I raised a hand, deciding Spio had a point. “I’d like to mention I’ve also avoided being eaten by the serpent twice.”
Meela groaned. “So you think this is a good idea?”
A good idea?No. But it was an idea.
Before I could come up with a reassuring response, Spio said, “It’s something we’ve had practice with.”
Meela eyed him.
“So,” said Spio, turning back to me, “while you keep after the snake monster to make sure we don’t lose it, Meela and I set up the net. When it’s go time, you get its attention, I help steer it into the Ropey Trap of Terror, and Meela slips away to where Adaro’s hiding.”
He mimed shooting a crossbow.
Meela looked desperately between us. “Does anyone need to be bait, though?”
“You need the serpent out of your way,” I said. “This will do it.”
My courage was mostly feigned, fed by Spio’s confidence in his plan, but Meela didn’t need to know that.
She considered for a long moment. “Have you two always been this insane?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Never,” said Spio.
We continued in the serpent’s wake, waiting for Adaro to veer towards land. He kept the serpent at the bottom. For easy breaching while dragging the heavy net, we stayed close to the surface. The pace was quick. We dropped further behind, the net making it hard to keep up.
I hadn’t said it aloud, but I was terrified Adaro wouldn’t transition. Maybe I’d counted the days wrong and had missed our chance, or king tide wouldn’t happen for another tidecycle. Maybe he was already on land and had sent the serpent swimming by herself as a false trail. Too many things could go wrong.
As Utopia drew nearer, Meela kept touching her crossbow and remaining bolt, like she was afraid they would disappear. Twice, something dark eclipsed the daylight, and we looked up to see a helicopter zoom by.
The question that kept popping up was how we were going to find Evagore. I’d been so close to knowing where she was; if only I’d tried harder.
“I should have made Thetis and Nestor tell me where the high security prison is,” I said.
“No, you shouldn’t have,” said Meela. “You were in no place to pry for information.”
But the knowledge was right there,I thought. My insides roiled with frustration.
“The Reinas are in Utopia,” she said. “Maybe they already figured out where she is. Maybe they already have her.”
“I doubt it. The way they were talking, the high-security prison is an entirely different direction from Utopia.”
“Which direction?”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember Thetis and Nestor’s conversation. “They said it was on a different current.”
Another dark shape passed overhead, low in the sky. We looked at each other, none of us voicing our fear. The floor had begun to grow shallow. Could they see the serpent from up there?
The rising floor also meant we were close to Utopia. What if we couldn’t find Evagore before Adaro got there, or before the humans did something drastic?
Meela’s aura was so taut I could have snapped it.
“Lysi, are you sure it’s king tide?”
Swallowing back the fear that my senses and intuition were all wrong, I said, “Positive.”
“This current’s going the wrong way,” said Spio. “If he was going to Utopia, he would have hopped streams back there.”
