The Vast and Brutal Sea: A Vicious Deep novel (The Vicious Deep) (7 page)

Rule number five: Don’t piss off Grumble. I mean Karel.

As I run back to the village, I notice the soft change in the moons. They do move. Not very far, but a purple light falls over the village, which is as dark as it ever gets down here without being pitch black.

Leaves crunch hard in front of me and I draw out my dagger. She chuckles in her translucent form.

“I know you’re there, Yara.”

I turn, but I don’t know if I’m turning the right way because I can’t see her. Then when I look closely, I see the soft ripple in the air. She blinks her tiger eyes and then shows the rest of herself.

“Put that away, Land Prince.” She walks ahead of me with her quiver full of arrows and bow around her arm.

“Do you always walk around here fully loaded?” I jog to keep pace with her.

She looks at my harness with my dagger in the front and the scepter in the back. “I hope Karel hasn’t made you change your mind.”

“He’s not that scary.” I shake my head, but I’d be a fool to say Karel doesn’t rattle me. So I’m going to be the fool and not say it, just think it. “I have to go through with this, Yara. My people, the ones here, the ones on the other side, they depend on it.”

She doesn’t say anything for a long time, just walks alongside me even though I don’t know where I’m going.

“Why aren’t you as angry as Grumble?” I ask. “I mean Karel.”

She stops and watches the sky as the purple darkness deepens around us. “I was much younger when we came to the Vale of Tears. I’ve grown up here. It is my home, more than the river I was born in. For Karel, for many of the older generation, it will always be a place of banishment.”

I think of Coney Island, the beach, Layla sitting on our lifeguard tower with the sun in her wavy hair. No matter where I end up, that will always be my home. The thought of it weighs down on my chest. I breathe fast, like it’s going out of style.

Something falls from above, right at my feet. I pick up the purple apple and brush the dirt off the skin. Unlike the weeping trees, this one holds its branches up, reaching toward the sky. Its leaves are as dark as the skin of the fruit it gives.

“The goddess tree,” Yara says. “The only one we’ve found in the Vale.”

I hold it out to Yara.

She shakes her head, but I see her body stiffen. “Too sweet for my taste. The kids gobble it up.”

I hold it closer to me to see if she’ll stop me from eating it.

“It’s time to eat,” she says, pressing her hand on mine until I lower the fruit from my lips. “You’ll spoil your appetite.”

I throw the fruit behind me.

We pass the tent where I’m staying on the outside of the village square, and I’m feeling a little bit better because at least I can trust Yara. There’s a massive fire pit that looks like it gets regular use, and people are surfacing from the river, from tents, hopping out of trees to gather around for dinner. Off to the side there’s a wooden dais that looks like it’s hardly ever been used.

“This is the town square. We have dinner collectively every night.”

“Is that like a family tradition?”

She shakes her head. “To make sure we’re all accounted for.”

I follow her as she walks past the tent they shoved me into when I first got here. “The tent of the elders. Isi is our leader. Karel and I are in charge of training our children. The Tree Mother is—”

“The oracle,” I offer. She doesn’t deny it, but she also doesn’t confirm what I’ve said.

“You don’t look so old,” I joke. “I mean, to be an elder.”

“You should know better than anyone else how deceptive our exterior is.”

We walk in silence for a bit, passing eyes that follow us with unabashed curiosity.

“I feel like I have something on my forehead.”

She licks her finger and rubs it between my eyebrows. “It’s gone now.”

“That’s gross.”

“You asked,” Yara says. “We haven’t had a court visitor in—ages. You have to understand that to us, there isn’t a world outside here. There’s the outer ring where the beast lives. Then the inner ring, where we live. This is it.”

Suddenly the warriors start marching past us. They form a circle around the border of the village where the tree lines start.

I’m about to unsheathe my dagger, but Yara places a hand over mine. “It’s okay. It’s just our guard.”

“Does this happen often?”

The warriors of the clan ready themselves, facing the darkening forest.

Yara nods. “The Naga doesn’t come here, but it’s a precaution.”

“Then how does she take so many of your people?” I don’t realize how crass that sounds until after I say it.

“The bigger game is on the outer ring. We have to hunt.”

I stop when we’ve made a complete loop around the main village. The fire pit is lit and older women bring out trays of food. Kai and Brendan and Dylan emerge from their paradise getaways ready to stuff their faces.

“If you knew Dylan was out there, why didn’t you get him before?”

She walks past me, ignoring the question, but looking back to say, “Best eat and get some rest, Land Prince. You have no idea what you’ve agreed to.”

The breeze brings a soft drizzle from the weeping trees, and I know why they call it the Vale of Tears. I shiver at Yara’s words, because I know she’s a hundred percent right.

“You aren’t going to help anyone if you can’t sleep,” Brendan says.

His feet are at my head, and he’s wiggling his toes every ten minutes. It’s a mer thing.

“You aren’t sleeping, either.”

“Can you sleep with Dylan’s lion roars?” Brendan says.

Dylan is on the other end of the tent beside Kai, who emits a whistling sound every time she breathes.

“You’d think, with how big this place is, that they’d give us our own tents.”

Brendan scoffs. “I don’t mind it so much.”

“Surrounded by every girl in the tribe, including the old lady with the missing front teeth? Of course you don’t mind.”

“Really, Cousin, you underestimate me. It’s part of my plan. They want us right where they can see us.”

“Easy for them to say. They’re see-through piles of water.”

