by Lily Velez
Please.
Jack and I held each other’s eyes for an eternity. I dared not look away, not now, not in this defining space of time when so much hung in the balance. I tried to convey what he meant to me in that single look, how much I cared, how much I would fight for him if he only chose to fight for himself in this.
I waited.
The seconds passed with excruciating slowness.
Jack shifted slightly, and my heart lurched.
And then he took my hand.
I held back a sob as I rushed for him, throwing my arms around his neck. Our hearts beat in unison, and I held him tighter, never wanting to let him go.
“Scarlet?”
I hadn’t realized it when my knees buckled. I would’ve sunk to the ground had it not been for Jack’s arms keeping me upright. I tried to grab for the fabric at his shoulders, but my fingertips had gone numb, that leaden sensation filling my limbs once more, as if I were made of concrete. The world was a carousel around me, making dizzying rotations that made me sick to my stomach.
“Scarlet!”
The burning in my veins was hotter than ever, and I couldn’t stop shaking. I staggered back within the hoop of Jack’s arms, my vision blurring, my hearing fading to silence. The last thing I saw was the panic in Jack’s eyes before the pain exploded everywhere.
30
Jack
Violent convulsions tore through Scarlet’s body, her body spasming in my arms as her eyes rolled to the back of her head. She was beyond feverish, her face searing to the touch. It was as if a fire burned under her skin.
The latticework of inky black, though—that was what made my pulse hammer against my wrist. From head to toe, she was covered in veins of black. They multiplied with every passing second, darkening, thickening. She looked like a stone effigy in the Hall of Kings wrapped in vines of midnight.
“What’s happening to her?” I demanded of Kai, the convulsions growing more aggressive. She was barely conscious, and the pain she endured was clearly unbearable, rendering her unable to even speak.
Kai’s eyes hopped all over her before landing on a swollen hand and then crossing over to a blood-stained sleeve. He cursed in his native demon tongue.
“She’s been bitten,” he murmured, as if speaking to himself. “The Wargling venom has infected her.”
The response clawed into me. “What will it do?”
Kai’s face was solemn, his eyes still on Scarlet. “Theirs is a unique venom among demon-kind. Its purpose isn’t to manipulate.”
The crippling silence that followed his words emphasized their implication.
The venom’s purpose was to kill.
“Is there an antidote?” I asked not a second later. As the question left my mouth, Scarlet suddenly stilled, and I quickly adjusted the angle of my arms to catch her as she slumped into me.
“From the tales I’ve heard, the only known antidote is located at the bottom of The Dreaded Sea. There, a type of pearl grows within the shell of a rare mollusk. The Goddess’s Pearl. When crushed into a powder, the pearl can be used in a nectar that’s able to counteract just about any type of potent demon venom.”
“Where’s the sea located?”
Kai hesitated. “It would be remiss of me not to mention that The Dreaded Sea bears that name for a reason. All manner of terrors reside in its depths.”
“Where’s the sea located?” I repeated. I maneuvered Scarlet slightly, sliding one arm behind her knees and the other under her upper back. I lifted her until she was cradled against my chest. She hardly weighed a thing, as if I were carrying only the shell of a person. I gazed down at her, those oil-black avenues of venom continuing to spread across her skin.
“It’s said to be at the very center of The Everwoods. Making allowance for the ever-shifting nature of the forest, I imagine it should take a handful of hours for us—”
“No,” I said. “I need you to stay with her while I get the antidote. If we run into another pack of Warglings or worse, we won’t be able to protect her. It’ll leave her too vulnerable. We need to set up camp somewhere safe, and then I’ll go to The Dreaded Sea myself.”
There was a pause before Kai spoke again. “You trust me with her?”
“Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“I don’t think she much cares for me at present.”
I nodded. “I still have questions about plenty of things,” I said. “But none of those things can stand in the way of us helping her right now. Her life depends on it.”
