* * *
Within the Sphere
Maanta’s eyes squinted as the traveling party’s bubble slowed, the things before him becoming less of a shimmering multicolored mesh now and more of a clear view. Eventually the bubble that surrounded the traveling party, as they swept along, dissipated.
“Is this Orion’s Birth?” Leil’s voice called from behind. “Its walls are so intricately draped with runes. I wonder what they say.”
They were just passing Orion’s inner walls now. Maanta desperately searched the sands before him, knowing his fellow Meridians should be here and afraid of what had happened to them.
“They were camped here!” Maanta hollered ahead to Tao.
“Then we must find them, and with haste!” Tao lifted his bone mask to be heard more clearly. “The beings of Sangfoul surely have taken them, or else their bodies would still remain. Toward which currents is Meridia?”
“This way!” Maanta swung his pale arm slightly to the side and maneuvered Lola in that direction. He could see nothing unusual there. Had they been captured and were now heading to Meridia? It would make sense but how long had it been since they had been taken?
Tao reared upon his riding companion, gliding swiftly upward for a better position, before diving to where he was almost touching the sands below. A harpoon clasped against his toned arm, he swung it forward in the direction of Meridia. “They are there in the far distance hugging the ocean floor as they move! We must maneuver quickly to catch them!”
Before Tao had finished his words the group was off again.
Maanta squinted to see what Tao saw. The man must have phenomenal sight, he realized. I wonder if he had it at birth or has honed it over the years. Carefully as he moved, Maanta searched for what Tao had seen, and then far away on the lower horizon noticed what looked like a serpentine mirage shivering, a minute distant apparition. He had never seen it during the many times he had been here before.
I should have seen that. I should have looked harder. It’s not phenomenal sight that Tao has after-all, Maanta decided. He just pays great attention to detail. He would work on that in the future. It could prove a necessity one day. I wonder if that’s what makes great people, the dedication and effort they put into things, and not the abilities they are born with or inherit.
Maanta’s group divided and hugged cliffs and the ocean’s bottom while pressing toward their enemies. It would not pay to be seen before reaching the beings of Sangfoul. Their enemies would only evade them with their quickness.
“You are needed for something, Maanta!” Tao beckoned him from the front of their group.
Maanta whispered to Lola and the two jutted forward until arriving side by side with Tao. “What can I do?” He began to see the forms of his enemies and entrapped friends becoming clearer in the distance before him.
“They are not many leagues from us now,” Tao’s low voice resonated with both nervousness and excitement. “And if they notice us before we are upon them they’ll flee beyond our abilities to catch them again. We must flank them in their front so that they turn to face us. That is where you come in to play.”
“Me? What do you want me to do? Who should I follow?”
Tao grinned behind his bone mask, and they swept onward. “Follow yourself. You know these waters better than I, or any of my fellows, and we need someone to lead a group to cut the beings of Sangfoul off. You are my choice. You must sweep quicker than the rest of us in a wide arch before them and halt them as they flee our pursuit. Leil will follow you, along with five of our best men. I’ve noticed you and Leil talking. It’s good to see you made quick friends.”
“Are you sure I’m the right one to lead?” As he spoke, waters somersaulted upon Maanta’s face and a gust of passing sands stung his eyes. “Puh! Yuck.” He spat out the sands whipping into his throat. “I could instruct someone so that they could lead. I’m nowhere near the strongest fighter here.”
“Did you decide it was time for a snack?” Tao joked, Maanta still struggling to get the sand from his mouth. “I’ve made my decision. Do not question me. You are right for this task. I’ll speak with the others and they will meet with you here at the head of our group. Besides, when your people see you it will give them courage.” And with a swift swish Tao’s riding fish took him back to where five bulky riders and Leil had clumped together behind them.
Tao may want me to lead them, Maanta thought. But what if they don’t want to follow my lead? Why would they follow a boy when they are experienced, elder warriors?
“I don’t understand Tao’s choice of you to lead.” A large man approached upon his rather chubby fish. “But I trust his decision. Do not worry. I won’t allow our mission to go awry.”
“You’ll be fine.” Leil came next with the others, tapping her hand upon his pale back while riding past. “You know these waters better than us. It was a good call.”
Tao must have warned them of my apprehension, Maanta pondered. “We’ll go this way.” He pointed above a rolling wall of coral on their left. “It stretches clear to Meridia. We can remain hidden behind it as we pass where they are.” His deep opal eyes looked down to a dagger strapped upon his side.
