Chapter 3

The Black Cliff. Sixteen years earlier.

That spring day Johannes was lying on a hill catching few rays that were shining through gloomy clouds. He was nibbling on a grass blade, lazily looking at a flock of sheep: yellowish and light gray wool balls were plucking juicy clover that covered the whole hill. From time to time the animals bleated at each other as if exchanging words, and tried to push their fellows away from the most delicious areas of grass.

 Johann hated the Black Cliff and dreamed to leave it, break out of the mustiness of the eternal fog and head south where it was always warm as in summer, the harvest ripened faster, and the air smelled lavander and peaches. Capital people delivered groceries for sale in the villages the Black Cliff.

Spring on the north was late. And in summer it was hardly warmer. For most of the year there was a forever hazy weather, the air was filled with the aromas of dampness and decay, the night cold made you freeze up even while lying under warm sheepskins. In particularly severe frosts, fishermen found stiffened bodies of beggars in sea caves. The wretches tried to warm themselves by a miserable fire but died of cold in their sleep. A whisper went round that even sorceress’s moray eels wouldn’t crave for their bony corpses.

Reasonable residents stayed away from caves and grottoes, fearing not a cold death but meeting with the sorceress. Some imagined her as a fanged woman with a fishtale. Some – with numerous octopus’s tentacles. And rest considered her to be the fog that enveloped both the Black Cliff and the obscure castle on it all year round. Whitish smog seeped like snakes into the narrowest cracks, bringing nightmares and pulmonary sickness to homes.

On days when the fog turned into an impenetrable wall, and the windows were covered with frost, Johann sat with his father by the hearth, ate hot porridge with butter and drank warm milk. The miller looked out of the window, behind which the outlines of the black castle spires could be seen, and grumbled:

“Even if I were as rich as our butcher, I would never trade my house for this frightening thing. Icy stone. I bet inside it’s even colder than in a grave. The walls look like they're covered in soot. Windows don’t let a single sunray in. And at high tide, the basements and the lower part are flooded, turning the castle into a water dungeon. Its better to live in our simple and cozy house where there we always have a warm loaf of bread and a spicy jag of wine, and our sheep are warmer in the barn in winter than people in a rich castle. Although, what could be left of those riches? Everything has long decayed from wetness, devoured by salt or plastered with shellfish.”

Occasionally the father had to yoke a wagon and went to the southern border for bread-corn by himself. He returned late at night, in the cold, in bad weather. He brought sacks, and the mill began to creak, singing its lullaby to little Johannes. As long as Johann could remember himself, the mill had always worked. Day and night, the father ground grain to spend money on the education of his only son.

In the morning, the boy noticed white flour marks on the floor and walked along them, as if on a path, to the bedroom of his fast asleep father. He took his clothes outside and cleaned it. They have no one closer but each other. If father spent the whole day at the mill, Johannes did chores, butchered a hare he caught or a herring he bought at the market. They didn’t dare to approach the sea and take its gifts. Johann loved listening his father’s stories about the times when the element favoured their family. But after the old fisherman who after became the miller accidentally caught a black moray eel, the element turned away from him and cursed him. Then the miller didn’t know he caught the pet of the sea sorceress, fried and fed his pregnant wife with it. Johann was born prematurely and was very weak. Feeling guilty for the fate of the child and the disgrace of the sea, the miller's wife threw herself off the cliff, and the black water swallowed her. The widower didn’t dare to approach the water to find the body to bury his wife properly. So, he raised and took care of Johann by himself.

Johannes' poor health became better at the mill. He began to recover quickly and got sick as often as other children, or even less often. The sea air and physical labor toughened his body up. The boy grew up to be an attractive young man with feminine features, golden hair and deep-set gray eyes. The miller managed to give him a good education, so his son wasn't inferior to wealthy merchants' children.

The loud bleating made the young man twitch. Narrowing his eyes, he examined the flock again and, missing one sheep, got up from the grass and rushed to the animal's crying.

“Where did you get to?” Johannes was indignant, going down the hill to the protruding stone peaks. The grass became rarer, the ground parted, revealing black cracks, from which the echo of a bleating sheep could be heard.

“Sea sorceress damn you, how did you manage to fall there?” Clinging to the ledges, the young man ducked into the gap. Ducking so as not to hit his head, and treading carefully on the cracked ground, he began to descend until he reached the uneven stone steps. With each step, the smell of dampness intensified, supplemented by the smells of rotting seaweed and the sea. Johann was nauseated by the scents floating in the air, mixed with something familiar. He had seen it before in a butcher's shop. Hot blood flowing down the cutting table, hanging intestines, from which a butcher will make homemade sausage, liver, which will go for a pie. Not a single organ will be thrown away, and those that are not useful in cooking will be given to stray dogs, and a cow's tail will be a toy for children. And then they will play with it with calico kittens.

