Billy: Messenger of Powers (61 page)

Mrs. Russet seemed to understand this unwritten rule of the universe as well, so she didn’t seem disappointed that Billy didn’t do more than shake her hand and mumble a quick, “Glad you’re okay.” But she
did
hold onto his hand for a long while. She didn’t hold it in a strange way, it just seemed like a natural extension of his handshake. It went on for a few moments, and at the end, Mrs. Russet smiled, a quick tilt of a smile, and mouthed “Thank you.”

Billy blushed, and smiled back. They looked at one another for a long time, teacher and student, Sponsor and unDetermined, friend and friend.

Then Mrs. Russet turned to everyone and asked them to tell her what had happened since their captivity. Vester and Fulgora both immediately protested that surely this wasn’t the time or place for story telling, and Billy couldn’t help but notice how pleased Vester was when Fulgora agreed with him. But Mrs. Russet just said, “Bah. There is always time to know what has happened. The study of the past is the preparation for the future.”

So Vester, Ivy, and Tempus all told what had happened to them. There wasn’t much to tell, really: just long periods of confinement in their crystal prison cells, with only a few times that each had been let out for a short period of questioning at the hands of some lower-ranked Darksider.

Mrs. Russet also had little to tell: she had been questioned, it was true, but the questioning and the force of the Elemental torture at the hands of Black Powers had been so fierce that she couldn’t remember much of it. Only fear and pain. “And that,” she said, “is not a fit conversation to have with such young—though strong and able—people present.” She did however mention that Mrs. Eva Black had played more than a small role in the horrible ordeal. She even could remember seeing Mrs. Black’s son Cameron at a few of the sessions, and said almost casually that the boy had grown in power and stature among the Darksiders, and was already a trusted lieutenant in their army.

When Mrs. Russet turned to Fulgora, asking where she had passed her time in the weeks since she had turned into a dragon at her Challenge and then disappeared from the volcano, the Red Lady again declined to answer in detail. She said that much of her time had been spent finding Dark Isle, but more than that she refused to disclose. And clearly no one, not even Mrs. Russet, thought it very wise to press the Red warrior princess too far or too hard on the subject.

At last they came to Billy. Mrs. Russet shook her hand before he started, and thrones of stone came up from the earth. “I suspect that this will be a longer tale,” she said as each person in the company took a seat. To Billy’s surprise, the chairs were not hard and uncomfortable as he thought they would have been. Instead, they seemed to be covered in some kind of clean mud: it didn’t come off on their clothing, but still seemed to mold itself to the contours of each person’s body. Billy’s chair was, in fact, the most comfortable thing he had ever sat on.

Slowly at first, then with more confidence, he told them some of what had happened. He omitted some things, but gave them the high points. For instance, he told them of his rescue by Rumpelstiltskin, but didn’t mention Prince at all. He wanted to brag about the fire snake’s bravery, but couldn’t bring himself to talk about it, for that tale ended in the bright Fizzle’s conversion to Mrs. Black’s plaything through the power of the Death’s Head Moth.

Other things, things he did mention, were greeted with surprise to the point of disbelief. The whole story with the sharks, and his rescue by Artemaeus the whale, and the encounter with the mermaid Blue in particular were hard for them to understand. None of them, not even Mrs. Russet, had ever heard of such things happening before. But unlike the others, Mrs. Russet didn’t say she didn’t believe in mermaids. She just narrowed her eyes as though thinking hard about something, and asked Billy to continue.

And he did, though when he told of the dark outcome his deal had had, he almost started crying. He still couldn’t believe that his agreement with Blue had ended in both the Darksiders and the Dawnwalkers being almost completely destroyed.

“It’s okay, Billy,” said Ivy, the Green Power of Life always acting as the comforter, trying to build people up from despair. “You couldn’t have known.”

“She’s right,” said Vester. “All you have been guilty of was being braver and brighter than anyone I have ever met.”

Tempus, still in a bit of shock over all that had happened, continued saying “I say, quite remarkable, I say, quite remarkable.”

And Fulgora, still looking like she was ready to gallop off to war at any moment, merely nodded gravely at Billy and said, “Your choices were the choices of any good warrior whose friends are prisoners.” High praise indeed.

But none of it seemed to matter that much to Billy. Too much of Dark Isle all around them was still covered in water for him to forget the devastating result of a bargain misunderstood. He felt himself—again—crying. He sniffled and tried to hide the tears from the others.

Ivy stood and walked to him, holding his hands down as he tried to bury his face and hide from his friends’ gazes. “Don’t look away, Billy,” she said. “Don’t try to hide the fact that you weep even over lost enemies. It’s what makes you a true servant of Life, and greater praise I cannot think to give.”

“She speaks truth, in her way,” said someone else at that moment, and Billy immediately recognized the sing-song lilt in the voice and the sound of rushing waters. He looked over, and sure enough, there was Blue. The mermaid was sitting atop the crest of a huge water spout that had risen out of the ocean below and now stood as high as the cliff where Billy and his friends now were.

Billy had very mixed feelings upon seeing the strange mermaid. He looked around, and saw that this time his friends saw her as well, and from their shocked expressions, he knew that she was not appearing to them as a dolphin, but apparently had decided this time to show herself as she really was. His first reaction was a feeling of some happiness, coupled with a desire to say, “See? I told you!” to all his friends who had not believed that a mermaid could be real.

