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It started with me seeing a long, dark tunnel in my mind’s eye. Then I was tumbling down it, flipping head over heels again and again and again.
When I came to a stop, I was disoriented, confused, my head spinning. At the same time, there was an overwhelming sense of danger. A powerful need for me to get my senses back and be on the lookout.
I shook my head, tried to stumble to my feet—I was still in human form—but before I could do much more than push to my knees, I was hit by a powerful blast of energy that sent me reeling all over again. This time, when I came to a stop, I was ready for the next attack and managed to roll out of the way of the energy surge.
As I lay there, panting, I glanced down at my hands and saw a scar in the center of my palm. A scar I didn’t have, but that my mother had had for as long as I could remember. It was as I stared at that odd, diamond-shaped scar, that I realized this wasn’t my fight. It was Cecily’s. In this moment, in this memory, I was not just watching my mother battle Tiamat. I was living the battle—as her.
The realization galvanized me, had me paying more attention as giant blasts of power slammed into the wall right above my head. I ducked and swerved, twisted and turned in an effort to get away from the sea witch—who definitely had the upper hand here. It was in all of this dodging that I got my first good look at the wall I had been plastered against more than once.
It wasn’t a rock wall at all. It was the side of a ship. On closer inspection—which I got when one of Tiamat’s blasts sent me careening face-first into it—I realized it was wooden. An old Spanish Galleon from back in the days when Christopher Columbus had landed on North America. But what it was doing in the Pacific was anyone’s guess, unless the Spaniards—or someone else—had attempted to navigate both oceans.
Something about the ship gave Cecily an idea. I didn’t know what it was, which was the oddest thing I’d ever experienced—it was like I was in her body, performing her actions, but using my brain. Even with all the magic I’d experienced since being under the ocean, I’d never dreamed such a thing was possible.
Before I’d recovered from that shock, Cecily was racing toward Tiamat, throwing another blast of energy at her with every foot of territory she covered. Soon, it was Tiamat who was on the run, Tiamat who was tripping and tumbling through the water.
It was no different than any of the other fights I had seen between my mother and the sea witch, at least until Cecily slammed Tiamat with enough power to light up a small city for a week. As Tiamat reeled, my mom took advantage of her distraction to dive straight toward the ocean floor. Once there, she burrowed her way under the sand and rocks until she’d created a deep tunnel of sorts that ran beneath the ocean floor and came up next to the old Spanish ship.
As I got my first good look at the ship—and the color of its wood—I realized that the desk Hailana was so proud of had come from this ship. This battle.
Tiamat, crazed with rage and pain, shot through the tunnel after Cecily. And that’s when I finally understood what my mother was doing.
Quick as a flash, she blasted through the outer wall of the galleon. Out came thousands upon thousands of gold coins. Manipulating every ounce of magic she had, Cecily used her energy to lift the gold up and funnel hundreds of pounds of it into the opening she had just created in the ocean floor. Then, before Tiamat could even realize what had happened, she whipped the remainder of the gold to the other side of the tunnel, blocked in that end too.
Tiamat was trapped—at least until she could tunnel through another portion of the ocean floor.
I kept wondering how this had managed to trap Tiamat for five hundred years when it had taken my mother only about ten minutes to dig the entire tunnel. But then Cecily seemed to get an infusion of power, an influx of energy that made her phosphorescence near blinding.
Malakai lending her his power? I wondered, remembering the way Hailana’s Council had said my mother hadn’t done this alone. At that moment, Cecily stepped back and did exactly what I had done once before with her magic—pulled electricity from the water around her. She was able to channel so much that she didn’t just cause a big explosion like I had. She actually melted the coins.
Rivers of molten gold flowed from both ends of the tunnel, filling the entire thing and catching Tiamat in the burning metal. The monster screeched as she burned, but Cecily didn’t even pause. Creating a minicyclone much like the one I had spawned earlier on the beach, she created a tunnel right through the center of the melted gold, letting the frigid sea water flash freeze the stuff from the inside out. Tiamat, who had to be surrounded by water—who couldn’t function in any other conditions—ended up being almost totally encased in hardened gold. Barely able to move or breathe or function. The only thing keeping her alive at all was the small amount of sea water she had access to from the tunnel that had flash-frozen the gold.
It had been a miscalculation on Cecily’s part—she’d been trying to kill Tiamat not trap her. But that didn’t stop her from completing the job by fashioning a nearly unbreachable cage.
The miracle, I realized as I watched Cecily layer on more and more molten metal—silver as well as gold—wasn’t that my mother had managed to contain Tiamat for hundreds of years. It was that Tiamat had ever gotten out.
That alone warned me just how powerful she had become in those years trapped below the ocean floor. Which did not bode well for me. At all.
Chapter 30
Let’s go, I told Mahina as I scooped up two of the pearls whose memories had already been expunged, just in case we needed something to trade with along the way.
Sure, she agreed, though she was watching me with a frightened look on her face.
Did that last memory help you figure out what you need to do to stop her? my friend asked as we made our way back out to the ocean.
You couldn’t see it?
No. I saw the others, but that one was weird. You just checked out, and except for a little bit of thrashing around, you didn’t move again until you opened your eyes. It scared the crap out of me.
I’m sorry. It was weird for me too. And no, I really didn’t get any great ideas from it. Unless there’s a bunch of gold lying around the Sahul Shelf.
Gold?
Yeah. I told her what I’d seen. Any ideas?
We need to run in the opposite direction. Melting gold using just energy? Good luck with that.
It wasn’t just her regular energy. It was this electric thing—
What’s the difference?
I don’t know how to describe it. I guess you have to see it to understand.
I’d rather not, to be honest. She shuddered. Well, at least we know to go for the underbelly, right? That’s where she’s most vulnerable.
Yeah, because I can so see her giving us a shot at that.
Mahina stiffened. I was only trying to help.
I know. I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to be obnoxious. I’m just messed up.
Me too. She smiled. It’s okay.
I paused as we left the cave. Now, which way is Australia from here again?
Still right. She rolled her eyes, grinned.
Mahina talked as we swam, once again explaining the whole direction thing, and I let her drone on—mostly because I knew it gave her something to concentrate on besides where we were going and what we would do once we got there. Plus, the sound of her voice was kind of soothing. It kept me calm, which was important, since I pretty much felt like I could wig out at any second.
