Ice Crypt (Mermaids of Eriana Kwai Book 2) Read online

  Tanuu turned the page. The animal skin made no sound beneath the wind.

  I checked compulsively over my shoulder to make sure nothing but waves advanced on the beach. The mist had thickened, shielding my view of the shoreline.

  “The Aanil Uusha made a deal with Eriana. To spare her own life, Eriana agreed to wrest control of the indestructible serpent. She followed its wake in a ship made from the bones of nature’s victims. The beast churned the ocean like a maelstrom, but Eriana’s ship, supported by the spirits of a thousand people and animals, endured.

  “She caught up to the leviathan. As the creature reared an enormous head, preparing to strike from both sky and sea, Eriana shouted a simple command: Stop. The leviathan, for the first time in existence, ceased her attack. She closed her jaw and raised her other head. Four eyes as blue as the sea met Eriana’s. Follow me, she said, and turned her ship homewards. The leviathan obeyed.”

  “I knew it,” I said. “She’s the only—”

  It was their turn to shush me.

  “For three decades,” Tanuu read on, “Eriana lived alone on an island in the Pacific. She guided the serpent in a benign existence, using the beast to turn people away from her home.

  “But the loneliness became too much to bear, so Eriana permitted select ships to disembark on her island. She began life anew with another family, eventually marrying and bearing three children.

  “But attempts to access the island continued, once the world learned of the two-headed serpent. Sailors came from afar to see the beast, to capture or to fight it, and made their home on Eriana Kwai.

  “In time, Eriana was fatally wounded in battle. Knowing she would soon die, she prayed to the Gaela for an indefinite resting place for the serpent, a crypt beneath the island where none would find it. The Gaela answered her prayer and created Eriana’s Crypt. The crypt can be entered only by a fissure in the crust of the earth.”

  “A fissure!” I said. “We have to find a fissure—”

  Annith clapped a hand over my mouth.

  “As Eriana guided the serpent to her crypt, a bush with leaves of coal grew where each drop of its venom fell.

  “But the Aanil Uusha was afraid to lose the only one who could control the leviathan. He did not permit Eriana’s soul to ascend to the stars as a goddess, as the Gaela had intended. Instead, he bound her soul to the serpent. Host to her soul, the otherwise untameable beast could still be controlled by a mortal as long as the spirit of Eriana was a part of it.

  “He granted Eriana the ability to leave the crypt by blood alone. To awaken her, a drop of mortal blood from a descendant of Eriana must be fed to the leviathan’s sleeping jaws. By …”

  Tanuu shuffled the pages, not looking at us. He mumbled to himself, re-checking the pages and their empty reverse sides. His frown deepened with each passing second.

  “What’s wrong?” said Annith and I together.

  “One’s missing,” said Blacktail.

  Tanuu looked up at her, eyebrows knitted. “Yeah.”

  I stood. Had I dropped a page? Or had one slipped out long ago, and was now lying on the ground inside the totem?

  “I have a page left,” said Tanuu, “but the sentences don’t match up.”

  “Read it anyway,” I said.

  “… gains control of the leviathan until death. Control is passed by blood: either to a descendant of one who is in control of the serpent, or one who takes the controller’s life. So it will go, until the leviathan ceases to exist and Eriana’s soul is free to ascend to the stars as the Gaela intended.”

  He placed the pages on his lap with rigid calmness.

  I spun towards the totem poles, but the wind had blown in a blanket of fog and I could no longer see them. My heart pounded. This legend was real—and serious enough that someone had hidden the written evidence. The missing page hardly concerned me. We had the information we needed. The Host was in a crypt somewhere on this island, and we knew how to free it. We needed the blood of Eriana’s descendant. I could do it.

  But according to these pages, the Host of Eriana’s soul was the most dangerous, powerful creature to ever live.

  The gravity of the situation washed over us for a long moment. I crossed my arms. A chill had set in, and the fog brought with it the sharp scent of the ocean. If not for the solid ground beneath my feet, I might have felt like I was back aboard the Bloodhound.