“That won’t get you far.” Tao handed him his massive golden trident, its shaft lined and ribbed with various patterns. “You might find this tool handier.”
Astonished, Maanta wielded it sternly in his webbed fingertips. “I can’t accept such a gift from you. And besides, what will you fight with?”
“I have a spear. And Leil can tell you I am master with it as well. I have many tridents in my home dwelling and this is something you will need if you are to protect yourself. Now leave and listen for my shell call as a signal of attack.” Tao gripped Maanta’s shoulder sternly. “May your God be with you.”
“Follow me.” The ghostly white boy directed his troop while sweeping Lola upwards over the coral wall and swiftly dipping low along its other side. They moved stealthily and swiftly as water blurred before them and the coral looked as if it had become a humming wall of smooth ivory glass.
“Hmmmmmm Hmmmmmm.” It sang before something else entered the tune. “Hmmmmmm Hmkeemmjusmmletm.”
“Slow down,” Maanta whispered to the others behind him. “That must be them speaking on the other side of the wall.” The coral became cragged again as they slowed. Lola took him closer as he cupped his ear to listen.
“We should slaughter them all and use their entrails as fuel for Sangfoul’s great furnace,” a high-pitched voice shrieked.
“Or feed their innards to those wretched riding companions of theirs!” another howled.
“No matter how it’s done I’d love to hear them scream,” the first replied.
And then another voice interrupted, its scratchy tone sending shivers along Maanta’s body.
“Shhh!” Venge’s distinct twisted voice broke through. “I smell something beyond the wall you fools. Clamp your mouths and stay alert. I’ll investigate.”
Nothing more need be heard as Maanta and his companions swept forward to escape discovery. The boy’s heart stung as if on fire. Waters wiggled along his webbed fingers like fish in a fisherman’s net. “There’s a shale cove a league down we can hide in before Tao’s shell sounds.”
As he looked behind he noticed Venge’s forehead rising where he had snooped moments ago. But before Venge could look in their direction the troop was un-seeable, hiding amongst the shale.
Long moments passed as they awaited Tao’s call. A deathly silence floated in the water. Maanta caught himself grinding his nails upon the trident gifted him by Tao, his nerves searching for release.
“Ooooooooooooooo!” The howling of Tao’s shell bellowed from where the traveling group had come.
“Now!” Maanta beckoned as he, Leil and the five muscular warriors shot forth toward the shale cove walls. “Rise above the coral there!” Lola twisted to the side, hugging up and over the peak of the coral wall. Maanta hugged her
back, closely followed by the others, down in the path of Evanshade and the tailfinned beings’ retreat.
Nervous anxiousness simmered along Maanta’s muscles as a horde of serpent-backed men rushed toward him. “Halt!” he shouted. “We have come to defend Meridia!”
Evanshade somersaulted with his trident, lunging it outward while bracing it upon his toned arm, pulsing vigorously toward Maanta. The boy’s trident sparked, stinging his palm while locking with Evanshade’s own weapon. His wrists burned as the man pressed his body down in the currents.
“You?” Evanshade bellowed. “I saved your life outside Cardonea Tower, and this is how I am redeemed? I should have left you to be crushed by the chariot! I’ll make up for my mistake here.”
Maanta couldn’t respond. Too much of his attention needed to be given to the struggle to keep Evanshade from running him through. Slowly he pushed Evanshade up but soon found himself fighting a losing battle again as the man’s tailfin rammed into Lola’s flank, causing her to tip sideways. In his side vision he saw Evanshade’s trident rushing toward his eyes.
Clang! A foreign weapon stopped it short and Maanta soon noticed the rather burly man he had traveled with had come to his rescue. “I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you, young one.” The large man thrust his weight against Evanshade while swinging a harpoon. Evanshade fled and then spun into the burly warrior before being halted once more.
“Maanta!” Tao beckoned from a whale-length off. “Go to your fellow Meridians. Cut loose their bonds and free Sift so that he may assist us in this battle!” Two enemies were slowly overpowering Tao himself.
With but a moment’s search Maanta found the tightly wound kelp netting holding Amaranth and the others captive. As he reached them a woman clasped his arm with her shaky hand. Sobs uncontrollably mumbled from her mouth.
“I’ll have you free shortly,” he spoke to her before diving deep below. What to use to break them free? My dagger is too dull. If I had a Malta shell I could burn the kelp off. A large clamshell lodged between two stones below glimmered light all about. This will have to do. After he dismounted Lola, his cupped hands swiftly pulsed his body downwards, knocking his heels along the massive shell. A cracking sound echoed while splitting it free where the stones pinched its sides. Grasping the shell he swam to Lola’s back and rose with her up to the netting.
