Vilqa glided beside me. “It’s okay, this is way less scary than jumping off a cliff. How about we try floating first? Just lean back like you’re lying in a bed and let the water support you.”
They put a hand on my back and eased me backwards into the water. When I let my feet leave the bottom, they put their other hand under my legs to help support me. I flinched when I felt my hair getting wet, but at least my face was still out of the water. I looked up and saw Vilqa’s reassuring smile over me.
“Good, feel that? Arms out, yes, that will help.” Vilqa adjusted me into an even position and the water supported me. “Alright, I’m going to let go so you can float on your own.”
Vilqa let go and took a step back.
For one blissful moment, I was floating by myself. Then my stomach sank and the feeling of weightlessness was gone. I thrashed my limbs around, trying to stay at the surface, but the water closed in over my head. It was dark, and cold, and when I opened my mouth to scream, water flooded into my throat and lungs.
Strong hands grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me up. My flailing feet found the bottom again, and I stood. I tried to breathe but coughed instead, choking on the water.
Vilqa thumped me between the shoulders and the water came spewing back out of me. I turned and struggled back onto the shore, doubling over on my hands and knees. More water came up, scraping my throat raw, and then air found its way into my lungs again. I collapsed in the sand.
Vilqa sat down beside me. “Try to breathe evenly. Are you okay?”
I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut. Something was irritating my eyes, like they’d picked up dirt from the water. “No, that was terrifying,” I said, my voice shaking with the effort.
“We’ll start with holding your breath,” Vilqa said. They seemed remarkably calm, considering that I’d almost drowned a minute ago.
“No.” I opened my eyes and sat up, looking around for Tika. “We should start with the magic first. I won’t risk my life on this.”
Tika was perched on a branch that reached out of the water, watching the others. Kyra was floating on her back with no help from Amena, and Janera had her face in the water, blowing bubbles. The sand piper turned her head toward me. “You had one little setback, Riwenne. Try again.”
I wrapped my arms around my waist and glared at the pool. “I’m not getting back in there until I know I can’t die.”
Vilqa stood up and offered their hand to me. “I’ll be right there to pull you up the moment you’re in any danger. You won’t die, I promise.”
I looked into their face. They seemed confident in their ability to swim. I’d asked them to trust me with their own life, so it was fair that I should do the same. I took their hand and let them lead me back to the water.
Tika made us practice swimming for three days, with sessions in the morning and the afternoon. If she caught me trying to use magic to make any part of the process easier, she scolded me and made me start over. Each day left me so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open to eat dinner. The nights of dreamless sleep were the best part.
By the end, I wasn’t very comfortable in the water. But I could float, hold my breath, and paddle around the pool without freaking out. Kyra and Janera weren’t much better, but Tika declared us ready to learn her special kind of magic.
We stood in waist-deep water as the sand piper called directions at us from the shore. If we struggled, all we’d have to do is stand up to reach the surface. My clumsy attempts at treading water wouldn’t be tested.
“How do you give us your power?” I hadn’t been around when Amena showed her magical doorway gift from Uqra, so I wasn’t sure how the whole demigoddess thing worked. “Do we need to pray to you?”
Tika shook her head. “Just do as I say.” She tilted her head so her left eye pointed straight at me. “Although it wouldn’t hurt for you to show a little more respect.”
I bowed my head. “Please, bestow your gift upon us, oh ancient one.”
Tika puffed up her feathers but didn’t respond to the taunt. “Ahem. The first part is to protect your eyes,” she chirped. “You must see where you’re going underwater, and salt water stings. Imagine a thin film, like a transparent secondary eyelid, covering your eyes and helping them to focus. You can hold your breath for now as you test it out.”
A film on my eyes didn’t sound comfortable. I tried to picture what it looked like. Do fish have eyelids? Lizards didn’t, so they licked their eyeballs to keep them clean. Ew—that was the wrong thought!
