The Savage Blue

The captain’s chambers are small and unused.

There’s a long, stiff bed and a table with some old maps, a magnifying glass, and a rusty water pitcher. The gas lamp swings precariously above my head. In the three hours of sleep I was able to get last night, I woke up sweating because I dreamt the quartz scepter was gone. Even now, removing the long rectangular box from the trick compartment under the bed, I’m afraid of opening it.

But that’s stupid, because it only opens to my touch.

Then her voice makes me jump, and when I stand, I hit my head on the gas lamp.

“Weren’t you just talking about how we don’t want to swim down there?” It’s Layla. She’s jittery, like the minutes before a meet. She lets all of the nervousness wash over her. Then when she stands on the ledge, she uncrosses her arms and lets it all go.

“What else do you want me to do? Sit here and duel with Kurt?” I set the box on the bed, trace my finger from top to bottom. The effect is instant. Symbols etched carefully in golden leaves, circles, and flurries hum beneath my finger. I think, this has to be what magic feels like. Buzzing, kinetic, electric. It purrs under my skin, shooting pinpricks of energy until something unhinges and the box sighs open.

I let go of the breath I’ve been holding.

The scepter is still there.

I grip the dusty golden hilt and pull it out. The quartz piece comes to a sharp point. A soft glow emanates from inside the crystal. It comes and goes like the fluorescent tubes in my old classrooms. Kurt says it could be because the three pieces are meant to work together, and when they’re apart, they’re erratic.

Layla hooks her thumbs on the back of her shorts. “Is it heavy?”

“Not really.” I hold it horizontally and press on its weight, like a too-thick branch I can’t snap. “It’s solid, though.”

“Can I touch it?”

“No.” I hold it over my head and away from her. “Did you see what my dagger did to Gwen’s hands?”

“Fine, I’ll get my rock candy on a stick.”

I make like I’m going to throw it at her, a fake basketball pass, and she flinches. “See? You don’t really want it. You just want it because I have it. Like when you stole my G.I. Joes.”

“Only because you stole my Barbies. Which makes so much sense now.”

“I took better care of your Barbies than you, Ecuadorian scissor hands.”

“They looked better with short hair!”

I strap on the leather harness Blue made for me. I can sheath my dagger at the center of my chest, and my scepter between my shoulder blades. I use Layla as my mirror. Her eyes flick from my feet to my weapons and settle on my face. She reaches out to my cheek where Kurt nicked me.

Layla’s never been delicate. She’d rather punch you than kiss you. But right now in the captain’s cabin, with her sun-kissed hair and her chin tilted up in that stubbornly cute way, I wonder—

I close the space between us one step at a time. She can step back if she wants to. She knows that.

But she doesn’t.

Her hands unhook from her shorts and fall on my hip bones. The pads of her fingertips press firmly on my sticky, sweaty skin.

I tuck a strand behind her ear, trace the length of her neck. “I think you only like me when you think I might die.”

“I think I like you better when you aren’t talking.”

We exhale at the same time. The heat of it is like the hum of the quartz piece in my hand, and because she’s frozen still, I know I have to be the one to banish the gap between us and I lower my lips to hers.

But then the heat is gone.

“You said fifteen minutes.” A very naked Kurt stands at the door, which I forgot was open.

I put a hand over Layla’s eyes. “Why are you naked?”

“Those are my last trousers,” he says. “I didn’t want to ruin them. This is why we have armor on the Sea Guard. Too bad—”

Layla’s batting my hands away. “Really Tristan, It’s not anything I haven’t seen before.”

“What?” Kurt and I shout in sync.

“I don’t mean Kurt. I’m one of three girls on the swim team. The guys aren’t exactly shy. Neither are you.” She pinches my abs and walks right past Kurt, like it’s just another Sunday morning.

I put my hands on his chest and shoo him out of the way. “Come on, let’s go.”

There isn’t a plank on the ship, so we just have to jump off the starboard rail. I drop my shorts, ignoring the tittering from Layla and Gwen, and try to take on a serious voice. Like a commander. A captain. Someone they can’t laugh at for having his ass out. “Arion, whatever happens, get to the Vanishing Cove.”

“Aye, sire.”

“Dive on my count,” I tell Kurt.

He nods once, securing the leather sheath around his hips.

