by Sarah Porter
Part of me wants to swim as fast as I can to Rowan, but I can’t. I need to decide what to say before I face any of them. The truth hits me as if all my blood had frozen at once: if I get this wrong, if I make a mistake, I’ll have another “accident” in no time. There’s no good solution that I can see, but maybe I can at least buy myself some time if I do the opposite of whatever Gabriel is expecting. I can’t count on Soraya being there to save me again.
Soraya. I hope she believed what I told her about Rowan. I would never want to hurt her. Never.
We’re family.
Chapter Twenty-Two
WHEN I REACH the shore, Rowan is still there, sprawled face-down with his T-shirt soaked and sticking to his fur, and his wide, fur-topped feet bare on the sand. He must have lost his shoes when he was swimming. I have a flash of fear for him—why hasn’t he run back to the hotel?—but his warmth is still bright, and his back is heaving. I shuffle over to him on my knees, my drowned clothes streaming water with each soggy movement, and reach to touch his shoulder. He’s shaking; he’s drenched, and a cool, harsh wind blares from the sea, but I didn’t think he could get cold this easily.
“Rowan?”
He startles, and slowly turns a tear-streaked face to me. “Ada!” I see him taking in my dripping, saliva-slimed hair, my torn shirt. I sit beside him with my arms wrapped tight around my chest. I don’t think she did it on purpose, but Soraya’s suckers shredded my clothes in places. “How—getting through that underwater passage—the fence—are you—”
I’m not sure what he’s getting at. “My sister saved me. She brought me back here. And I think you know her.”
Rowan spasms again, then laboriously heaves himself up to sit cross-legged on the sand. His eyes are red, and he reaches self-consciously to smear his tears away.
“You met Soraya.” He sighs. “She’s been asking to meet you. I told her it was a terrible idea, but I thought she might not listen to me. The second I saw your face, I knew this was going to be a big problem.”
“Asking to meet me?” I say. Does she have some way of talking that I don’t know about?
Rowan’s shaking his head. His eyes look glazed, disoriented. “She saved you, though? Soraya? What—” He’s twisting himself harder now, like he can clear his mind by force. “Oh, no. Oh, Ada. You went back underground, and when you couldn’t find me you started searching the tunnel? And—you, even you didn’t see that gap in the floor somehow, and you fell into the water?”
“That’s what Gabriel is going to tell everyone,” I say. “He’s probably telling them that story right now.”
Rowan’s eyes go wide as he takes this in. “Ada!”
“And I’m going to go along with it. I’m going to repeat whatever Gabe says. I won’t tell anybody else the truth except you, Rowan. I just need someone to know, in case he tries it again.”
“He wouldn’t, though! He knows Ms. Stuart thinks—”
“Gabe thinks she’s wrong. He thinks I’m useless. And he thought maybe Soraya stole you, so he wanted to trade me to get you back. He threatened to throw me to her if I wouldn’t tell him whatever it is that you’re all so sure I know.” I’m kind of shocked by how cold my voice sounds. Relentless. “He was convinced that Soraya would murder me for him. He was being stupid. That’s not what she’s like. She grabbed me just the way he wanted, but she did it to save me from him.”
“Of course she wouldn’t actually murder you! Okay, so the first time she saw you she said some pretty upsetting things, and I guess I did tell Gabe about that, but still. She was basically in shock. How could Gabe possibly—” And then he gets it. His cheeks flush crimson. “Hey, Soraya’s kind of my sister, too. We’ve been close since we were both babies. We grew up together.”
“I’m not sure she sees it like that.”
Rowan doesn’t answer out loud, but I can read the look he fires at me: You don’t need to give me an excuse, Ada. I know you’ll never like me that way.
It seems like a good time to change the subject. “So how did you get here, Rowan? Why didn’t you wait for us? I get that swimming out of there is no problem for you, but that’s no reason to scare everybody!”
He gets a strange look on his face. The sun is totally under now, but a film of moonlight covers the two of us and glints gray on the sand. It’s a gibbous moon, fat and sleepy, balanced on the horizon.
