I wondered grumpily how he thought she’d feel any better, knowing he was dead in her place. But then, that’s a man: elf, human, dwarf—all the same.
“So how did you convince her to let you go?” I persisted. Knowing Sabia as I did, having seen her strong in her determination, I found it difficult to believe she had given in easily.
“I didn’t,” Devon said, the color in his cheeks deepening. “If you must know, this convinced her.” He raised a clenched fist, showed bruised knuckles.
“You socked her!” I gasped.
“You hit her!” Alake echoed.
“I begged her to let me go in her place. She refused. There was no talking her around and I did the only thing I could do to prevent her from going. I knocked her out. What else could I do? I was desperate. Believe me, both of you, hurting Sabia was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life!”
I could believe that. An Elmas will suffer pangs of guilt for days over accidentally stepping on a spider.
“As for my jewelry,” Alake said, turning the silver bracelet on her arm with her hand, “these are mine, Grundle, given to me by my mother when I was born. I couldn’t leave them any other message about where I was going or what I was doing. I tried, but it was too hard to put my feelings into words. When my mother finds that these are gone, she will know. She will understand.”
Alake went back to her altar. Devon tugged at the tight sleeve of his gown, which must have been cutting off his circulation. I could have sat down and cried. The words had come out, but they were hard to hear and I didn’t see how I had helped matters.
“So much for dwarven proverbs,” I muttered into my side whiskers.
“I am ready to begin now,” said Alake, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Alake forbade me to write down the details of the ceremony, but I couldn’t have done so, in any case, since I hadn’t a clue as to what was going on. All I know is that it involved salted cod (a dolphin’s favorite treat, if they can get it) and flute music and Alake chanting a lot of strange words and making fishlike noises. (Humans can speak the dolphin language. Dwarves could, I suppose, but why would we want to? Dolphins speak dwarven quite well.)
I dozed off, at one point, during the flute music, and was startled out of my nap when Alake spoke in normal words and voice.
“It is done. The dolphins should come to us now.”
They might, I thought, if we threw the salt cod into the sea-water. I couldn’t see that it was doing much good where it was, lying in a silver dish on the altar. Perhaps she figured the stench would draw them.
As you may have guessed, I don’t set much store by human or elf magic, and you can imagine my surprise when we all heard and felt a bump on the hull of the ship.
“They’ve come,” said Alake complacently, and hastened off to the waterlock to greet them, her beads clashing, her bare feet (humans rarely wear shoes) padding swiftly over the deck.
I glanced at Devon, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows. He’d been planning to call them with a magical dolphin whistle, which made no noise at all that I could hear. Devon assured me, however, that dolphins could hear it quite clearly and considered the sound very pleasant.
We both hurried after Alake.
Our ship consists of four decks, numbered from the bottom to the top. Not a large craft, compared to the sun-chasers, but it was only used by the royal family on their occasional sinkings into the other realms.
Deck four is the topmost deck (if you don’t count the outside). Here is the observation room and, beyond that, the pilot’s house, which none of us had the courage to go near. A ladder extends down from the observation room, through a shaft that opens onto each other deck. At the aft end of the observation room, a huge set of windows provides a view of land or water, depending on where you are at the time. The seasun, shining through the water, fills this room with cheerful, blue-green light. Outside, you can see the open deck, surrounded by a railing. Only a human would be crazy enough to go out there when the ship is moving.