Secrets of the Tally

by Halie Fewkes

  Archie said, “Do you see that? The Escali falcons won’t even fly over the water of the Breathing Sea. Trying to get in a boat will be suicide.”

  “What about Michael?” I asked. “We can’t just wait out here for help.”

  “He’s fine. Just look at him,” West said, brushing that to the side. “He’ll die of starvation before that wound kills him. Trust me.” I knew West didn’t believe that for a second.

  Michael said, “If this gets infected and spreads, I may never be able to run again. I would rather be dead, so we need to get off this island. Now.”

  “We will be dead if we try to cross the Breathing Sea,” Archie repeated. “Let’s just give it until morning. Please. If nobody from the Dragona comes to get us by then, we’ll reconsider.”

  “Fine,” Michael said, wincing as he tried to get to his feet. “Now somebody help me to the top of the cliff.”

  I kept a close eye on the bridge while Archie and West carried Michael to the higher elevations, but I also couldn’t help glancing at West’s dagger in my hand. The blade had wolves, falcons, and a rabbit carved in among the detailed foliage. I had never seen anything like it.

  I climbed the hill minutes later, still watching for Escalis, and at the top I heard West asking, “Should we build a fire?”

  “No reason not to,” Archie said. “The Escalis already know exactly where we are.”

  I tried to hand West’s dagger back as we began our search for sticks to burn, but he said, “Hold onto it. Tightly. My grandfather gave it to me. He said he killed an Escali once and took the dagger from its dead hands.”

  “Was he a mage?” I asked, tucking the dagger into the lacing of my sandals.

  “No,” West replied, pulling flint and steel from his bag. “I just happen to be from a long line of Dincaran Escali killers.”

  That caught Archie’s attention as he dropped an armload of sticks he’d already gathered. “You’re from Dincara?”

  “Did I never mention that?” West asked, seeming genuinely surprised. “I usually flaunt it whenever I can. Couldn’t be prouder.”

  “I have friends from Dincara,” Archie said, his voice taking on new life at the mention of his friends. “Best fighters I’ve ever met in my life. They taught me most of what I know.”

  “Well of course they were,” West said, stacking the twigs into a pyramid. “Did they ever show you their tattoos?”

  Archie laughed. “I’m not sure a day ever went by without them showing their tattoos.”

  “You have a tattoo?” I asked, my voice flat with disbelief.

  West didn’t wear an undershirt beneath his sleeveless jerkin like the rest of us, so he easily pulled the leather aside to reveal a black spider painted on his shoulder. “It’s just the Dincaran spider, everybody has one,” he said, striking flint and steel together to make a shower of sparks. “And let me tell you, I’ve never regretted coming to the Dragona,” his pile of sticks began smoking and a small flame came to life beneath them, “but there are times when I see a body of water that isn’t my ocean, and it sure makes me miss home.”

  The fire warmed my cold hands and was perfectly positioned for us to keep watch over the waterfront, but it gave me little comfort. I couldn’t gaze at the popping and crackling driftwood for more than five seconds without turning to check the bridge again. No Escalis.

  The silence had drawn on for long enough. I called, “First watch,” and moved away from the fire so I could keep my eyes on the bridge without getting too cozy.

  I ended up on my stomach, resting my chin on folded hands where I could see the granite walkway below. Archie and West stretched out next to the fire and Michael curled in against himself. I heard a venomous hiss resonate from the Breathing Sea, and I hoped nobody else had heard it. Sleeping would be even harder with the sounds of danger playing amidst our dreams.

  Time ebbed away as I watched the foamy waves slam against sharp black rocks, and I lamented the fact that none of my old memories had come back. If being chased down and pummeled by Escalis wasn’t dangerous enough to reawaken my past, nothing was. Except maybe the Breathing Sea, I thought, watching the water explode into mist. We still had to escape it.

  I didn’t know if Archie woke up or had never fallen asleep, but after a few hours he joined me on the cliff to watch the empty bridge.

