Prelude
Posted
Trevor climbed up flights of stone steps and along the maze of cobblestone footpaths leading up the cliff face. The limewashed faces of the buildings passed by as he made his way to the coastal terrace on the north side of the village.
He could still imagine the feel of the walls along the path, with the grey smudge line from untold generations of children running their fingers along as they ran along, but he was a grown man of 16 now. There was no time for such frivolities.
On the terrace, there was soil for little vegetable patches and herb gardens, supplementing their diet of seafood. They were overseen by tidy wooden houses with prosperous farming families. Houses made of imported lumber were a sign of real status.
Trevor saw the siren out by the headland, a small figure in the water waving at him, periodically obscured by the rise of a wave. He started jogging through the dry sand, belatedly wondering how long she had been trying to get his attention. She beckoned for greater haste, and then dove towards the point, away from the village.
Trevor knew that it was forbidden to associate with the sirens that lived along the rocky coast to the East of the village, but Tasha’s soft eyes had a way of dispelling the warnings of the old stories. Besides, the Sea Dragon himself had authority over both the village and the sirens, and didn’t tolerate petty bickering between them. If they ran into trouble, surely it would be smoothed over.
And then there was the sirens’ magic that she showed him. Trevor was training in the enchantments used in the village, and Tasha had sung the few that she knew to him, but their real magic was the codices.
At last he came to the North Trailhead which descended the rocky face around the headland. It was a strenuous path coming back up, and a popular one for militia training. They would race down around the point, and to the pocket beaches. His lungs always burned as they toiled back up the slope for the second half of the run.
But now he was going down, and fast. The breeze was stiff as he emerged from the leeward side. He still had a good way to go. High above he could hear the bleating of sheep and goats on the terrace where the pastures extended along the coast. He kept watching for Tasha, though he knew she was already far ahead. Trevor had to run around the first few pocket beaches which didn’t help matters. He pushed himself to go faster. She had insisted he come before high tide, and codex magic didn’t abide delay.
Presently he emerged onto the last beach and saw a great grid of the codices lying in the dry sand just below the high tide mark. Tasha had pulled herself out of the water. For a moment there was something strange about her that he tried to grasp, but it faded away. She was chanting something to him in her strange language that made him feel warm and calm and right. As the song continued she gestured proudly at the books arrayed before her. It was always jarring for him to see something as important as books sitting on the ground so close to water.
Everything she had showed him so far was nowhere near this scale. One or two books, set out on the beach for minor things. Drawing in fish for a better catch, seeing the weather for the coming week. This was something different.
“Tasha, what is all this? It must have taken ages!” he exclaimed. She responded with the glistening eyes and mute emotion of a labor-filled gift appreciated. He wondered why would she do something so extravagant for him?
She managed a laugh, the sort that emotion threatens to turn into a sob, much to the alarm and confusion of Trevor, who knelt close by her. “What’s wrong?” he said. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, everything is okay,” she managed. “I’ve been wanting to show you this one for weeks.”
There were twenty-one of them, the dark green of dry seaweed, with a single white character on each, save one: In the center was a single codex, bone white, with a single red character written boldly upon it.
Trevor saw beneath that the sand had been wetted, before the codices had been placed. In the gaps between he could see half guessed channels in the damp sand weaving their way beneath. Tasha had shown him this once before. Something about ensuring the proper timing of the mixture before it poured into a collecting hollow. codices such as these were written to dissolve and mix, not to be read.
He gestured towards the strange white book. “May I?” he said. Tasha hesitated briefly, then nodded her head. Trevor leaned over and gingerly parted its first pages. The leaf of the cover felt brittle, but had enough integrity to not flake away when handled with care. Like the single large character on the cover, the inside was lettered with a red ink. He knew that she would have written out each line by hand.
Tasha reached out and tugged the cloth of his pant leg. “No more time! The tide is coming. Here, lay down here!” She pulled herself back towards the water, revealing the person-sized collecting hollow in the sand, with the channels leading from the array. Trevor noticed that he had been kneeling among some of them, the prints of his knees pressing parts of the network out of existence.
He gestured towards the damage, but Tasha just shrugged. The tide was coming in, and there was no time for changes. It already washed over her tail. Trevor noticed her roll it into the water, and remembered how the dryness itched. Trevor wondered at this, knowing how fragile his sung spells were. It seemed strange and grounded by comparison.
She watched Trevor, prone in the basin, as the tide filled it around him. “Is it safe?” he asked, looking up at the spell books. “Yes, of course!” Something in the way she said it suggested “probably”. Trevor felt a pang of uncertainty, but her soft song resumed and washed it patiently away.
The waters surged softly around him, beneath the rows of books. There was the soft sound of the thirsty pages drinking in the sea water, before it withdrew. Strange smells, herbal and chemical, reached their nostrils, and Trevor looked back again, as colored water began to find its way into the basin.
“Lay back, let the water cover you,” Tasha called, as a second wave came urgently and softly in. The books, now saturated in water, began to dissolve away in the water. Only the covers held together, moving in alignment on the surface. They too began to dissolve away into translucent flakes, then to naught. The hand-inked characters on the covers lingered longest on the surface, as the wave receded. A faint memory, disappearing as they washed into or past the basin around Trevor.
Tasha swam to his side with the third surge. He felt cold. He didn’t have the hot blood of the sirens. Not yet, anyways. She pressed against him, and kissed his lips and the sides of his neck, and laughed as she swam away.
Turning, she watched him avidly, not knowing what to expect. “What’s it supposed to do?” he called to her, coughing from the strong fumes. Tasha shrugged.
“Tasha! Tasha!” a voice cried over the water. “You leave that one be. I have written the counter spell, and put it in the waters.” Her eyes flashed with anger as she responded, “What do you mean? This took me weeks!”
Trevor thought he recognized the new arrival. She had spoken with him last week, on a day that Tasha had not come. She was strange and fierce, and had bitten the top of his ear as he was leaving. Trevor looked back at Tasha troubled, “What’s wrong? What is she saying?”, for he did not know their language.
The new siren swam forward, her face fierce and angular, as Tasha’s were soft and open. She bared her sharp teeth at him. “Go, this does not concern you.”
Tasha looked at him with a stricken expression, “It’s fine, go. Just go!” At a loss for what else to do, he began to slog his way back towards the village. He turned back once more, only to be cowed by the continued row in the unfamiliar tongue, which now had turned into some sort of chanted chastisement, then he disappeared around the point.