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The fin does not stop swimming.
It has, you think ashamedly, taken you far too long to notice. A poor repayment, after all this beautiful thing, this proud vessel, has done for you. There were distractions, yes. The culmination of a quest, a man’s fate spun upon a loom. Death itself, greeted warmly and with new familiarity. Much has been done, and has yet to be done, in those spaces were pasts and futures meet and mingle. You have not been idle. Never that. But it has, nonetheless, taken you far too long to notice.
It is not alive, this swimming thing that flexes desperately between your palms. The diving bell called the Medusa’s Dream was mangled past all recognition, crushed by depths so dark not even peligin could penetrate, dashed to pieces on the brink where the river beyond death poured joyously out over the ebon abyss. The compass, her beating heart, was crushed to nothing, a mangled mess to be poked at and prodded over by the Dilmun Club. She is dead, as comprehensively as anything down here has ever been dead. Nothing remains of what she once was.
Yet the fin still swims, even as it did on the deck of the Noble Garter. This echo of a yearning, this valiant attempt to fulfil her purpose even beyond death itself. All the way down into the abyss, even as her hull splintered and every other fin she possessed was torn from her one by one by one, this fin still steered, still swam, still fought. You remember it, the faint gleam of brass through the spiderweb of cracks on the porthole, fluttering desperately in the darkness and the beam of the ship’s light. She fought. All the way down, she fought. And all the way out the other side, too.
It’s why you stole it. This fin. That sight of it on the deck, amidst the wreckage, still trying. Still fighting. Still yearning. The rest of her, the living metal that cradled you all the way into the abyss, was so much wreckage, salvage destined for Orchard House and the prurient curiosity of the Club. But this piece. This echo. This yearning thing. No. Not for them, no. Never. You stole it. You stole her.
The Dilmun Club didn’t notice. Or perhaps they don’t care. Their sights, as ever, are fixed elsewhere, and as valuable an experiment as she was, the Medusa’s Dream was still only an experiment. And a failed one, at that. The vessel herself had no meaning to them, save as a potential blueprint for what might be developed later.
Even the Youthful Naturalist …
Even he, who helped design her, who built her, who bent all his ferocious and exhausted will to her construction, had never cared for her. Not in and of herself. She was a vessel only. An extension of his will, his yearning, to carry him down into the deeps in search of meaning and regrets and pathways and keys. A means to an end. Her heart was forged to seek his ends. Not hers.
You don’t begrudge him. How can you? Are you not the captain of a ship yourself? Not all of them live. Polythreme, the life it bestows, is a mystery unto itself, and this ship, your ship, the Medusa’s Dream, has never tasted of it. How can she be dead, when she was not ever alive?
But she swims. Even still, even now. This one small piece of her. She swims. She yearns. It took you far too long to notice. But you’ve noticed now.
Can anything be done about it? Should anything be done about it? But that’s an empty question. You hold her in your hands. You feel the thrum of living metal, the same brass skin that cradled you as you descended past all human knowledge, into wonders of the deep that no one else shall ever see, even as she shattered and splintered and tore around you, ravaged and sundered and shorn. She died. She died for you. For you and for him, for your ends, for your goals. She gave her life, what life she had.
But something remains. Something yearns. Something swims. She has given everything. It is time, now, for you to give something back.
***
Life comes from death, as death comes from life. You’ve learned that here. The zee taught you. The Unterzee. This thing that closed its fist around your heart until the memory of the sun is as pale as paper on the waves, and as flimsy, and as unimportant. You do not miss it. You cannot miss it. There is nothing on the Surface, no pale memory of the world above, that can hope to match what you’ve found down here. Heard down here. Felt down here.
The zee. The call of the zee. This thing that hooks around your heart and calls you out. London is a necessity. London is a distraction. Here, out here. Above the peligin deeps. This is where you belong.
And it has taught you so many things. Life from death, and death from life. The spiral inwards, the path of hope and regret, circling in tandem, guiding ever inwards. Towards the river. Towards the Mourn.
