Pearl Before Swine ch 21: Ally

~THE PEARL~

Pike leaves.

I sink to my knees, four words on my tongue. They are vaporous yet heavier than any stone. “He is the Swine.”

By his own admission, Pike is the child of Mare. The Essence of the Sea dotes on him. Yet, no mirth wraps the sentiment. Even as it softens with each echo off the inside of my skull, the phrase is flat, dry, and wrinkled.

His song waltzes between my ears, staccato claws curling into my heart, and no wonder. It is a melody meant to summon those of the sea performed by a being for whom music is as integral as breathing. He would trap me. He would have me dangle forevermore from Mare’s necklace, motionless except for at the will of others. Less than a puppet on a string.

How could Pike want that? He was the only one who waited for me to awaken when I first arrived here and greeted me with such a friendly smile.

Of course he did. I was a valuable prize.

Outside the dean’s office when he told me of the bear’s demise, he held me, and we cried together. It was not just to get close to me, though. He could not have faked the depth of his sorrow.

He argued so adamantly against the death of prey.

He killed Terra’s messenger, and his regret rang genuine—not only because he had angered me. I feel this, though I cannot explain how. There is something in the way Pike holds himself that speaks to his truth. He keeps claiming not to believe in the Essences. It must be a deception meant to confuse me—a deception worthy of a villain—yet I cannot reconcile my concept of evil with this caring, music-infused boy.

How I wish I could touch his mind.

When I first tried to walk, my knees knocked against stone. Its echo shoots through my bones now. In its wake, the laughter of the Sea Swine trickles, just as painful. They found my misfortune amusing—all but one. He stared at me as if something wondrous had happened and as if he wished it had happened to him.

Has it? Is this the Swine that Mare chose to disguise as human? Pike? There must be a reason for that look back in the cave. Can Pike be an ally, even as the Swine?

I surge to my feet, but Beau clamps a hand on my elbow.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to show you.”

This bait is too vague to snare my attention, and I tear free. Yet, as I reach the open doorway, he throws out another lure.

“The new Essence’s realm isn’t Night.”

My stride hitches. How does he know? And if it is not Night, then what?

My foot lowers. My head turns. “I do not want him as my enemy.”

Beau’s brows draw a V, but if he verbally objects, the words become lost in the distance between us. I dash through the corridor. Steam limits visibility, while the moving, metallic walls wink and flash like distant stars. The warm air sticks in my throat.

A shadow, a figure, grows before me.

“Pike?”

He stops, fists clenched. The closer I come, the more details fill in. His jaw locks. His eyes cut sideways, the color of a lagoon beneath a midnight sky. “Got tired of standing me up or just bored of that nitwit’s company?”

A grin tugs at my lips. “Which nitwit: Halcyon or Beau?”

The smile is contagious until he closes his eyes and sighs. “I don’t know how Halcy got into this school. I know exactly how Beau Smythe did, and that’s the problem.”

His face is a maze of squiggly lines, but much as I would delight in exploring it, I did not come here to discuss the dragon or the scientist.

I reach toward him. “Pike, what are your goals? Besides trapping me, I mean.”

“I’m not trying to trap you, Pearl.” He whirls toward me to take my offered hand, then hesitates, fingers hovering above mine as his eyes sink to the fog-concealed floor. “Sorry if I gave that impression, if I came on a little strong. Most avoid me at home, so I thought of this as a fresh start, but I guess I’ve gone and messed it up already, and I’m so, so sorry.” The words pour from him, a river of delicate notes, babbling up and down and around the stones of sharper consonants.

“Then do not do it, Pike. Tulip told me love is sharing and helping one another. We cannot love each other, but…” I trail off as his eyes widen.

“That—that’s okay.” It is a stutter with a hint of a squeak. His hand retreats, then his feet. “I—I don’t need the distraction.”

Tulip’s line finishes only in my head. If you want them to help you with your goal, try asking about theirs. Then do what you can to help them reach it.

Pike is a Sea Swine, a Creature of Essence incapable of love, but I want to believe the principle still applies to making allies. Even friends.

