Until I met Tor. Torkek.
Until he spoke to me, sat with me, yelled at me, frightened me, ensnared me.
Each movement he made fed my hunger for experience. Each emotion he inspired within me made him more and more vital. I knew I couldn’t have him. I couldn’t be the princess from the melodisk tales who walked hand-in-hand with the man who saved her from the monsters. The stories were all the same. The princess thanked her savior with a kiss so painfully true it sealed their love forever. Instead, I would have to say goodbye and he would leave. I would ache for him to return, and maybe one day he would, but for how long? The reality of my existence excluded his presence. I was an abomination, a half-breed never meant to exist. What would he think when he found out the truth?
He turned his head, locks of hair still pulled back from his face, and my pain and insecurity was mirrored in his expression. I didn’t know why he was here, but he had come. I hadn’t forced him or chased him. Something drew him to me. Whatever I longed for, he sought it as well.
I shivered, excited by the promise of what the future would bring. Sunlight shone on us and the ocean shimmered. Always just out of reach, the fire in the sky bent each night to kiss the water, never meeting.
“Sera make,” Tor greeted when I arrived. His bag drooped next to him, a drawstring pulling it closed at one end.
“Yep, I made you breakfast. What do I get for it?”
“Get?”
“You know, like a trade. Can I have my papers back if I feed you?”
“Oh! No.” He picked up the bag and hid it behind him with a playful smile. “Mine.”
I shrugged and turned away. “Too bad. No food for you.”
“Sera make!”
“Poor Torkek, no breakfast. You must be so hungry.”
“Food!” he said with a smile.
“My papers?”
“Share,” he conceded, pulling the bag in front of him.
“Deal.” I plopped down next to him and set the plate and water jar in the sand between us.
We ate in silence, passing the water back and forth. It never occurred to me that we shouldn’t be sharing one jar. That was how I’d always done it with Mother. The simple intimacy of sharing the meal calmed me.
When we finished eating, I stretched out my legs and dug my webbed toes into the warm sand. I watched the second moon peek around a cloud to say hello. Its rare daytime appearance delighted me.
“Sera?” Tor’s agitated voice broke the silence.
“Yes?” I turned to find his gaze locked on my feet, on the thin flesh connecting my toes.
“Oh!” I said, pulling my knees up to my chest and burying my feet beneath the sand.
“You Fish.”
“No! I’m... I’m Serafay.”
“Fish feet. Fish toes.” Accusation and confusion warred in his voice.
This was the moment my mother always warned me about. The moment when someone discovered I was different, that I wasn’t Sualwet or Erdlander. The ground fell away beneath me. Any hope of friendship dissipated like the morning fog beneath the far cliffs. I buried my head into my knees. A ball of anguish and disappointment welled within me, fighting to break free in sobs.
I breathed deeply, terrified to look back at the man I barely knew but had placed so much hope in. It wasn’t fair that one person could move me so much, but considering he was the only person other than my mother and her few disapproving friends I had ever met... well, it made a kind of perverse sense. Every breath was a story never told, every moment an opportunity never taken.
“Sera?”
“What?” I whispered, not trusting my voice.
“Mother. Mother is Sualwet?”
No sense in denying what the evidence made clear. “Yes.”
“You not Sualwet.”
“No.”
“What?”
“What am I?” I looked up at him, my tears darkening my vision. “I’m a mistake.”
Tor shrugged and cocked his head. “Sera not bird. That good.” His smile was weak but sincere.
Kindness and understanding broke me deeper than rejection could have. Rejection, I had been raised to believe, was inevitable. All my life I’d been waiting for the moment when I would be discovered, but this wasn’t it. This was something I’d never dared imagine.
“Feet,” Tor commanded, pointing at the mounds of sand where my toes were buried.
“No.”
“Yes, feet.” He reached out as if to grab my ankle, and I jerked away.
I was unaccustomed to being touched. Even under the best circumstances, contact was something Mother raised me to avoid.
“Sera...,” he began, but I interrupted him by taking my feet out of the sand and letting one rest in front of him.
I spread my toes and showed him the connective tissue. “I can’t live underwater. I can swim really well, though, and can stay under for a long time.” I spoke in a rush, keeping my focus on my toes. “Mother says my eyes are different, too. The color and the membrane that covers them when I want to...”
“Eyes?” Tor waited for me to look up at him.
When I did, he studied me. The look on his face suggested he was taking in the subtle differences, now that he knew what to look for. My irises were larger than his but not as dramatically as my mother’s. Their silver sheen, unknown among Erdlander or Sualwet, was unique to me.
“Eyes are nice.” His expression was calm, his voice sincere. He directed his attention back to my feet but said nothing else.
“Tor?” I asked after the silence had expanded past my patience.
“Sera.”
“Are you going to tell anyone about me?”
“No tell. No... huh. No mother, no tell....” He struggled to find the words, one hand coming up to pull on the roots of his tangled hair.
“You won’t tell.”
“No.”
6
Morning turned into afternoon while Tor and I sat on the beach. He asked me questions about everything except my Sualwet genetics. By the time evening was upon us, his language skills had improved so much we were having real conversations. I kept expecting him to disappear, to evaporate into the salty air, but he didn’t.
