Strange Noises Fiction by Rachel Greenham

“And as well as all this stuff, she’s paid our harbourmaster fees, right to the end of the month,” I say, finding and waving the piece of paper from the harbourmaster’s office that confirms this. “The sloop’s been checked over by her shipwright, and completely reprovisioned, and made over into my name, registered here at Denhall as salvage.”

“We can leave whenever we want,” Kerilas interprets.

“Yeah!”

He and Sam and I are out in the courtyard the following morning, finishing breakfast. I can hear Lotan practicing again behind me, which he’s gone back to after eating his share. Swish-thuk. Swish-swish-swish-thuk.

I’m wearing one of my new outfits. The weather’s cooler today, and I chose a warm, grey overdress going to below my knees with slits in the wide skirt to show the bright Aegean blue silk underskirts. A matching undertunic, visible above the collar of the dress, and leggings, and my new boots. It feels very comfortable.

“And this is all no-obligation?” Kerilas asks, openly skeptical.

“Yeah, that’s how it works, isn’t it Sam? Remember what Beni was saying yesterday?”

“So are you going to go with her?” Sam asks.

“’Course not.”

“Why not?” Kerilas asks.

I stare at him. “What do you mean, why not? I’m… I mean, we’re a group, aren’t we?”

Swish-swish-thuk.

“I still think we should be looking for Gyrefalcon,” I say. “I didn’t think we were just going to be staying here. Sam?”

“I don’t know what I want to do any more,” Sam says.

“You’ve got to think long-term,” Kerilas tells me. “You need to learn how to be Neri, and she’s offering—”

I hear the door behind me being flung open, and Jalese’s voice: “Hey Tani, Hethan wants—”

Silence.

“Oh shit, no!” Lotan cries out.

“Oh fuck,” Sam breathes, and launches herself out of her chair. I turn in time to see Jalese crumple to the ground. Lotan’s sword is covered in blood.

“I didn’t mean—” Lotan is saying. Sam is already running to Jalese’s fallen body. I’m closer, and I scramble across, shoving Lotan aside roughly. Suddenly there’s blood everywhere, frothing from a deep puncture wound under Jalese’s left breast. “I didn’t mean to!”

Her eyes meet mine for a moment, then she passes out.

I know what to do.

I pull the little bag of charms off from around my neck and yank it open and grab the first thing my fingers find. Sam is by my side. She’s doing some First Aid stuff, tearing Jalese’s tunic open and jamming her hand practically into the wound. Good. Not enough. I remember how to start. In that other language. Not Elvish, I know now. Even older. “Ocean Mother, hear me—”

“It was an accident!” Lotan cries out, behind me.

“Shut the fuck up!” Sam yells at him.

Distracted I have to begin again. There’s an interestingly-shaped pebble, worn smooth, embedded in my hand, as if it had grown there all my life. My palm-print whorls across the featureless stone. “Ocean Mother, hear me. Jalese your… devout child is innocent of this harm. Let it be your will that this wound is undone. Let it be your will—” “Sam!”

Sam moves her hand aside from the wound long enough for me to put mine to it.

The stone is gone.

I can feel the pressure of her blood against my palm. I can feel her heartbeat becoming erratic. And a taint of something cold and burning.

“It’s not working!” Lotan complains, still behind me.

I withdraw my hand and Sam instantly replaces it. I pull another charm out. My hand is shaking. Covered in blood.

“No wait, her bleeding’s stopping!” Lotan says, his voice full of hope. The spurting from under Sam’s hand is slowing down.

“It’s ’cause she’s lost too much blood, you idiot,” Sam retorts bitterly. Blood is soaking into the wooden decking, into the soil, into my clothes and Sam’s. “Her heart—” She starts CPR. Pump. Pump. Pump. Pump. Pump…

I lose count. “Ocean Mother, hear me,” I say quickly. Sam’s attempts are totally inadequate and she knows it. She’s just trying to keep the brain alive while I get it together with the Goddess. “Jalese is our friend. Jalese is my friend. I beseech you spare her from our own carelessness. She deserves to live. She deserves to live. She deserves to live.” “What I tell you three times is true,” I add in English while Sam is blowing into Jalese’s mouth. The charm is gone. I didn’t even notice what it was.

There’s no more blood coming.

“Wait—” Sam says, sitting up. I look at her, and down. Jalese’s eyes are open. “Just hang on,” Sam is telling her. “We’re fixing you.” She lifts her hand gingerly away from the wound.

There is no wound. I wipe the blood on the surface away and there’s just unbroken skin where the deep slot between her ribs had been. But her skin is horribly pale. Her face is pale and clammy.

“No, wait!” Sam calls out to Jalese again. She’s passed out again. “Wait! Stay with me! Tani, do it again!”

“I don’t know—” Something tells me, it’s not cumulative. It doesn’t work like that.

“DO IT!”

I tip all the remaining charms out onto my hand and clap my other hand over them. I press them together, more the image of a prayer from home.

Sam yells, “You’ve got to replace the lost blood! What sort of fucking stupid deity doesn’t realise that!”

I’m jabbering away, trying to find another form of words.

“Just fucking do it!” Sam yells.

I pull my hands apart and place them both down over Jalese’s chest. “Just fucking do it, you bitch,” I hiss, echoing Sam’s sentiment. My hands hurt more than I can believe. “Just fucking do it, you bitch,” I say again, and push again. I’m feeling dizzy, as if I’m going to be sick, and my breath won’t come. “Just fucking—” I have to force in a breath. “Do it.”

“Tani,” Sam says. Her voice has changed. All I can see is a curl of Jalese’s hair, fallen across her face, stirring slightly in the wind. There’s nothing else. I can still feel all the charms rooted in the flesh of both my hands.

“Just fucking—” The waste of it. The stupid random waste of it.

“Tani, stop,” Sam tries again.

“Do it. Do it. Do it.”

“She’s gone.”

And then, it’s a strange lightheaded feeling. I can feel myself fainting; my body losing the strength to even sit upright, and falling, and nothing.