Marina Coralwise's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Marina Coralwise knew the exact spot where the sunken temple opened to the sea. She had known it for three years, since her mother died with her father's name still locked behind her teeth. Now she crouched on a wet rock, watching the water pull back with the tide, and realized she knew nothing at all. Her mother had described a doorway of black stone. But the sea here stretched flat and gray, and every rock looked the same. She pressed a hand to the light green scales climbing her legs. Her mother had pushed those scales into her skin as a gift, a mark of the mermaid blood in her. The proof of her father waited inside that temple. Her mother had left it there, then told someone where. Marina did not know who. She only had the doorway to find, and the doorway would not show itself. The tide dropped lower. Marina waded out, feeling the cold grip her knees. She ran her fingers along the seabed, hunting for a ledge, a carved edge, anything. Nothing. Just sand and slick stone. She had timed this for the lowest water of the month. If the temple hid here, it should have surfaced. It did not. A bird landed on the rock she had left. Its feathers washed in blue, purple, and green, and its yellow eyes glowed like small lamps. It tilted its head at her, then dipped its tiny beak toward the water. Marina had seen the bird before, always near the shallows, always watching. It hopped, then flew a short way and settled again, farther out than she had searched. She followed, because she had nothing better. The bird led her past a cluster of rocks she had ignored for years. Behind them grew a low bush heavy with orange and red fruit, glowing faintly in the fading light. The bird pecked one loose and let it drop. The fruit rolled off a shelf of stone and vanished into a dark gap below the waterline. Marina knelt and reached into the gap. Her fingers touched a smooth edge, carved and straight. She pulled seaweed away and found black stone, cut by hands, not tides. A doorway. Her mother's doorway. She had searched the wrong rocks for three years, standing paces from the truth. Water still filled the opening. She could not enter now. The tide was rising again, sealing the door. But she had it. She marked the spot in her mind, the bush, the rocks, the gap. Then she stood in the dark water and made herself a promise. At the next low tide, she would go in. The bird watched her from the rock, its yellow eyes steady. Marina looked back at it, then at the fruit bush that had betrayed the door. She knew where the temple lay. Now she needed a way to breathe beneath the sea long enough to reach what her mother had hidden.