FLOOD

City of the Sea God

It took us another twenty minutes to get anywhere near the silvery light at the bottom. Cassa told me that Eli was being towed, the same as I was, towards the bottom, but his descent would be more gradual than mine, since humans were more susceptible to underwater pressure than Jotun. They had given him some sort of breathing device, apparently.

            So I let the mermaid tow me down and down, and tried not to think about how much time we were wasting. I was also trying to close my thoughts off to Cassa, who I could feel prodding at my defenses, like a faint tickle at the back of my mind.

            Stop that.

            She withdrew, and to my surprise I could feel her emotion, sullen and wounded. But soon I was too distracted by what lay below us to be caught up in the idea that I could sense what she was feeling, because below us was…a kingdom, exactly as Cassa had said.

            The lights I had seen from miles away were all from lanterns that housed what looked like tiny glowing pearls, thousands of them. As we drew nearer, the light grew brighter, and I could make out paths winding through the dark sand at the bottom. Between the paths were houses, each one made up of old wood covered in barnacles. The houses were a bizarre jumble of shapes, some of them long and rectangular, some of them short and square with oval shaped windows. There were a few that had long wooden poles stuck near the front entrances, like rickety pillars. A few had flags attached to them.

            It dawned on me that this was a village of sunken ships, a shipwreck town.

            “The king.” Cassa gestured to the path, which wound up a tall mountain of sand. The house on the top of the mountain was massive. A castle of creaking ship parts. Three masts jutted from the top, and tattered flags in a multitude of colors waved in the dark currents.

            For the first time I paused to consider what this King Aegir might be like. What did he want, anyways?

            “He wants to meet you, daughter of the sea.”

            I really had to get better at protecting my thoughts. Why? Why does he want to meet me? I’m not…I mean, I’m a Jotun. Not a mermaid.

            “Our king is not merman.” Cassa continued to tow me towards the castle as she spoke, and it was getting bigger and bigger, looming over us. A lump started to form in my throat. “He is of the sea, but he is not one of its creatures. He is what your people would call a god.”

            A god. For all that is good and holy. A god wants to see me.

            I felt faint. The Jotun were taught about gods growing up. We learned all the tales of them, sang about them, had our feasts and festivals around the days that were named for them. But it was very few Jotun that had ever actually met one. Judging from the stories I’d learned as I was growing up, this could either go well for me, or very very badly.

            Now that I knew he was a god, the name was staring to ring bells. Aegir, god of the sea. There was something I’d learned about him when I was little, wasn’t there? He liked parties or something…

            “He is fond of his festivals and drink.” Again, Cassa sounded amused in my head, and I tried to slam down a pair of iron gates to block her access to my thoughts. I could practically feel her pouting.

            “You’re no fun, Jotun.”

            I was about to return the slight, but we’d finally arrived, our feet…or my feet, that was, touching down on the bottom of the ocean. It was a strange feeling. I was still weightless, and if Cassa hadn’t been anchoring me, at the same time she was pulling me forward, I probably wouldn’t have made very good progress.