The two girls locked gazes with each other and nodded. They met in the middle, wading out into the ocean together.
Rivka looked back over her shoulder one last time at Andrei and Viktor. She realized this may be the very last time she saw either one of them. She committed Andrei’s face to memory. Come hell or high water, she’d fight her way back.
22
Lesya
The water lapped at Lesya's hips, and her anxiety made its appearance. “Is now a good time to tell you I'm terrified of the ocean?”
Rivka looked at her in horror. “You never said anything after we got dumped off The Black North!”
“It didn't seem relevant. We didn’t have a choice then.” She gazed out over the gently waving sea. “Now that I'm choosing to go underwater and swim to the bottom of the ocean… I'm kinda scared.”
Rivka stopped and grabbed her arm, turning her to look in her eyes. “Hey.”
Lesya looked away from the siren's concerned gaze. “You know I'm not good at magic. This spell I have in mind isn't strong enough to last long. What if we're at the very bottom of the sea, and it wears off? I'll die. And I already almost drowned twice. Like my parents.”
Her heart ached just saying the words. She wanted her cottage, safe on land. She wanted her puffins and the comforting monotony of living off the land. She didn’t want to risk her life or have this insane responsibility weighing on her.
But when she looked at Rivka, she felt different. Like the person she had been wasn’t the person she was meant to be. She wanted to be brave like Rivka, who barreled out of the ocean to find salt for her people, despite the danger. She wanted to be more like the siren.
And yeah, she kinda wanted to save the world.
“I’m not a good enough witch for this.” Lesya’s voice cracked. She felt as exposed now as she had when Baba Yaga had laid bare her weaknesses on the mountain.
Rivka took both her hands. “You are. You can do this. We can do this. If we don’t, nobody will be safe. On land or in the sea.”
Lesya nodded and took a shuddering breath. “Okay. Okay. I can do this.”
The words to the spell didn’t come easily. She had to dig deep into her early training, back when she learned alongside her father in the shallows of the sea near their cottage.
Her cottage.
She closed her eyes and stated the incantation in a loud, clear voice. Her power built, a knot of energy deep within her solar plexus. She thought she felt the pinprick of pain behind her ears and a thrill raced through her. Maybe she could actually do this. Give herself gills, like Rivka.
But as she sealed the spell with the final words, she searched her neck for the gills and found nothing.
Lesya caught Rivka’s concerned gaze. “It didn’t work.”
Rivka pulled her into a tight hug. “You are enough.” She broke the hug and said, “Okay. So try another spell. Something that isn’t as involved as giving yourself gills.”
“Gills were the strongest and surest way to ensure I don’t die,” Lesya pointed out.
“Don’t worry about that right now. I’ll keep you alive. Just find a way.”
Lesya faced the setting sun and dug deep into her training. The only thing she could come up with was an air bubble, but that definitely wouldn’t last long. Air bubbles were finite. She would run out of oxygen, especially if they found themselves against any nasty beasts of the deep.
But what choice did she have?
“I would just like to say, for the record, that I don’t like how my choices have been made for me from the moment we met.” She eyed Rivka pointedly. “This is your fault.”
“If I accept full responsibility, will you just do the damn spell?”
Lesya grinned. “Deal.”
She focused on her power, then clapped her hands together and slowly spread them apart. A thick bubble formed between her palms, stretching as her hands parted. She put it over the lower half of her face, over her nose and her mouth. Then she tucked the ends behind her ears and took an experimental breath.
So far, so good.
Lesya bent her knees and let the ocean close around her. Then she breathed.
It worked.
Rivka joined her under the water. She found it strange to see the siren in her normal habitat, under the ocean where she belonged. The water suited her, made her look stronger, more dangerous.
“Can you hear me?” Rivka asked. Her voice was muffled, but audible.
Lesya nodded. “Can you hear me?”
A grin spread across Rivka’s face. “We’re in business. Are you ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Rivka floated backwards on her back, still smiling. “Let’s do this!”
