Vicious Deep

by Zoraida Cordova

  “I want to know if you actually have a piece of the trident.”

  She smirks and rattles the things cupped in her hands, and they click like die. She lets go, and they fall on the surface of the pond but do not move. They float around each other until they’re completely still for her to look at. “Are you sure?”

  She’d make a good poker player, good enough to even play with Mr. Santos. But then a dark shadow crosses over her features. The seashells sink to the bottom of the water, and I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure she’s not too happy about it.

  She sets her black eyes on me. “Who have you told of this place?”

  “N-no one. Why?”

  “You have been followed.”

  As she says it, my dagger heats in my hand. I turn around when I hear Gwen gasping for air. All the light fairies scuttle behind leaves and boulders, so the light is stretched out too far and the shadows grow longer.

  I don’t need light to see who followed us here. Elias’s hand holds her at the neck. Her pale fingers hold his wrist. Her eyes are open like small bursts of lighting.

  “Don’t you touch her,” I say.

  “I already am.” Elias’s voice is a growl. “She’s mine to do with as I please.”

  He steps forth, still dripping water. He’s in the same clothes I last saw him in, but the chain mail around his waist looks more rusted, his skin more green than tan.

  “This isn’t very champion-like.”

  He still isn’t looking at me. The skin around his eyes is breaking apart. The smell of rotting fish is heavy in the air, and this time I have to do something. Gwen kicks at the air as he raises her up with one arm.

  Behind me, the oracle in her red shroud is waddling away to safety. I don’t really blame her. I just wish my body didn’t feel so frozen.

  “Especially when she’d prefer a champion like me, right?” I say. The effect is instant. His face shoots sideways at me. “At least I don’t stink.”

  He turns back to Gwen slowly.

  I keep going, “You didn’t really think she’d sit around waiting for you. She needs a real merman, not a fake king who lost to a human girl.”

  He tosses Gwen to the side, and I fight the impulse to run to her and make sure she’s okay, because she isn’t moving.

  Elias charges at me, all arms and bare chest, a blurred shadow.

  “A little help, ladies,” I mumble. One of the light fairies flies around us. She pulls at his ears and kicks him, which is like getting smacked around by a Barbie doll, really. All I need is for her to stay close enough that I can see him.

  I grab his arms, dropping my dagger, and hold them above my head. He has no weapons, just brute strength. With my knee I get him right in the gut. He tenses up and clutches his stomach. He grabs at his throat, his chest, and heaves for air. I roll over him and start punching him in the face.

  I’ve only ever seen guys get into fights at school, in the park, in the middle of the street. I used to wonder what made the guy winning look so vicious. Now, with Elias’s face bloody and tender under my fists, I don’t feel any pity for him. I think of how he let everyone think he was dead, how he hurt Gwen. And in this moment, I swear to myself that I will never hurt a girl again.

  Elias stops moving. I can feel his body go limp under me.

  I can’t breathe.

  I roll over.

  Fall into the pond. The water is shallow enough that it doesn’t cover my face. The cool of the water is the best feeling against my skin. A fairy floats above my face and lands right on my nose on her little toes. Her body is a slick Thumbelina version of a perfect woman, and her hair lights up at the very tips. Huh. So it’s her hair that’s the light, not her wings. She flies to my chest and lies there, right over my heart, which feels like it’s going to tunnel right out.

  I notice Gwen standing over me. The little fairy gasps and runs away, taking the light with her. Gwen puts her head on my chest where the fairy just did, like she’s listening for my heartbeat or just looking for a pillow. I rake my shaking fingers through her hair.

  “Ouch,” she says when I hit a tangle.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. You saved me.”

  I guess I did. She sits up and stares at her ex-fiancé. I wonder what she’s thinking. Is she even a little bit sad? Is she going to hate me tomorrow?

  The oracle isn’t coming out of her hiding spot behind a small boulder.

  “It’s okay,” I call out to her. “He’s not getting up anytime soon.”

  But he does, because the next thing I feel when I sit up is arms bending me in a headlock. Motherf—

  And the voice that screeches in my ear doesn’t belong to Elias anymore. It’s the one I’ve dreamt of for days. It comes in heaves, a deep scraping thing. Something inside him gasping for air. Then I realize that the gasping sound is coming from me. I can’t breathe.

  Closer is the only word I can make out.

  Then Elias goes stiff. He falls on top of me, and I have to push with everything I have to roll him off my back. He lands sideways with my dagger in his back. Smoke fumes around the golden hilt.

