Xadia the axolotl's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Xadia counted five dead fish before breakfast. She dragged their pale bodies to the reef's edge and lined them up, the way her mother once lined up the healthy catch. Once, these waters glowed. The coral pulsed with light. Then the heart-crystal vanished, and the magic drained with it. Now the water grew murkier each day. Xadia knew only one truth: find the crystal, or watch her home die. But she had no idea where it had been lost. She swam home to the pink house that sat half-sunk near the reef. Its warm stucco walls had once faced open air. Now the tide covered its lower windows. Xadia kept her mother's charts inside, rolled and dry behind the wooden door. She unrolled them on the floor and stared. The charts marked currents and trenches. None marked where a crystal might sink. She pressed her webbed hands flat and felt useless. Her cat pawed at the door. The little creature had pink fur streaked with yellow, and she never liked the water rising in the house. She trotted to a loose floor tile and scratched it, meowing. Xadia had scolded her for that habit a hundred times. "Stop," Xadia said. "There's nothing under there." The cat scratched harder. She hooked a claw and pried the tile up. Beneath it lay a small leather journal, swollen with damp. Xadia had never seen it. She lifted it and recognized her mother's handwriting on the first page. She read fast. Her mother had written about the crystal in the weeks before she died. One line stopped Xadia cold. "I carried it north when the sickness spread, to keep it from the raiders. I hid it near the drowned bell." Xadia read it twice. Her mother had not lost the crystal. She had hidden it, on purpose, and told no one. Xadia's hands shook. For months she had drifted with no lead. Now she had a direction and a marker. The drowned bell. She did not know where it stood, but her mother's charts marked the northern trenches. She could start there. She rolled the charts tight and tucked the journal against her chest. The cat wound around her tail, purring now. Xadia scratched behind the yellow-striped ears. "You found it," she said. "You stubborn thing." Then the floor shifted. A low groan rose through the house, and a crack split the wall near the door. Water pushed in fast, cold against her legs. The old house had held for years. It would not hold much longer. Xadia grabbed the journal and the charts and kicked for the door. She broke into open water and looked north. Somewhere out there stood a drowned bell, and a crystal her mother had died protecting. Xadia had her lead at last. She swam toward it, leaving the sinking house behind.