“Would you believe me if I told you that I can’t remember? That I had a blackout and found myself here with my memory totally wiped—everything from the moment you left me?” Rowan asks.
I think about it. It sounds a lot like what happened to me after I saw the blue mouthing, They want power. The truth is we have no idea what it’s capable of doing. And what was it Gabriel said—they think I can make it help them with their project? Is that what Ophelia was so worried about? That maybe if I refused, Ms. Stuart would try to force me somehow?
“I believe you,” I tell him. “It’s no crazier than anything else that’s been happening.”
“Good,” Rowan says decidedly. He flashes me an awful smile, slow and contorted. “Because that’s what I’m going to tell everyone. Except for you. We’re going to walk back up there and lie our faces off together.”
I stare at him. “So what actually happened?”
Rowan locks his gaze on mine. “Do you really not know? Really, Ada?”
The blue. Did he see it somehow?
“I went and sat back by the pool, and it got darker and darker. And then—I felt something take hold of my hand. It was, I don’t know, not as solid as a human hand. It had kind of a sizzling feeling, like there was a lot going on inside it. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew, I knew for sure, that it was the thing Ms. Stuart has been searching for. The thing you’ve been keeping secret.” His smile looks a lot sadder now. “I’m not mad. I mean, I didn’t tell you about Soraya. I still wouldn’t want you to know about her, honestly, if it was up to me to decide. Did you see that thing in the cave when we were both there?”
I can’t answer that. Can I answer that? “I saw it. It was curled up around those kimes in the pool. Like it was cuddling them.”
“The same blue thing you started telling Gabe and Ophelia about. After those creeps knocked you out.”
He’s not lilting it like a question. He’s announcing it like he’s known all along.
“Yes.” My heart speeds into a twitchy, unsure beat. I’m probably making a huge mistake by admitting this to anyone.
“So why didn’t you tell Ms. Stuart the truth?”
“The blue didn’t want me to.”
I expect Rowan to argue, but he nods. “I kind of got that message, too. I don’t know how, though. Or why. But it felt like everything it was showing me was just for me, and it wanted me to keep my mouth shut. Anyway, it took me by the hand, and I felt like I had to trust it. I felt like it was someone I’d missed for a long time without knowing it, if that makes sense. So I let it lead me away, even though it was so dark that I was completely blind. And the really crazy thing? When I put out my other hand, I touched water. Water was floating ahead of me in this wobbly cloud. I could stick my fingers right in, and it was full of swimming animals. Those tadpole kimes, Ada.”
I’m the one nodding now. “The tadpoles were gone when Gabe and I went down there.”
“Yeah. I have no idea where they are now. I bet your blue thing knew more people were coming and it wanted to move them somewhere safer.”
There’s a pause while I think about that. There’s something in what Rowan is saying that makes me feel like I’d rather not talk about this anymore. “Why would it care about protecting them? Rowan, look, everybody’s scared out of their minds about you. We should go up.”
“We have to figure this out first. I mean, don’t you have any ideas about what that blue thing is? We know it’s intelligent, and we know it went out of its way to protect those tadpole kimes. It seems like it cares about us, too. So, think: something that�
�s at least as smart as we are, and that worries about different species—what does that sound like to you?”
I think of the blue turning itself into a rolling mass of animal parts, all mixed up together. It was trying to communicate something by doing that.
Voices float down from the top of the hill. I look up, and there’s a cluster of bodies up there. They’re just starting to make their way down the slope. I guess Rowan is right: whatever we have to tell each other, we’d better say now. I still don’t like it, though—and I’m not quite ready to tell him about the blue shape-shifting in the woods, even though I’m pretty sure that’s something he’d be excited to learn.
“But, Rowan, if the blue led you away on purpose, where was it taking you?”
His lips pinch a little; he’s probably annoyed that I asked a new question instead of answering his.
“It wanted to show me something.” That sounds familiar. “There are caves leading off from that underwater tunnel, Ada. It tugged on me until I jumped down into the crack in the floor, just trusting it that there was water down there, and that I’d find a way out, because I still couldn’t see anything. It took me on—I guess you’d call it a tour. I’m probably the only one of us who could’ve stayed under long enough for it to do that.”
