The Skybound Sea

TWENTY-ONE

He called it a man.

There might have been better words for what he stared at, but they were words that he didn’t know or that had not been created yet. But while he called the thing that sat in the darkness across from him with crossed legs and palms upon his knees a man, it was more than that.

His eyes were nebulous and fluid, a river of blue that flowed through like a living thing, drowning pupil, drowning white. It was the only movement from the man. He did not breathe.

There was much wrong with him, Lenk thought, enough that he shouldn’t be called a man. And yet, Lenk had to call him a man. For, save the eyes, he looked exactly like Lenk did.

And Lenk knew his name.

“You,” he said.

The man did not speak.

“I think I’ve finally figured out how you work.” He cleared his throat. “To a point, anyway.”

The man listened.

Lenk made a gesture like he was about to strangle whatever he was about to say. “See, I think you’re just one big hallucination. . or something. You’re something in my head, that much is obvious, and you twist things so I see them as you do.”

The man stared.

“So, these things that you tell me don’t really happen. I make them happen because you make me make them. You take my emotions and. . twist them, somehow, into something worse than they are. You made me think Kataria would try to kill me. You are a lie.”

The man spoke.

“No.”

“Then what are you?”

“Important.”

Lenk rubbed his eyes, sighed into the darkness. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“What?”

“The threats, the commands, the cryptic mutterings. . I can’t. I don’t want to.” He met the man’s stare. He did not blink. “I’m not going to. Not anymore.”

The man blinked. Behind him, a horror of fire was born in the darkness. Images of burning farmhouses and corpses falling beneath wandering shadows flickered like shadows cast by a candle. They shifted to dark chambers, dark waters, and six golden eyes peering out from bloodstained liquid voids. They shifted to a distant figure staring with forlorn green eyes before fading behind a veil of fire.

All moments he should have died.

All moments he was saved thanks to the man in front of him.

“You would be dead without me. I saved you, I preserved you, I kept you from falling into the shadow.”

“And at what cost?”

“Do not pretend to be confused. You call cryptic that which is obvious, you deny that which is inevitable. You know that without me, you will die. Your hand, her hand, someone else’s hand; it does not matter. You will die. I cannot allow that. There is no choice.”

“You say that, but. .”

Lenk faltered a moment as the man’s eyes intensified. A cold fire smoldered behind his stare, too bright to be drowned. It burned through the darkness, brighter than even the flames roaring silently behind him. It forced itself upon Lenk, sought to bow his head, to break him.

It did not.

He did not.

“You couldn’t make me do it.”

“What?”

“I heard you. I heard every word you said. I had the sword in my hand, above her head.” He tried to feel the weight of it in the darkness. “She wasn’t moving. You were screaming at me, along with the other voices, and I could. . I could understand it, but. .”

He looked up at the man. He looked into his burning, flowing, bright-blue eyes. He smiled as though he were pleased.

“With everything, all of what I felt and all of what you told me, you couldn’t make me kill her.”

The man’s eyes widened. They grew wide enough to see further, to see into the future, to see the words that would fall from Lenk’s lips only a moment later on a breathless sigh that had been held in for years.

“You can’t control me.”

“Don’t.”

“You have no power.”

“You need me.”

“You can’t do anything.”

“She will kill you.”

“To her.”

“They will kill you.”

“To me.”

“You can’t just-”

“To anyone.”

“WE STILL HAVE TO-”

“No.”

“LISTEN-”

“No more.”

There was darkness.

There were better words for what it was, that profound emptiness that is left behind when something great and terrible is gone. There may never be such a word created for what he felt when he stared at the space where the man had sat before the flames and the shadow. But he called it darkness.

And he fell into it.

A shadow.

Light.

And then another.

First one, and then the other, in an endless, silent tide. They circled beneath the light, chasing each other with no particular hurry. Their wings were water, black flesh that rippled with silver light as they wove their way between the stars peering through a hole in the world.

Somewhere in the chasm, the earth had opened up overhead. It had let just a hair too much light in for the kelp and coral to be comfortable and they shied from it, lurking in the shadows, while the stars overhead peered through, watching what he watched, watching the two rays circle each other overhead with no particular care for what he did or if he ever rose from the sandy grave upon which he lay.

For some time, neither did he.

And so he lay there, as he had lain there since he had awoken. It wasn’t that he couldn’t rise. He felt light, unbearably so, as though he might be carried away with whatever tide wasn’t there that carried the rays so effortlessly through the starshine.

But standing seemed a daunting prospect.

“You can get up now.”

Daunting as it was, though, he looked up from the sand, stared past his chest, past his stomach, between his feet. She sat not far away, beneath the stare of the stars, beneath the envy of a frond of wafting, purple kelp.

Light and shadow painted her. The naked skin of her shoulders glowed silver against the light, twisting against the black bands encircling her, spitefully chasing the starlight away as the starlight chased it, in turn.

Like the rays.

He could see her eyes. They were bright and green, like a thing that shouldn’t be growing down here in the dark. They weren’t looking at him. She stared at the sand. Her ears twitched, she pointed to them.

“It’s how I know,” she said. “You breathe differently when you sleep and when you’re awake. I can hear it.” She smiled sadly. “I know that about you.”

He came to his feet. It was hard. The earth kept moving beneath him and the sky was going the opposite way overhead. He stood between them, trying to keep his balance, trying not to get dizzy as he stared at her and her shadows and her light.

“Is that you in there?” She tapped her temple.

“Yeah,” he said. His words felt too light on his lips, like he knew he would need the breath he was giving away for them.

She nodded.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Do you believe me?”

