Above World - By Jenn Reese Page 0,19
could be that many.”
“It’s true. How many Coral Kampii are there — a little over two thousand? We’d be a tiny village in ancient times, just a grain of sand compared to the huge cities that used to cover the land.”
“Well, I don’t see any of those huge cities now, and I don’t want to be here if the dragonfly-people decide to come back. Can you try to focus, please?”
Hoku paled. “Focus. I can do that.”
“The sand ocean is to the east,” she said, remembering a story Daphine had told her about the horse people of the desert. “I doubt we’ll find HydroTek so far from the water. I walked half a day from the south and didn’t see anything, so I say north. I can see mountains and trees that way. Maybe mountains are like our coral reefs, and people will be living in nests carved out near the bottom.”
Hoku nodded and said, “North is good. Anywhere but here is good. I want to leave this place and never come back.”
Aluna glanced at the charred doll by the door. “Agreed.”
They headed north, following the coast. The sand grew rockier. The sun rose in the sky, and Aluna kept a hand over her eyes to shield them from the light. Hoku did the same. A few times they stowed their packs in the sand and dove through the waves, collecting mussels and hunting crabs.
The day burned on. Aluna was surprised the Kampii hadn’t sent more hunters after them, but maybe the fight Hoku described had made them cautious. Good. She didn’t want any more Kampii risking their lives because of her.
“What’s that?” Hoku said, pointing up ahead. Aluna squinted. The beach was littered with silvery-gray bodies.
“Dolphins!” she said, and took off running. Maybe some were still alive. If they’d beached themselves by accident, she and Hoku could push them back out to sea.
As she approached, the thick stench of blood clogged her nose. The sand under the creatures was stained dark, like a great crimson cloak dragged out of the ocean. A web of ropes lay over their bodies. The creatures hadn’t beached themselves. They’d been pulled from the sea and slaughtered.
“The dragonflier-people,” Aluna said. “They must have come this way after destroying the Human village. But why would they kill dolphins?”
She looked at the closest animal. It was long and sleek and gray, much like a slender shark. A dorsal fin jutted out of its back. But instead of flippers, it had arms. Instead of a wide, pointed snout, it had a hairless human head, great bulging black eyes, and tiny holes for ears. Its mouth, slightly open, contained rows of pointed, razor-sharp teeth.
“By the tides,” she hissed, and took a step back. Hoku ran up beside her, breathing hard.
“Are those —?”
“Yes,” Aluna said. She looked at the two dozen other bodies lying torn and bleeding on the sand and gripped the knife belted to her leg.
“Deepfell.”
“ARE THEY DEAD?” Hoku asked. None of the Deepfell demons were moving. They lay tangled in big nets, like a school of caught fish. “They’re probably dead. Come on, let’s keep going.”
“Wait. Some of them are missing . . . parts,” Aluna said.
“Parts?” he echoed weakly. He scanned the bodies and saw one without a dorsal fin, another with half of its tail cut off. “Oh. Parts. I guess that’s what the patchwork people are after. And why they killed the Humans, too. Parts are like tech to them.” He tried not to think about the pit of dead Humans back at the village.
Aluna gripped her dagger in one hand and knelt beside a Deepfell to check for a pulse. “This one’s gone,” she said, standing back up. “I’ll go check the others.”
He watched her hop from one Deepfell to the next, checking for signs of life. Grandma Nani had been telling him stories about the Deepfell his whole life. “They gave up their humanity to live in deep ocean,” his grandma had said. “But if we were meant to live there, the price wouldn’t be so high.”
The water in the deep-dark was ice-cold, the pressure so intense it would snap the bones of a Kampii in the flick of a tail. Strange creatures lived down there — monsters out of nightmares. Things with tentacles and teeth and no memory of the sun. And on those things, the Deepfell preyed.
He’d been a youngling during the last Deepfell raid on the colony, but his uncle had been a hunter and one of the first