Stone Heart (The Cursed Seas Collection)

by Pauline Creeden

  Hiruko hooted so softly, I almost thought I imagined it, but then another monkey a few branches below us responded with an equally soft hoot. Another responded farther below us, and another. Then, silence.

  We sat in the silence, and I clutched the tree, desperately holding my balance so I didn’t fall and give our place away. My ears continued to ring, and my breath came in pants as I tried to get control of myself and calm down. The sense of panic I felt upon waking was unnatural and unnerving. The morning sun bathed us all in soft light from the east, and a breeze licked the sweat from the back of my neck.

  Finally, a soft hoot came from below, followed by a few more, until it reached Hiruko, who then relaxed, and hooted at his mate, and then at me.

  “Safe?” I asked in a very soft whisper.

  He nodded.

  My eyes met Kane’s. “What was it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just took their word for it, and once you were being taken care of, started climbing.”

  Hiruko waved at us and started swinging through the trees.

  I frowned. “Uh, he realizes we can’t do that, right?”

  Kane smirked in response.

  Why was he smirking?

  I got my answer the next moment, when a monkey grabbed me around the waist, and swung on a thick piece of rope after Hiruko. I bit down on the back of my molars to keep from screaming and was glad the monkeys were stronger than they looked. My ears began ringing again. This was all too much. I wanted to close my eyes against it, but instead they widened as we flew among the trees. My stomach flipped, and I worried I would have chucked my breakfast if I’d had a full stomach.

  Finally, we came to a stop at the last tree in the forest. Hiruko sat, perched on a limb in the tree, waiting. I slowly moved across the branch until I sat right beside him, and when Kane joined us, Hiruko pointed.

  Kane and I followed his gaze, and I swallowed in fear. Walking across the sands beyond the trees, was a giant panther. Black liquid dripped from its sides, falling to the ground, and leaving a disgusting trail of black ooze.

  “That’s a creature from the deep, isn’t it?” I asked softly.

  Hiruko hooted softly in agreement, and Kane nodded. “Evil, long forgotten beasts that should have stayed in the deep, but when the mages used their powers to transform the sirens, they awoke them.”

  “Had we been on the ground,” I whispered, “that thing would have killed us for sure.”

  Hiruko patted my arm and made a noise that sounded vaguely like agreement.

  “Thank you, Hiruko,” I whispered.

  Kane’s face became harder, more determined as his eyes remained fixed on the panther. “We need to continue our journey. The stone isn’t here.”

  I frowned and met eyes with the monkey. “Hiruko, have you seen a blue stone?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any large craters? Big pits with a strange rock in them?” Kane asked.

  Hiruko shook his head again.

  “Of course, it won’t be that easy,” I whispered.

  “Let’s check our supplies and then get back on our way,” Kane said, and started hopping down the branches of the tree.

  Hiruko offered a hand toward me, and had me wrap my arms around his neck, and then he followed Kane.

  When we reached the camp, Kane and I began packing our supplies. It felt as though I had a rock sitting in the pit of my stomach. But it wasn’t just the sudden awakening or even the swinging through the trees. Something else was bothering me. Kane was right. Our journey took precedence over anything else. It had to. If we found the stone and things returned to normal, those ancient, evil animals would return to the deep, making life safer for Hiruko and his mate as well as the mages and sirens. That hit home with me more than I expected. It was strange, I’d only been with the monkeys a night, but I was sadder leaving them than I had when leaving the other sirens.

  “Thank you, Hiruko. You’ve been a huge help, and I won’t forget you,” I said, leaning forward to hug him.

  He hugged me and then patted Kane while hooting softly. Kane nodded, seeming to understand what the monkey was trying to say, while I was completely in the dark.

  Kane hiked his bag up higher on his shoulders and smiled. “Ready?”

  My heart fluttered. I could get used to that smile. When I’d first met him, smiles from him seemed almost as rare as the stone we were searching for. But as we continued together, he seemed to smile more and more. And each time he smiled, I felt a little happier too.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” I took one last look at the monkeys who had saved us, then turned and followed Kane.

