Encante

Encante

Aiyana Jackson

A Fifteen Solars Novella

© Aiyana Jackson 2013

The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the creator of this work.

Characters within this work are fictional, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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To Sammy, for whom this was originally written, and who is, I know, eagerly awaiting the sequel; patience, dear one, it won’t be long now.

Chapter One

M
y worst fear is that I shall one day shift to another world and find it gone, sucked into some singularity, lost to a strangelet, or shattered by the rain of a million asteroids. Perhaps it would only take one—a rogue planet that for reasons beyond reason collided with another. We knew so little about the stars, how could we ever say with certainty that the worlds to which we travelled would still be there upon our arrival? That was, I suppose, the reason for the carapace—if one did step through into nothing, the carapace would activate. An invisible, translucent second skin, it preserved your air, giving you a little time to reactivate your damned compass and get home. And yet, I know this is not how portals are supposed to work. The Kabbalah takes no chances when hopping from one world to the next: they can see, as if looking through a window, exactly where they will appear on the other side.

The rebellion has precious few portals in their possession, all cobbled together from mismatched pieces of kit and barely functional parts. Since I joined I had become a man of many luxuries, courtesy of my benefactor, yet we still did not have the luxury of true portals; we still did not have the luxury of time. On my worst nights, I dreamed of losing my compass, of drifting in space, slowly suffocating as I watched a transient star devouring its childling planets.

One might wonder why I continued to hop from one world to the next, never knowing where I would materialise or what would await me. I liked to say it was for the adventure, for the cause, for the future, even for Cecelie, but the truth was far simpler: since joining the rebellion my worst nightmares had changed. And I far preferred the new to the old.

When it came to it, the carapace worked exactly as had been intended; however, I was to see no stars, no nebulas or magnetars. No comets. As the shell closed around me, I saw only one thing: darkness.

As the world around me coalesced, I was shocked to realise I was not in space, not in an endless open void, but under a considerable body of water. My first, panicked instinct was to swim for the surface, but I was spinning slowly with the currents; even if the surface had been above me when I arrived, I no longer had any concept of ‘up’. The panic began to spread. Then I recalled my compass, and looked down fearfully at my hand, convinced my nightmare had finally come to pass. It sat innocuously in my palm, wondering what I was so worried about, and I chuckled nervously within my safe little bubble.

I set the coordinates to home, struggling due to the shaking of my hands, and was about to activate it when a tentacle snapped closed around my wrist, jerking my arm around at an unnatural angle. I’m not ashamed to say I screamed; I believe any man in that situation would have, and I think no less of myself for having done so. I flailed like a madman, dragged away to the asylum trying to shake himself free of the men who would incarcerate him forever. But I soon realised the tentacle was doing nothing more than tugging insistently at me in a manner that reminded me so much of a small, curious child, I was momentarily disarmed.

I turned as best I could, and suppressed another scream as I saw a bundle of slithery limbs. Yet, as I calmed, I realised that while it looked much like the kraken legends of old, this creature was far, far smaller. Its puckered, curling arms unfurled, and I was astonished to catch a glimpse of a young woman beneath. Struggling wildly, I reached for her, presuming she too had been captured by the creature; it was only then that I saw they were one and the same. The tentacles that had given me such a fright grew from her head in place of hair. She looked up at me from beneath them, and I had a flash of amethystine eyes before she reached out with a pair of very human arms. Her skin was pale and bare, even across her breasts, which rose with a rhythmic motion, as if breathing like a normal woman.

Any thought of returning home, or even attempting to reach the surface, fled.

I was utterly entranced.

She swam backwards, beckoning. Her delicate figure merged below her waistline into the most elaborate tail I’d ever seen. Unthinking, I moved to follow her. With the carapace around me, I stepped awkwardly through the depths of her ocean. She swam slowly, the tips of her tentacles and tail often flitting about me as she moved. One tentacle still held fast to my wrist, though the gossamer shield surrounding me prevented it from actually touching my skin. Once she was certain I followed, she turned to face away from me, giving me a better look at her tail which, I now realised, was the source of the dim light that was enabling me to see. I trod on after her, my curiosity piqued beyond any rational point of caution, and I marvelled as I realised there was nothing natural about this light, or in fact her tail in general. It appeared to be mechanical, jointed like a lobster, with thick metal segments and complex inner workings, visible as she moved. Now that I listened for it, I could hear the sound of it moving, metal against metal, as cogs turned in place.

