Through the Whirlpool - Book I in the Jewel Fish Chronicles Page 5

  Now very dry… hot, scorching…

  The vision had changed once more, showing him a dry desert, scorched and seared by heat. This was not like the desert he knew to the north, where low scrub and age-worn escarpments melded together in arid harmony. This dead dryness seemed to scream in the agony of its lifelessness, as if whatever growth it might once have had had been torn unnaturally from its back. In the middle was a trudging figure. A single line of footprints trailed away behind to the far horizon. Kreh-ursh glided closer on the wings of his trance. The figure stumbled, near death, parched with thirst. Then Kreh-ursh was almost alongside, and he was able to see that it was a young man, emaciated, only a few years older than himself. The skin of his face was burnt and parched, his clothes ragged and torn. The stranger raised his eyes—red, grit-filled—turning his face toward him… It could not be… It was himself! As the vision dissolved, his alter ego fell face forward in the sand and lay unmoving…

  Describe.

  …No!

  He struggled with every scrap of willpower. Taashou did not insist. Then Kreh-ursh was fighting to be free of the oppressive smoke clouds that held him captive. He lashed out at Taashou with his mind. She did not strike back, but suddenly he was aware of the fire before him on the beach, the cold sand. The fire’s smoke, normal and natural, swirled upwards into the night sky, and darkness eclipsed his inner sight. He was exhausted. Abruptly aware of the long day, the lack of food, and his own emotional strain, he could not last any longer. He felt himself sag, noted Taashou’s arms around him, one hand massaging his temples, pressing insistently on a certain point. Then he was slipping toward sleep, wondering why Taashou had insisted on seeing into his visions… Is that normal? They were his own… secret… no other candidate had ever revealed… How many different scenes! Questions whirled in his brain, unresolved, but he was already entering a pleasantly dark, dreamless realm.

  He did not see how Taashou caught him as he fell unconscious toward the fire, how she laid him gently on his sleeping mat within the fire’s warmth and wrapped him in a blanket. Neither did he see, oblivious in his exhaustion, how she sat for a long time, gazing into the dying fire herself, another thousand unanswered questions flickering in her own dark eyes along with the firelight.

  13. Clouds

  The next day Jade got up early. She went in to see Kyle before breakfast and found her mom there. Her brother was sitting up in bed, and Joan was helping him take some of Dr. Bilges’ pills.

  “They taste awful, Mom! Do I have to?”

  “Come on, Kyle, they’re to make you feel better. Just the three, and then you can have some breakfast.”

  He submitted silently, but immediately after he swallowed began to cough and retch, bringing the pills straight back up. “I can’t, Mom. I don’t want to go back to sleep. The bleeding man...”

  “They won’t put you to sleep. They’re to stop your tummy hurting, dear. What bleeding man?”

  “The man with the bleeding face. He came to save me, but he scares me.”

  “Can I do anything, Mom?”

  Her mother was abrupt, tiredness and worry showing on her face:

  “No! Sorry… Please, could you get us all some breakfast? That would be a help. Now, Kyle, stop talking nonsense and just take these pills, will you?”

  She left them, Kyle now crying, his face a patchwork of red and brown blotches where tears and the sludge from the sea had stained his features. She remembered how he had looked as he began to slip down into that mass under the waves, and a stab of guilt shot through her.

  Hoping to distract herself, she turned on the TV. It was a rerun of the earlier Mauri Cove item on the twenty-four-hour news channel her mom liked. And there onscreen was that flask of multicolored swirl. She froze the image. Was it possible? She was going crazy! But she could feel her frontal lobes beginning to pulse as if a headache were chasing her. That synthetic fuel… it was like her dream, like the swirls of seaweed that had surrounded her in the water. That’s normal, she told herself. We always incorporate bits of reality into our dreams. Yet why should this substance she had never encountered before have such an effect on her?

  An unexpected bright flash from outside drew her toward the window. It was a clear day, yet over the roofs of the line of houses that separated their home from Mauri Cove, a strange storm was brewing. Out to sea, beyond their bay, more clouds than before were stacked up like a huge frozen yogurt cone, yet darker, more sinister. They appeared to revolve in a slow whirl at least a mile wide. All around, the sun still shone… blue sky, summer heat.