He waited when I went inside, refusing to enter the small enclosure I called home. Something about him waiting put me at ease. I didn’t know why, but it felt right that he stayed outside.
I taught him songs I’d learned from the melodisks.
He marveled at the glittering butterfly clip my mother had brought me and insisted I put it in my hair.
We started a fire on the beach and ate dried meat and fruit.
I lent him Erdlander books: if he was one of them, perhaps he could read the language. Maybe we—the two of us—had more in common than I thought. The idea sent my mind reeling.
Night fell and the fire crackled with warmth. Sparks fluttered into the air. The ocean breeze danced over the flames, seducing them to new heights.
“Where do you live?” I asked in the darkness. We lay side by side in the sand, watching the ruby moon rise. It arced like a sickle.
“Up above.”
“Above what? Do you live in a tree?” I teased.
“No. Trees around, and a spring for water.”
“Sounds beautiful.”
“Ocean is nice,” he said.
“I’m tired of the ocean.” I sat up, grains of sand clinging to my hair. “I want to go somewhere else.”
“Nowhere else to go,” he said, still lying beside me.
“What about the city?”
“Can’t go there.”
“Why not? I could go.” The defensive tone I used with my mother squeaked out of me. “If I wore shoes, no one would ever know about me and—”
“You could go,” he agreed. “I can’t.”
“Why do you live out here?” The question fell from my lips before I’d thought it through. All day he’d volunteered nothing about himself. I’d avoided asking him, even though curiosity
gnawed at me. He was the first real friend I’d ever had, and I was terrified that asking the wrong thing would make him leave. But it was late, and I was tired.
“Just do.”
“Were you born out here?”
“No.”
“Were you born in the city?”
“Don’t know.”
“Were you born mute?” I teased, lying on my side, facing him. The fire behind him outlined his sharp silhouette against the light.
“Yes.”
“Tor.”
“I don’t like to think on it. I had no one. Was taken in—” He hesitated. I watched his face as he stared out into the night, seeing memories I couldn’t share. “Had to leave and be alone.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push; I just wanted to know more about you.”
“Huh,” he grunted, falling back into his monosyllabic ways, shutting me out.
Propped up on my elbows, I looked out over the water, past the cove and toward the open sea. I felt more alone with him next to me than I had before I’d met him. Somehow, not talking made the emptiness between us more painful. The silence was like a razor. I wanted him to go. I wanted him to stay.
“Sera,” Tor began, sitting up next to me. I tensed at the sound of his voice, unsure of what he would say next. “What’s that?”
He pointed out past the rocky jetty that concealed our beach from the open sea and toward a dim light on the horizon. The light grew brighter until a flare went up into the sky, illuminating the night and chasing the stars back into hiding.
“I don’t know.”
“Is it fire?”
“I think so, I think... Tor, you know there’s a war right? The Erdlanders and the Sualwet. Looks like the fighting might be closer to us than usual.”
“Yes, they have always fought.”
“It’s worse now. Mother says Sualwets are coming ashore to attack and the Erdlanders are poisoning the sea.”
Five other small fires flared in the distance, burning the ocean surface. More deaths of people I would never know, cultures I would never belong to. Their war meant nothing to me, yet I mourned for them.
The black sky offset the hue of the bright ruby moon. Tonight the smaller moon hung low, barely a crescent. The day after, it wouldn’t be visible at all. As a child, I imagined fire blazed on the surface of the moon, and that made it red. Mother told me, No, the moon is made of nothing but broken dreams; its color is the blood she’s seen spilt.
A small ripple in the water caught my attention. A splash at the coral reef.
I scanned the dark water of the cove, searching for what disrupted its calm. The small fish that swam there did not break the surface, and dolphins stayed out in deeper waters.
Our fire made it difficult for me to focus, so I stole toward the shoreline.
Tor followed me. “Sera?”
“Did you see that?”
“See what?”
“That,” I whispered, pointing to another disturbance in the calm water. A dark silhouette floated above the surface, something was on the coral reef. “I’m going to look.”
I stepped into the water, my skin relaxing as moisture seeped into my pores.
“It might not be safe.”
I turned, expecting him to protest, but instead he had taken off his shirt and joined me at the water’s edge.
I ran into the gentle surf and dove beneath the surface as soon as the water was deep enough. Tor splashed behind me, wading deeper before jumping in. Swimming out to the reef, I heard the distant Sualwet song. Their voices carried farther underwater. This was a warning cry. Carried from one group to the next like a single voice. All who heard it joined the song:
~We’ve been attacked. They knew where the Domed City was. We’ve destroyed their ships. Kill all Erdlanders you see!~
I suppressed my fear for my mother, who was out there foraging for supplies, and swam harder toward the reef. Beneath the surface, the blackness of night was complete. No stars lit the way, no fire brightened the air. Instead, I retracted the membrane protecting my eyes and relied on my senses to show me the world.
The cove was empty. No fish darted through the water, no crabs scurried along the ocean floor. Farther out, I sensed the warmth of a body. Sualwet or Erdlander, I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t moving. In the distance the rumbling of displaced water and a submerged engine told me a large ship was cutting its way through the sea.
