Free In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield Page B

straight-edged stone after straight-edged grey stone.
    “Use your staffs,” Allard said.
    Henry looked down. The distance would have been a few seconds’ worth of swimming, but he had learned to be wary of heights.
    Allard reached out and took Henry’s hand, placing one of the sticks on the first step down. The movement tugged Henry out of balance; his legs could flex and adjust, but they were still ill-adapted to carrying him upright. Henry snatched his hand away, dropping the stick and leaving it to rattle down the stairs. He fixed Allard with an aggressive glare, then dropped the other stick, leaving it to follow its partner down and sat, slithering one leg after another over the sharp stone ledges. His skin scraped and bruised as he descended, but he did not fall.
    The chambers he passed through to get to the door were large, but to Henry they still seemed confining: walls on all sides, ceilings, straight-sided furniture, and no better than the chamber he was usedto. It was only when Allard opened the door and dazzling light flooded his eyes that the world changed.
    Light was different under the sea: grey shafts wavering at the surface, or a blue haze above that shaded down to nothing beneath. In the few moments of surfacing to breathe, there was nothing more than a quick flash, half-blinding him while he filled his lungs. But here the light had
heat
, the sun shone from above, and where it fell on his pallid skin, it warmed. And the fields of green stretched on and on, further than he could have seen under water, into what Allard described as “forests,” a stiff, huge gathering of plants that grew straight up, hardly moving—but then a gust of wind passed, stroking cool air over his skin, and the forest swayed, a great rustling roar unlike anything he had ever heard filling the air. The wind continued, and Henry stood, marvelling at this new thing: a current that parted around you, caressed your flesh and gave way to your solidity, not pulling you along, but whispering by. The air was weak: it carried none of his weight, gave him no help in bearing himself up or transporting himself through it, but neither could it drag him with it. It gave way before him.

    That first day, Allard stood by while Henry played in the grass. He made no attempt to stop the boy as he pulled off his clothes and rolled naked on the cool, damp ground, pressing his nose to the earth and inhaling the scent, unfamiliar but pleasant, free from the rank red undertone of so many things he encountered inside, unwashed clothes and cooked meat, the flesh of landsmen and the air of closed rooms. Henry said nothing, but tumbled on the earth, happily stretching out his limbs, while Allard stood over him and scanned the horizon with anxious, watchful eyes.

S IX
    T HE YEAR THAT followed was filled with weapons and movement. Markeley, who had previously been little more than a man who occasionally appeared to draw his wife into a side room, became a constant presence, teaching, pointing, hefting weapons into Henry’s hands and goading, goading, goading him on, forcing his tired muscles to greater efforts, his webbed fingers to grasp the heavy hilts of swords almost as long as he was.
    Allard watched the practice daily, but not continually. As Henry struggled to subdue a reeking, plunging horse unused to having a deepsman on its back, there was something in Allard’s steady stance and folded arms that reminded him of his mother, waiting with her back to him all those years ago.
    Once he had the feel of it, Henry wielded a sword without trouble. The heaviness of his body in the air was never again such a burden once he realised how the wind would part for him, and the speed at which he fell was compensated for by the speed with which a blade sliced through the air as he swung it. Markeley was bigger than him and knew tricks with the blade, but he was also slow. Though barely up to Markeley’s waist, Henry could already wrestle a weapon from an adult