The Savage Blue

by Zoraida Cordova

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.” I hook my finger on the side of the car and lean my head back. Below us, some girls in the swinging car shriek at the top of their lungs. Kai looks horrified, and I’m glad I opted for the stationary seats. “How are you related to Brendan?”

  “I’m his aunt.”

  Just that sentence makes me retract the arm that I’ve slung around her shoulder. “I don’t think I’ll get used to this age thing. You look sixteen.”

  She seems relieved that I’ve put a little space between us. “My brother is the herald of the North. I’m the youngest at forty.”

  “I guess you and I are related by marriage, then? Brendan’s mother is my aunt. Never met her, though.”

  “I’ve read all about your mother, Lady Maia!” She laughs giddily. “Bit scandalous when it happened. Even more than Lady Maristella eloping with my brother, a lowly scroll keeper. My brother wasn’t herald of the North yet when that happened. He had to fight for that title.”

  “So you’re a lady of court who really wants to be a scroll keeper? Are there rules against that?”

  She doesn’t laugh at my ignorance, which is nice. “Our people are changing slowly. A thousand years ago, merfolk with magic couldn’t marry into the court families. They were sent away. Our stations have changed, but slowly as does everything we do.”

  “No wonder Sarabell’s having such a hard time finding a husband.” I almost feel bad for her.

  The breeze around us picks up, and a thin fog comes in with the sunset. There’s a strange horn blasting in the distance. I wonder if that means more accidents.

  “It seems to me that mer-people aren’t that different from people-people. Everyone just wants to be on top of any kind of pyramid.”

  “I don’t think you’d be that kind of king.”

  “I’m not even sure what kind of anything I am lately.”

  She offers me a smile. “Had I…done that”—she can’t bring herself to say vomit—“to Adaro, I’d be missing a head right about now. No, you’ll make a just king.”

  She sounds so sure when she says it that now I feel sheepish. If Kai believes in me, then maybe she can help us figure out how to get to Eternity.

  “I mean, I feel like I’m at a disadvantage in all of this. I wasn’t raised on the island, and up until a few days ago, all I did was swim and hang out with my friends. Now, all of a sudden, I have a piece of the trident and I’m carrying around a dagger in my backpack that would get me locked up—sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping this all on you. I mean, if you’re going to help anyone, it’s going to be Brendan.”

  “Really, Tristan?” A surprising laugh comes from deep in her belly. She dabs at a tear falling from her long, fringy eyelashes. I can tell she digs me even if it’s just in a friendship kind of way. “First of all, if you’ve met Brendan, you know he isn’t taking the championship seriously. He’s always had the heart of an adventurer—not a king. My father blames it on the fact that he’s read too many of our scrolls depicting pirates and ladies in towers and islands full of treasures. Even among our kind, we take pleasure in new worlds. It’s why we travel on Toliss.”

  “He can’t blame the books,” I say. “You’ve probably read the same ones and aren’t off looking for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.”

  “I’ve also read enough that makes me want to stay hidden away in my family’s caves.” Her smile falters. “There’s a lot more in the sea to be wary of than on land. Don’t you feel you’d be safer if you kept to your human life? I don’t mean to put doubt in your mind. I really, really do believe you’re brave. You’ve got the heart of the heroes I’ve only read about.”

  “You’re going to make me blush.” And I do. I feel the heat and confidence flooding back to me.

  “I’m going to tell you this.” Her eyes flit from side to side like she’s feeding me answers of our history final. “From the last tournament I read about, the champions didn’t hunt the oracles. The sisters are secretive, even for our kind. It’s almost cruel the things they can do. Don’t make them any promises. It always backfires. I read about one champion who was asked for his heart in exchange for the Trident of the Skies. He agreed and then she ripped out his heart.”

  My own heart clenches when she says this. I rub my chest. “That’s pretty harsh.”

  “The oracles are harsh. Their duty was supposed to be to interpret the word of the gods. Now, I don’t know. They’ve always been a mystery. I know the king only calls on them when important war decisions have to be made. I’ve never met one. You’ve met at least one.”

