The Tree of Water

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “Coreon!”

  The thrum was similar to the voice of the boy, but older and deeper.

  “Coreon! Where are you?”

  The dark-eyed boy did not move his lips, but words came out of him and hung in the water.

  “Here. I’ve found some land-livers.”

  Thousands of tiny colorful tentacles in the coral bed waved, and a man’s head came into view, atop broad shoulders and a bare chest that seemed to have seaweed instead of hair. He, too, was armed, but with a long spear with a cruel-looking barb that curled like a sharp seashell.

  “What are you doing here?” The thrum sounded threatening. “You do not belong here.”

  Out of place, again, Ven thought.

  “They’re my friends.” Amariel’s underwater voice washed over Ven as she rose up from their side of the reef. “Please excuse their staring. You are the first Lirin-mer that they have ever seen.”

  Ven’s eyes opened wide, the edges stinging from the salt.

  Lirin-mer, he thought. Sea Lirin. He tried to keep his body steady in the drift, trying not to seem threatening. On land, Lirin and Nain were often mortal enemies. He hoped that was not the case in the sea.

  The man stared at Amariel.

  “You’re far from your school,” he said. “What is a merrow doing keeping company with land-livers?”

  “We’re going to the Summer Festival.” Ven could tell by her thrum that she was nervous. Amariel had told him many times that merfolk were not supposed to show land-livers the wonders of the Deep.

  “Why are you traveling with land-livers and not your school?”

  “I—I needed their help to get past the Gated City.” Amariel glanced at Ven and Char. “I didn’t want to try to get around the disturbance in the north of the harbor alone.”

  The man shook his head, his hair floating like sea kelp.

  “The land-livers in the Gated City have tunneled out into the harbor again,” he said. “For a short time their route into the sea was blocked, but now they are back to their old evil ways. There is great danger near the shore. You would be well advised to stay as far away from there as you can.” The sea-Lirin man looked over at the boys. “All of you.”

  “Believe me, we try,” Ven said.

  Behind him, Char said nothing, but Ven could feel the temperature of the water around him grow warmer as the sun shifted above, causing a patch of sunwater to shine down on them.

  “Oh boy,” Amariel muttered.

  Ven turned to see Char clutching his head, trying to block his thoughts, but it was too late.

  The sunwater cleared. Within it Ven could see an image of the inside of the Gated City and the tunnels beneath it that led to the dark realm of the Downworlders, human rat-like people who lived there. He saw Char’s memories of the Outer Market, where bright colors, sweet music, and the rich scent of food abounded, where magical goods from the world over were sold to people who came through the gates on Market Day. And he saw the water tremble with the thrum of Char’s thoughts about the Inner Market, the deadly part of the city past the enormous keyhole gate.

  The water around them swirled. The sea-Lirin man was beside them in a moment. He seized Char by the arm and swept the spear through the water, where it came to rest at Ven’s throat.

  “You must be from the Gated City,” he said, dragging Char across the sandy bottom closer to him.

  “No, no!” Ven said hurriedly. “We’ve only been there once.”

  “Please don’t hurt them,” Amariel pleaded. “They’re good people, and they don’t mean any harm.”

  “We’ll leave that for the Cormorant to decide,” the sea-Lirin man said. He gestured at Coreon to set his sights on Ven. Coreon lifted his strange crossbow and pointed it at Ven’s heart.

  “Come, merrow,” the man said to Amariel. “You will soon see why you and your like are warned to stay away from humans.” He turned and started away, deeper out to sea.

  “Ven’s not human,” Amariel protested as she swam behind them. “He’s Nain. I would never consort with humans—my mother would have my fluke.”

  “What do you call that?” Coreon asked, pointing at Char.

  “I call it Chum,” Amariel said gloomily. “He’s like a barnacle on the Nain’s backside.”

  “Cease thrum,” the man said. Ven could tell by his tone that he was demanding silence.

