Page 55 of Broken Veil
“Good news,” Duncan said. “Well… news anyway.”
“Wade says that I have his permission to sing this creature back to the sea.” Frida turned to Carys. “And that after that happens, you will know what you must do next.”
Carys finished wrapping Lachlan’s bandage and tied it off. “I’ll just… know what I need to do next?”
Frida nodded. “Yes.”
The crows hopping around the riverbank cackled. But then the cackling turned to squawking that turned to shrieking as the flock of birds took to the air, circling the serpent twisting in the lock. The creature let out a roar that sounded halfway between pain and rage.
It pierced Carys’s ears, and she slapped her hands over them.
“Fuck!” Laura exclaimed. Her hands were covering her ears too. “If there are any humans in a five-mile radius, they’re going to hear that shit. It’s louder than a train whistle.”
The sound went on and on until suddenly?—
It died.
The beast shuddered through its whole body, and the murder of crows screamed and took to the air, disappearing into the night.
Cadell stared at the sea serpent. “She is gone.”
Carys and Naida ran to the side of the lock, and the sea serpent named Sam was still as death.
Frida touched Godrik’s arm. “Wolf, open the gate to the river.”
Godrik walked to the gate, and with Duncan’s help, they easily opened the doors.
Sam didn’t move.
Without a word to any of them, Frida walked down the edge of the water and waded into the long grass. The moment her feet touched the river, she grew taller and her hair grew longer, longer, longer until the waves touched the grass and her hair drifted as one with the rushes.
The water sprites danced around her, and the current stilled.
When Frida opened her mouth, gone was the blunt and practical human woman they had met the day before. Her song was like water rippling over rocks, and as the music rose, the water pulled the sea serpent back and into the flowing depths of the river.
Frida walked to the great beast, her godly form twice as tall as the creature, and ran her hand over its rippling skin. Not scales like a fish, but much closer to the soft, pebbled skin of Cadell in his natural form.
When the glowing water sprites landed on the serpent, his skin seemed to come alive with a pearly grey light.
Then Frida sang a different song, and it was as if the music was a rhyme that Carys had always known, a song her mother sang to her in her cradle, a song her father caroled as he returned from the hunt. It was a marching rhythm, and the melody was as familiar as her own voice.
Though Carys had no idea what language the demigoddess sang in, the words formed in her mind as if Frida sang directly into her ear.
A single choice shows the path you must follow.
Over the hill and down in a hollow.
Gather an offering of milk and clay
Cross the bridge and
Wait for the shepherd
And when the birds sing the light will array.
One choice is waiting to show you the way.
Sam drifted into the center of the river, and Frida walked with him. She climbed on the great serpent’s back, wrapped her arms around his body, and without another word, they slipped beneath the surface of the water.
