Through the Whirlpool (17 page)

O
n a day when Shah, the wide sea, was bright with sun and sparkles, flickering colors—green, blue, and gold—pulsated like heartbeats in the water. This was kree-eh: ribbons of delicate light that drifted in the current, reflecting the hues of the surrounding deep with magnified brilliance. If the sun was shrouded with cloud, the kree-eh strands appeared as nothing more than opal shimmers of mauve and orange within the ocean’s gray heart. At sunset, they shone gold, lilac, and orange, though they softened to indigo and mauve by twilight. Yet as Shaamoh, the moon, lit the evening, they shone out like crimson and silver veins in the dark vastness.

“
Enjoy her pretty colors, but never forget, she is alive, aware. Kree-eh is the mind of Shah, and only she can tell you what the ocean truly feels.”

Geh-meer remembered this day, sitting at the old woman
’s feet on the beach at their village, Rrurd. They were mending the nets and baskets that the Shahee, the sea nomads, used to fish from their canoes. To Geh-meer’s young eyes—she was barely ten—the woman had seemed ancient beyond imagining. Yet Geh-meer sensed an undertone to their talk; she suspected it had to do with that serious matter of growing up, of becoming a woman. That really was why the proud old woman was there; Geh-meer knew enough to realize that she did not normally mend nets; she was one of the shahiroh, or sea callers, who lived on the volcanic island of Kaa-meer-geh across the bay.

Even after all these years, Geh-meer could remember the shariroh
’s exact words as she talked about the moon and the kree-eh:

“
She, whom men call Shaamoh, the Pale Lady, truly has four names: Maataa when she is new, a waif barely visible in the sky; Shaamoh, as her body grows and assumes its shapely form; Sheehah when she takes on the pregnant glory of womanhood; and Sounaa as she curves and shrinks, bent by the weight of the knowledge she must bear in this world. But twice a year, as Sheehah, she brightens Hurm’s rosy face to silver, and that is the time for harvesting kree-eh.”

Hurm was the wide band of light that crossed their sky to the north. The shahiroh said she was once a moon who lay down in the sky and wept when her lover died, and her tears formed a river leading back forever to his grave beyond the horizon. In the daylight she shone a silvery rose and at night, magenta.

“How do you harvest it?”

“
First, you thank Shah for her children. There is a special rite the shahiroh perform, before the Shahee paddle their canoes in a wide circle around a kree-eh bed. They sing to the kree-eh, asking it to come to them.”

“
I will be one of the Shahee one day, a sea nomad like my father. Then I may harvest it, too.”

“
You can be whatever you put your mind to be, child, but remember that the world owes you no favors.”

Then her brothers, who were only four, woke the baby with their games, and she had to pick him up to comfort him. When she looked around, the old woman was gone.

Here she now was, barely seven years later, and though she had embarked on her sea-nomad-becoming, she had nearly lost it all. Sea-nomad-becoming was a private test, so to help another as she had helped Kreh-ursh, her fellow candidate, was forbidden. Yet it had been an emergency, hadn’t it? She had saved him from being roasted by an ungrateful dragon. Even if it had nearly cost her the sea-nomad-becoming.

Returning to her own beach two days after having left, it had been a challenge to blanket her mind from the shahiroh who confronted her about her absence. Shahiroh were cunning with mind speech and could sniff a lie in a moment. She claimed she had got lost on the sacred island and had been wandering the slopes in despair. What she had done was right, she knew, even if it was against the rules. If she had acted on her last premonition, their friend Kaar-oh might still be alive. The
forewarning that Kreh-ursh needed saving had come to her as soon as he had jumped from the great canoe. The farther the canoe traveled away, the stronger her foreboding became until it was throbbing at her temples, letting her focus on little else. Finally, she knew she would have to act.

