snaking in and out of my heart, filling all the empty places. Longing,
sadness-it’s all there sifting out of me into the water.
We swim hard and fast until I think my tail will fall off. Nearly
an hour passes before we can locate the channel. It’s not like
highways with big green signs ticking off miles.
No matter what I do, the current is so hard that my face might as
well be the grill of my dad’s car catching lots of little sea bugs.
The water gets warmer and bluer as we go along.
Kai is the first to pull out of the channel. This time, Gwen makes
a face and holds on to her stomach like she’s seasick, which makes me
laugh until I realize puking underwater is probably worse than on the
surface.
The ground is speckled with geysers. When they blow, we’re
surrounded by warm bubbles. Here there’s a shipwreck, the bones of the
ship covered in coral and seaweed and shadow.
Kai hovers around a thick yellow patch of weeds. She parts the
grass in half, then, unsatisfied, moves along to the next.
“What are you looking for?” My voice comes out in a clear
vibration.
“The entrance.”
“What does it look like?”
“I’ll know when I see it.”
We sift through a soccer field of weeds and still there’s nothing
but sand and rock and the hollow skeletons of shipwrecks. An entire
fleet must’ve sunk here. Golden trinkets are strewn about, along with
soggy rags and undisturbed human bones.
“Over here!” Gwen shouts.
Past the ships, away from the geysers where stiff green trees sway
in a semi-circle, there is a speck of gold beneath the sand. The
ground has been turned over and littered with gravel. The three of us
dig with our hands until we uncover the round door. It’s solid gold
with the image of the tree etched in it, like a manhole steaming in
the middle of Times Square.
“Be careful,” I say. “They might still be down there.” I head down
first with the light of my scepter. The tunnel is gray stone,
glistening where light hits. Maybe it’s the plummeting darkness. Maybe
it’s the pressure of being down here. Maybe it’s just my nerves, the
idea that Nieve and Archer are on the other end of this tunnel. But
there’s an acrid taste on my tongue.
Something hits my shoulder. Then more and more, fish swimming
against our current. Only, they’re not swimming. They’re dead. Pale
and gray, fleshy mouths wide open. There’s a faint taste of sulfur and
minerals in the water.
And with one forceful push, the current turns, like someone pulled
the drain stopper out of the sink, and we’ve got nowhere to go but
down.
***
I spit out the water in my mouth. It tastes like rocks. Not that
I’ve licked a lot of rocks. My head throbs right where I’ve landed on
long, wet grass. My tail licks at the air, and I lie back and grip the
ground, concentrating on the half shift and bracing for the tear of my
legs.
I roll out my ankles. Crack my knees. When I stand, my legs give
out. “Holy leg cramp.”
On my knees, I look up. I don’t see the tunnel we came out of.
It’s like the air just opened up and dumped us here. But at least
there is sky. Lots of it. Stars move like a mobile against a dark blue
night that fades to the sun hanging low. It doesn’t seem to be moving,
just hovering and tainting the horizon with pinks and yellow.
“How are we under the sky?” I hold out a hand to help the girls
stand.
“It’s Eternity.” Kai dusts ash from her elbow. “It is its own
world.”
Gwen bends back, cracking her bones. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
We’re surrounded by a bright green field. The grass blows in a
breeze that is refreshing on our wet skins. I take a step forward,
disturbing the grass. Fat butterflies with glowing wings scatter. The
change inside me is instant. The pain in my ribs vanishes. I close my
eyes and inhale the happiness of sun on slick tanning oil, blue skies
and cool sand, the warmth of a kiss. “Wow. Do you smell that?”
“I don’t smell anything,” Gwen says. “Except for wilting grass.”
Kai leans her face to the sky, which feels like it’s moved closer
to us. “I smell parchment. And squid ink. I used to get it all over my
hands. And the sweet crab cakes my mom used to make.”
“Look.” In the distance, there’s a great big tree with gnarled
branches atop a hill.
A bird with a white beak and red feathers flies past us. He lands
on a stone smack in the middle of a dried stream. He pecks at the
water and tiny glowing things that float like pollen.
“The stream leads to the tree,” Kai says.
“Is it supposed to be this…dry?” I pull a blade of grass and it
turns to ash in my palm.
Gwen bends back down to the earth. The patch where we fell is
losing color, yellowing under cracked dirt. The ashen earth breaks
away in her fingertips. “There is a pulse here. It’s faint.”
“Hurry,” I say, pointing forward with my scepter. We follow the
stream toward the tree. The dribble of a stream washes over mossy
stones. The animals here are tiny. I can’t imagine it would be able to
support anything else. I try to picture the stream full to the brim,
the grass bright and blue, and mermaids swimming and lying on the
banks. I try to imagine living here forever.
When we reach the tree, the sun is still in the same place over
the horizon. The tree is as tall as the sky, branches yawning and
shuddering back into place. Leaves fall all around us, on the grass,
in the spring nestled at the roots of the tree.
“I’m pretty sure I can make a fort under here.” I pat the fat
arched roots of the tree. A piece of bark comes away like a scab. I
try to put it back into place, but then I just let it drop into the
water.
Tiny animals emerge from the insides of the tree. They’re all
glowing from the inside out. Ladybugs and dragonflies. Tiny
translucent frogs hop from roots to toadstools. One frog shoots out a
neon green tongue and catches a dragonfly twice its size. The bug
seizes inside the frog and lights up its belly.
“Why aren’t there any big animals?” I ask.
Kai shrugs, stumped for the first time. Her sad eyes scan
everything-the sky, the parched trunk of the tree, the tall grass, and
leaves the size of my head. “I suppose they left when we left.”
“What’s wrong?” I put my hand on her shoulder.
“I think I landed wrong on my ankle.” She sticks out her leg.
“Let’s try something.” I go to the tree where a small trickle
falls into the brackish water. I take my water bottle from swim
practice, swish out the blue energy drink at the bottom, and refill it
with the water from the waterfall. I bring it to Kai and make her
drink.
Nothing happens at first, but then it happens so fast I almost
miss it. The swelling and redness disappears, along with the fissures
of glass on her hands. Even her cheekbones are flushed, which is
better than the sickly green thing she had going on.
Then the chirping dies down. The frogs jump back into the pond.
Grass rustles in the breeze. The dryness of the ground is encroaching,
sucking the lush green from the blades and leaving wilted hay.
“Tristan, look,” Kai says.
A bright light fills the trunk of the tree. The waterfall dies,
and a creature emerges from within. First, a golden head. I cannot see
her face but I’m too stunned to care. She grips the sides of the trunk
and pushes herself out. It’s like she’s been dipped in golden paint,
down to her nails, down to the softness of her forelegs kicking out in
the water with gold hooves, until lastly her hind legs are out. Her