Kingdoms of Light

FIFTEEN

Feeling a little light-headed, Oskar rushed to join her. The others followed at a more decorous pace: Cezer and Mamakitty because to them entry into even shallow water was a disagreeable business to be embarked upon only after sober consideration, Taj because the experience was wholly new to him, and Samm simply because when given the choice, he tended to do things more deliberately than his companions.

Not Oskar. Knees lifting high with each stride, legs pumping energetically, he made a joyous, splashing dash to catch up with Cocoa. If not precisely in his element, he was for once in their long journey more comfortable in new surroundings than any of his friends. She shut her eyes and turned away from him as his flailing legs threw water in all directions.

"Hey-ssst! I'd like to keep as much of me as dry as possible for as long as possible, if you don't mind." Raising her left arm, she began licking away the droplets that clung there.

"Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away." Slightly abashed, he bent at the waist and with cupped hands began to throw water in the opposite direction for the sheer joy of it. The blue-toned liquid felt a little heavier, a little denser, than the ocean water Master Evyndd kept stored in a large Jeroboam. "I keep forgetting that certain attitudes carry over, and that your kind finds swimming and soaking unpleasant."

"It's not so much that it's unpleasant." She kept a wary eye on his active, splashing hands. "It's just that it's cosmetically unflattering. Don't you remember spending hours and hours trying to dry and groom yourself after a compulsory bath?" When she drew only a blank look she sighed and turned toward the eastern horizon. "No, come to think of it, I guess you don't."

"What's to dry and groom?" He promptly sat down. Composed almost entirely of particles of what appeared to be very fine quartz, the bottom was eerily translucent. He let the warm water swirl around his legs and partially submerged lower body. At that point his previously uncooperative bladder relaxed. Even though the shore was lined with trees aplenty, there was no way he was going back into the Kingdom of Green. "You lie out in the sun until you're dry. As for grooming, the wind takes care of that."

"You ought to know that that's not how cats do it. We're a little more proper where our appearance is concerned." Shading her eyes with one hand, she pointed across the water as Mamakitty trudged to a prudent halt nearby. "I don't see any landmarks. No distant shore, no bump of an island, no trees: nothing."

"Perhaps the whole Kingdom of Blue is like this," the older woman speculated. "Maybe we won't need a boat after all."

Taj tiptoed up behind them. "Surely it can't be all ocean. And if it is, there must be places that are much deeper than here." He looked down at his booted feet, clearly visible through the warm, pellucid salt water. "It defies everything I've ever heard about such bodies of water. Anything this shallow should quickly evaporate away."

Mamakitty eyed him thoughtfully. "How comes a canary to know so much about oceans?"

He looked away. "I didn't spend all that time in the Master's study singing. With my cage hanging over his desk, I couldn't help but look down at some of the books he read."

"You're thinking of the oceans of our world; the ones Master Evyndd spoke of often." As Samm joined them, the others moved to stand discreetly in his cooling shadow. "Couldn't it be that the water here, where everything is so saturated with blue, blue, blue, acts differently? Obviously it doesn't evaporate as fast, or under the same rules. Or perhaps there are forces at work we don't understand."

"Coming from a snake, that qualifies as almost an insight." Crouching but making sure his backside stayed dry, Cezer scooped up a palmful of liquid and brought it to his lips, They promptly curled back on contact. "Tastes like thick salt water, looks like thick salt water, but that doesn't mean it has to behave like thick salt water."

"There goes lunch!" Turning and leaping into the air, Cocoa came down with all four hands and feet on a tranquil patch of sparkling clarity. The rivulets that subsequently ran down her cheeks and chin were indicative of a good effort but lack of success. "Missed, ssst!"

"What was it?" A curious Mamakitty waded over.

"Some funny-looking kind of flatfish. The only kind that would be comfortable in these long shallows. Not a flounder, or a small halibut. Something different."

Cezer licked his lips, and would have licked his whiskers had they grown long enough. "A nice change from trail food. This traverse might not be so uninteresting after all." Bending low, he began scanning the nearby shallows and the crystalline sands beneath.

