Crap.I froze, considering whether to flee.
“Hello?” he said again.
Unless I was mistaken, this guy’s aura was kind enough. Plus, he was alone. Maybe he could help me.
“All right, I can’t tell if you’re there or if I’m hallucinating again,” he said. “I did eat some anemones that might have been a bit off. So if you’re a mermaid, I’m going to need you to say words.”
As his shape materialised, I wasn’t sure how I possibly mistook him for Lysi. He was a bony, lanky merman about my age, with the hairstyle of someone who’d stuck a fork in an electrical outlet. He wore a backpack that had a stone blade sticking out the top.
“Have you seen a blonde mermaid?” I said, throwing caution aside.
“Wow, you really are looking for Lysi,” he said.
“Yes, I lost—wait, what?”
“You know Lysi.”
“Youknow Lysi?” I squeaked.
We stared at each other. He turned to my scattering baitball.
“Nice job. I felt it from a league away and thought it must be the work of a pod. Did you do this by yourself?”
I kept staring at him. “Sorry, but who are—?”
He slapped his forehead. “Of course! You’re Meela!”
“How—?”
His gaze fell to my tail. “That hypocrite!”
I looked down at my tail as well, too confused to respond.
He extended a webbed hand. I took it and was met with an enthusiastic handshake. I wondered if merpeople shook hands or if he was doing the human-like thing for my benefit.
“Pleased to meet you. Name’s Spio.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Lysi
Northern Detachment
I opened my eyes to a blue-white haze. It brought to mind the blind eye I’d once seen on a dolphin.
Oh, no.Had I gone blind?
I turned my head and pain stabbed my spine. I groaned weakly.
Beside me, the haze gave way to clear water. So the blindness was just a glacier in front of my face. I would have been relieved, if not for the pain.
I tried to raise a hand to touch the glacier and found I couldn’t. My arms were pinned across my stomach.
How had I ended up like this? I tried to remember what I’d been doing. My brain felt murky, slow to react to what was surely an unusual—maybe dangerous—situation.
Something hard pressed into me on all sides. Pain throbbed in my shoulder blades. I couldn’t feel my tail at all.
I was pinned between two chunks of ice. They’d been thrust against each other, with me in the middle.
I had a fleeting surge of gratitude that these chunks weren’t big enough to crush me to death. Then the gratitude vanished, because I couldn’t tell if they were big enough to have paralyzed me.
