The Savage Blue

by Zoraida Cordova

  Something hits my shoulder. Then more and more, fish swimming against our current. Only, they’re not swimming. They’re dead. Pale and gray, fleshy mouths wide open. There’s a faint taste of sulfur and minerals in the water.

  And with one forceful push, the current turns, like someone pulled the drain stopper out of the sink, and we’ve got nowhere to go but down.

  •••

  I spit out the water in my mouth. It tastes like rocks. Not that I’ve licked a lot of rocks. My head throbs right where I’ve landed on long, wet grass. My tail licks at the air, and I lie back and grip the ground, concentrating on the half shift and bracing for the tear of my legs.

  I roll out my ankles. Crack my knees. When I stand, my legs give out. “Holy leg cramp.”

  On my knees, I look up. I don’t see the tunnel we came out of. It’s like the air just opened up and dumped us here. But at least there is sky. Lots of it. Stars move like a mobile against a dark blue night that fades to the sun hanging low. It doesn’t seem to be moving, just hovering and tainting the horizon with pinks and yellow.

  “How are we under the sky?” I hold out a hand to help the girls stand.

  “It’s Eternity.” Kai dusts ash from her elbow. “It is its own world.”

  Gwen bends back, cracking her bones. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

  We’re surrounded by a bright green field. The grass blows in a breeze that is refreshing on our wet skins. I take a step forward, disturbing the grass. Fat butterflies with glowing wings scatter. The change inside me is instant. The pain in my ribs vanishes. I close my eyes and inhale the happiness of sun on slick tanning oil, blue skies and cool sand, the warmth of a kiss. “Wow. Do you smell that?”

  “I don’t smell anything,” Gwen says. “Except for wilting grass.”

  Kai leans her face to the sky, which feels like it’s moved closer to us. “I smell parchment. And squid ink. I used to get it all over my hands. And the sweet crab cakes my mom used to make.”

  “Look.” In the distance, there’s a great big tree with gnarly branches atop a hill.

  A bird with a white beak and red feathers flies past us. He lands on a stone smack in the middle of a dried stream. He pecks at the water and tiny glowing things that float like pollen.

  “The stream leads to the tree,” Kai says.

  “Is it supposed to be this…dry?” I pull a blade of grass and it turns to ash in my palm.

  Gwen bends back down to the earth. The patch where we fell is losing color, yellowing under cracked dirt. The ashen earth breaks away in her fingertips. “There is a pulse here. It’s faint.”

  “Hurry,” I say, pointing forward with my scepter. We follow the stream toward the tree. The dribble of a stream washes over mossy stones. The animals here are tiny. I can’t imagine it would be able to support anything else. I try to picture the stream full to the brim, the grass bright and blue, and mermaids swimming and lying on the banks. I try to imagine living here forever.

  When we reach the tree, the sun is still in the same place over the horizon. The tree is as tall as the sky, branches yawning and shuddering back into place. Leaves fall all around us, on the grass, in the spring nestled at the roots of the tree.

  “I’m pretty sure I can make a fort under here.” I pat the fat arched roots of the tree. A piece of bark comes away like a scab. I try to put it back into place, but then I just let it drop into the water.

  Tiny animals emerge from the insides of the tree. They’re all glowing from the inside out. Ladybugs and dragonflies. Tiny translucent frogs hop from roots to toadstools. One frog shoots out a neon green tongue and catches a dragonfly twice its size. The bug seizes inside the frog and lights up its belly.

  “Why aren’t there any big animals?” I ask.

  Kai shrugs, stumped for the first time. Her sad eyes scan everything—the sky, the parched trunk of the tree, the tall grass, and leaves the size of my head. “I suppose they left when we left.”

  “What’s wrong?” I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “I think I landed wrong on my ankle.” She sticks out her leg.

  “Let’s try something.” I go to the tree where a small trickle falls into the brackish water. I take my water bottle from swim practice, swish out the blue energy drink at the bottom, and refill it with the water from the waterfall. I bring it to Kai and make her drink.

