Heart of the Kraken (Tales from Darjee) (9 page)

The kraken's head swivelled upward and its mouth opened, exposing its beak and teeth as though it answered an unseen call. Then it turned back to her and waved a tentacle up to the shadow of the ship. It swam a short way and stopped when the chain pulled taunt on its limb. The round eye peered at her and it waited.

Her heart dropped in her chest. Freedom wasn't freedom at all, her limited time was up. As they neared the surface, the kraken raised the tentacle holding her chain. Through the distortion of the water, she saw hands reach down and unwrap the cord. The creature looked to her, the lid came down over the eye and it blinked. Although they had no language between them, she couldn't help thinking it tried to communicate something to her. Then it turned and swam away, leaving her to be hauled up on deck.

Hands grabbed at her and she still clutched the prize claimed from the rock. The sun had dropped in the horizon and no longer stung her skin or burned her eyes.

"Well don't you look revived for a swim," the captain said. "And what do you have there?" He held out one hand.

She toyed with holding on to her treasure but what was the point? A few more days and she would be dead anyway. At least her restored health would ensure she was a fine meal for the Lady of Darjee.

The captain took the object and turned it over and over in his hands. The dying sun played over the surface and it shimmered with blue and green fire. The cycle of subtle colour what attracted her attention on the coral bed.

"What did it find, Cap'n? A plate?" One of the crew asked.

"This is no plate," he said. It wasn't a circle, but flatter at the top and then curved.

"Looks like a giant scale," another said.

The captain's head shot up and he fixed the man with his steady gaze. "Scale?"

The man blanched. "I was just joking, Cap'n. Of course it's not a scale. Imagine how big the fish would be that it fell off."

A brief rustle of laughter broke out but the captain stared out over the ocean. He made a noise in his throat as he thought. Then he let out a low whistle. "I happen to agree with you Dinger. I think our pet fish has found us a scale from the Curiosity."

Silence fell except for the odd whispered oath and the captain regarded her with a hard, wondering look in his black eyes.

Chapter Nine

Fenton found the men circled on the deck, Ailin at their feet. He breathed a sigh of relief to see the grey tinge gone from her skin and replaced with a pearl-like warmth. The spines along her tail stood erect rather than flopping to one side and her scales had regained their lustre. Her long hair draped over her shoulders and covered her breasts, hiding them from men who had been overlong at sea without a shore visit.

"Any problem from the Regulators?" he enquired of the captain. He lost himself when controlling the kraken, with no awareness of anything that happened on the vessel while his mind was lashed to the beast.

Reis looked up from the plate in his hands. "Our bad luck to encounter Captain Shame and he demanded we hand the creature over. I told him to find it and damn if the scourge didn't search everywhere, he even sent a man down to the latrine. I thought I might have to invite him for dinner, he took so long."

Fenton picked up Ailin and her arms looped around his neck. "Will he be back?"

"Undoubtedly, he had talked to Captain Wyman and knows we hold the fish, he just doesn't know where. We have created quite the puzzle for him and he is intent on solving it." Reis tucked the blue disc into his jacket. "We make for Lusions."

A cheer went up from the assembled crew, they would finally have time in a port to spend their gold, to have land under their feet, and a woman under their bodies.

Fenton held Ailin closer. Docking at the Isle of Illusions bought him time. Time to figure out how to free Ailin, even as the other part of his mind made a mental note of the supplies the ship would need to acquire. "I'll double check the hold and give you a list of what we need to restock."

Reis smiled. "Good. We need an intermediary to contact Darjee for us. We can't exactly sail up the Darjee channel, especially not with Shame snapping at our heels. Plus there is another matter I want to discuss with Nancy." Reis stared at Ailin for a moment longer, then he strode toward the helm, shouting orders. Men leapt to action, others watched Fenton, ensuring he didn't slip the mermaid back over the side.

Below deck, he placed Ailin on the floor with her back against the crate. He sat next to her, his long legs stretched out next to her luminescent tail. Their shoulders touched and the cool metal of the container behind him soothed the sweat itch on his back.

"Did he hurt you, the kraken?" He had to ask even though she appeared unharmed and much restored for her dip in the ocean.

The ends of her tail flicked back and forth and he had the impression it was the mermaid equivalent of wiggling your toes.

"No. He terrified me but he held the chain and did not approach."

"Good." He swallowed his relief.

"Timmy says you summon him." She peered sideways at him, her eyes wide as questions swirled in their azure depths.

"Yes. I control the beast and Reis controls me." A simplistic explanation, which should have an equally simple answer.

Her gaze never left his face. "His control is your prison."

He nodded and rested his head against the crate. His eyes dropped shut as he sorted through the furore in his mind. The burden he carried grew in weight as though it were no mere tattoo on his back, but the physical embodiment of the kraken pressing him down. One day it would smash him into the deck harder than a fall from the crow's nest.

"How?" she asked.

"The ore-mancers wanted to make sailors who couldn't drown. They tried mechanical gills but the switch could not mimic what your body does naturally. Some men drowned on dry land when it activated on its own, others fell overboard but couldn't get the gills to work." The older sailors told the stories of those poor unfortunates who ended their lives as failed experiments.

She picked up his hand and traced the suckers on a tentacle that wrapped around his wrist. "Perhaps man and ocean are not meant to merge?"

"Perhaps." He stared at their hands and the path of her finger. The light touch set his arm aflame and he breathed a sigh as she reached his bicep and stopped her exploration. "They thought to try a more natural solution, men bonded with shark or other fish species. I was not yet born when they joined me with the kraken."

