The Tree of Water (37 page)

He closed his eyes and concentrated.

At first he could feel nothing but the ferocious pressure of the sea. The weight of the water was heavy even on his spirit, and seemed to block out the thrum from almost everything else around them. The vibrations of the hydrothermal vents, the giant tube worms waving in the drift, the enormous clams filtering water on the seafloor, the thousands of starfish clinging to the mineral chimneys of the black smokers, were all very slight compared to the heaviness that surrounded everything.

But then, high above it, he heard, or more likely felt, a sound.

The thrum was bell-like and clear, with a sweet, deep tone. It did not ring desperately like the harsh clanging of the diving bells, but rather rolled through the drift, like tides of breath. It seemed like it was coming from very far away, and yet it hung in the water around him at the same time.

If he hadn't been specifically listening for it, he never would have heard it.

Now that he
could
hear it, the sound reached down into the depths of his soul. He felt lighter just knowing it was there, and a moment later it was as if he had breathed in sweet air, or sunshine, something that banished the darkness from inside him, even though it was still all around him.

“I think I hear her,” he said.

Char's eyebrows drew together.

“Who?”

“Frothta.”

“Really?” His best friend listened carefully. “Sorry, mate, but I don't hear anything except the thuddin' o' the sea.”

Coreon, who had been listening as well, nodded in agreement.

“I could be wrong, but I can't imagine what else would make a thrum like I'm hearing,” Ven said. “I guess we should just follow it, at least as long as we can. Unless someone else has a better idea.”

“No better idea—but you have to lead,” said Char. “Where are we headin'?”

Ven pointed to the towering mountain range. “Over there. Then up.”

“I don't think I can carry this diving bell any longer,” said Coreon. “I can barely drag it along here at the bottom. If you think we need to climb, I don't think it's coming with us unless we're inside it.”

“I guess we're going to have to decide if we believe we're going to find a miracle, then,” said Ven. “Because you can get back in that diving bell, say
going up
, and it should take you back to your body. It may be the last chance either of you have for making it out of the Abyss. I don't blame you if that's what you want to do.”

“You're sayin'
you
—not
we
,” said Char. “I guess this means you've already decided you're not goin' back in the divin' bell?”

“Yes,” said Ven. “I'm going to the mountains—and I'm going to find the Tree of Water, or die trying.”

Char sighed. “Well, then, ya know what I'm gonna say.”

“Me too,” added Coreon. “There's no point turning back now.”

Ven smiled in relief. “Good. We'll just start climbing the first mountain we come to, and keep going as long as we can.”

Coreon let go of the chain tether. The small cage floated away from them and into the black water outside their sight.

“Goodbye!” Char called after it. “Well, there goes our last lifeline.”

“We'll have to make our own way out, then,” said Ven. “Let's get to it.”

The black drift was heavy, and it took all their strength and concentration to move upward in it. Every now and then a crack in the floor of the sea would spew forth acidic spray. They dodged out of the way, forgetting for a moment that they had no bodies to be harmed by it.

They soon lost all track of time. The mountains they had seen in the light of the river of lava were much farther away than they had seemed, and after a while it felt like they were traveling in vain, not getting any closer.

“You know, I really hope that stupid hippocampus made it back,” Char muttered. “I hope he's home, tendin' to his babies.”

“With his mate,” Coreon added.

“I hope so too,” said Ven. “He really was a trooper.”

“Are you still tryin' not to think about the Cormorant?” Char asked Coreon.

“Trying, but not succeeding,” the sea-Lirin boy said. “My dad is the division leader of the eastern part of the coral reef. He would have been one of the first ones in.”

“Sorry to have brought it up,” Char said.

“Focus on hearing the song of the Tree,” Ven advised. “Once you do, you'll feel better, I bet.”

Coreon nodded. “I think I do hear it,” he said. “It has a hopeful ring to it, doesn't it?”

“Yes.”

Finally the mountains were within plain sight. They reached up into the black drift, lighted by the blazing lava oozing from the cracks in the skin of the world. The haze and smoke from the mineral chimneys on the seafloor made them look like a nightmare fairyland.

This is a little bit like what the Nain kingdom of Castenen, where my ancestors come from, might have looked like if it were in the upworld,
Ven thought as he stared up from the base of the towering mountains.
Strange that Nain fear the water so much, and in fact in the deepest depths of the sea the world looks almost the same
.

He tried to remember what it felt like to ride the drift, the way Amariel had shown him and Char at the beginning of this long, terrifying, amazing journey. None of the lift the ocean had provided then, back in the Sunlit Realm, was in the heavy salted water at the bottom of the world. He pushed his arms through the drift, and his spirit form rose slightly, with great effort. He took another stroke. He rose a little farther up, feeling tired.

The other boys joined him. Char took twice as long as he and Coreon, his dim spirit form all but disappearing several times. Ven set a slow and steady pace, swimming until he was finally within reach of the side of a mountain of towering rock formations.

All over the surface, millions of tiny starfish clung to the mountainside with several of their arms while they waved others in the drift, catching the occasional eyeless shrimp for food. Light from deeper within the mountain chain glowed, making the drift almost as bright as moonlight when it shone on the surface.

“This is so weird,” Char said as they struggled past the cliff faces swarming with starfish. “It looks like the reverse of the sky in the upworld, like all the stars fell right into the sea.”

“Are any of them shining?” Ven asked. “Because until they do, we won't be seeing home again, according to the Epona's riddle.”

“Well, they kinda glow every now and then when a burst of lava shoots out. I don't think any o' them are shinin'.” Char's spirit form dimmed again.

“Try not to thrum too much,” Ven advised. “We have an enormously long climb ahead of us. I can't even see the peak of this mountain, and I know there are more than we can count on either side of it and beyond. It may take us the rest of our lives to find Frothta.”

