Young Writers Society

Silira slammed the latch shut on the last chest. Her dresses were the kind that were very hard to pack, and she was exhausted. She walked--ugh, she didn't care if merpeople couldn't cry, one of these days she was going to burst out crying--to her bed and collapsed on top of the covers. It had been two weeks since the lighthouse. The Golden Palace had been filled with bustling seamstresses and tailors, fixing the clothes and making new stuff for the lords and ladies who would accompany Corwin and herself to Eire. And the tradesmen were only the half of it. Wintress had been so busy she couldn't even stop for lunch from ordering people around.

They would leave the next morning. Corwin was elated, and she was excited as well. She would see more of the land, experience her first winter as a human, and find out what Yule was like. Corwin wouldn't fall for Serena, since she wasn't The Girl--Silira had taken to mentally capitalizing her--and they would come home in the spring, to a whole life in the Golden Palace.

So this is what it is like to be human.

She was definitely one now. No one, looking at her, would have any idea of who she really was. She drifted off to sleep and dreamed again.

Silira sped out of the house and into the forest, holding the vial out in front of her. She couldn't get out fast enough. The potion glowed brightly, cooling the water around her and scaring the living forest with its light. The polyps drew back, shrieking hollowly. The bog was easy when the vial was cooling the water, and it stilled the whirlpool for long enough for her to swim up the abyss towards the light at the top, and she was back in the normal night darkness of under the sea.

She swam slowly back over the grey plain, back to the palace. She stopped near a window of the dining hall, hearing the party going on without her. Father must have made some excuses. Nobody knew she was leaving, and she went on silently, to her sisters' gardens, picking a flower from each of their plots and weaving them into her hair. She wanted something to remember them by. Silira stopped at her own plot, staring at the statue. It felt almost as if she had never left, as if it had all been a dream. Corwin smiled back at her. She had mostly thought of getting a soul, but Corwin was always in the back of her mind now. She had asked around, watched him from the sea when she was bored, heard stories until she knew him so well. He was no longer a story or a statue to her, but a friend who didn't know he was so loved. Someday he would. She was fighting for that, too.

She rose high above the roof of the palace, kissed her hand again and again, and rose above the surface into a wide moonlit night. It was hard to imagine that only an hour ago she had been in the witch's house.

Bells rang in the palace chapel. In Sentrynyl, people would think the royals were being summoned to a meeting. And it was true, sort of.

Silira stumbled, still exhausted, into her clothes. She hated stumbling with a passion. She grabbed her coat off the dressing table, where she had left it, and pulled it on as she ran out of the apartment and down to the fountain hall. Through the windows, she saw fog. Just fog. There was a faint sound of wind outside. She nearly ran into Henry at an intersection, and jumped back, trying to look apologetic and succeeding only in looking almost dead. The kid yawned behind his hand. "Oh...Silent. It's not that bad a morning, I suppose." He kept going through the golden stone halls, with her walking next to him. "Um...you and Corwin..."

She looked down at him, startled. He turned away. "Never mind. It's just that...on the balcony the morning after he came back..."

She shook her head and walked faster. Speeding up was better than thinking about...no. She was not going to think about the fact that she wanted a soul and also Corwin, and she couldn't speak and her feet--

No. She was not going to think about it. Not now. Not ever. She would forget her past. She wouldn't even visit her sisters again. She would become Lady Silent. She was Silira no longer. Thinking about her past hurt too much.

In the huge hall, Wintress stood at the front of a gathering of nobles. Corwin stood with Silira at the front of a gathering of their own, ten other dignitaries who would accompany them to Aeryn. Henry stood next to Wintress, looking sad. He'd only just gotten his brother back from the east.

"Go with all speed and the wind at your backs," Wintress said. "Lady Silent, I apologize for separating you and my brother at the party. Corwin, everyone else, may you enjoy the festivities in Aeryn." She swallowed, then broke down and hugged Corwin. She had missed him over the summer, after all. Henry looked at them for a second, then came over to Silira. She bent over and hugged him, smiling. The kid did have intuition. He had known she needed it more than anyone else.

"Good luck," Henry said, and then winked so only she could see. "I'll pray for you," he said, as they left the hall, left the Golden Palace, left Sentrynyl, left Aragon and the very land itself. The nobles all rode on different roads to leave the city, but Corwin and Silira rode together. Guards were posted throughout the city, making sure no one saw the faces of the cloaked figures and tried to kill them. Neither of them said anything.

The ship was waiting in the harbor. Her name was the Falcon, and she was beautiful, her silver figurehead made like a falcon, a white flag blowing in the wind overhead. Any ship flying a white flag meant no harm to anyone, and hopefully no harm would be extended. They flew no other. If any ship hailed them and asked who they were, their story was that they were bringing supplies for the New Year festivities in Caer Ebon, which was true in a way.

