Robin McKinley - Water

“You will remember nursery stories about the Kraken,” she said. “The unbelievably huge creature that will at the end of time arise from the sea floor and destroy the world. Your reasons have told you that there can be no such life form, and who knows the doom of the world? But there are fish that live far below the limit, fish whose ancestors in remote time made their way down into those lightless depths, and when they did so found that there was something already there, not of the same creation as sea-things and air-things, something whose nature is pure cold, pure dark, something utterly other. That is what fish know, in their small-brained way. They cannot put the knowledge into pictures or words, but it is still there, in their blood. It is in your blood too, and mine, and perhaps we can dimly sense it. Perhaps it is from this faint memory that we have constructed the nursery tale of the Kraken. And it is perhaps through that remnant of knowledge in her blood that the princess, and the huntsmen too, sensed the movement of something vast and strange in the deeps below them.”

“Others, myself among them, have crossed the limit and returned,” said the king. “We did not wake this creature. Why should the princess have done so?”

“She has told us she feels it was waiting for these airfolk to fall into its realm,” said Hormos. “But she took them away, and now it is seeking for them. As I said, I would trust her feeling. It comes from the knowledge in her blood.”

Another Councillor caught the king’s eye, received his nod and rose.

“Could this thing actually destroy the world?” he asked.

The Royal Archivist sought permission and rose.

“Does anyone remember Yellowreef?” he wheezed. “It’s a legend, of course, but some authorities believe there’s history behind it. It was in West Ocean, a mountain city much like ours. The people there found a lode of emeralds, far down, near the limit, and mined them. They went down and down, making themselves a sort of armour to endure the pressure and the cold, until something came from even deeper and took the mountain in its grip and shook it so that it crumbled apart and the merfolk could live there no more.”

Nobody spoke. In the silence Ailsa felt the crystal pillar shudder again beneath her palm. She caught her father’s eye and knew that he had felt the same. She raised her hand for permission to speak. He nodded. She rose.

“Yes, we must take them back,” she said. “Or it will shake the mountain to pieces like it did Yellowreef.”

“But they still live,” said the king. “They are very different from us, but they are people nonetheless, and under the protection of our laws. I could not send any of our own people to such a death without their consent.”

“They’ve chosen already,” said Ailsa. “I saw them do it. And it’s the Kraken who’s keeping them alive. It’s got to be. It wants them alive. Perhaps it can’t keep them alive for ever.”

“Very well,” said the king. “The Council must decide. Before we vote, I will tell you that while I have been here I have twice felt this pillar shake beneath my hand, and I think my daughter has felt the same. I have never known it do so before. Now it seems to me that we have only two choices. We cannot simply keep them here. If they wake, they will die. So either we can take them back to where my daughter saw them sink, or we can tow them to some shore and strand them in air, to live or die as their own fate falls. Will those in favour of the former course please rise?”

It was close. By only four votes the Council decided to take the lovers back to where the Kraken, perhaps, waited for them.

Their dreams were darker, colder, slower yet. There was death at the edge of them.

They did the lovers full honour, schooling out as if for a royal funeral, the whole court, formally jewelled, to the sound of sad music. By now few of the merfolk had any doubt that they were doing what they must. Three times in the night the mountain had shaken so that all had felt it. Scouts reported that the limit had risen yet further up the slopes.

Ailsa rode near the front, knowing where she had gone yesterday. Carn was still too spent for work, so she had an elderly quiet blue-fin from the royal stables. The lovers lay on sleds weighted with boulders and buoyed with bladders so that they would not sink until they were needed to. Master Nostocal rode beside them, and took their pulses at intervals. He had reported that morning that their heartbeats were slower and weaker than before, and was afraid that whatever was keeping them alive was losing its ability to do so.

For a while, with so many people around her, Ailsa was not sure that she could sense the same immense mass of cold and dark that she had felt yesterday, tracking her across the sea bed. But even her stolid old animal was nervous, and the huntsmen riding scout on the flanks said they thought it was there. Slowly she began to feel more sure, and she knew for certain when the great tide below came to a halt.

“This is the place,” she said.

They did not doubt her. They could tell, too.

The music changed. The merfolk gathered round the sleds and held them in position while the air was released from the bladders. Ailsa, full of grief at what she accepted must be done, was watching the stream of silvery bubbles shoot towards the wave-roof when a cold, dark thought slid into her mind. Not, this time, a question. A command.

“It wants me too,” she said.

“No,” said the king.

“I must go with them, or it will break the mountain.”

“No, I will go,” cried someone. Others joined, until the king raised his hand for silence.

“It’s got to be me,” said Ailsa.

He stared at her, and away, and bowed his head.

“Hold the sleds there,” he said, and took her to one side.

“You are certain of this?” he said.

“Yes. It told me. As if it had spoken.”

“Will you come back?”

“It didn’t say.”

Hard lines creased his face. This was how he had looked at her mother’s funeral.

“Very well,” he said.

She raised her hands to remove her diadem. To do the lovers honour, she had put on the same jewels as the night before, but there was no point in taking them with her. If she did not come back, her cousin Porphyry would become Prince. He should have them, for his wife when he married.

“No, wear them,” said her father. “You must go as what you are, a king’s daughter.”

They went back to where the sleds were waiting. Ailsa took the middle of the rope that joined them, raised her forehead for her father’s kiss, and nodded. The merfolk loosed their hold and the weight of the boulders carried her down. The light faded, more slowly than when Carn had dived at full surge. Ailsa was only vaguely afraid. The terror she should have felt was somehow numbed, like a pain being kept at bay by one of Master Nostocal’s drugs. She could not guess what the Kraken wanted with her. Perhaps it would keep her in some strange half death, like that of the lovers, in its kingdom of dark and cold. The massive pressure of water closed around her. Light died. It became dark as night, dark as a starless midnight, darker than any night. With a plunge of cold she felt the limit pass.

Beyond it waited the Kraken.

Ailsa was aware of it in her mind, not through her bodily senses. In her mind she could feel the immeasurable length of it on either side of her, its immeasurable depth below, dark beyond black, cold beyond ice. It told her to let go of the rope. In her mind she saw the tendrils of dark that wreathed from it and took the lovers, playing over their bodies. But now there was light, light seen with her eyes, a dazzling spark as one of the tendrils lifted a jewel from the woman’s dress. The light blazed from the jewel as the tendril turned it this way and that, and then vanished as the Kraken took it into itself.