Waterfire Saga, Book One: Deep Blue (A Waterfire Saga Novel)

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Ah, here it is!” Lena declared, after she’d dumped out her tenth box.

  She handed a little plastic sack to Ling, who opened it, then tipped the bag upside down. Dozens of small white plastic tiles, all with black terragogg letters on them, poured out on the table.

  “So cool! Thank you, Lena!” she said, and immediately started making human words with the tiles.

  Neela, who was still bent over the piles of junk, straightened and pointed to the things she’d found. “Lena, can I buy these from you?” They still had some currensea left from the coins the duca had given them.

  “Buy them? Why?”

  “We need disguises, Sera and I. There’s a bounty on our heads. I was thinking I could use this stuff to turn us into swashbucklers,” Neela said hopefully. “Sera’s already hacked her hair off, so we’re halfway there.”

  “No,” Lena said firmly.

  “Please, Lena. We’ll pay you well,” Neela said. “We can’t go around the way we are. Someone will recognize us.”

  “I mean, I won’t sell them to you. Just take them. And then stop the bad men. The ones who came here today. Stop them from hurting people.”

  Lena looked at Neela, then looked away. But not before Neela had seen the fire in her eyes. Lena was shy and awkward and not very tactful. She was better with catfish than people, but she was also kind and brave. Very brave. If the death riders had found them here, she would have paid a high price.

  “We’ll do everything we can,” said Neela, swallowing the lump that had risen in her throat. “Could I borrow some scissors, a needle, and some thread?”

  Lena nodded. As she opened a drawer to get them, Serafina said, “I’m tired, everyone. I’m going to turn in.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Ling said.

  Serafina and Ling said their good nights. Lena went outside to settle her catfish down for the night, then went to bed herself. And Neela stayed up, working into the small hours by lava light in Lena’s kitchen.

  She was battered and bruised. She felt heartbroken and lost and scared of what lay ahead. And yet, alone at her work, with cloth in her hands, and a sense of purpose in her heart, she felt something else, too.

  For a few hours, she felt wildly, defiantly happy.

  “HALF A LEAGUE to the river’s mouth, max,” Ling said, squinting against the bright rays of the noontime sun.

  “Two leagues past the Maiden’s Leap, in the waters of the Malacostraca. Follow the bones. Those are the landmarks Vrăja gave me, but we haven’t seen any of them yet,” Serafina said anxiously.

  She and Ling were consulting Ling’s map again.

  “The landmarks probably only start in the Olt,” Ling said.

  “Does this water make me look fat?” Neela asked.

  Ling looked at her over the top of the map. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I feel like a whale! It’s so hard to float in water without any salt in it,” said Neela.

  “Death riders could appear at any moment and you’re worried about how you look? This isn’t a beauty contest!”

  “Life’s a beauty contest,” Neela said. “Just ask my mother. Or either of my grandmothers. Or any of my aunts. Are we any closer to the Iele’s cave? I could really use a cup of sargassa tea, people.”

  Ling rolled her eyes. “I hear singing. That’s the river’s mouth. Has to be,” she said. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”

  The mermaids had set off from Lena’s house three days ago, with food she’d packed for them. “Good-bye! It’s been awful having you!” she’d called out cheerfully, waving them off. “Don’t even think about coming back!”

  They’d hewed close to the dark riverbanks, trying to stay out of sight, and had holed under tree roots or behind rocks during the night. It had been a lot easier to blend in with their surroundings since Neela had turned them into swashbucklers, dressed in gray and black.

  Sera glanced at her friend and smiled. She was almost unrecognizable. Same with Ling. Sera knew that she, too, looked nothing like her old self. She and Ling had gone to sleep at Lena’s house, and had woken to new clothes, new accessories, and new identities.

  “Did you get any sleep?” she’d asked Neela when she saw all the work her friend had done.

  “Not much, but it’s okay. I’m not tired. And before you try on your new clothes, we’ve got to do something about that hair,” Neela had said, patting one of Lena’s kitchen chairs.

