The head reveler lady says to us, “Don’t be shy! Get yours! You’ll see…”
What I see is her being pulled down to the floor by one of her companions, a guy whose intentions are not anything I want to witness.
“Where would my dad be? Tam, any ideas?” I ask.
He shakes his head no. “You’ll have to ask them. The seven sages. Minor gods Enki made. They’re his attendants.”
I count the weird fish-men. There
are
seven. “These are sages?”
Bree says, “I’m not letting them touch me.”
“Smart.” But Tam’s right about no way through. There’s a shadowed opening, door-sized, that goes further into the temple, but it’s on the other side of the tanks. There’s no going anywhere but back the way we came – blocked by lion-eagle – without help from these sages. Dad had better be here.
I choose the nearest tank, averting my eyes as I skirt around the revelers’ disturbing activities on the floor. “Yes,” I hear the woman say, and she adds, “get your blessing.”
Every muscle in my body wants out of here, to do anything besides take another step closer to the tank. Black water sloshes over the top, and a head three times the size of mine emerges. “
Cooome
close to me,” the sage says, in a voice thin as liquid. He has to push back when another sage forces up beside him. “Let us show you
truuuth
,” the new one says, and the voice is more feminine. So there are fish-
women
sages, too.
I am the center of attention of the revelers, angry at the fact their blessings have stopped, as all seven of the sages mass at this end of the tank. They hiss, coaxing me to come to them and be shown truth.
“Stop it.” I can’t think of anything else to say.
They don’t stop. If anything, the order amuses them. Well, maybe it’s amusement. Their reactions are hard to read, their eyes fathomless flat discs in their half-human, half-marine faces.
“I’m here about my father,” I say.
“You want to know why he attacked
youuu
,” the first sage says, pressed into the corner of the tank by his fellows. “Our cousin Anzu was told to protect your father. You are a threat. He saw
youuu
as a threat.”
I swallow. That monster attacked me on Dad’s behalf? “Is my father here?”
“
Youuu
are
.
” They chant it.
The reveler lady pokes my shoulder. “They don’t talk to us. Who are you?” she asks.
“No one for you to worry about. You can leave me here.”
The moment I turn from the tank, one of the sages’ tails caresses the bare skin of my neck. Cold, wet, scaly. I dart away, and the hiss-chatter-maybe-laughter gets louder. Bree and Tam are stuck between the rest of the revelers and me. I look at them, and tick my head toward the reveler lady. “You guys go with them. I’ll stay.”
“She
loooves
us
.
”
“She’ll
stayyy
…”
“The threat will stay
foreeever
.
”
“Blessed ones
leeeave
her…”
The sing-song hiss makes me nauseous.
I expect giggles and protests from the dismissed revelers, but the woman bows her head to the sages. The others steeple their hands in a semi-universal gesture of respect as they shuffle back out. The wish of the seven sages is their command.
But Tam and Bree aren’t going. Of course.
“All three will see truth.
We will
show
youuu
.
”
“I just want to see my dad,” I tell them.
More hissing and, “There’s a price. Truth is the price.
Cooome
to us
.
You three. Then we
miiight
tell.”
I refuse to ask anyone to do
this
for me. The pictures Bree made without anything like the sages in front of her are enough to make me regret bringing her here forever. The nightmares she’ll have… And Tam, he doesn’t owe me this.
But they exchange a look with each other and move to the front of the tank before I can step in. “Don’t–” I start, already too late.
The laugh-hiss of the sages fills the chamber, two tails swiping down to Bree and Tam’s open mouths, their tongues extended – if not with the abandon of the departed revelers, at least with determination. Both of them close their lips and step back as soon as the tails retract. They clutch each other’s hands.
“You too or it’s for nothing.
Cooome
here, daughter.
”
I don’t know which ones beckon for me, and it doesn’t matter. Now that Bree and Tam have gone this far, I have no choice.
