The Savage Blue

by Zoraida Cordova

  “The oracle in my dream,” he says. “She told me I would find what I was looking for here.”

  “Adaro!” Sarabell hisses.

  He squares his jaw and takes on the most commanding tone I’ve seen of him today. “If you are going to question my decisions, you are free to leave, as I already said. Don’t make me repeat myself.”

  She sits back and crosses her arms.

  It makes sense. The secrecy from Sarabell. Adaro’s shiftiness.

  “You mean an oracle,” I say. “Here.”

  “Another?” Kurt is incredulous.

  “The other reason you’re here,” I point out.

  Adaro laughs nervously, trying to maintain our friendship. “I think we’re stronger in numbers, don’t you?”

  Yes, I do. That’s why I wanted to talk to him. But with this new information, it’s hard not to walk away and scour the city for the next oracle. The trident head. The centaur must have sent it to her sisters, which is why Adaro hasn’t found anything.

  “This presents a new problem,” I say. “You and me, here. We each have our own winnings. This makes us targets. And now we’re on the same shore. The third trident piece means Nieve will come for us, faster and stronger.”

  “What do you propose?” Adaro asks.

  “Numbers, just like you suggested. Nieve has numbers. You have numbers.”

  “It seems you’re the only one who doesn’t,” Sarabell says. “Have numbers, that is.”

  I shake my head, keeping my face as even as that of Frederik, the High Vampire of New York. “I have people on this shore. The Thorne Hill Alliance is loyal to me. I just have to pick up a cell phone and they’ll help.”

  It’s a lot to bluff. But like poker night with Shelly, I have to bet it all.

  “Vampires? Werewolves?” Sarabell is about to scream. “The very fey who pushed us deeper into the earth? You would side with them?”

  Thalia stands forward. “Don’t forget the landlocked.”

  “The banished folk?” Adaro says, more thrilled than repulsed. “I’ve never met one, but if they’re willing to listen and die for my—our—lives, why ever not?”

  Kurt interjects. “I doubt it’d be that simple.”

  “You may be surprised, Brother.” Thalia says. “Perhaps you should speak to them before casting them aside.

  “Let’s hear what they have to say,” I suggest. “Thalia, you know the way.”

  We trek down the dark and foggy Brooklyn streets until we reach the kind of alley that gives this city a bad rep. Sarabell turns her nose up at the moldy couch where a family of rats is taking a nap. Adaro is fascinated by the graffiti. He sounds out all the letters and has a good laugh, followed by, “How charming.”

  When Thalia finds the manhole she’s been looking for, I say, “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”

  I volunteer to go down first and no one stops me. I regret wearing flip-flops the moment my feet hit the ground. The water is thick and slippery like chicken soup, which I now think I can never eat again. “Is it okay if I throw up on you?”

  “This is nothing,” Kurt says. I can see the faint outline of his smile. “You’ve never swum near Biscay Bay.”

  “Follow me,” Thalia says. Her yellow-green eyes glow like headlights down the sewer tunnels. Layla keeps her fingers hooked on the loops of my cargo shorts, and I keep my hand close to my dagger. I lose track of the turns, right and left, and another left, and straight on ’til morning. The rattle of the subway accompanies us the whole way until we reach an open door.

  I blink hard against the fluorescent brightness of the room. When my eyes adjust, I realize there’s only one flickering fluorescent tube. The rest of the ceiling is covered with fat fireflies. A couple of them break away from their feeding frenzy and waddle through the air around us.

  “They brush honey on the ceiling,” Thalia points out. “Otherwise they’d be flying all over the place.”

  “So this is where you’ve been spending your time.” Kurt snatches a lightning bug from his ear and crushes it in his hand. He smears the green slime on his cargo shorts. She avoids Kurt’s stare and turns to me.

  “Is this a bunker?” I ask.

  The walls are lined with all kinds of books. There’s a small stage centered against the back with uneven rows of chairs facing it. Open cabinets are stuffed with boxes and cans of food. A dartboard and a pool table that look like they’ve had their last games take up a corner, beside a couch coming apart at the seams.