"Provided the water doesn't get up over our necks," Taj reminded him as he joined in the hunt. Canaries liked fish, too, but only in the form of minuscule flakes. With the addition of teeth, the songster had been experiencing and enjoying a whole new universe of taste sensations ever since the first day of their transformation. This was just as well, there being a decided dearth of fruits and vegetables, not to mention seed, in evidence on the route that lay ahead of them.

With three cat-folk on the prowl, locating and catching the fishlike denizens of the shallows was a problem soon solved. Consumption, however, was another matter entirely. In their human guises the travelers had grown used to cooked food. Even if they had been able to locate any drifting wood, it would first have to be dried. Assuming they managed to do that, they then faced the dilemma of how to construct a fire in the midst of open ocean.

Returning cautiously to the beach, they managed to snatch some dead chips and branches from beneath the disapproving gazes of the denizens of the Kingdom of Green. The resultant humble blaze the travelers then managed to kindle on the sand caused the nearest trees to bend away in horror.

"This is all very well and good for now," Taj pointed out, "but what are we going to do when we start across the sea?"

Oskar shrugged indifferently. "I don't mind raw fish. How about you, Cez'?"

The swordsman was amenable. "Same here. We'll manage without human cooking until we walk out on the far side." Mamakitty and Cocoa nodded agreement, while Samm simply ignored the question. Everyone knew that not only did the giant not require his meals to be cooked, it was not even necessary for his food to be cut up.

"I think I saw some shell-wearing bottom dwellers moving about, too." Cocoa spat out a cluster of limp, pale white lumps of cartilaginous material from which her teeth had efficiently stripped the flesh. Conveniently, the fish-things had no bones. "Scallops would make a nice addition to our diet, or clams."

"We'll be fine." His belly stuffed with food the more agile cat-folk had caught for him, the giant leaned back against his folded hands and stared out to sea. "So long as it doesn't deepen I don't see any reason why we can't just walk across." He gestured casually. "How big and dangerous can a creature get that only has a foot of water in which to grow?"

"Beware overconfidence," Mamakitty warned him. "Deadly poisons often come in small packages."

He turned to look at where she was seated near the cooking fire. "I don't plan on doing anything stupid, but after all we've been through to get to this point, I don't think I'm going to be afraid of anything I can step on."

"Or jump over," added Cezer.

"We can catch fresh food along the way," a confident Cocoa insisted. "All we have to do is carry enough drinking water, and we can use the big leaves of some of these trees for shade umbrellas." She sat back on her heels, looking very pert and alert indeed, not unlike the cat that ate the cana—in deference to their songster, she banished the aphorism from her mind. "And by the time we reach the shores of the Kingdom of Purple, we will all have exceedingly clean feet and ankles."

Certainly nothing happened the following day to diminish her optimism. Mile after mile, the water varied in depth from place to place by no more than a few inches. The cat-folk advanced with deliberate, easy strides; Taj with unconsciously mincing precision; and Oskar with unfettered exuberance. As for Samm, the giant trudged effortlessly forward, shouldering the bulk of their supplies while suffering little more than the moistening of his feet and ankles.

Everyone else had slung their boots and socks over their packs and rolled up their pants legs to keep them as dry as possible. As suggested by Cocoa, scavenged shade leaves kept them cool as the cantankerous Kingdom of Green receded farther and farther behind them. Around them now, all was flat, teal glare—blue sky, blue water, blue-tinged sand, azure-shelled bottom dwellers, and the occasional wandering, sapphire-tinted invertebrate.

A week out from land marching steadily along beneath an unforgiving sun saw their water supplies significantly reduced, but not yet dangerously so. Everyone was still in good spirits, no one had stepped on anything deadly, and supplemental food remained plentiful and easy to catch. When he lay down for the night, the cat-folk took turns sleeping on Samm's back, that being the only dry land within view. The giant could accommodate two of them at a time. This did not always guarantee either sleeper a dry or restful nap, however, since from time to time something in his pythonic dreams would bestir the serpent-man, causing him to turn over in his slumber and dump his dozing companions unceremoniously into the drink.

