It felt strange to finally be allowed to be together. Nobody was around to tell us we couldn’t hold hands, couldn’t love each other, couldn’t even speak to each other.
But then, nobody was around at all.
The situation was both lucky and frustrating. Sure, none of King Adaro’s armies were chasing us down—and they’d undoubtedly been ordered to do so after the king himself had failed to finish us off three days ago. But our isolation also meant we were nowhere near finding the rebel group we were searching for. How were we supposed to find allies when all we had for company were a bunch of fish?
At the thought of Adaro swimming freely with Sisiutl under his control—my people’s sacred legend, the power that should have been mine—the pressure in my eyes built, the world reddened, and I knew I’d transitioned to demon mode. I let it happen. It was easier to see through the dark depths this way, to blend with the green-grey sea, and to make tight turns with the new webs that stretched between my fingers.
The current stirred as something large moved below. It was a shape and rhythm I hadn’t encountered yet. In a single motion I pulled away from Lysi, let go of the stubby squid, and plunged. I beat my tail a little harder than I intended and had to push out my webbed hands to stop myself from face-planting against the bottom. My hair whipped past me, and I flung the braids back over my shoulder before they could tangle around my neck.
Rockfish—big, ugly, orange things with underbites—cleared out of my path as I pushed clumsily along. Under my new fingers, the texture of rock and sand was wonderfully intensified. I followed the vibrations over my skin, which told me that somewhere ahead, a fish the size of my upper body lay hiding. I sped up. A prawn scuttled away, half-swimming, half-running, looking like a pompous galloping horse.
“Found it!”
My target darted away before I got there. He was strangely flat, with eyes on top of his face like he had evolved sideways.
I watched him go, deciding the ocean was insane.
“What was that?”
Before Lysi had even caught up, I spotted a cluster of plants to my left and zipped over to them.
“What are these?”
Palm-sized, mossy blobs clung to the rocks alongside starfish, and little white trees with fluffy tops.
I poked one of the moss blobs. It turned out to be un-mosslike, and what I thought was fluff was actually needles. I wondered if I’d discovered some sort of underwater hedgehog. The needles moved, convening around my finger as though to grab it.
“Urchins,” said Lysi, sounding out of breath.
I moved on to another blob beside it. These tentacles looked soft, swaying with the current.
“Anemones,” said Lysi, before I could ask.
I poked it. This one was squishy. The sticky tentacles wrapped around my finger and clung to it like tape.
“The cavity in the middle is so it can digest—”
Something silver glinted in the corner of my eye. A school of herring the size of a house floated nearby, noses to the current.
They darted away before I got there.
I chased them, concentrating on beating my tail in long, powerful strokes.
“Mee, wait! You need to—oh, for goodness’ sake.”
I burst into the cloud of fish, reaching for them as they scattered. They were quick, but I was quicker. Maybe too quick. My reactions outstripped my thoughts, and I found myself in the middle of an explosion of fish before I knew what I’d do with them. I grabbed one in each hand and bit them behind the skull like Lysi had taught me.
A hand closed around my arm and hauled me back into the open.
“You can’t burst into a school like that,” said Lysi. “Baitball, remember?”
I offered her one. “It still worked.”
“But if you were hunting with a group, you would’ve totally ruined everyone else’s chances.”
I watched the herring fleeing in every direction. I supposed she had a point.
“Watch.” She darted after them and made a wide circle, rounding them up.
