Sea Green Siren

by Ellie Margot

  “Your mother—”

  “My mother did this?”

  Cassian walked back and stood on the other side of the bars opposite Riette. “They knew who he was and said he was banned and could not enter.”

  “That’s bullshit. Did they say why they banned him?”

  “I asked, but I was two seconds from being thrown in the cell beside you.”

  “Cassian,” Riette said.

  “Riette, they wanted to put me in here, and frankly, I don’t think they would have ever let me out if they did.” Cassian swallowed. “We need a plan.”

  “This is insane. Why isn’t she here? Why haven’t I seen her?” Riette looked at his face through the bars.

  They had been talking, but it took up to that second for her to see what had been on his face all along. A red mark that seemed seared into his cheek.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Cassian turned to hide it from view. She itched to reach through the bars and see it again. She grabbed his hand to force him to pay attention.

  “What did she do to you?” He still didn’t speak, and he was still faced away. “Cassian—”

  “It wasn’t anything I didn’t deserve.”

  “Bullshit,” Riette said, and her tattoo burned on her shoulder. Flames flickered again on her hand, but it was like trying to light a match and only seeing the sparks form instead of the flames.

  Cassian looked at her with his blue gaze and his jaw tight. “I deserved worse. Look at you. Look where you are.”

  “Don’t take this shit on. She put me in here.”

  “And it was my job to make sure nothing happened to you.”

  “I’m fine, and it’s not your job,” said Riette.

  “Riette, your eyes—”

  “It will go away.”

  “No, it’s worse now.”

  Riette touched the side of her cheek. Then she dropped her hand. “What the fuck ever. It’s a mood ring. It’s part of me now.”

  “And that’s because I didn’t do enough to keep you out of harm’s way.”

  “Cassian, the only person whose job it is to keep me out of harm’s way is me. No one else.”

  Cassian touched her hand through the bars. “I failed you.”

  Chapter 30

  Riette fought the urge to scream. The flames flickered again, and Cassian watched the reaction.

  “There’s a blocker,” Riette said. “You have never failed me. Have you pissed me off? Of course. But that’s your job, if anything. You’re the sensible part of my brain that just happens to be located in a different body, okay?”

  “And if I had tried harder—”

  “I would have killed you for interfering. Say I wouldn’t.” Riette stepped back and wiped her hands off. Ashes from the vines on the hill still colored them.

  “You probably would,” Cassian said after a moment had passed.

  “Exactly. Now let’s figure this shit out. I don’t think I’ll survive long in here.”

  “We’re going to get you out, but it needs to be done the right way.”

  “It’s not right for me to be in here,” said Riette. “The least she could do is talk to me.”

  “And I’ll make sure that that happens. You let me figure it out, and I will handle the situation with Guy, okay?” Cassian leaned down. “Okay?”

  Riette let out a breath. “Fine.”

  Cassian nodded. “So there is one benefit of you being in there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You have to let me help you,” Cassian said, and there was a partial smile on his face.

  Riette rolled her eyes again. “Don’t get used to it.”

  “Of course.”

  Riette looked at him again, but when she saw the redness, all of her anger flared back up. “You need to get me out of here before I do something that I will regret.”

  Cassian nodded. “Do you trust me?”

  “Cassian.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Riette looked at him. He looked older in the dim light. The boy she had grown up with was becoming someone else in front of her.

  Romantic feelings weren’t there still, but the respect she felt for him was. “With my life.”

  “Then let me lead. Trust me to do what needs to happen.”

  And Riette nodded.

  Cassian gripped the bars again and then released them to turn around and walk back into the night he came from.

  Riette walked over to the cot and sat in the middle of it, with her legs off of the side. Bark moved the bag and came out from behind it to sit next to her. He settled in and kicked his feet again, and then he moved closer so that he was nestled in right next to her side and kicked his feet again.

  He grunted.

  “I’m too big to kick my feet like that.”

  He made another noise after looking up at her.

  “Yeah, I guess that is one of my problems.”

  He grunted again.

  “No, I’m not talking about my eye.”

  Bark mumbled.

  “I’m not broken,” Riette said, and she looked up at the speckled ceiling above her.

  Bark mumbled again.

  “Yeah, I guess I do look okay for an almost broken thing. Thanks, Bark.”

  Riette stood up and walked toward the bag. When she got to it, she leaned down and opened it to check on Barry, but he was fully sleep, holding the book tightly to him.

  “Guess it’s just me and you in the bed, buddy,” said Riette, and Bark got up, ran to the wall side of the bed and settled in to his position with his back to her.

  “You’re choosing to go to the wall and prolong your claustrophobia?”

  But Bark said nothing.

  “Okay, then.”

  Riette sat on the bed on the other side of him, and she faced away from the bars in favor of having the view of the window.

  From that angle, she could pretend. Her world wasn’t against her. She was just sleeping in a new place. Not in her own bed.

  The rest could figure out itself later.

