I wanted to call out to them, but could not find my voice. And something within the Shoal was still focused on me. The whole Star of the Shoal, its consciousness.
I tried to swim up and away from this attention, but now all the bonded but unconstrained souls in the Shoal were turning toward me, from above, from below, from the sides—pressing in. Suffocating—I did not know if I even breathed. A feeling of dread seized me, and I knew that if I stayed, I would be counted, accounted for, I would be judged by the collective which was the Star of the Shoal. I, too, would be bound and constrained with those who now hovered motionless, glowing a dull red—those deemed too dangerous to the collective.
In my fear, I tugged with all my might upon my living bond. The bond with Old Song. In a moment, I flickered out and upwards, toward her. To Song Isle.
It was raining, sweet drizzles upon the clammy skin of my face. Breath came in and out of my nostrils, filled my lungs with beautiful, cool surface-air. I opened my mouth, devouring the raindrops. I lay there, spread on the stones. Just breathing. Alive. Alive.
Somewhere above me, Old Song was yelling. I did not understand. Then I felt pain. She was kicking me with her feet. Away from her, into the water by Song Isle. I did not understand her words.
I do not remember how I got back to Stone Isle. Did I get there at all? There was a cave, perhaps my own. A shallow pool. My whole body felt as if aflame. I was delirious. I sank down into the water of the pool, opening and closing my gills. In my ears, Old Song’s yelling now coalesced into words. She said she loved me, but I betrayed her—endangered her. That she had transgressed enough. That she needed me to hold her.
I covered my ears with my hands and sank deeper. Behind my closed eyelids I saw the connections of light, remembering how the Shoal had separated for a brief, sharp moment.
Then it reformed. Around the prison.
I shudder with the vividness of memory. My gills open and close and I cough, half-suffocating in the dry, too-warm air of my room. Ulín makes a motion toward me, but I wave her off. I rise, dip my hands in the tepid water of my pool and rub my sides up to the gills, easing the pain just slightly. The water would need changing soon.
I expect Ulín to ogle, but she is looking aside, giving me privacy. The feeling of her kindness is strange, like a pinch on my arm. I did not expect it. I don’t know if I like it.
“She told you she loved you,” Ulín says at last.
I swallow, my mouth painfully dry, my gills barely better. “She said so, but I don’t know if she ever did.”
“Her fear outweighed her love.” Ulín’s face is still, as if she is holding back even more words. Perhaps she shouldn’t.
“Can you take over for a bit?” I ask her.
In the palace of nacre
Ulín did not see the sister again, but Laufkariar was wonderful. So attentive and tender. He even helped her learn the language of the serpents. He asked his people to help Ulín, and they would come to speak with her. Mostly these were women—noblewomen and servants. She learned the language from them. They were friendly, and Ulín wrote down many words.
She missed the library at Ranra’s Towers, and she wondered if the university would have an even larger library. But Laufkariar did not think she should go anywhere. The university in particular was a nameway place, he said, and Ulín was to live among the dreamway, by his side. He wanted them to be married.
When Ulín agreed to get married, she thought how much she wanted to be a part of his people’s ceremony. It would have splendid foods and poetry, musical instruments and underwater games. The serpent people’s weddings seemed much more elaborate and magical than what happened on the Coast, where people rarely married a single person. Her parents had that kind of union, but it was more common to simply live in houses, with many lovers and their lovers and their friends. Ulín knew that she did not want many lovers. It was more than enough to have one.
If Ulín hesitated about the marriage, she tried not to dwell on it. She loved his language, and she loved his people and she loved him. Laufkariar was splendid, magnificent. And he wanted her. And he was so interesting; even his moods, perhaps especially his moods. She was only nineteen.
He gave her so many gifts—clothes and jewelry unrivaled. He gave her a chest of treasure from ancient treaties—gifts given to his people by Ranra herself when she was crossing the sea. Then there was the pen—a splendid mechanical pen with a hidden ink chamber and a long, graceful nib. It had a body like a feather made of tiny diamonds. The heart of the feather was a ruby that glittered every time Ulín moved to write something down, distracting her with its fractured light.
He’d leave, sometimes in the night, to hunt in the dreaming sea, accompanied by his three companions. Ulín did not give this much thought. He would return in good spirits, smelling of lilacs and death. And he smiled, as if he knew things she did not, and that was exciting. Ulín would ask him to tell her about the dreaming sea, and she wrote down the words he used to describe the dreamhunt. She was happy, she thought, alight with curiosity and always learning more.
He did not want Ulín’s brother to be at the wedding.
She was not a friend of her sibling. He was entering adolescence, and he was strange those days, full of anger and angles. It was difficult to talk to him. Ulín rarely tried. But he was her brother, after all.
“He is askew,” Laufkariar said harshly. “Neither a man nor a woman.” Later, Ulín remembered that she told that to his sister.
“It is too early to know,” she replied, defensive but not comprehending his vehemence. “My brother uses the language of he, and has not yet attended his first gathering.”
“He likes men,” Laufkariar snarled. “This is a perversion.”
Later, Ulín thought she should have asked him how he knew her brother’s preference. Back then she said, “All my people are like this.”
Perhaps Laufkariar did not understand. She had to make him understand. “Our customs are different from yours. We are free in our loves and multiple in our preferences—”
