Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  “Yeah?” A million explanations rumble through my head, so many my hands seem bound by them. I fight for an apology, a promise, something. Something to make it right. But I don’t know if there is any way to make this right, just like there’s no way to make the Murk take me back or make my body not revolt at the sight of a net. “I was going to tell you.”

  “You were going to tell me?”

  “It’s not like there’s anything we can do about it now! Rubem’s been abducted by the fishers—I would’ve gone back for that ignit if I thought we could get to it easily.”

  “So, you didn’t take the green ignit when you had the chance, and you were going to make us continue to my mother’s hoard when we could save me by saving Rubem?” Her signs snap, and the impact of each settles in my skull like a physical ache. “You’re just here for the ignits, aren’t you? It doesn’t matter how much I’ve grown on you.” She chokes, wrapping her hands around her waist, and Xera holds her steady while she heaves bile. When she finally wipes her mouth, fingers brushing bleeding lips, they tremble harsher than ever. “You’re still just as greed-poisoned as my mother.”

  “That’s not . . .” Not true. But maybe it is. Maybe every time I was a little bit selfish, every time I thought a little bit more of my ignits and not of Thais or Rubem, every time I acted to preserve something because of how it made me feel and not what was good for us all, maybe all those instances have compiled into this. Into a poison. I can’t say it’s not so.

  Thais watches me with those terrible beautiful ignit eyes. Slowly, a drop of liquid slips free. She cries.

  Her tears slice into me more than any foul name ever could. I was already going to lose her, I knew that. But I never wanted her to be hurt when it happened. I never meant to hurt her.

  Brine rears closer, her monstrous head looming over us. “Little earth, you have proven you will change only for the worse. You have ignored every chance your elders and the two-legged council have given you, twice over. You have condemned yourself in the eyes of the Murk, and you are the only one to blame.” The aggression fades from her scent like the retreating tide, replaced by the grainy damp sadness of the exposed shore. “You were my final offspring, and I am sorry.”

  She’s sorry. Sorry. As though she knows me enough to be sorry. I’m not sure whether to laugh or scream. Boiuna often shared the work of raising their young, but it always seemed my forebearer retracted from me like I was a plague, not a child. Everyone did. And now they’ll execute me and feel sorry about it.

  As Brine turns away, sinking into the water and retreating out of view, the elders at her sides rise up, all teeth and scales. Part of me knew this was coming, the moment I chose to enter the Murk. I knew this would be my end. No ignits can save me from the elders. No ignits can save me from my past.

  Before Acai and Cayenne can inflict their justice, though, Thais wobbles across the branch, half tripping over my tail, and plants herself in front of me. “If you intend to hurt him, you’ll have to do the same to me.”

  The air fills with the scent of confusion. Hands shift, the watching Murklings talking in tiny motions. Cayenne tries to lunge at Thais, but Acai grabs his arm.

  “She’s a boat human!” Cayenne protests. He yanks away from Acai, forming waves that crash against the nearby roots.

  Acai bares their teeth, the otter on their shoulder mimicking the expression. “We are no better than them if we judge based on where they come from and not who they are. Can you prove she has done anything to us?”

  Cayenne snaps back with fiery hands, but my focus moves to a wobbling Thais, sweat slipping down her already grimy glistening face.

  “Thais!” I sign.

  She gives me no time to add an objection or a request, her lips pulling into a staunch line. “I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it because it’s the right thing.”

  “This isn’t the time, you damn—” I adjust my words at the last moment, trying to find some new argument. “This is my fault, Thais. I made my choice. It shouldn’t bring you down too. You have a chance still, to get to the ignits, to save yourself.” I can’t watch Thais’s face as I sign, and by the time I glance at her, I find her gaze on the canopy, where a thick white cloud rises from one of Xera’s little pots.

  The ghastly smelling steam rushes out, creating an impenetrable veil around us. Xera darts through the branches, and I feel the impact of a blunt-tipped crossbow bolt hitting Cayenne in the forehead. The elder boiuna’s huge body wavers. A second bolt follows.

