Hiresha could not help but note that no matter how the kraken flipped or dove, its pupil remained horizontal. Its eyes revolved in their sockets.

“Thinking of humans as female.” The kraken’s skin changed to spotted pink. “Or male. So strange, but if whales and starfish can be female, so can you.”

“Gender is a matter of most pressing importance to humans. Of course, I would extend the same courtesy to you.”

“I’m the Skyheart. That’s what’s important.”

“Very well, Skyheart. I believe we can make our alliance official.”

The usual ways of binding promises would not do, so Hiresha clasped the nearest two tentacles to signify her trust. The thought of the kraken pulling the enchantress into halves sent trails of gooseflesh across her skin.
Not that I’m at so great a disadvantage with my diamonds. If it came to a contest, Skyheart might find a piece of her arm torn off.
Hiresha disliked the idea of hurting this vast champion of the sea, which struck her as passing curious.
When wearing a red dress I vowed to kill her.

One tentacle wrapped around Hiresha’s arm. A suction cup puckered the skin of her palm. Skyheart said, “You taste of dolphins and stormy seas.”

“Setting the relative politeness of that statement aside, I’m curious. You can taste through your arms?”

“Can’t you?” Her tentacles turned orange with concern.

“Above water, we can taste without touching. We call that smelling.”

“I know about smells. Eels scent octopus burrows. You mustn’t do it well. No human has tasted me coming.”

“Your smell is subtle.” The enchantress could tell the kraken wanted to know more by her skin shifting to a bluish green. Her scent reminded Hiresha of burning mint, and the closest concept she could offer was “green lightning.”

“That must be a taste of my venom.” The kraken’s beak clicked.

“Likely so. Now if I’m to have time to collect a dream storm today….” Hiresha tried to disengage her arms.

Skyheart held on. Her tentacles darkened to green, with spots almost of black. “I wish it had happened differently.”

This, Hiresha realized, was as close as the kraken’s language could come to an expression of regret. Every nerve twitched into readiness, and the enchantress’s paragon diamond spun closer, ready to impale a suckered arm.

“I wouldn’t like to be played with then killed. I shouldn’t have done it to the humans.”

An apology.
The enchantress relaxed. “As a rule, we also dislike having our limbs sprinkled on the shore for our friends to see. That causes mental pain, anguish.”

“You are such funny little creatures.” Skyheart tugged the enchantress’s arms in multiple directions. “I could snap the humans then play with them.”

“Release me.”

Skyheart did so. Her tentacles curled together in a vase shape. “I shouldn’t have done that. You are the Lady of Gems.”

“Yes, do mind yourself. We could have been great enemies, you realize.”

“I think it’s good to have one human friend. I’d hate to lose you.”

“And you are a remarkable specimen.” Hiresha glided away from the sleeping whales and toward the boat. “I have a request. A few of our land ships were famously blown to sea and lost. Might you guide me to their wrecks?”

“I can’t lose my entire boat collection.”

“I only want the gold and gems in the chests. The one you brought today was a fine example. Even if the tales were exaggerated four fold, the resource would establish my new and better life.”

“Who better to have them than you? And you’ll ban sea fishing in your lands?”

“I will force the issue. Skyheart, I think this is the beginning of an exceptional friendship.” The pattern she used for “friendship” might have meant “pairing” or “hunting partner.”

Hiresha passed the barge. It had turned to follow the dragons. Beneath
Pharaoh’s Wisdom
, the enchantress encountered something as large and—in her estimation—as wise.

A great platehead sifted into view from the deep. Its fin curved around its tail like a tadpole’s, though there the comparison ended in a precipice. The giant fish lazed its way toward Hiresha. The enchantress knew her jewels could pull herself to safety, but seeing the plated predator bearing down on her still made the back of her neck itch with fear.

Skyheart jetted in front. Her skin flashed between white and black in a pattern similar to light on the water’s surface when seen from below. The great platehead stopped. The kraken drifted closer and closer to the mesmerized fish. Tentacles cradled it then pushed it away.

“I can’t eat this now,” the kraken said. “The dragons won’t wait for long.”

“It would not do to keep a dragon waiting.” Hiresha leaped from the sea.

Her sari brightened from ultramarine to blue as she Attracted the water from it. Droplets flowed down her legs and between her toes. Her feet landed on the barge.

