Robin McKinley - Water

There were old wrecks littered around the mountain, but Ailsa had never seen floating ships before, except in books.

White smoke puffed from the bows of the pursuer. Thunder rolled across the water. The shot fell wide. They did not see the splash. On the after-deck of the fleeing ship, sailors waited beside two small cannon, four to each gun. Another boom, and a splash astern and to starboard.

“Why do you not fire back?” said the woman. “And why so many of you? Are you not needed to sail the ship?”

One of the sailors answered.

“We haven’t the range with these popguns, my lady. We’ll fire as soon as our shot will reach them. Our best hope is to dismast her, and for that we must handle our guns as well as we’re able—two of us to lay and haul back after the recoil, one to swab out and load, and one to carry powder.”

“My lord and I can at least carry powder. It will be better than waiting. Show us.”

As they reached the companionway, the first shot struck. They felt the small boat’s timbers jar with the impact, somewhere aft, low down.

They followed their guide on into the dark.

Ailsa put Carn onto a lead rope and floated herself up to a little behind the crest of a wave, with only the top half of her head clear of the water. When that wave carried her astern, she dived and repositioned herself. Carn circled impatiently below her, but dutifully kept the lead rope just slack.

It took her a while to see, and then to understand, what the two ships were doing. Her eyes were lensed and shaped for underwater vision, and too dazzled by sunlight to pick out any detail. At first all she could be sure of was the two tall ships, the leading one bright, the other larger and more grim. They were making the thunder, and with it sent out white stuff like clouds, which rolled away on the wind. Then she heard a crash and a cry and the smaller ship seemed to stagger for a moment in its course. Squinting beneath half-closed lids, she saw airfolk at the front of the larger ship working some sort of dark pipe from which the thunder and the smoke emerged. And yes, the airfolk at the back of the small ship were doing the same, making a thinner boom, with less of the cloudy stuff. Ailsa realised that the airfolk were using the pipes to throw things at each other, not darts or spears, which were the merfolk’s weapons, but dark balls which they crammed into the pipes between booms.

A heavier crash, and cries of many voices. The smaller ship staggered, swung sideways, wallowed. Part of the towering white fins that seemed to drive it were twisted away, falling, collapsing. The other ship came surging on with a mass of airfolk gathered at its front. Sunlight flashed off weapons. There was a louder crash, bellows, screams, fighting. She watched, amazed and distressed, until two figures appeared at the front of the stricken ship, one white and glittering like sunlit spray, the other dark and tall. The fight continued, with the attackers driving forward. Sharp whipping cracks rapped out amid the yells. The white figure—Ailsa, unthinking, had drifted herself near enough to see that it was a woman—turned her head, watched the fight for a moment, turned back and spoke.

“It is time to go,” she said softly.

She had let her green cloak fall and stood at the rail in the dress that had been stitched for her marriage, though not to this man. Ten thousand seed pearls patterned its surface, and on it she had pinned every jewel she had brought, and they were many, for she was a king’s daughter. The sun dazzled off her as if she had been white sea foam. On her cheek was a smoky burn, the back-flash from a pistol. The ship lurched and wallowed. The yells neared as the pirates started to force the companionway to the foredeck.

He flung his sword out to sea and with brisk fingers unbuckled his sword-belt. He grasped a stay, climbed, balanced on the heaving rail and helped her up to stand beside him. She laid her body against his, passed the belt around their waists and fastened it tight. The empty scabbard dangled by her side.

“I have brought you to this,” she said, putting her arms around his neck. “It was all my doing. You had the whole world before you.”

He bowed his head.

“My world is in your arms,” he said.

The pirates erupted onto the foredeck and rushed towards them, but he clasped her to him and leapt clear. They hit the water with a glittering splash, and at once the weight of his armour carried them under. Her dark hair streamed above them as they sank, mixed with the pearl-like bubbles of their breath.

Ailsa saw the sword arc through the air, dived and was already swimming towards it as it splashed into the downslope of the next wave. She lashed with her tail and caught it not three lengths under. When she rose, the white figure and the black were poised on the rail at the very edge of the ship. A man and a woman. Lovers. Their pose and gestures signalled love. With one hand the man gripped the rope that rose beside him and with the other steadied the woman while she bound some kind of strap around their waists. She put her arms round his neck and spoke. He bowed his head to hers and answered. Time stopped.

The waves stood still, the spume hung brilliant in the air, the wisps of cloud-stuff remaining from the fight hovered motionless, and Ailsa’s own heart paused between beat and beat. The lenses of her eyes seemed to adjust so that she could see every detail with diamond clarity.

And then they leapt, and the splash of their entry sparkled in the sunlight, while the pirates gathered with yells of anger to the rail and gazed down at the spreading circle of foam.

The moment held Ailsa in its trance. She had no need to try to understand what had happened. The moment was all that mattered, with its focussed brilliance and beauty, as if forces, whole lives, had been gathered into it from before-time and after-time, the way that light is gathered into a drop of spume or a jewel. They had made it so, in and for each other, choosing to leap, choosing to die. . . . Yes, die. Ailsa knew that airfolk could not live long in water, any more than she could in air.

The thought broke the trance. If she was quick, perhaps they did not have to die. She dived, twitching the lead rope as she lashed herself downward. Almost at once Carn was beside her, positioned so that she could grasp the hand-grip. Still swimming, she slid the sword under the centre-strap, laid her body against his and flicked him into full surge while she loose-rode him down.

But blue-fin, like merfolk, are creatures of the upper layers of ocean. The wild ones never enter the sunless underdeeps. The green-gold light changed through heavier green towards full dark in which they would see nothing at all. Carn tried to level out, and even with the leverage of the harness it was an effort to force him on down. She was fighting to hold course when she saw the lovers, right at the edge of her dwindling sphere of vision.

Their lips were on each other’s lips as the darkness took them.

“There!” she gasped. And Carn had seen them too, knew what he was here for, and drove on down. The water darkened. The woman’s dress was a shadowy glimmer, almost in reach. A layer of deadly chill slid over Ailsa. Such layers exist in all deep oceans, and the Grand Gulf was deep beyond knowledge. The merfolk call these layers limits, and do not willingly go beyond them.

Now Ailsa could see the lovers no more. She loosed one hand from the grip, reached, groped, touched something narrow and hard, clutched it. The sudden weight loosed her other hand from the grip. She swirled and lashed upward, dragging the weight with her. Terror sluiced through her.