“Three. Two. One.”





I shift midair.

The numb prickle starts at my spine and trails all the way down. Seconds before I hit the water, I catch sight of the turquoise blue of my scales, and my adrenaline races. Then I break the surface.

My gills flare and my chest expands. Out of habit, I have the urge to kick as if I’m in the pool. The movement jerks me forward and turns into a flick. I spin in a circle at first, just to get used to the fins. It’s constricting, being one movement instead of two, but the speed is addicting. I press my arms at my sides and get into the undulating rhythm of the current. When I turn around, the shadow of our ship is long gone.

Kurt swims ahead of me by a foot, keeping closer to the surface for now. His long tail is a flash of violet, barreling into a swarm of fish. They scatter, then reform their circular pattern. We swim side by side until we’re the only ones as far as I can see.

Then Kurt stops abruptly.

I double back to where he’s floating and staring into the faroff darkness.

“What?” I ask.

“Listen.”

But I don’t hear anything aside from the swish of our tails and the slow current. I kick out to swim again, but Kurt grabs my wrist and anchors me. He shakes his head and shuts his eyes. “You have to sense it.”

His gills open and close with the deep gulp he takes. I try to do the same. Above water, this hypersensitive sense allows us to smell emotions. It’s annoying—and nauseating when I’m surrounded by tons of hormonal classmates. But down here, it’s different. I can taste fear, like melting copper on my tongue, and it’s coming right at us in a cloud of white.

I nudge Kurt. His eyes snap open.

Leading the pack is Thalia, her deep green hair pulled back against the current. Her powerful tail is a good chomp away from the mouth of a great white shark, his jaws wide open in a perpetual bloody grin. As they come closer, the white cloud comes into focus, shark by shark by shark.

Thalia wails again, glancing behind. I think I hear her shout, “Stop,” but I can’t be sure.

Kurt raises his sword over his shoulder like a lance.

Something is wrong.

The coppery fear I sense isn’t coming from Thalia; it’s coming from the sharks. I haven’t met many sharks, but I know one saved me. I’ve seen him in my dreams. Always the same massive one who comes and saves me from the silver mermaid’s grip. He had metal chains around him, like a shark muzzle with handles at the sides for a rider.

These sharks are not part of the guard, but I know they’re swimming away from something big enough to scare twenty sharks.

Thalia’s scream gets closer, and this time she’s waving her arms in the air. She doesn’t want us to attack.

But Kurt’s ready to strike.

I lunge and tackle him around his waist.

He pushes against me, wrestling out of my grip. “What are you doing?”

They’re feet away from us now. Thalia reaches her arms out for us to hold. She’s moving so fast she can’t stop. We grab hold of her tightly and the sharks, all of them, zoom right over our heads as if we’re not even on their radar.

Thalia presses a hand over her heart. I can hear the thud of it, the ragged strain in her breath. There’s a long gash of blood down her arm.

“No time.” She takes our hands and tries to pull but there’s no strength behind it. “No time.”

“What is it?” I ask, looking back at where she came from. “Merrows?”

“Worse.” Her eyes are brilliantly green and panicked.

Kurt shakes her, but there’s no need. In the murky darkness, something slithers. It weaves into the cracked sea floor and back out again. Kurt’s face goes slack. He grips both of our wrists and pulls us up and onto the surface.

“What the hell is that?” I cough out the water in my throat as my gills clamp shut against the air.

“Makara demon,” Kurt says. “The king buried them centuries ago.”

“The cove is three channels south,” Thalia says. “That’s where the demon rose, eating everything in sight.”

“It’s happening,” Kurt says. “Now that the trident is broken, the king’s seal is loosening. That’s how the demon must’ve broken free.”

“How do we fight it?” I ask.

“With six of my best guards and lots of luck.”

“Thalia, go back to the ship. Tell them to keep going to the cove,” I say.

She nods and swims away.

“We can’t lead the beast back to the others,” Kurt says.

He looks torn between following his sister and staying here with me. But his duty wins, and he follows me back down.

The thing—the makara—is undulating in wide arcs, eating. It shakes its head back and forth with a twelve-foot-long shark in its mandible.

“I think I just peed myself,” I say. “How can you tell down here?”