“Back away and watch out for the shell’s edge,” he spoke into the net cage as Meridians quickly swam from where Maanta had begun to cut the shell’s sharp side along the kelp. Fraying, the kelp snapped strand by strand. Amaranth met Maanta from the inside, tugging on the kelp to break the strands quickly.
“Thank Gelu you arrived with help,” Amaranth spoke. “Who knows what would have awaited us in Meridia. It is sad that we must fear our own home like this.”
“I hope some day we can live there in peace again.” The boy’s sawing tore free another piece of kelp. “Is this enough for your escape?”
“But can we ever feel safe there or any other place again?” Amaranth tugged on the hole in the netting to extend it to its fullest. “I think this will do.” Appendage by appendage, he squeezed through the netting. “Follow me!” he called to the others before turning to Maanta. “Thank you. Now free Sift. He’s strapped to the back of us.”
Maanta didn’t know what to expect upon finding Sift bound to the back of the netting. Truthfully, he was shocked the strong man had been captured at all. Sift struck the boy as being someone who’d rather give his last breath fighting than admit defeat. Thoughts of Sift defending him in Meridia against Venge played out in his mind.
As Maanta came to the netting’s back he took in the severity of what had been done to Sift following his capture.
Crimson blood curdled along the man’s lips where a metallic contraption ground upon his face, contorting his features and bringing on irritation and pus. Black straps of whale carcass bound Sift’s arms and legs together on the netting behind him. His skin was torn and bloody from where he had been whipped. His eyes whirled wildly like those of a strangled fish.
It didn’t escape Maanta’s thoughts while he sawed through the tough whale carcass that this old flesh could be from the whale he himself had slain. What a horrible thing, he thought. “What have they done to you?” he asked as a burning sensation sizzled across his muscles, all his force used while ripping the last of the fish flesh apart.
Sift’s body writhed in the currents as he struggled to regain control of his limbs. His dark hands clasped upon the contraption encompassing his skull and locking his jaws. Vigorously beating its joints with his fists, Sift attempted his own release before realizing it would accomplish nothing. He only brought about further injury.
Maanta pulled out his trident and began locking its longest tip within one of the mask’s joints. “Maybe we can stress the metal into breaking,” he said as he looked to Sift’s eyes for permission to make the attempt.
Sift grasped the trident’s tip and pushed it away while grunting in agitation. There was something he wanted to communicate. Maanta held out his dagger and Sift eagerly snatched it from the boy’s webbed fingertips. Quickly, he dug its tip within the mask’s joints, but the metal only screeched eerily. He lodged it between the small opening at the mask’s mouth and tried prying the contraption open before letting out a scream of agony, accidentally catching his tongue on the blade.
“We’ll have to find the mask’s key,” Maanta spoke disappointedly. “But where would it be?”
The answer became obvious as Sift caught a glimpse of Evanshade in the edge of his eyesight. A simmering hatred lurked in Sift’s eyes as his fists shook, the dagger clutched in his hand. And as Sift’s legs pumped vigorously, taking him toward Evanshade, a howl echoed through Sift’s lips. The emotions he wished to express spewed forth in eerie reverberation.
“I’ll help you!” Maanta called after Sift who was already pivoting past warriors and skirmishes in his path. Maanta quickly reached Sift, thanks to Lola’s quick movements, but the face encaged man shot him a look as if to say stay back because this was between him and Evanshade, alone. “At least take Lola back from me.” Maanta stroked the riding companion’s scales. “You’ll need her agility to keep up with Evanshade.”
A tailfinned man locked in battle near by shot them a glance. “Like this beast of a creature would stand a chance against our leader!”
Sift thrust his dagger in the back of the man’s skull causing him to convulse and sink limply in the waters. Maanta swam from Lola’s back and Sift took his place before shooting toward Evanshade to take his revenge.
For a long moment Maanta shuddered, watching the dagger-struck man’s dying eyes. Is there any goodness, justness or correctness in any fighting and in what we do here? Is either of our sides right? Sure, these creatures murdered our families and drove us from our homes, but look at this man Sift has taken the life of. What son or daughter is fatherless now because of this death?
Does that not make any killing of another being an unforgivable sin? And if we don’t fight back they will murder and enslave us all. Gelu can love us for nothing we do here. There is much shame in our ways.
