stories have a way of changing faces

To Hear Destiny Calling

the-knights-who-say-book:

the-knights-who-say-book:

the-knights-who-say-book:

the-knights-who-say-book:

the-knights-who-say-book:

(In which I finally begin writing that story idea about the girl with hearing loss, a magical quest, and an unfortunate lack of hearing aids)

It was a perfectly normal night. She was slumped into her bed, soaking in a new book, taking a sleepy sort of happiness from having taken her hearing aids out after a long day — like pouring all the synthetic, grating sound out of her head, shaking it out of her ears like water.

It was a perfectly normal night, except that a glowing purple portal had opened up in the corner of her bedroom five minutes ago, and she’d been huffily ignoring it ever since.

It’s just my imagination, she’d told herself, aiming the thought pointedly at the softly humming portal, in case that would help. No weird magical shit going on here.

She focused on her book. Through the softness that was all sound without her hearing aids in, she heard the portal cough, politely but purposefully, waiting to be acknowledged. She raised her book higher so it would block her sight.

This went on for a another few minutes, then the portal let out an indignant huff and a flash of bright violet light that grabbed her around the waist like a cosmic octopus arm and yanked her in, ignoring her protesting yells of “What the fuck!”

The portal did not care for rude language, or for slightly magical teenagers who ignored the very polite callings of their destiny. Unfortunately, it also did not have a good enough grasp on humans to know that some of them, if they were to complete quests with their highest possible potential, really ought to be wearing their hearing aids before they are sucked into magical alternate realities.

Sometimes magical quests just go to hell before they’ve even begun.

(To be continued tomorrow!)

“Olivia Cohen?”

Livvie cracked one eye open in response to her name, but refused to give the voice the respect of both eyes. It was too bright to see anything, anyway. And the light, combined with the warbling background noise that would have been deafening had she been able to hear it properly, was overwhelming.

“Hmm.” Something that felt suspiciously like a shoe prodded her ribs. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d cooperated earlier, you know.”

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Livvie stepped through the wide open doors and onto a platform in midair. Endless blue sky stretched out before her, with mountains of white clouds in the distance and a deep green landscape blurred by mist below. Wind tugged at her loose hair. She tried in vain to gather the messy waves of brown hair back from her face as she struggled to contain her awe — I’m not happy to be here, she reminded herself. There was a reason she hadn’t stepped over that dream cliff or opened that impossible door, and a nice view wouldn’t change anything. This isn’t really cool or anything.

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Lean into it, Livvie fumed to herself as she lugged the basket of food on board the Ark. 

It’s not like I asked to be brought here…

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“Sorry about that,” Noah said, sounding really apologetic as he rubbed his neck.

Livvie considered her situation, with her hands tied with rope behind her back and two pirates holding onto her arms, before she answered, “Fuck off.”

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Livvie helped the crew tie themselves to the masts, double knotting and tripping knotting and quadruple knotting until her fingers hurt. “Is this really necessary?” She’d asked several times, but everyone else was either taking it very seriously or talking excitedly about getting to hear the Siren Song.

“Don’t worry, Liv,” Red said, far too casually. “I’m pretty sure this will go down without a problem. Just focus on steering and not on jumping off the boat, even if you start to really want to.”

Livvie only sighed and gave Conque one last pet on the head. She’d caught him loafing in a box and trapped him there by tying on the box’s top, with a hole for his head, just in case cats did hear Sirens singing about research grants and Conque decided to try and jump ship. The pirates had found this effort hilarious, but Livvie wasn’t taking chances.

Conque proceeded to make indignant cat noises during the first part of Livvie’s solo sail, which actually helped a bit, as she ignored her nerves while she argued with him.

“No, mice aren’t kosher. I specifically remember that they’re not.”

“Mreow!”

“Well no, I wasn’t paying much attention. Most people that don’t eat mice don’t care that much. Doesn’t change their status.”

“Mrrrrrrp.”

“Yes, we all know you’re a very religious cat. No one thinks less of you for not keeping kosher.”

Some miffed purring.

“Hmm, interesting point, but I’m not sure any rabbis have ever felt the need to debate th—” She paused, partly because she began to think there was a chance the rabbis had in fact debated Conque’s point, and partly because she’d heard the Siren Song for the first time. She knew the pirates had begun to hear it a while ago, from the way they all stopped chatting among themselves, but it hadn’t pierced her own bad hearing until then.

It wasn’t exactly… a song. That is, there might have been singing involved, but it was more than that. She’d expected something, well, seductive, perhaps? She wasn’t sure what “seductive” would sound like, but this wasn’t it. It just sounded friendly. Someone was laughing. There might have been some humming.

The only thing that kept it from sounding like a perfectly normal conversation that she happened to be hearing from some distance was the slight off-key-ness of it, as though these sounds had more in common with the ringing she got in her ears when her surroundings were quiet than with normal talking sounds. It was coming from her head, that was it— it wasn’t real.

