Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  “Oh.” Guilt tangles in my gut like thorny vines. I stroke my necklace ignit, trying not to think about Thais’s pain or the fisher’s ability to distract me from it so thoroughly, or my own stupid desire for them to have dropped everything to come after me. And they did. They came. For me. “Hey, you did what you could.” I smile at Fern, but I don’t feel the grin beyond the forced tug of my lips.

  She cringes. Though, that may be from Rubem tightening a bandage around her torso. “Yeah, but see, there’s more.” She glances over her shoulder, out into the fog, back the way Rubem and I had just come. Her signs speed up. “We can’t stay here. Thais and Xera and I, we’ve been behind you, but that group of Murklings from the village, they’ve grown larger, and they’ve got three elders with them, one huge enough to take down Rubem’s boat in a single swoop.”

  The world dissolves around me, spinning itself into a deadly point. I shake. “Is it . . .?”

  “It’s her,” Fern confirms. “Brine’s coming for you.”

  SIXTEEN

  The Limit to Goodness

  An idea which seems like a million ignits in one moment

  may twist into an unattainable fog the next.

  Not all that shines is precious stone.

  (Some of it’s actually just sparkly muck.)

  ONLY THE PULSE OF my ignit against my collarbones holds me together, its gentle heartbeat seizing each of my shattered pieces and sealing them back into place bit by bit. I pull air into my lungs and push it out again. Brine is coming. Brine is coming, and we can’t be here when she arrives.

  “Right. Well, Rubem has to continue driving the boats to keep them as far from Brine’s reach as possible. But this rivulet turns for a ways before veering back toward the coast. I’m small enough to swim through the groves, so I can get to the ancient and still catch back up with the boats where the rivulet swoops toward the ocean again.”

  Fern startles. “Get to what now? Why do you—”

  “You’re sure you’ll be all right?” Rubem signs in front of her.

  “No.” I reply with one hand, rubbing my ignit with the other as though it might fix this the same way it fixes the exploding pain in my bones. “But I’m doing it.” I give him and Fern no time to object, slipping neatly back over the boat’s railing.

  Fern follows, confusion wafting off her in waves. As her body plunks into the water, Rubem shouts something up the deck. His boat’s engine reverberates to life, its massive blue ignit sending a tremor through my skull.

  Fern vanishes below the water, sinking out of sight. I nearly follow, but Rubem waves at me.

  “Wait!” he signs. Reaching into his vest, he seems to fish through a couple inner pockets and finally draws forth a handful of ignits, smaller than those I left in his cabin. Knowing I won’t be back on this boat immediately, I have a sudden urge to grab them. But as I hold back, Rubem tosses me a few: a purple, a yellow, and a red. I catch them, plucking them straight into my mouth for safe keeping.

  He opens his vest to put the remaining ignits back, revealing a pocket made of fishnet fabric. A familiar poisonous glow peeks through it, larger than the other stones and far more deadly.

  A green ignit.

  “Come back in one piece,” Rubem signs, but his words hurdle through my head in a blur.

  I want to reach for him, for his green ignit, for Thais’s life, but a thought stops me: If I get this ignit now, if I hand it over and it cures Thais, then this ends, all of it. No hoard, no journey. No more us. We both immediately go back to our old fucking poisons, the slow ones eating us up over the course of a lifetime. Alone. Her off in the world without me.

  Rubem’s boat bursts into motion, carrying him and his green ignit away, carrying my choice with it. My chest tightens, sparks like lightning tingling their way down my limbs, taunting me to throw off this paralysis. Fern shoves into me, reaching past, but her fingers barely brush the hull before the boat pulls out of her reach, vibrating off into the gloom.

  “You—he—he had one,” her hands sputter. “Cacao! He had a poison ignit, I saw it.”

  “I know.” What else do I say? “I panicked.” Such a harmless truth, so many meanings, so many lies. If Fern knew, she’d probably appreciate it.

  But in her current state of horrified bewilderment, she only continues to point. “We have to follow him. We have to take it from him!”

  “There’s no time.” I shake my head, even as my heart throws fits of guilt, yanking me all directions at once. “We have an ancient to steal.”

