Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (18 page)

We set out for the Enticer early the next day—a Sunday. The trainees had the day off, and Dani and her father were scheduled to gloat to Rik about their training program for at least an hour. That would, theoretically, give us plenty of time to search the area.

Tanuu brought his fire iron, claiming it saved his life and he wasn’t about to put it out to pasture yet.

We stopped in the clearing where the ship waited, ancient and crumbling as always. The training area hadn’t changed in years—apart from the blackened remains of the fire pit Annith had tripped over.

“Let’s look around a bit,” I said.

I ignored the nagging doubt that we wouldn’t find anything. The area had been so overused throughout the years that the dirt had been trampled into near clay. Even ferns and grass didn’t grow. The ship’s deck sagged in the middle, the railing chipped and battered. Anything worth discovering would have been discovered long ago.

Or maybe it was just that no one had been searching in the right place.

Under a blanket of low clouds and towering cedars, a chill settled in the woods. A raven cackled at us from the edge of the clearing. I glanced sideways at it, feeling watched. Ravens were too smart, infamous for learning pesky behaviours like stealing.

We started around the outskirts of the ship, pushing leaves and twigs out of the way to check for anything strange where the hull met the dirt. The ship seemed to have sailed right through the earth before settling in its place.

Turning up nothing, we split up. I stomped on the dirt around the clearing, listening for hollowness that might indicate a trapdoor. Tanuu knocked on the surrounding trees. Annith crawled around the deck on all fours. Blacktail stood on the ship’s railing and surveyed the ground from above.

Tanuu glanced up at Blacktail, laughing. “Do the leaves on the ground spell the location of the Host?”

Blacktail pulled a face and jumped down. “Have the trees whispered their secrets to you?”

“Not yet,” said Tanuu, “but I did piss off a squirrel.”

I zigzagged across the entire clearing until my legs hurt from stomping and I was certain only worms lived beneath our feet.

The raven cackled again.

I stopped at the cabins and stared around, hands on my hips. A pile of stuff sat outside the door of the nearest cabin. It seemed to be a heap of black barbed wire, except …

I stepped closer. My heart skipped a beat. The wire was all connected. This was a huge, iron, barbed net.

Dani had been fond of using fishing nets to trap mermaids on the Massacre. This must have been one of the new weapons they were trying out. It would roast the mermaids alive. It would split their flesh and drown them and burn them all at once. A victory for the girls, maybe, but I couldn’t let that happen. If other mermaids were at all like Lysi, they didn’t deserve this.

“Meela,” said Annith, “have you ever looked closely at these carvings?”

My brain stalled. I couldn’t take my eyes off the net.

“Meela?” Her boots thumped across the deck.

“Yeah?” I peeled my eyes away. “Did you find something?”

“Carvings. Come look.”

With a last glance at the iron torture device, I turned my back and returned to the Enticer. If we could find the Host, I wouldn’t need to worry about that net.

I hopped onto the deck. Annith crouched at the helm, face pressed close to the wheel.

I knew the ship was covered in detailed engravings, but admittedly, I’d never taken the time to study them.

Annith pointed to one in particular: familiar wavy lines, and two eyes that could have been mistaken for swirls in the water. To the left, the wavy lines broadened and coiled around a cluster of human faces. To the right, the lines disappeared altogether, replaced by a forest.

I crouched, tracing my fingers around the wheel’s perimeter. The wooden handles glistened from being touched so often, and smelled of sweat. I identified a few animals and birds in the carvings, but found I couldn’t decipher most. The art was symmetrical, with the same carvings on opposite ends of the wheel.

“I’m wondering how true the legend is,” said Annith. “Like, this looks like wood to me, but the ship is supposed to be made from the bones of Eriana’s people.”

I yanked my hand away. She was right, though. It was clearly not made of bone, and likely human labour had pieced it together, not divine magic.

Tanuu climbed up next to us. “I betcha some parts are more literal than others. The ice storm was probably told as it happened.”

“What about the Host?” I said. “Was Eriana’s soul supposedly bound to a stupid seagull that died a few years later?”

I hoped the others would refute that idea.
Of course not! That’s the truest part! The story is literal and we’re totally on the right track!

