The Deepest Blue(67)

The woman began swimming up—there must be another cave, deeper but with air. Mayara doubted the stranger could hold her breath for as long as an oyster diver could. She waited just a bit until the woman surfaced and started moving away again. Mayara then followed, and her head soon popped out of the water.

She was in another cave with a ceiling covered in firemoss. It glowed as if the stars had been stuck between the stalactites. Gathering herself, she saw that the other woman was swimming for the cave’s shore. Mayara swam faster, reaching the shore first, scrambling onto the rocks, and drawing her glass knife.

The woman pulled herself out of the water and lay on the shore panting. She was mostly in shadows, and it was difficult to see her face. Her ribs were visible, pressing against her skin as she panted. “If you’re going to kill me with that, please wait until I’ve regained my breath.”

“I’m not going to kill you—not yet anyway,” Mayara said, hoping her voice belied her revulsion at the idea of killing another. With more conviction, she asked, “Why are you trying to kill us?” She expected the other woman to deny it.

But the woman didn’t. Instead, she said, “It was nothing personal.”

“My death is extremely personal.” Mayara gripped her knife, but the other woman didn’t make any move to go for a weapon. Mayara wasn’t sure what she’d do if the woman did. She’d never even punched anyone, much less used a knife against another person.

Glancing around, she saw that the other woman had set up a camp here. Or more accurately, a home. There were driftwood shelves that held rows of coconuts, an array of palm fronds in one corner, a pile of shells in another. She had a bed—a bed!—of leaves and even a stack of clothes. How long had she been here? And how had she survived the spirits? Mayara had thought she and Roe had done well with their little hole in the sea cliff, but this seemed . . . permanent. “Who are you? What do you want? Why did you set those traps?”

The other woman hadn’t moved. “My name is Lanei.”

“Why are you here? What do you want?”

Lanei didn’t answer her. Instead she said, “You’re lucky those spirits didn’t follow us here. If they’d found this cave, we’d both be dead.”

“Then I’d say you’re just as lucky. But I’m not sure you’re actually all that worried about the spirits.”

Lanei just lay there.

Mayara pressed harder. “Your traps nearly killed my friends. We’re supposed to be surviving the spirits, not each other. Why would you do this?”

“For the greater good,” Lanei said simply.

“No.”

“No? Just ‘no’?”

“You don’t murder innocent people for ‘good.’ Try again.”

“Then I did it for all the women and girls who wake up one morning and feel the spirits dancing on the waves and hear their thoughts and know if they tell anyone, horrors will befall them. I set the traps to end the test for all those future spirit sisters.”

“Still not a good excuse for murder,” Mayara said. “You’d better start making sense, or I will call those spirits and tell them where you are.”

“Then they’ll find you too,” Lanei said, shrugging, and propped herself up to sitting, and for the first time, Mayara got a good look at her. She had bronze, sun-beaten skin and black hair with fire-red streaks. She was wearing a tunic made of a black leathery hide that didn’t look like any animal Mayara had ever seen. Could it be a spirit hide? She was barefoot, and her feet were cracked and calloused. Her hair had been chopped just above her shoulders and was matted. She was thin, only muscles and bones, with the look of someone who never had enough food.

“How long have you been here?”

Lanei shrugged again. “I lost count of days. A week, a year, forever? Sometimes I think I have always been here.”

Mayara thought of the snares near her and Roe’s cave. Her first reaction had been to think they’d been laid a while ago, before their group of spirit sisters came to the island. She hadn’t imagined that the person who set them was still on Akena. “How did you get here?”

Lanei pried herself off the ground and stood.

Crouching, Mayara gripped her knife tighter, but Lanei made no move toward her. Instead she crossed the cave and plucked a mango off a pile. Sitting on a rock loosely shaped like a chair, she began peeling its skin with a sharpened sliver of stone. “Want a slice?” Lanei offered.

Mayara didn’t lower her knife. “Are you a Silent One?”

Lanei let out a humorless laugh. “Do I look or sound like one of those monsters? No, I’m just like you. Or I was.”

“You can’t be,” Mayara said. “The last group came a full year ago! How could you have survived here for that long? And why? The Silent Ones should have taken you home.”

“Like they took the others home? Oh, wait, they didn’t, because the others died.”

Mayara eyed the water. She knew the way back, if she had to flee. She couldn’t be sure the spirits weren’t still there, searching for them. “Did you kill them?”

“I haven’t killed anyone.”

“Your snares . . .”

“Failed. I spent months laying them, but you set free the only two people they caught. So you can stop waving that . . . is that supposed to be a knife? You can stop waving it around because I’ve never successfully murdered anyone,” she said with a tinge of bitterness.