It was not dog heaven, Oskar reflected. Dogs were not fish, and like his feline friends he preferred dry land to damp. But there was no question that he was more at ease in the wet blue surroundings than all of his companions save Samm. About time, too, he mused with gentle indignation. Come the Kingdom of Purple, their situation might be reversed. With the Kingdom of Blue imparting only dank distance as an obstacle, he found himself wondering what the Kingdom of Purple might be like, and how they would go about locating and securing a bundle of white light to take back with them to the Gowdlands. Voicing the thought aloud, he was not surprised to receive a response. The source, however, when he finally identified it, was something more than a surprise: it was an unadulterated shock.

It was the ocean, shallow and warm and blue of hue, that had answered him, and not one of his companions.

Shooting from his resting place to a standing position, he stared wide-eyed at the water rippling quietly around him. Surely he had imagined it. Surely the heat had affected his concentration. One way, he knew, to find out.

Gazing down at the undulating water, he reiterated the thought. Sure enough, for a second time, a sympathetic response was unhesitatingly forthcoming. "Nothing know we about white light, sand treader, and no help can we give thee."

It was truly the ocean that was replying, Oskar observed. One might dispute the exact direction of the sound, but not the fact that it arose from somewhere beneath the surface. He had felt the slight vibrations in the water from the speech. Cocoa had come over to stand next to him, her shade leaf parasol hovering above her normally calico-colored but presently blue-tinted hair.

"There's something in the water, Oskar, and it's talking to you!"

"How can there be something in the water, Cocoa?" He had not taken his eyes from the gently rippling surface that had emitted the sounds. "I don't see anything moving, it's too shallow for something to disappear against the bottom, and there's nowhere to hide." He bent lower. "Maybe something's living under the sand?"

"Near the top the sand layer is transparent." She was bent over at the hips so that her pert nose was less than an inch from the water. For once, her enchanting personal perfume was overwhelmed by the odor of salt. "I think we'd be able to see anything hiding within it."

"We are not living beneath the granules, but just under the surface," explained the speaker. "Come over this way. We know that we are difficult to see. That is intentional."

Side by side, Oskar and Cocoa searched for the source of the tiny but emphatic voice. Mamakitty was gazing curiously in their direction, while the other members of the group were finishing their lunch.

"There!" Her feline vision better attuned to the movement of quick, small objects, it was Cocoa who spotted the speaker first. With her help, Cezer soon found himself staring at the same spot in the water. One by one, the others joined them, and one by one, they found themselves alternately transfixed and delighted by what they had discovered.

Drifting just beneath the limpid surface were dozens of tiny finned shapes, human in outline and form save for their exceptionally broad nostrils and mouths and slightly bulging eyes. Naked and perfectly formed, they either darted to and fro at astonishing speeds or remained perfectly still. There was no in-between motion; no languorous swimming or casual treading of water, no measured acceleration. Movement was accomplished at maximum velocity or not at all. The largest of the creatures was no bigger than Oskar's little finger. Easy enough to espy, one might think, especially when clustered together by the dozen. Except for one thing.

They were all of them, male and female alike, almost perfectly transparent.

The pale azure light of the Kingdom of Blue shone straight through them. Only a faint hint of cobalt blue signifying the presence of tiny internal organs had allowed Cocoa to pick them out from the surrounding liquid. That, and the flash of light off their diaphanous skins when they moved. The minuscule flaps of flesh that transformed hands into flippers and feet into fins were virtually invisible.

"Why do thee seek white light?" The diminutive speaker was floating on its back directly beneath Oskar's face. "Blue be best! There be no need for another."

"Just so!" added a female of the species. Appearing as if from nowhere, she came to a sudden stop alongside the speaker. "Blue be calm, blue be soothing, blue be a color beyond reproving!"

"We need the white light to return color to our own homeland," Cocoa explained obligingly, "where only a somber and depressing gray now rules."

