Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Astrid nodded and Sera thought she saw a shimmer of tears in her blue eyes.

  “Tell the others good-bye for me,” Astrid said. “And tell Desiderio…tell him I…just tell him thank you.”

  “I will,” Sera said.

  Astrid turned and swam away. Sera watched her move through the camp as the first rays of sun struggled to penetrate the North Sea gloom. Past caves and tents she swam, getting smaller and smaller, until she reached the north gate, and was gone.

  Sera waited for a while, not wanting to return to the cave just yet. If the others were up, they’d ask where Astrid was. They might try to follow her, to stop her. Sera knew that wasn’t what Astrid wanted.

  From her perch on the rock, Sera watched the camp come to life. She saw the guards change their shifts and Antonio make his way to the mess hall. She wondered how they would find enough food to feed everyone in the coming days. She wondered where she would find medicine to make Ling and Mulmig better. She wondered if Ava would make it through the day. She wondered where she’d find the strength she needed to get up off the rock and lead the resistance.

  Then she looked at the fresh scar on her hand, and smiled. She had her answer.

  As the waters brightened, Sera rose.

  “Good luck, Astrid Kolfinnsdottir,” she whispered.

  Then she swam back to the cave to rejoin the others.

  HIGH ABOVE THE Black Fins’ camp, on a lonely, current-swept bluff, the maligno floated.

  Tireless, dead-eyed, implacable, it coldly surveyed the ragtag group spread out far away in the distance.

  The sea scorpion chittered from its perch on the maligno’s shoulder, its venomous tail lashing, its black eyes hateful and bright.

  The maligno reached into its pocket, pulled out the small conch its mistress had given it, and wordlessly handed it to the scorpion.

  The creature took the conch in its pincers and crawled down the maligno’s back. It scuttled off over the bluff, heading toward the camp.

  The maligno watched it go.

  Then it smiled and headed for the Darktide Shallows.

  CAN A DRESS change your life?

  If it was made by the late Alexander McQueen, then quite possibly yes.

  I’ll explain.

  Some time ago, I was casting about for a new idea for a novel. Ghosts from the past had inspired all my stories, but I needed to get away from them. Ghosts are beguiling creatures. They give you their stories but take pieces of your heart in return.

  Looking for inspiration, I went to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. The museum was staging a retrospective of Alexander McQueen’s work. As you may know, McQueen was a clothing designer—and a brilliant and troubled man.

  His collections were shown in dusky jewel-box rooms; walking through them felt like walking through a dark fairy tale. The dresses were so fierce. They were made of cloth and thread, but of other things, too. Of antlers and skulls. Thorns, flowers, feathers.

  And emotion. Love, longing, desire, regret—these things were bound into every stitch. I could feel them. I could feel him. McQueen was there, moving through those rooms.

  I came to the last rooms, to collections inspired by the sea, and they blew me away. One dress looked as if it was cut from white waves, another like it was fashioned from seaweed. And overhead, on a large screen, was an image of a young woman sinking slowly through water, her dress billowing around her.

  Who was she? I didn’t know. All I knew is that I was spellbound by McQueen’s vision of the sea—a sea that was beautiful, but also treacherous and dark. I knew then that I had to write a story about it.

  I thought I was done with ghosts, but it turns out they weren’t done with me. Because to this day, I believe that Alexander McQueen sent me a gift. Dark Tide is for him, wherever he may be, with gratitude for things rich and strange.

  ABBADON an immense monster, created by Orfeo, then defeated and caged in the Antarctic waters

  ACHILLES a brigantine, captained by Maffeio Aermore, that went down in 1793 near Cape Horn; now a shipwreck full of ghosts that protect the Williwaw’s lair

  ALÍTHEIA a twelve-foot, venomous sea spider made out of bronze combined with drops of Merrow’s blood. Bellogrim, the blacksmith god, forged her, and the sea goddess, Neria, breathed life into her to protect the throne of Miromara from any pretenders.

  ALMA the woman Orfeo loved; when she died, he went mad with grief

  AMARREFE MEI FOO a pirate who attacked the Demeter, looking to steal the infanta’s blue diamond

  ARMANDO CONTORINI the late duca di Venezia, leader of the Praedatori (aka Karkharias, the Shark)

  ARTEMESIA Sera’s grandmother, a regina of Miromara who considered the Volnero family tainted and decreed that there would be no alliance with their bloodline

  ASTRID KOLFINNSDOTTIR teenage daughter of Kolfinn, ruler of Ondalina

  ATLANTICA the mer domain in the Atlantic Ocean; Becca’s home

  ATLANTIS an ancient island paradise in the Mediterranean peopled with the ancestors of the mer. Six mages ruled the island wisely and well: Orfeo, Merrow, Sycorax, Navi, Pyrrha, and Nyx. When the island was destroyed, Merrow saved the Atlanteans by calling on Neria to give them fins and tails.

