By: Brianna Lee Hubler
Copyright © 2022 Brianna Lee Hubler. All rights reserved.
The Sea Elf and the Siren
__________Though a gargantuan, silvery moon raised over the blackest, bleakest landscape known to elfkind, its moonbeams scarcely outlined the peaks of mountains and the topmost branches of trees, and they lit nothing beneath the sky. The sunless realm never warmed. Its damp atmosphere smelled stagnant and stale, much like the upper interior of an icy cave, where everything drips, and nothing dries. The moist air encouraged steady growth of mildew and fungi. The debilitating darkness of Zaliradai blinded Kimio, but the senses provided by his pointed ears, delicate nose, and sensitive skin instantly sharpened.
__________Kimio’s captor held her axe-sliced belly with one arm, and with the other, she dragged Kimio along by the wrist, like a frustrated parent. Kimio wrinkled his nose when he smelled the fungal forest he and his captor stumbled through. The towering fungi coughed clouds of spores at their faces, declared their sudden and continued intrusion most unwelcome. Kimio’s heart raced, and his teeth chattered; moisture clung to his exposed skin and his soiled village clothes. A platoon’s worth of bootsteps marched toward him, accompanied by the “ay-chih-chee” of elf-spoken animal calls. Crows cawed, leapt from their fungal-branch perches, flapped their ebony-feathered wings, and dispersed.
__________A Zalirkatheer platoon halted a mere yard from Kimio’s sandaled feet and muddy toes. While idling there, the soldiers hummed the chorus of a battle song. The glint of their menacing, red irises pushed through the realm’s shadows. Their commander stepped forward, scowled at Kimio, but then addressed his captor.
__________“Uuinora Havelleh, back from fishing the larger, otherworld pond?” the commander teased.
__________“Indeed, Commander Glaiven Tyrth,” Kimio’s captor replied. She raised Kimio up by the arm, as proudly as a local fisherwoman pinches the tailfins of her catch and boasts of its size. Kimio’s feet dangled a few inches off the ground. His eyes widened and his teeth clenched.
__________“Shouldn’t you throw him back?” Glaiven judged. “He’s puny.”
__________Uuinora’s eyes narrowed. “The softer the clay, the easier to mold,” she said.
__________She lowered her arm and Kimio’s. Kimio’s sandals touched earth again. Slightly relieved but no less nervous, Kimio bit his lip and inhaled through his nostrils. He feigned stoicism.
__________Glaiven smiled; his pampered, white teeth appeared and then vanished like a short, bright, crescent flash in the darkness. “You could put him in with her,” he suggested. “That fishtail bludgeon of hers ought to round him out in no less time than the river smooths a stone.”
__________“Precisely,” Uuinora agreed. “I’ll take him straight to the tank from here.”
__________She stepped forward, but Glaiven grabbed her arm. “Not so fast,” he argued.
__________He ripped Uuinora’s grip from Kimio’s wrist and hoisted Kimio over his shoulder. “Tend to your injury,” Glaiven insisted. “I’ll escort the captive.”
__________Kimio kneed him in the chest. Uuinora chuckled. “You lack the feminine touch this little selkie prefers, Commander,” she mocked. “Perhaps you should surrender him again to me.”
__________Kimio pounded his fists against Glaiven’s back. “Let me go, you dark-clad, red-eyed, son-of-a-wraith!” Kimio demanded.
__________Glaiven bounced Kimio against his shoulder. When Kimio fell back down, Glaiven’s leather pauldron jabbed him in the stomach. Kimio coughed and groaned.
__________Glaiven laughed. “I can handle an elf-child fair as you can, Uuinora,” he insisted. “Besides, I’m learning to like this one.”
__________Uuinora scoffed, “You want the credit for his capture.”
__________Glaiven smiled again. “Get your stomach sewn, Inshaudia!” he insisted, using the Elvish word for assassin to spear Uuinora’s character. “We can barter bounties once your innards are stapled back in where they belong.”
__________“Yes, Commander,” Uuinora hissed. She stepped in front of Glaiven’s soldiers, turned around, and threw herself backwards into their hands. They caught her, lifted her over their heads, and carried her away.
__________Glaiven shook his head. “Such a diva,” he chuckled.
__________“And you’re a devil,” Kimio muttered.
__________“Thank you, little selkie,” Glaiven replied. “I aspire to be.”
__________Kimio glared into the darkness, soured with repugnance and fear. They all revel in the dark here, he realized. Is it dark where you are too, Fruyr?
__________Tears dripped silently from Kimio’s cheeks and soaked into the priorly saturated, fungal-forest soil, which Glaiven packed down with each of his steps. Kimio worried less for himself and more for Fruyr, as the image of his stilled twin, dragged beneath the mists of the Shadowlands by fiendish hands, reentered his thoughts from wherever his mind hid it when he stepped beyond the daunting, ethereal door into perilous Zaliradai.
