16
THE HIGH GODDESS OF THE SEA
Finnian
The Present
Finnian’s feettouched down on familiar ground. The humid air hung around him, curling the ends of his short locks around his nape.
He breathed it in—the salt, the seaweed, the island flora. An ache split apart his chest as his eyes stretched down the cobblestone, winding alongside the palace and veering off through the garden entrance. Echoes of memories flooded Finnian’s mind: Father leading him down the pathway by the hand, Naia not far behind, or walking shoulder to shoulder with her along the palace grounds, plucking honeysuckle and nursing them on their tongues.
He rotated and looked out at the greenery beyond the palace walls.
More memories blossomed—roaming in the village, listening to Naia talk with a mouth full of sourdough, their excursions in the jungle, ending each day at the water hole, making up excusesnotto go back to the palace; of Father and their nights spent onthe abandoned cove, gazing up at the hundreds of lanterns that filled the sea sky.
His throat constricted with grief.
He straightened to face the palace. The moonstone structure glistened under the sea-filtered rays of the sunlight like a pearl.
Not once had Finnian ever considered her a mother. She was truly a heinous excuse of one, and it didn’t take him long during his childhood to abandon the hope of her expressing any form of affection.
He was in his fourth year the first time he’d snuck away from the servants. A feast for High Deities had distracted them.
He wandered into the palace garden, retracing his steps from earlier with his father during their afternoon stroll. Beneath a plantain tree, he’d noticed freshly sprouted lemongrass.
There was a curiosity within him. An indescribable knowing to carefully work the root up from the soil. He stuffed the herb in his pockets. They were overflowing when Mira found him, his face smudged and the lavish outfit the servants had dressed him in blotted with stains.
Her shadow loomed over where he sat, the evidence of his foraging in the holes dug with his dirty fingernails. She said nothing. And before he could hold up the herbs and display his proud smile, a strong force of water smashed into him.
It threw him back into a palm tree, his spine colliding with its trunk. The strong current filled his small lungs. The edges of his vision wilted. His skull throbbed with intense pressure. The impact surged against his limbs, on the verge of snapping his arms at the elbows.
The water relented. He slid down to the puddled ground. The rough surface of the bark scraped against his backside. He coughed and heaved to quench his burning thirst for air.
Mira’s silhouette stood before him. He blinked to rid the burning of his eyes. She came into focus, her ghostly gaze aimed down at him.
Finnian held himself up on quivering arms and glared at her, so deep he could spot glimpses of the turquoise shine beneath the opaque color of her irises. His fury was bone-deep and filled his veins with dread.
She bent towards him, the motion pulling her long silver braid over her shoulder and swaying in the space beside her face. “Place your forehead to the ground. You have disobeyed your High Goddess. Now, you repent.”
Finnian kept his eyes locked with hers, defiant. His fingertips curled in the soil, gathering globs of it in his palm to throw at her.
Too fast for his eyes to register, she cupped the back of his head and slammed it down.
His face struck the solid, muddied ground, crunching his nose. The sound reverberated in his skull and rattled through his teeth. Pain wept down his jaw and into his collarbones.
He wedged his palms into the wet terrain, straining against her hold.
In response, she crammed his face deeper into the cool dirt. Granules of sand coated his tongue, mixing with the metallic taste of his own blood.
“Know your place.” The loud ringing in his ears distorted her words.
She released him.
The servants rushed to him.
“Get him changed,” she ordered.
Resentment frothed in his mouth. The taste lingered on the back of his tongue during every insufferable feast he had to endure in her presence, when he introduced himself to others and they referred to him asMira’s son.
