Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (28 page)

My hesitation made his eyes widen in panic.

“No. Meela, I know you’ve been through a lot, and if you need space, I’ll give it to you.”

“I know you think I just need time to come around. But that’s not it.”

He continued to stare at me in horror. I hated myself for drawing this out.

I drew a breath and tried again. “We … We need to break up.”

The words sat heavy on my tongue, like a bitter taste.

Tanuu blinked. His face sagged.

He sat on a boulder with a thud. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s not—”

“Is it my cooking? I can stop making you dinner.”

“No, Tanuu, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Then what is it? I don’t get it.”

I twisted my fingers in a knot. Would the truth hurt him even more? Or would it be easier for him to accept?

“If you need time to recover from the Massacre,” he said, “that’s fine. I waited a month while you were away. I can keep waiting. As long as you need.”

I shook my head. Why did he have to be so selfless? His sincerity was killing me.

“It’s not a matter of needing time to recover,” I said. “I don’t want you to wait around, hanging onto the hope that I’ll change my mind. You need to move on. I want you to be happy.”

My voice broke. He’d whipped out his number one defence against me: his deep brown, sad-baby-seal eyes. They stared at me with watery confusion and defeat. My chest contracted.

“Tanuu, you’re one of my best friends, and I love you. But I’ve been a terrible girlfriend.”

At this, the panic on his face worsened.

“Wait, is there another guy?”

“No! Of course not. I’d never cheat on you.”

But I thought of Lysi, how desperately I’d wanted to kiss her, and wondered if that were completely true.

“Well, I don’t think you’ve been a terrible girlfriend.”

“I have. I’ve been putting minimal effort into this relationship, and you deserve someone who’ll give it everything she has. You deserve someone who loves you back in the same way.”

He dropped his face into his hands. “I don’t understand where I went wrong.”

I sat next to him. “Tanuu, please understand me. It’s not you. I have … personal things. It’s hard to explain.”

Tell him,
said a voice in my head.
Just tell him. It’ll make it less painful if he understands.

My mouth opened and closed several times.

I couldn’t keep Lysi a secret forever. I’d have to tell people eventually. Why not start with Tanuu? I trusted him, probably as much as I trusted Annith and my parents.

My heart rate quickened, like I was about to dive off a cliff.

“Hey,” said a voice.

We looked up to see Blacktail beating her way through the long grass. Her smile faltered when she saw our expressions.

She seemed to guess what we’d been discussing, because she didn’t give any indication that she knew something was wrong.

“Annith here yet?” she said, hooking her thumbs on the straps of her backpack.

“No,” I said.

Tanuu stood without looking at either of us. He moved closer to the beach to stare at the spouts of water that rose with the tide.

“Don’t get too close,” said Blacktail. She made a convulsive movement with her arm, as though about to grab Tanuu and haul him away.

Tanuu raised an eyebrow. “What, are you worried about me?”

“No.”

“Are, too.”

She turned away. “Well, yes, but you’re useless near the ocean, aren’t you?”

Tanuu almost cracked a smile, but caught my eye and turned away again.

“Here comes Annith,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.

We met her halfway across the field.

“Ready?” she said cheerily.

I nodded. Tanuu said nothing. Blacktail grunted.

Annith gave me a quizzical look, but I jerked my head slightly.

“Uh, I found out my family’s always lived here,” said Annith. “I guess that makes me a descendant of Eriana.”

I stared at her. I’d momentarily forgotten Blacktail and Annith had been trying to get the same information the night before.

“That’s great,” I said. “I mean, if you’re all right with … a bit of your blood …”

“Don’t be dumb,” said Annith. “Of course.”

“I asked, too,” said Blacktail. “No go. Somewhere along, my family came from Alaska.”

“At least we’ve got Annith,” I said. “I still haven’t found out about mine.”

Annith was staring at Tanuu, who stood apart from us, arms crossed, face uncharacteristically sullen.

“The Ravendust bushes definitely go into the woods over there,” said Blacktail, motioning to the left.

She trekked onwards without waiting for a response. We followed, stepping high through the grass. Annith caught up with Blacktail, presumably to ask in undertones what was going on.

