The Savage Blue

by Zoraida Cordova

  I hug her. Her hands hang at her sides at first. I can feel her breath hitch.

  “That’s the great thing about now,” I tell her. “Now, you get a real choice.”

  My feet feel foreign.

  They’re numb. Awkward. Possessed.

  They’re leading me past my own street.

  No, I can’t go home yet. I can’t stand in my kitchen and cross off the end of another day.

  I pick up the pay phone and dial her number. On the second ring, she picks up.

  “Did I wake you?” I can hear her rub her eyes and kick the covers off.

  “Tristan?”

  “Only if you want it to be.”

  “Shut up. Where are you?”

  “Down the block at the bodega.”

  “My dad is this far away from putting remote control bars on all the doors and windows because of you.”

  “That’s never stopped you before,” I taunt.

  “Is everything okay?”

  I inhale loudly. Nothing comes out. “I’ll be on your porch.” I hang up and turn the corner.

  •••

  Her mom’s garden is overgrowing, leaves wild and swaying in the cool night. I used to pluck a flower and give it to Mrs. Santos. She never complained that I took it from her own garden. “You look like crap,” Layla says.

  “Exactly what I wanted to hear after swimming in torpedo-fast underwater currents for over ten hours.”

  She comes around from the back entrance. She’s wearing her black Guardian Knight T-shirt and denim shorts. I wonder if she sleeps in her underwear. As if she knows what I’m thinking, she smacks me on the back of the head. “I’m familiar with that grin on your face.”

  She sits beside me, and I get a hot flash. Damn, I thought these things only happened to women. She burrows herself into my shoulder and says, “Tell me.”

  I run my hand along the top of her hair. Why is it that girls have this effect? Things like long hair and long eyelashes and the smell of flowers just throw me. I squeeze the bridge of my nose.

  “Tristan, you’re shaking.”

  She rubs the cold away from my arms. The iridescent sheen of where my scales were rubs off on her palms. For a moment, she smiles down at her hands, then at my face. Then dusts it away and says, “Gross.”

  It calms me, and I tell her about Violet (she laughs) and Kai (she laughs some more). Then the sea dragon. (No, I didn’t hurt it, thanks.) Kai’s father. Eternity burning.

  “The oracle was a centaur?”

  I nod. “I was expecting a mermaid or something with tentacles.”

  “Actually that makes sense, because Poseidon did create a horse as a gift to Artemis.”

  I take her head in my hands and kiss it. “Smart chicks are so hot.”

  She bats me away. “I just read, you dumb jock.”

  We laugh together and it’s the best I’ve felt all week. Except for yesterday in the locker room, but this is an inside kind of good. I remember Kai singing underwater for her father, the way it made me long for something more. That’s why I couldn’t kiss Gwen. That’s why I can’t kiss anyone but Layla.

  “That’s horrible about Kai’s dad.”

  “They’re weird about death. It’s like they take a moment to see it happen and then they move on. It doesn’t feel natural. And he literally turned into coral.” I sit up. “I wonder what will happen when I die, since I’m half and half?”

  “Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t say that.”

  “There’s a chance,” I admit. “I was so close to that trident. But I hesitated because I wanted to help the oracle. In the end, she died anyway. Nieve is stronger every day and she’s coming for me.”

  “Then you just have to be stronger than her.” Layla makes it sound so easy.

  I hold her tighter. “When I’m with you, I feel like I can do anything. I don’t want to mess this up.”

  “Us? Or the championship?”

  This sounds like one of those girl trick questions that I shouldn’t answer. I’m too quiet. Every part of me hurts. I should drink some of the spring water but I want to save it for something more important, not just wimpy pains I can get at the gym.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “There can’t be an us anyway.”

  “Shut up, dude,” I scoff. “You’re so totally my girlfriend. You’ve been dying to be my girlfriend since we were in the sandbox. Marked your territory by peeing on me and everything. I’m just going to tell everyone that you’re my girl, and then you’ll make me look like a loser when you try to deny it. Can you really do that to me?”

