“Yes,” I say. “Is there an entrance?”
“Like I told the other sea boy,” Felix says. “The ladies of the oracle came above ground. Creepy little girls they are. They took away the entrance right in the church. Nothing but rocks in that tunnel now.”
We shift in our seats. I’m sweating against the leather chair. The walls of the tent seem to be getting smaller. “Wait, what sea boy?”
“Like I says,” Felix drains his cup and refills it. “Last two days I’ve seen more sea folk than in my whole life. Just last night, a second ship’s crew came in. Stumbling down the dock bold as you please, drunk as worms in a pirate’s belly.”
“Are they still here?” I stand abruptly.
“Was he wearing anything?” Kurt pats his chest. “Any symbols?”
“Aye, the serious one came first, three nights ago. Left as angry as he’d arrived. He had a medallion with a sort of octopus. They’re long gone.”
“That’s Adaro,” Gwen says. “That’s his family’s crest.”
“The others, they were here this morning, naked on the beach all of them! Talked about a championship of sorts. Came around to my shop asking for the town pub, though I dare say after last night, they don’t need it.”
It’s like I’m in a boxing ring getting the snot beat out of me. Bam! There’s an oracle. Bam! You can’t get to her. Bam! Others just like you got here first. Bam!
“Will you show us where this pub is?” I reach into my pocket and pull out some gold coins.
Kurt adjusts the sheath around his hip. “What are you thinking?”
“If it’s another champion,” I say, “I want to know their progress. Don’t you?”
He seems hesitant but says, “I suppose.”
“Your gold’s no good to me, Tristan.” Felix pushes my hand away. “It is I who owe you a gift. I have just the thing!”
He stands from the crate he’s sitting on and shifts objects around until he finds a box about six inches wide. Like a good salesman, he opens the lid with a flourish of his hand and waits for our reaction.
My initial thought is: what am I supposed to do with a bunch of tennis ball sized pearls?
Then Thalia cries out. “Are those sea-horse eggs?”
“Very good,” Felix says. “Though, without the father, about as useful as a paperweight. Pretty, nonetheless.”
The only time I saw a sea horse, it wasn’t the tiny curled things that fit in a fish tank. He was huge, greedy, and slick with a long snout and fins for ears. He had great forelegs with talons and a great tail that curled back into his spine as my grandfather, the Sea King, fed him. His name is Atticus, supposedly the last of his kind, and he belongs to Thalia.
I hand her the box, and the sheer happiness on her face makes the fox bite worth it.
“So…” I stand, holding out my hand for Felix to take. “Will you take us?”
Felix chuckles giddily. Suddenly I can picture him running around a ship searching for his Infinite Abyss. He makes sure his crates are locked and waves to us over his shoulder.
Wind blows through the tent flaps, carrying with it the chatter of the market and the sudden blare of instruments. Felix leads us out of the tent into the red glow of the sunset and the chime of the cathedral bells.
I wonder who it is,” Kurt says, matching my pace beside me.
“And how the champion could reach her if the two entrances are blocked.”
“That’s the end of the world question.”
We weave through the market crowd fairly unnoticed. A woman in a bright dress tries to pull me into the dancing in front of the church, but I pull away and keep my eyes on the road.
Felix walks with Thalia up ahead, probably discussing sea-horse eggs, behind a silent Layla and Gwen who take turns glancing over their shoulders at me.
Past the church, up the hill we go. I remember the jagged coast as we docked. Up close, the houses lean against each other for support. Everyone, it seems, is leaving their homes and heading to a celebration in the square. Couples holding hands. Families with their children. It all turns my stomach into knots. What if I’m too late?
“Why won’t you tell us about her?” I ask abruptly. Despite Kurt being my ally, he’s still such a mystery. I know that when their parents died, Kurt left Thalia at court. His journey brought him to this oracle who led him into slaying dragons to avenge his parents’ deaths. Thalia said he’s tight-lipped about it. Then he returned and resumed his life at court and in the guard until my grandfather charged him with my protection.
Kurt keeps his eyes on the road. “I told you what to gift her, didn’t I?”
