Fathom (17 page)

“So nothing that bites?”

“Nothing that bites harder than you, I promise.”

She laughed at that, and zipped backwards with a slippery splash, all fish-quick and flexible. Out in water that was surely no deeper than her waist she lounged on her back, the tips of her hands and feet peeking past the surface.

He walked away from her, staying close in the shallows but moving to the far side of the pit.

But the woman wanted to play, so she called out, “Is there anything with
stingers
in here that would stab me?”

The man answered over his shoulder, without turning his head. “None so sharp as yours, my darling.”

“Is there anything
vicious
in here?”

“Nothing half so terrible as
you,
my love.”

She cackled with glee, splashed and drifted.

He worked through the thick, wet mold and grasses down by the pool’s edge to the far side—where a remnant of the cave wall was strung with vines as thick as arms. He pushed his hands between the long, living curtains and withdrew them again, empty. Down beside his feet he found a stick, or a dried-out root. He pried it loose and wiped away some of the mud that covered it.

“What are you doing?” The woman called from the water.

“Looking for your treasure.” With long, solid stabs, he rammed the stick through the vines. The baton slipped easily among them, meeting resistance shortly behind the vegetation where the rock stretched up out of the ground.

“Is it back there someplace?”

He rammed the instrument forward again.

“Is it back—?”

“Yes, darling. It’s back here someplace. But it’s been a long time since I left it, and things have grown quite a lot. Give me a moment and I’ll find it.” And soon, he did.

The stick passed through the growing drapes, and nothing stopped it. The man let go and let the thing drop; it landed with a wet clatter somewhere beyond where anyone could see it. He wormed his arm amid the vines and wriggled it back and forth. Plants tore and leaves tumbled; the living curtain gave way and a hole opened.

In the water, the woman stopped splashing. “Is that a
cave
? You’re not going to drag me into a cave, are you?” She rotated herself in the water and began a slow swim in the direction of her partner. “I’m not following you into any damn cave.”

“No,” he replied as he pushed his arms, head, and part of his torso into the darkness on the other side. “It isn’t a cave. It’s only a ledge.”

A scraping, splintering grind echoed around behind the hanging vines. The man emerged slowly, his shoulders and hands inching backwards at last as he drew the chest from its hiding place and into the open night.

Behind him, the woman quickly appeared from the water—standing close and curious. “Let me see.”

“One moment.” He levered his fingers beneath the hinges and gave them a pull. He was rewarded with the squeak of stretching leather and the uneven ripping of old metal.

“How long has this been here?”

He forced his full hand between the lock and the soggy front panel. It cracked and split with a damp pop. “Perhaps a century or so. Since . . . I can’t recall the year. It would have been 18 . . . 1815?
1820? It was before I went into the water, but not terribly long before.”

The box was more of a trunk, covered in mold and difficult to hold or wrangle. The man adjusted it on the ground, backing it up against a rock and using that spot of solidness to secure it while he pried and twisted at the fastenings.

After another round of jabbing and rending, the lock finally snapped and the clasp fell away.

“Here we go,” the man said. The lid was falling apart in his hands as he lifted it away. It crumbled into sodden pulp once its hinges were gone, and the heavy loot within settled and scattered.

“Wow.”

“Yes.” He dug his fingers into the coins and baubles. He combed through them and separated the treasure from the green-black cake of mildew that coated it. Beneath the glaze of mire, the trunk’s contents sparkled with vivid brown light.

The creature at the edge of the pit blinked slowly.

Out in the water, over the sandy breech, the ocean was singing a peculiar song. The creature felt a tightening in its coiled, cobbled insides. The sound rushed; it was air over waves, and a ferocious sweep under the surface.

Water witch,
the creature thought. It knew that the witch had a name, but it would only use that name if forced. She might not notice him. She might have only come for her underlings, whose eyes were round and crinkled with joy at their fresh discovery. But the odds were against it.

