I scream as I’m thrown backwards into the water, watching from under the surface as fire ignites the very air itself.
From the waves, I see Delia fall, burned. She gets up and runs away as our island is destroyed. Mei crawls towards the water, leaving a trail of blood that bubbles behind her. The sand melts as the trees catch and burn to ash. Mei rolls into the water.
Delia screams, the sound echoing and turning both male and female, distorted under the waves, and then is abruptly cut off.
She destroyed everything, I think, staring up at the world in horror. Every piece of green, the fresh water. It’s all gone. Our chance of escaping is gone.
I can’t fathom it.
“Do you see now?” Ronit snarls.
He grabs Mei’s ankle and drags her deep down into the dark, his black and silver tail flashing with the dim reflections of the fire. I flick my scaled tail, chasing after him in a moment. Stripes glow on his skin, pulsing with his fury. The poison-filled spines twitch and shift along his tail with every movement. He looks alien now, his face more angular, more violent under the blue haze of the ocean.
“Ronit, wait!” I shout, but he’s not listening.
He’s too angry.
The blood trail is bad. Sharks start to gather, and then other predators, things that shouldn’t be woken. Tentacles, teeth, claws. Things that dwarf us and look like horrors from my worst nightmares.
“Stop!” I sing to him.
He whirls around, and I see the moment she wakes up, opens her mouth, and chokes on water. Her body convulses, but shetouches her arm, draws a rune in the air, and suddenly starts to breathe.
“Strega,” Ronit hisses. “Cursed witch. Foul beast.”
“You don’t understand-” I protest again, even thoughIdon’t understand.
“You’ve killed us!” Reed hisses.
“So, now we’ll kill you,” Canto snarls.
Ronit tosses her to the waiting and ravenous jaws of the Leviathan as he rises from the deep. He snatches her up in his jaws and turns, vanishing with his prize. The light bouncing off his endless teal, black, and silver scales before he’s gone.
“No!” I shout.
I stare down at them, willing her to come back up, needing to see her somehow defy logic and reason. Nothing happens for so long that the others relax, still I can’t help but know she’s alive.
I feel it.
I see her paddling upwards, a small shape in a place she should never be in.
She’s a terrible swimmer, but she struggles as the creatures of our dark world dart in, trying to take her. She’s quick and determined, beating the odds.
I want her to make it, but she’s got so far to go.
Ronit holds out his hand, and a massive trident appears in it. It gleams with black light.
“Strega! Die!” Ronit says.
She looks up, startled, seeing the trident coming straight towards her.
“Ronit, wait!” I shout, suddenly getting a glimmer of what I don’t understand. Her body changes shape, and she’s like us. Pale blond hair, no eyes, but completely and utterly human. Devastatingly beautiful.
Haunting.
I hold out my hand, turning the currents just enough so that the trident misses her.
I float in the water, looking down at her as she bobs there. No longer swimming, there’s something lost and broken about her.
