Arianna's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Arianna had her face back, but the test came tonight. She climbed to the cave in the purple mountain, where the stream fed the deep pool. The spirit would rise there when the moon filled. She knelt at the water's edge and froze. The pool had dropped. Its surface sat low against the rocks. Somewhere below, water slipped away faster than the stream could fill it. The block she had set on the drain had failed. Too shallow, and the spirit could not reach her. She pressed her hands to the stone bottom and felt it. A gap near the drain pulled at her fingers. Water drained through a crack beside her old plug. The moon was already rising. She had hours, maybe less. She needed to seal the leak and she could not see it under the water. A splash came from the stream mouth. Marius surfaced, dark hair slick, gills working on his cheeks. For six years he had watched her dance from the sea. Now he had followed the stream inland to find her. "The water's leaving," she said. "The drain cracked. I can't find the hole." He dove without a word. His blue tail flashed and vanished under the dropping surface. Arianna waited, hands shaking. When he broke the water again, he held something small in his palm. A seahorse, no bigger than her thumb, with a shimmering rainbow body and a white mane that drifted like smoke. "It lives in the crack," Marius said. "It can seal stone. But it won't move for me." "Why not?" "It answers the sea. Not merfolk." He looked at her. "It might answer you." Arianna understood. She stepped into the cold pool. The water reached her waist. She began to dance. Not the full ritual, just her hands and hips telling the oldest story she knew. The tide coming in. The shore filling. The little seahorse turned its head. Its mane curled toward her. It drifted from Marius's palm and swam down into the crack. She kept dancing. Beneath her feet the floor hummed. The draining stopped. The seahorse pressed its coral-fine body into the gap and the stone closed around it like a plug. Slowly, the water rose. It climbed her waist, her ribs, filling the pool deep enough to hold a spirit. Marius watched her, still as the rock. "You did it." "We did," she said. The pool was ready now. The moon would be full within the hour. But as the water settled, a cold thought cut through her relief. The witch held her true answer. The spirit would ask why she danced. And somewhere in her dark dwelling, the witch could already be speaking that secret into the water, poisoning the one reply that would save her.