My hand goes to the bag of glittering rough-cut jewels in my pocket. “I mean, like what to expect.”
“That I can’t do.”
“Why?”
“Because no two experiences are the same.”
He goes quiet again. The more we climb the hill, the better view we have of the sunset, the ships waiting in the shadows of the dock, the white surf crashing against jagged rock.
“Here we are.” Felix stops in front of beat-up double doors that belong to a saloon right out of a Western. “I ought to warn you. Do not offer nothing you won’t want to part with, and that includes your personal limbs. Do not gamble with fishermen, unless you’re seasoned, like yours truly. Most importantly, tip Reggie the barkeep. He’s part troll and can have quite a temper on him.”
“Are you not coming in?” Thalia asks.
Felix shakes his head. “Me wife’s making meatballs.”
I hold my hand out to him again. “I can’t thank you enough.”
Felix pats my hand, ready to go back to his regular life, to his wife, to a supper to come home to. I wonder if their conversation will start: “How was your day, dear?” Then I’ll become a memory, the guy who saved him a few bucks on his inventory. That’s what all of these things are, memories.
“Fair seas to you, my boy,” he tells me.
•••
My thoughts are all in knots going into the dimly lit Kraken’s Tooth. The walls are all brick, stacked together with black cement that oozes between the red. On the ceiling is a taxidermied beast.
I wonder if it’s the kraken the bar is named after. It’s arresting, with giant tentacles frozen in great curls like it’s crawling across the ceiling. The fury still captured in the creature’s eye gives me the creeps, like it will unfreeze here and now and swallow us whole. If I were him, I’d start on whoever is making that tinkering noise.
I wouldn’t exactly call it music. In the corner, a slender woman in a lace dress plays a makeshift piano. The keys are flat stones pulling on exposed rusty cords.
As we all file into the tavern, there’s a shift in temperature. The coolness of the sunset is replaced by the humidity of bodies crammed into one place. Their emotions are raging, which adds to the queasiness in my gut. I prefer the super senses underwater, thanks. Between the smells of beer sloshing in puddles on the creaky wooden floor, the sea salt and sweat that permeate these sailors’ skins, lily-weed and bubbly sea mead, there’s something else. I can’t single it out and I start doing what no self-respecting New Yorker ever does—I stare.
I’m staring too long at the fishermen playing cards while drinking amber liquid from dirty, chipped glasses. They could use a bath or a shave or eyedrops because their eyes are so red. One with graying hair and skinny scars around his eye, like the points of a compass, stares back at me. He licks his ringed fingers, looks down to shuffle his cards, looks back up at me.
Gwen pulls me closer to the bar. “Get over here.”
I pat my dagger for the familiarity of it.
Kurt walks the length of the room, searching for the same thing I am—great, big, glaring mermen with their entourages. So far, there are plenty of fishermen and wimpy young pirates trying to make out with some fairy girls, but no champions. He takes a barstool beside me. “They aren’t here.”
“Really?” I mutter. “I hadn’t noticed.”
<
br /> A tiny part of me is glad. The knot tying my insides starts to loosen. What would I have even said to someone like Dylan if I saw him again? Hey, good to see you? Say, I know we’re both searching for the same trident pieces, but let’s compare notes. Your family probably has tons of resources, while I have a group of friends who might kill each other before the night is over.
“There has to be another way down,” I say.
“You heard Felix,” Layla counters. “The oracle police closed whatever entryway there was, and you blew up the other. Kurt, what do you think? You’re the only one who’s ever seen her.” Kurt contemplates this for a while. In our conspicuous cluster of barstools, he pinches his chin thoughtfully. “I-I don’t know.” And there it is.
Kurt, my greatest source of knowing, says he, in fact, doesn’t know. Before I have time to wallow in my premature defeat, Gwen literally smacks me. “You’re all looking at this wrong.” I rub the sting on my cheek. “Enlighten us, princess.”
“So other champions are gallivanting around this goddess-forsaken cove of creatures that have nowhere to go? That doesn’t mean they’ve found her. They don’t seem to be trying very hard if they’re seducing locals and showing up in this shabby hole.”
