The Tree of Water

  And the waterspout coming closer and closer, the black wall of swirling filth rushing ahead of it.

  Then, as he struggled to hold his sea horse’s back, the wall caught up with the merrow and Teel.

  Ven watched in horror as the blue-green hippocampus and the merrow were swallowed up before his eyes.

  He screamed her name, his mouth filling with salt water.

  “Ven! Ven! Hurry up! Where are you?” Char’s thrum seemed very far away.

  A moment later his friend’s vibrations were drowned out in the tornado that was splitting the sea.

  Despair washed over him only a few seconds before the wave of debris did.

  It hit him square across the shoulders, making his head snap back with a sickening crack.

  * * *

  Then everything went black.

  I think the yellow hippocampus dashed out from beneath me as I lost my grip on her neck, but I can’t be sure.

  I’d like to think she got away, that I was just holding her back, and that she was faster once I was off her.

  I’ll never know.

  * * *

  When Ven awoke, he was alone on the ocean floor, in the dark.

  He thought he might be lying on a piece of broken coral because whatever was poking him in the back was sharp, but there was no way to see for certain. Even the special sight that Nain had in the darkness could not penetrate the complete, overwhelming black of the sea.

  I wonder how long I’ve been unconscious, he thought. It must be night now, by the look of things. His stomach dropped. And that means the last day of summer is over. Threshold has come and gone—and the Sea King didn’t get a chance to send his message to the Cormorant. Which means the attack will begin when the sun comes up.

  He felt like crying, but no tears came to his eyes, awash as they already were in salt water that was pressing down with great force on him.

  He tried to concentrate on the thrum of his friends, but could feel nothing specific in the still-unsettled drift. He closed his eyes again, trying to keep his breathing steady and his heart from pounding too hard. His thrum came out like a call in a wild wind.

  Amariel? Can you hear me?

  Nothing but the slurping and swishing of the drift answered him.

  He felt around in his pocket for the air stone. He already knew it was there, because he was breathing, but there was comfort in feeling the bubble beneath his fingers, still with him even after the entire sea had seemingly turned upside down around him.

  If I take it out, I will have light, he thought. But if there is no other light, whatever else is around me will see me. That might be worse than being in the dark.

  At that moment, however, it was hard to imagine anything worse.

  Far away, he felt a familiar ping against his skull. He could almost place the location of the feeling, in his forehead, above his right eye.

  Ven? Ven, is that you?

  Ven’s heart pounded harder with excitement.

  Char? Char! I’m over here. Where are you?

  His best friend’s answer seemed very far away.

  Here. I’m comin’. Stay where you are and keep thinkin’ my name. I’ll come to you.

  Can you see? Ven thought.

  Not a bit. But I’m human, so I’m prolly more used to it than you are. Hold still.

  Ven exhaled and lay still, trying to keep his thoughts clear.

  Char. Char. Char, he thought, over and over. Char.

  The sand beneath him wriggled, and Ven sat up, blind in the dark.

  Ugh! Char!

  “No need to shout.” Char’s thrum was right next to him.

  A blue glow appeared, blinding in the pitch darkness.

  Ven shielded his stinging eyes.

  Char was hovering in the drift a stone’s throw away, his hands cupped around a cold, gleaming pinpoint of light.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” Ven said, taking his hands down as his eyes adjusted. “Are you all right?”

  Char nodded. “Neck’s a bit sore, but it’s amazin’ we both still have our air stones and knapsacks.”

  “It’s amazing we’re both alive. I lost my spear.” Ven swam up from the ocean floor and over to his friend. His shoulders and back felt bruised, but otherwise his body seemed to be working.

  “Any sign of Amariel or Coreon?”

  I’m here, Coreon’s thrum replied from a distance. Put your light away until I get there. I can see you—and so can a whole bunch of giant squid nearby. They’re on their way to find you right now.

  Char quickly slipped his air stone back in his pocket, dousing the light.

