Prince of Song & Sea
: Chapter 15

ERIC AND Ariel threw themselves into the rowboat. There was a whine in Eric’s ears, the squeal of a distant storm or swords scraping together. It was high and low at once, audible despite Sauer’s loud questions in his ear.

“What was that?” they asked.

“It was the witch,” Eric said, gripping the side of the boat with aching hands. “She spoke through my mother’s ghost. She threatened Vellona. Said she might get there before me. She’s heading for the bay. We have to beat her.”

She was the curse. She was the storms. She was every pain and trouble that had struck Vellona in the last two decades, and she was heading for his home.

“Great.” Vanni groaned and rowed faster, the oars slapping against the choppy waves. “Did we replace anything useful?”

“More or less,” said Gabriella.

Eric bowed over his legs and took several deep, slow breaths. Ariel gently touched his shoulder, the gesture more question than comfort. He snaked one hand between them and tapped her side. Her fingers curled around his shoulder and then moved to his hair, brushing the wet strands off his forehead. She was real and present and not some trick thought up by the ghosts. No; the witch, not the ghosts.

This was real.

It hadn’t felt like he was being controlled. Good manipulation probably didn’t feel like anything at all, but he remembered the odd haze that had taken him over last time. This time, it had felt natural. The drive to chase his mother’s ghost had felt like him.

And that was terrifying.

“She called me lover boy, of all things,” he said and straightened up. “Why would she do that?”

Gabriella blew him a kiss, and Ariel made a face.

“Get ready for the ropes.” Panting, Vanni pulled them up alongside Siebenhaut. “We can be disgusted once we’re on our way back home.”

Two crew members tossed down the ropes and helped them up. The deck was in calculated disarray, people preparing to leave as fast as possible. Nora was halfway up the main mast, a twin to Sauer’s spyglass in her hands, and the captain darted to her the moment their feet hit the deck. Vanni held Eric and Gabriella back once they were all on deck again.

“What happened?” Vanni asked.

“Nothing much beyond what you saw,” said Eric. “She’s the one behind the storms. Sait and other places are working with her, giving her titles in exchange for magic. She’s been targeting Vellona for years.”

“At least we know for sure now,” muttered Vanni.

Ariel raced passed them to the other side of the ship. Eric slipped away from Vanni and followed her. She was leaning against the rail, ear tilted out of the wind and down toward the sea. Eric stopped beside her.

“What is it?”

Ariel tapped her ear.

“I don’t hear anything,” said Eric. “Hey! Nora, you see or hear anything out there?”

The girl shook her head and pressed the spyglass harder against her face.

Suddenly, something rammed them. The ship rolled dangerously low, people sliding across the deck and water sloshing over them. Ariel latched her arms around Eric, and they slipped down the deck to the rail. Eric could’ve kissed the waves, they were so close. Ariel braced and pointed into the depths. A dark shadow unfurled beneath the ship.

“Sauer!” Eric scrambled up the deck as the ship righted. “Sauer! There’s something beneath us.”

“You don’t say,” they said, dragging crew members to safety. “Brace! Who has it in their sights?”

“Port side,” called Nora. “It’s coming again!”

The ship rocked again, but the blow was weaker. Gabriella and Vanni skidded down the slant of the deck to Eric and passed him a sword. Gabriella offered Ariel a knife. Ariel wrinkled her nose.

Vanni snorted. “Fair point. What are we going to do—stab a whale?”

“No laughing,” muttered Gabriella, “because we’re all about to try shooting something the size of a whale.”

Nora screamed. A slimy, slobbering sound surrounded them. She slid down the ropes, shouting words Eric couldn’t comprehend. Sauer blanched, and a shadow rose up from under the ship. It blotted out the sun and oozed salt water onto the deck, the stench of the deep filling the air. Vanni gagged, and Ariel’s breath escaped in a voiceless shriek. Eric’s eyes finally focused on the writhing silhouette above them.

It was a malformed tentacle made up of eels. Hundreds of them were knotted together in one monstrous mass, the tangles so tight that blood rained. Mouths snapped open and closed every few feet, and a single eel worked its way free of the tentacle and fell, smacking onto the deck next to Vanni.

“I would rather fight a whale,” he mumbled, nudging the thing out of the way.

The tentacle curled over the ship, snapping ropes and ripping away part of the sails, and gripped two of the masts tight. The wood creaked and groaned. The ship stopped turning away from the Isle.

“It’s trying to keep us here,” said Eric.

He leapt forward and sliced at the tentacle. He tore through the yellow belly of one of the eels, and it collapsed to the deck, dead. Gabriella and Vanni moved to help.

“Easier than the ghosts,” Gabriella said, and cut away at a tangle of them.

