Vast and Brutal Sea

by Zoraida Cordova

  “You waited too long.” She presses her hands on my chest.

  “I know.” I brush her hair back with my hand and hold her face so she won’t look away when I talk. “When I was in the Vale of Tears, I thought about where you were. That somehow I’d come out of that world and I’d have missed it. That she would have won. That I’d never see you again—”

  She takes my hands down and holds them. “I’m not going anywhere, Tristan. Not unless you do something stupid.”

  “I’m trying to have a moment here.”

  She smiles the kind of smile that makes me forget I’m fighting a war.

  “We aren’t ‘moment’ kind of people.”

  I kiss her wet, salty cheeks one at a time and she jerks back. “Don’t kiss my eyes. My dad says it’s bad luck.”

  “Your dad also says I’m bad luck.”

  “No, he says you’re bad news.”

  “But you’re still here.” My insides are moving, like the first time I shifted into my tail. Like I’m not done becoming whoever I’m supposed to be. “We’re only just starting and I’m not ready for it to be done.”

  “Listen to me.” Her hand cups the back of my neck. “I will never be done with you.”

  And then she kisses me again. I hold her tight against me because I’m afraid if I let her go, she’ll be gone for good. I pull her tank top over her head, kissing the dip of her clavicle. Outside the dark is getting darker, but I don’t need light to find her mouth. I realize I’ve never been this close to Layla before. I’ve thought about it, alone in my bed when the possibility of her feeling the same way was not even an option. I’ve been with girls because I was bored. Because I wanted to feel this. Because I didn’t know how different it could be when I totally completely loved the other person.

  She stops for a moment, guiding me with her hands.

  I want to shout it out at the top of my lungs. I’m dizzy and giddy. We kiss while we smile and it’s clumsy, and we laugh and I know I love this girl. I’ve never been more sure of anything in my whole life.

  When I sleep, I see her—the nautilus maid. She’s weak. Her pale pink skin has a cold tinge to it. The white, shimmering stone of the Toliss chamber is her prison. Two bodies lay limp beside her, and even though I can’t look at their faces, I know they’re dead.

  The nautilus maid snaps to attention, like she heard a noise, her eyes darting right at me.

  She says my name.

  •••

  “Tristan!” Someone is shaking me.

  I sit up fast and reach for my dagger. I pat the empty mattress, before I realize my harness is on the windowsill.

  “Get up!” Thalia’s voice becomes familiar again.

  I don’t remember the last time I slept so well. Despite the crick in my neck, that is. Then a knot tightens in my chest. When we fell asleep, Layla was in my arms. Now she’s gone.

  “What’s happened?”

  “There are people,” Thalia says. “On the beach.”

  Layla walks back into the room. She’s changed into her lifeguard two-piece. Her hair is tied back into a long braided rope. A sword draped around her hips. Wait a minute, how long has she been awake?

  I rub off the layer of crud that keeps my eyelids shut. “I thought the city was evacuated.”

  I sling my harness back on and buckle it on my chest.

  “I believe it’s a mermaid,” Thalia says. “She’s calling them out to sea. They’re sleepwalking, entranced by the call.”

  I start to follow them out, but Layla stops me at the door. She smirks. “You may want to cover up first.”

  She turns around and walks down the steps with Thalia, laughing.

  When I look down, I’m naked.

  “Really funny!” I yell after them.

  I close my eyes and wait for the quick burn that comes with raising my scales. My skin is numb where my scales cover my skin, and I resist the urge to scratch everywhere. It’s like my entire body is thirsty for water.

  When I’m decent, I run downstairs. My small army is pooling out onto the street. It takes me a moment to realize what’s wrong. It has nothing to do with the drizzle or the monster rain clouds that cover every inch of blue sky. It has everything to do with the dark circle trying to cover up the sun.

  “It looks like a black and white cookie,” Marty says.

  “Except you can’t eat it,” I counter, taking Layla’s hand in mine.

