That sends him rolling back with laughter. It booms above the hushed conversations, the makeshift piano, and the chorus of dogs barking outside. Reggie digs in a bin of ice and pours me a pulpy glass, which I chug thirstily. I wipe my sticky mouth with the back of my hand and set the glass on the bar top.
“So you’re the mutt, then,” Reggie says. “Shoulda guessed it.
Human spirits dehydrate the sea folk. And sea spirits make humans hallucinate. I predict a life of weak beer ahead of you, Mermutt.” I shrug, not denying it. “I guess I am a mutt.”
“So am I.” He shoves a fat thumb into his chest, all you bet I am.
“Got a special place in all three of me hearts for our kind.” Kurt’s eyebrow cocks all the way up to his hairline. “Our kind?” “Mutts. Halfsies. Neither here nor there, but everywhere. Call us what you will.”
Kurt puts his hand on my shoulder, friendly. “He’s not like the other champions, that’s for sure.”
“Cheers to that,” Reggie says, raising a glass of brackish liquid.
“The other, the serious one, he practically had a scavenger hunt with forty men looking like some lost army of conquistadors.
Didn’t realize you can’t find her, the oracle.”
“Because all the paths are sealed?” Thalia asks.
Reggie takes a big gulp of his weak beer. “’Cause she ain’t wanting to be found. She has to find you.”
Just then, something startles him. The smell I’ve been trying to figure surrounds us. All merfolk turn their faces up to the air as if we can suck it all in. The scent is lonely and thin and winding its way inside.
“Tears,” Kurt whispers.
Reggie’s large body shivers. He knocks on the bar top. Backs away slowly and tells me, “Fair seas to you.”
The bit of white at the corner of my eye sends my heart jumping.
At the door it’s just a girl. She’s so translucent that, for a heartbeat, I wonder if this is my first time seeing a ghost. There’s a rawness at the corners of her eyes and under her nose, like all she does is cry.
I’ve never felt this way before, like she’s rubbing her sadness all over my skin. Kurt’s right: she smells like tears. Something inside me is twisting, changing slowly. There’s a wonky bit of glass across from me. It’s cloudy and speckled, but I can see myself in there some where and that in itself is a relief.
Like Reggie, the patrons that glance at her busy themselves with pretending she’s not there. Others tap crosses over themselves. One man covers his ears and leans his forehead on the table. She’s staring at Kurt.
I nudge him. “Friend of yours?”
“Not at all.”
When the girl in white turns around, she exposes the white ripple of her vertebrae, the blue spiderweb of veins. She looks back over her shoulder once.
“Think she wants us to follow her?” I say.
“She will lead us to the oracle,” Kurt says, taking one foot toward the door.
“Or, with our luck, to a dark pit of despair.”
He’s trying to compose himself, leveling violet eyes at my blue ones. “You heard the barkeep. She will come for you. I will be by your side.”
“Right. Time to grow some claws.” I draw out my dagger. Then I remember the girls. “I don’t think we should leave them alone here.” Gwen pounces off her chair. “Hardly. We can take care of ourselves.” She holds my face in her hands so I can feel a tiny electric hum that threatens to fry my face off.
“Okay, I get it.” I take a step back.
“We must go now,” Kurt says.
Beside me I can feel Layla’s heartbeat racing, the panic in the way she balls her fists. Kurt grabs my shoulder and pulls me to the door. This is why I’m here. This is what we’ve been waiting for. “We’ll meet back here,” I say to everyone, but I’m looking at Layla. Hers is the face I take with me as I follow the faint smell of tears and this girl dressed in white around another dark corner.
For a girl her size, she runs fast.
Kurt and I are head to head, eyes straight up the narrow hill as if we’re climbing to the heavens.
“What does she look like?”
“I suppose she looks like a ghost,” Kurt says.
“The oracle, smart-ass!”
He glances at me but doesn’t say a word. Why would he think he had to hide a girl from me? If there’s a guy you want giving advice on girls, it’s me. Or…it used to be me. I’ve gotten girlfriends for all my friends at one time or another. So why can’t I keep my own?
