Seawitch

TWENTY-TWO

Solis’s words echoed in my head. I swallowed a lump in my throat and couldn’t think of what to say. “I . . .” I started in a weak voice.

Solis shook his head and looked aside. “An unpleasant tale. I offer it so you will know where I am broken and cannot be trusted. But if you do not want it . . .”

“Don’t you dare.”

Solis raised his eyebrows at me.

“Thank you.”

“Why?”

“You can’t take something like that back. It can’t be unheard. And you are not broken or untrustworthy and I don’t want to forget how much you’ve entrusted to me. No matter how ugly it is, it’s still precious.”

“But it is ugly,” he agreed.

“So are my feet and I don’t apologize for them. Of course, I also don’t wear sandals. . . .”

He looked puzzled.

“You know I used to be a dancer.”

He nodded. “It’s in your record.”

“Never seen a dancer’s feet? I spent so much time in dance shoes as a kid, en pointe, or hoofing in road shows more weeks on than I was off that my feet look like they were run over by a truck. Dreadful, crippled-looking, knobby things. I earned them through pain and vanity. They remind me of what I left and why I left it. I don’t show them to most people because they’re . . . well, they’re awful, but they are part of why I am what I am. And I don’t regret that.” I studied his face to see if he understood and it seemed he did. He nodded, scowling a little. I nodded back and gave a tiny laugh. “But they’re still disgusting.”

“More disgusting than those creatures in the waves?” he asked with a grimace.

“There’s a lot that’s more disgusting than those,” I said. “Most of the things coming over the rail were illusions filled with water to give them weight. They wasted our energy and distracted us from the real ones coming up behind them. I tried to let you know, but I didn’t have the breath to shout—I’m sorry about that.”

He shrugged and I had an odd spark of hope for his nightmare’s resolution. “I have survived. What manner of attack comes next?”

“I’m not sure. They may just try to batter us to death in this storm, since we’ve figured out their weakness.”

“I haven’t. What is this weakness?”

“The sea witch’s power is limited and she has to choose where she’ll spend it. The merfolk—or, more likely, the sea witch we keep talking about—casts illusions to create the impression of an army of her minions. But only a few are really flesh and blood. They aren’t pushovers—though I’ll admit the illusions are powerful, too—but once you know most of what you’re seeing isn’t real, it’s easier to dodge the real ones and break the false. The merfolk aren’t quite impervious to the motions of the water in the storm, so while the storm may continue to wear us down, I think they’ll have to make their next sally against us in a less-unsettled circumstance. Anything else that comes at us will be magic, not meat.”

“That may reassure you, but I do not feel better hearing it. What if she’s holding the majority of her men and power in reserve against the eventuality of our arrival in her domain?”

I mulled it over. “That could be. But if you were her, wouldn’t you want to get rid of us as early as possible? Unless there’s some reason she needs us in her lair before she tries to suck up our souls to power her spells, why let us get any closer than she has to? Consider that the Valencia was wrecked way out at the southwest point of Vancouver Island, west of here, but Fielding implied that her base is east of here, so her reach is—or can be—fairly wide. But the farther she wants to reach, the lower her power. So she has to play it close to her vest unless she’s willing to come out of her place of safety.”

“If, in fact, it has always been the same sea witch. But if Shelly usurped her mother and Jacque is doing the same now, each wreck would have a slightly different profile, since the perpetrators, though related, are not the same.”

I hmphed and gave it a few moments’ thought. “Possible. I guess we won’t know until we are face-to-face with her.”

“Is that wise?”

“I don’t see any other way to fix the problems we have. We both need an explanation for the disappearance of Seawitch. You can understand better than anyone that I need to set some things right with those ghosts and Gary Fielding.” I saw a question forming on his lips and cut it off. “I can’t go into the reasons but I also have a duty to the world I live in—I didn’t choose it but it’s still mine. And that includes, at the moment, doing something to free the ghosts of Valencia and Seawitch and get Gary Fielding straightened out in some way.”

Solis narrowed his eyes. “If he caused the deaths of the people on board Seawitch, it will require more than straightening out.”

“That’s another thing we’ll have to deal with when it comes. We may not have any way to bring him to human justice. If that’s even applicable. You may have to swallow dealing with this my way.”

His face settled back into his customary stillness and he didn’t say another word.

I wanted to tell him he couldn’t do anything to change it, but I just shook my head and got up from the galley table, wincing as new bruises expanded the zone of discomfort in my back, side, and chest. “I need to dry off and warm up before my muscles freeze up completely.”

“Your rib. My apologies; I’d forgotten.”

“I wish I could. This is slowing me down more than I’d hoped. And it hurts!” I added with an attempt at humor that fell a little flat on our ears. “I’ll tell you this, though: If we have any chance to catch one of those merfolk, we’d better take it. We could use some more leverage than just the bell.”

I left him to put on an extra layer of clothes. While I was in the cabin Quinton and I had been sharing, I took another look at the bell. Fielding had mentioned it as he disappeared. Examining it now, at my leisure and without someone looking over my shoulder, I let my vision shift as I sank closer to the Grey.

