Above World (8 page)

“A
RE THEY DEAD?”
Hoku asked. None of the Deepfell demons were moving. They lay tangled in big nets, like a school of caught fish. “They’re probably dead. Come on, let’s keep going.”

“Wait. Some of them are missing . . .
parts,
” Aluna said.

“Parts?” he echoed weakly. He scanned the bodies and saw one without a dorsal fin, another with half of its tail cut off. “Oh. Parts. I guess that’s what the patchwork people are after. And why they killed the Humans, too. Parts are like tech to them.” He tried not to think about the pit of dead Humans back at the village.

Aluna gripped her dagger in one hand and knelt beside a Deepfell to check for a pulse. “This one’s gone,” she said, standing back up. “I’ll go check the others.”

He watched her hop from one Deepfell to the next, checking for signs of life. Grandma Nani had been telling him stories about the Deepfell his whole life. “They gave up their humanity to live in deep ocean,” his grandma had said. “But if we were meant to live there, the price wouldn’t be so high.”

The water in the deep-dark was ice-cold, the pressure so intense it would snap the bones of a Kampii in the flick of a tail. Strange creatures lived down there — monsters out of nightmares. Things with tentacles and teeth and no memory of the sun. And on those things, the Deepfell preyed.

He’d been a youngling during the last Deepfell raid on the colony, but his uncle had been a hunter and one of the first to die. The Deepfell had ripped chunks out of him until there was nothing left for the sharks. His grandfather — Grandma Nani’s husband — had died trying to save him.

“Hoku, quick! This one’s alive.”

Aluna crouched by a Deepfell, her dagger hovering in the air between them. It didn’t look like the demon was going anywhere, not with that huge gash in its neck. It just lay there, quivering. Hoku hurried toward Aluna, giving the dead a wide berth and doing his best to step around the patches of red sand.

“Look,” she said as he approached. “It’s trying to talk.”

Hoku stared down at the creature’s face. Its lidless black eyes bulged like domes from its sockets. He’d seen other fish with eyes like that. The Deepfell needed to absorb every speck of light in the darkness of the deep. They never truly slept; there were far too many enemies lurking beyond their range of sight. But eyes weren’t enough, not in the deep ocean. He’d heard them at night, their high-pitched keening echoing through the colony as they hunted kilometers away.

This demon lay before him, its mouth moving ever so slightly, its eyes aware and watching. Aluna dropped to her knee near the creature and lowered her ear toward its mouth.

“Be careful,” Hoku said. “You know how fast they can kill.”

She waved him into silence. Hoku saw the Deepfell pull in a shuddering breath and try to speak. He saw Aluna’s knife, still tight in her hand, its point aimed directly at the back of the monster’s neck.

“I can’t understand you,” Aluna said. “What are you trying to tell me?” She lowered her ear even closer to its mouth.

“We should go,” Hoku said quietly. He thought of his mother, and all the months she had mourned her father and her brother. Every year, she covered their family shrine with offerings on the anniversary of the attack. She remembered them, and she cursed the Deepfell. “We should swim away,” he said again.

“It can’t breathe,” Aluna said, finally looking at him. Her face, normally bright with energy, seemed drained. Her brown skin had paled to the color of wet sand, and her knife hand began to shake. “He’s suffocating,” she said. “Just like Makina.”

Hoku looked away quickly. He’d watched Humans get killed today, and he’d stumbled upon a pit filled with their dead. Now he stood on a beach covered with the slick gray bodies of the Kampii’s mortal enemies. But the worst thing he’d seen today by far was that knife wobbling in Aluna’s hand.

“I don’t understand,” Aluna said. She was looking back down at the demon. Her knife lay useless in the sand as she gently pressed the rubbery skin around the Deepfell’s wounded throat. “They don’t wear breathing shells,” she said. “How do they get air from the water?”

“They don’t have shells the same way we do,” Hoku said. “Their ancestors modified the inside of their bodies instead. They pull in air through those slits in their throats.”