  Jade felt an uneasy dread grip her insides. Her face felt hot, yet her limbs were as cold and dead as clay. It was fear. She was too scared to move. But why? They were just clouds. All she could do was stand, gazing out at the summer’s day and that ominous weather pattern. Another flash came, like lightning, from within the churning mass. She waited for more, but there was nothing. While she stood frozen at the window, staring at the sky, an odd thought drifted into her mind: Help this boy… Save your brother...

  What boy? Her brother? She shook her head and stumbled from the window, but found herself staring into the television screen, at that image of sparkling, multicolor flakes suspended in that flask of biofuel. Panting, she looked around at their living room: settee, rugs, cushions, her mother’s overdue library books piled on the coffee table… It broke the spell. What was she thinking?! Breakfast… her mom wanted her to get them breakfast. She went into the kitchen. Patrick had beaten her to it. Waiting on the bench were three bowls of his homemade muesli with chopped fruit and yogurt. Jade grabbed a bowl like a life raft, a solid piece of reality she could grasp onto, to know what was real amid all this craziness. Concentrate on the small things, the normal things. She walked out onto the porch, sat down on its sun-drenched steps. She kept her eyes on the concrete path, shrubs, trees, Patrick’s car in the driveway. Each thing before her seemed to vibrate with some intense energy, as if all its molecules were vibrating, ready to burst out of the very structure that held it together. So the car could become a gas cloud or a tree, the concrete path could turn into a liquid pool before her eyes. Even herself—maybe she did not exist in a solid sense at all. Perhaps she was just dust blown on the breeze? She tried to ignore that, had to, and began eating her breakfast, keeping her eyes fixed on the bowl... Yet it was as if Patrick had chopped ginger into it... Nausea threatened to overwhelm her... Red and yellow peaches seemed to palpitate viscerally against the soft brown wheat flakes and pale yogurt... The passionate purple of the berries began to throb like a heartbeat…

  …hurzjh... faadaw... oh...

  The sun turned black. She was among crashing waves again. Kyle screamed, trapped by the dark sludge... sucked under... downward. The ocean swirled, and he was drawn toward that whirlpool, a maelstrom of dark ooze. Scrabbling for his arms, she felt him slip... begin to sink... Jade was screaming, “Hold on, Kyle! You must hold on!” yet Kyle’s greasy fingers slithered from her own, and the current sucked him away… The whirlpool spun faster... emerald... turquoise… violet... black. Jade was being rushed along too, sucked down, Kyle’s screams around her... And she knew she was heading toward the worst nightmare she could ever have imagined... Then she saw it, watched the treacherous water coiling, twisting, snaking inwards... she was being sucked toward a dark tunnel that vanished deep into the ocean…

  …hurzjh... faadaw... oh...

  14. The Hollow among the Rocks

  Kreh-ursh was awakened by the cold rising from the sand, which felt like rock beneath his sleeping mat. He sat up—body stiff, bones aching from a night spent under the stars. The sight of the fire, now just dead ashes, brought back the evening before. Taashou. Many of the images were muddled. He had questions to ask, but she was gone and had left no sign. In the early morning, with still one sixth part of a tide cycle remaining before sunrise, the beach was cold and gray. Abruptly then, that stumbling figure in the desert came to mind. He shut it out.

  Behind
him the island reared, sinister in the dawn. Its dark face, woven of shadowy vegetation, frowned down at the beach. Birds, just waking, began to screech. In moments the cacophony had reached its full power, but it sounded aggressive, alien. He didn’t feel like beginning sea-nomad-becoming this morning, dreaded penetrating that matted jungle, had no desire to know what further secrets the island might be holding leashed, ready to pounce.

  Yet hunger now attacked him; plus, he was thirsty. He had sand in his hair. It had sifted all through his clothes. He went down to the water and stripped, plunged under the waves. The shock of its chill refreshed him. To dry, he ran back and forth along the beach a few times. Then, squatting next to the dead fire, he nibbled some of the fish from the night before and took a swig of his mother’s potion. Last night’s meer-zjhur tasted bland; eating cold fish was not a great way to break your fast, but the potion refreshed. New energy flowed through his limbs. He rolled his sleeping mat, burying the dead fire under sand, and turned toward the jungle, searching for a way inland. Northward along the shore he wandered, the sand beneath his feet fine and pale, cool on his soles at this early time of the day.

