"Father? There's a storm to the south."

Tanya remained where she was, most of the way up the mast of the small fishing boat while squinting to the south where a wall of churning clouds was moving in their general direction. She had loved the sea ever since Father had allowed her to go out with him on the boat, and despite a young lifetime of stubbed fingers and rope burn, felt her heart beat wildly with joy every time the sail spread wide and the flimsy wooden craft skimmed across the Mediterranean like the waterbug that Father had named it after. This morning had dawned perfectly clear with only a few puffy clouds scudding along high in the sky to differentiate it from the blue of the water, but the distant wall of clouds was nearly as black as Father's obsidian skin. It worried her a little, because the flags hanging from the Stormwarden's lighthouse this morning had predicted a light breeze out of the south, picking up as the day went on and only building into something that could be dangerous long after sunset. Tanya swept her gaze across the rest of the visible sea and scooted higher on the mast of Waterbug, keeping one leg wrapped in the prickley main halyard to prevent an embarrassing crash onto the deck below. Father had taught her the value of caution, and where other seafarers exalted in leaping from line to line where they could show off for the women on the docks, Tanya had followed his advice and not broken or sprained a limb from stupid exhibitions that he said were only carried out to attract the kinds of women foolish enough to fall for a sailor. It seemed a little unfair as a comparison, because Mother had fallen for Father as much as any woman could, and she was a very intelligent woman.

They made an odd trio. Father was as black as coal with a booming laugh and broad shoulders, always next to his little mousy wife, with what little skin she showed being colored a light creamy tan, as if she bathed in milked caffe, and followed by their tall, pale daughter with a shock of brilliant red hair. It drew eyes from the other sailors and more than a few whistles as they walked through the fishmarket to sell the day's catch of anchovies and whatever else Father had managed to capture in his nets. Gobies and eels mixed with bream or bluefish, they all brought in the tiny silver and copper coins that patched nets, bought beer, and kept their small and strange family intact.

Both Mother and Father were turning the capstan to bring up the nets, with Mother actually having taken off her encompassing abaya in order to put the full force of her small body into lifting the catch from the deep sea. The puckered white scars that contrasted against her light brown side still brought a chill up Tanya's back with the thought that some man had used her as a plaything in that fashion, and it was only made worse by the look in her eyes when anybody asked about it.

She shuddered and looked out to the south again, trying to judge just how large the storm was sweeping towards them and how far away the port of Versillia was. Father was an adventurous sailor, sometimes sailing far away from the shore in search of the perfect catch, so the bright dot of the lighthouse was only a faint glimmer on the horizon.

But the storm was noticeably bigger. And growing.

"Father!" she called. "Come quickly!"

"What is it, Little Fire? Have you seen a handsome merman?" Father's white teeth flashed in a grin as he looked up at her, but the grin vanished in an instant, almost as quickly as he scaled the mast while gripping the halyard between his toes. The sail jerked with his weight, making her very glad of a tight grip on the mast, and even more grateful when Father slid at a totally unsafe rate down the halyard to land on the deck afterwards. "Mousey, help Little Fire with the sails! Bring her around and point us to port as fast as you can. Dat is no ordinary storm."

---

The wind had picked up to a tearing gale, ripping and clawing at the short expanse of sail that Father was still running in an attempt to keep Waterbug's bow into the waves. Mother had carefully tied each of them off with short lines while Father had wrestled with the halyard, successfully for now. The roar of the wind was like some devilish monster, snatching away words and slashing the rain down like blades against her skin. It was certainly no ordinary storm, for Father had stopped his perpetual attempts at humor in exchange for a grim determined grip on whatever line he was tying down while Mother helped her hold the bucking tiller. The net filled with flopping fish had been dropped into the hold despite Tanya's first instinct to cut it away and keep the boat as light as possible, but as the water sluiced across the deck and the wind tried to flip them over, she realized that it was ballast against their lives.