  “I know what those Escalis said,” I told Archie. “They said our mages wouldn’t be able to find us on this island.”

  “I know,” he said. “I believe you. The Dragona’s mages would already be here if they were coming.”

  I readjusted my hands so the rocks no longer jabbed them as sharply. “Isn’t the Escali Epic blocking all of Treldinsae from the mages? Maybe he’s blocking this island from being seen as well.”

  “Could be. Let’s just hope our mages can track us down as soon as we get to the mainland.”

  “You’re considering crossing the Sea then?” I asked, glancing up at him.

  “I’m equally considering cutting back across the bridge,” he replied flatly.

  “Can the monsters in the Breathing Sea really be as bad as the Escalis?”

  “Worse. I’ll bet you can’t even hear the Sirens out there, can you?”

  I listened closely but shook my head. I could only hear waves crashing into the rocks. “What are Sirens?”

  “Beautiful sea women,” Archie replied, staring vacantly ahead. “And they sing. I heard one singing a little while ago, the most beautiful songs you could imagine.”

  “I don’t think I heard any songs,” I said, feeling left out and curious.

  “The singing doesn’t affect girls, but for us, a Siren song makes us want to jump into the Sea, swim down to the depths, and stay there forever. Lucky you, you don’t have to resist it.”

  “So I’ll probably be the safest getting in the boat then?”

  “No, because the Sirens are vile, made entirely of jealousy. They kill any girl they find simply so no other man can ever fall in love with her. That’s one of the reasons we’re not supposed to go near the Breathing Sea. Guys are put under the spell of a false, never-ending love, and girls are murdered for being anywhere near the water.”

  The beginnings of daylight started creeping up the horizon ahead of us. I said, “They still don’t sound worse than the Escalis.”

  Archie laughed and said, “The Sirens are just one monster in the Breathing Sea. I’ve heard so many stories. About snaky fish called eels that can swarm out and shock you. Clear jellyfish with tentacles that sting you until you die. Something called an octopus, with eight arms to strangle you. Fish that look like dogs and rip you apart because they like carrying around the limbs. And those are just some of the small ones.”

  “How big are the big ones?”

  Archie’s thoughtful frown told me he wasn’t sure he even believed what he was telling me. “When the Breathing Sea was first tainted, they say the ships in the water were swallowed whole by gigantic water lizards with plated armor on their backs. I think they’re still in the depths. And there were water dragons, like gigantic snakes, that were able to breathe fire underwater. The tiniest drop of blood in the water would send them into a frenzy from a mile away. Even the plants down there want to kill you. The shores are lined with thistleweed. If you touch so much as one leaf, you come down with a delusional fever for three days and die.”

  “Alright, alright,” I said. “It’s dangerous. That boat has to be there for a reason though.”

  “And I’m still hoping our mages get here so we don’t have to find out,” Archie said. “Why don’t you get an hour of sleep and I can watch the bridge.”

  “I could probably use it,” I said, moving back to the fire. “Wake me up if you need anything.” I threw another dried chunk of wood on the coals and settled in.

  Of course, falling asleep was nearly impossible with such a beehive of thoughts buzzing about, so I just lay thinking. Thinking about Treldinsae, wondering if the Dincarans made it out of the city, th
inking about every monster I had just heard of, along with the ones I had so recently faced.

  When Archie thought we were all asleep, I heard him softly whistling the part of the duskflyer song he liked so much. Nothing bad could be happening as long as I could hear it, so I was finally able to drift off.

  I woke to find daylight blazing through the branches of the one leafy tree above me, and I blinked my eyes several times. Michael and West slept soundly, but Archie had disappeared. I double checked the bridge for Escalis, squinting against the bright reflection coming off the water, and Archie showed up seconds later to sit on a mossy rock next to me.

  He gazed silently over the water as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and asked, “What’s the plan?”