Johann swallowed a lump in his throat and pressed his palm to his trembling lips. He saw a mermaid sitting on a smooth stone. Beside her slimy tail was a clod of wool stained with blood. The unfortunate sheep was gutted on the spot. A scarlet stripe with entrails lying on the sand was running into the water, where the yellow-eyed heads of moray eels, crowned with thorns, poked out.

The mermaid gave Johann an interested look and grinned, showing blood-stained fangs. Her hands with silver scales up to the elbow were stained with blood. She clutched a sheep's heart in her claws, tearing off piece by piece and eating it like an apple.

“Well, hello, handsome.” A smooth fin stirred behind the mermaid's back. The ink-black eyes blinked, replaced by ordinary, human ones, and funny sparkles flashed in the pupils. The sheep's heart fell to the sand, rolling to Johannes' feet. “And what do you want for a meeting with a sea sorceress?”

***

Nocté

A thick fog enveloped the shore, not allowing anyone to see either the spires of the castle, or even the sky. Greenish-blue clouds spread along the black sand, hiding the footprints left by Nocté. In such weather, people hid at home, afraid to suffocate from the asphyxiating fumes, get lost and fall off the hill into the depths of the sea.

The water seemed to calm. No sound of waves. No cries of seagulls. The Black Cliff sank into sleep, disturbed only by the quiet footsteps of Nocté. The current brought warmth from the south. For a while, the sea ceased to resemble icy tentacles and now warmed the girl's bare feet. There was a faint whistle in the silence, and a light came on in the fog.

Agnes left a candle on the windowsill, taking care the lady found her way to the castle. The maid was pleased with Nocté's appetite: she had been eating normally for many days. The old woman even stopped grumbling about the bad weather, instead switching to Bastian and hurrying the cook with cooking.

Nocté smiled with pleasure – the sand seeping through her fingers allowed the pain in her legs to subside. Taking a step, the girl froze, peering at a strange silver-gray flower opening towards her and fluttering with numerous petals.

Tilting her head to the side, Nocté held her hand in front of it, and dozens of moths fluttered up in fright. Their wings were flapping, and they hit the girl's chest, poked into her face, tangled in her hair and disappeared into the fog.

Sprinkled with pollen, there was a dead newt laying on its back. The water barely concealed the sharp shoulders and hips, stirring the fin needles and protruding scales on the elbows. From chest to groin, a ruby void gaped: the whiteness of the ribs didn't hide the absence of the heart. As before, the insides were missing. Newt's once long, bronze hair had been cut short, and uneven strands stuck to his porcelain skin. On the neck there were scarlet stripes of gills, resembling long cuts. The torn lobe of the elongated ear was dusted with black sand. This sand also managed to cover one leg, as if the sea was trying to swallow its child.

Nocté bent over the unfortunate man, put her palm over his closed eyes, ran over his split lips, icy chest and slipped her fingers between his ribs. The revealed truth made her hand go numb, a shiver ran down her back.

“It’s gone! The pearl’s gone.”

Magic wandered through the veins of the sea people, while the exiles were forced to change not only externally, but also internally, gathering all their strength in a pearl grown behind the heart. Without it, a newt or a mermaid lost the ability not only to do magic, but also to breathe.

“It’s impossible to take it without killing a carrier, but who needed it?” Nocté tried to recall the first victim. “He was gutted the same way but I didn’t think about a pearl, didn’t check it.”

The girl was sure of one thing: even if this unfortunate man had faced his own kind, they would have killed him in a duel, and not dismembered him like a fish for soup, and deprived him of the last dignity which is hair.

“Sea monsters also don’t attack without a reason. If they are disturbed, they can tear you to pieces, swallow alive, but not thoroughly gutted.” A moth landed on Nocté's hand, and others flew after it, fluttering their wings over the dead.

She tried to brush them away and touched the needle on newt's elbow with her palm. Her skin instantly burst and started to bleed. Dipping the injured finger into the water, Nocté didn’t even wince.

Deceptively calm black waves began to appear through the bluish fog, carrying a flexible, long body in her direction like a snake. The drizzling rain blurred its outlines. A smooth, shimmering blue fin emerged from the water. From a distance, the inhabitants would have taken the creature for a fish, but upon contact with it, a person would instantly lose a limb.

Each monster had its own name. Nocté remembered them from childhood, drawing frightening images on the shells. Adamanda approved of her younger daughter's enthusiasm, considering the sea “guards”, as she called them, an important component of the underwater world and the main “weapon” against enemies. However, few shared the Queen's opinion. After the war with humans, the great-great-grandfather, King Potidey, built a wall from the bones of the largest Leviathans[1]. He forever separated the northern waters from the coral capital. With the help of the trident, he imprisoned dangerous pets in the bottomless abyss of Sombra, where they went into hibernation.

[1] Leviathan is a demonic sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the Book of Amos