Almost at once Autumn became clear to my eyes, and beyond her the others. Nearly invisible bubbles glowed around their heads: magic.
“Who?” I asked—I had a bubble as well.
To my surprise, she seemed to hear—and I realized our bubbles were touching. She pointed downward. I peered past my billowing skirt, and spied an old man, human, his hair waving in the water. He gestured sharply for us to follow—fast. Below him were some dark shapes that I couldn’t make out; as I peered, they seemed to flicker and speed away into the depths.
Puzzled, I looked around, to find Senrid on my other side. His bubble touched mine with a soft sound like a hand-pat, and he said, “I’m not sure, but I think we’re being chased.”
And he pointed off in one direction, where a cloud of dark shapes was boiling rapidly toward us.
We tried to swim away, but they were much too fast.
Within moments we were surrounded by long, sinuous of a dark bluish color, who took hold of us with long, sticky fingers. Senrid fought the hardest—713 not at all—but none of us won free, and we were forced down and down and down until the light was only intermittent weak shafts, and then nothing, until weird blue glows lanced out from the beings—from their foreheads.
Rough rock scraped at my arm. We were being forced down into some kind of fantastically large rocky grotto.
Still farther down, until they stopped. My hair floated round my face like live black snakes, and my body felt squeezed, as if I were wrapped in a tight cloth. The water was cool, but at least we could breathe in our bubbles.
Then a nasty voice spoke directly into our heads: Leave here the way you came, or die.
“What?” I bellowed, shock making it impossible to think. Shock—and anger. “Do you think we want to be here? And I’ve had enough death threats to last a lifetime—”
It felt a little as if I was shouting into an empty room, except I heard Senrid’s snicker on one side. Then his sharp intake of breath.
I turned my head to discover Autumn drawing her fingers apart in a peculiar pattern. I could see her face clearly, though her bubble was smaller; her eyes were half-shut, and again she drew her fingers out as if she wove invisible threads, and this time tiny bubbles streamed between them.
Again, and more bubbles came, and then she gestured a huge circle through the water, and bubbles whooshed out around us, millions of them, like glowing blue crystals. A hard hand gripped my arm and tugged. I yanked back, trying to free myself, but the grip was too hard to break, and Senrid snapped a command: “Get Faline!”
We were making a human chain. I groped about for where I’d seen Faline last, found her small, freckled hand, and gripped it.
We swam—pushed along by a hissing, tickling froth of bubbles.
It seemed a long time—longer even than hiking to breakfast through Senrid’s kingdom-sized castle—then the bubbles abruptly cleared, and light glowed from above.
Above?
I swam upward toward the wavering blue light. My bubble had shrunk and now barely enclosed my head. But then I broke a surface, and breathed in dank air that smelled like wet rocks. The water had felt merely cool when the bubble was round my head, but now I was chilly, and my dress dragged horribly at me as I pulled myself up some barnacle-encrusted rocky steps.
All around the cavern paintings glowed on the walls, surrounded by a flourishing script that I couldn’t read. I looked down, blinking salt from my eyes, to see a short, thin old man with greenish skin and short, thin greenish-white hair waiting patiently as, behind me, Faline emerged, and then Kitty, Leander, and last 713.
The old man spoke—and we couldn’t understand a word of it.
We stared at one another, drips from our clothes echoing in the cavern, until Autumn held up her hands. “Wait,” she said to the man, her palms toward him. “Wait!”
The old man made a sign with his hands, then retreated to a stone bench, where he sat down, water dripping from his hair and robe, his head bowed.
Autumn dove back into the water and vanished.
ELEVEN
Well, in these records I do try to tell the truth as I saw it, so I have to say that what happened next was mostly confusing.
First we had to wait.
713 sat, looking tired but patient. At the time I figured that was because he was feeling rotten, but I think now he was also waiting for someone to give him an order so he’d know what to do.
Leander wandered along the walls, studying the glowing paintings and the mysterious script, completely entranced—except when Kitty (who was complaining non-stop about the cold, and Senrid, and her wet gown, and Senrid, and being hungry, and oh yes, Senrid) tugged at him or got louder when he didn’t answer.
Senrid sat on a rock, looking down at the water, his brow furrowed as he pulled off his boots and stockings and set them aside to dry.
Faline plopped beside me. We caught up on each other’s stories after Senrid had zapped her to his snackle-grundge of a capital. I was fascinated by the cave, but I kept sidling peeks at Senrid as if—oh, I don’t know. I really can’t say what I expected. Did I want him to do something villainous? With him away from Marloven Hess I found it harder and harder to keep up a good, brisk hate, until I looked at Faline and remembered what he’d tried to do to her.
In short, I didn’t stay mad at him—until he spoke to me. Then it all came rushing back.
The old man, meanwhile, sat on a worn stone bench, his long fingers laced together, his eyes closed. After a time there was a rustling sound from the back of the cave, and two women emerged from a narrow opening. One woman was old, one young, both green, with browny-green short hair.
They all wore long PJs of a kind of shiny, lightweight material. Waterproof? It sure looked easier to swim in than my woolen gown.