Maanta could have followed Sift then, to help him as he said he would, but he didn’t. Instead the slim boy dove, swimming as quickly as his leg fins and webbed fingertips would take him from the entangled chaos. He knew he wanted to rescue his fellow Meridians but knew no way of doing it without fighting and killing.
He was a boy, he realized while huddled in a small stone outcropping close by, cool currents whipping across his flesh. Tao had tried to show him he could be a man now but he wasn’t. He knew his friends could win without him. And this is what he counted on.
Sobbing, was that sobbing he heard close by? Or was he sobbing and he hadn’t known it? No, it was something other than himself. A youthful girl’s face with curly red hair falling about it peered around the corner. Her deep emerald eyes peered into his, and Maanta held out his arms to embrace her
closely. “Anna…” he breathed softly, happy to have her near. “Thank Gelu you’re ok.” Archa bobbed around the corner next, her head nudging his elbow with a smile in her eyes. “I missed you too, girl.” He stroked her smooth body gently.
Anna told him how they had been ambushed and about how she had hidden in the inner ring of Orion’s Birth, because he had said others feared the air there. She told him of Lisaly’s death also. “When they took the others I was alone, but eventually I saw you riding Lola above and I had faith things would work out somehow.”
“You saw us as we swam past? I wish I would have known so that I could have gone to you.” They loosened their embrace and Maanta looked into her soft eyes once more. “I missed you while I was away. I missed everyone I guess. I missed you deep in my heart though.”
Anna held close to Maanta’s warm body. “I missed you too.”
The battle raged a league before them. The two held close, making silent prayers to Gelu that their friends would prevail. Maanta made his own silent prayer that there would be few deaths on both sides.
At that moment in the battle’s heart, Sift quickly approached where Evanshade was locked in battle with the large man who had rescued Maanta.
Evanshade was almost impaled by the larger man’s harpoon as Sift drove his caged head into Evanshade’s spine. A spasm crept up his body as a crack resounded within him. Evanshade spun to meet the confrontation and was shocked when Sift managed to block his trident with a mere dagger. “Venge!” He hollered to the boy who was busy mutilating an escaped Meridian. “Come to me. Distract this rotund beast behind me!”
“My name,” the large man’s sturdy harpoon clashed with Venge’s own. “is Hone! And I would have been more merciful than Sift will be with you. He doesn’t need my assistance to outwit and overpower the likes of you.”
“We’ll see if this weak man holds his own.” Evanshade smirked while focusing all of his efforts on slaying Sift. “Can you see through that mask you freak?” He taunted his foe while thrusting his trident against Sift’s dagger. “It sure would be kind of someone to take that off of you. It’s too bad I buried the lock’s key below the sands of Orion’s Birth. I could always run you through to put you out of your misery though.”
The two men confronted each other in intense conflict as small skirmishes flared about them. Each man’s muscles tightened and inflamed while twisting, clashing his weapon against the other man’s. With each clash of their weapons both men tired, becoming slow and less precise as time passed about them, but never was there contact made with the other man’s flesh. Their faces heated with fury and exhaustion.
Opal light trickled down from the ocean’s surface and set a frost of light on their bodies as they fought.
And yet, as time went on, Evanshade noted the perishing bodies of his fellow men floating in the waters about them. Tao’s men were slowly thinning his men’s numbers. Behind him Venge was definitively losing the battle with Hone. If Evanshade survived the battle here and Venge perished, surely Venge’s father, Evanshade’s superior, would decapitate Evanshade himself.
“Retreat to Meridia!” Evanshade bellowed while thrusting his trident against Sift’s dagger, setting his foe off balance. Instantly the surviving men of Sangfoul pumped their tailfins in the currents, sweeping rapidly out of sight in Meridia’s direction. Instead of retreating, Evanshade swam quickly toward the center of where the conflict had been before clasping one of the Meridians’ wrists in his tight fist.
“Help!” Amaranth yelled as Tao, Sift, Hone and the others rushed to his rescue.
“You have not won this conflict!” Evanshade called out as they approached him. “You have only prolonged the fates of these Meridians and yourselves. I will send for reinforcements and we will find and capture you all! And Sift, I will personally forge a mask for you to wear the next time we meet.”
Sift threw his dagger toward Evanshade but missed his tailfin by a shell’s width. Tao and the others darted for Evanshade but with one swift thrust of his tailfin the man was off in the waters, following his men, and dragging Amaranth’s struggling body behind him. There was no catching him as he disappeared from sight mere seconds later.
