by Kara Timmins
Eloy thought there would have been sloshing, or a splash. The glow of the firelight was a gift, but it also shed light on a thing he would have rather not seen. For a horrifying moment, his mind refused what he was seeing. At first, Eloy thought it was the putrid and wrinkled face of a corpse, a reanimated man standing slowly behind Neasa. But the shoulders of the man never rounded out at its sides, and below the shriveled face was only the stalk of a neck. The face pruned in the center and was smaller than a normal old man, shrunken. It rolled back its thin gray lips and bore its jagged pointed teeth.
“Down!” Eloy yelled at Neasa.
She ducked her head toward her lap just as Eloy swung his sword, lopping off the thing’s head. The plunking splash hadn’t even finished before Malatic was on his feet cutting at another one.
“Wait!” Neasa yelled.
All five were on their feet now. They were cramped and fighting in close proximity, a bad idea.
Neasa crouched down to the little fire and pulled out a burning stick. She threw the light out into the darkness, and they saw a slice of what they were facing. The things were everywhere, standing up out of the water. They were limbless and snakelike. Every one had a different, disturbingly human face.
“Aerelion save us,” Malatic said. “What are these things?”
“They’re not moving,” Neasa said. “Why aren’t they attacking?”
“They look like the ocean eels,” Niall said. “They poke out of the sea sometimes. But none I’ve ever seen look like that.”
“Never seen one that looks like that,” Oisin agreed. “What do we do?”
“We should . . .” Eloy started.
A sound from the bog stopped his tongue midword—a whisper. A very human-sounding whisper. The sound was so out of place, so odd.
Scratchy words sounded from the dark shadow of the bog, closer now. “Am I dreaming . . .”
“Did one of them just talk?” Malatic asked.
Neasa shushed them. “Listen. They’re talking to each other.”
“How many can we kill?” one of the eels close to the tree croaked out. Its words were oddly emphasized, as if it didn’t understand the meaning.
The responses from the other eels didn’t seem to be an answer.
“She knows,” one said. “I know she knows.”
Eloy was frozen with confusion, and the others seemed to be feeling the same. So they listened, hoping to parse out the meaning of the words.
“I’m going to get them all killed.” An eel illuminated by the fire glow moved its shriveled smirking smile as it spoke.
“He’s not what I wanted,” another said. “He’s not what I expected for myself.”
“I feel so sick,” the voice came from the back in the darkness. “I feel so sick all the time.”
Eloy looked at Malatic.
“I should have stayed.” This eel had a higher voice, cracking under the pressure of the unnatural sounds. “I should have stayed with my family and left all of this stupid promise behind.”
Eloy felt his eyes widen. I’m going to get them all killed. I should have stayed. Those were his thoughts. His most sickening thoughts. Things he would never say out loud.
“What’s going on?” Niall asked.
“What are we doing?” Oisin asked.
Eloy didn’t have an answer for them. He was helpless with a kind of terror he couldn’t swing a sword at. He couldn’t kill something because he was afraid of what it would say.
“I would do anything for her,” a thin eel next to the fallen tree said. “What would she do if she knew how far I would go for her?”
Malatic looked at his feet. He knew too.
“He doesn’t answer me,” an eel said. “I ask him. He doesn’t answer me. He’s changing me.”
“What if I’m wrong? What if the treasure isn’t there? What if there’s no treasure at all?”
“They’re too stupid to see what’s right in front of them.”
“Thinks he’s better than us because people know his name. He’s nothing.”
The voices from the crowd of eels were coming more frequently, sometime overlapping over each other.
“What’s he going to do when this is all over? What am I going to do when this is all over?”
“I’m not good enough. Why did he choose me? I’m nobody.”
“Good thing they don’t know we heard them talking in the forest.”
“Heard them talking about the treasure. Going to be our treasure.”
Eloy looked at Niall and Oisin, who looked like they were just now catching on to what was happening.