  “Any further and you would’ve scratched me,” I say, crawling over to Gwen, who is holding her hands out like she’s waiting for rain. Her palms are raw and red, black in places where fire has burned her.

  “Did the dagger do that?”

  She nods once, wincing in pain. She dips her hands in the pond and shuts her eyes. The water running over her hands glows. When she pulls them out, the skin is starting to grow back, but it isn’t healed completely. “It isn’t meant to be touched by anyone but your family line.”

  “Duh, Triton’s blade.”

  “Triton’s blade, indeed.” The little voice comes out from its hiding place.

  “Thanks for the help, lady.”

  “Don’t you get smart with me.” She wags a finger in my face. “I haven’t lived as long as I have by fighting battles.” The oracle is pulling on a small wooden box with gold handles on either side. From here it looks just like a treasure chest I had when I was in my pirate phase. I used to keep baseball cards and food and a plastic sword in it. This one is solid wood. There isn’t a lock that I can see.

  “This,” she says, “opens to my touch.” She grazes her fingers along the lid, like tickling the back of a cat. The lid pops open.

  Part of me is expecting smoke and sparklers. Something a little more dramatic than this. Except it really is amazing on its own. It’s the bottom of the trident scepter. A piece of long, pointed glass that glows when I hold my hand closer to it. I grab the gold handle of the chest, and the lid swings closed. It’s much heavier than it looks.

  “Solid quartz,” she says, “from the depths of the earth.”

  It’s the same feeling I get when I hold the dagger. Like it belongs to me. I can feel a current, something more ancient than my blade, older than the ground we stand on and the trees that surround us. Still, it doesn’t look like it could do much damage.

  “It has power on its own,” says the oracle. “But it is still incomplete.”

  “I thought you could only read the bones of the sea,” I say.

  She chuckles. “Your emotions are plain on your face. You must work on that. Some of us play poker on the nights of the quarter moons. You should come. Learn something.”

  “I think I will.”

  She runs her fingers on the chest again, and this time it doesn’t open. “You won this with your strength. A king must be strong.” She holds the Venus pearl toward me. “You won this with your heart.”

  “But—you’ve been missing it for years.”

  She nods and the soft folds of her face upturn into a big smile, until even her eyes are smiling slits. “Some things have so much more power when given willingly.”


  I hold out my palm and she lets the pearl drop into my hand.

  A gagging noise comes from Elias. And this time it’s because he’s breaking apart. Poof, into nothing.

  “I think he’s been dead for days,” Gwen says.

  The oracle shakes her head. “And now you have more to worry about than putting pieces back together.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “You’re welcome to stay here,” she says, which emits squeals from the little fairy girls. “But I’d think you’d want to get a move on.” She looks up to the sky, and I wonder what she sees.

  I unzip my backpack, and the chest hardly fits. I pull the dagger out of Elias’s back. It comes away dripping black. I dip it in the shallow pond to clean it.

  “Let’s go, girls,” the oracle says. She takes one last look at Elias’s form. “The squirrels can have him. Won’t take long for him to dissipate. Our kind, we don’t leave many traces behind in this world.”

  After rinsing and repeating about three times, I don’t smell like rotting fish anymore.

  At least I smell like rotting fish washed in my mom’s lavender and honey shampoo. I trade my muddy backpack for a gym bag that has enough room for the treasure box, a change of clothes for the girls, clean shorts for me and Kurt, a bag of trinkets my mom thought might come in handy, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, jelly, beef jerky, and some regular old junk food.

  “I think you forgot I’m the one carrying this thing,” I tell her, opening the trunk door to the car.

  Dad’s still in the driver’s seat. The sound of the Beach Boys hits me right in the gut, familiar and distant all at once.

  “I’m not going. I can’t keep saying good-bye to you,” my mom says, pulling a sheer scarf around her shoulders. Her red hair falls like flaming waves around her, and the turquoise of her eyes glistens in the light of the street.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve got good company.”

  Gwen sort of curtseys at my mom. She’s wearing one of Mom’s long blue dresses.

  My mom nods back at her but doesn’t say much else. She kisses my forehead. “Don’t forget, you have school on Monday.”

  “I know, I know,” I say, taking on her tone: “I didn’t become a human in this country just so you could drop out of high school.”

  She turns on her sandaled heel and marches back upstairs, where she’s going to curl up on the couch, pull out one of her fairy-tale books, and wait for my dad to come back home.

  •••

  Dad leans against the Mustang in the Coney Island parking lot. I grab the gym bag and hoist it over my shoulder.

  “I don’t have to tell you—”

  “Be careful, and don’t take candy from strange mermaids.”

