Another update, another day. Thanks to all you lovely, delightful people who commented on the last part: Death's Counterfeit, Daugain, Pyrope, Silvia, Debbi, penguin, K'Ranna, Shelli, Nostawen Allesiel, Bex Drake, Shards-of-Ice, Kendal, lilmakochan, Violet Star, annemarie delacour, Shiegra and the fabulous untilhellfreezesover.
Your thoughts would be adored, pored over, cheered, revered and occasionally feared. :)
Lyrics: Steaming by Sarah McLachlan from Touch
I hope you enjoy :)
Ripples Chapter Three
You're always waiting on the tide
It's time you decide.
I walk down long roads that seem to have no end at all.
When Phi got in, the first thing she saw was her father, peeling potatoes. He was back early from work, and she knew what that meant. Her stomach filled with leaden tiredness.
He glanced round. There were lines carved on his face that hadn't been there five years ago, but the illness hadn't been so bad then.
"Hello love," he said, and raised a smile. "Your mother's overdone it again."
Phi growled. "Why won't she learn? Can't you make her stop?"
Scrape, scrape of potato skins coiling into the sink. "Don't you think I'd stop her if I could? But it's her gift and she chooses when to use it. Whether I like it or not. Go and say hello, she needs to ask you something."
And whatever it was, Phi knew when she saw her mother, a translucent ghost among the flowery sheets, she wouldn't be able to refuse. She never could. Sometimes she wondered if her mother knew that, and always guiltily dismissed the thought as spiteful and childish.
Slinging her bag down, Phi crept along to her parents' room. She poked her head around the door and sure enough, Marie Thetis was propped up in the big bed, sunk in a marshmallow sea of pillows. Phi knew that each time her mother told the future of others, she lost a piece of her own future in exchange – no profit in prophets, her mother would quip, as though that made it better. As though that would take away the desperate panic Phi felt every time she walked into that sickroom.
Once the same fiery colour as Phi's own, her mother's greying hair was loose around her shoulders. She was shrinking away, wilting like the last violets, and soon there would be nothing left of her but memories, lingering on the air like some faint, ethereal perfume.
Phi banished that thought, swallowing down the saline ache in her throat. No. She would hold on.
"Hello sweetie," her mother said, and put down the book she was reading. Her fingers were trembling, but both of them pretended not to notice. "How was school?"
"The usual. Jo was being a loudmouth. Riose was all mysterious."
"Celia eating chocolate," her mother said dryly. "Goodness knows where she puts it. That girl should be the size of a killer whale by now. As it is, she's getting squishy around the edges."
"You can't say that!" she squeaked.
However fragile her body, Marie Thetis could have stared down Medusa with those steel-grey eyes. "I can say whatever I like, darling. I'm entitled to my opinion – you don't have to agree with it."
But I do have to obey, the treacherous thought crept in. "Dad said you wanted to ask me something."
"Yes." Her voice was gentle. "Amelia Thelasso passed away last night, and the funeral's tonight. Your father's performing the ceremony, but I was supposed to be speaking the rites, and...well, that won't be happening now. I'd like you to stand in for me."
"Me? Really?"
The merpeople's last rites were an ancient tradition – from as far back as the Burning Times, it was said, and they were spoken each time they poured another pod member's ashes into the lake. They were never buried, always cremated, in a solemn reminder of their beginnings in a burning world.
"Please. The 'old barnacles', as your father insists on calling them, tell me I should be handing over some of my duties to you now you're of age. The rites are part of that."
Because you won't be around to speak them much longer, she thought with a bone-deep sorrow. That's why the old ones want you to teach me. They're waiting for you to die, as they wait for each other to.
"You have to stop looking," she said abruptly.
Her mother's lips tightened. "Phi, don't start this again."
"I mean it," she insisted. "Everybody else gets by without knowing the future. Why should we be different? If Cassie Atlantis wants to know what sex her baby is, she can go to the doctor like everyone else. And if Mr Travers wants to open a shop, he can find out if it's going to be a success the hard way."