I step into the growing space between us, chopping it shorter, little by little. “I do not know what Mare has offered you—”

“Don’t you think that joke has gone a bit far?” He rubs his eyes, his temples. “My relationship with the sea is…” The word stretches into infinity, still going even as silence fades in.

“I will offer you one dream come true, whatever it is.” Another step closer, but as that final syllable squeezes between my teeth, Halcyon’s warning leaps from the depths of my thoughts. A Swine once wanted to belong to another, and Mare killed him. A beat late, I add, “As long as it is within my power to give.”

“It’s not.” His backward steps stretch the gap between us again until his shoulder hits a wall with a thunk. “I have to make my own dreams come true. If you do it for me, then what use am I to the world?”

I understand. I would feel the same if Terra interfered so I could win the bet. It would deny me the chance to prove my worth and intelligence. It would mean he did not believe I had enough of either to complete the task on my own.

“Then I offer support. Whatever you need, ask.”

He opens his eyes. Tears gloss them. “I don’t think I understand. What are you asking of me?”

“Friendship.” My arms wrap him and draw him closer.

His chuckle tumbles like a hundred soft things hitting the ground. “This probably isn’t something someone who just got friend zoned should say, but your hugs are incredible, like reaching for a star and actually touching it, holding it.”

I place my chin upon his shoulder, voice as mellifluous as the slosh of waves. “Finish the sentence, Pike. Your relationship with the sea is…”

“I’m a child of the sea. Taken by it. Given to it. However you want to define it.”

My face crumples. “You have not always been a Swine, then.”

“I have never been a Swine, and I don’t appreciate the joke.” He pulls free, turns, and sets a pace that could rival an avalanche. “I’ve got a lot of stuff due tomorrow.”

I am his shadow, swift as darkness and deterred by no obstacle. “Pike, you saw what I wrote for my greatest fear.”

“I already said I’m not out to trap you, Pearl.” He stops as the corridor spills into the hub with the waterfall and the chasm where Sal and I encountered Aurora last night. Though he faces me, he walks backward.

Shadows do not flee from austere squints, and neither do I. “Tell me your goal, then. What do you mean you are a child of the sea?”

“So you can laugh at and shun me, too?” His mid back bumps against the rail around the chasm, and he grips the round top bar.

Afraid he would rather dive in than answer, I grab the front of his jacket. “One’s lack of freedom is never a cause for laughter.”

He sighs, then glances at every spiraling column of gold, every bronze gear, every shining balcony and dark tunnel before his liquid eyes settle on me. “I’ve always been full of questions, most starting with ‘why’ and ‘what if,’ and water fascinated me most of all. I’d stare out the drain slits under the ship rails and over the edge of skiffs, picturing myself beneath those waves. Then, one day, I fell in.”

“Does the sea return those it catches?”

“Usually not.” His gaze alights on my hands tangled in his jacket, and Sal’s words course through me.

You look just like her.

Does Pike also think I resemble Mare, holding him to me like this? Perhaps the thought should loosen my fingers. Instead, it tightens them.

His bandaged hand rises and curls atop mine. “If you don’t know how to swim, you sink. You drown, but I spent a lifetime watching sea creatures, so I copied how they moved. It was enough to keep my head above the water until I could grab the small boat. Crew said I’d been cursed by the fishies, though. If my mom wasn’t the pirate queen, they’d have thrown me back.”

I tilt my head as if this physical movement can shine rays of sunlight on the story from angles he might not have thought to conceal. Is it truth? Or how much of it is a lie meant to confuse me, woven from slivers of truth?

“So you, Child Claimed by the Sea, came here to escape it?”

His lips slant and his brows rise. “The opposite, actually.”

I mirror the expression until the coyest of grins cracks his.

“Look, you wouldn’t have seen it in the E’er Wild Forest, but the world has an overpopulation problem. They’re paving over the crops needed to feed us all. That’s the reason the politicians want to unite everyone, though getting the Koa’s little dots of land won’t help in the long run. They want to undo the Great Swallowing, but me? Eighty percent of the world is ocean, and if we could live in it, farm in it, thrive in it…”

“You want humans to live in the sea.” I pivot onto my toes, my weight pressing against him as if with enough physical contact, I can steal him from the sea. “Mare would never allow it.”

