“Keep your dagger out,” Gwen whispers behind me.
I unzip the familiar pocket of my backpack and feel for my blade.
I can feel Gwen’s cool fingers reach out for my wrist, then slide down
to my hand. Even on a nice summer night like this, my skin prickles.
“Why isn’t she saying anything?”
I shrug but then realize she can’t see me in the dark. “Maybe
she’s mysterious. Aren’t oracles supposed to be mysterious?”
“Maybe she’s not the oracle. Isn’t New York famous for crazy
humans?”
“If something is funky, you need to leave without me, okay?”
She doesn’t respond, because I know she isn’t going to listen to
me. The downward slope of the path comes as a surprise. I miss the
step and slide down on my heels. My flip-flops come off, and I lose
them in the dark. Gwen isn’t far behind. I land in a puddle that is
part of a small pond. Tiny specks of light wriggle and laugh over my
head. They’re fairies, about the length of my hand. One of them comes
close and presses her whole body against the side of my face. I can
feel her teeny, tiny mouth kiss me before she pulls away and hides in
the hole of a gnarly tree.
“Fairies,” Gwen says distastefully.
I go, “Tell me how you really feel.”
“I feel ignored,” says a raspy voice on the other end of the pond.
The fairies gather around a white boulder beside the oracle. I can
see her face, bathed in the soft fairy light. I know why she wraps
herself in so many folds of cloth. She is unlike any of the merpeople
I’ve met. Her face is round and wide. The wrinkles on her cheeks are
like the grooves on the side of a melting taper. The whole of her eyes
are black, and I shut my eyes against the memory of the black blood
coming out of the merrows.
“Does something so ugly offend the young prince?”
I try to right myself and put on my best smile, like she’s Lourdes
the lunch lady and I want some free chocolate milk. “I’m not
offended.”
The sound of the park fills her silence-the ripple of the pond,
the leaves brushing against the push of the wind, fairy wings flitting
faster than batting eyelashes in Van Oppen’s class, the very distant
sound of cars honking. That’s it, the cars honking. It’s the only
thing that reminds me I’m in the city.
“Come closer,” she tells me.
I step a foot in the pond. In five steps I’m in front of her.
“You wait till I ask you to sit,” she observes.
In truth, it’s because I’m afraid I’ll crush one of the fairies.
“What will you give me, Tristan Hart?”
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to people just knowing my name. I
feel for the pearl in my pocket. “What will you give me in return?”
She laughs, a raw brittle sound that reminds me of twigs breaking.
“Will you tell me I’m beautiful? The other champion told me I was most
beautiful.”
“Have there been others?”
“Just one. The golden son of the West.”
“Dylan,” Gwen offers. She sits with a few of the fairies watching
her curiously.
I don’t think I should lie to the oracle’s face. Wouldn’t she
know? Instead I say, “What if I can give you something that was taken
from you?”
She sits taller. She smooths her hair away from her face and
frowns when she sees my hands are empty. “What can anyone take from
me? I, who have nothing to give.”
“You’re an oracle, though. Right?”
She harrumphs. “In truth, I got the dregs of my sissies. The
shaft, as you humans call it. But I like you. Not just because you’re
young and as lovely as the calm of the sea seconds after a storm.
Though you are, you are. Would you stay with me so I can look at you
prettily? But no, Sea Kings cannot stay. Unlike golds and souls, you
aren’t meant to stay.”
“Stay where?”
“Why, right where you ought to be, of course.”
Of course. Maybe she is a crazy New Yorker after all. I reach into
my pocket, and she recoils from me, almost falling off her boulder. I
hold my dagger with my free hand and wave it so she can see I mean no
harm. Then again, waving a dagger isn’t the universal symbol for I
come in peace. “Don’t be afraid. It’s only this.” The marble-sized
pearl hangs between us on its long gold chain.
Her eyes fall on it instantly. Her hands reaches out, bony fingers
like twigs in a nest waiting to catch it. I pull it away.
“Your mother. Always the troublemaker she was.” She smacks her
lips like she tastes something sweet and sticky. “Do you know what
that is, boy?”
“It’s Tristan,” I say, annoyed that she’s speaking about my mom.
Oracle or not. “But you already knew that. What’s your name?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
“Fine. And no, I don’t know what it is. I thought it was just a
necklace.”
“Just a necklace,” the oracle says to the fairy closest to her.
The fairy laughs, a thin prickly sound that reminds me of pine needles
falling in a cluster. “It’s the Venus pearl. It’s only made when two
clams stick together and have one baby pearly.”
I go, “That sounds incredibly gross. Plus, I knew that. What’s so
special about that?”
“It’s the only one I’ve ever seen of its kind. And it’s rightfully
mine.”
“Finders keepers.”
She reaches inside her red shawls, and I pray to whatever gods are
out there that she’s not trying to seduce me.
“Like I told you, I was born last. The youngest of the last
generation of sea oracles.”
If she’s the baby, I’m afraid to see what the others look like.
“I do not have the powers of sight. Not for the past. Not for the
present. Not for the future. My eyes are as blind between the veils as
a human to the world.”
I’m starting to think we’re in the wrong place.
“And yet I can interpret the bones of the sea to the querent. That
is you.” In her frail hand she holds a handful of something. They
click against each other like marbles. Maybe they are bones.
“Ask me anything.”
“Anything?” Will I win? is at the top of my list. Will I die now?
Will Layla love me? Will Nieve find me? It all seems sort of trivial
when I say it to myself. When my friend is dead because of me. And for
what? A piece of ancient Sea Court? An oversized fork that conducts
electricity? Will I ever get my life back? Do I even want my life
back? What if after the end of all of this, I screw everything up? Can
my team win another championship without me? Can I rule an entire
race? How many more are going to die because of me?
“Ask me now, Master Tristan, or the time will pass!”
Why is it that when someone wants to tell you the truth about the
matter, you’d rather just not know. We want the truth, but what we
really want is to be lied to, to pretend things are going to work out
when they probably won’t. No one wants to hear, I don’t love you. That
dress isn’t your size. You’re pregnant. The paper you worked so hard
on is a C- at best. We’re better off as friends. And here she is,
asking what I want to know, and all I want to do is put my fingers in
my ears and wait and see what happens.
“Tristan,” Gwen urges me.
“I want to know if you actually have a piece of the trident.”
She smirks and rattles the things cupped in her hands, and they
click like die. She lets go, and they fall on the surface of the pond
but do not move. They float around each other until they’re completely
still for her to look at. “Are you sure?”
She’d make a good poker player, good enough to even play with Mr.
Santos. But then a dark shadow crosses over her features. The