"Why take the risk?" her mother countered, as she always did. "Ryar ap Sangager gave us the gift to be used, not to sit idle. It's just unfortunate she didn't realise the toll it would take on us." She smiled weakly. "But the pod is the better for it."
"We're not," she blurted. "Me and Dad, we aren't better. You're k-killing yourself, and I hate it!"
She inwardly cringed at the stammer – she had wanted to be cool and logical, not a crying child.
"Darling." The pity in her mother's voice was almost unbearable. "Your father understands. He wants what's best for the pod – and we want what's best for you."
"Well, let me decide!" she snapped, her intention of staying serene disappearing like a sandcastle under the surf. "I can make my own choices. I don't need you to – to arrange my life."
Marite Thetis let out her breath in a ragged whoosh. "Is that what this is about? Don?"
"I don't want to marry him." God, what an understatement.
"It's for the best. Not just for the pod, but for you too. I've seen it." The surety in her mother's voice was absolute: she had leafed through the future, and chosen the path, and all would be well if Phi would just nod and smile and obey.
"How can it be best for me?" she demanded. "I loathe him. I've never liked him, you know that – Dad knows that!"
"I know you aren't...fond of him." Her mother raised her eyebrows as if it was some churlish whim. "But I've seen it. There's such happiness in store for you, but only if we arranged for you and he to be married. I saw change – yes, darling, many changes, and that's never easy, and a journey deep into the earth...and fire. Cleansing fire, before a time of reflection, and mourning."
For her, no doubt, Phi thought. Her mother would die, and she and her father would be left to grieve. It was a dull, constant knowledge; she lived her life as if lost in smoke.
"A transformation." Her mother reached out and took her hand, her fingers thin and wizened. "And happiness, darling. Everything we've wanted for you. Try to understand."
"It doesn't matter what you've seen," she said fiercely. "He's not for me, mom. Let one of the other girls marry him – they all sigh over him anyway. Let me decide."
"And who in the pod will you marry?" her mother demanded with a flash of anger. "You don't really talk to any of them. Look at your friends, darling! Humans, vampires, a wildcat – and she's not so far away from savagery, no matter how prettily she smiles – and that witch! Not a pod boy among them."
"You never minded before." She drew her hand back from her mother, wounded in some place she hadn't known she was vulnerable.
"When your father suggested it might be nice if we encouraged you to have some – diverse – friends, I didn't complain," her mother said tightly. "The pod is too insular sometimes, and I thought you'd turn to your own kind eventually. Instead, you spend more time with those – landlubbers – than any of the pod."
Phi couldn't stifle an incredulous laugh. "Did you just call my friends landlubbers?"
"That's what they are." Marie Thetis leaned forward from the nest of pillows, her breath becoming hoarse at the effort. "They are not of us, Phi. They never will be. We are the first shapeshifters; we are the beginning, the purest, and the only ones unsullied by the Burning Times. Ryar ap Sangager made us to protect the last hope of the witches, and we kept faith. The ocean tried to swallow us up, Fireblade came to hunt us down, but we survived. K'Shaia was created to destroy us, and we survived. How do you expect your friends to understand that, or anything of what it means to be mer?"
"That doesn't make us better!" she said angrily, trying to disregard the chill sliding along her spine like a line of wintery kisses.
K'Shaia were made to destroy us, and yet Riose sends me to them to be saved.
"It does, darling," her mother said. "We are a race apart."
"Because we've kept ourselves apart!"
"Your father's words." Impatience there as her mother sagged back onto the pillows. "I've never argued his reforms, even when I didn't think them wise, but I think I let him have too free a hand with you. It's time you taken on some responsibility and start working with Don."
"Have you listened to anything I've said?" She wanted to scream, but made herself speak calmly, the first ghosts of tears pricking at her eyes. She had thought – she really had – that they would understand. "I don't love Don. I don't even like him. He's rude, he's arrogant, he's cruel-"
"Is this over that little incident when you were children?" Her mother pounced. "He's grown up."
