Waterfire Saga, Book Three: Dark Tide: A Deep Blue Novel (34 page)

I’m going to die down here,
she thought.
Totally alone.

Ling thought of Serafina and the others, waiting for her, depending on her. She thought of her father in the prison camp. His hopes were pinned on her, too. She thought of her brothers. Would
their village be raided next? Would they be hauled off to a labor camp?

And then she thought of her mother. Not being able to say good-bye to her hurt the most.

Ling had parted from her on bad terms, angry at her silence. But now she realized that the way she felt here in the Abyss—scared, alone, and desperate—was how her mother felt every
single day of her life.

Ling valued toughness and strength—in herself and others—but she saw now that even the strong couldn’t be strong all the time. Everyone was frightened or lonely or heartbroken
sometimes, and when they were, they needed others to be strong for them.

For the first time, Ling understood.

She took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of her lungs, “Please, is anyone here?
Anyone?
Can somebody
help
me? I was looking for a puzzle ball, but now I’m
totally lost and I’m sick and I’m scared and I need to get
out
of here!”

No one answered her.

Not at first.

But then Ling heard something. A few seconds later, she saw something, way below her.

A strange creature, with a slender, spiraling body and thousands of glowing tentacles, rose up from the depths. More creatures, just like the first, followed it.

Ling had seen the things in the night skies, things the goggs called
fireworks
. These creatures looked like that, like shining bursts of light in the darkness. They spoke as they rose,
and their language sounded like music, mysterious and beautiful.

“Look!” the creatures said. “Look! Look! Look!”

I must be hallucinating again,
Ling thought.

More creatures came. Their light illuminated the dark water. Ling saw that she was very near the wall.

“Are you real?” Ling asked.

“Look!” the creatures said. “Look! Look!”

Ling did so. Though her head was pounding and she felt sickeningly dizzy, she swam back and forth, searching in cracks and crevices. As her body cried out for oxygen, she dug through silt-filled
depressions, waved aside a school of tiny needlenose fish, parted a thicket of ribbon worms. And then, finally, she saw it. It was only a few feet away, resting on a ledge.

A small white ball.

Ling tried to swim to it, but a fit of coughing, painful and harsh, overtook her. She spat out a mouthful of blood. She tried again, and this time she made it, smiling as she picked up the
talisman. It was carved of coral and contained spheres within spheres. A phoenix decorated the outermost one.

Closing her hand around the precious object, Ling tried to swim up, but failed. Her strength was gone. Another fit of coughing gripped her. When it subsided, she could barely breathe.

The strange light-filled creatures began to descend again.

“No!” she rasped. “Stay!
Please!
I need you. I can’t die here. Please help me.”

As the words left her lips, another fangtooth loomed out of the darkness. It was twice as large as the one that had attacked her. Its teeth were six inches long.

Ling closed her eyes and waited for death.

But it didn’t come. The fangtooth swooped down behind her and grabbed hold of her tunic with his fearsome teeth. Ling felt herself being lifted off the ledge and carried upward.

An anglerfish appeared, too. A thin, fleshy stalk protruded from its forehead, and a blue light glowed at the end. It started for the surface, lighting the way, and the fangtooth followed. As
they ascended, the tightness in Ling’s chest eased. Her dizziness faded. She gripped the talisman tightly.

Half an hour later, she was back at the edge of the Abyss. Lights glowed in the distance. Ling knew they were from the labor camp. She needed to make wake and get far away from it.

“Thank you,” she said to the fangtooth and the angler. She was so overcome with emotion—gratitude, relief, awe—that, for once, she felt tongue-tied. “You…you
saved my life.”

“We know why they’re searching for the white ball. We hear them talking,” the fangtooth said, nodding at the camp. “They mustn’t win. Go, mermaid. Save many more
lives.”

Ling nodded. She watched the two fish return to the deep, then started her long journey. She would travel to Miromara, to find Sera. To prepare for the coming war.

But she would make one stop first. To give her strength to one who needed it. To set things right.

Ling turned and headed for home.

“M
ARCO, ARE YOU
sure
you’re not really a merman disguised as a human?” Becca teased.

They were in the ocean, swimming. Marco, floating on his back, raised his feet and wiggled his toes. Becca saw webbing between them.

“Wow,”
she said, laughing.

“It’s a genetic mutation,” he said. “All the males in the Contorini line have it.”

He dove under the water, came up a foot in front of Becca, and splashed her.

“Really?” Becca said, giving him a look. She raised her tail fins and slapped them down, nearly drowning him.

He shook the water off his face and they swam together. He insisted that they anchor the boat for an hour every day at noon, so he could make lunch, Elisabetta could nap, and Becca could
swim.

“You need to move,” he’d told her. “You need to work all the sore bits, or everything will cramp up.”

Becca left the boat through a small water lock in its hull, directly underneath the saltwater tank. Today, Marco had pulled off his T-shirt and jumped in with her, bronze and bare-chested. Becca
marveled at how strong and graceful he was in the water. She had no idea humans could be those things.

The wind had picked up now and the waves were choppy, but even so it felt wonderful to Becca to move through the ocean after being in the
Marlin
’s small tank. It was even better
since Marco had joined her.

They talked as they swam. Becca had known Marco for only four days, yet she felt like she’d known him her entire life. They never ran out of things to say to each other.

“Any word on Ava?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “The American Wave Warriors reached the Mississippi, but they haven’t found her yet. The swamps are enormous, and she could be anywhere. I know their
leader, Allie Edmonds. She won’t give up.”

“And Ling?”

Marco shook his head.

Becca’s heart felt heavy. She feared the worst. She tried to convoca all her friends whenever she got back into the ocean, but she never had any success. The spell was insanely hard and
tended to work best when several mer were casting it together.