  We were meddling in something much bigger than the fate of Eriana Kwai.

  No matter what was happening with the Massacres, I couldn’t unleash something this dangerous.

  “This isn’t worth it,” I said.

  They looked up. All three bore wide, unfocused gazes that said their minds were reeling as much as mine.

  “We can’t wake a leviathan,” I said. “The leviathan. This legend is beyond us.”

  Tanuu stood. “That’s more reason to do it. If we don’t find the Host, anyone else could.”

  “So let’s burn the pages,” said Annith. “I’m with Meela. Let’s make sure no one ever stumbles on it.”

  “It’s the serpent we gotta destroy, not the pages,” said Tanuu. “And what about the crypt? Someone could still come across that.”

  “No one has, yet,” said Blacktail.

  “That’s not to say they never will,” said Tanuu.

  We stared at each other, the three of us against Tanuu. How was it that he was so willing to press on? Maybe the Massacre had exhausted the supply of hope in us girls.

  He did have a point: even if we destroyed evidence of the legend, the leviathan still existed somewhere, waiting to be found.

  Still, we had no place being the ones who discovered it.

  “How old are these totem poles?” I said.

  Tanuu shrugged. “Couple hundred years, maybe.”

  “This legend is thousands of years old. That means someone found these pages since then, and deemed it dangerous enough not to pursue it. They hid it. They didn’t want anyone to know about it.”

  “They hid it, but they didn’t destroy it,” he said. “Maybe they were too scared to pursue it.”

  “And you’re not scared? Nothing can wound the leviathan … venomous teeth …”

  “Until the leviathan ceases to exist. That means it must be possible to kill it.”

  “That’s probably a metaphor for eternity.”

  Tanuu’s eyebrows pulled down. He leaned against the wall, the stack of parchment in his fist.

  “We keep calling the leviathan it,” he said, “like some soulless thing. But she’s not a thing. She’s the spirit of Eriana. She’s a part of our people, our history, and she’s trapped inside Sisiutl. If you ask me, she needs us.”

  I searched his face. His dark eyes met mine, pleading. He believed it. He believed the goddess of our people was prevented from ascending to the stars to watch over us.

  Did I? Was the spirit of Eriana real, bound inside the leviathan and stuck in her crypt forever?

  If that was true, she did need us. Only her descendants could wake the leviathan. But even then, the legend said Eriana could not ascend to the stars as the Gaela intended until the leviathan ceased to exist. When would that be? How was the death of the indestructible even possible?

  “I don’t think we stumbled on this legend randomly,” said Tanuu. “I think it’s our destiny to use our blood to wake her up. To free Eriana.”

  I rolled my eyes. I’d heard enough about my destiny for one lifetime: my destiny to go on the Massacre, to slaughter mermaids, to avenge my brother, to ally with murderers like Dani. I didn’t believe in destiny anymore.

  “Meela,” said Tanuu. “Remember who you’re doing this for.”

  I turned away so he wouldn’t see my grimace. He was referring to our families, of course, and our people, and all those we’d lost on the Massacres. We needed freedom from Adaro more than ever.

  So did Lysi. So did all the merpeople.

  Yes, this legend was bigger than us. But so was this problem. Could we figh
t the most powerful king of the seas with the most powerful beast ever to live? Should we?

  Annith and Blacktail had said nothing. Were they considering the idea, too?

  “Say I used my blood to do it,” I said. “The leviathan wakes up. I have control. Then Adaro gets here with Lys—with his army … I command the leviathan to kill him, right?”

  I crossed my arms, hunching against the cold. I glanced to Annith, but she had looked away.

  “Then,” said Tanuu, “we make sure it stays under your control until we figure out how to destroy it.”

  I considered him. His face was set. I felt a rush of fondness for him, for believing in this for me.

  “Do you think Adaro knows the part about passing control of the Host by murder?” said Blacktail.