  I scoop Thais up and flee in the direction of the coast. A human warrior appears through the cloud, but I shove them off our branch, and one of the hoatzis catches them. We burst free of the artificial mist, leaving a stunned group of Murklings behind us. They give chase. The soft rhythm of their feet on the wood is drowned by the giant crash of the elders diving into the water. I glance behind us just in time to see the wave they make slosh over a row of warriors.

  Someone leaps to our side, and my scales jump, my grip on Thais tightening until that someone comes into focus as Xera.

  “Get her to the hoard,” they sign.

  Thais’s chest rumbles in reply, but they peel away again, crossbow already in their grasp. They fire it at the nearing Murklings. No shot strikes our pursuers, but they slow all the same, Xera’s uncanny aim hitting just before the tips of their toes.

  Far behind us, the trees shudder, roots and branches cracking. The elders are coming. I can smell my forebearer already.

  When I draw in another breath, though, it’s not Brine that suffocates me, but the true salt tang of the ocean gusting through the trees. We’re so close. I press myself to move faster, my muscles burning, bark digging into my scales. If we can just get to the sea . . .

  The canopy lightens, and I drop to a lower branch. A host of colorful birds take to the air, zipping around us with a hundred vibrations, squawking and flapping. Xera turns back from firing another bolt. They crash into the flock straight on and shy away with a flinch so violent it sends them off the edge of their branch. One of the pursuing boiuna catches them as they fall, wrapping them in a restraining hold. I falter. Thais struggles in my arms, trying desperately to go back for them, but Xera waves us away. Three Murklings keep to my trail, giving me no other choice.

  The rush of fire that pushed me this far starts to fade, leaving only pain in my muscles and tight burning in my lungs. Thais’s paper-light weight grows heavier by the moment. The Murklings gain.

  I have nothing left to throw them off, no ignits or arrows or smelly mist, no weapons but my tail and teeth. Maybe if I leave Thais and attack these three outright, she can get to the ocean on her own. Maybe.

  She clutches tighter to my shoulders, crushing the weak hope as her whole body wracks and heaves, not even bile coming up. I guess if I’m going to die, it might as well be from exhaustion. I push onward, straining my muscles, seeking the smoothest path through the trees. A hoatzi behind us swipes at my tail, but I yank it out of their reach and crash through a cluster of leaves. The branches give way.

  Oh, muck. Thais and I hit the water. I burst forward, doing my best to keep her head above the surface as we swim between the mangrove roots. Sunlight peppers my back. Gentle waves hit us; then the heat of the late morning pours down in full force, the world so bright it makes my eyes roll. The ocean fills my senses, blue sky above and even bluer waters stretching beneath. I swim through the deeper lagoon to a sandbar a little ways off from the trees, preparing to fight whoever follows us out, but the three Murklings only watch from the branches. Apparently, I’m not worth leaving the Murk for.

  I collapse, letting Thais go. My arms shake, my tail twitching as if it hasn’t yet realized we’ve finally stopped. I feel like death. But Thais looks far worse, curled up, weak and shuddering. Golden sand sticks to the side of her shaved head.

  I force myself to sit up. At our back, the Murk stretches into a crescent peninsula of trees and dark rocks. The tip of the curve points toward a small isl
and as though reaching for it. Unlike the landless mangroves of the Murk, the island is all deep grey rock and weathered sea brush, a few palm trees hanging off the edges. A waterfall tumbles over the near side. In my beaten state, it takes me a moment to wonder where that much water comes from on such a tiny piece of land, but another question immediately overwhelms it.

  I nudge Thais’s shoulder. “Is that your mother’s hoard?”

  Thais opens her eyes slowly, and it takes her hollow blue irises a moment to focus. Her lips twitch. “First lucky thing that’s happened to us so far.” She barely lifts her hands to sign it. A wave brushes her leg—the tide coming in to cover the sandbar. Thais seems not to notice. “You muck-face. Why didn’t you bring me that poison ignit of Rubem’s?”

