scepter. The tunnel is gray stone, glistening where light hits. Maybe it’s the plummeting darkness. Maybe it’s the pressure of being down here. Maybe it’s just my nerves, the idea that Nieve and Archer are on the other end of this tunnel. But there’s an acrid taste on my tongue.
Something hits my shoulder. Then more and more, fish swimming against our current. Only, they’re not swimming. They’re dead. Pale and gray, fleshy mouths wide open. There’s a faint taste of sulfur and minerals in the water.
And with one forceful push, the current turns, like someone pulled the drain stopper out of the sink, and we’ve got nowhere to go but down.
•••
I spit out the water in my mouth. It tastes like rocks. Not that I’ve licked a lot of rocks. My head throbs right where I’ve landed on long, wet grass. My tail licks at the air, and I lie back and grip the ground, concentrating on the half shift and bracing for the tear of my legs.
I roll out my ankles. Crack my knees. When I stand, my legs give out. “Holy leg cramp.”
On my knees, I look up. I don’t see the tunnel we came out of. It’s like the air just opened up and dumped us here. But at least there is sky. Lots of it. Stars move like a mobile against a dark blue night that fades to the sun hanging low. It doesn’t seem to be moving, just hovering and tainting the horizon with pinks and yellow.
“How are we under the sky?” I hold out a hand to help the girls stand.
“It’s Eternity.” Kai dusts ash from her elbow. “It is its own world.”
Gwen bends back, cracking her bones. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
We’re surrounded by a bright green field. The grass blows in a breeze that is refreshing on our wet skins. I take a step forward, disturbing the grass. Fat butterflies with glowing wings scatter. The change inside me is instant. The pain in my ribs vanishes. I close my eyes and inhale the happiness of sun on slick tanning oil, blue skies and cool sand, the warmth of a kiss. “Wow. Do you smell that?”
“I don’t smell anything,” Gwen says. “Except for wilting grass.”
Kai leans her face to the sky, which feels like it’s moved closer to us. “I smell parchment. And squid ink. I used to get it all over my hands. And the sweet crab cakes my mom used to make.”
“Look.” In the distance, there’s a great big tree with gnarly branches atop a hill.
A bird with a white beak and red feathers flies past us. He lands on a stone smack in the middle of a dried stream. He pecks at the water and tiny glowing things that float like pollen.
“The stream leads to the tree,” Kai says.
“Is it supposed to be this…dry?” I pull a blade of grass and it turns to ash in my palm.
Gwen bends back down to the earth. The patch where we fell is losing color, yellowing under cracked dirt. The ashen earth breaks away in her fingertips. “There is a pulse here. It’s faint.”
“Hurry,” I say, pointing forward with my scepter. We follow the stream toward the tree. The dribble of a stream washes over mossy stones. The animals here are tiny. I can’t imagine it would be able to support anything else. I try to picture the stream full to the brim, the grass bright and blue, and mermaids swimming and lying on the banks. I try to imagine living here forever.
When we reach the tree, the sun is still in the same place over the horizon. The tree is as tall as the sky, branches yawning and shuddering back into place. Leaves fall all around us, on the grass, in the spring nestled at the roots of the tree.
“I’m pretty sure I can make a fort under here.” I pat the fat arched roots of the tree. A piece of bark comes away like a scab. I try to put it back into place, but then I just let it drop into the water.
Tiny animals emerge from the insides of the tree. They’re all glowing from the inside out. Ladybugs and dragonflies. Tiny translucent frogs hop from roots to toadstools. One frog shoots out a neon green tongue and catches a dragonfly twice its size. The bug seizes inside the frog and lights up its belly.
“Why aren’t there any big animals?” I ask.
Kai shrugs, stumped for the first time. Her sad