Part I
THE WITCH
1
Istared at the poison.
Mulapo seeds were large compared to most. Round. Bright red with a black dot on their oval tip. Nicknamedcrab eyes, they bore a striking similarity to the real thing.
And they were deadly.
I’d packed my breakfast only hours ago. Gathered strawberries from the patch just beyond my veranda, leaving the woven basket on the seat of my canoe to find buckets before casting off across the Nahli channel. It had been out of my sight for maybe a minute. But there they were, seeds dispersed throughout the berries, tucked and hidden amongst the bright fruit. There had been just enough time for someone to toss them in and give the mixture of innocent fruits and deadly seeds a good shake.
Lifting the basket for a closer look, I sank onto the single seat of myva’a. The two Naiads on either side of me shared a glance, and I ignored them. They pressed in, leaning over my shoulders to gaze at the basket of cut strawberries.
Nori hissed, batting the basket from my hand.
“Wait—” It tumbled over the edge of theva’a, its contents landing splayed across the beach where the tide met the sand. I shot Nori an impatient glare. “I wasn’t going toeatthem.”
“Why do you have poison seeds?” Olinne demanded in a tone that suggested I had unknowingly packed them for myself.
Me. Maren. The outcasted herbologist of Leihani.
I closed my eyes, suffocating the urge to roll them.
There was a time, years ago, when the Naiads taught me how to create and preserve life among the island plants. To recognize each grass and herb the way I would a friend, by sight or scent or touch. Now, my knowledge of local plants exceeded theirs.
“Ididn’t put them there,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t. Their eyes slid to the innocent berries, bright like drops of crimson blood across the shoreline, and the mulapo seeds scattered amongst them. Behind their turned heads, I rubbed a rough hand across my temple.
Half-women, half-fish, the Naiads dipped their naked bodies into the shallows, emerging from the ebbing wave as though the sea were a blanket in their bed with which they’d grown impatient.
Dressed in my usual tapa cloth and hau bark skirts, I watched, hands slack on the edge of my canoe.
I was used to nakedness. The islanders of Leihani—excluding the wealthy and important—bathed on the same beaches. My father and I were neither.
I’d seen the sweep of a breast and the curve of round buttocks, their owners casting off their tapa cloths and dashing for the cover of water. I knew how bodies looked. How they worked. I knew the difference between a man’s body and a woman’s.
The Naiads were naked in a way all their own. They didn’t flaunt their curves. There was no one for them to flaunt for, since I was the only human they’d ever come close enough to meet. They weren’t prideful of their nudity.
They were simply alive within themselves.
Their skin was not like that of the islanders. Pale and luminescent, their flesh held a metallic sheen that became more pronounced somewhere around their waistline, the shining scales of their tails as reflective under the shallow waves as a dropped coin that flashed in the corner of your eye as you passed it, making you pause to search for what might have blinded you.
Nori tilted her head, red-wine hair spilling over her shoulders as her eyes narrowed on me. “Who did, then?”
Who put poison seeds in my basket of strawberries? My head gave an idle shake, lips pursed. It could’ve been anyone. For all I knew, the wholeMihauna-damned island conspired to add the handful to my breakfast.
I didn’t mention the slimy, dead jellyfish I’d found on the floor of myva’alast week. Or the reaper spider that had crawled out of my water skein a month ago when I’d loosened the cork for a drink. I'd thought them both odd coincidences at the time.
Now, I wasn't quite sure.
Olinne sank to her belly on the warm sand, giving the mulapo seeds a gentle sniff, as though she could smell the person who had gathered them from their pods. Perhaps she could—a Naiad’s sense of smell was far superior to a human’s.
Nori gazed at me, her copper eyes sharp. “What are you not sharing, little creature?”
Avoiding her gaze, I stepped over the side of the canoe, splashing through the shallow waves to tether the stern to the rocks and ignoring the bump of the wooden vessel as the surf dragged it against the backs of my thighs. As I straightened to brush a few rogue strands of my dark, waist-length hair from my eyes, I glanced out over the waves.
Something flashed in the distant surf.
