the makara by the jaw. He lifts and pulls, and I push. My scream is a violent echo, scaring away the creatures that were just starting to peek their gills back into the clearing.
My breathing is short and painful. I shake my head against the blurriness clouding my eyes. “What are you doing?”
Kurt has propped the great jaws open. The smell coming out of the creature’s mouth is enough to keep me awake. I turn over, and everything I’ve eaten today comes right out. Every heave worsens the pain in my ribs.
With the careful precision of a dentist, Kurt uses his sword to carve out three of the makara’s teeth.
I spot my dagger and crawl to reach it. I put it safely back in its sheath. Kurt throws a tooth at me, which I barely catch.
“How come you get two?”
“One is for Arion.” He takes my arm and drapes it around his shoulder.
“That’s nice of you.”
“I can be nice.” He wonders at the makara, then turns to me with a cocky grin. “Saved your mer ass, didn’t I?”
I hold on to my side. “Don’t make me laugh—it hurts.”
“Should I take you back to the ship?”
The angry bones in my body protest, but I shake my head. “Let’s keep going.”
We swim south for two miles along the jagged black floor of the sea. There is no life down here, except for patches of seaweed. I have to lean against Kurt for most of it.
Then there it is again. The growl of a makara.
Kurt and I exchange worried glances and float back to back. I can’t see anything other than green water and miles of black rock.
“It’s coming from beneath,” Kurt realizes.
I inch for a few yards along the ground to where it stops at a precipice. Steam rises and I back away from the heat. My heart sinks when I see them deep below against a stream of red rock. Makara, slithering among themselves, feasting on the creatures down there.
I shake my head at Kurt. “It’s a nest.”
“That must’ve been the mother.”
“What do we do?”
“That’s the entrance, Tristan.” Kurt looks up at the surface, then back at me. “That’s the entrance to the oracle’s caves.”
“We can’t just leave these things out here in the open.” I swim up and float over the steaming head of the fissure with my scepter in hand.
“Are you sure?” Kurt says.
I shut out his words. Concentrate on the sound of the makara feasting below. My grandfather put them away once. I can do it again.
The scepter comes to life in my hand, energy winding from right inside me. When I shut my eyes, I have a faint memory. It isn’t mine. It can’t be. It’s the king, raising his hand and aiming it at the ground. When I open my eyes again, I let the power flow from me, through the scepter, and back again, like we’re feeding off each other.
The light shoots straight out, blasting the ground. Stones and boulders rain onto the trembling ocean floor. The fissure collapses on either side, closing the gap until all that’s left is the vibration of the makara demons’ screams.
Kurt shouts into the mess I’ve made. I hold my scepter at arm’s length, soaking up the images that flood from it.
The thing I’m not ready for is the blowback of energy. I can feel it recoiling back into the scepter. The light is blinding, and I know this is going to hurt.
Blue hands me a cup full of a tea that smells like my gym locker that one time I didn’t clean it out between sophomore and junior year.
“Your own scepter did that to you?” Gwen asks.
They’re gathered around me in the captain’s cabin. The winds have returned and Arion’s steering us as fast as he can. Soft rays trickle through mountains of clouds into the square windows. Kurt’s polishing the makara teeth with a black cloth. He stares at them with a happiness I’ve never seen in him.
Note: The way to make Kurt happy is to pit him against ancient sea monsters.
“It was the recoil.” Layla says. “Like when you shoot a gun.”
“I don’t think merpeople use guns.” I set the tea aside, but Blue picks it back up and holds it up to my mouth.
His blue face is scrunched up, lips trembling. “No, Master Tristan. Must drink it all.”
Trying not to gag, I take another gulp. Then another. A sense of calm spreads through my body. The pain from my ribs dulls, replaced by a strange