"Oh, that's terrible, terrible!" The two tiny figures squealed simultaneously, whirling about a common center until by their frenetic swimming they had generated a miniature whirlpool between them. It faded quickly when they slowed to an abrupt stop. "What be 'gray'?" the male inquired curiously.

"It doesn't matter. It's our problem, not yours," Oskar told him. To Cocoa he added, visibly relieved, "Even in the depths of a rainbow, I'm glad to see that water doesn't possess the power of speech. For me, at least, such an ability would make it hard to swallow."

Cocoa nodded knowingly. "It would surely give new meaning to the idea of soaking up a conversation." Of the diminutive creatures bobbing below them she inquired, "What are you called?"

The pair glanced at one another before replying. "Why, we are thweens, of course. We live just beneath the surface. That is why it is hard for such as thyselves to see us. The surface refracts the light around our bodies. When we lie still, which is most of the time, or move rapidly about, which is the rest of the time, we are very well concealed."

"You certainly are." His back beginning to protest at his crooked posture, Oskar straightened slightly. Being cat, Cocoa could hold the pose for hours. "If you hadn't spoken, I don't think we ever would have noticed you."

"That's right," a curious Cocoa agreed. "Why did you speak?"

"Because not many creatures can, besides the thweens. Despite thy size, thy speech intrigued us. Thee are almost interesting."

Nearby, the heretofore silent Taj spoke up. "And thee are almost thanked. What do you eat?"

With a perfectly formed little arm, the female made a sweeping gesture. "Our world is full of food. You have eaten some yourself, for which we are grateful. Unfortunately, the negwen you find so tasty are equally fond of us."

Oskar envisioned the flat, boneless bottom dwellers he and his companions had been feasting upon since they had started wading through the shallow sea ingesting and masticating the delicate little thweens. The disturbing image left him feeling thrice thankful for his own hearty appetite.

"Much of the life that surrounds us," the male added, "is, like ourselves, quite transparent. We can also live for quite some time outside the water. We simply have difficulty breaking through to the place of air. Surface tension, you know."

Mamakitty and Oskar exchanged a glance. "Surface what?" she inquired.

"Never mind." The female extended both tiny arms upward. "Pull me through. Up and through."

Tentatively, careful not to strike the speaker, Oskar pushed his index finger down into the water. When he lifted his hand, both the male and female thweens were clinging to his finger. He positioned them over the open palm of his other hand, intending to give them a soft place to land. They did not need one.

Spreading hitherto unseen wings, both promptly took to the air, buzzing back and forth in front of the captivated dog-man like translucent dragonflies.

"How wonderful to be airborne again!" The female executed a series of aerial pirouettes as notable for their swiftness as for their grace. Descending until her perfect little webbed feet hovered just above the water, she gestured excitedly. "Help Lis out, too. And Maygyn, and Plel, and don't forget Bou, and Geil, and Evave."

With everyone pitching in, the travelers soon found themselves enveloped in a cloud of soaring, darting thweens. The amphibious little sprites filled the warm blue air with a confusion of delighted giggles and captivating cooing. They danced around Mamakitty's face and rested on Taj's ears, scaled the heights of Samm's bald pate and plumbed the folds of Cezer's pants. They were altogether charming.

And then, quite unexpectedly and without warning, they embarked on an ardent and passionate variation of their aerial ballet. In a word, they began to mate.

"Amorous little pixies, aren't they?" observed Cezer admiringly. Next to him, Mamakitty looked on with academic interest. Cats did not blush, and neither did she.

The female they had first encountered zipped over to hover in front of Oskar's face. Her gossamer skin was flushed turquoise and her jewel-like eyes bulged even more than usual. "We can only mate and reproduce when we are out of the water."

"No wonder they were so anxious to have us help them out of the sea." Taj watched while an octet of thweens swirling near him executed a Byzantine sequence of aerial acrobatics that would have struck a host of hummingbirds dumb with admiration. "This is undeniably entertaining—but it's not getting us any closer to a purpling shore."

"We are glad we could be of assistance," Mamakitty informed the female. Rather primly, Oskar thought. "But we have to move on. We have our own agenda to fulfill."

