No, he just needed to enjoy himself for a bit, then he’d be back.
But my stomach twisted with worry and I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Aven!” Nothing, just me and the wind. “Aven!”
A dark form passed beneath the water’s surface, too far away for me to quite make out. A seal? I took another tiny step forward. Water brushed against the toes of my boots. “Aven?”
“Are you coming?” he asked, breaking from below the surface in the distance and raking wet hair from his eyes. It shone in the sunlight like his sealskin with every movement, everything about him sleek and strong and sure. When I didn’t answer, voice caught in my throat, he came closer, seawater streaking down the planes of his thin body. Not quite as thin as when we’d met; leaving that village had done him a world of good. “Why are you staring at me like that?”
A glint in his eyes said he had an idea of why, and I looked away. “Is the…is the passing here?”
“The passing? No, just the barrier. You can’t dive into any water and hope to come up in the Realm of Tides. But I figured a swim wouldn’t hurt.”
He was entitled to a swim. “Alright.” I shuffled back a bit, unsure of what to do now. Sit and wait? But he followed with a grin.
“No, no, you aren’t going to stay dry on this beach when there’s a gorgeous ocean waiting.”
I shook my head, eyeing the sparkling water. I could appreciate its beauty, its familiarity, but from a distance. “I’m alright. I don’t need a swim.”
“You’ve been in the woods for days, Hania. Those summer rains are nice, but can’t compare. Just a dip. Clean off.” The waves crashed between us. Aven stood waist-deep, waiting. But I took another step back. He tilted his head and laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the water?”
“Not of water,” I snapped, but my voice quieted when his amusement faded. “My…my mother drowned.”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes softened, and he stepped closer, water swishing around him in little white crests, and held out one hand to me. I stared at it. “There’s no safer way to swim than with a selkie, I promise. There’s nothing here to be scared of.”
I looked from Aven to the ocean stretching beyond, on and on to the horizon, and then to his waiting hand. The part of the deal that helped him was over. He had no real reason to stay with me beyond keeping his word, and he was a tidesperson. What guarantee did I have that this wasn’t a trap? What guarantee did I have that I could trust him, despite everything he’d said? They were only pretty words.
Why did I trust him?
I unlaced my boots, kicking them to wait beside his. He kept watching. My heart pounded as I stepped across that invisible border to where the waves could reach. The sand sank beneath my feet, the damp rocks rolling, but I kept my balance. Water licked up my ankles and I trembled at its first touch, cold despite the warm summer air. Another step and I could reach Aven’s hand. I slid my fingers around his slowly, hyperaware of the soft slickness of his skin beneath mine and the rush of the water back and forth around me. He didn’t pull me, didn’t speak at all, just waited.
Another step forward, and another. The water crept up my bare legs, floating my skirt, but the chill eased the further I went.
It had been three years since I’d been in the ocean. In three years, all I’d been able to see when I looked out at it was my mother thrashing in the stormy waves, vanishing beneath them. Now I looked out and all I saw was Aven, stepping back to give me more room, blue eyes never straying from me.
Something beneath my feet shifted, and I was sure I would fall. I could see the waves crashing over my head as they had my mother’s, forcing the saltwater down my throat. Aven’s grip on my hand tightened, and I clung to the feeling, forcing myself to breathe and keep going. If I couldn’t even do this simple thing how could I be expected to make it through the Realm of Tides and save Tobin?
I stopped when he let go of my hand, drifting into deeper waters. “You can tread water, can’t you?” he asked.
I nodded but took a second to answer clear enough for him to hear. “Yes.”
“Then come on.” I stared after him, toes curling into the sand. “One more step, Hania. I won’t let you go under.”
I took it. The current tugged at me, pulling me toward Aven, and with a deep breath I let myself drift along with it. My arms and legs worked on their own, my childhood lessons kicking in. The waves pushed me but it was gentle.
Aven vanished below the water and reappeared beside me. The sunlight caught on droplets of water rolling down the slope of his nose, his jaw, like little jewels, and he smiled. “See? Harmless.”