  We have an ancient to steal. I repeat it to myself, sinking into the water. I already shoved Thais to the side for this long. I set myself on this path. I have to carry it out.

  Not bothering to look back at Fern’s floating form, I head for the ancient. Away from my aching heart. Ignoring it is both way too hard and far too easy.

  I pause in the shadows of the mangrove’s arching roots and retrieve the ignits from my mouth to hold them out like little lanterns. There’s no law that the ancients must be guarded by some kind of dangerous beast. It just happens that way, like the creatures are drawn to the presence of the being within.

  I can’t decide whether attempting this at night is madness or brilliance. Drunkenness, maybe. But beneath the slight buzz of the alcohol I took from Rubem, a high of terror and determination courses through me, complete with the anxious intoxication that comes from having one glorious terrible option that might fall apart at a moment’s notice.

  A glimmer of blue scales shifts between the mangrove’s roots. The gentle pulse of the ignits growing in the tree’s center calls me like a siren song, a tiny heartbeat that makes my body move to its rhythm. Using the vibrations as a beacon, I slip through the nearest root tunnel.

  Another glimpse of blue gleams in my ignit’s rainbow light. I feel the creature’s movement along my ridges, starting with the beating of its massive gills three tunnels to my right and twitching down its long body, a body that keeps going, and going, and going. Panic swells in me.

  I shoot through the roots, careening the opposite direction of its head, but the sudden motion draws its attention. It slithers through the tunnels behind me. The roots split, new passageways leading off constantly, before winding back together, veering up, then down, then up again. I dive through them, narrowly avoiding the creature’s winding tail, trying not to thrash too much, not to draw its attention any more than I already have.

  This is where Rubem’s Sheila would have come in real handy.

  My heart beats like a drum, but even it can’t block out the shuddering vibrations of the beast moving around me. It seems everywhere at once, eternally coming closer and closer.

  At a brush against my tail, panic constricts bubbles from my mouth. I shove my extra ignits into my mouth and twist, coiling myself around the creature. I’m met with a body far smaller and leaner than the monster’s. Strong arms grab me. I give Fern’s shoulders a shove. She lets go.

  “What—” I start, but the beast’s head appears behind us, eyes sightless and a hundred needle-thin teeth bared. I shove Fern forward and burst after her. As we flee, I sign a simple question, making the grabbing motion of caught, aimed from her and yanking back toward the boat: “You caught Rubem?”

  She shakes her head, replying with you—here—be eaten.

  I motion with exasperation to the monster now chasing both of us.

  With a roll of her eyes, Fern grabs me, shoving me through a bundle of roots and into a higher tunnel. She wiggles in afterward. The beast knocks its head against our entrance, but the roots hold. It pulls back. Probably seeking out a new route to its favorite meal of idiot boiuna.

  “Are you really taking an ancient? That’s fucked up.” She gazes off to one side. Maybe she doesn’t like the idea. Maybe she’s not sure whether she should help me or stop me. Maybe she’s just tracking the monster’s movement.

  “I’m not taking it for myself.” I strum my thumb over my necklace ignit once, ignoring the subtle twinge of m
y lungs telling me I need another breath soon. “I don’t have time to explain, but this is what’s best for the Murk. For once.”

  Her gaze bores into me so hard I feel the urge to cover my eyes, as though that will remove her scrutiny. “Xera trusts you, so take the ancient. I’ll distract the guardian near the rim of the mangrove. But I want all the details on this later. And there better be some skeletons involved.”

  “Just don’t let any of those skeletons be yours, thanks,” I grumble.

  “Hey, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Her lips twist. A smile maybe, or a smirk. “But I make no promises.”

  With that, she peels back the way we came, bashing against the roots as she goes. Her vibrations resonate with such enthusiasm that they nearly drown out all else, and it takes me a moment to track the movement of the endless monster’s head. It slithers after Fern.

  I spit my little ignits back into my hands and swim toward the gentle pulse in the mangrove’s center.

