Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) (23 page)

Mist dampened our skin and clothes as we huddled on the front step of the cultural centre, waiting for Tanuu to continue reading the pages. He scanned our faces. We must have shown desperation, because he hastened on.

“For millennia, the waters of the Pacific were ruled by one beast. Sisiutl, leviathan, the two-headed snake—she is one creature with many names, her malevolent presence scattered throughout ancient history.”

“Leviathan,” said Annith. “I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it supposed to have seven heads?”

“One head,” said Blacktail. “It’s supposed to be like a gigantic alligator.”

“Sisiutl has three,” said Tanuu. “The middle one’s human.”

“Apparently, it has two,” I said impatiently. “Keep reading.”

Tanuu returned to the page. “Not earth, air, fire, or water can wound the leviathan. Neither iron nor bronze, weapon nor poison. Her double coat of armour is impenetrable; the shields cannot be parted. She is spared from blindness by the presence of two heads, neither weaker than the other. The mouths are lined with venomous teeth, their bite strong enough to crush stone. This is a creature with no equal, and so she lives without fear.”

“She’s indestructible!” said Annith.

Some mixture of awe and terror roiled in my stomach. This serpent was a living, breathing weapon.

“As man settled near the ocean to raise his sons and daughters, the leviathan’s presence threatened life above all other forces. None could vanquish her or predict when her wrath would fall upon the town. Yet if man was to prosper, someone would need to tame the untameable. Then, a child was born with an unprecedented gift.”

“Eriana,” said Blacktail.

“Eriana. The child possessed a connection with the spirits of animals, which grew stronger as Eriana grew older. She lived under the protection of the Gaela, who saw value in her skill and sought to protect the girl from Death. But Eriana betrayed the Gaela. She abused her gift, which struck imbalance upon the Gaela’s earth.”

“That’s the snowstorm,” said Annith. “When she killed all those caribou.”

I shushed her. The three of us had leaned closer to Tanuu.

“Angry, the Gaela sent the Aanil Uusha to punish Eriana. The Aanil Uusha went to earth, but with his own plan. He had long felt cheated by the two-headed serpent. The beast destroyed villages and killed its inhabitants before Death was ready to claim them. Even the Aanil Uusha could not take the life of the leviathan—but in Eriana, he saw the chance to control it.”

Tanuu turned the page. The animal skin made no sound beneath the wind.

I checked compulsively over my shoulder to make sure nothing but waves advanced on the beach. The mist had thickened, shielding my view of the shoreline.

“The Aanil Uusha made a deal with Eriana. To spare her own life, Eriana agreed to wrest control of the indestructible serpent. She followed its wake in a ship made from the bones of nature’s victims. The beast churned the ocean like a maelstrom, but Eriana’s ship, supported by the spirits of a thousand people and animals, endured.

“She caught up to the leviathan. As the creature reared an enormous head, preparing to strike from both sky and sea, Eriana shouted a simple command:
Stop.
The leviathan, for the first time in existence, ceased her attack. She closed her jaw and raised her other head. Four eyes as blue as the sea met Eriana’s.
Follow me
, she said, and turned her ship homewards. The leviathan obeyed.”

“I knew it,” I said. “She’s the only—”

It was their turn to shush me.

“For three decades,” Tanuu read on, “Eriana lived alone on an island in the Pacific. She guided the serpent in a benign existence, using the beast to turn people away from her home.

“But the loneliness became too much to bear, so Eriana permitted select ships to disembark on her island. She began life anew with another family, eventually marrying and bearing three children.

“But attempts to access the island continued, once the world learned of the two-headed serpent. Sailors came from afar to see the beast, to capture or to fight it, and made their home on Eriana Kwai.

“In time, Eriana was fatally wounded in battle. Knowing she would soon die, she prayed to the Gaela for an indefinite resting place for the serpent, a crypt beneath the island where none would find it. The Gaela answered her prayer and created Eriana’s Crypt. The crypt can be entered only by a fissure in the crust of the earth.”

“A fissure!” I said. “We have to find a fissure—”

Annith clapped a hand over my mouth.

“As Eriana guided the serpent to her crypt, a bush with leaves of coal grew where each drop of its venom fell.