The captain was already aboard, a general who had sailed with the king years ago, one Sir Hans Swordfish, a deeply tanned, businesslike man in the customary long blue coat. He came to the taffrail at the edge of the ship now, looking down at the last two passengers arriving. Silira's hood blew back as Corwin helped her off her horse. A boy ran up and took their horses. Corwin and Silira walked quickly up the gangplank, bracing themselves against the wind. Swordfish came up to them as the gangplank was raised.

"Welcome aboard," he said, turning his collar up. "Captain Swordfish at your service, milady, Your Highness. Your companions know where your cabins are. Please stay in one place while we're setting off. You know, sir, how busy it gets."

Corwin nodded. "Aye, Captain. Would here be all right?" He turned to Silira. "My friend here, as far as I know, has never been on any vessel. Have you?"

Silira shook her head. She had been watching the sea.

Corwin turned back to Captain Swordfish. "Then, sir, she has not lived."

She rolled her eyes. She had lived slightly too much--no, forget her past.

The captain was giving his orders to set off. Corwin was asking her if she wanted to stay on deck. "If it's too cold, I don't mind if we go below."

She shook her head again. She liked it up here.

"All right, then," he said, crossing to the port side with her (port is left, starboard is right) and leaning on the rail. He knew how to stand on a ship, she noticed, though she had known it for a long time from watching--No. Forget the past. He stayed perpendicular to the sea. That was the trick to it.

A strand of her long hair blew into his face, and he pushed it away with no more attention than if it had been his own. She gathered her hair into her hood and put it back on, pulling it down and gazing out of it at the grey sea. The fog was clearing, and they were pulling out of the harbor. Corwin put his arm around her shoulders. It really was cold.

"You aren't afraid of the sea, are you, Silent?"

She kept looking at the distant horizon. The slight sunrise behind them lit the waves with a faint white light, like seeing the moon from down in the deeps--No, for the thousandth time, she would not think of...of what she had decided not to think of. Nothing but the wind and the sea.

Corwin started talking again, telling her all he knew of the sea, fish, whales, ships, icebergs, rocks that ships had run aground on, storms of legendary might. He went on like this for a while, with her listening. It was interesting, finding out how much the humans knew of the sea--No. No! She was one now. She always had been.

Then her dear Corwin wrecked it all again.

"And there is one other thing," he said quietly. "A legend. Something unknown, not like sea serpents or the Kraken, which we have proof of, but the story keeps being told. I've always wondered about it, wondered whether they really exist. What if they did? What if, by some strange train of events, we never knew of them, but they still were, living in the deep without our knowledge for thousands of years?"

She looked up at him and tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. He looked down at her, and she gave him a questioning look, trying to look as if she didn't already know the answer.

"What? Oh, right." He laughed at himself, which was something he did often, and went back to looking at the sea. "Mermaids." He stared into the sea, and she gasped silently. Just before he looked, there had been a flash of a white tail. She hoped he thought it had been light on a wave, but she knew it was not. Levana. It had to be. Oh, well, she might as well remember her sisters. It seemed they were tailing her, thank heavens. Levana wouldn't come alone. Who else was with her?

Corwin hadn't noticed it. "Or mermen," he went on. "Some races are all female or male, but I suppose there's a chance of there being mermen. I've always listened to stories about them. Do they know about us? Are we only a story to them, the way they're a story to us? Everyone wants to know, Silira. If there are merpeople, I think they keep to themselves.

They can't be afraid of us or angry with us, I think, because they never wreck our ships. There is so much more sea than land, so they must be more than we are, and stronger. Why do they leave us alone? I think it must make them sadder to meet us, since..."

Silira nodded. Everyone knew that all the Seelie wished for a soul, and only the humans had them. Corwin stopped talking about it, inwardly shouting at himself for mentioning souls. It was a sore point with everyone who wasn't human.

She wished she could speak for about the infinitieth time and turned away from the rail, gently moving his arm away and realizing she hadn't had breakfast. A cup of tea from the kindly housekeeper in the big hall, that was all. She didn't mind the cold at all, but she was starving. She took Corwin's hand and brought him down below. Getting down the ladders was something of a challenge, with her voluminous coat, but it was worth it to stay warm. It was, after all, the best (and only, but she wasn't going to think about that) coat she'd ever had.

