Too focused to shout back an answer, I threw a glance at the island, now seated in the distance. I could have made the swim, were the surface smooth and quiet. But I didn’t trust these building waves, cresting over the side of myva’aand lashing me sideways hard enough to feel the snap of my vertebrae.
I’d taken on too much water to slide over the waves. Caught low in its grasp, the sea began to have its way with me. It crested below, dipping my bow, and I broke through the wall of an oncoming wave. The water hit me painfully in the face, choppy and solid, leaving hair in my eyes and mouth. The canoe tilted on its side, thrown off balance by its own outrigger as water filled the hull. I wouldn’t be afloat much longer.
Casting my gaze out, I searched for Kye in the quickly darkening water. He was some distance away, pushed out by the same wave. With only the light of the waxing moon, I could barely make out his silhouette.
Another wave hit me sideways. I braced under its force, gripping the sides as it rolled away. Water leeched through my tapa wrap, circling my thighs.
Damn this water to the shores of Perpetuum. The tide had been low when I’d left. What had angered the sea between then and now?
A glint of moonlight shined against the varnish of Kye’s boat. He rowed toward me, making little progress—as if the water pushed him away. The swells continued to grow. Around me, black water loomed like titans, sucking the surface into their mouths and blowing it back out, invisible against the night sky except that they blocked the stars. They rose and fell in slow motion, and I lost him again.
“Kye!” My shout traveled over the water, hollow. The water in my va’a was almost level with that of the sea’s surface. I stood, trying to put distance between the ocean and myself, my legs wobbly as I balanced on my seat.
A wall hit me square in the back, sending my canoe tumbling under the black waves. It flung me head-long into inky blue-black, and I twisted to extricate myself from the weight of the wooden vessel, the clamor reverberating in a storm of frenzied bubbles in my ears.
Something grabbed my arm; something else took my ankle. Hands yanked me down, and when the waves pushed theva’aout from over my head, the moonlight shone through the water, revealing them.
Nori and Olinne.
Behind them, faces glimmered faintly, shadows and refracted light crossing their features. There were too many to count. They watched me with preternatural stillness, their long bodies erect in the water, as though current and tide were no force against them.
I froze in shock for only a moment, my eyes leaping from one long Naiad to another. All beautiful, all female, all young—except for one face who hovered near, with white hair and silver eyes.
She angled her head down towards the sea floor, descending smoothly through the water. Realizing they were taking me with them, I kicked at Nori, but Olinne coiled herself around me like a serpent. My body began to sink.
Piercing terror rippled through me. I fought. Bucking my legs, hips, torso—but Olinne held tight, and we fell into the dark. I thrashed. My lungs tightened. The more I wrestled, the faster I ran out of air. A primal panic spread through my chest, and soon I was fighting myself as much as I fought them. Fighting to keep my mouth closed, fighting my own impulse to breathe.
They dragged me to a place so black, the only thing I could see was the flash in their Naiad eyes. Hands wrapped behind my head, nails biting into the sides of my neck, a powerful tail anchored around my waist.
A mouth drew over mine.
Potent oxygen invaded my lungs. My thorax inflated so powerfully it felt like a punch to my gut.
The pain only lasted a moment. As my lungs filled with air, my body became woozy. Slow. Lightheaded. I felt my muscles relax, and the hands released me into a clouded haze.
Water seemed to drift apart and together, as if I could divide great bodies of liquid mass with the edge of a knife. I reached to touch all the droplets of water. I realized I knew them—they were written in the stones of my memory, as if we’d been reunited after a long time away.
I forgot where I was. I forgot who I was. I forgot everything. None of it seemed to matter, as the water joined and split before me, shifting and overlapping in quiet splendor.
Something with silver eyes drifted below. Sharp fingers clawed at my wrist, and I pulled away. They came at me again, silver eyes flashing, mouth gaping. Grabbing my chin, my jaw, wrenching my head back, my mouth apart. I twisted and kicked. Fingers pinched, prying at my teeth, forcing my lips open. A single bubble wafted from me as a mouth clamped onto mine.
It wanted my air. My oxygen.
I bit it.
My foot connected with a body, soft flesh over firm muscle. The silver eyes flashed, and the swish of fins whipped hard past my ear. I glanced up, along with a hundred pairs of eyes, watching the underside of a boat slide across the surface above.
Something exploded into the water. Bubbles rose around the shape of a man, kicking his feet and stroking his arms.
The faces watched, eyes narrowing, mouths curling into smiles cruel and thin. Beside me, a slender, milk-white arm stretched into the moonlight, pointing to the shape above, and shadows darted toward the surface.
I don’t know why, but I screamed. None of it made sense, none of it at all—but even though I couldn’t think of the man’s name, I was certain I knew him.
I’d once breathed life into him. He’d once killed a monster for me.
Panic wove through my body.
I wailed and shook, wracking against them as though my own flesh and bone were a whip made of iron. They wanted him. I didn’t know how I was so sure, other than the hunger and the hatred in their beautiful eyes. But they wanted him. My reaction was forged from something beyond my body’s knowledge or control.