  She punches me in the ribs and I kind of exaggerate the pain so she’ll rub it. “Seriously, Tristan. This is fun, admittedly. But we shouldn’t do that to each other. Not now, at least.”

  “Why? One,” I count my fingers in front of her face, “you like me. You know how I can tell? You keep feeling up on me all over the place. Don’t act like it’s my mer thing because you like my mer thing just fine.”

  I brace for the next jab in the ribs, harder than the first.

  “I knew Angelo shouldn’t have taught you to fight.”

  “Are you done?” She sits back. “Was that the one reason?”

  I pop my lips. “Yep.”

  “My turn,” she says. “One, I’ve known 80 percent of the girls you’ve ‘dated.’”

  “Don’t. Come on. Don’t use air quotes.”

  “Two, you’re a merman.”

  “I can’t control that. That’s like your hair when it gets frizzy in the summer or the crooked little toe on your right foot.” I realize that won’t help my case.

  “Three, I can’t breathe underwater, Tristan. I’ve thought about this since it first happened and I-I trust you with my whole life. But this—where does it leave me when you’re king and I’m stranded on the Coney Island beach wondering which ocean you’re in?”

  “Layla, I will never leave you.”

  “You aren’t listening to what I’m saying.” She grabs chunks of her hair and then smooths them down. “We’ve waited sixteen years to be together. I think we can wait another week and see what happens.”

  I take her hands in mine. But I don’t want to wait another week. So I’m like, “I don’t want to wait another week.”

  That’s the thing about girls. Sometimes they say one thing and they mean another. She traces the outline of my lips and gives me a quick kiss.

  “See?” I say, to prove my point.

  “Hey, what happened to Gwen and Kai?”

  “Kai went to alert my grandfather, just in case.” At the mention, I think of Gwen trying to kiss me. Should I tell Layla? Unbidden, Angelo’s voice pops into my head and he says, “She didn’t ask so don’t tell her.”

  I say, “Gwen went wherever she goes.”

  “Do you hear that?”

  “Sirens,” I say. “A lot of them the last couple of days.”

  Sunrise creeps over the houses across the street. The siren horn dies down, and Layla and I are sitting on her front porch. I remember what Gwen said about thinking of Nieve like I would another champion. I’ve been to three oracles. How many of the other champions can say that?

  “New battle plan.” I slap my knees and stand up. All of my joints pop and ache. My mind is dizzy with exhaustion. “It seems everyone’s got themselves an army.”

  Layla’s eyes peel back to me with this new realization. “So what you need is—”

  “An army of my own.”

  After I leave Layla, I head home.

  My temples pulse. A whisper fills my head. I don’t know how I quite make it to my bed. Exhaustion blankets me like fog. When I close my eyes, I’m in water.

  It’s a cave made of smooth, bright-white stone. Skinny red and black plants sprout from thin cracks in the sparkling walls like bloody membranes.

  When I see her, I jump back and hit the wall, hear the crunch of my skull.

  Nieve, pale as snow and as skinny as when I saw her the first time, is resting on
a bench carved into the wall. Her silver scales gleam, and her cold blue mouth is slightly open, tiny bubbles coming in and out.

  Around me, the water turns pink with my blood. It trails across the cave to where the silver mermaid is sleeping. She sniffs at the air and rouses. A thin blanket-like thing falls off her shoulders and onto the floor. Her eyes flutter open. She smiles when she sees me; the sight of her shark mouth pulls at my gut. I can’t move.

  She tucks her hair back. The motion is slow, pained. She’s weak, skinnier than ever. But still with the face of a goddess—the refined cheekbones, the sharp slope of her nose, the silver eyes fringed with long blue lashes. Her mouth is a blue pout. Then she opens her mouth at the cloud of blood. She tastes it. Swallows it.

  “You’re so gross,” I say before I can stop myself.

  “You came.”

  “I wasn’t trying to.”

