"If it looks real and feels real, do you think it matters if it's real?"
― Daniel Nayeri, Another Faust
~O~
Part 7: Chasing Mists
~O~
"Did you miss me, Edmund?"
In Calla's place stands the White Witch, glowing in the fog, with her silver staff completing her arm.
"Y-You." Edmund recoils, leaning further against the edge of the boat but finds little to support himself with. "You need to stop."
The sound of the witch's laughter envenoms all sense of rationale and logic, rendering Edmund paralyzed and unable to run away even as she floats forward and their shoulders almost brush together.
"Did you really think I would die that easily?" The tantalizing voice breathes into his ear. "Not before I take all those you love, dear boy."
"If you lay one hand on my family," he warns, impassioned with fury. "I will kill you."
"Oh, little Edmund," she drools, with the sweetness of something rotting. "I can only hope you will be prepared for what is coming."
When Edmund unsheathes his sword ready to strike her, the phantasm before him fragments into the innocent shape of a fog.
"Your Majesty, put the sword down."
His vision fades into focus and lands on Calla, who has placed a stretch of distance between them.
It takes him a while to rescind from a defensive stance and sheathe his sword, the embarrassment and compunction clear in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."
The chill is gone. The mist in his breath has disappeared. He studies the fog surrounding Calla, wondering what premonitions he saw that brought back harrowing memories, ones he had spent years building walls to keep at bay.
"What were we talking about?" He asks, ultimately deciding that perhaps the sea is culpable for suggesting shapes amongst the fog.
"I asked if you could hear the merfolk singing to you. And then you froze." Edmund could see Calla plumbing for an explanation in his eyes, so he tries to look away. "Almost like they had said something… terrifying."
"I had forgotten that merfolk songs can induce hallucinations," he lies, partly to placate the air of uneasiness around them and partly to convince himself none of it was real.
"So you saw something?" Calla asks, and he hopes she doesn't notice the adrenaline shake to his hands as he wipes invisible dirt off his tunic.
But when he holds his gaze to Calla, he does realize something; not that she looked anything different, but seeing the visions had only made it more apparent. The glint of moonlight in Calla's upbraided hair, her dark features, and the prominence of her cheekbones reveals to Edmund that she bears the most striking resemblance to her—to the witch Aslan had gleaned from this world but never his memories.
"You seem as though you've seen a ghost."
She holds her gaze towards him, as if to wait if he were to add something that would prove otherwise.
She says one more thing. "The singing. It stopped," she tells him, eyes fixated on the fog hovering above the waters, or maybe something beneath it.
"Or something did."
And then it happens all at once. And there was no sound nor scream to alert anyone.
Edmund sees a cloaked figure behind Calla, registers the sight of a cloth over her mouth that immediately renders her lifeless, before she's hoisted off the deck and over the ship. He tries to unsheathe his sword, but his momentary relapse from earlier incapacitates his hand-eye coordination, leaving his movements sloppy at best as he wields his weapon against four more figures that emerged from the underside of the ship.
Just when he's able to fight, he only feels a sharp pain on the back of his head before losing consciousness.
-O-
The moment Edmund comes to, he had initially thought he had been dreaming, and the feeling of waves rocking him to and from was simply the motion he felt from the comfort of his cabin aboard the Narnian ship.
He is startled awake, though, the moment he tries to open his mouth but only feels the stifling hold of a ragcloth pulling the opening of his mouth, snagged between his teeth. He felt every muscle in his body seize up and cramp with such agony, along with the grim reality of his situation coming to him in an unwelcome rush. In his attempt to stand up, he finds the rest of his limbs shackled, the cuff bound to a peg on the wall. When his vision clears in the darkness, it dawns on him that they had thrown him into a wooden cell, at what he surmises to be the brig of a pirating ship, going at a pace of what he estimates to be 12 knots under full sail.
Where are they hurrying to?