Kurt shakes his head, gripping his sword even tighter. “If we live through this, I’ll point it out to you.”

As it swallows the shark like it’s munching on an Oreo, the makara is unaware of us watching. It’s curled up on a jagged black rock. Its head could belong to a crocodile—the long snout, the raised bumps that start on its nose and continue all the way down to the sharp tip of the tail. Crooked claws grip the bits of shark meat that fall from its mouth. It reminds me of a T. rex, arms short and close to the mouth. Chomp by chomp, the great white shark disappears inside the makara. There’s a dorsal fin off to the side, but nothing else.

Then the demon’s head snaps up. Maybe it can smell us. Maybe it caught the glint off our weapons. Whatever it was, two yellow eyes lock on us.

“No matter what,” Kurt tells me, “I will get you to the cove.”

“Don’t talk that way now,” I say, wracking my mind for something—anything. The makara is twice as long as our ship. Its body retracts, watching us carefully before it lurches forward. “You go left. I go right. On my go.”

“What?”

“Just do it!”

The demon drops the rest of its meal, blood billowing around it. The makara snaps its mouth once, twice. The sound of the crunch is so hard that the shock vibrates all the way to us.

“Now!” I dive to the right, up, and arc around.

But the demon isn’t following me.

It’s following Kurt.

I swim right behind them, trying my best to avoid the pointed tail. If there were ever a time for the scepter to work, it would be now. Why didn’t my grandfather give me a clue? Anything. Maybe he didn’t think I’d actually be able to get a piece of the trident. No, I can’t think that way. I was chosen for a reason. The hum of the scepter is dull, but I know its power is down there, like a prickle beneath the skin. I have to make it surface.

“Tristan!”

With every chomp, the makara gets closer and closer to Kurt’s fins. In a desperate move, I swing my scepter like a bat.

The demon’s skin is so thick that I’m not sure it actually feels the hit. The pointed end of its tail flaps around, trying to skewer me. I need to get closer to reach it with my dagger, so I swim underneath it and swipe. Blood flows from the cut.

The makara writhes, swimming past Kurt and up and up until it breaks the surface. Its cry is terrible, like a million snarling crocs. A thin line of blood trails from Kurt’s fin. We swim away, but not fast enough. It dives back down, barreling into me with one of the ridges on its face, pushing and pushing until I crash against the ocean floor. Something inside me crunches, hard. My vision is cloudy and every breath is a fire in my chest. I can feel the abyss of its open mouth over me, lips peeled back to expose the rows of massive teeth.

I search the ground around me until I find the cold gold of my scepter, screaming as I thrust it out. A blast of white light shines from the crystal.

The makara growls.

It shivers from snout to bleeding tail. Mouth open, eyes wide, it doesn’t move from the light. Slowly, I inch the crystal to the left.

It follows.

To the right.

It follows.

Kurt hovers above us. He holds his sword by the hilt, raises it high over his head. We look at each other for a second, nodding for reassurance. Kurt drives the sword between the makara’s eyes, piercing straight through the mouth until the hilt won’t go down any farther. The creature wails, a terrible sound that must carry on for miles. Blood pools in dark clouds around us as Kurt pulls the sword out and stabs it again.

I try to get out of the way, but I can’t move fast enough. The creature goes slack and falls right on my tail. Kurt’s so bewildered by the creature that he floats there and stares.

“A little help,” I groan.

“Yes, yes, of course. Can you move?”

“If I could move, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Right.” His chest is heaving. He swims around and clutches the makara by the jaw. He lifts and pulls, and I push. My scream is a violent echo, scaring away the creatures that were just starting to peek their gills back into the clearing.

My breathing is short and painful. I shake my head against the blurriness clouding my eyes. “What are you doing?”

Kurt has propped the great jaws open. The smell coming out of the creature’s mouth is enough to keep me awake. I turn over, and everything I’ve eaten today comes right out. Every heave worsens the pain in my ribs.

With the careful precision of a dentist, Kurt uses his sword to carve out three of the makara’s teeth.

I spot my dagger and crawl to reach it. I put it safely back in its sheath. Kurt throws a tooth at me, which I barely catch.

“How come you get two?”

“One is for Arion.” He takes my arm and drapes it around his shoulder.

“That’s nice of you.”