This had only just crossed my mind when an unhealthy grinding sound distracted me from my thoughts. I frowned, wondering if there was something wrong with the girl, and it was in fact she who needed my assistance, when a sudden change in the pressure surrounding me drew my attention back to the compass still clutched in my hand. I realised too late that the noise was emanating from me, not her, and I was the one in sudden need of help. My fingers had barely reached to fumble with the mechanism to reactivate it, when the bubble about me flickered, almost imperceptibly. Without time to set coordinates for home, I moved to activate it as it was, praying I landed somewhere safe. I was, however, unable to get that far, or even so much as scream again, before the carapace failed completely and I was lost to the watery deeps.

Chapter Two

A
hand clamped across my nose and mouth so securely I instinctively fought it. The grip tightened, as if seeking to suffocate me, yet I felt my lungs filling with something akin to air, despite the salted water stinging my still-open eyes. Her skin felt downy, her hand almost silken against my face, and somehow dry where we touched. I had expected it to be slippery, like an eel, yet as her tentacled hair coiled around my face, tickling at my neck and shoulders, I realised that even her fishier aspects were smooth.

There was a slight webbing between her fingers and down the edges of her palm; I felt them suction to my own skin, somehow forming a pocket of breathable air between her hand and my mouth. The salt of the ocean ate at my eyes as I stared into her face, and she stared back with those astoundingly violet eyes, apparently reassuring herself that I was, indeed, breathing. Her other hand gripped my arm, and suddenly I was being propelled along by her remarkable tail. I felt a slight vibration emanating from where her legs should have been.

We moved faster than I thought possible, and while my vision was obscured by her thickset barbels, I felt little apprehension as we sped forwards through this strange ocean. The girl—such as she was—seemed to exude serenity. Even so, I was completely within her power, and perhaps a rational man would have been terrified of such vulnerability. I, however, was neither rational nor terrified, perhaps due to the adventurous streak which lead me to join the rebellion in the first place, or perhaps on account of the ‘madness’ my dear CC accused me of so regularly.

What would she think
, I wondered,
if she could see me now, accosted by some siren of the deep, willingly tranquil in her arms as she drew me on to an unknown fate?

The world around me suddenly felt different, as if something had shifted. I struggled to look around, and while my vision was still obscured, there was a different feel to the water than there had been moments before. It seemed lighter somehow, both in the weight of it about me and in the eerie emerald glow it had taken on. A moment later, I recognised a true light source overhead, not sunlight, but a harsh, solid light that hurt my eyes far more than the salt. I squinted away from it just as we breached the surface. Her hand gently retracted, and I found myself breathing normally. The girl released me and dissapeared behind my back. I trod water a moment, disorientated at having surfaced, the weight of my sodden frock coat dragging me down so that I couldn’t quite keep my head above the surface. I gulped in more than a few mouthfuls before turning, flailing slightly, searching for something to keep me afloat.

We were in a pool, enclosed within a large, domed room of hammered metal. Riveted door frames were visible at several points around me, one of them closed with a dogging lever.

The girl was resting, clinging to a metal ledge, a walkway of some kind, floating on the surface of the water. A faint sound emanated from her. Never the best of swimmers, I kicked for the ledge myself and clung to its edge as the soft clicking sound she was making increased in tenor and tempo.

“Don’t get yer dander up, wench.” A gruff voice, from somewhere I couldn’t see. “We’re livin’ in banyan days in this pit. It’s bad enough I got’er get yer into the damned thing, ‘ithout puttin’ up with yer gum roarin’ at me to get yer out again already.”

I blinked in confusion, trying to fathom his meaning.

A pair of heavy boots hit the other end of the platform, bouncing it beneath my fingers. I jumped at the impact, swallowing water and coughing it out again. The boots turned abruptly at the sound of my spluttering, heavily worn, tawny leather, charging towards me as the voice I’d heard cursed loudly. Angry spurs adorned the back of the boots just above their short, square heels. I wondered idly what use spurs were beneath the ocean, as I continued to cough.

“Vee,” he growled, “what in the ‘ell ‘ave you dredged up?”

“My apologies, sir,” I managed, hoisting myself onto the platform as he approached. “I’m a traveller, and found myself rather unexpectedly in your ocean. This, erm”—I glanced at my rescuer—“lady, was kind enough to save me and . . .”