As she turned to go, the male and two companions materialized in front of her. "Oh no, don't leave! Must thee be on thy way so soon? Thy company is so very welcome to us."

"I'm sorry." Advancing, she forced them to move aside. "We have to follow the path that has been set before us. But if you enjoy our conversation so much, why not accompany us? As long as we keep making progress, we'll be happy to keep you company."

Three thweens put their heads together. When they separated, it was another male who spoke. "Some will choose to remain here, where there are known dangers and familiar food. But many will come with you. All the Bluesome is our home, and we do need to spread our seed as far and wide as we can."

"Come along then." Cocoa was pleased by the decision. Even when they weren't mating, the thweens were fun to watch. "We'll protect you from the negwen, and you can help us find food."

"Done, done—done it be!" Tiny webbed hands clapped wetly.

The thweens proved not only good company but avid guides, helping to ensure that the travelers stayed on course in their trek across the featureless, shallow sea. When not airborne, they rested on the shoulders and heads of the travelers, luxuriating in the unique opportunity to see their world without having to expend a constant flow of energy. They piped tiny curses whenever a school of negwen or other predators was spotted, and cheered as the agile, active cat-folk snatched up the hated archenemies one by one.

They restricted their own mealtimes to coincide with those of their new, much larger friends. Darting and diving beneath the water, they gathered up armfuls of food for their own consumption. Most of it was of such small size that even the sharpest-eyed of the travelers could barely descry it. The thweens assured them that it was all delicious, even if largely invisible to the naked eye. Meanwhile, drawn by the commotion and the calling of their fellows, more and more of the amphibious pixies arrived in a steady stream to join the procession—and to mate. Watching them, unable to avoid their ardent aerial couplings, Oskar found himself glancing more often in Cocoa's direction than would otherwise have been the case.

In this fashion travelers and thweens progressed eastward for several weeks, taking much mutual pleasure in each other's company. "What is this briny basin we are crossing called?" Mamakitty asked one morning.

"Thee really know not?" The thween fluttering beside her sweating face seemed genuinely startled. "Why, it be the Eye of the Beholder, of course."

"Evocative," observed Samm in his usual laconic manner.

"There is nothing else in the Kingdom of Blue? No land?" Cezer inquired curiously.

"Land?" The female thween sounded puzzled. "Why should there be land? There be only the Eye of the Beholder, blue and omnipresent."

"Something I've been wondering about." Oskar stepped over the siliceous skeleton of a long-dead vrorvel that was lying on the bottom. "What is it that you thweens do? Do you just swim around and eat and reproduce? Is that your only purpose?"

"Sounds very like the life of a certain dog I know," Cezer gibed.

Oskar made a face. "I wasn't criticizing. I'm just curious. Dogs do other things," he added, a bit defensively. "We hunt, and provide companionship, and dig things up, and bury them again. Occasionally, we sing."

"That's a matter of opinion," put in Taj, who ought to know.

"Well, not compared to your kind, of course," Oskar admitted. "But to us, it's singing."

"We do not sing," the thweens declared, "though we occasionally burble. And out of the water, we hum. It is a way of calling to one another. Mostly, we try to eat and reproduce as much as we can without disturbing the Eye."

Mamakitty frowned. "Disturbing? How can creatures as small as yourselves possibly disturb all this?" She indicated the horizonless surface through which they were traipsing.

"There can be quite a lot of us. There are now especially, thanks to thy help."

"Our help?" The conversation was leaving Oskar more confused than enlightened.

"Yes." The thween zipped over to hover before the dog-man's face. "Thee consume the negwen and others that eat the thweens. In their absence, we can propagate further. We must, however, have a care not to upset the balance, or it will disturb the Eye." Bulging orbs fell slightly. "Perhaps we have not been sufficiently forthcoming with you. We be parasites on the Eye, you see."

Mamakitty shook her head. "I'm afraid we don't understand."

Flitting up and down in front of her, the thween tried to explain. "All those delicious little bits you see us eating are important to the continued health and function of the Eye. If we eat too many, it will become irritated and not function as well. By preying upon the thweens, the negwen and vrorvels and such maintain a balance. It is not a balance that be to our liking, but there be nothing we can do about it." Tiny glistening oculi looked up at her afresh. "Unless we have the assistance of bold outsiders such as thyselves."

