Chapter 12
Ipaced the beach, eyes sharp for anything amiss. Every simple action took twice as long as I inspected my equipment, peering into buckets, checking for hidden ropes tied to the va’a. Unease dripped from me whenever I set foot out my door alone. Somehow, it worsened as I sat back on my heels, trying to wash away the foreboding in my chest at failing to find anything wrong.
Escaping death felt like fighting the looming darkness with luck as my weapon. I could only use it so many times before it ran dry.
Alone in my father’s canoe, I listened to the frogs croaking, thinking about my last conversation with the Naiads. The open sea lay ahead, turquoise water crashing up the sand. The island lay at my back. Low tide drifted later and later into the evening as the dry season wore on, the sun low in the waves to the west.
There is danger in all things, creature.
Voices manifested through the trees, and I quickly glanced down the beach at my aunt and cousin, walking up the shore. My aunt’s face tightened as our eyes met. “Is Naheso down here?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t seen him.”
I ignored the scoff my aunt sent across the sand at me as she and Nola turned and marched the other way.
Why was I nervous to follow the Naiads under the water? I’d spent my whole life tending to the island to become a Steward.
And I’d loved it—planting and foraging and healing. Creating life. But I’d always thought being a Steward was little more than a title. An earned acknowledgment. I’d wanted to care for my island, but even more, I’d wanted to earn a place among them. As friends.
I didn”t want to meet their queen. I didn”t want to see their home, deep underwater. I didn’t want anything to change.
It had been four days since I’d last spoke to Nori and Olinne, but I didn’t want to go to Neris Island.
My oars scraped the sand as I cast away. I watched the swells on the horizon, mounting over the dying sun. The moon was at my back, almost full. Its silver rays stretched over the water to meet the red sunset.
A rowboat floated just off the edge of the reef. I neared it, craning my neck to see who sat inside, though I recognized it well enough.
Kye paused, watching me as I slid past him, a net half-submerged under his grasp. He sent me a brief nod, and I offered him a tight smile back, though I was unwilling to invite any further conversation from him. He’d tried to catch my eye across the field since our discussion on the veranda a few nights ago. Despite his golden eyes and the way my heart seemed to beat faster whenever I spied him across the island, I wasn’t keen on striking up an interest with a man that would only cause me trouble.
My oars whisked through the waves. I stroked ahead, the channel below growing darker with each passing minute as the water deepened. At the mid-point of my journey, I stopped. Something felt wrong.
There was nothing I could see or hear to convince me. No evidence above or below. The sea air salty on my tongue, a warm wind brushing the strands of my long hair from my face. Water slapped rhythmically against my father’s va’a, playful as always.
And yet, deep inside, I knew something was off.
Paranoia trickled through me, raising the fine hairs on my arms, and I chided myself. I’d checked the buckets, the outrigger, the floorboards inside the hull.
But I couldn’t ignore it. Something was wrong.
I glanced over my shoulder, where Kye sat in the distance, watching me from his boat. Too far to see his expression, I was just close enough to make out the shape of his head as he tilted it, curious at why I’d stopped.
A tall wave washed into my lap, and I flung an arm over myself as water lashed across my thighs, trickling to the floorboards. Dropping my paddles into their oar locks, I glanced below my foot stand to see how much had landed inside.
The entire floor of my father’s canoe was covered in water.
A sharp squeal escaped me. I scrambled for one of my buckets, dipping the rim into the standing water. Bubbles rose from under my seat in a torrential parade. Somewhere in the keel of my boat, a hole existed. A tiny crack, invisible to the eye.
I’d checked this stupid boat for traps before I’d left, but I hadn’t checked for holes. I threw water out over my shoulder and bent to scoop more. A moment ago, I hadn’t even heard the bubbles, but I heard them now—a soft, watery crackling against the dry air.
I sent another round over the side. Then another—and realized this bucketful held more water than the last.
It was coming in faster.
Toes on the floor, the water level reached the soles of my feet. I lifted my heels away, watching it swirl around my ankles.
“What’s wrong?” Kye yelled, voice tight over the waves.
