The Seasons of Salt

Chapter Two

The rumble echoed through her. Cerissa sat up in the darkness. Everything felt suddenly, abruptly cold, as if the storm howling outside had broken into the heart of her. She rubbed a hand across her chest, feeling the ache blossom there.

Something was wrong. Something had changed.

She was halfway to the door when it swung inwards, Sylas standing there in his long night-clothes, barefoot against the wooden floor, his face ghost-pale in the darkness.

“Did you hear it?”

“No.” It was no lie. It was not a sound. It was the rushing waters, right in the heart of her. His eyes were shrewd.

“You felt it.”

“I … do not know.” Truth. She did not know what she felt. Only that she needed to be with him now. Needed to know he was safe – because something was desperately wrong. His hand rubbed against his chest like it was hurting him.

“Da?” He asked. Cerissa shrugged anxiously.

“Don’t know.”

There was a thump against the window which made them both flinch, and they clung to each other hard – frightened hands clutching arms, digging through thin linen. Just a bird, swooping against the thick, almost opaque glass of the windows. It was a strange, black-spread shape against the night, obscured by the expensive, imported glass from the Floating City. Cerissa always liked the open skies and plain shutters best, though they were freezing in the winter. Ma had insisted and when Ma really insisted on something she always won. Glass in the all the bedchambers, and in the solar where Da spent most of his time. Aunty Eya, Ma’s sister, had died as a child of the cold in the bleak midwinter, she said, and she’d not have any of her own children joining her.

There was another thump – another bird trying to break its way in.

“The storm’s riled them.” Her voice was high.

“It was the shake. There’s magic in it.”

“Should we fetch Ma?”  

A squeak and a scuttle. A score of mice came scuttling towards them, pouring out of the holes in the wainscoting. Cerissa shrieked and clung all the harder to Sylas. She was not afraid of mice usually, but these were mad. Heading straight for them like a tiny mouse army, charging unafraid for one last battle. Sylas stomped at them, trying to frighten them away, but the little soldiers scurried up their legs, winding round and round their bare skin, crawling with tiny skittering claws and scaly tails whipping around. Cerissa screamed and screamed fit to burst, trying to shake them free. A thump and a clatter of soot, half a dozen birds tumbled down into the fireplace, cawing and choking, flapping, sending rain droplets flying as they whirled around their heads, diving towards the cowering humans, and soaring upwards at the last moment. Cerissa, every minute expecting to feel the wrath of talon and beak and yet never finding it.

She barely noticed the dangling spiders plummeting from the ceiling, winding around them on gossamer threads, or the earwigs marching in single-file across the wood-work – but she could not miss the lolloping thump of the hunting dogs barging their way into the room. They were rumbling with something almost like a growl, but their teeth were not bared and their hackles were not raised. They wound themselves under her feet, their bodies warm and wet. They had clearly broken in from the kennels outside, using their gigantic shaggy weights to batter down the doors. The kitchen cat and her army of kittens followed mewling behind, and the dogs did not try to stop them. Cerissa was crying now. She and Sylas curled down together amidst this storm of the wild, the cats crawling over their laps, the mice nestling in their laps, the spiders in their hair, and birds above them, encircled by the dogs. And here – slow, late, lost, came the foxes and the hedgehogs, the badgers and the stoats, scuttling in from the open doors, wind-blown, rain-blown, snuffling, grunting, squeaking, howling, until Cerissa thought she had tasted madness at last. The air was thick with the scent of it. Moles, voles, water-hawks. Toads and frogs, owls, rats and newts – all clambering to be close to them. All trying to reach the two, tiny humans trapped in the middle of it all.

Cerissa heard shouting, distantly, but she could not make out who it was from. Her head was buried in her knees now, her hands trapped over her head, curled up small, her tiny frame wracked with sobs and raw fear. Her whole body cold. As though the waters were in her, the deep depths of the river itself in her veins instead of blood. Sylas’ head was tucked up against her, his eyes squeezed shut, his breath shivering out in fear, but his hands were clutched over her head instead as if they were the widespread wings of a mother hen.

Rough hands beat their way through the commotion, sending the dogs growling, the foxes snapping in dismay. Cerissa still had her eyes squeezed tightly shut as the arms grabbed her, and she clung blindly to them as they bundled her out, down into the hallways, followed by the baying, howling mob. The night had invaded here. The halls were thick with it, wet and wild, the storm broken through the last defences. The horses in the stables were thundering against their stall doors, trying to break free – trying to find them. The whole world was trying to find them now.

The wind blew harder, almost knocking them off course, and Cerissa clung tighter as they pelted forwards, out of the high stone walls encircling the courtyards of Beaversbane and out into the wide world beyond.

She was thrown bodily forwards and heard the scream before the splash. Her body was already so cold that it took her several moments to realise she was in the water. The fish coiled themselves around her, seeking her desperately, even the river weeds wound themselves about her. She broke the surface just as the lightning crashed, and swept sodden hair out of her eyes in time to see a huddle of people facing her there on the banks – Ma, Jonnah, Gerinson, Enric, Pippy, even Great-Grandma had been carried out in her wheeled chair – all staring in horror at her and Sylas, who, she found, was standing drenched beside her in the river.

There was a moment of stillness. Silence. And then the world fell in around them, more slowly now, as if the time that had been pounding far too fast had only just started to fall back into its right rhythm. The wind had fallen away immediately and the world seemed echoingly empty without it, as if her ears were ringing and hollow. The rain was still falling, but it was warm and gentle now, with none of the violence it had held before. The weeds released her and the fish skittered away and in the distance she could see animals chasing each other out of the courtyard, prey and predator once more, yapping and squealing and squawking. She looked over to Sylas, and found him shivering there beside her, his eyes wide and fearful.

Then Ma spoke.

“It’s over.” Her voice was hoarse. “It’s all over now. You can get out.”

Cerissa was not sure her legs would work though. Ma scuttled forwards, plunging herself into the slow, wide waters of the Dowsitch River beside them, ignoring the drenching muddying her immaculate night-dress. One arm, warm and comforting, wound around Cerissa’s shoulder, the other around Sylas and they both burst into tears at once. She handed them up to Gerinson who hauled them out, and forced them to stand on quivering legs, dripping barefoot onto the grass. He wrapped his cloak around Cerissa, and Enric gave his to Sylas.

“What happened, Ma?” Her voice was weak and shivering. She felt hollow. Empty.

“It does not matter. It was just the storm. It riles them up sometimes.”

Great-Grandma laughed darkly.

“The storm.” Her voice was full of scorn but her eyes were brighter than the lightning still flashing across the sky. “It’s more than that and you know it, Sendre. It’s the Fae.”  

“It does not matter what it was. It’s done,” Ma said firmly.

But she would not meet their eyes and Cerissa knew, more than owt she had ever known before, that it was not done yet.