of blue straight below her. Arms straight over her head, she pressed her palms together as if in prayer.
And then she pierced the water.
Silence filled her instantly. Beautiful silence. It wrapped her in its embrace. She kicked her feet together, propelling herself deeper. Her eyes stung from the salty water, but she kept them open, as she’d learned to do as a baby. Murky blueness was all around, and she felt as if it had erased the entire world.
For the first thirty seconds, she felt like an invader, forcing herself through the water.
In the next thirty seconds, she felt her body rebel, her lungs burning, her muscles shaking, as every bit of her body told her she didn’t belong. She needed air!
But she went deeper.
Then the shaking pain receded, replaced by a calmness.
It was a calmness only the deep divers ever experienced, and with it came the feeling of becoming one with the water, as if Mayara belonged here in this airless world.
The best divers on the islands could dive on one breath for eleven minutes.
Mayara had trained hard to withstand eight minutes, a full minute longer than Elorna had ever achieved. She loosened one of the straps on her belt and unhooked one of her knives. Giving another powerful kick, she propelled herself down toward the rocks below.
Few had harvested here, and the abalone were thickly clustered. She chose the largest. Gliding toward them, trying not to alarm them and cause them to cling harder, Mayara deftly slid her blade between the sea snail’s muscly foot and the rock. She tucked the creature into a pouch and went for a second one that looked to be the size of her father’s shoe. She could fit only one in each pouch, they were so big. She saved the last pouch for sea urchins, filling it with the spiky creatures, working quickly but smoothly so as not to disturb the water.
She judged she’d reached six minutes.
Her thoughts already felt sluggish. She couldn’t remember why she was here, why she’d decided to gather these poor creatures, or even what they were called. Silver fish flitted past her, and she saw a brilliant purple fish dart into an orange anemone. The colors were vivid and cloudy simultaneously. . . .
It was time to return to the surface. She performed a graceful half-somersault and kicked upward. Behind her, the fish scattered in her wake. She swam up, bending her body fluidly as if she were a dolphin.
Above, she saw a glow—the sun warming the surface, but in the shape of a crescent moon, the fissure she’d dived into. She aimed for it. Her lungs were hurting now, and black spots began to dot her vision. She wondered if she’d miscalculated. She thought she knew exactly what she could handle.
A trickle of fear slid into her.
Ruthlessly, she quenched it. Fear could kill you faster than anything else down here. She had to stay calm, conserve every last molecule of oxygen in her body. She’d reach the surface soon. She hadn’t dived that far.
Had she?
The glow intensified until soon it was all she could see. Her lungs were near bursting . . . and then she burst out of the water. Breathe! She sucked in air, and it hurt as she filled—
She sensed the water spirit in her mind, like a too-sharp tickle inside her skull, only a split second before its jaws clamped onto her leg. It yanked her down before she could finish her breath. Mayara swallowed water instead. Flailing, she fought to reach the surface again. She kicked the spirit, and it released.
Aiming for the glow, she erupted out of the water once more, this time coughing and spitting. She inhaled deeply, banishing the black spots. Her limbs quit trembling.
From the surface, she couldn’t see the water spirit. She knew it was still down there—she felt its nearness clawing at her mind. She couldn’t give it a chance to grab her again.
Inhaling once more, she propelled herself back under. She spun in the water, searching for the spirit, and saw it: vaguely humanlike, it was the size of a two-year-old child but as thin as an old woman who cannot eat anymore. Its skin was gray like a shark’s, and it had three rows of sharp teeth. Its all-black eyes were fixed on Mayara.
Knife out, Mayara kicked her feet, aiming for the spirit even as it swam at her.
I’m chasing death now.
She sliced with her knife, but the spirit pivoted faster than she’d