Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (14 page)

Spio waved a hand. “They don’t know how to react to you.”

“Am I that much of a freak?”

“A freak? No. But you aren’t exactly …”

“Normal?”

“Conventional.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Lysi, any other mermaid, she sees a sailor, and she turns on the charm and lures him into the water. Just because. You’d rather get him in the water by tripping him and watching him do a bellyflop.”

I grinned. “That was pretty great, wasn’t it?”

“It was awesome. I still have that guy’s shoe at home.”

“He had it coming.”

Spio pointed at me. “You see what I mean, though? You’re different. Some find it weird.”

I realised I’d been trying to dislodge a live shrimp that had gotten stuck in my hair. I dropped my hand. “Do you think I’m weird?”

Spio clapped me on the shoulder and looked me dead in the eye. “Would we be friends if I didn’t?”

I smiled.

“So you’re in,” he said, more statement than question.

I bit my lip. “Spio, this is high treason.”

He shrugged. “Which evil is bigger, Lysi? Doing away with him, or letting him live?”

CHAPTER NINE
Eriana the Mortal

Memories of elementary school flooded back as we crossed the schoolyard.

“That’s where I shoved Dani in the mud,” I said with a dreamy sigh.

Tanuu squeezed my shoulders. “That’s my girl!”

The mud puddle, affectionately called the Eriana Trench, was smaller than I remembered, but still big enough that I understood why kids got in trouble for trying to wade into the middle.

“I bet there’s a solid layer of paper on the bottom,” said Annith. “All those years of paper-ship battles.”

“Kids always chucked my shoes in there,” said Blacktail.

Tanuu, Annith, and I turned to her.

“They did?” I said. “Why?”

Blacktail shrugged.

“That’s just mean!” said Tanuu.

“Kids are mean when you’ve got big ears and don’t talk much.”

“You shoulda been my friend,” said Tanuu. “I would’ve put them in their place.”

Blacktail laughed. “Right. You never would’ve been my friend.”

“Yes I would have!”

“You were too cool, with your soccer and your little group of boys. Did you even know I existed?”

Tanuu rushed forwards to hold the door open for us. “Yes. You were the quiet girl who was good at drawing.”

Blacktail raised an eyebrow at him.

“You can draw?” I said.

She walked past him. “We still would never have been friends. And stop being so nice. I only saved you because you looked so pathetic kneeling in front of that mermaid.”

Annith and I giggled.

“Did you see her?” said Tanuu defensively. “I mean, she was …”

He glanced at me with a guilty expression.

I clapped him on the arm as I passed him. “Out of your league?”

Inside the school, everything was definitely smaller than I remembered. The hallways were narrow, the art on the walls barely came up to my chest, and inside the classrooms, the desks were so tiny I wondered how I ever fit in one.

The place smelled like crayons. As we searched for the grade seven classroom, our whispers and scuffing shoes echoed in the vacant hallways.

We knocked on the open door. Anyo lifted his heavy eyes from a pile of papers, his forehead deeply lined. Then he seemed to notice who was standing there and his face softened.

“Ladies! Come in.”

We entered, Tanuu awkwardly bringing up the rear.

I suddenly regretted being angry with Anyo. Of course he would always be happy to see us, his trainees and his legacy—like a proud uncle.

I scanned the classroom. The desks had been arranged in groups of four. Some kids had taped pictures to the tops. On the right wall, the blackboard had algebra questions across one side, and ‘Clean-up Duty’ with a few names at the bottom. The wall behind us displayed the students’ drawings of the circulatory system.

In the corner, a bookshelf overflowed with chapter books, including some in English, and textbooks on the world wars, animal habitats, the human body, and natural disasters. A poster of the earth’s crust had been taped above a dozen dioramas of earthquakes and volcanoes. Some had clearly been thrown together last minute, while others were clearly assisted by overachieving parents. I thought being a teacher looked kind of fun.

We stood across from Anyo, not sure where to sit.

“Come to learn from a retired training master?” he said, bitterness clipping his voice.

He drew an X on the homework he was marking with enough force to rip a hole in the page.

“These kids are lucky,” I said.

Anyo snatched another piece of homework from the stack. “They don’t care.”

“Come on, a former training master for a teacher?”

He hesitated, and then grumbled, “I guess I haven’t had problems with kids stepping out of line. Probably scared to.”

“They want to learn from you,” said Annith.

He made a violent checkmark.

“Is that why you’re here? To learn from me? Well, kids, will it be math or science?”

“Actually,” said Annith, “we were hoping you could teach us a bit of history.”

Anyo’s pen faltered. The tip hovered over the page, so he wasn’t writing anything but also wasn’t looking at us.

“Trying to catch up on the high school you missed during training?”

His tone made it clear he was grasping. He knew where this conversation was headed.

I followed his eyes to the filing cabinet beside the desk. The bottom drawer gaped open, full of paper and books.

“We hoped you could tell us about Eriana herself,” I said. “We know she was born mortal, but stories all tell of her as a goddess, not a human.”

Anyo turned back to his marking. “The story of Eriana is more myth than fact. We don’t teach it anymore.”

“At all? What about our culture?” I said, voice raising an octave.

My own agenda aside, the idea that the school board had taken out such an important part of Eriana culture horrified me. Even when I’d been in elementary school, our education on the goddess Eriana was limited to a single picture book in grade two.

“They can’t do that,” said Blacktail. “Even if it is myth, it’s still part of our history.”

Anyo shrugged. “It’s the board’s decision, not mine. If you want to take it up with them, I can give you contact information.”

I crossed my arms. “Who was Eriana as a human? Where did she come from, before she discovered this island?”

Anyo looked at the filing cabinet again, and then out the window, and then back to the pile of homework on his desk. Finally, he met my eyes.

“I don’t know anything about the Host.”