  I feel a set of arms wrap around my leg.

  “Tristan!” the little boy squeaks. It’s Timmy. I bend over and pick him up, patting the hard shell of his back.

  “What’s up, little man?”

  He shrugs in that exaggerated little kid way that makes all the girls smile, except for Sarabell, who looks like she’ll catch the plague from touching anything.

  Penny isn’t far behind, hand in hand with her boyfriend, who I’ve only seen from afar. Little suction cups pop out at her wrists as if coming up for air. They’re both still wearing their aprons like they ran out in a hurry. She’s surprised to see me, but when she sees Adaro and Sarabell, she doesn’t seem happy.

  I shake both of their hands and Penny asks, “What are you doing here?”

  “We come to enlist your services,” Adaro says matter-of-factly.

  I hold out my hands and say, “Actually, we want to talk.”

  As the landlocked file in, some realize who we are and sneer in our direction. It reminds me of the time Gaston Guerrero threw the soccer game and everyone walked past him with looks of disgust. I feel like freaking Gaston Guerrero.

  “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I whisper.

  Layla and Thalia flank me.

  “No, Tristan,” Thalia says, “this is perfect. They need to know what you have to say.”

  Some are kinder than others. I recognize the man I gave my food to on the boardwalk and he gives me a smile. A few bored college-aged girls lift their sunglasses with blue webbed hands. One winks a big blue eye at me. Her friends elbow her and they break into giggles. Their lives seem pretty good to me.

  There’s a man with a sallow face lit up by the lantern protruding from his head. It casts ghoulish shadows all over his features. There’s a man who takes up three seats that sink beneath his weight. He clears an entire section, running his hand over his face, trailing green mucus.

  There’s even a guy in a suit who tosses his long, blond hair back every couple of seconds. He hesitates before sitting down and then gets the brilliant idea to place his newspaper on the seat.

  These are the landlocked. I wonder what they’ve all done to get banished from the Sea Court. I can’t imagine any of them being all that powerful. Our presence has them all unnerved.

  “Is that the son of the king?” someone whispers.

  Another replies with, “That’s the grandson. The king only has daughters.”

  The last person to walk in doesn’t even look around the room. He walks slowly, straight toward me, like he knew I was here even before he started weaving through the tunnels. His face, arms, and legs are all wire thin. His shoulder-length hair is bleached blond. The roots are black and greasy. He uses the cuff of his sleeve to wipe at his raw, red nose.

  He holds his arms out, and at first I think he’s going to hug me. Adaro takes it as a threat and draws his sword. Instead, the bleached blond pulls a dart from the board and uses it to pick his teeth. When he’s done, he twirls the silver dart between his fingers.

  The landlocked fidget and whisper among themselves.

  I grit my teeth and say, “Adaro, put that away.”

  When the bleached blond smiles, it takes up his whole face. “So the Sons of the Sea have come slumming.”

  “I’m—”

  “I know who you are.”

  I hate the way he cuts me off. And from the way his body tenses and his face grimaces in my direction, he doesn’t think much of me, either.

  “And who
are you?” I say, minutes away from losing my patience.

  “This is Jesse,” Thalia says.

  Jesse lingers where we stand, like he’s sizing up his opponents or avoiding dog shit. He proceeds to take center stage, a preacher welcoming us to his church, extending arms wide. “Welcome to our weekly community meeting.”

  His arms go slack and he groans. “Yes, Ben, what is it?”

  The guy in the suit has his hand raised. He’s got scars all across his knuckles. When he tucks his hair back, I notice his ears are shaped like fins. “I’d just like to say that I’m confused. I thought we were going to vote on when we brought the champion in. I mean, we are still a voting group, right? I’m just saying.”

  Jesse’s smile is tight, annoyed. Even though he’s a skinny, oily, grungy little punk, he leads them. “Don’t worry, Ben. No one is changing any rules. I knew the champion of the sea would come to us eventually. Didn’t I say that? What I didn’t expect was two of them.”

