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BLOOD LINGERS IN THE water longer than it should.
The bristling urchin stains its spines with my blood before the steady waves pull the stain out. The rest of the blood leaves in a distorted cloud.
I watch the urchin with wide eyes as it shifts in place. Or perhaps this is the gentle push and pull of the reef current.
Poke me again, it says in the sway of sharp spines. I dare you.
“Kill it,” a voice speaks in my head. Not the wondrous imagined voice of an urchin, but one of my many cousins.
I forget this one’s name but not the stern cadence of her voice. Either I do as she says, or the creature will die by a heavier hand.
The spear is light in my hand. A carved piece of driftwood so unlike the metal tools above, yet infinitely more useful in the Akri Sea.
I must strike at the urchin’s weakest spot, regardless. That sliver of softness between spines. Still, my hand doesn’t obey.
“Kill it or I will,” my cousin says. Closer this time.
She’s at the corner of my sight, poking her spear into eel caves deeper within the reef. Focused so intensely, she won’t see more than a flash of movement.
My hand doesn’t hesitate. The spear crushes through soft flesh, splitting until it reaches whatever keeps this creature alive. The urchin doesn’t move or cry out. It can’t.
While the vermilion urchin scuttles away on tiny tube-feet, hiding in a shadowed crevice, my spear hits the dead husk of another clinging to a rock nearby. This one is the color of drying blood, spines drooping.
The hunt isn’t fruitful. A thin fish and a one-clawed crab are all my cousins manage. They cast the dead urchin onto the seafloor. My eldest cousin does nothing more than snarl and move on.
This winter is especially harsh, layering snow and ice over the frigid waters while fierce winds drive the waves into a frenzy. The biggest fish migrate into the warmer Synoro Sea at the first sign of a snow-laden breeze. Yet some fish should linger; the hardiest of survivors remained during other winters. Not this one. Only the half-dead and corpses stay.
People on land know the same ache of hunger. They catch whatever they can, using their biggest nets possible when crowded close on the few areas left without ice floes. Whatever remains is snatched by those dragging nets.
My stomach clenches around nothing. Spring will return. Spring must return.
Iris and Meda, twins with matching twists of chestnut hair, begin a song. A siren song. Their scaled tails undulate while swimming, but there are bits of the song melody in the play of muscle too. I join in, adding another layer even as my stern cousin glares holes into the side of my head.
More voices fill our heads, a veritable cacophony. We’re nearing our family. Warmth fills my chest. Song strings connect us all in a golden glow seen only in our minds. My head floods with songs. Everything is painted in voices not my own.
To the men and women onshore or boat, our song is nothing. Silent. My family lives beneath the waves, unable to voice our songs. We rely on mind speak forged between our minds instead.
But beneath these waves it’s overwhelming. Every day of my life I hear it, and still I swim faster to the closest source.
The stern cousin dodges before we crash together, saving us the heartache of tangling hair or stabbing each other with our spears. I’m left in open water while my cousin swims on with a tight grip on her spear and a narrow-eyed stare.
“Don’t spare the next one,” she says, slit pupils eyeing my empty spear tip.
How did she know? But she’s the leader of our hunts for a reason: she possesses both the intelligence to predict prey and the ruthlessness needed to kill. Besides, as the eldest of our younger cousins without children, she is the most experienced.
Still, it’s rude for her to point my failure out to everyone else. Yet no one so much as glances my way, too caught in the communal song when the multitude of hunting groups merge with those we left behind in the ruins.
My stomach twists when the ruins come into view through silt and sand. The pillar of stone juts from the seafloor, reaching in jagged spikes toward the surface.
Algae flakes off in slimy chunks, littering the sand in patterns of green. Crabs flit in and out of each crevice, snapping at anyone who draws near. They’re too small to eat but too fast to kill for good.
I pass through the main entrance, a massive arch. I glance up. Carvings sketch deep into the thick stone. Constellations, nonsensical markings, or words and creatures who have no place in the sea. They twist and twine around each other into a pattern. With each passing year, the pattern bleeds together a little more.