No one volunteered anything.

Then Blacktail said, “Here’s something.”

She was looking at the ship’s mast, arms crossed.

We gathered around it.

A single carving ran down the length of it: a long, curving pattern about a hand’s width, beginning at eye level and disappearing beneath the wooden planks at our feet.

For a long time, the four of us stared at the carving without speaking. I’d noticed it before during training, but hadn’t thought anything of it. Now … the blood seemed to drain from my head. Annith sucked in a breath. Realising I’d stopped breathing, too, I inhaled slowly, letting my thoughts fall into place.

At eye level, engraved in the ancient wooden mast, was the head of a serpent. Its forked tongue curved from open jaws, its eye angled in an expression of anger.

“Uh …” I said.

I dashed back to the wheel. The eyes in the water were the same shape.

I returned to the mast. The serpent’s body curved down the wood. I followed it until I was kneeling and the engraving disappeared beneath the planks.

“It’s pointing us below deck,” said Tanuu.

I looked up at him.

“I was afraid of this,” he said. “We gotta crack open the hull.”

This had to be it. Snakes didn’t exist on Eriana Kwai. Why else would one be carved into the mast?

I glanced around the deck, an odd dizziness in my head. If there had ever been a door leading into the hull, it had long been boarded up.

A flashlight appeared in front of my nose.

“Hold this,” said Tanuu. “I’m gonna pull up the boards, all right?”

Numbly, I accepted the flashlight and stood.

Tanuu used the fire iron to pry up the refurbished planks, taking care not to break any. They came away loudly, cracking through the silent forest.

“We’re vandalising a historic site,” said Annith in a high voice.

“We’ll put them back,” said Tanuu. “Besides, can’t be much worse than what the trainees have put it through.”

Still, I couldn’t help feeling guilty as I helped pile the wood.

Once the hole was big enough to fit through, Blacktail peered in.

“Think anything’s down there?”

Tanuu leaned closer and whispered in her ear. “Scared?”

She shot him a glare. “Care to go first?”

“Of course,” he said. “I’m here as gallant protector of you fine ladies.”

He made to jump into the pit but Blacktail grabbed his arm and scoffed. “Don’t be stupid.”

Clicking on the flashlight, I peered in beside them.

The pale beam of light revealed wet clay—a decent landing, but surprisingly far down. The ground beneath the hull had been dug into a pit.

“There’s the cave you were looking for,” said Annith.

She stayed back from the hole, averting her gaze from the height.

I’d always assumed nothing existed beneath the ship but rot and worms. The Host wouldn’t be here, would it? Had we been training for battle on top of a giant snake all these years?

“Let’s lower ourselves in,” said Tanuu, holding up a coil of rope.

“Where’d you get that?” I said.

Tanuu shrugged and pointed across the deck. “It was laying there. They must’ve used it in a training drill.”

He tied one end to the mast with a complicated knot and chucked the coil into the hole. It hit the bottom with a
splat
.

“Let’s have that fire iron, just in case,” I said.

“We going in?” said Tanuu, handing it over.

Flashlight in my belt, weapon ready, I sat down and dangled my legs inside the pit.

Tanuu made to grab my arm. “You’re not going fir—”

I scooted forwards and seized the rope before he could touch me.

I hit the ground and my knees buckled, but I kept my grip on the iron, ready to swing at anything that moved.

“Dammit, Meela!” said Tanuu, a note of panic in his voice. “Move over. I’m coming down.”

I rolled to the side, iron still ready, as Tanuu crumpled beside me.

The pit was damp and warm, a greenhouse of earthy smell. Up to shoulder height, the sides were a combination of layered earth and pieces of rotting hull. Tree roots sprouted towards us like fingers. Above ground level, slivers of daylight peeked through cracks in the boards.

“Ready for us?” said Blacktail.

“Someone needs to stay at the top,” I said, “so we don’t get stuck down here.”

Above, Blacktail glanced back to Annith, who lingered out of sight.

“I’ll stay,” said Annith. “I’m not great with … climbing.”

“Sounds fair,” said Blacktail.

She dropped into the hole without using the rope, landing catlike next to Tanuu and me.

