The Deepest Blue

by Sarah Beth Durst

  She swam, keeping the shore beside her, resting on rocks when she needed to, until the frenzied spirits of the cove felt distant, and then she flopped onto the shore.

  I’m still alive! She felt like laughing out loud—the same kind of high she felt when she’d performed a death-defying dive—but she didn’t dare make a peep. It felt wrong to feel such a rush when she didn’t even know if anyone else had survived.

  Still . . . she lived. And that was worthy of a little joy.

  Kelo, I’m trying!

  Monkeys were calling to one another. Beyond the sand, the forest of palm trees was dense. She had no interest in losing herself in there where she wouldn’t be able to see the ocean or any approaching enemies.

  This will have to do for now.

  The sun was setting. A glorious spread of pinks, oranges, and purples saturated the clouds near the horizon. She calculated that she had a little while to find a place to sleep, and then it would be dark. She’d collected a few oysters on her swim—they’d serve well enough as dinner, plus there were clumps of seaweed that were tasty uncooked.

  She picked a set of boulders that were above the high-water line and hunkered down between them. As the stars came out, she ate her oysters and seaweed. Falling asleep, she thought to herself, I can do this. Shelter, freshwater, and food. Keep away from spirits.

  Really, it’s not so different from home.

  Right?

  WRONG. VERY WRONG.

  This was very, very different from home.

  Mayara scrambled up the boulder as it moved beneath her. She didn’t know how she’d failed to sense that the boulders she’d picked weren’t ordinary rocks but rather part of an earth spirit. Her only excuse was that the spirit had been asleep, its thoughts dulled so that she couldn’t sense them beneath the buzz of the other spirits. Because she hadn’t tried to command it, it hadn’t sensed her either. She clung to its neck as it strode across the dark beach. The rocks in its legs crunched together as it moved.

  The moon shed blue light over the sea and the sand. But the sea wasn’t behaving as it should, any more than the rocks were. It was writhing as if snakes were dancing vertically on the surface. But these snakes were made of water, whipping fast in thin waterspouts.

  Don’t react, she told herself.

  None of them had noticed her. Yet.

  She tried to keep her mind as small and quiet as possible, which was difficult when everything inside her wanted to scream. Clinging to the earth spirit, she was rocked back and forth as it began to climb up one of the cliffs. It punched the rock to make handholds that it could use to climb.

  She tried to clear a small corner of her mind that wasn’t panicking in order to make a plan. If she brought attention to herself by jumping off, she’d be killed. If this earth spirit went closer to other spirits and they saw her, she’d be killed. So, for now, the best she could come up with was:

  Don’t move.

  Don’t think too loud.

  The earth spirit lumbered through the palm forest, crushing trees beneath its massive feet. It continued until it reached another cliff, and she saw it had brought her back to where she’d come from: the cove where they’d first landed, the place she’d tried so hard to get away from.

  On the shore were bodies, laid out in a row.

  Three of them: Tesana, the fisherwoman who had left behind her husband and son; Dayine, who hadn’t cut her hair since she was five; and quiet Resla, whose shell necklace was stained red with her own blood.

  She’d known them all. Called them spirit sisters. And they hadn’t survived a day.

  If their eyes weren’t open . . . if there wasn’t blood at their throats or spread across their chests . . . if they weren’t so very still . . . she could have pretended they were asleep, side by side, looking up at the stars. But she knew that wasn’t true.

  In the light of the moon, she saw a hint of movement in the trees just beyond the shore. She felt the earth spirit’s attention shift. Suddenly, it charged forward, stomping in great strides toward the trees. Clinging to it, she felt as if every bone she had was rattling.

  Ahead the trees writhed like a mass of shadowy snakes. She heard a scream—a woman’s voice, tearing through the darkness. And then it was drowned out by cries and howls as the spirits converged on the sound.

