CHANGE, thought Aluna. Not a word that got a lot of use in the City of Shifting Tides. The Elders would rather die than do anything that would alter the Kampii way of life. Or, at least they were willing to let other people die.

Elder Inoa began to speak about tradition, and Aluna felt movement in her chest, a quiet tension building slowly, like a wave.

“Events in the Above World come and go,” the Elder intoned. “The Humans and the other splinters fight their wars and destroy their resources. We of the sea, of the coral, of water . . . we remain strong and unwavering. We persevere. We thrive.”

Aluna snorted. She hadn’t meant to, but it just came out. The eleven Elders and the other supplicants all turned to stare.

She bit her lip and lowered her gaze, trying to fight the anger growing inside her. How could they be “thriving” if innocent girls like Makina had to die? And if more and more Kampii would die just as she had? Hiding from the rest of the world while your failing tech slowly killed you was in no way the same as “thriving.”

Elder Inoa began again. “We Kampii have always kept ourselves apart. We have not succumbed to the weakness that ravages the Above World. We have maintained our culture and grown our civilization even as the rest of the world suffers darkness and misery.”

Aluna rolled her eyes and muttered to herself. The girl next to her shifted uncomfortably.

“Silence!” Elder Peleke bellowed. Then, with more dignity, he turned to Elder Inoa and said, “Please continue, Elder.”

Elder Inoa tucked a tendril of pale hair into her coral headpiece and continued, but not without a long, dark look in Aluna’s direction.

“While the Above World destroys itself, our colony grows. . . .”

In the distance, a whale sang. It was a sad, melancholy sound that cut through the water like a harpoon. All whales are pessimists, Hoku had told her once.

He was probably out there now, wondering what she’d done to anger the Elders. She’d tell him later, along with some embellishment. Hoku loved a good story.

But what if . . . what if Hoku were next? What if it had been his body she had found in the kelp forest? What if he died, afraid and alone, and the Elders had hidden him away like Makina, as if he had never even existed?

Aluna stared down at the ugly seed in her bowl and clenched her teeth. Calm as Big Blue, she told herself. But she didn’t feel calm. She didn’t even truly want to be calm. The wave inside her chest grew like a tsunami, pulling thoughts and energy from every part of her and growing bigger and bigger.

She unwrapped her legs from the resting stick and floated up.

“On your stick, Aluna,” her father said, the first words he’d spoken directly to her since their fight the night before. His tail swished.

“No,” Aluna said. The wave inside her crashed and rolled, thunderous loud. Elder Inoa was staring at her, mouth agape, breathing shell pulsing at her throat. “I can’t listen to this anymore,” Aluna said. “Our city isn’t growing. The Coral Kampii aren’t thriving.”

“Daughter, enough!” her father yelled. Aluna cringed, but couldn’t stop the anger now that it had begun to flow. She turned on him.

“Makina is just the latest victim of our ignorance, but there have been others. Too many others. My mother died, too,” she said, knowing it would hurt him. Wanting it to hurt. She couldn’t say it to him last night, in private, but she found her voice now in front of everybody. “You could have gone to the Above World for help when she got sick, but you let her die. Now our necklaces are breaking, and we’re still hiding in our shells.”

Her father swam forward, his eyes dark, his mouth twisted. She’d never seen him so angry.

“Aluna, daughter of Leilani,” he said, her mother’s name sounding like an insult, his shame at being her father evident in every syllable, “if you do not apologize to the Elders and return to your stick, you will be asked to leave this sacred place immediately.”

But she wasn’t done. Not yet. She stared right into her father’s eyes. “If you won’t find HydroTek and ask for help, then I’ll go to the Above World and do it myself.”

He stared back at her, his eyes dark with the promise of further punishment. It took all her strength not to cower before him. Silence filled the dome.

Finally, he said, “This girl is deemed unworthy of citizenship in the City of Shifting Tides and will not pass into adulthood this day. What say the council?”

“By the moon,” the Elders agreed in unison, clearly relieved.

“Leave now, child,” her father said through gritted teeth, “and return to your foolish games.”

The wave of anger inside Aluna roiled and churned. She lowered her gaze and fought it back. If she opened her mouth again, she had no idea what would come out. Her father would never forgive her for this. Never. Her entire family would suffer in their standing because of her.

She swam toward the exit hatch slowly. Her body shook, her legs threatened to turn to jelly, but she kept them moving.

When she got close to the exit, Elder Peleke called to her. “Leave the bowl, girl. You will return in no less than one year’s time to have your loyalty to the Kampii reassessed.”

Aluna lowered herself to the ground. She stared at the Ocean Seed. How could something so small and ugly be so powerful? Her back was to the Elders. Before she placed the bowl on the sand, she snatched up the seed and hid it in her fist. The tiny nugget burned painfully hot against her palm. She said nothing and swam solemnly to the exit.

As the hatch snicked shut behind her, Aluna heard Elder Peleke say, “Even our glorious city can produce, on occasion, a bad fish. . . .”

She swam to her cave before Daphine or Hoku could catch up to her. Why had she taken the Ocean Seed? She had no plans to use it, at least not now. Where she was going, she needed legs.

Aluna opened the small pouch she wore around her neck and pulled out the shiny silver ring that had once been her mother’s. She kissed the ring’s single purple stone as she did almost every night, then placed the stolen Ocean Seed within the ring’s circle and tucked both back into the pouch.

She ripped off her ceremony clothes and dressed in a pair of worn leggings and the top Ehu had given to her the first time she’d killed a shark. Daphine had sewn the shark’s teeth around the neckline in a clever pattern. Whenever Aluna wore it, she felt fierce.

She strapped on her knife and tossed a few pieces of cured fish into a small net secured to her waist sash. At the opening to her room, Aluna paused. She looked back at her swirly, glowing cave, at her comfy sticky-sponge bed, at her secret stockpile of spearheads and pretty shells, and wondered if she’d ever see any of it again.

Or if she’d ever see Hoku. The Above World was no place for a youngling like him. If she told him where she was going, he’d insist on coming with her. Keeping herself safe was going to be enough of a challenge. Keeping them both safe would be close to impossible.

The Elders were wrong. She wasn’t a bad fish. To her, duty meant something other than doing what you were told. To her, duty meant doing whatever you had to do for the good of the Kampii . . . regardless of the consequences. If the Elders had their way, they’d all ignore their problems until the whole colony dwindled away into nothing.

Aluna left the nest and snuck out of the city, avoiding the major currents and crossways and sticking to the shadows like an eel. Once she was free of the coral reef, she swam upward, toward the sun, and toward the shore.