  The rest of my strength drains out of me. “It’s not like that! He was driving away, and I panicked too much. I knew you would stop your trek to the hoard if you had what you wanted already.” I stumble over the words. “I was about to tell you. I never—”

  She looks purposefully away. Slowly, she sits up, her breath heavy, dark circles beneath her eyes. She smells of determination and sickness, the rain-cleaned air gone from her. “You’ll get your hoard, like I promised. Just finish your job first.”

  You’ll get your hoard. After everything, she still plans to make good on her promise. I should be happy. But even the thought of a thousand ignits can’t seem to lighten my soul when Thais’s eyes are so dull and hollow.

  Another wave curls around her legs, tugging at a tear in her pant fabric. Her shirt clings to her chest, outlining the hard oval edges of her necklace where it rests against her sternum. “Will Xera be hurt? And Fern, where did Fern go?”

  “The elders have them both. They won’t be harmed, though. They didn’t hurt anyone, at least not badly. They’ll get a warning this time, probably be released in a few days, after the Murk has been scoured for any remaining boat humans.”

  Thais barely looks my way. “Still, we have to . . . shouldn’t we . . .”

  “Xera told us to leave. It’s done.”

  “But we should have stayed. We could’ve turned back for them.”

  “No, we shouldn’t have! This was their choice, Thais. You can’t take that away from them. Let them be the fucking hero for once.” Like I wasn’t for Rubem. Like I’ll never be.

  Thais flinches.

  With one last glance at the Murk, I offer her an arm. “Let’s go.”

  Her poison accepts for her, all but collapsing her into my grasp. I pull her onto my back and slide into the water. As I swim Thais to the island, the tide skates in over our sandbank. My muscles should ache or burn or something, but part of my mind has gone numb, and the detachment stretches like a thick fog into the crevasses of my physical body. I barely feel the warm rocks of the island as I yank us onto its bank.

  Thais stands and wobbles. I slip my arm under her shoulders, pooling my tail around her in case she falls. A tremble runs through her, from her shaved head to her bare toes, but she scarcely resists. Maybe she doesn’t have the strength.

  Slowly, we work around the side of the island, picking between rough brush and over jagged rocks, until only the sea greets us, endless and blue. Thais directs me into a deep crack between two great outcroppings. A little rowboat bobs below, with a steam motor and a pair of oars, and a system of giant scoops runs up one side of the fissure, carrying the wave water to the top of the island. It must form the waterfall.

  A large metal door fits neatly beneath the machine, hidden in the shadows. Thais digs through the smaller rocks around it. Her hands shake. I catch her arms and force her to sit. Her face pinches, and she refuses to meet my gaze even when I slide my fingers down to grip her own tenderly.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “A key, made of black stone.” She closes her hollow eyes, but her hands keep moving after a moment. “There’s an entrance for ships beneath the waterfall—well, boats now; my mom closed the opening enough that proper sea vessels can’t fit in or out—but the only place I can disable the shield is from this side, with the key.”

  I strategically set each small rock out of the way and find the key shoved into a crack. Thais doesn’t try to take it from me, her raggedly rising chest the only sign she still lives. I push the key into the lock. For a moment it sticks, then clicks, the vibration of an ignit deep within suddenly turning from an active buzz to an inactive pulse. I help Thais inside and close the door behind us, sealing us off from the brilliant midday sun.

  A thousand new lights replace it, glowing along the walls and ceiling of the hallway like living rainbows. A clasp embeds each ignit to the wall as though Thais’s mom replicated my necklace into an infinite strand, filling every space with a different-colored stone. The common ones appear most often, reds and blues and yellows creating patterns around little teal and purple flowers, a few orange and pink dispersed throughout, along with a few tiny greens far too small to fit in Thais’s necklace.

  The glowing walls break for six ignit-draped archways before the corridor ends in stairs. Massive red ignits carved into the shapes of blossoming flowers hang down from the ceiling, casting the steps in scarlet. Every crack between the glowing rocks reveals wardstone shielding the hoard from other greedy thieves.

  I start forward sluggishly, yearning to go deeper yet unable to draw away from the gorgeous entry. “Your mom built this place?” I ask, my scales gleaming with a million different hues. “She must have been incredible.” I feel Thais snort.