  The root maze opens to a small chamber glowing with the blue light of two ignits nestled on the ground, surrounded by curls of black glass that I know from experience will take an hour of tedious knife work to break through. But, oh, muck, it’s lovely. My fingers twitch, and I find myself moving toward it. Swallowing my greed, I focus on the far side of the room.

  I don’t have time to waste. The elders will be here any moment. My life or the stones, my life or the stones. This should not be a hard choice. I can’t enjoy the ignits if the elders strangle me. My life. My life is more important. My life, my life, my life. I chant the words as I approach.

  A peaked ceiling of black crystal stretches above the ignits, weaving into the wood of the trunk. At its highest point swirls a spot of darkness that gleams in a million different colors. The ancient.

  I float beneath it. How the fuck does Rubem think I can detach the ancient from the rest of the tree? Maybe I should have asked.

  I shift my ignits into one hand and poke the creature with the tip of my finger. Nothing happens. Carefully, I press my palm against its side. Its surface greets me, smooth and soft, like a velvet-covered rock. A tremble runs down my shoulders.

  As though it might hear my thoughts, I think at it, Hey, so, would you mind moving out of this mangrove? There’s some silt-breathers who want to mow it all down, and you might be the only way to stop that. The only way that doesn’t involve me giving up a multitude of ignits. So, if you could come with me, that’d be really fucking useful.

  The monologue is only a portrait of my worries, not meant to be anything more than a halfhearted release, but as the words form in my mind, the ancient’s velvet exterior moves beneath my touch. It releases a single wave of vibrations which settles every itching and splintered fragment of my body, as if it floods my veins with Rubem’s crushed ignits, filling me with a pulse far stronger than my own heartbeat can muster.

  Light glimmers off the creature, dancing rainbows around the room. Under the gentle pressure of my touch, it twists away from the trunk. It slips from the niche and curls around my finger, suddenly far smaller than it first appeared. The dark crystalline streaks in the wood it once clung to turn from hard obsidian to fragile embers.

  I drop my hand from the trunk ceiling. It holds fast to my scales. My chest goes light. What if I can never get it off, what if—

  A vibration grinds through the tree, cutting off my panic with a loftier fear. Above me, the mangrove crumbles. The fragments of wood fall into the ancient’s old hollows, gaining speed and ferocity with every passing moment.

  This tree is coming down, not in the tottering way that Xera’s did, but the shattering of a glass sculpture. I hold the hand with the ancient to my chest and dart out the farthest exit. An ashy substance billows through the crumbling root tunnels. The great guardian beast’s long body writhes as it flees. The world thunders. I knock into a root, and the ignits in my hands spill into the darkness, gone before I even know which direction they fell. My tail continues slamming me onward through the water even as my heart yearns to go back. I smell Fern, and fear, and death mixing into something like charred wood in my nose.

  Ahead, a shift from black to grey gives me hope. I lunge for the open swamp water. The roots collapse around me. Chunks of wood tumble down, grating against my bandaged gashes, and pain shoots up my spine. Fern slams into me, yanking me forward.

  She pulls, but the moment we gain momentum, a fresh slew of debris buries me. The rush of it flings Fern away, rolling her into the billowing silt. Slowly, painfully, blurrily, the world lightens and contracts, falling back into place in hazy shapes and disconnected lines. The final pieces of the ancient’s host-tree fall like stars through the foggy water, the first touch of dawn lighting the world. The thick scent of a team of Murklings pollutes the area.

  My heart tells me to flee, but I pull back instead, retreating into the settling wreckage of the mangrove and letting the smell of its blistering raw wood and ash cover me. I go perfectly still, hiding my necklace ignit with my palm.

  Through the silt, a familiar silhouette rises. Fern.

  Acai’s massive form bursts from the gloom and tackles her. She thrashes. The two of them twist through the water. Acai pins her down, an otter perched on their shoulder. The stirred silt blurs their conversation, but the elder’s huge hands make it easy to interpret despite the haze.

  “Who did this?” they sign. The force of their anger comes out in each blunt fierce motion. “Where are they? The truth, child!”

  Fern only shakes.

