Chapter 46
Ms. Granberg has eaten all the chocolate.
She bends down and opens a small refrigerator hidden under the desk, pulls out a can of cola, and offers it to me.
“Drink this. You look pale.”
One minute she was a mara, creature of the night, and now she’s transformed back into the everyday school nurse. A changeling.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. I just take a few sips of the sweet drink instead.
“Better?” Ms. Granberg asks.
“Mm,” I murmur and drink some more.
It’s easier to drink than to think. Or talk.
But when I lower the can, she’s still just sitting there. Waiting. I don’t know what she’s expecting from me, but I sense the magnitude of the unspoken demands.
“What do you want me to do?” I say.
My insides burn with fear, with anger. I didn’t ask for this. I don’t want to be her last hope. I can’t be.
“Even if they—or we—used to be their watchers, that doesn’t mean I know how to control them. I’m only twelve!”
“I know,” says Ms. Granberg. “It isn’t fair.”
“Maybe we can go to the police,” I say. “Or the military.”
A hint of a smile sweeps across Ms. Granberg’s face.
“Humans are no match for the Nurmand?r,” she says. “You must understand, these are no ordinary animals. These aren’t overgrown seals we’re talking about. They’re not at full strength yet, but the more time that passes, the more people they consume . . .”
She holds up her hands.
“Besides, how long do you think it would take? To convince the military that there are huge sea serpents devouring people in the Stockholm Archipelago? They can’t even find a Russian submarine these days.”
I finish the last of the cola and fight to suppress my impulse to just get up and leave. Run into the forest where no one can find me, where the trees would protect me from the sight of the angry sea.
Maybe instead of stopping Rasmus that day, I should have gone with him instead.
“I don’t know exactly how these things worked,” says Ms. Granberg. “The merfolk kept the beasts under control, but none of the old legends say how. Maybe the humans never knew anything about it, even when we lived side by side.”
For the first time since we started talking, Ms. Granberg seems overwhelmed.
“I wish I could help you, Tuva. I’ve done my research, read the old scriptures, but I can’t find any answers, and none of my contacts know either.
None of the other Ancient Ones can help me.
They are frightened, weakened. They are in hiding.
Someone has to stop the sea serpents—and you’re the only one left who can. ”
I clutch the armrest of the chair so hard my fingers ache.
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
A small part of me whispers that she is right. The feeling lives on in me like an echo.
When I opened my mouth and . . . screamed, roared, howled.
When I sang.
The knowledge is there, deep down. Half-forgotten memories from long ago.
Somehow I knew they were avoiding the sun. Knew they were waiting with infinite patience down in the depths.
But I remember something else too.
I remember the water, which should have been my support and strength. I remember how it seeped into my body and tried to take my life. The unbearable pain filling my throat and lungs.
“I don’t have gills,” I whisper. “I can’t breathe underwater anymore. It’s too late.”
My people are gone. I am nothing, neither merfolk nor human. A useless leftover that survived by chance.
“This isn’t going to work.” I quickly push the chair back and leap to my feet. I feel suffocated by the realization of everything I am not capable of doing.
“Thank you for telling me all that. But I have to go now.”
I’m afraid she’s going to try to talk me out of it or, worse, guilt-trip me. I don’t want to hear any more. I can’t handle it. Without waiting for a response, I slip out into the corridor, half expecting her to follow me.
But the door remains closed behind me. I’m all alone in the dark as the rain beats against the windowpanes.
I have no idea where I’m headed.
There is nowhere to go.