I looked down at the fish, and my stomach cramped. My eyes traveled to Tattoo, and he gave a curt nod.
I uncurled my fingers, and the fish floated on its side in front of me, then slowly drifted down and behind us.
“Quick.”Greylin’s one-word command broke the fish’s hold on me, and I shot forward to resume my place in the formation.“We hunt with honor.”
Screw honor. We were starving ourselves for no reason. Well, except to humor some sadistic creator. This all felt a little too familiar. First I couldn’t be gay because I’d burn in hell. Now I couldn’t eat! I like food even more than I like men. Couldn’t one side of my family not have ties to religious fanaticism? I guess the demon side of me could counterbalance that. Then again, since demons were fallen angels, maybe not.
Thenext day, after a backward glance from Syleen, Tattoo veered off to the left, breaking formation, and disappeared with three forceful thrusts of his tail, his flaring spikes quivering.
I hesitated, unsure what it meant. Had we found the sharks and were splitting up to do a surprise attack?
Greylin motioned to Tattoo’s now empty spot. After the fourth impatient motion, I took Tattoo’s place behind one of the twins.
He didn’t return that night or the next.
On theseventh day since we’d left the kelp forest, Tattoo returned. One of his spears had at least thirty fish skewered on its shaft, making it look like the most delicious kabob I’d ever seen. No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I remembered the fish weren’t for us. Where would the honor be in being well nourished to face our enemy? White Spirit, enemy, whatever. Even if we couldn’t eat them, I figured the fish meant we were close to our prey. However this whole debacle turned out, it would at least be over soon.
Sure enough, the following day upon waking, instead of instantly heading west once more, Syleen gathered us in a group. She lowered herself to the ocean floor, scooped a handful of sand into her palm, and focused her gaze into the open sea.“We honor you, Moheetla. We take the offering of your Great Spirit within us as you will. We offer our flesh as a sacrifice to your White Spirit as you will. Your desire is our destiny. Our destiny is your creation. We succumb to your will.”
After rising from her lowered position, she faced each mer in turn, took a small amount of sand and swiped it below their clavicles, then briefly bowed her forehead to theirs. She approached me last. To her credit, she only hesitated for a moment before including me in the ritual. Had I been asked a week ago if Syleen would touch me, let alone put her forehead to mine, I would have died in fits of laughter. Maybe the starvation was getting to her. Maybe she was just offering me up as the main sacrifice.
No further words were uttered—the process as much ritual as Syleen’s words to Moheetla. I hoped this Moheetla thingy was a different deity than the Christian God. I couldn’t handle any more religious issues with the same old god. Maybe if they were spread out to different fucked-up father figures, I could somehow manage.
The twins began to untwist ropes from the length of their spears. The way they had been wrapped in a spiraling pattern had made them seem like they were carved embellishments. As the ropes unwound, they began to spread out, woven nets revealed. I hoped they weren’t planning on trying to catch a shark in some net booby trap. Granted, the mers surely had skills I couldn’t yet imagine, but picturing the pretty twins, healthy looking as they were, wrangling down a great white inside a four-by-four-foot net was surely impossible.
The sisters untangled the nets and spread them on the sand roughly ten feet apart. Tattoo held his spear in the center of the closer net and forced off half the fish that were secured on its length. He repeated the process on the farther net, emptying the rest of the spear.
As a unit, the mers split between the nets and began to tear apart the fish—slicing with the points of their spears, ripping with their hands.
I floated a few feet away, caught in equal measure by the primal ferocity of the sight and my desire to rip the dead fish apart in my teeth, devouring the bait before any White Spirits showed up.
Without looking in my direction, Syleen’s condescension broke through my hunger.“You have been welcomed as a member of our family. As such, it is expected for you to take part in our offering.”
I continued to watch as fish particles filled the water between the mers, turning the space into a dusty haze. I was tempted to remind Syleen that it seemed like this so-called hunt was optional to the other members of thisfamily. Not to mention that saying I’d been welcomed into the tribe may be the smallest bit of an overstatement. I decided I didn’t have it in me and filled in an open space beside Greylin.
To my surprise, when I began to tear at the fish, I was no longer tempted to eat it. Maybe it was the contagion of the mer’s growing frenzy. Maybe it was my fear swelling into terror. Whatever it was, I was certain it had no tie to a budding devotion to Moheetla—Motherfucker that he is. She is. Who the fuck cares?
As the white particles of flesh brushed over my skin, I realized a problem to this little bait scenario. The fish had been dead so long that all the blood had leached out of them. Even landlocked morons who’d only watched half an episode during “Shark Week” knew sharks tracked blood. Maybe mers knew something I didn’t. I guess that’s obvious.
Once the fish had been sufficiently torn up, the pieces began to settle, only the smallest bits continuing to float around us.
Syleen made a motion with her right hand, jutting it upward. Before her arm was fully extended, Zef’s voice interrupted her.“He requires at least the barest of explanation, Syleen. He was not brought up among us. What comes naturally to us is foreign to him.”
Syleen paused, her arm angled awkwardly above her head. Her light-blue eyes turned to me, searching my face, prodding into my eyes. Who knew what she was looking for, if anything. Maybe she was just trying to be dramatic or a bully. When I decided she was going to go ahead with whatever was about to happen without an explanation, she lowered her arm.
To my surprise, her voice was neither impatient nor filled with contempt. Instead, the same reverent tone she’d used when she anointed us with sand colored her words.“We rise. Fifty or so lengths above and we wait. The White Spirits are near. They will come. Slowly at first, then en masse. Only then do we descend into their midst. Only then will Moheetla reveal offering or sacrifice, our destiny.”
“Then we fight?”Obvious or not, with all the religious rhetoric, I wasn’t going to take any chance on interpretation.
Syleen nodded, as did a couple of other mers.
Somehow, it was only then I remembered what I was missing compared to the rest—besides the tail. Sonia’s voice laughed in my head,Thank God you’re pretty!Each mer had a spear or two in their hands. Upon closer inspection, they looked to be chiseled from stone. Therin and Zef were the only exceptions. Instead of spears, they had short, wide blades that looked like they’d been derived from the same material. I motioned between the blades and spears.“Which do I fight with?”
The reverence was gone from Syleen’s tone, replaced by a coldness typically saved for criminals taking their last steps down death row.“Your heritage has provided you weapon enough.”
Her words confused me. I glanced around the group of mers, as if one of them had the answer or was hiding my special weapon as a surprise gift. Therin made some sort of minuscule motion, catching my attention. He shook his hands ever so slightly, as if flicking off water after washing his hands. Unbidden, my eyes rose and met his gaze.
I wheeled back toward Syleen.“My fire? You expect me to fight with fire? The very thing you want me cast out for?”