"Great," she threw back. "Now he's just a bigger bully."
"Rubbish. You've never given the poor boy a chance."
"He's had all the chances he's getting from me." Her temper was beginning to spiral out of control. "I won't marry him."
"Will you condemn us both to death, then?" her mother snapped. It was unkind, and it was deliberate; Phi saw that with a distant, numb shock. "Does our oath mean nothing to you? Does our pod mean nothing?"
"No one will harm you," she said scornfully. "Our pod?"
The merpeople abhorred violence; even arguments were hushed and rare. It simply wasn't in their nature. There was no rage in their melodic laments, no hurt in their hymns, nothing but joy, and contentment, and reverence.
"You're naïve, daughter of mine." Marie Thetis closed her eyes, but when she opened them, they were as determined as ever. "We will discuss this later. Go and get yourself ready for the funeral. I expect you to do your duty for the pod. All your duties."
X - X - X - X - X
Poseidon Ivan returns not as a supplicant, but like a conqueror with a swagger in his step, but a low, slow ire in his eyes. She recognises anger so easily; she has felt it all her life, that lash of injustice, of fulfilment denied.
What is wrong, child? she inquires, her voice silky.
Avy ap Sangager can hear his teeth grinding at very edges of her magical senses. "Phi is going to be difficult. I don't think she'll play the dutiful daughter this time."
Few daughters are dutiful, she replies, remembering how often she flouted Sangager's authority. Her brothers would wager with her to see who could enrage him most; they used to measure it by the colour of his face, she recalls fondly, and she always won. We just take care to appear so.
He blinks, as if it has not occurred to him that she too was somebody's daughter. "Her parents are soft. She runs around with vampires and humans and they don't seem to care. If she persuades them to break the contract-"
Did you not suggest your father made them swear blood-oath? If he has disobeyed her-
"He jumped at the idea," the dolphin says coldly, pacing the room in quick steps. "He's still so damn bitter that Marie turned him down for Daniel Thetis. Thirty years and he still isn't over it."
Then where is the problem, child?
His eyes flare with scorn, though it is not aimed at her. "He won't hold them to it. Thetis has led the pod for nearly twenty years. Marie is their beloved prophetess, saviour of their dreary daily routine. If my father kills them...but he won't."
Inside the cramped confines of her heart, Avy is laughing. Squeamishness is not new to her, but she has always had the stomach for the necessary cruelties.
Then find someone who will. If your darling's parents believe the threat is real, I think you'll find no matter how they love their daughter, they'll make sure she keeps the promise. In fact, little shark, I think you already know the people you need.
It dawns in his eyes slowly, ugly as a battlefield sky. "Yeah. They'd do it." His smile is savage, a promise of the malice in him that she will nurture and tend like a gardener of Hades. "But what about Phi? She isn't intimidated by anything."
He speaks as if he knows; probably he does. His is a character of small petty deeds that she will craft into great and devastating ones. Like the moon tugging the wilful tide, she will turn him to her purpose.
Then we must distract her, Poseidon. We must find someone who will cause her so much trouble she will forget her own. And this – this is where I will lend my aid. Ezekiel.
He frowns, but from the shadows beside her throne, where he crouches like a royal fool once might have, Zeke stands.
They stare at each other, her two weapons; fire and water, and she feels the dislike reverberate between them. Natural opposites, the dreamer and the doer, and she knows how to exploit that enmity as she does every emotion that makes the blood dance wildly.
He will explain, she says simply to the dolphin. But you should hurry, child. Don't you have a body to weep over?
He glances at his watch and swears, waving Zeke to follow him with an impatient hand. "I'm late. You'll have to wait until the funeral's done, but if you hide yourself near the lake-"
"I know a place," her pet says mildly, surprising her. Is that where he spends his nights, staring at the waters? Have the fires in him truly burned out – no, no, she remembers his defiance, his anger. Something still simmers, insignificant though it is. What then fascinates him there?
