Coquina's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

The channel narrowed here. The brown water grew clear over pale stones. Coquina swam low, gills sealed with mud, the cub flat against her back. She was gaining on the fisherman. She could feel it. Then the cub's claws dug into her hair. It made a small sharp sound and stared ahead. She stopped and looked. Across the deep channel hung a net. Fine dark rope, weighted low, stretched from bank to bank. Pale flowers dotted the water above it, wide blooms with pearl-speckled petals floating on the surface. They looked harmless. But under them the net waited, and hooks glinted along its edge like teeth. The fisherman had left it to catch her. If she hit it, she was done. He would reach the castle while she tangled and drowned in fresh water. She hovered, breathing slow. The net blocked the only deep path. Above it the water turned shallow and warm, too thin to hide in. She had no way through and no time to find one. "Don't touch the flowers." The voice came from the shadow of the far bank. A mermaid rose from the reeds. His tail shone in soft pastel scales. Blonde dreadlocks hung wet down his back. Blue eyes fixed on the net, not on her. Coquina pulled the cub tight and backed away. "The blooms mark the trip line," he said. "Brush one, the net closes." He swam nearer, calm, keeping low. "He set it wrong, though. Left a gap." "Who are you?" "Cove." He pointed at the net's far corner, near a sunken ledge. "There. The weight slipped off that stone. The hooks ride high. You can pass under." She stared at the gap. It was narrow. One wrong beat of her tail and the hooks would find her. "Why help me?" "You're chasing him." His voice dropped, quiet and flat. "So am I, in a way. He's why I know this water." He looked at her then. "Go slow. Keep your tail down. I'll hold the line off you." Coquina lowered herself to the stones. Cove gripped the net's edge and pulled it taut, away from the gap. The hooks lifted. She slid forward on her belly, the cub pressed flat, her mud-packed gills scraping the ledge. A hook grazed her fin. She held still, then eased past. The gap opened. She swam clear on the far side. Cove let the net fall. It snapped shut behind them with a wet crack. The flowers scattered. He surfaced beside her upstream, breathing hard. "He's half a day ahead. No more." Coquina looked at the closed trap, then at the mermaid who knew every stone of this river. Her only chance had not been lost. It had grown a guide. "Then we don't stop," she said. The cub chirped. The three of them pushed on into the clear deep channel, toward the shell-white castle.