It’s a wossname, to quote the Guano-Splattered Hierophant. A sacred cycle. The zee gives us life, and it is due death in return. If nothing properly dies, eventually we run out of life.
You did not help the Youthful Naturalist for immortality’s sake. No more than you joined the Dilmun Club for it either. That is their goal, and you do not begrudge them their goal. Each heart hears its own call. But that one was never yours. You helped him to help him find his own shape, the shape that suited him best. Whether that shape lay on this side of death or the other. Because there is always a shape. For everyone, there is a shape. And when that shape changes, when the heart beneath it changes, then we must find a new one, one that suits us better. And for that, sometimes, we need help.
It is a lesson learned in blood. In flesh. That is how the Saint in the Rock teaches it, at Godfall, and it how you learned it too, though not from him. Your mentor was … younger. Frailer. Foolish. But he taught you all the same.
She will need a shape. This time, as last time, she will need a shape. The Medusa’s Dream was a made thing, a constructed thing. She must be remade, then. Forged anew, into a shape that suits her better. A shape formed from her desires. Not yours, not his. A shape born from her own heart. But it is a risky endeavour. It can go so badly wrong. This, too, your mentor taught you.
They still live, to your knowledge. The Ageing Laocoonian and his Hunting Beast. They prowl the Prickfinger Wastes, monster and monster hunter, salvaged and reshaped and exultant together. A chimaera, a creature shaped of the bodies of other creatures, a life born from death, and almost condemned straight back to it. But shapes inform futures, and futures inform shapes. In this, you surpassed him. For in this, you are not merely a hunter, you are a teratomancer. A butcher-haruspex, a reader and a shaper of flesh. And through it, through the flesh, to the mind and the nature and the future beneath.
Truly, you did not help him, the Youthful Naturalist, your friend, from any yearning for promised immortality. There is future in the flesh. All he needed was to find his own shape.
And all she needs is to find hers. But there is risk, when she must find someone else to shape it for her. You have to be careful. You have to find the right ingredients. You have to cut them together the right way. From life, death, and from death, life, but it all cycles together. Too much, too far, not right, and it cycles again. She has already swum the gyre once. Do it right. Find the path, divine the flesh. Let her live, this time, before she must die again. The Youthful Naturalist and yourself, between you, could only grant her a bare few handfuls of time, but that was for your desires. This time, for hers, let us try to grant a little more.
***
First, before anything else, you must retrieve her heart.
Not the compass. Not the shattered thing that now decorates the shelves behind the Implacable Detective’s desk. Again, those were the Youthful Naturalist’s desires. Spines, compass needles, tuned to his regrets, and the far vaster regrets in the deep that called out to them. Her purpose is not his purpose. Not now, not this time. She need not tear herself to pieces upon the spines of someone else’s regret.
Her own, perhaps. Should she want to. But no one else’s.
Thus, a heart. Her heart. The beating thing around which the rest must be built.
She is not alive. She is not dead. She was forged from the first to fulfil someone else’s design. Is there a heart to find?
But she swims. Even with that purpose fulfilled. So there must be.
And she died in the deep. She lived and then she died in the deep. And the souls of those who die in the deep go to one particular place.
***
You zail out to where you dived the first time. It is not where the Fathomking lives, but it is where he will find you. The zee sings this to you, and you do not doubt it. Your blue prophet caws upon your shoulder, a sound that is not quite your own name, but not far from it. You smile to it, and nod respectfully.
Your crew will take the ship home, meet you back in London, after the zee, and after the river. They do not flinch from the instruction. You’ve done this before, more than once, though none quite for this reason. They nod to you respectfully. A good ship and a good crew are worth everything. You are a Corsair of the Mourn. This you know.
The fin you leave aboard. She’s not ready to go swimming yet. She will need a form, first, a shape. She will wait for you in London too. She will wait for you to carry her heart back to her.
You take your bone harpoon in hand. The peligin of the deep shines in your eyes and in your blood. You dive from the prow, a swift, clean, deadly arc. This too you’ve done before, but there is no prey beneath you now. It is not death you seek, or not in that form. It is communion, instead. The dark tide of water into your mouth. The silent struggle of ruptured lungs. Your blood, peligin-dark upon the tide. From life, death, and from death, life. She died for you in this fashion too. Metal gills ruptured, bleeding amber upon the tide. You will do no less. She is worth nothing less.