As Kai predicted, it took me hours to find The Dreaded Sea. As it was believed to be the only thing in The Everwoods that didn’t change location, ever remaining at the forest’s center, I used the triple moons and the stars as my compass, letting their position in the night sky guide me.
This wasn’t to say my trek was without issue. Again and again, I had to retrace my steps when the forest rearranged itself ad nauseam. Again and again, I had to tune into every rustle of leaves and every snap of twigs, my muscles braced as I prepared to either fight against or flee from the predators lurking in the shadows. Once, I had to hide for over half an hour as a pack of Warglings investigated a nearby clearing, gnawing on the bones of a day-old carcass. Another time, a different pack chased me for what seemed an eternity until I eventually lost them.
When I finally came upon The Dreaded Sea, my first reaction was to doubt my navigation skills. The body of water didn’t look particularly daunting from where I stood. Almost immediately, I heard Kai’s voice in my head. I heard the simple truth he’d echoed again and again since The Trials had first begun.
Things aren’t always as they seem.
In a forest that cloaked its deadliest weapons as mouthwatering fruit and innocent animals, something called The Dreaded Sea would surely seem no more than a perfect, peaceful pond at first glance.
In the darkness of the night, it took on the appearance of a pool of spilled ink, its surface eerily quiet as it reflected the three waxing moons that peered down from above. Three pale faces watching my every move.
A dagger of black flew across those faces, a distant bellow filling the forest, making the ground tremble. A dragon. During our nights in The Everwoods, they’d traced paths among the stars, their massive wingspan casting us in shadows as leaves rained down upon us with each thunderous flap.
“Where did they come from?” Scarlet had asked Kai one night as we sat around a fire. “Did they just always exist in the Otherworld?”
“They arrived the day Morrígan defeated Nuada. The augurs of the Otherworld, whose role it is to read into the signs of the land and her creatures, interpreted it as dragon-kind’s approval of Morrígan’s campaign to overtake the kingdoms of her fellow gods. They say the dragons pledged themselves to her service that day, regarding her alone as the only one powerful enough to command their respect.”
“And they plan to serve her for eternity?”
“They very well might. Or one day, she may simply release them from their service. Until then, they’re bound to her by magic.”
I peered down at The Dreaded Sea from the ledge upon which I stood as I stepped out of my shoes and peeled off my shirt. I tossed the tunic aside. I’d since washed the Wargling blood from my skin, but stains of it covered the garment, and I could just nearly detect the scent of it.
Closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing. I held an image of Scarlet in my mind to drown out the allure of the blood. Then, casting one final look at the sea, I leapt from the ledge and dove headfirst into the water’s depths.
It was colder than I expected it to be.
A lot colder, as if I’d fallen through thin ice.
It took a little over three minutes to reach the bottom of the sea. By this point, my lungs were nearly bursting. Spinning in the water so my back faced the sea floor, I switched my hands up before me as if shielding my face, palms outward.
In an instant, I connected with the magic of the water, our link seamle
ss. I barely had to think of what I needed it to do. It already knew. In a loud rush, the water underneath me parted, delivering me into the newly formed vacuum of breathable space replacing it.
I crashed onto the sea floor. The water arched above me, a ceiling held in place by magic. It surrounded me in shimmering walls as well. The magic had created something of a room inside which I could exist here at the very bottom of The Dreaded Sea.
After catching my breath, I began my sweep of the sea floor with my fire rock in hand, my temporary ‘room’ moving with me so that I always remained within its protective walls. Though I was soaking wet, which invited a biting cold, my focus was riveted to the task at hand.
Peculiar species of fish swam past me. At times, they paused to stare at me with red-framed eyes, their jaws slightly parted to reveal neat rows of sharp teeth like a piranha’s. It wasn’t long before an entire shoal of them gathered. As I continued looking for mollusks, it was with the keen awareness that over two dozen flesh-eating fish waited on the other side of my vacuum of space like a wall of death.