That realization shifted her perspective enough to separate what she was hearing. There was the lower, softer undertone that she had mistaken for humming, which did sound like singing, though a sort of meandering, gurgling singing. And there were the other giggly bits that sounded a little too familiar to be happening in the middle of the ocean, magic or no magic, that made Livvie wonder again how all this impossible stuff really worked.

“Livvie, are you paying attention?” Red called, her voice strained.

Livvie caught her wandering mind and corrected her course, her hands shaking slightly. She hadn’t realize that she was veering towards the island of spiky rocks off the port side of the ship, the one she had decided not to look at ever because she was terrified she might see the Sirens if she did, and hearing them was bad enough. She had to do better than this. Red had warned her curiosity could be dangerous… maybe the Sirens were playing with that. Could they play with her mind like that? What was the limit?

The limit doesn’t matter! She scolded herself, and tried to ignore the Song.

“Why yes, Conque, they are extremely rude, thank you for noticing,” she said, hoping for a distraction from the distraction, but the cat was apparently done debating. He had squished down into his box as far as possible, looking distinctly upset with this development.

The song was only getting louder. They ship was almost lined up with the island— still rather far away, as they had skirted the cove as far as Red had deemed possible without adding days to their trip, but as close as they were going to get— and now Livvie had to ignore the upset mumbling of some of the pirates as well. A few were straining against the rope.

The song pulsing in her ears sounded sympathetic, urging her to slow down the ship’s progress, stop and commiserate about how annoying all these pirate people could be.

“You’re annoying,” Livvie mumbled under her breath. The song did not take offense. It would be so much easier if it just actually sounded creepy and invasive, and not… she refused to put words to how warm and welcoming the barely distinct chatter really sounded, or start wondering if they had somehow searched her brain for familiar tones that would call on her homesickness.

But it was getting harder to focus on keeping the wheel straight, on not turning to look at the island, maybe just adjusting their course to get a little closer, she only wanted to hear exactly what it was they were saying, it was always like this, the conversation just out of her hearing, they sounded like they wanted to include her so why not just this once actually squish closer to hear what they were saying on that side of the lunch table, that is, the island, maybe she could—

“FUCK OFF!” Livvie screamed as loudly as she could, gripping the wheel so hard it hurt. “Just FUCK OFF!”

The Song fucked off.

“Excuse me?” An off-key voice demanded after a moment, the first sentence she’d heard distinctly enough not to feel the urge to sail closer to be able to hear better.

Livvie shut her mouth. Hearing actual words from them might have been scarier than the mind-messing gurgliness of the song.

There was a general pause. The pirates quieted down as well, looking around in confusion for where the beautiful singing had gone.

“I think we were just told to shut up,” another disembodied off-key voice said, in a tone that suggested imminent outrage and the possibility that it had never been told such a thing before.

“But we were singing so beautifully,” countered a third voice.

“No goddamn respect!” The first voice groused. “Fuck singing. I say we scream!”

And with that, scream they did. It was positively awful, like a car crashing into a field of metal garbage cans, each of which contained an automated screaming robot that turned on upon being crashed into.

Livvie couldn’t stop grinning.

Amid the groaning of the pirates, whose ears were suddenly assaulted with the loudest and most irritating noise on the Perilous Sea, Livvie steered them for the rest of the day out of range of the Sirens’ Cove, acutely feeling the upside of not hearing anything at full volume.

“I have to admit,” Red said, as she plopped her captain’s hat on Livvie’s head, “That’s one strategy I’ve never tried.”

Livvie tilted the hat’s slouching brim up so she could see Red standing in front of her, framed by the ships that were docked up and down the Port of Jewels harbor. Solid land felt strange and not actually entirely solid beneath her feet. In an illogical way, she already missed the cradling rock of the Cat’s Whiskers. “You’ve got blue hair,” she said, bewildered.

Red ran in one hand through her now uncovered hair absentmindedly. “Yeah, what of it?”

“Well, why isn’t your name Jackie Blue?“

“Yeah, right!” Red clapped her on the shoulder as though she’d made a good joke. “Whoever heard of a pirate named Jackie Blue? Although, I suppose there aren’t many pirates name Livvie Cohen either. Names are names, can’t argue with them.”

Livvie looked up at her, trying to put into words her sudden wish that she wasn’t leaving Red and her crew here. “I… I’m not a pirate.”

“Of course you are, Liv. Sailed us right through the most dangerous waters of the perilous sea, told three immortal monsters to fuck off, ready and willing to stab whoever necessary with that toothpick sized dagger of yours.” Red smiled proudly. “A pirate through and through.”

“Watch it,” Livvie said snootily. “I meant, I prefer the term ‘privateer.’”

(via the-knights-who-say-book)