Page 65 of Beneath the Haunting Sea

She saw a white ship on a stormy sea, a patchwork sail torn to shreds, a girl clinging to the mast, icy hail stinging her cheeks. Wind roared in her ears, and she could feel the rough mast, splintersdigging into her palms. Lightning seared across the sky, blinding her. A scream tore raw from her throat.

The mirror changed, and she saw the white Tree stretching bony branches into the sky, black waves crashing against its scarred trunk. Two serpents swam around the Tree, their lithe bodies shifting shades of blue and silver. They rushed toward her, and she knew she would be torn to shreds.

But then the mirror changed again.

She looked into a watery Hall filled with shadows, and she saw the shadows were the dead. They danced in endless rows before a goddess on a high throne. There was darkness in the goddess’s beautiful face, and on one hand she wore a shining Star.

One of the dead broke away from the dance, and Talia saw it was her mother, though her face was gray, her eyes empty.Her mouth was open, frozen in inaudible screams.

Talia,came her mother’s voice, slithering through her head.You have come for me at last! I cannot bear it. Take me away. Take me back to the light. The light! The light! The light!

And Talia reached out to take her mother’s hand.I will save you, Mama. I will save you.

The scene changed once more, and Talia saw her mother standing at the footof the goddess’s throne, weeping for the pain that wracked her ruined body.

Where is the other?seethed the goddess.The one you tried to protect, the one you continue to hide from me?

There is no one,said her mother, shuddering but strong.

You lie! The sea whispers to me of her, and I will not rest until she is mine.

There is no one!

I will find her when I rise, and I will chain her with you in the depths.

She heard her mother’s scream inside her own head, and then she felt the pain, splintering through every part of her. She wanted to let it rip her into a million fragments, wanted the release it would bring. But she could not break, for her soul was bound forever to the darkness.

From somewhere outside of herself she heard Wen’s voice, felt his strong hands wrap around herarm. He tore her from the vision like an arrow from a wound.

She was screaming, hitting him with her fists, clawing at him with her fingers, but he didn’t let her go. He held tight as she collapsed onto the floor of the library, crying uncontrollably.

“It may not be true,” he told her, over and over. “Whatever it is you saw, the future isn’t written yet. It may not be true. It may not be true.”

But she sobbed on his shoulder because she knew that it was.

Part Three:

SONG AND WAVES

Aigir took the remaining Star and bound it in a band of silver. He bore it with him into the depths of the ocean, and wrought a beautiful Hall at the roots of the Tree.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

DUSK WAS FALLING OUTSIDE THE LIBRARY WINDOW, and Talia and Wen sat across from each other in chairs pulled up to the hearth. Wen had built a fire and the flames licked thirstily on the stones, but the heat did nothing to dispel the chill in the deepest parts of her. He’d brought her tea, as well—the laden tray lay untouched at her elbow.

“We were in there nearly a day,” saidTalia quietly, glancing at the window. Snow clung white to the pane.

“Almost two. I spoke to Ahned on the stairs. And don’t worry. I saw him before we went up, asked him to tell everyone we were both ill, caught a cold on the ride back from the Ruen-Shained.”

Talia swallowed past the lump in her throat, and looked up at Wen. “Explain.”

He studied her for a moment without speaking, and thenturned his gaze to the fire. “I came up to the library last year. I stole Ahned’s keys and made myself a copy, and I snuck in every day, pouring through the books that my mother had loved so much, angry at my father for locking them away from me. I had always believed in the gods, but the stories came alive as I was reading them, and Ifelttheir truth.”

His eyes flicked momentarily to Talia’sbefore returning to the fire. She swallowed and twisted her fingers in her lap, not saying anything.

“I knew there were things about my mother’s death that my father wasn’t telling me. I knew they had something to do with the myths. And then I found a bundle of Caiden’s mother’s notes stuffed into a corner bookshelf, the pages half burnt. She wrote very vividly about visions she’d seen, abouta temple under the garden, about a sliver of the Tree. She seemed convinced it was her destiny to use the piece of the Tree to defend against some coming evil.”

“And she found it,” said Talia, “but it killed her.”

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