  AVA teenage mermaid from the Amazon River; she is blind but able to sense things

  BABA VRĂJA the elder leader—or obârsie—of the Iele, river witches

  BABY Ava’s guide piranha

  BACO GOGA an eel-like merman; spy for Vallerio and Portia Volnero

  BASTIAAN, PRINCIPE CONSORTE Regina Isabella’s husband and Serafina’s father

  BECCA QUICKFIN a teenage mermaid from Atlantica

  BEDRIEËR one of three trawlers that Rafe Mfeme owns

  BIANCA DI REMORA one of Lucia’s ladies-in-waiting

  BLACK FINS members of a Cerulean resistance group

  BLACK PEARL Orfeo’s talisman; given to him by Morsa

  BLACKCLAW DRAGON one of the many types of dragons that breed in Matali and are the main source of the realm’s wealth; huge and powerful and used by the military

  BLOODBIND a spell in which blood from different mages is combined to form an unbreakable bond and allow them to share abilities

  BLOODSONG blood drawn from one’s heart that contains memories and allows them to become visible to others

  BRITANNIA a luxury ocean liner that went down in a storm in the Adriatic Sea; now a ghost ship

  CAMO a songspell used to change appearance

  CANTA MALUS darksong, a poisonous gift to the mer from Morsa, in mockery of Neria’s gifts

  CANTA PRAX a plainsong spell

  CANTA SANGUA blood magic, an even more heinous violation than canta malus

  CARCERON the prison on Atlantis. The lock could only be opened by all six talismans. It is now located somewhere in the Southern Sea.

  CASSIO the sky god

  CERULEA the royal city in Miromara, where Serafina lived before it was attacked

  CIRRIAN the language spoken by barnacles

  CITADEL a city carved out of an iceberg in which Ondalina’s admirals live with their families and top members of government

  COMMODORA second-in-command to Ondalina’s admiral; spymaster and in charge of the realm’s military

  COMMOVEO a songspell that can be used to push objects

  CONCH a shell in which recorded information is stored

  CONVOCA a songspell that can be used for summoning and communicating with people

  CURRENSEA mer money; gold trocii (trocus, sing.), silver drupes, copper cowries; gold doubloons are black market currensea

  DAÍMONAS TIS MORSA demon of Morsa

  DARKSONG a powerful canta malus spell that causes harm, legal to use against enemies during wartime

  DEATH RIDERS Traho’s soldiers, who ride on black hippokamps

  DEMETER the ship that Maria Theresa, an infanta of Spain, was sailing on when it was lost in 1582 en route to France

  DEPTH SICKNESS a dangerous and occasionally lethal cond
ition caused by diving too deep; symptoms include headache, nausea, disorientation, hallucinations, asphyxiation, and brain bleeding

  DESIDERIO Serafina’s older brother

  DOKIMÍ Greek for trial; a ceremony in which the heir to the Miromaran throne has to prove that she is a true descendant of Merrow by spilling blood for Alítheia, the sea spider. She must then songcast, make her betrothal vows, and swear to one day give the realm a daughter.

  DUCHI DI VENEZIA created by Merrow to protect the seas and its creatures from terragoggs

  EISGEISTS murderous spirits that dwell in cold water; created by Morsa, they are neither alive nor dead; they drag their victims behind them until the flesh rots away and then eat the bones

  EKELSHMUTZ one of the four goblin tribes

  ELISABETTA CONTORINI sister of Marco Contorini, the current duca di Venezia

  ELSKAN an orca that Kolfinn bought for his wife Eyvör to ride

  ELYSIA capital of Atlantis

  EVEKSION the god of healing

  EYVÖR wife of Admiral Kolfinn and mother to Ragnar and Astrid

  FEIMOR FA EAEMOR a Viking chieftain who bought Orfeo’s black pearl from a fisherman

  FEUERKUMPEL goblin miners, one of the Kobold tribes, who channel magma from deep seams under the North Sea in order to obtain lava for lighting and heating

  FRAGOR LUX a songspell to cast a light bomb (frag, abbr.)