Too focused to shout back an answer, I threw a glance at the island, now seated in the distance. I could have made the swim, were the surface smooth and quiet. But I didn’t trust these building waves, cresting over the side of my va’a and lashing me sideways hard enough to feel the snap of my vertebrae.
I’d taken on too much water to slide over the waves. Caught low in its grasp, the sea began to have its way with me. It crested below, dipping my bow, and I broke through the wall of an oncoming wave. The water hit me painfully in the face, choppy and solid, leaving hair in my eyes and mouth. The canoe tilted on its side, thrown off balance by its own outrigger as water filled the hull. I wouldn’t be afloat much longer.
Casting my gaze out, I searched for Kye in the quickly darkening water. He was some distance away, pushed out by the same wave. With only the light of the waxing moon, I could barely make out his silhouette.
Another wave hit me sideways. I braced under its force, gripping the sides as it rolled away. Water leeched through my tapa wrap, circling my thighs.
Damn this water to the shores of Perpetuum. The tide had been low when I’d left. What had angered the sea between then and now?
A glint of moonlight shined against the varnish of Kye’s boat. He rowed toward me, making little progress—as if the water pushed him away. The swells continued to grow. Around me, black water loomed like titans, sucking the surface into their mouths and blowing it back out, invisible against the night sky except that they blocked the stars. They rose and fell in slow motion, and I lost him again.
“Kye!” My shout traveled over the water, hollow. The water in my va’a was almost level with that of the sea’s surface. I stood, trying to put distance between the ocean and myself, my legs wobbly as I balanced on my seat.
A wall hit me square in the back, sending my canoe tumbling under the black waves. It flung me head-long into inky blue-black, and I twisted to extricate myself from the weight of the wooden vessel, the clamor reverberating in a storm of frenzied bubbles in my ears.
Something grabbed my arm; something else took my ankle. Hands yanked me down, and when the waves pushed the va’a out from over my head, the moonlight shone through the water, revealing them.
Nori and Olinne.
Behind them, faces glimmered faintly, shadows and refracted light crossing their features. There were too many to count. They watched me with preternatural stillness, their long bodies erect in the water, as though current and tide were no force against them.
I froze in shock for only a moment, my eyes leaping from one long Naiad to another. All beautiful, all female, all young—except for one face who hovered near, with white hair and silver eyes.
She angled her head down towards the sea floor, descending smoothly through the water. Realizing they were taking me with them, I kicked at Nori, but Olinne coiled herself around me like a serpent. My body began to sink.
Piercing terror rippled through me. I fought. Bucking my legs, hips, torso—but Olinne held tight, and we fell into the dark. I thrashed. My lungs tightened. The more I wrestled, the faster I ran out of air. A primal panic spread through my chest, and soon I was fighting myself as much as I fought them. Fighting to keep my mouth closed, fighting my own impulse to breathe.
They dragged me to a place so black, the only thing I could see was the flash in their Naiad eyes. Hands wrapped behind my head, nails biting into the sides of my neck, a powerful tail anchored around my waist.
A mouth drew over mine.
Potent oxygen invaded my lungs. My thorax inflated so powerfully it felt like a punch to my gut.
The pain only lasted a moment. As my lungs filled with air, my body became woozy. Slow. Lightheaded. I felt my muscles relax, and the hands released me into a clouded haze.
Water seemed to drift apart and together, as if I could divide great bodies of liquid mass with the edge of a knife. I reached to touch all the droplets of water. I realized I knew them—they were written in the stones of my memory, as if we’d been reunited after a long time away.
I forgot where I was. I forgot who I was. I forgot everything. None of it seemed to matter, as the water joined and split before me, shifting and overlapping in quiet splendor.
Something with silver eyes drifted below. Sharp fingers clawed at my wrist, and I pulled away. They came at me again, silver eyes flashing, mouth gaping. Grabbing my chin, my jaw, wrenching my head back, my mouth apart. I twisted and kicked. Fingers pinched, prying at my teeth, forcing my lips open. A single bubble wafted from me as a mouth clamped onto mine.
It wanted my air. My oxygen.
I bit it.
My foot connected with a body, soft flesh over firm muscle. The silver eyes flashed, and the swish of fins whipped hard past my ear. I glanced up, along with a hundred pairs of eyes, watching the underside of a boat slide across the surface above.