I trace a fingertip over a womanly figure, the lines familiar against my skin. It’s the same action we all do upon entering. Our patron goddess Amphitrite is etched into this relic lost beneath the sea during the Titan War. Her long fishtail is obvious among the other carvings. Someday she won’t be here to trace at all.
It mirrors life. After aiding our ancestor Thelxiope by turning her from exiled mortal to what we are now, Amphitrite vanished. Our stories and this carving are all we have left.
Silt clouds the water within the crumbling walls. Blinking grit from my eyes, I look around. Where’s my mother? She should swim into my arms, the swelling of the child in her stomach keeping us from a full hug. She always does.
But there is only the tangling mass of cousins and aunts greeting each other after the hunt. Some sing despite the food piling into a too-small stack in the center of the pillar.
Spinning in place with my spear drawn close, my tail is a tame blue glimmer beneath the darkening waters. I search for a head of hair matching my own. There’s chestnut, auburn, brown. There is none the exact shade trapped halfway between brown and black.
I stare into the topmost reaches of the towering ruin. Children swim in the highest spots. The open space leading to the sea greets them. The same place was once enclosed with stone. A fierce storm knocked the roof out years ago.
None of us miss the roof. It closed us in. Trapped us. How can people on land stand being caged by walls and roofs? How can the gods stand their palace of impenetrable stone? I shake my thoughts away and lower my stare.
Then jump when a wrinkled face fills my vision. A child dodges my tail, then shoots me a delighted look like our almost-collision was a game.
Aunt only laughs, her glinting teeth worn smooth by years of salt and waves. Her shoulders shake, her stomach muscles tremble, and her drooping breasts quiver with the laugh. Her hands flutter in the water when she waves the child away.
I blink, taking a deep breath to slow my racing heart. “Aunt, what are you up to?”
Her laugh dwindles. Her wide smile remains. “Keeping the young ones entertained as always.”
Patting my cheek, it’s obvious she considers me one of those young ones. I don’t dare challenge her, never mind being seventeen years old myself. For how old Aunt must be; she remembers all our names despite how our numbers have grown to over a hundred. Yet I can’t recall her name. Her children are long since dead, lost before they could have children of their own, and her cousins lost to sickness and time. There’s no one left to ask.
Odd that our leader has no name.
“There might be a bit of food for you, my dear,” Aunt says. Her smile is warm but her eyes are sad.
“I don’t want food. Or I suppose I do, but—”
I stop speaking. This isn’t what I meant to say. Why can’t I be like the other girls my age? Like the twins with their engaging conversations and ready smiles? Face flaming pink, I stare at a spot of algae-covered stone instead of her kind face.
“We all do,” she says, clutching my chin until I’m forced to look. She’s still smiling. The tight knot in my chest loosens, but not the one in my stomach. I didn’t fumble so badly after all.
I clear my throat. “Have you seen my mother?”
Her mouth twists to one side, eyes straying to the children forming a cluster nearby. They watch back with undisguised glee. Remembering my own childhood excitement to hear one of her stories, I can’t help but smile.
“Desma will know,” Aunt says, beckoning the children close with a sweep of her wrinkled hand.
They giggle, swarming her. Most pull at her arms or hips. Chatter fills my mind. Fleeting scraps of too many words and voices.
“Calm yourselves,” she says. “Story time begins when the last of you is quiet.”
The last quiets. Still smiling, I turn away.
Her voice trails after me as I leave the crowd, threatening to pull me under her spell with entrancing words. “On a spring day long ago, the goddess Persephone...”
A bright head of red-orange hair swoops through the crowd. She speeds past. Our shoulders brush. Desma, our youngest healer, is threading through the crowd instead of lingering to chat or sing with us.
All at once, dread surges. Why would a healer know where my mother is? Has my mother’s fragile pregnancy worsened?