  FRESHWATERS the mer domain that encompasses rivers, lakes, and ponds

  FRYST a clan of giant ice trolls that protects Ondalina’s Citadel

  GNDAC a bug that is planted near a person or thing that a songcaster wants to observe; it catches and holds the ochi spell

  GHOST SHIP a shipwreck entwined with the life force of a human who died onboard; it does not rot or rust

  GOLD COIN Pyrrha’s talisman, with an image of Neria on it

  GREAT ABYSS a deep chasm in Qin where Sycorax’s talisman is believed to be located, and where Ling’s father disappeared while exploring

  GULDEMAR the Meerteufel sea goblin tribe’s chieftain

  HAFGUFA the kraken; according to legend, Meerteufel chieftains can call the creature forth in times of trouble

  HAGARLA queen of the Razormouth dragons

  HALL OF SIGHS a long corridor in Vadus, the mirror realm, whose walls are covered in mirrors; every mirror has a corresponding one in the terragogg world

  HIPPOKAMPS creatures that are half horse, half serpent, with snakelike eyes

  HÖLLEBLÄSER goblin glassblowers, one of the Kobold tribes

  HOROK the great coelacanth, Keeper of Souls, who takes the dead to the underworld, holding each soul in a white pearl

  IELE river witches

  ILLUMINATA a songspell to create light

  ILLUSIO a spell to create a disguise

  INCANTARIUM the room where the incanta—river witches—keep Abbadon at bay through chanting and waterfire

  IRON repels magic

  ISABELLA, LA SERENISSIMA REGINA Miromara’s former ruler; Serafina’s mother

  KARGJORD a hilly, desolate barrens at the northernmost reaches of the Meerteufel’s realm; the Black Fins’ military training ground

  KHARIS priestess of the death goddess Morsa

  KOBOLD North Sea goblin tribes

  KOLFINN Admiral of the arctic region, Ondalina; Astrid’s father

  KOLISSEO a huge open-water stone theater in Miromara that dates back to Merrow’s time

  LAGOON the waters off the human city of Venice, forbidden to merfolk

  LAVA GLOBE a light source, lit by magma mined and refined into white lava by the Feuerkumpel

  LING a teenage mermaid from the realm of Qin; she is an omnivoxa

  LUCIA VOLNERO once one of Serafina’s ladies-in-waiting, now a pretender to the Miromaran throne; a member of the Volnero, a noble family as old—and nearly as powerful—as the Merrovingia

  LUDOVICO DI MERROVINGIA, PRINCIPE younger brother to both Vallerio and Isabella; a Miromaran exchanged with Kolfinn’s sister as part of the permutavi; breeder of hippokamps and trainer of orcas used by Ondalina’s military

  MACAPÁ Ava’s home village in the Freshwaters realm

  MAELSTROM a powerful whirlpool in the sea

  MAFFEIO AERMORE captain of the Achilles, a brigantine that went down in 1793 near Cape Horn

  MAHDI crown prince of Matali; Serafina’s betrothed; cousin of Yazeed and Neela

  MALIGNO a creature made out of clay and animated by blood magic

  MÅNENHONNØR Ondalina’s moon festival

  MÅNENKAGER a cake, eaten during Månenhonnør, made of pressed krill and iced with ground mother-of-pearl, so it shines like the moon; baked with a silver drupe coin in it for good luck

  MARCO CONTORINI the current duca di Venezia; brother of Elisabetta

  MARIA THERESA an infanta of Spain who was sailing to France on the Demeter in 1582 when it was attacked by a pirate, Amarrefe Mei Foo

  MARKUS TRAHO, CAPTAIN leader of the death riders

  MARLIN a Wave Warrior boat fitted with a saltwater tank to transport sick and wounded sea creatures

  MATALI the mer realm in the Indian Ocean; Neela’s home

  MATALIN from Matali

  MEDICA MAGUS mer equivalent of doctor

  MEERTEUFEL one of four goblin tribes

  MERL Mermish equivalent of girl

  MERMAID’S TEAR another name for Neria’s Stone, the blue diamond, which Neria gave to Merrow

  MERMISH the common language of the sea people

  MERROVINGIA descendants of Merrow

  MERROW a great mage, one of the six rulers of Atlantis, and Serafina’s ancestor. First ruler of the merpeople; songspell originated with her, and she decreed the Dokimí.

  MERROW’S PROGRESS Ten years after the destruction of Atlantis, Merrow made a journey to all of the waters of the world, scouting out safe places for the merfolk to colonize.