“I can be nice.” He wonders at the makara, then turns to me with a cocky grin. “Saved your mer ass, didn’t I?”

I hold on to my side. “Don’t make me laugh—it hurts.”

“Should I take you back to the ship?”

The angry bones in my body protest, but I shake my head. “Let’s keep going.”

We swim south for two miles along the jagged black floor of the sea. There is no life down here, except for patches of seaweed. I have to lean against Kurt for most of it.

Then there it is again. The growl of a makara.

Kurt and I exchange worried glances and float back to back. I can’t see anything other than green water and miles of black rock.

“It’s coming from beneath,” Kurt realizes.

I inch for a few yards along the ground to where it stops at a precipice. Steam rises and I back away from the heat. My heart sinks when I see them deep below against a stream of red rock. Makara, slithering among themselves, feasting on the creatures down there.

I shake my head at Kurt. “It’s a nest.”

“That must’ve been the mother.”

“What do we do?”

“That’s the entrance, Tristan.” Kurt looks up at the surface, then back at me. “That’s the entrance to the oracle’s caves.”

“We can’t just leave these things out here in the open.” I swim up and float over the steaming head of the fissure with my scepter in hand.

“Are you sure?” Kurt says.

I shut out his words. Concentrate on the sound of the makara feasting below. My grandfather put them away once. I can do it again.

The scepter comes to life in my hand, energy winding from right inside me. When I shut my eyes, I have a faint memory. It isn’t mine. It can’t be. It’s the king, raising his hand and aiming it at the ground. When I open my eyes again, I let the power flow from me, through the scepter, and back again, like we’re feeding off each other.

The light shoots straight out, blasting the ground. Stones and boulders rain onto the trembling ocean floor. The fissure collapses on either side, closing the gap until all that’s left is the vibration of the makara demons’ screams.

Kurt shouts into the mess I’ve made. I hold my scepter at arm’s length, soaking up the images that flood from it.

The thing I’m not ready for is the blowback of energy. I can feel it recoiling back into the scepter. The light is blinding, and I know this is going to hurt.





Blue hands me a cup full of a tea that smells like my gym locker that one time I didn’t clean it out between sophomore and junior year.

“Your own scepter did that to you?” Gwen asks.

They’re gathered around me in the captain’s cabin. The winds have returned and Arion’s steering us as fast as he can. Soft rays trickle through mountains of clouds into the square windows. Kurt’s polishing the makara teeth with a black cloth. He stares at them with a happiness I’ve never seen in him.

Note: The way to make Kurt happy is to pit him against ancient sea monsters.

“It was the recoil.” Layla says. “Like when you shoot a gun.”

“I don’t think merpeople use guns.” I set the tea aside, but Blue picks it back up and holds it up to my mouth.

His blue face is scrunched up, lips trembling. “No, Master Tristan. Must drink it all.”

Trying not to gag, I take another gulp. Then another. A sense of calm spreads through my body. The pain from my ribs dulls, replaced by a strange grinding sound, as though my insides are shifting.

“Urchin secret,” Blue says. “Cures all.”

“Pound it.” I hold out my fist to him. And he does, pressing his tiny knuckles against mine in a fist bump.

Layla, who’s been pacing the length of the room muttering to herself, shoots me a nasty glare.

“Say it to the whole class, Santos,” I tell her.

She stops mid-step and turns to me with furious watery eyes. “You’re a big, dumb idiot.”

Gwen laughs, patting my knee. “I’ve been saying this since I met him. But you’ve got to admit, he must be doing something right. Since he’s still alive.”

I test the state of my ribs by sitting up. I stretch my arms up toward the ceiling, across my chest, and behind my back. “Oh, that feels so good.”

“I’ve never seen a makara eel before,” Kurt says. “It’s smaller than I thought.”

“Small?” I choke on the last drag of tea. “You call that thing small?”

“Only in comparison to the stories.” He gives his tooth one last polishing stroke and smiles down at it. “Blue, do you think I can make a spear out of this?”

Happy that he’s being addressed, Blue nods. “Oh yes, Master Kurtomathetis. Straight away.” He takes the giant tooth in his hands and rushes away with it.

Layla stops pacing. She sits to the left of me on the bed, giving me her back. “I don’t get how something like that can exist without anyone knowing about it.”

