Page 43 of I Summon the Sea

I try to breathe underwater and choke. My body spasms, trying to expel the water from my lungs. What is going on?

Release me! I’m here. Can you hear me?

But nothing happens, and I sink further down.

By all the Sleeping Gods… This isn’t good. Yet it’s not like I can go back now, is it?

All right.Orientate yourself. Get moving.

Above me, the surface of the sea sparkles and cracks into a glowing checkerboard. Kicking my legs, using my arms todirect myself, I swim up toward it. My dress and the dagger are weighing me down. My chest feels crushed. My lungs are burning by the time I break through the water and suck in a huge breath.

And cough.

Still coughing, I kick my feet and turn in a circle until I see the palace and the platforms floating at the center of the arena. It’s a small makeshift island with structures on it, swaying gently with the waves.

Am I supposed to climb up there? There’s no arrow pointing to say,‘This is the direction of your itinerary. Proceed with confidence.’

What if one just climbed out of the arena altogether?

But when I turn toward the walls connecting the small isles around the arena, I realize how high they are. The slopes of the isles themselves hang over the water, shiny and smooth.

Then I see two people trying to scale them. Bobbing in the sea, treading water, I watch them. They are doing a pretty decent job, obviously experienced in climbing, boosting each other up whenever they falter, finding somehow footholds and handholds and?—

A boom sounds, and they are blown up into the air, tumbling through it and splashing back into the water.

Enchanted barriers.

The water bubbles and fountains up where they’ve fallen. Then crimson spreads in clouds. Sharks?

With a shiver, I start swimming toward the platform island, sweeping the water away from me with my hands, propelling myself with my legs. Water gets into my nose, choking me, and I have to stop and cough it out. It burns my airways and my throat.

As I float, trying to get my breath back, something bumps into me from behind.

Startled, I let out a yelp. Then I hiss when I turn around to find it’s a body. A dead body, floating face-down, half-submerged in the water.

Another body is floating behind it.

Oh, Gods.This… isn’t good, because… Because where there are bodies, there are predators.

Instinctively, I start swimming away, even as I see what’s coming for them. Many things in the sea are carnivorous, and these bodies are a ready meal for them, like the knot of nokke that’s swimming toward the corpses, their equine heads held out of the water, their eyes crimson, and their teeth sharp.

At least these people are already dead, I think.Right?

Next time check, I tell myself.Check they are really dead before you swim away. You’ve spent too much time among finnfolk and their strange, self-absorbed ways.

As if it’s that easy, that simple to find yourself back in the air, back in the world you left behind, after living in the depths for so long.

As if human ways are better.

No human has ever managed what I’m about to attempt. Which is precisely why I’m here. Should I stick around, let the hungry sylphs, nokke, and sharks get me?

No.Can’t afford that. It’s each man and woman for themselves out here, I remind myself as I cut a line toward temporary salvation. Maybe, if I had the advantage I’d expected, but now… Now, I’m no better than them.

The humans seem to have also figured out that the platforms are the answer, and I see many heads bobbing over the gathering waves, going in the same direction.

But a woman screams as something thick and pale wraps around her neck and drags her down. A tentacle? A sea snake?

My heart is banging around inside my chest, echoing inside my head. I need to keep moving, find what it takes to win this game. How to get out of here.

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