Instead of tipping over and spinning into mid-air with the speed and tilt of the vortex, the boat positioned itself directly over the trench before free-falling into a column of water. The angle of the vortex should've capsized the boat. Should've crushed it under the waves. But the hole remained a column, a tube of air. Seconds later, the boat hit the sandy seabed with a thump. I hoped I hadn't crushed any fish. The pass of water reminded me of being the toad at the bottom of the well, except I had fallen into the well during my worldly travels instead of refusing to get out and explore.
Another five seconds later, and the hole filled in, sending a waterfall rushing down to where I still somehow sat, gripping the edge of the counter, face white with shock. I shuddered, gasping down air. I ducked my head as if my body braced myself for the impact of all that water crushing me and my poor boat. What would it feel like to be squashed under the sea?
It never came.
As it reached the bottom of the well, it smoothed out and gradually melded back into the wall of water around it, easily flowing around the mass of the wooden hull, gentle as a cat rubbing its head on one's leg. It was beautiful, I thought—the sheer opalescence of the flowing tendrils of water, slowly snaking down to rain softly on the sand. But I felt like I couldn't take it in properly.
When would it come smashing down? How long would I wait before I met my end?
Water seeped through the cracks in the wood. I stood, horrified as little fountains of liquid trickled their way in.
I gasped, gulping down precious air and salty water with each breath, kicking wildly as the papers piled on the table shrivelled and floated away to die. I held my breath on instinct as the water rose to my neck. My cheeks burned. My head pounded and I flinched inwardly at the water tickling its way up my nostrils. I felt the hem of my shirt float up to my bellybutton, my hair become drenched in liquid. The water rose.
And I went under.
Finally. Finally, was this where I would rest? Would I really be able to see him again?
My throat pulsed desperately as I drifted up to the roof of the control room, carried by the water. My knuckles connected once, twice, thrice with the glass, but my movements were sluggish. Some random cut on my shin began stinging and I gasped down the precious air.
I tried to remember what to do if your boat capsized (read: trapped at the bottom of the ocean), but my mind was empty.
What had just happened? I'd escaped sure death, only to be met with what?
My nose sucked in a litre of water and in a panic, I swallowed a mouthful of seawater, almost retching at the foul taste of the salt in it. I coughed, but I only inhaled more water, heart racing as my nose blocked up.
My whole life I had been friends with the sea. But never before had it seemed so much like a stranger, wrapping liquid hands around my throat.
Bubbles trailed my movement. Then every motion of my body slowed as if stuck in quicksand. The water rose all around me. I couldn't breathe. Everything felt numb. If I breathed, I'd die. If I couldn't breathe, I'd also die.
I couldn't hold it anymore. My chest constricted, caving in as I gulped down.
I expected the water to flood in, to push me under at last.
Yet just like before, I could breathe underwater. But while I was in a cave that I'd assumed was an oxygen pocket, now I was drifting in open sea. The water was all around me, swallowing up my boat.
Yet I could breathe.
How?
The question filled my mind as if it were the water filling the boat, filling my lungs, filling every thought about how I'd die under the sea, far from the land I loved. It threatened to topple the carefully stacked bricks I'd constructed to keep out those doubts about who I was, about how my whole existence turned out to be a lie. I'd thought Chiefs and Chieftesses were like the monarchies in the East—with royal blood. When they were only blessed and cursed with more Gifted.
Why?
Why me? Why couldn't I just be as normal as a Chieftess of Kaleveh, one of the most powerful territories in the Northern Lands, could be? Why did I have to live out the rest of my days with the powers of two gods in my veins, most likely hounded by demons swearing to corrupt my human soul? Demons who would steal and make me watch as they feed off my magic, then debase me further by implanting a hellish weed in me.
The thought did not sit well in my stomach. Although I would do anything to see my loved and lost one more time, Mama was not one of them. Seeing her again, I realised, would bring only the cold caress of death.
And why was I also able to breathe underwater? As my breathing calmed, as I found that my brain was not playing a practical joke on me, the liquid drained out of my clothes. Even as my jacket rippled in the water, not a dot of water stained it. I ran my hands through my hair, spotted with tiny knots, and found it dry as well. I wondered if I was simply delirious from what had happened.
I didn't realise I was burning until the water around me started bubbling. Was I truly dry, or was the water steaming off my skin? Still floating in the water, breathing easily like I was simply strolling through a park and not in the deepest part of the Iliesao, I put a hand on my arm and flinched at the contact. My skin was parched, like it hadn't touched water in a million years—and it was scorching hot. Turning my arm over, I could see the veins in my wrist glowing, like a strand of star had been woven into my flesh. A tiny part of me that didn't belong to this world, a part that belonged as a flaming shooting star in a dreamland galaxy, a part that succumbed to the will of nature and of wild things only. A part of me that was free, that burned with the brightest flame that could not be extinguished. I felt, saw the glow shoot up my arm and disappear under the sleeve of my t-shirt. Through the fabric, I could imagine the light dance all the way to my heart, where it burrowed in, leaving a searing lightness in its wake.