The creature almost wished it hadn’t left the trinket in the music box. It had seemed logical at the time. The ruse was a means of making sure, of knowing with absolute confidence that the witch was still there, watching and lingering, and that she was as close as it feared she might be.

Besides, the creature wanted to see her interacting with her
pets. It needed to see how she worked with them, and how she treated them. How resilient were they, really? How helpful were they, really?

It owed its own static and frightened recruit some knowledge of what she’d be up against.

And the time was at hand. The monstrous water witch arrived at the island’s edge and was furious to see no passage to the cove; but then she sank herself deep and felt around for an outlet that ran beneath the shore. She found it shortly.

The creature sensed her furious push from the ocean, against a current that struggled through sand and stone. She did not need much water to work, only
some
—only enough to dissolve and draw herself along like a salmon swimming upstream.

In the center of the pool she emerged with a geyser and a shout.

Her children jumped and turned their backs to the moldering chest, slapping their hands down and drawing quick breaths. They were caught off guard, and they were so frightened that they froze. Transformed or not, changed or not, beloved of the water witch or not—they were still seized with the very mortal fear of being eaten.

“Mother?” the man gasped. The woman straightened herself beside him.

In one of the witch’s enormous hands, black and rough like sharkskin, she held out the mermaid trinket from the
Gasparilla
’s music box.
What is this, and why?
she demanded.

The man said. “I don’t understand.”

Did you cast this? Did you throw it down into the water?
Her voice was too low to be shrill, but too severe to be merely a shout.
One of you did, I know.

“I did it,” the woman spoke up fast. “I found it on the boat—”

Out there, the decorated thing that’s about to break itself in the tide?

“Yes,” she said.

You found it there?

“She did,” the man interjected. “It was in a box, down below. A music box; I told you about it when you asked about the song. Please, before you get any angrier with us, won’t you explain? It is only a toy. She meant no harm with it. What is it, and why have you chased us into this confrontation?”

The water witch settled in the water, melting herself until she was shaped like a woman only from the belly up. The rest remained in the pool; she hid her lower half in the dark water, as if to cover it with a tremendous skirt. She crushed the mermaid in her palm, concealing and destroying it.
You cannot lie to me
, she said more calmly.
I made you what you are, and I can see inside you, the way you work and the way you plot.

“Then you know that we hide nothing. Please, Mother,” he begged. “Explain to us our transgression.”

Her yellow pupilless eyes smoldered. You
hide nothing,
she agreed with him. She turned her attention to the woman.
You found it in a music box. Do you recall the tune that it played?

“I don’t,” she said.

And you played with this, before you cast it over the side?

“I did.”

But you do not know why I’ve come?

“I don’t.”

While the water witch fumed and tried to read the hearts of her offspring, the creature on the hill nodded to itself, pleased at the mermaid’s successful summoning, even if the very nearness of the witch made its twig-filled face twist with disgust.

The song was not so hard to reproduce. The witch was not so difficult to beckon or banish after all. One needed only to know the correct arrangement of the right old tunes.

She glowered down at the stiff-limbed, stubborn woman, and
she opened her hand. The mermaid was unrecognizable, so badly had she bent it.
This was a signal,
she said with care.
It was an urgent request, charmed and loud. It was a cry for assistance and aid.

Having found the track of her subtle lie, the witch followed it.
I was afraid for you both. I could smell your hands and I thought that something tragic had occurred. It was as if you screamed my name and it was a scream of terror, and I wished to answer but I feared for the circumstances. I did not mean to treat you so crossly, children of mine. But you worried me with your
—She tossed the metal lump to the woman, who caught it and held it tightly.—
little toy. I can only wonder where it came from. I would ask that you be more careful with the things you throw away.

She gave the woman another long look that was neither kind nor unkind. It was not a threat, but it carried with it elements of a warning.

And be careful also of the wishes you make, and cast. Baubles such as those may carry them far, and betray them as likely as grant them.