  Mayara held on as the earth spirit strode toward the twisting trees. As it burst through, she saw a half dozen tree spirits. Two looked like knots of wood, with gnarled bodies covered in bark. The others were slender and faceless, with smooth bodies that looked vaguely human. One had wings made of leaves. Another had fingers that were thorns.

  Like spiders wrapping their prey, the slender tree spirits were cocooning something in vines. The vines grew fast, as Mayara watched—the spirits seemed to be drawing them out of the trees. The gnarled bark spirits flipped the cocoon over, and in a flash of moonlight, Mayara saw a face.

  Kemra, the young spirit sister who’d wanted to be an heir.

  Her eyes were open, lifeless, and her mouth was filled with bark. Bark seemed to have burst out of her mouth and encased her cheeks. The spirit with thorns for fingers drove those thorns in between the vines, drew out, and then stabbed her again.

  Mayara felt a scream building inside her throat, and she fought to keep it back.

  To the east, another cry from another human throat ripped through the night.

  The earth spirit pivoted and charged toward it, trampling more vegetation. The trees they pushed through—I could leap onto one of them. But what if the spirit saw her? Torn by indecision, Mayara let the moment pass, and soon they had broken free of the trees and were above a cliff. Below, the sea crashed onto rocks.

  She sensed the spirit’s confusion—it had lost its new target. Maybe she—whoever it was—escaped? She hoped that was true. She feared it wasn’t. Four of us already dead. And the rest hunted. The earth spirit let out an oddly wolflike howl, which was echoed by other spirits across the island. Plunging forward, the spirit headed toward the echoes.

  As it stomped through the lush vegetation, the trees creaked and shifted, and the feel of spirits was so intense that the air felt thick with them. Instinctively, she squeezed her eyes shut—as if they couldn’t see her if she couldn’t see them, which she knew was ridiculous, but she’d never felt so helpless.

  Don’t see me.

  It was only meant to be a whisper of a thought. But she felt it spread out from her and sink into the spirits around her. “Oh no,” she whispered. She’d meant to hide from them, never using her power, never drawing attention to herself. . . .

  “Jump now!” she heard a familiar voice call.

  Roe!

  Mayara didn’t hesitate. She jumped from the earth spirit’s neck—arms flung out, she grabbed on to the trunk of a coconut tree. She felt its bark scrape against her as she half climbed and half slid down to the ground.

  Searching for her, the earth spirit howled again. She felt the sandy ground buckle, as every rock beneath the sand was called to the surface. The rocks kept growing, piling on top of one another, rising into towers all around her.

  Scrambling over and between them, she ran toward Roe’s voice.

  She tried to run silently, but she was panting in both fear and exhaustion, and she stumbled and tripped over the dark, shadowy ground. “Where are you?” she whisper-called.

  “Over here, the nearly dead girl by the tree.” Her voice was right beside Mayara, and Mayara spun and jumped—and saw her. Lashed to a tree by vines, Roe was speckled in blood. Her hair was matted to her cheeks. Her leggings were torn, revealing an ugly gash that ran down the side of her calf. The soles of her feet were caked with dirt and blood.

  In the darkness, the blood looked black.

  Mayara began yanking at the vines, trying to loosen them. She glanced around at the ground, spotted a sharp rock, and began using it like a knife to saw through the vine. “Where are the spirits that did this?”

  “Off killing someone else, if
I had to guess,” Roe said. “Must have figured they could finish me off later. The spirits themselves weren’t here—it was a trap, like a snare, and I walked right into it.”

  “I used power,” Mayara confessed. “They’ll be after me.”

  “Everyone’s using power. If we can get away fast enough, they won’t know which of us did it. Just get me free and run.” Roe struggled against the vines—they were wrapped tight around her thighs and arms, pinning her against the trunk.

  Listening with her ears and her mind, Mayara kept sawing at the vines. She wished she had her diving knife. That would have sliced through these in no time.

  At last, the vines began to fray. She kept going.

  One snapped. Arm free, Roe yanked at the others, trying to loosen them, while Mayara attacked the next vine. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Spirits were close. It was hard to tell how close or if they were aware that Roe and Mayara were here.

