I sighed, leaning forward on the railing so our shoulders were touching.
“What now? Those beneath the water want us dead and now those on land seek our destruction as well. Should we learn to fly?”
Vidar chuckled again, bobbing his brows as he glimpsed the pink horizon. “Now, that would be something but no. We need a port. As attached as I am to this ship, we will always need supplies and time ashore.”
“How swiftly do you think word has spread about your governor? No doubt they all knew it was you, considering your poster was fastened to that pole and there were plenty of witnesses that saw us go into that jail with him.”
“I cannot say, but it will make our travels a bit harder. Let us just hope no one finds out about the company I keep on top of it all.”
I knew he was referring to Meridan and me. The most notorious hunter now harbored two sirens and if other hunters found out, there’d be a bounty on all our heads, if there wasn’t one already.
Glancing out into the dark waters surrounding us, I imagined how it could so easily swallow us up and leave no trace. How we were nothing in the grand scheme of things. We were simply twigs floating on stormy waters, soon to be sucked under.
“The bigger problems still are the damn beasts below us,” I said. “The ones preventing me from sprouting fins like I’m meant to. They need to be stopped.”
Vidar took a deep breath and let his head hang low for a moment, massaging his temples as if to chase away a headache. His silence reflected my despair.
“I never thought there could be something worse than your kind out there. Yet here we are. The xhoth. Akareth. What other monsters slumber just beneath our hull, I wonder. What other horrors are laughing at us as we feign control over the world?”
“More than either of us can fathom, I’d wager.”
“On land, parents tell their children stories to keep them afraid. To keep them from wandering where they shouldn’t. I feel as if our story will one day be used to make children wary.”
“Our people do the same.” I inched closer to him, tilting my head in his direction. “Tell me one of yours.”
Vidar smiled faintly, raising a brow. “Let’s see, the one my father used to tell spoke of a pirate crew. Their ship was the Nightwalker. It was big and it was fast and its crew was fearless. The captain, Leofwine, led them into uncharted waters. Waters so unpredictable, the fog could swallow a ship as fast as the currents. But Leofwine swore he could find a city in those foggy waters. A city full of gold and gems. How he found out about the city was never realized, but the story goes that they got lost in that place for weeks. Months. They ran out of food. Water. The fog darkened the sun. Made some of them go mad until they started taking nibbles out of one another. At first, it was fingers. Then hands. Legs. Then people started killing each other and they didn’t put those corpses to waste.
“They thought they’d all perish until one night, the captain climbed to the helm with his pistol, took the wheel, and held the barrel of his gun to his head.” He made the motion with his hand as if holding a pistol to his temple. “But something stopped him. Something in the distance. A sight he never thought he’d see again. The moon, some say it was.
“The crew woke. The half that was still breathing, that is. They sailed straight for what they thought was the moon, hoping it would bring them out of the fog and into more forgiving waters. Instead, it brought them somewhere darker. And the moon they found was not a moon. For days, they followed it like a beacon until the hull of the Nightwalker was crushed against jagged stones. The moon disappeared, leaving them in the most torturous silence until the sea awoke with fury and devoured what was left of Leofwine’s crew.”
His story left an eerie chill across my skin. Even to me, the thought of being lured into the darkness by the prospect of hope was unnerving. And even if Vidar’s story was a human one, I was not entirely unfamiliar with it.
“A Lyr,” I muttered. Vidar turned to me, waiting for me to explain. “There are fish in the deepest parts of the sea where light cannot reach. They tease their prey with a glimmer of light, dangling it like bait on a hook. When another fish gets close enough, it opens its toothy maw and devours them.”
“You saying the moon they saw was a giant fish?”
“I’m saying something lured those men to that place, if the story is to be believed. A Lyr is a gluttonous creature from children’s stories. It lures unsuspecting victims with hope. Then it devours them or leaves them for something else.” I let out a loud sigh before I turned to look at him, taking a moment to sink into his anchoring gaze. “We think we know what kind of horrors the world harbors, but in truth, perhaps we don’t know anything. Perhaps we haven’t seen the worst of it.”
Vidar groaned softly at the idea and then nodded, seemingly unfazed. But I knew him better than anyone. Our dreams had bound us with sloppy but resilient sutures, closing a gnarly wound. I could feel his unease like I was certain he could feel mine. We were durable creatures, but the unknown was a dangerous place.
“I’m certain we haven’t,” Vidar said, staring out into the endless waters before us.
I bit my bottom lip, mulling over Gus’s words. There was a burning sensation in my throat where my need to tell Vidar everything ached to come up. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for the confession. The confession that I felt weak. Helpless.
Afraid.
“It needs to stop,” I whispered.
“What’s that?”
“This feeling I have. This dread. His presence in my head. Call me mad, but it is more persistent than you know.”
He reached around, weaving his fingers through mine against the railing.
“How do we make it stop?”
“I don’t know.”
