CHAPTER ONE
THE SHELL AROUND HER NECK
Being from the depths of the sea, you’d think I’d be frightened of the light and its ability to illuminate what we all tried not to see, the memories we tried to leave in the dark because it was too painful to do anything but. This was true for the rest of my pod, yes, but not me. I relished in the way the sun’s rays pierced the surface of the water and fractured into a million stars of the sea. I cherished the way their energy heated the sand beneath me so I could forget I was a creature of the dark depths.
Here in the Kilkov, the seafloor rose to a natural plateau a hundred odd feet below the surface, the only place I could find peace in the light. It was my sanctuary of sorts, beyond the forest of kelp that hid my pod’s territory from the larger creatures of the sea.
The Kilkov was the shallowest place in our territory, the place I would go when the darkness of the sea’s depths weighed on me. It was where I could lie alone and stare up at the ripples on the surface that glimmered in the sun’s rays like melted glass—or so I’d been told. I had never seen melted glass firsthand, just broken pieces and old bottles that had found their way to us like abandoned memories. My father, on the other hand, usedto wield it, commanding the molten sand to bend to his will, shaping it into art that spoke to the souls of sea fae like us.
Of course, he kept his large and fragile pieces on land, fearing the rough sea would destroy his life’s work. He only brought us small odds and ends to invite us into his world, such as thick glass shells less prone to damage. Zellia and I would safely tuck them away in marked locations in the sand, deep enough to not be swept away by the sea currents.
His remaining art had been destroyed in our war, abandoned, roaming the sea floor like his haunting spirit. Each time I saw a glimmer in the water, I dove down to the sand to collect it, wondering if, at one point, the glass was his.
I’d convinced myself that if I found every last fragment, he would finally be able to rest. Sometimes, I swore I was fighting for peace and a chance to move on from his death. Other times, I wondered if all I was doing was torturing my wounded heart. The wooden chest in my room filled halfway with glass fragments was a source of both pride and pain.
My back rested upon the sea floor, and I stared up at the surface of the water, lost in its constant, mesmerizing fluidity. I was thankful most of my pod was too fearful to come to the Kilkov, because that meant more peace for me. I didn’t understand their hesitancy. Yes, it was hundreds of feet closer to the surface, but we were by no means close to land.
The fear wasn’t always present. Long before I was born, my people used to purposely swim to the surface to find ships for an easy way back to land. The fishermen didn’t mind the company, and the sirens didn’t mind the clothes and food supplied to them for the journey ahead. Those journeys were how we ended up with so many hybrids, babies of both worlds, like my father had been. Only a few dozen remained of my pod, since many of them decided to remain on land with their families. Even more had been killed in the war, like my father had.
I wasn’t stupid enough to go to the surface, but if I laid here in the Kilkov, I was safe from the greedy sailors who had forgotten how we were once cousins of the sea. Now, we were nothing but distant enemies, and I refused to get close enough to find myself in their grasp.
As I pressed my hips into the sand, I bent my tail up so the thinner flesh of my fin came between me and the sun, illuminating my opalescent scales. They shimmered with shades of pink and blue, bleeding into each other in a purple haze one could only see in the daytime. The light had a way of making everything down here far more beautiful, myself included.
The Kilkov was the sole place I allowed myself a morsel of happiness, knowing that when I went back down to the Dreslee, the weight of the entire sea would crush me once more.
“Sidra.”The sweet voice echoed in my mind, yanking me from my thoughts. My tail fluttered as I sat up, burrowing my hands into the fine sediment below me. My neck cranked to find my sister peering over the ledge of the Kilkov at me. She remained in the safety of the deep, hanging on to the ledge with her two webbed hands. Her small face poked over the top, her ash blonde hair floating above her, glowing and hypnotic.
“Zellia?”I responded with a cocked head, taking in her scrunched face distorted with worry. I didn’t need to open my mouth to ask my question, but the speculative words rang through her mind all the same.“What’s going on? What are you doing up here?”
“It’s Mom,” she said in my mind, biting her trembling lower lip. My heart faltered, and my hands clenched a fistful of sand, allowing bits of broken shells to penetrate my palms. The sharp pain woke me from the peaceful daze I had stupidly allowed myself to slip into.
“What about her?”I snapped, all patience leaving me as my sister stared into my very soul.
“She gave her rations away again.”She said the six words with haunting sadness, and my mind filled with her grief and desperation. I could almost taste her emotions as present as my own, maybe even stronger.“She needs food.”
“Have Xifi and Tetwin not come back from their hunt?”I peeled my eyes from her and peered into the kelp forest below. I searched for movement, but nothing stood out past the flow of the kelp as it swayed in its usual pattern, being pulled softly in and out by the rolling waves above.
“They have. Empty handed.”Her grave face and the way her features pinched together reminded me so much of my father. Great waves, she was the spitting image of him.
“Again?”I gawked, surveying that all-too familiar face. How many times had they come back empty handed?
“Again. It has been months, Sid. We can’t keep doing this. We need more than kelp and crustaceans. I think I may very well perish if I have to eat one more anemone,”she all but whined, and my stomach lurched at the thought. I could almost taste the bitterness, feel the gooey texture between my teeth. Never again did I want to stoop to eating such a thing.
“Do you think we haven’t been trying, Zel?”I didn’t miss the way she gripped the ledge, as if her life depended on it. She wouldn't even swim up here, yet I knew why she had come to the Kilkov in search of me. I knew what this subtle ask truly was, though she would never admit it.
“No, it's not that. I know it's not your fault. It’s just… When will this end? When will we be free from this hunger? I just want to go back to the way things were before?—”
“We all do,”I said, not wanting to hear it from her right now.“I’ll grab my spear. I’m going to take care of this.”
“Sid, you won’t.”Zellia’s sharp nails dug into sand and rock, and she rose a little higher over the ledge, just enough for me to see the silver scales trailing over her shoulders.
“I will if it means I can keep this pod alive. What’s left of us, at least,”I said, my jaw clenching. Out of the three dozen sirens in our pod left, many of us were too young to remember the start of the war. Most of us hadn’t been alive, and those who survived were the young ones who had been kept hidden away in the deepest parts of the sea, far from cruel fishermen.
The water around me suddenly seemed too warm, too thick. I itched to dive back into the Dreslee and have the cooler waters wash over my skin and scales, cooling the heat accumulating under them.
“But none of the other hunters would dare cross the territory.”Her eyes scrunched as if the sun had struck them. I hadn’t said I was going past our territory, but she knew from the look in my eyes exactly what I’d meant when I said I’d take care of it. That looming truth was what she really wanted to ask of me all along.
“And that’s exactly why we have nothing to eat!”I fought. The other twelve hunters hadn’t attempted to leave the Dreslee, despite their need to save us all. We should have been working together, but somewhere along the way, a competition had formed to see who could feed the pod the best, who contributed the most. That person was rarely me these days, because I felt no need to compete, only to feed. Gone were the days of working together; first, we lost camaraderie with the sharks, then each other.
