Sky of Water Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE EQUAL NIGHT TRILOGY

  “Tucker’s gift for dialogue asserts itself often … A romantic fantasy series starter full of intriguing concepts from science and spirituality.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This mystical novel will have you begging for the sequel.”

  —Brit + Co

  “In this captivating and explosive story, Skylar must make choices that will indefinitely alter her own life and the lives of everyone around her.”

  —Buzzfeed

  “It is time for the power of women, and women’s mysteries, to reclaim their rightful place in world cosmology … the lore behind the book came across as well researched. Enjoyable.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  SKY OF WATER

  Copyright © 2020 Stacey L. Tucker

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  Published by SparkPress, a BookSparks imprint,

  A division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC

  Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 85007

  www.gosparkpress.com

  Published 2020

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-68463-040-0 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-68463-041-7 (e-bk)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 019916864

  Cover design © Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com

  Formatting by Katherine Lloyd/theDESKonline.com

  Map illustration by Sean Donaldson

  All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For Kayli

  Every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open,

  fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning.

  —Pablo Neruda

  In the First Age, in the dark cave of creation, the light of knowledge was infused with the blood of compassion in the womb of earth. The heart light was born. Its power was coveted by those that knew its strength. But soon fractured, the stone could not come to light. So began a world controlled by fear, where the devil was blamed for all sin. A fractured stone meant a fractured humanity, and the dark ones were pleased. But the sands of time have waited for the moment to arrive when the extraordinary magic of the human heart will have another chance to shine again. If the stone can be healed by the pure of heart, its power will be remembered in all souls that walk the earth.

  Vivienne DeClaire’s apartment sat perched precariously over the lapping waves of the Mediterranean. An ancient, gnarled pine clung tenaciously to the exposed face. It hadn’t yet decided to succumb to the sea. Vivienne’s marble deck now hung completely over the side of the cliff. She had made Bari, Italy, her home after the First Age, when more land surfaced after the Great Flood. Good memories had soaked into the land there. She had only wanted to remember the good. But now she looked out at the stunted shore beneath her and saw the painful ones returning. Ghostly, black, crab-like creatures crawled out of the sea at a snail’s pace. Their slow speed made their return that much worse, prolonging the inevitable. They had been waiting, as all painful memories do, in the churning, deep, dark water of the ocean. They were messengers from the primordial deep, and Vivienne was now faced with a choice she thought only applied to humans: act or react. She already knew she had waited too long to act.

  The earth was experiencing remarkably swift changes that no scientist could explain away with global warming. Beatrice, the Great Mother of Air, was to blame for some of them. She hadn’t limited her wrath to the US. Many of the shores of Europe had been coated in silt. Now a light gray color, the beaches couldn’t hide their sadness. The shadow of humanity had been drawn out of the protection of the ocean and washed up like a tidal wave of beached sea life. It was forcing mankind to look at its own darkness.

  Ocean, Great Mother of Fire, had to take responsibility as well. Fire was volatile, and volatile energy was escaping the earth’s core through volcanic activity. Volcanoes were, surprisingly, more easily dealt with than the quiet migration of the rising tide, however. The sea was just like Vivienne, Great Mother of Water—reserved and commanding, yet lethal when necessary. Nothing could stop raging water.

  But all of the earth changes couldn’t be blamed on the Mothers. The greatest Mother herself, Gaia, needed to stretch and change. If a house sat where fire or fresh water must flow, so be it. Humans were required to adapt; they could no longer believe the earth was for conquering. Gaia had allowed people to live on her body, and they had proven horrendous stewards.

  Natural disasters were the Great Mothers’ way of healing, of purging their personal pain. Although selfish in motive, the disasters always helped collective humanity. It seemed people forgot their pettiness and self-absorbed lives when disaster struck and remembered what life was truly about.

  “Beauty always emerges out of destruction,” Vivienne said. “Always.”

  Milicent Grayer wrapped herself in her vintage Armani purple silk kimono and sat on the corner of the ornate, satin-covered bed in one of her grandmother Vivienne’s guest rooms. Vivienne’s grand apartment had nine bedrooms, unheard of in crowded Bari. But Vivienne had converted six apartments into one at the turn of the twentieth century, mostly out of boredom. She had admired the rich Italian décor then, but now over a century had gone by, and she hadn’t the energy or desire to redecorate. She was considering leaving the apartment and relocating to Indonesia.

  Milicent was slow to dress that morning as the wet heat wafted off the water through the open doors of the balcony. Her assistant, Noah Maganti, sat in lotus position on an uncomfortable antique desk chair in the corner. He was dressed all in white, his dark curls sleekly swept up in a man bun. He’d fallen off his weekly trim regimen, and it showed.

  After Skylar’s abduction, he’d been glued to YouTube doomsday channels until Milicent forbade the negative energy in the house.

  “You love negative energy, Mil,” he said.

  “I’m working on raising my vibration and so should you,” she said. “We can’t keep feeding the collective fear. Power over others is a dying paradigm, and I’m trying to get ahead of the next big thing—power from within. Do your part to help me, Noah.”