Water splashed and ringed outward as Autumn reappeared, and with her a squid-like critter that gave me the shudders. She kept her hand on its head, though, and its great stalked eyes wove in a gentle pattern as it observed us all.
Autumn said, “They talk mind to mind.”
“Eugh,” Kitty said softly. “They’re disgusting-looking.”
Leander murmured something in a voice too low to hear, and Kitty turned away and folded her arms.
“So what can they tell us about those creeps down under water?” Faline asked.
Autumn looked up our way, as the man and the two women came down the steps to the edge of the dark waters. They extended hands, tentacles reached up to wind round their arms, and for a moment everything was quiet.
Then Autumn said to us, “The weird thing is, I don’t think there are any villains—not like how we mean. At least, no villains from this world.”
Kitty pointed at Senrid. “So they know about him, too?”
Autumn shook her head. “Strangers.”
I said, “What? Those blue creatures threatening to kill us sure seemed to be a clue.”
Autumn shook her head, and droplets flew from her wet hair. “They thought we were the villains. Something’s gone wrong here—those creatures talk in mind-pictures, not in words. Kept showing me over and over this kind of mind-picture.” She waved her hands side-to-side, and rocked. “Off-balance? Something is out of balance? I dunno—I hope they can tell us.”
Senrid said, “How did you find that thing to communicate with?”
“It found me,” Autumn said. “When I made the bubbles. This water—this world, is full of…” She shrugged.
“Magic,” Senrid said. “It’s full of magic potential. Feels like the power-build before a big spell.”
“Ah!” Leander let out an exclamation. “It is! I thought it was some kind of residue of the transfer. But it really is.”
A flash of blue light crackled between the squid-thing and the three humans.
Then, with a surge of water, the squid dove below and vanished.
The three faced us.
The youngest woman said to 713, “Please accompany. We go to find you sustenance, and ban
ds. We then discourse.” I heard the words as Mearsiean, but they sounded strange even so.
We followed the people up the stone steps into what turned out to be a city inside rock. A city! That easy word doesn’t begin to explain the great, carved lacework of railings and stairs and rooms and balconies arching and swooping and curling with a soaring, airy beauty that you would never expect of rock. There we found more of the green people, of all sizes and ages, including kids running about and playing. A few tentatively approached us, but were waved away by cautious grownups, who brought us food that was completely strange, but not bad tasting. The only thing I recognized was a kind of flat bread made of rice, onto which they put vegetables that seemed to be stewed with spices.
After that a woman came and said, “We will give you access to the water. But there is much to be learned, you from us and us from you, until danger is averted.”
Just as I wouldn’t expect any visitor to Sartorias-deles to suddenly know all our main kingdoms, leaders, villains, and the rest of the mess, I can’t really say that I completely understood that world or what was going on, even after what I believe was a couple of weeks.
So I’m sticking to what was important for us.
First were the bands. The squid-beings were the ones with magic, and they provided gold arm-bands like the local humans wore, so that we could breathe underwater, and not feel cold.
Then Leander and Autumn disappeared on an exploratory dive. Eventually the rules relaxed when we caused no one any harm, and Faline and I made friends with the local kids, trying hard to learn all their games, which had to do with swimming. Wow, were they fast! But when we came out of the water into those caverns, then we taught them some of our word games, and they seemed to like them.
Senrid stayed silent and listened.
713 slept a lot in the little cave they gave us, with alcoves carved round the walls, and nests made of soft woven material that felt odd, almost like smooth plastic but very soft, a little like that fake grass they put in Easter baskets on Earth. I found I much preferred sleeping under water than on stone—especially when there was too much talking going around me.
Kitty glared at Senrid, got bored with games she couldn’t win, and complained when we were out of the water. She was worried about Leander, I guess, but I dove a lot to get away from her temper: I liked her when she stood up to villains, but she could get tiring when she whined about how a princess ought to be treated.
Finally, after a week or so (it was hard to judge the passage of time under water), Leander and Autumn returned. The rest of us were asleep (and sleeping underwater is probably more comfortable than anything else in the universe, as long as magic keeps you from being cold), but a hand on my arm woke me instantly.
I blinked awake to see Leander drifting nearby, his dark hair floating crazily about his head. I’d already made a braid of my long hair so I wouldn’t get choked or blinded by it; I could see why all the people we’d seen in this world wore theirs short.
In silence I followed Leander up to the cavern, which was always lit. There, Senrid already waited, and the four of us each picked a stone and sat down.
“We’re the ones who have magic,” Leander said, Pointing to Senrid and me and himself. “Autumn hasn’t learned it—not the way we know it—but she’s got a talent for finding it.”
She IS magic, I thought. But since she didn’t say anything, neither did I. Autumn had spent a century not learning, but running, in order to break a creepy enchantment that had involved the generation before. Her learning was about to begin.
Leander went on, indicating the four of us, “It’s we who have to figure out what to do, so we can go home.”
“We can’t use our magic,” I said. “I’ve tried. Something stronger makes my spells flub up.”
Leander nodded, his green eyes reflecting bits of light from the water. “Same here. Senrid?” He lifted his head.
“Yes. Same.”