  “This isn’t where I imagined you,” said a voice on the other side of the bars.

  It was still early. The sun could be seen outside of the window as Riette tried to open her eyes, but at recognizing the voice, she sat up as quickly as her body would allow.

  Being home gave her a natural ability to recharge by being around the Vitan trees, but it didn’t mean that she fully felt like herself.

  Riette turned on the bed until she could see the bars clearly and her mother on the other side of them. “Mother.”

  Alluette looked at her from where she stood. There was no one else with her, and part of Riette was surprised by that.

  Not that she thought her mother needed guards around her, but she had spent half of the night trying to imagine the world of her mother’s making and what that world was like if it didn’t include her.

  “You’ve been a busy girl.”

  “Have I?”

  Alluette didn’t smile. Her dark skin seemed to glow from within, and the silver of her hair that fell to her waist shined brightly against it. She tilted her head at Riette, as if she were considering her. “Busy enough to not be here.”

  “I had to find Corin,” said Riette. She gripped the edge of the bed and remembered the panic she felt at watching Corin leave the world they knew.

  “And you found her.”

  “I had to travel a long distance,” said Riette. Her words were guarded, short. She wasn’t sure what she could say and what she shouldn’t reveal. Things were changed. Different.

  “And when you did find her?”

  “I started to head home,” Riette said, and in a way, she knew she had.

  She wasn’t sure if her travels would have found her there so quickly, but she always knew she’d come home. Vitan was her center. Wasn’t it?

  Alluette looked her over again. She shook her head. “I’ve always known when you were lying, Riette. You used to respect me enough to
not bother with that.”

  “I’m not lying,” said Riette. She stood, and she didn’t try to conceal Bark, but a quick glance showed her that the bed was empty. She wasn’t sure how long that had been the case.

  Alluette brought her hands together in front of her in a clap that echoed in the small room. “Give me the courtesy of not wasting my time,” Alluette said with her eyes closed.

  “What have I done that is so wrong?”

  “What have you done?” Alluette opened her eyes. A smile that moved her face in all of the wrong places graced her lips.

  “Let’s start from the top then. Do you know that Cassian’s parents are considering the idea that you kidnapped their children?”

  Riette swallowed. “I didn’t—”

  “They had a funeral. They were so sure that both of their children would never be seen again that they mourned their loss and were trying to make sense of a world without their children in it? Can you imagine that? What you put them through?”

  “I didn’t tell her to leave,” Riette started. She stood, her tattoo burning, and color formed on her cheeks.

  “Didn’t you? You always thought that I never listened, but I always heard you. You didn’t think I was fixing things fast enough for you—”

  “You didn’t! You weren’t trying—”

  “You couldn’t begin to understand what I was doing. The lengths I was going to in order to right the wrongs—”

  “We could have worked together,” said Riette. She walked closer to the bars. “We could have figured it out.”

  “Corin was foolishly young, and she listened to your bright ideas and thought the world outside of here would save her,” said Alluette, all in one breath. “Tell me I’m wrong, Riette.”

  The fire burned deeper inside of her, and Riette knew it was evidenced on her face. She said nothing.

  “And do you know where that left me? The shame, the questions—”

  “Because you always have to care about what they think. What about what I thought?”

  “What about what you thought?” asked Alluette. “The world can’t rise and set on you and your ideas.”

  “But you could’ve pretended to care. You could have given me that.”

  “I’ve given you the world, and you left it. You left me. You left everything I had planned for you.”

  “I was coming back. I never was going to be gone forever.” Riette gripped the bars in front of her, and Alluette stood just out of reach.

  “When you left here, you didn’t know what you would find. The fact you weren’t killed at all—”

  “Should show you that I’m not as weak as you think I am.”

  “What’s the sense of being strong when there’s no purpose behind it?” asked Alluette, with her voice softer than before.

  “There was a purpose. Just because you didn’t like it didn’t mean I didn’t have one.”

  “And at what cost?”

  “I brought her back. I am working toward the goal—”

  “And look at you. Look at your face.” Alluette stepped closer. “Look what you’ve done to yourself.”

  “It’s not forever.”

  “You don’t know that. You can’t speak with such assurance when you do not know.” Alluette shook her head. “What you have put yourself through—”

  “Then shouldn’t I make it worth it?”

  “How could you? How could you possibly?” Alluette covered her mouth with her hand while she shook her head, and then she took her hand down. She took a breath. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  A lump formed in Riette’s throat. “I didn’t kidnap anyone,” she said. A sob was behind it, but she wouldn’t let it come.

  “I know that,” Alluette said in a rush.

  “Then let me out.”

  “For what?” Alluette asked her. “So you can run away again?”

  “Keeping me in prison doesn’t save me. You can’t protect me by holding me against my will.”

  “If I had any other option—”

  “You do. Everyone does.”

  Alluette went quiet. Then she looked down and then at Riette once more. “I’m going to give you some time to think.”

  “Mother,” Riette started.