  As he walked, his mind returned to the visions. Given to all aspiring Shahee, his people were divided on where they came from. The shahiroh would not say. Perhaps they offered a glimpse of one’s own personal possibilities, a kind of a guide, or maybe they were just an invention of one’s own mind and hopes. Did the sea callers prompt them? Could these visions really tell the future, or were they just imagined possibilities? Most people would not talk about what they had seen, considering them private and personal. Even his father was reticent:

  “Kreh-ursh, it’s a part of the event, of sea-nomad-becoming, and that is secret. Once you’ve experienced it, you can make up your own mind.”

  That did not help. Was that vision really how he would die—far from the nearest drop of water, thirst slowly reducing him to dust? And what about the srehn-taagaag, or unicorns, the ritual on Kaa-meer-geh and the sea castle in the mountains? What did the scene with the sick child mean? Who, and where, was he? Strangest of all had to be ee-kawg-zjhur, the jewel fish. That is what he cannot understand. Ee-kawg-zjhur is not real. It was part of a children’s story, a mythological being. None of it made sense.

  The beach was small and soon gave way to a jumble of rocks leading out to a promontory. After scrambling over them a little way, he discovered a large, smooth hollow worn in the volcanic rock by ocean that no longer reached so high up the beach. The evening before, in his search for firewood, he had not come this far. It would have been a better place to camp. In the center, somebody—a candidate from an earlier year?—had built a round rock hearth. On one side, a narrow ledge had been carved from the stone and built up with rocks, a kind of sleeping alcove. The whole hollow was sheltered from sea breezes and would provide shade most of the day, except when the sun was at its highest. As surprising as the crude camp’s existence might be, it was logical: Generations of his people had been coming here to complete the sea-nomad-becoming. His father might even have slept here, or any of his grandparents. He decided to camp here if he came back to the beach that night. It had a comforting feel, like an indirect link with home.

  He was about to leave when a movement just beyond the hollow caught his eye. Too late, he realized... Something had thrashed about, then held itself still. He froze, not breathing. What was he thinking blundering about as if this were his own village? Here there were risks. Nothing, no sound came from beyond the hollow. Still, he slipped a knife from his bundle of tools. Edging around the rock wall, trying to find an angle from where he could see, he focused all his senses, but could only hear the rumble and hiss of surf on the reef... crackling jungle behind him. He crept closer. Maybe whatever was there had slithered or crept away. A few paces from the edge of the hollow, he leaned slowly forward, peering beyond the stone ridge that blocked his sight...

  SCHLLICKEAAARRGGHHH!

  A dark shape flew up. A flaming brand tore past his head, singeing his ear. As he threw his weight back, his foot slipped. He struck with the knife, but the blade slid harmlessly. His hand touched hide and feathers as he fell. Head ringing, he rolled. Heat blasted him, scorching the rock where he had lain moments before. Springing up, knife arm out, he feinted sideways. He had to keep moving. Then he saw it… He froze.

  It flew just a few paces and crashed into the far wall, blocking the exit. Glowing yellow eyes observed him. It shuffled, ungainly, blew out more flame. This time he dodged. Trapped together in the hollow among the rocks, Kreh-ursh and the dragon eyed each other warily.

  15. Patrick

  “Jade!”

  She rested on hands and knees. On the step below the porch lay the shards of her muesli bowl: fruit, yogurt, and grains strewn across the driveway. Yet Kyle’s screams kept ringing in her ears. She jumped up and ran into the house. As she entered her brother’s room, his shrieks were cut off by another bout of vomiting. Jade grabbed the basin from the floor and whipped it under his face just as a torrent of deep green erupted from his throat. Joan was holding him, both hands tightly clasped around his body. Kyle kept retching before collapsing exhausted against his pillows. He immediately dropped whimpering into half-sleep.

  “Thank you, Jade,” Joan whispered. “You’d better leave us now.”

