by WB McKay
"Not every bird shifter would go diving into the ocean," said Art. "I'm sure if I took to the sky you'd find a way to help me adapt, too."
"Unlikely," I said. "First of all, it's not like I can help you grow wings. Second of all, I'm not as nice as you are. And last--"
"Because all of your lists come in threes," interrupted Art.
"And lastly, you're a bit of a heroic genius. Ava here is clearly nervous about her brother and dear friend scuba diving for the first time. This is no time to be humble. Let your heroic history comfort her."
I'm sure my smile was devilish. Owen gave me a funny look, but he wasn't exactly my target audience. I was giving my all to trying that helpful thing people are always doing. As a novice to the role of wingwoman, I wasn't sure how my heroic comments had worked. I chose to believe I was a natural.
Charging forward, I grabbed Owen's hand and put us in the lead, leaving Art and Ava to sort themselves out. I'd done my best. Walking on sand was nothing new to me, but the Sayulita beach was a little different. The sand was bigger and thick with pebbles. The group of us trudged awkwardly on the slanted beach over to the glamoured boat. The waves on this part of the beach weren't as impressive, so the beached boat rocked gently.
"Hello there." I cleared my throat. "I mean… ¡Hola!" My head sunk into my shoulder's, desperate for a place to hide in embarrassment. I couldn't even remember to try and say hello in Spanish. It probably wasn't that big of a deal, but it surprised me. I'd always thought of myself as someone who hadn't actually been around much of Earth yet, but would inevitably, someday, be well-traveled. It had been my assumption that this meant I'd be good at it. Respectful of languages and all that. Clearly, I needed to get out more.
"Hola, amigos. My name is Max." His smile was welcoming. "I am here to take you to the statue and help you dive. Are you ready?"
"My name is Sophie and this is my team. We're ready." I breathed a sigh of relief at his mention of help, and waved to the rest of the team to climb aboard.
Max offered each of us a hand up and then hopped out to push the boat into the water. When he took my hand I caught a whiff of clean fish and seaweed. While they were natural enough for the area and subtle enough in magic to make him pass for human to the unknowing eye, they were definitely his magical signature. I wasn't sure what type of fae he was, but confirming he was fae was enough for me. Having a fae help us keep hidden from the humans was a huge mark I could move down on my list of worries as the captain of our little crew.
The waves picked back up, making it easier for Max to push the boat off the shore, something I was pretty sure he had a hand in. One hard shove later, Max scrambled over the back of the boat and lowered the motor into the water. After a couple of pulls on the cord, the engine roared to life and we were headed out into the ocean.
The boat was a simple affair consisting of nothing more than a few bench seats. In between the benches were the sets of scuba gear. There were six in total, one for each of us and Max. The boat skimmed through the waves in a much smoother manner than I expected it to. I could hardly feel the motion. If I had a sea fae like Max driving, I could get used to riding around in a boat. I breathed deeply of the sea air and let the wind whip through my hair.
It took almost twenty minutes to get to the dive site. As I watched, the water went from deep and blue to shallow and turquoise. Just ahead there was a small sandbar with a boat similar to ours beached on it. The pirates. How long had they been there already? It had to have been hours by now.
"And now to the real work," I said, as Max brought the boat to a stop.
"Very good," said Max. "Do any of you need a lesson in scuba?"
Owen and I raised our hands. I took a second glance back at Enid. She'd already said she didn't need to know how. I was looking forward to finding out what that meant. Many sea fae were shifters, others maintained human form, but could breath underwater, and some needed air as much as I did. I suspected this meant she could breathe underwater. I should have asked her for an inventory of her skills before leaving on the mission. What kind of leader didn't know what was in her arsenal?
There was hardly time for asking now. I focused on Max as he explained the ins and outs of scuba well enough for us to survive what we were about to do. It was a blur of gauges, regulators, and hoses. I got the general gist of it and pulled on all the equipment with the help of Ava and Max, who were ready long before Owen and I. It took a bit of extra work to get my swords comfortably on with everything else. I expected Max to ask about that, but he didn't. I hated bringing my swords into the salt water, but I hated the idea of going without them even more. Art watched the whole ordeal with curiosity for a few minutes, then shifted and slid over the edge of the boat and into the water.
Meanwhile, Enid stripped off her clothes without consideration for modesty. Shifter then. And one who couldn't shift with her clothes, which was unfortunate but made me smile. I'd been around Art and Owen too long, who sometimes made me feel like the only shifter who didn't know how. And Enid was so much older than I was, too. She caught me looking at her and gave me a salacious wink.
"Oh!" My cheeks burned. "I didn't mean to stare."
Enid's musical laughter filled the air. "I know," she said, and a dolphin jumped out of the water like it was in a show at a water park. "Oops." She covered her mouth and it was her turn for burning cheeks.
"Did you do that?"
"Yes," she said. "It's embarrassing. I lose control when I laugh sometimes. My magic comes out and I cal sea creatures without meaning to."
I waved her embarrassment away. "That's a lot better than accidentally scaring people so bad they mess themselves or start a brawl."
