Melissa's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The stone serpent held Yemaya's bone in its throat. Melissa could not smash the stone open. Her curse had made it, but her hands could not free what it swallowed. The cavern would not be hers until the bone came out. Yemaya waited by the water, arms crossed, tide-window closing. Melissa needed someone who could reach the bone without turning to stone. She went back up the slope to Elias at the broken way-station. "I need a diver," she said. "Someone who works by touch, not sight." Elias, safe behind his iron shades, remembered a name. "Kofi. He's blind. He pulls pearls from water no one else will enter." They found Kofi at the shore, standing still in the shallows after a dive. A blind man, salt-crusted, pearls strung at his neck. He turned his head toward Melissa's steps but not her face. "You walk heavy," he said. "You want something from the water." "Inside a stone serpent," Melissa said. "A bone. My eyes turn men to stone. But you don't see me." Kofi was quiet. "Then you can't hurt me." He gathered his line. "A bone in stone. I've felt worse in the dark." At the cavern, Marina Coralline waited beside Yemaya. She was young, robed in coral pink, and she served the sea witch. "He's honest," Marina told Yemaya, a hand on Kofi's arm. "I've watched him dive. He takes only what he's asked." Yemaya said nothing, but she stepped aside. Melissa held out a carved wooden piece. Two hearts, a glowing center, blossoms at the base. "Collateral," she said. "Something that matters to me. Hold it until the bone is out." Yemaya took it and turned it in her hands. "If you fail, I keep it." She closed her fingers. "And the cavern stays closed." Kofi knelt at the stone serpent. He ran his hands along the frozen scales, over the split where pale bone gleamed. "Coral grew here," he said. "The stone is soft where the crack runs." He worked his fingers into the gap. He did not look, because he could not. He listened to the grind of stone and the give of it. Melissa held her breath and kept the locket tight over her eyes. Stone flaked away under his hands. He pushed deeper into the serpent's throat. Then he pulled. The bone came free, gray with dust, small in his palm. He held it up toward the sound of Yemaya's breathing. Yemaya took the bone. She pressed it to her chest. For a moment her hard face broke. "The debt is paid," she said. She returned the carved wooden piece to Melissa. "The cavern is yours. Truly now. No debt, no eyes but yours." Melissa had her home at last, free and clear. But Kofi lingered at the water, listening, and Marina watched him with a look that said the sea witch's tide was not the only thing still open.