‘I tried! I tried!’ it wailed as it flailed wildly with one arm and clutched at its blossoming wounds with another. ‘Mother, I tried! But he won’t listen! He’s hurting me! It hurts!’
‘STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!’ the voice shrieked, pounding on his skull with fiery fists and sending waves of burning pain through his head.
He clung to the beast for as long as he could, despite the pain, but it took only another breath for him to feel the grasping water again. When he could see through the pain, he saw the deck vanished completely, swallowed by the rising tide. The frogmen stood calmly, their black eyes fixed on him as their heads slowly slipped beneath the water, glittering like onyxes even as their white flesh disappeared.
‘Survive,’ the voice whispered frigidly.
Between the two voices, there was no room in his head for contemplation about how infeasible such a command was quickly becoming. There was no room left for anything but a compulsion that pulled his eyes to the side, to the sole wooden salvation.
Blackened and splintering as it might have been, the sloping mast reached out like a pleading hand, the ship’s last, desperate attempt to keep above water. Fleeting as any salvation might have been, Lenk leapt for it anyway, leaving his demonic mount to sink beneath the waves.
It was far away, only growing smaller as it continued to slide under the water. He swam in a violent frenzy, kicking up froth as he struggled to bite back the pain in his shoulder and hold onto his sword as he did. Still, beneath his body, he could feel the presence of eyes staring, arms reaching.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something. A soft, blue light pulsing beneath the waves in a trio of azure heartbeats moved steadily towards him. Through the waves, through the pain, he could hear the whispers as they drew closer.
‘Noescapenoescapenoescapenoescape …’
‘Mercyathandmercyisheremercyforall …’
‘SheknowsSheseesShesympathisesgiveingiveingiveingivein giveingivein …’
‘No!’ the voice and he spoke as one as he found the mast and pulled himself out of the water, tumbling and facing the black water below.
The Abysmyth came rising up, its white eyes wide and stark in the gloom as it crept out, black claw glistening, reaching out of the water. He swung at it, the sword heavier in his hand than it had been, the pain in his limbs more pronounced. The beast accepted the blow, gurgling from below as it hauled the rest of its body onto the mast as he scrambled backwards.
The frogmen behind it moved with a similar inevitable purpose, staring at the blood-slick blade that had already seen its brethren, its masters spilt upon salt, without fear. They boiled up behind the Abysmyth, climbing over its body, onto the mast, reaching their webbed hands for Lenk.
He could feel the fear in his eyes, if not his head. He could see his wide stare reflected in the blade’s face. He could feel the blood seeping out of his shoulder, the fire searing his skull. What he couldn’t feel was the numbness, the callous cold that had swept over him and seized control before and delivered him. The voice was shrieking still, but it was faint, fading, disappearing behind a veil of fire and drowning in a sea of darkness.
He was alone. Abandoned.
‘Your song is ending, lamb,’ the Abysmyth croaked, reaching for him once again. ‘Fleeting sounds and errant voices offer no sanctuary. Things made of paper flesh and wooden bones provide no redemption.’
‘Forsakenforsakenforsaken …’
‘Abandonedabandonedabandoned …’
‘Noonenothingnobodyleftleftleft …’
‘But Mother hears you,’ the Abysmyth said, its eyes growing wider at the mention. ‘Mother wishes you to hear Her, to know what we know, to feel what we feel. Let Her speak. Let the pain end. Let the sinful thought end.’ Its claw reached out not to seize, but to offer, to beckon. ‘Let yourself hear.’
‘I … no …’ For lack of thought to do anything else, for lack of voice to say anything better, he shook his burning head. ‘I can’t … I can’t.’
‘Nolongeryourchoice …’
‘Nolongeranychoice …’
‘Letushelpyou …’
He heard the water rip apart beneath him, an eruption of froth at his back. He managed to see them in glimpses: soft lips within gaping needle jaws, bulging black eyes set in bulbous grey heads, long grey stalks of flesh pulsing with soft blue light. He managed to feel them as they wrapped scrawny grey claws around him, coiled eel-like tails about him, pressed withered breasts against his body.
He managed to scream only once before the mast shattered under their weight and they pulled him below.
Drowning wasn’t so bad.
Lenk absently wondered what the fuss was all about, really, as he continued to drift, pulled lower by liquid hands. The water was not as cold as it looked, enveloping him in a gentle warmth. It wasn’t as dark as he had suspected it would be, either. The creatures saw to that.
To call them ‘demons’ seemed a little insulting. Demons were twisted beings, foul things that found the natural world intolerable. These creatures, circling the waters far above him, their azure lights forming a bright halo, did not look so twisted. They were emaciated, true, with their bulbous heads at odds with their bony torsos, their slithering eel tails in place of legs. Below the surface of the water, though, they looked delicate instead of underfed, graceful instead of writhing.
And their whispering had become song.
He could hear it more clearly the deeper he drifted: lilting, resonating, wordless songs that carried through water and skin, seeping into him. They sang everything at once, lullabies and dirges, love and agony. It was a familiar song, one he had heard before. But he could not think of where, could not think of anything. With the song in his ears, there was no room left for any other sound. He found comfort in that. He found peace in the deep.
So much so that he didn’t know he shouldn’t be able to breathe.
That didn’t seem so important, though. There was no fear in the warm, welcoming depths, for drowning or for the corpses that sank around him. Down here, the anger was erased from the netherlings’ long faces, their eyes open and tranquil as they sank softly, shards of the ship drifting around them like unassembled coffins. Down here, the creatures that swam around him, with their black eyes and white skins, didn’t seem so menacing.
Down here, for the first time in weeks, he felt no fear.
‘Enjoying yourself?’
The voices came from nowhere, clear as the water itself. He caught a glimpse in the shadows surrounding him as something swam at the edges of the halo of light. A grey hide shifted, an axe-like fin tail swept through the water, manes of copper and black wafted like kelp in the water.
He remembered the Deepshriek.
She appeared. No, he reminded himself, it’s not a she. Rather, a face appeared, a soft and milk-white oval, framed by long and silky hair the colour of fire. Its eyes were golden and glittering above soft lips set in a frown. It drifted closer to Lenk and he saw the rest of it, the long grey stalk that served as its body snaking into the darkness.
Another head emerged, black hair lost in shadow, attached to an identical stalk. They circled him, as the hulking grey-skinned fish that the stalks crowned circled him. There was another stalk, hanging limp and bereft of a head. He remembered there had been another head. He remembered taking it.
He remembered the Deepshriek wanted to kill him for that.
That thought prompted the realisation of his lungs working. That realisation prompted his question.
‘Why am I alive?’