Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(71)

“Ever hear of positive thinking, mina?” Ava asked testily.

“Ever hear of rational thinking? How are we supposed to kill it? Sneak up on it? It has like, a dozen hands! With eyes in them! We’ll never even get close to it,” Astrid said.

“So what should we do? Just go home? Go shoaling, go shopping? Pretend none of this ever happened?” Ling asked heatedly.

“Yes!” Astrid shouted.

“Wait, calm down, everyone. Let’s take a deep breath and look at what we know,” Becca said.

“Which is, umm, hold on, let me see…nothing!” Astrid said. “We don’t know what the talismans are. Or where they are. We don’t know exactly where the monster is or what it is.”

“We do know—” Becca began.

“That we’re going to get our wrasses kicked!” Astrid said. “Abbadon killed thousands of people! He sank an entire island!”

“I would appreciate it if you would stop interrupting me,” Becca said.

“And I would appreciate it if you would stop being mental.”

“You’re unbelievably rude.”

“You’re clueless.”

“Stop arguing, please,” Serafina said, trying to hold the group together. “It’s not helping.”

“You’re right, it’s not,” Astrid said. “So, hey, let’s just poison everybody. Problem solved. Isn’t that how they do things in your neck of the water?”

“Whoa!” Ling said. “Time out!”

“Astrid, you are totally out of line!” Ava said.

But Astrid didn’t listen. And Serafina, infuriated, started tossing insults back at her. And everyone else just talked louder. A few minutes later, they were all arguing, shouting, and flipping their tail fins at one another.

“I grow tired. I shall leave you now,” Vr?ja suddenly said, the sound of defeat in her voice. “The novices have prepared food for you, and beds.” She turned to go.

“Thank you, Baba Vr?ja, but I won’t need a bed. I’m heading out,” Astrid said.

Vr?ja spun around. Her eyes bored into Astrid. “Orfeo had great powers, child. The greatest the world has ever seen. He had to choose how to use them. He chose evil. Magic is what you make it.”

Astrid’s angry expression cracked. It fell from her face like ice off a glacier, revealing raw fear. “But Baba Vr?ja, you don’t understand! I can’t choose!” she said.

It was too late. Vr?ja was gone. The doors closed behind her.

The six mermaids were by themselves.





SERAFINA LOOKED AT ASTRID. “What was that about?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Astrid said brusquely. “It’s been real, merls. Good luck with it all.”

She tried to swim out of Vr?ja’s study, but two armed frogs blocked her. They waited until she stopped shouting, then one of them spoke.

“Can you tell me what he said?” Astrid asked Ling.

“So sorry. I don’t speak T?ngj?.”

“T?ngj?? What does that mean? The guards don’t speak T?ngj?. They speak Amphobos.”

Ling smiled tightly. “T?ngj? means jerk. And I wasn’t talking about the guards.”

“Sorry,” Astrid said stiffly. “Can you please tell me what he said?”

“He said, ‘You will stay, as Baba Vr?ja instructed. There is danger in the darkness. You will be safe here.’”

“Safe…yeah, sure,” Astrid muttered, looking pointedly at Serafina. “As long as I don’t eat anything.”

Serafina said nothing, but her fins flared.

A young river witch appeared and led the mermaids to a suite of rooms. One contained a round stone dining table and chairs, another beds. Two more witches brought food and the six mermaids sat down to eat a late supper. The food was simple, but fresh and delicious—salted frogs’ eggs, pickled water spiders, plump leeches in algae sauce, and a salad of marsh grass topped with crunchy water beetles.

Sera was quiet during the meal, overwhelmed the enormity of what she’d learned in Vr?ja’s study, and what she’d witnessed in the Incantarium.

As she ate, she realized that everything she’d been taught about the origins of her people was a lie. Merrow had sought to protect the mer by wiping out all traces of the truth of their beginnings, but instead she’d left them dangerously vulnerable to the very evil she’d tried to defeat.

Merrow, the first regina, a mermaid so revered that in the minds of the mer that she was seen as infallible, had made a mistake. A big one. And now it was up to herself and five other teenagers to put it right.

Sera remembered the towering statue of her ancestor that had stood in the grounds of the palace. She saw herself, as she had been only weeks ago, looking up at Merrow. Looking up to Merrow. That merl, dressed in a beautiful silk gown, surrounded by Jani?ari, protected from the cruelties of the world by her powerful mother, seemed so innocent and naive to her now, a child—one who’d lived in a world made for her, not by her. By decisions made for her. Under Merrow’s many decrees.

Part of Sera still felt like that child, and still longed for the strength and wisdom of her mother. But another, braver part realized that childhood was over and that she’d have to find her own way through this, just as she’d been finding her way ever since she’d fled Cerulea.