Stone Heart (The Cursed Seas Collection)

by Pauline Creeden

  After I secured a position around a tree, I spun around to the other side to peer out and search for the wolf. A cold wet nose touched mine and I peered into its one golden eye. I swallowed a scream as I jerked back. He snapped his jaws at me, catching the end of my hair and tearing a few strands lose.

  Too close. Way too close.

  Blood and clear, viscous fluid streamed from the eye socket I’d injured. Whimpers intermingled with its growls. I needed to kill the wolf quickly. I hated seeing an animal suffer and although the wolf was some weird monster, it was just trying to survive, and we looked like food.

  “You still alive?” Kane asked from above me.

  “Where are you hiding?” I called up but didn't risk a glance away from the animal in front of me.

  “In the trees,” he answered.

  Well, clearly one of us could climb trees.

  Wolf’s blood dripped down the blade and onto my hand, making my grip slip. I wiped the blood on my hand and the knife off on a big leaf beside me. Once finished, my grip tightened, slightly sticky, but no longer slick.

  Okay. It was now or never.

  I edged around the tree, just as the wolf’s tail disappeared behind another tree. I darted in the direction of the wolf but miscalculated and slid on some leaves past it. The wolf spun and snapped his jaws. Heat surrounded me, making me gasp and throw myself away from the source.

  The wolf yelped in pain.

  I turned and found the wolf’s face covered in flames. He rubbed his face on the ground, trying to put them out.

  Fire? Had that been from Kane?

  I ran forward, while the wolf was distracted, and stabbed the knife into the back of his head, right at the base of his skull and before the quills along its back. I wasn’t certain how the wolf was built, but I imagined that would be a vulnerable spot as it would be on most of the animals that I’d encountered under the sea. Thankfully, I was right. The wolf crumpled to the ground, dead.

  I jerked the knife from his body, walked several trees away, and then cleaned off the blade before returning it to its holster. Sadness overwhelmed me. I hated to kill the beast, but it hadn’t given me a choice.

  Kane dropped down beside me and leaned on his staff. “That was either the bravest thing I have ever seen or the stupidest. I’m not sure which.”

  I frowned at him, wiping dirt from my shirt. “Did you use your magic? The fire?”

  “Yes,” he said but then turned and started walking again, heading the same direction we were traveling before.

  I rushed to catch up, peering toward the ground to see if anything had fallen from my pack. When I caught up, I said, “Thank you.”

  But he didn’t respond.

  This was becoming a thing with him. He was so quiet all the time, and even if I asked him a question, he ignored me mostly. I sighed and followed him, still remembering the look of pain in the wolf’s golden eye. Would things be different once we found the stone? Would animals go back to being like they were before the world started changing—more like they were in the pictures I’d seen? Even underwater, the sea animals had gotten bigger and more gruesome than I’d even remembered as a child. Each year, things seemed to get worse. And those sharks who’d made it past the barriers, would they just be the beginning of things getting worse? We really did need to find the stone.

  We walked for half of the day and finally made it out of the jungle when the sun was at its zenith overhead. Just beyond the jungle lay a flat, dusty land. A few bricks strewn randomly throughout the area in piles. Some partial walls still stood.

  “This used to be a city,” I whispered, and crouched beside one of the piles.

  “Yes,” Kane agreed. “It was once a huge city with thousands of people.”

  “And, now they’re all dead.” I swallowed and picked up one of the bricks. The edges of it crumbled in my hand. My throat suddenly felt dry.

  “Yes.”

  “This will be us, if we don’t find the stone,” I said, standing and turning to face Kane. “I know we don’t want to do this, but I don’t want to die like these people and end up forgotten.”

  Kane didn’t say anything He just looked at me.

  I turned away and headed across the dusty land. The places of vegetation on land were filled with dangerous beasts, but before us stood dry lands that had no vegetation or any life at all as far as I could see. Would the stone be out there? We had no idea where the stone would be. We just had to search for it and it could be anywhere. The word that came to both our clans was that the stone was what could heal our lands, but it didn't tell us where it was, what it looked like, or even how to use it to heal our lands exactly. Why did everything have to be so vague?

  “We should head towards the mountain range over there,” Kane said, and pointed with his staff at mountains in the distance. “They will give us a high vantage point which will allow us to see if there are any craters.”

  “Why do we want to find craters?” I frowned up at him.

  “Because craters will show us where meteors fell.” He shook his head and started walking toward the mountains.

  “But what if the stone is on one of the nearby islands? It could be anywhere.” I rushed to keep up with his pace.

  He slowed as if my words suddenly made him unsure of himself. “It could.”

  His brown eyes remained fixed in the distance as he walked. He didn’t look my direction even as I found myself studying the lines of his face again. He didn’t know anything more about what we were doing or where we were going than I did. Why did we need both a mage and a siren for this journey? It only made sense that part of it would be on land as well as the island.

  I pulled my gaze away from staring at him and sighed. “So, we check from the mountain range, and then find some way to cross the ocean and check the islands?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  I put my hands on my hips and spun around in front of him, making him stop. “Why are you so blasé about this?”