  The two sea Lirin led the two boys northward along the edge of the reef. The merrow followed sullenly behind. Ven could tell she was angry more than frightened. Char, on the other hand, had the man’s shell-tipped spear in between his shoulder blades, so his thrum was a lot more nervous, to the point of almost panicking.

  Now that they were traveling along its north-south edge, rather than crossing it east to west, the coral reef seemed almost endless. It stretched to their right, beyond them and behind them, as far as he could see. When they were crossing it, the reef had looked like a garden full of magical plants, or a jewel box full of brightly colored gems.

  Now that they were being led along its edge, with a sharp drop off to a deeper seafloor to their left, it looked like a wall, a barricade between the shore and the Deep.

  Ven wasn’t sure which side it was trying to protect.

  They traveled in silence for what seemed like hours. By the time the sea-Lirin man came to a halt, the sun had passed from directly overhead to deep into the western sky, and the shadows of the depths had darkened to a deep green. The sunshadow had begun to pick up sunset colors, breaking the surface with pink and orange haze.

  The man held up his hand for the boys and Amariel to stop. Then he nodded to Coreon, who swam ahead into a darker part of the reef. He returned after a few moments.

  Behind him was a line of sea-Lirin men, all armed with the same kind of cruel spears and crossbows.

  At the front of the line was an enormously tall sea-Lirin man with dark kelp-like hair. His shoulders were wide, and he wore a shield-like chest plate made from what looked like black rock carved like wings, the tips of which rose above his shoulders. It was clear to Ven immediately that he was the leader of the men who were following Coreon.

  Thrum pounded against their ears, as if his voice was harsh and deep.

  “I am the Cormorant,” the man said. “The leader of this outpost. What are you doing in the sea, humans?”

  “They are with me—” Amariel began.

  “I did not ask you, merrow.” The Cormorant’s thrum darkened, and Amariel’s undersea voice choked off immediately. He turned to Ven. “I will ask you again—why are you here?”

  “We are going to the Summer Festival,” said Ven. It seemed the best of his many bad reasons.

  “Coreon says you have knowledge of the inside of the Gated City,” said the Cormorant. “Is this true?”

  “We’ve been there once,” Ven admitted. “Char and me, that is—not her.” He pointed at Amariel.

  “You will tell us everything you know,” the Cormorant said. “Which is the one who caused the sunshadow?”

  The sea-Lirin man gestured at Char.

  “That one.”

  The Cormorant floated over. Ven could see that, like the merrow, the Lirin-mer had webbed fingers, but instead of a tail they had legs clothed in trousers that looked as if they had been made from sheets of kelp, and webbed feet. What would have been the whites of his eyes on a human were tinged in green. The Cormorant stared down at Char as if waiting for another sunshadow.

  “Well?”

  “Urk,” said Char. It was the only sound he was able to make.

  “Tell me of the Gated City,” the Cormorant demanded.

  Char opened his mouth. Nothing came out, but seawater rushed in, and he began to choke.

  Ven tried to get to his friend’s side, but the first Lirin man swept him back with his shell-tipped spear.

  The Cormorant’s nostrils flared in anger.

  “Enough of this,” he said. “Take them to the Drowning Cave.”

  13

  The D
rowning Cave

  “Stay calm, Char,” Ven thought as two of the sea Lirin seized his friend. Two more grabbed him a moment later. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Yeah, that seems to matter a lot,” Char replied. “Sorry, mate. My mind went totally blank.”

  The Cormorant turned in disgust and swam off to the north. In the blink of an eye he was gone.

  The sea-Lirin soldiers pressed their legs together, then gave a powerful kick that looked like the tail of a dolphin as it swims. Suddenly Ven was being dragged through the drift faster than he had ever swum. He swallowed hard, hoping that his vest pocket would stay closed and its contents remain safe.

  The soldiers swam faster and faster until after a while the only thing Ven could do was to try to keep from being sick. The sweet air from the stone in his pocket kept bouncing hard against his nose as he was dragged along, making his stomach turn. And behind him, the merrow was following as quickly as she could.