  The vampires step out of the house slowly, reaching out with their pale hands. They don’t burn and that gives them the courage to walk out. Even though the day is dark and gray, they squint at the hiding sun.

  Frederik is the last one to walk out. Rachel is beside him. He catches my eye, and for the first time since I’ve met him, I see a look of wonder on his face. It’s like even though he doesn’t want to admit it, this is the thing he’s been longing for.

  It only lasts for a few minutes, his face tilting up to the sliver of sun that doesn’t burn him. He holds out his palms, like he’s receiving a blessing. But it’s short lived.

  We all turn to the water where someone screams. It’s worse than I thought.

  Beneath the crashing waves that lap their way up toward the boardwalk, dozens of men tumble out. They walk slowly and stagger, as if their hands are being pulled by invisible strings. One of them walks past me, and his face is both strange and familiar. Then it hits me how long I haven’t been home. How my best friends are almost strangers to me.

  His eyes are dilated and staring, his mouth open. I grab him by his wiry arms. “Bertie!”

  He pulls against me, mumbling and incoherent.

  “Bertie, wake up! ” I shout.

  When did he get so strong? He shoves me off him and joins the horde of men making their way to the beach.

  I recognize them all—the old Dominican man from the bodega and Jimmy from the Wreck.

  “Coach! ” Layla screams. She runs and jumps on his back. He flips her over, and she falls hard on the boardwalk.

  “Don’t let them get in the water,” Frederik yells, “or they’ll drown!”

  But the problem is that they’re possessed. Their own lives don’t matter because they’re not in there.

  Then I swallow hard. “I’m sorry, bro.”

  I pull back and punch Bertie right in the face. His head slacks and he crumples to the ground. I hold two fingers in front of his nostrils. His breathing is fine, so I leave him and run out on the beach where the Alliance is trying to hold back the humans.

  Layla is screaming, holding back someone’s hand. Tears run down her face. I’ve never seen her so scared, not even when she had a knife at her throat. I run to her and help her hold her father back.

  “Don’t hurt him, Tristan. Please don’t hurt him,” she cries. But I know that it’s the only way to stop him from drowning.

  “Turn around,” I say, even though I know that she won’t. I look into Mr. Santos’s hazel eyes that have the same fierceness as his daughter’s. His hair is whiter than I remember, but the mustache is still black. He calls out for Layla, tells her he’s coming to find her. Before I can do anything, he takes a swing at me. It takes me by surprise, and he grazes my ear with the ring on his left hand. Then he keeps walking onto the beach, calling for his daughter.

  “Dad! ” Layla yells. “I’m here. I’m here.”

  We jump on him. He flips over, hands flailing in the air, sand going into his mouth. His eyes are glazed over, bewitched.

  All around me, the men of the city trek onto the sand because the Alliance can’t reach them in time, and they walk straight into the water where their screams get muffled beneath the waves.

  And then the wind shifts. A second voice—strong but soothing. It’s the voice that takes me back to being a kid. The utterly impossible memory of being a baby and swimming with a fishtail.


  Mr. Santos stops struggling. His arms fall to his sides and he doesn’t move.

  “Dad!” Layla grabs him by his shirt and shakes him. When she makes a whimpering sound, it crushes me. “Wake up.”

  I want to console her, but another familiar man is headed our way.

  “Dad?” I say.

  He walks toward me, eyes totally dazed. He falls to his knees and then on his face. I leave Layla and her dad and run to him.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I yell, turning him over and brushing the sand off his face. His glasses are broken and I toss them to the side. How can I be surprised? I should’ve known that they’d never leave, not knowing that I was right here.

  When I look up, my mother is standing on the boardwalk. Her red mane is a beacon. She holds out her arms and the wind picks up around her, listening to her voice as she calls the men back to dry land.

  All of the men that fell to the ground get back up again, the bewitched glossiness returning to their eyes. Only this time, they listen to my mother’s voice, powerful and true, as if it’s telling them their wishes have already been fulfilled, that it’s okay to go home.