“Yet someone wants us here. It’s not a mistake that we landed here—someone wants us. There’s something that four kids can do, and we’re going to have to do it.”
Someone with a whole lot of power. I could see that thought strike them all, and they reacted in different ways: Leander frowned, Autumn looked pensive, and Senrid very, very angry.
Remembering that last hour in the cave on Marloven Hess’s border, I turned to Autumn. “You said, just before you found Laurel and Lael, that you thought someone was watching. Was that—” I jerked my thumb toward Senrid.
Autumn shook her head as Senrid said, “Wasn’t me. I was at home until the tracer I’d put back over the border three times alerted me that someone had transferred. Then I had to find the nearest patrol.” And to Autumn, “So what did you learn?”
He’d been perching on a rock, but at my words about being watched he got up and walked back and forth along the water-splashed stone, his bare feet making a slapping noise, his hands gripped behind his back. I could see his knuckles turning white.
“That the islands are supposed to sink,” Autumn said. “Twice a year. The old man we first met is always the last to go, and he was worried that we’d be sucked down with it. The squids gave us the breathing bubbles.”
Leander continued, “And the tould-hayin—that’s the blue creatures—get to harvest something that grows on the islands, but needs both water and air in order to grow. The humans who live on the islands all swim down here to the caverns during that time, and carve some more of the city as their numbers grow on the islands. Our island is a small one. The people on it live at the other end.”
“How does that fit with our being at the wrong end of the island when it sank and then getting death threats from the blue guys?” I asked.
“The humans leave a week or so before the islands sink,” Leander explained. “Our being there was misunderstood.”
“How?” Senrid asked.
“That’s what we can’t find out,” Autumn said. “Leander and I think maybe the tould-hayin thought we were going to steal their whatever-it-is they were gathering to harvest. They won’t tell us. They don’t trust us enough yet, and the—the squid-people—their name is an image, not a word—well, they don’t have a name for the harvest either. Anyway it’s all part of how life goes here, and our appearance interrupted it. But I think something else might have been here before, because why else would they be so scared of visitors? But again, I can’t get any images. I mean, ones I can understand.”
“So the islands and the harvest and all the rest is a false trail, is that it?” Senrid asked, still walking back and forth.
Leander shrugged. “You tell me.”
Senrid cast a look over his shoulder, and I realized he was looking for Kitty—like he didn’t want her to hear what he was going to say next. “Back to how we got here.” He stopped and faced me. “You and Leander both performed the multiple transfer spell. Mine was a counter, a disintegration meant to take you, though we were all included—by rights it should have destroyed us all.” He made a kind of sour, sarcastic face; he’d been a lot angrier back in Marloven Hess than I’d known.
Including at himself, I know now.
But at the time I thought: well, him and me both. But I had a right to be.
Senrid swung around and glared at Autumn. “You did something, didn’t you? You’re some kind of mage. Why are You hiding it from me? I can’t do anything to you.”
“But I’m not hiding anything,” Autumn said. “And I’m not a mage. Magic comes to me, it has all my life—to my three sisters and to me. But I’ve never done anything with it. Not in the sense I think you mean.” Her smile was crooked. “My own life until days ago has been a long search over the continent, between time is the only way I can describe it. I don’t know enough about where our people originally came from, or how our magic works. That’s what I will be doing when I go home again. Learning those things.”
“But you know we were being watched,” Senrid countered, his eyes narrowed. “That is, you
were, at that border cave. The air just happened to be filled with magic.”
Autumn spread her hands. “I know it sounds strange, but it is the truth.”
I was about to stick my oar in with a nasty SHE always tells the truth, unlike Some People—except he’d never lied to me. To Kitty and Faline and Leander, yes, but not to his supposed cousin. Again I felt uneasy and unsettled.
“So how did we get here?” Senrid turned to each of us.
Leander sighed, rubbing his eyes. A mistake; a moment later he winced. We were all covered with salt when we dried off. I’d already learned not to rub my eyes. The people here didn’t have cleaning frames, though they did have the Waste Spell. I guess they didn’t mind the salt. But then their skin was different from ours: shiny, sort of, like the leaves of their plants, and their clothes. Maybe the salt didn’t crust on them like it did to us.
Autumn said, “I tried something by instinct when I felt your magic spells clash.” She nodded at me, and then at Senrid. “I don’t know, I guess I’d say I mentally reached for the big knot of fire that the magic was making, and threw it before it could burn us up. But I did not direct it in any way. Someone else did that.”
Senrid shook his head. “How do you know?”
Autumn pressed her lips together, then said, “I—I felt it. Someone took that magic-knot, and shaped its direction after I threw it.”
Senrid’s eyes narrowed. “We have to figure out who stuck their unwanted snout in, and why, before we can get out of here.” He was walking again. “I hate being shoved about on someone else’s game board.”
“So,” I snarled, unable to stay quiet any longer, “do Faline and I.”
Senrid gave me a fast, nasty glance over his shoulder. “Then why did she open her big mouth in the first place?”
“Because some rock-brained fleeb—naming no names—was about to invade another country that was no threat and had done absolutely nothing to warrant it,” I shot back. “She felt she had a moral obligation. Is that your claim?”