  But her words found Alluette’s back as she walked away from her.

  Chapter 31

  Riette gripped the bars and shook them. The energy inside of her pulsed. It made her ears ring and her hands shake. She grabbed the bars and forced the energy into her palms. The earth powers inside of her started to make her tremble, but it was the sensation of climbing up a tall hill and, just before reaching the top, getting smacked down and stepped on.

  Riette tried again. She pushed and pulled and gritted her teeth, and her jaw felt like it was splitting because of it.

  She released the bars with a jerk and stalked to the window. Looking out, she saw her grandmother’s tree, and she looked at the vines hanging down from it.

  She knew that from the vantage spot of that tree, she first noticed her world burning, but at that point, standing in her cell, she could notice the ruin. It could be seen from where she stood.

  The trees were being run through with burning ashes, and even the ground where her father was buried at the foot of her grandmother’s tree was starting to blacken and decay.

  All of the air left Riette’s lungs. There was a burning inside of her. She grabbed her throat. Riette was choking on it. She closed her eyes, trying to find the strings that she could use to pull herself together.

  She heard the ocean.

  No.

  She couldn’t let it come. She couldn’t give into the rush, the hum, the energy. It would try to find a release inside of her and burn her up from the inside. She needed to think.

  She sat on the bed. Riette shook with the force she had in her, and she tried to find control. A noise escaped her. A cry. She put a hand over her mouth to quiet it.

  Bark and Barry stuck their heads out of the bag. They looked at each other and back at her again. Barry slipped out of the bag. He held her grandmother’s book in his hands.

  He took a step toward her, but Bark tried to stop him. Barry lashed out and smacked Bark back, and the sudden movement knocked Bark off guard.

  Barry stepped forward again. The book was just large enough to make movement cumbersome, but he didn’t stop his mission. He walked until he was at Riette’s feet, and he tapped her shoe and waited.

  Riette looked down and saw the book. It looked perfect, despite the travel and the small sharp-nailed hands of the monkey who held it. He lifted the book up in silent offering.

  Riette wiped her eye before reaching down to take it from him. Riette touched the spot next to her on the bed. Barry leaped up and sat next to her. She ruffled his blue fur, and he cooed next to her, trying to soak up all of the attention being given.

  “Thank you,” she said softly.

  Bark walked closer and looked between both them.

  Riette watched him. “You can come up too.”

  Bark gave her a look before making a noise.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty safe to say that I lost my mind, but you should join us anyway.”

  Bark climbed up to her other side and eyed Barry warily.

  The book stayed in Riette’s hands, and she touched the cover. The line from her grandmother looked to be written by her own hand but enhanced by a magic that Riette had never seen before. She touched the embossed letters again.

  Riette saw her grandmother’s face. Touching the book was like touching her grandmother’s hand. She opened the book and looked inside.

  And found nothing.

  The pages were blank. Two hundred pages of gold-edged emptiness.

  “This can’t be,” said Riette. She turned toward Bark. “It’s empty.”

  Bark made a noise, and his eyes were larger, but Barry made a sound not unlike the cartoon whistle before a bomb would implode.

  Riette flipped through more pages, one after the
next, and nothing changed. The entire book was empty. She almost cried out but bit her hand instead, forcing the noises in.

  Bark moved her hand from the book and flipped back to the front page. Riette’s eyes found the ceiling as she struggled to contain herself. Bark watched the page and then shoved Riette’s side. She didn’t look down at first, so he elbowed her again.

  “What?” Riette looked down to see what Bark was pointing at. He pointed at the blank pages and then grabbed his neck as if he were going to choke himself.

  He repeated the motion.

  “Choke you with the book?”

  Bark grunted and shook his head. He jumped down off the bed and walked to the bag. He rooted around in it until he found what he had been looking for. Grabbing it, he returned to Riette and put the item in her hand.

  Her grandmother’s necklace.

  “Bark.”

  But Bark grunted again, pointing at the necklace and then at the book.

  Riette looked at the necklace. There was a stone at its center, and it glowed at her touch like it always had. It was green in color, and there wasn’t a back to the stone, in order to let the stone breathe.

  She flipped it over to look at the swirling white running through it. Bark stilled her hand and guided the hand holding the necklace to the pages. He moved it until the green stone was face up against the pages and moved it slowly across.

  Riette leaned in. Through the stone, she could see something happening.

  She lifted it from the page and saw something shimmer across the surface of it. She put the necklace back and moved it slowly over the page, and words started to trickle to life in the afterglow of the necklace stone moving across it.

  Word after word appeared, little by little, but when Riette flipped the page, the words stopped. So did the magic.

  She flipped back to the first page, and the letters were still there, but the stone didn’t work on any other part.

  Riette swallowed.

  My dearest granddaughter,

  If you have this book, you are every bit the woman I hoped that you would become. Even now, I find solace in that while being at a point where only you can make me feel any semblance of happiness.

  There is so much I want to say that I am humbled at where to begin.