We chuckle then listen to the white noise of foreign insects and waterfalls and rivers.

“Karel wants to kill me.”

“Did you tell him there’s a very long list?”

I snort. “And that’s just my ex-girlfriends.”

Brendan chuckles, but he’s fading fast.

“And Yara is hiding something.”

He mm-hmms. “They all are. Must keep”—he yawns—“eyes open.”

A snap makes me sit straight up.

Brendan follows suit. He presses a finger to his lips, and his turquoise eyes turn to the tent flap.

I think I see a shadow walking past, but there are a million shadows in this place. I grab my dagger at my side. Brendan is on his feet. We lift the flap to peek outside. The fire pit is long gone. The weeping trees dance in the breeze. And then there’s Isi standing at the edge of the forest.

There are no guards around her. She’s still, head bent to the ground. Then up to the purple moon. Her hair whips around her. Then she starts to fade, becoming water, moving in a rush where we can’t follow.

“Is that a normal River Clan custom, praying alone in the woods?”

“I’d say not,” Brendan says. “However, your presence has given them hope of being free of a monster they’ve known too long. You worry too much, Cousin Tristan. All will be smooth as the seas.”

Except that he doesn’t worry enough, so I have to worry for both of us. Smooth seas means the storm has passed, or is only just arriving.

•••

Cold water to the face wakes me.

I jolt up, grabbing my dagger. Karel is standing over me. I take a swing, and he ducks out of the way before I can follow through. He laughs and that makes me swing again. This time, he laughs when I miss, and we topple out of my tent.

Where the hell are my friends? Oh, that’s right. Brendan has his girls, Dylan his boys, and Kai her books. Me? I have Grumble and a new bruise on my cheek.

“You may be fast landside, Prince, but in our world, you’re still catching up.”

And so it happens. Me throwing punches. His shoulders lean back, but I don’t give him time to catch his step. I cross punch. My second hit lands on his solar plexus. His breath catches. I grab a branch from the ground and turn it to feel its weight. “I’m a fast learner.”

The thing about fighting someone who doesn’t exactly want to be your BFF is that he’s not going to go easy. He doesn’t slow down or hold back his punches. We fall back, narrowly missing a woman carrying a basket of fuzzy green coconuts. I block Grumble’s stroke with my dagger. He’s strong as hell and I can’t hold him off, falling back. The wood digs into my throat. I bring up my knee for a cheap shot, and he rolls off me.

“You’re strong, Land Prince,” he says, standing back up. The villagers have stopped their day-to-day activities to watch us. “But you have to be stronger.”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“To wake the Sleeping Giants, yes. But that’s not the same kind of strength I mean.”

“I don’t even know what you mean.”

“You’re resisting me.”

“I’m fighting back. Isn’t that the point?”

“You’re fighting like a human. Your lineage is ancient as the seas, and yet you still haven’t discovered what it means.”

I’m panting, but I don’t stop. “Show me.”

Grumble nods. He turns and I race him into the trees. The ground is wet and our bare feet squish against the soggy earth. “Are we going back to the outer ring?”

“Scared of the beast, are you? You should be.”

The lush, green forest starts thinning out. The trees grow sideways, elongated like they’re trying to stretch and break away from the ground but can’t. Then we reach the bottom of a cliff.

“What the hell is this?”

There are carvings in the stone.

“Do you know what we did before the court took us?” Grumble asks.

I shake my head once, feeling red at my ignorance.

“We lived in the rivers of the world. We kept the waters clear, safe from beasts. We lived every day in peace.”

“Don’t you have peace now?”

“We have warring children that will grow into soldiers like me. They will hunt the Naga until they fall.”

“Not anymore they won’t,” I remind him. “I’m here now.”

He cocks his head to the side, studying me like he wants to believe me, but years of fighting won’t let him. Like I’m something rotten that washed up on his shore.

Suddenly I stop taking all of the happiness in my life for granted.

“Climb,” he says, becoming translucent, then water moving into the trickle running through the stone.

“Easy for you to say!” My voice echoes
Say. Say. Say.

The first half is easy enough. The words “death wish” come to mind. I have no harness. One time, I did the rock-climbing wall for my buddy Angelo’s birthday and they were all, oh, finally we can do something better than Tristan. I remember reaching for the red and yellow hooks and sweating bullets, even though I was safe, and Layla climbed past me like a squirrel on a branch. She blew me a kiss, her helmet too big for her head, and said, “Bet you can’t catch me!” And maybe it’ll always be like that, me a step behind.

I can’t think that way. I have to keep going, reminding myself that this is a test.

Now, I grab hold of the edges jutting out of the wall. I’m a merman. Mermen don’t go rock climbing. But that’s the thing—this is the fear I have to get over. Climb to the top of the mountain. Step by step. My bare feet burn and get cut on the sharper edges of stone. My hand slips and I swing outward. They say, “Don’t look down,” so I keep my head up. The pit of my stomach plummets.
Don’t let go, Tristan.
The day is bright with white sun, and I pull myself one more time. The top of this cliff is flat. Chipped stones litter the ground, and I inch my way up.

“I made it!”
It. It. It.
“Take that motherf—”

Hands, wet and fluid, press down on mine.

I lose my footing and bang my knee, dangling off the side of the cliff.

“What are you doing?” I yell.

Grumble’s face is in his water form right in front of me. His breath is like wet soil. “Getting rid of your fears, Land Prince.”

“Don’t—”
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

His fingers are solid around mine, crushing, lifting, and pushing me off the edge.