And then they are gone, and she is alone again, to drown willingly in her memories.
X - X - X - X - X
After dinner, Celia cut through town to the spacious house out on the edge of civilisation. Unlike most of the buildings, it was new, a pale blue that glowed in the ramshackle street.
She stepped up and rang the doorbell, mentally wincing as 'Wild Thing' played out in jangling chords.
The foxy, mistrustful face of Aspen Martin, her sister's fiancé, peered round the door. "Hello wench," he said, beckoning her into the hallway, "It's been a while."
"This place is a tip," she informed him, stepping gingerly over heaps of mail. "Mom said she's visiting next Thursday, so you might want to tidy up before then."
"Oh god." The vampire sounded horrified, as well he might. Her mother was determined to hammer her moral code into Aspen. "I'll call a cleaner."
The living room, like the rest of the house, was appallingly cluttered; when he'd lived with her family, fear of her mother had kept Aspen's mess under control. Now, unleashed in the bachelor pad, it was vast and uninhibited; plates were piled everywhere and pieces of car engines littered the floor.
"Who is it?" a voice rough as raw velvet called from the kitchen. "Aspen, can you take the brat? He keeps – no, you little monster – trying to eat my damn coffee!"
"It's Celia," the vampire shouted back. "Make yourself comfortable, Cee, I'll go and get Zane."
She swept the detritus off the boys' long, squashy couch, clearing space. No one quite knew what had passed between Aspen and the sister he almost never spoke of, but the result had been Aspen coming back from wherever he called 'home' with Zane.
Celia had always thought she adored children until she'd met Zane Martin, whose penchant for biting, kicking, and squirming was rivalled only by a set of lungs that would have made Pavarotti weep and promise to lose half his body weight if he could just have that raw power.
Her surrogate big brother came back in and it was easy to see that Zane and Aspen were two peas from the same malformed pod. Same strange, dual-changing eyes; same childlike smile, same dark hair.
"Aunty C!" howled Zane, promptly kicking Aspen so he was free to toddle over and bite her on the leg before she could think to stop him.
"Ouch!"
"Oops..." Aspen grabbed him, settling the boy on his lap. "Sorry, Cee. He's been feisty all day."
She rubbed her calf, grimacing . "Well, he didn't draw blood this time. How've you been, big bro?"
As ever, the endearment brought a smile to his face, too gaunt even after years of her mother's brisk but loving regime. Aspen was all edges and bones, slight but gracefully built. Those bizarre eyes, sliding from hue to hue at every moment, were more self-assured now than they once had been.
"Overworked," he said. "Between Zane and the garage, I haven't had a moment's peace."
"No one in this house has," came the biting tones of Vaje Chusson, coyote shapeshifter and Aspen's delectable housemate, who strolled out of the kitchen holding two cups of coffee and wearing nothing – oh, lovely - but a towel.
"Doggie!" screamed Zane, pointing at the shapeshifter.
"Still at the point and name stage, then," she said.
Unsuccessfully trying not to grin, Aspen stage-whispered, "Vaje wasn't very happy when Zane kept throwing sticks at him."
Vaje ignored both Martins. "Hey, Cee. Cap-perfect-cino. Just how you like it."
"Coffee and you half-naked?" she quipped, enjoying the way Vaje instantly hitched his towel up. "What did I do to deserve this?"
"Your obsession with nudity isn't healthy," the coyote shapeshifter muttered.
"Neither is your obsession with coffee," she retorted, taking the mug. It smelled wonderful, thick and rich as molten chocolate. "But I don't see you cutting back."
Vaje glowered at her, and just to infuriate him, Celia ogled him from towel to damply curling hair and wolf-whistled. Looking incensed, he shot out of the room as if the hordes of hell were after him.
Aspen's chuckle broke the silence. "You're an evil, evil girl. So what's the occasion? Not that I mind the visit, you're welcome any time."
