Prologue
Ayoung mother sat on her open veranda, holding a small girl in her lap as she rocked, the pads of her toes soft on the wooden floor. A quiet current of motion.
The girl had inherited her father’s dark hair and golden skin. But Alana could place her own features amid the child's paternal heritage. A hidden trove of familiarity among a village of people that looked nothing like herself. Almond eyes, a high little nose, a heart-shaped chin.
The girl’s age was lost somewhere within the realm between infancy and toddlerhood. She only claimed a handful of words. Her gait was still clumsy, her hair a short heap of curls that didn’t yet reach her shoulders.
Wind whistled through the grass, bringing with it the scent of rust and iron. The scent of blood. Time and fate were two things interlaced, but fate always finds an end. Time stretches forever.
Alana’s end was today.
She carried her daughter through the jeweled palms, nodding at the few islanders who acknowledged her passing, though sheuttered not a word. Most of her neighbors were wary of the woman who had appeared from nowhere. And spoke to no one.
The baby babbled in conversation with herself. She reached to grasp at low hanging leaves within her reach, and Alana stopped to pry ripped foliage from her daughter’s investigative mouth, where the girl’s tongue experimented with texture and flavor.
They journeyed downhill until the floor became sand and the hills ahead were blue and shining, cascading in peaceful avalanches over the beach. At the sight of the sea, the girl rippled with excitement, flailing elbows and knees against her mother’s ribs to gain her freedom. Alana plonked her child on the sand. The baby had been bipedal for a full season, confident enough to leave her mother’s side but cautious enough to remain close by.
Salty air invaded Alana’s mouth, fresh and briny. An alkaline cloud of ancestry and rebirth. Her toes rooted in the beach, and she closed her eyes, soaking in the late sunshine. Her last sunshine.
She could feel it. The brittleness in her bones. The weakness in her flesh. The toxic burn in her blood. But even if she couldn’t, she’d known it was here. Day 1,095. The last day of the third year.
They ambled across the beach at a creeping pace, Alana accommodating her daughter’s plodding feet as she zig-zagged around her mother’s knees, gathering shells and stones and bits of driftwood. The girl hoarded each treasure until she collected an abundance in her chubby arms. Then, at the sight of a fresh shiny object, dropped it all in a pile at her feet to procure a new fortune.
The sun had sunk low on the horizon when Alana finally collected her daughter. Busy splashing in small pools along the shore, the girl strayed a little too far past the rocky cliffs that stood along the beach, separating them from their home.
Alana snatched the girl in midair as she prepared to jump into a mushy puddle. She hoisted her daughter nose-to-nose and didn’t care that the baby twined sandy hands into her hair and across her face. The girl dissolved into giggles, but Alana felt her throat cinch.
Regret and pain were a thing made of simple twine, and Alana had wrapped both around her own neck. She scooped the little thing in tight and forced a watery smile.
She’d expected the fearlessness that came from a solitary walk into the unknown. The determination. The resolve. And the grit.
She hadn’t expected the loneliness.
Dusk claimed the sky. A breaking wave slithered behind Alana’s heels in a way that sent a shiver between her shoulders. She went still. The water didn’t touch her, but she felt it transform from friendly and mischievous to something darker.
Something cold. Something cruel. Something final.
It crept away, leaving a layer of foam along the shoreline. Against the setting sun, the watercolor sky of pink and lavender unraveled into ribbons of scarlet, casting the sun in an unearthly hue.
And the next surge of water wasn’t water at all. It was blood.
Alana ran.
Fate was coming for her, and she’d wandered too far from safety to let it take her in its hands while her daughter played alone in the surf. Alana hurtled over the beach, sand flying out from under her feet. The path through the beachside cliffs was long, but the cliff edge above was only twenty feet high. Hesitating, Alana changed direction as the first crashing wave of blood hit her, rocking against her calves.
She gripped the base of the cliffs and climbed.
Her daughter released a frightened cry. Clinging to her mother’s body in a rigid ball, her small face turned to watch the building crimson surf.
Vibrations penetrated Alana’s hands and feet through the base of the rock. A familiar throb borne of betrayal, buried under sand and water.
The next wave came to her hips with enough force to throw her sideways. Blood didn’t drip cleanly like water. It stuck to her skin, heavy and viscous like oil. The rocky cliff became slippery under her feet. Drenched, the girl wailed frantically, the pitch of her voice small behind the roar of crashing waves below.
Over her shoulder, movement caught Alana’s eye. She glanced up to see a mass of islanders running down the hill towards the beach. Her husband was among them, waving his arms and shouting words that failed to reach her.
The cliffs shifted and trembled underneath her. The next wave set in. Alana leaned into the jagged rock, sharp on her brow, willing her heart to slow.
Red sea pulsed under her skin. Electric. Deep. Every hair stood erect on her body.