The sky is clouding over in fat, black and gray tufts. The row of slanted buildings is an echo of slammed doors and shutters. The girl makes a quick left into a skinny unlit alleyway.
I stop running.
“Why are you stopping?” Kurt bumps into me. “We’ll lose her!” “I don’t know, man.” I bend down and squeeze my thigh muscles.
“What if she’s, you know, evil?”
“She’s not evil. She’s one of the oracle’s handmaidens.” “You said you didn’t know her.”
His violet eyes are like beams against the shadow cast by the slanted alley walls.
He says, “When you found the oracle in Central Park, she had women with her, yes?”
“Fairies. But—”
“All the oracles do. They’re protected by other women.”
“Fine. But if she tries to eat your head off, I’ll let her.”
We shuffle sideways into the narrow path. The stones are cold and slick with moss, the cobblestones like walking on crooked teeth. When we reach the end of the path, the high walls form a circle around a well. The girl in white hops up on the edge.
“Oh, hell no.” My first reaction is to take a step back. Really, truly, the bravest thing I’ve ever done. “Don’t you people have clean and sunny passageways? Something with palm trees and girls who don’t look like Jack Skellington? It’s the goddamn rabbit down the goddamn well.”
She looks down the well, then back up at us. Her white dress hangs on her bony shoulders like on a coat hanger. Her lips are blue. If this is how the oracle keeps her, then the oracle is not someone I’m dying to meet.
“Why won’t you speak?” I ask.
She taps her stick-skinny fingers on her throat. She gives me a smile that makes me cold all over before taking one step forward and vanishing down the black hole. I move to follow her. Kurt smacks a hand on my chest. “I’ll go first.”
“No, your part is done. Go back to the others.” When I say it, the path behind us shifts. The brick walls close in on themselves. When I look up, the sky is a dark speck at the end of a narrow tunnel. “Or not.”
For the first time since I’ve met him, Kurt seems unsure of himself. It’s in the way he presses against the walls closing in on us. “If this is a trick, I should go first.”
I wave my weapon in the air. “Hi, supernatural dagger here? We don’t know how deep this goes. How will you signal me? I’m the king’s champion. I should be the one to go first.”
He grumbles and tightens the leather strap around his waist. “And the king named me your guardian. Let me dive first. If only to preserve the customs you are so haphazardly breaking.”
I gesture at the well. “Lead me to my premature death.”
And he does.
Down the well.
The blackness swallows him in a second. I look up to the bit of sky above, the hovering clouds. I tap my forehead the way Kurt does, just in case. I take a step and let the mouth of the well swallow me whole.
•••
This one time, the team got the inspiration to go skinny-dipping on Valentine’s Day. It was freshman year and pretty much the coldest winter I can remember. Your nose would turn red and runny the second you stepped out into the street.
I wasn’t sure the guys would go for it. The cold doesn’t exactly do the most flattering thing to us, but I reminded them that the girls would want to huddle up when they got cold. They called me crazy but did it anyway. Before I jumped, I didn�
��t feel cold. Even standing on the pier in my boxers, peeling off my socks, I wasn’t shaking like the others. The shock of the dive took my breath away for a second. I think I even liked it because I lasted the longest and the guys were pissed at me for showing off.
They wouldn’t call me a show-off now.
Here in the well, the freezing water wraps around me even before I hit the water. I tense my body as narrowly as I can, just like passing through a tube at a water park, switching the slippery plastic for brick. I am colder than cold. Colder than getting locked in the school’s refrigerator as a prank. So cold my gills won’t open and I choke when I inhale.
When I shut my eyes, I see a woman’s face. The memory pushes its way so deep inside me that it feels real. She’s golden against the sun. I’m a child in her arms. She brushes my hair away from my face and stares with violet eyes. I can feel her warm breath, smell sea and lilacs, and even though I know this memory isn’t mine, it shakes the cold away. I can breathe and see again.