"It is, unless I'm near the beach and go into a laughing fit," she said, her eyes staring into the distance, focused on something in her past. "Then it gets called a mass beaching event." She was quiet for a few moments, eventually lowering her head. "It happens to most nereids, but we usually grow out of it."
I squeezed her shoulder until she met my gaze. "Maybe not so different after all." I'd seen mass beaching events before. They were terrible. Sometimes hundreds of whales or dolphins died. Nobody really understood why they happened. "We're all capable of both great and terrible things. That's what makes it so important we use our magic for good when we can."
Eventually, she nodded. "Let's go do some good."
Enid dived into the water and when she surfaced, she had shifted. The clear water gave a good view of her new form. Her legs were gone, replaced with the body of a large fish with flowing fins and scales of various shades of blue. At her waist, the scales transitioned to light green skin with pencil thin patterns of swirling black. It reminded me of an elevation map. Her arms and hands were mostly human except for small webs between the fingers. Her face was most remarkable. Her features were similar to her human form, but more delicate and angular. Her ears were gone, and her hair was a flowing white even though it was dripping with water. She was stunning.
I took a test step in my ungainly scuba suit and flippers and barely contained a laugh at the contrast between us. Oh well. I was a bird about to dive deep into the sea; I should look ridiculous. I waved to Owen in his equally silly looking suit and slid into the water. It was a welcome relief. The water wasn't that cold, but it was much better than the sweltering heat and humidity above.
Owen, Ava, and Max followed me in. Max guided us around the boat, down a few yards and back up to the surface. Owen and I got corrected on a few things by Ava and Max, but when we surfaced, Max was smiling. "You're doing very well. I would spend more time with you, but time is something you don't have. I wish you much luck. I will be here if you return."
Max's words sent a chill down my spine. His English was perfect. There was no pretending that his use of the word "if" had been an accident. I shook it off and gave him a confident smile. "See you in a little while." I said it, so I must have really believed it.
He climbed up the back of the boat and gave us a w
ave. "Good luck." He pointed toward the other boat. "I think I'd rather have you win than them."
"You have no idea how right you are," I said, and dived into the unknown.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I'd caught glimpses of the underwater sculpture as I'd learned the ropes of the scuba equipment, but awe hit me when we drew close. As Owen had explained, the sculpture represented Triton, the Greek god and messenger of the sea. He held one hand aloft, gripping a trident with tines reaching up to only a few feet from the surface. The other hand held a conch shell at about eye level. His body was remarkably similar to Enid's, being that of a fish from the waist down. Whether it was magic or some trick of materials, his scales gleamed in the light that filtered down from the surface. His tail rested on the sandy bottom about seventy-five feet below.
There was supposed to be an entrance to the trial somewhere around the statue. If it was anything like the entrance to the first trial, it was going to be a pain in the ass to find. We'd discussed our strategy, what there was of it, on the way to the beach. Basically, we would spread out and search for anything that could be a trigger, magical or otherwise. If we didn't find anything after thirty minutes, we'd surface and discuss what we'd seen and make another plan.
Owen and I kept a bit closer to Ava than Art and Enid. They swam circles around us. Literally. Something seemed off almost as soon as we hit the water, but it took a couple of laps around the sculpture to figure out what it was. There were no fish within a hundred yards of the statue. There was an almost invisible barrier dividing it from the rest of the ocean. Glamour, of course. If it weren't glamoured, humans would be all over it. There would be hourly tour boats.
I was still examining the glamour when Enid solved the puzzle. She flicked a fin in my face to get my attention, and then swam with hypnotic grace up to the conch shell that Triton held in his hand. She pressed her face to the narrow end and there was a clarion note that rang through the ocean like the call of an impossibly large whale. It was hauntingly beautiful until the ocean swallowed all of us whole.
I kicked with my flippers and fought against the current with my arms, but it was no use. Even Art and Enid were pulled helplessly down toward a hole in the ocean floor that hadn't been there a few seconds before. Gradually, my panic subsided. This was the idea, after all. If I'd been given the choice to swim toward the hole that had just opened in the ocean floor, I would have done it. I let my body turn toward my destination and kicked my legs to help the current carry me along. It was a good thing I'd decided to surrender to the loss of control, because it got a lot worse once we crossed into the unknown and blazed through a tunnel at inadvisable speeds. The journey ended abruptly as we were tossed into a massive underwater cave.
The group of us were tangled up like a bowl of ramen noodles. Owen was the first to meet my gaze; I showed him a thumbs up and then a thumbs down. He gave me a thumbs up in return. I repeated the same ritual with each person on the team and collected two more thumbs and one flipper up. Everyone was fine. This not being able to talk thing was a pain in the ass. At least there was some magical source providing us light so we weren't blind on top of it.
The light didn't come from any source I could determine, but it was definitely focused on the wall opposite the entrance. I stared at the words etched there, waiting for them to make sense. I'd probably have to be able to identify the language before I could discern meaning. This is why people work in teams, I reminded myself with some relief. Relieved wasn't something I ever expected to feel when working with other people, more like annoyed, but there I was. I gathered the team around me with hand gestures.
I pointed out the markings and mimed touching them. Everyone nodded. I then gave a sweeping wave at the whole wall and performed an exaggerated shrug.
