Chapter 6
The Naiads had tried to convince me to enter Nahli”s home before. I”d always refused, determined to respect the goddess’ slumber.
But I needed their help. I was willing to risk Nahli’s wrath for it.
Thirty minutes later, I stared down the mouth of the volcano. The air inside was colder than I anticipated. Something about it tasted old. Forgotten. I shuffled down the slippery throat of the cavern, following a map written by Nori in my memory, until frigid water surrounded my feet. Bathed in liquid black, the cavern walls were so icy and humid the simple act of breathing choked me. My heart thrummed in my chest, my pulse throbbing against my fingertips. I offered a prayer to the volcano Nahli.
Then into the water I dove.
There was no current, and yet, the water pulled me through the tunnel like blood through a vein.
Breath tight, I let it carry me down. The tunnel narrowed, winding into a space so small I had to wiggle through the last few inches. Arms pressed against my own body, I found the opening and burst through, paddling for the surface.
Mihaunaalive, I was not looking forward to doing that again.
The air tasted stale, damp like mold and dripping crypts. An eerie blue light stretched across the walls. Over my head, a soft twinkling spread across the ceiling. Glow worms.
The interior chamber of the volcano was wider than I’d expected. Somewhere, water echoed as it dripped. Inky liquid surrounded my treading feet. With the blue constellation above, I might’ve been suspended among the stars. It was the kind of beauty that beckoned me into a trance, like a moth to a torch. I could’ve stayed there forever, floating in the chilled water and staring at a night sky—but I wasn”t fooled. Nahli might be ethereal, but she was a tomb of hardened magma.
And tombs should not be disturbed.
Light vibrated from deep below. Soft, soothing, cool. I watched it, wondering how deep the well of the volcano lay. It cast a smoldering blue iridescence along the obsidian floor, flickering as it burned.
I could do this.
Dive down, grab the thing, swim up. Dive, grab, swim.
I was a Leihaniian. Diving and swimming were two things I did better than anyone else in the world. I had nothing to fear. Just get in and get out.
The liquid black churned around my feet. I wondered if monsters lay in wait below.
Don’t think about it. Just do it.
My breath puffed from my chest, leaving stunted, foggy clouds. I fisted my fingers, working warmth back into them. Three, two, one, go.
I remained latched to the wall, staring down into the deep water.
GO.
Twisting my long hair away from my face, I gathered my air—as much as I could gulp down—and tilted into the cold.
A vast canyon of wide open nothing, the well seemed to only grow deeper as I descended. The weight of pressure from above fed my strokes. Very quickly, the water turned into icy sludge. Thick, globby, cold.
I wasn’t equipped for this.
I was a girl from the islands. Heat, I could handle. But the cold in the volcano leached into my scalp, freezing my thoughts. With every twitch of my arms and legs, I felt my tendons threaten to snap, like frozen ropes stretched too taut. The water pierced my skin, sharp and brilliant. Slicing.
There were no monsters here. There was only the cold, waiting to drink me alive.
I stretched, lungs tight, and my fingertips brushed a flat plane. Slick, like glass. Transparent. And freezing. I ran my hands along the smooth surface, the burning blue light just beyond my reach.
Dimly, I realized it must be ice. A sheet of ice in the heart of a volcano.
It made no sense, but I didn’t have time to puzzle it out.
My toes slid across the plane, and I felt a shift. A pocket of air, hovering on the other side.
Bubbles escaped my nostrils. I stiffened, disregarding the shivers that crawled from my skull and down my arms, clenching my teeth so they wouldn”t chatter. On the other side of my feet, below the ice, the pocket of air hummed.
My head became thick with the weight of water above. If I swam back up, I could find a sharp rock on the surface. Something to break the frozen wall.
But when I kicked my legs to ascend, I hardly moved.
I was stuck.
Oh no. No, no, no, no—
My hands clawed and punched. My legs fluttered, feet pointed hard. I pushed and stroked—and rose not an inch.
The volcano didn”t want me to escape. It had trapped me here on purpose.
I’d come like a quiet predator in the dark to the heart of a cursed island, hoping to slip in undetected. But the goddess of lava had set her snare, and I’d swam right into it.
I was going to die here.
Perhaps it was the splintering cold, but for a moment, the thought was oddly comforting. Nahli, the mother without a child, and me, the child without a mother. I could curl up and perish in the belly of a volcano, the soft waters deep within the earth, thick like waters of a womb.
