by Gwenda Bond
“Later there are tons of myths about him helping humans out, giving us knowledge. Art. Water for crops.”
“Don’t all the tricksters have stories about them like that?” I press him. “Isn’t that why the Society knew they’d be willing to do the go-between thing? I thought it doesn’t mean they’re really that friendly.”
“I took you to those meetings.” Tam rakes a hand through his messy hair. “All I know is Dad thinks Enki’s one of the more sympathetic to us.”
That might explain why my dad would come here. If he needs help.
Whatever I was going to say next is stolen by the appearance of the winged creature. It launches out of the temple’s entrance and into the air. Brown and black wings spread wide as it circles above us in lazy swipes. The body belongs to a giant eagle but the head… That’s all lion.
“Holy crap,” Bree says.
“Tam,” I say, “would that be a chaos monster?”
Tam lifts a hand to shade his eyes. “Nah. Anzu. He’s the son of a bird goddess. Part eagle. Enki likes to keep him close. He’s not supposed to be one of the good guys.”
“Great.”
The revelers in front of us point and cheer and speed up. Not that they need to. We’re nearly to the top already. With each step closer, I become less ready to face whatever lies ahead. My stuffed shirt of a dad’s been hanging out with part eagles? Then Anzu roars like this is a circus and one of us stuck our hand in his cage, and I have to rethink. My cranky, rule-obsessed dad’s been hanging out with part eagles, part mad lions?
We finally arrive at the top, where the temple sits. Straight ahead is a long hallway with arched entrances that I assume leads to the interior where Enki and company are. The revelers walk in without a hitch. But I stop on the flat stone, still open to the sky.
Anzu the giant lion-eagle swoops. Close. Closer. I feel wind from his wings in my hair.
Bree and Tam rush toward the first arch, but I’m afraid to go with them. Afraid Anzu will take notice of them, like he has of me.
I peer up at Anzu, wishing for him to fly off or up or anywhere away. But he’s so near I can see the precise edge where his feathers shift from brown to black. He lands in front of me and his enormous lion nose twitches. He’s sniffing the air.
“Nice monster,” I say, and my voice only shakes a little bit. Hardly any. Dad would be proud, if he could see me.
Anzu roars loud enough to wake a god.
I step back once, then again. He stalks forward, claws scraping the stone.
We are locked in a terrible dance. His giant teeth are knife-sharp and on full display as he bares them at me, roaring.
My heart threatens to stop. I’m shaking, and it’s like yesterday all over again. Death is staring me in the face. Maybe if Dad can’t see me, he’ll hear me. I suck in a breath and go for volume. “Dad! Dad, I could use some help!” I shout.
Behind me, Tam says, “Kyra, no sudden moves.”
Tell that to the monster.
Anzu claws toward me, his mouth stretching wide enough to swallow the world. He’s close enough that I can see the clumped mats in the fur of his mane. I have nowhere to go to get away. Sheer panic kicks in. I cringe, lifting my backpack in front of me. But it’s a too-weak reaction behind a too-small shield.
After Oz’s observation that my backpack isn’t much of a weapon, I am keenly aware that I don’t have any way to defend myself.
“Tam, go inside,” I manage. It doesn’t matter that my voice shakes, since Dad’s not showing up to be proud. I couldn’t shout for him again now, even if I thought he’d show. “Make sure Bree gets out of here. OK?”
It’s only then that I notice Anzu is no longer coming at me. He’s stopped. In that brief reprieve, Tam grabs me and tugs me backward. I turn and we lunge for the first arch. I expect to feel the back of my T-shirt ripping, claws and teeth tearing into me. I wait for that roar to sound too near to survive it.
But no flesh-rending pain or ear-scorching warning comes. We’re through the arch, and another, and the rest, tripping forward as fast as we can over the mosaic floor.
Bree is waiting for us at the end of the hall. The temple entrance is visible from here, and so is Anzu, pacing in front of it. But he stays outside.
