Chapter Eleven
Kai
Koemi was lit, as the bed of the Laune had once been, with bioluminescent rock.
Carved and polished, it lent a deep blue glow to the sprawl of the village, either placed in tall pillars of coral or wedged between pebbled pathways that served to light the way for the teems of merrow swimming to and fro.
Their settlement was large, its seaglass buildings packed tight in a way that reminded Kai of the bustling city at the heart of Eisalaan.
It was disorienting, but in many ways, the seabed was just familiar enough to tighten Kai’s chest until it ached with wist. It was in the way the light caught the deep whorls carved into the seaglass walls.
It was in the gentle sway of the seaweed thatching, and the large, coral temple looming above it all, a glowing white beacon in the distance.
Passersby stilled in Daithí’s wake, suspended in the waters to stare at the strangers he led into their midst. A handful of the spectators were quite as ordinary as the merrow Kai had known his whole life, save for their cold, assessing gazes.
Many more watched with the same bulbous black eyes as Daithí.
A small child waved a webbed hand and smiled a shy, gapped and fanged grin. Kai waved weakly back.
Al caught his elbow as they swam, and they hung back until he was satisfied there was enough distance from Daithí that he could cup the waters around his mouth and say, “I had no idea, Kai.”
Alun glanced around, hesitant to say more with so many eyes gliding over them. He did not have to; Kai had seen the shock on his face when Daithí approached them. He’d heard the choked, wet splutter of Al’s airless gasp when Eda had greeted him as an old friend.
“Later,” was all Kai said, and at Al’s wordless nod, they kicked off and caught up to the others.
Daithí led them toward the temple, but stopped at a cottage within its grounds, separated only by a low hedge of dense, purple seagrass.
It was carved of brittle, white coral, and an entire ecosystem bloomed from its roof, anenomes and weeds pulsing rhythmically and shoals of bright fish floating above like the smoke from a billowing chimney.
“My home,” Daithí said, with a low bow in Eda’s direction.
Kai exchanged a swift glance with Alun, and then with Os.
Neither Daithí nor Eda had yet explained their acquaintance, let alone how it was even possible with the passage of six hundred years.
But they watched as Eda bobbed a respectful nod, brushed a gentle hand over Daithí’s shoulder, then swam past him into the cottage.
Kai glided after her, nodding to Daithí as he went.
In the blue light of the entryway, he hurried to close the waters between himself and Eda, seizing the brief moment of Daithí’s absence while he held the door for Os and Al.
“Eda,” he murmured, cupping as much water as he could around his mouth; the closest he could come to whispering.
But the waters around them stirred, announcing the presence of their host before Eda could do more than smile and mouth, Patience.
“We will sit,” Daithí said, perhaps catching the tail of their exchange. “And talk.”
Merrow homes did not typically have living rooms; living was something best done out in the wilds of the waters.
The dim peace of the home was for respite and, occasionally, privacy.
This was apparently not something that had changed in the last few centuries.
Daithí saw them seated in his kitchen and set out shell bowls of fresh foraged greens, diced small enough to pick at as they spoke.
Kai glanced at them longingly; it had been so long since he’d eaten such comforting, familiar fare, but his stomach had knotted itself into a vicious tangle, and there was simply no room for anything but anxiety.
Eda was plainly more at ease, of course.
“A beautiful home, Daithí,” she said, before popping a pinch of salty greens into her mouth with obvious relish.
Kai was not certain if Daithí’s answering expression could be called a smile; the movements of his face were so foreign, and the slow stretch of his thin lips over his sharp teeth seemed to take an age.
“A far cry from our cottage on the Laune bed, but it will do.”
Had Kai been breathing air, his lungs might have stilled. As it was, he just stiffened, distantly noting that on the other side of the table, Al and Os did the same.
“The Laune,” he said slowly. “Your home was in the Laune?”
Daithí’s black eyes swivelled to fix him with a gleaming stare.
“Yes,” he said simply.
Kai swallowed, ignoring the burn of the salt in his throat. Where did he begin?
“How?” he said finally. It was the only way he could think to address all of his endless questions—questions of Daithí’s strange appearance, his even stranger survival and lifespan—with even a semblance of tact.
Fortunately, Daithí seemed to understand, and with a slow blink of his thin eyelids, he raised his webbed hand to his throat and began from his own beginning.