But something flickered across my consciousness, a wispy feeling I couldn’t quite materialize into solid thought. All my years mending roots and planting seeds, creating and preserving life—wasted. My father alone in his quiet house. The relief the islanders would share at finding I never came home. They’d believe I’d met my demise, swallowed by the sea like my mother had been. A fate deserved for an island witch.
Hatred brushed its poisoned fingers down my sides.
Some small part of me realized it was the wrong reason to fight for my life. That I could have clung to my father’s love, or the friendship I shared with the Naiads. The breath of wind, the taste of sea, the scent of grass that I’d never feel again.
But it was anger that drove me churning for a way out.
The weight above bore down on my shoulders, and I found myself sitting on the freezing sheet. I beat my heels, lifting, crashing, until the unmistakable sound of a crack split the water, a strike of thunder in my ears. A thousand tiny fractures followed, fissures grinding and falling together and apart.
I gave a final heave, and my foot broke through. A groan echoed through the water as the ice around me caved. Down I fell, through air and darkness, arms flailing, until I hit another body of water, forced down by the gush of liquid above. Dazed, I clawed my way up, my head reeling. Cold air burned in my lungs, and I sputtered as I gasped it in. Beside me, water fell from the icy hole above in a thick deluge, spray flicking across my face.
I was moving—rising—the falling water quickly filling the empty cavity. I drank down a few short breaths, gathering strength, and dove again.
The bottom wasn’t far. A few kicks brought me to the blue glow, arms and legs blessedly flexible once more. The light flickered as I picked it up, the fiery glow dimming until it went out.
It was a narrow prism, small but heavy, with sharp points at the top and bottom. I didn’t have time to inspect it, though even with the jarring cold, I wondered what it was. What could the Naiads want with it?
The falling waters had slowed, air escaping to the surface. I swam back up, sucking oxygen from the shrinking pocket, running my fingertips across the ice above. The hole wasn’t hard to find, I merely followed the sound of falling water.
I waited for the rushing water to stop, the cavity to fill. Near the end, it yanked me down, water pressure and tension pulling at my body; though I worked my hands around the grooves of the broken ice and gripped tight. The world went silent, and I swam through, following the final bubble as it wobbled to join the air above.
Propelling myself up, I burst through the surface, panting and clinging to the slick edges of volcanic rock. I floated in silence and disbelief that I was still alive, my arms and legs chilled to the bone, watching the glow worms orbit like stars around my head.
The only thing that felt warm was the prism, clutched tightly in my hand.
The tide had long since climbed up the sandy beach when I returned. Muscles stiff, flesh cold, my feet flapped numbly against the earth. Nori and Olinne gazed at me in shock when I drew the prism from my tapa wrap. I held it tight in my fist, realizing they’d expected me to fail.
“You might have warned me about the ice,” I spat, gripped with a sudden fury at the expressions on their ethereal faces. “What is this?”
Nori held out her hand. Shoulders squared, body motionless, she waited for me to hand over the prism. I glared at the Naiad, body still warming under the sun. My muscles shivered once, twice, but I didn’t look away. I’d risked my life for this stone, when Nori and Olinne need not risk their lives for the favor I’d asked of them.
I wouldn’t hand it over without learning first why I’d done so.
“It is the Breath of Safiro,” Nori answered, her open hand waiting. “It belongs to my queen. Give it to me, child. It is dangerous in human hands.”
I gazed down at the stone, now radiant in the light of day. Smooth, sharp facets refracted at one end, catching the sun like ice trapped beneath clear water. At the other end, the stone grew rough like gossamer frost, glittering as I turned it in my fingers. Prickling nerves trailed down my back, and I shuddered with cold.
I’d never seen anything so lovely.
“Maren,” Nori said, a hint of warning in her voice.
I placed the stone in the Naiad’s hand. Remnants of ice seemed to stick to my fingers, and I flicked my wrist absently. Olinne peered at the stone in Nori’s grasp, a hungry sparkle in her eye.
“Find the drowned sailor tonight.” I’d never demanded anything from the Naiads before.
They ignored my brash tone, gazing at the stone in awe. Refracted sunshine glowed blue across their faces.
“Tonight,” I repeated, my clam buckets thudding at the bottom of my va’a. I climbed in, throwing them a final glance, worried that they still hadn”t acknowledged me.
“Tonight.”