We have rescued most of the surviving Meridians, but can we truly consider this victory? Maanta wondered while looking on from his hiding place. With so much death about them from the losses of both sides surely there could be no victory here for anyone. “It’s over. They’ve left.” He gently stroked Anna’s crimson curls while bracing her in his arms. She hadn’t wanted to watch and so he had held her close instead. “Evanshade seems to have captured Amaranth though.”
“Someday they’ll pay for what they’ve done to us,” Anna cursed through a sob. “They will, if I have to make them pay by myself.” She swam off to join the others.
Vengeance can’t be the answer, Maanta thought. But what is? “What do we do to save both ourselves and our souls?” He spoke to Archa while floating up and upon her back. It was good to feel her familiar form beneath him once more instead of Lola’s awkward slim body. “I wish you could speak.” He lovingly kissed her forehead. “Fish don’t war and battle in masses like this. Surely you know the answer to my question if you could only say. “Ooooahooo!” he sang to Archa and the two joined Anna and the others in mending wounds and burying the dead in the sands below.
Neither Tao nor any of the others spoke of how Maanta had left them during the battle. He was, however, showered with praise for setting his fellow Meridians free. He assumed they had thought he had stopped fighting out of fear and they had understood because of his youth. Did any of them feel as he did, that they should find a way to end the fighting on both sides? Death sickened him.
Burying the dead was a solemn process. He accidentally touched one of the dead’s hands while covering its body with sand and heavy stones. Goose bumps jumped up his arms and down his legs as repulsion frothed in his stomach. He couldn’t look in their faces. He didn’t want to recognize them and have the reality of the monstrosity that had occurred connect more in his thoughts.
Once the burial process had been completed, at least thirty men, women and children had been sealed in their watery tombs and every living person who had placed them there was worn and dark-eyed from exhaustion.
As darkness swept through the waters like an oily film, this tired band of Meridians and their saviors would return once more to Orion’s Birth, encamping before a long journey to Sift and Tao’s home city the next morning. Small groups broke oyster shells over broken malta stones outside Orion’s Birth’s walls and spoke of how they would reap their revenge on the beings of Sangfoul, the horrid things they would do to Evanshade, if they ever got their hands on him.
Amaranth and Sift had spoken once of how the skin colors of their peoples might cause them to be leery of each other. The Meridians had soft light blue bodies, contrasting greatly with Sift’s people’s deep black skin. But their common enemy had brought both groups together without a second thought of the other group’s race.
Maanta huddled with Archa in the darkness against Orion’s Birth’s outer wall, listening in hidden silence to the words one close-by group of his fellow Meridians spoke.
One tattered and grungy Meridian with a bald head and flowing slim beard cooked a fish above the simmering malta heat. “For what they’ve done to us, we should behead each and every one of those devils.”
“If only we could catch them and stand a chance against their army,” a slim woman in pastel shell garb spoke. “But it seems as if we are the ones hunted instead of them.”
The first man replied to her. “I’ve heard that new man, Tao, saying that once we reach his city they will train us to defend ourselves and to fight the beings of Sangfoul. They will join us and we will have our day and our revenge.”
This is ridiculous, Maanta thought while petting Archa’s back. No matter what training we receive, we will never be able to defeat the people of Sangfoul. And we have to free Amaranth and the ot
hers, but what is all this talk of revenge? If we attack their lands, then surely we will end up killing their innocents and be sinful ‘devils’ ourselves. How do we free our people without killing and without going over the edge and being like them?
“Their entire race deserves to die for what they’ve done to us,” a youth slightly younger than Maanta said to the others. A woman close by shushed him and told him that surely there were tailfinned beings that were good-hearted and that he should watch his tongue, but Maanta was repulsed and fled from his hiding spot to a place where he was certain he’d be alone with his thoughts, Orion’s Birth’s inner circle.
The runes in the inner circle glowed a sweet rose hue as he arrived and Maanta traced them with the tips of his webbed fingers as he thought. They rippled with vibrant colors. Colors, sounds and movements of inanimate objects fascinated him. Taking in the sights and sounds around him reminded him much of the days when he was alone in his wanderings of the outer-waters. I felt like such an outcast then, he thought. And yet here I am with friends and yearning for peaceful aquatic wanderings.
A soft sound whispered in his ears next, like seaweed brushing against a reef in the currents. He swung around swiftly in the waters, not so much out of fear for what was making the noise but more out of curiosity. Had something followed him within Orion’s Birth’s inner circle?