She should have been terrified at the storm, but there was something in the wind that plucked at the strings of her soul, caressing her like a lover promising that everything would be all right even as the crash and clash of lightning overhead brought prickles of pain from the sodden seat. The vast forces of wind and water all around them felt as if two mighty armies were clashing, powers that could grind them into chum barely brushing against Waterbug's sides and tossing it like a cork. Something beyond her comprehension moved in the storm, and she reached out, not with her hands that were locked to the tiller, but with her mind. She might as well have been a mouse trying to guide a runaway horse, but the powers that struggled out in the maelstrom of wind reached back somehow, filling her with the shock of power as the wind directly outside of the boat eased slightly.

Mother's dark eyes opened wide, staring into her adopted daughter's face as if she were seeing for the first time, although she maintained her fervent grip on the tiller. The crash of water against the boat eased as Tanya reached out even farther, grasping the power that flung the wind and water into a froth and channeling it through her body. The wind shrieked in rebellion and slammed against the boat, tossing it up into the air before smashing it to the sea again and again, screaming at the reluctance of the thin wooden craft to separate into splinters and rags. The storm roared its challenge above them as the boat tossed and turned, fighting against the young woman who thought she could tame the sea. Back and forth went the waves, smashing and crashing as Tanya held on with every bit of strength she could muster. The forces outside the small bubble of relative destruction would have torn the boat apart and killed them all by now, if she had not been able to do what she was doing.

Until the agonizing sensation of fighting the storm overcame her control.

And the storm crashed back in.

She was vaguely aware of Father, kicking the net filled with fish off the bow of the boat in order to act as a crude sea anchor.

The snapping of thick lines holding the mast.

The look on Father's face as the swinging boom caught him across the chest with a crackling noise of broken bones.

The shriek of agony from Mother as she dove overboard after her husband, knife in hand to cut away the entangling loops of rope.

The crunch of the deck as the waves finally broke the boat into pieces and began scattering it across the sea.

The towering wall of water above her, descending…

Into darkness.

---

Only the cries of the gulls and the crash of waves sounded along the debris-strewn beach as two thin figures walked down the coarse sand in the ruddy light of a cloud-strewn sunset. They did not speak, but checked every unmoving figure that lay sprawled out along the waterline or pushed up into the drier sand, continuing their pace one uncertain step at a time in the manner of old people who feared a fall more than anything else. Finally, as they looked down on the corpse of a nearly-naked black man cradling a caffe-brown woman in mutual death, the first figure gave a short and muffled sob.

"Old man, you have much to answer for. Look at them. Look at them! You killed them just as surely as if you had ran a knife through their hearts."

"Tell me what I do not know," said the old man. "I have sent legions to their deaths, uncounted thousands of innocent lives. When Atlantis settled into the sea, the corpses were so thick on the shore that you could have walked for a mile without dampening your sandals. My brothers and I have a debt which your God will be long in collecting. Was it so bad that I tried to hide her? Was it too much for me to have hope, Sarah?"

"I am no longer Sarah," said the old woman, turning on her heel and striding away with the damp sand spilling from her sandals. "You lost your right to call me that when I took my vows."

"I shall ever call you by what you wish," said the old man, picking up his pace until he was striding alongside the woman again, although he rested a great deal of weight on the staff he carried in one hand. "It is the least I can do for the one who will remember after I am dead."

The woman slowed until she was trudging through the damp sand. "Old fool. You'll outlive us all. That devil-wrought staff won't let you die."

"Long-lived is not immortal, Reverend Mother Mary Elizabeth. The Staff of Storms is powerful, but it cannot stop death. I will die soon, and the staff will pass to my son. What he did today is but a small fraction of what he is capable of. I will destroy it before I let that happen."

The old woman trudged along in silence for a while. "You said it could crack the world if destroyed."

The Stormwarden nodded. "It could. If it falls into my son's hands, it will. Diogenes the Cynic sought only an honest man and failed. I must find someone far more, or else."