The water sloshes as I approach the tank, open my mouth and put out my tongue like when I was tiny and had a sore throat and Mom would use a flashlight to say strep spots or no strep spots. As a tail delicately deposits a drop of foul black water onto my tongue, I hang onto that memory of Mom. I step back and close my eyes. My plan is to try my best to resist whatever the droplet’s supposed to
do
.
But the room I’m in… suddenly it’s home. I’m in Dad’s room. I remember coming to myself over the shirt and the money and the ID, his note in my hands as I rocked back and forth. I hear a sob and the room is dark and so I’m sure it’s
me
from the night before that I see and I get so angry at the seven sages, with their clever game, their empty promises of truth, that I almost don’t realize.
It’s not me, it’s
Dad
. The shirt’s open on his lap, and he slips in the note. He folds the T-shirt around everything. He is crying. His head shakes back and forth,
No
,
as he folds the fabric with such care. So deliberate, he rises and pushes back the desk, hides the bundle in the wall. I lean in and hear him whisper, “I’m sorry.” I want to forgive him everything. I reach out, saying, “Dad, it’s OK. Dad, I’m here. It’s Kyra.”
That’s when the cool hand touches mine, and brings me back to the seven sages’ chamber.
I resist for a blink, two blinks. But, no, this is where I am. The tanks, sages watching instead of hissing, the blue ocean walls.
Tam and Bree stare at me. The god touching my hand obviously pulled them both out of their sage visions – or whatever that was – first. His skin is composed of blue and white scales, alternating, so I know better than to feel relief. When I look up, I discover he has two faces. Each is perfect beside the other, one blue and the other white. The foreheads and the planes of his jaws curve like twin moons of a single planet. He wears a long pale robe.
Tam says, “This is Isimud, Enki’s messenger.” He can’t hide how shaken he is. Not from me. The droplets must have taken them somewhere too. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he says. “Ask him.”
Tam’s bravado strikes me as false, but the suggestion he makes is genuine.
The two-faced man waves his free hand. “Our apologies for the greeting you received. Anzu is an overzealous creature.” The last word is soaked with disdain. “But he has his uses.”
I force myself not to shy from his dual gaze. “Did he really attack me because I’m a threat to my dad?”
His blue face frowns, and the white one speaks. “I believe you are familiar with complicated situations. This is one. Come. Enki will allow your audience now.”
He releases my hand and gestures to an opening in the floor in front of the tanks. I’m certain it wasn’t there before. Steps descend into cool blackness. The sages’ silence is almost worse than their gibbering.
I hesitate. “My friends? They’ll be safe.”
“They have nothing to fear from us,” Isimud answers, though I don’t see which mouth says the words.
“What about Kyra?” Tam asks, and I have to admire him even while I want to tell him to keep quiet and worry about getting out of here in one piece. Not about me.
“She is a guest,” Isimud’s blue mouth says. “As is her father.”
That’s all I need to hear, that Dad
is
here. As I start down the steps, the black water of the tank sloshes, and the last thing I see before there’s only darkness in front of me is one of the fish-men’s faces, as he swims to the bottom of his glass cage to watch us disappear. He’s showing me his teeth.
We walk down and down, and the black is like being inside a permanent night. There is no soft candle glow, no faint hint of light. Wherever we’re going, it’s the deeps. I find each step with care, glad they are regular and steady. Stone, I guess, from the sound of our shoes.
Bree has her hand on my shoulder, the only sign of her fear the tightness of the grip. I don’t complain. It’s only right I’m the one in front. I should have been strong enough not to bring them, to come here alone in the first place. We
are
in danger, no matter what assurances my grandfather Bronson made to Ben, no matter what the two-faced god claims.
Anything might happen to us. Of that, I’m certain.
I assume Tam’s following Bree, and that Isimud needs no guidance. We do not talk. We might be descending into an ancient cavern, winding far below the surface of the earth. Or we might be beneath the ocean by now. There is no sound except the heaviness of our feet and our breathing as we travel down, and down, and down.