“How’d you offend the dragons?” Emesea stomped up and down the planks of
Pharaoh’s Wisdom
. “Those ungrateful runts left before I could swim to ‘em.”

“We’re to sail and meet them. Though there may not be much time for dragon petting.” Hiresha then told Emesea and Tethiel the plan. The warrior took the news as expected.

“So you’re shitting on the world? Then setting it on fire.” Emesea’s arms shook with frustration. She reached for the enchantress, but a diamond pulled her backward and out of arm’s reach. “You should’ve helped me make war ships, but I guess you prefer your lands well done, charred black and crispy from the Winged Fire.”

“I prefer the risk of your gods to the certainty of your sacrificial knives.”

“And the dragons are in on this? Would expect more gratitude from those puddle snakes than you, and I saved all your scaly backsides.”

Tethiel could not conceal his frown from the enchantress. His and the warrior’s disapproval might have pained Hiresha, but she told herself they both had proven themselves unworthy in this facet of reality.
Or of dream.
When Tethiel started to speak of the disadvantages of splitting the trade routes, she interrupted him.

“This flood would have occurred regardless. Better to have it in a controlled fashion.”

He said, “You are courageously doing good for your people, and they’ll have no choice but to hate you for it.”

“If they can’t be sensible then perhaps they’re not my people.”

More whispery sayings from Tethiel, and more notes ringing with anger from Emesea. Hiresha felt right to ignore them, even if it also felt wrong.

“Your opinions have been most diverting,” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a dream storm to catch.”

She leaped over the prow. She ran between the two thunderstorms, the force of the wind thrilling from either direction. Dragons skimmed in and out of the water. The kraken beneath her was more colorful than a treasure chest full of gems.

The feathers in the sail trembled when fangs thrashed against the boat. The terror croc slewed to the side, a wall of its leathery hide rising from the waters as it pursued
The Roost
.

Hiresha drifted to her feet, and she caught hold of the lead mast to avoid being blown overboard. Storm winds buffeted them from a mountain of a black cloud.

A gale of disorientation also rocked the enchantress.
It should be day now, but the stars are out. I was due to meet a dragon. Or perhaps I already did?
An image of a bluish serpent flitted across her mind.

And now there’s the small matter of this fifty-five-foot crocodile.
Hiresha had only a shard of a second to recall that in this facet she had saved Tethiel from the Murderfish, that she held the diamond he had given her.

The Feaster slashed the air in a gesture, and a decoy of
The Roost
branched off from the true boat. A false wave surged to conceal the true vessel, and the terror croc’s maw snapped down on an illusion. Branches of the hull dissolved into shadows.

The terror croc had opened its mouth long enough for Hiresha to notice a particular shattered tooth, the same Emesea had broken days before. That coincidence rang in Hiresha’s mind as a note of unreality.

Tethiel gazed up at her, his face glowing like moonlit pearl. “Tried to wake you for hours, my heart.”

Emesea yanked a sail to better catch the storm’s gusts. “We knew you wanted to stare death down the gullet.”

The possibility that Hiresha now dreamed frightened her more than the monstrosity. She realized then that she wanted her rescue of Tethiel from the cave to have been real. The memory of their time together above the coral garden distracted her with afterimages of pleasure.

She asked, “How’d this terror croc locate us again?”

Neither warrior nor Feaster could answer over the howl of wind and the roar of the crocodile. Water sluiced between fangs of its opening mouth. Scars and ridges of tissue crossed over its palate, crimson in the light of Hiresha’s diamond.

The enchantress leaped, over fangs, over tongue. Her toes slapped against the lump of the monster’s snout. Breath of half-digested fish seared her ankle. The terror croc tossed its head, and one eye narrowed to a vertical slit from the glare of her gem.

She threw the diamond onto the monster’s brow. The triangle stone flamed a hot hue between its eyes. The enchantment yanked her to kneel on the leathery ridges of skin. The terror croc worried its head from side to side. Water cut into Hiresha, but she could not be shaken loose.

Her hand lay between the ridges of its eyes, anchoring the diamond. She would enchant it to implode the crocodile’s skull.