“Not much down here,” I said, shining the light around more carefully.

I checked the ground, easing my fear that I’d crunch on some human skull or a writhing mass of worms. I found broken wood, nails, plastic, a lost mitten, a murky puddle. We might have landed in a garbage pit.

Stepping slowly, I lifted the light to the walls of the hull. Tanuu followed, running his hands along the grimy surfaces.

We searched the area thoroughly, testing for trapdoors, feeling for irregularities, combing for anything odd among the debris. I examined a clay bowl that looked like it might belong in a museum, wondering if the ship had living quarters at one time.

“Meela,” said Blacktail, and the note of urgency in her voice made me whirl around with the weapon ready.

She pointed at a wooden cylinder in front of her, which must have been the rest of the mast. Faintly lit from the daylight above, it ran from the deck down into the clay at our feet, where it splintered.

“Look at the bottom of the carving.”

I shone the flashlight on it. The carving of the serpent continued downwards. It ended at my waist in that open-jawed, fork-tongued head.

“What am I looking—?”

I gasped.

“What?” said Annith.

“The head,” I said. “It’s at the bottom, too.”

Annith made an indiscernible noise of surprise. Tanuu came to see for himself.

“Sisiutl,” he said.

“Bless you,” said Blacktail.

Tanuu shoved her. “The two-headed serpent. The symbol of invincibility.”

I shrugged. I hadn’t heard the name before.

“Come on! The legend’s from all over the Pacific Northwest.” He leaned closer to it and added breathlessly, “Cool.”

“Not cool!” I said. “Don’t you know what this means?”

The possible manifestations of this thing played across my mind. Was the art accurate, or did it take liberties, like with ravens and bears and elk? How much power were we up against?

Tanuu frowned, staring at the engraving. “I’ve seen this somewhere.”

“Where?” said Blacktail.

He continued to stare, until his frown deepened so much that his eyebrows became one.

“I’m not sure.”

“What else is down there?” said Annith.

I shone the flashlight back on the ground. “Bugs. Litter. Some stuff people dropped. I think there used to be a cabin and a galley down here.”

I kicked bits of wood around half-heartedly. My boot clinked against something.

I bent down. The flashlight illuminated something pale.

It was a dagger. The whole thing was beige, from hilt to blade.

“That’s a bone dagger,” said Tanuu quietly.

I nearly dropped it. “
Bone
? Like, part of a body?”

“An animal, I bet, but yeah.”

“I’ve never seen one of those,” said Blacktail, her voice also hushed.

I pushed a finger against the blade, the edge about as sharp as a butter knife.

“Me neither.”

Designs were engraved into the hilt. I held the dagger horizontally to study them: at the top of the hilt, a large tree; at the bottom, a clump of smaller trees. An irregularly shaped hole opened between them.

On the reverse was a fanged animal head, jaws parted, with a long, narrow eye. Based on its similarities to the carving on the mast, I took it to be the head of a serpent.

“We’re borrowing this,” I said, stuffing it in my belt.

Outside, the raven cackled with more volume than ever. Annith cursed, making the three of us jump.

“Turn the light off!” she said.

Before we could ask why, she chucked the pile of boards roughly over the hole in the deck, plunging us further into darkness. I clicked off the flashlight.

“Are you looking for someone?” said Annith pleasantly.

I froze. Tanuu and Blacktail seemed to have stopped breathing.

Annith’s boots thumped across the deck, moving further away from the hole.

A girl’s voice answered from the ground, alarmingly close. “I was hoping Dani would be here. I wanted to do some extra practice.”

“Oh,” said Annith, still cheerful. “Dani’s not here. Besides, you should give your muscles a break.”

The girl must have shown apprehension, because Annith added, “Recovery time’s important. By the time May comes around, you’ll be at optimal fitness.”

“But I haven’t got until May, and my aim isn’t as good as the others, so I think I would be better off practicing today instead of resting.”

There was a heavy silence.

“What do you mean, you haven’t got until May?” said Annith, all lightness gone.

“We’re leaving next week.”

The blood drained from my face.

“They haven’t made another ship yet,” said Annith.

“They patched up the last one.”