Harmless. The first step to surviving the Realm of Tides. I knew I had about a thousand more to go, but I couldn’t think about them now. I relished in the small victory, closing my eyes against the bright sun and feeling the rhythm of the tide, the brush of water.
I could do this.
We needed to get going. We really needed to keep going, to find the passing, but I hadn’t been this comfortable in a long time. The sun beat down, warming me from head to toe. The sandy area we’d found to rest in was far softer than the rough, uneven ground of the forest and a welcome relief to my aching muscles. And Aven had proven himself much better at fishing than I was at hunting, and for the first time since leaving home my belly was full. It added to my exhaustion, lulling my eyelids closed and my mind into peaceful nothingness. But I knew it needed to end; there were more important things to do.
I couldn’t do much more than mumble, “We should go soon.” Aven gave a wordless sound of agreement but looked as half-asleep as I felt. He stretched on his back beside me, hands behind his head and looking like he could spend the rest of his life sunbathing there. “Aven.”
“It’s always work with you,” he muttered.
“What I’m doing is a little time-sensitive, remember?”
“Don’t worry, Hania, your brother can spare an hour for us to rest.”
He’d already spared more than an hour to let us swim and eat. It had been nice, I’d admit, letting myself relax and forget my worries—not to mention rather entertaining, watching safely from the shore as Aven had stalked fish and snatched them from the water in flashes of sealskin and swirling waves—but we couldn’t wait too long. Today marked five days in the Realm of Tides, and I didn’t know how long a human could be expected to survive there.
“Do you think he can wait an hour?”
“I don’t know,” Aven conceded. “But I do know that, at the risk of ruining my status as a gentleman—” I interrupted him with a scoff, and laughter lit up in his eyes but he continued, “I’m obligated to tell you that you shouldn’t enter the Realm of Tides until your dress is dry. There are more than a few people there who you’d catch the eyes of like that.”
I slapped his arm as hard as I could to hide the heat blazing in my face, and sat up to tug the still-damp fabric away from where it clung to my skin. “A gentleman would have pointed that out hours ago and given me something dry to wear.”
“A lady wouldn’t hit a wounded man.”
His shoulder hadn’t bothered him while he’d been swimming, so I found little sympathy to give. “She would if he deserved it.”
“Fine. Forgive my forwardness, milady.”
I couldn’t keep myself from laughing and shook my head. Sometimes I didn’t know what to do with him. “You are the most unpredictable person I’ve ever met. I can never tell if you want to kill me, help me, or flirt with me.”
He shrugged as he got to his feet, stretching both arms over his head. “It’s a gift.”
I chose not to comment on what I thought of his gift and scanned the quiet, rocky beach. We were well in between villages, far from prying eyes. Far from anybody at all. It was so peaceful, so calm, like a tiny paradise set aside for us to enjoy.
Would the Realm of Tides be like that? Quiet, like the quiet that lurked below the water? The quiet of endlessness?
The same quiet held darkness and d
angers too, my thoughts reminded me, and I tore my gaze from the soft waves lapping at the shore.
“The barrier runs along here?” I asked. Aven nodded, staring out to the ocean as I had been. I wondered what he saw or sensed there, if it was the same things I did or something I had no hope of understanding. “Are there any weak spots?”
“I’m not sure. I’m looking.”
I closed my eyes as I waited. If the barrier touched this place then it meant this beach had been cleaved apart and sewn back together by magic, changed forever with one spell. That it had once been a place where you could step into the land of the tidespeople. I didn’t have their magic, their tie to the barrier, but it was my world that had been broken apart, too.
But I felt nothing but the cool brush of the sea breeze. No pulse of magic.
When I opened my eyes, Aven was looking around us as if he could physically see the wall of magic separating our worlds, tracing some invisible ebb and flow of it with his eyes. I thought he might have found something, but then he shook his head. “We should camp here tonight. It’s safer than the forest.”
