Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  “Not—boat—away!” Rubem’s usually fluid hands move with sloppy slurring motions.

  The other human shakes their head, the gold clams in their beard bouncing. “—too much wine. Let us do it.”

  Rubem fumbles around with his hands but manages to make something that looks like, “I want all of them alive—all of them!”

  “I’ll rein the crew in,” his companion replies.

  A heavy vibration echoes through the wood from the front of the house, tingling along my head ridges. I whip around. Thais, Xera, and Fern still sleep peacefully in the cushion pile, the hallway beyond them dark. I feel nothing more. Leaning back out the window. I catch the end of Rubem’s signing,

  “—after the fishers—”

  “None of us would turn on you, sir,” the bearded human assures him.

  “You turned on your last leader, didn’t you?” He wobbles in place, as if the root shifts under him, though his companion seems sturdy.

  Another vibration hits me from the front of the house, this one stronger and nearer, but I still see nothing when I glance over my shoulder. I miss whatever the human replied with, but Rubem shakes his head in response, motioning them away. As they leave, he turns toward my window. His chin lifts.

  I yank back from the sill. My heart thumps like a creature bent on escape. I burst to wake the others, but before I can, the vibrations return, clattering down the hall. Two boat humans appear in the archway, pistols already drawn.

  My muscles set themselves alight. I spring at the cartel thugs, half sliding over Fern and Xera in the process. Wrapping my tail around both humans’ legs, I yank them together. They topple into each other. One of their guns goes off, tearing a clunk of wood from the floor.

  I grab hold of the other weapon and pull the trigger directly into the opposite human’s chest. A burst of blood pours out their back, just another shade of red in the maroon-tinged light. The stew of liquid and flesh reminds me far too much of Thais’s stomach contents, though. I put both pistols down instead of bothering with them again, swimming my tail around the living human’s neck and tightening. The human goes limp.

  I catch Thais looking at me, Fern and Xera waking behind her. She stares, and her hands form my name. Too sharp.

  “They shot at us,” I snap, “I have every right to kill them.”

  As I untangle myself from the bodies, Rubem’s wine-reeking scent floods the room. A fishnetted hand clutches a grappling hook embedded in the windowsill, and he pulls himself inside, a lantern swinging dangerously from one elbow. He stumbles. His chest vibrates and his lips twist. An odd gust of emotions tickles my nose, a heat like the sun, not anger and not joy and not determination, but somewhere in between, a dramatic drunken mix of life, swirling around something dark and dead, like a sweet flower masking a sickly rot.

  “I was very, very much put out by your running away,” Rubem signs, sluggish and then too fast.

  I stare at him. “Are you drunk?”

  “I am high tipsy, I’ll have you know,” Rubem counters. “I’m here to capture a pair of teenagers who’ve done nothing to deserve it, I’m allowed to dull the experience.” He ends the sentence with a sloppy middle finger. It’s almost funny.

  “You’re here to be annihilated by a couple teenagers, you mean?”

  Coming here compromised shows a level of bravery I hadn’t expected from Rubem. It’s convenient that bravery is just another word for stupidity. This shouldn’t be too hard, fishnets or not.

  I rub my thumb over my ignit and dash for the intoxicated cartel leader. Behind me, the hallway vibrates once more. A third human sprints into the room. The ring of their pistol trembles the air. I duck, and I swear I feel the bullet graze the very edge of my scales. My head cracks from the vibration, my world spinning into too many pieces, but I can still make out the projectile when it smashes through Rubem’s lantern. The glass gleams, its fire a falling snake of spark and light. It hits the ground.

  The flames fade. Then they burst, dancing along the wooden floor with terrible ferocity.

  Rubem seems not to notice. He marches toward the human with the pistol, the top of the broken lantern still clamped to his arm. “Alive, dammit!”

  He slips around the bench and desk like he’s made of nothing but mist, drawing a thick rod from his coat as he walks. A short rope spirals off it. He tugs away a metal-lined cloth at its end, revealing an active purple ignit—a paralyzing variety, harmless in the air, but a single touch can make whole patches of a boiuna’s flesh go numb and stun a human from head to toe for near a minute.