“See him gasping?” she said. “The slits are above his wound, so the air isn’t making it to his lungs. He’s not getting enough oxygen.”

Hoku shrugged. “Even if we wanted to save it, there’s nothing we can do.”

“But he’s going to die.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Hoku said. “If that monster had been able to fight, it would have tried to kill us!” He wished they’d never found these Deepfell, or found them an hour later, when the decision had been made for them.

Aluna said nothing. For a minute, she just stared at him. He recognized that look: the furrow of her brow, the slight closing of her right eye, and the almost imperceptible twitching of her lips. Aluna was thinking, and there wasn’t a more dangerous activity in all the world.

“I couldn’t save Makina or the other Kampii,” Aluna said. “I couldn’t do anything. In the City of Shifting Tides, I was useless.”

“That’s not true,” he said. “You’re brave and funny, and —”

“Useless,” she interrupted. “I can’t fix their necklaces or stop any of them from dying.”

Her hand gripped the small pouch around her neck. He knew her mother’s ring lay nestled inside, and that she never touched it unless her thoughts were dark.

“Aluna, what are you —?”

“I’m going to save someone,” she said. “I’m going to save the only person I can.”

He watched her suck in a huge breath of air, filling her lungs. Both her hands went to the breathing shell at the base of her throat.

“No! Stop! You don’t even know if it will work!”

Hoku fell to his knees. He grabbed Aluna’s wrist with both his hands and yanked. Her body jerked, but she was strong. Much stronger than he was. Her hands stayed on the shell as she tugged and twisted, trying to dislodge it from its rightful place in her flesh.

“No!” he yelled again, but it was no use. With a sudden pop, the breathing shell came loose. As she pulled it away from her throat, the shell trailed two long, thin metallic tendrils with a sickening slurp.

Aluna had just ruined her chance of ever returning to the ocean.

H
OKU WATCHED
, horrified, as the tendrils of Aluna’s breathing shell retracted into the device. She wasted no time. Still holding her breath, she slapped the necklace against the Deepfell’s throat below its wound.

Nothing happened at first. She pushed and twisted it. Her face started to turn an unhealthy shade of purple.

“Stop!” Hoku said. “Put it back on. It’s not too late!”

Aluna shook her head. She twisted the breathing shell again. This time it glowed and whirred. The Deepfell’s eyes — those ludicrous black orbs — widened even more.

“The shell’s tails are burrowing to your lungs, demon,” Hoku said. “Lie still. Struggling will make them lose their way.” He’d never seen a shell affixed to an adult before. Kampii received their shells within a few days of birth, once their mothers were sure they were healthy enough to journey beneath the waves. He had no idea how the Deepfell’s body would react.

Beside him, Aluna gasped. She’d held her breath as long as she could. Now she toppled forward, onto her hands and knees, and choked.

The demon choked, too. And gurgled. And tried to claw at its own throat.
Let it,
Hoku thought. Aluna was his only concern. He grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to steady her as she coughed and hacked.

“What’s . . . happening . . . to me?” she managed between choking sobs.

“The shell does more than burrow. I don’t know what. But it does something to your lungs and your breathing and eating tubes. I . . .” Her face was red, her eyes bulging. Her body was trying to expel something, and it wouldn’t leave.

“I don’t know exactly,” he said, frustrated. He held her shoulders tighter. That’s all he could think to do. The Deepfell squirmed nearby, and if the demon wanted to, it could grab Aluna’s knife and murder them both.

“Don’t fight it,” Hoku said. “Your body knows what it needs. Don’t fight it.”

Her coughing eased slightly. He saw her take in a shuddering breath, and then another. She looked at him just as another spasm shook her body. She fell out of his grip and curled into a ball on the sand.

Behind him, the demon had stopped clawing at the breathing shell and had started wriggling toward the surf. It was heading back to the deep —
with Aluna’s shell.

He glanced at the sand where the Deepfell had been. Aluna’s knife was still there, where she had dropped it. The demon was a dozen drags from the water. Hoku had time to get the necklace back. He could take the knife and . . . what? He’d never deliberately hurt anyone in his whole life.

