Alan Foster - Kingdoms of Light

"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.