Above World - By Jenn Reese Page 0,8

brown eyes sparkled their response. Tides’ teeth — he was.

She pulled herself upright with a groan, adjusted her hands on the spear, and adopted the White Coral stance.

Push.

Her father was waiting for her when she got back to the nest. His tail curled around his resting stick in the common room, the resting stick no one else dared use. He didn’t look at her when she entered but stared at his dinner pouch, seemingly transfixed by whatever food Daphine had prepared for the family that night.

Aluna hurried through the room, eager to collapse and savor her well-earned exhaustion. She had almost made it to the other side when her father spoke.

“That girl should never have been in the kelp forest alone,” he said. “Her death was an unfortunate accident.”

Aluna stopped and twirled to face him. “An accident?” The anger and frustration she’d just purged from her system returned in one flash of a tail. “How can you say that? It was her necklace!”

His eyes flickered wide, but he recovered quickly from the surprise. “You’re talking nonsense. The girl made a foolish mistake and she died for it.”

“But you know it’s the necklaces,” she sputtered. “And you know more people are going to die just like Makina!”

You let my mother die, too. You chose the City of Shifting Tides over your own wife. She couldn’t say the words out loud. Not to him. But they both felt the accusation floating there, an invisible barrier always between them.

“Lower your voice,” he hissed. “I know the girl was your friend, but if I tell you her death was an accident, then you’ll believe it was an accident. Do you understand me?”

Tears pooled in her eyes and she blinked them into the ocean. “The Elders listen to you. I know they’re afraid, but they listen to you. They would follow you anywhere.” Even to the Above World.

He gave a harsh laugh. “No one will follow a man who can’t even control his own daughter.”

“So this is my fault somehow?” she said. “What if Anadar is the next Kampii to die? Or Daphine?”

Her father’s brow darkened. “You are too young to understand what’s happening. You know nothing of the Above World and its horrors. Grow up, Aluna. You’re about to get your tail, and you’re still acting like a child.”

She glowered, her blistered hands curling into fists. She couldn’t speak, not without screaming. Where was the proud, honorable man the rest of the Kampii saw when they looked at her father? All she saw was a coward. A coward who was perpetually disappointed in her.

“Get out of my sight,” her father said, and she did.

TRADITIONALLY, her mother would have fixed her hair before the ceremony. Aluna had to make do with her sister.

“Stop moving,” Daphine chided. “This would be easier if you’d grown your hair out. I can’t get this shell woven on.”

“Tides’ teeth, how many shells do I need?” They’d been at this for more than an hour. Her head felt like a basket of clams.

“Shhhh,” Daphine said.

“Who did this to you, before your ceremony?” Aluna asked, surprised that she didn’t already know the answer. Their mother had died a week after Aluna was born, a few tides before Daphine got her tail.

“I did it myself,” Daphine said.

Aluna could hear a mix of pride and hurt in her sister’s voice, and that hollow, aching echo of silence that remained the only acknowledgment of their loss. She heard the echo in her brothers’ voices sometimes — and in her father’s voice on those rare occasions when he wasn’t yelling at her. But Daphine, who had suffered the most, rarely let it show. When she did, it made her look vulnerable. It made her seem young.

Aluna squirmed. “I bet it didn’t take this long when you did it yourself,” she said crossly. She’d rather her sister be angry than frail.

Daphine snorted. “It took longer, and half the shells fell out right before I swallowed the Ocean Seed.”

“Ha!” Aluna poked at a group of pearls clustered at her temple. “That must have irked the Elders. They like everything to go steady as tides. Remember when Ehu sneezed during his ceremony and Elder Peleke got so flustered he forgot a line of the ritual?”

Daphine laughed. The sound lifted Aluna’s heart. If her sister’s quiet despair could make others weep without even realizing why, then her laugh could bring sunlight to the abyss. Her three brothers had almost as much power. Pilipo and Ehu were the city’s best hunters,