  Archie shook his head slowly, fixing his eyes on the bridge. “I don’t know… We might as well go now if we’re going to do it. No sense waiting until we’re all faint from thirst.”

  My neck was stiff from sleeping on the ground, a discomfort I was reminded of as I nodded in agreement. “What have you got there?” I pointed at Archie’s closed fist.

  He held up the dozen brightly colored flowers and said, “These are for you.”

  I was awake now!

  “Oh,” I said, closing my fingers slowly around the stems. I wanted to scream at him, you’re doing this now? Instead, I stammered, “Well… thank you.”

  He smiled at my attempt to avoid blushing and saved me the trouble. “They’re breakfast,” he said. “They only grow around the Sea.”

  “Well then, thanks for breakfast,” I said, holding them up in a toast. If this had been anyone but Archie, the moment would have been fantastically awkward. But all was fine among friends. Right?

  I bit into one of the small buds and found it sweet and rosy.

  Archie shook West to wake him, but West didn’t take kindly to the bright light and almost knocked Archie into the fizzled fire before realizing where he was. I had a small laugh and was glad to see the commotion wake Michael. Archie had breakfast for them as well, but neither seemed particularly hungry.

  “Guys,” Michael said, setting his brunch bouquet in the dirt. “Why don’t you just put me in the boat and give me a good push into the water. Somebody’s got to try to get across. I have the least to lose right now.”

  “And then you get to the other side and hobble back to the Dragona alone?” I asked. “I don’t think so. I’ll go.”

  “How about we all go,” West said. “Nobody wants to be left behind on this island. Will the boat hold all of us?”

  Archie and I looked at each other and said, “Maybe.”

  “We’re not far from the south side of the island,” I said. “Come see for yourselves.”

  We all left the vantage point to head for the boat, and although we risked having the Escalis come while nobody watched, it was a risk we had to take. West and Archie helped Michael, and as soon as we got to the southern cliff, West said, “That can hold four people.”

  “I’ll go down and get it,” Archie said, stepping onto the narrow zigzagging trail. The beginning of the trail was no more than two hands wide, carved into the eroding stone and in great disrepair. He had walked an entire three cubits and turned around one corner before the precarious trail gave way, sliding him down to the next level of the path and sending little amounts of debris into the Sea. I couldn’t believe he was lucky enough to land on the next narrow piece of ledge.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” I said, clenching my fists.

  “Not at all,” he called back up, eyes wide in fear as well, “but at the rate it’s eroding, it’s going to be safer to climb down now than in an hour.” He pushed forward to the next turn, and I followed after him. I jumped over his excavation before making my first turn in the trail, thankful for my exceptional sense of balance since I found no handholds whatsoever.

  From above, I heard West say, “Looks steep,” and I looked up just in time to see Michael cuff him on the back of the head, flinching from his own movement.

  Archie had already found the boat’s chain and pulled the craft over to the sandy beach by the time we safely reached him. Only two trees grew in this sand, and Michael immediately sat against the bigger of the two, breathing heavily.

  “Before we all get in this boat, I just want to try something,” Archie said. He tossed the chain to West and said, “Tie this around the tree trunk?”

  As West did so, I nodded in understanding. “You’re sending it into the water on its own first, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Archie replied. “Look how long the chain is. I just want to make sure nothing happens to it, and then we can pull it back in.”

  West finished tying it securely to the tree, and I stepped carefully into the wet sand to help Archie give the boat a great shove. I only had a second to admire the ornate carvings on the exterior of the wood, like intertwined ropes, before the boat drifted into deep water.

  “Back up,” Archie said quietly, and we both took slow steps back from the wet sand. My heart beat quickly, but nothing happened. The bobbing carrier peacefully reached the end of its chain length, but I heard the beginnings of an earth-rumbling growl and the water began to churn.

  The greatest leviathan of a mouth I had ever seen erupted upward from the water, and the boat was immediately swallowed whole between teeth larger than me. One black eye, set among sickly brown scales, emerged from the waves but sank immediately back into the Sea, blasting water up to us on the shore. The boat was gone.

