Celeste's Arc

Chapter 24 of 23

Morning light slid green across the cave pool. Celeste sat with the purple shell horn in her lap. Nyrimia, the mermaid who had killed the wraith and healed Slate, floated near the tunnel's violet mouth. Her chartreuse eyes watched the girl and would not soften. The light down that tunnel had already killed grown men. Their bones still lay inside. Only the horn's song could hold it back. But Celeste had never played a note in her life. "You must play it yourself," Nyrimia said. "The light listens for the tide song. It does not care who carries the horn. It cares who wakes it." Celeste turned the shell in her hands. Its face was pearly, marked with old carved lines like waves. Small holes ran along its side. She lifted it to her lips and blew. A dead whistle came out, flat and ugly. Nothing in the tunnel stirred. "No," Nyrimia said. She glided closer, over the flowered rock at the pool's edge, past the sealed glass jar on its spire. "Not from the chest. From the breath under it. The way you hum when you are afraid and do not know it." Celeste tried again. The note broke. She tried a third time, and her cheeks burned. "I can't. I watched. I never played anything. I watched the sky and the birds. That was my job." Her voice cracked. "I don't know how to make it sing." Nyrimia was quiet. Then she rested one webbed hand on the horn beside Celeste's. "Watching is knowing. You know how the wind bends over a wave before it turns. Blow like that. Long. Then let it fall." Celeste closed her eyes. She thought of birds banking on the wind above her father's boat. She drew a slow breath and let it out steady, then eased it soft at the end. This time the shell answered. One clear note rose and curled through the cave. The violet light in the tunnel shivered. It pulled back from the mouth like water off sand. A path opened in the glow, dark and cold and safe. Celeste lowered the horn, shaking. "It worked." "It worked," Nyrimia said. But she did not smile. "Now you can walk the tunnel and live. That was the last wall between you and the crossing." She looked at the open dark. "Which means I can no longer stop you with danger. Only with truth." Celeste stood. Slate padded to her ankles, ears flat at the tunnel's chill. "Then tell me the price," Celeste said. "You promised. When I was strong enough. I made it sing." Nyrimia's dark lips pressed thin. She drew back into the water. "Yes," she said. "You did. So I will tell you. But not here. The tunnel is open now, and open things listen." She turned toward the deeper pool. "Come. Before your courage cools."