Tanuu continued brooding, misery seeping from him like a toxic gas. Trailing behind, I felt guiltier with each passing second.

Once in the woods, we stopped at each Ravendust bush and turned on the spot to locate the next. It was hard to tell whether we were following a path or jumping from plant to plant like a weird egg hunt.

The silence deepened as we zigzagged through the woods, sometimes looping in a circle, other times guessing the direction of the next plant and then happening across one a few minutes later. We passed by my house, and then the training base, and then pushed so deeply into the woods that it became hard to move without needing to clamber over huge logs and rocks. We paused here and there to snack on huckleberries, but by the afternoon we were starving and tired and out of water. We stumbled more frequently as it became exhausting to lift our feet. My coat had snagged on so many branches that I was sure I’d ripped it beyond repair.

Blacktail cursed as a low-hanging branch jabbed her in the eye.

“Maybe we should split up to cover more ground,” she mumbled.

“Split up how?” said Tanuu. “There’s one path. It’s not like it forks.”

Blacktail smacked the next branch out of the way with extra force. “I mean the next time we don’t know which direction to take.”

“Speaking of directions,” said Annith. “Where are we?”

Nobody answered.

I hadn’t spoken in so long that it took me a moment to find my voice.

“I’m sure we’ll see a landmark soon,” I said into the waspish silence.

I quickened my pace, putting distance between us as though to buffer their moodiness.

Eventually, we broke into a meadow. The land dropped off at the opposite end, apparently a steep bank or cliff. I hoped it would give me some indication of where we’d ended up.

A lone Ravendust bush peeked out of the centre, surrounded by grass and weeds.

I hadn’t made it five steps into the meadow when a crack rang through the air and Annith let out a piercing scream.

I whirled around to see her frizzy hair disappear into the ground.

I lunged for her. “Annith!”

A splash, a moment where she stopped screaming, and then she surfaced, gasping and choking.

She’d landed in a pit, like a grave dug large enough to hold a grizzly. Around her, what must have been a cover of thatched branches had crumbled in with her. A layer of muddy, thigh-deep water roiled under Annith’s flailing limbs.

For a brief, absurd moment, I wondered if she’d landed in the fissure in the earth we’d been searching for. Then sense took over as Tanuu threw himself on his stomach and reached into the pit.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s an old trap. Are you all right?”

Annith was making strange gasping sounds, like she wanted to keep screaming but was too busy coughing.

“No,” she said. “The sticks.”

Panic rose in my chest. “The what? Sticks? What did she say?”

I dropped to my knees. Blacktail flung herself beside Tanuu and stretched out a hand, too.

“Annith, grab on,” she said.

Annith reached trembling arms up to Tanuu and Blacktail. She whimpered in pain as they lifted her from the water.

I leaned down to grab her leg, and had to stifle a cry. Several of the thatched branches had sliced her open. Her jeans had torn, and one of the sticks still clung to her, penetrating through skin. Blood seeped through the wound.

Tanuu swore. He removed his jacket and wrapped it around her trembling shoulders.

We eased Annith onto the grass. She was breathing fast, panicking.

I knelt beside her.

“Annith, hold my hand. Try to slow your breathing.”

She inhaled unsteadily a few times, gripping my hand like a vice.

Blacktail used her dagger to slice away the material around the protruding branch. I watched her face for a reaction, not wanting to look at the wound.

She stayed calm, thoughtful.

“I’m going to remove it,” she said, and without waiting for anyone’s response, she pulled the stick swiftly from Annith’s leg.

Annith cried out, the sound filling the empty meadow.

“It’s not deep,” said Blacktail.

She unscrewed the lid of her water bottle and spilled what was left over the wound.

“See why we have hunting laws?” she said with a rare note of venom. “This trap is an illegal—”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Tanuu.

Blacktail set her jaw, focusing on cleaning Annith’s wound.

“Are you saying my father set this trap up?” said Tanuu.

“Of course not,” said Blacktail. “But you were angry at my father for enforcing the law. Well, this is why.”

Tanuu scoffed. “There’s a difference between setting up an illegal trap that can hurt someone, and accidentally trespassing while trying to stop your family from starving.”

