The Savage Blue

The Savage Blue - By Zoraida Cordova





Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,

It frets against the boundary shore;

All earth’s full rivers cannot fill

The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.

—Christina Rossetti, from “By the Sea”





For a merman, I’ve done very little deep-sea exploration.

I grew up in chlorine pools, racing from one end to the other until I became the fastest kid in all of Brooklyn. Those were fishbowls compared to the endlessness of the Atlantic Ocean.

I kick my legs harder and harder alongside the belly of the ship until I grab hold of the ladder.

I consider shifting into my tail, but then I remember these are my last pair of cargo shorts, and I’ve not yet mastered the half-shift combination of legs and scales to cover my goods. Instead, I let my gills develop, only freaking out a little that I, in fact, have gills. Then I give myself a pat on the back for being able to control them. Cold water trickles in and out, and I wonder if that’s something I’ll ever get used to.

With one hand, I secure my footing on the ladder and let the ship do the heavy lifting. With the other, I lean out to the ocean, combing my fingers through water. I want to shout out the thrill of the moment, of the powerful ship cleaving the ocean like a knife through the smooth skin of the sea. But I stop myself, realizing that shouting would give away my position to my opponent.

War games aren’t supposed to be fun, not the way my guardian describes them. War games teach you skills—fighting, hunting, hiding. All meant to achieve one thing: survival.

I’m four days shy of turning seventeen, and though I was technically born with a blue fishtail, I’ve only been a merman for two whole weeks, ever since the Sea Court returned to Coney Island to hold a championship for the next king. That would be the Sea King (my grandfather) and me (one of four remaining champions). Yeah, me a king. I’m not in Coney anymore, Toto.

The clucking wail of a dolphin echoes from below. He swims up alongside me, and for a moment, I forget about Kurt lurking nearby. I reach out a hand and touch the dolphin’s slick skin. I can’t understand the sounds he’s making, but I can sense the urgency. He dives downward and disappears into the blue shadows.

Then I see him.

Kurt’s glowing violet eyes lock on me. He undulates like a serpent rising from smoke. His dark hair billows with every kick.

Kurt takes the dolphin’s place beside me, like we’re two cars racing on an empty road. He swerves to his left as if to knock me off my ladder, but I kick out and he swerves to the right. In our last skirmish, we managed to disarm each other. But I didn’t account for the small knife strapped to his bicep.

Kurt holds the knife by the hilt. He raises it over his head, flicks his wrist back and forth. He wouldn’t. As my guardian, he’s in charge of making sure I don’t meet an untimely death. He wouldn’t.

But he does.

I dive to the left. My back hits the ship hard, and I let the current pull me away. His deep chuckle lingers in the rustle of water. He takes hold of my ladder and hoists himself back up onto the ship, which is getting farther away.

My muscles burn with every breaststroke, every kick. Then the dolphin returns, and I realize that being the grandson of the Sea King comes with some perks. His big black eye gleams at me, and I wonder why dolphins always look like they’re smiling. I grab hold of his dorsal fin.

In seconds, we’re caught up with the ship. I pat him on his back and grab hold of the ladder. Halfway up, I see Kurt’s knife an inch deep into the wood. When I pull it out, there isn’t much resistance. I break the surface and my gills shut against the wind. My body feels a hundred pounds lighter. The blisters on my soles pop and bleed with every step until I’m over the rail and planted on the deck. I strip off my T-shirt and toss it to the side.

I brush my wet hair from my eyes and spot Layla and Gwen leaning on the railing of the quarterdeck. All they need is a tub of popcorn, and it’d be just like being at the circus. Layla’s biting her nails down to stubs. She runs her hands through the mess of her thick brown hair, which is growing bigger and bigger with the rising heat. Her hazel eyes flick between Kurt and me. He’s holding his knees and breathing hard. He quickly adjusts the sheath at his hip. Great, he’s got his sword back.

“Tristan,” Layla says, “you guys are still just play-dueling, right?”

The Sunday morning sun is so hot that my chest is already dry. I pick up my sword off the deck.

“Best out of five,” I remind her.

“You’ve lost twice,” Gwen says, twirling a lock of white-blond hair around her finger until it coils on its own.

“He’s also won twice,” Layla counters.

“I don’t know if that last one counts,” Gwen says. “They went overboard, and the arena is supposed to be the ship. I say that last one didn’t count.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “It totally counts!”

“Uh—”

“Tristan?” Gwen points a finger behind me.