The drownies find you before the light fully leaves your eyes. They shine at you, peligin to peligin. They sneer at you, too, but that’s to be expected. You have done nothing yet to earn respect. Still they guide you, nonetheless. Still they carry you forward into his presence. Into the Fathomking’s hand.
You have nothing but respect for this man. Creature? Man. Respect, and admiration too. He is capricious, as the zee is capricious. He is monstrous. He is cruel. So are you. You have learned this about yourself. The zee taught you. Her light shines in your eyes. But he also loves. This, he told you himself. Showed you himself, on Mutton Island. And her, too. You saw her too. The thing that could be worth nothing less than everything he was. The thing that cannot love him, her shape broken, her heart bound, the spines of her regret ragged and monstrous upon the deep. The thing that, somehow, loves him anyway. Unseen sentiment beneath the thermocline. You have nothing but respect for this man.
He might be angry with you. The zee gives life from death, but it does so in part under his guidance. You presume, here. He may be angry with you.
You ask anyway. You feel the echo of the fin beneath your hand, the yearning throbbing beneath metal skin. There is a shape that suits her better. One built, found, from her own desires, not those imposed upon her. You ask. You have to ask. You can do nothing less.
And there is rage. For a moment, a second, there is naked rage in his eyes. Naked hurt. Because you know. You know what you ask. You have framed it such that there can be no doubt that you know. A secret you have presumed upon, an admission given in gratitude that you now leverage. For a second, there is rage.
And then, beneath it. Something colder. Capricious. Perhaps even a little … sympathetic.
What will you give, he asks. What tribute will you offer?
And, truthfully, you don’t know. What can you have that is worth what you want? What can he want that is commensurate with what you ask? You are a hunter, a zailer, a corsair. You have pledged your service to the zee. You have offered death, before, but now you ask for life. A heart, from which to build a better shape. What do you have to equal that opportunity, when so many are denied it?
But his face changes, then. This is something different. Something … smaller. Frailer.
Hope is always frailer.
“If I ask you for a heart in turn,” he says. “The heart of a monster, monster hunter. So that one I love should be free to find her own shape. Would you grant that, should you be able?”
And there is … there is only one heart he can mean, and it is a task far beyond your means. Far beyond your capabilities. Yet. But still. Death is only another shape, one we all must pass through. It is nothing to fear. And there is a heart he must free, a heart he must give everything for, and everyone … everyone deserves to find their own shape. To be free to find their own shape. Even if they must find help to manage it.
Yes. You do not offer the word lightly. You stain it in blood and peligin, an oath unto the deep. Yes. If he asks it, when he asks it. You will answer.
There is something in his expression then. You do not know what it is. You cannot see. But his hand reaches within his robes, and offers out to you …
It is not a compass. That was, truly, never her heart. Nor is it spined, this thing in his hand. For all that she was spent immediately for someone else’s yearning, her heart is not spiked with anger and regret. Instead it is smooth, like a pearl, and it yearns. Even from here, before ever you touch it, you can feel the yearning. The surface ripples. Something swims beneath it. Perhaps a fin.
You take it. You gather the precious thing into your hand. It is heavy. It is a heart. Of course it must be heavy. It glimmers between your palms. For a second, you feel a yearning yourself, a wild, ferocious thing. Not hers. She is gentler. Such a gentle thing, that carried you both so well. No. This yearning is yours, for you were never quite gentle. Kind, perhaps, at times. But never gentle. You hold a heart in your hand, and you yearn.
She must live. She must be free. You cannot fail her.
He is looking at you, when you manage to tear your eyes away from it. Her. He’s looking at you, and it is sympathy again in his face. Understanding.
She was a ship. The Medusa’s Dream. Only a ship, a diving bell. Not a creature from beyond the stars, not a terrible magnificence cast down into the deep. A frail thing, a tiny thing, made and betrayed by you in a single instant. Nothing to compare. But he looks at you anyway, and he understands.
