SSCS 02: Installment 30 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 30 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 the jangling stopped. “How much longer do you want me doing this, gran-Tom?” That was Hedwin, who was slouched down on a crate placed across from the entrance into the pig pens, holding a funny box and looking extremely bored.
“I think that was just about right, Hedwin,” gran-Tom answered, standing now in that entrance, looking grey and worn, and quietly, dangerously regal, just like herself. “You can get back to your chores.” Then she cast her eye over to Mina, crouched shaking half-inside the garden. “Come along Mina. For the next part we need to get down close to the sea.” And she turned away, heading for the spire stairs leading down.
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 30: 21.1002
But Mina’s knees were not up to standing her up and moving her around again just yet. And her heart was still going so fast she didn’t think she’d be able to get words out that weren’t made all shaky, juddery by the force of it. So, as Hedwin went to walk past, all she could think to do to stop him was just put out a pig-mucky hand and grab his ankle.
“Mina, why!?” Hedwin hopped around in a little circle to keep from tripping. “She said I could be done now. Do you realize how much I haven’t had a chance to get done today?”
“H-how…how..”
“How long do you think? You two’ve been in there moaning for over two hours. I thought it might be a nice sit-down for a bit, but do you know how boring it is making sure to shake a box every ten seconds, for TWO HOURS?” Hedwin shook it again now in emphasis, and it clanged and jangled again. Mina had not heard any such racket from inside the pig pens, but Hedwin really did look seriously put out. It was an awful sound, and an awful look on his face, and somehow both made her feel much better.
“Mina. Come now.” That was gran-Tom’s heart-call voice, not so much loud as sharp and cutting straight through to the bone. Mina and Hedwin both turned toward it without thinking, and Mina found her limbs already gathering themselves up to stand. But it was completely different from the awful compulsion of before. That was like being turned into some sort of weird puppet, while gran-Tom’s heart-call was more like a jolt of fizzy energy and purpose. Taking a deep breath, Hedwin gave Mina a slightly less annoyed look and turned toward gran-Tom’s observatory, presumably to stow the weird box. And Mina, gagging and spitting out pig stink, headed for the cliff-stair.
***
She didn’t catch up to gran-Tom until almost all the way at the bottom, where gran-Tom had stopped, sat down on an out-cropping of boulders, and was now staring fixedly down at the waves crashing themselves against the spire.
“Sit here with me, Mina,” she said without looking up, patting a patch of rock that was much too steep for Mina to sit down on safely. Instead, Mina went around to her other side where there was a little bit of ledge and sat there. The smell of pig muck clinging to her was still making her stomach shaky, and it gave an extra wobble as she scrubbed the last goop away from her cheek and nose and flung it out into the waves. The white and blue-grey of the foaming water looked soft and swirling against the fixed, jagged spears of rock shining purple-black under the sea spray.
“Start the first Hum,” the priestess said, “and then when I give you a nod, switch to the second one.” Gran-Tom still wasn’t looking away from the waves, and it was making Mina nervous. But the priestess’ back had grown a bit straighter – as much as an old woman’s back really could – and now her tentacles unfurled in a sort of limp fan all around her – a pose Mina thought of as gran-Tom’s Moon-singing pose – so maybe everything was actually okay. Swallowing, Mina started the strange buzz that made the first, too-long note of the First Hum, and tried to otherwise hold still, even though gran-Tom’s fan of tentacles now had two of them draping over Mina’s own lap.
Her throat was now doubly sore and so her buzzing hum wasn’t very loud. Mina was afraid not even gran-Tom beside her would be able to hear it over the churning of the waves. But then the old priestess’ voice joined in with hers – not very loud either – and suddenly Mina realized that volume almost didn’t matter. There was something else there, more fundamental, and all that mattered was that they were joined in song.
The First Hum stretched and stretched, and somehow the waves seemed to move slower, and slower, as though their song was asking the sea itself to pause. Then gran-Tom nodded, and Mina’s voice slipped over into the Second Hum, so easily that at first she didn’t realize that it was just her singing it and that gran-Tom had stayed with the First. The waves moved slower still, almost crawling up the faces of rock, and they hadn’t quite crested before Mina realized something else: There were still two voices singing the First Hum.
And that was when the great, flowing body of the kraken made itself visible to her, riding just beneath them within the churn and coil of the waves.