by Jenn Reese
She awoke later, although how much later she couldn’t say, and in darkness. She opened her eyes slowly, expecting sand, but there was none. Her hands went to her legs immediately, but she found them safely under a thick layer of bedding.
“You are awake,” Dash said. Immediately, he was kneeling at her side. “I was not sure . . . I did not know if . . .”
“Tayan?” Aluna croaked.
“Still in danger, but alive,” Dash said. “Her Equian heart is strong — it may compensate for the failing Human one.”
“Tal?”
“Fine. Eating far too many mushroom jellies for her own good.”
Aluna tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. Dash handed her a clay cup, and she drank. She’d never tasted anything better.
“We are underground,” Dash said. “In Coiled Deep, the last of the Serpenti cities.”
“Serpenti,” she said. “Your allies.”
He nodded and pulled out a sash he’d been wearing under his tunic. It had threads of bright red and orange braided together with strands of gold. Had he been wearing that when she’d first attacked him, months ago, in the broken SkyTek dome?
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Nathif gave it to me the night I helped him escape Shining Moon.” He rolled it between his fingers. “I never expected him to return the favor.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said.
He looked up from the sash. His eyes glittered like eelskin. “So am I.”
She smiled. Already she could feel strength flowing back into her limbs.
“Are we safe here?” she asked.
Dash nodded. “The Serpenti are peaceful. There are too few of them left to be warlike. They are cautious of visitors, though, as they are still being hunted by the herds.”
Aluna studied the room. It was spherical with a flat bottom, like a bubble resting on the palm of a hand. She reached out and touched the wall. Cool, sandy dirt, covered in a clear sealant of some kind. “The whole city is underground?”
“Yes. I must admit, it is far cooler down here than in our settlements in the sun. No place to run with four hooves, but that has never been a concern for me.”
“I should visit Tayan and meet our hosts,” Aluna said, and sat up. The world spun wildly but soon righted itself.
“You are recovering quickly from sun exposure,” Dash said. “Perhaps all that smoke you made shielded you from the worst.”
“So it worked? You saw the smoke?”
“Aluna, there are people living in the stars who saw that smoke.” He offered her an arm to help her stand. “Tal and I would have found you without it, but not as soon. The smoke saved your lives.”
She checked under the bedding and saw her familiar trousers covering her legs. Even her shoes and foot wrappings were still in place. She grabbed Dash’s arm and stood slowly. Her legs ached and wobbled, but she couldn’t tell if the weakness was due to her fatigue or from her growing tail. She nudged one leg forward and was pleased when it obeyed. They hadn’t fused together yet. They could still hold her weight.
When she found her balance, she reluctantly let go of Dash’s arm. He took a step away but hovered close enough to catch her if she fell.
“I’m ready for my tour,” she said finally. “Do I look presentable?” She looked down. Although her face and hands and hair had been washed, her clothing hadn’t. She looked as if she’d been swallowed by a whale and spat back up again.
Dash laughed. “Let us hope the Serpenti are not a fastidious people.”
They walked slowly out the arched doorway and into a hallway lined with other bubble-shaped rooms. A Serpenti boy must have heard them. He slithered out of another room, shut the thick plastic door behind him, and came to meet them.
The boy’s sand-colored hair almost perfectly matched the color of his skin. His eyes were a light, vibrant green, the color of kelp in the sun. He wore his hair short, cropped close on the sides and back, but longer on top. A clump of it fell into his face and partially concealed his stunning eyes. Aluna liked his features immediately — they were wide and open, marred only by an old scar that cut deeply across one cheek.
The boy’s loose-fitting tunic, very similar in style to the Equians’, was made of a thicker material and decorated with intricate patterns sewn with colored thread. Below his waist, the boy’s tail swept forward for balance, then curved back under him and undulated on the floor in waves. It was so much longer than a Kampii tail, two or three meters at least. Its tiny scales glittered brown and tan and gold.