  Serafina sat down in it. In all her sixteen years, her hair had never been cut, not even trimmed. Before Rorrim had knotted his fingers in it, it had hung halfway down her tail. As Neela snipped away, letting the chopped locks fall to the floor, Sera had the oddest feeling that parts of her self were falling away with them. The part that trusted blindly. The part that followed all the rules. The part that always let others take the lead.

  After Neela had cut her hair and dyed it black with a bottle of squid ink, she’d led Sera to Lena’s bedroom mirror. Sera had quickly checked to make sure Rorrim wasn’t lurking inside it, then peered at her reflection. Neela had transformed her raggedy mop into a sleek, edgy pixie. Spiky black bangs fell over her forehead and tapered to points at her cheekbones. The cut emphasized her long, slender neck, and enormous green eyes. She was speechless.

  “Totally swash? Totally genius? Or totally both?” Neela said.

  “Totally wonderful! I love it, Neela—thank you!” Serafina said.

  “Of course you do,” Neela said. “Now, put these on.”

  She handed Serafina a long, clingy gray dress. She’d cut the arms off it and slashed the neckline. A loosely-knit black tunic went over it. Neela looped bicycle chains around Serafina’s hips and slid Grigio’s dagger through them. She put silver hoops in Sera’s ears.

  Next, she outlined Sera’s eyes and stained her lips with more black squid ink. Her cheeks got a silvery dusting of ground abalone shell.

  “You look so riptide, I don’t recognize you,” Neela said, when she’d finished.

  “I look so riptide, I don’t recognize me,” Serafina said, still staring at herself.

  Neela had also made herself a disguise, using a tattered lace top, a voluminous sea-silk skirt fashioned from Lena’s bolt of fabric, and a military jacket that had lost its buttons—all in black. She’d torn the collar off the lace top, and pinned the jacket together with rusty fishhooks. She’d found herself a terragogg messenger bag and inked Anne Bonny Roolz across it in silver. After she bleached her hair blond, she coiled it on top of her head and secured it with a swordfish’s bill. A pair of fishhooks served as earrings and a shark’s tooth threaded on some fishing line as a necklace. She stained her lips black and brushed shimmering blue-black mussel-shell powder over her eyelids.

  Ling got a makeover, too, though she hadn’t wanted one, to make it look as if the three of them had always been together. Death riders looking for two princesses wouldn’t glance twice at three swashbucklers, Neela reasoned. Ling’s braids received purple streaks. A torn black cape replaced her red jacket and covered her sling. Long turitella-shell earrings, a necklace made of old skeleton keys, and the sword she wore slung over her back completed her outfit.

  “No princesses here, Mr. Death Rider,” Neela had singsonged, laughing. “Only some swashbucklers on their way to see Skwall play the Marshlands.”

  Sera and Ling had thanked her profusely. She’d told them it was nothing, but Sera had seen how brightly she’d glowed. She’d also seen how well Neela’s strategy had worked. The few mer they’d come across on their way upriver had glanced at them, then quickly crossed to the other side of the current.

  Neela’s right in a way, Sera thought, swimming behind Ling. Life is a beauty contest. And I’m sick of competing in it, sick of being a smiling, nodding, pretty little princess. There was another contest that mattered now—a contest for Cerulea, one of life and death.

  She was done with heavy silk gowns that got in the way. Of jewels so valuable they required their own security detail. Of g
old crowns and diamond tiaras that weighed heavily upon her.

  Now she wore clothing that allowed her to move and to blend in. Her hair was so short that no one could grab it and hold her back. Instead of jewels around her neck, she carried a dagger at her hip.

  For the first time in her life, she didn’t look like royalty. She looked fierce, edgy, and troublesome. A merl not to be messed with.

  And she liked it.

  The three mermaids rounded a bend in the Dunărea now.

  “Look! There it is!” Ling said, pointing.

  Fifty yards ahead of them was the Olt. It was rushing heavy and fast into the Dunărea, whirling into swift eddies, and thick with silt. Like all rivers, it had a voice. The Olt’s was earthy and low, and it sang about the black mountains it came from; the wolf, bear, and deer that drank from it; the tall trees that grew on its banks; and the sweet breezes that blew across it. The mermaids swam into the mouth, then through its rough, churning waters. They emerged a few minutes later, coughing and sneezing and worse for the wear. Serafina shook silt out of her hair. Ling pulled a frog out of her sling. Neela spat out a minnow.