  The two boys waited in darkness, hanging in the drift, for what seemed like a very long time. Finally they heard Coreon’s underwater voice very nearby, its inconsistent tone a little deeper than before.

  “You two both in one piece?”

  “Yes,” Ven replied. “How about you?”

  “Fine.” Coreon swam nearer. “Any sign of Amariel?”

  Ven closed his eyes and tried to find her thrum. After a few moments’ concentration, he shook his head sadly.

  “Not even a whisper,” he said. “I can’t hear her at all.”

  “Me neither,” said Char. “What happened to your hippocampi?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ven. “I think mine bucked me off her back, or got swept out from under me. I hope she got away.”

  “Mine too,” said Char.

  “Mine as well.” Coreon’s thrum seemed somewhat more spirited. “Do you hear that?”

  Ven concentrated, but felt nothing out of the ordinary.

  “No—what are you hearing?”

  “There’s a strange, sort of sad, helpless thrum not terribly far from here—can you feel it now?”

  Ven thought he could, but he didn’t recognize it.

  “I do, but it doesn’t sound like Amariel to me.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Coreon said. “But I think it might be Teel.”

  Ven quickly unbuttoned his pocket and pulled out his own air stone.

  “Where? Can you find a direction?”

  Coreon listened again, then nodded. “I think so.”

  “Then we’ll follow you.”

  The sea-Lirin boy nodded again, then started off into the drift.

  With the light out, the black ocean looked ghostly. Both of his friends’ faces appeared, disappeared, then reappeared as they passed through the cold shadows cast by the glowing stone. They swam over broken bones of long-buried ships encrusted with claw-like rusticles. Ghost shrimp flitted in and out between the bones, while goliath groupers, enormous pink speckled fish twice as big as each of them, swam slowly past.

  It seemed to Ven that he was floating through an entirely different world.

  He and Char followed Coreon for a very long time over an ocean floor that was now almost totally absent of plant life. The heavy ceiling of the black water above pressed down on them, making Ven’s heart beat hard in his chest.

  “It’s a good thing Amariel told us Teel’s name,” Char said as Coreon swam ahead at the edge of the cold blue light. “I’m not sure we’d ever be able to find his thrum in the sea if she hadn’t. That thing about names having power in the sea sure seems true.”

  “Teel trusted her right away,” Ven agreed. “She really does have a skill with hippocampi. I bet she wins the Grand Trophy one day, just like she wants to.”

  “I think I see him,” said Coreon.

  They quickened their pace.

  At the edge of the light Ven could see something vertical in the drift, trembling violently. As they got closer, he recognized the giant sea horse, paler it seemed than he had been before, shaking nervously, his round eyes wide and darting.

  “Teel!” he called as they got closer. “Teel! Do you know where Amariel is?”

  The hippocampus stared at them.

  Then it bobbed forward slightly, as if it were bowing to them.

  Ven glanced down at the ocean floor at what looked like a smal
l mound of rags and broken coral, half-buried in sand below the giant sea horse.

  He held up the air stone to see it better, then gasped.

  “Oh, no,” he whispered. “Oh, no. It’s Amariel.”

  30

  At the Edge of Twilight

  Char dove down to the ocean floor, followed an instant later by Coreon.

  “Ven, hold the light closer,” he said. “Don’t drop the stone.”

  Ven obeyed. His hands had gone numb. He watched as Char turned the motionless merrow over onto her back, clearing the sand away from her neck.

  “She’s still breathin’,” Char said. “But barely. Her gills are barely flutterin’.”

  “Here, you get out your stone too,” Coreon said to Char. “We need more light.”

  He lifted the merrow off the seafloor while Char fumbled around in his pocket. Char cast a baleful eye at the trembling hippocampus.

  “This is your fault, ya fat waste o’ breath,” he said. “If she hadn’t insisted on savin’ you, she’d have—”

  “Stop it,” Ven interrupted. “We owe Teel thanks—if he hadn’t stayed with Amariel, we would never have found her.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Char glared at the trembling beast one last time, then held his light stone aloft in the drift.