Okay. Deep breath, Riwenne, you’re overthinking this. Imagine it more like spectacles or goggles—to protect my eyes and help me see. I held the image, pinched my nose shut, and put my face forward into the water.
I blinked several times to test it out. My eyes felt… normal? I could still feel the faint pressure as the water swirled past. I wiggled my toes in the sand to test my vision. They seemed a little clearer.
Not too bad so far. I picked my head up again to breathe.
“Good, keep your eyes like that,” Tika instructed. “Next, imagine that you’re breathing normally, but instead of air, you’ll take in water.”
“Wait, what?” I wiggled my finger in my ear to make sure there wasn’t water clogged inside and making me hear wrong. I’d spent a lot of time trying not to choke on water again, and now she wanted us to do it on purpose?
Tika tilted her head at me. “Pretend to breathe the water as if it were air, and my magic will make it work. What else did you think we’d be doing?”
I looked around at the others, who were also hesitating to try it. “Um, can’t we just, like, take some air with us somehow? Like trapping a bubble around our head?”
“You’d need a lot of air, and a lot of concentration to maintain something like that.” Tika shook her head. “I’m trying to make this as simple as possible. The technical answer is, there’s oxygen in the water just like in the air. Fish extract it with their gills. It would be complicated altering your body to give you gills and time-consuming, and then more work to reverse it when you wanted to go back on land. My magic bypasses that so your lungs can treat water like air.”
I frowned. “You’re sure it works?”
Tika sighed. “Yes, I’ve taught many warriors how to do this for centuries. I know what works.”
I couldn’t remember any stories about heroes breathing underwater, but then I hadn’t heard of Tika or Uqra before I’d met them. My history classes had focused on heroes like High Priestess Ylnauta, who’d founded the empire and built the first floating city.
“Breathe out,” Tika said. “Focus on emptying all the air out of your lungs so they are prepared to change. Once the magic takes over, you don’t want to try coming up again too fast.”
I watched as the others leaned forward. No one came back up for breath, so it must be working.
I blew out my air and put my face into the water. I sat there for a while, hand pressed against my mouth and nose, as I tried to imagine breathing in the water. I waited until my lungs were aching from the emptiness and then opened my mouth a little.
The pool still tasted of rotting leaves and a faint mineral tang. It swirled into my lungs, cold and heavy. But miraculously, my body didn’t cough it back out again.
I had to consciously think about each movement in and out. It didn’t feel the same as breathing air, but it didn’t feel like suffocating or drowning, either.
“Very good,” Tika’s voice echoed under the water. I turned my head and saw that she was in the water with us, and somehow, her voice easy to hear. “Keep going for a few minutes, and then we’ll practice shifting back together. Also, you should be able to speak.”
“This is amazing.” Deryt grinned when his voice came out.
“I know, right?” Janera gushed next to him.
I nodded. “Sorry for doubting you.”
We’d done many impossible things together, but this one had turned my entire world upside-down. I was breathing unde
rwater.
Good, because we needed to get back to Jenatta’s Bay soon. Time to rescue Quilla!
16
The Deep Blue Sea
I sat in the middle of a rowboat bobbing on the water near the entrance of the bay from the open ocean, but I was looking back to the east. I held my hand up to shield my eyes as I squinted in the early morning sun. The waves lapped at the wooden sides of the boat, gently rocking us back and forth, and the wind stirred my hair, bringing a faint salt spray that cooled my skin. Soon.
Next to me, Amena checked her pocket watch for the third time in the past five minutes. “Shouldn’t it be here by now? Maybe we should get in the water while we wait.”
I shook my head, and not just because I wanted to avoid getting in the water any sooner than I had to. “I think it’s important we wait until we’re sure.”
My view was straight to the horizon across the bay and the wetlands. The nearest mountain range was too far east to see from the bay shore. The sky was pale blue, and the sun was still low. The moon would be hard to see in these conditions, just a sliver as it chased behind the sun, but I wouldn’t move until I glimpsed it. I needed to know Quilla’s symbol was watching over us as we searched for her.