The rough brick passage is gone, replaced by thousands of soft and slick tiny tentacles. They tickle my face, grab at my hair. Their suction cups suck hard on my skin, leaving slimy white circles. I’m breathing hard.
Then the foreign memory of the woman is back. Not like the last vision. This one comes from a different mind. Her hair is pulled to the side and this time she’s under me. I love her. The kind of love that makes the heart clench like a fist, that makes you want to part seas, stay above clouds. I bring my whole body down against her, and then she’s gone, replaced by a flood of others.
The tentacles suck harder on my skin, and I realize this is where those memories are coming from. I see a girl in a white robe running from an army. A man diving off a cliff. The sorrow of thousands. The joys of few. The feelings permeate my body until all I can do is scratch my skin raw.
I’m about to scream, but the well spits us out into the shallow stream of a cave. I tumble onto Kurt who covers his face with his hands. I wonder if we saw the same things. Felt the same things.
I choke. “What was that?”
“I don’t know. I—”
My muscles feel like rubber. The first time I try to push myself up, I fall back down, so I just roll over and crawl onto the cool rock. Something steel and sharp pokes my arm. “Kurt?”
In the darkness of the cave, we don’t hear them waiting for us. Their steps are soundless as they circle us. Fire sizzles from a torch held by the mute girl in white who led us here. At least, it could be. The girl now jabbing a spear at my ribs looks just like her and the rest—pale, skinny, blue at the mouth, and with big gaping eyes as if all the lights in the house are on but no one is home.
Kurt and I stand back to back. He whispers, “I’m sorry.”
“Remember when I said I’d let them eat your head off?”
The girl with the torch, the one who led us here, takes a step forward from their circle, right up to my face.
I try to smile. “Hey, we’re the good guys, remember?”
She cocks her head, confused.
“I’m Tristan Hart. My grandfather is the Sea King.”
“Was the Sea King.” Her voice fills the cave, but her lips don’t move. “You are here because you want to take his place.”
“And who the hell are you? You didn’t mind us so much when you came to get me at the tavern.”
Her pale eyebrow arcs. “You have a foolish tongue.”
“At least I have a tongue.”
The spear digs into my skin a little bit more.
“You are the laria, aren’t you?” Kurt says quickly. “We are here for the oracle.”
The voice laughs. “He is. But why are you here, Kurtomathetis?”
“How did you know his name? What the hell is a laria?”
In unison their harmony fills my head. “We are the laria, maidens of the oracle, protectors of the Well of Memories.”
“I’ve been here before,” Kurt says, “and I didn’t see any of you.”
“She did not want us to be seen,” the girl says.
“Okay, then. You came to get me. So why won’t you let me pass?”
Their laughter is a chorus. The girl with the torch steps closer to me. Unmoving, endless black eyes. “I wasn’t there to find you. I was fetching our supper.”
My fingers itch for my dagger. If I’m fast enough, I can pull the spear poking me and knock her back with a hit in the chest. If I’m not fast enough, I’ll be a sashimi kabob.
“Prove to me you are the king’s heir,” she says.
“Call off your girls and I’ll show you.”
They step back in their lithe ballet movements. I reach behind my shoulder and draw the quartz scepter. Now would be a really good time for it to spark or light up or do anything. And it does. Its soft glow is too bright for some of their eyes and they look away. Except the girl with the torch. She isn’t afraid of me. I think she wants to eat me.
In a swift movement, she draws out a tiny blade and takes a swipe at my belt. The bag of jewels falls to the ground and into the stream where they wink as they get carried downstream. Some of the girls cluster to pick them up, smiling at the precious things in their palms. The girl with the torch stares at the other girls with distaste, but she lets them.
Kurt scratches his head. He picks up a ruby from the stream and squeezes it in his palm.
I ask the question I read on his scrunched-up merman face. “Why’d you do that?”
“You won’t be needing them.” She points her torch south into the blackest part of the cave, and we follow her deeper and deeper into the dark.