The plant life eventually began to change the more I progressed. Tall grass gave way to plants with leaves as long as swords or as wide as the front of a lorry. The colors were extraordinary as well, exuding a phosphorescent glow that made me think of the aurora borealis. I was most entranced by the anemones. Their bright, tube-shaped tentacles flowed in the water like dancing fingers, only to drop lifelessly whenever I passed in my box of air.
I knelt among the plants to carefully examine the sea floor for any sign of mollusks. It was as I reached to push a flower aside, thinking I’d spotted what I sought based on Kai’s description, that a large shadow flew past in the water beyond.
I threw a quick look to my side but caught nothing. Strangely, however, the shoal of would-be piranhas had disappeared. I considered the possibility they’d scented another meal somewhere else in the sea, but the notion didn’t land right in my gut. I surveyed the water surrounding me for several minutes, but when nothing appeared, I had no choice but to let the matter go.
I returned my attention to the plants before me, realizing now that what I’d mistaken for a mollusk was only a simple shell. My stomach clenched. Kai had explained that Scarlet wouldn’t last the night without the antidote. Returning empty-handed wasn’t an option. Pressing on, I marched forward, determine to scour the entire vastness of The Dreaded Sea if that’s what was required.
I hadn’t taken half a dozen steps before the shadow zipped past me again, this time on the right. Now I knew I hadn’t imagined it. Another realization: it was much larger than I’d originally thought. And much longer.
I held up the fire rock, hoping to catch the creature in the light. It coiled around my makeshift room like a living ribbon once, twice, three times…on and on and on, revealing its true length. And revealing its sharp-nosed face, two red eyes glistening in the light of the fire rock.
An eel.
But not just any eel. Like many of the creatures in Morrígan’s world, it was a gargantuan beast, something out of a nightmare. And it was also demonic.
There was a splash of water to my left, and then something wet wrapped tightly around my ankle. With an effortless pull, the eel yanked me off my feet with its tail.
I hit the sea ground hard, my upper back throbbing from the impact. The eel dragged me across the sediment of the floor and pulled me out of my vacuum of space, the water beyond swallowing me in a ravenous gulp.
I clamped my mouth shut as the eel bolted through the sea like a blaze of lightning, towing me along as if I were the fresh catch on the end of a fishing line. I thrashed against my captor. My fingers groped for anything on the sea bottom that I could grasp. The tall grass easily slipped through my fingers, though, and whatever other plants I managed to catch hold of were no match for the eel’s strength, the force of the pull easily uprooting them.
The creature, perhaps sensing my struggles, moved even faster, cutting an unforgiving course through the frigid water. Nothing I did improved my chances of freeing myself. More importantly, I hadn’t had a chance to take a final breath before being taken captive, and my lungs demanded oxygen immediately.
I closed my eyes and merged with the water’s magic once more, envisioning a solution.
A heartbeat later, a canyon of open space within the sea emerged before us. Unfortunately, the eel, carried by its momentum, easily flew across the canyon in a blazing shot, the other side of the water engulfing its lithe frame. For my part, it all happened so quickly that I hadn’t been able to catch my much-needed breath of air.
Again.
And again, a canyon opened in the water like parting lips.
But the eel, surprisingly intelligent, didn’t shoot through the open air this time. Instead, it cut a sudden turn to the right, the whiplash nearly snapping my neck.
I clenched my jaw to keep myself from inhaling water. As I did, I sent a volley of intentions to the sea, and a trio of canyons snapped open one after another. The eel evaded every last one, denying me the opportunity to take in air.
At the lack of oxygen, I could feel my mind fading. I had only seconds now. I summoned an image of what I needed, the pieces sluggishly fitting together. The moment they snapped into place, the magic left my body.
A second later, I slammed into something as hard as concrete.
A wall of ice.
I’d effectively frozen an entire portion of the sea, encapsulating the eel like a fossil in amber.