She looked at him now. Her eyes flashed, stared past him, through him, around him. The color was too much, too bright, too vivid, too full of. . something. It threw him, upset the balance of light and black. He swayed, did not fall.

He stared back.

Did not blink.

“I shot my brother,” she said. “I stepped over my sister’s body.” She turned back to the sand.

“For me?”

“Not for you. Not entirely. They were something I wasn’t. You were when I realized it.”

“Why?” He felt a pain in his neck, the question hurt to speak.

She shook her head.

“You’re all I have left.”

The pain grew sharper, twisted in his throat at the question he dreaded to ask, the answer he was terrified to hear.

“What if that’s a mistake?”

She looked at him. Her eyes were no less bright as they hardened.

She rose. She stood before him. The stars painted shifting stripes across her face, turned it into a mask of silver and black. Her hair drifted in a breeze that wasn’t there, licking against the lobes of her ears, sending them twitching.

Her belly rose and fell with each breath. The shadows moved with her, tracing the contours of her muscle, drawing a circle of perfect pitch about her navel. The finer hairs of her body shone translucent beneath the silver, alight where the shadow’s hands did not slide across her belly as it rose, gently; fell, gently.

She breathed. She lived. Her body moved as the earth moved and the sky moved and the world moved and everything moved around him.

Except her eyes.

So he stared into them. And he clung to them to keep from falling.

“Then I’ll keep beating you unconscious until it isn’t,” she said.

She stood there. Her body trembled. Her eyes did not. She waited for him to do something. For him to fall dead at her feet. For him to kill her instead. For him to turn away and leave and fade into something else entirely.

The silence hurt his ears. There was something in his mind, something he had trouble hearing. It had no words. It had no language.

He stepped forward, just to hear the sand crunch beneath his feet. And at that moment, the world moved a little too much one way, the sky too much the other. He fell.

And he felt her as she caught him. He felt the shudder of her breath against his chest. He felt the chill of her shadows slithering over him.

“I’m tired,” he whispered. “I am. . very tired.”

And she could feel it. She felt the groan of muscles that struggled to keep him on his feet. She felt the murmur of a heart in his chest flowing warm and weary in his chest.

“You need to rest,” she whispered.

“I need. .”

She could hear his voice. She could hear a quaver that wasn’t there anymore. She could hear a sigh that was on every breath.

“I need. .”

She could hear his body. She heard the slide of flesh as his arm wrapped around her. She heard the desperation in his grip as his hand pressed against the naked small of her back. She heard the crunch of cloth as he pressed her belly against his.

“I. .”

No more voices.

No more language.

He leaned into her to keep from falling, pressed his lips against hers to keep from being carried away.

Nothing was left to hear.

She felt him now.

She could taste the desperation in his lips, the urgency that dripped off his tongue and onto hers. She could feel him, every part of him, everything that was left of him. In the grasp of his hand around her wrist, in the tension of muscle and the coarseness of his tunic against her belly, in the low, urgent growl that slid from his mouth into hers.

And as he poured everything he had left into her, he fell. His knees gave way beneath him and he clung to her as he slid to the sands, arms wrapped about her waist, face pressed against her skin. He clung as though there was not enough of him left to keep him on the dirt and keep him from drifting away on a tidal sky.

She said something. Something to herself, something to him, something hateful, something teary. Maybe. Maybe she said nothing. Maybe he should say something. If he had a voice anymore, he might have. If she had one, she might have.

All her language now was in her body. The protest of fine hairs standing on end in the wake of his tongue, the whisper of muscle in her stomach as it yielded to his lips, the howl in her fingers as he felt them tangle into his hair and pull.

She had no voice to make a sound. No more words. No more curses. Not so much as a moan. The slightest escape of air between lips barely parted. The world above was too far away to hear. The world below was silent as the darkness it held. There was no sound. There were no voices.

Lenk liked that.

His fingers found themselves trembling over her belt buckle. It was too complex for him now. He pulled on it, tore it free, let the leather hang limply about her waist. His fingers found the space between her skin and breeches and he pulled.

She slid out of them, watched them pool about her ankles. Maybe it was them that caused her to fall, to feel the grit of sand upon the skin of her buttocks. Maybe it was him. No use for words. She had none left.

He pulled himself on top of her, felt her hands at his belt, felt his trousers sliding from his legs. He felt her beneath his hips. He felt her thighs pressing against his. He felt her nails sinking past his tunic, into the skin of his shoulders.

He made not a sound.

She barely even breathed.

No words.

No voices.

No people.

Nothing but a shifting of shadow and stars above as he leaned into her.

She felt the breath inside her, the sudden rush of air as her mouth fell open. She saw the flash of her teeth in his eyes as he stared at her. She felt her ears flatten themselves against her head, bury themselves in the locks of her hair, pressing so hard, trembling so fiercely they hurt.

He felt the shudder of her body against his hips, the hairs on her skin stand up and reach out to the ones on his. He felt the clench of his jaw as he strove to keep back a word that had no place down here. He felt himself close his eyes and felt the shadows washing over him.

She felt the blood blossom beneath her nails.

He felt the sand rub beneath her buttocks.

She felt the agony inside him, the muscle of his abdomen contracting so hard it hurt to have it pressed against her.

He felt the scream inside her, the snarl broiling behind her lips as she leaned up and caught his in her teeth, the blood beneath her canines.

She felt the hardness of his stare as he opened his eyes and met hers.

He felt the ferocity of her embrace as she pulled him closer onto her, wrapped her thighs about him, pressed the soft flesh of her neck into the sloping curve of his shoulder.

Her gasp.

His breath.

Her hair.

His blood.

Everything they had.

With no more voices.

With no more people.

There was only shadow.

And the world moving beneath them.