  “Get ready to run. You go east, and I’ll go west,” Roe whispered.

  “You’re hurt—” Mayara protested.

  “I’ll be hurt worse if they catch us. How did you escape the water?”

  “Guess I outswam everyone.” Her disgust in herself permeated her voice. She thought again of the bodies on the sand—Tesana, Dayine, and Resla. Not “bodies.” They had names. Dreams. Lives. They must have died in the first few hours. She wondered how many more of them were already dead and how many had suffered like Kemra before they’d died.

  “You did what you had to do.” Roe sucked in air and then winced. She fell forward as the last vine snapped. Mayara caught her and helped her straighten. Roe then sagged, clutching her injured leg.

  Mayara made a decision. “Lean on me.”

  “We can’t stay together,” Roe said. “You heard Heir Sorka.”

  “They’re already hunting us whether we’re together or not,” Mayara said. “And you can’t run.” Supporting Roe, she helped her hobble away from the tree. She noted as they left that Roe was right: it looked like a deliberate trap, a hunter’s snare, that would tighten the vines around a body as soon as someone stepped inside. She wondered why a spirit would have to set a trap like that when they could simply control the vines with their minds.

  In the distance, they heard another woman scream.

  And then they heard the shrill, ecstatic shrieks of spirits.

  The scream abruptly cut off.

  “How many of us have they gotten?” Mayara asked. She knew of four. She didn’t know if any others had been swept out to sea or lay somewhere, silent and still, in the sand between the trees.

  “Don’t know,” Roe said. “Maybe half of us.”

  “It hasn’t even been a full day. How are we going to last a month?”

  Roe winced and leaned more heavily on Mayara. “We keep outswimming everyone.”

  It was terrible but also true. Because the spirits were distracted killing someone else, Mayara and Roe were able to hobble away from the trap. Mayara aimed east, not for any reason but because it fit the requirement “away from here.”

  In the darkness, every shadow looked like a spirit. She heard them calling to one another in shrieks too high-pitched to be birds’. Sometimes the shrieks held words: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha! Gonna get you, gonna tear you, gonna rip you, gonna make you dead!

  Or a sweet, childlike beckoning: Come, spirit sisters! Come, I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make you warm. Feel my warmth. Feel it burn. Burn your flesh.

  Little sisters, where are you? Little almost-heirs, let me embrace you!

  All we want is you. All you must do is die.

  A giggle, shrill and unhinged, emerged from deep within the coconut forest. Mayara shivered. She couldn’t tell which direction that had come from, but it sounded too close. Fear was chasing so fast and loud through her mind that she couldn’t focus enough to feel any spirits.

  As quietly as she could, Mayara whispered, “We need to hide. If they can’t see us or hear us, and if we keep our thoughts small, they won’t find us.”

  “But we’re supposed to—”

  Mayara cut her off. “We’re supposed to live.”

  The moon cast everything in a blue hue. The shadows were layered in its light, and Mayara scanned the area for any darker patches. Despite the fact that she’d chosen to sleep on top of an earth spirit, she thought her first instinct was a good one: hide between rocks. Leave as little of themselves visible to the world as possible.

  She helped Roe over to an outcrop of rocks—it was curved, like an eye socket, and there wasn’t much room. But that was good—it meant less space through which the spirits could come at them. With difficulty, they climbed up and over the first boulder. Roe lowered herself between them, and Mayara squeezed in next to her. “Your wound, how is it?”

  “Woundlike.”

  “Deep?”

  “Painful. Can’t tell if it’s deep or not. I think the bleeding sort of stopped?”

  “Not to be blunt, but are you going to die right now or can you make it until morning?” She knew how to make the various poultices and salves that Kelo used on her, but she couldn’t search for the herbs until she had light. Even then, it wouldn’t be safe to forage much.

  “Absolutely no idea. If I wake up dead, I’ll let you know.”

  They fell silent after that, listening to the night sounds. Neither of them slept much. And they heard two more screams that abruptly ended before dawn crept over the island.

