My mother turned to me. “Surely by now he is no longer alive, but his lineage, that of the others…they all must be protected.” She shook her head, her wide eyes pleading. “I didn’t tell you about his fate because I didn’t want you to have a lifetime consumed by war and revenge…like mine.”
I didn't have time to process any of this before Mara began barking her protest. “So in protecting your princess, you abandoned the Lawless. For centuries,” she echoed from the depths. I felt the push of the Queen’s Guard behind her in the refracting sound.
“Do you think you’re their savior?” I called into the deep green water. “Tell us, Mara. Is Dynah with you? Dynah of The Depths!” I echoed for her, knowing I would not get a reply. “You sliced her throat. You were ready to betray all the Lawless for your own gain, just like Mama Luz did to my mother all those years ago.“ I turned toward the horizon, toward the Lawless I couldn’t see, but knew had gathered. “Don’t you see? Mara would happily exchange all of you for a chance to return to land!”
“Desperate cries from a desperate, weak princess,” Mara echoed. I felt her advancing. The Guard moved with her, so I turned to face them.
“She betrayed Reed of The Shallows, one of our own lieutenants, to Mama Luz. She left him with her to die. Did she tell you that? When I came for him, she had promised Luz your loyalty in exchange for my capture. Ask yourselves… Are you willing to serve the Gnome Queen? To be slaves to a selfishness that has already cost too many lives?” I darted into the murky water, to Mara, stopping when we were eye to eye. “You will not enslave my people.”
“You had your chance to lead, Princess,” Mara echoed, gripping her short spear. “Now, you can die.”
She jabbed her spear into my stomach, in between the armored scales as we’d been trained by Shoal and Enoch. The wide planes of Mara’s face shifted from silver to black with the sudden violence, only returning to silver when she pulled the spear out.
“Cora!” Reed echoed. The rows of Mara’s small, needle-like teeth slowly faded into the dark waters as I drifted backward, still unsure of what just happened. My mind was racing, but it felt as if everything were retreating at the same time. Clouding. Vanishing.
Flashes of light electrified the sky again, followed by bellows of thunder that moved through my whole body. I drifted in the water, aware of movement all around me, but detached from it, like I was somehow invisible and powerless to affect it. It was so tempting to close my eyes and let it all slip away. To stop fighting a war that could never be one because my greatest enemy was never who I thought. It was never the Lawless or Mara or Mama Luz.
My greatest enemy all these years—the one who had played the role of leader but took the necessary risks…not really—had been me.
20
I heard my mother’s location echo calling desperately to me. It bounced off the waves until it found me, but I could tell she wouldn’t be able to follow it because she was cut off by the streams of mobilizing Lawless. Reed’s echo sounded next, but he, too, was cut off. Mara must have delivered the Guard to Mama Luz, and soon they would lead the Lawless toward land. Toward the humans.
I thought of the stories Nicholas told me of his people. Of Bev and those who lived in The Grind lands, forgotten, feared, and at best, tolerated beyond the gates of The Citadel…just like our Lawless. I closed my eyes under the weight of the thought. How had we lived all these centuries worlds apart, yet made so many of the same mistakes?
The pain in my stomach started to fade, and my clouded senses sharpened. I heard Reed’s location echo again, still cut off by the streams of Lawless who were creating countercurrents to the tide pummeling the shore.
I had to stop them. There had to be a way. I pushed forward, sounding my trajectory, then pushed harder, swam faster, and echoed loudly enough to rival the thunder until I broke through the skim. My stomach burned, but I stopped caring when I saw that Mama Luz’s ship was struggling to stay upright in the tossing sea. The Lawless were following her into the second wave of the storm, which was black and rolling on the horizon.
“Stop!” I echoed, my airborne voice barely audible in the thunder that continually shook the sky. If Paralda and Djin had been helping me, they seemed to have forgotten me now.