I hear the wet smack of Kurt’s feet racing. Without a word, it’s still game on. Kurt drags the tip of his sword along the floor. With his middle finger, he lightly taps the center of his forehead, something he does every time we fight. I never ask and he never explains what it means. It reminds me of going to church with Layla and her Catholic father. They do something similar—the father, the son, and the something spirit. I have no secret messages to tap like Morse code on my face like they do. I’m not exactly sure what I believe in anymore, now that I know monsters are real and good people die in the blink of an eye.

I raise my sword just in time to meet his and growl, “I wasn’t ready.”

“I’m a hungry merrow. I don’t care if you’re ready.” He spins and strikes the opposite way.

I block, block, block, moving two steps backward with every blow. Sure, merrows don’t care if you’re ready or not. They come out of the shadows and attack, the way they attacked us in the football field of my school and at Ryan’s house Friday night…

Too late, the thought of Ryan, my friend, dead on the ground, makes me miss a beat, and Kurt’s sword comes a hair away from my face. I wipe sweat and seawater from my cheek, and a long stripe of red comes away with it.

“You cut me!”

“It’s a duel, Tristan.” Kurt rolls his eyes, a habit he’s picked up from Layla. All of his movements, from the eye roll to the way he turns his dagger like the right angles of a clock, are uptight. “Of course I cut you.”

But he doesn’t let up. His face is ferocious, shoulders hunched like a predator. “When Adaro was your age, he slew white-bellied sharks for supper. Collected their teeth and dipped them in gold to decorate his armor.”

Block.

The sun is in my eye and the rail of the ship digs into my lower back.

“Yeah, well,” I say, “Adaro doesn’t have the quartz scepter, does he?”

“There are still two pieces out there.” Kurt turns, elbows me in the chest, and spins back around. “You only have the one.”

Our swords are a mess of clinks and screeches. I’m running on pure adrenaline. It’s a rush no swim meet has ever given me.

“One is better than nothing.” I push him back with the ball of my palm, but that only makes him smile. It’s got to be a record. When he was on land, he never smiled this much.

“Brendan might be young, but he can cut a man into ribbons with nothing but a spearhead.”

Block.

I can’t let him get to me. It’s like when Coach Bellini swims alongside us during practice, shouting, “You call that swimming? I met a turtle in Vietnam that was faster than you!”

Sure, Adaro, champion of the Southern Seas, and Brendan, champion of the Western Seas, have been fighting longer than me. But my grandfather chose me. That’s got to count for something.

Doesn’t it?

“Dylan’s so fast on his feet that you’d swear he was born sparring.”

Right, Dylan, the golden boy, champion of the Northern Seas.

And then there’s Kurt, King of the Show-Offs, who does some ballerina shit across the deck. I push hard, metal banging on metal. I hit his solar plexus and he braces, trying to regain his breath. He switches arms. Every five strikes, he switches arms to not tire one over the other. That creates the gap I need to strike.

I make my blow count, aiming where I know it will hurt Kurt the most. The swipe is painfully accurate, and a lock of his precious hair falls to the deck. His brow trembles, giving way to the first drip of sweat from his too-tight pores.

I’m about to say, “Don’t worry, it’ll grow back,” but he raises his blade with a deep grunt and charges at me until I find myself stuck between Kurt and the edge of the ship once again.

Note: Don’t mess with a merman’s full head of hair.

It’s the reaction I want—careless, reckless, thoughtless. Until we’re stuck in a mirror image with my sword at his throat and his at mine.

“Draw?” Kurt suggests.

“I don’t think so, bro.” I shake my head, pressing the cold metal of his own knife to his abdomen. My heart is pounding, partly because I can’t believe I did it. Partly because Kurt digs the edge of his sword into my throat some more.

“Easy,” I say. Neither of us stands down. “If I show up to the oracle without a head, she’s going to think I’m rude.”

With a loud harrumph, he steps back, lowers his weapon, admits defeat by bowing. It takes all of me, and I mean years of discipline, to not shout, “Yeah, in your face!”

But this is not me beating my buddy Angelo at Mortal Kombat. This is how grown-up mermen fight. I bow back to him, accepting his defeat but keeping my eyes on him at all times. The clapping above us breaks our warrior trance. Kurt blinks into the blinding sun beating through the sails. I flip the small knife in the air, catch it on its blade, and hand it back to him. He grunts a short “Thanks.”

“Well done, Master Tristan,” says a baritone voice. Arion, the captain of our ship, hovers over us. He’s a merman just like Kurt and me, but he’s royally bound to the vessel. Enchanted black vines twine around his wrists and his tail. The black and silver fins lick at the empty air beneath him. The binding stretches all over the ship, allowing him to go as far as the topmast, but never into the sea. A punishment carried over from father to son.

