Holes In the Sky
Fantasy, A Swells Over Still Waters stand-alone
This is one of three bonus stories I included in the hardcover version of my fantasy novel, Swells Over Still Waters (the Amazon pricing for hardcovers is expensive so I wanted to make it special). These stories hold no spoilers for the book and take place prior to it, giving extra depth to secondary characters I liked. I’ll be publishing them alongside each Interlude.
When Gorsha was a little girl, she looked up at the stars and asked her mother where they came from. Her mother told her a story of a crab that she knew as the pinchfast crab, but in the north, in the mountains of Broadfell Keep, it was called a knitting crab. Her mother explained that in the north, the crab has a different name because the Fellbin’s believe the knitting crab was once in love with the moon and all it’s splendor. But when the crab realized they could never be together, it became ashamed and sad. In it’s grief, the knitting crab fashioned a black cloth to cover the sky so that it might not have to see the moon every night. But the crab moved too quickly and clumsily for the task, and the black shroud it fashioned had many holes and gaps. The moon shown through and it’s bright light pricked the cloth all over with dots. Now, at the end of every night the knitting crab pulls down its black cloth and tries to mend the holes that the moon can be seen through, but in mending one hole, another tears open. That is why the moon is sometimes hidden completely, and other nights only part of it can be seen peeking through.
Gorsha stares up at the night sky, thinking fondly of her mother and listening to the lapping water below her. Her mother told her to not be like the crab, to not just dream of the moon, but to find a way to get it. She told her that the stories say Oullman comes from an ancient language and means shining one, just like the moon. When she thinks back, she knows that is when she decided she would be the Oullman of Filkash. Someday. When Gorsha levels her gaze, her neck is stiff with age and her lungs plead for air. She kneads her shoulder and walks away from the edge of Gardeep Fill, the floating island of tangled vines where she has lived her whole life. She walks every night, gazing at the stars and feeling lonely, but tonight more so. When she enters her small home, she lights a fire in the stone hearth. It crackles a soothing melody, a new voice in the song of the lapping water. The entire world was singing, if you knew how to listen. Gorsha knows how, her mother taught her.
Tomorrow is 25 years since Oullman Wellisham took on the mantle of Oullman. He has no kin who desire the title, and so it is the day of the Contest. He has chosen the Contest of Breaths, which is not one Gorsha is as confident in. Her mother taught her to not just dream though, so she plans to win. She thinks this as her chest burns and her lungs scream for air, then even her vision darkens at the edges, until she finally releases the breath she has been holding. She blows out air slowly, rather than in a desperate huff. Tonight’s walk, she made it the whole way back home and even lit the fire. It’s the longest she has ever held her breath, and she thinks she can go longer. Tomorrow will tell.
She dreams of her mother knitting an endless black cloth. She wakes in the morning to the sound of distant windgulls and the nascent bustle of emerging trade, a new verse in the ancient song of the world. The nearby market stalls open like new blooms and the customers crowd like birds. The fire in the hearth has burned down to the gently breathing embers. Gorsha stirs them, digging up the orange glow from beneath the ash. She places two pieces of dry sweetbread on the baking rack, then swings it over the orange heat. As she prepares her breakfast, she holds her breath for small increments, continuing to breathe and hold the air until she sits at her table with a dish of buttered toast and a cup of tepid coffee.
A high sharp horn rings out from the docks on the edge of the Fill. Gorsha walks out of town bearing a coil of rope, down to the docks where she sees the Oullman standing at the gunnel of his elaborate ship. He quiets the gathered crowd and begins speaking. “The Contest of Breaths will commence at the base of Windrock Cairn when the Saints Sun touches the base tomorrow, as is the tradition. All those wishing to compete must have a partner, and must approve their rope and marker prior to the start. Good luck all. May the Saints fill your sails —”
And like a huge congregation, the whole gathered town responds, “— and may the sea find your star.”
The horn peels off another high note and the Oullman’s ship pulls away from the dock with waves of both water and hands.