  Ven closed his eyes to keep from seeing the look on her face.

  Then all at once the sea Lirin stopped.

  At the reef’s edge was a dark hole, hard to see amid the coral. It was barely large enough for a human man to crawl into.

  The soldiers pointed at the hole.

  “In there.”

  “I—I’m not sure I’ll fit,” Ven stammered.

  The soldiers dragging Char pushed him forward.

  “Let him go first,” said the bigger of the two.

  “Swell,” Char muttered. He got down on his belly gingerly, with care to avoid cutting himself on the coral around the hole. “Well, Ven, I have to say it’s been good to know you. I have to say that because you’re my best friend, and I’d rather say I told you so, but I don’t want that to be the last thing you hear from me before we drown.”

  “Many thanks,” Ven replied. He smiled at the merrow, who was hovering in the drift, fighting back tears. “Don’t worry, Amariel.”

  “Of course not,” said the merrow sourly. “I think I’ll polish my scales and braid my hair instead.”

  One of the soldiers guarding Ven turned him loose and tapped him with his spear.

  “You’re next,” he said. “Get moving.”

  Ven exhaled, then got down on his hands and knees. The coral beneath his fingers darted out of the way, and he recoiled as he touched it. Then he put his hands down again on the rocky spine of the reef and crawled into the darkness of the hole.

  And, to his shock, tumbled out of the drift and rolled down what felt like a long rocky hillside.

  Surrounded by air.

  Ven sat up.

  Char was beside him on his hands and knees, fumbling around. It took Ven a moment to remember that Char was human, and blind in the dark. He touched his friend on the shoulder. Char gasped and moved away.

  “It’s all right,” Ven said aloud for the first time since they left the skelligs that morning. “We can breathe. I don’t know why, but we can breathe.”

  A spark flared as a flame was lit.

  The Cormorant was standing in front of him, a lantern in his hand. The gills on his neck were flapping slightly, a little like a fish out of water. In the shadows cast by the lantern, Ven could see that more sea-Lirin soldiers stood nearby, each armed with a spear. Coreon and his father were among them, watching silently.

  They were in a cave of some sort, with a high ceiling where something was moving in the dark above them. The cave seemed to be filled with splashing noises and what looked like casks of rum and water in barrels all around its edges, as well as sea chests and other goods that once rested in the holds of sailing ships.

  “Welcome to the Drowning Cave, human filth,” the Cormorant said. In the air, his voice was very different than his thrum, and harder to understand. “This is the place we bring sailors and others of your kind who have run afoul of the sea. It is a place where many lives have been saved—and just as many lost. What will happen with yours remains to be seen.”

  “Are—are we really breathing air?” Ven asked.

  “You are.” The Cormorant held up his lantern.

  Above them they saw an enormous wheel like the waterwheel in the Great River that turned a grindstone in a mill. Along its circular edge, however, where a waterwheel would have buckets, were many clamshells of great size. As the wheel descended, the shells swung down with it, then swung flat again as they made their way back up. The pink and white interior of the shells gleamed in the dim light as they passed by.

  “The airwheel,” the Cormorant said, guessing their question. “It scoops air from the surface and deposits it in here as it comes down, then pushes water out as it goes back up. Now, my patience has come to its end. Arrogantly you humans ply the sea in your ships, and we allow that without disturbance. But all that is beneath the surface is our realm, and you are trespassing within it. You appear to be younglings, but looks are deceiving. It is clear that you know what lies within the Gated City. This can only mean that you are inhabitants of that place, criminals of the worst sort, and most likely spies. Before we put you to death, you will show me everything you know about that city—it streets, its walls, its weapons. If you cooperate, we will see to it that your ends are quick and painless. If you refuse, you will see another reason why this is called the Drowning Cave.”

  A loud ooof! followed by the sound of a body falling heavily rattled the ceiling of the cave.

