Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (17 page)

“There will be an official Promising tomorrow, and then the marriage contract will be signed. I want everything taken care of before I die.”

Astrid’s breath came rushing back. “No!” she shouted. “I won’t do it!”

“Astrid—”

“I’m only seventeen! I don’t want to get married to
anyone
! Especially not to Tauno!”

“Why not? He’s a good leader. A strong merman. He’ll protect you.”

“He’s a barracuda! He beats his hippokamps. I’ve seen him! And…and…”

Kolfinn raised an eyebrow. “And what?”

“He’s
stupid
! He never paid attention in class. He sat in the back with his dumb friends and shot iceballs at everyone,” said Astrid.

“That was years ago,” said Kolfinn dismissively. “I’m sure he’s grown up since then.”

“I
won’t
do it,” Astrid declared. “Better
udstødt
than married to Tauno.”

Udstødt were Ondalina’s outcast. Their numbers were made up of criminals and loners. They lived in the southernmost part of the realm, in broken off pieces of icebergs.

“It’s your
duty
to marry. You
know
that,” Kolfinn said. “If something happened to your brother, or the sons he’ll someday have, your future sons
would rule Ondalina.” He shook his head. “You’ve spent too much time in southern waters. That explains your ridiculous behavior.
Värme gör oss dumma
,” he
said, in Ondalinian mer.

Astrid knew the expression. All Ondalinians did.
Heat makes us stupid.

“I’m
not
marrying Tauno,” Astrid insisted. “You can’t—”

Kolfinn cut her off. “Good gods, child! Are you actually going to make me say it?” he thundered.

“Say what?” Astrid thundered back.

“You have no choice! Tauno’s the only one who wants you!”

Astrid felt as if she’d been slapped. She floated perfectly still, utterly humiliated.

“Who wants a mermaid without magic?” Kolfinn continued. “Who, in these waters, would risk having children who couldn’t songcast? How would such children defend
themselves? How would they contribute to our society?”

“You’re
wrong
, Kolfinn,” Astrid said defiantly, thinking of Becca and Sera. “My friends want me.”

“Friends?”
Kolfinn echoed scornfully. “Rulers have no friends. Rulers have realms.” In a tone that brooked no further discussion, he added, “I’ll
have my advisors bring the requisite documents to my bedside tomorrow at noon. Tauno will be here. Rylka, too. Make sure
you
are.”

Noon,
Astrid thought. It was seven o’clock now. In seventeen hours she would be back here, signing her name to a marriage contract. With
Tauno
, a merman she despised. The
thought filled her with revulsion.

“What we do, we do for Ondalina,” Kolfinn said, as if reading her mind.

Astrid nodded. She dutifully kissed her father’s withered cheek, slung her sword and her pack over her back, and left his room.

She swam out of the hospital, and then down the Hall of Elders, an arched passageway that led through the palace to her family’s private apartments. The hall was empty. On either side of
it, life-size statues of Ondalina’s past admirals stood. Astrid’s head was high and her gaze cold as she glided by them, but inside her emotions burned like waterfire.

Part of her desperately wanted to swim away.
Now
, before it was too late. But another part refused to desert her family or her realm. She told herself that she would face tomorrow, and
her Promising, the same way she’d faced every other hard thing in her life—by encasing her heart in ice. She had no choice. It was the only way. For her and for Ondalina. Kolfinn had
said so.

Astrid stopped dead. Her anguished eyes swept over the statues, over their silent, stony faces. “But
is
it?” she asked them.

The statues didn’t answer. They just stared through unseeing eyes as Astrid struggled to make sense of her warring feelings.

Staying here and promising herself to that squid Tauno, watching as her realm capitulated to Miromara’s demands, and knowing that all the while Abbadon grew stronger…how would doing
these things help Ondalina?

As she continued to gaze at the admirals—some who’d ruled hundreds of years ago, some thousands—Astrid realized that their ways, and her father’s, were the old ways.
Their strength had come from hiding. From camouflaging. From keeping secrets in, and keeping others out.

That had been Merrow’s tactic, too. According to Vr
ă
ja, Merrow had hidden many truths—the truth about Atlantis’s destruction, the truth about Abbadon—to
protect the mer. Instead she’d put them in terrible danger.

“Kolfinn’s way, Merrow’s way…they aren’t
my
way,” Astrid whispered.

She had embarked on a different current the moment she’d set off for the Iele’s caves. Meeting Vr
ă
ja, learning the truth of the mer’s origins, spending time
with Sera and the others had all carried her farther down that new current. Was she going to turn back now?

“There has to be
another
way,” she said. She had less than a day to find it.

“M
ACAPÁ, AT LAST, BABY!” Ava said wearily but happily to her pet piranha. “
Meu deus
, I thought we’d never
get home.”

Ava couldn’t see her home, but she could hear it, smell it, and feel it.

She heard the sounds of children playing. Someone singing a lullaby. Dishes clattering. Mothers yelling. The spicy smell of mud peppers wafted by, followed by the sour tang of marshfruit. She
felt the warmth of Macapá’s waters, and its mer.

She’d lost her sight at the age of six—young, but old enough to allow her to remember how the village looked.

Its dwellings were made from the empty shells of giant river mussels, tethered to the riverbed by ropes made of tree roots. Round holes were cut into the shells’ walls for both doors and
windows, and the windows were framed by brightly painted shutters, which were closed at night and opened in the morning. Glass was costly and Macapá was a poor village. Tiny snail shells,
threaded on river vines, dangled in doorways to keep the pesky purple, blue, and orange discus fish out. Caimans floated on the river’s surface, their bellies like pale clouds drifting by.
Anacondas slithered across the river’s muddy bed.

