by Alyssa Breck
She stepped in his direction. “We are sirens. Why would you help us?”
“It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. You are here to save the world. I’m here to help you succeed.”
“We need to get out of the street,” Kiera reminded them.
“Grab your belongings and follow me,” Silver said.
The warriors looked at Alayah. She nodded, and they quickly moved around and grabbed their bags. Then, they fetched the horses.
Alay stood still, watching Silver. She had no idea if she could trust him.
“You will,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“You will trust me. Like I already trust you. But it’s wise not to trust anyone here. Earthlings aren’t like the siren people. They are greedy and cunning.”
“Siren people aren’t that different, either. What about your people?”
“My clan is honorable, and we live by a code. But we are neither sirens nor earthlings.”
“What are you then?”
“Dragons.”
Alayah frowned. “What?”
“Ancient titan creatures with scales that breathed fire,” Marina said. “I’ve read about this. But they aren’t real, and if they ever were, then they are extinct like the majority of the animals after the Big Crash.”
“You don’t look like a titan,” Alay said.
Silver smirked and leaned down. “No. I’m not a titan nor do I become a dragon. It’s just a name that we call our race. We are an evolution of humans. We have all the mage powers and the skills and strength of the greatest warriors. We can also defy gravity and float if we run fast enough.”
“Intriguing,” Alayah mumbled. A mage. That could be useful.
“Indeed.”
Alayah sighed and turned her back on him. “Are we ready?”
Kiera arrived with the horses while Lyra shoved the prisoner on the back of her horse.
“We are two horses short,” Lyra said.
“I’ll walk,” Alayah said.
Silver whistled before inviting her. “You can ride with me.”
A white stallion trotted in their direction. Alayah had never seen a horse as beautiful and imponent as that one. Silver jumped on its back and offered Alay his hand. She didn’t move.
“You can ask me anything you want while we ride,” Silver said.
Alayah gave him her hand, and he helped her sit in front of him on the saddle.
With a movement of his arm, Silver removed his cape and placed it over Alayah’s shoulders. “The nights are cold here. This will keep you warm until we get to our next stop.”
With her cheeks burning, she remained quiet as Silver placed his arms around her, so he could reach for the reins. Moving his hips, he commanded the horse to run.
The other warriors followed behind Silver Wind and Alay.
Chapter 18
“Rise and shine, my dear ladies!”
Alayah sat up with startled eyes and blinked several times until she found Silver grinning at her. His hair fell straight, he seemed rested and in an awfully good mood. She sneered at his joyful morning personality and good-looking appearance.
Patting down her wild hair, she fell back on the hay that had served as her bed and looked at the spiders hanging from their webs in the ceiling. The smell of something mouthwatering reached her nostrils, and she raised her head to look at the door.
“Someone has overslept,” he teased, folding his arms and securing his body against the doorframe.
Looking around, she saw Marina, Lyra, and Rose yawning and rubbing their eyelids. “Where’s Kiera?”
Silver replied, “She’s outside tending to the horses. She did the last surveillance shift, remember?”
Alayah nodded and touched her belly, feeling how famished she was. “What smells so good?”
“I’m making breakfast for us. When you are ready, you should join us outside.” After saying that, Silver turned around and exited to the light of the day.
“He’s nice for a mage,” Marina said as she stretched her arms over her head. “They are normally arrogant and expect us to treat them as royalty.”
“Hmm.” Alayah got up and walked to the door. “We need to find more horses, so we can continue our journey. I hope we aren’t too far from our objective.”
“He’s a mage and wants to help us. Do we still need to look for another one?” Lyra asked.
Alayah stopped in her tracks and turned to look at her. “Are you willing to bet your life and trust him?”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and nibbled on her lip. “He’s … He seems friendly, and he saved us.”
Marina added, “He didn’t try to kill us in our sleep.”
“We’ll eat, and then we’ll talk about this before we decide anything,” Alayah suggested. “This quest is as much yours as mine. Agreed?”
“Yes, Commander,” they boomed their answer.
“Now, does anyone know where we have our combs. My hair looks a mess,” Alayah complained.
The fire was still lit when the sirens sat around it and grabbed the bowls that Silver prepared for them.
Alayah, as well as the other sirens, smelled and looked at the food with mistrusting eyes.
“It’s just beans with pork meat,” Silver explained, digging his spoon into the bowl and shoveling the food inside his mouth. “See, it’s good, and it’s not poisoned.”
Marina was the first one to eat and smile while chewing. “It’s pasty but good.”
“I made coffee, too,” Silver announced, signaling at the jar with steaming black liquid by his side.
“I have no idea what that is,” Alayah grumbled as she nibbled the so-called beans. “Don’t you have real food?”
Silver arched an eyebrow. “This is real food. But I also have eggs if you want. I found a few not far from here. The villagers have chickens, and I traded their eggs for a few cans of beans.”
“Alayah doesn’t come often to the dryland,” Marina explained. “She doesn’t know what you are talking about.”
