SWIFT AS A SEAL.

Aluna could feel Great White behind her, mouth agape, hunting. Its glowing net formed around her once, and she darted out of it as fast as she could. She tucked her chin to her chest to minimize her drag in the water and kicked harder. Nothing could hold her. Nothing would stop her.

She swam through a school of sunstripes, trying to confuse her scent. Great White dragged its green light through the water, searching for her. She ducked under coral and around rocks. Never in all her life had she wanted to see one of her brothers so badly. She’d even be grateful to see her father. Not even Great White could scare him.

If the shark hadn’t been throwing out its net, it would have caught her in one flash of a tail. Whatever game it was playing, that game was saving her life. So far. The rest of the saving was up to her. If she could just make it to the kelp forest near the city! Great White would never be able to navigate between those thick, sticky strands.

The first tufts of seaweed were young and sparse, easy to weave between. Easy for Great White, too. It powered through the fronds as if they didn’t exist. Aluna tried to stay calm and focus on her technique. She’d never swum this hard and this long before, even when she’d secretly followed her brothers on their hunting trips. The breathing shell at her throat pulsed faster, sucking air from the water and feeding it to her lungs.

The kelp thickened. Long strands of green brushed her face and slid across her legs. She tried to keep her bearings. It was easy to get lost in a big kelp forest like this one — and dangerous. You could swim for days without finding your way out. She’d heard some Elders talking about a kelp jungle somewhere that was too treacherous to enter at all. Strange things lived there, they said. Creatures with unnatural bodies cried like babies to lure you in, then devoured you with a hundred tiny mouths.

That kelp jungle was high on her list of places to find.

Soon, she had trouble navigating between the tall, sticky stalks. She slowed and used her hands to make a path through the towers of green. Behind her, Great White slowed to a stop. Its green light bounced off the dark kelp, creating a field of dancing shadows. Aluna drifted silently, afraid to move. A few heartbeats later, the shark’s glowing net veered off, grew dimmer, and disappeared.

Great White had gone in search of easier prey.

Aluna took her first big, slow deep breath. Almost home. She’d be safely in the City of Shifting Tides before full dark, and hopefully, so would Hoku.

A tendril of kelp wrapped itself around her ankle and she kicked it off. Another wrapped around her wrist. She tried to shake it off, but it clung tight. She unsheathed her knife to cut the kelp from her arm, but it wasn’t kelp that had grabbed her. It was a hand. A girl’s hand. Aluna looked up into a pretty face and a pair of blank white eyes.

Makina.

They’d been friends until last year, when Makina had undergone the ceremony of transformation and grown her tail. Since then, they’d barely spoken.

Makina hung in the tendrils of kelp, swaying softly in the current. Her eyes glowed white and full, as if tiny moons had eclipsed her pupils. Dozens of thin braids drifted around her face. Her hand, stiff and clawed, had somehow grabbed Aluna’s wrist.

“Makina,” Aluna whispered, blinking away sudden tears. Her gaze fell to her friend’s throat, to the little shell pressed hard into Makina’s flesh. No pulsing glow. She wasn’t breathing.

Makina was dead.

Aluna stared at her, remembering her face in life, remembering how proud Makina had been of that silly long hair and all those braids. How she always wanted to come over when Aluna’s three brothers were home. Aluna wore tight sealskins in order to swim faster, but Makina cared more about her looks. Her delicate fish-scale blouse perfectly complemented the silvery shimmer of her new tail and the pale, gauzy skirt she wore over it.

Gently, Aluna pulled her free of the kelp. The sticky fronds had wrapped around the girl’s legs and torso, but not tightly. Makina could have freed herself easily. The seaweed must have attached itself after she had died, not before.

But there was no blood. Makina hadn’t been bitten or punctured. Aluna stared at the breathing shell attached to Makina’s neck, suddenly suspicious. She reached out a finger to trace the seahorse design. As soon as she touched it, the shell dislodged and drifted toward the ocean floor. Aluna caught it in her hand.

Aluna saw two small, dark holes in Makina’s throat where the shell had been attached. Empty holes. The breathing shell’s two slender tubes should have been burrowed there. Those tails held the shell in place as it filtered air from the water and delivered it to the lungs.

Without air, Makina had drowned.

Aluna opened her hand and stared at the broken shell nestled in her palm. A name was carved on its back in tiny, perfect letters. The Elders had spoken the name a dozen times before, always in hushed voices, always when they thought no one could hear them. She couldn’t read, but Hoku could, and he’d written the letters for her to see.

HydroTek.

Makina wasn’t the first to die like this, and Aluna knew that she wouldn’t be the last. The City of Shifting Tides was fading, one Kampii at a time, and the Elders weren’t doing a thing to stop it.

Aluna squeezed the necklace in her fist. Makina was dead. Suddenly, it didn’t matter that Great White had almost caught her. It didn’t matter that her legs ached and her eyes burned and her head was starting to pound.

She wanted answers.