She took a sip of the cream-crammed, sugar-loaded, caffeine-saturated slice of sin that was Vaje's coffee and sighed, feeling the heat curdle into her bones. Delicious. "I want to know about the pod."
"The real locals," he remarked. "Does this have something to do with your friend – Phi?"
"In a way."
"Well, they're the biggest group of shapeshifters in town-"
"Isn't that the Pack?" she interrupted. It was a rare day when she didn't see at least one group of ragtag werewolves sauntering down the main street, overconfident and territorial.
He shook his head. "You'd think so, but the pod's easily ten times bigger. They're just less visible. There must be two or three hundred of them about. They founded the town – and the Thetis family's led them for as long as anyone living can remember."
"They started as pilgrims," Vaje mentioned as he stomped back in. His body was sadly hidden by a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms that had seen better days. "How's your Nightworld history, Cee?"
"Virtually non-existent," she said with a hapless shrug.
"Typical," sighed Vaje, perching on the arm of the sofa. "Well, around thirty thousand years ago there was a massive war between the dragons and the witches – the Burning Times, we call it, and it's the reason why some of the shapeshifters get treated so badly. Towards the end of the war, a dragon princess called Ryar ap Sangager, who betrayed her own people to fight for the witches, made the dolphin people to take away some of the witches' children. Brave lady."
"They have some weird quirks because of it," put in Aspen. "Rather than being born, they were made, and so their powers are..." He searched for the word.
"Immaculate," supplied Vaje finally, his voice strangely soft. "They've kept their blood pure over the years – Ryar made so many of them, they've rarely intermarried. Arranged marriages are a key part of life in the pod, though it's becoming more difficult to enforce." His eyes were piercing, and unnervingly blank. "That is why you've come here, isn't it? Because of Phi and Don Ivan?"
How had he known? "Yes...but..."
"I have some friends in the pod," he said, and flashed a charming, crooked grin. "They think Marie Thetis pushed for this marriage, and they think she's wrong to do it. But they're old now, and their opinion doesn't count for much. And god knows that woman's stubborn as hell."
"The grapevine's got Ivan down as Daniel Thetis's successor," Aspen said mildly, "and the prophecies have been saying it for years. Though prophecy's a double-edged sword, and it's tearing that pod apart while they think it's saving them."
That philosophical statement was so unlike Aspen that she stared. For all his shrewdness, Aspen wasn't much given to social commentary. Glancing over, she saw Vaje wearing a similar astounded expression.
"When did you start channelling Confucius?" Celia leaned over to prod Aspen, careful not to touch the now-sleeping Zane. "Fess up, big bro, those aren't your words."
Aspen inclined his head. "Maybe not, but Iry Lupine knows what he's talking about."
Iry, the irascible lone wolf who lived deep in the Ghost Roads was half-legend, half disappointing reality. Longevity hadn't aged him much, except for splatters of grey in his hair and a tendency to paranoia. Someone had told her he'd been around for nearly two hundred years.
"How is the old maniac?" Vaje enquired. "And why were you talking to him about the pod?"
"Still healthy, and leaving bear-traps in the garden," grumbled Aspen. "And he talked to me about it. I was just painting over the rust on that banged up Chevy he's so fond of. He thinks they're overusing their prophets."
"You don't have to be a genius to know that," said the coyote, his mouth curling so the tiny burns on his cheek pulled tight and shiny. "I went to see Marie Thetis on behalf of the Elders. The woman's dying – no, she's killing herself, looking into the future over every damn decision."
"She won't stop." She couldn't keep the pity from her voice. The change in Mrs Thetis had been drastic; Phi's mother had become a pale, shimmering skeleton, ageing before her eyes.
"Stupid bloody woman thinks the pod will fall apart if she doesn't tell them what the weather's going to be tomorrow," snarled Vaje, glaring down at his coffee. "God knows why she doesn't just look at the lottery numbers for next week – then she'll never have to worry about them."