In the watery darkness of night, sight was difficult, but the red glowing runes speckled his surroundings just enough to allow him to make out the beautiful girl before him. Her deep emerald eyes playing with the red light caught his heart and breath in a shiver. Every time I see her, she looks more beautiful than she has ever looked before, he thought. Why is that? Her flowing curves and soft blue skin entranced him. And her crimson curly locks, why was she so attractive?
Anna twisted her fingers in her hair as it flowed in the currents and smiled at him. “I hope you don’t mind my intruding.” She came into the light a little more. “I’ve been looking for you ever since we returned from the battle.”
“How could I mind?” Maanta smiled a true smile back at her. “You can intrude on me anytime you like.”
“Watch what you wish for.” She gave him a flirtatious look while swimming gently about. “I might like it too much and intrude all the time.”
“There could be no such thing as too much with you.” Maanta tried to flirt back, finding he was a little nervous while doing so.
Anna swam at him, giving him a swift push and pivoting quickly away.
“Oh really?” Maanta sped after her, chasing her in circles for moments, then wrapping his slim, pale arms about her body, bringing her down close to the sand below them. They were so close now. Her warm body snuggled close to his as she looked up into his eyes. Maanta realized that in this moment he didn’t care what was going on in the world about him. He had Anna in his arms.
“Maanta,” Anna spoke with what seemed to be some sort of purpose to him now. Her voice was soft. “I want you to always remember the way my eyes look tonight. Feel how I feel for you.” Maanta was lost in her eyes. “I have a love in me that’s growing for you.”
A rush of warmth flooded Maanta’s soul. “I feel the same thing in me for you.” He gently touched her soft cheek, holding her loving look. “I’ll never leave you. I’ll always be here for you whenever you need me. I promise.”
“Don’t say things you can’t know will be true.” Her hand traced upon his. “But thank you. I would love that. If there’s one good thing that all these horrible events around us have brought me, it’s you. And there’s nothing I would give you up for.”
He traced his fingers through her hair and along her head as she moved closer still. Their lips were so close now. Though he had never kissed before, he knew he wanted to with her.
Her warm, soft lips pressed against his, her body forming to his own and warming his. They were mentally one, he realized, in that moment. He would carry this with him forever. His hands held her close along the bare of her back.
Something was happening now though.
What was moving beneath him now, attempting to break up this moment? Archa? he thought. Stop it! This is a personal moment. Do I really have to stop being close with Anna to send you away?
The thing moved more and more beneath him, pushing upward on his legs and then swarming about his body and above. His legs flipped above his head as he realized what “it” was. A geyser of air thrust Maanta’s body upward causing his fingers to claw at Anna’s back, and their lips ripped apart. “Nooo!” he screamed, tumbling up in the air burst with no control over his movements. His neck snapped back and thrashed from side to side as he whirled toward the ocean’s surface above.
Far below he could hear Anna screaming because of the pain he had caused her with his nails, and then bellowing out his name, hoping he would find his way back.
“Maanta!” Anna screamed. It sounded like a hollow echo now, leagues away. “M..a..a..n..t..a..”
Sheets of the forbidden fluid, air, whirled about him making it impossible to see anything as the burst spat him upward. His eyes burned, water evaporating off them into steam as he tried to open them. He sucked on his fingers, attempting to breathe in the water still barely clinging to their forms, but the air proved too much, sweeping past his lips and through his nose in a choking swarm.
Squirming, the gills within his throat sucked and writhed at the foreign substance, causing him to suck more for water in futile agony. He choked, trying to scream to Anna, but no noise passed his lips.
The air geyser’s walls swirled about him as he cartwheeled in their mist, writhing up and up before rocketing Maanta’s pale form high above the ocean within an open mass of the poisonous substance, the night sky.
Hovering there for a moment, he wondered if possibly he would be able to swim in this substance now. I have to make it back to Anna, he thought. I promised I would never leave her. There must be a way back.
His stomach lurched as he fell. There is no falling underwater. He had never fallen before and grappled for sanity in the drop, still gagging on the air.
In mere seconds his body cracked against the ocean’s top film. Blackness filled his sight as unconsciousness swept in. In the darkness, with pure blue night sky within eye’s reach above him for the first time in his life, Maanta’s body limply bobbed on the edge of ocean and air. His lips sucked at the water beneath him impulsively, sustaining life in his slim form at least for a short time.
On a nearby shore a wrinkled old man twirled his long gray beard, staring at the stars and humming softly to himself.