SSCS 02: Installment 20 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 20 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
And she still didn’t know how to calm the sea. She just fetched when gran-Tom said to fetch, and swept and cooked and cleaned up after the pigs likewise, so that the priestess could continue the work of the spires, which was really what they all depended on. All the long line of the spires, and all the priestesses in them singing their songs. Mina didn’t know, really, whether the sea was any calmer for it, only that it moved in the cycle that was always the same, tides rising and falling as the position of the Moon said that they must. And that above all else they must guard against any change in it.
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 20: 20.1230
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Mina stiffened against the Other One’s tentacled grasp, even as her knees bent and swayed her forward in supplication at the Other One’s feet. Hands stiff, she only just managed to set the teapot and cup down safely.
“There are no roses today, and I cut my hand,” she half-wailed, half-sang, in a voice meant to convey one of the greatest tragedies of the world, rather than just a very bad day. Despair and contrition were allowed in the Other One’s presence. If Mina had let her anger try to talk for her, she knew already the words would have stuck in her throat; it had happened before. On the second of the very, very bad days that Mina counted, her throat had stopped up so tight she couldn’t breathe, and she had come-to again with fingertips and lips turned blue. “I’ve had a long, and weary climb, but now I’ve brought you oyster-bell tea, and hope that at least it will soothe.”
Mina’s head was laid in the Other One’s lap, by her own muscles if not by her own will, and she felt pinching tentacles plucking at her hair in a way that may have been either greedy or falsely conciliatory. She was doing her best not to fight the compulsion, which wanted fawning obedience above all else, and which Mina was always, always loathe to give. The more she fought it, the more tightly it would wrap her up, and she couldn’t risk getting caught in a loop today the way Hedwin had.
“Oyster-bell tea will warm my throat and loosen my songs before moonrise.” The Other One’s scratchy, whispery voice sounded far too close to Mina’s ear, the sibilants seeming to come from more directions than just one, plucking at the edges of her skin. “But it will leave my tongue sour and sad. Sing me a song of happier times, Mina. I need a taste of memories. I need something to sustain.”
At these words, tears ran hot from Mina’s eyes and down her cheeks, and she wasn’t sure whether they’d been pulled to the surface by the compulsion or were really hers. A song from her childhood. The Other One had only demanded one twice before, but each time, afterward, when Mina had tried to sing it back to herself, the notes had sounded sour and awkward and couldn’t be called back again. Though the observatory had walls of glass and the day was bright and clear, it seemed as though a great shadow now filled the whole of the platform, and a great rushing sound filled Mina’s ears, as though it were night, and rain was pounding heavy on the rooftop. Opening her mouth, Mina began to sing a drumming song.
She sang carefully, putting her focus away from the observatory, away from tentacles now winding around her arms and throat and too-tight in her hair. She didn’t want this song anymore anyway, but she must not let the Other One know that, she must sing it only with happy memories in her mind, or the Other One would know. And Mina didn’t want to know what would happen next if the Other One found out. So she sang while thinking about playing with friends now barely more than memories, thinking about laughing, and about the sunny smiles of others all around her.
When it was done at last, she found she’d been allowed to sit back on her heels, so that she was no longer wound up in the Other One’s tentacles quite so closely. There was just one now, the Other One sitting facing her and reaching out so that one tentacle wrapped twice around her throat, catching each and the last notes and vibrations of the song. Mina finished on a hum, her lips stretched into a smile and her cheeks plumped up to make the smile look real – though gran-Tom was sea-folk and probably wouldn’t see such little details the way a land-folk would. It wasn’t hard to smile that way, though; the compulsion was still holding her close.
Turning with a false grace, Mina lifted the teacup – the tea inside by now certainly cold, though that at least never seemed so much to matter – and held it out in offering. “May the holy tea call forth your songs. May the Moon hear your singing.” It was what she was usually supposed to say when she brought gran-Tom the holy tea. This time the compulsion made the ceremonial phrases sound perfect and sincere where Mina usually offered them with a wrinkled nose, if she remembered to say them at all.
“Thank you, Mina. And thank you for the lovely song. You’ve worked so hard today.” That was gran-Tom’s real voice answering now, and Mina almost slumped forward in a heap at the sound of it. At last she felt the edges of the compulsion falling away. It made her feel like a little girl again, wanting to run to the old priestess for a hug, to be told everything would be okay.
But she wouldn’t believe the platitudes anyway, and she didn’t dare. True she’d never tested it, but there was always a hard fear in Mina’s gut after every time the Other One had gone, that doing anything out of the ordinary would bring it rushing back, would punish her for breaking the illusion it had commanded. So instead she picked up the teapot and handed that over next. It was wrapped in a cozy and would still have a little bit of warmth to offer. Then, duty accomplished, she fled. Time to get back to Hedwin, anyway.