Of Sea and Stone (Secrets of Itlantis)

Kate Avery Ellison

Copyright © 2014 Kate Avery Ellison

All Rights Reserved

Do not distribute or make copies of this book, electronically or otherwise, in part or in whole, without the written consent of the author.

For Jennie, who always loved this story

OF SEA AND STONE

All her life, clever Aemi has been a slave in the Village of the Rocks, a place where the sea and sky meet. She’s heard the stories about the fabled People of the Sea, a people who possess unimaginable technology who live below the waves in the dark, secret places of the ocean.

She never dreamed those stories were true.

When a ship emerges from the ocean and men burn her village, Aemi is captured and enslaved below the waves in Itlantis, a world filled with ancient cities of glass and metal, floating gardens, and wondrous devices that seem to work magic. To make matters worse, her village nemesis, the stuck-up mayor’s son, Nol, is captured with her, and they are made servants in the same household beneath the sea.

Desperate to be free, Aemi plots her escape, even going so far as to work with Nol. But the sea holds more secrets than she realizes, and escape might not be as simple as leaving.

THE PEOPLE OF the Rocks live above the sea, among the rocks from which they get their name—a collection of bone-white shards of stone that protrude from the seawater like teeth of a rotting jawbone, sea-stained and crumbling even in their glory. The village is carved deep into the rocks like the tunnels of ants into the earth, and it glows with a thousand pinpricks of light at night when the sea and sky are dark. Travelers say it looks as though someone has folded the sky around the rocks like a blanket, and all the stars are on fire.

The melody of the waves lulls the babies to sleep at night in their seaweed-fiber cradles, and the rush of the tide makes them wake in the morning. The People of the Rocks sing love songs about the sea, and they play in its shallows as children, but as men, they grow to fear its power and its secrets.

If only we’d known how many secrets the sea held.

MY NAME IS Aemi, which means sea-born in the old tongue, and I’m a thrall.

It’s just a fancy word for slave.

When my mother was alive, she used to tell me about the place she’d come from, her home as a girl.

“It was called Perilous,” she would say, stroking my dark brown hair that matched hers as we lay together on our sleeping bunk, our tired muscles throbbing from the day’s hard labor as sleep stole over us. “Everyone was free there. We always had enough to eat. My favorite place to play was flanked by columns, and surrounded by blue and green. The sunlight shone bright over it, and when I’d close my eyes, everything was a golden blur through my lids.”

“What did you eat?” I would ask every time, my voice small and sleepy.

“Tarts with cream, striped fish, and little cakes,” she’d say, and then she’d tickle me.

“Do you miss it?” I’d ask.

“Every day. One day, we will go there together, my Little Cake, and we will both be free.”

“Then your Little Cake will eat a little cake,” I’d say, and she would laugh.

My mother died one winter when the sea was wild with storms and the wind howled around our village like death itself. She would never again see Perilous, the place she called home. She would never be free.

But I would.

I swore it to myself.

One day I would be free, and I would go there.

Ever since the day she died, I’d worked and saved to earn my freedom.

~ ~ ~

The sea sang to itself in the music of blue water and salt and gulls’ cries as I sat above it, crouched atop the column-like Looking Rock with a spear clenched in my hand and words of frustration crawling on my tongue. The water below lapped at the edges of the rock, foaming over the pebbled shore that ringed the rock, and the foam hid the fish I was trying to catch.

I bent over the water and stabbed the spear into the foaming waves. When I withdrew it from the pool, a fish wriggled on the end, and I smiled with a quick jerk of my lips. I had always been good with a spear, somewhat inexplicably according to Nealla.

I tossed the fish into my sack and moved to the other side of the Looking Rock, where the tide pools were often filled with exotic things washed in from the sea. It was a secret place, and few knew to look here. I came often whenever I had a moment of freedom from my duties, for if I could catch enough things of value, I could sell them in the marketplace and add coin to the stash I kept hidden away, the stash that would one day buy my freedom.

The first tide pools were disappointingly empty except for a few anemone and starfish clinging to the sides of the rocks, and a yellow fish darting away from my face as I peered down.

I moved on. Three more pools, empty. But luck had not abandoned me. At the final pool I stopped, transfixed by the creature I saw beneath the surface.

It was eerie and beautiful, with fluttering fins along its throat and back and tail, speckled blue scales, and a mouth full of teeth. It wasn’t a fish or a dolphin or a snake, but something that looked like bits of all three. I had never seen such a creature. It was some monster from the depths, but a small one.

I bent over the rock, sliding my belly forward by inches, peering into the deep glassy green of the pool beneath where the creature swam in small circles, imprisoned until high tide. I didn’t want to use a spear on such a magnificent creature. For this, I needed a net.

I stabbed my spear into the edge of the pool, marking the fish-creature as mine. Then I scrambled to the edge of the Looking Rock. The wind swirled around me, wetting me with a mist of sea spray as I brought my arms forward and dove into the sea below.

Bubbles exploded around me as I swam through the green-blue water. Below, fish wove between a jewel-colored spread of coral. A dark line at the edge of my vision signaled where the shallow waters ended and the deep water began.

No one ever went out into deep water.

