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As a rule, Ozma never went near the sea. Not if he could help it.
Being king of a coastal kingdom made that slightly tricky, especially when its capital was perched ever so close. But one could not actually see the sea from the city, not unless one went to the very top of the castle’s tallest tower. This fact provided some illusion of distance, even if on windy days, one could certainly smell it.
Things had been different when Ozma was a boy. Then, he had gone to the sea all the time. There was something magical about it – magical in a way that nothing else really was – that was an opinion he still held, and he felt it was a very qualified opinion, given that he was a regular dealer and wielder of magical materials and artifacts.
He used to play in the ocean surf, chase the waves as they crashed, one after another along the beach, spilling froth everywhere beneath his feet. The air was clean there, the weather exciting and unpredictable, and treasures abounded. The creatures were so strange, almost as if they came from an alien world (in a way, he supposed they did), and he had been fascinated by them – all the little ones that were thrown into his path, and the ones he’d heard fantastic tales of that he himself had never laid eyes upon. What little boy wouldn’t be?
He had spent more time there than he cared to remember. And, he supposed, he had always been in love with the sea.
She was certainly his first love and . . . she was also his last. Beautiful, heart achingly so, on a calm tranquil day, under a blood red sunset, early in the morning in the soft, pink light, or on a foggy afternoon when she was grey and mysterious.
When her waters were crystal clear and one could see right through to the bottom in the shallows and watch the little shoals of fish, she was enchanting. When she was wild, she was invigorating, and when she was angry, she was terrifying. But terrifying in a way that was alluring, that called to the soul like a siren’s song.
He had been utterly enraptured with her in a way he could never really put into words, entertaining wild dreams of setting sail on her treacherous waters one day as an explorer, and to never leave her side.
That hadn’t happened of course. He’d grown up, gained responsibility, a sense of purpose, of duty, and a care for the people of his home. He left the sea, and her wild, enchanting call, in favor of the real world. And one day, when he’d returned after some time had elapsed, to the waters he used to dance so delightedly with, he found a fear he had never known before. It was like looking at something you had always thought you knew, and seeing it for what it really was for the first time.
When he’d dreamed of sailing the high seas, he’d never thought of conquering anything, not the way some men spoke of sailing. Only of venturing out into something utterly untamable, and letting her guide him. But that, he supposed, was the innocence of youth. Children never did dream of conquering things, did they? They didn’t understand that there were some things that were too dangerous to play with, too treacherous to love, too horrible to be allowed to exist unchecked.
He wondered now, looking back, if it had ever really been the sea he’d fallen so madly in love with, for the only shores he’d ever known were her waters. Here, within the borders of his kingdom, all the sea belonged to the Black Leviathan, and always had, from the days of his forefathers. When one felt the spray of it upon their face, they invariably felt her as well; her power, her unspeakable power, her soul, her very essence. She and the sea . . . they were one and the same, really. He knew this, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And this was why, now, Ozma never went to the sea. Why, when he tasted salt on the air, he felt something wretched and traitorous stir deep within the darkest recesses of himself, and he thought he ought to wash his mouth out with soap.
Once. Once after she had returned there, to her own wrathful waters, after she had escaped the fate that had been due her, he had gone to the sea once more, when he was turning over the idea of commissioning the Huntsmen Fleet to be built, and wished to survey his naval vessels and consult with some of his captains.
There, down at the beach, in the waning light, he had seen her.
He knew now he hadn’t really seen her of course, had known even just after the vision had passed. But all the same, it took him with such force, he’d been unwell for the rest of the day and on into the next.
For, there, not but twenty odd feet in in front of him, she’d appeared, walking just before the breaking swells, and everything had stilled, inside and out, but in a rather horrible, momentous way. Each wave pouring forth almost endlessly before it broke, each step floating forward impossibly, the light had dimmed, and everything had been golden but she; clad in the dress she’d worn the day they’d wed. Only, in the vision, instead of the lovely verdant green of new life, it had been as black as night, as the sea, as her true form, as if to remind him that their union was a defiled thing right from the start.
She was serene, even as tears tracked her face, and she was so beautiful that the very air itself seemed thick with it, with some kind of glamor, too heavy to breathe, and she wasn’t even looking at him. He’d been very sure she hadn’t even known he was there, even though they were the only two things in the whole of existence. He’d wanted to yell, to scream “LOOK AT ME!” But he was too frozen to speak, to do anything but stare stupidly, helplessly.
When he’d been forcibly pulled out of this vision by his guards; anxious at having lost track of him, he’d felt as though he’d just woken up from a days-long bout of fever induced delirium, and that while he’d been unconscious, he had been moved from where he first fell ill to some strange place he did not recognize. The only thing he really knew in that moment, was that he could feel Salem in his bones, feel her power and her anger as though it sang through his very soul, and that he had to, whatever he did, get away from the sea and never return, ever again.
And he never did.
He wondered though, from time to time, how he’d never been frightened of her as a boy, and how any man of the sea could bear to be so near her, and feel her presence all the time. But, he supposed, sailors of all kinds described themselves as being in love with the sea, devoted to her. It had always seemed understandable and quite romantic to him when he was young, if also quite mysterious. But it wasn’t mysterious at all anymore, and that, he decided, grimacing with distaste, took the romance quite out of it.