Nyx foxglove's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Nyx wrapped the star shard in wet kelp and left her greenhouse behind. She could not fight the spirit in the tides. She had to understand it first. She needed the map of the deep water and the truth of the thing that guarded it. Twin black pyramids rose ahead, their gold moons catching the dawn. A stargazer lived here who charted the black sea and the sky above it. Inside the glass wing, a sphynx mermaid bent over a telescope. Nephthys Starweaver did not look up. A star chart hung near her, black etched with gold rings and marks. Between the plants, a skeleton cat lay flat on the warm sand, tail curled. "I need to reach the deep spring," Nyx said. "I need to know where the water runs under the tides. You chart the sea. Do you have the tides?" Nephthys tapped the gold chart. "The pull, yes. Not the bottom." She traced a ring of marks. "The deep water sits here. Under the black sand shelf. The tide covers it twice a day." She looked at Nyx now. "You dug there already." "It nearly drowned me," Nyx said. "Something in the water. Star-flecked. Shaped like a woman with a crown." The skeleton cat lifted her head. Her jaw parted. A low hiss slid out. The air near the glass seemed to thin, as if the light dimmed before it reached her bones. Nephthys went still. "Rue only hisses at bad ones." "What is it?" Nyx asked. "You see spirits. Tell me what it wants." Rue rose on all four legs. Her yellow eyes fixed on the shard in Nyx's kelp. "It guards the spring," Rue said. "Not for hate. For grief." One idea, then she stopped. Nyx crouched to her level. "Grief for what?" "The drowned ones," Rue said. "It holds sailors under the black tide. Alive. It cannot let them go. So it lets no one in." She sniffed the kelp. "You carry its light. A piece of it fell." Nyx unwrapped the shard. The gold caught the lamp. Nephthys drew a sharp breath. "That is not sea gold," Nephthys said. "That fell from the sky." She held it against the chart. The mark on the shard matched a ring near the deep water. "The spirit sits where a star came down. The two are joined." Nyx understood then. The spirit was not simply a guard. It was tied to a fallen star, weighed down by the sailors it could not release. Force would never move it. But a fallen star was something she could return. "Where did this piece fall?" Nyx asked. Nephthys pointed to the ring on the chart, then to the tide line beyond the glass. "There. Where you nearly died." Nyx wrapped the shard again and stood. She had her map now. She had the spirit's wound. The spring was not won by digging but by giving the star back. Now she had to carry it into the water that had almost killed her.