I reached the larger rocks that rose from the water like the spearheads of giants and hauled myself onto a sea-carved shelf of white stone. My master’s house was before me, a collection of caves and hollows in the rock. It was a nice house, with a strip of pebbled beach facing west. Beyond the beach, a shallow place for bathing and washing was surrounded by thin white stones that protruded from the water like fingers and broke the force of the waves.

A hole in the rock wall led to the interior. Strings of shells formed a curtain barrier, and they tinkled and clicked in the wind. I shoved them aside and stepped into the cool stone passage leading to the house.

I needed one of my master’s nets. Just to borrow, to catch that fish.

The master’s father sat on a mat beside the fire, muttering to himself. Beside him were nets, the small ones used for hand fishing. He was mending them, his wrinkled hands moving swiftly as he worked over a hole.

“Hello, Old One,” I said, speaking carefully and respectfully. “I need to borrow a net.”

He lifted his head and scrutinized me. I was dripping from the sea. My hair stuck to my neck and forehead. Droplets fell from my fingers.

He reached for one of the nets and lifted it toward me, but pulled it back before I could take it.

“Don’t go in the deep places,” he said, and his voice creaked. “The Sea People are in the deep places.”

“Yes, Old One,” I said, leaning forward to reach the net.

The master’s father was crazy, but gentle. Sometimes he liked to ramble about fables from his youth, and sometimes I listened, because none of the others did, and I felt sorry for him.

I didn’t have time for it today.

“I saw one of their ships the other night,” he continued, pulling the net farther away and out of reach again. “Came up from the depths, black as a wet stone, bright with lights. They’re watching us.”

“Don’t worry, Old One,” I said. “We’ll keep you safe.”

He harrumphed as if doubtful and handed me the net. “Stay out of the deep places,” he said again.

I snatched the net and hurried outside once more. The wind fanned my face. I stopped at the edge of the water and shaded my eyes against the glaring sun.

Someone else was on the Looking Rock. I saw a figure moving around the pool. Confound that Old One and his stories! I splashed into the water, my heart pounding as I swam hard, kicking my legs. I reached the rock and hauled myself up, hair dripping, leaving wet footprints as I ran to the tide pools. A young man stood at the edge of the pool, his feet hanging in the water, his arms braced behind him and his face tipped toward the sun. He was lounging, waiting for me, stretched out as if to show off his physical perfections and the gold bracelets on his arms and ankles. That handsome, arrogant face, smirking mouth, and long, dark lashes that contrasted with his pale, wavy hair—I’d know him anywhere.

Nol.

I looked past him into the water and stopped in horror.

The creature was gone.

My bag of sad little fish lay at the edge of the rock, looking deflated in the sunlight. My spear lay beside it.

Fury built up at the back of my neck and swept through my throat to take hold of my tongue. Anger licked at my bones.

“You stole my catch.”

Nol opened one eye and looked at me. “What are you talking about? Your bag of fish is right there. I didn’t touch it.”

“No. The creature in the pool—it was my catch. I found it first, as was clearly demonstrated by my spear marking the pool. You took it! Where did you put it?” I was furious, devastated.

Nol straightened and blinked at me. His smile was slow and smooth, like butter being spread across bread.

“It wasn’t your fish,” he said. “It wasn’t in your net, so you had no claim.”

“I marked it with my spear—”

“You aren’t a fisherman, thrall-girl. The rules of the village don’t apply to the likes of you. You have no identifying marker that deserves to be honored, and that thing you call a spear is simply a piece of garbage with a point at one end. It could have washed into the pool on its own, for all I know.”

I wanted to strangle him. My anger was hot and fierce, and it made my legs tremble. But he was the mayor’s second son, and he could do as he liked. Instead, I bit my tongue and turned away.

I’d lost this round, but I would not lose to Nol again.

“AEMI!”

When the master’s daughter shouted, her whole face turned an ugly red color.

She stood in the doorway of the balcony, and I sat below on the rocks with her laundry at my feet. The sun was hot and heavy on my bare shoulders, and the sea sucked at my legs like the mouth of an angry, insistent infant. A stream of fresh water poured down the side of the rock to meet the sea, and below it, I’d placed my bucket to catch the liquid for washing. I slapped the soaking but clean robe down on the nearest round rock and dropped another from the basket into the foaming bucket. I took a scrap of soap from the rock to my right, a little one that made an excellent place to put small things because of the indention in the top of it. I scrubbed the garment with the soap until foam bubbled between my fingers.

“Aemi!”

I was not Tagatha’s personal thrall, and she knew it. If her father were here, he would scold her. But he was not here, and I was not sure how long I dared ignore her, so I stopped washing the cloth and turned to look up. I didn’t reply, because no reply was necessary. She knew I had ears, and it was my job to hear the voices of my master and his family. Not hearing an order was never an excuse for disobedience, and so the idea of it simply did not occur to her.

“Come here,” she called. The wind caught her garment and whipped it around her body. Her eyes squinted down at me against the sun’s glare. “Forget the wash and come fix my hair. Nealla has gone out and there’s no one to do it.”

I rinsed the robe I was holding and spread it on another rock.

Tagatha made a sound in her throat that promised punishment.

“Aemi!”

Fire burned in my veins. I was not her thrall.