But I couldn’t go back to my protected world anymore and do nothing. I may have failed my own people by hiding behind boundary walls my entire life, but I would die before I failed Nicholas’s. It was what he would do. It was what leaders do.
I swam until the ache in my stomach became almost unbearable, but again, I pushed it away. If I had to arrive at the front lines of the Lawless with a school of sharks in my wake, that’s what I would do if it meant stopping Mama Luz.
The tide was strong, and I didn’t know how much longer I would be able to swim against it below the skim. I would never catch the front lines of the Lawless at this rate, so I began to cut the water like the dolphins, using the undertow of the pending waves to pull forward, breach, and dive again into the pull of the undertow. I could only hope Djin would be watching and would keep her Salamanders from electrocuting me in mid-breach like the hundreds of Lawless before me.
The rain pelted my back and tail as the clouds rolled, gathering and growling like something alive and hunting. I thought of Paralda and how very real that idea could be, which was comforting until I saw that even the massive gales she must have been creating were not enough to stop Mama Luz’s ship or the army of Lawless Undine following her toward the horizon.
But the wind had blown something else into view.
An enormous ship emerged from the storm, at least four times the size of Mama Luz’s barge. As the ship moved closer, I closed the rest of the distance even though it felt like one more jump would tear me in half. I had to get in front of the Lawless.
Mama Luz’s barge started to arc out of the way, but the white ship began firing on it anyway—firing on the Lawless in the water.
“No!” I echoed, launching toward it with the intent to sink it myself if it fired on the Undines again. I rammed the side of the hull, barely cracking it. Searing pain shot through my side, and I channeled the imminent cry into a command. “Stop! Or I will drag you to the bottom of the sea myself!” I wailed into the howling wind.
“Cora…?” Nicholas called down to me over the railing. I could barely hear him, barely see him, and wasn’t sure it really was him until I saw several deckhands rush to the railing and pull him back from it.
He was alive… I didn’t know how, but he was alive.
A rolling laughter, thick and heavy, filled the air. The wind lessened and the lighting fell into rivulets of St. Elmo’s Fire, which took the shape of countless Salamander Elementals lighting the sky. Tornado whips pulled from the clouds and shifted into the forms of long, wispy Sylphs. More Lawless surfaced from under the skim, and all eyes were on me.
“Well, it been a busy tree days fer ya, little princess…” Mama Luz’s voice surrounded me. “But I smell yer blood on de water.”
“I know all your lies, Ghob!” I echoed over the heads of the countless Lawless gathered in the water. “I know the story of your lies—how you let the Undine die just so you could have the world for yourself!”
Mama Luz laughed again. “De only ones who died was da ones already dead, my fishy!” she said, but I still couldn’t see her on her ship. “To and from da water of life dey went, toting it on der backs like slaves to dem new pets in da Garden dat I made. Eatin’ up all de fruits dat I made. We was gods, little princess! Da Mother made us gods, not slaves!”
A lifeboat started lowering down the side of Nicholas’s ship, and I glanced to find him fighting with two of the other men aboard. He pushed one away and hit the other one who was advancing on him again.
“Cora! Hold on!” he shouted as he jumped over the railing and landed hard in the boat. I started getting dizzy in the heave of the tide pushing me up from below, then disappearing and leaving me to crash back into the water.
“What wa
s wrong with helping them?” I echoed, the pain in my stomach sharpening again where Mara had stabbed me. I gripped a piece of the cracked hull for support and pressed my arm into the wound. “We were supposed to teach them!”
Mama Luz finally appeared on her deck, her dark braids blowing in every direction underneath her red scarf, which also whipped behind her in the breeze. She reached out to the sea with her strong, bared arms, the flowing green sleeves turning black with rain against her dark skin.
She laughed obnoxiously this time and let her head fall back. “Help dem…teach dem…” she mocked. “Ya not listenin’, water child!” She raised one arm to the sky. “Do ya tink deez sprites had da same burden as yer kind and mine? Deez smug little fairies flittin’ in de skies? Dey never seen Da Fadder’s pets destroy what dey make from der little cloud perches.”