“I was born in the Laune, a blue-eyed Merrow babe, doted upon by a large and loving family—including my favourite uncle, Seosamh.” Daithí flashed his fangs in Eda’s direction, and though Alun flinched at her side, she softened as though he’d smiled the sweetest, doe-eyed smile. “And his lovely wife, Eda.”
Daithí turned his unblinking black gaze to Kai, long hair floating eerily behind him.
“I was seven years old when the ice took our home.
I was foraging in the gardens with my mother when the waters thickened over our heads.
The cold was immediate. Consuming. It stung my skin while I screamed.
It burned my lungs and eyes raw, and though I did not understand the pain, it is now my most vivid memory of home.
There was no escaping it. No relief. Many did not survive it; we lost scores of Merrow to the unforgiving waters and hundreds more to the crush of the panicked crowds as we fled through rivers and streams, racing to outrun the spread of the frost.
We swam endlessly; time inflates, I believe, when you are young, but it seemed to be weeks before I was no longer cold.
Mother Adhlas could not hear our calls, and the waters no longer moved easily through our gills; our limbs were slower and weaker.
We settled in the warmest, closest seabed that we could, but even here the waters were dead, devoid of all magic.
Survival became a battle, a choice we made day after day.
Some gave up the fight and made their homes on land, content for their souls to ache as long as their gills did not.
But my mother was stubborn—and all the stronger for it. ”
“She always was,” Eda said fondly.
“She remains so,” said Daithí. He paused to watch Eda press a shaking hand to her mouth, and Kai suspected from the tilt of her brow that her tears had become one with the ocean water.
Her response seemed to stir something in Daithí, too, but after a beat, he went on in that same flat and unreadable manner.
“We grieved and we re-grouped. I recall that my mother and many others were angry, furious at some new danger that some of our number had subjected themselves to. But some time thereafter, things became easier. We erected homes quickly. We had the strength to mine luminous rock, and to hunt—for the first time in a long time, we had fish. It seemed, somehow, that a handful of Merrow regained the power to Wield the waters in small ways; inconstant and weak though it was. It was enough. Just enough to keep us safe, to feed us, to maintain our home. As an adult, I later learned that a dangerous expedition had been led back to the Laune. Weeks spent tunnelling through the ice, and beyond that, a journey to the darkest depths of the lakebed.”
A thrill of warning ran through Kai’s spine, drawing him up, alert.
The darkest depths.
Kai’s gills sealed against his own breath as each muscle tensed, dread weighing on his very bones.
As though his body knew, before he did, what Daithí would say next.
Daithí laid one hand on the table, fingers slowly splaying until their webbing pulled uncomfortably taut.
He spoke slowly, every word dragging, tearing like tender meat beneath his sharp teeth.
“They had heard a theory, you see. A theory that the Merrow were not alone in their grief; that the world beyond Eisalaan had lost the magic that once coursed through all of Adhlas. That the Laune was the source of all the world’s power, and the heart of the Mother herself.
And beyond the theory, a rumour, that the Beira girl had claimed herself a small piece of the Mother’s heart magic from the depths of the Laune—and Wielded it against us all. ”
Not a soul spoke, nor moved. The very waters around them had stilled with the dead silence, and yet beneath Kai’s skin, his blood moved like waves in a storm, crashing and swirling and shaking his airless lungs.
No.
He had told no one. No one save for Adeline, who had hardly dived down here for a bowl of seaweed and a chat with Daithí. And if they’d known for years, for hundreds of years—
Who else had known what he did? What he’d helped Avette do to his people?
Kai felt his eyes shoot to his friends, so fast he had to blink before his sight caught up. Alun was staring at him, uncomprehending. Oswalt … Oswalt tongued at his own teeth, jaw working—disappointed.
And not at all surprised.
Shame was thick in his throat, a solid thing that strangled his voice when he finally croaked out, “The pendant. They heard about the pendant.”
“Yes,” said Daithí, the single word sillibant against the jagged range of his teeth.
“How?”
It was not Daithí who answered him.
“It was not a secret, Kai.”
He knew her voice, but Kai still turned, still cast about to see which of them held their throat, who had spoken those impossible words.
“I knew. And I told them.”