The catfish snapped. Neela jerked her hand back.
“We don’t have time for this,” Serafina said, casting a worried glance over her shoulder.
“Tell him!” Neela said, checking her fingers.
Death riders were on their tails. The mermaids had reached the Dun?rea and had put a league or so between themselves and Mfeme’s ship when they heard the soldiers coming. They’d been trying to find a place to hide. Instead, they found themselves surrounded by giant catfish.
“Get off my river,” a voice brusquely said.
Neela looked up. A freshwater mermaid floated nearby, brandishing a hockey stick. She was dark gray with beige stripes and spots. A spiky fin ran down her back. She wore dangly earrings made out of bottle caps and a necklace the likes of which Neela had never seen before. All sorts of goggish things dangled from it: a doll’s head, a pacifier, a bottle opener, a lighter, a small flashlight, and a golf ball. Her hair, bound into two hippokamp tails that stuck up on either side of her head, was dyed an alarming shade of red. Her mouth was painted a matching shade. She hadn’t exactly colored inside the lines.
“Perfect. Just what we need. A crazy lady with too many catfish,” Ling whispered.
The mermaid had come out of a house—kind of. Neela had never seen anything like that, either. It appeared to be made out of old, rusting car parts—doors, hoods, chrome bumpers. The windows were bicycle wheels. An old black umbrella, its edges hung with forks, knives, and spoons that clattered and chimed, was stuck at the very top. It twisted in the river’s current like a weather vane.
“Zi bun?, doamn?,” Ling said in Romanian, trying to smile as she held her broken arm to her chest. Good day, madam.
“Don’t madam me, merl,” the freshwater retorted, in Mermish. “Leave the way you came. Now.”
“We can’t do that, Miss…Miss…”
“Lena,” the freshwater said. “This section of the river,” she added, pointing with her hockey stick, “from that rock all the way up to the next bend, is mine. And I don’t like trespassers. Trespassers upset the kitties. Can’t you see the line of pebbles I put out? You aren’t supposed to cross it!”
Neela knew that freshwater merfolk were very territorial. They liked to be left alone, too. But this mermaid’s behavior…there was more to it than a dislike of strangers. Under the brusque words and aggressive posturing, there was fear. Neela could sense it.
“Could we please cross, Lena?” she asked. “We’ll swim right through and keep on going.”
Lena crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what the mermaid who wanted to cross yesterday said!”
“Do you know who she was? Did you get her name?” Serafina asked.
“Sava or Plava or Tava…something like that,” Lena said.
Neela traded glances with Serafina and Ling. She could see they were thinking the same thing she was: Could Sava, Plava, or Tava be one of theirs?
“Lena, please. We really need your help,” Serafina said.
“Why should I help you?” Lena asked.
“Oh, no reason,” Neela said. “It’s not like the fate of the oceans rests in our hands or anything.”
Sera nudged her with her tail fin. “Because mermen are after us. Bad mermen,” she said.
Lena lowered her hockey stick. She was no longer making any attempt to hide her fear. It was written plainly on her face. “The same ones who took the folk?” she asked.
“What folk?” Neela asked, casting a nervous glance over her shoulder. The death riders were coming closer every second.
“The ones from Aquaba, a village near the Dun?rea’s mouth. It happened three days ago. More than four hundred disappeared. They just vanished. I’ve been afraid that whoever did it would come for me.”
“I don’t know about that,” Neela said. “But they’re coming for the three of us, for sure.” She told Lena what Traho and the death riders had done to Cerulea, to Sera’s family, and her own.
Lena’s eyes widened. “You think they’d take my kitties?”
Serafina shook her head. “I don’t—” she started to say.
She was about to say I don’t think Traho wants catfish. Neela was sure of it. She was also sure the only way to get Lena’s help was to make her think that Traho was a common enemy.
“—I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Neela cut in. “Traho totally wants those kitties. They are so…so incredibly…” She paused, at a loss for words.
“Beautiful?” Ling prompted.
“Yes! They are so beautiful he’d surely want them all.”
Lena nodded, her mouth set in a grim line. “Well, I’d like to see him try. I have more, you know. A lot more. And they don’t take kindly to bullies.”
She put her fingers in her mouth and blew a piercing whistle. Catfish materialized from behind rocks and downed trees. They came out of eddies and pools. There were at least fifty of them.