  Nothing happens at first, but then it happens so fast I almost miss it. The swelling and redness disappears, along with the fissures of glass on her hands. Even her cheekbones are flushed, which is better than the sickly green thing she had going on.

  Then the chirping dies down. The frogs jump back into the pond. Grass rustles in the breeze. The dryness of the ground is encroaching, sucking the lush green from the blades and leaving wilted hay.

  “Tristan, look,” Kai says.

  A bright light fills the trunk of the tree. The waterfall dies, and a creature emerges from within. First, a golden head. I cannot see her face but I’m too stunned to care. She grips the sides of the trunk and pushes herself out. It’s like she’s been dipped in golden paint, down to her nails, down to the softness of her forelegs kicking out in the water with gold hooves, until lastly her hind legs are out. Her tail swishes at the water playfully, coming out of the stream and onto the bank across from where the three of us stand.

  “What is she?” My mouth is open.

  I’m expecting her to neigh, but her mouth is a bird’s beak. Her black eyes are a stark contrast against the gold contours of her face. She is like the pure light of the sun, and I can’t stop looking at her.

  “She’s a centaur,” Kai says. Then leaves a pause for the obvious: but she’s got a beak.

  The centaur gallops in a circle, then stops to bow in my direction. She spreads her arms wide, then up to the sky. The water at the base of the tree is rippling, the light as bright as the stars, swirling into a funnel. And I can see it. The golden head of the trident. A thin spark of lightning shoots from the prongs and up into the velvet blue sky. The sparks rain back down in a drizzle of lights. Insects buzz, vibrating their song into the breeze. I head straight for the trident like my feet are possessed.

  Then the oracle cries out, sharp like a falcon. A shadow springs from behind the great tree, jumping on the centaur’s back. His massive arms wrap around her throat. She can’t cry out. His weight makes her legs tremble and give out.

  “I knew you’d make it, brother,” Archer says.

  He’s got her arms pinned down, a muscular thigh across her body. She kicks out and pecks at him until he lets go. He hits her hard and she falls down.

  “The trident,” Kai yells behind me.

  The head of the trident spins inches over a tiny whirlpool.

  I push off the ground as hard as I can, but so does Archer.

  The air around us is a vacuum, sucking the trident back into the dark water. Archer splashes in first. I kick and pull myself out of the spring. I roll over onto the dry grass and shout at the oracle. “Where did you send it?”

  Archer lunges at me. Birds cry and flutter away. The tree sheds a torrent of leaves. He’s got one hand on my throat and one on my wrist, pinning me to the ground. I’m holding my scepter with all my strength, using my other arm to grip his neck, but it’s like trying to squeeze a baseball bat.

  I bring up my knee, but even though I hit him where it hurts, all he does is grunt the pain away.

  He lets go of my throat and grabs my scepter. The effect is instant. His skin burns, blackening where flesh curls into itself. His scream is terrible, and as he drops it, I smile. It’s a stupid thing to do because that’s what he wants. Every part of my hatred and anger feeds him.

  Archer rights himself, panting. He holds his palm up. The black blood dries on his palms, healing instantly.

  Gwen and Kai form a barricade in front of the oracle, but Archer smacks them away. Even Gwen’s outstretched fingers sizzle, powerless.

  “Where did you send it?” Archer is a wild th
ing, grabbing the oracle around her middle and bringing her down. I run behind him and use my scepter as a bat. No, no, no. He can’t hurt her. He can’t.

  He turns to me and hits me right in the gut.

  I fall to my knees. Need. Breath.

  He holds his arms over his head, the crooked curves of his dagger facing down.

  I step forward.

  “Death sets fire to the eternal well, brother.” A slick wet sound fills the air.

  “I am not your brother!” When my hand closes around my scepter, a great bolt of light shoots out into the sky. Then the sky spits it back in tiny balls of fire that singe the dry earth.

  The oracle is slumped behind Archer. Her blood is red fire, dripping over her and into the ground. The flames sizzle, consuming and spreading all around.

