Colors of the water shifted and changed throughout the cavern. Holes in the ceiling and sides allowed for more or less light, depending, and in a few meters, she could move from a pale gray to clear water, to a shade of sapphire-blue sea. Growth of algae crept across the walls, plucked back by the hands of nibbling ilorays. Bravis moved in sculpin-like precision as they turned left, then right, far past the hub to where Apocay had told her to meet him. They came to the last oxygen chamber on this end of the long cavern, just before pitch blackness opened into the bone pit.
Last night Gryshen had been focused on staying pieced together just enough to hold her shattered heart in place. Now, she considered that this space kept inviting the significant: her father’s burial. The first time she had journeyed with Coss. The first time she opened herself to him. It seemed like a remotely far time and place, a distant event between her and a stranger, the romance between them. Now she began to feed the lick of flame that seemed to keep her fused together for the time being.
The shaman was waiting like an ancient ghost hovering just beyond. She couldn’t begin to read his expression, even though she searched for something. Anything.
Chapter 11
“This is where you leave.” Apocay had nearly closed his eyes, as if he was ready for a morning nap. He pointed back from where they came. Though he never looked at Bravis, it was clear this was directed at him.
“Gryshen, here. To guide and protect.” Bravis gave a quick tug at his throat, loosening the rope that held a blue glass disk. His hands felt unusually warm as they grazed her neck, his fingers tucking beneath her twin braids to tie it twice.
“Bravis. You’ve worn this since I can remember—I’ll give it right back, just like Jode’s.”
“You’ll keep it. Please. She’d want you to have it now. And I—”
“Who?”
“Your mother.” Bravis looked down. “She looked after me, too. I’ll stay as close as I can. Right by the hub, so if you need to stretch your signal for anything—”
“She won’t. Need to.” Apocay cut him off completely, still looking sleepy and half-interested in a wolf fish that gnashed its teeth in protection from its menacing shadow. “Everyone goes through their Forms. Everyone finds their function, one way or another.”
“But that’s just the thing,” Bravis protested. “No one has been through this kind of injury before taking—”
Again, Apocay interrupted, his tone sleepy. “Surely you don’t believe that. Throughout our existence, as far back as we can recall, we have done some version of these Forms. Who knows how many warriors had broken limbs right before having to swim through paces, so that they could come out truly prepared for wars?” He didn’t raise his voice at this. His signal almost always maintained its monosyllabic sound.
Bravis wasn’t giving up just yet. Gryshen couldn’t pinpoint the moment of this shift he seemed to be experiencing, all she knew was that she could never recall his being so fiercely protective. For a lax who had always struck her as obsessed with rules, he certainly was pushing them here, now.
“But in our history, Apocay, there have been losses.” His signal turned down to whisper, as if by speaking too loudly his statement could become a curse upon Gryshen.
“I am here. I am going. And you are leaving.” She was tired of this discussion occurring around her, sick of being sheltered. The last one who could really protect her was gone. And as it turned out, even he couldn’t save her from her own stupidity and destruction.
Maybe by diving forward, she could begin to save herself.
She surged ahead, startling Apocay’s eyes wide open. She couldn’t help but grin at this.
Bravis called out, “Gryshen! Wait!” Then he spoke to the shaman. “Isn’t there a ceremony before she goes in? Something?”
“Usually. It appears that this was hers.”
Gryshen could feel her smile, like a stranger’s, pressed into her face as she pushed into the black-blue. The water swirled around her body like a tunnel as she moved relentlessly forward, as if pausing could make this sudden surge of strength stop. Gryshen only looked ahead as she moved further into this part of the cavern than she had ever been before.
It took several seconds before she identified the hundred little pinches around her back and shoulders. The thick coil that rode in with them, snaking alongside her, ever lengthening, made it clear enough. A shaft of light burst through. Clouds must have broken for the sun to open up in this dark space. Gryshen was disoriented as it was . . . was she near the bone pit? As she beat against the massive squid, the water continued to brighten, and she got a view of its size.
Its head had to be the length of two of her lying down. Its tentacles flailed, the suckers on them pulsing about in the brine. The creature’s movements reminded her of the haunting ceremony dances of ilorays.
Maybe if this was happening three days ago she could have fought it for longer, but her already damaged lungs struggled more than they normally would as two, now three long arms wrapped themselves around her whole figure and began to squeeze.
The eyes were the most startling thing, though. The thing that pulled Gryshen’s mind from being choked and into something else in this moment. It was between the two of them. She didn’t want to kill him, and she didn’t think she’d have to. The small arrow tied to her didn’t seem up for the job anyway. Were the spears on the ground lost by previous journeyers, or were they left here for her? Some looked far too rusted to be newly placed. They suggested a stretch of time, an evolving of various “monsters” lured and trapped here to fight. Gryshen knew that few had actually died from these quests, especially in recent generations where the paces had become finely honed. This didn’t feel like life and death. Not now, as she had just pushed herself from the tentacle. The trick she had remembered learning from Sodaren was to relax, to stop struggling for just a moment. In that same moment, a giant squid would release its grip involuntarily, ever so slightly . . . and there she had it.
Gryshen darted toward the small opening on the far side of the creature, not knowing what lay next, but not wanting to waste precious energy here.
Just as she had circled him, a prod to her back served almost like a courteous warning. It was followed by a swift blow to the head.
Gryshen shrieked, knocked toward the sea floor. Her reluctance to harm the giant beast had vanished. Now, she seized the first spear inside her reach. It crumbled in her hands, ruins of iron and wood and leather. His eye matched hers . . . eyes? No, eye. The other had been slashed into a dark-purple bulb. Maybe from another journeyer, perhaps from something else. Gryshen met his lone optic as it stared back into hers. There was a synchronicity, a match in the moment, which she broke by reaching down to grasp another spear. It was shorter than the last, silvery, with broken bits of shell on the end. The jagged arrow appeared to be abalone. She didn’t think as she flipped it in her arms just the way Jode had shown her long ago, and sliced one, two of the creature’s long arms.
It was as if the massive squid spoke to her, communicating like a stable pet, tingling against her outstretched fingers as she pulled back the weapon, blood and ink pouring in spirals around the beast. She looked at him, just for as long as she felt safe to, his one eye steadily meeting her gaze, as if to nod in some strange sort of mutual understanding. She swam in a circle around him, her heart thudding through her chest as she slid through the opening on the other side. She had managed to defeat him. She had managed to do this without killing the creature or killing herself.