"Well, we're glad to help." Cezer sloshed steadily onward. "But I still don't see how you wee folk can irritate an entire sea, no matter how many of you there are. How do you upset an ocean, anyway?"

The thween was about to reply when a sudden shaking commenced underfoot. The myriad little creatures darting through the water felt it first. They began swimming faster and faster, occasionally bumping into one another or into the legs of the travelers, until the last of them had vanished off to the west. The airborne multitude immediately ceased mating and bolted in the same direction.

Looking down, Oskar could see that the water was frothing around his ankles. The hitherto stable bottom of translucent granules had begun to shudder. "Is this what you meant by 'disturbing' the ocean?" He addressed the one thween that remained. "If it doesn't get any worse than this, then what's to be concerned about?"

"Ocean?" The clearly agitated thween zipped nervously back and forth in front of the scruffy mustache. "What ocean?"

"The one we've been walking across for the past several weeks," Cocoa reminded it impatiently.

The thween spun around to look at her. "There be no ocean here. There be only the Eye of the Beholder."

"Yes, of course," Mamakitty commented irritably. "That's what you call it."

"That be what we call it," the thween explained, "because that be what it is. The Eye of the Beholder. Or if thee prefer, an Eye of the Beholder. It dwells within the kingdoms of light and sees all, observes all, memorizes all. When thee see the kingdoms from without, as only visitors such as thyselves can do, do not most of thee focus on the Kingdom of Blue? It be because that kingdom, which be all the Eye, be looking back at and contemplating thee. Not all eyes be round, thee know. There be many ways of seeing. But there be only one Eye of the Beholder."

The trembling underfoot intensified. "You're not making any sense," Oskar insisted. "We're standing in a sea, not an eye."

"If this was an eye, even a very big eye," Cezer added, pointing to one of his own oculars, "where's the pupil?"

"Below thee." Now the thween was looking around anxiously, as if expecting the arrival of something unspecified and unpleasant. "It be the dark area beneath the transparent cornea. These past weeks thee have been wading through the protective optic fluid that forms a film atop the cornea. And now I really must go. I am sorry for thee, for thee have been good friends to the thweens." It waved once before dashing off in the wake of its fellows.

"Hey, ssst, wait a minute!" Cezer yelled. To no avail. In the absence of the thweens, there was now only the increasingly intense undulating underfoot. It was not severe enough to knock them off their feet, and the ground beneath the water did not crack or shift, but the sensation was unsettling, to say the least.

"That's just swell," Taj muttered. "By helping the adorable little creatures, we've gone and upset some kind of territorial balance. But what kind?"

Mamakitty held her ground, watching the water foam around her legs. "Maybe now that they've left, whatever they've disturbed will settle down."

Bending low, Cezer was staring at the crystalline layer beneath the surface. "Did you ever notice the funny shapes that kind of lie under the ground here? Maybe we should try and dig down a little ways and see what we find."

Oskar was gazing anxiously southward. "I don't think that would be a good idea. We might aggravate this Eye further. Not that it's going to matter. Not at this point."

"What are you talking about?" Straightening, Cezer saw that everyone else was staring in the same direction. As he joined them in looking, his mouth gaped involuntarily.

A tsunami was rushing toward them, rising higher and higher above the hitherto featureless southern horizon. Though tinted with the same ubiquitous blueness that suffused everything in this kingdom, it was noticeably darker than the water in which they stood or the sky above their heads. At its forefront, riding the crest of the wave, was an entire uprooted forest of crooked trees from which the branches and leaves had already been stripped.

Then the swordsman's jaw dropped still farther. The dark, twisted growths were not trees, and the wave rushing toward them was composed of something other than water. He identified both well before his brain would countenance and accept the inescapable conclusion.

What he thought were trees were in fact lashes, lining the leading edge of a most monstrous eyelid, embarked upon a single gargantuan blink.