Gorsha assumed the contest would be held at the Face of Dōmünfoll, the traditional place, but it should not make a difference. She approaches one of many stands at the dock where a contestant can barter for a partner, a rope, and a marker if they need any of the three. She attempts to barter with the man, but he waves her off. “Is nothing, no worries. I am still owing you for the bread.”
She smiles and waits as he impatiently waves over a young boy. She follows him over to a small schooner and sees he cannot be older than 17, likely the stand owner’s son. She boards the small schooner after the boy, and within seconds he is steering them off the dock and to the north. Sailing across the Deep Sea will take the entire day, wind permitting, so Gorsha lays down in the front of the schooner. She listens to the straining ropes that hold the sail, the creaking hull as it twists and shifts, and the frothing water as it is carved away by the prow. She falls asleep easily.
Gorsha dreams of a long crab the size of a two-masted whaler, it’s claws clacking together rapidly as it knits together a sprawling black cloth. Her mother stands in the center of the darkness and Gorsha runs to her, only to find her mother sinking. Soon, Gorsha is sinking after her, melting into the empty void and swimming down, chasing her mother’s limp and peaceful body as it is pulled deeper by the dead weight tied to her foot. She rouses to an uneasy feeling and knows that they have arrived. Being near Windrock Cairn always brings strange dreams and an atmosphere of unease. She rises from the bottom of the simple schooner and turns to see the immense obelisk of white stone rising out of the Deep Sea to stab high into the sky like a knife. It is just before the first sun’s rise, and birds are swirling around the height of Windrock Cairn, the precipice proving almost beyond sight. The white stone of the pillar glows in the early morning ambience, and when the first rays of sun touch the Cairn, it’s a beautiful and haunting sight. Misty clouds appear skewered on the massive stone pillar like ghostly fish, red light bleeding down the stone.
The boy piloting the ship pulls them alongside the sprawling length of the obelisk's nearest face. There are already dozens of other boats fixed to the side of the Cairn with rigid wooden tethers. He doesn’t bother dropping the anchor, as the limit of the Deep Sea has never been sounded. Instead, Gorsha watches as he detaches a long wooden pole from the side of the ship and sticks it into a bucket of snagweed. The sticky seaweed adheres to the pole easily and when the boy jams it against the Cairn, it sticks fast. He does so again with another pole and soon the small schooner is fixed to Windrock Cairn by two poles from it’s stern and bow.
When she hands the boy her coil of rope, he seems to study it critically. He nods to himself, as though he were the official approving the rope, then he attaches a small weight to one end and the other to the mast, dropping the weighted end over the far side. Gorsha unties a thin strip of purple fabric from her hair, a piece of the childhood blanket her mother sewed and swaddled her in. The boy glances at it and nods to himself again. Sometime later, Oullman Wellisham’s voice carries across the water and bounces gently off the white stone of the obelisk. “The Contest of Breaths begins now, divers: carry your markers as deep as your lungs will allow, then return to the surface to measure your results. Whoever places their marker farthest down the sounding line will be named the new Oullman of Filkash. May Delód’s breath fill your lungs.”
A few eager divers drop into the water as soon as the speech is over, though the contest is not one of speed. Gorsha closes her eyes and tries to clear her mind, breathing deeply. She hears the birds high above and the water just below, the sounds of divers splashing, and the high keening sound of the wind off the Cairn. She pushes all of these things out of her mind as she begins breathing more rapidly. She removes a thumbnail-sized wooden clip carved into the shape of a crab claw, and fixes her mind on the imagined rapid clacking of a knitting crab’s claws. She sees it in her mind and no longer hears the world around her, hearing only her own rapid shallow breaths that sound like the clicking of pincers. She places the wooden claw over her nose, then dives off the far side of the boat.
The moment Gorsha plunges into the cold dark water of the Deep Sea, she hears bubbles tumbling over each other to return to the surface. Then there is only the muffled creaking of submerged hulls, and as she propels herself downward, even that is soon left behind. Behind her closed eyelids, the brightness of early morning is supplanted by the dull red glow of muted light, then as she swims easily downward, the red bleeds away to black. Still she reaches over her head to scoop handfuls of the world steadily behind her, burrowing deeper into the abyss.