Owen raised his hand and so did Enid. Ava held out her hand palm down and tipped it from side to side in a so-so motion. I gave them a thumbs up. Whew. Someone else knew what to do with the puzzle. That relief stuff sure was refreshing. I made a shooing motion, telling them to get to work.
I had a very important job: I hung back and watched. Art swam lazy figure eights between Ava and I while Owen and Enid went from one marking to another. A sequence of words lit up in white at their touch, then they tapped one that glowed red and the wall went dark again. One mistake, and they were made to start over. That's exactly the kind of thing you don't want to see when you're working against the clock. The oxygen in our tanks was a limited supply, and Art could only hold his breath for so long. He could stay underwater a lot longer than an actual sea lion thanks to his fae magic, but he couldn't stay under indefinitely. My dive timer said we'd been down twenty minutes. That was already the max for a true sea lion. Art didn't seem to be in any sort of distress. I didn't know about Enid's limits, but she seemed comfortable as well. Those thin slits on the side of her neck were probably gills. It was possible she didn't need fresh air at all. That made one of us possibly okay.
I swam over to the cave entrance. The current that had pulled us down was gone, so I swam until I was able to get a good angle up the tunnel. The light in the cave was just enough to see that our entrance had been closed in. There was no escape. I'd figured that was the situation. Either we found some air by moving forward through the challenge, or we all died. Well, probably not Enid. At least she would have something to eat once we all died. Art was right: Sophie Optimism was a unique brand.
Turning my back on the morbid thoughts, I returned to watch Owen and Enid lighting up the cave wall in white. Ava had moved closer and was every now and then pointing out a word or two. I tried not to cast concerned glances at Art. Every time he caught me, he did a backflip or some other silly maneuver to let me know he was fine. I started focusing on my oxygen gauge instead. We were doing a lot better than we had a right to be. From what Ava and Max said, we should have been out of air by now at this depth, but you could never tell what would happen when magic was at play.
It wasn't my way to watch three members of my team doing all the work while I sat back and twiddled my thumbs. It gave me a whole new perspective on the teams I'd been on and the person who ran them. The loss of control was infuriating. Every part of me wanted to jump in and figure this out, but I knew I would only be in the way. And then there was Art, perfectly content to allow others to do what they were good at while he chilled out and waited for his time. I really needed to learn to be more like Art if I hoped to live past forty without having a stroke.
Enid pressed a long word and then floated back toward me, waving for Owen and Ava to do the same. There were at least a couple dozen different words glowing white on the cave wall. She studied them from a distance for a full minute and then swam with certainty toward the top center of the puzzle. There were three very similar looking words written there. After a moment's hesitation, she touched the one on the left.
Immediately, there was a rumble that I felt in my chest. A crack opened at the bottom of the wall and continued up to form an arc when it touched the ground again about three feet away. The rock slowly sunk into the floor and disappeared, leaving a small tunnel in the wall. Great, it's not enough to be trapped in a cave underwater, now I have to squeeze through a small tunnel that is who knows how long. And the best I can hope for on the other end is another trap or puzzle that will kill me if I don't figure it out.
I waved the team forward and gave them a confident thumbs up before taking the lead. What the hell was my life?
CHAPTER TWELVE
The tunnel was a twisting, turning warren that was either a natural phenomenon covered up with the magic in the cave, or it was a torture device designed by prophetic fae who knew I hated tight dark spaces. I was leaning toward the latter. Prophetic assholes seemed like the kind of thing I would have to deal with.
Gradually, the dark winding tunnel led upward and emerged in yet another cave--and open air. Death by drowning was off the menu! At least for the time being, anyway. After a rather hilarious bit of struggling, Owen and I made
it out of the pool of water and removed the scuba gear, except for our wet suits. Ava did the same with about a hundred times more grace. Art shifted back to human and offered a hand to help Enid to her feet after she'd shifted back to her human form. After years of working with me being naked so often, he'd perfected looking at people only from the neck up. He barely even blushed.
I stood and cleared my throat. "You guys did an amazing job on that puzzle." I remembered hearing somewhere it was important to give clear and specific praise as a leader. "When we're through with all of this, one of you will have to explain it to me. I expect that will take about three days and many gallons of coffee. On second thought, nevermind the explanation. Just keep being amazing."
I met each of their eyes and they gave me a smile or inclined their heads; until I got to Art, who crossed his eyes. "I had no clue," he said. "I really hope there's something more in my wheelhouse coming up. I could use a good praising."
"Bah, you know what my praise is like more than the rest of them with all the times you've saved my ass over the years." I gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. "If it weren't for you, I'd probably have drowned on my first case."
"Nah, you would have pulled through somehow." He gave me his best smile. "You always do."
As usual, he said just what I needed to hear. I had to resist the urge to hug him because I was pretty sure that was an unprofessional thing for a boss to do on a job. Most of these people had no illusions that I was in anyway professional, but I needed them to know I took this seriously. I needed them to trust me. I needed to earn that. "All right team, let's get going." I headed down the passage, grateful that it was at least ten feet wide and magically lit. "Let's catch up to those pirates."