  We walked in silence, heading back toward the beach where we’d crash-landed. What was it? A week ago? I’d lost track of the days we’d been down in that cave. It could have been two days or two weeks for all I knew. Kane offered to carry the pack but I wanted to keep it. For some reason when it was strapped to my back I felt better, safer. I kept it strapped to me while we walked. Then my mind wondered to our plans. Kane had said we’d build a float and head back to the mainland. That rock in the pit of my stomach grew heavier. My hands fisted on the straps of my pack as I frowned. Something about the idea of leaving the island bothered me, but I couldn’t really say what.

  “What’s up?” Kane asked.

  I glanced up. “The sun.”

  He shook his head and smirked. “In your head.”

  “I’m not really sure.” I shrugged, nibbling on my lower lip.

  He lifted an eyebrow and studied my face. That made me stop biting my lip. I schooled my expression and shrugged at him, but it seemed my impassive face didn’t fool him. His brows furrowed. “The mainland scares you, doesn’t it?”

  “What? Why would it?”

  “Because it is a solid land mass, and our search will take us to the middle of the continent, which is miles away from water.”

  That made sense. And the knot loosened a bit in my stomach. How did he know so much just from looking at my face? How did he even understand what I was feeling when I didn’t even know? Finally, I sighed. “Maybe.”

  He rested a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me with a soft expression. “Right now, just relax. We’ve got a few days before we have to worry about it. Let’s focus on getting to the beach for now, and then we can worry about the next step.”

  I nodded.

  He squeezed my shoulder and then released it. Then went back to marching forward on the path while I followed. We went back to our comfortable silence.

  We were surrounded by the sounds of the birds in the trees, the frogs in the nearby stream, and even the songs of the bugs. Occasionally in the distance from where we came we’d here a hoot and it made me think of Hiruko’s clan. Still, the island here seemed safer than the jungle where the mages’ cavern was. “Why aren’t there people living here?”

  Kane shrugged as he pushed aside some branches on the path and gestured for me to go on through. “People tend to live in the safety of the caverns. Outside of the caves, the animals and monsters are too abundant.”

  “Couldn’t they just build structures like they used to have back in the day? Ones tall enough and sturdy enough to keep the animals and monsters out?”

  “We don’t have the technology anymore,” Kane said. “And, before you ask, no. Mages don’t have magic to do that type of thing.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask that,” I lied, brushing hair away from my face.

  He smirked but didn’t comment. Then he took out a fruit and broke it in half, handing me one. I took it and began to eat while we walked. For some reason, even after days and days of eating this fruit, I hadn’t grown tired of it yet. It definitely beat the dried meat we’d gotten from the mages. The sun overhead stayed hidden behind clouds and the tree canopy, but it didn’t stop the sweat from dripping down my neck in the humidity of the forest. And I continued following after Kane, marching until my feet began to ache. And after a full day of walking, we still hadn’t made it to t
he beach. How far had we come? “I don’t remember traveling this far inland. Why haven’t we reached the beach yet?”

  Kane stopped and eyed the area in the fading light of sunset. “We should reach it tomorrow. We’ll rest for tonight and continue on in the morning.”

  “Sleeping in the trees?”

  He nodded. “I think it’s safer to do that than try our luck on the ground. We saw that panther thing head in the opposite direction, but that doesn’t mean that it is the only one here. For all we know, there’s a whole pride of them.”

  “What’s a group of monkeys called?” I blurted out suddenly, shocking even myself.

  “A troop. I think?” he said, not sounding sure.

  I nodded. A troop. I liked that name for them.

  “I still can’t believe Hiruko saved you, dropped us fruits, and then had his troop pull us up out of the cave,” Kane said, shaking his head. “Luck doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

  I shrugged. “I never thought I’d say super intelligent monkeys saved us.”