It doesn’t make any sense, but panic rushes through me the way it did in the woods that time—right before I turned and ran frantically from the blue as it gibbered its silent words at me. Ada, darling. They want power.
“How could you see anything? If it was pitch-dark—”
“The caves weren’t dark, is the thing. Just the passage. The caves were blazing, and it was all so insanely beautiful. Some kind of bioluminescence was everywhere, all over the walls. Green and blue and white stars living on the rocks. And the whole time I was thinking how I could never show it to you—that you would drown—but that you’d see it in ways nobody else ever could. That wasn’t all that was in there, either. Not—not even close. Ada, listen, I think I know what the blue thing is trying to tell us.”
I open my mouth to ask the question he’s expecting: what? But the truth is that I don’t want to know. Not right now, anyway. I’m beyond exhausted, and all at once the cold wind sucking on my drenched clothes is getting to me. I feel shaky and feverish.
But then I’m saved from asking him anything, because some of the kids heading down the hill catch sight of us and start hollering. “Is that Rowan? Rowan! Rowan! And who’s with him? It looks like—but Gabe said—how could she have gotten here? Rowan! Ada! Is that you?”
Rowan shoots me a rueful look and stands up. “It’s us! We’re right here!”
“But Gabe said Ada fell into a chasm! He said she vanished!”
“She did. Soraya rescued her.” I wish Rowan hadn’t told them that part, but realistically there’s no other explanation that would work. “She’s kind of stunned, but she’s fine.”
“Ada!” Ophelia screams. “I was so, so, so upset! I couldn’t believe you were gone!” There’s a stampede of running feet on the slope above us, and then Ophelia launches herself off the ragged shelf where the grass drops sharply to the sand. Her wings thrum into an opal blur, and she sails twenty yards through the air, her body lifting in a long arc across the night, and lands on me in a squealing tangle. “Oh, gross. What’s that all over your hair?”
And then we’re both half laughing and half crying, and I’m shocked by how relieved I feel to be back with her—and by how relieved I am that she cares.
Besides, what she did just now? That looked to me like more than just hovering. It wasn’t all that far, maybe, but it was a lot farther and higher than I’ve ever seen her go before.
Ophelia almost flew.
Chapter Twenty-Three
ONE OF the smaller kids there happens to have deer legs, and she drops to all fours and goes sprinting up the hill so fast I see her as a red blur weaving through the brambles. She’s off to tell everybody that Rowan and I are safe, and that means I’ll have to face Gabriel soon, but I barely bother to watch her run. Ophelia’s still hugging me, and little Indigo is clinging to my right leg and crying, saying, “You couldn’t be dead, you couldn’t be, you couldn’t, I won’t ever let you die!” over and over again. I reach down to stroke her dusk blue cheeks, which don’t sting.
Maybe a dozen kids are crowded around me and Rowan, and I stare out at the moon-speckled sea and let him do the talking. I don’t like to think of Soraya out there by herself; wouldn’t she rather be with all of us?
“It’s really crazy,” Rowan is saying. “I sat down in that cave to wait for Ada and Ms. Stuart to come back and rescue me, and—I guess I felt a little lightheaded, but I really thought I was fine. Anyway I must have fainted, and when I came to I was at the edge of the water, right over there, feeling the sand suck out from under my hands. I have absolutely no idea how it happened. I was still catching my breath when Ada came crawling out of the sea and splatted down right beside me. I mean, there’s obviously a tunnel through to the ocean in there, because that’s how Soraya was able to save Ada. I must have gone through it, too.”
Everyone’s nodding. So they all knew about Soraya, but nobody told me. But do they know the really important thing?
“I couldn’t believe how much she looks like me,” I say, to check how everyone reacts.
“She does?” Ophelia sounds genuinely surprised, at least. She leans her head on my shoulder. “How could she look like you, though? Though I guess none of us but Rowan have ever seen her up close. She doesn’t usually come—anywhere too near the fence—except to visit him. She’s kind of a mysterious loner type. Soraya, lost princess of the whispering waves. Like that.”