  He leaned on his staff, looking incredibly bored. “Blasé?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I get you don’t want to be here, but you just act like you don’t give a crap at all.”

  “I don’t,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’m tired of the way the elders run the mages. I don’t like the way they treat it like it’s a religion. Yes, we have magic, but there are no gods to worship.”

  “You don’t know that for certain,” I pointed out.

  “If there were gods, they wouldn’t have let this happen,” he said, and turned away, resuming his walk with tensed shoulders. “And if there are gods, and they let this happen, they don’t deserve to be worshiped.”

  I didn’t really believe in gods, but there was always the chance that some existed, and I would rather not piss them off. Just in case.

  “Why not change the mages then?” I asked, skipping to catch up again.

  “I’m the minority on the topic. The others are so freaking brainwashed that they aren’t capable of having an original thought.”

  That was pretty harsh a judgment. But, as I thought about it, it sort of fit a lot of the sirens, too.

  “I think it’s because everyone is scared,” I said softly.

  His steps slowed as he for me to catch up. He looked down at me. “What?”

  “I think everyone is just scared of the unknown, and they need this order. There is no balance in the world. We’re losing our lands, more monstrous creatures are appearing, and there are pirates on the seas. If they don’t have order, they’d be crippled with anxiety. Having someone tell them what to do takes the worry away from them. They don’t have to think or make decisions, aside from mundane ones. They just have to go about their lives and follow the rules. Everything becomes someone else’s responsibility that way.”

  I stopped and scowled. So, what did that say about me?

  “Which makes you and I an exception,” Kane said.

  “Or crazy,” I mumbled.

  He chuckled. “You did tak
e on a giant wolf-porcupine thing with just a tiny knife. That would definitely be considered crazy.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to be eaten,” I said and then looked up at him. “I was serious earlier. How do I make myself less appetizing?”

  He didn’t respond, just laughed, shook his head, and continued walking.

  I followed, since his plan was better than my lack-of-a-plan. I stayed just a step behind him, giving him some space, but keeping close in case something else tried to eat me. The sky overhead was covered with clouds that seemed to be made from the same orange dust that swirled around us. At least the ground under our feet was solid and didn’t slip with each step the way the sand in the desert area did. Everything was so lonely and quiet as we walked for the remainder of the afternoon with no life surrounding us at all. I wanted to hum, or sing, but I didn’t want to draw attention to our position in case some kind of animal lurked out here that wasn’t easily visible. There could be more wolfcupines around, hiding on the other side of a dusty wall, just looking for a tasty snack.

  “You alive?” Kane asked, glancing back at me.

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”

  “This is the longest you’ve been quiet since we met, so I just wanted to check,” he said, facing forward again.

  I stuck my tongue out at his back. “Just trying to be quiet so nothing else tries to eat me.”

  He chuckled softly and then went silent again. We walked until the sun set, and then Kane found a spot for us to sleep in the corner between some walls, so we didn’t need to worry about every direction. Since there were just two of us, we were sharing a tent and a sleeping sack. Normally, I would have objected, but I didn’t want to be alone in a tent of my own. I might get snapped up by a wolfcupine and Kane wouldn’t know until the next morning.

  I helped him set up the tent and spread out the sleeping sack, and then we sat in front of the encampment, chewing on some dried meat.

  “Tell me about your home,” Kane said softly, looking at me from over the top of his meat.

  I blinked at him. He actually wanted me to talk?

  “We have buildings along the bottom of the ocean floor. There’s a barrier set up, but it’s starting to fail.” I knew it was a crappy explanation, but I was starting to understand the absolute improbability of us finding the stone. We would be searching until we died. And, how we died wasn’t likely to be from old age.

  “Did you live alone?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Pretty much.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My father was sent out twelve years ago to find the stone. He never came back,” I admitted. “My mother spends as little of her time sober as possible. Although technically we live in the same home, she’s almost never there.”

  “You weren’t mated yet?” His curious eyes sparkled in the moonlight.

  I scoffed. “No. What about you?”

  He shrugged. “I was considering one girl a few years ago, but she was more brainwashed than the others and it drove me crazy to hear her praising the elders and the gods all the time.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead. Killed a few years apart by some animal in the jungle while on gathering runs.” He said it with a shrug, like he didn’t care, but his eyes were avoiding mine now.

  “You miss them?” I asked.

  He sighed, leaning back on his hands. “Sometimes. Other times I’m glad they aren’t here to see how far we’ve fallen even since they died.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I remained silent, chewing on the meat in my hand.

  “If we find the stone, are you going to return home?” Kane asked, his gaze returning to mine again. His jaw tensed and relaxed as he chewed the meat.

  I chuckled, mirthlessly. “I don’t know. I want to be able to rub their noses in it, but it’s not like I ever felt like I belonged there. Maybe, if we find the stone and the threats are gone, I will find a nice little island to call home.”

  “Cut yourself off from humanity?” The smallest smile played on his lips.

  I nodded, swallowing the last bit of food. “Yeah. That sounds lovely, doesn’t it?”

  His smile widened, exposing a dimple, and it did strange things to my stomach and chest at the same time. “It does, actually.”

