Billy: Messenger of Powers (53 page)

Blue shrugged, the movement barely visible through the floating mane of green hair that surrounded her like an aura. She opened her mouth, and sang. It was like the whale song Billy had heard, but shorter, and livelier. It sounded more…direct, somehow, as though the whales put poetry into their words, and Blue cared only about simple sentences and direct questions.

Soon, an answering call came. Billy saw that it was Artemaeus, the huge blue whale’s head once again poking into the coral palace. The whale sang back to Blue, then disappeared into the open sea once more.

“Well?” asked Billy.

Blue shrugged. “He said that he does know Lumilla Russet, but he has no particular desire to help her. She’s rather rude to him at times.”

“But she’s like that to everyone,” said Billy.

“All the more reason to leave her to her fate,” said Blue in a wise tone of voice.

Billy was desperate now, knowing that this strange creature was his only hope to help his friends. But he couldn’t think of a way to persuade her. She was simply too alien-seeming, too disconnected from the things that made him happy and were important to him.

He decided to try a new tack. “Blue?” he said.

“Yes, Billy?” came her strange, lilting response.

“You said I can do whatever I want down here.”

“Yes, you are a guest of Blue,” she agreed.

“Well, what do
you
do down here? What do
you
like?” he asked.

She smiled. “I catch fish, and I ride the currents, and overlook my domain. I swim with the sharks, and tear into flesh; and I sleep with the jellyfish, and light up the sea. I drift with the unborn eggs of fish in the tides, and I watch the oldest whales go to their graveyard to die. I am Blue, and I see those things.”

“But what do you
like
?” Billy tried again. “I mean, do you read, or watch movies, or—”

“Oh, Billy,” Blue laughed. “You
are
funny. I can see why Artemaeus likes you.” Then she stopped laughing. “None of those things you say are things of Blue. They are things of Brown, or Gray, or Red. These things have no place in my world.”

“But, but,” Billy sputtered. Blue was now moving away, clearly bored by this conversation and ready to leave. She was no longer listening to Billy. He looked about, seeking some hint, some clue as to what to do next. But all he saw was the beautiful palace all around, with its coral, its diamonds and emeralds and plenteous treasures…

“Treasure,” murmured Billy.

Though he whispered it only to himself, the word had an effect on Blue. She stopped moving, immediately straightening up. She didn’t turn to face him again, but she did speak. “Treasure?” she said.

“Treasure,” Billy repeated. Blue turned to him. He pointed at the giant gems that were scattered all around this beautiful place. “Diamonds, emeralds, rubies. Those are all things of the Earth—of the Brown—aren’t they? But you keep them near you. So
some
things about the other Elements are of interest to you, right?”

Blue seemed to carefully contemplate his question. At last she said, “I would perhaps debate with you whether these things you call treasure are truly of the Brown, for so many of them find their final resting places in the Blue. But yes, we do like treasure.” Her eyes closed lazily as she spoke, as though she was thinking of some particular memory, something that brought both pleasure and pain at the thought of it.

Then her eyes snapped open. “Do you have treasure?” she asked suddenly. “If you do, perhaps something could be arranged for your friends.”

Billy’s heart leapt, then stopped leaping just as quickly. What fourteen year old kid had treasure? The nearest he could come was….

“You can have my watch,” he said. He looked down at the birthday present his parents had gifted him with and saw, to his surprise, that it was cracked and destroyed.

Blue swam over and grabbed his arm, none too gently. “Ow!” Billy howled, but Blue didn’t seem to pay any attention to this. “Broken,” she said. “It’s been crushed by the depths. It’s no treasure.”

“Crushed?” repeated Billy, still surprised to see that his birthday gift had lasted such a short time. “What do you mean it was crushed by the depths?”

Blue looked at him like he’d just asked her if she was sure that one plus one
really
equaled two. “You are thousands of feet below the water’s surface, Billy. No air-breather, not even a machine from the air-breather’s world, can come to this place without suffering destruction. The water is heavy here, and so it will crush and destroy the things of the air.”

“Then how come I haven’t been crushed, too?”

“Because I changed you,” said Blue. “That was what was needed when Artemaeus brought me to you. You had no oxygen left in your body, and no way to fashion any, so I changed you.”

“You changed me?” asked Billy incredulously. “How?”

“I made you more efficient. You don’t need air as much now, you can hold your breath for a very long time. And your organs are tougher, able to withstand the depths all around us. You are part of us now, Billy, one of the Blue. Just as am I, just as is Artemaeus.” Blue touched him as she said this, and her touch was electrifying, like sticking a knife in a light socket. She was concentrated Element, Billy realized. Somewhat like a Fizzle, only much, much stronger. Then she grabbed the wrist with the watch again. “At any rate, this is no treasure.”

