Mom and Dad, Nita thought ruefully. Dairine. That’s not love, I don’t love Dairine! — do I? She hardened her heart and said, “No, Pale One. Not that way. No one… that way.”
“Well then,” said the Master-Shark, “the Song will be sung from the heart, it seems. You will still offer the Sacrifice?”
“I don’t want to—“
“Answer the question, Sprat.”
It was a long while before Nita spoke. “I’ll do what I said I would,” she said at last. The notes of the song whispered away into the water like the last notes of a dirge.
She was glad Ed said nothing for a while, for her insides gripped and churned as she finally found out what real, grownup fear was. Not the kind that happens suddenly, that leaves you too busy with action to think about being afraid — but the kind that she had been holding off by not officially “deciding”: the kind that swims up as slowly as a shark circling, letting you see it and realize in detail what’s going to happen to you.
“I am big enough to take a humpback in two bites,” Ed said into her silence. “And there is no need for me to be leisurely about it. You will speak to the Heart of the Sea without having to say too much to me on the way.”
Nita looked up at him in amazement. “But I thought you didn’t believe— I mean, you’d never—“
“I am no wizard, Nita,” Ed said. “The Sea doesn’t speak to me as it does to you. I will never experience those high wild joys the Blue sings of — the Sea That Burns, the Voices. The only voices I hear cry out from water that burns with blood. But might I not sometimes wonder what other joys there are? — and wish I might feel them too?”
The dry, remote pain in his voice astonished her. And Nita thought abruptly of that long line of titles in the commentaries in her manual: as if only one shark had ever been Master. Sharks don’t die of natural causes, she thought. Could it be that, all these years, there has been just one Master? And all around him, people die and die, and he — can’t— and wants to? And so he understands how it is to want to get out of something and be stuck with it.
Nita was terribly moved — she wasn’t sure why. She swam close to the Pale One’s huge head for a moment and glided side by side with him, matching his course and the movements of his body.
“I wish I could help,” she said.
“As if the Master could feel distress,” Ed said, with good-natured scorn. The wound in his voice had healed without a scar.
“And as if someone else might want to end it,” Nita said, sarcastic, but gentle about it.
Ed was silent for a long while. “I mean, it’s dumb to suffer,” Nita said, rather desperately, into that silence. “But if you have to do it, you might as well intend it to do someone some good.”
In silence they swam a few lengths more through the darkening water, while Nita’s fear began to build in her again, and one astonished part of her mind shouted at her, You’re running around talking about doing nice things for someone who’s going to kill you? You ‘re crazy!
Ed spoke at last. “It’s well said. And we will cause it to be well made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved.” Calm, utterly calm, that voice. “Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”
“HNii’t?” came a questioning note through the water, from southward of Ambrose: S’reee’s voice. “It’s almost your time—“
“I have to go,” Nita said. “Ed—“
“Silent Lord?”
She had no idea why she was saying it. “I’m sorry!”
“This once, I think,” the passionless voice said, “so am I. Go on, Sprat. I will not miss my cue.”
Nita looked at him. Opaque eyes, depthless, merciless, lingered on her as Ed curved past. “Coming!” Nita sang in S’reee’s direction, loud, and tore off southward.
No pale shadow followed.
The next few hours, while the water darkened further, ran together for Nita in a blur of music, and annoying repetitions, and words that would have been frightening if she hadn’t been too busy to be frightened. And something was growing in her, slowly, but getting stronger and stronger — an odd elation. She sang on, not questioning it, riding its tide and hoping it would last through what she had to do. Again and again, with the other Celebrants listening and offering suggestions, she rehearsed what would be the last things she would ever say:
“… Sea, hear me now, and take my words and make them ever law!—“
“Right, now swim off a little. No one hears this part. Upward, and toward the center, where the peak will be. Right there—“
“ ‘Must I accept the barren Gift?
learn death, and lose my Mastery?
Then let them know whose blood and breath
will take the Gift and set them free:
whose is the voice and whose the mind
to set at naught the well-sung Game—
when finned Finality arrives
and calls me by my secret Name.
Not old enough to love as yet,
but old enough to die, indeed— (“— Oh Lord—“)
the death-fear bites my throat and heart,
fanged cousin to the Pale One’s breed.
But past the fear lies life for all—
perhaps for me: and, past my dread, p
ast loss of Mastery and life,
the Sea shall yet give up Her dead!’ “ and then the paleness came to circle over her, bringing with it the voice that chanted all on one soft hissing note, again and again, always coming back to the same refrain—
“ ‘Master have I none, nor seek.
Bring the ailing; bring the weak.
Bring the wounded ones to me:
They shall feed my Mastery…’”
That strange excitement was still growing in Nita. She let it drive her voice as she would have used it to drive a wizardry, so that her song grew into something that shook the water and almost drowned out even Ed’s voice, weaving about it and turning mere hunger to desire, disaster to triumph—
“ ‘Lone Power, I accept your Gift!
Freely I make death part of me;
By my acceptance it is bound
into the lives of all the Sea—
yet what I do now binds to it
a gift I feel of equal worth:
I take Death with me, out of Time,
and make of it a path, a birth!
Let the teeth come! As they tear me,
they tear Your ancient hate for aye—
so rage, proud Power! Fail again,
and see my blood teach Death to die!’ “
… The last time she sang it, Nita hung unmoving, momentarily exhausted, for the moment aware of nothing but Kit’s anxious eyes staring at her from outside the circle and the stir of water on her skin as the Pale One circled above her.
“That’s right,” S’reee said at last, very quietly. “And then—“
She fell silent and swam out of the circle of Celebrants. Behind her, very slowly, first the Blue and then the rest of the whales began to sing the dirge for the Silent Lord — confirmation of the transformation of death and the new defeat of the Lone Power. Nita headed for the surface to breathe.
She came up into early evening. Westward, sunset was burning itself into scarlet embers; eastward a Moon
