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Eleven

Once Embar Dea reached the open sea, she swam quickly, surfacing from time to time to watch the wheel of the stars. She could hardly see them, but she could track their passage across the sky, and tell that she was still in time. The sea was calm, but she sensed the ripples beginning beneath the floor of the trench, and she could smell the sand that was stirred up from the ocean bed, dirty with chemicals and the pungent odor of fire, strange so far beneath the sea. Embar Dea rode the waves with ease. Her fear had gone; she was no longer confined within the walls of the temple, and she was young again now, riding swift upon the currents and breathing the track that led her to Tenebrae.

Night passed and the new day shone under the surface of the water, light curving and fragmented. She was coming closer to the cold waters, the ice seas of the north, and she breathed in the fresh water, snowmelt running cold along her dappled sides. A thousand words for water, the sea dragons had, describing the part of the world that was real to them, and Embar Dea sang them now: sweet water of the mountains; the acid salt up from the complaining ocean trenches; the rainwater from the forests which covered the hills of China, scented with earth and leaves, carrying fragments of the woods far out to sea.

Someone was reached by her song, responding with a note, and Embar Dea rolled joyfully in the icy waves under the sun, thinking, Not alone, no longer alone, coming closer to Tenebrae. She swerved in the seas and turned toward the singer, but now something came between herself and the song, a barrier that broke the water, disturbed the carrying current. The dragon dived, straight down toward the safety of the seabed, and watched the ship draw above, covering the path of the sun. She saw the square hull curve up over the swell, then in a sudden patch of gentle water the ship cast its shadow over the hills of the seabed, and the guns lay like thorns along its sides. The distant song sang warning, and the voice of wisdom inside Embar Dea's head told her: Stay here, out of sight, stay still. Be silent, Embar Dea told herself; but she was young again. She cried out, and the sound echoed off the ship's hull, crackling through the sunlit water. The dragon sang, and the distant voice, suddenly cruel, joined hers. The ship's radar would be swinging wildly now, uncertain of its path, easy to lead it, draw it singing on. Far below, Embar Dea sang, and watched as a cloud drew across the sun and the sea swelled up around her. She somersaulted in the water and, turning, swam before the ship, singing it on, and it followed her obediently, drawn on by the deceiving instruments into the path of the gathering storm.

The arctic water was as green as a winter sunset, luminous with phosphorescence. Sea jellies, crusted with ice, drifted ghostly through the sea's depths and a single sea star coasted among them, browsing on their trailing tentacles. Embar Dea ignored the life around her. She followed the path of the stars, the underwater current which followed what, on land, would become an energy line, and then at last through the glassy water she saw a great bulkhead looming up, a rotting hull beneath the ice. Along one side, the name of the tanker was still visible, Aluha: the first ship lured to these icy seas by the siren dragons to sink among the icebergs.

 

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Framed