“Well,” said Billy desperately, “what kind of treasure
do
you want?” He thought of Mrs. Russet and her incredible powers; of the diamonds the size of cars that he had seen while traveling the Earthessence on Rumpelstiltskin’s stone chair. Surely arranging for one of those to be given to this weird creature wouldn’t be a problem, not if he could rescue Mrs. Russet first. “I could get you diamonds.”

Blue smirked. She waved at the palace of coral and gemstones all around. “I have enough of such things already.”

“Gold?”

“There are mountains of it, already buried in coffers and safes on ships that have met their end in the Blue,” she said dismissively. “All these things of which you speak are of little interest to us. They fall to us, and we use them as we will. But if there were no more of it, we would not miss it at all.” She bent down and plucked a slowly-moving sea slug from the floor at her feet. It was gorgeous, a tiny animal striped with red, fuchsia, magenta, white, yellow. The colors were so bright they seemed unreal. Blue allowed the animal to crawl on her hands as she said, “If there were no gems in our world, no gold in our sea, we would have the beauty of our own selves. We are not wanting of anything from the world above.”

“Not
anything
?” asked Billy. He didn’t know what else to do.

Blue put the sea slug back down, where it continued to crawl slowly around. When she straightened up to look at Billy, there was a sly look in her eyes that he didn’t like. “Perhaps there might be
one
thing, Billy Jones,” she said.

“What?” he asked quickly. He knew he sounded over-anxious, but didn’t care. Anything this creature could give him to help him stop the Darksiders and retrieve his friends was desperately needed. She was his only hope, and the cunning look on her face suddenly told him that she knew it.

“Come with me,” she answered, and swam to one end of the great hall in the coral palace.

Billy swam after her, still amazed at how fast he could go. When Blue came to one end of the hall, another doorway opened in the coral, magically pulling back to allow her to go through it. Billy followed, and found himself in a much darker, murkier place than he had been in before. What little light there was here was supplied by a trio of glowing white lobsters, crawling on the craggy walls and ceilings. The room itself was almost bare. The walls were coral, just as the great hall had been, but all the coral here was bleached the same color: a clean, simple white.

The floor was covered in sand, and the sand, too, was purest white. And etched on that sand was a picture of sorts. It was as though a master artist had come down here to work and realized he left his paints at home. So rather than go back and not do anything, he had simply drawn in the sand.

“Swim softly here, Billy Jones,” warned Blue. “The sand is soft, and currents will fade its outlines.” She pointed at the floor over which they both now floated. “Do you see what it is?”

Billy looked closely. It was clear that whatever this was, it had once been an intricate sand drawing, now faded by generations. “Who did this?” he asked as he looked.

Blue shook her head. “I do not know. I do not remember. My memory fades before that time. It has been here as long as I have been Blue, and as long as Blue has been me.”

Billy slowly maneuvered himself so that he was floating face down, his eyes only inches above the sand drawing. “It looks,” he said at last, “like some kind of sword or something.”

“Yes,” Blue breathed. Billy looked at her in surprise. She sounded really excited. More excited than he would expect over him simply being able to tell what the picture was.

“So what about it?” he asked.

Now it was Blue’s turn to look a bit nervous, as though unsure how to say this. “It is mine,” she said.

“But it’s a sword. Aren’t swords for air-breathers?” Billy asked.

“Yes, they are, but that one is mine. I don’t know how I know, but I do know it. The sword is a thing of Blue. And I want it.” Blue’s voice was almost trancelike, detached, like she was speaking from somewhere so deep inside herself that Billy wasn’t sure if she was even seeing him right now.

“I don’t know where it is,” said Billy.

“No, you don’t,” said Blue, snapping out of her reverie. Then, without any kind of preamble, she said, “What are you?”

And Billy answered as in a tone that was as quick and frank as her question had been. “The Messenger,” he said simply. He was surprised how much he was starting to think of himself as that, even though he still had no idea what it meant to be the Messenger.

Blue nodded. “I thought as much. Artemaeus certainly seems to think so.”

“He does?” said Billy in surprise.

But Blue wasn’t really listening to him now. “The Messenger can find my sword,” she said, then focused on Billy. “You can find my sword, and return it to Blue,” she announced with finality.

“I, I don’t…,” began Billy, totally confused. His role in this magical world was as fluid as the water he now floated in, currents of change around every moment. The Messenger could get Blue her sword?

Then a chilly thought swept through him. He remembered that several of the Prophecies about the Messenger and the White King had mentioned a sword:

A sword, a spear, and armor strong

A shield to wear, and dagger long

To fell the Dark and bring the Light

To call the spark that ends the night.

And also, in Rumpelstiltskin’s silly-seeming limerick prophecy:

He used a big blade,

And the dead were waylaid,