Where on earth is Baby? she wondered frantically. What if he doesn’t find the ring?
The temperature of the swamp water dropped again. The Okwa were angry. Ava could feel it. They kept talking, and though their words were still polite, their voices had an edge. More of them came. They moved closer to her. She started to lose her nerve, then remembered that their hands were bound.
As she burbled on, another deeper wave of despair hit her. It was followed by a jolt of panic. A wash of desperation. An avalanche of fear. She didn’t know where these feeling were coming from. As she struggled to cope with them, her words trailed away, and she started to see images in her mind. One was of a terragogg running away. Another was of a woman begging on her knees. A third showed a man screaming.
Ava’s breath caught as she realized that she was feeling exactly what Nashoba’s victims had felt and seen—right before he’d killed them. The Okwa Naholo couldn’t kill her through her eyes, so they were using her heart.
“Is there something wrong?” one of them asked, with sugary concern. “You’ve suddenly turned so pale!”
Ava couldn’t speak. The visions grew worse. It seemed as if she was witnessing the deaths of every one of Nashoba’s victims. Keening with grief, she sank slowly through the water. The thick ooze on the bottom of the swamp clutched at her. She no longer cared about the ring. She didn’t care if she lived or died. She only wanted the suffering to stop. She didn’t want to feel the victims’ pain and terror. She didn’t want to feel anything.
But she did. A piercing pain.
Not in her heart.
On her backside.
“OW!” AVA SCREECHED.
She heard growling. There was another pain, this time on her shoulder. It felt like tiny knives. Like…
“Baby!” Ava breathed.
A bite on her arm brought her back to her senses. A harder one got her moving. With a cry, she wrenched herself free of the mud.
Nashoba and the other Okwa tried to enclose her in a circle. She could feel them all around her. Their black hearts beat loudly, and their voices thrummed in her head. Her hands scraped against their bones as she pushed her way through them, tearing ribs apart, knocking jaws off. Her powerful tail broke legs and spines.
And then she was high up in the water over them, swimming free. Their voices receded. The images faded.
Ava was sobbing with relief when she felt something jab her in the back. It was bristly and rough. It jabbed her again, then hooked her sleeve and pulled her to the surface.
“The spiders!” she cried. “No!”
As her head broke the water, more bristly legs swiped at her, each tipped with a claw. The spiders were scurrying along the banks of the swamp, hoping to catch their dinner. Ava could hear them crashing through the vegetation. Sticky strands of spider silk trailed over her face. Screaming, she tried to pull her arm away. The spider’s claw ripped through her sleeve, freeing her. She dove back down into the water, her heart pounding. Baby, barking madly, zipped off. Ava followed the sound, swimming low and fast, and didn’t stop until she was well out of the Spiderlair. Then she sat down on a rock to catch her breath. She was lucky to be alive, and she knew it, but she was devastated. She hadn’t obtained the ring. Baby hadn’t had enough time to search for it. She’d blown her one chance; the Okwa Naholo wouldn’t give her another.
All along, she’d been telling herself that the gods had chosen her to get the ruby ring, and that this was why they’d taken her eyesight. What was she supposed to believe now? That she’d lost her vision for no reason at all? Could the gods be that cruel? And how would she tell the others that she’d failed? She couldn’t bear to disappoint them.
“What am I going to do?” she said aloud, a hitch in her voice.
She didn’t have an answer, but Baby did. He swam up to Ava and slapped his tail fins against her face.
“Oh!” she yelped, her hand going to her smarting cheek. “You bad fish! What are you doing?”
Baby did it again. Ava, furious, grabbed for him. Her hands closed on his little body and that’s when she felt it—the ring. He was wearing it on the narrow base of his tail. He must’ve found it, then somehow threaded his fins through the shank.
“Baby!” she shouted. “You did find it!”
The little piranha folded his fins together, and Ava carefully slipped the ring from his tail. As soon as it was off, Baby yipped and swam around in excited circles.
“Brave fish!” Ava said admiringly. She pulled the piranha to her and kissed him on the lips. Baby purred.