Саймон Бествик - The Devil and the Deep - Horror Stories of the Sea

“Then don’t go,” Theo says.

“It’s not up to me anymore.” A note of desperation breaks her voice, and Ana hates it, trying to push it back down.

Even now, she can feel it, a tug at the center of her belly, pulling at a part that both is and isn’t her. Two lost children, one sailing on the waves and one alone and frightened under them. Maybe they’re not all that different. Maybe, by now, they’re one and the same.

“If you’re in trouble, and I could help, you’d tell me?” It’s only half a question.

The way Theo asks it makes him seem like the younger one between them. For the life he’s lived, Theo has remarkable faith in the world. He has faith in her, in them together. Ana shakes her head, tears frosting her lashes, but not falling.

“Promise,” she says, and it isn’t entirely a lie. He can’t help her. This time, she’s on her own.

Theo watches her for a moment longer, like she’s a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. Finally, he rises, leaving her alone in the galley. Ana cradles a mug of coffee between her hands. Heat seeps through the ceramic, but her skin remains cold.

The wave builds, and holds, waiting a moment before breaking.

Ana watches the horizon. The sea and the sky are almost the same color, a pale, washed-out slate. The wind tugs at her hair and her jacket, the nylon making a snapping sound like a sail.

The engine’s growl drops to a purr, then a hum as Theo eases back on the throttle. There’s a splash as the anchor hits, followed by the long sound of the chain unwinding. Theo cuts the engine altogether.

“This is it,” Theo says.

Ana looks at him, really looks at him, as she hasn’t in a long time. He squints, deepening the lines at the corners of his eyes. There are a few early strands of gray in his hair, though he isn’t even thirty-five.

There’s a sudden image in her mind, Theo, older, with his arm around a woman’s shoulders; she’s nearly a head shorter than him, thick at the waist, hair blowing in the wind as they watch a pair of children run.

“If I don’t come back…” She looks away. It’s easier when she does. “Go somewhere far away from the sea,” she says. “Go inland. Find someone to love. Live a good life.”

She makes herself look at him then, and smiles, a crooked thing. Her tattoos sway, restless.

“Name one of your children after me, okay, cuz?”

She flashes a grin at his confusion, and before he has time to answer her, she unzips the windbreaker and lets it fall to the deck like shed skin.

“Aren’t you—” Theo starts, but the rest is lost as Ana launches herself off the bench and over the rail—no tank, no fins, no dive computer—just the air burning in her lungs.

The water is dark, but she follows instinct. The pain when the skin at her neck slits itself open is barely noticeable this time. She remembers holding her mama’s hand as they crowded onto the ship. She carries that pain with her as she goes deeper. She carries the pain of an ill-made child, too, a pawn in a power struggle, despised and afraid. She winds them both around her like armor, and she doesn’t feel the cold.

A warning spike of fear makes her jerk to the side. A spear tears her dive suit, just missing her skin. Cold water rushes in, and she whips around, faster than human limbs should allow. The spear is polished bone; the creature that wields it is nothing human. The torso is like a man’s, the cheekbones angled hard, eyes flat black, sloping skull giving way to thrashing tendrils like a nest of snakes. Needle teeth part with the familiar hiss, traitor .

She grabs the knife from her dive belt, and when the creature lunges again, she slashes its forearm. A shriek of pain, then an elbow driven in her face. Her nose gives with a sickening crunch. Blood clouds the water and pain blooms behind her eyes. Her fingers open, losing the knife. Through the haze, another figure appears. She is snake-long, and there are symbols cut into her blue-gray skin. The magician.

Ana feels the bruises, the cuts her father—the prince’s father—never saw. Hears the taunts and the threats and they blend with her own memories of the terrible sound of the ship being torn apart, and the magician’s priests chanting, and the needle going in and out of her skin.

No.

Ana becomes inky blackness, unfolding. She opens an infinity of mouths. Ill-made as she is, she’s more like her father than anyone knows. She is liquid smoke poured through the water; she is pain, and she is hunger.

Blue-flame eyes meet the magician’s. Then a dozen, dozen, dozen more open all over her body, every shape, every color, every size. And they see. Together, her rage and the prince’s fear are stronger than the magician’s tattoos and spells. The magician’s flat black gaze goes from triumph to fear. She tries to turn away, but Ana is faster. She thinks of the men on the boat, and the man in the alleyway, and even Zarah. She lashes out in every direction at once, catching the magician, and this time, she doesn’t hold back. She gives the prince free rein; together, they bite and rip and tear.

Ana is alone. Shreds of her dive suit drift around her, but not even scraps of her attackers remain. She should be cold, but she’s not. She should be afraid, but she’s not. Ana swims.

Figures pace her, keeping their distance. They’ve seen what she is, not the frightened, whipped princeling anymore. She is her father’s son, come home, and so much more. It is time to wake the King from his slumber.

She passes carved statues whose blind eyes are taller than her body. There are bones, the carcasses of sea creatures from the beginning of time. She feels the beating heart of the kingdom, its sluggish black pulse. Her father. Home. She holds the word like a stone on her tongue. She passes through a carved archway so wide she can’t see its edges. Home.

She opens her mouth. The voice that emerges is and is not hers. It has a thousand tongues, all of them belonging to dead men, save her own. She uses all of them to push out words like drowned coastlines and the shifting of tectonic plates.

WE ARE :::: WE ARE HOME.

Something stirs in the dark. It is not one thing, it is everything. It is every drowned ship since the beginning of time, shattered boards, torn sails, rotting corpses. It is the hungry maw of ocean trenches, every lightless abyss, every dead spot on the map where things disappear. It is lighthouse eyes, and foghorn voice, and the crash of the tide.

CHILD.

A word for her and for the thing inside of her. Eyes open, so many of them, surrounding her. She is seen, utterly and completely, then they blink closed.

Everything leaves her in a rush, a single thread of her pain and the prince’s, braided as one. It is pulled from her, and she gives it willingly, every cut, every blow, the needle tattooing her skin, the tanks, her mama, the rage.

And when she’s hollow, the King Under the Waves holds her without holding her, considers her with eyes sealed closed, even as he still dreams. In the stillness around her, there is a question.

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

She know the prince’s answer— unmake me.

But what does she want? The magician is destroyed, but her cult is still out there. Even now, they are searching for her, thinking they can control her, make her into the weapon the magician promised long ago. The prince may want unmaking, but Ana wants to live.

And just like that, the thought is plucked from her mind. All around her, the King Under the Waves unfolds. She feels the prince pulled from her, an ache like a lost tooth, part of her ripped away, but in the absence, she is remade.