Tha-thump!
The sound came from her right. She recognized it, had to beat down memories of swimming alongside a beautiful kraken, had to remind herself of the noise’s peril. She jumped before finishing her enchantment. She had to.

A boulder of liquid blasted over the crocodile’s head. Water at that speed would hit as hard as rock, and had Hiresha not reacted, her body would have lost much of its solid parts. Even a glancing blow had dazed the terror croc to a drifting stillness.

Hiresha spotted the Murderfish. The cauldron-shaped siphon on its neck pointed to the enchantress. With another sound of water forced between walls of muscle, a torrent erupted. A river of force launched at where Hiresha hovered in the air.

You are one craftily cruel cephalopod.
A sense of betrayal stung twice because it was illogical. Hiresha knew she had no reason to expect kindness from the kraken.
Not in my red dress.

She Attracted herself back to her diamond. Droplets stung her from the water coursing overhead. She rolled over the comatose crocodile, along its scaly neck. Its underside was patterned like a dry creek bed. Her fist rested against a rectangle of hide below the creature’s brain and beneath her diamond.

Two tentacles curved downward through the water toward her. A third angled upward. None would reach her in time.

Her fist opened, and the red diamond bore through the crocodile’s skull, brain, and sinew. It smacked into her palm and stopped. Blood leaked from between her fingers.

A spasm ran down the long creature. Stubby arms beat against its flanks then hung loose. The terror croc died before it could release any sound shockwave. It was a mercy killing, considering what the enchantress planned.

She whisked herself onto the ridged back of the corpse. Her diamond plinked against its snout, and her magic hauled on the gem to pull the beast’s jaw vertical, to crack it with the sound of a falling tree. The enchantress jumped and landed on the squishy carpet of a tongue. She touched a tusk of a fang then Attracted it from the bone. The tooth circled around her. She wanted the fangs like an archer wants arrows.

With the kraken’s arms a grasping jungle around the terror croc, the enchantress had run out of time. She wondered how to defend herself with but a single tooth. The next moment held a year’s worth of uncertainty and tension.

Mist billowed from Tethiel’s outstretched hands. A red aura formed around Hiresha. A whiteness covered the stars, making the light-speckled arms of the Murderfish all too obvious. The kraken’s skin never adapted to the fog. The Feaster’s illusion must have only been intended for the minds of humans.

Emesea pounced from the boat and dug her axe and knife into a tentacle. The warrior said, “Hope she tastes even better than she looks.”

An arm that had reached for Hiresha snapped back to crush Emesea. The warrior scooted onto the other side of the starlit skin. She kept her hold with gashing weapons. Suckers closed in, and she beat them back long enough to plop into the water.

Tethiel and Emesea had secured Hiresha the time she needed. She ripped out all the terror croc’s fangs. Blood only trickled from the jaw, with the creature’s heart already stopped. A fleet of ivory spikes followed her as she leaped over the Murderfish.

The kraken’s slatted eye saw her. The wide mouth of the pupil gaped, and the Murderfish was gone in a burst of water and a spin of tentacles. The kraken drilled its way into the deep.

Hiresha glanced to
The Roost
, saw the boat sleighing its way down a wave. Tethiel’s whipping hair was a star storm in the wind. She called out to him. “The mist was a most excellent counter illusion.”

“My heart, krakens flee you. What does that say of your greatness?”

An air-pocket formed over the enchantress’s grin as she pursued the Murderfish. She towed herself beneath the storm-tossed surf one throw of her diamond at a time. Neither moonlight nor the glow of her jewel extended far in the blackness. She had to slow down.

Have a care. I mustn’t die to a mistake now that I have a desirable life.
With only one diamond, she feared to dive too deep. She would be vulnerable.

The duskiness ahead condensed into spires of smoky water. Eels roiled in and out of the fumes in streaks of purple. Beyond them, a rim of basalt stone reared up. A shivering knowingness spread over her. She saw what looked like her laboratory, drowned and broken. Her heart thudded against her ribs. Her spine arched backward as if she had swallowed strychnine poison.

It was an underwater volcano. Not her laboratory.
She knew that, but the feeling of looming fate remained.

She coasted around the jagged ridge of basalt. Lava-red coral filled the crater. The smoke boiled from patches of brimstone. The vents growled. The eels careened around her and nipped at the pulp ends of her crocodile teeth.