“We
have
heard that Astrid’s okay,” Marco said. “And that she’s making her way to the Karg with Desiderio, Sera’s brother.”

“Some good news!
Finally
,” Becca said, encouraged.

“We’ll get you to the Karg, too,” Marco said. “Don’t doubt that for a minute.”

“I can’t thank you both enough for all that you’ve done for me already,” Becca said.

Marco shrugged. “You don’t need to thank us. It’s what we do.”

“I
do
need to thank you,” Becca insisted. “I wouldn’t be here without you.”

Marco turned to look at her. “I don’t even want to think about that.”

His gaze, suddenly intense, held Becca’s as he spoke. For a second, she thought she saw something in it—something more than friendly concern. She quickly looked away, feeling
flustered and self-conscious.

“What will you do?” she asked, changing the subject. “After you get me to the Karg, I mean.”

“Head back to the Pacific,” Marco replied. “We were helping marine animals there. The elder of Qin and his forces are overwhelmed. It’s a bad scene, Becca. Birds are
swallowing pieces of plastic they mistake for fish. It makes their stomachs rupture. Dolphins are getting tangled in fishing nets and drowning. Turtles eat plastic bags that they think are
jellyfish. The bags block their intestines and they starve.”

Marco’s eyes hardened as he spoke. Becca could hear the anger, and the sadness, in his voice.

“People don’t get it. Because most of them don’t see ocean pollution. If anyone dumped garbage in the Alps, on the Serengeti, or in the Grand Canyon, there would be hell to
pay.”

A sea turtle swam close by them. Marco reached out his hand, skimming it over the graceful creature’s shell.

“Isn’t her life worth more than a plastic bag?” he asked, watching the turtle swim off.

“Yes, it is,” Becca said softly.

“The waters of the world contain millions of species we haven’t even identified yet.
Millions.
There are plains, mountains, and trenches under the seas we haven’t
mapped. And we’re
destroying
them….”

He shook his head, unable to finish. When he got his emotions under control again, he said, “Elisabetta graduates law school next year. Then she can continue our father’s
work—taking marine polluters to court. I graduate in three years—if I can ever get back to school—and then I’ll do my part to document the damage, make people sit up and
take notice. Maybe my generation can achieve what my father’s couldn’t. I hope so. It’s the only chance the ocean’s got.”

Becca was moved by Marco’s passion—and surprised by it. She’d had no idea that there were terragoggs who cared so deeply for the seas and their creatures. Nor had she any idea
that she could care for a terragogg.

As a friend,
she hastily told herself.
And why wouldn’t I? He saved my life, and he and Elisabetta have been so kind to me.

The waves had carried them back to the boat. Becca heard footsteps on deck and looked up. Elisabetta was standing in the bow, binoculars raised to her eyes.

“See anything, El?” Marco shouted to her.

“A manta ray and a school of sea bass,” she shouted back.

Marco spotted the ray about twenty yards away.

“Come on, let’s race. Last one to the ray is a rotten squid egg!” Marco said.

They dove. Becca streaked to the manta, certain she’d reach it first, but Marco was right behind her. The ray saw them coming. In no mood for their games, he flipped his tail at them and
sped off.

Becca laughed. Then she remembered that Marco was human, not mer, and looked at him, worried that he might need to surface. He understood the concern in her eyes, shook his head, and gave her a
thumbs-up.

A movement to her right caught Becca’s attention. Something loomed toward them out of the depths. It looked as if a seamount had broken off from the ocean’s floor and was floating
by.

Becca grabbed Marco’s hand. She pointed with her other hand. Marco’s eyes grew huge in his face as he followed her gaze. He grinned from ear to ear.

The blue whale was so magnificent and her song so beautiful, that Becca’s heart swelled. She felt Marco’s hand tighten on hers and knew he felt the same way. She turned to him, but
Marco wasn’t looking at the whale anymore, he was looking at her. He was still holding her hand and was floating close to her now.

Becca suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe, but in a good way. Then she saw that Marco looked like he couldn’t breathe, either—but in a bad way. She sped to the surface,
pulling him after her. Their heads broke the water and Marco inhaled a gulp of air.

As soon as he caught his breath, he took both of her hands in his, and said, “Becca, I need to tell you something—”

His eyes had that same intense look they’d had earlier. And Becca once again felt that his gaze held something more than friendship. Her heart started to race. Because she felt something
more than friendship, too, but she didn’t want to. She knew that anything more than friendship between a human and a mer was a bad idea. A
very
bad idea.

“What is it, Marco?” she asked, almost fearfully.

“I think—”

But the rest of his answer was cut off by shouting, urgent and fearful. “Marco! Becca! Back in the boat
now
!”

Elisabetta was running to the captain’s chair.

“Two speedboats off the starboard bow. Mfeme’s!” she yelled.

“Go, Becca! Hurry!” Marco said, pushing her toward the boat.

Becca dove, swam under the boat, then shot onto the narrow platform hanging down from the hull. She positioned herself just as Marco had taught her to and pressed a green button. The platform
was pulled up inside the boat, sealing the hull. Becca slid open another hatch above her, hoisted herself into the saltwater tank, and slid the hatch closed.

“She’s in!” Marco shouted. “Go, El!”

Elisabetta tore off. The seas were choppy and the boat smacked against the waves.

“Marco, it’s me they want,” Becca said. “Open the hatch. I’ll swim out and disappear.”

“No way. That’s exactly what they’re hoping for,” said Marco. “I’d bet any amount of money they have death riders on board their boats ready to swim after
you.”

As they spoke, they heard Elisabetta open the throttle.