Do it, Tristan, I tell myself.
I grind my teeth, and staring at myself in the mirror, I let the
blade slice through the hair bunched in my fist.
I haven’t gotten a haircut in more than three years. I love my
hair. I grab another bunch at the nape and hack. The wet, brown waves
fall to the ground and coil at my feet. When we were in junior high
school, I tried to spike my hair because that was the scene. Layla
took one look at me and said I looked like a Dragon Ball reject. I
went right to the bathroom and washed off the glue gel. I let my hair
grow longer and longer until the girls started coming up to me and
running their hands through it. All of them except for her .
It seems stupid. It’s just hair. It’ll grow back. It’s not like I
lost my fighting arm or my head, though in the five hours since we
left Coney Island, I did come pretty close. I refuse to let anyone
else take something from me. I have to take matters into my own hands.
Brendan promised me that the Sleeping Giants and their primitive
strength would help me with this war. But to do that, I have to
change. I am a different guy than I was three weeks ago. I’m a merman.
I don’t know if I’m a better person, but I want to be. I have to be.
When I’m done, I run a hand across the surface. The stubble is
foreign against my calloused palms. I turn my face from side to side.
My cheekbones are more pronounced from the weight I’ve lost and muscle
I’ve gained from miles of swimming and sweating under the sun. The
only things that haven’t changed are my eyes, turquoise like my
grandfather’s-the Sea King. I touch the soft, purple bruise ringing my
eye and wince.
I drop the knife on the floor and use a brush I nabbed from the
urchin brothers to get rid of the loose strands sticking to my skin.
The door swings open and Brendan runs in.
“Are you all right? I heard a noise.”
His shoulder-length red hair is tied back. His turquoise eyes
flick from me to the knife on the ground, then back to my head.
“Who are you,” Brendan says, “and what have you done with my
cousin?”
“He’s still here,” I say. “And he’s ready.”
Brendan, Champion of the North and my cousin, is the reason I’m
here now. After the fight against the merrows on Coney Island, after
Nieve took Layla, after Kurt-after all of that, I was a mess. Brendan
showed up and, along with Princess Kai, hauled me onto Arion’s ship.
We started sailing north right away.
I’m like, “Say something, man.”
“I’m not entirely certain what I’m looking at.” He leans against
the door frame. Behind him I can see a lunch spread and my stomach
roars. He points a finger at the brush in my hand and says, “Vi’s been
looking for that to scrub the deck, you know.”
“That bad?” I rub my hand on my head.
“I didn’t say that.”
“A bunch of it kind of burned off on one side during the fight.” I
brush stray hairs from my chest and re-strap my sternum harness. I
keep Triton’s dagger sheathed on my chest and the Scepter of Earth
between my shoulder blades.
“It’s-it’s nice.” When he says that, it reminds me of every time
my mom asks for my dad’s opinion on her hair, her clothes, her garage
sale trinkets. I shake my head-like that’ll stop me from thinking of
my family.
“You don’t have to like it.”
“You look like a different person.”
Good, that’s what I’m going for. “Are we at the Cry Me A River
Island yet?”
He jumps around me, still staring at my head. “It’s the Vale of
Tears. We’re not far.”
Brendan whistles and holds his arm out north. His shoulders are
tanned dark from days of sailing before meeting up with me. He’s still
got a black and blue shiner around his eye. Before now, he was down
south in search of some magical city in the sky. Whatever was guarding
that city really did a number on his face. So we’ve got that in
common.
I check my waterproof watch, a gift from my coach for being
captain of the swim team last year. “You said it wasn’t a long trip.”
“It’s still morning, Cousin Tristan. The end of the fortnight
isn’t ’til Saturday night. Tomorrow.”
We let a moment of silence pass for the things that don’t have to
be said. When the moon is full, it will mark the end of the
championship. Not that the quest is going by the same rules. We
started out with five champions-Adaro of the South and Elias of the
East are dead. Brendan is on my side. Dylan of the West hasn’t been
heard of since the day my grandfather broke his trident into three
pieces and set them loose for us to find.
The pieces have been found all right. I have the Scepter of Earth.
Nieve took the Staff of Eternity. Kurt has the Trident of the Skies.
The rules have gone to shit, and if no one else is going to follow
them, then I won’t either. We’re going to visit the river merpeople to
get some power. I’ll fix the throne and I’ll save Layla.
Piece of cake, right?
“Worry not, dear cousin.” Brendan pats my shoulder. “Once we reach
the mist, we know we have arrived. Then we sail right into it. It’s a
bit of a fright at first. The mist will try to push us back, to make
sure we have the will to pass. Then,” he claps his hands hard, “we’re
in.”
Cake.
“Yeah, fog and mist have done wonders for me in the past.”
“That’s the spirit!” He smacks my back.
Kai smiles at us from the quarterdeck. Her long, blond curls are
wild, and she wears the metallic armor of the Sea Guard. For a scroll
nerd, she’s taken to weapons really well. She and Arion stop speaking.
“Don’t stop just because I’m here,” I say. But I know I’ve given
them reason to think I’m not okay. For a moment back there, I thought
I was legit insane. Like, put a crazyjacket on me and lock me in a
white padded room. I was tired and delirious. I was going to jump into
the sea and follow the silver mermaid. It took Kai and Brendan to
sedate me with some bitter liquid that let me sleep. When I came to,
Brendan told me of the Sleeping Giants.
“Where we at?” I take the heavy metal telescope from Arion and
peer through the glass. Blue and gray, endlessness like there is
nothing wrong with the world.
Arion, the captain of the ship, is mystically bound to the vessel
with black ropes that stretch as high as the masts but never into
water. He moves his arms in the wind, carefully steering across rough
waves. “Just passing Greenland.”
I turn my face into the salty breeze and breathe deeply.
“The change suits you,” Arion tells me.
I smirk at Brendan. “Arion, have you heard of the Sleeping
Giants?”
He nods, keeping his dark eyes on the horizon. The urchins load us
up with food. I take a seaweed chip and crumble it in my hands.
Brendan shoves more food down his throat than my entire swim team
during Thanksgiving.
“Aye, Master Tristan,” Arion says. “Only tales from when I was a
guppy.”
“I can’t picture you as a guppy,” Kai says.
Arion laughs. “I believe this is a compliment, Lady Kai, yes?”
Her cheeks turn red. “What I mean is, I’ve read the accounts of
when you were a warrior. How you were the best dragon slayer in the
whole Sea Guard.”
Arion looks away from the admiration on our faces and into some
memory. “That was long ago.”
“The Sleeping Giants?” I urge.
“Aye,” Arion says again. “Some legends say our kind was as big as
the beasts that roamed the earth and seas long before humans did. When