On the Starlit Sea by Idrils Scribe

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Chapter 15: Running Out of Air

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He hits the water with a sickening slap, and he tries to kick himself up but his mail drags him down like a stone. Saltwater rushes into his mouth and nose as he sinks flailing into the blue depth. 

The last thing Elrohir sees of the world above is the leaping red flicker of the Nemir in flames.

All he knows is terror and the burn of his lungs and the painpainpain of salt in the knife-wound on his hand, trailing a red ribbon of blood through the water. 

This is how I die. 

The thought strikes him like a hammer-blow. Two score years are all he gets, short and violent; and now they are up. He will never see Elladan again.

He has neither time nor air left to weep, and instead he struggles to summon as his last living thought some hazy memory of his brother’s face, but the water’s pressure builds in his skull until he fears his eyes will burst like bitten grapes, and Elladan’s image flits from his grasp.  

He must breathe, but he cannot, and he battles his own body to keep from inhaling. Bright, blood-red spots dance before his eyes. 

It is a losing battle, and at last after a small eternity of torment he must give in and gasps. Water fills his chest. He can feel it flowing through his windpipe, cold as death itself. A great rush in his ears and all goes dark. 

 

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When he opens his eyes, he is deep underwater. 

The world is blue and twilit. Silver shoals of fishes whirl about him amidst waving strands of feathered kelp, thick as Elvish hair. They disappear down into the blackness below, where dark shapes move almost beyond sight. He has no desire to learn what nameless things lurk there, hunting in the lightless depths. In the distance, constellations of luminous jellyfish float like alien moons.

He had imagined that the ocean would be silent, a vast emptiness, but all around him unseen creatures speak in trills, clicks, whistles. From somewhere beyond his sight comes a strange moaning song, so low that he feels it vibrate in his chest, and in those eerie tones lies a meaning he might understand like speech, if only he knew its warp and weft. 

Something keeps him from sinking further, and he hovers at the edge of the light. The water here is the deep indigo of a Haradrim cloak. 

For a moment he wonders, and then comes the realisation. 

He can breathe.

“Greetings, son of Elrond.” The voice is deep as the abyss. The sound echoes in the water, and inside his head, resonating through his very bones. 

He flails his arms and legs within the steel confines of his hauberk, struggling to turn his face towards the sound. He is no longer sure which way is up or down. 

When he rights himself a beast the size of a looming hill hovers before him. A kraken with great golden eyes. 

Eight arms thick as tree trunks wave in the water with eerie elegance. The very skin glows sea-blue against the dark water, bearing swirls of living light like alien calligraphy that pulses with the rhythm of the waves.

He should be terrified, but the certainty of death has carried him to a strange, remote calm beyond all fear. Instead of fleeing he meets the creature’s gaze, and is lost.

The pupils are horizontal slits. Within their depths lies an endless sky of wheeling stars. The light in those eyes is beyond sentience. This is no animal, no monster from the deep.  

“What are you?” Elrohir asks, because he sees and he knows but he cannot believe , and watches in wonder as his words form a trail of bubbles that float up and away from his mouth. 

“Your kind call me Ossë.” The great octopus waves its tentacles, and high above Elrohir’s head the Sea is stirred to foaming rage. “My true name cannot be spoken in your tongue.”

Spoken words, and yet they are Song. Within them lies the music of the waves, the crashing surf, the wind that sings upon the open waters, but also the crack of thunder and the howl of the ocean gales. 

The Stirrer.

“My Lord.” Elrohir folds himself in half as he floats, hoping it will look like a bow, and draws another impossible breath. Salt fills his mouth and the back of his throat, yet he is not drowning. 

“How-” he stammers, swallows a mouthful of brine only to breathe in more, and still he does not drown. “Why can I breathe?”

“I made it so.” A hint of pride beneath the words - Ossë is not wholly inhuman.

“Why are you helping me?” Elrohir blurts out, all politeness forgotten out of sheer wonder. 