“You are not going to believe this,” Bree says, pointing up an adjoining passage. Beyond it is another broad archway.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, fighting to catch my breath. “At this point I’d believe anything, except that I’m getting out of here past that thing.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Now that we’re not evading a monster, I take in the place. The walls have changed from the glimmering gold of the sand outside to a blue deep as a night sky or the bottom of the ocean. The floor’s mosaic patterns are wavy lines that must indicate water and curving ones that might be Enki’s horns. Yes, horns.
“The only way out is in, then,” Tam says.
Bree whirls on him, green eyes wide and afraid. “How are you keeping your shit together like this?”
“One of us has to.” Tam is trying to be funny.
But I punch his arm. “Excuse me. We all are.” I put my backpack on so I don’t have to carry it. “Bree, what’s unbelievable?”
“The blessings. This way.” She waves at the passage, frowning, and we start up it.
Tam ignores Bree, somehow not getting that she’s worried. He says to me, “He couldn’t hear you. That’s all. He would have come.”
Sure, Dad not showing up to rescue me stings. But that doesn’t mean I’m surprised by it. I exaggerate my shrug. “Sure. He would’ve.”
Bree stops at the arch, and when we join her, it turns out she might be right. I do have trouble believing the scene in front of us.
Several of the revelers writhe, moaning, on the tiled floor of a large rounded chamber with those same seamless blue walls. The woman with the flowing dress tips her head back and opens her mouth. A bright-red fishtail slowly lowers until it touches the woman’s extended tongue. She pulls back with a blissed-out smile and spins around in joy. The revelers aren’t what defies belief, though, it’s the things doing the “blessing.”
Long tanks form a border around the edges of the room. The glass is smudged with grime, not the spotless clean of the temple. The water within is so deep and dark that it appears black, as if they’re swimming in ink.
Oh, yeah. The they.
They’re not quite as big as Anzu, but still larger than any man-fish thing should be. They’re not mermen or anything ridiculous like that. They’re nothing you’d put in a child’s storybook, unless you wanted to mess that kid up for life.
They are the size of small whales, the oversized tanks hardly big enough for them to do more than turn around in, and there’s enough of them that the water ebbs in endless swells. Their heads end in disconcerting fish lips that contain giant jaws with rows of razor teeth. (The teeth make me think of Legba. I don’t want to think of Legba.) Their bodies are a mix of scaled hues, the tails sharp-finned as they swipe from the tank to touch the tongues of the revelers.
The head reveler lady says to us, “Don’t be shy! Get yours! You’ll see…”
What I see is her being pulled down to the floor by one of her companions, a guy whose intentions are not anything I want to witness.
“Where would my dad be? Tam, any ideas?” I ask.
He shakes his head no. “You’ll have to ask them. The seven sages. Minor gods Enki made. They’re his attendants.”
I count the weird fish-men. There are seven. “These are sages?”
Bree says, “I’m not letting them touch me.”
“Smart.” But Tam’s right about no way through. There’s a shadowed opening, door-sized, that goes further into the temple, but it’s on the other side of the tanks. There’s no going anywhere but back the way we came – blocked by lion-eagle – without help from these sages. Dad had better be here.
I choose the nearest tank, averting my eyes as I skirt around the revelers’ disturbing a
ctivities on the floor. “Yes,” I hear the woman say, and she adds, “get your blessing.”
Every muscle in my body wants out of here, to do anything besides take another step closer to the tank. Black water sloshes over the top, and a head three times the size of mine emerges. “Cooome close to me,” the sage says, in a voice thin as liquid. He has to push back when another sage forces up beside him. “Let us show you truuuth,” the new one says, and the voice is more feminine. So there are fish-women sages, too.
I am the center of attention of the revelers, angry at the fact their blessings have stopped, as all seven of the sages mass at this end of the tank. They hiss, coaxing me to come to them and be shown truth.
“Stop it.” I can’t think of anything else to say.
They don’t stop. If anything, the order amuses them. Well, maybe it’s amusement. Their reactions are hard to read, their eyes fathomless flat discs in their half-human, half-marine faces.
“I’m here about my father,” I say.