“I know what eggs are,” Alayah protested.
“Animal eggs are different from fish eggs,” Marina said, waving her spoon before eating again.
Silver arched an eyebrow. “You have expensive tastes if you just eat caviar.”
Alayah looked at him with a blank expression and the spoon inside her mouth. “Hmm?”
Marina and Rose laughed which made Silver giggle. “I’m teasing you. I’ll cook chicken eggs for supper. The only better thing than that is the chicken itself.”
“That’s really kind of you,” Lyra said.
Kiera arrived from the woods with her bow and arrows hanging from her back. “I didn’t find anything to hunt.”
“It’s hard to find prey in these woods. The animals don’t have time to reproduce,” the mage said. He patted the spot on his left side. “Sit, and I’ll serve you coffee and beans.”
Beaming, Kiera dropped her hunting gear and sat with crossed legs in front of the fire.
Meanwhile, Silver had put his bowl down and was serving the black water inside iron cups.
Alayah grabbed the cup and frowned at it. When she looked up, the other siren warriors were gazing at her as if waiting for her to test it first.
“Drink, it will give you energy. They won’t drink if you don’t,” Silver said with his eternal grin.
Puckering her lips, Alay took a sip. She immediately spat it out. “This is terrible! It’s worse than the ale in the taverns.”
Silver chuckled, and the sirens mimicked him. “It’s an acquired taste. But it’s energetic, and once you get used to it, you might even get addicted to it. Coffee beans are extremely expensive around here.”
“Really?” Kiera asked, holding her cup and taking a sip. She grimaced but gulped the liquid. “It’s strong.”
“Some people believe that coffee has magical properties,” Marina said as she drank hers.
Alayah sniffed the cup. “What magic
al properties? I like the smell, but it doesn’t taste as good as it smells.”
“It’s energetic like the mage said.”
“We can all use extra energy after last night’s encounter and use of magic,” Alayah mumbled before emptying her cup. “Drink up.”
“If we leave after breakfast, we can still reach my outpost before nightfall,” Silver said as he carefully sipped on his coffee.
“Outpost?” Marina asked. “Weren’t we going to the Depths?”
“The outpost is closer, and we need to interrogate the prisoner,” Silver Wind explained.
“We have no intentions of going to your outpost. We have other plans.” Alayah got up and dusted off her clothes. “Kiera, where’s our prisoner. Once you eat, we need to start packing and …”
Silver grabbed her arm. “Wait, you can’t go back to the city. It’s too dangerous.”
Alay looked at his hand and then at his face. She grabbed his soft hand and pushed it away. “Don’t ever touch me without my permission.”
Silver’s eyes dropped to the floor in a bow before looking up at her again. “I’m sorry, but you need to listen to me. You are in grave danger. Someone is offering a lot of money for your lovely heads. Going to the outpost is your only hope to survive.”
“How do we know that you are telling the truth?”
“Your prisoner is in the other barn, tied up and unconscious. I’m sure that he’ll corroborate my story once we interrogate him.”
Narrowing her eyes and folding her arms, Alay raised her chin at him. “You used magic on him. Who knows how long he’ll be out.”
He placed a hand against his heart. “I’m here to help. I swear on my honor.”
“I’ll kill you if you are luring us into a trap.”
He smiled. “Okay.”
Her body relaxed, and she spoke softer. “I need a horse. If it’s a long trip, your horse can’t continue to carry us both.”
“You’re right. We’ll buy a new one from one of the farmers on the way.
Alayah nodded and caressed down her hair. The humidity was making her hair frizz, but it was good for her skin.
“Alayah …” Silver raised his arm but then retracted it. His eyes widened as he stared at her hair.
She frowned at him. “What?”
“You have something there,” he pointed.
“What is it?”
“A bug.”
Alayah’s body tensed, and she stopped moving with the air caught in her lungs. “What sort of bug?”
“It’s just a spider.”
Alayah completely froze in horror. “Get it out, get it out!”
“I can’t, you said I couldn’t touch you.”
She closed her eyes and hid her face between her hands. “Just get it out!”
His hand touched her hair, and she felt his chest against her hands. Peeking, she relaxed when he recoiled back and moved to release the spider inside his hands on the ground.
“Here you go, little fellow. Leave the cute siren alone and go play somewhere else.”
Alay stepped forward to see the size of the spider. Puckering her lips, she looked at the other warriors who had turned around to watch the show.
She blushed. “Why does the dryland have to have so many ugly creatures?”
Silver fixed his cape. “All living things have their place in the ecosystem. Spiders might look menacing, but these ones are good to eat insect pests and prevent some deadly diseases from spreading.”
“Silver is so smart,” Kiera chimed from where she was still seated.
Alayah glared at the warrior and looked at Silver. “If they are harmless, why did one of them attack me?”
“It didn’t. You aren’t a food source to it. The spider was just exploring.”
“Ugh. I think I need another bath.”