  Layla starts to follow her dad, but the first voice, the one full of anger and longing, picks up again.

  “She’s too powerful.” Thalia is at my side again. “I don’t think Lady Maia can hold them back much longer.”

  My mother hasn’t been a mermaid for a long time, and I can see her struggling to sing, to bring the men back to safety. She’s like the sun trying to shine when the moon is pushing for darkness, like the sky right above us.

  “Who?” But I don’t even have to ask. Out in the gray sea is a swirl of water. She holds her arms out and lifts her face to the eclipse.

  Gwenivere sings.

  Her voice is mingled into the wind that rushes in and out of the shore like a riptide, like the hands of the sea desperately grabbing the men. I felt those hands the first time the wave crashed over Coney Island and I got carried out to sea.

  Too many of the men are waist deep in water. The waves swallow them, and when they’re washed out far enough, the waiting clawed hands of Nieve’s merrows snatch them up and take them back home.

  I dive into the waves, flicking my tail as fast as I can until I reach Gwen. She doesn’t see me coming at first. Then she loses concentration and her song stops. She teeters on the spiral of water that serves as her tower. I knock her off it and she splashes down. I grab her around the waist and hold her arms down.

  “Stop it!” I say. “I know you don’t want to do this. I know you’re tired of this.”

  She splashes hard, but I hold on tighter. She screams and the beautiful song she was singing before is a terrible shriek.

  “How can you know what I want?”

  “Because I saw your face, Gwen. I saw your face when Archer wanted to hurt Layla. You saved her. I know you did.” I brush her white-blond hair out of her eyes. She stops struggling against me.

  “You can help me stop her,” I say. “If you don’t, all of the lives she takes will be on your hands.”

  She grits her teeth and screams once again. We float out in the water, and I wait for her to make the right choice.

  “If I do, my brother and sisters—their lives will be on my hands as well.”

  “Gwen, please,” I say, holding her by her shoulders.

  She looks back to where yellow eyes lie waiting behind us. There are a few more splashes, and I know if I turn around, I’ll see more men drowning.

  I keep thinking that if I try hard enough, I’ll get her to be the same girl who sailed alongside me, fought alongside me. I have to remind myself that girl never existed. That Gwen was playing me, and I fell right into her stormy gray eyes. I see her make up her mind, a shark ready to strike. She places her hands on my chest and snarls, “You smell like her.”

  I can feel my heart stop and start as a shock of current hits my chest. From Gwen. I shake as she leaves me in the water. I gasp for air. Try to swim back to the shore, but my muscles are as strong as loose rubber bands.

  I push against the weakness and start to swim after her, but someone catches my attention on the shore. Layla’s on the sand again, Thalia holding her back from getting into the surf. She’s chasing after a guy our age.

  Oh fuck.

  I put my energy into swimming with the waves toward the shore. The waves take me in, crashing over his head. Angelo, in his stained white underwear.

  I loop my arms around his chest and drag him out. He takes a swing at me, but the next wave flips us both over. “Hey, man. It’s me. Wake up, wake up.”

  I grab on to him and he makes it difficult by flailing around. When I get him on land, I smack him across the face. “Remember when we took the Triborough championship last year? How we competed over girls but never let it get in our way? How you beat up a kid from our rival high school for pissing in the pool while I was swimming?”

  Something happens to him. Without Gwen, my mom’s song is stronger. His eyes are bright again, like he’s coming out of a long sleep. “Tristan?”

  “Come on.” I pull him toward shore. “We have to get out of the water!”

  He hangs on to me, trying to take stock of what’s happening around him. But all he can say is, “Bro, you have a fucking tail!”

  I want to laugh, but I can taste blood in the water. When we’re near the shore, I let my fins dissolve and go back into a half-shift.

  “You’re sleepwalking.”

  Layla runs to him and grabs him in a tight hug. “Oh, thank God.”

  “What’s happening?” Angelo yells.