  MIROMARA the realm Serafina comes from; an empire that spans the Mediterranean Sea, the Adriatic, Aegean, Baltic, Black, Ionian, Ligurian, and Tyrrhenean Seas, the Seas of Azov and Marmara, the Straits of Gibraltar, the Dardanelles, and the Bosphorus

  MOON JELLY a bioluminescent jellyfish

  MOONSTONE Navi’s talisman; silvery blue and the size of an albatross’s egg, with an inner glow

  MORSA an ancient scavenger goddess, whose job it was to take away the bodies of the dead. She angered Neria by practicing necromancy. Neria punished her by giving her the face of death and the body of a serpent and banishing her.

  MOSES POTION a liquid from the Moses sole in the Red Sea that puts people to sleep

  NAVI one of the six mages who ruled Atlantis; Neela’s ancestor

  NEELA a Matalin princess; Serafina’s best friend; Yazeed’s sister; Mahdi’s cousin. She is a bioluminescent.

  NEFÉLI a cloud nymph

  NERIA the sea goddess

  NERIA’S STONE a blue, tear-shaped diamond that Neria gave to Merrow for saving Kyr, her youngest son, from a shark attack

  NYX one of the six mages who ruled Atlantis; Ava’s ancestor

  OCHI a powerful spying spell in which the songcaster plants a gândac, or bug, near the person or thing being observed

  OKWA NAHOLO water spirits in the swamps of the Mississippi that guard Nyx’s talisman

  OMNIVOXA (OMNI) mer who have the natural ability to speak every dialect of Mermish and communicate with sea creatures

  ONDALINA the mer realm in the arctic waters; Astrid’s home

  ORFEO one of the six mages who ruled Atlantis; Astrid’s ancestor

  OSTROKON the mer version of a library

  PALAZZO Italian for palace

  PERMUTAVI a pact between Miromara and Ondalina, enacted after the War of Reykjanes Ridge, that decreed the exchange of the rulers’ children

  PORTIA VOLNERO mother of Lucia and a powerful duchessa of Miromara; wanted to marry Vallerio, Serafina’s uncle

  PRAEDATORI soldiers who defend the sea and its creatures against terragoggs; known as Wave
Warriors on land

  PRAESIDIO Duca Contorini’s home in Venice

  PRAX practical magic that helps the mer survive, such as camouflage spells, echolocation spells, spells to improve speed or darken an ink cloud. Even those with little magical ability can cast them.

  PRINCIPESSA Italian for princess

  PROMISING an exchange of betrothal vows that, once spoken, cannot be broken until death

  PUZZLE BALL Sycorax’s talisman; a small, ornately carved white ball containing spheres within spheres, with the image of a phoenix on the outside

  PYRRHA one of the six rulers of Atlantis; Becca’s ancestor

  QANIKKAAQ a giant maelstrom in the Greenland Sea; believed to be the location of Orfeo’s talisman

  QIN the mer realm in the Pacific Ocean; Ling’s home

  RAFE IAORO MFEME worst of the terragoggs; he runs a fleet of dredgers and super trawlers that threaten to pull every last fish out of the sea

  RAGNAR Astrid’s older brother

  RAYSAY the language spoken by manta rays

  RAZORMOUTH DRAGON one of the many types of dragons that breed in Matali and are the main source of the realm’s wealth; they are feral and murderous and prevent invaders from getting past the Madagascar Basin

  REGGIA Merrow’s ancient palace

  REGINA Italian for queen

  RIVER OLT the Freshwater region where the Iele’s cave is located

  RORRIM DROL lord of Vadus, the mirror realm

  RUBY RING Nyx’s talisman; a large stone, with many facets, in a gold setting

  RYLKA Kolfinn’s commodora, the second most powerful mer in Ondalina

  SCAGHAUFEN capital of the Meerteufel sea goblin tribe

  SEA WASP the most deadly jellyfish in the world

  SEJANUS ADARO Portia Volnero’s husband, who died a year after Lucia’s birth

  SELECTION the death riders’ daily process of choosing which of their captives will dive into the Great Abyss to search for Sycorax’s talisman

  SERAFINA regina di Miromara and leader of the Black Fin Resistance

  SHAN LU CHI Ling’s father, an archeologist

  SHAYÚ Amarrefe Mei Foo’s pirate ship

  SHIPWRECK GHOSTS hungry for life, their touch—if prolonged—can be lethal