“Wasn’t supposed to be this hard. Was just going to kill them and take the treasure as soon as they got back to the beach,” an eel close to Niall said.
Niall, totally clued in now, swung his curved blade and cut the head off the eel. Thick black-looking blood shot out and rained into the water.
Eloy held his sword out toward Niall and Oisin.
An eel leaned in. “Take all of his treasure.”
Niall stomped his feet, causing the thick tree to wobble. “Make them stop! They’re lying!”
“I’m not proud to say it,” Malatic said, “but mine weren’t lies.”
Neasa looked at Malatic with heavy, sad eyes. “They were true of mine too.”
Niall dropped the facade of his tantrum. His new expression was cold, sour, and real.
He looked at Eloy. “At least I know we can agree on one thing: you’re not good enough. You’re nobody.”
Eloy was too conflicted to be stung by having his own thoughts and doubts used against him. Niall had real venom in his eyes. Eloy wondered how he could have missed it. He had traveled with these men for weeks. He had wanted to trust them, as much as he trusted Neasa and Malatic. Eloy looked at the two men with their swords raised in front of their angry bearded faces and saw strangers, enemies.
Unfortunately for Niall and Oisin, Eloy had stared into the faces of enemies before. The emotion in him went cold, his heart like a late autumn fruit caught in an early winter frost.
He took a step backward, Neasa and Malatic at his back, his sword pointed at Niall and Oisin. “And who would I have to be to deserve a show of integrity?” Eloy felt the cruelty in his smile. “But of course I know you can’t show me something you don’t have. I should’ve known you’d want whatever wealth you could get your hands on when you have no value yourselves.”
The eels were still murmuring around them, but Eloy was too focused on Niall and Oisin to hear. The creatures whispered thoughts of abandonment and being unwanted, sentiments that could have come from anyone but Neasa.
The rage in Niall boiled over. With his curved blade held out in front of him, he charged Eloy like a territorial beast. But Niall was big and broad and his movements were slow. After fighting the Vaylars and their dance-like agility, Eloy easily avoided the slash of the blade. The fallen tree was their weakness; its rounded and uneven surface was a dangerous battlefield.
Eloy avoided the blade, but he couldn’t outmaneuver taking the hit from Niall’s muscled shoulder and upper arm. Eloy clashed his sword against the descending blade, throwing it to his right, but Niall rolled into deflection. He hit Eloy in the center of his chest, and he felt himself falling into the forest of writhing eels. He saw their shrunken smiling faces staring down at him as he fell into the water.
As he fell, his eyes focused on the illumination of the little fire, like it was the thread holding him to consciousness. He was on the outside looking in at Oisin running toward Malatic and Neasa, his sword raised. A part of Eloy, a distant part tucked away, felt a light touch of pity for Oisin.
Then Eloy hit the ground and was under the shallow water. Panic shocked his reflexes and got him to his knees, but still he couldn’t breathe. The fall had knocked the wind out of him. He had to catch his
breath. Niall was in the water with him now too; Eloy could hear the heavy splash. He felt hot tears run down his cheeks and mix with the bog water as he struggled to will his chest to move again, to work for him, to keep him alive.
Finally, they did. Unstuck, Eloy sucked in the rank bog air. He had time for one gasp before Niall was in front of him.
“You’re not nearly as good a fighter as they say,” Niall said.
“I still have my sword,” Eloy said, “so it’s not over yet.” He widened his step in the knee-deep water and let his mind go blank. It didn’t get to stay there.
A twisted yell came from the fallen tree. At first, Eloy thought the noise came from one of the eels. It didn’t sound like any of the people he had come to know so well. He wouldn’t have turned away from the battle in front of him were in not for Niall, who turned to look first, horror on his face.
The window of firelight now looked onto a horror. Neasa and Malatic were together in much the same place they were at the start of the fight, but their demeanor was far from combat-ready, as it had been moments before. Neasa had one hand pressed to her mouth, holding back the scream of horror that showed in her eyes.