“You want to know why he attacked youuu,” the first sage says, pressed into the corner of the tank by his fellows. “Our cousin Anzu was told to protect your father. You are a threat. He saw youuu as a threat.”
I swallow. That monster attacked me on Dad’s behalf? “Is my father here?”
“Youuu are.” They chant it.
The reveler lady pokes my shoulder. “They don’t talk to us. Who are you?” she asks.
“No one for you to worry about. You can leave me here.”
The moment I turn from the tank, one of the sages’ tails caresses the bare skin of my neck. Cold, wet, scaly. I dart away, and the hiss-chatter-maybe-laughter gets louder. Bree and Tam are stuck between the rest of the revelers and me. I look at them, and tick my head toward the reveler lady. “You guys go with them. I’ll stay.”
“She loooves us.”
“She’ll stayyy…”
“The threat will stay foreeever.”
“Blessed ones leeeave her…”
The sing-song hiss makes me nauseous.
I expect giggles and protests from the dismissed revelers, but the woman bows her head to the sages. The others steeple their hands in a semi-universal gesture of respect as they shuffle back out. The wish of the seven sages is their command.
But Tam and Bree aren’t going. Of course.
“All three will see truth. We will show youuu.”
“I just want to see my dad,” I tell them.
More hissing and, “There’s a price. Truth is the price. Cooome to us. You three. Then we miiight tell.”
I refuse to ask anyone to do this for me. The pictures Bree made without anything like the sages in front of her are enough to make me regret bringing her here forever. The nightmares she’ll have… And Tam, he doesn’t owe me this.
But they exchange a look with each other and move to the front of the tank before I can step in. “Don’t–” I start, already too late.
The laugh-hiss of the sages fills the chamber, two tails swiping down to Bree and Tam’s open mouths, their tongues extended – if not with the abandon of the departed revelers, at least with determination. Both of them close their lips and step back as soon as the tails retract. They clutch each other’s hands.
“You too or it’s for nothing. Cooome here, daughter.” I don’t know which ones beckon for me, and it doesn’t matter. Now that Bree and Tam have gone this far, I have no choice.
The water sloshes as I approach the tank, open my mouth and put out my tongue like when I was tiny and had a sore throat and Mom would use a flashlight to say strep spots or no strep spots. As a tail delicately deposits a drop of foul black water onto my tongue, I hang onto that memory of Mom. I step back and close my eyes. My plan is to try my best to resist whatever the droplet’s supposed to do.
But the room I’m in… suddenly it’s home. I’m in Dad’s room. I remember coming to myself over the shirt and the money and the ID, his note in my hands as I rocked back and forth. I hear a sob and the room is dark and so I’m sure it’s me from the night before that I see and I get so angry at the seven sages, with their clever game, their empty promises of truth, that I almost don’t realize.
It’s not me, it’s Dad. The shirt’s open on his lap, and he slips in the note. He folds the T-shirt around everything. He is crying. His head shakes back and forth, No, as he folds the fabric with such care. So deliberate, he rises and pushes back the desk, hides the bundle in the wall. I lean in and hear him whisper, “I’m sorry.” I want to forgive him everything. I reach out, saying, “Dad, it’s OK. Dad, I’m here. It’s Kyra.”
That’s when the cool hand touches mine, and brings me back to the seven sages’ chamber.
I resist for a blink, two blinks. But, no, this is where I am. The tanks, sages watching instead of hissing, the blue ocean walls.
Tam and Bree stare at me. The god touching my hand obviously pulled them both out of their sage visions – or whatever that was – first. His skin is composed of blue and white scales, alternating, so I know better than to feel relief. When I look up, I discover he has two faces. Each is perfect beside the other, one blue and the other white. The foreheads and the planes of his jaws curve like twin moons of a single planet. He wears a long pale robe.
Tam says, “This is Isimud, Enki’s messenger.” He can’t hide how shaken he is. Not from me. The droplets must have taken them somewhere too. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he says. “Ask him.”
Tam’s bravado strikes me as false, but the suggestion he makes is genuine.