  “Like, does he intend to kill Meela after she frees it?” said Annith.

  I thought I knew enough about Adaro to guess the answer.

  “We’re talking like Meela’s gonna use her blood to free it,” said Tanuu. “You’re sure you’re a descendant, then?”

  “Aren’t I? Aren’t we all?”

  Tanuu shook his head. “My ancestors came from Haida Gwaii, ages back.”

  Annith and Blacktail appeared as unsure as I was. My parents and grandparents had been born here, and as far back as I knew, their parents’ parents had been born here.

  “We still don’t know where the crypt is,” said Annith. “Once we find out whose blood to use, where do we go?”

  “The word crypt makes me think of a burial ground,” said Tanuu. “Maybe it’s beneath the graveyard.”

  Annith pulled a face. “I am not digging around the graveyard, thank you very much.”

  “I doubt it’s there,” said Blacktail. “Eriana guided the serpent to a fissure in the crust of the earth. We shouldn’t start digging randomly.”

  “What if the fissure got covered, or built over top of?” said Annith.

  My heart fluttered. The girls were talking like we were going to do this.

  “The story mentioned a bush with leaves of coal,” I said. “That’s Ravendust, isn’t it? It said the plant grew from the leviathan’s venom while it crossed over the land.”

  “It must have slithered all over the place,” said Annith, “because those bushes grow everywhere.”

  “Are they, though? Are they everywhere, or do they actually form a line from the water to a destination?”

  No one answered.

  “We won’t know until we try and follow them,” I said.

  “From where? Which direction?” said Annith.

  “Skaaw beach,” said Blacktail. “Where Tanuu got attacked by that sea demon. Remember the gap in the lava flow? The bank we climbed up?”

  “Oh!” said Annith.

  I stared in that direction, my line of sight stopped short from the fog. When I thought about it, the lava rock had been parted, like something huge had broken through.

  “Remember all the Ravendust that grew between it?” said Blacktail.

  I thought of the black leaves poking up in the meadow. Was I remembering wrong, or did they form a vague, freckly line across the grass?

  I looked to each of them, finding unmistakable excitement gleaming in their eyes. A smile tugged at my lips, and I let it.

  “One of us is bound to be a descendant, don’t you think?”

  “If not, we’ll ambush someone who is,” said Tanuu.

  “What, and steal their blood?” said Blacktail.

  Tanuu grinned mischievously.

  “Zey vill call us”—he raised an arm across the lower half of his face—“ze vampires of Eriana Kwai.”

  “Genius,” said Blacktail. “Keep the ideas coming.”

  “I’ll ask my parents about my ancestry,” I said. “Blacktail, Annith, you do the same.”

  Something with claws scurried across the other side of the door Annith was leaning against. She screamed, leaping to her feet.

  I glanced around, again failing to see the shoreline through the fog.

  “Yeah, let’s get away from here,” said Blacktail, reading my thoughts.

  Tanuu stuffed the parchment inside his jacket. “Okay if I take this?”

  I shrugged. “You’re the only one who can read it.”

  “I’ll keep it safe. I wanna re-read it a few times and see if I get anything more out of it.”

  As we made for the road, I imagined myself controlling the leviathan. How would it feel to have power over the most fearsome creature to ever exist? I could make it do whatever I wanted. I could kill Adaro, and then ensure no one ever threatened my people again.

  It would be like when Eriana originally had the serpent under her control. We’d be invincible.

  I glanced to the others. They were lost in their own thoughts, watching their feet—all with slight grins.

  I grinned, too. With my friends at my side, I finally felt like we were gaining ground. We knew what the Host was and how to free it—and if the Ravendust bushes didn’t let me down, we’d soon know where it was hiding.

  If Eriana’s Host was ever meant to be freed, we were going to be the ones to do it.

  From the kitchen table, I watched my mother pull a casserole dish from the oven. She placed it on a vaguely circular hot pad I’d knitted in grade five. Her lips puckered in concentration as she sprinkled spices over it.