  “Shark attacks,” Layla and I say at the same time.

  “Are you on duty? I thought the beach was evacuated. Where are my clothes?” He goes on with questions we don’t answer until we get to the boardwalk.

  The Alliance and the landlocked are making sure the human men make their way up onto the boardwalk and head home.

  “Tristan,” Angelo says. He grabs my wrist. His brown eyes are wide, and fat beads of water cling to his eyelashes. “I’m not stupid. You’re strapped on like fucking Clash of the Titans minus that fly Pegasus. Don’t lie to me. I know what I saw. I could hear a voice calling out to me, and all I wanted to do was jump into the water. It was that girl—that Gwen girl. I know she’s not your cousin. Those things that got Ryan. Don’t lie to me. What the fuck’s going on?”

  “More than I could tell you and not sound crazy,” I tell him.

  Because I don’t deny him, he relaxes. I can see him fill in the blanks for himself. Then he reaches for the dagger on my chest all, “Cool, can I play with it?”

  I smack his hand away. “No!”

  “Fine,” he says. “I’ll get my own.”

  “Look, something bad is going down tonight. Whatever you do, don’t go in the water.”

  He looks from me to Layla, to the mix of people on the boardwalk. “I want to help.”

  “You can help me by making sure people don’t go into sea. Not tonight. Tell your brother—he’s a cop. Tell him that you heard about some crazy-ass party that’s going down in the middle of the hurricane. Whatever you do, you can’t mention me.”

  “Hurricane party. Block off beach access. Don’t tell him about your sparkly tail. I’m on it.” He holds out his hand and I take it. Shake, pound, slap, slap—our Thorne Hill Knights handshake.

  I turn to Layla. “Where are our dads?”

  “Dazed and sleeping. Your mom and I put them in the backseat of her car.”

  I grab her face and kiss her mouth, then her forehead. I remember that was the last thing I did the last time, when the wave was coming in and I ran right in. Now I’m doing it again.

  “I’m going to help the others,” she says and pulls herself from me.

  “I’ll be right there.” I hold on to her, right down to
the tips of our fingers, and then she’s gone. I can see my mom standing at the boardwalk. I fight every impulse to run to her, to go home and let Kurt have at it. A scream is caught in my chest and I push it back down because I have to be strong for her. She’s singing one last song, a melody that I know as well as the lines of my face. A sailor getting lost at sea and finding a beautiful castle with riches and a love that is magical and impossible but true, but in the end he comes home.

  This is not her world anymore. It’s mine.

  “Tristan,” Frederik says from behind me. “A word?”

  I turn to where he stands. “It was Gwenivere. She was calling out to them.”

  “I saw. Where is she now?”

  “Gone.” I press my hand over my chest where my skin is red from her handprint. My scabs are bleeding. “I thought she was going to burst my heart out of my chest.”

  Frederik shakes his head. “She wouldn’t.”

  “I was sure she would come back with me, but I was wrong.”

  “We lost at least a dozen humans,” Frederik says, walking back up the beach to regroup with the others. “Thanks to your mother, we can usher the rest back inland Come on.”

  When he turns around and I don’t follow, he knows what I’m about to do. The sun and moon are stuck, splitting each other in half. As if she’s reading my mind, Amada is at the shoreline waiting for me.

  “This wasn’t the plan,” he says. I might be crazy, but I think he sounds concerned. “You said—”

  “I have to go now,” I tell him.

  He nods once. “When I first met you, I didn’t think I’d be here side by side in your fight. I couldn’t wait to get your kind off the shore.”

  I grin. “Did my charming ways make you change your mind?”

  He pulls his hands in his pockets. “Who says I changed my mind?”

  But he holds his arm out for me to take, all the same.

  “What should I tell the others?”

  “That nothing else has changed.” I take his hand. “And remember, wait for my signal.”

  Amada breathes in deeply. The air is thick with salt. In this gray noon, I’d never guess it’s summer.