Desma’s eyes glow in the growing darkness, pupils slim. Her tail flashes pale blue. I chase her through the darkening sea.
“Desma,” I call when we are both free from the crowd.
She doesn’t glance back. She continues through a hole in the pillar wall close to the sand.
I pass through the same hole. “Desma!”
She turns. Her voice is soft, always soft, and suits her job as a healer even when her blank face does not. “Yes?”
“My mother,” I say, coming closer. My gills work overtime. I’m careful to tuck my tail away from the reaching crabs below. “Have you seen her?”
Her mouth purses smaller. She nods and turns to swim again.
I follow, irritation swirling in my gut. She’s seen my mother. Where? Why? I don’t dare question her. My gills are already pushed to the limit. Using mind speak on top of keeping pace would have me crashing into the crab-riddled sand below.
Besides, I’ve chattered at her enough to know she won’t answer unless she’s ready. There’s no use pushing, no matter how curiosity claws at my insides.
Time passes. The water darkens deeper still. She leads me to the underwater caves us sirens live in like eels.
My brain circles in tangled loops. Two centuries ago, our ancestor was a winged immortal. Now our kind are like eels, of all the wretched creatures. And if the hunt keeps dwindling, we’ll be more like eels still: predators willing to eat anything at all.
“Eudoxia,” she says.
I snap out of my thoughts. Another cousin peeks around the entrance of a rough-hewn cave. She’s young but old enough to ensure we weren’t raised alongside one another.
“You’re here already,” Eudoxia says, swimming nearer.
Eudoxia’s eyes flash to me but don’t hold. They swivel back to Desma, who’s drawn closer with hands outstretched.
Eudoxia swims backward. “You must touch?”
Desma’s fiery eyebrows furrow. “I suppose not.” She straightens and meets Eudoxia’s hard stare. “Can you shift?”
Can she shift? I grimace. To shift to two legs is to join those above. Those on land. And to shift is to endure the pain of the Akri’s pull. My family only does this to mate.
Pieces slot together. I wonder if they hear the audible click my brain makes. But no, another passing daydream.
They stare at each other. Eudoxia’s mouth tightens into a firm line.
She returned. How long was she gone? Questions bubble at the back of my throat. I swallow them down.
Eudoxia’s rage builds in her reddening cheeks. Her tail whips. Best not get between them.
“I can’t,” she says.
Desma nods. Her face remains blank, her hands unfurl. Her shoulders loosen. This is what she expected all along.
She turns to go further along the line of caves. “Then you’re pregnant.”
Desma swims first one, then two paces away.
Eudoxia’s face goes slack. Her red cheeks fade to fish-belly pale. Her mind speak is a muddle of incomprehension. She pulls it together. “You must rid me of it!”
Desma stops. She doesn’t turn. She’s listening, regardless.
Eudoxia’s gills flare to sharp lines on her neck and abdomen. “I won’t be chained here,” she says. She pauses, blinking rapidly. Her gills flatten. Her body slumps. “My lover waits for me on land.”
Desma shakes her head in a quick no. Her red hair fans out, too colorful beneath this barren sea. “He must wait until your child shifts.”
I speak despite my stomach churning. “But her child won’t be able to shift for eleven years at least.”
Eudoxia darts her stare between us. “Please! There must be something to rid me of it.”
Desma’s head turns enough for me to glimpse the side of her face. She frowns. “There’s nothing I can do.”
When Eudoxia bares her pointed teeth in a silent snarl, Desma continues. “Stop being selfish.”
Eudoxia snarls. “If there’s no way to kill it, surely one of you can raise my child.”
Desma turns her face forward. I can’t see anything except her waves of hair. “You must put need before your wants. No one else will raise your child with their own to tend.”
Eudoxia growls. Her hands dig into the skin of her stomach. I want to pull her hands away from the delicate life there, remembering my mother’s gentle cradling of the same place. But it will end in violence judging from the angry flush to her cheeks.