“We gave you back The Garden, Ghob, or have you forgotten?” Djin said, her voice coming from a growing lightning storm low in the sky. She emerged from it, draped in the shifting colors of St. Elmo’s Fire, just like the Salamander who came to me before.
“Outta guilt! Guilt because ya knew my burden. It was de least to be done,” Mama Luz answered spitefully.
“And what of Necksa’s burden?” Paralda asked, moving toward us all from the center of three merging tornadoes. She held her long, thin face tightly as her white hair flared and faded into the clouds behind her. “You are not the tortured one here, Ghob.”
“Cora…Cora, can you hear me?” Nicholas said, the lifeboat just out of reach. Lawless snapped at the oars as he rowed to me as far as the rope still attached to the deck would allow. It was enough. I gripped the side of the boat, and he pulled me aboard. “Christ, Cora…” He pressed a cloth against my stomach and stared at me, somehow knowing the questions I couldn’t ask. “They came…the fire ones,” he said, showing me the ragged burn mark on his throat. “Then the wind ones came and brought me to land—to this ship, and back here…to you.”
It wasn’t more than a second later that the boat was rocked so hard I was thrown free, back into the water.
“It’s all right, Cora,” my mother echoed, the feeling of her voice warm and heavy all around me. Everything else stilled, even the waves. She pressed her hand to my stomach and light cleared the murky waters, revealing the leagues of stunned Lawless and schools of whales far in the distance.
My body went numb, but then felt warm again. Stronger.
I shot up through the skim, high above Mama Luz’s ship, and grabbed her arms on the way down. Her clay minions followed her as I pulled her into the sea, each of them crashing into the water around us. By the time their impact bubbles cleared, they were already dissolving, and soon, there was nothing left of them. I turned again to Mama Luz, her wide, electric grin beaming in the water before me. She laughed open-mouthed as bubbles escaped. I thought I would drown her, that it would be over, but my grip on her arms seemed to loosen as my fingers sank into her flesh.
Her long, dark braids turned to sand and washed away, followed by her ears, her shoulders, every piece of her dissolving to earth and leaving only her gaping, laughing mouth, which also finally disappeared along with the sound of her all-encompassing laughter.
“Coward!” I echoed, the sound ripping a hole in the length of Mama Luz’s barge and ricocheting off anything else in its path. The Lawless surrounding me parted, and I heard Nicholas in the distance. He was about to impale one of the Lawless with his oar as he straddled the capsized lifeboat.
“Nicholas! Stop!” I echoed, knowing he wouldn’t understand, but I hoped the screeching bird call would be enough to get his attention.
He looked up, and the Lawless he was about to kill knocked him into the water. I darted to him and righted the boat, commanding the siren he almost killed to back away from him.
She obeyed. In fact, all the Lawless backed away. The gnashing water evened and the dark, electric clouds rolled back behind the horizon.
“Cora!” Reed echoed. In his wake, Shoal and Enoch carried my mother to me. I dove into the water to them.
“What’s wrong? What happened to her?” I demanded. Her yellow, glowing eyes were dim, and her silver skin was dull and tacky with the same kind of white film Reed had aboard Mama Luz’s boat.
“She is passing, water child.” Paralda’s voice surrounded me. My mother’s hair dried in the warm breeze that accompanied it and draped over her long body. “She gave her immortality to heal you.”
“No! No…take it back! Give it back to her!” I demanded of the shimmering green and yellow light that surrounded her. “Djin! You healed Nicholas! Give it back to her!”
“Cora…” my mother said, reaching for me. I took her hand and held it to my chest.
“You’re going to be all right, Mother. Djin can heal you.”
“No, my dear…”
“Yes! She brought Nicholas back! I watched him die. She can help!”
My mother just smiled at me. “The only person who could heal me is you, Cora. And you’ve already done that.”
“No, I haven’t done anything. This is all happening because of me!”