  The three boys and the frightened hippocampus all winced as the intense blue light brightened the murky black depths.

  Now that they could see a little better, Ven was even more nervous. He could see in the cold light that Amariel had lost a good deal of her coloring. Her skin and scales looked bleached, and her mouth was open, her teeth showing, something she would never had allowed if she were conscious. Coreon lifted her wrist and then dropped it, hoping she would respond, but her arm fell, limp, to her side.

  “What do we do now, chief?” Coreon’s thrum was even deeper in pitch than before, and more stable.

  “I have no idea. Do you have any sense of where we are?”

  Coreon shook his head.

  “The waterspout tore up a good deal of the seabed,” he said. “The ocean floor isn’t the same as it was. And if even if it were, there’s no way to tell whether it’s just a moonless night in the Sunlit Realm, or if we’ve fallen over the edge into Twilight.” He gave the merrow a gentle shake, but she did not respond. “If it’s the first possibility, when the morning comes we will know which way to go to get back to the coral reef. I’m assuming you are ready to go home now, and not pursue any more sea dragons or mythical trees, yes?”

  “Absolutely,” Ven said, struggling to keep the kelp he’d had for lunch down. “Char, you may blame Teel, but this is all my fault. You told me from the beginning this was a bad idea, and you were right.”

  “Hooey,” Char said. “If we hadn’t o’ come with her, she woulda been here anyway. She made it pretty clear that seein’ the Festival was somethin’ she was gonna do. And it was an amazin’ sight, before the waterspout, wasn’t it?” Ven nodded distantly. “All right. So she got to see somethin’ she always dreamed of seein’, and we got to explore the Deep. Like you said, one day we’ll have a bajillion tales to tell the sailors on board the Serelinda, or whatever ship we’re on. Things happen sometimes that you can’t control. I apologize, Teel.”

  The hippocampus just stared at him.

  “Have you given her up for dead, then?” Coreon asked. “You sound like it.”

  “Heck no,” Char said before Ven could reply. “I just don’ want Ven to spend the night beatin’ himself up. He does that enough at home. So I guess we wait until mornin’, figure out which way is east, then head home, right?”

  “Maybe,” said Coreon. “That only works if the waterspout didn’t throw us too far. I was unconscious during the ride, so I’m not sure how long it carried us. It could have been a few leagues—or for many miles. And if it took us a long way, well, we could have fallen over the edge into Twilight.”

  “And if we did—”

  “Then the sun won’t be coming up, or at least when it does, it will only change the water from total darkness to gray total darkness. We could try to find our way back, but we will probably end up wandering, lost, in the sea forever. Or at least until our luck runs out and something eats us.”

  Char blew out his breath, sending a stream of bubbles into the drift as he did.

  Ven bent down beside Amariel and touched her arm. It was hard to tell for certain underwater, but she seemed colder than usual. He fought back the panic that was rising inside him.

  “I think we need to find a safe place until morning,” he said, looking around at the sea beyond the glow of the air stones. “Do you think there’s a shipwreck or something where at least Amariel can be sheltered?”

  “You stay with her, an’ I’ll go look,” Char said.

  “Don’t go far,” Coreon advised.

  “No worries about that,” Char said.

  The light around Amariel dimmed as Char swam away, clutching his air stone in front of him. He left a trail behind himself, a little like a tunnel of light, and Ven could see him holding the stone aloft, checking the murky darkness beyond where Amariel was lying. A few moments later he returned, bringing the light with him.

  His face was pale in the blue-white glow.

  “I don’ know what this place is, but I’m not sure I want to take shelter in it.” His thrum was shaky.

  “What’s out there?” Ven asked.

  “Go look for yourself. It’s sort of hard to describe.”

  “Let’s all go,” Coreon said. “We have to get Amariel out of the drift. If a predator comes along, or more than one, we won’t be able to defend her where we are. Let me carry her so you don’t risk dropping your stone.”