  We laughed, and I was glad to be able to laugh about a near-death experience. It would be even easier to laugh about in a year or more.

  We climbed up a tree, tied our bag and staff to another branch, and then tied ourselves to the trunk—Kane against the trunk, and me against him. We didn’t want to chance falling while asleep.

  I sat on the tree branch, my back pressed to Kane’s front, and closed my eyes. In the distance, I could hear hooting, and wondered if it was Hiruko, calling to me even from afar. Was it sad that I wanted to believe that? I didn’t care.

  “Try to get some sleep,” Kane whispered, his voice deep with sleep already.

  I leaned my head back against his chest and closed my eyes.

  The next morning, I felt refreshed. We extricated ourselves from the tree, ate some breakfast, and then continued on our walk to the beach. We found it a few hours later, and Kane immediately began cutting small trees to make the raft. I wanted to help, but he asked me to keep watch instead.

  Keeping watch was important, but I wanted to do more.

  I patrolled a semicircle around Kane, keeping an eye out for the giant panther, and listening to the animals, hoping they clued me in as to when a predator was approaching.

  Kane didn’t finish by that night, so we climbed back up into the trees to sleep again. I could get used to tree-sleeping.

  “Maybe we should have a tree house,” I suggested.

  “It would make it easier for Hiruko and his troop to live with us,” Kane said with a nod.

  “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked, turning to look at him over my shoulder.

  He shrugged. “We’re both a bit crazy, but that’s okay. I think it will help us survive this quest.”

  Survive. Right. I snuggled in closer to Kane’s chest and breathed in his comforting scent. “You think if we found a wolfcupine when it was little that we could tame it?”

  Kane let out a bark of laughter. “No. We are not trying to tame a wolfcupine.”

  “Fine,” I grumbled.

  “Did you pick a name for the panther beast?” Kane asked.

  I shrugged against his chest. “No.”

  “Really? That’s sad,” he said.

  “Oily Panther,” I said.

  “Boring.”

  “Oiline?” I asked.

  He hesitated a moment before asking, “Oiline?”

  “It’s oil and feline combined.”

  His chuckle rumbled through his chest. “Perfect.”

  “So, we need to avoid the oiline at all costs,” I said.

  “I should be able to finish the raft by tomorrow,” Kane said.

  “Great!” I tried to be enthusiastic, but anxiety churned my stomach. What if pirates intercepted the raft? And what would happen when we got to the mainland? The dangers in the sea, I knew. Here on the island, I’d gotten used to the animals and even found the monkey troop who helped us. But what would we do once we were away from the island and the sea? What kind of monsters awaited us there? And how long would it take us to find the stone. I closed my eyes and felt Kane’s breath evening out. I took comfort in it, and the more I concentrated on his breathing and heartbeat, the calmer I became. Then finally, sleep overtook me.

  “Finished.” Kane stood back from the raft with his hands on his hips the next morning.

  I looked at the dubiously tied wood and wondered if it might be better for me to swim with Kane tied to my back instead.

  When I looked back at Kane, he was pouting. “Don’t look at it like that. It will float.”

  To prove his point, he dragged it down the beach, and slid it into the water. He continued pushing it until he was waist-deep in the water. Then, he hopped onto the raft, stood, and raised his arms victoriously. “See?”

  I chuckled. “Alright. I see. How are we going to steer it?”

  He pointed behind me. “There are a couple oars I made on the other side of the bushes there.”

  Grabbing the straps of my pack, I went in the direction he pointed and found two long poles with some strange things on the end. I picked them up, turned, and froze at a very angry feline growl from nearby. Then it struck me that the rest of the forest had gone silent. The growl was the only thing I could hear. The hairs on my arms stood on end while I slowly lifted my head and caught sight of the growl’s source. The oiline stood not more than a hundred feet from me.

  “Run!” Kane yelled.

  I grabbed the poles, turned, and ran as fast as I could.