“’Ku, ’Ku,” Aluna said, wincing. “My insides burn.”

The Deepfell was only a few drags from the sea now. Hoku should stop the demon, but how? Even if he were strong enough to strike, he could never be a killer. He watched the Deepfell pull itself the last few meters. Once it reached the surf, it disappeared quickly into the waves.

Maybe he couldn’t be a killer, but he could be a best friend.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Oh, no,” Aluna gasped. “Not again.” And she was off on another coughing bout. He winced and held her. He couldn’t look at her face, so he stared at the knife, his water safe, the dead bodies on the beach. Anything but her pain.

And that’s when he noticed the birds. A dozen winged shadows glided across the sand. It took him a moment to realize that they were getting larger, and another long moment to find the courage to look up.

The birds weren’t birds. They had wings — vast feathered wings — but their bodies and faces were Human. Not only Human, but
female.
They wore sleek silvery armor around their chests and elaborate metallic bands around their arms and necks. They gripped their spears and harpoons with warriors’ ease.

“Tides’ teeth,” he hissed. “Aviars!”

According to his grandfather, an Aviar warrior could kill a Kampii in one thrust of her spear, but needed a full day to cook and eat her prey afterward. “Sharks,” he whispered to Aluna’s shuddering body. “Sharks in the sky.”

Two Aviars drifted to the beach and landed near one of the dead Deepfell. They stood over the creature and pointed to something in the sand. Another pair dropped behind him, and another. Were they assessing the battle scene or planning for their next feast?

Hoku reached for their bags and pulled them close. He wrapped his body over Aluna’s, trying to hide her from their view.

What was she always saying —
still as a starfish, calm as a . . . jellyfish
? That didn’t sound right. And how was a silly phrase going to help, anyway? Here they were, out in plain sight, not a single hidey-hole within crawling distance, and he was acting like it mattered if he stayed calm or not. Did a shark care if your heart was racing when it bit your head off? No, the only reason they hadn’t been plucked from the beach already was that the dead Deepfell probably smelled more like food than they did.

The bird-women called to one another. He understood “too late” and “food.” Their language was more similar to the Kampiis’ than the Humans’ had been. Only the Aviars’ accents made it difficult to figure out their words.

“To pull so many Deepfell from the water would take a great beast. Or a machine,” an Aviar with orange-and-red-feathered wings said.

“Agreed,” the other said. Her white feathers were covered with strange symbols painted in blue and black. “Upgraders did this. The bodies have been desecrated. Fathom’s minions always take pieces for their master.”

“This far north? We must inform the president immediately,” Redfeather said. “Perhaps he is planning another attack.”

Whitefeather turned and spat on the sand. “Go. Scout east. You know the signs to look for. Be back by dawn.”

Redfeather pounded her fist to her chest, then leaped into the sky.

“Aluna, what should I do?” Hoku whispered. She was the tactician. She was the fighter.

And she was unconscious.

Hoku lowered his ear toward her mouth and listened for her breathing. Her heartbeat was there, weak and ragged, but growing steady. His own breath came a little easier. Maybe the worst was over. Her lungs were figuring out how to work on their own again.

Whitefeather let loose a high-pitched screech, and two Aviars flew over. “Bring the two Human children,” she said. “They may have witnessed the attack. The president will wish to question them.”

“Yes, Sister,” they said.

Heavy ropes fell across his shoulders and back. Hoku lunged for the knife, but it was out of reach. Three Aviars swooped to the sand. Rough hands grabbed him, tumbled him back. He smelled dead meat and sweat. Feathers brushed his legs and face.

In no time at all, he and Aluna were tangled tight together. Two Aviars vaulted into the air, and the net jerked into the sky.

The ground fell away. The sand became a yellow ribbon between the blue of the ocean and the green of the trees. They rose fast. The frantic flapping of giant bird wings resolved into a steady rhythm. His hair flattened against his face with each downswing.