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My eyes narrowed. “You’re following waymarks, aren’t you?”
Laughter soaked his voice like water rushing through a crack in a ship’s hull. “Possibly. But you weren’t supposed to notice that.”
He started pointing out each waymark we passed by. A patch of pink algae growing in the peculiar shape of a hook. The rotted mast of an unfortunate vessel that had apparently taken over two dozen mermen to orient in the appropriate direction.
Were these the sort of tasks Papa had traveled around for? Tending to landmarks that would make maps to guide wayward merfolk to the nearest kingdom?
It made sense. From what I knew about mermaids, they loved nothing more than to travel. A few landmarks might insure more would find their way back home if they ever decided to pass through.
A formation of rocks appeared in the distance, and I pointed at them with the lantern, curious if they were another marker. “And that over there?” I couldn’t imagine it taking less than a couple hundred mermen to erect stones that large.
“That…” Leander paused, chewing on his lip like he wasn’t sure if he should tell me, “… is a portal. It means we’re getting close to the palace gates.”
Aportal?
“Wait, wait. What do you mean, a portal?” He had to mean a doorway, right? Not a magical gateway to some far-off world, like in a book or a fairy tale.
“To the other kingdoms. It isn’t really something that—”
“Can you take us over there?” I cut in, leaning over to get a better look. His tail beat even faster. We were about to pass it. “Come on, Lee! I want to see it.”
“Fine,” he grumbled. His tail swerved, knocking me back into his chest, but I didn’t complain. I was going to get to see aportal to other kingdoms.“Better now than after we have the trident. You have to understand, it isn’t a place meant for those who aren’t royalty. Only the magic from a trident can work the portals.”
I couldn’t keep my eyes from rolling. Leave it to Poseidon to bestow the trident-wielders with the power to create a magical portal system just for them.
We were close enough now to see the markings on the rocks, their steep sides jutting from the ocean floor like the fangs of an ancient sea beast. I counted six massive monoliths, each as blackened and ominous as the one sitting on either side of it.
We were close now, close enough that I could see into the center of the deep circle that the great rocks guarded. Then a slither of movement caught my eye, and terror coiled around my throat like a vise.
I didn’t know what creature it was, but instinct drove my body to clench as one long tendril rippled along the water, unraveling like a rolled-up swath of black velvet, the slash of agile flesh curving along the side of the nearest rock. Then another joined it.
And another.
Was it one or many? I didn’t know. But I did know that if it caught sight of the glowing beacon I carried, we were about to find out. “Stop, stop, stop,” I hissed, yanking on his shoulders until he looked down to see the panic on my face.
His tail stopped instantly. Or tried to, at least. It rubber-banded back, the recoil sending it into a little spin that had us spiraling downward. As soon as we touched the sand, I threw down the lantern, burrowing it into the seafloor in an effort to extinguish the glow.
“The fuck,” Leander’s voice was in my ear, but I kept digging. Kept covering. Kept raking sand. Why wasn’t he helping?
“You saw it, right?Saw them?” I whispered, surprised by the panic in my voice. There was only a faint glow left. Maybe it hadn’t seen us.
“Sawwhat?Fuck, Claira, we need the lantern!”
I clapped a sandy hand over his giant, gaping mouth to quiet him, my eyes whipping back to the rocks. “Shhhh, it’ll hear you. At least, if it has ears. I’m really not sure…”
Magic flickered over my eyes, and I gasped as the great monoliths seemed to come to life in the distance. Swirls and markings covered every inch of their surface, glowing a faint gray in my mind’s eye like an elaborate script or code had been scribed into them. And in the very center of the structure hovered one—no,two—creatures. Ones with sprawling tentacles that danced and curled around them like black cloaks of death.
My stomach burned as I squinted, willing my vision to sharpen, but not daring to ask Leander to get any closer.
They were eating. Feasting on something light and fleshy that sank into their middles—Wait.
“Leander,” I whispered, daring to crawl an arm’s length closer, but Leander held me tight. “Do you know of any merfolk that have human tops and octopus bottoms?”
Every muscle in his body seemed to tense at once. “No.”
Not that he knew of, at least.Because they were right there in monochrome, sixteen tentacles between the pair of them. I should have been happy they weren’t creatures feasting on human snacks, but the stark contrast of the ghostly white of their torsos next to the void of their appendages made me feel like these creatures were even more vicious than the merfolk I knew.
“No, not a mer,” he said, his calmness doing little to soothe my unease. “A cecaelia.”