Lesya dove after her friend.
There was something absolutely massive about the world underwater. Funny considering how massive the sky could feel when she lay on the grass and stared into it. But instead of feeling claustrophobic under the pressure of the water, Lesya felt free. Lighter and more elegant.
She realized almost immediately that Rivka wasn’t at her side. Panic struck, and she whipped in a circle, her dark hair undulating around her. Her eyes weren’t accustomed to the dark yet, so she didn’t see her friend right away. When she finally caught sight of her, she realized something was terribly wrong.
Rivka was swimming in circles. And not fun, happy-to-just-be-underwater circles. She jerked in confusion, staring at her arms as if they’d stopped working.
Lesya swam back to join her. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t swim in a straight line. I think…” She trailed off, her gaze lowering to the bandage on her arm.
Suspicious, Lesya grabbed her wrist and worked the bandage open. Rivka didn’t try to stop her. As the fabric floated away on the currents, Lesya saw the problem.
Rivka was missing a scale.
“What is this?” Lesya demanded.
Avoiding her gaze, Rivka replied, “Marina required payment to heal you.”
“What?” Lesya burst out, furious. “Are you kidding me? You gave her a scale to fix my leg?”
“You had to be healed!” Rivka snapped. “And we had nothing. Literally nothing but the clothes on our backs when we showed up at her doorstep.”
“You gave her a piece of your body. That’s not okay!”
“You were worth a single scale. I can’t save the world without you.”
“How do you expect to save the world at all when you can’t even swim?”
Rivka clenched her jaw. “I think I just have to adjust. If I angle a little to the left, I can probably…” She faced the dark, open expanse that led deeper into the ocean and angled her body. She kicked her legs and jettisoned forward. As long as she kept her left arm at an angle, she could stay on path.
Lesya hurried after the siren. Even with a missing scale and her swimming impaired, Rivka was still a hell of a lot faster than Lesya.
After a few minutes, Lesya realized she was breathing too hard and too fast for the air bubble spell. She grabbed Rivka’s ankle and yanked her to a stop.
“What’s wrong? Are you already out of air?” Rivka said, panicked.
Lesya shook her head and took a minute to catch her breath. “I’m fine for now. But if we keep moving at this rate, I won’t be. I’ll run out of oxygen even sooner than I guessed.”
Rivka covered her mouth. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think.”
“It’s okay. We’re both out of our depth here.” Lesya snorted with laughter at the pun.
Rivka giggled. “We’re in too deep to stop now.”
The two burst out laughing. Lesya was fascinated by the bubbles that escaped Rivka’s lips and gills as she laughed.
“No more puns,” Lesya said sternly as they both calmed down. “We might pun me to death.”
Nodding, Rivka said, “We can’t have that. You’re the GPS for this trip.”
Lesya fell into a casual front stroke. “GPS. How do you even know what that
is? I haven’t heard those words since my old history classes. We haven’t had working satellites in a hundred years.”
“We have history classes too, you know.”
“I guess I’ve never really wondered what you guys do down here. So you have school?”
Rivka rolled her eyes. “We were humans once. Just like you. Just because magic gave us the power to become sirens doesn’t mean we gave up everything that made us human.”
“Your history classes couldn’t have been too much about your own race. Since it’s fairly new. You studied human history?”
Rivka nodded. “The great wars. The main civilizations, Romans, Greeks, Sumerians. I actually liked history.”
“I liked math,” Lesya offered.
“Ew! Why?”
“I don’t know. There’s only right answers. There’s a specific structure. One and one equal two.”
“I don’t know what magic math class you took, but I had more wrong answers than right ones.”
Lesya laughed at the look on her face, as if she’d smelled something awful. “If I ever want to make you go away, I’ll just start talking about the Pythagorean theorem.”
“It might kill me.”
“I’ll steer clear then.”
