Page 28 of Wicked Tides #1

Dahlia

There is serenity in darkness

And peace in oblivion.

~ Eli Williamson

“They’re young enough,” Vidar said. “If they go home now before they see the rest of the world, maybe they won’t end up like us.”

I hated that those words hit me like they did. As Vidar disappeared upstairs, I wondered if that was truly the reason I didn’t want to see them killed or hurt, too. It was rare to find eyes that hadn’t been darkened by violence and loathing. Something in me wanted to preserve it.

What disgusted me more was the realization that maybe Vidar and I had something in common.

“He is a sly bastard,” Meridan said, pulling me from my thoughts. “Do you believe anything he is saying?”

“I don’t know. All I know is we’re behind bars. No matter what happens, he currently has the upper hand.”

“In here, perhaps.” She reached over and tapped my temple lightly with one finger. “Not in here. Can you control the dreams? ”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll find him in my sleep tonight. I’m not sure how it works.”

“I believe you will find a way. You have to.”

I had to…

Meridan’s words stayed with me until it came time for the crew to sleep.

Thankfully, my own fatigue cradled me at the same time and I found myself dozing on the thin bedding.

I didn’t know how to find Vidar in my sleep again.

The first time was entirely accidental. All I could do was think of him as I drifted… as uncomfortable as that was.

Black sand covered a flat as far as the eye could see.

It was dark, but the world was visible around me.

Bland. Dreary. I spun in a slow circle to gauge my surroundings only to find the same view in every direction.

Dark sand littered with half-submerged whale bones and the skeletons of decrepit ships.

It was a graveyard. A place where all dead things eventually ended up.

Above me, a world of gray, blue, and black swirled in slow and eerie motions. Sound was muffled, but I could tell by the muted flashes that a storm was raging above. But the depths never felt the turmoil from the skies.

It was all so familiar.

Looking down, I was in my seal skin dress, the pieces stitched together in asymmetrical patterns like they’d always been.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

It was my dream. One I had many times. One I knew very well.

Looking around again, I found myself let down by my own mind.

I didn’t want to be there in that barren wasteland, alone where no light or sound could penetrate.

I had gone to the deep ocean before in a feeble attempt to erase myself only to find that it was exactly what I wanted.

I enjoyed the silent loneliness. I enjoyed it too much and I almost didn’t find the will to return, but now I had something to do.

I had Vidar to deal with and I couldn’t let that cold, dank world summon me too soon .

I started walking, determined to find a way further from the temptation.

The cold sand was gritty between my toes and smelled like salt and rot.

A deep moan rippled through the space and as I panned my eyes upward.

The monstrous shadow of a whale slowly moved overhead, silhouetted by the dancing light of the storm behind it.

I sighed contently at how beautiful I found it all. I used to enjoy the sun. The breeze. The sound of rain beating on the waves. But my mind changed throughout the years when I realized just how ugly the surface was.

My eyes dropped to the sand ahead of me to see a giant ship rotting in my path.

The wood was misshapen and half eaten by the sea and barnacles.

The sails were shredded, hanging like wet moss.

The figurehead, however, was untouched by time and deterioration.

A wolf carved from oak stood at an angle, a bronze bell hanging from between its teeth.

“Mother’s Fang,” I whispered, slowly making my way closer.

As I neared, I could smell him. His scent had never left me since that day and it had not changed much in the eighteen years we’d been apart. Adulthood had only added the metallic smell of metal and the sweet scent of rum.

Circling around the skeleton of the ship, I found that small, rusted cage in the hollow bowels of the lower deck. Inside it was the boy before I knew him as Vidar. I had seen his face that day, full of fear and sadness. Seeing it in that dreamscape, it was filled with revulsion and fury.

How was I so stupid to not see it then?

Vidar’s eyes flicked toward me, but his anger did not wane. He stared into me, tears of blood making lines down his face.

I stepped closer and cautiously crouched down by the too small cage in which he was stuffed, eyeing the lock on the front.

“You seem uncomfortable,” I said.

“Come to devour me?” he spoke, his voice hoarse and dry.

“What’s your name?” I said, dodging his question .

“They’re all dead, you know. Piece by piece. I saw it. Heard it all.”

“Cover your ears.”

“And my eyes?”

From his lap, he uncovered a rusted nail and quickly jammed it into his eye. I tensed at the sight of the boy gouging out his sight without a sound. He ground it around, making sure it was well and truly mutilated before moving to the other. More blood washed down his young face and down his neck.

Hand shaking, he dropped the bloody nail and gnashed his teeth.

“Doesn’t matter, does it? I don’t need eyes to see what I saw.”

I swallowed hard and looked down at the dark sand around me to find his silentium necklace at my feet. I pulled the chain from the sand and raised it up only to find that the cage was now empty, the gate open with a broken lock.

