Fathom (37 page)

It was Mother. It was the way she glared with her unseeing eyes, closed and turned to regard José—who wasn’t twitching anymore. Something taut and quietly seething pinched her face, even though it had no muscles to pinch or make it look cross.

Arahab made a small gasp, a burp of pain. She coughed and José’s body flopped and wriggled inside her; she hacked again and the simmering blond liquid spilled out of her mouth. She was forcing something, harder and with more power. It buzzed in the air around her, and it hovered over the beach like a cloud of mosquitoes. Arahab called it; she dragged it. She commanded every bit of it, and it came to her—and she funneled every spark of force, or grace, or energy into her own body.

She sent it into
his
body.

No
, she said, but Bernice wasn’t sure what she meant.

“Mother, are you all right?”

Yes
. Arahab’s eyes flew open, and they were no longer blank. They were red as if shot with blood.
I’m all right. But he
 . . . And then she expelled him through her chest, not in a violent burst of gore, but in a tender little birth that was slow with regret and disappointment.

“But he?” Bernice was transfixed, but not by the sight of the pulpy, repugnant mass that Arahab had deposited onto the edge of the beach. She was watching Arahab, watching and waiting. She had been expecting something, and it hadn’t happened. She had been keyed up with anticipation, but this was not the outcome she had planned.

There’s nothing more I can do for him
.

“Wait.” Bernice shook her head. “Wait, I don’t . . . No. Look at him. You’re just going to let him
die
?”

Arahab’s slim, crimson eyes narrowed brightly and smoldered with something riotous and unreadable.
Look at him yourself, girl. He’s dead. And that’s all. He’s dead, and you’ve killed him
.

“I? No, I didn’t. I told you, it was the Greek, in his awful little shop. He’s the one who did it. I tried to stop him—he was going to kill me, too. I was trying to help you, Mother.”

Were you?
She feigned a wide-eyed face. It was a mirror of Bernice’s, when Bernice wasn’t telling the truth; that was where she’d seen it before. “Were you so devoted that you followed my directions to the letter?”

“Yes—” She had to say it fast, because Arahab was firing questions one after another, harder and quicker. And she was rising up with each question, taking in more water and taking on a bigger form.

She swiped at Bernice and pulled the shell from her hand with a ferocious splash that almost knocked the girl off her feet.

Were you such a devoted daughter that you’d wish for my success, that you’d wish to awaken my father, my Leviathan?
This time she wasn’t in a cay puddle, surrounded by a rock wall. This time she was wallowing in the Gulf of Mexico, and there were tons upon tons of water at her disposal.

“Yes!”

And were you so single-minded in your pursuit of my ambitions that you strayed not at all and dabbled in no preposterous dark arts—as they are weakly known and dimly understood by the mankind that spawned you first?

“Yes, Mother—”

I made you to help him! To help me! And you would go with him into the fire priest’s den, and you would conspire with him to—

“Mother, fix him! Fix him, you have to try harder!” Bernice was shrieking, hysterical. She couldn’t help it. Mother was twice
her size, and then three times and four times it. She was the size of a house, and growing larger by the sweeping second.

He’s dead, and there is no fixing him! I could not do it. I don’t hold that kind of power! No one does, any longer. The one who was once called Death is an outcast shadow, weak and shunned. Even if that creature had the means to assist me, I do not think that it would do so.

“You brought
me
back to life,” Bernice insisted. She was crying now, and no matter how hard she tried to sell them as tears of pain and loss, they were tears of fear.

No, I prevented you from dying—as I did him, a hundred years before you were born.

“Then why not now? Why did you let him die now? I don’t understand! Why didn’t you fix him; I swear to God, I thought you could fix him!” And then she realized she’d said too much. This confession would not have been on the script if she were as innocent as she swore.

But Arahab already knew—if not everything, then enough.
You gave him too much of that elixir, and you waited too long to bring him, and now you are afraid, as you should be. Look at what you have done!