There—just the tip of a silver crescent peeking over the curve of the world. I pointed and nodded to the others. “That’s it. Let’s go.”
Deryt held the rowboat steady as the other five of us got to our feet. We’d decided one person should stay behind to keep an eye out, and he drew the short straw. Uqra would also stay at the surface with him.
Tika shifted to the form of a diving bird. She hopped into the water and floated as she looked up at us. “Alright, come on, then.”
Kyra jumped in first, then Amena, both of them treading water near the boat. And then it was my turn.
I tugged at my bathing costume a final time and forced myself to jump in feet first. The water was pleasant, almost warm, and my head barely dipped below the surface before I bobbed back up to the air. Floating was easier than it had been in the fresh water. I blinked, beginning the magic to protect my eyes from the sting of the salt.
Vilqa and Janera followed. Tika looked over us with an approving nod. “Good start. Now, faces in the water.”
I resisted the urge to touch the pocket where I’d sewn the moonstone into my bathing costume. I had to trust the magic would be there when I called on it. I emptied my lungs of air, forced my eyes to stay open, and bent forward to put my face in.
Deep breaths, drawing the water in and out. At first, my body panicked and fought against it, but I concentrated on staying calm and acclimated. I tasted salt and something else, an almost metallic tang that coated my tongue. I tried not to think about what was in the water where so many animals lived.
My vision cleared as the magic finished taking over and I could see through the water. There were my bare feet dangling below me, shafts of sunlight streaked down through the blue water around me, but farther down there was nothing but growing darkness. We were floating in a vast emptiness.
Panic won out. I yanked my head up, coughing and sputtering up the water as I struggled for air. My lungs, caught in the middle of the spell, spasmed. I was suffocating.
“Head down!” Tika snapped, rising to the surface in a flurry of water droplets. Her webbed feet smacked into the back of my head and forced me back into the water.
I sucked in the water and my lungs filled again.
“That’s it, in and out,” Tika said, twisting her long neck at an angle so her head hung down in the water next to mine. Her weight sitting on top of me kept my head down. “Keep calm and breathe. If you fight the magic’s transition, you’ll just make yourself sick.”
I focused on drawing in the water through my mouth for several breaths until I got ahold of myself. “It’s just so big,” I said, my voice echoing in my ears.
Vilqa slipped below me so their face was before mine and took my hand. “It’s okay, it’s just the bay. It’s smaller than the sky, and you can’t fall.”
I’d never thought of that. I’d live in the sky my whole life, a great big blue emptiness, and I’d never questioned it. Picturing myself floating in the sky made breathing a little easier.
Tika dove into the water, flapping her wings to push herself deeper, and she looked like she was flying. She circled around our group, checking on each of us. “Is everyone breathing?”
When we’d all given our all-clears, Tika swam back toward me. “Alright, we’re following you. Lead us to Quilla.”
I resisted the urge to look up at the surface a final time. I had to concentrate on where we were going. I bent at the waist, tucking my legs in an awkward imitation of the dive Vilqa had tried to teach me, and flipped so I was facing down toward the deep. I kicked and pumped my arms, and I was swimming.
As Vilqa had warned us, the water cooled as we went deeper, although I still thought the woolen bathing costume was too much. The bulky bloomers caught at my legs.
The bay wasn’t as empty as it first looked. Long, ropy seaweed called giant kelp swayed around us like an underwater forest, tickling my bare feet when I got too close. Fish darted in and out of hiding in a riot of color—large, gaping-mouthed orange fish, tiny silver fish that clustered in schools of a hundred or more, brilliant yellow and purple and neon pink and blue moving so fast that I couldn’t make out their shapes.
I hesitated the first time we saw a small shark, a mottled blue and brown thing that was almost half my size, cruising by. Even from here, I could see the rows of sharp teeth in its mouth. I stopped and pointed at it, turning to look at the others with horror.