  After a bit of research into the other side of YouTube, he’d discovered the world of Kundalini yoga videos and had been practicing the technology incessantly ever since. Milicent didn’t know which was worse.

  Vivienne walked into the room and Noah jumped to his feet and bowed. Niceties observed, he returned to lotus in the chair and resumed his alternate-nostril breathing. Vivienne chuckled quietly, but the reverberations of her laugh were felt for miles. Locals would cite a mild earthquake. Until now, she had done a queen’s job of keeping herself hidden among the cliffs of Bari, but now it was her turn to be seen, and that would come with a cost. Her sisters both claimed to be the most powerful Mother, but they secretly knew nothing was greater than the power of water.

  She picked up the Book of Sophia from the desk next to Noah’s computer. It was barely recognizable, disintegrating by the day.

  “It will return to the ethers soon,” Vivienne said. “Sophia calls for its return.”

  “It’s unfortunate,” Milicent said. “It was the last piece for my library.”

  “Records of the past have their place, but the future will be created on a whole other level,” Vivienne said. “The need for writing things down is coming to an end.”

  She put down the book, and the t
wo women walked out onto the small balcony attached to Milicent’s room. The high tide made the shore completely disappear.

  “Grandmother, if a flood is inevitable, what’s the point in trying to make the world better?” Milicent asked. “It would seem we’re truly at the end of things now, and we should invest our money in that fellow who’s trying to get to Mars.”

  “It’s never the end,” Vivienne said. “In the trying, help is given, timelines are collapsed, and futures change. Compassion for your fellow human acknowledges your own worthiness, and in that, worlds can be saved and crises avoided.” She sat on a bistro chair and sipped a glass of something cool and sparkling. “Besides, Mars is a dusty place. You’d hate it there.”

  Milicent understood what Vivienne was saying. But as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she liked the drama of her life—except maybe the part when her husband, Devlin, put a cord around her neck.

  Vivienne glanced back inside at Noah. “I like your boy,” she said. “He balances your energy.”

  Milicent frowned.

  “You know, for someone who claims to hate men, you always choose boys to collect. Do better with this one, child.”

  “I’ve changed, Grandmother,” Milicent said. “Not necessarily by choice, but even I can’t deny that it’s for the better.”

  Vivienne smiled warmly.

  “And I’ve been thinking about something.”

  “Yes?” Vivienne waited.

  “I want to see Diana,” Milicent said. “A part of me is incomplete knowing that she is somewhere I can see her.” She paused. “And I shouldn’t go alone.”

  Vivienne sipped some more, not in a rush to reply. “I know what you’re thinking,” she finally said. “But this world is not mine to fix.” She stared out at the sea. “It’s up to humanity.”

  “Grandmother, we both know that’s not entirely true,” Milicent said with a bit of scolding in her voice. Vivienne glared at her but she didn’t back down. “You know this. History repeats itself because the core issue has never been dealt with. The landscape may look different, but the energy is exactly the same.”

  Vivienne paused. “I am not the same,” she said, quietly but firmly.

  Milicent softened and took her hand. “I understand deep wounds of the past and how they color the view of things. But this is your last chance. Magus has Skylar.” She followed Vivienne’s eyes to the horizon. They both knew what sat underneath the ocean, waiting to be discovered. She squeezed her grandmother’s hand. “It’s only a matter of time before he finds a way to extract the stone and it leads him to the citrine wall.”

  “The stone is useless unless buried within the heart,” Vivienne said. “It works its magic through human compassion.”

  “Magus believes differently,” Milicent said. “Technology has always been his religion.”

  “He destroyed the world in the First Age with his technologies. Casting out love on his quest for power.” Vivienne’s eyes were sad but no tears would be shed. In recorded history, she had only ever shed one. She knew the secret locked within her tears and had decided long ago that no one would ever deserve that power—her vulnerability.

  “Grandmother, I still struggle with finding balance between exorcising the past and letting it go,” Milicent said. “And I feel you must do the same.”

  Vivienne chuckled softly. “Child, you have come so far, and grown so much,” she said.

  “Who knew there was hope for me?”

  “I did.” Vivienne squeezed her granddaughter’s hand.

  Milicent tried to stay present but grew uncomfortable and began to fidget. “I need to go inside. This air is the worst for my hair.”

  Noah turned down the volume on a YouTube video about the secrets under Antarctica. He looked up at Milicent through his BluBlocker glasses. “Mil, did you know that Antarctica is fresh water?”

  “There is no saltwater ice, Noah, it’s chemistry,” she said. “The salt is squeezed out. But don’t listen to that garbage anyway.”

  He immediately went back to scouring the internet.

  “If you care to know the real truth, the caps are melting to return fresh water to the earth,” Vivienne said in the doorway. “The sleeping goddess of Gaia is waking up to restore the water to its original state. The curse will be lifted soon.”

  “Is that so?” Milicent asked, her cool demeanor returned. “Mother Gaia is just going to swoop in and fix your mess? After all this time, you’ll just be exonerated, without any penance?”