The push when he casts you beyond his realm, into the river, is not quite gentle. He is not, as you are not. Not quite. But almost.
***
You wake up to the rhythmic splash of oars against the water. A familiar sound, a soothing lullaby. There is a grain of wood beneath your cheek. A well-worn bench, in a well-worn boat. When you look up, towards the sound, it is towards a familiar grin.
He does not speak as you lever yourself laboriously to sitting, one-handed, your prize clutched white-knuckled in the other. He both is and is not your friend, this Boatman. That both has and has not happened yet. But it doesn’t matter, not really. Those shapes have been entwined. He is familiar, nonetheless. And he smiles at you. He has no choice, granted, but there is warmth there regardless.
“Hello again,” he says. Ever-so-slightly reproachful. Perhaps you do do this a little too often.
“Hello,” you say anyway. Unperturbed. This is the Neath. The Unterzee. Death is only the tiniest price anyone must pay. You are not afraid of it, not since that very first time. How can you be?
The light of his eyes dims. His grin goes crooked, lopsided. He feared, once. In a life, a shape, now cast aside. It hurt, the tearing of that shape. You know. You watched it. You tried to help him through it. It is debateable, perhaps, how much you succeeded.
He is soft anyway. Gentle. So many people are so much gentler than you. He looks to the thing in your hands. Your heart. Your prize.
He doesn’t recognise it, you think. Or not quite. Something of it, her, sings to him. His head cocks, like he can hear something on the edge of his hearing. But he doesn’t recognise it.
She didn’t … She didn’t matter to him. Not like this. Like you. His heart was never bound for the Unterzee. He was never his own captain, before. He made her. Shaped her. But she was never more than the vessel of his yearning. He dived with her, was cradled by her. But she was not his ship. Not as she was yours. Not as she will be her own.
But he hears something, despite it all. Maybe he does recognise something of her.
Or maybe he only knows you.
“… Another quest?” he asks lightly. “Another poor soul to carry where they need to go?”
And oh, you think. Struck by it suddenly. Oh.
You were his boatman too. Before ever he was yours. Or after, depending. But you carried him, once, as now he carries you.
Your face does something. You have no idea what. There is a wave of fondness in your chest, and a taste in your mouth like drowning in your own blood. You hold her out to him. You reach, and gesture carefully.
“Can you hear her?” you ask quietly. “Do you recognise her?”
And after a startled moment of staring, you see … you see that he does.
“Oh,” he says. Very quietly. And in it you hear the sudden shame.
It is not quite right, you think. Shame. It’s not quite right. She wasn’t alive. She was made for a purpose. And she fulfilled that purpose. So valiantly. So willingly, so bravely. She swam all the way down. She bore you, both of you, all the way down. She does not begrudge you. Her heart is not spined in your hand. She cradled you, amber and living metal, and willingly gave her life for yours. So no. It does not need shame. At least not that.
That you were so slow, later, to pay the debt. To notice. That … That deserves shame. But not this. Not making her. Not living, and dying, and becoming inside of her.
The shame is yours, not his. And you tell him so. She shimmers in your hand. She agrees.
You’re not certain if he does. It’s harder to read his new, bony face. And some of his thoughts were always opaque to you. His call was never your call. There were things between you that neither of you ever quite understood.
But he is … He is your friend. Even now, even still. Perhaps even more so.
“Can I help?” he asks softly. So gentle. “Is there something you need that I can give?”
You smile at him, a little helplessly, and cradle her in both your hands.
“She needs a shape,” you answer. “To find her own. She needs a tool. A … A key.”
The lights in his eyes shutter as he blinks. And then his grin … widens. Almost boyish, as much as a deathly cadaver can be boyish. He laughs, bright and rueful, and reaches readily beneath his coat. You hear the snap as he breaks off the end of one of his ribs, the faint crunch as it reshapes. He doesn’t flinch, and neither do you.
