Clayton Emery: Whispering woods

The heroes glanced around. The shattered cliff face was a stone's throw away, except now it sported a huge trough down its center, from the grass above to a massive cascade of dirt before them. High up, gazing down the trough, stood Towser. Waving both hands at the sea.

Where Morven gazed, horrified.

Silver shapes slipped in and out of waves. They flickered and flitted, vanishing, appearing, disappearing. A school of fish, Gull thought: that silver sheen was their backs. Yet the patches twisted, came together, formed coils…

A snaky head long as a ship broke from the waves, opened jaws with more teeth, with countless teeth. A crest like a ship's sail decorated the undulating head. The neck stretched on and on.

A fishy eye three feet across fixed on them, dipped through a wave, came out straight as an arrow, jaws agape.

"Sea serpent!" Morven shouted.

To pluck them off this rock like a robin gulping worms.

The serpent's head reared from the waves. The cavernous mouth yawned at half a bowshot. Then it split another wave, and Gull could have thrown a rock and hit it. He stared down the gullet, imagining the stink of long-dead fish. Eaten, he thought. We're to be eaten, after surviving all this.

In his arms, Greensleeves stirred. She lifted a hand, and the world went white.

A fungal glow loomed over them. The dank smell of musty mushrooms banished the salt tang for a moment, and Gull wondered where he'd seen this light before.

Ah, the battle of the burned forest. When the armored wizard seized Greensleeves, and was suddenly confronted by a mushroom beast the size of a barn, a fungusaur. Lily (where was she?) had pointed out that it was conjured by someone else, and of course, that had been Greensleeves. And Gull had been too dense to see her magical prowess.

Now she'd plucked this fungusaur from some deep cavern. Gray-white and glowing, with goggling yellow eyes, its mouth like a cave itself, the beast towered over them like a living wall -and the serpent struck it with mouth open.

Chunks of white, glowing with cold light, exploded through the air. The mushroom beast growled, bit at the serpent, whose long tail thrashed the water to foamy phosphorescence. The serpent snapped its head, tearing at the beast, whose pulpy muck-encrusted feet slipped on the slimy wet rocks. The fungusaur's growl dropped to a low rumble, then a grating squall. Though it was hard to see from below, Gull thought the serpent had torn a hunk from the fungusaur's spine, if it had such. Whatever, that sounded like a death keen from the white monster.

The heroes didn't wait. Grabbing one another, clutching for purchase, they scrambled across the spume-flecked rocks for the dirt cascade.

Within a dozen paces, they mired in soggy mud-loose dirt churned to slurry by seawater. In the lead, Kern sank to his hips in muck. He turned, yelled at the others to get back. But too late for Gull, who'd stumbled into a wallow, too. The others hung back, clinging to rocks, afraid to move for fear of water and mud.

"Where the hell now?" panted Morven as he gazed around. For the first time ever, he sounded old. Ancient. "I thought-the cliff-" He gave up, exhausted.

Sunk, wedged tight, Gull craned about. The sun was gone behind the clouds. It was almost completely black. Foam and flickering fungal light were no help. He felt they drowned in blackness. Even had he been free, he couldn't have picked a direction to go. Off to their left, the fallen monolith lay big as a barn and smothered in dirt. More cascade stretched to their right. Directly ahead was the huge trough, like a slue, that rose in fits and starts and jagged steps, all trickling loose dirt, up to the remains of the bluff.

Light showed up there. The wizard commanded the center. Ranged on either side were shaggy shapes with curved swords and torches. Blue barbarians, dozens of them.

The woodcutter looked seaward. Dimly, he saw the fungusaur had been ripped to pieces that floated away. Amidst the ruin thrashed the sea serpent, unharmed and hungry and hunting them. It steamed back and forth amidst the rocks, seeking a deep-enough channel to close and swallow them. Rain still slashed down, but Gull was so numb he couldn't feel it.

He'd feel nothing soon.

"Can't go, can't stay," muttered Kem. He threw himself flat to try and swim out of his mudhole.

"Stabbed or eaten," gasped Morven. He instructed Stiggur to hold his belt, leaned out across slurry for Gull. "Or time permitting, we drown at high tide."

Gull stretched, and sailor and cook's boy hauled him free to the rocks. Picking around the deeper pockets of mud, together they hauled Kem to safety.

Slapped by waves, by wind and rain, they huddled inches above the sea. Kem muttered, "Hell of a place to die."

"Let's hope we do," panted Morven. "I can use a rest."

Only Greensleeves peered around, sniffing like a dog.

Gull asked, "Anything else, sister?" But he had little hope. Funny, he thought, ever since that first day in White Ridge, he'd been running like a madman to rescue his sister. Now overwhelmed, he could only ask her to rescue them. Strange were the twists in the road of life.

The girl swirled a hand in seawater. "Th-there's… s-omething… s-singing to me… S-something st-stirred by the ear-earthquake…"

The men watched glumly. Far above, Towser gave orders. A score of barbarians hopped into the earth scar, picked their way down sliding dirt toward the captives. Not thirty feet out, the serpent hissed, louder and louder.

Or…?

It wasn't any beast hissing, Gull realized. It was the water, the ocean itself.

The surf pulsed all around, but each surge was weaker. They were no longer slapped by spume.

Curiosity made the men turn. Gull asked, "Greenie, is this your doing?" But the girl only stared oceanward.

Everywhere they looked, the water level dropped. Waves stopped licking at their heels, receded altogether. Rocks that had shown only seaweedy tips stood revealed. The water drained away so quickly flapping fish and clicking crabs were trapped in pools. The sea serpent, incredibly long and silvery, flopped amidst rocks.

Like a dream, the waves rolled away and away, clear to the horizon. The muck green seabed lay revealed, rocks and stranded fish and even a mossy shipwreck a quarter mile out.

"What is it?" breathed Kem.

Morven had gone white. He mumbled under his breath. "Oh, no. Oh, no…"

Gull poked him. "What? What is it?"

"Tsunami," the sailor whispered.

"Su-what?"

"Run!" he shouted, startling them all. "Run! Ashore! Fast! Like you've never run before!"

Morven caught Stiggur, lifted him by main strength, then ran, galloping across rocks, fear making him light as a squirrel. Gull glanced at Kem, who stared back. But the panic was infectious. The woodcutter caught his sister's elbow, the bodyguard caught the other, and, hoisting her, they ran obliquely across rocks and thin mud for the shore.

Morven scrambled up the trough, pushing Stiggur by his backside. The men followed with Greensleeves, though they slid down as much as they climbed up. Panting, the sailor searched the blacker pockets. High up, a confused gurgle came from the backlit barbarians, who wondered why these men ran to their deaths, and what had happened to the ocean.

"What is it, Morven?" Gull hollered. "What's after us?"

"Tsunami!" the man shouted over his shoulder. "But we'll never outrun it, not on this slope, not ever! Look for a cave! It's our only chance!"

"But what the hell's a su-whatever you said?" demanded Kem.

"Here!" The sailor stopped at a cleft, just a blacker slash in the black hillside. He grabbed the boy's hair and mashed him into the cave. Stiggur yowled.

Gull swore. Morven had gone mad.

Yet the ocean was acting damned queer. Though Gull knew little about the sea, Lily had explained tides. But never that the water disappeared completely, rolled right over the horizon.