  Adaro crosses his arms over his chest, his dagger gleaming in one hand. The air is getting denser. Everyone sweating. Nerves sizzling like crossed wires.

  “Thalia, it is good to see you again,” Jesse says, cocking his head and squinting way too hard at Kurt. “I look forward to the day we can count you in our ranks. Now. Let the champion come forward. Come, come. I’m sure you’re brimming with kind words for us.”

  I move from the back of the room to closer to the raised stage. Sweat runs down my back and my mouth is dry.

  “Do you know what we are, Tristan?” Jesse asks me.

  “You’re Sea People,” I say.

  “Were. We were Sea People.” Jesse smiles with his red, raw mouth. “Now, we are the landlocked. Excommunicated. Discarded. Unwanted. Untouchables.”

  Jesse paces, weaving that silver dart between his fingers. The flickering bulb gives his hair an orange glow and deepens the shadows of his face. His lips look swollen, but they might just be big. His teeth are too prominent. I kind of hate him.

  “For some of us,” Jesse says, “it wasn’t our choice to be here. Unlike your mother, not all of us fancy being on two legs. Clumsy, ugly, nasty things. Foot-fins, you call us.”

  He hops off the stage and passes through the crowd, and they follow his wiry body, snake-like in the way he turns his neck. I wonder if his tongue is forked. I make a note to punch him the next time he talks about my mother.

  “You broke the law,” Kurt says. “That’s why you don’t have your fins anymore.”

  Every eye turns to him. The volume in the meeting hall shoots up. Their voices are a mixture of curses and explanations of how they were wronged. But mostly curses. Jesse uses his hands and shushes them like children.

  “Don’t mind the young soldier,” Jesse says. “He was raised to lead the Sea Guard. He could never understand us.”

  Kurt’s head looks like it might pop right off his head with how angry he is. “What is there to understand?”

  “That we were once sea creatures, like all of you. Some, like Penny and her little turtle boy, were born on land. Her mother was a cephalo-maid. Her father human. Her mother, ripped of her ability to shift, was left on land to raise a child she could never explain. She died when Penny was only twelve, and Penny’s father left her in an orphanage. It wasn’t until she found some of us that she could truly know what she was, who she came from.

  “Ben, over there. His parents were part of the first rebellion. And now he’s banished from court. As his children will be. And their grandchildren and so on, until the blood of the sea is no longer in their veins.”

  Ben crosses his arms. His muscles strain against the fine tailored suit. “I’ve got too much invested in my firm to have kids, anyway.”

  Jesse murmurs a curse under his breath. “Really? I’m trying to prove a point here.”

  He swipes at his watery nose with the back of his hand. Despite my really casual pose, I force myself not to recoil as he walks up to me, twirling that dart. He smiles with his horse teeth. “Do you know how your grandfather punished me? He took his trident and stuck it right in my spine. The pain was ghastly. I could barely swim to shore. I was lucky. Some of the others got eaten up by the shark guard who, by the way, weren’t fed for a week just for that purpose.

  “They never had a chance. Sitting here, underground, we still don’t have a chance. Up there, we’re deformed, forever bartering with tricksy court fairies for their glamours because we have no protection of our own.”

  “You have protection,” Kurt says.

  “The tithes? Giving what little we have for safety from each other?” Jesse laughs. The sound is brittle, broken, like taking a hammer to glass. “Do you suppose all of us can survive as humans? Ben, he can hide his ears with that mop of his. Penny can shift back and forth from her tentacles. What about the rest? Jim and the flashlight on his forehead? Alice and her crocodile eyes?

  “It’s time for a change. I’ve watched us dig our way deeper and deeper under this city, and the tunnels are giving out. How much farther can we burrow?”

  “What is it you want?” It’s my turn.

  “We want what the Sea Court has.” He walks back to the center of the stage. “We want a fair chance.”

  The wood sinks under our weight. When I’m this close to him, I can see the eternity in his eyes. They’re black as oil slicks. “Don’t forget my mother was just like the rest of you.”