I know the destination is close when the smell changes. The air holds nothing, no light, no air, no smell, until it does. Like a memory of visiting the harbor and getting a snort of water up my nose by accident, there’s a sting to it. The scent
is
water, its nature, as pure as possible. I don’t know how else to explain it. One moment we’re inside living darkness, the next we’re inside living water.
The steps end, and there is light.
“Wow,” the word escapes Bree, a soft exhalation.
The wall of water stretches higher than I can follow. It’s a solid sheet of blue, not held there by glass or by
anything
. It simply is. We stand on a scant few feet of sandy soil with the night stairs behind us, and a subterranean magic ocean in front of us. I’m trembling, and it’s hard to imagine how anyone could
not
. I grip the straps of my backpack to help disguise it.
This is where my father is. I have to keep going.
“No harm will come to you in the abzu,” Isimud says.
“What does he mean?” Bree asks. “He can’t expect us–”
Tam puts a hand on her arm. “I believe we can trust him on this.”
Bree bites her lip, but nods. I extend my hand, and she takes it. Tam takes her other one. Bree’s trembling too, which makes me feel better and worse.
Isimud angles toward the water. “He awaits.”
Walking into the mass of water feels wrong, but necessary. So we move forward. I pause at the edge of it… “Should we hold our breath?” I ask Isimud, and both faces say, “There is no breath in the abzu. It is life itself.”
“So that’s a no?” I mutter, and Tam snorts. I want to hug him for the normalcy of it. I look at Bree and Tam, and ask them, “Ready?”
Bree swallows. Tam raises his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” I say, “me neither. Here we go.”
Forgetting what Isimud said, I suck in a breath, and we step together into the deep blue.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s not just water, of course. There are more
things
swimming in it. Monstrous gods, large and small, and fish – magical or regular, I can’t say. I keep holding my breath. I glance over and see Bree and Tam doing the same, cheeks puffing. We discover almost immediately that we don’t have to swim. No waving our arms and legs around required. We release hands because it’s easier to move with them free.
We walk
through
the water, the endless water that is not warm and not cold, not dark and not light. Isimud stays to our left, and I suppose he’s leading us somewhere, though he’s not forceful about it.
Finally, I have to release my breath. For a long moment, I can’t move. I feel my lungs empty and start to burn. The lining of my nose stings. My mouth fills and fills again with water that tastes of nothing – not salt, not sweet. Life has no taste, it turns out. I want to laugh, and the word
hysterical
floats through my mind.
Bree and Tam are flailing too, inhaling water. Have the gods tricked us down here to drown? We could go back, except behind us is only water. In front of us, water. On our sides, surrounding us completely, water. I’m not even sure which way is back anymore.
We’ve been allowed into the abzu to die. Lucky us.
I shout for my Dad again, but the endless water absorbs the sound. Then comes a voice that is everywhere and nowhere, inside our heads and outside them:
Enough. Finish the journey
.
My lungs calm. I breathe in… water. And I breathe it out again.
“This is weird,” Tam says.
The sound comes to me muffled, but I can hear well enough to understand him. I clear my throat, which is such a ridiculous thing to do
underwater
in the freaking
abzu
that I almost revisit hysterical. I ask, “That voice, was it…?”
“Enki. He awaits,” Isimud says. Both his faces seem impatient with us.
Bree has her mouth open, letting water come in and out of it. She closes it when she catches us watching her. “At least there’s no head trip from this stuff,” she says.
So they
did
see something too. I’ll have to ask her what later. Except I can’t, because I don’t want to have to talk about seeing Dad crying in his room. But it has made me more eager to get to him. He didn’t want to leave me. He was sad. I
saw
him being sad.
“If Enki awaits, we’d better get going,” I say.
Able to breathe without trouble, we make better progress. Massive bodies curve past us from time to time, but we keep moving. The shift in environment at the end of the stairs was clear enough that I recognize when we hit the next one.
There’s light, though it’s not bright and doesn’t seem to have a source. The blue water around us lightens, suffused with the glow. We pass into the heart of the deeps. The glow pulses, and my not-breathing grows deeper. My body likes this water.