  Ven, Char, and the sea Lirin looked up.

  Amariel was rolling down the cave wall, her tail spinning end over end as she fell, until she came to a bumpy stop in front of the Cormorant.

  The sea-Lirin commander glared at her and gave her a poke with his spear.

  “Did I not tell you to remain on the reef?” he demanded.

  “You did,” said the merrow huffily. “But if you’re going to drown my friends, you may as well drown me too.”

  “That would be a first,” said Coreon. His speaking voice cracked a little in the air.

  “No, it wouldn’t,” said the Cormorant. “A merrow can be drowned fairly easily.”

  “I will tell you what you want to know,” said Ven quickly. “But first, will you please tell me why you want to know about the Gated City?”

  The green-tinged eyes of the Cormorant narrowed.

  “Your people in that city—”

  “Wait, please,” Ven interrupted. “With respect. I swear to you, though we have been inside the Gated City, I swear to you we are not its citizens. My name is a Ven, and this is my friend Char. We live at the Crossroads Inn outside the city of Kingston, and I work for the human king, Vandemere. In the course of my travels for the king I have been many places, and one of them is the Gated City. That’s why I know what’s inside it. But, as you can see, I was able to leave. If I was a resident of that city, that would have been impossible.”

  “You are a fool, Ven,” the Cormorant said. “Humans who dwell within those walls make their way out of that city all the time. As you undoubtedly know, they have built a long tunnel outside the harbor in the King’s town, a tunnel that has destroyed a good part of the reef. They crawl like sea slugs beneath the sand, ripping up the reef, killing millions of coral and creatures of the sea. But that is about to end.”

  “You are going to seal the tunnel?”

  “Yes—after our army has used it to enter the city and destroy every human that lives there.”

  14

  The Airwheel

  “You can’t mean that,” Ven said. His voice shook.

  The Cormorant’s kelp-like eyebrows lifted in surprise.

  “I do,” he said. “Merfolk are a peaceful people, but we are also a strong one, and we do not tolerate the destruction of our realm, the murder of our people and fellow creatures, and, most important, the devastation of the sea. Every land-liver within the walls of that city is a criminal—every single one—so there is no need for mercy. And there will be none.”

  “It’s not true that everyone within the Gated City is a criminal,” Ven said.
“There are good people there as well, and—”

  “Lies.” The Cormorant’s voice was as harsh as a slap across the face. “The Gated City is a prison colony. Those living behind its walls were sent from other places because they were the worst of the worst, so dangerous that the humans in the lands where they came from did not even want them in their realms. They came in a prison ship, the Athenry, specially made to hold them securely, locked away behind bars so that they could not escape into the sea. They were offloaded into the city in chains, by armed soldiers. Each time the Athenry approached our reef we saw them, linked together with iron loops. Then, finally, the last load of criminal slime was delivered. The gates were sealed, and the ship sailed away, never to return. Do you deny this?”

  “No, I don’t deny it.” Ven’s heart was beating so fast that his words came out sounding like he had the hiccups. “But that was hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ago.”

  The Cormorant blinked. Then he looked at the other Lirin-mer, who looked at each other and shook their heads.

  “Years?”

  The merrow cleared her throat.

  “Er—storm seasons. There are four storm in a year.” She looked at Ven. “Those that live beneath the sea don’t count time in human years, Ven. I only know what you are talking about because merrows can breathe both on land and under water, and we spend time sunning ourselves on rocks in the air. We see more of the human world, so I know what you mean, but they don’t.”

  “Four storm or four million, it doesn’t matter,” said the Cormorant. He signaled to two soldiers whose gills were flapping heavily. The men made their way over to the airwheel. The first one caught hold of a giant shell as it passed by and pulled himself into it. The other soldier waited until a few shells had passed, then caught one and rode it to the surface as the other man had.

  They must only be able to stay out of the water and in the air for a short period of time, Ven thought as he watched them leave the cave.