Ava couldn’t wait to be inside her house. She missed the sound of her mother singing, the taste of her father’s spicy salamander stew, and the comfort of her own bed. As she and Baby
made their way down the narrow, crowded current that flowed through Macapá, Baby snapped constantly, annoying everyone around him.

“Stop it,
louco
, or I’ll put you back on your leash!” Ava scolded.

She was exhausted. The trip from the River Olt was long, and it had been made even longer by the need to stay off the main currents in order to avoid Traho and his death riders. Both she and
Baby were thin. They needed rest and home cooking. Ava was sure they would get plenty of both. When she felt strong again, she would set off for the swamps of the Mississippi to look for
Nyx’s ruby ring.

Her parents had been unhappy when she’d sat them down at the kitchen table and told them she intended to travel halfway around the world, to a cold, dark river in the Carpathian Mountains.
But when she’d explained why, they’d understood.

The gods took your sight for a reason,
her father always told her.

“Maybe now they’ll tell you why,” her mother had said.

Like all the villagers of Macapá, Ava lived close to her gods. They weren’t distant figures to be worshipped once a week in cold stone temples, but living deities to be loved,
invoked, and sometimes even scolded. No bride-to-be would think of marrying without asking the sea goddess Neria’s blessing. A new business venture required an offering to Ploutos, the god of
money. And if Ava’s father’s salamander stew turned out bitter, the first one he blamed was Estia, the kitchen god.

Ava had waited most of her life to learn why she had lost her sight.

All the way to the Olt, and all the way back again, she’d hoped the gods would reveal their intentions, but they’d remained silent. She’d learned about Orfeo, and the
talismans, and a murderous creature called Abbadon that she would have to help defeat—but how, exactly, was her blindness supposed to help her fight a monster powerful enough to destroy an
entire island?

Five mages of Atlantis, with strong magic and full vision, hadn’t been able to kill Abbadon. What chance did she have?

Throughout her journey home Ava had cajoled and begged the gods, hoping for an answer.

In the Canary Islands, where she’d come out of the mirror realm, she’d surfaced and called out to the sky god.
Why did you take my vision, Cassio? Can I have a hint? Just a tiny
little clue? I hate to bother you, but I kind of have to save the world and I can’t even see it.

On her way through the Cape Verde Basin, she’d chided the god of healing.
You think this is funny, Eveksion? When Abbadon figures out that I can’t get him in my
sights—because I don’t
have
any sight—he’s going to rip my head off. Even
you
won’t be able to fix that.

In the Gambia Plain, she’d tried to engage the twin gods of the tides.
Hey, Trykel and Spume, here’s a riddle for you: What do you get when you send a blind mermaid to fight a
monster with twelve hands? Answer: splattered.

And one night, in the Doldrums, hiding out from death riders in a cave while hungry, alone, and scared, she’d cried out to the sea goddess herself.
Neria, please, tell me the reason.
This is life-or-death, you know? Maybe that’s not a huge deal if you’re immortal, but I don’t want my friends to die.

But the gods had kept their silence.

Ava wasn’t far from home now. She felt the current bend to the left and dip down, and she knew her house was only about twenty yards away.

She could already hear her mother fuss over her as she swam through the door, and feel her father’s strong arms around her as he swept her up in a hug.

He would be so happy to see her. She knew exactly what he would say. He’d missed her. He’d been so worried. He loved her. And she was too skinny.

He would tell her,
These peppers are so darn hot, they must’ve been planted by Helios himself! I’m going to take them right back to the grocer and tell him to stick them in his
ear!

“Wait…
what
?” Ava said out loud.

Her father’s voice…it was so loud, so clear. It was as if he was not in her imagination, but floating right next to her.

Ava stopped short, in an alley. Her hands went to her head. She was having a vision—one so intense, it made her dizzy. Her ability to see with her mind’s eye had only grown stronger
since she’d traveled to the Iele’s caves and met the other five mermaids.

She saw her father and mother sitting at the kitchen table. Her father was chopping peppers. Her mother was knitting. Usually they talked or sang while they worked. But they were quiet, and
their faces were grim.

Something’s weird,
Ava thought.
Something’s wrong.

“Ay, Mami, these peppers are burning my hands,” her father said. He looked up from his chopping board then, and stared directly at Ava. “They’re so hot, they’re
dangerous.
They have to go.” He rose then and turned toward the garbage can near the kitchen door. Ava watched him and saw that two death riders were positioned on either side of the
door. One had a crossbow trained on her mother. The other was holding a net.

Ava gasped. Baby, hearing the fear in her voice, growled low in his throat. He circled her defensively. Death riders were waiting to ambush her. The crossbow was to prevent her parents from
songcasting a convoca to warn Ava. Her father must’ve suspected that she was near, though. He knew she could sense things, and see things in her mind.

The vision cleared and Ava was left leaning on the alley wall, her heart pounding. What if there were more death riders lurking in the current outside her house? Hiding on the roof? Or the
neighbor’s balcony? She had to get out of there. Fast.

Ava was numb with weariness. She had little food and even less money. She yearned for her parents. She needed their comfort, advice, and protection. But they needed protection themselves.

There was nothing to do but leave. Eventually, the death riders would realize she wasn’t coming home, give up, and leave her parents alone.

Bitter tears welled in her eyes. “Mami, Papi…I love you,” she whispered.

There was only one place for her to go now…to the swamps of the Mississippi, where the Okwa Naholo were holding Nyx’s talisman. She couldn’t go home again. Not for a long time. Not
until this was over.

Ava pulled the scarf that was wrapped around her neck up over her head. Then she turned and quickly swam away, just another mermaid on Macapá’s bustling current.