The mage’s lips curled into a smile. “You are a warrior and a magic wielder, you shouldn’t be afraid of a small spider.”
“I am not! They are just disgusting.”
“I saved you now, you can go pack, so we may buy you a new horse.”
Alayah rolled her eyes at his condescending words.
Chapter 19
The Dryland fell short of what Alayah had expected. It was everything she had not foreseen. As they trotted out of Rheyn through smaller villages and hamlets, she began to understand how dire the situation was and why she longed for her underwater home again.
Silver Wind took the lead position, his eyes scanning the hills and open windows in houses along the paths. Alayah saw whole villages empty because the inhabitants had to move out or starve.
In places where folks held on stubbornly to what they believed was their ancestral lands, young kids hung to their mothers’ skirts, bowls in hand and pleas on their lips.
Every quarter of a mile, Alayah saw dark shadows lurking in the corners and an occasional sound of receding hoof beats.
“They are with us, those ones,” Silver Wind said when Alayah raised the matter. The trail soon brought them into the open country, and they once again increased their pace.
The sun was a quarter of its way up in the sky when the green trail became rocky. Alayah’s heart sank, she had hoped they were nearing some source of water.
Alayah rode up to Silver. He smiled at her. Half the time he was either smiling at her or just simply looking ahead and riding. Alayah wanted to ask him what he meant the other time when he said the Depths had what the world was.
“Is your kingdom in Asia? Would it take us long to get there?” she asked instead.
“My people came from an island called Japan in the Pacific Ocean. My outpost is closer than my kingdom. We are just one-day journey away.”
“Is Japan far away? What’s it like there?”
He sighed. “I have no idea. My people came to these lands long before I was born. We have records and pictures of what it was. It was nothing but beautiful. Nothing like how the world is now.”
Alayah stared at his short brows, small and rectangular droopy eyes, his sharp and slender nose, his thin neck, and full, pouty lips. Different but extremely good looking.
“Are the people there all like you?”
He looked at her. “No. We have other races living with us. You’ll see.”
They had to come down in speed on account of the terrain. Silver Wind rode well, his back straight and his chin jutted out stately. Alayah admired how his body moved in rhythm with his horse’s body. She had only recently learned how to ride, and the first days had been exhausting and painful.
Silver broke the silence. “What did you mean when you asked if they were all like me? Have you never seen an Asian person before?”
Alayah shrugged and averted her eyes. Nibbling on her lip, she tried to remember what her mother looked like. Everybody always spoke how beautiful siren Sora was. To Alay, her face was a blur. She was too young when her mom had died and left her alone in the world.
The prince insisted by saying, “You know that you are half like me, right?”
“I’m different from anyone else.”
Silver chuckled. “That’s arrogant of you to say.”
“No one is like me where I live. They don’t have the shape of my eyes, the color of my hair, or the tone of my skin. I’m not black or Caucasian. I’m not just a siren, either. They said my mom bedded a man and had to run away.”
“Is she still alive?”
Alayah shook her head. “She was killed when I was really young. Eaten by a Titan.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Alay lowered her head in respect because she could sense that Silver was being true. “I’m no longer alone. I have people who love me.”
The memory of Nana and Omin swelled her heart with happiness and made her lips curl into a smile.
Silver mumbled as he folded his hands on his saddle. “It must be nice to smile like that when remembering the ones you love.”
“Don’t you love someone?”
“Love has always
brought me pain. In my culture, we try not to get attached to mundane things. We live to serve our king, and our life belongs to him. When the time comes to die, we hope that in our next life we can be rewarded with a better destiny.”
“Next life?”
“My people believe in reincarnation.” He raised an eyebrow.
Alay shook her head.
“We are all made of energy. Our soul never dies, and it returns in a new body. We are reborn as someone else or something else.” He looked at the horizon. “I want to be a bird in my next life or a horse. They are majestic, aren’t they?”
Puckering her lips, Alay blinked at his rambling ideas. “You are odd, Silver Wind.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“Maybe not to you, but I received it as one. You are odd, too, Alayah without a last name.”
“Fatherless sirens aren’t allowed to have a last name,” she told him before pushing her horse to ride faster, so she could join her friends and leave the strange mage alone.
“So, your kingdom, The Depths, is it an underwater place or what?” Alayah asked.
“The Depths used to be a part of the oceans. The palace is rich and beautifully decorated. The outpost we are going to isn’t that bad, either. But it’s not as luxurious. Though, you should find it a lot more comfortable than where we are coming from.”
Silver Wind slowed down, and Alayah fell behind him again as the trail suddenly thinned out and steeped.
“Watch your steps now.”
Alayah turned around to look at her fellow warriors. Their faces showed as much uncertainty as hers. Finn was slung across a horse that was tethered to Marina.
The trail was now almost vertical. Alayah watched as the mysterious mage expertly made his horse step around sharp rocks while taking care not to lunge forward in a free fall.
It kept going down and down.
“How do we get out?” Alayah asked, breathless.
