Tide

by Lacy Sheridan

  Moray shot me a blazing look. “The Court of Bells. We won’t need to go there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I do, little one.”

  “It was only a question. And I do have a name.”

  “I never asked for your name.”

  “I never asked for yours. Does that mean you’d be alright with me calling you irritating little dewdrop?”

  It turned its nose up, bobbing higher in the air. “I wouldn’t care what a human felt like calling me.”

  Aven rubbed a spot near his temple but didn’t comment on our bickering. It was childish, I knew, but the sprite was childish. Why Aven was friends with it I couldn’t imagine. A hundred sharp replies jumped to my tongue, but I swallowed them and looked to Aven instead. “The Courts we’re near. Are we going to any of them?”

  “I don’t know, are we? This is your quest.”

  I stared at him. My quest. Of course it was my quest, but he was the one who knew his way here. He was the one who knew how to survive, how to fight, how to win. He met my gaze, staring right back and waiting, and I looked down. Moray snickered beside us, but a look from Aven cut it off.

  “I don’t know where my brother is,” I said. “I don’t know anything about this world. Would the people in the Courts have an idea?” Was it unusual for a human to be brought here? Would word travel? Or would Tobin’s presence be shut down, guarded and secret? Or, maybe worse yet, was it so normal that nobody cared to remember it?

  Moray turned another loop through the air. “The Court of the Sun is full of gossips.”

  Aven shook his head. “Gossips and liars. Even if they knew, they wouldn’t tell us the truth for all the gold in the world.”

  “What about the others?”

  “They keep to themselves. And if a human walked into any of them…you or your brother, it would not end well.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat. I wouldn’t accept that. Wherever he was, whatever Court had taken him, I’d find it. And I’d get him back, dead or alive. There was no alternative. I closed my eyes and thought. Anything that might tell me where they’d taken Tobin. Anything they’d said. But the only thing that jumped at me was that woman. The one who was like a storm, who carried herself like a queen. She must be someone recognizable.

  But Aven was a storm, too, so maybe that only narrowed it down to this world.

  Or to selkies.

  And the storms they brought with them.

  My eyes popped open, and I studied Aven, searching for any resemblance. The dark hair, the steel in their eyes, yes, but were those marks of their race, or wishful thinking? “What is it?” Aven asked.

  “Are there other selkies?”

  He lifted one eyebrow at the question and answered in a flat voice. “No, I’m the only selkie in existence. It was a miracle I was born at all.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  “Of course there are other selkies. Do you think a selkie took your brother?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. There was a woman. She reminds me of you, in some ways.”

  “Reminds you of me?”

  “She was…maybe it’s everybody here, but she was powerful. I could feel it when she walked past me. It was terrible.”

  Moray scoffed again, floating away. “You humans think everything to do with our world is terrible.”

  “It was more than that—”

  “Was it? Or did you only see her as you wanted to see her?”

  “Stop, Moray,” Aven said. “Let her finish.”

  The sneer Moray gave me was tiny, but cut through me like a knife, and I looked away. I didn’t want to risk provoking it too much and learning why Aven was unwilling to tell me the details of what it could do. I couldn’t help but mutter to him under my breath, “I’m going to boil that stupid sprite to steam if it keeps that up.”

  “Have some patience. It’ll warm up to you.” I heard the note of laughter buried in his voice. I wondered if Moray’s attitude carried over to those it warmed up to or whether it was permanent. It must at least become bearable, if Aven managed to call it an old friend.

  But either way, I was stuck with it if I didn’t want to wander the Realm of Tides on my own and get eaten, so I painted on a smile that I was sure was far from convincing. “She took my brother, and her army killed dozens of my people and destroyed more homes, so I’m going to stick with terrible.”

  Moray ignored me, but something flashed in Aven’s eyes. “Army? What were they like?”

  I shuddered. “Horrible. They were ripping into people—”

  “Did they fight with spears? Did they look like us—like selkies?”