  I was about to say how lucky we were when the chain snapped tight with a twang and the entire tree behind us was wrenched from the ground in one swift motion. Its winding root system slammed into us from behind and I found myself ensnared in the tangle just about to crash into the Breathing Sea.

  Chapter Fourteen

  We plunged into the dreaded tide within a second, and a horrific scream ripped through the waters as the herculean monster pulled us under. Water rushed by so forcefully that I had to press my arm over my eyes for fear they might be torn out and float away. When our movement slowed, I whipped around to see that the others had been ripped free from the roots. I was alone, in deep murky water where light barely filtered down to me.

  I could hardly hold my breath anymore, and had yet to even disentangle myself from the root system. I hoped the legends of the Breathing Sea would prove true in one more way as I released the air in my lungs and watched my bubbles tear toward the surface.

  Drawing my next breath felt like an offense to my very Humanity. I was clearly dragging water into my lungs, but I didn’t feel the sting in my nose of drowning. I was almost free of the roots when a net settled onto the entanglement. From between the roots I saw the slimy face of the Siren who had thrown it. She held a golden trident in her webbed green hands. Everything about her was eerily green, from her glimmering tail to her long seaweed hair, fanning from her head in every direction. The tree I was stuck in floated slowly toward the surface of the Sea, and she swam effortlessly up to stay even with it. She kept her entirely white eyes fixed on me while each flick of her tail moved her one drift closer.

  “Well hi,” I said, my voiced suppressed and barely audible in the water.

  I almost made the mistake of thinking she was beautiful until she flung her jaw open wide. What sounded like a hiss from between her four rows of teeth turned into an ear-searing scream, forcing me to clamp my hands to my head to block out the noise.

  She stopped her screaming as six slimy eels snaked up to us from the darker depths. They easily passed through the holes in the net around me, and I recoiled from a sharp shock as one of them brushed against my neck. Another jolt struck my right leg, and I jerked my sword from my side as another one zapped my arm.

  The Siren barked another short scream, as though concerned about her precious vermin, and they darted away from me before I could cut one in half. The wicked Siren swam up beneath the overturned tree, grabbed the chain still tied around the trunk, and struggled to pull the entire thing
down to deeper water.

  I immediately turned to the net in front of me and attempted to pull it from the root system, but it was already entangled and snagged on every tendril of wood. I started sawing at the rope with my one sword, but the strands had been densely hardened by years in the water. I had barely cut through one strand by the time I looked down and saw jellyfish drifting below.

  My instincts screamed that those would kill me.

  But why was she going through the trouble of dragging me down to them? Why send eels after me when she had a trident that could easily do the job? I realized why she looked so frightened seeing my sword — she didn’t want any blood in the water.

  Whatever this Siren feared seemed like hope to me, and I quickly pricked the back of my arm with my blade. A tiny wisp of blood flowed into the water where it was pulled apart and thinned until I couldn’t see it. The Siren smelled it within a second, however, and let go of the tree to look fearfully in every direction.

  I heard a roar and snapped quickly around to see a gigantic blue snake, easily big enough to swallow me whole, cutting through the water faster than an arrow. The Siren immediately took off, and given the choice between pursuing her or trying to dislodge me from the tree roots, the massive snake thankfully bolted after her.

  Cutting through the remaining ropes took time, but soon I was free and swimming for the surface.

  I had no idea when I had lost my hair ties, but my long hair had been freed and obstructed my vision every time I tried to turn my head now. I also found that I was an awful swimmer as I made my way upward. I kicked hard with my legs and tried to pull myself through the water with my arms, but I barely felt as though I was moving.

  When I finally breached the surface, I immediately heard, “ALLIE!” and saw Archie running along the shoreline. The southern shoreline — he had made it across!

  I swam toward him and tried to speak, but water spilled from my mouth instead of words.