And that was that. I didn’t protest, something in his voice told me not to. I didn’t ask what he’d found in that search I couldn’t understand. But long after the sun had set, when I lay watching the crackle and dance of our fire and feeling my lids grow heavier by the second, he stayed awake, a flickering silhouette past the flames. I knew he was watching the water, but I couldn’t disturb him to ask why.
I was drowning.
My lungs burned, screaming for air. I clawed at my throat, fingernails digging into the soft skin. The water pressed down on me, so cold my body felt sluggish and numb. My hands shook. Salt ground its way into my wounds, sending stinging flashes of pain through me with every movement. My back hit something hard, unyielding, and I felt sand stir up around me in grainy clouds.
The ocean floor. I could go no further.
Up. I could go up.
I scrambled to make my feet, my hands, cooperate and push against the ground. Every surface they landed on slid and crumbled away, adding to the blinding murkiness of the water around me. If I could find a foothold, something to push off—
A rock. One of my bare feet scraped against it, and I swallowed a hiss of pain as it raked into my skin. A bit of red curled up into the gray and brown darkness, bright and terrible. But I kept pushing, pushing myself up, forcing my arms to work. To fly through the water, to snatch at that far-away glimmer of sunlight on the surface.
Something caught me. Something reached from the ground behind me, snagging at my dress and pulling me back. I thrashed, swatting at it, but found only empty water.
And then it was before me and a hand was at my throat, pushing me down, and my mouth opened of its own accord and let a scream bubble out. Water rushed down my throat as I drew the breath that would kill me, searing and scratching on its way down.
Up, up, up.
Air. I needed to get to the air. I needed to breathe—
I didn’t want to die like this. Not like my mother had, in the cold and dark, in a place where fear swallowed you whole.
The hand pinning me vanished and dark shapes floated around me, dancing through the water. I turned, trying to get a look at them, trying to decide if they would save me or finish the water’s job. Seals—dozens of seals circling me, watching me with blue eyes. I hauled myself toward them and shouted for their help, screamed. But the water had stolen my voice. My muscles clenched, turned to stone by cold and fear, and I couldn’t move. Couldn’t reach them.
Before my eyes they shifted, stalking toward me with the spines and fangs of the sellye, and I tried to scramble away. Tried, but my body was petrified, and when I turned through the dark water I saw the stormy eyes of the woman who had led the tidespeople through my village.
I bolted upright, gasping in the cool night air and letting it wash away the icy sweat sliding down my spine. Every inch of me trembled, and I sat and breathed, showing myself I could breathe, before I could move. I closed my eyes, tucking my head toward my knees, but those eyes swam into my mind and I flung my eyes open to chase them away.
The fire had gone out, leaving cooling ash. On the other side of it, I could see the shadowy form of Aven, asleep. Beyond him stretched the beach, turned silver by the moonlight, and then that glittering, jet-black expanse of water, only the gentle rocking of the tide stirring the surface. It blended as smooth as glass into the night sky, one massive, endless world of darkness and stars. I looked away, to where Inka wandered quietly near where the grass met the sand.
I couldn’t sit there. I needed to move, needed to do something. I got to my feet, fighting off the chill that raced through me, and stepped around the remains of the fire. The sand was cold beneath my feet and goosebumps chased up my arms, but I ignored them. They were better than being surrounded by that cold darkness and the desperate ache in my chest. At least the darkness here was open and gentle.
I stopped by Aven and watched him. Curiosity tugged me a step closer. He wouldn’t have liked it, probably, but he wasn’t awake to mind. I’d never seen him asleep. Even in the village—the prison—he’d stayed far from me at night. Protecting himself or granting me the privacy and illusion of safety from him I didn’t know, but I’d appreciated it at the time. Now I almost wished he’d slept closer tonight, if only for the sense of familiarity he brought with him.
I’d never seen him look so peaceful, either. I watched the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest, listened to the whispered rhythm of his breath, before I stepped away. Toward the water.