As soon as she was dropped off, once the canoe was out of sight, Geh-meer began to run. Beach by beach, laboring over headlands, she worked her way back around the island until she reached the cove where Kreh-ursh had camped. She stayed in the jungle that night, seated in a tree fork, immersed in trance. Listening, not risking sleep. At one point she sensed a presence in the gloom and slowed every neuron to stillness. She watched, frozen, as Taashou—one of the senior shahiroh, the same old woman who had mended nets with her on the beach all those years ago—glided by beneath. The sea caller was wearing her ceremonial mask. That meant that another caller must be seeking Geh-meer far down the coast. Thereafter, the girl was scared to approach the beach, or to betray herself with even the slightest mental tremor. Only in the cold dawn, once the imperative to act became too great, did she dare to move. She had barely reached the thick foliage beside the shore when she saw Kreh-ursh, standing before her on the rocks, peering into the jungle gloom. Just as he pushed his way in, she slipped behind a tree. He seemed to sense her as she watched him harvest the sedative berries. She felt him cast around with his mind, but she was good, better than he at that skill. She dropped into a trance where she would not betray the tiniest mental activity. Soon he relaxed. He went looking for soap moss before returning to the beach. Hidden in the undergrowth, she watched him sedate the lesser dragon that had been brought low by the poisonous mud, and begin to clean its feathers.

Kreh-ursh would make a good Shahee, she knew, one of the best. Strong, intelligent, and sensitive to the life code, the rash boy who had been her companion in training for the last year seemed within two tide cycles to have grown into an adult. Perhaps it was because of his friendship with Kaar-oh that she had thought of him as a child. But he was barely a year younger than she was. Here on Zjhuud-geh, he was a man.

Feeling slightly silly, and believing that her trip here had been wasted, that she must violate sea-nomad-becoming no further, she was turning to leave when it came. The dragon raised its head—she saw it a moment before Kreh-ursh and mind-punched with all her force. The flame flashed past Kreh-ursh
’s scalp. The monster roared again, and again she mind-punched, both their minds acting in unison to turn its head. At the second attack, Kreh-ursh scrambled backward out of range, retreating toward the jungle. She also retreated, knowing he had sensed her. Turning to check where he was, she saw him just within the foliage line, watching the lesser dragon. That was when she made her mistake. The huge reptile was flapping its wide wings on the rocky shore. Silhouetted by the bright sea, Kreh-ursh stood, tall and square shouldered, watching the dragon. She was captivated, too—it was a beautiful sight. Kreh-ursh turned and saw her.

Geh-meer!

She ran.

B
ack in early 2002, I was sent a facsimile copy of a story my young nephew had written about a Santa who, faced with a team of sick reindeer, took some ‘genetic modification’ pills, allowing him to sprout wings and fly off to deliver his presents. I was delighted with the story, and decided to write one in answer. So “The Jewel Fish Chronicles” were born. In the time it’s taken to get this first book in the series to publication, that nephew has grown up and moved out into the world, and my initial ideas have also evolved and matured.

Many people have aided me in bringing
Through the Whirlpool
to publication, but of them all, TomCia, a dear friend, has shown total faith in my fiction. The wonderful days we passed in her caravan on Australia’s Gold Coast, our evenings spent reading an early draft aloud and discussing the novel, proved invaluable for reshaping the narrative and characters.

Two other friends who have been endlessly supportive are
Mariann Unterluggauer and Robert Gaggl. I would also like to thank Rafael Bertran, who for years, was doggedly effusive about the Jewel Fish project.

I am grateful once again to Carlos Serrat, Bernardo Alvarez and Dani Mur
o at Gira Visual Communication for another fabulous book cover, and for thoroughly redesigning the Poble Sec Books website.

Jill Mason, my
editor, also deserves sincere thanks for her exhaustive and conscientious work. As well as identifying many weak spots and loose ends, she tightened the manuscript in a truly professional manner.

Many other friends and colleagues—more than I can list here—have read early
versions of this story and offered much appreciated feedback, for which I am supremely grateful. Thank you all.

B
orn on a South Pacific island, from his first foray into 
The Hobbit
 at ten years old, through writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Anne McCaffrey, K. Eastkott spent his formative years submerged in fantasy and science fiction. At nineteen he set out to discover the world and spent the next twenty-odd years living in and moving between countries such as Spain, Australia, New Zealand and England. He currently lives in London. “The Jewel Fish Chronicles” is his first fantasy series.
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