How the three immortal sisters who decide the fates of gods and mortals alike, the Moirai, work remains a mystery. My mother struggles with miscarriage after miscarriage for one more child. Yet Eudoxia would rather tear out her child than remain in the sea.
Desma swims further away. “Come on, Agathe.”
Eudoxia’s shoulders shake. Her head tilts down. What will she do?
The question lingers while I follow Desma. Kelp brushes the underside of my tail. We pass the caves, heading to the shoreline and its shallow waters. We stop among a kelp forest stretching toward shore.
The patch of kelp leans toward verdant green in the shadows. With each slant of a moonbeam, the color shifts to a dull brown. No matter the shade, it’s silken soft beneath my palms.
I look closer. A circle of ruins is hidden among the forest. I pivot, taking in the ruin stones worn smooth by relentless waves. What was this before the sea claimed it? A house? A temple to the Titans, the once-rulers of the two realms? The stone is cold beneath my hands. Too smooth for ancient markings to remain.
Frowning, I turn to Desma. She watches from among the kelp like she belongs to the forest. “Where’s my mother?”
Her sigh echoes through my mind. She traces the fluttering ridges of a towering kelp plant but doesn’t speak. Long seconds pass.
I open my mind to ask again.
“We are seventeen years old,” Desma says. “And I can’t recall us talking. Not once.”
Well, I suppose talking at someone isn’t quite the same as talking to someone. Still, I can’t recall one fact about Desma beyond her being a healer. Where’s her mother? Does she have sisters? I can’t answer.
For the first time, I wonder what claws at her. My mother’s is plain. She has a gaping hole where the want for another child howls. Aunt is simple. She wants us to be happy. But what is Desma’s want?
More: what is mine? Even as I think about it, I know: to be our ancestor, a winged immortal creature from the stories. Fierce and memorable.
Two stems of kelp sweep to the side on a wave. The shadow of a cave mouth stretches wide but low across the seafloor, surrounded by more smooth boulders. Beyond the shadows, I see nothing of what must be her home.
My mind tumbles in useless loops. “I’ve tried.”
She smiles. It doesn’t reach her crisp blue eyes. Her hands clench into fists. She hides them behind her back. “Does selflessness exist? Or is it another story Aunt tells, like those of heroes and gods?”
My thoughts stutter to a stop. Then restart. Goosebumps sweep down my arms. My stomach clenches into a tighter knot. I cross my arms to hide how my fingers twist and turn against each other. Is anyone wholly selfless? With our wants eating at us, how can we be?
“I don’t know.”
Her gaze lingers on my restless fingers. “Maybe the gods aren’t real. Maybe our ancestor never had wings or knew Persephone or the gods. Maybe Aunt and the older ones only have creative imaginations.”
My irritation returns like a blight. My face heats. We know so little of each other, but she knows enough to spit out imagination as an insult. Are my wandering thoughts so obvious?
My pupils contract. My hands tighten into fists. Nails dig into the meat of my palms. There’ll be grooves there later. My mother will fret.
Her smile falls. “When have any of us seen a god? Or another creature?”
She knows none of us have. Not any of our great aunts who hand out food portions or, like Aunt, entertain the children. Not the younger aunts who forever chase after children.
We see boats, fishermen, and gulls. Sometimes towns where some of us go to find a sire for our children.
I can’t answer. There is no answer.
And from her crooked smile, she knows. Shrugging, she turns toward the cave. Peels layers of kelp until the full breadth of a wide entrance is visible.
“Come on.” She vanishes into shadows created by kelp and the protruding upper lip of the cave. “Your mother is inside.”
Though irritation continues to simmer beneath my skin, dread returns.
I glance back. Moonbeams shining through the water brighten until the kelp forest is awash in shades of gray. Something sparkles. Not silver or jewels. They wink, rearranging into constellations an exact mirror of the night sky. Burn brighter than the moonbeams.
Stars?
I blink and the image vanishes, replaced with the forest murk.
Desma calls my name. I venture into the cave, leaving the odd vision behind.