“What are you suggesting we do?” Kurt’s seething through his teeth. “Sit here awhile and make friends with the locals some more?” Her smile is stunning, bright as the sun yet somehow still cold.
“That’s precisely what I mean. Your problem is that you’ve got a giant spear up your—”
“Gwen—”
“What I mean is, your approach to everything is to stab it.
Tristan doesn’t need that. His actions brought him to Felix, which brought us here. All the creatures on this cove are linked, the way we are on Toliss and at the Glass Castle. Let’s see, for a moment, if there is anything worth finding out before we storm the city, shall we?”
“She’s right,” Thalia says quietly, sitting on the side where she’s turning an opal egg between her hands.
That smell is driving me crazy. I thought I sensed it in the market, but I disregarded it as incense and smoke from the tents. I smack my hands on the bar top. “You guys can’t tell me you don’t smell that?”
“What’s wrong?” Layla asks, pulling on my pinky the way she did when we were little. All, “Come on, Tristan, keep up.” “There’s a certain scent—” I look to Kurt and Thalia. They should smell it too.
“I think it’s the liquid freezing the kraken,” Thalia says. I close my eyes. Concentrate on singling it out. There’s dew in the wood arches of the ceiling. It must have rained just before we got here. I find the smell of the chemicals in the beast above, but no, that’s not it. There’s the sweet burn of molasses from the greedy fishermen and lusting pirates. That’s not it either. Maybe I’m imagining it.
“Never mind.” I open my eyes again, wishing they wouldn’t look at me as if I were seconds away from getting committed. The tavern vibrates as Reggie, the half-man, half-troll barkeep, stomps from the far end of the bar to us. My head reaches his nipples, which are barely covered by a thick leather vest. And here I thought trolls were supposed to be little and hairy. I used to have tons, with their pointy tufts of multicolored hair and tiny jewels in their bellies. Actually, they were Layla’s. Yeah, Layla’s.
“You gonna order or sit there looking pretty for us?” says the troll man.
“Order,” I say.
Reggie lines up glasses in front of us, doesn’t ask what we want but starts pouring the familiar green bubbly. Except for Layla. He gives her something that smells like roses. Kurt takes some coins out of his pocket and lets them cluster on the table. Reggie scoops them up like jacks and weighs them in his sausage-y palm. Satisfied, he leaves us to our drinks.
“What the hell is this?” Layla asks. She sniffs the glass but doesn’t take a sip. “Perfume?”
Thalia takes the flute glass from Layla’s fingers. “It won’t kill you.” “Milk of the rose,” Gwen says, pursing her lips at our ignorance. “All the princesses like to drink it, of course. Better than the disgusting burping you get from sea mead.” She arcs her back and snaps her fingers at the trollish bartender.
“What are you doing?” Layla whispers.
All we need is for Reggie to snap at us and we’ll never get any information.
Gwen smirks with her pretty pink mouth. Reggie takes her in for a moment, and whatever he sees in her eyes, he seems to decide he doesn’t want to argue with her. The movement, the command, the way he switches her drink without ever asking why. It’s all impressive. It’s so very Gwen.
I lean into her ear and whisper, “What did you do, bewitch him?” She elbows me jokingly and says to us, “Sometimes you have to show your claws a bit. Try it.”
“I don’t have any claws,” I say.
She glances back at the gambling fishermen, then back at me.
“Grow some.”
“Are you quite finished?” Kurt asks.
Gwen touches his nose with her fingertip. “You’re no fun, Kurtomathetis.”
“You’re not helpful, Princess Gwenivere.”
“Oh, many pardons, Kurtomathetis,” she says, taking a dainty sip from the flute. “Best make myself helpful.”
I don’t even want to ask what she’s doing. Gwen takes on a charm she hasn’t shown any of us the past two days. Or ever. “Reggie!” her voice is as delicate as crystal, rid of the dry edge she uses on Kurt.