  “You mean did they look human? The woman did, but the rest…” I trailed off, trying to find words to describe the tidespeople who had attacked us. They were so far from Aven and that woman, even from Moray: true monsters, like in the stories. Wrong. “They didn’t use weapons, just their teeth and claws. They were more like wild animals.”

  He shook his head. “I remember the storm. It was nothing natural. And tearing up a human village on the solstice—I should have thought of it,” he added to himself. “Were they scaled? Dressed in furs?” I nodded, and he let out a groan. “Merrows.”

  I knew the word but not the race, and I tucked the name away in my mind as I suppressed another shudder. The way he said it was like a sigh, full of defeat and dread. I forced my question out, my mouth dry. “What are merrows?”

  “Another race, and they do love the solstice. Or any hunt. Any excuse to dress up and wreak havoc, especially if the targets are humans. And if they had a selkie with them to bring that storm…”

  “Do races not cross between Courts?”

  “Most don’t. A few Courts have tried to integrate people together.”

  “Is there a Court with both selkies and merrows?”

  Moray was hovering closer now, watching us. Aven cast it a lingering glance, and neither spoke. I was ready to throttle them when Aven answered, “Yes, there’s one.”

  One Court. Only one. It had to be where Tobin was. My heart soared, and I almost laughed in relief. We knew where we were going. But Aven’s expression silenced the sound before it reached my lips. “What Court is it? Where is it?”

  “The Dragon Court.” Another look to Moray, then his gaze slid to the bright trees ahead of us, like he saw something there I didn’t. “Home.”

  The silence that rang between us cut deeper and colder than the comfortable quiet Aven and I had developed. His answer circled through my head, again and again, stinging worse each time.

  Home.

  Home.

  Home.

  The Court we were looking for was Aven’s.

  The Court that had attacked my people, that had stolen my brother.

  The place Aven had come from. The place that had built him, that had raised his hidden and sharp temper. The place he’d spent the last fifty years dreaming of going back to.

  Those creatures were back in my mind, their claws catching my skin, their twisted fangs gleaming in the rain. The smell of them, like rotted fish, lingered in my nose as if they were standing before me. I tried not to flinch when Aven’s arm brushed mine as he stood.

  No. He wasn’t one of them.

  He was, but he wasn’t really one of them. He was Aven. He was apart.

  He’d had nothing to do with the attack on my village. Nothing to do with Tobin. And yet I’d seen the coldness in his eyes when we’d first met, and I’d seen the way he stalked and hunted and fought, and I could almost see him standing beside that woman.

  “Hania.” His voice was tight, but when I looked up at him I saw the Aven who had saved me when he hadn’t needed to, who had laid on the beach basking in the sun. “We’re days from the Court on foot. We should go.”

  “I thought you said we should rest.” My voice felt wrong, too rough and quiet.

  “I’ve seen humans walk into my Court,” was the answer he gave me.

  I knew there was a sec
ond, unspoken part: he hadn’t seen them walk out. I wanted to demand what had happened to them. Ask what horrors my brother could be facing. If there was any hope that he was alive at all, or any hope I would survive going there. But I didn’t. Not yet.

  He didn’t speak, and even Moray was grim and quiet as we continued through the forest. The trees dazzled around us, their leaves dancing on the wind. Moray’s skin sparkled in the sunlight. It should have been beautiful, but I couldn’t admire it anymore. The branches turned to skeletons waving limp, dangling fingers at us. Every rustle of movement turned into the crack of bone or the growl of the merrows stalking through my memories.

  When the sun dipped low in the sky, casting deep shadows across the ground, and we sat around a pitiful fire to keep the wild at bay, Aven still didn’t speak. Moray commented on our supper of fruits and strange little forest rodents, but Aven said nothing to it. I bit my tongue and kept quiet as well. I saw the storm boiling in his eyes; I wasn’t about to risk it coming out.