I coiled the old necklace in my hand and slowly stood, searching the strange wasteland for him. When I heard a man’s deep humming nearby, I stopped breathing.

I knew it was him. Somehow, I knew. And as I circled around the decaying ship and found the hull barely intact, there he was.

Vidar, grown into adulthood and sitting with one ankle crossed over his knee in a red velvet chair that looked just as aged and rotten as the ship.

He wore captain’s attire, but his leather hat sat on his knee as he hummed an eerie tune.

Dreams were strange. I wasn’t entirely sure whose dream I was wandering at that point. Mine. His. Both of ours stitched together into a venomous realm of horrors. It could have been any or all of those things. None would make more sense than the other.

“…They stripped them to the bone, the sailors come ashore. They broke their backs and ate their hearts, the crew became no more…”

Vidar hummed portions of the song and added words to others, but never finished it.

Walking further into his view, I saw him staring out into the vast graveyard around us with unfeeling eyes.

Empty eyes. The necklace hung in my hand, but this Vidar didn’t need it. His silentium was buried in his chest.

“The son did drive a blade into the chest of the father. And when he slew the bitch he had hate and vengeance to harbor…”

I blinked, realizing quickly what the tune was about. Growing impatient, I tossed the silentium necklace into Vidar’s lap and immediately his gaze darted in my direction.

“There’s no singing at the bottom of the sea,” I said.

Vidar’s lips curled into a smirk as he rested his head on his fist.

“Well, well. If it isn’t the devil herself.”

“The devil doesn’t exist.”

“I beg to differ. We all see the devil from time to time.” His eyes roamed over me once. “Mine happens to dress in skin.”

“Seal skin.”

I didn’t know why I wanted to correct his assumptions. It wasn’t as if I cared what he thought of me and I wouldn’t have been opposed to wearing the skin of men, but if I was going to appeal to him in any way, I needed him to see me differently.

“Is that right?” he said, narrowing his eyes.

I took a deep breath and peered around at the endless sands once more.

“So? Why are you dreaming of the devil?”

“In this place? You can’t tell where we are? This is Hell, isn’t it?”

“You seem awfully comfortable in Hell.”

He snorted and looked down at the silentium in his lap before picking it up to examine the small, hollow pendant.

“I’ve been here before, devil.”

I inched my way closer to him. “So have I. But it’s not Hell. It’s just the bottom of the sea. The place all things come when they die.”

“Is that not another name for Hell?”

I huffed a laugh and shook my head. “In Hell, you suffer. Here, you simply lay in silence, rotting away, free of pain. Alone. Surrounded only by darkness and bones. ”

Vidar narrowed his eyes again and slowly unfolded from his seat, coming to his full height. He held his hat in one hand as he stepped to the edge of the hull and then down to the sand in front of me.

“You talk as if you desire this place.”

“This place is nothingness. Up there is where the horrors are,” I gestured toward the whirling waters above us.

Vidar followed my gaze upward as another wave of lightning lit up dark shadows swimming in the void.

“Hard to believe horrors lay beyond that,” he said softly.

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” I muttered back, staring at the barrier.

“Like a lace veil placed over a diseased body.”

I kept staring, losing myself in the haunting beauty of it and knowing his words were painfully true.

When that realization came, so did the water.

It descended in a faint mist at first before turning into a light sprinkle.

Slowly, I lowered my eyes back down to look at Vidar.

His head was still lifted toward the watery sky above, his eyes closed as the sprinkle turned into rain.

Cold, salty rain as if the ocean was falling on our heads.

And still, he wasn’t alarmed. Instead, he looked… at peace.

Finally, when his head lowered, I found myself entranced by the tears of water cascading down the contours of his tortured face.

His lids rose to reveal those deep brown eyes like he was re-realizing where he was.

There was a moment between us that stretched on too long.

A moment where I felt tethered to him in a way I didn’t like.

I’d always felt trapped in a feud with him, but this was different.

“All walls must come down,” I whispered.

He shrugged a shoulder. “All walls must come down.”

“Are you afraid of drowning?”

“Always.”

I swallowed, my insides churning at the tone of his words. I wanted to kill him, but I didn’t seek him out in our dreams to fulfill that fantasy. I had come there to find a way in. To find a soft spot that I could expose and sink my claws into .

I couldn’t tell him I hated him. I couldn’t tell him that the dream wasn’t quite a dream or that I was me.

So, I spoke in the gentlest way I could.

“Me, too,” I whispered.

The ire faded in that gaze of his and as it did, something deep and overwhelming seemed to loom over the watery expanse like a storm cloud.

No, a tidal wave. I turned my eyes to the great darkness that seemed to stretch on forever and heard rumbling thunder far within the void.

I’d heard the sound before. It was deep and melodic and made of nightmares.

My blood went cold. I stared at the overbearing darkness and felt that there was something beyond it.

Something behind the shroud. Something not of our world or the next .

Father.