  “We are not fishers.” His signs twirl the ignit disastrously near his own face, but somehow, it never hits, his chin tipping out of its range so precisely that it seems beyond what even a sober human should be capable of.

  It hits me like a blast of seawater: I underestimated him. Rubem possesses the sort of ingrained skill that clings to him even with the alcohol. A chill races across my aching skull when I realize how close his plan had been to succeeding—how fucked we would all be if I hadn’t woken when I did. And how fucked we still are.

  I tense, trying to shut up the pounding that bullet left in my skull so I can attack him before he reaches Thais. But Rubem ignores her and Fern. Instead, he swings the ignit end of his weapon at the other cartel member. It smacks them in the head. They collapse.

  Complete stillness reigns for half a moment as everyone stares at the limp human who is unconscious but still breathing. My confusion overrides my better instincts. Rubem paralyzed his own fighter. Paralyzed. His own fighter.

  Xera recovers first. They rush at Rubem with a small blade. Both of them are silent cautious predators, but Rubem, despite his intoxication, is older and more experienced. He moves just as fast and twice as quietly. His ignit flies straight for Xera at a speed too fast for their knife to compete with.

  Thais leaps at the weapon, sluggish and bungling in comparison, yet she stretches out her arm just in time to grab the paralyzing stone before it can hit Xera in the chest. Her clumsy body crashes to the floor, pulling Rubem’s weapon with it. Her eyes flutter closed, and the ignit slides from her grip.

  A spasm wracks her. The fire spreading along the floorboards lights the spit gurgling out of her mouth as she heaves, half-conscious. My chest tangles itself into knots. Into fishnets.

  Whether the sudden wave of sickness is brought on by Rubem’s ignit or just a bad twist of fate, I don’t know. I don’t care. Either way, I have to get her to safety. My gaze slips from the fire now licking at the far wall and catches Fern. I sign for her to take Thais and go.

  Baring my teeth, I launch myself at Rubem.

  I hit his waist, yanking him to the ground. He struggles. Every movement is bizarre—perfect and yet entirely wrong—as though Rubem knows what I’m about to do and has the skill and control to react, but forgets his own intentions halfway through that reaction. I wrap my tail up his legs and over his waist. Before I can reach his neck, the fire hits the ceiling with a crackle. Sparks rain down. I jerk away from them, rolling us both toward the windows.

  Fern rushes through the space I just occupied, Thais in her arms, and slides into the hallway. In her wake, the human Rubem knocked out earlier stands with heavy shaking steps, still holding their pistol. They ignore the fire raging along the room to one side of them and aim for Fern’s back.

  Like the mists of their namesake, Xera appears from nowhere. Flame lights them from behind as they plunge their little knife into the back of the human’s skull. Blood washes over their hands. The body falls. Xera flicks their fingers twice, forming the phrase for not here, a death proclamation which leaves no blessing or curse, because the dead is not of the Murk and therefore those of the Murk are not the ones responsible for acknowledging it. It’s more honor than I’ve ever given the boat humans I’ve killed.

  Rubem reclaims my attention, gripping his weapon again. Its ignit flies toward me, forming a lovely purple streak over a background of orange flame. My fascination fades
when it hits my side. A wave of energy tingles through my muscles, making them too tight, then too loose. Rubem fumbles beneath my tail loops, shoving my body off. I reach for him, but he’s too far away and my arms are still too heavy. Smoke fills my lungs. I hold my breath.

  A tremor from the ceiling hits me. One of the great wooden beams that holds up the palm-laced roof creaks where the fire consumes one end. Then it falls. It crashes onto me, pinning my chest and stealing my air. An excess of pain shoots up my ribs and down my spine. It tosses back and forth within me.

  I writhe through the agony, pushing it aside enough to steel myself and swing my tail around the beam. I heave with all my might. It rolls off my upper chest, down to my waist, but from where the room meets the mangrove’s trunk, another three giant planks of the roof collapse, dropping on the end of mine and immobilizing it. Trapping it here. Trapping me beneath.