But that’s not what he said. Instead, he turned his face away from the mermaid, and said, “Go away, Blue. I hate you.”

He could sense rather than see her surprise. “Why hate Blue?” she asked.

“Because of what you did,” said Billy, gesturing around him at the waste of Dark Isle.

“Ahh,” said Blue. “Because of our understanding. So many feel this way of the deep, of Blue. They travel her, and use her for sport and gain, but when some find that there is a price to her presence, they bellow and wail. But such have always been the ways of Blue. She takes little that is not freely offered, though many do not realize the realities of their offerings. But she is deep, and terrible, and true. She is Blue.”

The Powers atop the cliff were amazed at this strange coralline creature, and none of them could say anything. But Billy could. “Shut up,” he said. “I don’t want to hear you talk like that. You killed all those people.” Now some of his friends—especially Ivy—did speak, murmuring quiet assent at his words.

“And would you not have done the same?” said Blue to all of them. “Were you not at the very steps of a war to end all wars, a war to end the other side? Were you not already engaged in destruction, with what I brought as its ultimate end? But,” she continued before anyone could argue with her, “so that you may know that you know little of Blue….”

And with that, the mermaid raised her arms. The sea that now covered and surrounded what was left of Dark Isle started to bubble all around them. Billy felt a thrill of fear. What was Blue up to now? He barely knew her, but knew enough to worry about her strange and alien ways.

“Artemaeus, Artemaeus, Old One of the deep,” sang Blue as the water bubbled and broiled with whatever was happening below. “Come to me, my friend, my companion of ages and eons.”

She raised her arms even higher, like a conductor of the world’s greatest and largest symphony orchestra, and now the source of the bubbling could be seen.

Whales. First hundreds, then thousands, and then what seemed like tens of thousands. The leviathans surfaced with a spouting of water and air, surrounding the island like smaller living islands as far as the eye could see.

At the front of the great expanse of whalekind was Artemaeus. The great blue whale looked at Billy with its enormous eyes. And as it had before, it dipped its head at Billy in a slow and ponderous bow, and Billy stood from his granite chair and bowed somberly back.

“What is this?” demanded Fulgora. As always, she was almost imperious, the warrior princess speaking as though she had an army at her back, ready to enforce anything she said. “Have you returned to wreak havoc on us with your forces, to kill the leftovers?”

Blue looked at the Red Lady with an almost savage expression. “Blue speaks not to you, young Fire, youthful Flame. Blue speaks to Billy, to the Deal-Maker, the Messenger, the Seeker to be and the Ender of Worlds.”

Billy felt a thrill at her words. What was she talking about? Seeker to be?

Before he could think too long on it, though, Blue continued. “True it is and true it will be that you, young Billy, did not expect Blue to do as she did. But true it is and true it will be that we had a deal, and there was no provision about how each of us would fulfill its terms.” The mermaid crossed her arms across the mane of green hair that still almost completely covered her upper body. “Still it is and still it may be that Blue will need you, and you will need Blue. And so I think that perhaps you should be given a token of trust.”

She held up her hands again. As one, the thousands of whales all opened their mouths. And as soon as they did, Billy and the Powers near him were all on their feet in shock. For each whale held a single person in its mouth, resting on its tongue. Each person was unmoving, but Billy could see that they were breathing. They were merely asleep, or in some kind of magic trance.

“What’s happening?” Billy asked Mrs. Russet. It was a bit ridiculous to expect her to have answers to everything, he knew. But he did expect it, and she didn’t disappoint him.

“It’s the Dawnwalkers,” she said. “All of the ones who were imprisoned on Dark Isle.”

Tempus was almost dancing with glee, and a puff of wind launched him ten feet in the air as he laughed. “Phoebus, and Nebia, and Trachton,” he said, pointing out several of the sleeping Powers, people who were clearly his friends. “And Grayson and Lamika and Berzeb…and Ralph!” He clapped his hands in delight.

“And…Daddy!” screamed Ivy. Billy looked where she was pointing, and saw that it was true: Veric the Green, Councilor of the Throne of Life, was in one of the whales, asleep on a whale’s tongue and a bed of green seaweed.

The other Powers were too astounded to speak. They all had their mouths open wide enough that Billy was a bit worried that the edges of their mouths might meet together in the back and the tops of their heads would fall off.

Vester was the first to say something after Tempus’s and Ivy’s outbursts. “All of them?” he asked, clearly not believing his eyes. “Alive?”

“True, true as Blue,” sang the mermaid. “And unexpected as the treasures of the deep.”

“But why?” managed Ivy.

“As I said, and as I am,” responded Blue, “it is because Blue wishes to show her signs of solidarity and tokens of trust with Billy Jones. Besides,” she added, with an element of glee like sun kissing the waves of a summer beach, “Artemaeus likes Billy, and as one of the Oldest of the Old Ones, he carries much sway.”

“Then,” said Vester in a strangely quiet voice, “we’ve won.”

Fulgora glanced at Vester when he said this, and Billy saw in her eyes that she approved of his grasp of the underlying realities of the fantastic event now unfolding. “Spoken as a strategist,” she remarked with an actual
smile
, and again Billy thought he saw tendrils of pleased smoke curling up from the fireman’s clothing.

“What?” said Ivy. “What do you mean by that?”