Page 99 of Beneath the Haunting Sea
She wasn’t close enough. The sea was toying with her, keeping them apart. And somewhere behind her the creature waited.
“Wen!”
White-hot light, the crackle of electricity in her ears. Hisarms spreading out, shivering and shifting until they were wings, wide and white. His head jerking back, feathers crawling up his neck. Claws curling out where his legs should have been, clothes shedding off of him like so many torn shadows.
And then he wasn’t Wen anymore, but a huge, white seabird. He spread his wings and flew toward her.
But the storm wasn’t finished. The wind caught him,wheeled him about in the rain, and slammed him hard against the broken mast.
She heard thesnapof bone and the bird’s sharp cry. Waves crashed over her, water creeping into her nose and mouth. She’d found him and lost him in the same moment, and now both of them would die.
“Endain’s daughter,” thundered the powerful voice all around her. “The sea means you harm.”
Once again she was liftedout of the water, beyond the grasp of the waves. The creature swam steady beneath her, a leviathan of the deep, strength rippling beneath its skin. It could crush her in a moment, it could swallow her whole. But it didn’t.
Her fear of the creature was outweighed by her desperation for Wen. “We have to save him,” she begged. “Please.”
She heard the low rumble of the Whale’s deep voice. “Thensave him.”
Lightning streaked the sky and there he was, clinging to a scrap of wood with both clawed feet, one wing dragging limp. She slid into the water and swam to him, wrapping her arm around his strange feathered body, pulling him back onto the Whale. The bird shuddered and shook and she held onto him, not understanding what he had done, or why he had done it. Not understanding how everythinghad gone so wrong.
“He spoke the Words to change his form,” said the Whale, deep and dangerous. “He thought he could save you.”
Tears stung her eyes. “Can’t you change him back?”
“Only he could do that.”
“Then why doesn’t he?”
“I do not think he knows how.”
The bird huddled close to her, his broken wing hanging awkwardly away from his body. She tore strips of cloth from her soaked skirtand bandaged the wing as best as she was able. When it was done, the bird gave a shuddering sigh and laid his head in Talia’s lap. She stroked his feathers, tears dripping down her chin.
The storm seemed a little less wild now, the waves not as high. But her fear was deeper than before, the reality of what she was doing stark and awful.
Lightning flashed, and the sea devoured the remaining fragmentsof her ship. The rain dwindled to a few icy drops, and the wind stopped roaring. A slice of moon cut through the clouds.
“Why are you here, daughter of Endain?” asked the Whale.
She blinked out over the sea, her fear of the creature tying her in knots. “I’m going to the Hall of the Dead.” Her voice sounded ragged and rough to her own ears.
The Whale made a lowhmmmmsound beneath her, vibrationsrippling through his skin. The wind wrapped around Talia, the scent of roses mingling unaccountably with the lingering rain. Silence stretched into the darkness.
“Do you so despair of your life, that you seek Rahn’s Hall?” he said at last. “Do you not wish for a future?”
She screwed her eyes shut and saw before her the Ruen-Shained, the white cat curled purring in the corner, the spot in thesitting room where Wen’s raina would go. Wen, sitting at the instrument, scribbling notes on paper, ink spots all over his hands. Talia, coming in with a tea tray, Wen looking up with a smile.
The realization unfolded inside of her like jasmine flowers drinking in moonlight. How cruel to understand she wished for that future, just as all hope for it was gone. She looked down at Wen’s white head,an immense sorrow weighing heavy. “My future can’t matter, not now. I’m going to destroy Rahn. To end her rule and free my mother’s soul. Will you take me to the Tree, Whale? Will you take me back the way you once carried Endain?”
Stars gleamed suddenly through the remnant of the clouds; the scent of roses bit sharper. “That is why you called me, is it not?”
Chapter Forty-Four
NIGHT TURNED TO DAY, THE SUN BURNINGgold behind the torn threads of clouds, and the Whale didn’t say anything more. Talia sat tense and afraid on his broad back with the seabird sleeping beside her. She felt lost. Alone. Powerless. She was at the mercy of a creature from a story, adrift in a dark sea.
She hadn’t expected him to answer her call.
There was a footnote in theaccount of Endain that her many-greats-grandmother had written—an explanation of how Endain meant to call the Whale back to her, and a Word spelled out phonetically that was supposed to mean “Come to my aid.”