Rivka held out a hand to slow Lesya down. “I’ll warn you, we’re about to come up on the end of the sandbar.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just brace yourself.”
Lesya watched the ocean in front of them, looking for this enigmatic “end of the sandbar.” When it came upon them, she wasn’t as prepared as she thought she was.
The sand beneath them just dropped away, and the ocean spread ahead of them like a vast, empty universe.
“Down we go,” Rivka said.
The tension of diving straight down made Lesya’s skin crawl. Suddenly, the freedom of the ocean felt like a coffin. The deeper they dove, the more the water crushed her. Rivka didn’t seem to notice the pressure, which made sense. She was crafted to live in it.
Lesya reached for Rivka’s hand for support as the inky blackness devoured them. If they reached the bottom, she wouldn’t know to stop. Or maybe there wasn’t a bottom. Maybe they would just keep swimming forever.
Lesya held out her free hand in front of her, but the only thing visible was more blackness. That was, until she lowered her hand, and two massive green eyes appeared in the distance.
Aiming for them.
23
Rivka
“Friend or Foe?” Lesya asked. Her hand trembled in Rivka’s grasp. “Please say friend. Please say friend.” She chanted like a mantra over and over. Probably hoping if she said it enough, it’d come true.
“I..I...I’m not sure.” Rivka squeezed Lesya’s hand to still the tremors. “I feel like I should know what this is.”
The green eyes radiated with an ethereal fogginess. Just two floating orbs hovering ever closer. Until the shadows lifted to reveal their stalker.
“Oh, it’s just a whale,” Lesya observed.
Rivka yanked on Lesya’s hand, pulling her back. “That’s not just any whale, Lesya. That’s a temnokit.”
“What the hell is a temnokit?”
“It’s a…what’s the word. Dammit. A mutant. It’s a mutant whale.”
The whale made Rivka’s nightmares look like child’s play. Large spikes ran along its back, divided only by its knife-like dorsal fin. Every edge sticking out from the beast contained sharp barbs. It was prepared for battle.
All Rivka had to defend her and Lesya was the knife Andrei had given her. Luckily, it was a bit larger than her government-issued bone knife that she’d lost.
The whale’s leisurely pace picked up.
“Watch out!” Rivka screamed, throwing Lesya behind her and brandishing her weapon.
Sharp barbs passed close to Rivka’s face and would have struck home if not for Lesya pulling her back.
“Thank you,” Rivka breathed.
“Don’t mention it. I’d say we’re going to die, but I’m wondering what tricks you have up your sleeve. Do you have super powers under the water? Maybe supersonic speed?”
“I’m afraid I have neither of those. As you would say, we’re fucked.”
Lesya gasped. “I’m totally rubbing off on you. You’re like the little sister I never wanted.”
“Don’t celebrate just yet. If I can’t kill this whale, you may become an only child.”
The whale circled around. Its girth made it difficult to maneuver so close to the rock face. Rivka would need to take advantage of that.
“Get down low. I’ll see if I can get close enough to stab it.” Rivka waved to the dark recesses of the ocean.
Lesya blanched. “Down there?”
Rivka waved at the temnokit as it completed its awkward turn and plowed towards them.
“Never mind. Happy to comply.” Lesya turned upside down and swam maniacally away.
“Guess it takes a little fear to get her to listen to me,” Rivka muttered to herself. She reached out as the beast came by and tried to grab onto one of its fins. The sharp edge nearly sliced through her palm. She yanked her hand back just in time. “Yowzers!”
The large body was almost past her. In a last-ditch effort, she thrust the knife out, but it merely glanced off the tough, plated exterior. Rivka had been correct on her first assessment. Her and Lesya were fucked.
She opened her second set of vocal cords for the second time in as many days and started her melodious song, hoping that any who were near would come and lend their help. She wouldn’t be able to fight this beast on her own. Not if she wanted to live.
Glancing below her, she searched the deep for Lesya but couldn’t spy her. She hoped and prayed the mage was still breathing and hidden somewhere deep and out of place.
