She held the infant close.
“Jode,” she whispered. Her tears spilled black, and gleamed copper around him in his light. The baby smiled.
Gryshen clutched him, burying her face into the top of his head, kissing his curls. She closed her eyes tightly, and felt him change into something else.
It was larger than the Great Pearl.
She opened her eyes, and floating just above her, resting barely on the palms of her open hands, was the most enormous pearl she had ever seen. It glittered like the sunlight on a wave.
She couldn’t quite feel the object itself—it was like grasping a shadow—but its presence beyond vision was clear in the charge running through her fingertips and up and down her outstretched arms. It pinched and popped, and when she couldn’t see the pearl anymore, the sensation didn’t stop. Gryshen could feel the bursts around her body, like tiny geysers shooting off in her bloodstream, piercing her bones. Gryshen waved her fingers in the water, seeking out the pearl. She whirled around to face the shell throne once more. There it sat, resting, like it was just born, like it was in the beginning of a legend. It multiplied into shell cradles encircling the cavern floor, producing their own glow.
“You’re the First Ones,” Gryshen thought, or signaled. She couldn’t be sure. “Why are you here now?”
The glow from the shells seemed to jump out and in, swimming around like the pictures on the walls.
“Just coming home.” That single voice answered again. “Like you.”
Gryshen stared. “But why? Why now?” The glowing orbs shifted into tails, ghostly babes chasing each other in the darkness, twirling around her. “Coming home for what? Forgiveness? Protection?” she pressed, desperate for a reply as she saw them swimming away.
Only murmuring streams of “yes, yes” followed.
The light from the lamp came in sparks that matched the pulses in her body, and in flashes it lit her and the great white sphere before her on its throne.
“What protection? The pearl is nothing,” she now signaled to it, hoping for clearer answers. She couldn’t help but shudder as she spoke what would have been blasphemy only days ago. “It’s just a story!” she barked at the glimmering orb. Water whooshed in her ears, rocking her. The lantern shone in irregular bursts.
A story that’s been told wrong. The sound echoed in her mind.
I don’t understand.
The truth has many versions.
Gryshen smiled as she imagined Jode’s response. “Oh, well that helps. Hugely. Thanks.”
The stream of signal continued. He’s with you. We all are.
She reached to touch the giant pearl again, feeling nothing solid, only a pulling charge. Gryshen swam to it, and quickly following were the gleaming babe swimmers. Gryshen watched, open mouthed, as they were absorbed into the pearl, one by one.
A last gasp of blue seemed to send the whole cavern alight, and the golden crown on the far wall was mirrored in the glass-like surface of the gleaming globe. The popping grew more frequent.
Gryshen gasped, sucking in more water. A jagged surge of lightning rippled through her tail as she caught the image reflected before her. She reached out her fingers to touch the face looking back.
Her face, with the crown of Mother sitting perfectly atop it.
Her body seemed to be electrified, and then everything went out.
“I’m getting Jode’s body. I need to tell someone else about him. Before I tell them all,” Gryshen answered Bravis’s questions in a current as she shot out the sacred cavern’s opening, where he was waiting, and moved back toward their encampment.
“Are you going to tell me what just happened? It looked like a sky storm in there, and I called to you, but you wouldn’t answer. I finally went in, and all was dark.”
“And I found your hand even in pitch darkness.” Gryshen reached back, and grasped his hand again.
Gryshen did not go ungrateful that Bravis trusted her enough to let her be. When she was ready to speak more, she would.
Together they hoisted the net, ignoring the questioning eyes of their hobbled crew. Even if some of their group was unsure about Gryshen, Bravis had their trust, and so they let it be, too.
Soundlessly, they pressed on, save for the whooshing of their bodies and Jode in his net. Gryshen motioned for them to swim past her lookout, straight to the rocks on the edge of the small island. She pressed the top of her head above water, darting her eyes around the gloomy, barren place.
It was the far side, where she had first spoken with her mother. Or rather, shared tea with a stranger, in what seemed like a long-ago and faraway place.
“I don’t see her,” Gryshen said to Bravis as he dared to rest his own gaze upon the surface.
“Does she have a name you call her?”
Chapter 22
It looked like rain. The sound of waves crashing against the rocks sang their familiar melody, and Gryshen called out their tune, and waited. The wind sliced past her ears as she heard the sound of rocks tumbling.
The woman appeared, breathless, at the edge of the cliff, clutching sun-bleached linen like a flag of surrender.
The woman gasped when her eyes fell on Bravis, but seemed to relax at Gryshen’s nod. Gryshen watched as she glanced backward for a moment, before seeming to fly down the stone path to where the she lay, waiting for something the woman longed to give her, her black hair spilling over the coal rock.
“Gislunn.” The woman spoke the landkeeper version of her name aloud, as if it had the power to lift the face of the girl who bore it. And it did. Gryshen lifted her head, the sun escaped the clouds for a moment, and for this instant in time, a shine washed over the mother who couldn’t comfort her child, the daughter who was an endless wound, the dead brother in the net, and the advisor who had nothing left to say.
The sea calmed. The glow lit up the clean linen, and the woman draped it around her daughter, holding her. Gryshen watched her carefully. Watched her see the net. The body. The face. Watched recognition splash over her, the familiar features of her love reflected in the dead iloray.
The woman smoothed the wet strands away from Gryshen’s trembling face. Bravis held fast to the other side of the net with one hand, the other gripping the edge of shoreline.
“I needed you to see him.” Gryshen’s voice was steady, but her eyes began to well in spite of herself. The blast of cold air dried them quickly. The gales of wind took over, as if they could sweep her brother up and carry him away on their current. She repeated herself. “I needed you to see him.”
The woman nodded, and held her close, as if she understood. Gryshen lay against her, hearing the thud of her heartbeat drum against a beat of thunder in the distance.
Gryshen held Jode’s face in her ashen hands. Then she gently pressed the woman’s warm fingers against his cheeks, then against her own.
“Brother.” She barked the word out, unsure of intonation. But the woman didn’t need her to say it properly. She knew. She leaned over and kissed the bloated dark cheeks of the boy, the other child, and she held him and his living sister in her own pale arms. She took her shawl, her braid whipping loose in the wind, and she cradled Jode in it, kissing him once more.
Bravis remained steady witness. The thunder crept closer, but for some time it just matched this rhythm, this beating in their hearts, this clutching and cradling, kind words and whispers silenced by the sea, but clear to the senses. The rain came, and the woman stayed.