Once Stolen

by D. N. Bryn

  But the Murk is still my home.

  My fingers find the ancient in my necklace, brushing the velvety surface, feeling the life pulsing within. The Murk is my home, and the home of two Murklings who gave up everything for Thais and me, and the home of the strange creature pressed between my collarbones. I’ve taken so much from the Murk. Now it’s time to give back.

  Hold on Thais, we’ll be there soon. Just hold on.

  I ignore the stairs, twisting up the railing and dropping in front of Rubem. “We have to warn the Murklings.”

  The light wrinkles around his shadowed eyes deepen. His knuckles tighten against the wheel before he finally lets go with one hand. “I already failed them, and they’ve failed me.” His gaze jumps to the ancient still wrapped firmly around the ignit in my necklace. He knows. He knows I abandoned him. But he only releases a heavy breath. “After we pick up Thais, I’m going back to my little house on the north edge of the Murk with Sheila. Everyone else can be damned.” He keeps his course, turning along the side of the island until the Murk sits firmly at our back.

  I twist the tip of my tail through the wheel, grabbing it from him. “I’m sorry Lily got to you.” It’s the best apology I can muster, but it’s a true one. I am sorry that Lily killed his caiman. I’m sorry she forced him into this. But I’m not sorry I left him to save Thais.

  He exhales again. “It’s no worse a hand than life has ever dealt me before.”

  “Maybe that’s true. But I promise that next time, it’ll be better. I’ll do the hero thing for you, if you do it now for the Murk.” I wonder vaguely if this is what Thais feels like: the fire, the hope, the dedication. “You’ve tried so hard to keep the Murk safe from Lily and the fishers. Aren’t the people who dwell in it the most important part of the swamp? We’re both Murklings, too, even if they rejected us.”

  Rubem’s gaze lingers on my hands as though he expects me to say more, or maybe he’s still trying to make sense of what I did say. A vibration starts in his chest, rising up his throat. Laughter, that same dark heavy sound he made back in the Murk.

  He shoves a hand into his pocket, yanking out a flask, and takes a long swig. A harsh stinging alcohol replaces the deep fruity wine scent of his name. He props his elbows against the wheel, his signs turning a little sloppy. “How about a deal, little cacao bean?”

  My view of the Murk beyond Rubem’s shoulder slips slowly behind the rocks. “What do you want?”

  “What I wanted before.” He takes another swig. “If I help those Murklings, you work for me—not the cartel, they wouldn’t let me back in if I begged—but for me, for one month, collecting and selling ignits, saving animals, scaring the cartels away from the Murk. That sound like a good trade?”

  Sheila’s thick scales gleam as she breaks the surface to our right. She’s still here. Not one of the cartel humans in Rubem’s crew stayed loyal when the fishers offered a better return. He can count on no one but her, no one but a beast who can’t even talk back.

  I roll my eyes and grab Rubem’s flask, letting it slide through my fingers and plunk to the lower deck. “I would’ve probably done that already, you idiot silt-breather. Now turn the damn boat around.”

  Rubem gives me an unknowable look, wide and open and endless. He shrugs. “What’s one more impossible feat today?” With that, he snatches back the wheel and sets it awhirl.

  A grin takes over my face, but it vanishes along with the front of the island and the entrance Thais will leave through. She’ll just have to get by in her rowboat for a little while. “I need that poison ignit in your vest, too, for Thais.”

  “Why would you—” But my expression must say enough, because he amends, “It’s in my cabin, under the mattress. Hid it there when Lily reappeared too soon.”

  I drop onto the lower deck and slide down the stairs to the cabin, my tail thudding unhappily from step to step. Rubem’s tanks and jars and cages all sit empty, and I wonder whether he had time to release the creatures back into the Murk, or if Lily let her fishers take them away to be sold or slaughtered. A smear of blood sullies the floor, too dry for me to tell what it came from.

  Avoiding the stain, I drop beside the bed and shove my arm under the mattress. The gentle pulse of the ignit greets me. I pull it out: green. My heart leaps, and I pop it into my necklace, its tiny heartbeat so subtle and soothing for something that would kill me if a single spark of electricity hit it.