She shuddered at his look and the implication that came with it. "No. I shall not, even to protect the world. The Devil himself could not— There!" Mary hastened her pace to a shuffling run in the direction of yet another body, this one with a flash of muddy reddish hair. As she dropped to her knees and reached out, the Staff of Storms appeared in front of her open hand, and she stumbled backwards, nearly falling down in her shock.

"Don't, Mary. She bears the touch of my son." Reaching down with the staff, the Stormwarden touched it to the young woman's bare chest, which was barely differentiable from a young boy's. A low blue glow spread across her skin, and then small black threads of magic like hairs seemed to abruptly grow around the wood. They waved almost hungrily, and vanished back into her bare skin as the Stormwarden withdrew. "All of this, the deaths and destruction, the wasted lives, was only to poison her against us. He killed merely to bait a trap."

"Purge her, then! If you won't, I will!" Mary struggled to her feet with her aged fingers already dancing in the complicated motions of a spell. A second attempt was just as futile, as was a third and fourth, until she broke off her attempts and glared at the Stormwarden as if he had grown horns and a tail. "Damn you and that cursed staff! Damn the day I let you touch me! How many more lives will your Atlantean curse consume before it is done? A thousand? Tens of thousands? Can you save even one, or must the world perish lest you lift your hand against one of your own blood? She is your blood too, old man! If you're willing to destroy all of the world rather than let your precious staff fall into your son's hands, why can you not save your granddaughter!"

The old man did not react, but remained motionless with the staff still held just above the nearly naked young woman. Her pale chest continued to rise and fall in shallow motions, but her eyes were still closed and water carried sand across her submerged limbs in a constant flow. Far up the beach, the sounds of search parties from the city could be heard headed in this direction, descendents of the survivors of Atlantis who had a nearly bone-level commitment to rescuing the strays and oddities of life and providing them a home in their chaotic and mixed-up city. After long minutes, the Stormwarden lowered his staff until it barely touched the young woman on the chest, and seemingly did absolutely nothing for the longest while.

"There," he finally said, taking a step back. "She will survive, but—" he cast a sharp glance at Mary, who had moved forward to pick the young woman up "—we must not interfere. The spell which he had placed is a complicated trap, and I have wrapped a second trap around it, teeth set against teeth and fang against fang. She shall be safe within the city, provided she is not loved. Place her with a new family, one who has little affection for her, and all will be well."

"And what of you, old man?" Mary looked down the beach where the first of the rescuers had begun to drag bodies out of the surf. She pulled the thick wimple up from her shoulders and draped it across her nearly-bald head with thin aged hands. It was the work of a moment to fix it in place before she turned back to the Stormwarden, once again becoming Reverend Mother Mary Elizabeth, Mother Superior to the Sisters of Saint Mary.

"I will return to my home to grieve the fallen and plan for the future. I…" He paused, his old rheumy eyes seeming to become slightly more moist. "My son knows me far too well. Should either of us spend too much time with her, our affections would cause our own demise. I shall redouble my efforts to find a successor, and perhaps he will be able to lift the curse without killing her. Farewell."

The air around the old man shimmered and he was gone, just as if he had never been there. Even the footprints left in the sand had vanished. The balcony of the lighthouse where the Stormwarden had lived for the last two centuries flickered with a similar light, and Mary could see a tall, dark silhouette framed for a moment in a doorway as he passed back inside, just the same as he had done for far longer than anybody in the city had been alive.

The time for sentimental thought was over. Sister Mary Elizabeth, the stern and unyielding Mother Superior of a hundred active and troublesome young nuns was back. She lifted one thin aged arm and lit an illumination spell to attract the attention of the rescuers, and directed them afterwards to cover the young woman and take her to the hospital with the rest of the storm's victims. There were so many who needed her help, and little time for herself. Although the storm today was over, there was always another one coming up.

This upcoming storm was going to be a killer.