If Ophelia is telling the truth, then that explains why Rowan was the only one who really jumped when he first saw me.
But did Rowan truly keep that a secret even from Gabriel—that Soraya and I are obviously some kind of sisters? Maybe it makes a little more sense now that Gabe had such stupid ideas about her. He doesn’t know her at all, and he just assumed she must be as cruel as he is.
“I mean, Soraya looks more like Ada than you’d expect, considering she’s mostly squid.” Rowan’s voice is lazy, but he flashes me a warning look over Ophelia’s head. “I guess their eyes are similar. The same color, anyway.”
“How did you get back over the fence?” someone asks.
“Soraya threw me over the top. I hit the water pretty hard. Maybe she threw Rowan, too, while he was unconscious? And I was facing the wrong way to see it?”
Rowan’s aware that I know about the hole in the fence, but nobody else has to realize that. He beams at me, to let me know I said the right thing.
They’re coming. A long trail of bodies like hazy red torches dots the hillside. I imagine how Gabriel must be practicing the words in his mind as he walks toward us: Ada’s crazy, she’s lying, she’s not one of us . . . He can almost count on everyone believing his word over mine, but from the way Ophelia’s been hugging me and Rowan is gazing at me, not quite.
Rowan believes me. That’s really sinking in now. He didn’t like what I was telling him, but he took it to heart anyway.
“So if Soraya caught you,” Indigo asks out of nowhere, “why didn’t she just put you back with Gabriel?”
Like most little kids, she’s always listening even when you think she’s spacing out. “Who knows, Indigo? She doesn’t talk. At least, not in a way I can understand. Rowan, can you tell what she’s saying?”
He hesitates. “Soraya and I have our own language. We invented it together when we were small.” Then Rowan seems to make up his mind about something. “I wasn’t sure if we could trust you, Ada. Soraya’s incredibly sensitive, and I was afraid of how hurt she’d be if you didn’t react well when you saw her. And—you know, it would be way too dangerous for her if the normals ever found out she exists. But I’m actually relieved that you know all our secrets now, because it proves you’re really part of the fam
ily.” He says it a little too loudly, too decisively: it’s not for me, it’s for everyone listening.
All your secrets? Really, Rowan? I think.
But instead I say, “So can Marley know, too? I can see why you might be worried that Soraya would freak her out, but it seems weird not to tell her. Does she count as part of the family yet?”
I don’t actually care that much about the answer. I’m mostly talking to cover the drumming of my heart as Gabe gets closer to the beach. But everyone except Rowan shoots nervous looks at one another.
“What?” I say. “Nothing happened to Marley, did it?”
“We weren’t going to bring it up yet, Ada. Because you and Rowan went through a lot already today, and we thought . . . you don’t need any more crazy news just now. Right?” Ophelia says. She pulls back and gives me a strange smile, like she’s afraid I’ll get mad.
Rowan stares. “Ophelia, tell us right now what’s going on with Marley! Is she okay?”
“Um, she’s okay. Don’t worry. At least, she’s not feeling too good right now. We’ve been trying to calm her down. But she will be okay. You know, in a while.”
I scramble to my feet, ready to run up the hill. I can deal with Gabriel later. “Where is she?”
“Ada, it’s really all right. Don’t go, okay? She’s in her room, and you can . . . At least, I think you’ll be able to talk to her tomorrow. It’s just that she’s, um, she’s building a chrysalis.”
“What!”
“She’s physically okay, really. Or she will be. But she’s going through some heavy emotional drama because she wasn’t expecting anything like this. Mr. Chu says it’s not compatible with her self-image. Her instincts just took over, and she couldn’t stop herself.”
“A chrysalis?”
“So she’s going to be a way bigger part of the family than she ever wanted to be,” Rowan murmurs. If someone else had said that it might have seemed like gloating, but he sounds genuinely sad for her. “Poor Marley. She must be in complete shock.”