  I snatch a portable transitioner from Rubem’s shelves and wave it at him as I climb back onto the deck. “I’m taking this. You owe me anyway.”

  Rubem shakes his head, but he says nothing.

  As we round the side of the island, I glimpse the horde of fishers zipping along the coastline before the tip of the peninsula blocks them out. The full host of Murklings swims slowly toward the island, barely halfway between the mangroves and the waterfall. A few simple ignit-propelled canoes float between the boiuna, weighed down by an overcrowding of warriors. Hoatzis glide above on their feathered arms, dipping onto the elder boiuna’s backs and vaulting off their shoulders to catch fresh gusts of the sea breeze. Brine still leads them.

  Rubem slows the boat as we approach, cutting the ignit power just before we reach their ranks. The boat drifts, and the Murklings surround us in a wide V. Brine motions for them to wait. She turns her gaze on me, unyielding.

  I try to meet it, if only to convince her to listen, but shudders run along the back of my neck, forcing me to stare at her hands instead. I grip Thais’s green ignit like it might save me. I have to get through this and back to Thais.

  “Are you surrendering yourself, little earth?” Brine asks.

  “Fuck no—I mean not preferably—”

  As I form the denial, Brine’s own fingers flick. Three Murkling warriors leap from the nearest canoe, two hoatzis and a boiuna joining them to grab Rubem. They hold him in place and prepare to lunge for me next. Fear bites my throat.

  “Wait, wait!” My wrists tremble. “We’re here to help you, to warn you!”

  They tackle me anyway, holding my tail down. Slamming into my shoulder, they force my chest to the desk. A hoatzi’s claws dig between my scales. Muck, muck, this was a bad choice, I never should have—

  “What warning?” my forebearer asks, her irises tight, and the two pinning my torso let up enough for me to move my hands.

  But my panic remains, tight and jittery. “There’s fishers, boats of them, coming up the other side of the peninsula. If you don’t return to the Murk, they’ll cut you off.”

  Cayenne releases such a skeptical huff that his huge chest vibrates like a drum. But Brine looks to Acai, who dives beneath the water, streaking toward the peninsula. The canoes bob in their wake. Acai surfaces a little ways out.

  They go still, and their giant otter poses on their shoulder. “I can feel something. The trees and waves cloud it, but there does seem to be movement.”

  A weight drifts off me, or maybe that’s just the Murklings slowly letting go of my tail. “They’re fishers, Mom, you have to believe me. You can do whatever you want with me after this—as long as Thais gets her ignit—but I won’t let those murderous silt-breathers hurt my home. Or anyone who belongs to it.” My motions come firm and strong, and I stare at Brine’s shoulder with such force that maybe it’ll make up for the fact that I can’t glare directly into her eyes.

  Brine looms a bit closer, blocking out the sun with the entwined ridges on her head.

  My gaze weakens. “Please, Mom.”

  One of her rough hands cups my head, so huge she could crush me with it. But she only pulls away, mumbling, “So, you are a Murkling after all.” When she rises up to address the group, her signs grow huge and precise. “Back to the coastline! Send the runners to Salt Root for every warrior they can spare.” She looks down at me, and for the first time in ages, I don’t feel singed by her attention, only warmed. “We will not allow these fishers to harm the Murk either, little earth.”

  The Murklings take to their canoes,
Cayenne and Acai catching some of the warriors on their backs to speed the way. Brine lingers. She watches as Rubem leans over the side of his boat and motions to his waiting crocodilian, signs which seem to mean he wants her to return to the swamp with them. She bumps her nose against the hull, but she turns and follows the Murklings, leaving Rubem alone once more.

  Cautiously, he steps down the stairs, “Hello, I—”

  Brine rises farther out of the water. The boat tips as she inclines against the side, looming over Rubem. He sinks down, like ice melting into a puddle. I never see his feet move, but somehow, he drifts back a few steps.

  Brine continues to loom. “You are familiar.”

  Rubem swallows. “My first forebearer was the One Who Leaves No Trace When Stepping on Water, a woman of more. She came from the village of Gilded Flower.”