Twice she swam around the summit, searching for the Murderfish. The enchantress found nothing, except a simmering tension beyond that of the water’s heat.
Perhaps the volcano will soon erupt. Or it already has, in my other facet.

The pit of foreboding in her even made her wonder if she had died here.
Can one aspect of me live on with the other dead?
She doubted it. Death, she suspected, would at least shatter the dream inversion and take away her power.

Hiresha could remember only flashes from the previous day. The taste of abalone, a tentacle sucker pulling against her skin. Two days ago was clear to the last detail of her pyramidal diamond.

She had a theory.
Perhaps both blue and red facets occur simultaneously. Part of my brain sleeps while the other is awake.
She realized she might be flattering her mental ability too much, but it would explain her disjointed memory.

The first time she had woken to wear the blue dress. The second time, the red.
And one of those is false.
She realized that perhaps she only perceived the blue dress as coming first because of the time of day. Sleep may have held her in oblivion until the evening, when she donned the red. Twelve hours later she dreamed of a blue dress and cutting the paragon diamond.
That would explain my reaction to the atoll. Not a prophetic feeling but a suppressed memory.

Hiresha could imagine the Jeweled Feaster in the dream laboratory. Her smile stretched to inhuman dimensions reflected in an orb of crystal. She stole memories and locked them in stone, sprinkling them back into Hiresha’s consciousness when best to deceive her.

Whitewater parted around Hiresha’s face, and she launched from the sea and onto the boat. Emesea stood over a steaming slab of crocodile meat. A layer of fat separated the muscle from the hide. The terror croc’s carcass dipped into the trough of a wave.

Emesea grinned at the fangs floating behind the enchantress. “Nice set of corn-nibblers you got there.”

In this light, Tethiel looked less like a person and more like an entity carved of onyx and moonstone. In the flame pattern in his vest, gold thread danced within crimson fabric. Speaking over the gusts, he said, “If the Murderfish comes, I’ll know it. She fears you now.”

He knows I couldn’t yet kill the kraken.
She guessed he had seen it in her face, or scented her worries. The enchantress took his hand and was surprised to feel the stiffness of his knuckles.

“Your fingers, they are not healed.” Hiresha glanced over his shoulder at an essence tempest with autumn hues.
Yes, in my dream, the wild magic cured his hands.

“Intriguing that you expected them to be, my heart.”

“An oversight I’ll correct as soon as I have a spare jewel.”

“What?”

She had to repeat herself, shouting over the wind. Closer than any essence tempest, a thunderstorm dominated the sky with a cloud like a cliff overhang. Hiresha knew she had searched for dragons and their storms earlier in her dream.
Was it Emesea’s dragon?
Hiresha could almost remember.

“Emesea, might your dragon have birthed this storm?”

“No. She would’ve dropped her snout by to say hello.” Emesea had stopped rowing to speak. She resumed paddling on one side, facing the boat back into the waves.

Her pause bothered Hiresha. The warrior could talk and fight at the same time.
She could’ve pumped the oars and shouted simultaneously. Unless she had to focus on a lie.

Her dragon could never have created this storm or any. Because that dragon is dead.

“Emesea, I am sorry that your dragon has departed the Lands of Loam,” Hiresha said. “Do you speak of her to try to comfort yourself, or me?”

A wave burst behind Emesea in a netting of collapsing froth. She stared at Hiresha. And the warrior laughed. “You sound as certain as a man about his cock.”

“I learned of it in my dream.” The memory was dust in the wind, but it felt true.

“Ha! Well you’re wrong.” The warrior knuckled the enchantress in the chin, too light to bruise. “And you’re right. I knew a storm-master of a dragon, the best scaled, and the most courageous. She took on the Sleeper, the leviathan who snores tides, and she came out the worse for it—”

“Sorry I don’t feel guilty for interrupting,” Tethiel said, “but shouldn’t someone be afraid of this storm?”

The warrior ignored him. “The dragon had been chewed up pretty good, and she was bleeding in her skull. She was dying and she knew it. The dragon cast the only spell that could save herself. She shed most of her crushed body and became a human.”

“Became you.” The enchantress gestured to the warrior and her immense tattoo.
Having swum the first part of her life as a dragon would explain her knowledge of the sea.