The Ark of Humanity

  ***

  Anna awoke as Maanta kissed her forehead. The kiss was comforting and made her smile. But she did not open her eyes. Why was he setting her on the sand? His chest had been so strong and warm. At any moment he would lie down beside her again and they would warmly cuddle back to sleep.

  But he didn’t return to her. Instead she heard him mount Archa beside her and swim away.

  As she opened her eyes, Anna saw Maanta riding Archa quickly toward the mountain in the distance. Where is he going? she wondered as he moved farther and farther away. She had already lost him once, unexpectedly. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

  Slowly, so as not to wake the others, she mounted her riding fish and swept off after Maanta. The sunrise-lit morning water swept coolly past her as she followed him over the mountain ridge.

  Sangfoul’s deep black spiked structures shocked her as they came into view. They stood like tombs above the ocean floor. Surprisingly, no tailfinned people swam about Sangfoul’s black rising horns.

  Maanta and Archa swam quickly past Sangfoul’s structures and then on toward a series of caverns that seemed to exist in rising stone walls not far away.

  Anna kept her distance so that Maanta would not know she was following, and as she rode her fish through the black horn buildings, something caught her eye in a window in one of their high rooms.

  There, in a barely lit room, a young girl with pale pastel blue skin cradled an adorable baby in her arms. She looked familiar. Anna swept past, continuing to follow Maanta. Illala! Anna realized. She’s alive! After I discover what Maanta’s up to, I’ll come back and try to convince her to come with us. Are they using her as a babysitter to watch over their children? How bizarre.

  Anna had long thought Illala dead and could never have guessed that she would have had a child with Evanshade.

  Anna moved on the riding-fish’s back quicker now as she saw Maanta disappear into a pitch-black cavern beyond Sangfoul. The cavern was high in elevation, higher than any of Sangfoul’s horns rose, and Maanta disappeared into its lips of darkness.

  She arrived at the cavern’s entrance shortly and halted, not entering. Voices inside startled her. One voice was that of Maanta. Whose voice was the other?