  Nieve moves forward off her bench. She starts to sink to the floor and has to kick extra hard. It’s too much for her, and she falls on her knees right in front of me. She undoes the button of my shorts. They’re the same ones I went to sleep in. Yep. I’m dreaming. I don’t remember sleepwalking. I was asleep somewhere in my house. Probably beside Kurt.

  She moves her hands over my chest and makes a parting motion. My T-shirt rips away. The cloth floats to the ground.

  I have this terrible image of her biting into my ribs and tearing me apart so I say, “That was my favorite shirt.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” She cocks her head. “Unless you ask.”

  “I’m pretty sure I won’t ask.” I’m convinced this is a dream. A gross, twisted dream. I need to wake up right now.

  “Why don’t you shift, Tristan? I hate seeing you in these human clothes.” Before she can get a little too close to my goods, I do as she says. There go my shorts.

  “Are you going to let go of me now?”

  When she doesn’t bare her teeth, she’s incredibly beautiful. Hard to believe she’s a monster. She does that thing with her hands again and the invisible force holding me goes away. She swims back, away from me and onto her bench.

  “How did I get here? Where is this place?” I reach at my side and come away empty. What I wouldn’t do for my dagger.

  “This place is very dear to me. It is where I go when I’m weak. This very moment, my son is bringing me something special. Something to make me strong. The way I was before my brother put me away. You do look like him, in your own way.”

  “You made Archer kill the oracle.”

  She shakes her head softly. “The oracles killed themselves, wicked, tricky devils that they are.”

  I hate the pressure of her on me. It’s worse than struggling against the currents. “You won’t win, you know.”

  “I already have.” She doesn’t smile. “My brother has broken the seas. He started this many years ago. I intend to make it right. We will put the seas back together.”

  “How generous of you. It’ll make up for all the people you’ve killed.”

  “I didn’t kill you.” She undulates like an eel until her face is right over mine. “Don’t you remember the wave, Tristan?”

  I wish she’d stop saying my name. “How could I forget?” I thought I’d gone insane, floating underwater until I saw her in her silver splendor. She cut me with her fingernails. Then the shark attacked her and carried me away.

  “I wanted to see your heart. So I lured you. And you came after me so willingly, not even stopping to think that it might not be real.

  “The first time I held you was the first time since your birth that you shifted into your true self. I knew who you were just as I knew they were searching for you, my brother’s heir. I wanted to kill you.”

  I remember the trace of her nails, the jagged edges cutting across my chest.

  “Then I tasted your blood. Blood can tell you so much about a being. It is life. It is your past and future. In it, I could see exactly how invaluable you were to me. I’ve lived so long, and my future is linked to a boy. Funny, aren’t they?”

  “Who?”

  “The fates.”

  I swallow hard. “And how exactly am I invaluable to you?”

  “Because we could be great together.”

  “You’re a killer.” I hate the way I sound, like a scared, dumb kid.

  “You will be one too. Just because you killed a merrow, my child, does that make you better?” She tsktsktsks at me. “What will you do when you have to drive your sword through one of our kind to keep the peace of your new broken kingdom?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Do you know what happens when you’re alone for ages?” She squeezes my face with her hands, forcing me to look straight at her. The white of her eyes. The blue of her eyelids. “Do you? The pitchblackness of the Caves of Tartarus. The creatures that live there, caged like beasts when far worse lies in my brother’s own court. Whimsical, he is, sitting on a throne that should’ve been mine, entertaining half breeds and stripping our own to pacify beings far beneath us.” She coughs, clutching herself as if there is not enough water or oxygen down here. “I don’t mean you. You’re special.”

  She flicks her hand at me again and I’m paralyzed once more. I pull against a force that weighs me down until it pulls me to the ground. Red plants sprout from the ground and weave all over me. Everywhere except my face. She swims slowly, cutting through the water with the elegance of a shark. She props her elbows on my chest, her tail right on top of mine.