__________Since all was silent, except for the pounding of Glaiven’s bootsteps and the nighttime ambience native to Zaliradai, the image became harder and harder for Kimio’s mind to conceal, even as the danger to himself increased. Kimio was trapped among the most notorious of the Katheermor, in their realm of shadows and despair, but he was alive and among elfkind. He could not boast the same for Fruyr. The sudden prevalence and clarity of his brother’s vestige, as it dominated Kimio’s thoughts, tempted Kimio to fear the worst for his twin.
__________Will I ever see you again, Fruyr? Kimio sniffled. I don’t feel like you’ve left me, but you’re too far away for me to hear your thoughts.
__________Glaiven smacked Kimio on the back. “Best cure yourself of that now,” he warned. “Zaliradai is no place for crybabies, and if the siren hears you blubbering, she’ll scoop your eyes out of their sockets like pearls she’s harvesting from clams.”
__________Kimio’s tears dried, his eyes widened, and he swallowed. A siren? By the Eternals, how did they catch one of those, and why in all the lands and realms would anybody ever keep one?
__________Glaiven jiggled a doorknob. A wooden door creaked open. Smoke streamed out the doorway from a brass burner, carried with it the scent of burning charcoal and lavender incense. The burner hung from thick chains, mounted to the ceiling, and hovered above an enormous, glass fishbowl. The fishbowl was filled nearly to its brim with murky water. The brim was capped with a classic, four-panel spike trap, flipped upside down. At the base of the fishbowl sat one of two brass levers, which triggered the fishbowl’s ceiling of spikes. The second lever sat aside the exterior of the bowl. The mild glow of the overhead burner disturbed the darkness of the realm. The sudden influx of dim light in the complete darkness of Zaliradai (mild as it was compared to the natural light of suns, moons, and stars in realms elsewhere) stung Kimio’s eyes when Glaiven carried him into the chamber. Unceremoniously, Glaiven dropped Kimio onto the stone floor of the chamber, shut the wooden door, and pushed a metal bar through a row of metal rings, nailed to the door, which locked it from the inside.
__________Kimio rubbed his eyes and raced for the door. He patted the door with the palms of his hands, located the metal bar, and yanked on it with all his strength. The force of the pull flung Kimio across the room. He fell onto his rump a few feet away from the door, but the bar remained unmoved. He got up, tried again to pull the bar free of the rings, but the force of the pull tossed him, as it had before. He crossed his arms, as he sat on the floor.
__________“Break the charm on the lock, if you have a sorcerer’s grit,” Glaiven said nonchalantly.
__________“And what if I do?” Kimio challenged.
__________“You can’t hide from us in the shadows, you can’t evade nightwalkers in this nightscape,” Glaiven explained, without looking at Kimio, “and even if you overtook us all, the great, ethereal door is as fickle as the Shadowlands that bear its weight.”
__________Cooperate or die lost and alone, Kimio translated in thought, but what if I prefer to sink while sailing? To go down fighting, like Fruyr, for Fruyr?
__________While Kimio pouted, Glaiven shoved aside a corner of the heavy, spiked lid of the fishbowl, as one might the stone slab atop a coffin. Something silvery splashed him with its tailfins. Glaiven reached into his satchel, retrieved a handful of dried kelp, and sprinkled it over the surface of the water. A slender, pale, feminine hand reached out from the murky water, grabbed onto all the flakes it could gather, and then dragged its fistful of kelp underwater.
__________Glaiven collected Kimio, as unceremoniously as he had dropped him, and splash! He tossed flailing, kicking, shouting Kimio into the murky water of the fishbowl. Kimio’s natural, Querathoskatheer gills opened along his neck, filtered the water pouring into his lungs, and permitted him to breathe underwater, though the polluted water in the fishbowl made his stomach queasy. Once immersed, the bioluminescent, electric-blue highlights in Kimio’s lapis hair brightened. He caught a glimpse of the shapely face of the silver-tailed siren, which swam up to investigate whether he was as tasty as the kelp she munched.
__________As she idled in the motionless water of the bowl, her wavy, coral-colored hair flowed, as if she created her own current. The corners of her pink lips downturned, she squinted her cloudy, pearl eyes, and she turned up both her nose and her chin. Her hateful expression haunted Kimio, even though with a speedy flick of her powerful tail, she turned away, clearly having decided he was too sentient to snack on.
__________Glaiven replaced the ceiling of spikes over the fishbowl. He abandoned Kimio with his sinister cellmate, for a day’s time or longer. Without a rising and setting sun, Kimio was unsure how much time passed before Glaiven returned, but Kimio’s queasy stomach growled, and his body fatigued.
Endlesslore 