Finally, the creature had what she wanted. Solitude.
The ocean floor spread out around her, quiet and dark, and life was how it had used to be.
Except now, when the creature held her Storyworld to one of her eyes and looked inside it, she remembered that the silbercows had wanted to talk about who the two bodies were. Why they were there. The creature still didn’t want to know those things. But it had changed her Storyworld, that there were stories connected to it that she didn’t know.
And when she lifted her ringed tentacle to the brighter water above, admiring its sparkle, she missed the silbercows trying to press upon her the story of the sad human who’d lost it. When someone tried to press a story on you, you needed to be able to refuse. But it was also nice to know that the story would be there again for you another day, if you changed your mind. If you were ready.
The creature was lonely, for the first time.
She began to play games in her mind, invent fantasies, of ways to make the scary egg treasure go away, so that the silbercows could come back. Not come back often, but visit sometimes.
Eventually her fantasies turned into ideas, which she studied and revised, until one day, her ideas became a plan.
On that day, the creature began to push one of her tentacles—not the ringed tentacle—into the sand beneath her body. With all her strength, she pushed down, drilling a deep, thin tunnel in the ocean floor. She drove her tentacle into the ground as deep as it could go, surprised by how hard it was inside the earth, how cold. At the bottom of her tunnel, with her tentacle fully extended, she scraped out a little well.
Then, ever so carefully, she pulled her tentacle back out again. She picked up the scary egg treasure. She lowered it through the tunnel and placed it into the well.
Then, her tentacle plugging the tunnel, she pulled the ring.
* * *
—
The pain was terrible.
The pain was so terrible that when the silbercows arrived, flying toward her with big, alarmed eyes, she told them that she thought she might be dying.
What did you do? they asked her. We heard the big noise. We felt the ocean shake. You don’t look like you’re dying. What did you do?
I buried the treasure in the ground beneath me, she told them, and pulled the ring.
The silbercows were boggled by this. They stared at her, blinking, then they stared at one another and talked amongst themselves. They told her that she was a hero.
I’m not, she said, crying from the pain in the place where a horrible poisonous fire had burned away her tentacle. She was really quite sure she was dying. She didn’t want to live.
Maybe you’re the Keeper after all, they said.
No! she said, unable to bear this. Not that again! I was just lonely! And then she began to cry. Her crying turned into a song of loneliness, sadness, and loss, because she’d lost her tentacle. She’d hurt herself, to make her home safe for the silbercows, and now they were misunderstanding her again. She sang louder and louder. Her singing turned into a wail.
The silbercows didn’t leave. They stayed with her while she sang and wailed, watching her quietly, waiting. They flinched sometimes at the noises she made, but they didn’t leave.
When she was done, they carefully examined her tentacle with their noses, which were soft. It wasn’t a tentacle anymore, really, they told her. It was a black, burnt nub.
Will it ever stop burning? she asked.
We don’t know, they said.
I’m uneven now, she said. My body is uneven.
Yes, they said, touching her gently, touching their noses to her nub. We’re uneven too.
Do your wounds still hurt?
Much less, they said.
Am I dying?
We think you’re going to live.
The creature found that she was relieved to hear this. She thought that she would like to live at least long enough to see if her wound could ever hurt less.
Listen, she said, because something else was hurting her. Will you tell me . . . She paused. Briefly sang a few notes for courage. Will you tell me why the humans would make a thing like that?
Chapter Ten
A blade of light woke Giddon, blinding him, then dragging him into a consciousness he did not want.
Everything hurt, especially his neck, especially his hands and feet. They’d had to drag him out of the frozen sea yesterday like a drowning dog; they’d had to go through an entire rigmarole to warm him, for he’d made himself sick, trying to find her even if it killed him. Hava’s face had been tight and scared with worry for him when they’d pulled him back aboard. He was supposed to be taking care of Hava, and instead he’d given her something else to fear.
“Bitterblue,” he said. “Bitterblue.” Then he wept, as he hadn’t been able to yesterday, desperately, like a man who was choking, pressing his face into pillows so that his neighbors wouldn’t hear.
* * *
—
When Giddon began to understand, with some alarm, that his cistern of tears was bottomless, he forced himself to sit up and calm down. This had never happened before, that he hadn’t been able to cry himself out. A new discovery about himself that he’d have to learn to manage.
Bitterblue, he said. I’ve mucked it up already, without you. You would not be proud.
Except that he knew she would be proud, always, whether he deserved it or not.
Tears began to trickle again. He cleared his throat, wiped his face, and took a breath.
All right, he said. Tell me what to do.
The answer came in her clear voice. Make sure Katu is safe. Take care of my sister. Write to my uncle and our friends and tell them what happened to me. Keep an eye on my advisers. And find out about Mikka and Brek: Investigate those importers.
The family names on the importer list had included Cavenda, Tima, Balava. There had been people with those names at dinner last night.
Giddon was going to kill the importers.
He reached for his clothes.
* * *
—
By the time Giddon stepped out of his bedroom, he had his face in order.
He was on the second floor of Quona Varana’s tall, many-windowed house above the sea. Light streamed into the corridor from the gigantic stairway at the far end, where the walls were made of windows. The light was an assault.
A straight-backed, bearded man in white stood in the corridor and nodded a greeting as Giddon approached. His skin was brown but his hair and eyes, his beard, were the same dark shade as Giddon’s.
“Breakfast is served in the dining room downstairs, sir,” he said in Keepish.