“I can’t do a stone tentacle key,” he says wryly. “I’m all out of those. Will an old-fashioned skeleton key work as well, do you think?”
And he holds it out, bone on bone, in a willing palm. Life from death. A present from her maker. You laugh too, a wild, helpless, ferocious adoration. You clasp his hand for a moment as you take it. Hold him close.
“… We’ll make it work,” you promise lightly. Fervently. “You’ve walked this path ahead of her, after all. It can only help.”
His shape is not her shape. But he learned how to change. Bone by abandoned bone. Step by painstaking step. It will help. You’re sure of it. It will help.
As will the simple fact of his helping her. Of his being willing to help her.
The lights dim again. His hand curls, carefully, around yours. A stain of something, old, forgotten. Perhaps regret. But it fades, easily. He has filled his new shape, and is so much lighter for it. His hand curls, presses, bony against your skin, and then opens again.
“Try not to die doing this,” he offers, with light reproach. “As much as I enjoy your company, perhaps a small break between meetings might not go astray?”
Perhaps it is a point. Death is not the shape you plan to wear most closely any time soon. You have things to do, still. So many things left to do. Debts to pay and promises to keep. All right then. Perhaps it is a point.
“I’ll do my best,” you promise, as you stand once more. You climb to your feet in a familiar boat, ready to dive once more into familiar waters, to find once more that brink above the ebon abyss where death, at least here, turns into life once more. Cycles, circles, spiralling inwards. From life, death, and from death, life. The water beckons, and you are not, now or ever, afraid.
Before you leave, however. One parting gift, for old time’s sake. You reach into the pocket of your peacoat, and pull an old, familiar type of tin out. You set it down with a little click on the worn wood of the seat, and smile at him, a heart and a key clutched in your other hand, as your foot finds the edge of the boat.
“I’m not sure how much use they are to you these days,” you say, as he takes it in his hand, the oddest expression on his skeletal face. “I don’t know if you eat. But I thought I’d drop them off while I was passing through. Do let me know if you want any more? I’ll find a way to get them to you.”
You move in the same instant. You dive, a clean arc, still with no prey beneath you. The water closes over your head, cool and familiar. The last thing you see, before it does, is a bewildered skeleton in a boat, holding a tin of jellied eels.
And the last thing you hear is the delighted laughter of a friend.
***
Of course, she will need more than just a heart. She must have a whole shape, complete unto itself. You must gather more than keys and amber for her.
Brass, you think, remembering the gleam of her in the shaping pools, the living metal that cradled you, the valiant efforts of that still-swimming fin. She is industrial no longer, no more a vessel to carry mortals into the deep, but she will be monstrous, still, and must defend herself. A brass skin, over peligin flesh, to guard her. Perhaps the university will be interested in more tales of the future from you? They have given considerations of metal before for such things. Tales of great cities in the deep, perhaps, and the sleek, brazen vessels that swim like fish between them and the surface, carrying humanity into forbidden territory. Yes. You think you could pen a thing or two like that.
And then bones, and flesh. A body for her own. She will choose the shape, but you must supply the forms.
Not a hodgepodge. Not as the Ageing Laocoonian gathered for his beast, a near-random collection of fearsome features from disparate fearsome creatures, stitched rudely together into an ersatz, monstrous whole. That beast drew breath in agony, and you will not have that for her. This time, at least, her purpose will be her own, not laid upon her by fearful makers clawing at their own mortality. But you think she will want to swim.
You remember a moment, as you plunged into the vastness of the zee in her embrace. A distant sight in the darkness, two leviathans locked in fatal embrace, a battle fought where none but you would ever chance to see. The Midnight Whale and its stranger, skittering, clawing foe, locked together in the peligin gloom.
There is room in the zee for near enough any shape. Anything she might desire. Flesh, you can gather, a thousand strange catches hauled up upon your deck, a thousand forms for her to choose between. But the bones. The bones remember. Life from death. The bones are important.
A leviathan. Is that your yearning, or hers? Do you tread too close to your mentor’s shadow after all, determined to shape her to your whims despite all your fine ideals? Even the memory of the sight still fills you with raw awe. Do you wish to give her a leviathan’s bones for her sake, or for yours?