  I twist and squirm, but the wood sinks into one of my arms and most of my torso, as if a penajuar lies across my body. The flames lick closer. Nausea grips me, fueled by the rapid rhythm of my heart and the tingle in my bones. Oh muck, oh muck, oh muck.

  Two sets of hands reach around me, one with fishnets and the other with leather bracers. They both try to lift the beam. They both fail. Xera gives me one last look and darts away. My chest hurts more from that than from the wood pinning me down, but I respect their choice. Heroes are idiots. Xera shouldn’t die here with me.

  But Rubem stays. His weapon forgotten on the floor, he shoves at the wood in frustration, as if confused why it won’t move. His fishnets gleam like gashes in his skin, like he’s falling apart, reality falling apart, me falling apart. I can’t reach my ignit to soothe myself, but I can’t look away from him either.

  “You—you and Thais could fix everything.” He pauses to push at the wood again. “If I had that hoard.” His hands slur together, and he coughs. “I could make those damn fishers leave.”

  The fishers you made a deal with are penajuar lunch now, I want to sign. But the searing rush of fire overwhelms that, though. I roll my tail away from it, but it chases me, leaping along the beam to lap at my scales.

  It catches hold of Rubem’s sleeve. He stares as it licks at the baggy brown material, jumping toward the ruby rim of his long vest. His eyes widen. He stumbles, smacking the burning material against his shirt.

  Xera darts in from the hallway, a cloth pressed to the lower half of their face. My surprise makes my head light, or maybe that’s the smoke. They came back. But why?

  They snatch Rubem’s discarded weapon off the ground and toss it toward the trunk of the tree that forms the far wall. The active ignit bounces against the wood. It lands on the chunk of burning ceiling that immobilizes the beam pinning me down. Xera unravels a slingshot and drops a stone into its crook. As it falls, I catch the glimmer of color, flashing like a fissure down its center.

  What a fucking hero.

  Without hesitating, they launch the eruptstone at Rubem’s ignit. Their aim strikes true, and the dark rock clicks off the luminous one. Both explode.

  Light spreads from them, disintegrating all it touches. It ripples out in a perfect sphere from the ignit’s center, consuming the blankets and pillows, the floor, the ceiling, hollowing out half the room and half the mangrove’s trunk. It stops suddenly, the explosion of light vanishing as quickly as it had come. All that remains in the space the light touched is a dull useless stone, which falls out of sight, nothing left to weigh down my beam.

  I heave the wood off and scramble away from the flames. They blaze through the room like it’s a furnace, and we’re the only kindling left. The massive tree creaks, starting from the great hole Xera’s explosive left in the trunk. Slowly, the portion of the tree above the hole tilts. Then it tips, sluggishly splintering through the burning ceiling.

  All my previous pains vanish in a burst of horror. I grab Xera and launch into the hall. Rubem’s feet pound behind us. The floor starts to fall away, chunks of the walls breaking apart as the tree topples. We crash through a room that might have once been a kitchen and out the front door. The house tears off its supports, bowing away from the elevated front path. Pulling Xera into my arms, I spring through the gap, the river stories below us. We tumble across the pathway. It rocks but stays sturdy. Xera bolts from my grip and rushes down the street to Fern and Thais.

  Only then do I notice Rubem. He clutches a plank that hangs out from the broken edge of the path, his shirt sleeve still smoldering. He drags his torso onto the wood, propping himself on his elbows. The crash of the tree toppling behind him drowns out any other vibrations.

  “We want the same thing!” he signs. “We shouldn’t be fighting.”

  I bare my teeth, rearing over him. “Yeah, well, if you haven’t noticed, both of us wanting ignits means we’d have to share.”

  “Ignits? No, not only ignits, but—” The crumbling wood beneath him splits in half, cutting his ramblings short as it spills him into the mist. The splash of his body hitting the water rings through my head. I barely feel him break the surface again because approaching footsteps pound down the pathway to what was once Xera’s house.