  “She was a greedy malicious coward who only cared about herself.” The shake in her hands looks different now, and bitterness tinges her sickly scent. “The ship trapped in the cave was originally her older sister’s vessel. When she was my age, they were sailing together, taking passengers between the big isles of the siren seas—she with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their young son—when they ran off course in a storm. Sirens killed most everyone on board, including my aunt and uncle. Tore into my cousin, too. And my mom just left him to die at the nearest port, left that poor kid all alone when she had a responsibility to be there for him, left him because it wasn’t convenient.”

  The way her gaze goes distant, I wonder if there’s another child she’s really thinking of, one with a heart brighter than an ignit and a mother who never realized that was more important than any trove.

  “I won’t be like her,” she signs. “I won’t leave people just because it’s inconvenient to save them.”

  Her pain takes a new shape as I realize it’s not just her mom who left her to anguish when it wasn’t convenient. It was me as well. My chest fills with gravel, and it aches in all the wrong places, like a baby caiman slowly claws its way free. “You’re nothing like your mom, Thais.” I make the motions big and firm, forcing her to see them. Her brow creases and her face slackens, but her sad smell pushes me on. “But sometimes the first person who needs saving is yourself, and sometimes you have to let someone else help you with that.”

  She looks away, tucking her arms around her stomach. I half roll my eyes. Self-righteous fool. I skim the beads covering the nearest archway. My fingers catch on a heavy piece of fabric hanging beyond it, and when I pull that back as well, I find a small ignitless room. A primitive phonogram sits on the dresser, and hand drums of every size and style line the wall, all of them covered in dust.

  Thais pulls me feebly toward the stairs. “My mom kept her rarest ignits in her room. All the poison stones big enough to reverse the poison should be there.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

  I let her guide me, supporting her as much as she’ll allow. With our first step, the desire to turn back and snatch a few ignits off the walls hits me so strongly I have to preoccupy my fingers by stretching them. There will be time for that later, after Thais recovers.

  A change comes over her as we climb, as though her dying body is giving her its last seed of energy to fight this emotional battle. She straightens her shoulders and lets go of me to step t
hrough the ignit curtain shielding her mother’s room.

  Compared to the glory of the ignits below, this sweeping chamber seems almost muted at first glance. But what it lacks in rows of the stones, it makes up for in looping patterns of them that flow across the ceiling and delicately carved bundles of ignit flowers that spring from pots and bedposts and balcony railings. Glass cases throughout the room display a few dozen ignits, many in unique shades so rare or foreign that I’ve never seen their like.

  “They’ll be in a case somewhere.” Thais takes off toward the back of the room, so I head the opposite way, peeking into each container as I move along the wall toward the balcony.

  I pause by a workbench. Mechanical gears and tools litter it, and a tiny box with a slot for a few small rocks sits half-finished, a mere grain of eruptstone embedded in its spring mechanism. Thais’s mom must have intended it to be some kind of tiny precise bomb.

  “How did your mom die?” Maybe I shouldn’t ask something like that, but I sign it before I can stop myself. The words come out just in time for Thais’s drifting gaze to catch them.

  Her shoulders bounce once. “She collapsed while checking the waterfall last summer and dropped over the side onto the rocks she’d moved there to hide the back of her stolen ship. I don’t know if it was the fall that killed her or whatever caused the collapse in the first place. She had passed out a few times before that, but she’d never stopped collecting and tending her ignits long enough to find a doctor.”

  Thais’s demeanor never changes, but when she finishes, she sets her hands on the case in front of her, and her eyes wander the room, aimlessly tracking the perfectly made bed with its deep-purple pillows and grey rugs, an old blue coat hanging over an open chest of folded pants. A dead room in a dead home.

  “You boat humans often live with both parents, don’t you?”

  She blinks at me as though trying to make sense of my question, then nods. “My mom got pregnant with me on an ignit collection trip to the other side of the continent, a few years after she built this place. I don’t think she even knew his name. But I—I’m fine. I’m fine being alone.”