  I was trying to think of the best way to ask about my ancestry without letting my parents know this was about the Host. Could I ask out of nowhere? Would they wonder where my sudden curiosity came from?

  My father lay sprawled on the couch, reading some newspaper comics that must not have been very funny, because his expression was blank.

  Maybe I could try and segue into it. But how?

  My mother glanced at me, seeming to feel my stare.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  She tasted a piece of whatever was in the dish and glanced back at me.

  “Hungry?”

  “Smells good,” I said.

  I couldn’t think of an appropriate segue. Maybe it would be best to jump into the question.

  My father seemed to detect the weird silence. He lifted his eyes from the newspaper.

  “I was thinking about … our family,” I said to both of them. “Tanuu was talking about his grandparents yesterday and I thought … I never got to meet mine.”

  “You would’ve liked them,” said my father. “Interesting lives. Good people.”

  “Nilus knew my parents,” said my mother. “But only as a child. My mother passed away when he was six. He might not have even remembered …”

  She trailed off, shaking her head. I wondered if the memory of both her son and her parents was too much to think about at once.

  “Tanuu said his great-great-great-grand-somethings came from Haida Gwaii,” I said.

  “Most families migrated a couple hundred years back,” said my father.

  “Did we?”

  He rose from the couch, stretching so I heard his spine crack. “I’ve got a family book somewhere. Let me find it.”

  He shuffled down the hall. I wanted to tell him I didn’t need to see a family book, and I only wanted to know if we were descendants of Eriana, but I held my tongue. That would make it too obvious that I wasn’t just asking on a curious whim.

  From the kitchen, however, my mother’s eyes flicked over me sceptically.

  “Anyo said you were asking all sorts of questions the other day. You’re not still on about that silly legend, are you?”

  I traced my finger along a groove in the wooden table. Why would Anyo tell my parents that? Did my mother read too deeply into our visit at the school, or was Anyo warning my parents about what I was up to?

  “Meela …”

  “No,” I said. “I was only saying hi to Anyo. That’s all.”

  It pained me to pretend I’d given up because the committee had told me off. But now was not the time for stubbornness.

  My mother set three plates o
n the table and sat across from me. Each had a fair portion of meat and carrots in gravy. My mouth watered. With my mother’s garden turning out decent vegetables this summer, dinners since my return had tasted nothing short of fine dining. I’d have to commit this meal to memory and think back to it when we were all living off spruce again in mid-January.

  “Speaking of Tanuu’s family, I got this meat from them, so you can thank them for tonight’s dinner next time you’re there.”

  “I will,” I said, digging in. “This looks amazing.”

  I assumed it was the same mystery meat we’d had at the beach. Bring on the fluffy kittens.

  “How is Tanuu, anyway?”

  Though my mother’s tone was polite, the question irritated me.

  I scrutinised her over my plate. “Fine.”

  “He’s such a nice boy. You know he graduated with honours?”

  I made an indiscernible noise. He’d mentioned it.

  “He’s a catch, Meela. Don’t let go of him. I can see him being a great father one day.”

  My fork slipped from my fingers. It clattered onto my plate then to the floor, taking a carrot with it. I stooped to get it.

  “Mama, please don’t talk to me about this.”

  I plucked a hair from the fallen carrot before eating it.

  “I’m just saying, you’re a grown woman. You’ve dealt with more responsibility than any other girl your age. You deserve to settle down now, and start a life with a man who has a career planned.”

  “Tanuu doesn’t have a career planned. He just graduated.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Sure, he does! His mother says he’s got a talent for carpentry.”

  “I bet he does,” I mumbled through a mouthful, thinking of how easily he’d pieced the deck of the Enticer back together.

  In fact, he’d never mentioned it—but I also hadn’t asked.

  “Anyway,” said my mother. “Now you’re done with all that Massacre business, it’s time for you to start thinking about your future. You’ve had five years of warrior training and no time for much else, which is a real shame.”