The Cerulean (The Cerulean Duology #1) - Amy Ewing Page 0,51

had no concept of distance here. She’d only ever seen the planet from high above, where everything looked small and simple. Pelago was to the east of Kaolin, across an expanse of water. And Kaolin itself seemed a very large mass of land. Where on the lopsided star was she being held? How far apart were the two countries?

She went back to kicking the crate, over and over until her feet were sore and her legs gave out. Her stomach ached, despair threatening to swallow her whole.

“Please, Mother Sun,” she whispered, tears spilling down her cheeks. “If you can hear me . . . help me, please.”

“It cries.”

Sera’s head whipped up. The voice was raspy and hissing, and there was something off about it, like it was coming from inside her head. A pair of bulging eyes hovered above the edge of the platform. A clawlike hand emerged, then another; then a strange creature wriggled itself over the moss and onto the platform itself. Sera shrieked and scuttled back as far as she could go.

The creature was small, only about three feet long, and pale green. From the waist up it had a torso and two arms and a head that were all humanlike. From the waist down, it had the scaly body of a fish. Its head was perfectly round, with luminous eyes and teeth like razors. Its skull was bare and pocked. Instead of eyebrows, three glowing filaments stuck out over each eye—they dipped and swayed with the creature’s movements. The clawed hands had seven webbed fingers.

The filaments were beautiful and delicate—like spun glass, they refracted the light that shone from the flowers. And on the end of each filament was a tiny bulb. Sera could not help but be reminded of the fish in the Great Estuary, the ones that had filaments just like these, fish that no other Cerulean would go near but herself. Except they were fish through and through, without arms or heads.

The creature stared at Sera and Sera stared back. It never blinked. She was fairly certain it didn’t have eyelids.

“Did . . . did you say something?” she asked, feeling a bit stupid but unsure of what else to do. Even if it had been the creature who had spoken, it wouldn’t understand her.

“It cries in its box, so sad, so far from home, the sea, the sea.” Its mouth didn’t move, but the filaments lit up in a distinct pattern—red-gold, magenta, blue. Something about the voice made Sera guess the creature was male.

“Is that how you talk?” she asked, crawling forward and gripping the slats. “With lights?” Suddenly, she noticed her fingertips were glowing, like the blood bond, except this wasn’t just one index finger, but each of the three middle fingers on both her hands. She stared at them, aghast. “What is happening?” she said aloud.

Her fingertips lit up in flashes, just like the filaments. Purple, yellow, green, purple again. She recalled the story her green mother had told her of the planet with the giant birds. Could her magic let her communicate with this sea creature?

Sera hesitated, remembering what Agnes had said. Don’t let anyone else know you understand us. But she felt that applied to humans, and this creature was not human. She held up her hands so he could see them and said, loudly and clearly, “My name is Sera Lighthaven. I am a Cerulean and my blood is magic.”

Lights flashed across her fingertips. The creature’s entire body reacted, a rainbow erupting over his skin and scales.

“It speaks!” he cried. “It speaks the colors!”

The relief that flooded through her at being heard, at being understood . . . it was a joy so sharp it was almost painful.

“Where are we?” she demanded, her fingers lighting up in amber-jade-scarlet. “What is this place? Who are you?”

“Who am I? Why, I am a mertag, proud and cold and true. My name . . . my name is too long for land dwellers and old, very old, yes, bubbles and blowfish, but no one speaks to me here, no one understands. They call me Errol, over and over, Errol Errol Errol. Errol is my name here and as good as any, Sera Lighthaven.”

“Errol,” she whispered. The mertag seemed to be taking just as much pleasure in being heard as Sera was in being understood, and his lights flashed again and again.

“From the sea I came, yes, the dark cool waters of Pelago, but they took me, they took me from