“Because Lord Ulmo ordered it.” That strange blue light flickers once more, stripes and waves of radiance running up and down Ossë’s suckered arms. “He sent out all his folk to seek you. My brethren searched all the waters of the world and every vein and cave below. You were hard to find. So deep in darkness, where we rarely tread. But in the end all waters run to the Sea. Even those that well up in the desert.”

“It was you!” The revelation strikes Elrohir. “ You told Glorfindel where to find me!” 

Glorfindel has told Elrohir the tale of the captive Arnorian who somehow, against all odds, escaped both Umbar and the desert war to return home, carrying the tale of an Elven-fair warrior among the Haradrim all the way to Imladris. Elrohir had thought the man lucky. He was far more than that: a God’s hand guided his steps. 

“Not I,” says Ossë. “That was my Lord Ulmo. Your father Elrond is his friend and servant. He called upon the Lord of the Waters for your return, and my lord heard his plea.” 

Elrohir tries to imagine it. An Elf-lord calling upon the God of the Sea. Mere months ago he would have laughed at the very notion. Now stories have sprung to life and legends walk the waking world. If Ossë in all his terrifying might is but a vassal, Elrohir is glad to have escaped Ulmo’s personal attention. 

Elrond must have wanted him badly indeed, to ask such a perilous creature for help. Elrohir should feel awed, or perhaps grateful. Instead he finds himself quite detached from it all, as if the entire matter concerns someone else. 

In a way it does - Elrond asked Ulmo to return the Elf-child he lost. In its place he will get a grown man, a perfect stranger. 

A changeling.  

Elrohir would have laughed at the bitter irony, but he dares not imagine what will happen when the Elf-lord realises that his Sea-god has cheated him. 

Another curl of the mighty arm. Waves of light flash up and down its length, and Elrohir is jolted from his dark musings. Like the storms he commands, Ossë is wild and quick to anger. Offending him would be the last thing Elrohir ever does.

“I thank you, my lord,” he says, and makes another strange half-bow. 

Ossë’s movements calm a little. The innermost of his eight arms drift apart, revealing a pale shape that floats cradled between them. At first Elrohir thinks it some strange creature of the deep, but then he notes the shape of arms and legs.

Calear’s battered face is lit by that deep blue sea-light. He hangs limp in the great octopus’ grip, but fresh blood curls from his wounds and spirals up through the water like smoke. Like Elrohir, the Elf is alive and breathing water.  

“Lord, I beg you, spare him!” Elrohir pleads in the foolish hope that the kraken might release its prey. Calear remains still, floating insensate in the tentacle’s embrace. 

“Fear not,” replies Ossë, and something like a laugh ripples against the edges of Elrohir’s mind. “He is one of my Falathrim, and dear to me. He has faithfully done my bidding. To eat him would be poor gratitude.”

A supple undulation of arms brings Ossë closer to Elrohir. One of the limbs curls around him. Its suckers are white discs the size of plates. To resist is pointless, and so he lets the arm wind around his waist like a great cable, thick as one of the Nemir’s masts. He can feel the bunch of muscle beneath the flickering skin. Ossë could crush him like a mussel-shell, but the Stirrer’s touch is quite gentle. He is folded into the octopus’ mantle beside Calear. 

Once the Elf is in his reach Elrohir grabs an elbow and pulls him into his arms to keep hold of him as best he can without placing his hand over one of the myriad welts and burns. At the touch Calear’s eyes open to swollen slits. He does not speak, but the sight of Elrohir brightens the battered face into something like a smile.

“I have done Ulmo’s bidding,” rumbles Ossë at their backs, “and I grow bored of duty. The servants of Sauron dare to foul my waters. Now for vengeance!”

It strikes Elrohir that he has one, single chance, and this is it. “Lord, please,” he pleads, “do not sink the Shakalzôr !”