  “My sons will be here soon. I will drink from Eternity and I will be strong again.” She puts a finger to my lips. My tongue is heavy and fat in my mouth. I can only grunt in protest. “You will see that the only way to keep your loved ones safe is to be with me.”

  I want to scream but my voice is gone.

  My lips are numb.

  She traces the length of my cheek and whispers, “Soon…”

  She lowers herself with her mouth slightly open, coming down for a kiss.

  The blast of a horn wakes me up.

  Kurt is standing over me.

  I roll over and realize I’m naked again. “Stop doing that, creep.”

  He’s jittery and the energy crackling around him is frantic.

  “Get dressed,” he says. “Something’s happened.”

  I throw on a pair of shorts off the floor and a T-shirt that smells vaguely clean, and we’re out of the room and into the kitchen.

  Layla’s drawing a black X over Tuesday on the wall calendar. When she sees me, she smiles. I finger-comb my bed head before kissing her cheek. The tiles are cold under my feet.

  “Where are my parents?”

  “Doctor,” Layla says. “Everything is fine with the baby, but it’s her first time going. She’s so scared.”

  I splash water over my face in the kitchen sink and use a paper towel to dry off. The last thing I remember is Nieve’s blue lips coming down on me. Why does everyone try to kiss me? There should be rules against that.

  “Kurt, spit it out. You guys are freaking me.”

  Layla opens the window, letting the cool air out and the warmth of the overcast day in. Curry, sea air, and smoke—the neighborhood smells waft in with something else. The horn blast. “What is that?” A thin strand of lightning crackles on the horizon. “Adaro,” Kurt says. “He’s here.”

  I whip around. “Like here, here? Coney Island here?” “That’s what the call is,” Kurt says. “This place is too noisy. I didn’t think it could be one of our calls. There are too many sirens in this place.”

  “But why is he here?”

  “He’s requesting an audience with you.” Kurt takes his arm knife and checks the blade. “It seems he’s acquired the center staff of the trident.”

  The front door cracks open and we jump, even Kurt. “It’s just me,” Thalia says.

  Kurt’s voice is like thunder. “Where have you been?” Thalia’s face is hard, greener than usual. She ignores her brother and runs right up to me, pointing at my chest. “You�
�re bleeding.” When I look down, beads of blood bloom through the white of my shirt. I take it off and rinse it in the sink, then clean the wound. “I want to show you guys something.”

  I go into my backpack and bring out the water bottle. “Gatorade has a new flavor?” Layla laughs unevenly. I pour just a single drop on the cut. The skin grows back, stitching itself back together. “The effect doesn’t last long. It’s from the springs…which are now gone.” I retell them about the Hall of Records, the channels, and the springs. Even though Layla only heard it hours ago, she still nods along enraptured until I get to the dream of Nieve when they all share a grimace.

  Thalia takes the plastic bottle in her hand. “To think, eons are reduced to this container.”

  “I want you guys to drink it.”

  They stare.

  “Why?” Kurt asks.

  “Nieve.” Even saying her name makes my tongue feel like lead. “She’s more than just an angry mermaid with a grudge. She wants to be queen. When Archer brings her the spring water, she’ll be strong. She can make more merrows.” I think of Adaro waiting for me out on the beach. I punch the wall.

  “Now she needs the trident and we’re making it easy for her. Two of the pieces are right here. Me and Adaro. She can march up the shore with her mutant mermen and pick us off. To prevent that, we have to do a few things. Step one is you all have to drink this.”

  “What about you?” Layla asks.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “What the hell do you mean?” She follows me to the window and gets in my face. “I have this necklace. I—”

  “What if it’s not enough?”

  “Tristan, all of us know the risks,” Kurt says. “We’re still here.”

  The conch horn blasts again.

  “What the hell is up with this guy?” I ask. Come to think of it, that horn’s been blasting since we got back on Monday. Sarabell knew he was here when she came up to me at Luna Park, when we were out on our date. I feel so used.

  Thalia shrugs, setting the water bottle on the table. “If we were on his land near the Galapagos, he would have to return the favor.”