“I stopped thinkin' a long time ago,” Char answered. He paused for a moment. “Can you imagine what Amariel would have said in response to that if she was with us?”

“She
is
with us,” Ven said. “I have to believe that, or there's no point in going on.”

“How is the pearl cap?” Coreon asked.

Ven looked down at Amariel's most prized possession. It had shrunk considerably, and was now fraying at the edges.

“Let's just keep going,” he said. He was finding it hard to get his thoughts out of his head in the heavy water.

They climbed the drift, swimming up along the mountain face, stopping to rest every so often, until it felt almost as if that was all they had ever done in all their lives. The starfish-covered mountain seemed endless in height, and Ven was beginning to despair of ever reaching its summit, when something shot off above them like a firework in the depths of the sea.

It seemed to come from beyond the mountain.

“We're almost at the top,” Ven said excitedly. “Keep going if you can. We're almost there.”

“You go on ahead,” Char said. “I have to stop.”

Ven saw his best friend's spirit all but disappear into the drift.

“No, we'll wait until you're ready,” he said. “No point in getting separated now. You all right, Coreon?”

“Right here beside you,” the Lirin-mer boy said.

“Good.” He tried to force back the excitement he was feeling as they neared the summit of the mountain. His curiosity was pulsing through him like a strong heartbeat. But he kept his thoughts to himself and struggled to be patient until Char became more clearly visible again.

Then he waited until the deep thrum song he had heard filled his ears again, and followed it once more.

Once they started climbing again, they kept going until they could see the summit. Beyond it, the tips of many more mountains rose, even taller above the distant floor of the sea below them.

“Don't look down,” Ven advised Char, whose pale spirit had dimmed even more when he cast a glance at the seafloor. “We can't fall—our bodies aren't really here.”

“It still feels like they are,” Char said. “Now I finally get what Amariel meant when she said everythin' in the sea was bigger or taller than everythin' on land. I don' think I've ever seen a mountain this big. And they seem to never end.”

Ven turned around as they reached the summit and looked at the seafloor below. The tube worms, giant clams, and starfish were much too far away to be seen now. Rolling clouds of gas from the vents in the ocean floor bubbled up occasionally, and the rivers of bright orange lava now looked like tiny threads so far below.

“I guess that riddle can't really be about us,” he joked as he watched the lava wind its way thought the undersea canyons in the dark. “I don't really think the view from up here was worth the climb.”

“That's because you aren't looking in the right direction,” said Coreon. “I think you might feel differently if you turned around.”

 

40

The Real Queen of the Sea

Ven turned slowly.

As he did, an enormous display of what looked like undersea fireworks exploded above him. Red and gold sparks sped through the drift, leaving glowing trails hanging in the water before they began sinking slowly to the floor of the sea.

Beyond the summit of the mountain they had just climbed were more mountains filling the Trenches for as far as they could see. Unlike the view from the bottom of the world, however, these mountains were lit by a ring of glowing red vents that exploded molten fire into the drift around them like a giant cauldron of bubbling lava. It reminded Ven a little of the huge pumpkin shell full of boiling squash soup in the Gated City that he and his friends had sampled on Market Day when they had visited there.

Great molten lava bubbles three feet or more across floated past, then burst into the freezing cold seawater all around them. Farther off in the range of endless mountains, volcanos erupted, filling the drift with rolling smoke. Hazily Ven was aware that they would never have been able to stand so close to such things in the upworld if they were still in their bodies, and it was only the intense pressure of the water that had suppressed the violence and heat of the undersea volcanoes.

Madame Sharra's voice echoed in his memory.

If you are looking for lost magic that was born in the Before-Time, you will need to find a place that no one else could look for it. It might be in a place of extremes—the hottest and coldest part of the sea, the highest and lowest place in the world, the brightest and darkest realms, all at the same time.

“Criminey,” Char whispered.

Ven looked up even higher, following his gaze.

Rising into the drift beyond the summits of the mountains was another peak, larger and taller by far than all the others. It stretched up like a wide flagpole in the middle of the mountain range.

High atop it was a giant tree, a tree bigger than anything Ven had ever seen before.

At first he did not know what it was.

The enormous trunk and arms, branches, twigs and leaves all seemed to be made of water, water that pulsed clear in the hazy black drift, running like a stream flowing upward, gleaming with a light of its own and rippling with power. Ven was not certain that there was anything solid to it, as if it were made of the same kind of elemental magic as his air stone. Its thrum rang all around him, shouting joyously over the mountaintops and echoing through the drift until it filled his spirit with the same vibration. He could see that Char and Coreon were feeling the same thing.

The song they had all been following.

The tree's gigantic supple arms reached far out over the mountain range, swirling and dancing in the moving drift and the flickering light from the flowing lava of the sea volcanoes. Its lacy leaves cast shadow patterns all over the mountainsides, making the depths of the seabed flicker and swirl with light. The leaves resembled those of an upworld oak tree, but the body of the tree was more like an undersea kelp plant, fluid and flexible, unlike the solid bark of oaks that lived on the land.

What is an oak tree doing at the bottom of the sea?
Ven wondered, amazed.

Even more amazing, however, were the creatures that had taken shelter within its boughs. Bright fish in every color of the rainbow, and some colors Ven had not seen in the upworld, hovered amid its branches, decorating them with their hues. Dolphins with a metallic shine to their skin chased each other playfully through the giant tree's boughs, and shimmering silver whales circled the upper limbs, singing in high, sweet tones.

I wasn't sure if the sea creatures were spirits, like Coreon, Char, and me, because they seemed almost clear at times. I was certain there was something special about them, because a normal whale, fish, or dolphin could not have survived the pressure and the temperature of this place.