“But the Aanil Uusha was afraid to lose the only one who could control the leviathan. He did not permit Eriana’s soul to ascend to the stars as a goddess, as the Gaela had intended. Instead, he bound her soul to the serpent. Host to her soul, the otherwise untameable beast could still be controlled by a mortal as long as the spirit of Eriana was a part of it.

“He granted Eriana the ability to leave the crypt by blood alone. To awaken her, a drop of mortal blood from a descendant of Eriana must be fed to the leviathan’s sleeping jaws. By …”

Tanuu shuffled the pages, not looking at us. He mumbled to himself, re-checking the pages and their empty reverse sides. His frown deepened with each passing second.

“What’s wrong?” said Annith and I together.

“One’s missing,” said Blacktail.

Tanuu looked up at her, eyebrows knitted. “Yeah.”

I stood. Had I dropped a page? Or had one slipped out long ago, and was now lying on the ground inside the totem?

“I have a page left,” said Tanuu, “but the sentences don’t match up.”

“Read it anyway,” I said.

“… gains control of the leviathan until death. Control is passed by blood: either to a descendant of one who is in control of the serpent, or one who takes the controller’s life. So it will go, until the leviathan ceases to exist and Eriana’s soul is free to ascend to the stars as the Gaela intended.”

He placed the pages on his lap with rigid calmness.

I spun towards the totem poles, but the wind had blown in a blanket of fog and I could no longer see them. My heart pounded. This legend was real—and serious enough that someone had hidden the written evidence. The missing page hardly concerned me. We had the information we needed. The Host was in a crypt somewhere on this island, and we knew how to free it. We needed the blood of Eriana’s descendant. I could do it.

But according to these pages, the Host of Eriana’s soul was the most dangerous, powerful creature to ever live.

The gravity of the situation washed over us for a long moment. I crossed my arms. A chill had set in, and the fog brought with it the sharp scent of the ocean. If not for the solid ground beneath my feet, I might have felt like I was back aboard the Bloodhound.

We were meddling in something much bigger than the fate of Eriana Kwai.

No matter what was happening with the Massacres, I couldn’t unleash something this dangerous.

“This isn’t worth it,” I said.

They looked up. All three bore wide, unfocused gazes that said their minds were reeling as much as mine.

“We can’t wake a leviathan,” I said. “
The
leviathan. This legend is beyond us.”

Tanuu stood. “That’s more reason to do it. If we don’t find the Host, anyone else could.”

“So let’s burn the pages,” said Annith. “I’m with Meela. Let’s make sure no one ever stumbles on it.”

“It’s the serpent we gotta destroy, not the pages,” said Tanuu. “And what about the crypt? Someone could still come across that.”

“No one has, yet,” said Blacktail.

“That’s not to say they never will,” said Tanuu.

We stared at each other, the three of us against Tanuu. How was it that he was so willing to press on? Maybe the Massacre had exhausted the supply of hope in us girls.

He did have a point: even if we destroyed evidence of the legend, the leviathan still existed somewhere, waiting to be found.

Still, we had no place being the ones who discovered it.

“How old are these totem poles?” I said.

Tanuu shrugged. “Couple hundred years, maybe.”

“This legend is thousands of years old. That means someone found these pages since then, and deemed it dangerous enough
not to pursue it
. They hid it. They didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

“They hid it, but they didn’t destroy it,” he said. “Maybe they were too scared to pursue it.”

“And you’re not scared?
Nothing can wound the leviathan … venomous teeth
 …”

“
Until the leviathan ceases to exist
. That means it must be possible to kill it.”

“That’s probably a metaphor for eternity.”

Tanuu’s eyebrows pulled down. He leaned against the wall, the stack of parchment in his fist.

“We keep calling the leviathan
it
,” he said, “like some soulless thing. But she’s not a thing. She’s the spirit of Eriana. She’s a part of our people, our history, and she’s trapped inside Sisiutl. If you ask me, she needs us.”

I searched his face. His dark eyes met mine, pleading. He believed it. He believed the goddess of our people was prevented from ascending to the stars to watch over us.

Did I? Was the spirit of Eriana real, bound inside the leviathan and stuck in her crypt forever?