She reached out and touched his neck. "But you do not have gills or tentacles?"

He took her hand in his and laced their fingers together. "No. They spliced our minds together but considered me a failure. I am no sea creature, but I have the ability to summon and control one. When Reis was in their hospital being fitted with his gauntlet, he saw me stumbling along a hallway. What pirate could resist the lure of having the kraken under his control?"

"The thing on his arm controls you? How?" She snuggled in closer against him.

"It is my invisible prison, binding me to this ship." And there was his simple solution, destroy the gauntlet and tear down his walls. But in doing that, he would destroy himself and there would be no separation between man and kraken. What would he become if the barrier came down and its dark shadow swallowed his soul? Would they be one hideous amalgam or would the massive kraken drown out anything that remained of Fenton?

He sighed. "Let's talk of something else."

She fell silent for a moment and then tugged on his hand. "The captain said the plate I found was a scale from the Curiosity. What is that?"

A smile pulled at his lips. "A story to tell children, although some swear it is true."

"Tell me." She leaned over and smiled up at him. "Words spoken have more heart than scratchings on a page." A gentle tease at his fascination with books.

"As my lady wishes." He knew the old story and how could he resist her request. At least he could give his words freely since he had nothing else to offer her. "Let us title our tale the
Mystery of the Curiosity
. It begins many years ago, fifty I believe, in Duo Uisage, the coastal province of Darjee….

A young ore-mancer fell in love with the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The affair continued for many months as their love grew, until one day, the mage worked up the courage to ask her parents for their permission to marry. Now people revere ore-mancers but they also fear them. No one understands the source of their power or the things they do to meld metal and flesh. The merchant did not want an ore-mancer as part of his respectable family. They rejected the young man and forbid their daughter from ever seeing him again. Then they sold their daughter in a commercial contract to the son of another merchant family.

The lovers were devastated, but undeterred. They vowed to be together and decided to flee to another province. One night, under the cover of dark, the young woman climbed from her window to join her love. But the fates intervened and she fell. She plunged to the cobbles below and broke her neck. By some small miracle, she continued to breath but could not move, paralysed from her neck down.

The merchant family cancelled the marriage contract, a paralysed woman was of no value to them. Her family turned their backs, they didn't want the expense of her care and so they sold her to the ore-mancers. Her flesh was to be enhanced by metal, for her to be transformed from a human to a product.

That day, the distraught lover started work at the wharf, constructing a vessel. Locals gathered to watch, never before had an ore-mancer worked outside of their high glass towers yet this one laboured at the dry-dock in full view. With no need for rivets or welding equipment, he bent sheets of metal and rods of steel as though they were silk in his hands. With the caress of his finger, he sealed seams perfectly.

Over the weeks, the vessel became known to all as The Curiosity. Never before had they seen anything like it. The interior layout baffled comprehension. Ducting, pipes and wire with no discernible purpose embraced the entire structure like veins and tendons through a body. Then the ore-mancer enclosed the entire sleek shape in a metal skin. Day after day, he laboured to graft metal scales to the exterior. The size of dinner plates, they glimmered the darkest shades of blue and green.

"Just like the one I found!" Ailin said.

Fenton raised her hand and kissed the back of her knuckles. "Yes, just like the one you found that has sparked Reis' interest."

"The ship had no mast or any visible form of propulsion and no open deck. Long and slender, it resembled a mermaid tail. Each day, the crowd grew, speculating about what lay within. Then one night at high tide, the Curiosity drifted down the slipway and vanished. She sank below the waves and has never been seen since.

The Lady Alise and the ore-mancer guild set a large reward on both the young man's head and on the capture of the Curiosity. Rumours flew that he stole secret equipment from the ore-mancer towers. That he constructed the vessel as an underwater laboratory. There is also another rumour - that he spirited on board the broken and discarded body of his lover so that they might be together, always."

They sat in silence for several minutes, their hands threaded until Ailin spoke.

"I like that. He built something special to honour her and so they could be together. I think it shows if you love someone, there is always a way to be together."

He wanted to scoff but her words made something deep inside flare into life. Did love find a way? A curious notion, not that he had any experience of love. What woman could embrace the kraken that shadowed him? He turned to find her steady gaze on him and the small spark flared a little brighter.
No woman
, it whispered.

***

"Do you have a woman, Fenton? A mate waiting for you on land?" She had to ask, the question burned through her brain. Thoughts of him dominated her waking hours and crept into her dreams, lulled by the sound of his voice as he read poetry. When he picked her up and cradled her to his chest, she felt like the rarest treasure. The gentlest caress of his hand was like the brush of an anemone and raised a tingle along her skin. She could well imagine the care he would lavish on the female he selected.

"No." The sadness took up residence in his eyes. "I would not ask any woman to share my burden." He looked away and gazed out the port hole at the small sliver of ocean and sky that bobbed up and down in their view with the roll of the ship. "Do you have a mate, Ailin, is there someone scouring the ocean searching for you?"

Now she looked away. There was no one to truly mourn her loss. The children would have told the elders the ship took her, and they would know any search would be pointless. Captured mermaids never returned to the sea. She lived her life below the waves alone. "I have not been chosen."

A frown wrinkled his brow. "What do you mean, chosen?"

She stared at their hands. Such a simple act and yet she found such comfort in touching him. What would it be like if he removed his shirt and she pressed her breasts to the hard muscle of his torso? Her heart pounded at the thought. "Merfolk mate for life, our bodies and souls will only ever know one other. I never met a male who wanted to bind his life to mine."