Its wriggling tail released me, and I floated against the ice for a moment before I began to sink. In my mind, I knew I needed to create another vacuum of air for myself. I knew that I needed to broadcast the intention to the water for it to be made manifest.
But my thoughts were consumed with fog.
And within seconds of the fog arriving, there was nothing else.
31
Jack
When we were younger, our mother used to sing us lullabies at night. They were lullabies her own mother had sung to her once, lullabies her grandmother had sung even before then, reaching far enough back in the Ó Broin line to span several generations. Many of the lullabies had been spelled, the unique combination of lyrics potent enough to steal away a cough, or chase off a nightmare, or nurse an injury, or alleviate a brotherly quarrel.
I still remembered the majority of those lullabies. If asked, I could easily recite them nearly verbatim. I remembered the dips in the melodies as well, how the abundance of minor keys rendered them harrowing and funereal. Sometimes, I still heard those haunting notes. Not in my mind, but from the piano at Crowmarsh, in rare moments when Connor thought himself alone and played the melodies by heart.
Mostly, I remembered my mother’s voice. Whenever she sang, it was like a cool balm on a searing wound. It was a sunrise in the Land of Youth. It was the first day of spring. When she sang, I imagined angels gathered and listened.
I suspected her love of singing was why she enjoyed spending time in her aviary so much. Being surrounded by the symphony of birdsong must’ve nourished her soul. She’d sing along with the canaries and finches time and again. Eyes bright with a smile full of light, she looked so beautiful in those moments.
I heard lullabies now.
My eyes drifted open, and for a moment, I couldn’t place where I was.
When a rainbow-colored fish swam past, realization quickly dawned. I was once again at the bottom of The Dreaded Sea. I let go of a relieved breath. I’d been able to cast a final ember of magic before losing consciousness after all.
Giggles burst from somewhere behind me. I pivoted around. I hadn’t noticed how the lullabies had ceased, but now I faced the songstresses behind them. I’d dropped my fire rock, so my only light came from the phosphorescence emitted by nearby plant life. Even then, it was enough to make out my audience.
From beyond the walls of my vacuum of space, three women watched me, excitedly whispering to each other behind their porcelain hands as they giggled further. Thei
r hair floated all around their heart-shaped faces, and they each wore a necklace fashioned from shells. The lower halves of their bodies each consisted of a large, fish-like tail covered in green scales.
I regarded the merrow-maidens evenly, offering a nod of gratitude. Unlike their male counterparts, who were known to capture the souls of drowned sailors and lock them in underwater cages, the maidens of the sea weren’t characterized as particularly vicious creatures. Their vice was of a different sort.
Merrow-maidens are notorious for falling in love quickly, I’d once read in a text about creatures of lore. Many a young man has been lured away from his home by their magic, living the rest of his days in an enchanted state beneath the waves.
The merrow-maidens beckoned me forward. I hesitated but ultimately relented, thinking that if nothing else, I could perhaps enlist their help in recovering The Goddess’s Pearl. I neared the wall of water.
They reached out to me. Their arms entered my vacuum of space, and they traced tentative fingertips down the intersecting lines of my palms, marveling at my human skin. Their heads slightly bowed, my eyes landed on the red scarf each had tied over her head. The source of their power. Without a cohuleen druith, a special enchanted item which took the form of a cap for men and a scarf for women, merrows were no longer able to live underwater.
One of the merrow-maidens met my gaze. I could only mark her expression as excitement, which left me to assume that perhaps these three had never encountered a human before. As I thought it, the merrow-maiden yanked me forward until I was in the water with her.
She gave into her burgeoning curiosity, sliding her hands up the planes of my stomach in slow, careful progression, as if conducting a study in the makings of a man. When she reached my chest, she kept her hand fastened over my heart, taken by its steady beat. She pressed an ear over it to hear it more closely, and I moved my head slightly as strands of her vibrant red hair floated against my nose and mouth.