Something exploded into the water. Bubbles rose around the shape of a man, kicking his feet and stroking his arms.
The faces watched, eyes narrowing, mouths curling into smiles cruel and thin. Beside me, a slender, milk-white arm stretched into the moonlight, pointing to the shape above, and shadows darted toward the surface.
I don’t know why, but I screamed. None of it made sense, none of it at all—but even though I couldn’t think of the man’s name, I was certain I knew him.
I’d once breathed life into him. He’d once killed a monster for me.
Panic wove through my body.
I wailed and shook, wracking against them as though my own flesh and bone were a whip made of iron. They wanted him. I didn’t know how I was so sure, other than the hunger and the hatred in their beautiful eyes. But they wanted him. My reaction was forged from something beyond my body’s knowledge or control.
Just as I rolled free, they reached him, three of them at once. They reached for his arms as he stroked down, their fingers like talons in the streak-lit water. And then something odd happened.
They scattered.
First the three—and then all of them.
Scattered in an instant, like mice under a shoe. So quickly I wondered if they’d even been there in the first place, or if I’d imagined them, a hundred faces in the dark water.
I hung there, blinking in confusion as gentle hands probed my shoulders and sides as though making sure I was really there. Exhausted, I sagged, letting him prod until he wrapped his arms around my waist and propelled me skyward.
We broke through the surface together.
Clarity rushed through my head with the burst of fresh air. I sputtered as I gazed at him, remembering his name. My feet treaded the water with groggy precision, my head slipping under.
“I think you’re bleeding,” he said haltingly. “I smell blood. Say something.”
“Did you see them?” I blurted, my eyes darting around us under the moon. It came out wrong. Contorted and low, my words joined into an unintelligible moan.
Kye didn’t answer. He dragged me back up, leaning me against him, my head lolling against his chest. Gasping for air, he brushed wet hair out of my face to get a better look at me.
“Get out of the water,” I warned him, my eyes dragging shut.
He swore. His face was full of worry, gripping me harder against him to free one arm. I felt him reach for the side of his boat, frantic. Glancing at my hands, I realized my fingers held blue tinge. I felt cold.
“Hold on to the side of the boat,” he ordered, finding my hands and placing them on the edge for me. Cautiously, he let me go, treading close enough to catch me if I dipped under. He watched for a few seconds, satisfied, and swam to the other side. Through the wooden rim, I felt him scrape and scuffle, rolling up over the edge, his weight rocking the little boat, and he appeared above me with an outstretched hand.
I should’ve been ashamed at how little effort I gave.
I let him haul me in, my dead weight at the end of his arms forcing a groan from his throat. My ribs grated against the hull and then I was over the side, crashing into him, his muscles taut and hard, his arms catching me as we fell. We laid nestled together on the floor of the boat, our breath shallow and twining. His hands squeezed along my arms, warm and rough.
The boat shifted, rocking again, and my stomach cramped. Suddenly, I didn’t want him so close. The moon flashed, dizzying me. It wouldn’t be full for a few days, but it was already too bright. I avoided looking at him and sat up, draping one hand across my eyes to shield myself from the light.
Kye swallowed hard as I moved away. I watched him from under my fingers, wanting to say something—but couldn’t focus enough to decide what. Nausea melted into a dull pain which spread and ripened through my muscles. My legs became cumbersome. I tried to wiggle my toes and found I couldn’t.
Alarmed, I made to touch my feet—could I at least feel them? But my body wouldn’t respond. I couldn’t move my fingers. I couldn’t move my back.
Hysteria blossomed inside me, tight and constricting, like someone had wound rope over every inch of me and pulled taut, cutting the circulation from my body. I tried to call Kye’s name but the sound left me like a distorted gasp, breathless and weak. From across the boat, Kye glanced up at me. He became fuzzy, his face losing shape and structure.
The bright light faltered, the edges of my vision dimmed like viewing the world through murky water. Kye’s face returned directly in front of me, but his features were wrong. Foggy and obscure. His voice echoed distantly.
The boat rocked; the wind whipped.
My eyes closed.
Everything went silent.