The cave is smooth rose stone. Round pools light the entire ground. Down here, the energy crackles in and around me. Traces of others who’ve passed through here linger in the air. But the emotion is a fraction of what I felt coming down the well. Kurt whispers, “According to legend, the laria feed on the memories of men.” I wonder which of my memories are mingled in with the others.
“Mind the floors,” Kurt says. “The pools are chambers of eternal sleep. Only the oracle can release you once you’ve plunged in.”
In one of the occupied pools, a girl’s hair floats up to the surface like weeds. I wonder why she’s down there. What is she running from that would make her want to do this? I tell myself that I want to remember all of my life, no matter what happens.
At the end of the cave is a great basin made of polished moonstone. A tiny waterfall fills it, and the runoff trickles into skinny rivers that line the grounds. “Pretty sweet Jacuzzi.”
Kurt elbows me in the ribs. “Shh.”
I want to tell him to chill out, though my insides are as uneasy as the tremble in my legs. I miss Shelly’s pond in Central Park. The bright Thumbelina-sized fairy maidens that blew me kisses. Even Shelly’s kind, wrinkly face.
Then, she emerges.
Her movements are slow and delicate, like a doll coming to life. Wondrous and strange, from the belly up she’s so pink. Her eyes are like the blush of new roses. Her smooth, naked torso is obscured by powder-pink hair tumbling down to the water. At her hips, she disappears into a giant, golden nautilus shell. I wonder how she bends her legs to fit. Maybe she doesn’t have any legs.
“Surely you’ve seen creatures more wondrous than me on your travels, Tristan Hart.” Her voice… Her voice is achingly lovely. Every word fills me with a peace I haven’t felt in so long. I want to put a smile on her sad face.
“No, ma’am.” I know I sound dreamy, but I feel very, very good.
She turns a fraction, setting pink jeweled eyes on Kurt, and I suddenly hate it. I want her to keep looking at me. “Surprised to see me, Kurtomathetis?”
“You’re not Lucine.” His words are steeped in disappointment and hurt, but when I wait for him to turn to me and explain, all he can do is stare at the nautilus maid.
“Come forward,” she tells him.
And he does it. Kurt, the most logical guy I’ve ever met, goes to her without even thinking. It happens slowly
, the brush of his feet on the ground, then all at once, into a memory pool with a heavy splash. The space is narrow but he manages to lift one hand to punch against the force containing him until he stops moving and finally sleeps.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Because I don’t need him, that’s why.”
Somewhere in my mind I know she’s wrong. But here I am, agreeing with everything she says.
“Your girl,” I say. My tongue is like wet cotton in my mouth. “I had something for you and she took it.”
“I’ve no use for trinkets.”
“But I have nothing else.” I sound whiny. I don’t want to sound whiny, but I do. It’s like I’m complaining to my mom. I miss my mom. My bed. My friends. I want to sleep like Kurt. Then the cave whispers, and I snap awake.
Her voice is like a trail, and I follow it around the danger of the sleeping chambers and right up to her basin where she fingercombs her hair. “I know something you can give me.”
The cave dims. We’re alone. She dips her fingers in the water around her. There’s that smile, brilliant as dawn. When she looks back up at me, her eyes glow with eager newness. I wonder what happened to her legs, then I study her face—the slope of her nose, the bow of her mouth—she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Second. Second most beautiful—but I can’t remember who the first is.
“Why was he surprised to see you?” I ask.
“You mean why am I here?” Her smile is strained. I can tell she doesn’t do that very often. “You mean how could I possibly be stuck in this cave on an island full of degenerates? I don’t belong here. I belong in Eternity. Eternity is my home. But my sisters and I, we are all shifting, moving, breaking, like the plates beneath us. We’re moving like we’re intended to. I must be here and now for you. In the Well of Memories.”
I rub my face. Wake up, Tristan. “I saw things that weren’t mine to remember.”
“When you go down the well, you leave traces of yourself behind. Don’t make that face. You aren’t losing anything. Only now I know your mind as well. From kings and heroes to lost boys and girls, they all leave their memories here. The water is impregnated with the past. The oracle is the keeper of the well.”
The Savage Blue Page 6
