Elara Meadows's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Maris stood at the door until dawn threatened, then he left. He gave no goodbye. He said only, "Stay inside. Don't touch the pearl." Then the sea took him, and Elara was alone in the shack with a warm stone in her pocket and a body that had begun to change. She should have listened. But her belly ached, and the ache carried a pull she knew. She drew the pearl out. It flared gold in her palm. Her magic answered too hard. Light burst from her eyes and slammed the shutters open. A gust knocked the candle to the floor. She gasped and shoved the pearl back into her pocket, and the light died. So she learned by testing. Small draws, not big ones. She fed the pearl a thread of power and held it steady. When she pushed too far, the room shook. When she eased off, the glow settled soft in her hand. By the second day she could light the pearl without breaking anything. Her hunger grew worse each time. She ate everything in the shack and still wanted more. Her body swelled fast. On the third night the pain doubled her over the cot. She had not known she carried a child. There had been no months, only days. Yet her belly had grown as if the magic itself had rushed it forward. She gripped the cot frame and breathed the way village women breathed, and she pushed. He came in a rush of water and blood. A boy. His skin was olive, his hair a dirty blond, and when he opened his eyes they were the deep green of his father. He did not cry. He looked at her. Elara held him to her chest and felt the pearl pulse against them both, matched now to a third small heartbeat. "Rath," she whispered. The name came from nowhere and fit. His fingers curled around hers. Along his neck she saw three thin slits open and close, gills where a land child would have none. He was half of Maris, half of her, and wholly strange. She cleaned him with soft cloth. Then she found the old basket in the corner, the one passed down and softened by years. She lined it with fabric scraps and moss, tucked a patched blanket over the rim, and laid him inside. She rocked it with one hand and watched him sleep. Her power hummed steady now, no longer wild. Holding the child had settled it, as if he anchored the thing behind her eyes at last. She had spent nineteen years chasing this magic. Now it lived in her hands and in the boy in the basket. Then she felt it, a cold ripple across the bond. Something out in the dark had noticed the birth. It was coming toward the shore. Elara pulled the basket close and did not move.