  “STILL ALIVE?” MAYARA WHISPERED. HER THROAT FELT ROUGH AND thick. She had a sour nutty taste in her mouth, so she must have dozed off, though she didn’t remember falling asleep.

  Beside her, Roe was still, curled in a fetal position. But Mayara could see her chest rising and falling. “Not sure,” Roe said back, without opening her eyes. “If I were dead, I don’t think it would hurt this much.”

  “Let me see.”

  “It’s gory,” Roe warned. Opening her eyes, she uncurled herself, wincing as she pulled her hand away from where it had been clamped on to her calf. Her palm was painted red with blood, and the gash itself was a clotted mess of deep red, black, and brown. Sand and dirt coated the cut. On the plus side, it wasn’t bleeding.

  “It doesn’t look deep.”

  That was about the only positive thing Mayara could say, though. Because it did look filthy. If she didn’t get that cleaned out, Roe was likely to come down with an infection, and that could kill her as surely as any spirit, as Tesana had warned. Pushing aside the image of the fisherwoman dead on the sand, Mayara ran through the list of herbs that she’d need: Verve leaf. Graymoss. Or sap from a suka tree, if she couldn’t find the moss. Also saltwater. And angel seaweed, if there was any. As the list grew longer, she realized how dangerous foraging for all these could be and came to the conclusion that she could make do with just the saltwater and the seaweed. It would ward off infection, and that was the primary goal right now.

  If she could find any.

  She tried to reach out with her mind to check for spirits. It was difficult to make her thoughts calm enough—she didn’t know how the other spirit sisters did it so easily back in the valley with Heir Sorka. She hadn’t remembered any of them complaining about difficulty in feeling for spirits. Maybe I’m just bad at this.

  “They’re still here, if you were wondering,” Roe said. “I’ve been monitoring them all night. A few of them are combing the island in a methodical way, but the bulk of them are stupid. They’re milling around and hoping they trip over someone to kill. We just need to steer clear of the smart ones.”

  “How close are they?”

  “Entirely too close. In another hour, they’ll be here, if they keep the same pace and pattern and aren’t distracted by killing someone else.”

  It was terrible to hope for another’s death. But maybe she could hope they just chased someone else without catching them. . . .

  A day in, and I’m already being stripped of my humanity. She shuddered, then closed her eyes tigh
t. Shaking her head, she opened them and looked at Roe.

  “Can you move?”

  “Oh, sure. I was thinking a morning stroll might be nice.” Roe managed a wry smile. “You know, this hasn’t gone the way I pictured it. I thought . . . Guess I was naive.” She leaned her head back, looking up at the sky.

  It wasn’t naive, though. Even as bad as the rumors about Akena were, there was nothing that could have prepared them for this. She couldn’t get the image of Kemra out of her head, or the glee in the face of the tree spirit as it stabbed her body with its thorns.

  You weren’t naive. You were lied to.

  Roe was still looking up, and Mayara followed her gaze. It was another dreaming sky, blue without even a wisp of cloud to mar the brilliance of its color. In the east, the morning sun tinted it with lemon yellow. The beauty warred with the horror of the last day.

  Mayara wondered if Roe was thinking about her mother. Maybe she was regretting forcing Lord Maarte to acknowledge her power. Maybe she was just trying to see something that made her smile before descending into the madness of the island. Either way, it was time to go.

  “We need to get by the shore. If I can find angel seaweed—”

  “You need to get away from me,” Roe said, without looking at her. “I’m a liability. Stay with me, and you’re twice as likely to die.”

  “Yeah, and if I leave you, you’re a hundred times more likely to die.” She’d already swum away from Roe once, leaving her in obvious danger, and she’d hated how that had made her feel. She wasn’t going to do it again.

  Roe snorted, and then her snort turned into a cough. “Think highly of yourself, don’t you? Actually, that’s good. If you believe you can survive—” She coughed harder, the effort stealing the rest of her words.