As she tunnels deeper, swimming headlong into the deepest part of the Sea, it feels as though she is clawing her way into the earth. She pictures her mother down there, somewhere below in the perfect darkness. Her head seems to fill with air and pressure, complaining with swelling throbs. She begins letting out small amounts of air in trails of bubbles to relieve the mounting pressure inside. Her descent continues, until she feels a familiar burn in her lungs, her body beginning to fight for air. She reaches out and feels a moment of mild panic when she doesn’t immediately find the rope, then her hand brushes it. She fixes her purple ribbon of fine Filkish silk to the rope, then begins kicking to return to the surface. Except she kicks something in the blackness and she realizes with genuine panic that her foot is caught in a frond of snagweed growing on the stone pillar. She tries to hold off the terror as she kicks blindly at the sticky seaweed, all while gripping the rope.
The boy in the boat watched as Gorsha faded into a dull blue shadow, then he waited. She has been down there for a while, and other divers have already begun surfacing. He begins to feel a small knot of anxiety in his gut, so he leans over, searching. Suddenly, he notices several tugs on the line. Before he can even think, he is grabbing and hauling the rope, feeling the weight of a body at the end. He scrambles to heave in lengths of rope as fast as he can, hoping the lady doesn’t prove to be one of the few unfortunates that never resurface. Then he sees a dim shape emerging from the depths.
Gorsha was struggling with the snagweed, unable to free her foot, when she felt the rope being reeled in. She grabs tightly, clinging desperately to it in hopes of being pulled up out of the snagweed. The boy is strong from years of hard labor and she feels the snagweed tear away, but now she senses that she is resurfacing too rapidly. Her ears feel like a wine skin left in the sun, but she doesn’t dare to let go of the rope. She hears crackling and feels an intense burning pain in her head, then a final muted pop, followed by nothing, save for the eerie silence of endless water. She nearly passes out from the pain, but she clings to consciousness as tightly as she does the rope.
The boy sees that Gorsha is alive and hurriedly begins pulling her from the water and into the boat. She is breathing, but appears dazed. The boy looks at her with concern and holds her shoulders, “Hey, hey lady? Are you okay? Hello?”
Gorsha blinks a few times and can hear muffled sounds. She sees that the boy is speaking to her, but she cannot hear him, it sounds as though someone shoved moss into her ears. The boy notices with growing unease that the water dripping down the side of Gorsha’s neck has wisps of red in it, trailing up to her ears. When she speaks, her own voice sounds fuzzy and faraway, like she is still just under the water and someone is talking to her from above the surface.
She stands clumsily, feeling as though the world were swirling around her. She begins to shake her head, intending to clear her ear canals of water. The boy grabs her by the shoulders, partly to help her stand and partly to stop her from shaking the water out of her ears. She looks at him and sees he is staring at her ear, then she touches the wetness there and her hand comes back a watery red. She knows then that she may never hear well again, even if her ears heal. She sits back down heavily, grieving the loss of the world's song. Yet, when she sits and closes her eyes, she returns to that moment of peace just before she dove off the boat.
Later, the high note of the horn cuts across the water, but Gorsha barely hears it. She is lying in the bottom of the gently rocking boat, staring up past the swaying mast at the point of Windrock Cairn. It seems to spin as she watches, and maybe, if she focuses, she thinks she can hear the wind ringing off the edges in ghostly high tones. The boy steps into her view with a huge grin on his face and his lips say something, but she only hears garbled sounds. She stands unsteadily and sees every person on the other boats all staring at her boat — no, at her — and they are smiling, and clapping. She sees her mother’s smile in them, and she hears the muffled clicking of pincers in their clapping.
Check out the novel, here at the homepage (It’s got an audiobook option as well).
Check out Tragedy Mill, another stand-alone story in the world of Swells (also with audio).
The description beginning with, "Her ears feel like a wine skin left in the sun..." is really intense. Almost made me queasy to think about the pain of the experience.
You did great with this one.
the way you described the dive was riveting! so good.