Dream Storm Sea (29 page)

Two boats sailed toward shore. In one, Hiresha wore a red dress, the sun rising gold behind her. In the other, blue silk wrapped around her, and the day was setting into tones of twilight.

The enchantress felt a deep harmony, the synchronicity of dream aligning with reality. A vision—a vivid memory or foreknowing—unfolded before her, and she imagined she could gaze over the waves and see herself in another facet, another time, another hue.

In
The Roost
, a boat of feathered sails and woven branches, she helped lift the warrior’s remains. They had shrouded the body in blue, using the spare dress. Hiresha thought it fitting that Emesea wore the abalone armor in her sea burial.
The best suit ever crafted in the Lands of Loam
,
for the best warrior.

“Yes, this is right,” Hiresha said. “She wants to be left at sea.”

Tethiel could not close his fingers in this facet. He held the warrior by bending his wrists. “Emesea is beyond regrets, and for that we must mourn her with envy.”

They lowered the remains overboard. The shroud darkened. It bobbed until Hiresha pressed a palm against it. She Burdened Emesea into the deep. A sensation of cold water slithered up Hiresha’s wrist and around her arm.

Tethiel said, “Living is a tragedy. We can only appreciate life by losing it.”

“And yet existence has its blessings.” Hiresha pulled back her sleeve to reveal what looked like a snake wrapped around her arm. Richer in color than any tattoo, its scales had a rippling texture similar to abalone. Blue crests swept backward from its head and ridged its back. “It appears that Emesea did not lie about being a dragon.”

Tethiel’s eyes flicked from the waters where the body had sunk then back to the serpentine creature on Hiresha’s arm. His voice contained a ghost of laughter. “The most dangerous thing about liars is their capacity for truth.”

Emesea the dragon gazed up at the enchantress with her golden eclipse eyes. Hiresha felt a sense of resounding peace, and she rather liked holding a dragon. The slender creature had a tingling aura, and her arm hairs stood on end.

Hiresha said, “She has rather more poise, would you not—Ow!”

Emesea shocked the enchantress then slithered up into her armpit. Hiresha did not care to guess where the small dragon intended to go next, and Hiresha Attracted the serpent into her hands. Emesea opened her mouth for a smile adorned with stubby fangs.

Tethiel and Hiresha sat side by side, his ragged trousers and her red skirt. He gazed to the west, she to the side. A tentacle rose from the waters, and its tip curled outward toward the dragon as if in a polite invitation. Emesea crawled onto the arm.

Hiresha watched the kraken. It swam beside them, lifting the sea level. In lulls of the wind, a tentacle pushed the boat forward. The kraken spoke with its eyespots, teaching the sign for “dragon.” Hiresha replied with ripple patterns. She had relearned the rudiments of the language.

When the kraken passed near a reef, eels and other fish bolted for cover.

Tethiel said, “Help me. I've been around fish so long that I'm developing a taste for their fear.”

“What is its flavor?”

“Caviar, of course.”

“You are indeed at the fringe of sanity.”

He nodded to the reflective band of dragon scale scrawling over the kraken’s skin. “I do so hope you’re talking with the Murderfish about Emesea. Gossip about a person is most exciting when said to her face.”

“I’m arranging to meet Skyheart at the next new moon. That should provide sufficient time for me to reestablish control of my mental facilities then begin a new dream inversion.”

“You’ve decided to continue being of two minds?”

Hiresha glanced into the other facet, seeing herself facing away from Tethiel and implanting jewels in her back. “It’s better for a woman to live two lives than half of one.”

“I congratulate your duplicity,” he said, “but then why stop your inversion at all? Powerlessness doesn’t suit you, my heart.”

“I promised myself I would, once I reached the shore,” Hiresha said. “A step back from the experiment will grant perspective.”

A tentacle dribbled water onto the boat, and Emesea slithered off it onto Hiresha’s lap. The enchantress dabbed the dragon with her red sleeve.

“I must wake,” Hiresha said. She heard her voice echoed on the other boat. “I must wake.”

In
Pharaoh’s Wisdom
, a boat of patchwork sail and barnacled planks, Hiresha ran a hand over her shoulder and across her back. Her skin alternated with smooth facets of blue. Her flesh sang with heat and tenderness. The diamond dust she had used to communicate with Skyheart now glittered across her shoulder blades and spine as a tattoo. Her larger, round gems formed a kraken’s eye and eyespots.

Emesea had tattooed herself as a remembrance for her dragon. Hiresha had chosen to do the same for Skyheart.
A tribute to them both.

She looked over her shoulder. “How is Skyheart’s likeness?”

Tethiel made a show of cupping his chin in thought. “The perfect mixture of terror and beauty. A pity that perfection in living can only come through death. Life is such a tragedy.”

A sense of having heard him say that before chimed through her. The sensation was heady and not entirely disagreeable. She looked into his eyes, a dark grey in the dusk.

He gazed at her tattoo. “Any man viewing your blindside will feel at a great disadvantage.”

“As he should.” Her sari wrapped itself around her chest and over her shoulder. The silk felt like fire flowing over her back. “I’m more aware of what happens behind me now than I once was of the events in front of my eyes.”

“But, my heart, will the gems not pain you as you lie to sleep?”

“Do you even know whom you’re talking to?” She turned to face Tethiel.

He bowed in acknowledgement of her sleeping expertise.