  Vivienne walked toward Milicent and stopped inches away from her. “Be careful how you judge others, dear one, for it is how you judge yourself.” She turned and walked out the door to the living room.

  “She looked hurt, Mil,” Noah said.

  “She needs to own her role in this mess.”

  “That’s harsh,” he said.

  “Yes. But all of the Great Mothers have their secrets, and they are usually wrapped around lost love. She loved Magus in the First Age. We’re talking thirteen thousand years ago, but a woman never forgets rejection.”

  Noah wrinkled his nose with disgust. “He’s all shriveled and pruny. He must have looked better then.”

  “He only looks that way in our timeline. He can manipulate his appearance to suit his needs. I’m sure he was disgustingly handsome in the First Age. I mean, why wouldn’t he be?” Milicent sat on a round, tufted chaise tucked behind the balcony door. “She’s kept a low profile ever since, perfectly happy to let Ocean run the show. But this is her karma to dissolve. The whole planet is in Dissolution. This is hers.”

  Noah got up and walked to the floor-length window. “Mil, how long do you suppose we’ll be here in Italy? It’s just glorious. I could stay forever. The world back home is a distant memory.”

  “In more ways than one,” she said, staring at her cuticles. “Washington is officially dead. And Rosen … It’s marred now that I know Devlin was playing me all those years. I spent thirty years of my life with the man while he was orchestrating some other horrible plan. It’s as if he had me under the spell I claimed to know so well.”

  “I’m sorry, Mil.” Noah bent to take her hand, forcing her to look at him. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve loved every second of the past year. Even almost going to federal prison.” He got up and walked to the balcony door. “It’s probably too soon to ask what’s next.”

  “What’s next is we have to stop Magus, once and for all. Then we can discuss a future.”

  Argan sat with his arms resting on his knees, staring out at the sea. As the small waves lapped at his bare feet, he casually let the emerald stone slosh around in the tidewater. He sat so long, the water receded and the stone was left in a small tide pool the size of a puddle. He drew a heart around the green stone, and one last wave of the outgoing tide lightly splashed it.

  “Come in, child,” his mother, Leonora, called from the back door. “You’ll catch cold.”

  He shook his head. The women in his life loved to tell him what to do. All except one. Skylar balanced him, complemented him. He loved taking care of her, making her happy. Their time together had been so short. He made no effort to go inside. “It’s eighty degrees out, Mom,” he called back.

  A minute later, Leonora took a seat in the sand beside him. Her long, black hair blew in wind. “Rain’s coming,” she said, looking at the sky.

  Argan glanced up briefly, then returned his gaze to the horizon.

  “You’ll wait until tomorrow.”

  “Tonight,” he said curtly. “The weather doesn’t matter.”

  She shrugged and glanced down at the stone in the water. “You should keep that in a safe place.”

  “That is a safe place.” He chuckled to himself, thinking of Skylar’s haphazard care of the Book of Sophia. The light from the gem made the water around it glow fluorescent green. Argan watched the light extend from the stone and out into the sea.

  “It’s reacting to the silver in the seawater,” Leonora said. “Most of the sil
ver on the planet is dissolved in the ocean. That’s why the moon has such an effect on the tides. It’s pulling the silver around like a magnet pulls metal filings.”

  Argan nodded, acknowledging the science trivia. He picked up the stone and the light faded. “It’s not that special,” he said, unable to convince his mother or himself.

  “It’s half of the whole, but perfect in itself, only enhanced by its other half,” Leonora said. Argan knew she was talking about more than the stone. “Come in soon. We’ll eat.” She squeezed his knee and stood up. As she stood there, her long hair whipped around wildly in a sudden burst of wind.

  “Okay.” Argan put the stone in its bag and got up to head inside. The cypress trees in the backyard still stood as protectors of his childhood home in Kythira, but the landscape had changed so much since he was a boy. In two short decades, the sea had edged dangerously close to many of the homes that had once been well protected from the water. Now it was anyone’s guess how long it would be before they were in the ocean.

  When he walked into the house, he found his seven older sisters all crying, holding a vigil; they assumed Argan was leaving to his death. He rolled his eyes at the drama. He hadn’t missed any of them while living in the States.

  His father, Giannes, sat asleep in a well-worn recliner in the living room. The chair was the one thing he’d shipped back to Greece a dozen years earlier when they’d returned from America. He said he wanted to be buried in it. Argan wasn’t sure how soon that would be. His father spent most of his days asleep; if anything, death would be an improvement.

  He was grateful for his father’s teachings. He was an old soul and had raised Argan in the traditions of their Greek heritage. He’d instilled in him the importance of being respectful, a gentleman, a good provider. He lived by tradition and resisted changing what worked. Argan appreciated his father but now that he was older, he saw Giannes’ limitations, especially with his mother. Giannes loved Leonora and gave her earthly security, but Argan could see there was something missing. A loneliness permeated his mother’s eyes that he hadn’t noticed until recently.