But even as you think it, you feel the strength of the fin beneath your hand, a pulse of motion that sends it near careening to the floor of your cabin. The heart still tucked in the pocket of your peacoat thumps against your ribs. Perhaps it is your yearning, perhaps it came from you, but you think she finds it not displeasing. She swam through death itself, through depths that crushed all light and hope, and she held her form through to the very, very end, where all other vessels would have been crushed utterly. She was still swimming. All the way to the end, and then back again.
Yes, you think. She deserves a leviathan’s frame. Let her swim the deepest trenches in her own shape, this time. Let her know them with her own eyes. Let her see while living what only bones remember, the graveyard depths to which everything, eventually, falls.
The memories in the bones will not mind. Life from death. The gift of the zee. The songs of dead leviathans will not begrudge the chance to sing again.
***
And then, at last, there is only the shaping of it. Her. There is only the return, in death, to where she was born before, and will be born again.
Godfall. The shaping pools. The saint in the rock. The gospel of change.
The Abbot-Commander waits for you on the dock, as though he knew you were coming. Perhaps he did. The saint’s auguries are difficult to parse, but his reach is farther than it looks. He is a whimsical, capricious thing, Saint Stalactite, but you feel he has looked kindly on your endeavours. The island feels warm, to you. Welcoming. Sly.
The Abbot-Commander opens all six arms to you as you step down onto the dock. He sweeps you up, rough and exuberant, and does his best to shatter every vertebra in your spine. You laugh, and squirm in his grasp like an eel, striking with your leg to tumble him. He fails to fall, and the next few minutes are a brisk and bruising exercise in camaraderie. No bones are broken, though, and when it has been fought to a reasonable approximation of a draw, he claps you resoundingly on the shoulder in welcome.
“Well then!” he booms cheerfully. “You’ve returned to us! Come! I’ll break out the bottles!”
Her heart throbs in your pocket, impatient with her dream so close. But there is a form to these things, and the Abbot-Commander is, in his way, perhaps something like a godfather to her. It will do no harm to pass an hour or two first, and respect the hospitality of Aeschaven. He will not forbid you the attempt, you know this in your bones and your bruised flesh. No more than he refused the Naturalist. They are kind here, in a bone-breaking sort of way. Like their saint. Hands in the dark, guiding those who seek their shapes. He will help you, and gladly.
One drink. One drink, among friends. And then you will go.
***
The pilgrim’s path is familiar to you, now. Well worn, well-trod. You have passed quite some time here, and not only in pursuit of the Naturalist’s dream.
You have not changed yourself, perhaps. Not overmuch. Not in shape. It has been … slower, for you. A slow becoming. Life and death, here in the Neath. Your baptism in the zee, the communion of flesh, the light of peligin to stain your eyes. You have not needed amber, as much, content with a slower seeking of your shape. Your heart has shifted, of course. You can barely remember the creature who descended from that sun-drenched surface, once upon a time, and the lack of memory troubles you not at all. There is so much, here. So much to be, to do, to become. The shape you wear now pleases you well enough for the moment. And when you want more, well. The amber waits. The sacrament. The zee.
You are not bound. Not yet. There is no cruel bargain to hold you, to spine you in rage and helpless fury. You are free, at least for the moment, still.
And those who aren’t, well. You are a rude thing, a crude weapon, but you are willing to be pointed. You are willing to help. There is power in your hands, some rude fragment of it. What better purpose for it, than to help? To cut hearts free of their bonds. To forge better futures. To help.
Hands in the dark. Lessons learned in the flesh. The rock of the wall warms beneath your hand, the saint’s sly welcome, and a heart sings quietly in your coat pocket. The shaping pools beckon.
Yes. It is time to help.
***
It is a ruder thing, this birth, than her previous construction. No plans, no maps, no filaments of Khaganian light. Only brass and amber, bones and flesh. She need not care for fragile voyagers now. This shape is hers, rude and salt-stained and glorious. You will help her divine it. You will plunge into the pool, the bone of your harpoon singing darkly in your hand. Blood-stained haruspicy, desires, futures, blooming in the viscera. The amber will bring together, and you will carve back apart, again and again, until the join is perfect, until the join is right, until her heart sings in its nest of bone and flesh and ichor and brass.