  The hippocampus bobbed its head in the drift. Ven looked over at him.

  “Can you carry her, Teel?”

  The giant sea horse nodded.

  He and the other boys exchanged a glance.

  “That’s prolly a good idea,” Char said. “You lift her, Coreon, an’ I’ll get her across his back.”

  Teel shook his head, then curled and uncurled his spiral tail.

  “Oh,” said Ven. “Well, we can try letting you carry her. But if you think you’re going to drop her, tell us quickly.”

  Together they carried Amariel over to the chubby hippocampus and held her where he could curl his tail around her. The giant sea horse bobbed down to the ocean floor, but then righted himself.

  “All right,” Ven said. “Let’s go see what’s beyond the ring of light.”

  * * *

  Walking into the complete darkness is something I’m not sure I could have done alone. Under the sea, the blackness is much heavier than a moonless night in the upworld, especially for me. In the upworld nighttime, even if there is no other light, I can see shapes, and sense what things have weight. It’s easy to separate out dark emptiness from solid things that are all around you but not visible.

  In the sea, there is no weight to feel. Non-living things do not give off thrum, so you can sometimes come right next to something massive that you had no idea was there if there is no light. It would be as if you were walking across a big open meadow in the upworld and suddenly were standing next to a castle you hadn’t known was there.

  Which was a little bit like what happened.

  * * *

  Ahead of the circle of light, what looked like a giant rock cliff suddenly appeared.

  Char held his air stone up to cast the light a little farther.

  “What do ya make o’ that?” he said.

  Towering above them was a sunken ship, broken at the keel line down the middle, but almost entirely intact. It lay, partially buried, on the sandy ocean floor, its bones bleached as clean as it might have been in the air of the upworld. Not a barnacle or rusticle or undersea creature of any sort was visible on its decaying hull. The mainmast was intact, a tattered flag still flapping in the drift off the crow’s nest.

  “That doesn’t look like any other shipwreck we’ve seen, that’s f
or certain,” Ven agreed. “But maybe it’s just because the water is deeper here, and it’s colder. Maybe it’s too cold for the normal ocean life that makes a crust on ship bones to grow here.”

  Coreon shook his head.

  “It’s cold, but not that cold here,” he said. “I’ve heard that cold seas can preserve ships, but this one seems too clean to even be possible.”

  “I’ve never seen ship bones like that,” Ven agreed.

  “Well, you would have if you had held your stone a little to the left,” Char said.

  Ven looked puzzled. He turned with the small bubble of blue light, and almost dropped it in shock.

  Beside the enormous galleon was another huge ship, also in almost perfect condition, with a gaping hole in the hull, but otherwise intact, as clean and free of sea life as the ones outside Ven’s family factory in Vaarn.

  And, while he could not see very far in the darkness beyond the glowing blue bubble, it appeared that there might be a line of similarly broken ships stretching into the gloom, side by side, on a reef of sorts.

  A reef that sparkled.

  “Criminey!” Char whispered. “Look at all the gold, Ven.”

  Ven didn’t need the suggestion. His eyes were already locked on the sight of mountains of coins, of every possible kind, taller than the houses of Vaarn, on which the ghostly ships were seated. Lower down on the reef was a line of ships’ wheels, like the ones that steered the Serelinda, each carefully mounted in the pile of treasure. There were many more of them, and they were turning slowly in the drift, like windmills on top of a long underwater hill.

  But by far the most unsettling sight was what at first had appeared to be a gathering of frozen women, their glassy eyes staring at him in the devouring darkness. Then, as he looked closer, he realized what he was seeing was a collection of figureheads, the wooden sculptures carved into the bows of almost every large sailing ship. His eyes wandered over them, taking in the wide variety of colors of their hair and clothing, their different facial expressions, which ranged from warm and welcoming to stern and forbidding. There was even one that seemed very familiar, as if he had seen it before. He stared at it, trying to make out its details in the pale light of the air stone.