The Shards of Stillwater

When the last moons sank beneath the violet and orange horizon, Eira knew the tide would not return. Stillwater Bay had always obeyed the moons, three silver orbs that rose and fell like clockwork. They drew the waters with them. But that morning the sea was motionless and flat and looked like glass stretching into infinity.

The fishermen gathered along the docks and mumbled prayers to the Tide-Mother. Their nets sagged and were dry in their hands. Even the sea gulls had flown away.

Eira touched the hilt of her mother’s dagger, a silver thing etched with runs that faintly glowed whenever she came close to the water. It hummed now, a soft and steady hum as if it was sensing something stirring beneath the surface.

“It’s best not to go out there.” The harbormaster said. His face was pale and weathered slightly covered by a short grey beard. “The bay is cursed today. No wind and no waves. It is not natural.”

Eira did not say a word. She only looked one more time at the horizon, the endless mirrored plain before she untied her skiff and pushed it into the dead sea.

The oars cut through the water with an unnatural quietness. The surface did not ripple. It parted around her and rejoined behind as seamless as silk. The air smelled like rain which never came. Eira rowed toward the center of the bay where her mother’s ship had vanished more than ten years ago. The Virela, a black and silver sloop with white sails, which was lost to what the people would call the Stillwater curse. Some people said that a creature from deep below the water had swallowed it whole. Others whispered that her mother betrayed the Tide-Mother and she had been taken for punishment.

When the dagger’s hum started trembling in her bones, Eira stopped. The sea beneath her skiff was so clear she could see the bottom, or what she thought was the bottom shifting like white smoke. Then something glimmered below.

A shard.

Long and thin like a piece of broken glass or ice pulsing with pale blue light.

Without thinking, Eira plunged her hand into the cold water. The water felt like the space between waking up from a dream and still dreaming, thick and soundless. Her fingers brushed the shard. A voice boomed in her mind.

“Return what was taken.”

Eira gasped and pulled her hand back. The shard rose on its own up to the surface. Water clung to it forming droplets which refused to fall. The dagger at her side flared and turned bright silver. The two lights from the dagger and the shard pulsed in one rhythm.

“Retun what was taken.” The voice demanded again. This time it was sharper like the edge of a sword in the wind. Her mother’s dagger vibrated so violently she had to drop it. It clattered onto the skiff’s wooden boards, glowing like a piece of captured light.

Eira’s heart was pounding as she reached for the dagger. But the shard titled towards her as though it were watching her. “What was taken?” She asked.

The voice did not answer, Instead the sea shimmered and faces appeared below. Human faces. Hundreds of them rippled in and out of view. Their eyes were closed and their lips were moving as though they were singing a silent song. Her mother’s face was among them.

Eira froze.

“Mom?”

The face’s eyes opened, hollow and sliver. They reflected Eira’s image. “Return what was taken.”

That night the villagers saw light from the bay, silver and blue like twin stars trapped beneath the surface. Some said it was Eira calling to the moons and others said the curse had finally claimed her.

When Deren led the search party at dawn they found the skiff drifting near the center of the bay. Eira was gone. Only the dagger remained floating above the still surface humming softly.

Eira woke up on a shore she did not recognize. The sky was black but not the nighttime kind of black. The black the color of a deep black stone. The air was full of murmuring voices. She could not quite hear them or understand them. Behind her the sea stretched silent and endless like before. But this time it was alive. She could feel the heartbeat of the sea, steady and patient like a giant creature breathing beneath her feet.

The shard was beside her and it was half-buried in the sand. But the sand was not sand at all. It was more like a fine ash which glittered faintly in the dim light. She picked up the shard. It no longer glowed. Its surface was dull, opaque and lifeless. She turned her head to the left and looked over her shoulder and there was her mother’s face. Her mother’s hair was flowing behind her like she was underwater but there was no wind. Her eyes had turned silver as she smiled. Her smile was gentle and almost looked human.

“Eira.” She said. Her voice echoed and was layered with other voices like a chorus was speaking through her.

“Where are we?” Eira asked.

“The in-between.” Her mother said. “The Stillwater. The place where what’s taken waits to be returned.”

Eira clutched the shard. “Then how do we return it?”

Her mother looked her straight in the eye. “You already have.”

The shard flared briefly. Then Eira felt something pulling at her chest, as if a thread was digging from deep inside of her. For a minute she struggled to breathe. “What did I return?” She gasped.

Her mother smiled again. “Yourself.”

Then she disappeared. Her form scattering into motes of silver light that drifted upward and vanished.

The sea trembled and the air thickened. The shard got hotter in Eira’s hand and started to pulse in time with her own heartbeat.

The villagers woke up to sound for the first time in months. They heard the rush of the waves and the crash of the surf. The Stillwater was no longer still. The tide had returned fierce and wild. But it also came with whispers.

The fishermen swore they saw figures walking beneath the waves. They saw pale shapes which moved through their half-forgotten dreams which seemed to have learned to swim. And in the center of the bay, the Vireliai had returned gleaming in the morning light. Its sails were whole and its decks were clean. But nobody was aboard.

When Daren climbed aboard a few days later he found carvings on the rail which were not there before. “Return what was taken.”

He swore he heard footsteps behind him but when he turned around the deck was empty. Only a faint hum filled the air. He left that day and never returned.

Far beneath, in the calm heart of the sea, Eira drifted among the lights. The faces around her no longer looked like strangers. They were silent, neither living or dead.

She could still feel the shards pulse in her chest as steady as a second heartbeat. Sometimes she remembered the surface. The sounds of the birds, the smell of the sea and the salt in the air. But those moments faded quickly, dissolving into the deep sea.

And sometimes when the moons were full and the light reached far enough she thought she saw her reflection on the water, standing where she once stood, looking down at herself.

Was it real? She no longer could tell.

When the tide turned the villagers noticed the bay had gone still once more. But this time nobody dared to call it a curse. They said it was just sleeping. They said the sea was finally at peace. Yet sometimes when the air was quiet and the moons hung low, you could hear it, a faint humming coming from the edge of the water like a song they half remembered. Nobody knew what it meant. Some say it’s the Tide-Mother’s voice and others say it is Eira’s voice.

And some say that if you listen closely it is not just one voice at all but it is two echoing from opposite sides of the world.