The voyage went on and on. Everyone, crew and passengers, grew to like Lady Silent, mostly because she was willing to listen. Anything to distract her from her pain. It was wonderful, being aboard ship. The Falcon was truly lovely. Her perfect balance let her walk along the taffrail as easily as if it was the floor of the Golden Palace, but she didn't do that often, as Hans Swordfish nearly broke a blood vessel when he saw her doing it, bored, as the crew were swabbing the deck one day.

This balance let her sit easily on the railing astern, which means at the back of the ship, and that was what she did most days, when she wasn't learning chess from Corwin or playing the songs of the sea on First Mate Tobacco's harpsichord. Her hair was tied back, the skirt of her black coat blowing back in the wind.

The sun was out, but it had kept getting colder as they went further north and closer to winter. Silira looked down into the wake of the ship. It was a cold day, but beautiful.

She turned her head briefly to see whether anyone on deck--it was a large ship--would notice her. She was often sitting there, and maybe they would ignore her this time. She was looking for her sisters. Levana and whoever else had come with her would be following as fast as they could, probably on their large seahorses. They couldn't swim as fast as a ship for six weeks, which was how long they had been at sea now.

Silira and Corwin had chatted, played chess, and learned more about each other. Not much was learned, though, on Silira's side, owing to her condition. The coast had been visible the whole time, and still was. Silira had seen some landmarks she recognized at first, a hill, an odd tree, the cathedral where the whole fiasco had started. Once, on the evening of the first day, she had looked down into the sea. The light had been just right, shining down and gleaming off the glowing roof of the palace. The water was so clear, she had seen her grandmother's silver crown at one of the amber windows. But now the land was strange to her again.

The cabin boy had a few minutes off, and he was smoking his pipe and pacing the deck. He hadn't seen her much on the voyage, but the others of the crew who were on deck ignored her, as she had hoped. She pulled her hood up and looked back at the sea. Oh, they probably wouldn't show up. She had checked nearly every day, dodging the attention of anyone who might notice--

There they were. By all the waves on the sea, they had showed up, every one of her sisters. Yes, they were on horseback, packs on their backs, riding as fast as they could, Eltress, Rika, Levana, Nyrie, even Eylee, following the Falcon. They must have been riding too far down to be seen, but they were risking surfacing to talk to her. But why did they look so sad?

Oh.

Right.

They could only hear so much of what was really going on in the palace, and Silira hadn't checked in with them for a while. They must think...oh, no. Oh, no. This was not good. They thought Corwin was going to marry Serena. And if he did, she would die the following morning...no, they wouldn't know that, there was no way anyone would have told them that...but Corwin marrying another girl would still be disastrous.

They were surfacing now, hands breaking out of the waves, singing sadly. Silira smiled and nodded, wishing there was some way to let them know Corwin wouldn't marry Serena, that everything was fine. But the cabin boy came up behind her. She heard his steps and slid off the rail, walking past him with an annoyed and barely civil nod. He had intended to chat with her, but then he remembered that she couldn't talk and that he was the cabin boy. He puffed on his pipe and looked down at the foaming wake. Nothing was there but the flick of a tail.

Under the hull of the ship, a heated conversation took place. The five sisters drew knives from their packs, specially designed to hold in the hull of a ship, standard issue to the Sea King's army, and slammed them into the hull. The horses kept up as they held onto the knives, staying in the same place under the hull.

Levana's knuckles were white. Of course, all her skin was whiter than normal, but this was white even for her. "Look at her, trying to play it down as if she doesn't care."

"She does," Nyrie said, holding the knife with both hands. "I can tell that much. Eltress, remind me again why we went on this fool's errand."

Eltress, holding on easily with one hand, tried to push her knife farther into the hull. "For moral support. Father wants her to have people near who know and love her."

Nyrie rolled her eyes. "Corwin might like her, but he certainly doesn't love her. He would see what pain she's in if he did."

"But isn't he already in love with her?" Levana said. "I mean, isn't he supposed to be obsessed with Silira from when she saved him in the wreck?"

"There was another girl there." Rika pulled her cloak around her, but the current blew it back. "A human. She found him on the beach. We don't know which one he loves, her or Silira."

Nyrie growled, but a fish hit her in the face and it came out sounding like she was throwing up. "And what if that girl is there? What if she's the princess he's going to marry? Why else would he go to Eire?"

"What are we supposed to do?" Eylee said. "I can't watch over her with you other four for my whole life. I have to be queen someday, and who knows how long Silira will live? Something must be done."

"I have an idea," Levana said unexpectedly. "It's dangerous, but it will probably fix everything. Silira has been through so much. If Corwin marries someone else, she'll probably turn to foam on the spot."

They were quiet for a moment.

"Speak your plan," Eylee said.

Levana shivered. "Get help from the Sea Witch."