Where did the whale go? She floated in a full circle and came up empty. Had it decided she wasn’t worth its time?
She turned in time to get hit by the nose of the whale. A nose that also had Lesya attached to the front of it, her shirt caught in the beast’s long, narrow teeth.
“Oh my gods, Rivka! He found me down there in the dark!”
Rivka clutched the nose and tried to free Lesya. The temnokit shook her off, and she did a backflip, swimming right back into the fray.
“I want to go back to the beach. Now!” Lesya shrieked. “Get me off of this thing!”
“Calm down. I called for help. Maybe another pod of whales will come to help.” Rivka tugged and yanked on the fabric gripped between its teeth. “You’re not going to like this, but you need to take the shirt off. Slide out of it, and you’ll be free.”
“Yeah and the next time he tries to grab me, it’ll be my skin!” Lesya balled up a fist and struck the beast’s nose.
It growled, vibrating the water around them.
“Great, go ahead and tick it off more, Lesya!” Rivka jerked at the sleeves on Lesya’s arms and pulled her free from the garment.
Rivka rolled them away and dragged Lesya a safe distance from the sharp edges. At the same instant, a huge, great white shark zoomed through the darkness.
“Oh. Fuck.” Lesya clutched her chest. “Now we have two things that are going to eat us.”
Rivka opened her second vocals and repeated her song, bubbles floating to the surface around her. The shark detoured the last minute and veered around them toward the whale.
“No, no. I think he’s here to help.” Rivka gripped the knife. “You stay here. I’m going to see if the shark can distract the temnokit while I find a good spot to stab him.”
A siren could swim fast in the water, but they still had their limitations. Rivka was about to try to break past them. She dove head first into the path of the whale, and her fingers grazed over the spikes lining its spine. One sliced into her fingers before she realized there’d be no way to grip one.
She shoved her finger in her mouth and sucked on the blood. It wouldn’t do to bleed in the water around a shark.
Her new prot
ector barreled into the side of the whale, throwing him off his course. The beast collided with the rock face, sending a barrage of rocks raining down on them. Some small, some large enough to cause a concussion if they hit Rivka in the head. She dodged the slowly sinking boulders.
The whale shook off the impact, bristling from the interruption. If a massive whale with razor sharp teeth could look more upset, this one pulled it off. It flapped its tail angrily, trying to right itself.
“Oh, shit,” Rivka muttered to herself. Lesya would be proud.
But then she spotted something that gave her hope: a fleshy white patch near the whale’s dorsal fin.
A soft spot. Not protected by the barbs or the plates. That was her ticket. She just needed to get one more swipe at it.
The whale turned its sights back on Rivka.
Her knuckles turned white on the handle of the dagger, and her mouth felt dry despite the ocean that surrounded her.
“This is it, Rivka,” she said, trying to bolster her courage.
She kicked off toward danger, tilting so she could get to its side and near the dorsal fin.
The temnokit had other plans. The beast turned its massive head and snarled, trying to consume her whole.
“Watch out!” Lesya screamed. Too bad she didn’t take her own warnings to heart. The temnokit’s tail swished out and knocked Lesya out of the way.
Rivka was able to avoid being a snack between meals, but one of the spikes on its back scraped a sizeable gash into her leg. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. The main goal still needed to be getting to that dorsal fin.
Blood leaked from the wound, filling the area around her with a cloud of red.
She waved a hand to try to clear the water just in time to grab the fin. The sharp edge cut into her palm, throwing more blood into the already clogged water. She raised her knife and stabbed into the soft, meaty part right behind its fin.
The beast reared back with a mighty roar, and Rivka lost her grip on the fin. Luckily, she grabbed onto her knife with both hands. When the creature took off, her grip never faltered. The momentum opened a large cavity as the knife sliced through blubber and meat. Dark green liquid spewed from the opening.
Sordid Depths (The Cursed Seas Collection) Page 15