“The Great Lighthouse?” He sneers at me, but there is a light in his eye that tells me I’ve piqued his interest. “Better to ask for the soul of your dead husband back.”
And I do not know if it is his words that trigger it, but that night I dream of Oke drowning with no one to save him. I leap into the inky water, but when I reach for him, there is nothing to be found but a dull, festering ache.
When I wake, the dream is still with me and I realize the ache I felt is familiar. It is that infection I’ve been sensing in the sea that I do not wish to explore.
I go about my work that day pretending I don’t know what I’m going to do, but when evening comes, I can no longer deny it. I must know. I must know if Markanos told the truth and Oke yet lives in some form or another. I must know if his life is connected to that dreadful pain and sorrow I feel at the center of the sea. And if it is, then I must beg him to explain to me how to drag his Lighthouse up from the depths. I must know if there is any other way than that ridiculous list of impossible tasks. And I must do it now before I make a greater mess of things than I have already.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Iheard a story once of a woman who wed a man who visited her only at night. She was forbidden to see his face, which was no matter since he only attended her in the dark. The man was the most winsome of lovers and one day the woman awoke to realize she had fallen in love with him. How could she be in love with a man whose face she did not know? Fearing he may be a monster, she brought to bed with her a tiny mirror, and when her husband slept, she angled the mirror to catch the light of the moon and shine it on his face. He was beautiful indeed—so beautiful that it broke her heart. And it broke his, too, for he opened his eyes, saw her betrayal, and immediately turned into a gull and flew away squawking, leaving her only a feather to remember him by. And there the story ended with broken hearts and some god-man off scavenging fish guts along the shore.
That story is different than mine, for I am not in love with Okeanos and no one has ripped him from my arms but myself. And yet, it echoes in the same way, for I looked to see the monster and found beauty instead. Or perhaps I did find a monster when I looked for him… only that monster was me.
I wear the belted tunic and the pearls. I never feel completely safe taking the pearls off anymore, and the tunic will give me free movement if this turns out to be like the encounter with the sea monster. I do not think that Oke would have the witlessness to turn into a gull, but I could very well see him as a sea monster intent on cracking every rib in my possession. I bring with me the trident with which I killed the last sea monster. It is the only weapon I have, but more than that, it is a symbol to myself that I can do some things, still.
The walk down to the shore feels long and heavy as if I already know what I will find when I travel to the painful miasma I feel in the center of my sea.
I don’t take the boat. I can’t explain why. I simply have a wrenching feeling that whatever I find might require quick flight, and besides, I feel safer with the arms of the sea wrapped around me. I feel more whole when I can move with its every current. More real in its briny depths.
I step into the waves. They’re shockingly peaceful today, painted in lacy white foam on the edge of dappled green water. Like his eyes, I think, when I was murdering him. But I won’t dwell on that now.
I slip into the water and I hardly need turn my hand anymore to move where I wish. I am the sea and the sea is me. I think of the misery and darkness and churning pain I’ve been feeling somewhere out there in the sea like an itch on my back, and then suddenly we are there and I am bucking against a sensation like a knife down my throat.
Whatever I perceived from afar is magnified here. While at first it had felt like a patch of darkness, and then later like a canker with something rotten within it, now I have become certain that a terrible evil is being spun out in that place. It taints my waters and clouds my power with something akin to pain. I have a feeling I know what it is and the thought makes my stomach clench and twist. But if I am to address it, then I must go to the source.
I have arrived underwater. The dark roots of a small island are before me and here the sea is churned black with activity. Fish of a hundred colors and shapes dart in and out of the bubble-cloaked shadows. I make out the undulating body of a ray, the stinger of a jellyfish, the smooth fin of a shark—they’re such a tangle that I can hardly pick out one creature from another. But there are hundreds here and they are feeding on something dangling from the surface.
I would have to muscle through a wall of fish to see what they are feasting upon. I will take a more oblique approach and see if I can observe without being observed in turn.
I clamber up the backside of the island. It is a small island—hardly bigger than a large fishing sloop. To one side of it, a massive anchor juts out from the rock at a very odd angle. Oneof its arms is swallowed entirely by the black rock as if it was lowered into hot lava, sealed in its embrace, and then jetted up on a stream of hot rock to form this island. The anchor bears a crossbar that is thick with a patina of rust, shellfish, and barnacles. Washed around it are massive clumps of kelp rotting in the sun while birds stand in a solemn line along the anchor’s crossbar like witnesses before an execution.
But it is not the anchor that draws me, trembling, toward it, but the man lashed to it, hands above his head, rings around his wrists with rivets placed right through the flesh of them so he might not move his hands at all from where they are pinned to the anchor. His legs dangle waist-deep in the thrashing water and I see now what has driven the fish to such frenzy. They feast upon him as they ought only feast upon the dead.
But of course heisdead.
I should know, since I am the one who killed him.
In the wound on his thigh, fat barnacles have taken up residence, peeking through the gaping flesh. I look on him aghast, trembling all over. My trident falls to the rock, clattering and then slipping into the waves, but I find that I cannot care.
He looks up at the sound, and our eyes meet with a clash. In his is a spark so very alive, so very powerful, that though he is the one bound and captive, I am the one with the sudden spark of fear in her inmost heart.
“You live,” I gasp, barely able to draw a new breath.
His face is a thunderhead. “I mislike this, wife.”
Understatement. How very… godlike of him. My fingers start to tremble.
“How are you alive? I felt you quiver and die by my own hand.”
He’s frowning at me, his eyes running all over my exposed body. In his worn tunic, there’s quite a lot of it to see.
“You are bruised and wounded,” he says, fixated on my skin.
I look down. I hadn’t even noticed the bruises. And he’s right. There’s a gash I left unbandaged on my leg. His gaze darts up to mine, questioning.
“You must be in relentless pain,” I say, shuddering at the cloud of red in the water. It is his flesh the sea creatures feast on, but he is stoic and hard on the surface, his face a mask he wears in front of whatever he feels.
“The bruises,” he presses. “Where did they come from? Has someone assaulted you?”