“Aluna, this is Nathif,” Dash said. “He brought you back from so close to sundeath that I think our great sun may feel cheated.”
“Brother Dashiyn is too kind,” the Serpenti said, grinning. “It is a pleasure to see you awake, Sister Aluna.”
Aluna bobbed an easy Kampii bow. “Good to meet you, too. Thanks for saving me.”
“Think nothing of it,” the boy said. He waved his hand, as if he’d only given Aluna a drink of water. “We are forever pulling mermaids from the desert these days.”
“You are?” she said, confused. How could other Kampii even get here?
Then she heard Dash chuckle. “You will have to get used to Nathif and his jokes. They sneak up on you like thieves.”
She looked back at Nathif, his expression now one of exaggerated innocence. “Oh, I see how it’s going to be,” she said.
“You should know right up front that I am not well liked, even by my own people,” Nathif continued easily. “There was talk of trading me to the Humans for a camel and five stacks of wood.”
“A terrible bargain,” Dash said. “I would not pay more than three.”
Aluna laughed.
Nathif leaned in toward her and said, “You see? Dashiyn risked his life and his honor to save me, and even he does not like me.” He leaned back and sighed, his eyes sparkling. “I wish I could take you to see your friend Tayan, but she is still unconscious and needs rest. I would ask you to wait a little longer.”
“We will do as you wish,” Dash said.
“I’m surprised you’re trying to save her,” Aluna said. “After everything between you and the herds.”
The boy didn’t flinch. “It is true that Brother Dashiyn’s tribe killed my mother and gave me this lovely scar, but we Serpenti do not hold grudges. It is our philosophy to remember the past and to honor it, but to give the future more weight in our thoughts and actions. Even if Tayan herself had struck the blow that sent my mother into endless sleep, we would try to save her.”
She looked at Dash. “Is this a joke, too?” He shook his head. She turned back to Nathif. “I haven’t met many other people who think like that. With the world the way it is, being so forgiving seems . . . dangerous.”
“It is,” Nathif said. “We consider forgiveness our greatest strength, even as we recognize that it may also be our greatest weakness. But we never want to be the people we were before our war with the Equians. And, truthfully, we don’t have much time left. We will survive this generation and the next, but not many more. The Serpenti will end. We have chosen to live out our time in peace, in the hopes of atoning for our past.”
“You do not seem as upset about your fate as the Equians would be,” Dash said.
Nathif smiled. “To be upset about the inevitable would be a waste of energy. We have better uses for our time . . . like pottery and singing!”
Aluna laughed again. She couldn’t help herself. Something about Nathif reminded her of Hoku.
“Dashiyn, do you see how Aluna appreciates me? Even though we just met?” Nathif said. “You might try something similar.”
Dash reached up and clapped Nathif on the shoulder. “I will laugh when you are funny.”
“So cruel,” Nathif said, hanging his head. In a flash, it popped up again. “But come! I will show you our city. Perhaps we will find the pharos, as I know they wish to meet you.” The snake-boy slithered up the corridor. He moved slowly, his long body push
ing him forward with its wave motion. Dash tugged Aluna’s elbow, and they followed.
The Healer’s Hall, as Nathif called it, opened into a vast bubble room twenty times the size of the last one. Aluna could see other ball-shaped rooms in every direction.
“It’s like someone stuck a tube into the desert and blew a cluster of huge bubbles deep in the sand,” she said. She turned, trying see all of it at once. “The walls glitter.”
Nathif laughed. “Once again, you are astute, sister. The ancients did almost what you suggest! Except their bubbles were lined with a sealant that lets air in and keeps the sand and desert creatures out.”
“How big is this place?” Dash asked.
“Far too big for the numbers we have now,” Nathif said. “As a child, before my sister grew sick, she and I vowed to explore every nodule. We spent months, but I daresay we never made it to half.”