“What in the . . .” Malatic yelled, his words dropped away.
The inhuman screech was coming from Oisin. A line of blood oozed out from a stab wound in his shoulder, a wound Eloy was sure came from Neasa, her attempt to wound him without killing. One of the eels had Oisin by the shoulder, the meat becoming pulp in the creature’s grinding jagged teeth. Blood fanned out from the bite like a river down a hill. The eels had what they had been waiting for: they were all over Oisin as soon as the blood started gushing. Eloy could hear the wet meaty thwaps of each eel bite, one after another, until they overlapped into a mess of feeding sounds.
The screech of shock that had drawn Eloy and Niall’s attention morphed into wails of pain. Oisin fell backward into the water on the other side of the fallen tree and then went quiet.
Neasa and Malatic looked down but turned back again, their eyes now wide with fresh horror.
Niall bellowed out a sound that was anger and grief in equal measure. The eels were all around. Eloy could see the void of their shapes in the dark. He could feel them moving. He had to get back on the fallen tree, but Niall blocked his way.
Rage was rolling off of Niall like heat off of desert sand. He was caught in the madness of sorrow, swinging his curved blade at Eloy and the eels in wild arcs. If Niall was skilled in battle, his abilities were lost in the flurry of his emotions. Eloy watched for the glint of light from the campfire off of the shine of the blade and ducked, crouched, and dashed to get to his other side.
Eloy ran to the side of the great tree and reached up for Neasa and Malatic. Neasa grabbed hold of his left hand and Malatic grabbed his right wrist, below the sword that was still tight in Eloy’s grasp.
Neasa and Malatic almost had Eloy up on the tree again. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of someone running through water behind him. It had been foolish to leave his back open, but getting away from the eels had seemed like the most important move. Neasa let go of his hand. Malatic kept a tight grip on his wrist. Eloy spun around and kicked out with the heel of his foot. A single crack of connection sent a stab of pain up into his hip. Niall was positioned in just his range. Blood shot out of Niall’s nose like a punctured water bladder.
Everything that had happened since Niall had rushed Eloy had seemed to move so fast, a jarring discombobulation of movement. Watching Niall rock back with blood streaming down his face was a moment that seemed to hold time in its hands, making it immobile.
Eloy wished the moment could have held there forever. He wished Niall was out of the range of the fire glow. He wished he had the willpower to close his eyes.
The eels were quick, snapping their grinning mouths onto the gushing parts of Niall’s face. Niall tried to scream, but it came out smothered. The eels pulled Niall back into the darkness just as Malatic pulled Eloy back onto the tree.
Neasa grabbed Eloy and Malatic by their shoulders and pulled them close to her. The three huddled together in the center of the dead tree.
“We’ll be okay,” she said. “As long as there isn’t any blood, we’ll be okay.”
Eloy tried to calm his rapid breathing, elongating every inhale and exhale as much as his hammering heart would allow.
One of the eels writhed a few steps away from the tree. “I’m going to get them killed.”
As if on cue, the others started their conversation again.
“We’re being punished for what we let happened to the tute,” another said.
“She’ll see soon enough that I’m no good.”
Let them talk, Eloy thought. As long as they cover up the sound of what they’re doing to Niall and Oisin, let them talk.
30
It felt like time took on a new structure that night. Every moment seemed to be on the brink of morning, and every moment after was still night. The three stayed clumped together. The emotionless words of the eels continued until they ran out of unique thoughts to say. The repetition of Eloy, Neasa, and Malatic’s most guarded thoughts became a new kind of normal background noise, but Eloy stayed keen to the intention of the words: to divide and weaken their prey.
The eels finally started to hush their chatter, like a horrible dream retreating with the threat of morning, which, Eloy supposed, was exactly what it was. The monsters were gone by first light.