  We went to sleep shortly afterward with our backs to each other. Despite my worry over animals sneaking into our tent, I slept soundly.

  “Favorite color?” I asked Kane. Everything was so orange and boring, but at least no dangers had presented themselves to us. Still it seemed that every direction looked the same, until we reached a wooded area again. I’d grown tired of the silence a few hours into our day and had started asking him random questions. He groaned at first, but played along.

  “Blue.” He kept each answer short, and never asked me questions in return, but it didn’t matter to me. I looked back at the orange land we just left, happy to see greens and blues again, myself.

  “Blue like the sky? Or blue like the ocean?”

  “Ocean,” he said, pushing a branch out of his way. He let it go, and it almost hit me in the face.

  I ducked under it and asked, “Seafood or land animals for meat?” I asked.

  He glanced at me. “What?”

  “Do you prefer meat from sea animals or from land animals?”

  He turned back around and started on a path that would lead us to the mountain we were trying to reach. “Land animal meat is easier to dry and stays edible longer.”

  “I’m asking about taste.” I peered up at the mountain ahead of us. There were sparse trees growing along the sides of the path we took which was narrow, like an animal trail. It wound around rocks and my thighs started to complain about the gentle upward climb.

  “Fish,” he finally said.

  “Jungle or mountains?” My breath started coming out in pants a bit at the exertion.

  He sighed. “Neither.”

  I was quiet for a short while, concentrating on the climb upward, watching for the little rocks in the path that wanted to twist my ankle as we went. Each step became more tiresome. Part way up, Kane sat on a rock and waited for me, pulling out his canteen. After taking a quick sip, he gestured it toward me to take a swig as well. I drank a bit, not realizing how thirsty I’d gotten. I wiped the sweat from my brow and watched him for a moment. Not one bead of sweat glistened on his dark skin. How did he do that? He never seemed to tire no matter how far we walked. He stood once more and started walking on the path again. I followed, happy we at least had the short breather.

  “Ocean or land?”

  “Land.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t know the ocean well, but I’ve heard even the best swimmers can be pulled under and drown.”

  I nodded. “Undercurrents are a bear.”

  “What are they?” he asked, turning around so I could see the side of his face. He shaded his eyes and looked out toward the ocean. We weren’t high enough yet to get a good view, but I could see a strip of blue along the horizon. It gave me the slightest longing for home.

  “It’s a current beneath the top of the water, going in a different direction. So, let’s say the water on the surface is going east then the undercurrent is going south. You go too far down, and that undercurrent drags you away. They’re fast and deadly.” At least I was finally talking about something I was familiar with.

  “Good to know.” He nodded, and then started the trek upward once more.

  I skipped to catch up with him. “Day or night?”

  He sighed, and his shoulders slumped a little. “Are you going to ask questions all day?”

  “I’ve got nothing else to do.” Part of me wondered if I annoyed him, but another part of me didn’t care much. “I could sing, but that would draw every predator’s attention for miles.”

  “Your talking doesn’t draw them, but your singing would?” he asked, stopping again to face me with one eyebrow lifted.

  I smiled. “Wel
l, my singing sounds like a dying seal, or so I’ve been told.”

  His lips twitched and after a moment, he burst into laughter, shaking his head. “You always surprise me.”

  “Happy to help,” I said, and offered a little bow. “At least one of us should be entertained on our voyage into the unknown.”

  We continued upward, and breathing became a little more difficult. The air felt thinner and colder in my lungs, and my ears popped. Once we reached the top, we could see to both sides of the mountain, all the way back toward the jungle we'd trekked before making it to the ruined city. And beyond that, we could see the ocean. I sank onto a boulder nearby, my muscles burning from the uphill climb. At least we didn’t need to go any higher.

  He nodded. “I’m going to find a tree to climb and try to get a good view of the area.”

  “Happy climbing.” I had no intention of going farther. I pulled off my shoes to rub my sore feet. I had no idea walking could hurt so much. I missed the water and the currents that pushed me along with minimal effort.

  Kane set his staff at the base of the tree he chose and began climbing. The muscles in his legs and arms strained as he pulled himself upward. He seemed to expend as little energy as possible when he was around me, so it was easy to forget how strong and capable he actually was. The trees around us were fewer and not many of them grew very tall in the surrounding area. Kane had picked the tallest one and seemed to be making good progress on his climb.

  “Don’t fall!” I called up to him when he reached the halfway point.

  “Thanks for the advice,” he called down to me. “Try not to get eaten.”

  I growled, mumbling some of my favorite insults too low for him to hear. He disappeared into the thick foliage, and I realized how quiet the mountain was around us. Were the animals quiet because of us or was there a larger predator nearby. My heart quickened at the thought, and my hair began to stand on end.

  “Kane?” I called up to him.

  No response.

  Caracas!

  Had something snatched him from up above? There had been snakes in the trees in the jungle. What if there were predators like that here... or worse? What if something that was lizard and bird had gotten him? What if it was a giant bird with razor-like talons? My mind began spinning with all the possibilities, and anxiety twisted my stomach.