Would this have happened if I'd chosen to stay? All of it?
I knew the answer, but the fear of the unknown still grasped me in a chokehold. I didn't know if I regretted leaving. I told myself that I would've left one day. One day. Nothing would've changed.
I would still have been stuck here, my boat shredded, a speck of dust under the sea.
Unexpectedly, the gears of water pressure began to turn. I looked up just in time to see splinters of wood rain down on where I had been seconds earlier, releasing a torrent of water that whooshed in. The hole was just wide enough for a human to fit through. Large enough for me to swim through, propelling with flailing feet and pushing with clumsy arms.
Once I got out, I found I could breathe and swim so much more easily. It was like the boat had been restraining the water and however the oxygen got to me, and now that I was out, the water moved so much more freely. It rippled peacefully, and there was more light than there should've been this far down. I thought that was strange. Shouldn't the wreckages of shipwrecks jut out in the distance? Shouldn't the water have been tainted with the unrested souls of the drowned? Shouldn't their half-rotted remains be littered throughout the seafloor instead of the rocks and coral? There was no shortage of tragic accidents in this area. It was the easiest way across the Greman Sea—yet the most perilous. How many times had I watched my father sigh in sorrow, tired eyes scanning a newspaper heralding the unfortunate death of yet another sailor?
I'd expected this place to be an eerie graveyard.
Instead, it was a lively fish's haven.
What was the catch? Why was it so easy? I'd expected raging storms, peril haunting me the moment I set foot out of Kaleveh, leaving behind my home and my birthright. Sure, I'd had those notes, but were they really simply the work of a cryptic goddess? Or were they something more, a warning I should heed every step of my journey?
There had been the Branokann. But it had not been me who had brought him down. I knew that deep in my soul.
And the storm. I hadn't even been able to see through the lashing rain and howling wind bringing waves of water flooding over the comparatively minuscule boat. I'd been sure I was about to be flung out the window of the cabin, been ready to meet a welcome end. Instead, the water had opened up, sending me down the hole in the sea. Like… like I'd been summoned.
This was Aquanaya's terrain. Perhaps she was really the mildest of the elementals, a goddess who ruled her underwater kingdom with only thoughts of love and goodness in mind, not war and wishes to expand her already—prosperous empire.
Or perhaps she had a warning for me as well. Another task, with me as only a puppet and she the master. Had she presented me with a pretty, simpering mask, only to swipe it off a face as eternal and cruel and unchanging as time, and reveal the foul darkness beneath?
The water around me bubbled again. Could I scold a god? I'd never tried. But the distraction of my Gifts was too much right now. I had to concentrate, on finding whatever I felt like I was looking for, and on repairing my damaged skiff and somehow getting it back to the surface. I wasn't trapped in that room anymore, but now I was stuck under the sea, imprisoned by the crushing weight of water. Could the boat even sail anymore? If not, I might just have to swim to land and pick my way down through the coastal city of Laverrene, to Orinm. Could I walk that long? Could I even survive getting to land before the deadly hypothermia set in? Could I find enough to eat? Could I, could I, could I. Could I?
Could I survive long enough to reach that fabled Gifted stronghold—the Ytgeas?
Something floated into my head, so quietly and forgotten I hadn't realised it was there.
How much depends on a feral cat?
I still had no idea. But a lot depended on what-ifs and could I's. Everything.
It was then that I decided.
Enough of this. Somehow, I'd do it and face the impossible, I'd push myself to go against all the odds, I'd do it for every Gifted person who had suffered. For all those affected by the demons, those otherworldly creature of bone and darkness. I'd do it for Mama, for Father and for Grandma. For him, the people who had died. For the home I had once treasured and the home I would build for myself in the East.
I would travel far and wide, all the way to the end of the world if it meant safety. If it meant the safety of those I loved, I would turn over every rock and pebble, pick every leaf and blade of grass. I would go there, and I would become better, and even if I kept falling, I would rise, again, and again. I had to do it. I could be the mountain that didn't yield to the storm, the tree that didn't bow to the wind, the fire that raged through the rain.
Rise up, to be better than all those who had not made it, whose lives had been lost in vain. For those who had died reaching the fortress of legend, and for those that had yet to seek it.
For them, I could.