Blacktail glowered at the wound.

“Does it need stitches?” I said.

“She’s lucky,” said Blacktail shortly. “The wood was old and rotting. It broke before it penetrated too far.”

“She should still get it checked out,” said Tanuu.

I chanced a look at it. The wound looked messy to me, the skin mangled. Blood seeped out, thick and dark. My stomach churned. I lifted my eyes to Annith’s pale, damp face as Blacktail covered the wound.

“Annith, I’m sorry. This shouldn’t have …” I trailed off at the deadly expression on her face.

“No,” she said. “It shouldn’t have. But that’s what happens when you keep wandering around places you’re not supposed to with no real plan.”

She wrapped Tanuu’s jacket tighter to try and stop herself shivering.

“Searching these places is the best plan I have,” I said, keeping my voice calm.

Annith turned her stony face away to watch Tanuu, who’d returned to the last Ravendust bush—a meagre, knee-high sapling.

No one said anything for what felt like a very long time. A thrush whistled tirelessly overhead, finding no response. I removed my backpack and handed Annith my sweater as an extra layer.

“Let’s get you home. We can try again tomorrow,” I said weakly.

Annith and Blacktail raised their eyebrows at me. With the Massacre departing tomorrow, time was running out.

I was considering whether I should come back and continue searching by myself that night when Tanuu gave an exasperated sigh.

“This is pointless. Are we seriously following clumps of bushes and hoping they lead us somewhere useful?”

“Do you have a better idea?” I said.

He kicked the sapling at his knee. “Ravendust bushes don’t grow out of leviathan venom! They grow out of dirt and water and sunlight, like a normal -
freaking
 -
ordinary
 -
plant
!”

He attacked the bush, grabbing it and fighting to pull it from the ground. When it didn’t budge, he kicked it a few more times.

“If you don’t want to be here, no one’s keeping you,” I said, clenching my fists.

“We just keep running into dead ends,” said Annith, with hardly more patience than Tanuu. “No one believes us, no one is helping us, nobody even wants us to succeed. The Massacre is going to happen tomorrow and we’re no closer to finding this crypt. Why are we bothering?”

“Because the Massacres don’t work, and we’re the only ones who seem to see that!”

“Don’t they work?” said Annith. “We killed more sea demons than ever on ours. Women have a lot more success out there—and that was only the first go at it. Imagine what the next batch will be able to do.”

I blinked. Was she serious?

“Annith, the number of kills we made doesn’t mean anything. Not when the Massacres still result in that many deaths.”

“Maybe soon it won’t involve so many deaths. With a new training master, there could still be hope.”

I looked from her to Tanuu, to Blacktail. Even Blacktail looked mutinous.

“You’re telling me you’re okay with sending girls like us to battle every year?” I said.

“Why do you feel so responsible for those girls?” said Tanuu. “They’re not little kids. You’re only a few months older than some of the ones going out tomorrow.”

“I’m one Massacre older,” I said. “That’s the difference. So yes, I am completely responsible for them. Just as much as you two are.”

I looked between Annith and Blacktail.

“Sometimes sacrifices need to be made,” said Annith. “That’s the nature of war.”

“This isn’t about sacrifices. It’s about making peace.”

“What if the Massacres were a clean victory?” said Tanuu. “What if Mujihi can train those girls—”

“Human deaths aren’t the only tragic ones!”

The words burst from my mouth so loudly, the wilderness around us seemed to still. The thrush stopped singing.

I regretted my words instantly. Did their expressions darken when they looked at me? Were they wondering if I’d lied about my motivations?

I hadn’t lied. I simply didn’t tell them the entire truth.

I turned away from their stares and stomped onwards, not sure where I was going.

Annith’s low voice carried across the empty meadow. “Why do you care about that mermaid so much?”

I stopped, stiffening. I took a second to compose myself before rounding on her, chest heaving. “Don’t – you – dare –”

Annith waved a hand towards Tanuu and Blacktail. “Don’t act all scandalized. They were going to find out anyway.”

I stepped towards her. “Wouldn’t you try to save me, Annith? If I was on the enemy’s side, would you shoot me because
it’s the nature of war
? Would you shoot Rik?”