  Brine’s hands hover in an exclamation of understanding. “We will speak of this later.” She draws back, returning to her place in front of the boat. “For now, you will both wait in the Murk.”

  I rub the poison ignit and shake my head fiercely. “Not yet.” Before Brine can respond, I add, “Thais is dying out there, on that island, and I have the only thing that will save her. I’ll face your judgment, I swear on the mists, but I have to get this to Thais first.”

  Her hands remain still so long that my lungs hurt. Finally, she signs, “I will grant you this final chance. Go help your boat friend. Both of you.”

  I look Brine in the eyes now, just for an instant, but it’s enough. She smiles at me. My chest grows a little warmer beneath the pulse of Thais’s poison ignit, but a tremor destroys the feeling, blurring my senses into a mess of pounding dread.

  I wheel. Through the blotches of my vision, dark spots fall from the side of the island, like a grey waterfall. Rocks.

  Thais. She did it, she—

  But as the avalanche of stones plunges into the sea, the ignit-laced side of the island stays calm. The old steamship bursts through the drifting dust. The waterfall pounds along one of its edges, smoke streaming in clouds behind it like a poisonous mist. I clutch Thais’s ignit tightly. That can’t be her aboard the multideck vessel, which leaves one option: Lily and Wolf. Thais’s explosion won’t kill them now. Despite the potentially deadly problem they pose, a thunderous rhythm starts in my soul. Now I get to strangle Lily myself.

  Xera taps my shoulder.

  I nearly launch out of my scales. “The fuck—”

  They lift their brow.

  Fern coils around them, grinning. “I think Cacao is even deafer than you.”

  “That is less funny than you think,” Xera points out, but their lips curl.

  The Murklings vanish into the trees, all but Acai, who lingers by the side of the boat. “These two requested to fight with you instead of the warriors,” the elder explains.

  “I guess I can stand that,” I reply, before tackling them both, winding them in a momentary embrace. They smell good. Like friends, my first in a very long time.

  A cannonball bursts from the stolen ship, disrupting our reunion. It falls far short of our boat, but it seems to hit the base of my spine all the same, rattle its way through me. What the fuck are we going to do against it? Even Rubem’s decent-sized vessel looks like a stick compared to the solid log the northerners sail toward us.

  Acai and Brine submerge an instant before the first of the fishers slip through a gap in the rocks near the end of the peninsula. Their boats veer our direction, still a little ways away, but approaching fast. We have a minute at best.

  Their threat is momentarily muffled, though, by Thais’s entire island vanishing beneath an orb of light. The sphere crackles, rainbows of electricity shooting through it. Then it disappears. In its wake, it leaves only a hollow in the sea.

  Water rushes in to fill the gap the ignit explosion left, dragging everything with it, quickly at first and slower once the sea collides with itself in the hollow’s center, sending swells back out in all directions, like a pebble thrown into a still swamp where we are mere bugs flitting across the surface. Rubem’s boat sways and dips.

  My heart shudders for the ignits destroyed, thousands of precious gorgeous stones lost forever. But they should never have been gathered together in the first place, and if they had remained, the fishers would have found a way to collect them. I’ve no doubts about that. Just like I’ve no doubts that the hoard would have kept calling to me, no matter how long I managed to deny it.

  The Murk said this desire would latch inside me, claws through flesh. And now that it has, it might never go away. But I don’t care about that. Thais though—Thais, and her hopes, and her life—Thais I will care about.

  I push through my mourning. Its ache seems unimportant compared to the fresh destruction that arises in my chest after, because in the vanished island’s wake, I see nothing. No Thais.

  No. No, she—she would’ve gotten off, she’s too smart to stay. She has to be safe, she has to be—

  Then I spot her, a dot bobbing in a little wooden rowboat. Rubem’s vessel rises over another swell, and I fling myself up to the top deck to keep Thais in my line of sight, ignoring the flare of pain when I crash against the railing. I cling there, like Thais clings to her oars as the waves pummel her. Already a few fisher boats veer her way.