If that was true, she did need us. Only her descendants could wake the leviathan. But even then, the legend said Eriana could not ascend to the stars as the Gaela intended until the leviathan ceased to exist. When would that be? How was the death of the indestructible even possible?

“I don’t think we stumbled on this legend randomly,” said Tanuu. “I think it’s our destiny to use our blood to wake her up. To free Eriana.”

I rolled my eyes. I’d heard enough about my destiny for one lifetime: my destiny to go on the Massacre, to slaughter mermaids, to avenge my brother, to ally with murderers like Dani. I didn’t believe in destiny anymore.

“Meela,” said Tanuu. “Remember who you’re doing this for.”

I turned away so he wouldn’t see my grimace. He was referring to our families, of course, and our people, and all those we’d lost on the Massacres. We needed freedom from Adaro more than ever.

So did Lysi. So did all the merpeople.

Yes, this legend was bigger than us. But so was this problem. Could we fight the most powerful king of the seas with the most powerful beast ever to live? Should we?

Annith and Blacktail had said nothing. Were they considering the idea, too?

“Say I used my blood to do it,” I said. “The leviathan wakes up. I have control. Then Adaro gets here with Lys—with his army … I command the leviathan to kill him, right?”

I crossed my arms, hunching against the cold. I glanced to Annith, but she had looked away.

“Then,” said Tanuu, “we make sure it stays under your control until we figure out how to destroy it.”

I considered him. His face was set. I felt a rush of fondness for him, for believing in this for me.

“Do you think Adaro knows the part about passing control of the Host by murder?” said Blacktail.

“Like, does he intend to kill Meela after she frees it?” said Annith.

I thought I knew enough about Adaro to guess the answer.

“We’re talking like Meela’s gonna use her blood to free it,” said Tanuu. “You’re sure you’re a descendant, then?”

“Aren’t I? Aren’t we all?”

Tanuu shook his head. “My ancestors came from Haida Gwaii, ages back.”

Annith and Blacktail appeared as unsure as I was. My parents and grandparents had been born here, and as far back as I knew, their parents’ parents had been born here.

“We still don’t know where the crypt is,” said Annith. “Once we find out whose blood to use, where do we go?”

“The word
crypt
makes me think of a burial ground,” said Tanuu. “Maybe it’s beneath the graveyard.”

Annith pulled a face. “I am
not
digging around the graveyard, thank you very much.”

“I doubt it’s there,” said Blacktail. “Eriana guided the serpent to a fissure in the crust of the earth. We shouldn’t start digging randomly.”

“What if the fissure got covered, or built over top of?” said Annith.

My heart fluttered. The girls were talking like we were going to do this.

“The story mentioned a bush with leaves of coal,” I said. “That’s Ravendust, isn’t it? It said the plant grew from the leviathan’s venom while it crossed over the land.”

“It must have slithered all over the place,” said Annith, “because those bushes grow everywhere.”

“Are they, though? Are they everywhere, or do they actually form a line from the water to a destination?”

No one answered.

“We won’t know until we try and follow them,” I said.

“From where? Which direction?” said Annith.

“Skaaw beach,” said Blacktail. “Where Tanuu got attacked by that sea demon. Remember the gap in the lava flow? The bank we climbed up?”

“Oh!” said Annith.

I stared in that direction, my line of sight stopped short from the fog. When I thought about it, the lava rock had been parted, like something huge had broken through.

“Remember all the Ravendust that grew between it?” said Blacktail.

I thought of the black leaves poking up in the meadow. Was I remembering wrong, or did they form a vague, freckly line across the grass?

I looked to each of them, finding unmistakable excitement gleaming in their eyes. A smile tugged at my lips, and I let it.

“One of us is bound to be a descendant, don’t you think?”

“If not, we’ll ambush someone who is,” said Tanuu.

“What, and steal their blood?” said Blacktail.

Tanuu grinned mischievously.

“Zey vill call us”—he raised an arm across the lower half of his face—“ze vampires of Eriana Kwai.”

“Genius,” said Blacktail. “Keep the ideas coming.”

“I’ll ask my parents about my ancestry,” I said. “Blacktail, Annith, you do the same.”

Something with claws scurried across the other side of the door Annith was leaning against. She screamed, leaping to her feet.