"Iry said prophecy isn't meant to be used friv-frivol-" Aspen gave up.
"Frivolously." Vaje shrugged. "It isn't, though the fire and earth-based seers don't suffer like the dolphins do."
"That's true..."
Celia was starting to realise just how little she knew about the intricacies of the Night World – of her best friend's daily life. Had she just not paid attention? She was confused, unbearably so, and it must have been mirrored on her face.
"See," the coyote explained to her, "prophecy was originally a power that only the most powerful dragons had. In the Burning Times, they gave it as a reward to faithful minions. Fireblade gave the Jubatus family the gift, though they see in fire rather than water. When Hael made the first witches, they saw in smoke, though over time, they've learned other mediums – anything with air in will work. But Ryar gave the dolphins prophecy to protect them, and I think she did it in haste - I don't think she would have intended it to kill them. Maybe it wasn't meant to be used often."
"She didn't think about people like Phi's mom, then," muttered Celia.
Vaje grunted. "Who the hell does? I walked in, and the bloody woman had made me coffee just how I like it, what a waste of her gift, not to mention her fragging life, and then she thanked me for naming my third child after her. My third? I don't even have one!" Sudden, fleeting sadness crossed his face, and was gone just as swiftly. "Not anymore."
"Want mine?" offered Aspen thoughtfully. Celia had to restrain a giggle at the appalled look that suggestion got.
"Zane's not a child, he's the living proof of Murphy's Law," Vaje told him. "Anything else you want to know, Cee?"
"How do you break blood-oath?" she said.
From the heavy silence in the room, they obviously hadn't heard that tidbit of information.
"Explain." There was a thunder-headiness to Vaje's voice, and she was at once very aware of his inhumanity. "Fast."
"Phi's parents and Don's swore blood-oath on their marriage contract," she said, and at the look on Vaje's face, quickly jumped over the back of the couch.
"They WHAT?" he shouted, his enraged face appearing above her. "Celia Slone, tell me this is some kind of joke you and Riose thought up!"
"Don't scream," she heard Aspen say, as she stared into Vaje's smouldering eyes, which had an alarming red tint to them. "If you wake Zane, you're singing him to sleep, and until you've done thirty renditions of the Teletubby song in the style of Frank Sinatra, you've never known pain."
"Don't be fatuous," rapped the coyote, all his attention still on her. "God, you aren't kidding, are you."
"Is it that bad?" she said, poisonous fright setting in. What had Phi gotten into? She had thought it was Night World politics – that it was just an ordinary situation wrapped up in the Night World's jargon and archaic laws, breakable as any other. Vaje's reaction said otherwise.
"Blood-oath. God."
"No one does it anymore," explained Aspen patiently, as she clambered up from the floor. "Well, except the Furies."
That was twice today that she'd heard them mentioned, and both times in similar circumstances. Celia could count the number of times she heard their name whispered before on the fingers of both hands.
The Furies aren't like anyone else, she told herself. Even in the Nightworld, they are a race apart, and they are feared.
"Did you...ever run into anyone from the Furies when you were..." Celia waved a hand, trying to think of a polite way to put it. "In that line of business?"
She knew Aspen had been an assassin – it had slipped out in a drunken confession one night - and it explained an awful lot that she hadn't understood when he lived with them. His late-night visitors. His trips away. His complete inability to watch horror films without criticising the psychopath's knife technique.
Celia knew it as a fact in the same way that she knew that Pluto orbited the Sun; a dim, distant thing that didn't really affect her life, interesting to think about, but not quite real, somehow.
Vaje's eyebrows shot up. "Martin...have you been telling the nice girl porkies?"
There was a definite pink tinge to Aspen's face. "Not...really."
"What's going on?" she said guardedly, looking from one to the other.
"I..." Her big brother rubbed the back of his neck. "Kind of used to be involved with the Furies."
