Tempest Rising (28 page)

I’m taking you to her clan. I’m not sure if she’ll be there or not, but it’s the best place to start looking for her.

Her clan?

It’s made up of about ten thousand mermaids. She’s the high priestess, which means she’s the queen’s major adviser. But everyone knows that Cecily’s pretty much been running things for the last six years.

The timing wasn’t lost on me, and as Kona’s grip on my wrist loosened, I wondered if he’d phrased it like that deliberately—to show me that when my mom had chosen to leave me six years before, it was because she had something really important to do down here.

I turned the idea over in my mind, the thought that my mother had abandoned us not because the lure of the ocean got to be too much, but because her people needed her. Wondered if it would make any difference in how I felt about her.

It turned out it didn’t. Maybe that was cruel of me, maybe it showed my self-absorption, but I didn’t care. She’d run out on us, left my dad alone with three kids who didn’t know where their mother had gone.

It was all well and good that she’d wanted to sacrifice her old life for her clan, but what about everything that came with that decision? No one had ever asked my brothers and me if we were okay with her sacrifice. With our own. Maybe she should have thought about how things were going to end up all those years ago, before she’d crawled out of the ocean and gone looking for a human lover.

If she’s so important to her clan, why isn’t she there?
I finally asked.
Where is she?

She’s looking for Tiamat. Once she realized the sea witch had broken free from her imprisonment when you were ten, Cecily started hunting her. And when she realized Tiamat was after you—she sent me to find you.

That doesn’t make any sense. If she thought Tiamat would try for me, why didn’t she come herself? Maybe she could have caught her.

Again, he didn’t answer, but by then he was so tense that I didn’t need him to. I was figuring things out on my own. She
had
been there. My mother had watched as Tiamat had tried to talk me into joining her, had watched as I’d tried to save Kona’s life after he’d been struck by lightning.

And she had done nothing. She’d been too busy setting me up as bait.

When I thought of how I’d called out to her, how I’d pleaded in my head for her to help me even as she was betraying me, it made me feel like I was breaking apart. Made me scream deep inside of myself. It was worse, so much worse than anything I could ever have imagined.

You wonder why I don’t want to be mermaid?
I demanded, my voice shaking with rage.
Why on earth would I want to be like her?

They’re not all like her, you know. Cecily is
… He struggled with how to describe my mother, so I filled in the blank for him.

As big a menace as Tiamat?

No. It’s not like that. She’s just driven.

Driven enough to use her daughter to trap a monster?

Kona turned on me then, his anger as palpable as mine.
You don’t know what it was like. When Tiamat was free last time, no one was safe. Not merpeople, not selkies, not even humans. The carnage was unbelievable.

And how do you know that? I thought she’s been trapped for five centuries. You may be old, but you’re not old enough to have lived through that.

Cecily said—
He stopped abruptly, figuring, I guess, that any quote he attributed to my mother wasn’t going to get him very far with me.

Or maybe he was finally clueing in to the fact that she had used him too. Had sent him to the surface to “help” me when she could have done it herself. Had nearly gotten him killed and then stood by and watched as I fumbled around trying to save him.

Look, it wasn’t a lie, Tempest. The history books in school talk about that time, about how nothing was safe when Tiamat was around. She took down ships, caused tidal waves that wiped out whole cities, killing anyone who came near her. She had to be stopped, and your mother stopped her. She’s a hero.

Right. A hero. The word tasted bad.

I kicked, hard, suddenly not wanting to be anywhere near Kona. She might have used him, might even have been willing to sit back and watch him die. That was on her.

But for a while there, he’d let her. He’d hung out with me, with my friends, and all along he’d had a secret agenda. He’d kissed me and all along he’d been plotting behind my back with the mother who had abandoned me. He’d told me we were meant to be together, yet hadn’t bothered to tell me what I needed to know to make an informed decision.

I turned on him, suddenly.
Which way is San Diego?

He got it right away.
No. Tempest, come on. Don’t do that.

You don’t get to tell me what to do. Either point me toward home, or I swear, I will blunder around this whole damn ocean on my own until I find it.

That’s ridiculous. We’ve come this far—just let me get you to your mother’s territory and then we’ll try to figure everything out.

What’s there to figure out? She used me. You used me.

It wasn’t like that.

Oh, really? Then, please, tell me. I’m all ears. What was it like?

She came to me, told me your seventeenth birthday was coming up. She asked me to look in on you, that’s all. To keep you safe.

And you just agreed?

Yes.

Why?

Because Cecily asked me to. You don’t know what she is to our people. Because she’s your mother, you don’t see her for what she really is. I couldn’t turn her down.

So that’s what all this has been about?
I demanded.
You trying to keep me safe for your precious Cecily?

No!
He turned around, shoved his hand through his hair in obvious frustration.
Maybe at the beginning, but not after I met you on that beach. Not after I kissed you.

I stared at him, confused.
I don’t know what to believe
.

Then don’t you owe it to yourself to find out?

