The Watchtower

Marguerite,” she whispered to the pool. She knew Morgane’s abilities enough to know the volume of her voice didn’t matter. Morgane could hear to the ends of the earth, to the pitch-black bottom of the sea. “Please come up and meet me. I need your help on a matter of vital importance … vital…” Marguerite imagined her words radiating in the pool like moonlight, growing dimmer and dimmer, but still audible.
    Silence, for several seconds.
    Then Marguerite thought she heard a faraway rumble, way down in the water, so deep it was near the center of the earth.
    Silence again, for several seconds. Now a less muffled roar, lasting nearly half a minute. She couldn’t identify what sort of creature it came from. But the sound did have an undercurrent of agony to it.
    Silence, for several more seconds.
    Then a bellowing so loud Marguerite had to clasp her palms over her ears. The pool’s placid surface became tumult and surge, cauldron and whitecap. Morgane shot up out of the center of the pool, a winged seal about twenty feet in length, hovering as a bird might have, then twisting to face Marguerite. She had no talons, claws, or other weaponry. But she wasn’t blubbery, either. She was a trim giant seal, and something in her lean, glistening frame unnerved Marguerite. Her sister was unlikely to attack her, but the language Marguerite read in her musculature was dominance and anger. Marguerite had better watch what she said, she told herself. The fleeting centuries had not made them closer.
    “What sort of advice could I possibly give you, worldly sister?” Morgane asked her condescendingly. “I, who seclude myself in such a different world?” The voice was human and showed no influence from her shape.
    But Marguerite would answer prudently. “My question arises regarding the boundary between our worlds. You are the only person in either world fit to answer it,” she flattered, although her statement was also accurate. “What is of greater value, immortality or love?”
    “Neither is worth anything. You know that, dear sister. Why do you ask?”
    Marguerite asked because she hoped to fool Morgane into a theoretical statement that could lead to an agreement. “If immortality is worthless as you say, it might reasonably be bargained for something trite, no? Something as trite as, even, let’s say, love?”
    Morgane growled before replying, more a bear than a seal. And more a creature than human. This put Marguerite’s nerves on edge and signaled to her that Morgane did not have endless time for talk.
    “If our family had no sense of honor left, yes, by all means trade immortality for love! But fortunately that is not the case. Come, my dear. You obviously have some dreary circumstance on your mind. What is it?”
    Marguerite took a deep breath. “I have fallen in love with a mortal and want to relinquish my immortality so we can have a life together. I understand that if I am allowed this transformation, I may have to take on some new worldly responsibility to uphold the family honor. I am willing to do that.”
    “What is the name of the dung heap?”
    Marguerite chose not to object to her sister’s coarseness. It would have been futile; the only way to get her agreement was to cooperate with her. “Will Hughes,” Marguerite said in a soft voice. “The now estranged firstborn of Lord Hughes of Somerset. He’s an angel.”
    “I do not know him,” Morgane replied clinically, as if she were a naturalist referring to a species of reptile. “Nor, needless to say, do I have any inclination to. But is this pathetic turn of fate what you want for yourself, Sister?” Morgane’s seal eyes opened wide and quizzically.
    “I do not need to live forever. And I cannot live without my beloved. I must become a mortal.”
    “Then you can be one,” Morgane said swiftly, surprising and delighting Marguerite with her unexpected assent. “And, yes, the part of me that is analytical says, ‘Let her spend her mortal life rolling around with slime. It is a typical human decision.’”
    But then Morgane spun in a full circle in the air, twitching with rage, and by the time she glared down at Marguerite again, her eyes were dark pools with red, vertical pupils. Sudden-grown fangs reached out toward Marguerite.
    “The part of me that is royal, however, that supervises the tradition of the D’Arques nobility, damns your blasphemous decision and is tempted to refuse it. But I overrule my indignation as it is