He gives against my steady push, muscles tightening just in time to stop a plunge over the rail. Our feet remain on the metal floor, yet in a way, we still plummet headlong together. This understanding is viscous, too soft to walk on and too thick to swim in.

His eyes narrow, a pair of waning moons tinted beneath calm waters. “The only thing real about Mare is our fear of her.”

***

When I find my way outside, late afternoon paints the sky a hazy blue cottoned with wisps of yellowed white. Pike remains at my side. He tried to convince me not to come out here, and failing that, he refused to let me come alone.

“I will not be alone once I locate Professor Baker,” I state, chin high. “I wish her to teach me to fight.”

Pike scoffs. “I saw you against that bear. You don’t need a fighting teacher.”

“That was instinct. I want honed skill.”

Calling that bluff, the wind laughs through the brittle leaves above our heads. Several rain around us—scarlet, orange and yellow sparks against the brown carpet of pine needles. A sweet and musky scent coats my tongue with every breath.

I lock my jaw before I can tell the Swine that I hope to find Jun out here as well. I want to make sure he is alright. More than that, I want his company, even as Sal’s warnings cut at me from the inside. I should not bring the Swine to an islander, but Pike and Jun were together when I first met them. Pike will not hurt him, and I do not want to miss a single one of Jun’s smiles.

I stuff my mouth with words in support of my disclosed reason. “An iron rod can smash and stab, but only when crafted into a blade can we term it elegant.”

Pike puffs his cheeks and fingers the latch on his flute’s sheath, but he gives no further argument.

Soon, clashing swords and occasional shouts form a trail of sound, and I dart ahead. When I emerge into the clearing, Jun stands alone in the fighter’s ring, firing arrows and flicking knives at targets tossed by Professor Baker. He is a storm and a deluge, every movement a work of art.

Motion—dance—is the chosen art of the Sky. I have never seen Caelus, though I imagine his eyes must be blue like Halcyon’s and Issoria’s. They cannot be any more stunning than this human boy’s, and I wonder if the islanders might have some connection to the Sky. If so, why has Caelus done nothing to protect them?

I must ask him when I meet him someday. Instinct says that we will meet. We must, though I do not know how or why. Instinct is elusive like that, whispering things we would not figure out otherwise.

Another instinct draws me toward the ring, calling for my arms to rise and encase Jun. Kiss him again, but do it better this time so that he will not flinch away from me.

I should not waste time. Nearly all the hours have leaked out of my third day. I am a danger to Jun. Tulip tells me to avoid him. So does Sal, but I do not hate him, and that proves I am not a Creature of the Sea. Jun blushes so easily, and his stuttering answers to my myriad of questions are windows into his soul, however brief. It is deeper than one might assume of a being so young. I doubt even he has explored its depths and corners. Yet, from what I have seen, it is just as beautiful as he is on the outside.

The bet says nothing in regard to the appearance of the human whose love I acquire, but a part of me considers the desirableness of this human to be a reflection of my own worth. Is it petty if I want to make Mare jealous?

I stop as if my foot has been pinned to the ground by an arrow. My eyes trace an invisible cord to one sitting beneath a tree—not on a log bench like the other students but further away—alone, golden uniform blending into a wave of faded grass, eyes reflecting that same wan color as he glares at me.

As soon as our gazes meet, Sal looks down, and the gesture pulls me to him as surely as the tide chases after the moon. With an intense frown, he reads a tiny book, though he does not turn a page in all the time it takes me to get to him.

I fold my legs and sit beside him. The ground is cool and dry, dirt powdery beneath the grass. It smells of herbs and citrus and, of course with Sal here, salt.

He barely moves, even to breathe. A faint whine accompanies each inhale.

I squint at his book, but very little of it makes sense. “What is that?”

His mouth presses in a tighter line, but he does not deign to look at me. A hollow darkness caresses his cheeks, deepest beneath his eyes. Dirt speckles his white hair, and wildness dictates its angles.

“Sal, did something attack you? Are you hurt?” I lean between him and his pages.

He pierces me with a scowl. “You took from me, Pearl, without even asking.”

Continued in chapter 22

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