  It was terrible to see, the few times he looked at me. Icy cold and violent, something awful held in check, but it was a reassurance. Some anger in him at the knowledge of what his Court had done—another piece separating him from the monsters. A piece I needed.

  My sleep was filled with nightmares. The merrows. The woman. Tobin. Aven. Moray. Storms and lightning and crashing waves. I chased each image, trying to piece them together and find something, something I couldn’t name, but each one vanished as I touched it. Again and again, stopping when they woke me, panting and shaking, staring at the stars and the dark, reaching arms of the trees above.

  The tide wind continued, everywhere and nowhere, lulling my heartbeat to steady and sleep to drag me into darkness once again.

  “Aven.”

  I couldn’t stand the quiet any longer. Aside from a few sparse orders we had traveled in silence all day. The sun was climbing toward the center of the sky, and we had left the loose forest behind, making our way through gentle, rolling hills of gray-violet grass and white wildflowers. Another picturesque landscape that held too much unspoken threat. Each time I looked up I expected to see the sun and that ever-dawning sky blotted out by storm clouds.

  “Aven.” I hurried to fall into step beside him. “Say something.”

  “What do you want me to say?” The question was as cold as when we’d met in his prison, but at least he was speaking.

  “Anything. I know it’s your Court and you’ve been imagining some happy homecoming, and now we’re going there to rescue my brother. I’m sorry.”

  Something akin to sympathy broke through the stoniness in his face, and my heart lifted a bit. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Hania.”

  “No, it’s not your fault your kind are laughably easy targets,” Moray piped up from behind us. I cast it the sharpest look I could, and it gave me a mocking grin.

  Aven sighed, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry, Hania. I don’t like to think of my Court attacking your people. I’d like to think we’d leave humans alone after all that’s happened.”

  Leave humans alone? The tidespeople had never left us alone, and we all knew it. “You didn’t.”

  I knew it was a mistake the instant I said it, but it was too late. Words couldn’t be returned once they were spoken. The light that had broken through the ice in Aven’s eyes vanished . Without a word, he kept walking, leaving me standing behind him. My feet refused to move, though I begged them to chase after him. Moray soared past me with a hissed word I’d never had directed at me before.

  With every step my heart sank. I was sure I could look down and see it in the dirt at my feet. “Aven,” I managed, guilt rolling in my stomach. “Aven, I’m sorry.” My feet broke from their spell, and I raced to catch up to them. “That was cruel. I’m sorry.”

  He kept walking, and I matched his pace and stood in front of him. “I know that was a long time ago. And I know you feel guilty about it.”

  The selkie was back—not Aven, but the selkie from the legend. Proud, cold, immovable. Chilling. “I don’t feel guilt for what happens to humans who get in my way.”

  My insides knotted at the double meaning in those words. “I know you wouldn’t hurt people for no reason. I know if you were there you wouldn’t have been a part of it. I know, Aven, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  He laughed flatly and stepped around me. “You’ve known me for four days, Hania. You don’t know anything about what I would or wouldn’t do.”

  “I know you saved me when you didn’t need to!” I called after him. He paused. “I know you had what you wanted and could have left me. There were so many times you could have left me. But you didn’t.”

  Moray slowed to look between us. But Aven spoke without looking at me. “Maybe I’m keeping you around for the entertainment. To see how far you can get before you die.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Why not? Aren’t I just a selkie, just another tidesperson? I’ve done what they did. Those people who attacked you raised me.”

  “But you’re not them. Maybe you’ve done bad things, but you’ve also done good things. There isn’t good and bad and human and tidesperson. There’s you. And I believe you’re good, whatever you are and whatever you did all those years ago.” Days ago, I never would have believed those words would come out of my mouth directed to a tidesperson, but I believed them, with a sincerity that ached.

  He glanced at me, shaking his head, and murmured, “Brave and stupid as always.”

  And he kept walking.

  I followed, even as Moray scoffed and muttered, “Brave and stupid is right.”