I don’t know anything about trolls, but now I know that when they blush, they look like they’re farting. His face is scrunched up, sinking into his shoulders. If he were a turtle, his neck would’ve popped back into his shell. He comes back to our side of the bar. “M-me?”
Layla rolls her eyes as Gwen reaches out a slender hand to lightly graze Reggie’s hairy arm.
“Of course, you,” Gwen says. “We were just looking for our friends. They might look like these strapping young men—” she nods to Kurt and me “—probably lascivious and followed by many, many, beautiful girls.”
Okay, I get it. All the other champions have a bunch of princesses following them around, and I have Layla, Thalia, and Gwen.
But I like it that way. I do.
Whatever she’s said has broken the spell. Reggie stands up straight again. His face is stony, defensive, and pissed off. It’s the same realization Felix had in his tent when he figured out we were merpeople without tails. Only, Reggie isn’t quite as excited. It’s the look of the owl-faced woman who shooed us away. Fazya’s scorn. “Yeah, they was here. Pain-in-my-asses.”
Thalia snorts. “Plural?”
I stand in front of her and hold my arm out. “Were they really that bad?”
He thumbs at the beast of the ceiling. “Tried to take down Daisy up there.”
Layla giggles. “You named your giant octopus Daisy?” “She’s a kraken! There’s a difference, dontcha know? Was a right fine golden color when we caught her. Pity what the years is done to her.” Then as if remembering why he was angry at us for being merpeople, he frowns again. “Thought it’d be funny to set it back in the wilds of the sea! Don’t care for sea folk, I don’t. Wreaking havoc all over the cove with their ships and tricksy devil girls.” Gwen scoffs and Layla sniggers at the implication.
But Reggie’s not done with the mer hate. I’m starting not to care for it, either. He looks down at my drink, which is untouched, then back at me. It’s not my fault all the other merpeople didn’t exactly behave. I’m like, “Yes?”
He picks up my drink and sets it back down. “Not good enough for you?”
I can’t handle my drink. Not even one, so I try not to do it. But I’m not about to tell Reggie the troll man that. “Just watching my carbs, dude.”
He wants to smile but he doesn’t. “Which one is you, then?” “What do you mean?” I say, imitating polite Kurt as well as I can. “Did I stutter? The champions. Which. One. Is. You?” “What makes you think I’m one of the champions?” Though I can’t help b
ut puff out my chest and straighten my back. You better believe I’m a champion.
Now Reggie lets himself laugh. “Your ass reeks of your glittery mermaid shit.” He spits on the floor.
Layla lets out a booming laugh, which no mermaid or merdude present wholly appreciates.
“I’m all merman, Reggie.” I start to point at him but think better of it. I think I’ll need the use of my fingers in the future. “How many?” Thalia asks sweetly at the same time Kurt briskly asks, “Do you know where they’ve gone?”
The troll man smiles with surprisingly perfect teeth. He shakes his head and busies himself drying chipped glassware. “You’re all the same, you know. Mum always said the sea folk are responsible for their own downfall. Said your concern is about your secrets.
That’s what’s important to you. In the end, the secrets are what’s going to do you in.”
My temperature rises. I haven’t been a merman for very long, but no one dogs on my people. “Do you always listen to what your mom says?”
“It’s why I’m still alive,” he says proudly.
Just then we all start thinking of our mothers, or something, because we get real quiet. What did my mom say to me? She said she wasn’t going to stop me from choosing this. She didn’t exactly plead for me to stay home. Did she think I didn’t have a choice? Maybe I remind her too much of the life she was trying to get away from. I think of her kind eyes. Her lullabies that sang me to sleep until I was too cool for it, and suddenly I don’t mind this music so much.
Reggie scoffs at me and starts walking away, and I realize if my mom were here, she wouldn’t be a dick to him. She’d be his friend.
Like Gwen is doing now. Minus the flirting. I hope.
“Wait. I’m sorry.” I reach over the bar to touch his hand. Note: Trolls don’t want their hands touched.
I retract it immediately.
“What is it, then?”
I push the drink away. “If I drink this, I’ll pass out. Got any orange juice?”
The Savage Blue Page 5