Jode floated against the back of the cave wall, numbly.
Gryshen drew right up to her father, reaching out to touch his face, check his heartbeat. “I can’t hear his heartbeat. Help him! Somebody help! Where is a healer?” Her signal was like an earthquake in the small royal chamber. It seemed to push everyone back a few paces.
“Gryshen,” Bravis signaled. Her name was coated in grief as he spoke.
“Gryshen.” Another voice spoke, one far less mournful. Not sad at all, really. A steady hum. It was Apocay, sitting in a long stone indentation in the wall. Ilorays rarely sat, it was usually only something one did when very sick, or extremely exhausted. He was neither. But he was ancient.
The water around Gryshen suddenly felt like it was boiling. “Well, look who’s here! So, that’s it, then? You’re not going to try to help him?” She sounded her signal in a shriek, her teeth clenched, eyes wild. “What are you good for?”
“Gryshen”—the same hum—“it is done. He has been helped. We will help him on this next transition.”
“He’s NOT done! You have to help him. He’s not ready. He’s not ready.” She wailed and opened her mouth wide, gurgling. She could see the stunned looks on faces even through the black paint pouring from her face. “Do something!”
“Gryshen, you’re turning purple.”
She spun around at Bravis’s words. “What? Why aren’t you doing some—”
“Gryshen,” He repeated her name, his grief overridden by urgency. “We have to get you to the air tube. Drink. Please. Now.” He gestured toward the tube in her father’s chamber, but she could only think of escaping this.
Escaping into Coss.
She swam from her father’s chamber, leaving Jode frozen against the wall and Bravis calling after her. Gryshen pushed with a newfound force, but it only lasted for a moment. Bravis was right. She was draining, quickly. Her perception contorted, thoughts scattering as she tried to remember what to do, where to go.
She zigzagged past lines of ceasids, searching desperately, when she saw him.
“Gryshen!” He spotted her outside Oxygen Chamber Number One.
She couldn’t get out any signal. Pointing violently at the gills in her throat as she swam was the best she could do. Coss’s eyes widened, and he called out for the crowd in the hall to pass.
“Clear the air chamber! Make room!” he barked at two younger laxes.
“It’s all clear, Prince. May we help?”
“No. Just give her space. Move toward the hub.”
The hub? Why the hub? Gryshen's mind was in a fog. But there she was, at the entrance to the chamber; the pipes seemed to mesh and knot before her in a blur.
Just one quick swim, she told herself. Come on, Grysh.
She reached out to grasp the first tube she could, and suddenly her arm wrenched in pain. There was pressure on her throat—she couldn’t signal. Gryshen opened her mouth to cry out, but something covered it. She flailed wildly, thrashing desperately in a hold she could not release herself from. Her wild movements softened, the momentum slowed, and the blurry pipes in the water smeared into gold and blue. Just as her eyes shut, she felt a tightening squeeze around her neck.
Chapter 8
The sun was so brilliant, it cast a vivid white glow onto Gryshen and her father as they lay against the rocks beside the lady. She offered Gryshen a steaming cup of something she poured from a pot. Gryshen recognized the teapot, but couldn’t recall the name for it. She accepted the cup, her father accepted another, and the three let the hot drink fill their bellies as a breeze broke up the brightness. Frall gently patted her head.
“My little kelp.”
The lady smiled at them both and continued pouring their tea. They drank and drank. Gryshen had never experienced anything like it. Like any of it.
The lady put the cups and tea back on a tray.
“Oh no. Let’s keep doing this,” Gryshen said to her. She spoke like a landkeeper.
The lady gave her cup back and poured the final dregs of the pot into it. Then she leaned over, kissed Gryshen’s forehead, and faded into the glow.
Gryshen turned to speak to her father, who was staring deeply into the sea.
She gazed into her teacup, watching the leaves drift and clump together. They formed what looked like a pair of dark eyes, looking back at her.
“Gryshen!” They began shouting at her.
What?
She dropped the teacup, the sea washed over the pair of screaming eyes, and a purplish-blue swept past them.
“Gryshen!”
Bravis was bruising her arms, shaking her with all his might.
She said nothing, only stared, lost, letting the present come into focus. She was in the breathing chamber, her lips pressed against a tube. Bravis furiously jostled the pipe as if it would sweep more air down to her lungs. She had never seen him like this. Gryshen took in the gulps of sweet oxygen and let them melt her hot, scratched throat. What was happening? She heard the signaling of Apocay. His dark tail appeared to blend with the blanket of seaweed that he held around his figure.
The shaman inspected her carefully, reading her face. He held a lantern to look in her eyes as she sucked in air. She couldn’t stop breathing. He kept studying her, and with every drink, new awareness came into focus, following a line from the most recent memory to further back.
She had suffocated.
She had been trapped.
She was with Coss.
She had to warn Father.
Gryshen took one more sip, then ripped herself away to tell Bravis.
“Daddy, tell Daddy . . .”
Bravis’s expression was indescribable. His grip on her arm had softened as she had regained consciousness, but he had held fast. He started to signal, but paused, looking helplessly at her.
And the next memory drew up to greet her.
“Daddy,” she repeated, as if she could call him back and banish the recollection into myth.
The deep blue sea was a shade of violet. Gryshen wondered dully how long it had been this way. She began looking around.
“Purple,” she murmured emptily.
“We’ll just get you back to your chamber, Princess, and Apocay will take care of you.” Bravis was back to his authoritative tone, but she caught a current running beneath it. The water was turning almost plum, and yet he said nothing about it. Gryshen wondered if her mind was bursting. Maybe it had all broken her.
“Where’s Gryshie? Grysh! What happened?” Jode’s signal boomed in.
“She’s all right now. Help us take her back to her chamber. Apocay will give her a thorough exam,” Bravis reassured him. “Come.”
Jode followed like a young babe in the haze.
“Princess! Princess!” Two guards tore around the corner, pulling up to the group. They stopped, startled by the sight of Gryshen lying in Bravis’s arms, her tail hoisted by Jode, and Apocay circling around them.
“Keep it on our frequency. We don’t want anyone outside of this group to hear you,” Bravis signaled carefully.
“The pearl! It’s—”
“Yes. Follow us, and we’ll discuss the next action—”
“We think it was some kind of sleeping plant, something knocked us out. We didn’t mean—we didn’t know—” one of the guards signaled.
“Yes, yes. Enough,” said Bravis. “Our first priority is to bring Gryshen back to her chamber.”