Hiresha pondered if she ought to stay consistent by being terse.
Or is my affection for him in the red facet an insight that I should reconcile?

Tethiel adjusted a coat the color of amethyst, spun from twilight. He buttoned it triumphantly with his healed fingers. “Dreaming with your eyes open suits you. I say continue your inversion. But I never think better of you than when you ignore my advice.”

“Is that so?”

“I invited you to flee with me. Instead you regained your powers and saved a city.”

“That does sound conclusive.” Hiresha grinned. She knew Tethiel was choosing to ignore the times she had followed his advice to triumph over dangerous Soultrappers.

“You’re a woman who’d jump out of a boat to save those she loves. All the while being a model of elegance. True elegance is rarer than heroism.”

“If less useful.”

“Do stars then have no use?” He swept a hand to the sky, and a constellation identical to Hiresha’s kraken tattoo spread tentacles through the night.

She appreciated the illusion.

“My heart, as long as we continue to disagree, we’ll have a bright future together. I was wrong to suggest you should be a Feaster. What a misery if you were a protégé, a competitor. It must never be so.”

Hiresha’s heart trilled within her chest to hear that apology.  She said, “You already have Feaster Celaise as your successor.”

His pupils widened in surprise. “Just so.”

“Have you ever considered stepping down as Lord of the Feast?” Asking the question flushed Hiresha’s chest to match the heat on her back. “You could use wild magic to clear your mind.”

Tethiel closed his eyes as if savoring the thought. “Abandon my title? Escape responsibility for relaxation? What sort of irresponsible villain do you take me for?”

Hiresha smiled to herself.
He’s tantalized by the idea.
She made a decision then. It terrified her almost as much as it thrilled her.

She stepped beside Tethiel, unfolded a hand. She placed one of her remaining blue diamonds on his palm. Its faces flickered as she enchanted it.

The Feaster looked to her for an explanation.

“It’s for Inannis the Jewel Duper,” she said. She would heal the thief in this facet but not the other.
A fitting punishment and reward.
“You may be meeting him soon.”

“Will I now, Prophet Hiresha?”

“Inannis has a gem of mine. You may remember it. Once in your ignorance you gave me a red diamond. The mistake was not in the quality of the jewel but its setting.  Such necklaces are engagement presents in my land.”

“I remember.” His voice was a whisper.

“Bring me the red diamond mounted on a gold chain, and I may not refuse it again.”

Across the waters, where the sun shone on the sea, the enchantress wearing red was also speaking to Tethiel. “Bring me another necklace with the blue paragon stone, and I may not refuse your betrothal a second time.”

Once, marriage had eclipsed all of Hiresha’s thoughts. She had even gone as far as to pick out gemstone names for her children. Her desire for respectability no longer shone so brightly, which was well, because then she could have never desired to spend her life with Tethiel.

He kissed her, and though Hiresha was at her most lucid, she could not decide if his lips felt more like ice or fire. The enchantress exchanged a secret glance over his shoulder with her identical sister in blue. The woman in the other boat had Tethiel in another embrace.

“Tonight, then,” he said, “my children will search for the thief. And tomorrow I’ll be gone with the dawn.”

They spoke no more on the voyage. Emesea had fallen asleep coiled over the enchantress’s red skirt. The dragon woke as if by instinct when the shore floated over the horizon.

Turquoise waters ebbed and flowed over a beach of white. The sand was so fine-grained that it felt like mist between Hiresha’s toes. Tethiel scooped it up and laughed as it sifted between his crooked fingers. The dragon cartwheeled within a wave. The fronds of palm trees clattered in the breeze.

Their boat was carried onto land by Skyheart. She walked on her seven arms with a slippery gait. The enchantress bid the kraken farewell with another promise to return, to negotiate a peace.

On the same beach but at night, they had no kraken to move their barge. Hiresha beckoned
Pharaoh’s Wisdom
to float ashore, taking care not to crush any of the thousands of baby tortoises scurrying from their eggs into the water. Tethiel helped carry one tiny reptile to the surf, though he also cheered when a gull swooped to catch another.

She wished Spellsword Fos could have shared this land reunion. Glancing over the tree line, she hoped to see him running out over the sands to greet her. The improbable did not happen.

I will see him again,
she promised herself,
and all others left behind.

Hiresha contented herself with the idea of finding Fos in Oasis City. She had landed on a distant shore, but all the lands had opened to her. No empire guardsman or enchantress could threaten her again. No prison could hold a dreamer.

Night swirled back to day in Hiresha’s mind. The circling perspectives felt as enlivening as flight, but she knew the time had come to end the dream inversion, for now. Both aspects of her spoke the keystone words.

“May dream part from truth.”

A hand shook; a chest trembled. The enchantresses understood this was not just a beginning of a new life. It was an ending.
Lives in my dream will cease. But no matter what the result, Tethiel will be beside me.

Hiresha in red faced herself in blue. They nodded to each other and completed the unlocking phrase.

“May the sleeper wake.”

They expected two to become one, for their sight to be halved, but that did not happened. Not yet.

The enchantress in red glanced behind. She turned, gripping her crimson gem across her chest. Something in the sky had caught her eye. The moon was faint in the daylight, and it was full. A moment before, it had been a crescent.

It had changed. It was a sign.

Hiresha gazed down at her red dress and thought of all that had happened while wearing it.
All that did not happen.
She had never rescued Tethiel from the bane’s den. Emesea had never become a dragon.