Rule number one: Don’t eat the purple fruit.

Got it.

Rule number two: Don’t underestimate the book nerd.

Rule number three: Don’t act suspicious.

Sure, I’m making these up as I go along, but if we’re going to survive the Vale of Tears, I have to play along with whatever games they’re setting up.

As I walk, more and more villagers seem to turn into their translucent selves, hiding behind trees or just standing with their moving eyes and guts showing. I swing by the elders’ tent to see if the oracle is in there, but when I peek my head inside, it’s empty. A warrior sees me and starts advancing on me so I smile like I got lost and keep walking.

There’s a main square where people trade everything from food and cloth to weapons. Fuzzy green things that look like coconuts and dozens of leafy greens. Linens and silks and shields made of copper and wood. I don’t spot the purple apples from our tent.

I walk through the aisles and pick up an arrowhead. When I touch the tip, I yelp as it pricks my skin even though I barely touched it. The vendor chuckles as I put it back and walk away.

Rule number four: Don’t. Touch. Anything.

A pretty girl tempts me with a string of honey-colored beads. “For your heart’s desire.”

They remind me of Layla’s eyes.

“I don’t have any money.”

She shakes her head. “Trade.”

I pat down my body, but I have nothing to trade with. Nothing that I’d part with.

The girl takes my arm, her touch soft as feathers on the scales on my forearms.

“They turn to sand.”

She shakes her head again. I’m starting to think that she thinks I’m a moron. “Yes?”

“You can try, I guess.”

Then she plucks two of them. It stings as much as the time I let Layla manscape my eyebrows. The river girl holds one scale on each earlobe and smiles.

“That’s a little gross,” I say, but I take the glass bead necklace and wrap it around my wrist twice until I can give it to Layla.

“Where’s the armory?” I ask her.

“That,” she says, “I will tell you for a kiss.”

My tongue is tied and I back away slowly, realizing that half a dozen girls materialize behind her and burst into giggles.

An old woman one stand over sucks her teeth. She beats a stone over a fresh leather hide to stretch the material. “Armory is down river. Watch your head.”

•••

I follow the river until I get to a clearing in the woods. The sun is blocked by long weeping trees, like a natural barrier for the warriors training within. I try to approach slowly, wishing I were part ninja in addition to the whole merman thing. But with every step, I’m keenly aware of stray branches snapping under my feet, and for a moment, I let myself think of Gwen and her pink smile while telling me how clunky legs were.

She’s not wrong.

An arrow hisses past my ear the minute I step into the clearing. My hand instinctively goes to my right ear to make sure it’s still there. The last time someone shot an arrow at me, it went straight through my palm. This one sinks into the tree behind me.

I slice it in half with Triton’s dagger. Grumble is standing smugly between Yara and Dylan. They don’t think it’s so funny, and so Grumble, outnumbered, bows in a mock apology.

“You missed,” I say, putting my dagger and his bow between us. I wonder how fast he can draw an arrow from his quiver before I raise my dagger.

“No,” Grumble says. “I hit just where I meant to.”

Dylan tries to form some sort of polite conversation. I need to get him alone and tell him not to eat the purple apples, but he’s giddy from something else. “Tristan, Karel and Yara were showing me some of their weaponry. It’s truly fantastic work.” He holds out a fighting staff with an intricately etched design. He spins it between his hands. He bats at the air in front of him, his movements precise and calculated. When he switches sides, he finds he has an opponent. One of the warriors is challenging him.

At first Dylan hesitates. But when he sees his opponent’s playful smile, he relaxes, and they break into a blur of hits that are too fast for me to follow. As they fight, I feel Yara and Grumble’s eyes on me, the way my chemistry teacher watches me when I start mixing things that I’m not supposed to be mixing. Except maybe I’m the experiment here.

“Impressive toys,” I say.

“We were sent here without weapons,” Grumble says. “But we made our own to protect ourselves from the beast.”

He hands me a spear. The wood is light but solid with thin vines carved all over. The spearhead is glass. Sharp. I picture it going through Archer’s gut.

“When do we start my training?” I say, my knees almost shaking. “Dylan gets to train.”

Yara nods in Dylan’s direction. “Dylan isn’t training. He’s flirting.”

“Before, when we lived on the human plane, we supplied weapons to the court,” Grumble continues. “But they prefer their steel and combat fire now.”

The blue flame surfaces in my mind, and then I shove it away before it can consume me the way it did the ship.

“Are you so eager to feel pain, Land Prince?” Grumble says, walking slightly behind me. I turn because I don’t like anyone at my back.

“I can handle it.”

He sniffs the air around me. He presses a finger on my chest, and even though he barely touches me, I can feel a force push me back and the weeping vines whip the air around us. I step back, back, back until we are outside the circle of trees. Dylan and Yara and the others are a distant echo, and there is only Karel pushing me. Why does he hate me so much? I’m a pretty nice guy. But it’s like a lion realizing there’s an intruder in his pride.

He shakes his head, dispelling all of my confidence. “You do not know, Land Prince. You hide behind a mask of strength, but I can see what you keep underneath. You are cloaked in fear, and that fear will break your human heart until there is nothing and you are alone in the dark.”

I stumble back. He gives me one last push, then he’s gone, but his laughter lingers in the wind. I break into a run.