  “Shelly’s cool. She hasn’t got any voodoo or whatever.” I don’t want to talk about the nautilus maid or the terrible thing I promised to do.

  “She must be the youngest.” Kai bites her lip. I can tell the oracles are as much a mystery to her as they are to me.

  “You called it the Trident of the Skies?”

  She shakes her head and takes on a new air—the confidence that comes with everything she knows. “Our people aren’t exactly spending their eternity reading, which is a shame. Once the trident was pieced together, no one seemed to care what the separate pieces were called since its power is strongest as a whole.

  “The quartz piece is called the Scepter of the Earth. Quartz is the most common mineral in the world, but this kind is ancient, from the deepest depths of the earth. Poseidon was called ‘earthshaker,’ and one legend says he shook the earth so hard that a great mine of quartz opened up for us to use in making weapons.

  “The staff is the Staff of Endlessness. The symbols etched on it were burned with the blood of the oracles that forged it. Even if you’re a regular witch, it magnifies your powers. But for most, it’s really best to give someone a beating with. The trident tip is simply Trident of the Skies. It pulls on all the elements to create thunder and lightning and whirlpools. When I was little, it was always my favorite part of the whole trident.”

  “Scepter of the Earth.” I enunciate it in different voices—voiceover hero, evil villain, even a badass Russian accent. It all sounds kind of silly but I like the sound of it, strong and powerful and, most importantly, mine.

  Bonus points: I make serious, bookish Kai laugh. It’s a lovely sound until it’s followed by a scream.

  We’re halfway back down to the ground when something bangs into our car and we fly back against the hard metal door. There is nothing like getting crushed by your own backpack full of weapons to end a date. Kai grabs on to me, and even though I want to make her feel safe, I need to see what the hell is happening. The bang leaves a shapeless dent where our door should be. I try to pull it open but the metal is warped and the lock is stuck.

  “Come on!” I rattle it with my hands. “One time I saw a guy climb out of these things when it was stuck.”

  “I thought you said this was safe!”

  “I said it could hold our weight! I never said anything about safety.”

  Kai gives me a good shove, which I guess I deserve. Then again, I can’t control external forces, now can I?

  Down below, the crowds are mob-like, running out of the park. The other cars on the Wonder Wheel are in full panic, their occupants screaming and trying to punch their way out. The shaky technicians let out the people closer to the ground.

  A screech echoes through the park. It fills the air in a swoosh. I unzip my backpack with sure fingers.

  “Did you see it?” I ask her.

  The ride jolts, like the lever is hitting stop and go at random. There’s one guy left manning the station, because the others are running the hell away.

  Kai isn’t freaking, though. Why isn’t she freaking out? Instead, when she sees my dagger in hand, her eyes go wide and she smiles. “Triton’s dagger! I’ve never seen it so close. I have a profound affinity for ancient swords.”

  “It’s always the quiet ones,” I say. My dagger makes a terrible scratchy noise as I try to cut our way out. There’s another bang! The Wonder Wheel strains against
the pressure, and for a heartbeat, we fall. A shadow flies over us. Our car swings. We’re not supposed to swing. I paid for the stationary seats. But our car swings back and creaks and screeches, and I know we’re breaking away from the rest of the rise.

  I shut my eyes hard. “Please tell me I’m not seeing what I’m seeing.”

  Kai gasps, elated. “Oh my goddess!”

  “Don’t. Move.”

  She takes a step forward toward the shadow perching at the center of the Wonder Wheel and ready to pounce on us. “It’s a sea dragon.”

  “Okay, so that wasn’t going to be my first guess. I was going to go with flying dinosaur of unusually small size.”

  “I’ve never seen one before.” Her eyes are like mirror balls, spinning at the creature.

