Page 101 of Beneath the Haunting Sea
“I think you’re more than that. You’re not at all what I thought from reading my ancestor’s account. I didn’t even know if you were real.”
The Whale’s laugh hummed up and down his spine, reminding her of a purring lion—content but not entirely harmless.“What did you think I was?”
“A fable. A story. A colorful addition to a myth.”
“It’s a wonder you took the trouble to call me, then.”
A fair point. Talia changed tack. “Why didn’t you help Endain, when Rahn dragged her back to the Hall?”
“Because she did not ask me.”
“And you’ve been waiting in the sea ever since?”
Another hum of that dangerous laughter. “I come and go as I please, TaliaEndain. I am not bound to one place, or one form.”
“But Endain made you. She created you out of Starlight.”
“Endain did not make me. She called me, just as you called me. I simply chose to take the form most helpful for her.”
“And you did the same for me?”
“You had need of me, so I came.”
This was not quite an answer, but she didn’t know how to phrase her question any better.
“Why didyoucome, Talia Endain?” he asked her, his voicehmmmm-ing quieter than before.
She studied her hands in the moonlight, twisting them in her lap. “Because the gods and the Waves called me. Because my mother needs me. Because—” Once more she saw Wen falling limp and dead into the sand. “Because there was nothing else left.”
“Nothing at all?”
The Ruen-Shained appeared again in her mind, followedby Caiden asking her to stay with him and Blaive crying in the dining room. “I gave my heart to a fool and I ruined Wen’s life—and maybe Blaive’s, too—and I can’t—Iwon’t—leave my mother’s soul trapped in torment for eternity.” She clenched her jaw, a tear racing down her cheek.
Waves slapped against the Whale’s sides, sliding over the hem of her dress. “It is never foolish to love,” he rumbled.“Love is the noblest of all things, and the most powerful.”
Talia looked down at her right hand where Wen’s ring glimmered on her first finger. “Love has broken me.”
“To love is to be broken. That is the very definition of the word.”
Wen flew on far above them, his wings catching the moonlight and scattering the stars. She studied him intently, her heart tight.
“He loves you. Did you knowthat?”
“Yes,” she whispered. But that was not the knowledge that tormented her. “Can’t you change him back?”
“It was his own doing,” the Whale told her gently, “and so it must be his undoing.”
“But you said yourself he can’t do it!”
The Whalehmmmm’d and she took a deep breath, tearing her eyes away from the white seabird.
“Perhaps the Words he used to change his form have not yet ended.He wanted to protect you. To save you. Maybe he hasn’t done it yet.”
“He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have followed me.”
“You do not want him here, Talia Endain?”
“I don’t want him to get hurt.”