This astonishes Ossë. “Do you presume to command me? ”

“I dare not command. I only ask humbly.” Elrohir struggles for words, with so many lives hanging on them. “The rowers are but thralls, captured by the Corsairs. They did not come here of their own will, and they would drown for their masters’ wickedness. Will you not spare them?”

“The sea spares no one!”

The great tentacles thrash, and Elrohir can see the light of the burning ship above waver and shift as the waves roil and seethe. Down here, all remains eerily quiet.

“Lord, I beg you!” Elrohir could weep, knowing that his plea is pointless. The mere fact that he is alive to utter it is a priceless boon. Ossë will not grant another. 

“Storms do not hearken to a sailor’s begging! I have done much in guarding you, son of Elrond. Now I shall have my sport!”

“What would you have in return for their lives, Lord?” Elrohir demands, though he has nothing but the clothes on his back.

“I do not take bribes!” Ossë laughs. “The richest kings of Men have plied me with their treasure, and still I wrecked them. I am the storm!” 

“Hundreds will die!” Elrohir protests. Knowing Ulmo will not permit his servant to kill him, he risks some boldness. “Surely you are no murderer?”

“It is not murder,” Ossë replies, wholly undisturbed, “merely the nature of the Sea. Any Child of Eru who sets out on a ship risks a watery grave.”

“Those men are Eru’s Children indeed. Would you deny them the life He gave them? To live chained in a slave-hold and be drowned at the oar is a waste. Will you snuff them out, and call yourself a servant of the Light?”

His words strike home. “Do you doubt my allegiance!?” Ossë rages, the light on his skin flickering in mad swirls. “Do you think I would deal behind my lord’s back? In his own realm even!?” 

With a sickening jerk an arm winds around Elrohir’s middle once more to yank him out of the octopus’ mantle. It is all he can do to keep hold of Calear as Ossë drags them through the water with a great rush to hold them up before his eyes. 

Calear moans when the lash-marks on his back rub against Elrohir’s mail, but Elrohir clenches both arms tight around the Elf’s ribcage, lest he drop the poor fellow into the fathomless black of the abyss beneath. Elrohir’s wounded hand burns like fire, but the pain is a mere afterthought to the terror of Ossë’s displeasure. 

The light of Ossë's eyes is terrible, and for a moment Elrohir is convinced that the mighty arm that holds him will tighten and snap him in half like a twig.

“Mercy, oh magnificent Lord!” Elrohir bows his head low, hastening to soothe Ossë’s anger with fawning learned in Umbar’s court. “Spare us poor wretches. Your wisdom is beyond my ken, and Calear here had no part in my folly.” 

Something stirs the great arms. The slitted pupil rests on him, and its gaze is heavy to bear.   

“Not folly, child.” Ossë gentles, as if the sight of Elrohir’s fear has struck him with some strange insight. “Fear not. I turned from that path long ago. Harsh I may be, but you shall see that not all of my kindred are like Sauron.” 

Ossë’s arm unwinds from Elrohir’s waist, and Calear and he float free, suspended between the shimmer of the waves overhead and the dark depths below.  

Those great golden eyes contemplate them for a moment, and then the Stirrer laughs, the sound of waves leaping at the shore. Somewhere in the far blue distance, his whales sing an answer. 

“The slaves you plead for are free men already,” Ossë says, folding his arms beneath his mighty body. The light of his skin pulses in calm, lapping waves. “I shall leave the Shakalzôr afloat. Let Galdor take her for a prize! When you see him, tell him who granted it. He knows how to thank me.”

Elrohir barely has a moment to tighten his hold on Calear before, somehow, they both shoot upwards like corks. A wild rush of bubbles cuts off sight and sound, leaving him blind to all but the white fury of surging water, the strange pressure in his head, the burn of his lungs, hungry for air once more. 

The surface cannot be far, sunlight on the waves and sweet, sweet air, but the distance is too great and his body too frail. With his last, desperate strength he clutches Calear against him as darkness closes in.