Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

think keys might seem the more accurate naming of the five pieces, or so some of the fabled Salt stories have claimed them to be.”

Bryant rolled his eyes. “Keys to what?”

Marisa snorted. “Do the purpose of keys differ so much in your world than they do in mine, David Bryant?” She went on when he gave her no answer. “As best as I can tell, the five keys are but further clues of a greater riddle. A means to unlock answers to one of the greatest Salt mysteries of all.”

“That being how you seem to know all these things?” Bryant asked.

Marisa ignored him, her eyes gleamed as she glanced away from Bryant, then looked on to Chidi and Allambee instead. “Why did the Ancients retreat from this world? Why leave if knowing the Other and his minions lingered and might torment those of us left behind? Did the Ancients choose to abandon us willingly . . . or was their forsaking us part of a darker art from the monsters we have witnessed below? A curse placed upon Them by the Other, perhaps, before he too vanished into that other realm to collect his further strength . . . and all with the thought to rise at a later time with none of the Ancients’ collective might surviving to thwart the next attempt.”

Chidi shivered. “You’re saying you think the monsters we saw below cursed the Ancients? Banished them into their primal forms, somehow?”

“I know not for certain,” said Marisa. “But the Salt stories of old tell of the Wise Ones retreating from this world not long after the Sancul demise. Some say the Ancients left in favor of adopting their Salt forms in full. Others . . . other stories speak to a darker answer.” Marisa shook her head. “I have long sought and prayed for such answers to my questions, yet I have only ever been rewarded with further dreams and whispered, phantom words relaying such tales of the forgotten five pieces of two.”

Bryant scoffed. “Maybe you oughta thought to ask just who it is giving you all these dreams then, Bourgeois. If they can show you such things and lead you onward, why not just give you the whole story in full?”

“The deepest of answers to life are not easily given or explained, David Bryant,” said Marisa. “For some mysteries, there are no answers. Nothing of black or white, right or wrong. Only further questions amid a sea of endless gray. Aye, a feeling that urges us onward in pursuit of explanation nonetheless. An inward quest, you might say,” Marisa approached Chidi slowly, reaching out and taking her by the hand, lifting it that she might inspect the Merrow ring upon her finger. “For oft times it is along the journey, my friends, that one discovers the answers to their questions lay with the unseen before them all along.”

Chidi looked on the gift that the old Merrow, Wilda, had given her back at the Indianapolis Zoo. The band was crafted of silver, the lone adornment a plain, stone pebble. As she had done the night Wilda offered it to her, Chidi thought the ring as simple and unassuming as any other. Her spirit told her elsewise. “What is it?” she asked Marisa.

“I cannot say for certain,” said Marisa, her tone belying the ease with which she spoke the words. “But I believe you wear one of the five keys upon your finger now, Chidi.”

Bryant scoffed. “It’s just a ring,” he said. “And an ugly one at that.”

It’s not. Chidi thought, her skin warming at his argument even as her mind raced back to the night the elderly Merrow had offered it to her. And Wilda knew it too . . .

Marisa was uncaring of Bryant’s argument also, her gaze fixed on Chidi and the ring. “How did you come across this piece, Chidi?” she asked, her voice like one already knowing the answer, then confirming it before Chidi could reply. “An old and royal gift, I should think. One given you somewhat recently . . . offered to you by the best and purest of souls, yes? An elderly Merrow?”

“Aye,” said Chidi, freeing her hand from Marisa’s grasp and stepping back. “But how would you know that?”

Marisa chuckled through another booming echo of thunder outside the cabin. “You were not wearing it when we were last together in Crayfish Cavern,” she said in answer of Chidi’s question. “Did you never question why it was I did not free you to accompany Declan Dolan and I? Why I did not offer you the choice of which of us to journey alongside when he and I split after leaving you behind?”

“I did wonder,” Chidi said, pulling her hand from Marisa’s grip, her pulse racing at the memory of abandonment. “Just like I remember begging you to take me with you.”

“And yet we should not have the Merrow ring with us now if I had,” said Marisa. “For just as Declan Dolan and I were meant to part ways in seeking out the other Ancient pieces, you were meant to go ashore and retrieve this ring. You to receive this gift that it might aid us all in turning back the dark tides to come, Chidi.”

Bryant sighed as he traipsed over to the nearest chair and collapsed upon it. “Well, I’ll tell you this, Bourgeois. If I heard this sorta nonsense outta just about anybody else, I’d pick them up and send ‘em on down to the funny farm. This all sounds like a bunch of hooey to me.”

Marisa smiled. “And yet you do not doubt me?”

“I don’t reckon I know much of anything anymore,” said Bryant. “But I know the name Declan Dolan, sure. Him and my partner, Edmund, ran together a long time ago during the Selkie Strife. Way I remember it, Edmund only ever had good things to say about Declan Dolan.” Bryant crossed his arms. “You said the two of you took off together and ran somewhere?