Vilqa touched my arm. “Don’t worry, they’re harmless,” they said with a shake of their head. “If you leave animals alone, they’ll leave you alone. Try not to touch anything.”
The bottom was closer than I expected, only thirty feet down. I could see the sun shining on the surface when I looked up. Unlike the sandy river bed, the ocean floor was covered in life. Barnacles clung to rocks, more colorful seaweed drifted in the current, and twisted corals reached out their strange arms. All of them were full of life, from starfish and crabs to sea urchins and eels, and more strange things I couldn’t name. I swam a safe distance above everything to avoid any brushes with something sharp or otherwise unfriendly.
The ocean floor sloped away from the shore, which gave us an obvious direction to swim. I tried to focus on where we were going but I couldn’t get anything beyond a general feeling. My eyes kept getting drawn to the many fascinating creatures around us. The colors were so bright and artificial that it was like being inside a candy store, except the candy was moving all around us.
Ugh. I could not be getting hungry already. We’d just had breakfast while we waited in the boat, and we couldn’t eat again until we went back to the surface. Stop thinking about food.
Then we came to the edge of the kelp forest and saw the bottom drop away from us. The trench. It split apart the sea floor in a jagged gash like some giant had reached into the rocks and torn them apart. I could see the other side twenty feet across, but the length of it stretched out to the mouth of the bay. Worse, I couldn’t tell how deep it went. Floating on the edge of that cavern, I had the sudden fear that the darkness would reach out and swallow us.
I didn’t want to get anywhere near that horrible place. But I could feel Quilla calling to me from the center of that trench. Her prison was in there.
Amena looked down into the trench. “Are you sure that’s where she is?”
I gulped and nodded, unable to find the words.
“Right.” Amena turned to Tika. “Will we be able to swim down that far?”
Tika spread her wings out to her sides so she floated in place. “The water pressure will grow the deeper we go,” she warned. “I’ll use my magic to compensate as much as I can, but we should be careful. Don’t swim down or back up quickly. Your body needs time to adjust.”
I reached my hands out to the others. “And we
have to make sure we stay together. I—I don’t know what else is in there.”
Janera took my right hand, and Vilqa took the left. The others linked up with them and we formed a circle, the five of us. I managed a wavering smile, and the others returned it. Warmth flowed through me, more powerful than any magic. Whatever happened, I could endure it if they were with me.
“Let’s go!” Janera yelled, pumping her fist above her head.
Vilqa echoed her cry and dove head first over the edge of the cliff.
17
The Truth
As we descended into the darkness, our god crystals began to glow, shining a light so we could see where we were going. The moonstone on my chest felt warm. The magic would protect me from the chill.
Even more surprising, I saw there was life even down here in the black. Red seaweed grew on the walls of the trench. The fish were larger and more solitary, gliding through the gloom. They all had large eyes that flashed when they reflected the light from our crystals.
Ghostly, translucent white blobs drifted up toward us. They looked like handkerchiefs someone had lost, except I could see looping curls in the middle—intestines? Something that weird couldn’t be alive!
Vilqa laughed and reached out to scoop up a small blob in their hand. “Moon jellies,” they said. “Some jellyfish can sting you, but these don’t. This has to be a sign we’re on the right track!”
I poked a jellyfish with one finger and jerked back. I was afraid it would be slimy, but it was smooth and firmer than I expected. The creature didn’t seem to notice that I’d touched it. I could see why they were called moon jellies. They were white and round like a full moon, and they jiggled like a jelly tart.
I turned to Tika. “I’ve never heard of these. Is it a good sign? Do they serve Quilla?”
Tika shrugged. “I don’t know. We’re in Sawycha’s domain, but not every living thing in the sea serves the sea goddess.” She peered at the nearest moon jelly. “I don’t see any kind of brain in there. I doubt they have the intelligence to serve anyone.”
Riwenne & the Bionic Witches Page 13