“Yes…” My mother tried to laugh. “You’ve brought my sisters back to me. You’ve ended centuries of hatred and blame, Cora. And you have united our people,” she said, raising her eyes to the sea of Undine, Lawless and Royal Guard shoulder to shoulder. “You are their queen now. Their warrior queen. Lead them and protect them.”
“Mother… I’m not ready. Mother, no. No! Please…” I echoed.
“Believe, my child. Believe in yourself as I do. This is not the end… it is only a new beginning…”
The water lapped over her arms, which became white with foam. Slowly, she washed away from me, illuminated on the tide that had shifted direction in the breeze, the glow of St. Elmo’s Fire surrounding her until she disappeared in all directions of the vast, endless sea.
Epilogue
We would not be able to return to The Shallows. There were too many of us now. Mara had escaped any justice that could befall her, but that didn’t matter anymore. The Lawless had exiled her, which meant she would be killed on sight if she dared show her face again.
I wondered if she’d gone in search of Mama Luz, who was likely putting herself back together one grain of sand at a time. I didn’t know how long it would take before she surfaced again. I only knew she would, and it was my duty until the end of eternity to protect my people from her.
“Captain, the squadron is en route to escort the human Nicholas’s ship to the island, as you ordered,” one of the Guard lieutenants echoed to Reed, who nodded in acknowledgment before pulling away from Opal, leaving her with Shoal and Enoch to swim next to me.
“I would apologize to him for what I did if he could understand me…” Reed echoed quietly after a long pause.
“I know you would. But it’s in the past now.”
“It’s not, though, as much as I wish I could just leave it there.” He checked our distance from the Guard over his shoulder and turned back to me. “You should know, too, I would do it again, Cora…if the price of your life was his. I would do it again, even though he’s a good person.” I looked into his eyes, narrowed in sincerity as his silver brows drew together and his jaw tightened. “Even if the price of your life was mine.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but he nodded to me and swam ahead before I could even have the chance. I darted after him.
“Reed!” I echoed, hooking his arm. The way he looked at me was different, though. Distant. He was Captain of my Guard again, and I was his queen.
“Luz can track you now because of that thing that bit you. She has an advantage,” he warned, completely changing the subject. He didn’t meet my eyes, and I knew I would have to be content to let the other topic go. For now.
“Doctor Zee called what bit me a Feral,” I echoed, glancing at the outline of the scar left by the bite. I had to hope once we got back to Snake Island, he would know how to neutralize whatever made me trackable—t
hat he would know what to do about the monsters Mama Luz had already set loose in the world. But there were no guarantees, and I wasn’t sure how I would help Nicholas fight this war. I only knew that I would.
“Cora?” Reed echoed impatiently. “Did you hear me? Who’s Doctor Zee?” Several seconds passed before I found my way back into the moment, and I slowly realized I hadn’t told him the whole story of what happened on the island we were returning to now. I turned to Reed, and this time, he met my eyes briefly. “I mean, if you want to tell me…”
So much had happened since I’d left The Shallows the first time in pursuit of Reed, and I wasn’t sure what would happen once we made our way back to Snake Island with Nicholas. I didn’t know what the future held for humanity or for The Undines, but I was confident I could tell the story of how we had come to be here now.
“Of course I’ll tell you.” I smiled as I took his arm again. “In the beginning…”
A note from the author
Nervous Water is the prequel to Bad Seed, Book One of the dystopian / urban fantasy hybrid series, First Bloods (coming September, 2019).
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About the Author
Tracy Korn is a sci-fi / fantasy author and all around science geek who may or may not have a "Lip Smackers" chapstick addiction. When she's not inventing worlds (and subsequently saving them or wrecking them), she reads about other people doing it, practices her newbie cinematographer skills, and dreams of someday meeting James Cameron. To read more from Tracy Korn, visit her website at www.TracyKorn.com.
Kingdom of Salt and Sirens Page 59