A hundred thoughts race in his head in a dizzying swarm: concern for his soldiers, wrath for his captors, and dismay that he could not get to Susan as quickly he had promised. No doubt, this is the work of the Calormene slave traders—they were surely not above piracy. But above the noise, the most immediate danger on his radar was the certain fact that Calla was also taken.
A woman cannot be safe in a ship full of men making living off illicit affairs.
-O-
Inside the creaking cabin, Calla takes a sip of a thirty-year-old snakewine; if the captain offered only the finest beverage ever to be found in the Calormene desert, he must surely be in the best mood for negotiating.
"What are you staring at?" She had meant it more as a warning than a question when she finds his gaze wandering. The captain had a crooked smile, and a gold tooth on his lopsided grin. He was hairy on all the wrong places, and not a strand of it was on his head. But she tries not to provoke too much—not when he had the company of five other burly men around him.
"Oh, my manners," the captain feigns shame. "I am simply surprised you were the one who sent the raven. Bold request, I may add—to invade a royal cargo ship. But you are aware of the cost of such an endeavor?"
"It is why you will be paid handsomely if you escort me until the full moon again. Where the deed shall be done," Calla says.
A short pause follows. Calla tries not to be unnerved by the unconvinced look in the captain's eyes.
"You claimed in your letter that the cost of extracting a high profile figure—such as a Narnian monarch—shall be shouldered by the Guild," he finally says.
"Believe me, they will break the treasury for the honor of killing one of the Royal Four, no less than the Just himself."
"Oh my dear," he says, with the kind of lopsided grin that showed only the other half of his teeth—or the lack of it. "You know better than to lie to us."
Calla finds herself standing up in fury at the accusation. "I'm not lying," she hisses, prompting the other men within earshot to unsheathe their scimitars.
The captain only gestures for the men to lower their weapons. "Lest you forget, girl. We have eyes. Everywhere and all the time."
"Always, all the time." The men chime together. Calla feels a bead of sweat run down her hairline.
The captain takes his time standing up and reaches Calla within a few long strides. "It has come to my attention that you have defected from the Guild, and are no longer one to enjoy its benefits…" He reaches out to gingerly fiddle with her hair. "…and protection."
Calla tries not to blink. "You will be paid. I swear it."
"Perhaps you're right," he drawls. "And perhaps we can still negotiate." He motions for the men surrounding Calla to leave.
"Alone."
The men rustle to leave the room, and as the cabin door is shut, Calla does not know what to make of the uneasiness in her stomach and the occupation of only one word in her mind. Run.
"Tell me, sweet Calla," he says, the gentleness in his voice belied by the stomach-turning intent in his eyes. "Where are you going to get all that gold, 'more than all of the sunbreaks and sunbends one can see in their lifetime,' as you've written?"
"I have a plan," she holds a finger up imploringly. "And it involves not just the Guild's reward for you but also all the treasure in Cair Paravel. You see, I have a spy in the castle. I swear it."
Even at this, the captain seems unfazed. "I do not run my business on the word of promises—especially not a woman's. I require a downpayment."
"I—I have nothing on me."
He doesn't seem perturbed, as though he already had something in mind for his feverish gaze was unsettling. "On the contrary, you have everything... useful on you." The gap between them was only a breath away, and Calla almost retches at the smell; the man only a husk of all the whiskey he had consumed and a brainrot of all ill things he had ever conjured. "Oh my beauty, if you can't please me with gold, there are other ways to satisfy a man." She feels his hand rest on her waist and almost gasps when he pulls her even closer with a sudden jolt.
Calla is frozen as she feels him bury his nose in the nape of her neck, as though he was raking in her scent. The sensation travels from there to a shuddering whisper in her ear.
"And I really prefer when women don't put up a fight, as several others have," Calla, cold with horror a moment ago, now finds her cheeks livid hot with rage. The captain continues his business, sliding a hand around her waist but doesn't feel Calla's sleight of hand as she hovers something at the base of his neck.
A/N: sorry for the long wait, I had recently graduated and also got a job. I really missed writing, though. Thank you for reading and still sticking around, if you are.