Alternate Realities

Pulled Under

Tumblr Prompt: Idk how but Mare, Maven and Cal somehow meet each other when they're like 6. Maybe the Calore boys were being naughty and snuck out? Or it's a Silver celebration and Shade drags Mare and Kilorn out when they were young for fun and bump into the two brothers who were sneaking away?

Response:

"Chicken!"

"Am not," Mare leaned back on her hands to keep from slipping down the muddy embankment.

"Bock, bock, ba-cock!" Kilorn flapped his arms and dipped to splash water onto her feet.

"It's moving really fast." She gaged the spring current.

"It's moving really fast," he mocked her tone.

"Shut it, Warren!" Mare sprang off her vantage point, her fist coming down on her friend's back. They both went into the water and rolled. Sputtering at the shock of the temperature, she stood, shivering, her arms at her chest.

Kilorn laughed sitting up. The water rushed under his butt and lifted him up off the bottom of the shallows. His toes curled at the cold, but the river was more his home than the closet-sized room his master had afforded him with his apprenticeship.

"Is that ice?" Mare's teeth chattered.

Kilorn twisted, looking for a residual block to be flowing past, only to get a wall of water splashed in his ear. He took out her legs and they both tumbled over twisted legs.

"Say it!" Mare commanded, Kilorn in a choke hold. She shoved his face in the water for a moment and drew him out. "Say it!"

Kilorn struggled to gasp enough breath, his arms pinned but his resolve not yet broken. He wiggled, hoping the slick mud would let him wriggle free. She dunked him again, holding him a little longer. He struggled harder.

"Say it!" she commanded, letting his head lift up.

"Silvers!" he coughed, she dunked him.

"No, say it!"

He coughed, "Silvers, on the shore!" He coughed out. Mare froze.

Two black-haired boys looked from the road down the washed out bank to the red children covered in mud.

"Are you killing him?" The small one looked horrified.

"No." Mare let Kilorn drop into the water. He went under and twisted in the current.

She scrambled to catch him, her hand circling his ankle. Kilorn kicked at her, trying to shake her grip, launching himself into the deeper water.

She watched his body tumble under the muddy water. Her hands sat on her hips and an easy smile settled on her face along with a shrug. If he wanted to go deeper, who was she to stop him? She spared a glance at the boys on the bank to check, they were watching, too. The small one, maybe her age or a little younger, pointed a finger out at the river in a lazy, subconscious movement. Before she looked back, the older boy started moving, fast. He took two steps down the bank, surprising her with his agility on the mud and stones. He pushed past her into the water.

Kilorn kicked and threw one arm over the other, his head came up for a gulp of water-mixed air, then he failed against the current. She blanched. Kilorn slipped out of view.

The boy's clean white shirt sucked up the brown river as he submerged himself in pursuit. He grabbed Kilorn's long leg. Mare could see his ankle and the edge of his pant leg and little else. The black-haired boy held onto a branch, white knuckled and strained face. He pulled Kilorn in towards the shore throwing his body back against the force of the water. Mare saw Kilorn's hand grabbing at air, his head and torso still under. And then the rescuer slipped, lost Kilorn's leg, and with his legs washed out from under him, they both rushed down the river.

"Cal!" The small one screamed and took off down the fishing path that ran along the river.

Mare knew better. The path dead-ended at the bridge. She scrambled up to the road and raced past cards and a crowd of merchants next to a broken wagon. She launched herself onto the stone wall that ran from the bridge into the heart of the Stilts. Her feet sailed over the top, past the crowd, and gave her a vantage point overlooking the river. The white-brown shirt marked the boys progress. Only he wasn't moving.

She pushed harder, sucked air, and raced faster than ever before. At her pace, she'd have outrun every silver in the city. She waited for them at the fork. The boys washed to the right, away from the main river that flowed on through the countryside and into the wide reservoir of the mill-works. On one side, the wheel turned pulverizing wood chips and powering the saws of the saw mill. On the other, the power station loomed high above the dam, the turbines sucked from below the waterline and jettisoned brackish, mud-laced spouts out at the bottom of the dam. With the rains, water also gushed over the top landing with a plume of mist on boulders thirty feet below.

Kilorn had his arm around the black-haired boy, around Cal, who didn't move. In the basin, Kilorn made slow progress in calmer waters towards the shore, but his stricken face reflected her horror. The undertow from the turbines could snatch them faster than the upstream current and neither would survive the chop of the blades. They'd be nothing more than a red slick churning on the rocks.

Screams went up from the Mill. Workers waved their arms at the power station, but the silver in the tower gave them a shrug, like there was nothing he could do. More like two kids weren't worth the trouble of shutting down the power station. Millwrights disappeared from windows and reappeared below, makeshift ropes in hand and with planks of wood. Kilorn reversed his direction and began pulling both of them towards the mill.

"Cal!" The small one had caught up, standing on the wall next to her, fingernails between his teeth. "Are they gonna get them? They have to get them. What if they go over?"

"Over is bad. Under is worse."

Both heaved shallow breaths, helpless to do anything else on the top of the wall. The millwrights lashed the boards together and sent a small apprentice out on the end, floating him into the current towards Kilorn who's stroke was fading in exhaustion. One hand gripped the other. Mare let out her breath and launched herself past the boy and towards the bridge. He followed.

Kilorn sputtered and panted, disoriented and exhausted on the grass next to the mill. The workers pounded on the back of the black haired boy, forcing lungfuls of water out of him until he took over coughing. Kilorn looked at his hand and down at his chest where a silver streak ran through the water on his arm.

"His blood. He's a silver!" Mare exclaimed whirling on the other boy.

"Cal!" They couldn't keep the smaller boy away any longer and he rushed through arms and legs.

A crowd had gathered, including some silver patrolmen. They glared from Kilorn and Mare to the silver boys and lurched in to detain them. Cal struggled onto the heels of his hands and saw the soldiers extracting clubs and cuffs as they towered over Kilorn and Mare.

"Did you push him?" One declared, raising the club as Mare tugged Kilorn backwards. The soldiers advanced.

"Stop!" Cal shouted.

Mare put her body over Kilorn's head and took the bat to the back. She reeled and gasped, but they both kept scrambling. Another blow came down on the meat of her thigh.

"Stop! In the name of the King! In the name of my father, stop!" Cal roared, a flicker of flame catching the sleeve of the soldier's uniform.

The soldier whirled to put himself out, and his partner pounced on the stunned red kids pinning them down.

"In the name of King Tiberius, stop what you do." Cal shrieked again.

The guard evaluated him, expression sliding from rage to horrified recognition. He fell to his knees in a bow.

"My lord, my prince! Don't be troubled. We'll manage your attackers."

"They aren't my attackers." Cal pushed himself up to his feet with Maven's help. "That boy saved my life. Release them."

The soldier paused, looking up. The one smashing the kids to the ground scrambled off of them. Mare leaned on Kilorn, the bruise already forming on her side. Kilorn didn't wait for another word, he spun her and pulled and they ran through the gathering crowd and across the bridge into the alleys of the Stilts and all the way back home.