Bernice didn’t know what she was looking for, but through terrified streams of tears she did her best to see. “I don’t understand,” she sobbed, folding her legs beneath herself and crawling slowly back away from the water. “What happened to him? What happened, and why didn’t you fix him? I
know
you could have fixed him.”

You know?
Arahab twisted her neck and crushed her eyes closed with pain, or with restraint, or with some other unidentifiable pressure that pushed up on her from within.
You know nothing—or worse, you know small pieces of things. You’ve picked up fragments here and there; you’ve gathered tiny bits of secondhand chatter and you think that you know all the answers!

“No, I don’t. But you saved us before, and I thought if you tried
harder—
”

If I tried harder, then what? That I would bring the poison into myself? That I would sicken myself and become vulnerable? Do you think I did not know what you were planning?

Bernice’s face went gray, and her knees folded. She scrambled backwards crablike, realizing that she should not stay so close to the infuriated monster. Arahab was gathering malicious, outraged mass. She was swelling and growing, but she was aching somehow. Something about her rise was pained and forced. There was power there in the water, and there was energy untapped still waiting her command, but it was hard for her.

You know so little,
she continued,
that you did not even understand the workings of the call you sent to me, from the wretched little boat that my son wished to sail. You did not know or did not believe that the intent is carried with the casting. But I heard you, my precious liar. I heard you hold the trinket to your breast and make your wish as if it were a coin, and as if the Gulf were a well. I heard your query to the gods.

Flustered and now beyond panic, Bernice tried hard to remember what she’d wished. She remembered the act of it—the closing of the eyes, the childish toss over the side of the boat, and how it had felt like throwing a coin in a well, yes. It had felt like saying a prayer, so she assumed that no one was listening.

But she couldn’t recall the plea she’d made.

Arahab answered for her, filling in the missing piece.
My lamb, you wished to be rid of me. My child, you wished to replace me. And because you are so very knowledgeable—
She opened her massive hands and spoke with sarcasm, another thing she’d learned from Bernice.
And because you are so very wise, and so cunning . . . you did not realize that you were making that wish to me.

“If . . . if . . . if that’s what you think—” She was blubbering,
and she hated herself for it, but she couldn’t stop. “—then why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t . . . Why didn’t you . . . You could’ve kept me here. You could’ve killed me or changed me, or whatever it is you do!”

The creature in the water had grown to the size of a city block, and even though the beach was deserted, people far away could see her. Somewhere far away, someone began to scream. Arahab began to roar.

Because I did not know that you would harm him!

The tides that swirled inside her were sloshing back and forth, and the things she’d caught up—the fish, the weeds, the shells, and the rays—were thrown from side to side. She was a maelstrom contained. She was a vortex above the surface.

“But you could’ve saved him!” Bernice shouted back.

So the fault is mine, then? So I was the one who killed my son, not you? I made him to ease my loneliness as much as to aid my plans, and he was good to me, and devoted.

I did the best I could, my darling love. I gave him all the energy I could spare, and it was not enough. It has drained me, yes, and the metal venom with its water poison tastes like death in my mouth. But it cannot injure me. It can only disgust me, and a simple aversion is not deadly.

It cannot kill me . . . and I believe you did not know
that.

Arahab gazed down at José’s body, which was half-floating in the shallow water where the tide was leaving it, tugging it, and breaking it up on the sand where it lay. She regarded him with her empty face, gazing down as if she did not know what to do.

I wanted to fix him,
she said, her voice dropping from an ear-shattering explosion down to a mournful howl.
I would have fixed him, even if doing so sickened or wounded me. I would have fixed him regardless, for I loved him longer than I ever loved you.

Bernice was nearly at the water’s edge, almost free of the sopping, slapping mess that sucked at her shoes and held her in the
damp. There was no point to her retreat, and she knew it. She could never run far enough or fast enough.