"Involved how?" Her mind couldn't take it in. Aspen couldn't have worked for the Furies; that was stupid. How could anyone so, so gentle, so timid, so very...careful, her mind supplied. He's always careful, like he's afraid something he does might make us leave him. He's so afraid of being alone.
Maybe it wasn't just self-doubt that made him so wary. Maybe some of those sad shadows in his face were from what he had done, not what had been done to him.
He was shaking, she saw, the old, lunatic fear crashing back into his eyes like it had when he'd wake up screaming from nightmares that he wouldn't talk about. When he spoke, his voice was a child's voice, uncertain. "I used to run Pursang."
Celia stared at him. "No."
"Very much yes," Vaje said calmly, crossing his arms. "He ran it, and I used to work for him. We're both Furies, girl, and we know just what happens if you try and break a blood-oath."
She covered her face with her hands, not wanting Aspen to see her reaction, not wanting to hurt him. "Oh...god."
X - X - X - X - X
Almost all of the pod had turned out for the funeral, dressed in mourning finery; not black, but the heady blue of their last resting place, of sky and sea and maybe oblivion. They stood in their families, children hushed by parents, forming a loose semi-circle around the jetty of the lake as the funeral pyre blazed, the fire popping loudly in the summer evening.
One face, though, was noticeable by its absence. Don wasn't here, and Phi felt glad of it, even as part of her recognised how unusual that was. Unlike her, he played the part of dutiful son to perfection, with flattering fawning to his elders, glowing like some handsome angel among the dark, lithe merpeople.
His father was there, a large, imposing man with a halo of thinning hair that had darkened to gold as he aged, and would soon become the premature grey of all the merpeople. Laurence Ivan was only here because her mother was not; even after thirty years, there was a stiffness between them Phi could not fail to recognise.
"Not long now," her father murmured. He'd gone out of his way to greet the Ivans, but Laurence's reply had been perfunctory, mere feigning. "Thank goodness the wind's blowing onto the lake."
The odour of the pyre, smoky and thick, mingled with the pungent herbs the body was liberally swaddled in, could not quite mask the underlying aroma of burning flesh. It was not uncommon for the close family to arrive after the balefire had died, but today the Thelassoes were all here, heads high.
The pyre was smouldering gently when she realised Don had crept in; he was stood beside his father, looking appropriately solemn, theirs the only two blond heads in the entire pod, and that intense stare was fixed on her.
No one could quite explain how Don had sprung from his parents; though Laurence was handsome in a rough, rugged way, and his wife had a certain washed-out prettiness, neither held a candle to their son. He had the best of both his parents, and the blessings of some divine artist beyond that, and he shone out in the pod like a sunlit idol.
There was a delicacy to his features that was almost androgynous, as if a benevolent artist had taken care in smoothing out the planes of his face, drawing the generous curve of his mouth with simple grace, painting in those ocean eyes with deftness.
She stared back steadily, hoping he could read what she was thinking. Not you. Never you.
I will sell my soul to the Furies and all their dark, bloody horrors before I give myself willingly to you, she vowed. I will not be your plaything,
His voice, always shockingly gentle, eased into her mind like he might slide into her bed, smooth and naked of all his ambition. Don't fight me over this. Don't be a fool, Phi.
You'd rather I marry one? she slung back flatly, as the last pallid webs of smoke drifted over the lake, and her father stepped forward to gather the ashes. Why did you agree to this?
There was a curious grimness to his voice. It was necessary.
Her father was speaking then, commiserating with the family, and she broke off to listen to him. She had liked Amelia Thelasso, who'd never hesitated to speak her mind or howl with laughter at the pod children's pranks, and she deserved respect.
"...it's good to see so many of you here," her father finished. "Amelia was much loved, even by those of us who got bruised shins from her infernal cane."
"She only gave you a whack when you were impertinent, boyo," grumbled Amelia's husband from the crowd, a grizzled figure. That was the way of the pod; interruptions were allowed, and everyone invited to share their memories.