  In the catalog of my childhood storytelling, I always pictured dragons to be the size of Godzilla. This thing is iridescent blue and green, hard and slick at the same time. It huffs into the air and takes off again, undulating through the sky. A row of ridges starts at the dragon’s neck, like a Mohawk, and gets smaller and smaller toward the tip of its tail. The head is what surprises me the most. The sea dragon’s face is soft with eyes that shine golden and glossy, even in the diminishing lights of the park. Until the creature opens its mouth to growl.

  “Well, it doesn’t seem to like us, so I say we get out of here.” I stab the door. The blade slides through the metal with some resistance, but there’s good give and I shout, “Stand back!” The lock on the door opens with my second strike. I kick hard, and the door falls and slams into the cement ground, just missing a group of kids running away.

  It’s probably not a good time to tell Kai that I’m not a fan of heights either. I stare at the open space below. It’s not that far, but landing without a cushion will hurt.

  “You’re not saying we jump?”

  “Unless you’ve got a magic portal to get us out of here, the only way is down.”

  For a moment, the sea dragon vanishes into a patch of thick fog before making a circle toward us. This close, I can see the barnacles growing around the pink slits of his gills. Of course. All the princesses and pirates and evil sea witches want a piece of me. Why wouldn’t some nearly extinct dinosaur want in on it? I ready my dagger to stab at it, but Kai pushes my hand away.

  “Don’t hurt it!”

  “It’s trying to eat us!”

  The sea dragon bangs into our car once again. We tumble back in. The metal hinges creak and finally break apart. Kai falls into me and holds on. I hold on to her with one hand and my dagger with the other, but we never hit the ground. Talons break through the ceiling to clutch the car, and the dragon starts to fly away with us.

  “I think we’re too heavy!” I shout, not at Kai but at the dragon.

  It struggles to fly while holding us. We’re barely skimming above the ground, and if he dips below a foot or two, we’re going to ram straight into the carousel. I let go of Kai and ready my dagger to take another stab at the sea dragon.

  “No!” Kai yells, pulling me away. “Tristan, please!”

  “Kai! I don’t care. I’m trying to protect us.”

  The beast screams. I didn’t touch it but it screams and releases us. I get that familiar tickle in my stomach as we fall like a rock straight into the large seat of the teacup ride. We lurch forward as the car hits the ground. Kai is injured. The dagger’s cut her arm. The skin is singed where the blade touched her.

  Blaring sirens wake me up. When I move, my shoulder is burning up. I’m nauseated and dizzy, and there’s a pulsing in my head.

  “Hurry,” a strange voice tells me. He’s poking me with a stick. Holds out his hand. My first thought should be to smack his hand away with his own stick. Instead I wonder: Why is Salvador Dali wearing a pink tie? That’s the thing with concussions. But he’s real and he says, “Hurry now!”

  I shield my eyes against the light that creates a halo around him and take his hand.

  Then voices around me tell me not to move and that help is coming soon. They wonder if it’s a terrorist attack. They scream about the apocalypse. They say it’s the thing killing all those boys. Sirens are whooping nearby.

  Salvador Dali catches me as I wobble forward and says, “Quickly, before the paramedics want to get their hands on you.”

  That sobers me right up, and I fight through the pain in my shoulder. I find my dagger, sling on my backpack, and take my princess by the hand. “Kai, are you okay?”

  She nods, holding her arm where the skin is burnt and bleeding. Her first step is a limp that nearly sends her to the ground.

  “Carry on, young prince,” Salvador Dali says.

  I sling Kai around my shoulder. We push past the throng of people that encircled us after the fall. We run down the ramp and cut through a passageway I’ve never seen before. We come out on the side of the sideshow by the seashore entrance. And there, as we enter through a red curtain into a dark corridor, Princess Kai sighs and faints in my arms.

  The room is draped from floor to ceiling in plush, scarlet velvet. Taper candles flank the edge of the table in front of me. A neon PSYCHIC sign hangs above the day bed that I lay Kai on. Her hair spills over the side like a waterfall and her hand hangs off the couch like she’s reaching out to the ghost of a prince who sure as hell isn’t me.

  I try to roll my shoulder out but the pain is like a hot poker digging into me. So I sit as still as I can until the pain becomes numb.