A few clusters of Serpenti slithered across the room, barely pausing to look in their direction. Nathif was right; there were far too few for a city this size. Mirage and Shining Moon had been teeming with Equians. In contrast, Coiled Deep was an old, weak city, drifting slowly toward death.
“So you have a leader, a pharo, just as the Equians have a khan?” Aluna asked.
“We have two pharos,” Nathif said. “One rules over the material world and the realm of the body. He guides our warriors and healers, our cooks, our farmers and mushroom growers, and other Serpenti who deal mainly with the physical world.”
“The other pharo is of the spiritual world,” Dash said. “He guides the artists and singers, the holy ones, the thinkers. At least, I believe that is what you told me.”
Nathif grinned. “You remember! How pleasing that you actually listen to me at times. Although Pharo Rashidi passed into endless sleep, and a woman, Pharo Zahra, guides us now.”
“It seems like there’d be a lot of crossover,” Aluna said, thinking about the Kampii hunters who carved their spears with shark heads and dolphin motifs. And Kampii fighting, with its complex forms, was almost as much an art as it was a warrior skill.
“You are wise, sister,” Nathif said. “Our two pharos remind us of the duality of all things. Many of us wear a golden hoop in one ear, to symbolize the circle of life from birth to night. In the other ear, we wear a triangle with its point down, to symbolize the greater internal riches we can discover as our spirits and hearts grow.”
And then, in the distance, Aluna heard drums. An energetic rhythm that set the blood dancing in her veins.
“Ah, the cappo’ra warriors have begun their afternoon practice session,” Nathif said. “Brother Dashiyn told me you would be willing to kill all the fish in the sea in order to see them.”
“I said nothing like that!” Dash grumbled.
Aluna headed toward the drums. “Let’s go see if he was right.”
ALUNA STUMBLED THROUGH one bubble room after another. Stylized patterns in bright reds, yellows, and oranges decorated the spherical walls. Occasionally a deep blue or green caught her eye, but she spared no time to examine the art. She’d have time for gawking later, after the cappo’ra training session was over.
Dash and Nathif followed more slowly, laughing at her enthusiasm. She let them. She knew how focused she became when there was a new fighting style to be learned. Her brother Anadar had to suffer through her obsession for years, as she begged to be taught the next shark-style form, the final dolphin-style technique, the advanced knife attacks.
The Aviars had taught her so much about Above World fighting, but their techniques had been designed for warriors with wings. The Equians’ styles looked interesting but relied on height and a physical power that Aluna could never hope to attain. How had the Serpenti adapted to fight? With their long, sinuous tails, maybe they were the most like Kampii.
The Serpenti fighters moved and twisted in a great circle inside a bubble that seemed devoted to fighting. Weapons hung on the walls — thick spears, slender swords, fascinating circles of silver hung in pairs. She wanted to study them all. But right now, the drumbeat called to her like a mythical siren. She could not resist its voice.
The drummers bobbed and weaved in the circle along with the fighters. Their tall drums bore the same colors and decorative patterns as the walls. Only a dozen warriors stood in the circle — adult men and women, three older Serpenti, and a handful of children. All of them swayed and clapped to the music, as if they were dancing instead of fighting. Their tails came in shades of tan and brown. Desert colors. But now she started to see patterns emerge: diamonds and stripes and spots of black and gold. Each one was different.
Aluna walked up to the circle slowly, not wanting to interfere with whatever ritual was happening. One of the children saw her, a young boy of eight or ten, and waved her over. He slithered to the side to make room.
Inside the ring, two Serpenti weaved as they faced each other, their long snake tails curling behind them like coiled whips. They bobbed to the rhythm, taking their Human torsos lower and lower until their fingers and forearms could brush the ground. Aluna held her breath.
One of the drummers changed her rhythm, and suddenly the sparring match began. Aluna expected the Serpenti to rear up on their snake bodies, to try to wrestle and overpower each other. Instead, the first warrior — a woman in her twenties — planted both her palms on the ground and stood on her hands. Her tail, freed of its job of supporting her weight, swung around in a wide arc, just like one of Aluna’s talon weapons!