  She went out again, tipped the basin down the toilet and flushed it. Yuck. If only she hadn’t let Kyle swim out! What was she thinking letting him stay in the water alone? Why hadn’t she thought?

  On the porch the sky glared at her, but she kept her head down, refusing to look. The clouds seemed to be expanding, a serrated swirling pattern that looked like nothing she’d ever seen. She felt as if she wanted to cry, to curl up in her bed and hide under the eiderdown, hoping this malignant… whatever it was... this evil force would disappear. Crouching down, she collected the remains of her breakfast off the steps, carried it inside, and dumped it in the trash. She would have to confess to the broken bowl, but now was not the time.

  Undecided, she paused beside the stairs. From under the house came the dim whirrrrrr of Patrick’s lathe and the schi-li-li-li-li-lick! of wood chips being sliced off a spinning post. The sound of that two-by-two gradually becoming a table leg was strangely reassuring, a background noise she had known since she was a kid. Its hum seduced. Patrick seemed to be treating this as a normal day. So she went downstairs and spent the morning watching him work.

  Jade and Kyle’s stepdad had lived with them since Kyle was two and Jade was six, though they still saw their real father a couple of weekends a month. Patrick was a wood-turner, spending all day in his workshop under the house, making furniture and ornamental stuff on his lathe. A steady, methodical man, his hands were knotted, rough, and scarred from years of work—chipping, chiseling, sanding, and caressing the wood into the shapes he wanted—looking like a pair of twisted roots themselves. Yet they had a surprising sensitivity, nimble and loving as they stroked or bashed along or against the grain. Patrick was tall, but his bench was low. When he was doing anything away from bench or lathe, he held a hooked stoop, like a heron perched, beak down, examining some life deep in the water below. His hair grew in tufts on each side of his head. His nose was also hooked like a beak, maybe more like a hawk’s than a heron’s, but his eyes were a pale honey color, so pale they were almost yellow, the clear hue of a kingfisher’s gaze. There was something comforting about watching Patrick work. You got a feeling of safety. The world could be blown apart at any moment and you could be certain Patrick would still be there, peacefully carving and turning his beloved wood.

  At ten-thirty, Jade went upstairs and prepared a snack for them all. During the holidays, if their mom was away, Jade made the morning snack and Kyle, the afternoon one. Patrick made lunch. Both Jade and Kyle were thankful for that, since—the truth had to be said: Patrick was a much better cook than their mom, who generally just beat some eggs together, threw them into a pan, burnt them to a crisp blackish brown, and scraped
them onto plates. Jade and Kyle had learned the value of loads of tomato ketchup years ago. Today, Patrick and Jade had morning tea alone, while Joan continued to keep Kyle company. Jade was the first to see the muddy Range Rover turn into the driveway.

  “Dr. Bilges is here!”

  Patrick got up and showed him in, then disappeared down to his workshop. Jade wanted to follow the doctor into Kyle’s room, but he shook his head and closed the door on her. She sat around, and when he and Joan finally came out, he was still giving his verdict:

  “We probably didn’t get all of that stuff when we pumped his stomach last night. That could be what is causing the irritation. Plus, he’s caught a bit of an infection in his lungs—he was far too long in the water—hypothermia, from the cold out there. Deep water’s surprisingly chilly, even in summertime. But he’s a strong boy, and he’s fighting it. I think you’ll find he’ll be as right as rain by tomorrow. But just to be sure, I’ll come again this evening.”

  He paused.

  “It’s important at this point that you do keep a close eye on him. Give me a call on my cell if there’s any change in his condition.”

  The doctor left. Joan went down to report to Patrick. Jade couldn’t seem to occupy herself with any one thing. She started to read, but the words kept sliding away from her, and she had to reread each paragraph. Finally, she tossed her book aside and began playing a game on her cell phone; she got her lowest score yet. Downstairs, she could hear that Patrick was not doing any better. Every so often a black cloud of uncustomary swear words would drift up through the floorboards as her stepfather ruined yet another piece of good wood. He left off work early and came up to make lunch. The sandwiches the three of them sat down to were soggy and bland: overripe tomato slices sliding out of the crust, not enough salt, and mayonnaise that squirted onto the table when you bit into them.