The bell was no longer bronze but black, wrapped in green tangles that sent out long, thin streamers that vanished into the eastern distance of the Grey. The boiling agitation of the ghosts within pushed outward into a thick smoke of faces and forms twisted into one another. I put out one hand, wondering if I could just pluck the mess apart and let the ghosts go their own way, but a warning roar came from the ghosts and they flared red as if their agonized faces were washed in the light of a conflagration. I guessed that was a pretty strong hint that if I did anything to the spell that held them in the bell now—or here—the situation would only get worse. Though worse for them or worse for me, I didn’t know.

I eased back a little, still immersed in the Grey, still concentrating on the bell. “Well,” I whispered. “You wanted them and I’ve got them, but damned if I know what I’m supposed to do with them now.”

I raised my voice a little and tried to call the Guardian Beast, concentrating on its form as if my thoughts could pull it to me. “I could use a little help here. . . .”

Nothing replied except the ghosts of Valencia, moaning like the wind. I tried reaching out into the Grey, gathering threads and pulling or shaking them, begging the Guardian to show its misty hide, but nothing seemed to have any effect. I couldn’t even hear it in the distance as I sometimes did, going about its business. In desperation, I tried appealing to Will or whatever might remain of him, but to that the silence was even colder.

“Come on, you slippery bastard!” I shouted. “Get over here and tell me what I’m supposed to do! I’ve got the lost you wanted, but I’ll lose ’em if you don’t give me some clue what you want me to do with them!”

I turned again to the bell. “It said ‘Find the lost’ and I’ve found you. I think. But now it wants to play coy. Obviously just finding you guys isn’t the end of this situation. It’s not as if the Guardian actually cares about suffering, because it’s never done a damned thing about it before, so what’s the problem?”

“Power,” the ghosts sighed. They stretched out from the mouth of the bell in wisps and eddies, curling around me, dizzying me with their ever-changing faces and forms.

“Yes, all right. Your souls represent a storage unit of power, but why does it care about that now?”

“Now the cycle renews itself. Now the floodgates open. We were not alone.”

“Oh no . . . He—it—the Guardian Beast wants me to free all of the souls the sea witch controls? How do I do that? Without becoming one of you, too.”

They made the incorporeal equivalent of a shrug, billowing around and moaning minor-key arpeggios that moved the mist of the Grey in swirls of smoke and blackness.

If she had other captive souls—and she certainly had at least four from Seawitch and possibly more—then she kept them where she’d kept the boat for so long. “Open floodgates . . .” So the door was open and where creatures like the merfolk who’d attacked us could get out, others, like us, could go in. But wherever it was, it would have to be a place with a twin in the Grey. It had swallowed up living things before, so . . . it was a sort of Grey Brigadoon—a magical place that appears for a while and then disappears again, going about its business, undisturbed in the ghost world, until the door is open again. The door had opened long enough for Gary Fielding to slip out with Seawitch and the ghosts of Valencia, but it was closing again.

“We have to find the cove. Where is it? Can’t you tell me?”

The spirits sang on in their dreary, coiling tune of hopelessness and told me nothing. I pulled back toward normal, seeking warmth as much as respite from the company of ghosts, and sat on the edge of the bunk, staring at the bell.

It was heavy and plainly wrought with the little loop and a bead around the top and the flattened edge at the mouth upon which the name had been engraved. Not cast, so the ship hadn’t been important enough to make a custom casting, but enough to cut the name into the bronze lip rather than let it go without; enough to tie it to one ship only. A ship so long lost that only a single lifeboat and a few pieces of timber had ever been recovered.

I flicked a fingernail against the bell’s lip. It made a dull chime that rippled across the Grey and washed through me with a sensation of pressure and cold that made me cough and catch my breath. The green coils around the bell sparked bright for a moment, sending a pulse out into the distance along the threadlike tendrils that reached to the east. The ghosts moaned and flared into a bright curtain of terrified faces, frozen as if by an actinic flash. Then they faded away to no more than a distant whisper and the feel of ice water trickling down my back. The green light around the bell faded more slowly, lingering like a disturbed phosphorescence on the surface of nighttime waters.

I yanked a heavier sweater on over my still-damp head and found some thicker, drier socks to pull on before I resumed wearing my wet shoes. Then I tucked the gun I’d left on the bed earlier into a zippered interior pocket of my jacket and put that on, too, before I picked up the bell and carried it to the main cabin.

Solis, coming up from the galley, gave me a curious look. “The Valencia’s bell?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been wondering how we’re going to get into the place Seawitch was held, since it remained hidden for twenty-seven years. So it’s a place that exists more in the paranormal than the normal, though it has a normal twin. You don’t just walk into that sort of location—or motor, as the case may be.”

“Indeed?”

“Take my word for it. The easy way in is to die. I don’t think any of us want to do that just to take a look around the merfolk’s living room. We need a door opener. And after thinking about Fielding’s last words, I think this is—literally—it.”

“How?”