She struggled to her feet, and she stood there all soaking wet and vomited upon. She held herself upright in the sandy mud and in her towering shoes, and as she stared Arahab in the face, she began to pry the shoes off her feet—using her toes to pick and pull at them, one after the other.

Arahab met Bernice’s gaze, though she met it from a height of several stories. The Gulf had shrunk around her, but the tide was seeping in to replace what she had taken. The water seeks its level, as it seeks its mistress.

The mistress of the ocean brought herself down swiftly and firmly, planting one hand on either side of Bernice, and planting those hands down so hard that the wet earth shattered and shook.
I knew when I took you that you were evil. That’s why I pulled you under the waves and held you against myself. That’s why I saved you, because you were formless and void, and I thought I could bend you to join and assist me. I brought you in as a daughter, and as a companion to my son. I received and restored you knowing that you were made of bile and nails, so I suppose the fault is mine after all. I did not frighten you enough while I had the opportunity. I tried to rule you with love, but fear is all that will move you.

One shoe was completely undone and kicked aside. The second shoe was nearly gone.

If Arahab had noticed, she did not comment. She only raised her head again, pushing up on her hands and baring her beautiful wet throat to Bernice, who had no weapon to push against it. And perhaps there was sorrow after all. She knew how to make the mortal sound of it, if not the shape.

I want to know this, child. If you tell me this, and if you speak the answer truly, then I may yet find some mercy in my heart. I may yet conclude that there is use for you, and hope for you. I would prefer to
believe as much, because I have loved you, too, and wished for your companionship.

“What?” Bernice asked in a voice that was midway between a gasp and a whimper. Her other shoe was off, and her bare feet squished the exposed ocean floor between her toes.

Did he plan this with you, too? Was he willing to see me dead, and replaced, or did you tell him some sweet lie to deceive him? From you, I will accept and believe treachery, and it is a nuisance to me, but little more. From him, it would break my heart.

Bernice shook her head slowly, back and forth to mask the motion of her feet stepping away from the shoes. The tears swung away, dripping down her cheekbones and joining the rest of the salt water that pooled and puddled in the space around her.

“Is that all it comes down to? I can’t kill you or become you, so there’s no place for me in your heart or in your plans except as pet or princess?”

Arahab used her starfish eyes to glare down hard.
Did you do this alone, or did he conspire with you?
She asked it carefully, slowly. A letter at a time.

Bernice couldn’t look Mother in the eye. She tried, but her neck wouldn’t crane back that far and her eyes were snagged by the sight of the small bronze shell, swirling and dipping in the place where Arahab’s heart should be. She reached out her hand and could almost touch it, where an enormous breast came down, almost to the waterline. She reached for the shell like a baby stretches out its fingers for a rattle.

Arahab misunderstood, and softened her crouching, looming stance above the woman at the edge of the shore; and as she dropped her tremendous body down low, Bernice’s hand pressed against the false flesh. Her fingertips pushed past the surface tension that passed for skin, and she grasped the frilled end of the call.

With a swift jerk, she pulled it free.

Arahab felt the little theft. She swiveled her head, and when she shifted her position, sliding and rotating in the water, Bernice was able to meet her eyes after all.

“He did it with me,” she said without blinking. “It was
his
idea.”

And then she turned, one heel slurping at the sodden sand, and she ran.

Her feet pounded fast even where the water curled, bubbled, and slapped around them. Arahab had made her daughter strong and swift. A torrent of fast, irrational options sloshed through Bernice’s mind as she pumped her feet one after the other, driving them down into the wet earth and knowing that every drop of water meant that the danger was still close behind.

The world has many deserts; there are huge continents with land for miles and miles, and no water anywhere to be found. I am not like José. I don’t need the water to live. I never even liked it very much. I can run farther than she can chase me. . . .

But first she’d have to get away, and—

Arahab’s longest tendril-like finger looped itself around Bernice’s ankle and pulled her down hard. Facedown she dragged the woman back into the surf, and then she lifted her up out of the water, higher and farther than Bernice had ever been in her life.