The two-faced man waves his free hand. “Our apologies for the greeting you received. Anzu is an overzealous creature.” The last word is soaked with disdain. “But he has his uses.”
I force myself not to shy from his dual gaze. “Did he really attack me because I’m a threat to my dad?”
His blue face frowns, and the white one speaks. “I believe you are familiar with complicated situations. This is one. Come. Enki will allow your audience now.”
He releases my hand and gestures to an opening in the floor in front of the tanks. I’m certain it wasn’t there before. Steps descend into cool blackness. The sages’ silence is almost worse than their gibbering.
I hesitate. “My friends? They’ll be safe.”
“They have nothing to fear from us,” Isimud answers, though I don’t see which mouth says the words.
“What about Kyra?” Tam asks, and I have to admire him even while I want to tell him to keep quiet and worry about getting out of here in one piece. Not about me.
“She is a guest,” Isimud’s blue mouth says. “As is her father.”
That’s all I need to hear, that Dad is here. As I start down the steps, the black water of the tank sloshes, and the last thing I see before there’s only darkness in front of me is one of the fish-men’s faces, as he swims to the bottom of his glass cage to watch us disappear. He’s showing me his teeth.
We walk down and down, and the black is like being inside a permanent night. There is no soft candle glow, no faint hint of light. Wherever we’re going, it’s the deeps. I find each step with care, glad they are regular and steady. Stone, I guess, from the sound of our shoes.
Bree has her hand on my shoulder, the only sign of her fear the tightness of the grip. I don’t complain. It’s only right I’m the one in front. I should have been strong enough not to bring them, to come here alone in the first place. We are in danger, no matter what assurances my grandfather Bronson made to Ben, no matter what the two-faced god claims.
Anything might happen to us. Of that, I’m certain.
I assume Tam’s following Bree, and that Isimud needs no guidance. We do not talk. We might be descending into an ancient cavern, winding far below the surface of the earth. Or we might be beneath the ocean by now. There is no sound except the heaviness of our feet and our breathing as we travel down, and down, and down.
I know the destination is close when the smell changes. The air holds nothing, no light, no air, no
smell, until it does. Like a memory of visiting the harbor and getting a snort of water up my nose by accident, there’s a sting to it. The scent is water, its nature, as pure as possible. I don’t know how else to explain it. One moment we’re inside living darkness, the next we’re inside living water.
The steps end, and there is light.
“Wow,” the word escapes Bree, a soft exhalation.
The wall of water stretches higher than I can follow. It’s a solid sheet of blue, not held there by glass or by anything. It simply is. We stand on a scant few feet of sandy soil with the night stairs behind us, and a subterranean magic ocean in front of us. I’m trembling, and it’s hard to imagine how anyone could not. I grip the straps of my backpack to help disguise it.
This is where my father is. I have to keep going.
“No harm will come to you in the abzu,” Isimud says.
“What does he mean?” Bree asks. “He can’t expect us–”
Tam puts a hand on her arm. “I believe we can trust him on this.”
Bree bites her lip, but nods. I extend my hand, and she takes it. Tam takes her other one. Bree’s trembling too, which makes me feel better and worse.
Isimud angles toward the water. “He awaits.”
Walking into the mass of water feels wrong, but necessary. So we move forward. I pause at the edge of it… “Should we hold our breath?” I ask Isimud, and both faces say, “There is no breath in the abzu. It is life itself.”
“So that’s a no?” I mutter, and Tam snorts. I want to hug him for the normalcy of it. I look at Bree and Tam, and ask them, “Ready?”
Bree swallows. Tam raises his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I say, “me neither. Here we go.”
Forgetting what Isimud said, I suck in a breath, and we step together into the deep blue.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s not just water, of course. There are more things swimming in it. Monstrous gods, large and small, and fish – magical or regular, I can’t say. I keep holding my breath. I glance over and see Bree and Tam doing the same, cheeks puffing. We discover almost immediately that we don’t have to swim. No waving our arms and legs around required. We release hands because it’s easier to move with them free.