  In front of me is a deck of tarot cards. The borders are brown with age, but the scenes the cards depict are as bright as if printed hours ago. Three cards are laid out facing me. A heart with three swords driven through it, ten coins hovering around a couple in a garden, and then there’s the Devil with a naked man and woman chained on either side of his throne.

  The Devil card is singed at the edges. I wonder, why do people always picture the devil as being red? Mrs. Santos says hell would be a cold place. Somewhere where life and breath and everything that makes you happy gets sucked right out. When I think of hell, I think of colds and blues. I think of Nieve and her cold lips. I’m about to pick it up when the skinny, mustached man returns and says, “I wouldn’t touch those if I were you.”

  I retract my hand instantly. The last thing I need is to stick my hand in a pot of psychic fire or whatever. “Why?”

  “Because they aren’t yours to touch.” He sits across from me wearing a jewel-tone blue suit that’s tailored to his every angle. I’ve always wondered what wearing those things would be like. Granted, I wouldn’t top it off with a pink tie and a matching hanky, but still. I’d clean up well. “Who are you?”

  “Comit,” he says, unbuttoning his blazer to reveal a supercrisp shirt and black suspenders. Do people even wear suspenders anymore? “Charlie Comit. I live here.”

  Despite the suit and facial hair that make him look older, a twinkle in his blue eyes reveals something that is young and full of life. When he touches the tip of his mustache, I notice an elaborate red garnet ring.

  “Why did you help me?” I ask.

  “Would you believe me if I said I was a good Samaritan?”

  “You can be good and still do bad things.”

  “I suspect you speak from experience.” He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs on the table, careful not to touch the cards with his polished, black leather shoes.

  “Hey guy, you’re the one that helped me out of the car. You could’ve waited for the ambulance people to do it. Are you like a wizard? Because out of everything I’ve seen the past few days, that’s one I haven’t gotten around to.”

  Comit smiles, holding up his cane for me to see. The staff is dark cherry wood. Tiny wings, leaves, and intertwining branches are carved carefully all along it. It ends with a golden arrowhead, which makes a sharp click sound when he slams it on the floor.

  “When I was told to be careful of the Sea People trolling about on the boardwalk, I had no idea they meant you.”

  “What the hell’s that suppos
ed to mean?” I get up, knocking my chair back. “Know what? I don’t even know you, man.”

  “Tristan, please.” Comit stands and places a hand on my arm. “I only meant that I’ve seen you on the boardwalk. Even in the throngs of people, you stood out, and now I understand why.”

  “That’s not creepy at all.” I pick up my chair and settle back down.

  “I can identify with being different. That’s why I chose to make a home here in Coney Island.”

  “Different? You look pretty normal to me.” Then I add, “normalish.”

  Comit laughs and rests his staff across his lap. “I was one of nine kids. Father was a ranch hand in Wyoming, and I was so little that no one paid attention to me.

  “Then one day, my dad realized there was something different about me. The farm animals listened to me and did as I asked. From the stallions to the barn mice. He tried to beat it out of me a few times. Said, ‘God would never make something so unnatural.’” At the last bit, he takes on a drawl. I wonder how many times he’s said it to himself.

  “But in the end,” he continues, “my daddy was smart. Knew how to stay alive. Decided God don’t make imperfections. Made a few bucks off me.”

  I break the intensity of his eyes by checking on Kai. She makes a whimpering noise from the couch and curls up even tighter, like she’s in a cocoon.

  “Lucky for me, the circus rolled in. I ran off. Started as a lion tamer. Ain’t no one in any state had a lion tamer so young. I made my own way through this.” He holds his hands out and balls them into fists, as if everything he is can be contained in the center of his palms. “And soon enough, a man found me and took me hunting in the Amazon, finding beasts that time has forgotten and creatures only ever seen on rotting pyramid walls. It was like peeling back my own skin and finding a new version of myself. Have you seen any monsters, Sea Prince?”

  My mind flashes to the makara. The merrows. Nieve’s face. “Yes.”