Malatic crumpled against Neasa, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Neasa nestled his head under her chin and ran her fingers through his dark hair.
“Are you okay?” Eloy asked, reluctant to break the reclaimed quiet.
“About which part?” Neasa whispered.
“Any. All.”
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “His face is hot.” She had her hand against Malatic’s cheek. “He needs to rest. Just a little bit. Then we need to go.”
“Which way?” Eloy heard the weakness in his voice and wished it had come out with more confidence. But what did it matter now? She knew how unsure he actually was now.
Her glare was harsh. “What do you mean, which way?”
“Maybe we should go back. We don’t know how much more water there is to go through. What if we don’t find another fallen tree?”
“Go back to what? There’s no going back. There’s nothing to go back to. There’s no ship. There isn’t anyone to make a ship. The way back is a dead end now.”
Eloy didn’t need an eel to verbalize his guilt; he felt it on his face.
“I . . .” Eloy started to apologize.
“Don’t say it.” Her tone was more exhausted than cruel. “We only have one choice, and that’s to keep moving forward.” She pressed her lips against Malatic’s forehead, her gaze distant, lost in thought. “No one tells you that the things you want change. Before, I couldn’t imagine wanting anything other than exploring a place like this.”
Eloy didn’t know what else to say. He wanted to say something that would make things right somehow, to see that look of wonder in her face again. He didn’t have a solution. He didn’t have a way to negotiate their most pressing reality: that they were stranded and alone in a wild place.
“I should’ve been more careful,” Eloy said. “I should’ve known something wasn’t right about Niall and Oisin. Malatic knew. I should have left them at the beach.”
“Malatic is more used to people being violent and self-serving,” Neasa said. “We’ve had our encounters, you more than me, but not like him. I’m not happy that Niall and Oisin met their end here the way they did, but I’m grateful for the truth.”
Eloy looked at Malatic. “Are you grateful for all of the truth?”
“All of the truth. Mine too. There’s nothing hidden between us now. Any of us. It’s how it should be. It’s how it should have been from the beginning.”
&nb
sp; “I wish I could be more sure that I was doing the right thing for both of you,” Eloy said.
“I know. But I’ve seen what happens when a man wants something greater than himself without accepting humility. I prefer your doubt over the alternative. We have to keep moving. It’s all we have.”
31
They let Malatic sleep until the bog was fully illuminated with daylight. Neasa and Malatic looked pale and gaunt with fatigue, and Eloy was sure he looked the same. He didn’t want to get back in the knee-deep water. Trudging through the muck had been unnerving when he didn’t know what slithered under the surface, but now that he did, every step felt like a feat of bravery.
By midday, Neasa had stopped walking. “It’s getting shallow,” she said, panting. “I think we’re through the worst of it.”
“We might just beat this bog yet.” Malatic sounded winded and tired.
A little while later, they came upon a sizable stone.
“We should stop here,” Neasa said.
“Oh, thank everything,” Malatic said.
“I’m going to find stuff for a fire.” Neasa looked around. “I’ll be quick. I’m not going far. Rest. You both look terrible.”
“I didn’t need that last bit of encouragement.” Malatic lifted himself onto the rock with a grunt.
He was already lying on his back with a hand under his head and his eyes closed by the time Eloy hoisted himself up. Eloy followed the sound of Neasa tromping through the water, and he had a feeling Malatic was doing the same.
“I should’ve listened to you,” Eloy said.
“That sounds like a variation of saying I was right, so I’ll take it. About what, though?”
“About Niall and Oisin.”
“Ah.” Malatic still had his eyes closed, but his brows were pulled together. “I would rather I wasn’t right about that one. I was actually starting to like them. And I’ve known people I’ve liked a lot less who met ends far more kind than what we saw last night.”
Eloy looked down as his ankles crossed in front of him and nodded. “Same. They would’ve killed us if we’d gone back to the beach with the treasure.”