  Dazed, Serafina scrambled away from the river’s mouth toward its bank, trying to get out of the rushing water. She rested her back against a network of gnarled tree roots.

  And didn’t see the thing lurking behind them until it was too late.

  “Sera, look out!” Neela cried.

  All at once, Sera was jerked against the tree roots. She heard a snarl and smelled a gut-wrenching stench. She screamed and tried to pull away, but was pulled back.

  “Hang on, Sera!” Ling shouted, pulling her sword out of its scabbard.

  The blade came down to the right of Sera’s head. An instant later, she was free…and a human arm was lying on the ground. She whirled around to see what had attacked her.

  It was a terragogg. Or what was left of him. He was dead. His clothes were in tatters and so was his skin. His nose was gone. Teeth showed through a lipless mouth. He had only one arm now. And only one eye. It moved rapidly in its bony socket as he raged back and forth in his tree root prison.

  “Holy silt!” she said, gasping. “What is that?”

  “A rotter,” Ling said. “There’s some serious malus at work here, merls.”

  Serafina knew that very powerful mages could reanimate the human dead and make them do their bidding using canta malus, or darksong, a forbidden magic.

  The creature growled low in his throat. He swiped at them with a decayed hand.

  “I wonder if he’s a sentry for the Iele,” Ling said. “He saw us, but we never would have seen him if Sera hadn’t gotten so close.”

  “What a welcoming touch,” Neela said, grimacing.

  “And there’s another,” Ling said. With her sword she pointed at some white objects, half-buried in leaves and mud. They were small bones. From a hand, most likely. They were arranged in an oval with crossed lines running through it. “It’s Greek. A theta in its archaic form,” she said. “It means death.”

  “Death?” Neela said. “How about Hi? Or Hey, there! or Nice to see you?”

  “It’s a warning, I think. Meant to scare off the uninvited,” Ling said.

  “Follow the bones,” Serafina said. “That’s what Vrăja told me. I think we’re on track.”

  The rotter stopped growling. He turned toward the mouth of the Olt, listening.

  “Come on,” Ling said, putting her sword back in its scabbard. “This is no place to hang out.”

  The three mermaids continued up the river Olt, and the rotter stood where he was.

  Listening.

  Watching.

  And waiting.

  BY LATE AFTERNOON, the mermaids had put another five leagues behind them and were coming to the Olt’s first bend. They’d used no velo spells in the Olt, as they were afraid of speeding past landmarks. They’d encountered more freshwater mermaids, defensive and territorial, and had pleaded with them to be allowed to cross their patches of river. As they approached the bend, they heard voices, raised and shrill.

  “What now?” Neela said wearily.

  Serafina, worried, held a finger to her lips and hooked a thumb toward the bank. All three flattened themselves against it, then inched forward. As they rounded the bend, an alarming sight greeted them—three ghosts were attacking a mermaid. The ghosts had once been terragogg girls. They were wearing clothing from another time. The mermaid was young, too. She had curly red hair, blue eyes, and a smattering of freckles across her face. She wore gold-rimmed glasses that were hanging off one ear.

  “How dare you come here!” one ghost shrilled at her.

  “After what you did!” the second shrieked.

  “Stealing him from me!” the third shouted.

  The ghosts were pinching the mermaid. Slapping her. Pulling her hair. She was fighting back hard.

  Ling sighed. “Is everyone in the freshwaters a tĭngjŭ?” she asked.

  “What’s a—” Serafina started to say.

  “A jerk.”

  The three rushed to the red-haired mermaid’s aid.

  “Leave her alone! Get out of here!” Ling shouted.

  “Shoo!” Neela said.

  But instead of scaring the ghosts off, they only made them angrier. So angry, in fact, that the ghosts started to attack them. They were everywhere at once. Their slaps and pinches hurt. The mermaids outnumbered them four to three, but they were still taking a beating.