  The ground shook as the oiline gave chase, and I remembered how much I hated sand. Each step I made came painfully slowly, and my calves screamed at me in pain after only a half dozen steps. And still it felt like I was going in slow motion. What if the panther could just leap the hundred feet and land on me and rip my head off? What if it grabbed my pack and pulled me back toward it, like the sharktopus did? I could almost feel the panther breathing down my neck.

  From the raft, Kane raised his staff, and an orb of fire shot from it and flew over my head. The oiline made a yowl of pain not far from where I was. I didn’t dare stop or turn to see how much damage Kane had inflicted. I kept my eye on Kane and the raft. One foot in front of the other, I ran across the dreaded sand. When I made it into the water, I tossed Kane the oars, and dove beneath the raft, grabbing one of the ropes. I pulled as I swam, moving us deeper out into the ocean.

  Kane called my name, but I didn’t dare surface until I was certain we were far enough out that the oiline couldn’t get us. I breathed in lungfuls of delicious sea water, feeling the embrace of the waves around me. It felt like home, and it was helping settle my adrenaline from the chase we’d just had. After a while, I decided we’d gone far enough, and slowed then resurfaced.

  When I did surface, Kane grabbed my backpack by the straps, and dragged me onto the raft. “Don’t you dare do that again!” he snapped, his face inches from mine. Then, he pulled me into a tight hug.

  “What?” I gasped, trying to slow my racing heart.

  “I thought you were injured or something,” he mumbled into my hair.

  “I was just getting us away from shore,” I told him, relaxing into his warmth.

  “You took us a bit farther away than necessary.” He released me and turned me so that I could see.

  We were so far from shore, that I couldn’t make out individual trees.

  “Guess I overcalculated.” I chuckled.

  “Come on. Let’s get the rest of the way to the mainland. I don’t want to be caught out here if there’s a storm.” He grabbed an oar and started using it to propel us.

  “Or pirates,” I added, grabbed the second oar, and helped.

  “Right.” His eyes grew wider and he pushed his oar a little harder. “Let’s avoid cannibal pirates.”

  We rowed in silence for a bit. Then I asked, “Did you kill it with your fire?”

  He shook his head. “No. Just made it angry. It ran off to rub its face and get some distance from
us so that I didn’t get a chance to kill it.”

  “Kane, I’m really all right,” I said softly, looking at his still tense shoulders.

  He exhaled, and his shoulders relaxed slightly. “I know.”

  The water was calm and clear, which made me feel a lot safer. We rowed in silence, looking towards our destination, which was still far away. Then the raft shifted slightly on an odd wave. My brows furrowed as I looked around, trying to locate the source. Something far below the ocean’s surface darted from under us. It was nothing more than a dark shadow from our vantage point, but I was certain it was large.

  “Kane.” I pulled in my oar and grabbed his upper arm, pointing toward it.

  Suddenly, the shadow turned and swam toward us. It was getting larger by the millisecond.

  “Row!” I yelled at Kane and began rowing as fast as I could.

  He rowed faster. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s—”

  I didn’t get to finish my statement, as teeth appeared on either side of the raft.

  My eyes widened, and I yelled, “Jump!”

  Kane leapt from the raft, grabbing my hand as we splashed into the water. I redirected the current to propel us away from the monster and toward the mainland. I kicked as hard as I could while still gripping Kane’s hand.

  He would need to breathe soon, but I needed to get us just a bit farther.

  I peered back. The monster had destroyed our raft, pieces scattering across the surface behind us. The leviathan must have spotted us, because it charged after us.

  I surfaced, letting Kane get a breath of air.

  He gulped down a breath and nodded.

  The beast’s jaws broke the ocean’s surface behind us, mouth agape as it tried to get a bite of us.

  I kicked faster, using the current as much as I could.

  It was still closing in on us.

  I couldn’t see what it was from this angle, or how big it was, but the teeth were enough to instill fear in me.

  If I timed it right, I could propel Kane forward, and get him to the mainland.