  I pull out my dagger and drive it through Archer’s chest. He groans at first, but then he returns it with a right hook. “Mother wishes to see you, so I can’t hurt your face too badly.”

  He cocks his head to the side, predatory and seductive. Then he looks to Gwen and Kai and seems torn. Like he can’t decide which one he’s going to attack. “We will all be a family soon.”

  Then he plunges into the black pool beneath the tree.

  Smoke fills the sky, which feels too low and the land too small. Dry earth breaks off in chunks and sinks into the encroaching blackness. Eternity.

  Frogs and even birds dive right into the mouth of the pond beneath the tree.

  Something is quivering inside the trunk.

  “Kai,” I say, in warning. Everything, the earth around us, is consumed by a black void, breaking off into space.

  “We have to go.” Gwen sinks one foot into the spring. “Now.”

  “We don’t know where that leads,” I say.

  “The only other options are getting sucked out into a nothingness or burning up,” Kai shouts.

  Birds and butterflies fall right from the sky, dead all around us. The leaves of the tree have caught fire. One lands right on Kai’s shoulder. It leaves an angry red blotch.

  “Come on!” Gwen pounds the ground. It cracks beneath her fist, spreading under Kai. She slips and I scramble to my feet and yank her onto what’s left of solid ground.

  The gnarly old tree stretches up again, and this time the branches pierce the sky. A branch reaches up and touches a star. The flame ignites and courses down the dry bark.

  Gwen jumps into the pool.

  I hold Kai’s hand and we run in together, sinking like stones down a black tunnel. But I keep my eyes open, skyward.

  Even the sky is on fire.

  The spring leads us back to the sprawl of shipwrecks and geysers.

  The same fish. The same light. As if nothing has changed since we left.

  But that isn’t right. Everything is changing.

  I sift through patches of grass and try to find the door again but it’s gone. In its place is turned-over grass. I use my scepter to blast at the ground, showering us in slow-settling clouds of rock and sand.

  Over by the biggest ship, in front of a sea garden of colorful plants, Kai kneels. She presses her forehead to the sea floor. Fish swim around her like a kindness of ravens around a graveyard.

  “What should we do?” Gwen swims beside me.

  “I think someone should go back to Toliss. Tell my grandfather everything that’s happened.”

  “He won’t like that we’ve been to the spring. Or that it’s—gone.”

  I groan, which sounds like gurgling. “It doesn’t matter. He needs to get the island prepared in case of an attack.”

  Kai swims in circles around us as if she senses something in the water. “The fish, Tristan. They’re gone.”

  I see him from the corner of my eye. The merrow has a long red face, eyes like ink smudges, and tiny rows of black teeth. Long red thorns protrude from his arm. In one sling, they shoot out at us. Kai swims to the right, but a thorn tacks her tail to the wood of the ship. She pulls, ripping the flesh bloody. In seconds, it mends again.

  The merrow is about to blow on the golden conch hanging from his chest, when he goes into a frenzy at the scent of her blood. He swims after her and Gwen holds out her hands. A bright light bursts from her palms, throwing him backward. He spins and dives back for them. I throw a rock at his head to get his attention. The power of the scepter surges through me. Anger, that’s the trigger. Right now, my anger is all consuming. The quartz lights up, and as quick as lightning, I hit the red merrow in his chest. He explodes in black chunks of meat and red scaly flesh. They float everywhere, contaminating the water around us.

  Kai picks up the conch with her delicate fingers. She brushes off the black sludge and slings it around her shoulder.

  I make a face and she says, “These are really useful.”

  “We have to go back.” Gwen stares at the fleshy pieces descending to the sea floor and grimaces. She swims ahead, her melancholy song leading the way back.

  •••

  When we near the New York coast, Kai turns away and heads for Toliss. For a moment, I contemplate stopping there myself. I’ve only been there once, but find myself drawn to the clear lake of the court, the merfolk drinking and dancing and soaking up the sun. I want to stand before my grandfather and show him the scepter. I want to yell at him for leaving me in the dark my whole life. I would demand answers. I would say, “Are you happy now?”