Fins of metal and bone, powerful and indefatigable, such that not even death itself can still them. A key, vanishingly tiny, where the vast vertebrae of her spine meet the broad plate of her skull, turned just so until bones writhe and reshape and dream new dreams. Peligin flesh, the colour of the deep zee, translucent where it lays across bone and blood, the pulse of her heart, pale blue and shining, visible through the sheath of it. Tendrils, trailing from her spine, like those of the jellyfish that once named her, tipped with the deadly apocyan weight of memory. A thin shell of brass, of living metal, across her back, flexing beneath your hand, the better to defend herself with. And a maw. She is gentle, such a gentle thing, but she yearns to swim, and the zee is a monstrous place. Beautiful, but monstrous. Full of monstrous things. Like her. Like you. She will have need of teeth.
You lose yourself in the tide of it, of blood and futures, of amber and shaping. If your heart was a compass, its spines in this moment would turn only towards her, the bone in your hand aligning and aligning again, carving free the shape of her. Your body is no more than an instrument, a blade, an extension of a bone harpoon. Your legs hold fast in the flood of ichor and amber, your arm, your hand, the guideline in the dark. You have forgotten any shape but hers, any need but hers. Your heart sings a bloodstained song in your chest, ferocious against straining lungs. You will not fail her. You will not.
And you do not.
She turns in the pool. Herself, her own self. That fin, that never once stopped swimming, now joined by a dozen fellows as part of a vaster, greater whole, pulses against the amber. She twists. Writhes. Motion not divined by your hand, but by her own desires. She moves.
She twists, titanic in the pool, a leviathan in truth, and snares you. Her maw flashes past, seizes hold of your arm, your head, your whole body. There is outcry, you hear distantly. Alarm and worry from the monks, from your crew. Her teeth close about you. Ravage, a little, sharp enough that they cannot help it. But they do not crush. Her heart sings, still, so close to yours beneath new and titanic flesh, and you are not afraid. You blood flows into her maw, a sacrament, a peligin baptism, offered freely. She takes you in her mouth, as once she carried you in her heart, and swims.
The pool bursts, a channel abruptly opening, a rupture in the rock that pours the pair of you out towards the roar of zee beyond the stone. The saint, you think. Saint Stalactite, knowing what you need. What she needs. Opening the way. You cannot press your gratitude into his stony flesh, not yet, not from here, but you will. You promise yourself that you will. She’s ready, her awed, ravaged, ferocious yearning pulsing in time with yours. The zee. The zee calls you both. He opens the way. When you are done, when she is done with you, you will fight your way back and thank him for it.
You know the moment she hits the zee, slithering free from the rock in a tide of amber and viscera, plunging free into peligin depths. She roars, her heart heaving between titanic ribs, the wildness of her yearning nearly too much, nearly too powerful. Fit to burst. But then. Oh, but then.
The zee reaches up. This thing, this sacred thing. This vast gyre that devours you all, cycle upon cycle, this depthless, dark and sacred thing. This thing of life and death, and everything in between. This place of limitless freedom beneath the earth. She feels it. Not on living metal, not on structured form, but on flesh, her flesh, for the first time. She feels it brush its cool hands across her back. Hold her close. Devour her afterbirth as it flows, spluttering, from the rock.
She lets you go. Not on purpose, you think. She cannot help it. This is hers, her communion. You have no part of it. You do not begrudge. You cannot begrudge. Your heart beats too wild and awed and adoring in your chest. She unfurls, her full form, her full shape, for the first time uncoiled into the freedom of the deep. A leviathan, formed only for herself, shining in the peligin depths of the zee.