The woman’s opponent, a much older man with rippling arm muscles, leaned backward so far that his short hair touched the ground. His torso seemed as flexible as his snake body. The woman’s tail swung right over him. If he hadn’t moved, it would have smacked him in the side. The man dropped his hands to the ground, shifted his weight, and swung his tail in a low arc toward the woman’s arms, attempting to knock her off her handstand. She saw it coming. She hopped onto her snake body just as his tail reached her hands.
Aluna stood there, trying to understand the concepts — how they shifted and when; how they used the drums; how they relied on the strength in their arms, but even more on the flexibility of their backs and bodies.
Kampii warriors sometimes used their tails to smack fish and stun them, but they never used their tails as a weapon against an equal foe. Tails were too important, too easily ripped and torn by sharks and Deepfell. Serpenti tails were longer and heavier than Kampii tails, but similar in a lot of ways.
A bright light burned like the sun inside her. Hope. Even after she grew her tail, she might still be able to fight in the Above World. She might still be useful.
She wanted to yell with joy and cry with relief, but both would have to wait. Right now, she needed to watch the rest of the match, to memorize every move, every strategy. By the end, her body ached to leap into the ring, to dance and fight along with everyone else. But even as she despised courtesy in general, she respected warrior traditions. She didn’t belong in this ring. Not yet.
The match ended when the older man managed to wrap his snake body around the woman’s torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Aluna wouldn’t be able to perform that move with her Kampii tail, but she’d be more mobile. Anadar always said that every fighting technique could be improved by making it your own. By figuring out how to make it work best for you. And that’s exactly what she intended to do.
After six more matches, the last few involving the children, the group broke into pairs to practice techniques, and the cappo’ra master slid toward Aluna.
“Sister Aluna, you are welcome in our circle,” the man said. “I am Master Sefu.” He had skin as dark as her father’s and seemed almost as old. He kept his head slick, a style popular with many Kampii hunters, since it reduced drag in the water. Sefu’s body was thick with muscle, and he towered over her, yet his eyes were kind.
She gushed at him then. Words spilled out of her mouth in an endless stream. Her history, her love of learning new styles of fighting, her studies with the Avi
ars. And, before she could stop herself, she told Master Sefu, a man she’d just met, that she was growing a tail. It was a crucial part of her plea, the reason she wanted — needed — to learn this style.
When she was done, the Serpenti master smiled at her, nodded, and then spoke to someone behind her. “Healer Nathif, when will you allow your subject to begin training?”
Aluna closed her eyes. She hadn’t realized that Nathif was behind her. And if Nathif was there, so was Dash. They’d probably heard everything she’d just said. Aluna turned slowly, afraid to look at his face.
“I would probably earn myself a concussion if I tried to stop her,” Nathif said. “But make sure our bloodthirsty sister drinks as much water as possible. A girl cannot live on battle cries alone. And if she looks dizzy, make her refrain from at least one fight. If you need to tie her to a post, do it.”
“The post will not be necessary,” Master Sefu said. “Sister Aluna, when would you like to start?”
Aluna looked up — not at the master but at Dash. His face bore no expression. None at all. Not the happiness he showed when she awoke, not the seriousness when he said farewell to her in the desert. Just nothing. She should have told him about her tail during their trek through the desert. She’d had time. That he had found out like this . . .
“What are you waiting for?” Dash said blankly. His eyes were dark pinpricks, like a shark’s. Then he turned and walked away.
She felt a weight crushing her chest, squeezing her lungs and ribs and trying to snap her in two. Her eyes filled, but she managed to stop even a single tear from falling. She’d apologize for not telling him. She’d find some way to make him forgive her. She’d do whatever it took.
But now, in this moment, she needed to sweat. To move. To fight.
She turned to Master Sefu. “Now,” she said. “I’d like to start now.”