I reach up and shake his hand. “Thanks, man.”

“You’re a fast learner,” Kurt says, nodding. I can tell he doesn’t say this easily. “A natural, really, if you adjusted your focus.”

“You should have more faith in me,” I say.

Kurt takes one step closer. Whatever he’s going to say is interrupted by blue and purple blurs.

It’s the urchin brothers, pulling sails and tying ropes to create a little bit of shade. When they stop running around, you can see their true shapes. Their almond-shaped eyes are big and black, like their gums, which freaked me out when Blue woke me up this morning. True to their name, the urchin brothers have spiky heads that are surprisingly soft to the touch.

Note: Don’t mess with an urchin’s head of hair, either.

The food they’ve spread out on silver platters, tarnished from being stored below deck, is decadent. Dried salmon skin, pink stuff that jiggles without touching it, and whole calamari jerky that looks like Buddha hands coming to get you. There’s caviar in the brightest colors on top of crunchy dried seaweed. Steamed seaweed. Seaweed noodles. Seaweed chips. There’s a great big seaweed party in my mouth.

Blue is studying my face. He’s been trying so hard to make something that I’ll like. “Special, for Lord Sea Tristan.”

My smile is strained. I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to a mer diet. But he’s trying so hard and I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “Uh—thanks, little dude.”

I make to sit down, but Kurt stands in my way. He flips his hair back, splashing me on the way. I knew he was a sore loser, but damn, let me live.

“What?” I ask irritably.

“Don’t you think it’s time, Tristan?”

“Time for what?”

“You said you’d tell us.” He turns back to Layla, then to me. “About the other night. With the oracle.”

Friday night. The night I claimed one of the three trident pieces from the oracle in Central Park. I’ve been putting off the details, but I’ve run out of reasons.

“It might help us with the next oracle,” Layla urges.

“Perhaps later—” Gwen starts.

“Not later,” Layla presses, sitting up on her knees. “I mean, you just left. Then you return with your giant metal toothpick and Princess Snowflake here, and you won’t tell us what happened.”

“Tristan doesn’t have to tell you everything,” Gwen says.

Layla ignores her and looks up right at me. “What did she do to you?”

I’m not sure if she means the oracle or if she means Gwenivere.

I hold my hands up in defense. “You guys. It’s just—”

It’s just what? They’re my team. They’re here for me. I hadn’t considered that they might’ve thought I was dead. I didn’t consider them at all. I sit down at our makeshift floor table and cross my legs meditation style. “Come. Let me start from the beginning.”





Ryan was dead.

“I heard his neck snap, but I didn’t know who it was until he hit the ground. Everyone was screaming. Police sirens were getting closer. I was ready to give up.

“I figured, what the hell is the point? Maddy was screaming and drunk. She wouldn’t give me the Venus pearl. Until the merrows came.”

I pull down the zipper of one of my pockets and pull out a thin silver chain. A fat, smooth pink pearl hangs on a tiny hoop. “My mother stole it from Shelly, the oracle, a long time ago. I gave it to Maddy as a gift before I knew what it was. What I was.

“That’s when Gwen found me. She figured out how to find the oracle.”

“That I did.” Gwen smirks. “So we stole—what was it?”

“A bicycle,” I say. “We went to the train.”

“How did you know where to go?” Kurt glances between me and Gwen.

“Scrying, my dear Kurtomathetis,” Gwen answers sweetly. “How do you know how to do that?” Kurt leans forward.

“I know many things.” Gwen leans forward, too, just to show how unintimidated she is by him. “What would you have done? Threaten the pretty necklace with your sword until it answered you?”

“Easy,” I say, putting hands between them. “Gwen held the necklace up to the map, and it hit right on Central Park like a magnet. Shelly was there, waiting for us near Turtle Pond.”

“What did she look like?” Layla asks.

“Like a blobby fish,” Gwen says, shivering. “Drooping and wrinkled. I had no idea oracles were so hideous.”

“They aren’t,” Kurt says softly. “Not all of them.”

“Shelly—don’t laugh at her name, you guys. She’s cool, okay? Said she was the youngest of the remaining five oracle sisters. That’s why she’s got the fewest powers. She was talking in this rhyme, all vague. Why are supernatural people so vague?”

“When you live forever,” Kurt says, “you get bored. Riddles, games, quests. It’s part of our life.”

“O-kay.” Layla’s eyeing the Venus pearl spinning in my hand. “If you gave it back to her, why do you still have it?”

“She gifted it to me.” I shrug. I wonder what would happen if I offered it to Layla. Would she throw it back in my face? I wish I’d never given it to someone else first. “Something about my bravery and good looks.”

