Above World - By Jenn Reese Page 0,17

creatures had an irritating tendency to be poisonous.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly. She stashed her food pouch inside another pouch so that she wouldn’t be tempted to nibble as she walked, and headed up the beach. Getting to the Above World had been her first goal. Now that she was here, it was time to meet the Humans.

She stumbled less and less as she walked. At first, her legs were being stupid. Her foot would stop short of the sand and she’d lurch forward until it hit the ground, or she’d pound her foot down, thinking it would hit the sand several centimeters after it did. The process became easier the less she thought about it. She needed to trust her body more, to stop thinking so much. The idea made her laugh. Overthinking was not usually one of her faults.

She must have come to shore farther south than she’d intended. Not surprising, since navigation was one of Hoku’s hobbies, not hers. It was almost dawn when she saw the flickering glow of the Human village in the distance. She urged her legs to walk faster. Daphine said they could understand some of the Kampii language, but how much? Aluna didn’t want to insult them by accident.

The smell hit her a dozen meters before she reached the first hut. Charred flesh. Smoke, acrid and foul, filled her nose. Where were the Above World’s currents to whisk the odors away and cleanse the sky? She pinched her nose closed and kept her mouth shut, relying on her breathing shell to bring oxygen to her lungs. It didn’t keep the stench out completely, but it helped.

As she got closer, sickly light illuminated a small cluster of huts and enclosures. The walls of the huts were a patchwork of rocks and bricks, wood planks and dried mud. Some still smoldered. Flames licked out of pits scattered around the tiny compound and ate the remains of fences and roofs. She’d heard about fire, but never seen it. In the stories Daphine told, the flames were always red and yellow. But here, in the remains of the village, the fire burned green.

She approached cautiously, her free hand clutching the hilt of her knife. As far as she could tell, the village was deserted. She peered into a hut. The inside was scorched, its contents burned to ashes.

A strange scrape on the ground caught her eye. Aluna knelt and studied the marks in the hard-packed earth. Tracks. She could follow the trail of most ground-dwelling ocean animals to discover their hidey-holes, but she had no idea what sort of creatures made these marks. Some were probably Human — they resembled the tracks she’d been leaving in the sand all day. But others were unfathomable: huge depressions the size of her entire body, lines and scuffs as if something big had been dragged.

A barely audible noise tickled the inside of her ears. A sniffle?

She walked slowly and quietly through the Human town, careful to avoid the pits where green fires still burned and coughed up smoke. Tools crafted of metal and wood burned on racks by some of the huts. She didn’t know what they were for, but she bet Hoku could have figured it out.

Some of the huts had little fenced-in areas attached. White-furred animals lay dead inside, their bodies slashed with spears or knives or some other bladed Above World weapons. She moved past them quickly.

The sniffling got louder. She could hear it inside her ears, the way she heard other Kampii under the ocean. She ran toward the sound, ignoring the flames and scanning huts as fast as she could. Who was it? Had Daphine followed her? Was she hurt?

And then she found him. He sat huddled in a small hut on the edge of the village, his knees folded tight against his chest, his breathing ragged. Sniffling.

Hoku.

SHE THOUGHT Hoku would smile and rush to her, throw his arms around her and hug her tight. Instead, he said blankly, “The whole village. Dead. Even the younglings. Even the animals.”

Aluna knelt by his side. “Are you hurt? Do you know who did this?”

Hoku buried his face against his knees. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close. She’d seen him like this only once before, on the morning of the last Deepfell attack. He’d lost an uncle and a grandfather to those killers that day.

Eventually, he lifted his head and started to talk. The words spilled out in one long stream,