“Think about what you just said.” I take a lock of her hair and run my fingers along it. She bats me away. “No one sees the giant, floating Toliss Island that contains the whole Sea Court, either.”

“That’s different,” Kurt says. “There’s a spell around the island so it appears to be a storm at sea. To keep humans away. The makara and others like it were put away years ago. They caused so much destruction that the king buried them deep in the earth, hoping they would die. That explains their size. They’ve adapted to the constraints of the cave.”

I twist my torso to stretch the soreness out of my rib cage. “So why did one just happen to show up and start snacking on great whites?”

“It’s the king’s power.” Kurt motions at my quartz scepter and Triton’s dagger on the table. “It’s ebbing. The trident is the king’s power. He creates with it. He destroys with it. Now that it’s broken in three pieces, everything will come undone.”

“I don’t get it,” Layla says. “Haven’t there been other kings? Why is this happening now?”

“The line has been unbroken for thousands of years. Our kind is bound to the power of the throne. Which is why, if at the end of the fortnight, the trident is not pieced back together, everything—from the creatures banished in caves beneath the sea, to those banished from court—would be able to return. Even our kind would be able to go on land.”

“We don’t always behave very well among humans,” Thalia says darkly.

“Speak for yourself, guppy,” Gwen says. She’s got her arms crossed like she owns the world. Then the ship heaves. Gwen falls into Kurt, who holds her by her shoulders at arm’s length. Layla falls back against me and I take this moment to put my arms around her. The pitcher of water on the table wobbles but doesn’t tip over.

Thalia throws her hair back, just missing Gwen’s face. “I think I’ll check on the progress. We should be there shortly.” She presses her hand on my shoulder before leaving.

Kurt looks from Layla to me to Gwen, and as though he’d rather face another Macarena eel thing than stay with us, he says, “I’ll join you.”

Gwen tries to pick up my makara tooth, but doesn’t realize how sharp it is, and cuts her finger on its edge. She sucks on the wound.

“Time for an edible seaweed Band-Aid,” Layla says, mock-sweetly.

Gwen shoots a terrible glare at her. I’m expecting her eyes to glow white and sparks to fly from her fingers, but she just stalks out.

Which leaves just Layla and me.

I get off the bed and pour myself a cup of water. It’s cool, slightly salty, and perfect. I drink it eagerly as it trickles over the cup and down my chest.

“Thirsty?” Layla asks.

I set the cup down. “Just a bit.”

I grip the dusty golden hilt of the scepter, trying to remember the power I felt when I was facing the makara.

“How do you make it glow?”

“I don’t. Not really. Even when I was down there, I could tell it wasn’t me doing it.”

“What do you mean?”

I hesitate, trying to find just the right words. “It’s like it has its own power. Separate from me. Somehow, we feed off each other.”

She cocks her head to the side. All of her hair is pulled over her shoulder. Footsteps scatter on deck. I sit on the bed beside her. “You must be bummed you broke the entrance to the oracle lady, huh?” she says.

I take her hand in mine and cross our fingers together. “I’m looking forward to seeing the Vanishing Cove. This is the farthest away I’ve ever been from home.”

“Me too.”

“You’ve been to Athens. You’ve been to the equator. That’s way farther.”

“It’s not the same.” She shakes her head, not letting go of my stare. Not for a moment. “Promise you’ll be careful from now on.”

I smile. “And miss out on seaweed bandages?”

She doesn’t laugh, the way I intended it. It’s even better. She takes my face with her hand and brings it closer to—

“Many pardons, Lord Sea,” Vi says.

I throw myself backward on the bed. “What is it?”

Layla pours herself some water.

The purple urchin shifts from side to side, wringing his little fingers until I fear he’ll pull them right off the knuckles. “We’re nearing the coast.”

“We’ll be right out.”

He bows so low to the ground that his long, pointy nose nearly touches the wood, then leaves in a purple blur.

I take my scepter, nestle it into the back of the harness, and sheath my dagger on the front.

“Really, Tristan.” Layla stands back to look at me from the doorway. “I think you need more weapons.”

Behind her I can see the others loading up as well. I take a skinny blade with a bronze handle and hand it to her. She doesn’t hesitate when she takes it, but her hands are shaky.

“The way things are going,” I say, “we’re going to need them.”