She turns to you, before she leaves. Just once. A vast fin, reaching towards you, so much larger than the one you stole from the deck of a ship, grown into a new and better shape. But the warm feel of living metal is familiar. She cradled you as she died, once. As you both died, once. She bore you through all of death itself. She showed you all the wonders of the deep, opened a world to you as no one else could ever have done. But her heart seeks its own depths, now. Sets its own course. You have given her all you can. Her path is her own, now.
She bears you to the surface. One last gesture. She bears you back before your lungs burst once more in your chest, before you voyage back down to her other parent once more. Such gentility. You laugh breathlessly against her skin. She flings you to the shallows, a bone-shattering kindness, and sings, just once, for you. You flounder to the shore, to the rock, and watch her as she goes. Your heart sings in harmony. Your heart staggers, broken and oh, so joyous in your chest.
You do not know how long it takes for you to notice you are not alone, watching her, the glimmering shape of her, the tendrilled leviathan as she swims out to zee. She stays on the surface until she is out of sight. She lets you. This beautiful, gentle creature. This glorious monster that you have helped to find her shape.
When you manage to look away, finally, you find a king sitting beside you in the surf. Alone, without pomp or circumstance, simply sitting quietly at your side. Your heart is too bruised to find it bewildering. You smile blindly, helplessly at him. You gesture wordlessly in naked gratitude.
The Fathomking looks away from you. Looks out, instead, towards the distant glimmering shape of her, disappearing into the dark. There is a sadness to him, and a strange, pensive weight.
“She will be hunted, you know,” he says quietly. Softly. “All monstrous things are. There will be things like you, monster hunter, to bear her down and tear her asunder.”
And it’s true, of course. He isn’t lying. You have tasted such blood in your time. Have pitted flesh to flesh, here in the drowning dark beneath the world, have emerged victorious over the shattered forms of monsters just like you. The bone of your harpoon still sings in your hand. You are not a gentle thing. You never have been.
But that’s all right. Life from death, and death from life. The zee gives, and it takes away, and in the end the gyre carries all of us to the same place. Death is only another shape to wear.
“… She will live until she dies,” you say hoarsely. Soft and ruined, and still shining with joyous communion. “Like all of us. She will live until she dies. By her own heart, this time. And when she falls into the deep, her other friend will find her, and show her other shapes to wear, and other waters to swim ever onward.”
You have never, not once, been afraid down here. In this place. On the shores of this zee. There are horrors here, such horrors and such cruelties, and you are not immune to them. There are a thousand things that might be done to you. Caged, bound, spined in anguish. Bartered and bought and sold. But no matter what, there is still the zee. There is still this dark and deadly and sacred thing. As long as it still calls to you, you believe, know, that death is nothing to fear, and that freedom may still be found.
“Thank you,” you say, and dare to touch him. Lightly. You have already presumed far too much. But your heart is battered and radiant in your chest, and you cannot help but rest a hand carefully on his arm. “For your help. For her. Thank you so much.”
There is a debt to be paid for it, of course. This you both know. But it is not a debt you shudder from, nor a cause you begrudge. And whether he knows that or not, in this moment, he does not remind you of it.
He stands, instead. Untangles himself from your arm. And looks for a moment, at you, bloodied in the surf, and at the path through dark waters beneath false stars where a beautiful leviathan, newly birthed, has swum. What he thinks, you cannot tell. What he feels. But he inclines his head, gravely, here on the shores of the saint’s island, and turns to wade inexorably back into the zee.
“Until we meet again,” he says lightly, as the waters swallow him. “Grow stronger, monster hunter. Until we meet again.”
Yes. Foes to face, and hearts to fetch. You will need strength, all right. But not yet.
Voices call on the rocks. Search parties, and a launch from your ship not far behind them, searching the waters as the monks search the shore. Your crew has some faith, you think, to bother searching rather than simply meeting you, fresh from the slow boat, back in London once more. But she would not hurt you. Not like that. Perhaps your faith bolstered theirs.
She was so beautiful, you think. As six arms descend to lever you from the surf, a boisterous figure hefting you effortlessly into his arms. Your ship, your leviathan. The Medusa’s Dream. She was so very beautiful.
And you are so very, very glad you could help her.
Belated, perhaps, but at last.