“I bet,” she says drily.

Kurt nods to Gwen. “And what happened to your hands?” As a reflex, Gwen balls them into tiny fists behind her back. “Elias showed up,” I say.

“Gwen’s ex-fiancé Elias?” Layla asks. “Champion of the East whatever. I thought he disappeared.”

“He was dead,” I correct. Before they can interrupt me again, “I’ve never been around dead bodies, but I’ll never forget the smell. Bits of his skin were falling off, but he was still strong. He spoke in Nieve’s voice.”

They’re silent. Nieve, the silver witch of my nightmares.

“I recognized the voice from my dreams.” I push my plate of food away. “I’d swear on anything that Nieve was the one pulling the strings. Can she do that?”

“I wasn’t alive when Nieve was at court,” Kurt says. “The king banished her after she killed the queen and led the rebellion against the throne. They say she was able to make you see things—cruel things, nightmares. Until your mind was weak enough to control.”

His eyes fall back on Gwen. “How did you get rid of Elias?”

Gwen lifts up her chin defiantly. She holds out her palms to show us the black scabs of burn marks. “I took Triton’s dagger and drove it into him.”

He shrinks back, surprised. “Oh…”

We’re quiet for a moment. Gwen gets up and walks away from us. She leans on the side of the ship and watches the mountains of clouds left behind in our wake.

Layla rests her hand on my knee. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

I place my hand on top of hers but don’t answer.

Kurt is staring at Gwen. “Is there anything else?”

Gwen with her smoke-bending magic fingers. In the Sea Court, the merfolk who still have traces of magic have to register with the court and king. The merfolk fear magic the way humans fear lunatics with guns. They think it’s unpredictable and unreliable. Gwen is by no means registered. After everything she’s done for me, I can’t betray her secret.

“Hey, Arion,” I call out. “Where in the world are we?”

Arion uses the black ropes to pull himself over the deck. The strong winds ripple against the sails so he tightens them. “Steady on the Southern Channel. We’ll have to wait for Lady Thalia to return with an approximation of time.”

“She’s been gone since sunrise,” Layla says.

Arion tugs on his black beard. “It won’t be long now, Master Tristan. The trick to the Vanishing Cove is making sure we don’t miss it.”

“You’re not saying it literally vanishes?” Layla asks, wonder-struck.

“I don’t like this.” Gwen pounds her fists on the wood. “I don’t like being stuck on a boat.”

Casting a long shadow over Gwen, Kurt points an authoritative finger in her face. “None of us are stuck here, Lady Gwenivere. You’re more than welcome to return to Toliss Island and resume your duties at court.”

Under the shade of the mainsail, we stand in a broken circle. Now I know why Thalia volunteered to swim off and scout the remaining distance to the cove.

“Ah, right you are, Kurtomathetis of the Sea Guard.” Gwen crosses her slender arms over her chest, emphasizing the cleavage her bikini barely covers. “The only one stuck here is our captain. As is this foot-fin over here.” She waves at Layla dismissively.

Layla seethes, “Don’t call me that.”

Gwen smiles through it. She sees the argument forming on my lips and looks away, but doesn’t apologize. “What I mean is, we’ve been on this ship for nearly two days.”

“Congratulations on your accelerated ability to count,” Layla says.

Gwen throws her hands in the air and makes very un-princesslike exclamations. “What I mean is there are other ways of getting to the Vanishing Cove. We are Sea People. We swim.”

Unbidden, the attack of the merrows returns to the forefront of my mind. “We’re stronger together.”

“The championship ends in six days and seven nights,” she reminds me. “Then the champions return to Toliss for the final duel. Need I remind you that, without a trident, there is no king, and without a king—”

“We know what happens,” Kurt says roughly. “Without a king, we will be left with destruction and chaos. That is why the champions travel on ships armed to the masts with soldiers. When the throne is weakened, not even the sea is kind to us.”

Gwen’s cheeks are sucked in like she’s holding back the venom on her tongue. I can see the rage in her with nowhere to go. She throws it at the most vulnerable person she can find. “Oh, is that it? Here I thought we were staying dry because the foot-fin can’t swim.”

Layla, one the fastest swimmers I know, freezes. She takes a step toward Gwen, but Kurt gets between them first. On any other day, I wouldn’t mind watching a girl fight. Especially when it’s pretty much about me. But the thing Layla doesn’t know, the thing even Kurt doesn’t know, is that if it weren’t for Gwen, Layla wouldn’t be alive.