  Dad shakes his head. “No, if you break another cell phone, I’m cutting you off.”

  “I can’t—you guys—I’m trying to save our skins and that’s the thanks I get.”

  Dad laughs, a real chuckle like I haven’t heard in a long time.

  •••

  Arion’s ship bobs in the steady water. Layla stands talking to him. I can see her from here. My stomach tightens in that nervous way before you see the person you’ve been thinking about for days, the person whose face you see right before you think you’re going to die. Because that’s what it was like. Before the wave hit, before the merrows attacked each time, before Elias had a death grip around my windpipe, I saw her face.

  Kurt stands at the deck, waiting for us. He holds out his hand, and I look at it for a second too long before realizing that he’s trying to take my bag.

  “Are you angry with me?” His violet eyes scan my face for any lies. His mouth is tight. “For letting—”

  “My mom packed some beef jerky and a clean pair of shorts.” I give him my best smile, because I know that I need Kurt on my side. I hand him the bag, but first I take out the piece of the trident. I don’t want to let it out of my sight. “Where’s Thalia?”

  “Below deck, sleeping.” I don’t know if the tension across his forehead is because we both know there’s nothing we can do to help Thalia feel any better, or because he notices Gwen standing behind me. They nod at each other without saying a word, and we gather around the ship’s captain.

  “Lady East,” Arion says, bowing to Gwen.

  “Not anymore, I think,” she says.

  Arion looks confused, and I offer, “I’ll give you all the riveting details later.”

  “I see you’ve acquired the quartz scepter. I’ve sent word to Toliss. Soon everyone will know you are not to be trifled with.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Really, you shouldn’t have.

  “Where to, Tristan?” Arion steadies his arms, ready to steer us in any direction.

  Layla folds her chin on her hands and stares out at now-dark Coney Island. The rides have probably been turned off for hours. The only light comes from the sliver of moon that hits the deck and from the oil lamps that are hung around the ship.

  “The Florida Keys,” I say. It’s an amazing feeling, this is. It’s different from being captain of the swim team or just a good lifeguard. It’s having people look to me for real answers. The sudden shift of the boat takes a second to adjust to.

  “The Florida Keys it is.”

  I hold on to the hilt of the trident.

  Layla laughs. “It’s like a giant rock candy.”

  “I wouldn’t try to put my mouth on it,” I say. I can feel the glow of it down to my bones. We step back, surprised, as it shoots sparks of light.

  I look to Arion, who laughs the way he does at my clumsy humanity. “Don’t worry, sire,” he tells me. “It is always good to have a little more light when heading into such dark seas.”

  This book would not have been possible without Adrienne Rosado, friend, agent, and were-mongoose. We are the proverbial little-engine-that-could.

  My mother, Liliana Vescuso, the most selfless and hardworking woman in the world. Thank you for having the strength to leave your homeland to start a new life in New York City. For giving me everything I ever wanted, even when I didn’t always deserve it.

  Para mi Mami Aleja, por ser el corazón de nuestra familia y porque siempre ha creído en mí.

  Joe Ponytail, Tio Danny, Tio Rob, Ne, Adrianna, Ginelle, Adrian, Gastonsito, and my awesome little brother, Danny. I couldn’t ask for a better family and support system.

  The wonderful staff at Sourcebooks Fire—the Duo of Awesome, Leah Hultenschmidt and Aubrey Poole; Kristin Zelazko and the production peeps; Tony Sahara for the breathtaking cover; and my publisher, Dominique Raccah.

  Mr. David A. Johnson, the best teacher in New York City. You teach more than social studies. You teach us that we can be our very best selves. Yes, the train is moving.

  To the awesome English department at Martin Van Buren High School (2001–2005) for letting me express myself, even if it meant painting on the department walls.

  Meg Kearney, a lover of words and writers. Thank you for all the writing opportunities you’ve given so many of us over the years. You are a goddess to the writing community.

  Ann Angel for reading my very first manuscript and showing me what to look for when self-editing.

  Sarah Jane Jaramillo for the beautiful photography portraits.

  Kelly, TS, Hannah, Steph—who were my cheerleaders, outline readers, and playlist givers.

  And to the real Röaan Recklit for every nugget of inspiration I’ve taken from you. But especially for knowing I could do this, even though I always threatened to quit.

  Write on, like,

  Zoraida

  Zoraida Córdova was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she learned to speak English by watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on repeat. Her favorite things are sparkly, like merdudes, Christ
mas, and New York City at night. She is currently working on feeding your next mermaid fixation.

  You know you want to visit her at www.zoraidawrites.com.