"Odd," her father remarked with a roguish grin. "I seemed to have permanent marks."
"That's because you were always impertinent." The old man cackled, and pointed a finger at him. "You and that other whippersnapper...Laurie – thick as thieves, the pair of you, and always causing trouble. You here, Laurie?"
"For Amelia – of course," called back Don's father, his voice cool. "Her cookies were famous."
"For being dreadful," one of the pod shouted cheerfully, and the next hour was spent reminiscing over her life, each person listened to, laughter often rippling up through the air, and if tears were mingled with it too, there were plenty of hands to offer comfort. The children sat around, often bored, while the teens listened politely, even if they had little to say.
Finally, her father beckoned her, and the pair of them walked onto the jetty with slow ceremonial steps. He held Amelia's ashes, and Phi had nothing but the fluttering of wings in her stomach. There was complete silence about them, and she felt the weight of gazes on her, both burden and honour.
The waters were ruffled by the breeze, wavelets topped with foam that was turning orange in the fading sun, and carefully her father scattered the ashes into the lake. They drifted, silvery pieces darkening to grey, bobbing out, sinking, dissipating into the water.
She glanced at her father, and he nodded. Strange...tears stood in his eyes, and then she understood.
They would do this again, he and she; the two of them would stand here, to scatter another woman's ashes onto the waters, and say again the same words, and her heart would burn with this same bitter pain. She needed no prophecy to tell her that.
Let that day be distant, let it never come. Please.
She began, quiet at first, that premonition of sorrow lending a poignancy to her voice she hadn't known she could feel. "Your journey was long, and has seen its end."
Behind her, the pod took up the words, voices combining into one low chant.
"May the ocean take you to its deepest heart," she said simply, thinking of Amelia, and of her mother, who seemed as one. "Fly in its storms, sleep in its tides."
She found unanticipated tears clinging to the corner of her eyes, and blinked them back, forcing her voice to be clear and strong, carrying easily back to them. "And may the waters bring you back to us on the foam of every wave - until we are one."
"Until we are one," they said in unison, and there was a long hush before people filed down the jetty to say their farewells. The family were the last of the procession, and aged, half-blind Mr Thelasso last of all, refusing to lean on anyone.
"That was well done, girl," he told her kindly, dabbing at his eyes. "Very well done indeed."
"Thank you," she said, and surprising herself, gave him a kiss on the cheek.
"Careful now," he warned, giving her a leathery grin. "You'll give an old man a heart attack, making advances like that."
She laughed, despite the solemnity of the occasion and he nodded, as if for a job well done.
"He's right," her father murmured when they were last two on the jetty. "You did well, Phi. I'm proud. Most of us are going to the Thelassoes for a quiet coffee and some not-so-quiet nostalgia. Are you coming, or heading home?"
She gazed over the waters, that brief moment of humour gone. "I...think I'll stay here for a little while."
"All right," he said, and gave her a hug. "Don't be home too late."
"I'll look after her," a dry voice said, and Don Ivan stepped onto the jetty, elegant in his dark blue suit, the colour of shark-skin. "I want to talk to Phi anyway, Mr Thetis. We have some things to sort out."
Her father raised his eyebrows. "I'm sure you do. Tell your father it was good of him to come tonight."
"I'm sorry he didn't come to Danielle's funeral," the dolphin said unexpectedly. There was an expression Phi hadn't expected to see on his face; regret, lovely and ethereal. "I tried to convince him, but...he...Mrs Thetis..."
"I know," her father said heavily. "Don't worry about it, Don. It's all troubled water under the bridge. Goodnight kids." He roused a strained, if credible grin. "Don't do anything I'm going to find out about."
Oh my god, he's treating us like a pair of lovebirds. The thought was ghastly.
Then the two of them were alone, and she was afraid.
You never wanted time to end; to let my life offend
It's time to realise what hides deep inside your holy eyes.
X - X - X - X - X
Thanks for reading! Comments adored.