“Layla…” I warn. When she turns to me, I’ve forgotten what I wanted to say. Under the scent of washed wood and the salt of the ocean, I get a whiff of her—lavender and honey and light. Her nose is sunburnt and peeling. It makes me want to stand in the way and let the sun set me on fire instead.

“Fine,” Layla says, steadying her breath. She turns around and climbs the steps to the ship’s wheel. “Take her side. I’ll be over here doing whatever footfins do.”

“It’s not about sides!” I yell.

Gwen pushes past Kurt and me, growling, “You know that I’m right.”

With Layla and Gwen at different corners of the deck, Kurt and I are left standing at the mainmast. “We have to fix this,” I say.

“Lord Sea—” Kurt says.

I put my hand on his chest and press him against the mast. “Don’t. Call. Me. Lord. Sea.”

He looks down at my hand and smirks.

“Tristan,” he lowers his voice, “come with me. Your sword needs sharpening.”

•••

Kurt and I duck past the barrels of sea mead and the trunk of weapons. Two cannons are lined with seaweed so soft that it feels like velvet.

“I think I found where the urchin bros sleep,” I say. “Definitely more comfortable than the deck was last night.” Kurt unloads his weapons on a table slab.

I unbuckle my sheath. I add my beat-up sword and Triton’s dagger to the mix. Unlike the dull broadsword I’ve been training with, Triton’s dagger is pristine. Handed down from the man himself, it can only be held by his descendants. I’m imagining the other mermen who used this weapon when Kurt snaps me out of my trance.

“It was kind of you to give your chambers to Thalia.” Kurt sits on a crate level with the table and examines my sword.

“No worries. They’re technically Arion’s. He’s captain of the ship.”

“He’s bound to the ship, Tristan. He’ll never be more than the one who ferries it.”

“Arion’s more than that. He’s been my friend and I will free him.”

Kurt shakes his head, sighing. “Don’t make easy promises.”

“Isn’t that the point of having a new king?” I cross my arms over my chest. “Just because we’re supernatural beings doesn’t mean we have to live in the Middle Ages, slaying dragons and having squires and shit.”

Kurt sharpens the sword with a black stone, sending sparks flying with each strike. “I’ve killed my share of dragons.”

“Is that why you wanted to come down here?” I sit facing him on a barrel of sea mead. “Because this isn’t a two-man job, and Triton’s dagger doesn’t need sharpening.”

He stops. Sets his weapons down carefully. “I didn’t want to say this in front of Gwenivere—”

“Because you don’t like her?”

He rolls his eyes. “That isn’t what I said.”

“But you don’t deny it?”

“Does it matter to you?” he asks defiantly.

Truthfully, I don’t know anything about their relationship before they joined up with me. Maybe they dated and it didn’t work out. That might explain all the venom.

“Why don’t you like her?” I ask. Other than her general air of entitlement and her finger-snapping attitude.

“What has she done to make you two so close?”

“That was subtle.” I instantly think of Gwen’s eyes turning black for a flash, her magic. “It’s not like that.”

Even in the shadows, I can see him flush. “Forget it.”

“Oh, come on. Learn to take a joke. You should know me by now. What did you want to say that you couldn’t say in front of Gwen?”

“Thalia has been gone too long,” he says. “I trained her myself. I know she can take care of herself. But with the boy’s—Ryan’s— death…She was rather attached. I don’t know if she’d be reckless.”

Thalia’s the only mermaid I’ve met, other than my mom, who loves being on land. When she left this morning to scout the distance to the cove, I figured it’d be good for her to be alone. But that was hours ago.

“Maybe we should go now,” I say. “Make sure she’s safe, then just you and me keep on going.”

“I’ve been to the oracle here before. I told you. And while strategically it’s safer to enter through land, there are also the tunnels beneath. I’m willing to take the chance. If you are.”

That’s a challenge. I match the smirk on his face. “Of course I’m willing. Though, the girls are not going to like us leaving them behind.”

He seems startled. “Haven’t you ever said ‘no’ to a girl before?”

“Plenty of times. Doesn’t mean I like to do it. Then they get all sad and it’s my fault and I’m the one who’s the jerk.”

“We could have the urchins whip up a calming brew.”

I punch him in the chest. “Are you crazy? We don’t drug our friends to stop an argument! What’s wrong with you?”

“Then you’ll have to be the one to tell them. They listen to you.”

“Since when? Between the four of us, our stubbornness could fill a black hole.”

Kurt bursts out in a rare laugh. “Let’s get our weapons ready. I’ll meet you on deck in fifteen minutes. Which one of these do you prefer?”

“I don’t need a sword.” I duck back the way we came from and start climbing up the ladder. “I’ve got something even better.”