Water had been more difficult to come by. A small amount of freshwater condensation could sometimes be gathered from the ceiling of the cave when the tide was high, but it was never enough to slake her thirst. She had to content herself with the blood of the eels that swarmed abundantly in the tidal cave, trapped when the current ebbed, then eating their flesh raw to preserve as much of the liquid as possible. Occasionally she caught a few oysters, fish, or sea urchins that got swept into the cave, but after a few nightmarish days the source of her nourishment hardly mattered.
We will live through this together, you and I, she had promised her unborn child.
She would do whatever she had to in order to keep that promise.
I am a Singer, a Namer, she thought, caressing her abdomen while watching the gray sky turn pink from her perch on the natural ledge in the back of the tidal cave. And also because I am your mother, I must tell you the truth.
She closed her eyes, remembering Ashe’s tender words to her on the night their child was conceived.
And what do you flan to give me for my birthday?
Someone to teach your morning aubade, your evening vespers to.
A tiny shaft of sunlight broke through the gloom at the horizon. Rhapsody cleared her throat, ragged from the salt, and quietly sang one of the ancient aubades, the love songs to the sky that Liringlas had been marking time with for as long as she knew.
“Not my favorite,” she said to the unborn baby when she was finished, “but the first one your grandmother taught me. We must learn them in order; they have a pattern, as you will see.”
More and more she had begun to talk aloud to the child, her only regular companion in the prison of her tidal cave. The baby had become her touchstone, her reason for enduring the hours underwater, the thirst, the hunger.
During the times when the tide was high, she had stopped struggling, and instead viewed the hours as instruction in the music of the sea. While floating on her back, she could make out songs on the waves; at first they were wordless, mere melodies of swirling currents, rushing and ebbing along with the seawater. She tried to concentrate on floating, knowing her child was floating within her as well.
If you are not frightened in your small, dark cave full of water, I must not be, either.
Once she had banished the fear from her mind, she could hear it then, the lore of the sea, songs from all the shores that the ocean waves touched, some fragmented, some clear and long. She spent most of her quiet hours listening to the chanties of sailors, the call of the merfolk, scraps of lore from the ancient city of the Mythlin, now silent beneath the waves, the weeping of the families of those lost on the sea; it was an indescribably beautiful symphony of life, of history, sad, heroic, glorious, mystical.
And it was being sung to her, and to her baby.
How lucky you are in a way, my child, to have this time, she thought one night as the moonlight was reflected on the low water of the cave, swirling in great silver ripples. You are being steeped in elemental magic—the baptism of the sea, the fire that warms and dries us when the tide is low, the sheltering cave of earth that was formed in fire and cooled in water, the wind that blows through, singing its ageless song. One day you will make a fine Namer, if you choose to be one. The thoughts were enough to help her keep despair at bay.
Most of the time.
One afternoon, when she was not feeling so strong, and misery had taken a greater toll that it was usually allowed, Rhapsody looked up from her ledge to see bright eyes in a small brown furry face staring back at her.
She started, reeling back against the wall.
The animal started as well, disappearing beneath the surface of the water.
As she skittered back, her boots scraped for purchase on the ledge, sending a small hail of black rocks that had broken off from the wall into the swirling water.
Rhapsody watched, fascinated, as the black igneous formations floated in the surface, spinning in spirals. A moment later, the otter she had seen appeared, bobbing the volcanic rock in front of its nose, guiding it out of the tidal cave.
She pondered what she had seen that night as she floated with the rising tide, trying to think of a way she might make use of what she had seen.
By the time the tide had fallen, she had an idea.
Every few hours she would use the bolt tip that had lodged in her belt to scrape free pieces of the back wall of the cave, tying them within her shirt. If I can bind them together with something, seaweed, strands of my hair, it would make for a tiny raft of sons, she reasoned, trying to keep from shredding her fingers too badly. If I can use it to aid my floating when the tide is high, perhaps I can use it to obtain purchase, to work my away around to the front of the cave, so that when the tide falls, it will take me with it. She patted her abdomen and silently corrected herself. Take us with it.
Each evening that the tide was low, when the weather was clear, she would watch for the pink light that filled the cave, signaling that the sun was about to set.
Even more than the sunrise devotions, Rhapsody had always loved the vespers, the evensong that bade the sun farewell with a promise to be standing vigil until it rose again the next morning. It was a dual devotion, a requiem for the sun, marking the completion of another day as a requiem sung at a funeral pyre marked the completion of a life; it was a greeting to the stars, the sky guardians of the Lirin, as well.
I will not forget you, she whispered as the light in the sky dimmed, disappearing beyond the horizon into night. Please do not forget me.
The phrase rang in her memory, familiar; she pondered while floating where she had heard it before, then remembered as the water swirled around her ears, singing its ageless song.
They were die words, simple in their formation, spoken by her dear friend, the dragon Elynsynos, to her lover, Merithyn the Explorer, before he left her lands and returned to his king, Gwylliam, with the joyous news that there was a land, a verdant, beautiful land, that would take the refugees of Serendair in, would make them at home.
He had promised, and then died at sea on the way back.
As she watched the first star rising at the horizon, twinkling in the deep cobalt blue of the late summer night, Rhapsody wondered what might have come to pass if the sea had not taken him, had he made it back to her, to their children whom he would not live to see. How different would things be now, she thought, her hand, as ever, resting lightly on her belly.
She thought of their descendants, Manwyn and her two mad sisters, the Seers of the Past and Present, the first now dead, the second living a frail and harmless life, moment by moment, in an abbey in Sepulvarta. Edwyn Griffyth, Anwyn and Gwylliam’s eldest son, a self-imposed exile in Gaematria, the mystical island of the Sea Mages. Llauron, Ashe’s father, now lost in time somewhere, communing with the elements in a vaporous dragon form, one with them. And Anborn. Tears welled up in her eyes as her mind came to rest on him, remembering the sight of his body lying in the burning forest, his legs, lost in the effort to spare her three years ago, useless to save him.