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I scramble over Maida’s side to get a better look, and that’s when the breath gasps from my body.
There, just beneath us, swims a group of creatures that are at once familiar and yet not: massive reptiles with gleaming blue scales edged with gold, and golden horns crowning their brows as well as jutting out all the way down their backs. They look something like sea drakos, those colossal swimming reptiles I once thought Ixa was descended from, except sea drakos don’t have liquid black eyes that shine with intelligence and compassion.
But Ixa does.
I gasp: these must be the ebiki, Ixa’s kind.
I hadn’t imagined I’d get to see them here—much less so quickly.
Ixa swiftly flaps down to the single ebiki at the front of the group, a craggy leviathan whose scales are more gold than blue and whose head is considerably larger than all the others—so enormous, in fact, it seems almost like an island, a shimmering oasis under the water.
As I watch, Ixa lands on that immense head, which, when it crests the surface to look at me, causes waves to surge around us. Eyes filled with the same gentleness and intelligence as Ixa’s peer into mine, their gaze so arresting, I gape, unable to look away. So this is a full-grown ebiki.
Even the horn rays stop advancing and instead settle for making low circles on the wind currents.
“Deka,” Britta gasps, staring at the creature. “Is that—?”
Mother, Ixa happily informs me. Deka, Ixa’s mother here.
I gape at Ixa. “Your mother?”
Just the sheer magnitude of her…it’s almost more than I can comprehend.
Even Li is, for once, at a loss for words. “That’s one big mother,” he whispers.
As my friends and I remain where we are, mouths agape, Nenneh Kadeh and the rest of Sarla’s godsworn rise from their perches atop the horn rays, the movement so fluid, I know they’ve done it countless times before. They bow deeply to Ixa’s mother. “Queen Ayo,” Nenneh Kadeh declares, “we are honored by your escort.”
Those gigantic black eyes, each one the size of a single horn ray, don’t move from my face. They just continue staring. And then finally, that colossal mouth opens.
The sound that emerges from it is a rumble that vibrates through my entire being. Even stranger, it’s immediately understandable.“Deka,” Queen Ayo says the single utterance so powerfully, my body suddenly feels light—lighter than it ever has before.
And then I hear it again, this time from another ebiki. “Deka.”
And my body lightens again, that emptiness inside me, for a moment, almost seeming to disappear, erased by this feeling of lightness, of connection.
“Deka,” another creature calls.
Then another. And another.
One by one, the creatures call out my name, each vocalization so filled with power, my body trembles with it.
“Deka!” Britta gasps, urging her horn ray over. “Look at yer skin!”
She points at my hand, where, slowly, surely, the gold that still stains it from Melanis’s attack is retreating—or, rather, being absorbed back into me. And it’s not the only thing that’s changing. That emptiness in my belly, that hollowness that I’ve felt for so long, has been erased, replaced with a strange, content feeling—as if I’m whole again.
And it’s all the ebikis’ doing. I can see it in their eyes, their expressions. Every utterance of my name is a prayer, an invocation to the Greater Divinity Myter spoke about earlier, on my behalf. And it’s healing me. Not just the few blemishes that remain on the outside, but all the damage on the inside as well, the damage that even Myter, using the full power of a Maiwurian god, could not undo.
Tears fall down my cheeks. All these weeks of pain, of sheer, unrelenting panic. Every day in struggle, in desperation. But now I’m here, and I’m bathed in light and wonder and everything that is good.
It’s as though these creatures’ vocalizations are striking straight to the core of me, purging me of all my pain, my worry. And all the while, Ixa’s mother stares at me, that black gaze never blinking.
Not even when I begin to sob, heaving desperate tears.
“Thank you…thank you,” I whisper to Queen Ayo.
I’ve been so frightened these past few hours. Frightened the sores would swiftly come back. Frightened that Mother would not be here, or, worse, that she would reject me and I would never find my divinity.
But now I’m here and the ebiki are here and I’m whole again. Truly whole, not just on the outside but on the inside as well.