  Another boiuna dips down from the surface at their side, not nearly large enough to be an elder but still twice Fern’s size. “Acai, the boats have kept moving downriver.”

  “Then we follow,” Acai responds. “Leave three volunteers to investigate what’s become of the ancient.” They release Fern’s body, but their looming makes it clear she’s one wrong move away from confinement. “Come. Brine will make you talk—”

  They swim into the rivulet proper, down its arcing path toward the boat. As their outlines fade, I split in two, or maybe three different versions of me that argue and scream and tremble. Fear for Fern hits first, quickly pushed out by fear for myself when I remember that this is her first real infraction, one they might not even be able to pin on her, and the elders won’t harm her for that. But they will eat me whole.

  With the ancient still tucked to my chest, I squirm slowly free of the rubble, relying more on precision than strength. Slipping from beneath the final sliver of wood, I burst through the silt and into the roots of the surrounding mangroves. I breach the surface between them, risking one glance back.

  In the space where the glorious mangrove once stood, a grave of broken wood floats beneath a solemn fog. It makes my heart twist inside out. To the rest of the Murk, it must look even worse, as though the ancient itself died.

  The rainbows have retracted from the creature around my hand, leaving it black and dull and lifeless as an ordinary rock. Maybe the ancient did die. And I killed it. In the back of my mind, I knew it was possible and had made this choice anyway, but it still blisters inside me.

  It shouldn’t. The Murk doesn’t want me, and these creatures aren’t a part of my life, and the pain of taking my home’s most prized treasure shouldn’t be mine to bear. But it hurts all the same.

  One of Acai’s otters scurries through the wreckage of the ancient’s mangrove, and I swear its beady gaze locks on me through the mist. I flee, setting a straight course for the ocean. The rivulet vanishes behind me, but my heartbeat takes a while to realize it, lurching through my chest at every little vibration from the canopy.

  My bones react to the slightest change in texture, grimacing beneath my muscles as I slither over a tough root and sending shudders through my scales when a gooey water plant brushes my tail. I cling to my ignit’s faint rhythm, trying not to think too hard about any of the things that have already fallen apart today and the million others that could still go wrong. Instead, I focus on
what a multitude of ignits all lying beneath me might feel like, and take in the sea breeze gusting through the mangroves with the coming dawn.

  I sense the main rivulet before I reach it, not just from the churning water, but by the other vibrations: pounding feet, shouting humans. A gun fires. My chest aches like a well-worn rock beneath an ever-plummeting waterfall. But I smell no elders, no boiuna or hoatzis or even the woody leather scent of Murkling humans.

  I stay hidden in the roots, pushing out just enough to see. The lanterns on Rubem’s boats swing violently, lighting up the morning mist in chaotic yellow halos. Lily’s hair shines in them, the edges a flaming orange while the shadows stay deep auburn. She holds Rubem’s emerald-studded gun, and at her feet lies the bloody body of a caiman.

  I don’t see Rubem on the deck, but the way Lily talks with the bearded crewmate and the subtle kick she gives Rubem’s pet as though checking that it’s truly dead, I get the feeling he isn’t welcome there. My stomach jerks. Rubem might need rescuing, if he’s still alive. And if he still has that poison ignit . . .

  Maybe I should help him.

  The thought feels wrong, foreign, haunting: feels like Thais. I force it away, running my thumb over the seemingly dormant ancient still swathing my fingers, but another selfless thought crashes into me then: the desire to wrap Lily in my tail and drive the life from her, just like she took it from that caiman and from so many other innocent creatures. She may not have come south as a fisher, but she proved herself to be one all the same.

  In an odd burst of instinct, I wrap my hand all the way over the ancient. I can’t give it to Lily. Whatever I told Rubem, whatever I told myself, this creature belongs in the Murk. And Lily is the very opposite of everything the Murk stands for.

  She spins Rubem’s pistol, jolting me out of my righteousness. Whatever she is, she’s not someone I can fight on my own. Rubem’s life or poison ignits or not, I’m one boiuna, and she seems to have Rubem’s old crew under her thumb. My only advantage—the mist—recoils in the dawn light as I watch.