With that, she sank with a leisurely motion until the top of her head disappeared beneath the glassy surface and was gone, leaving only a circular ripple to mark her passage.

The creature also let itself sink, back down into the soil and through the tangled-tight roots of the slope. It emerged down at the water’s edge, where it hid in the shadows of the overhanging vines—though it was careful not to dip even one corner of its lumpy feet into the pool.

It hung back and waited while the man and woman caught their breath.

The night was still again, and the pool was as perfect as a mirror, except by the very outside edge . . . where a long black hand reached out slowly, crawling spiderlike from the lip of the water toward the blocky brown foot of the creature.

It spied the hand too late. Before it realized the witch was still
there, her hand had seized its foot, and the creature roared—sending the small, frightened people scattering back behind the trunk and into the vine curtain, where they sought shelter.

Arahab snatched the foot and dragged the creature into the wet; it struggled and swore, and it clutched at the earth. It reached with its center, grasping hard for the roots in the sinkhole bank and trying to anchor and draw itself forward and away, doing its best to keep from being picked up.

But the water witch wormed her fingertips through the creature’s loose, leafy skin and she held it firm.

As it grew wet, it began to disassemble; and as it fought, it came apart all the faster. It changed tactics. It lunged against her, thinking it would be simpler to be torn apart and regroup later, but she halted the plan before it got under way.

She rose up again out of the water, huge and enraged. She held the creature by its neck and squeezed it with both hands.

You? You were the one who made the call and bade me come?

“No,” it insisted.

Don’t lie to me, Thing. Neither of those two—
She gestured at the place where they hid.
Neither of them knows enough to make such a device. They would not know whom to ask, or what questions to bring. They lack the power to summon my sort
.

When she said
my sort,
the words were laced with razors to cut the insult deeper. She shook the creature, tormenting it even as she held it together. She had swollen herself until she was large enough to lift the creature aloft. The pool in which she stood was nearly empty, as she had used almost the entire contents to build her imposing, powerful shape. Her bottom half was a tentacled, finned anomaly that was forced to spread in order to support her.

“
Our
sort,” the creature threw the sentiment back at her. Its voice did not choke despite her grip, because the sound did not emanate from within its throat.

Furious, she hoisted the creature high and slammed it down into the mud where the emptied pool had left the ground wet. Its body split and would have shattered with the impact, except that she held it together in its beaten-sack shape with the force of her will.

You and I share no sort, no kind, and no kinship. We are in no way the same, and you have no power here.
To emphasize her point, she beat the creature again, over and over until it was pulped and crushed like the mermaid that had drawn her out in the first place.

She hit the thing in time with her words, because she knew they would hurt it more than the blows alone.

Exile. Fiend. Traitor.
She ground the creature down with her palm, burying it in the mud and leaving it all but immobile, so damaged was its form.
Outcast.

It lay there and jerked, broken to the point that it could not move the crude body it wore.

I ask you again, did you create that call?

“No,” it said.

She beat it again, although it was scarcely more than pulp.

Why did you make it?
she demanded.

“I did not make it. I did not call you. I would not dare it.”

She threw her wet fist down again, determined to erase him, to rub him into nothingness.
You would not dare it? But you would dare to watch, and dare to follow. You traced them here, because you knew what they carried.

“Yes,” it confessed.

Its answer caught her by surprise.
You’ll admit that much?

“Yes.”

She stood up straight and stared down into the crusty puddle where its body had been before.
But you were not summoned?

“No. I only heard the song, and wanted to know who had brought it and why. My crime is only curiosity,” it told her. “I heard it and I
followed it. But you know as well as anyone of
your
kind . . .” It was being careful now. It had pushed the ruse too far, almost, and it needed to retreat. “I do not have the power to fashion such an enchantment. Who am I to summon you? If I were to make my very best effort, I could not summon the queen of the waters. If I were to work with the finest tools, and act upon the finest advice, the greatest result I could manage would not be enough to tug upon your smallest pet.”