At the reef, I emerged to breathe. Tor was behind me, swimming with powerful strokes, but his need to surface for breath slowed him down. With caution I approached the warmth I had detected earlier, not waiting for Tor.
Ahead I saw the outline of a Sualwet woman face down in the water. Were she an Erdlander, she’d be dead, but floating this way meant nothing for a sea-dweller. I stepped closer, a shroud of dread wrapping around my wet shoulders.
~Mother?~
No response.
As I reached out to her, Tor came up behind me. He said nothing as I placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder and rolled her over in the water.
~Mother!~ I screamed, falling to my knees, pulling her limp body to my chest.
~Serafay...,~ she whispered, opening blackened eyes. ~They’re... coming. You... have to run....~
~What? Mother, stop. What happened?~
“Sera.” Tor pointed to a broken spear embedded in her abdomen. The wound bled into the water, staining the dark, churning sea.
~Please! What happened?~
~They... attacked. I was... alone.~ Her hoarse voice ripped into my heart. Every word was so weak, so unlike her.
My mother’s eyes drifted closed, and I tightened my grip on her. If I let go, I might lose her forever. Her skin was cool, but that was normal. I told myself she was fine. She would heal.
“Help me get her to shore.”
Mother forced her eyes open and moaned as she tried to sit up. ~Serafay. You... have to run. They’re... combing the shoreline. They’re going... to find you.~
Above us another flare went up, closer. The ships edged toward us.
~Go!~
~No,~ I protested as she closed her eyes again. ~I can’t....~
Tor’s hand was cool on my shoulder. “Sera, come.”
“No.”
A grinding noise vibrated along the water’s surface.
“We have to go!”
~Mother....~
She didn’t respond. Her eyes closed, and her body went limp. She was half in the water, her upper body exposed to the air. Just like how she’d lived—meant for the sea but kept above the surface by me.
Another flare went up. White light blurred my vision, and for a moment, nothing made sense.
“Now.” Tor grabbed me by the arms and pulled me up.
“I can’t leave her.”
He released me and leaned down to pick up her body. Then he walked out to the edge of the reef and placed her in the water. With a push, he sent my mother’s body past the cove and into the open sea. “She’s home now.”
Sobs in my chest clawed their way up, desperate to be released.
“We have to go,” Tor said, interrupting my grief. “We have to swim back and run.”
I stood before him. Mute.
“Please,” he begged.
I didn’t speak a word. I ran to the edge of the reef and dove underwater, using all my strength to swim to shore.
7
Tor wove his way through the dark forest with ease, waiting only long enough for me to see where he was going before moving on. The bag on my shoulder was stuffed with items I had haphazardly gathered while waiting for Tor to reach the shore. I swam much faster than him, but I wasn’t thinking straight enough to take advantage of the extra time. I didn’t even remember what I had grabbed.
The terrain changed from sand to dirt. Sharp objects jutted from the ground, slicing my bare feet. We ran toward the cliff, past the forested perimeter I had explored. Trees blocked the starlight, and I could barely see through the darkness.
; “Come on,” Tor whispered from ahead.
Dim light from the ruby moon outlined his shape. He crouched close to a tree. Beyond him the forest thinned before leading out to the cliff ledge. How many weeks had passed since he’d stolen my paper and yelled at me from this very ledge? How many lifetimes had I lived since then?
“Sera!” he hissed, bringing my attention back to him. “We have to climb. Can you make it up?”
I nodded.
“All right. We have to hurry.”
In the distance, flares whistled into the sky, lighting up the cove as the ships invaded the peaceful shore that had been my home.
“You first,” Tor said once he secured my bag.
Stretching above me, I grabbed hold of the hard cliff face. With caution and care, I searched for footholds that could support my weight and crevices I could grip. My Sualwet musculature extended with ease, giving me a long reach, and I ascended the cliff.
Together we climbed—one hand over the other, each foot on a deliberate path. The ground below me drifted away one step at a time, and thoughts of reaching the top eluded me. I could only concentrate on the next movement, the next stretch, the next tear.
Behind me came gruff shouts and the roar of motors. The night lit up red and white. Fire brightened the sky. A flare whizzed past us and burst high above, illuminating the rocky shoreline below.
Panic gripped me and tightened its noose around my neck. I clung to the wall, anxiety and fatigue consuming my muscles. I was paralyzed in place, unable to continue.
“Move!” Tor cried from below.
We were exposed—blots against the gray rocks. Our only hope was that the Erdlanders were too busy exploring the beach to look above them.
My body resisted Tor’s instructions. I needed to get to the top, to safety, but something told me I would never be safe again.
“Sera!” Tor had clambered around me, his body next to mine. “You’re going to fall and I can’t carry you. You have to climb!”
He continued to scale the cliff, passing me and leaving me to choose life above or death below. After turning skyward, I forced myself to continue my ascent.
The light reflecting off the cliff dimmed as the flare fell back to earth. The Erdlanders hadn’t seen us.
Two Moons of Sera Page 4