  One, a buxom blonde, ripped Neela’s messenger bag off her arm and rifled through it. When she found that there was food in it, she greedily ate it. It slowly fell all the way through her transparent body to the riverbed—which made her furious. Another ghost pulled the redhead’s combs from her hair and her pearls from her neck and tried to decorate herself with them. But they, too, fell to the riverbed. The third tried to pull Ling’s sword off her back.

  “What do you want?” Neela shouted.

  “I want my Gregory back!”

  “My Fyodor!”

  “My Aleksander!”

  “Merls, I’m getting my tail kicked here!” Serafina shouted as one of the ghosts ripped the neck of her tunic.

  “What are we going to do?” Neela yelled. “I can’t get them off me!”

  “Meu Deus!” a new voice said. “I just saw him! He’s with her!”

  All three ghosts stopped short.

  “What?” the first said.

  “You saw him?” the second said.

  “With her?” the third said.

  A new mermaid—wearing glasses with round silver lenses, a lot of fuchsia, and holding a piranha on a leash—nodded gravely. Her skin was a warm chocolate brown. She had dozens of glossy black braids.

  “I did. Swear to gods. He was kissing her. And they were laughing so hard. At you, querida. What’s your name again?”

  “Elisabeta!”

  “Ileanna!”

  “Caterina!”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s the name I heard him say. It was you, mina, for sure.”

  The three ghosts threw down the things they’d taken and screeched with rage. “Where is he?” they all shouted at once.

  The mermaid pointed downriver. “That way. Just past the last village.”

  The ghosts raced off.

  “Tão louca!” the mermaid said with a chuckle, watching them go. Then she said, “I’m Ava. Tudo bem, gatinhas?”

  “Um…still alive…I think,” Ling said. She turned to the others. “Ava just asked us how we are. In Portuguese.”

  “I’m not sure,” Neela said, her hair hanging in her eyes. “What was that?”

  “Rusalka, they’re called. Here, at least,” Ava said. “They’re the ghosts of human girls who’ve jumped into a river and drowned themselves because of a broken heart.”

  “The Maiden’s Leap!” Serafina said excitedly. “It’s one of Vrăja’s landmarks!”

  “Maiden’s Leap,” Ava said, shaking her head. “Maluca! Must be something irresistible about rivers to sad
girls. They just have to throw themselves into them. I’ve seen a lot of river ghosts. They’re like vitrina, only mean. We have them in my river, the Amazon, but they have a different name.”

  “What do you call them?” Neela asked.

  “Idiots!” Ava said, cracking up. “Can you imagine? Killing yourself over some guy?” She made a face. “Ekah! Não faz sentido! And I don’t care how hot he is!”

  The others laughed too. Serafina introduced herself, followed by Neela, then Ling.

  “And you, mina?” Ava asked the red-haired mermaid.

  “I’m Becca. From Atlantica,” she replied. “Thanks for the backup.”

  Becca was kneeling on the riverbed, collecting her possessions and putting them neatly back in her traveling case.

  “They gave you some nasty cuts. Your cheek’s bleeding,” Ling said. “I can’t believe you were fighting them off by yourself.”

  Becca, smiling, shrugged off Ling’s concern. “It’s only a scratch,” she said. “I’ve had worse.”

  “You’re brave. You’d have fought them all day long,” Ava said.

  “If I had to,” Becca said. Her eyes narrowed. “And they’d have come out the worse for it…eventually.”

  “One with spirit sure and strong,” Ava said. “Felt that the second I met you, mina.”

  Becca stopped repacking her things and looked at Ava. “How do you know those words?” she asked.

  Ava was about to answer her, when there was a loud snapping sound.

  “He tried to bite me!” Neela screeched. “I was only trying to pet him!”

  “Careful,” Ava said. “He has lots of teeth and no manners.”

  “What, exactly, are you doing with a piranha on a leash?” Neela asked huffily.

  “He’s my seeing-eye fish. I’d be lost without him. Wouldn’t I, Baby?” Ava said, smiling at the growling piranha.