  The serene slopes we passed through didn’t last the day. By the time we stopped to rest and eat in the afternoon they were giving way to sharp dips and rising walls of stone. Moray couldn’t have cared less, flitting through them like a shining insect, but Aven and I were stuck on the ground navigating the endless path. Watching the strange animals keeping just out of reach or studying the plants, letting my mind adjust to this new world, kept me entertained for the first few hours, but even they ceased to distract from my aching feet and gnawing anxiety.

  “Where is everyone?” I asked at one point, when I’d noticed Aven and Moray were the only people I’d seen since we’d arrived.

  “Not many people travel near here if they can help it,” was Aven’s flat, unsettling answer. I was too scared to ask why.

  The silence remained, but I knew I was forgiven, or at least on my way there, when Aven slowed his pace to match mine. My feet were less sure than his, stumbling when roots and undergrowth twisted onto the old road and slowing us down, but he never commented, only glanced back to be sure I was keeping up. But it was better than the frigid anger. Maybe he’d needed to let some of it out.

  The constant whispering of the tide through the air was interrupted by a realer kind of rushing noise, and I squinted through the dusk for the source. Aven spoke before I could find it. “We’ll cross and stop for the night.”

  As soon as he spoke I saw it: a deeper black racing through the darkening shadows, churning and splashing among the rocks, and winding like a broad snake past where I could see. “The Whispering Court is on the other side, isn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  “You didn’t think it’d be that easy, did you, little one?” Moray taunted.

  I hadn’t, of course, but that river was far wider and more violent than the one Inka and I had crossed to reach Aven. And I saw no sturdy bridge providing passage for us. My mouth was dry. “How do we cross?”

  “Very carefully.”

  “Oh.” I resisted the urge to inch closer to Aven, as if he could shield me from what would happen if I fell into that dark water. The rocks were sharp, jutting up into the air, and slick with spray. I didn’t want to know how it would feel to be tossed among them by the current.

  The early-night moon didn’t provide much light, leaving only a faint, ghostly kind of visibility that sent my h
eart pounding as I followed Aven to a slender bridge that looked as if it hadn’t been crossed in centuries. It was woven branches and stone, creeping with vines. The edges had crumbled away in spots, leaving behind stone worn smooth and slick by the spray. More than a few spots didn’t look steady enough to walk across.

  “Watch your step here, Hania,” Aven said as we paused before the uneven crossing. The water rushed beneath, little crests reaching up to claw at the underside of the bridge and any who crossed it. I bit the inside of my cheek and nodded, taking each step an inch at a time.

  Behind me, Moray snickered. “Scared, little one?”

  “I’ve done worse.”

  One step. Another. My foot slid, unsteady on the slick surface, but I kept going. Another foot across. I watched Aven’s feet ahead of me, trying to mimic his light, practiced steps.

  A stone beneath me wobbled and my balance flew with it, flinging me to the side. I snatched at the nearest solid thing, catching a handful of Aven’s shirt. He stopped, and I felt him tense, waiting for me to regain my footing. In seconds, the old bridge settled beneath me, but I was fixed in place. My heart raced like a bird’s, my breath no more than gasps. My eyes focused on the water stretched below us, too dark to tell how deep it might be, the rippling of it like fingers reaching for my feet.

  “Hania?” Aven called. I was gripping his shirt, as if that would do anything but drag him with me if I fell, and I forced my fingers to loosen.

  “I’m alright.”

  Moray bobbed beside me, arms crossed. “I told you a human shouldn’t be here. She’ll get you killed along with her.”

  “Moray,” Aven’s voice like a whip. That was all the warning the sprite needed: with a little hmph it soared past me.

  We stood in dead silence before I took a deep breath and put my hand flat against Aven’s back, nudging him forward. “Keep going.”

  He did, me edging along behind him, and the instant my feet hit land I could have sobbed with relief. My hands were shaking, and I curled them into fists to steady them. Why? Crossing an old bridge wasn’t the most dangerous thing I’d done since leaving home. It had taken all of a minute.