  Instead, I keep swimming, Gwen trailing quietly behind me until we reach Coney Island. We surface a bit away from shore to make sure we aren’t seen. The moon casts a silvery light on the beach. The rides are still shut off.

  I half-shift onto the sand and let myself fall into the surf. I’ll regret it later when I’m trying to wash sand out of my crevices, but right now it feels so good. When I was little, I’d paddle around right at the edge and pretend I was Robinson Crusoe and I’d just washed up on shore.

  I flip over and stare at the bruised plum of the twilight sky. There’s a sound in the distance, like a siren. My insides feel smooshed together, as if someone is stepping on my lungs. I bang my fists into the wet, soft sand.

  “Don’t do that, Tristan.” Gwen sits beside me. The surf blankets our feet. “You haven’t lost yet.”

  My laugh is bitter. “She keeps coming out of my blind spot because I stop expecting her.”

  “The rules have changed. Nieve has always been there. Perhaps you should start seeing her as a new champion.”

  “Yeah, one with an army.”

  She laughs. How can she be funny at a time like this?

  “Adaro has an army,” she says. “So do Brendan and Dylan. Even Kurtomathetis commands his own battalion of the guard.”

  “That leaves me.” I sit up, bending my face to my knees.

  “I can’t believe the kings have kept the springs from us for so long.” She stares ahead. “Then again, kings have many secrets.”

  “How do you know?”

  She doesn’t answer. Her white blond hair blows all over her face. She self-consciously covers the thin pear-colored slits where her gills would be. Right over that are long layers of scars that trace from the opening of her ear down to her clavicle.

  “Stop staring,” she whispers, tracing the scar along her throat. “It isn’t polite.”

  I know I shouldn’t ask but I want to know. “How did he do it?”

  Her hand remains on her scars.

  “You never talk about it, Gwen.”

  Her face is hard. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “He hurt you. The man you were supposed to marry actually hurt you.” She gets up and walks down the shore away from me. I hate how casual she is about it. “Wasn’t there anyone you could go to?”

  “He’s dead. Twice over. Don’t bring it up again.” She stops and faces me. “Why do you care?”

  “You’re my friend.” I grab her by the shoulders and smile. “Even if you don’t want to admit it.”

  Her face is smooth and she’s looking at me like she wants mor
e from me than I can give her. Her eyes are like little moons and she sets them on me. She rests her hands on my chest. The breeze is cold where my shoulders have just begun to dry off. A drop trickles down my spine. In this light, at the base of the pier, her scars are iridescent. Her lips are pink and swollen. With her index finger, she traces my jawline, tucks my hair behind my ear.

  She leans up to kiss me.

  I turn my face away. “I can’t.”

  “Right.” The little moons turn into little storms. She backs away. “You’ve already got someone.”

  “It’s not that I don’t think you’re beautiful.” I can’t call her hot. She is, but she’s more than that. She’s this burst of lightning and the calm right after it all in one. She’s just not for me.

  “Can’t blame a mermaid for trying.”

  My laughter is nervous. “You’re the one who said I never had a chance with you.”

  “That’s before I really knew you.” She brushes her hair away from her face. “When I heard they were presenting you at court, I thought you’d be a stupid skin sack.”

  “Why do you even call humans that? Merpeople have skin too.”

  “And you make me laugh. I saw how insanely brave and stupid you can be for your friends. Elias never cared for me that way. It made me long for that. Maybe I just liked the way you held that scepter.”

  Gwen turns over her shoulder with that mischievous smile. She closes the space between us and brushes away the scales at my hips to reveal the skin beneath. “Is her hold over you so strong?”

  And I don’t hesitate, holding her by her shoulders at a distance. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

  Layla. The name hangs between us like a pendulum ready to snap.

  “You can do better than me.” I rummage for clothes in my backpack. They’re all wet, but it’s better than walking home in glittery underwear.

  “I’m not used to having an actual choice in this. Before, Elias was it.”