“Well . . . not only is it connected to two of the boats and crews who’ve been trapped in the mystery cove we’re looking for, but it’s a bell.”

Solis looked puzzled and Quinton glancing down from the bridge hatch asked, “Why is that important?”

“What?” Zantree asked, out of sight.

“The bell,” Quinton explained.

“What are bells for?” I asked.

“To ring signals,” Zantree shouted down.

“And to ring for assistance. Or entry,” I responded. “Magic is sometimes ridiculously literal. In this case, the bell is . . . also a doorbell. I think.”

“What makes you think so?” asked Solis.

“I felt it. I flicked the edge of the bell with my fingernail and the ringing sent out a wave that I could feel passing in the paranormal fringes. Like a ripple on water. This bell is tied to the location it was hidden in, so ringing it causes a reaction there—in the paranormal ‘there,’ that is.”

“Some kind of magical entanglement, like electrons?” Quinton asked.

“If you say so,” I replied, carrying the bell up to the bridge station. Solis followed me. “Also I noticed that the merfolk made a noise as they retreated that sounded like something clanging in the distance. Or they were responding to the clanging—I’m not sure which. Either way, ringing or clanging, a bell is a bell and this one rings in the cove where Seawitch was kept for the past twenty-seven years. I’d bet my life on it.”

“That doesn’t mean it’ll open the front door for us,” Quinton said.

“No,” I agreed, “but the sea witch will if she wants it back, which I’m quite sure she does. We just have to find the cove.”

“That’s not going to be easy.”

“It can’t be very far away, since the merfolk could hear the recall bell when they attacked us. And there is a practical limit to how far even the most powerful wizard can cast an illusion spell like the sea witch used on us.”

“Sound travels easier and farther underwater since both air and water are liquids. Water is denser so the rate of energy loss is lower,” Quinton offered.

“But even so, I’ll bet it doesn’t travel around corners,” I said.

Quinton shook his head. “Only insofar as the sound waves fan out when they exit a restriction. The direction of travel from the source will be straight until the sound waves reflect off something, and the more they bounce around, the faster they decay.”

I nodded. “Look at the chart and see where the sound waves could travel from to reach us without violating the laws of physics. The cove will be in that area.”

“There’re a dozen little coves and bays between us and anywhere that noise could have come from,” Zantree objected, clutching the wheel and making a correction against the current and wind to take us farther into the safe center of the channel and away from the rocks at the edges.

“It would have to be farther from here than Lonesome Cove,” I said, thinking aloud, “because Fielding said he missed that opportunity. Just where is Lonesome Cove, anyhow?”

“It’s on the north side of San Juan on Spieden Channel,” Zantree replied.

I set the bell down on the chart table beside the steering station. “Fielding said he had to pass up the northern entrance to Roche Harbor and was heading for Lonesome, but when I asked if that was where the Seawitch had ended up, he said no. He didn’t get to say where the boat did finally come to rest, but it definitely wasn’t Lonesome Cove. Unless there’s another cove between Lonesome and Pearl Island . . .”

“Nothing you could hide a ninety-some-foot boat in,” Zantree said.

“What about beyond Lonesome Cove?”

“I can’t remember every blasted cove and bay in the islands! Quinton, take a look at that chart—page forty-six or so. Up and down Spieden Channel on the north end of San Juan Island, east of Vancouver Island.”

Quinton flipped over pages of a massive chart book, laying one of them flat on the folded-back book and running his fingers across the rough-edged, inverted-pear shapes of the big islands and the shapeless blobs of smaller ones until he found Spieden Island and the channel south of it. He guided his fingers along the outline of San Juan’s northern shore. “I see Davison Head . . . Lonesome Point . . . Lonesome Cove. . . . Maybe across the channel on Spieden, by Green Point? Or around the east side of San Juan into Rocky Bay?”

Zantree shook his head but kept his eyes on the view ahead. “With the wind he was describing, they couldn’t cut straight across to the lee of Green Point. Rocky Bay would have been too rough—they don’t call it Rocky for nothing. He said he’d tried for Davison Head, but he obviously didn’t make it or he’d have been home and dry, as long as he avoided the submerged pilings—and there’d have been a famous stink if he’d taken her aground on them. Look straight on down the channel.”

“There’s nothing down the channel. It opens up at the end of San Juan Island and there’s nothing else but Orcas unless you hook back over the top of Spieden Island.”

“Jones! It’s got to be Jones Island or I’m a gaffed marlin!”

“Why would it be Jones?” Solis asked.

“Because if what these two are saying about the sound traveling is right, Jones is the only landfall it could come from. It’s straight down the throat of Spieden Channel! That big rock before you reach Orcas.” He reached over and stabbed at the chart with his forefinger, mashing the page flat. “Right there.”

We leaned closer as he straightened up to keep both hands on the twitching wheel. Where he’d pressed the map lay a modest lump of an island with a nibble taken from the north and south shores. Jones Island. An unobstructed line drawn through Spieden Channel to Seawitch’s last known location cut right through the island’s northernmost point that guarded the nearly round little bite of North Cove.