Celeste's Arc

Chapter 9 of 23

Celeste sat in the shrine doorway and turned the problem over. The mermaid on the wall held a dragon egg. If a mermaid was real, she could help open the hatch. But Celeste had never seen one. A drawing was not proof. She could not chase a picture forever. By her foot lay a chip of stone with a fan-shaped grain. Petrified palm wood, hard as rock but still shaped like a leaf. She picked it up and rubbed her thumb over the ridges. From the tall palm yesterday, she had seen a strange lagoon far off. Bright water ringed with coral, orange and red and yellow. If mermaids lived anywhere near, they would live in water like that. "A drawing is not a mermaid," Slate said. He watched her pocket the stone. "You could walk all day and find seaweed." "Then we find seaweed." Celeste pulled the compass from her coat. The needle spun in slow circles, useless in the clearing. "But the picture and the lagoon are all I have. I would rather look than wonder." They set off toward the coast. Celeste kept the lagoon's direction fixed in her head and checked the compass often. Near the shrine the needle wandered. Twenty paces out it steadied. Fifty paces on it pointed true again, firm and sure. Each step away calmed it. "Better," she said. "The shrine was scrambling it." "The shrine scrambles more than compasses," Slate muttered, trotting at her heel. The jungle thinned. Sand crept between the roots. Then the trees opened, and Celeste stopped short. The lagoon lay before her, exactly as she had seen from the palm. The water glowed a deep, impossible blue. A ring of coral circled the edge in bright branches, orange and pink fading to pale yellow, each cluster ringed with smooth stones. She had never seen water hold such color. Celeste ran to the shoreline. Shells lay scattered across the wet sand. She knelt and lifted one, a scallop the size of her palm. Its layered ridges fanned out just like the petrified wood in her pocket. She held them side by side. The same shape. The stone leaf and the shell matched, ridge for ridge. "Slate, look." Her voice shook. "The mermaid's wall, the fan on the stone, this shell. Same pattern. This is the place. Something wants me here." Slate sniffed the shell, then the water. His ears flicked forward. His fur settled flat. He did not argue. "Fine," he said quietly. "You were right to come." Celeste scanned the blue water for any shape below the surface. Then she saw it near the far coral. A line of scallop shells lay on the sand in a neat row, spaced by an even hand. No wave stacked shells that way. Someone had placed them. She stood and stared across the lagoon. The mermaid was not a story on a wall. Someone lived here. And they had left her a trail to follow.