“This isn’t about the Host,” said Annith, but I waved a hand.

“We didn’t expect you’d know anything about that. We just want to learn more about Eriana. Anything you can tell us.”

He stared at us, rubbing a calloused hand over his mouth. The clock behind him filled the silence, ticking loudly.

“I’ve never heard of anything called the Host of Eriana,” he said.

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” said Blacktail.

“Maybe you know it, just not by name,” said Tanuu.

“What if it is real?” said Annith.

Anyo took in our determined expressions, probably noting the way we leaned towards him, hanging on his every word. He seemed to be having an internal struggle. I said nothing.

“Adette is in training,” he said.

It had crossed my mind that Anyo’s daughter was now outside his control, a generic member of the new training program.

“I don’t trust Mujihi’s training methods,” he said. “So I can’t pretend the prospect of ending the Massacres doesn’t interest me.”

“We want to help Adette,” I said. “We want to help all the trainees.”

His expression revealed nothing. He ran a hand across his scalp. Absently, he traced his fingers along the scar he’d gotten from his days as a Massacre warrior.

Yes,
I thought,
we want to avoid more injuries like that one.

He caught my eye, seemed to realise what he was doing, and sighed. “I can tell you the story of who Eriana was as a mortal. But I don’t think it will help.”

He motioned for us to sit. We pulled chairs out from the tiny desks and sat down while he opened the second drawer of the filing cabinet. He produced an ancient, barely held-together book and placed it in the centre of the desk.

Annith, Blacktail, Tanuu, and I leaned closer. The leather cover had a familiar emblem: a sea lion, teeth bared in pursuit of prey. It was our national animal—though it hadn’t had much presence since the mermaids invaded. At some point in the last thirty years, someone had chosen the northern saw-whet owl to grace our flag instead—an animal of the sky, not the sea.

“I dug this up after you talked to the Massacre Committee,” said Anyo. “My family’s had this book for generations. Have you come across anything like it?”

Annith and I shook our heads.

“It’s only pictures, mind you. The stories have been passed orally.”

He opened it, revealing soft, uneven pages of animal skin parchment. It had a musty odour, like it had been forgotten about in a shed for a few decades. The first page was a colour sketch of a young couple holding a newborn baby, bundled in thick grey and brown furs.

“The discovery of our land is, of course, said to be the work of one woman named Eriana. Her exact birthplace is unknown. Most historians believe she came from up north, but she might have sailed here from further away, like Russia or Japan.”

“Where do you think she came from?” said Blacktail.

“Given the legend and proximity, I think she came from what we now know as Alaska.”

He flipped the page to a child standing in the snow, hair blowing around her face, encircled by half a dozen bald eagles.

“Eriana’s people called her a charmer of animals, because from an early age she spoke to them in ways no other human could. She grew up playing with wild hares, pouncing in the snow with foxes, running with herds of caribou. She was known for calling families of eagles to fly circles around her, simply for the joy of feeling their wings. But her skill proved useful, too. If a pack of wolves wandered too close to her people, she could guide them away without evoking so much as a growl.”

Anyo flipped to a young woman standing before a herd of caribou, surrounded by a world of snow.

“One year, a rough winter hit Eriana’s people. With it came a terrible spell of hunger. They begged her to summon wild animals to sacrifice themselves for food. Driven by hunger, Eriana complied. She called a herd of caribou and made them wait until, one by one, her people had slain and eaten them all.”

The next page showed a group of faceless people huddled against a whirling blizzard.

“But the Gaela did not approve. She had given Eriana this gift of speaking to animals, and was furious that Eriana had cheated the natural order of the animal kingdom. Eriana’s gift, said the Gaela, was meant to bring peace between the species, not deceive innocent creatures. So she sent the Aanil Uusha to punish Eriana.”

Anyo pointed at the blizzard, and I looked again. The face of Death himself could be seen in the lines of the whirling storm.

“That night, the Aanil Uusha swept over Eriana’s people in the form of an ice storm. Eriana tried to plea with him, but Death was merciless. He took the lives of her entire tribe. He was about to turn on Eriana herself …”

He stared at the page for several seconds.

“But?” I said.

“The Aanil Uusha thought it would be a better punishment to leave Eriana and let her live her life in guilt. At least, that was how my mother told the tale. This is where the legend diverges. My father said Eriana and Death made a bargain, resulting in his agreement to give Eriana her life.”

“What kind of bargain?” I said.

Anyo shook his head. “My father didn’t know. That’s why I was always told my mother’s version.”

I glanced to Annith. So there was a hole in the legend.

“No one really knows why Eriana survived, then,” said Annith.

“There is some uncertainty about how she escaped the ice storm,” said Anyo.

He turned to the next drawing: Eriana on a warship, crashing through stormy seas.

“As it’s told, the Aanil Uusha built a ship from the bones of her people and the caribou, allowing her to sail away from her barren homeland. She landed on our shores. For the rest of her life, Eriana would fulfill a duty to protect the animals of our island, fending off anyone who dared approach.”

Anyo sat back. “That ship is now said to lie in the middle of our forest.”

“The Enticer,” said Tanuu.

Anyo nodded.

“The library books said Eriana guarded the island with her warship,” I said. “But the ship can’t be the Host, can it? Don’t you think she would’ve had something more powerful and, well, scary?”

“Ah,” said Anyo. “That leads me to the reason I dug this book out in the first place.” He pushed the ancient book towards me. “Have a closer look at that drawing.”

I leaned in.

“There’s a pair of eyes in the water,” said Blacktail at once.

She was right. Beneath the ship, something irregular was sketched into the wavy lines representing the stormy ocean. Angry, enormous eyes. They could have been overlooked as swirls in the water, but once I accepted them as a pair of eyes, I couldn’t unsee them.