His words calmed me as nothing else could have. Maybe it was because he didn’t try to convince me that he was telling the truth. Maybe it was because he wasn’t trying to convince me of my mother’s innocence, or of his own. For the first time since this whole mess started, I felt like I might actually have some kind of control over how it ended.

All right,
I said.

All right?

You win. I’ll stay for a while, meet my mother. Try to figure this whole thing out before I make any decisions.

His grin was wide enough to rival the sun and he grabbed me, hugging me tightly, before I could even think to protest.

Then he was letting me go, pushing me behind him, and before I could ask what was going on I realized that I had completely lost his attention. Instead, he was staring, hard, into the distance.

I couldn’t see anything—mermaids’ eyesight, though good, must not be as acute as selkies’. But within a couple of minutes I realized what he was staring at—five selkies were swimming through the water, straight at us. At least, I thought they were selkies. They were in human form and breathing under the water, exactly like Kona was doing.

Who are they?
I whispered, trying to figure out if I should be scared or intrigued.

Kona didn’t answer, squinting hard into the darkness. But as they got closer, he smiled.
My two youngest brothers, Ari and Oliwa, and a few of their friends.

Your brothers?
I looked at him, startled.
What are they doing way out here?
Though we’d done a lot of doubling back today, my best guess was that we were probably a couple of hundred miles from Kona’s castle.

We’re not like humans, Tempest. While the ocean is divided into territories, those territories are vast and we like to roam them. Staying within the same ten or twenty miles every day would drive us nuts.

Are we still in your territory?
I asked.

We are, for another five hundred miles at least. Then we’ll hit your mother’s area.

When the five selkies finally got close to us, they stopped a few feet away and regarded me curiously. I was pretty sure I was looking at them the same way.

Like Kona, they all had dark hair, but their eyes were different. Two of the guys had bright blue eyes—the same color as Kona’s mother—and I wondered if they were his brothers, while the others all had dark eyes.

Tempest, these are my brothers
, Kona said, pointing at the two with the blue eyes, as I’d suspected.
Ari and Oliwa. And their friends Malu, Jake, and Aaron.

I watched as they nodded as Kona said their names and it occurred to me—for the first time—that the communication between Kona and me wasn’t unusual down here. It was the norm.

Of course. That’s how everyone speaks when we’re underwater.

Are they saying anything?
I asked. Because if they were, I couldn’t hear them. I thought of the woman in the red robe, who had stared at me like she’d expected me to answer her when I first arrived in this place. I realized, now, that that was exactly what she’d been expecting.

They are.

I can’t hear them
, I said again, starting to panic. Was this another failure on my part, like the tail thing? I couldn’t speak the way everyone else did.

Kona laughed.
No, Tempest, calm down. There are general paths of communication, ones that everyone knows and speaks on, and then there are individualized ones, like the one you and I use. They’re using the general one right now and you don’t know how to tap into it yet.

You have different
frequencies
to talk to each other? Seriously?

I wouldn’t exactly call them frequencies, but yeah. It is kind of like that. When I introduced you, I was using the general frequency, but also the one that connects only you and me.

But how could I talk to you so easily, even in the beginning, if I didn’t understand how these things work?
I asked the question quickly, rushing the words together. The five guys were still staring at me, waiting for me to say something, and I was growing more self-conscious by the minute.

I told you before. We’re connected.
His hand ran in soothing circles on my back.
I knew it the second I first saw you.

That’s great and all,
I said, doing my best to ignore the warmth his words sparked in me.
But how do I talk to these guys now?

Say something to them. It may take a minute, but once they pick up on it they’ll be able to project a path for you to follow back to them.

The whole thing sounded a little wonky to me, but if it meant that they would stop staring at me, I’d be willing to try anything. Smiling at them, I said,
Hi. Nice ocean you’ve got down here.

Kona’s brother Ari was the first to hear me and he laughed. A minute later, his voice—rich and a little deeper than Kona’s—answered back.
Nice beach you have up there.

Once he spoke, it was easy to find what path to answer him on. It was just a little different from the one I normally spoke to Kona on.

Oh, right. I forgot you were up there the other night.
I studied him closely.
Were you the one I saw in the water?

No, that was me
, Oliwa said
. I’m sorry about that. We wanted to help you, but we were all in seal form and weren’t sure how you would take to the three of us coming out of the water and shifting right in front of you.

Yeah, none of us wanted to get hit by one of your rogue lightning bolts.
Ari nodded at Kona’s chest.
Good aim, though.

Kona punched him in the arm, but I could tell it was a gesture of affection
. Don’t embarrass her.

It’s a little late for me to be embarrassed, isn’t it? They pretty much saw me at my worst.

If that’s your worst, I can’t wait to see your best. You were awesome
, Oliwa said.
The way you used that storm to keep Tiamat at bay. Seriously awesome.

I started to tell him that it hadn’t been deliberate, but Kona said
Don’t!
sharply, his voice coming across the path only the two of us used.