  My quickening pulse tingles along my head ridges, agonizing. I’m so useless over here. I have to get to her.

  Fern must smell my longing, because she shakes my shoulder. “The fishers will reach her before we can, and we won’t be able fight them all alone.”

  She’s right. They pour from the cracks in the end of the peninsula like bees from a hive. I bare my teeth. “If we can lure them toward the swamp, we won’t have to.”

  Fern’s fangs show through her grin. She grabs the wheel as I flick the buttons on the console. Through the din in my senses, I think Rubem yells at me, but I must’ve done something right, because the boat lurches forward. Fern brings us around, aiming for the lead boat in the line of fishers. The steam-powered ship fires another cannon. It lands near enough to splash our railing.

  My gaze jumps back to Thais’s distant figure. Hold on, ignit eyes. I’m coming for you.

  Rubem appears beside me, gripping the railing with one hand. “This is a bad idea.”

  I can make out the expressions of the humans in the lead vessels, their pistols and nets and hooks prepared. “Probably.”

  As we come upon them, I wrap myself around Rubem and Xera, pinning us all to the deck. Fern turns the boat, her circle so sharp and close to the lead fisher that the spray of our hull crashes into them. She speeds us off, leading the fishers along the tree line. The main pack swerve after us like predators, nipping at our heels.

  On the stolen steamship, Lily and Wolf veer back toward Thais.

  My thumb cramps from the pressure I put on her ignit, but without its soothing pulse, I think I might fall apart. Diverting our course won’t help anyone now. I have to believe she’ll be safe a few minutes longer.

  We race down the coastline, the farthest reaches of the canopy shading half the boat. As the last of our pursuers take their place behind us, Brine bursts up from beneath them. She arcs through the air and dives into the water on the vessel’s other side, her body forming a dark shadow across her target. The fishers’ bullets create little more than light gouges in her thick scaled flesh. Her seemingly endless tail slams into the deck. The wood cracks. She tightens herself, and the boat splinters in half.

  At that shuddering vibration, the Murk comes to life. Cayenne and Acai crash down on the smaller vessels, tipping them over, while hoatzis dart to the farther one, crossbows firing rhythmically. Boiuna drop from the branches, slinging their human companions into dive rolls that end with their knives embedded into fisher spines and slashed across necks.

  But I can’t focus on the fighting for long, can’t focus on anything but Thais in the distance, being dragged onto Lily’s steam-powered ship. A fleet of fishers waft in the waves between us. I sign
her name to Fern.

  “On it.”

  “You know that this is in fact my boat,” Rubem objects, squeezing himself between us.

  Fern flicks her tongue at him, but she slides to the side, letting him take the wheel.

  He surveys the console, and his nose wrinkles. “We had better make this quick, or we’ll cease to be a moving target.”

  Around us, the fisher boats flee into the deeper water, trying in vain to escape the Murk’s onslaught. Rubem steers expertly through them, narrowly dodging debris, boiuna, and the bodies of boat humans. As Lily’s ship moves along the edge of the battle, though, the smaller boats flock toward it. A few waterlogged fishers climb aboard, returning to their own vessels to distribute something small and glowing. Glowing green.

  The rhythm in my chest skips a beat.

  Acai swims toward them, an ominous crest of water forming above their back. I can do nothing, nothing but cling to the railing of Rubem’s boat as we drive closer and closer, close enough for me to see the gleam of the tiny active poison ignits flying through the air, hitting Acai in the chest when they rear up. Close enough to make out the sickly bubbles forming between Acai’s scales and the wrongness of their eyes and the blood that streams from their nose and the corners of their lips. Close enough to feel the spray of their massive body plunging, lifeless, into the sea, dozens of ignits dropping with them.

  Those even near—Murklings and boat humans alike—fling from vessels and swim with a lethargic desperation. Some get far enough that they can pull themselves up on distant driftwood and heave the content of their stomach, like Thais has done so many times. Some only flail, then sink. Cayenne swims around the outskirts of the desolation, sweeping up a few of the smaller limp figures and dragging them to safety. I don’t spot Brine anywhere.