Tiny, night-dwelling things scuttled into the edges of shadows as I crossed the beach. I let them be. It was the water I was focused on, the pulse of it in and out, smooth and easy. Like a song it whispered to me.
I didn’t want that black water to touch me. I didn’t want to step into it, into the sea of ink and stars. I stood inches from its reach, staring. My hands trembled again.
I curled them into fists. I didn’t need to be afraid of it. I couldn’t be afraid of it.
The water had power, yes. The power to carve through stone, to bury a thousand lives and secrets, the power to take and give as it saw fit.
But I—I’d freed the one who commanded the water and the wind.
I stepped forward.
The water was far colder than it had been this afternoon, and I jumped when it rushed across my feet. It took a long moment to adjust to the temperature and take another step. The sand turned silken beneath me, between the sharp edges of rocks I felt my way around to avoid stumbling. It was so dark. So dark I couldn’t tell how deep it might become with every new step, what might be lurking out of sight and waiting for me to come near.
I pushed the thought out of my mind and replaced it with this afternoon. The sun glittering on the crests of the waves. Aven slicking his wet hair back and grinning at me. Warm and safe and, for the first time since the attack, pure fun. The ocean hadn’t changed since then.
My eyelids blinked as a shadow of something passing beneath the water ahead of me, and my insides tightened. The skin of some hunting creature catching the starlight? Maybe a ripple from a passing fish?
It came again, and this time I couldn’t keep myself from taking another step toward it. Not gray, like a reflection, blue. A wisp of cyan glinting on the surface.
The bright scales of some deep-dwelling fish luring a midnight snack; whoever might be stupid enough to venture into the ocean in the dead of night?
Another step, because I needed to know.
The water brushed along my knees, nipping at the hem of my dress. The color deepened, spreading. Not just a color, not a solid object beneath the surface, but a glow. A misty glow that spread and swirled and throbbed. Pulsed like it held a heartbeat. Like a light radiating from somewhere beneath the surface, rising and falling in time to some rhythm only it heard. Perhaps the rhythm of the tide, of the thrum of life through the world.
Or through another world.
<
br /> I stepped back, cursing under my breath when a rock sliced into the heel of my foot. I ignored the sharp pain and kept going. “Aven.” My voice came out a hoarse breath and I struggled to make it louder. “Aven.”
No sound. No rustle of movement from the selkie. My eyes stayed glued to the spreading light, drifting on the waves. My feet hit dry land.
“Aven!”
I felt him jolt awake from behind me, and in an instant he was beside me. I didn’t look at him—couldn’t look away from the water—but I could feel that he was tense, staring it down like I was. He didn’t speak, so I asked, “Is that…is that what I think it is?”
His answer came in a whisper. “I knew I liked this spot. That’s a passing.”
A passing.
A passing.
Passing, passing, passing. The word circled in my head as the meaning of it struck me.
We’d found a passing.
We could keep going.
To the Realm of Tides.
Aven watched it with bated breath, never looking to me as he spoke. “What happened?”
“I—I don’t know, it just…started.” Like the barrier had cracked, letting the Realm of Tides leak through bit by bit. The magic of it, the life.
He nodded once. “Get your things.”
“Now?”
“No time like the present. And underwater like that it’ll be much harder to find in daylight.”
I didn’t question him. He knew better than me on things like this. So I rushed to where I’d left my pack and checked that all was secure. My remaining supplies, the arrows, the bow. I pulled my boots on and laced them with unsteady fingers, fumbling at the speed, but stuck my knife firmly into my pack. I didn’t want to risk losing it.
Inka whinnied from the edge of the beach. My heart cracked at the sound, and I crossed to her. “It’s alright, girl,” I whispered, stroking her velvet-soft nose. Her dark eyes watched me. She couldn’t come with us and she knew it. She wouldn’t be looking at me like that, worried and restless, if she didn’t. “I’ll be alright. I promise.” She blew a warm, comforting breath into my palm. “You brought me this far. Your work is done. Thank you, Inka. Go home now.”
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