  Xera tugs at my arm, then leaps like a monkey for the nearest branch. They swing themselves higher into the canopy. I take Thais from Fern’s arms and follow them. The lighter looser fog of the early morning doesn’t quite cover us, but the approaching Murklings whip past all the same, dragging a water pump and hose toward the orange smear of fire and black billows of smoke.

  Thais struggles out of my grip. “Let go, I’m fine.”

  I lower her to the branch beside me, but I move too slowly for her pride. She rips out of my grasp, her curls snagging on my hand. The hair stays there as she stumbles away, barely keeping her footing. I move to catch her, but she glares at me. Her gaze lowers to the locks in my fingers.

  “You tore it!” Her arms shake, and she takes another step back.

  “Because you wouldn’t be patient,” I snap. But as I loop the hair around my wrist and tie it there, her accusation turns my stomach. I didn’t tear it. It came out. It came out into my hands, already torn. Whatever that means, it can’t be good.

  “Come on,” Xera signs, motioning us higher into the trees.

  “But your house—my pool—our things, our tree,” Fern objects, her hands drifting shakily through the signs.

  Xera grows so still they seem to stop existing for a moment. “Cacao was more important,” they say finally, their hands unusually sure of themselves. They turn away, continuing through the canopy.

  Their words hold me in place like tiny claws. Me. More important. Xera saved me, not because of some heroic nonsense or a stubborn abidance to right and wrong, but because I was more important than their home. The notion clings to the inside of my skull. I don’t know what to make of it yet.

  TWELVE

  The Heart Has a Compass Too

  It’s in the moments between that we find ourselves.

  But finding oneself is like finding a point on a map

  with a million steps separating now and then.

  WE CLIMB SPEECHLESSLY through the canopy, met only by the sudden rushes of startled birds, the gleam of giant monkey eyes, and the occasional scattering of a tree snake from our path. The fog fades to a haze and finally to clean fresh air as the leaves above part for a deep blue sky and distant pink clouds. I coil myself three times around a branch just thick enough to hold my weight. Fern does the same a little to my right. Thais settles in the groove between us, and Xera’s leather shoes peek out from the leaves above. We all seem to heave the same sigh.

  “The fuck was that,” I grumble.

  “My thought exactly,” Fern replies, shoving my branch with her tail so hard it bounces. “You said those boat humans wouldn’t find you with us.”

  “They couldn’t have!”

  Fern bares her teeth. “Yet they did somehow!”

  “Yet they did somehow,” Thais repeats, her motions slow and controlled. “Somehow, Rubem has
to be tracking us.”

  I jerk upright. “That’s it, that’s what he was doing.” When the others only stare at me, I continue, “I saw him, just before the attack, handing off some device with a compass. What other reason would he have had for a compass there, at the base of our tree, if it didn’t point toward us?”

  “How is that possible?” Fern cuts in. “Unless he planted you with something he can track—”

  “The poison.” Thais flips over her palm at the end of her signs, staring at the cut where the green ignit powder first entered.

  I nod. “Could be the poison, yeah. All active ignits send out multiple kinds of waves. Even the trace amounts in Thais’s body can be tracked with the right calibration, especially for a stone as rare as a pure green.”

  Thais gives her hand a little shake. “Well, how do we stop it from being tracked?”

  “We don’t, not unless you have enough wardstone to make yourself a full body shield.” My fingers dance across the little red-brown square of it on my necklace. “The boat humans ship it down from the base of the mountains, but we won’t find more than scant traces anywhere in the Murk. If your mother was smart, she’s probably lined her hoard with it to stop someone like Rubem from tracking any active ignits in her hoard and taking them, but that doesn’t help us unless we can get there.”

  “And we can’t get there if Rubem is constantly on our tail,” Thais concludes.

  In the stillness, the sun’s touch drifts across my back in a threatening caress as the leaves sway above me.

  “Destroy the device,” Xera says finally. “No device, no tracking.”

  “They’re right,” Thais agrees. “As long as Rubem has that device, we’ll never make it to the hoard, and if we did, he’d be on our tail the moment we arrived.”