  “Princess Maia knows nothing of our suffering. The Sea King made the change easy for her. He gave her gold. She had her beauty. Her human lover. She had you. We didn’t have the luxury you’ve been given, and yet you’re technically still one of us.” He puts an arm around me and I suppress a shiver. His skin is clammy and cold, but there’s a spark at his fingertips. “How do you suppose you’ll rule at court and not know the Rites of Summer? The way to control the island? The names of every merman and maid that breaks themselves to build your castles, your thrones, your weapons. How will you know?”

  My heart is racing. His voice has swallowed all our breaths as he inhales steadily, calming. I look out at the motley crew of the landlocked. There’s hatred in their eyes and I know it comes from Jesse. This is what he’s good at—filling people with hate.

  “I have no way of knowing what your lives are like,” I say, “and Jesse’s right. In many ways, you have been forgotten.” In the back, Adaro and Sarabell don’t like that I’ve said that. “But in a couple of days, there might not be a Sea Court to go back to.”

  Jesse’s eyes light up.

  “This right here,” I say, “is the city you’ve called your home. Imagine it all gone. Swallowed up by an army of merrows that won’t hesitate to destroy you. Because this is your home, just as much as it’s mine. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I ask you to stand behind us.”

  They talk among themselves. Some call me crazy. Others call me worse things.

  “We want to be part of the sea again,” Jesse says. He doesn’t consult them. He doesn’t let them speak. “We offer our support in exchange for yours. Our wish is simple.”

  I hold my hands up. I can’t let him corner me. “Easy, isn’t it? Standing up here and telling them what they want to hear. Promises are easy. My dad, who is very much human, taught me a few things. Other than how to tie my shoes, that is.” Penny and the girls around her laugh, which is a comfort in the tension of the room. “He taught me that I’ll never get anywhere by making false promises.” Granted, I’m pretty sure he was talking about girls, but it stuck with me.

  “Your lives have pretty much reached a level of suck that I will never know. Jesse’s right. I’ve lived my whole life with everything handed to me.

  “But when my grandfather handed me this championship, I could’ve backed out. I could’ve gone right back to high school. I’d probably be with the girl I care about instead of wasting time with princesses who want to bite my head off.”

  Ben pumps his fist in the air and shakes his head. “Been there, bro.”

  “I’
ve seen the kinds of things—punishments—that I would never want to see done to anyone. Especially people like me, because you guys are like me. Right now, the only promise I can give you is that your voices will be heard.”

  “Hear my voice right now, land prince.” Jesse studies my face. “Will you restore me once you are king?”

  Adaro steps forward. “This isn’t about kingships. This is about protection.”

  But Jesse is thrilled. He turns to Adaro and says, “And what of you, champion of the Southern Seas? What will you give us?”

  Adaro backpedals and Sarabell stands in front of him—like she’s his body armor—and I realize this is why she’s the only person he trusts. “Our family doesn’t negotiate with the banished. You can either acknowledge that you will need our guard to protect this shore, or not.”

  The landlocked are up in arms despite my attempts at quieting them down. Jesse does that best. “Here we have it, two champions who will offer us nothing.”

  He lets the words sink in and we don’t deny them. Adaro won’t and I can’t.

  Jesse takes the dart in his hand and throws it at Adaro.

  Adaro recoils and Sarabell stands in front of him. Everyone jumps out of their seats, scrambling for an exit, but Jesse claps his hands and laughs. The arrow has turned into a slick blue bird. It flies around the room in a swift circle and lands on Jesse’s open palm where, in a flutter of wings, it vanishes. There’s a regular old dart in his hand again.

  “How did you do that?” I demand, resting my hand on the hilt of my sword.

  “It was a gift from a very old friend.” Jesse shrugs, all, Who, me? “Nieve, the first daughter of King Erebos and true queen of the seas.”

  The landlocked do everything from shouting and whispering to demanding explanations to storming out. The sisters with webbed hands are texting.

  “She has come back for us,” Jesse says. “This time around, her power will be so great that she will cast a shadow over the sun.”