The knot of three smashed against the deck, and Ariel picked up two by the tails, flinging both back into the sea. Her hands came away covered in a gray, gelatinous slime. All across the deck, people were kicking and throwing eels into the water, shaking the slime from their hands, or cutting away at the large tentacle wrapping from port to starboard.

Eric ran to the port-side rail, and a light caught his eye. Beneath the ship, a spark of electricity flashed from the depths. It jumped from eel to eel and grew in size as it neared the eels on the deck of the ship. Eric stumbled back.

“Get away from it!” he shouted. “Metal down. Quick!”

The crew members attacking the tentacle moved back, and a bolt bright as the sun shot across the eels. It struck the deck with a deafening crack and left a smoldering black spot. More eels tore through the ropes and sails. The ship started turning again.

“Get us out of here,” someone screamed.

More eels fell to the deck and were kicked away by angry crew members.

Electricity gathered across the eels again. A terrible crack split the air, making Eric cover his ears. A new sound rumbled up the hull, putting Eric’s teeth on edge, and suddenly the eels along the tentacle bared their teeth. Eric lunged at it, cutting through one of the small eels. It fell to the deck and snapped at his ankles. He kicked it off the deck.

All around him, people wove in and out of the fight, dodging teeth and tails. Ariel ran back and forth across the deck and threw the untangled eels back into the sea. One hissed at her, and she hissed right back.

“Nora!” Sauer yelled from the wheel. “You know what to—”

“I do not know what to do!” Stabbing into the thin tentacle of eels and clicking teeth, Nora whipped around to them. “No one knows what to do. This is absurd.”

A large eel rose up behind her and bit at her neck. Gabriella grabbed her collar, yanking her back. The pair fell against the rail.

“Are you kidding me?” Gabriella carried an eel and yelped as it shocked her. “Eric, if we survive this, you owe me!”

“Deal.” He helped her cut through the eel’s thick neck.

Vanni hollered from across the deck and wiped the eels’ ooze away from his face. “Figure out how to stop it, Princeling, or forget owing me. I’ll kill you!”

Ariel was the closest to the rail.

“Can you see where it’s coming from?” Eric shouted at her, ducking under a branch of eels. He hacked it free of the main mass.

She swept a puddle of eels and ooze through a scupper hole with her feet and leaned over the rail. She held up one finger, running to the side of the ship the tentacle had come from. She waved him over.

A thick knot of eels twisted beneath the surface near the ship. It extended underneath, completely encircling the hull. Electricity sparked to life right beneath the surface of the water, and two eels as long as horses writhed at the center of the mass. They seemed to control the tentacle, twisting to direct it this way and that. Two pairs of mismatched eyes—one white and one gold—glared up at them.

“Brilliant,” he said, and squeezed her hand. “Gabriella, I need that rifle.”

She passed it down the line of people fighting the eels. The weight was familiar and strange all at once. Eric knew how to shoot, but he didn’t care for it and avoided it when he could. He tried to take aim, and the tentacle whipped to protect the two eels. Ariel picked up his knife and prodded the tentacle aside. Eric took the shot.

It grazed the head of one of the eels, drawing blood as it passed between them. They hissed, and the injured one’s golden eye dimmed to black. They untangled themselves from the knot of eels, and the electricity fizzled out. Without the two leaders, the tentacle of eels fell apart and dropped back into the sea and to the deck. One smacked into Gabriella, and she stumbled to her knees. Eric kicked another off the deck.

Relief, overpowering and exhausting, flooded him, and he dropped the rifle.

“How,” he said breathlessly, “have I survived this long without you?”

Ariel smiled at him. She wiped the leftover ooze from his shoulders and patted his cheek.

“No more deals like this,” one of Sauer’s crew told Nora. “If Sauer gets some high and mighty idea about helping folks with witches again, I’m shoving them overboard and you can be captain.”

Nora saluted them and collapsed onto the deck. “Thank you for your support.”

“I always wanted a funeral at sea,” said Sauer, limping over. “Your Highness, all right?”

“I think?” Eric glanced at Ariel, and she nodded. Gabriella and Vanni looked no worse for wear. The eels still slithering around the deck were too small to do much damage. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s get these eels off my ship first,” Sauer said.

“Come on, eel slayer.” Gabriella used the taffrail to pull herself up and offered a hand to Nora. “To your fee—”

A newly formed tentacle of eels and dying lightning whipped over the rail and grabbed Gabriella. She shrieked and clawed at the eels, but it yanked her over the rail. She vanished. Nora leapt to her feet.

“No!” She dove over the rail and into the sea before anyone could protest.

“Nora!” Sauer threw themself at the rail. “No, no, no.”

Ariel grabbed a rope and tossed it over the side. Vanni came running from across the deck, dragging one of the rope ladders, and he hauled it over, too. It tumbled into the water, hitting the surface where Nora’s entry still bubbled. Neither Nora nor Gabriella emerged.

“I’m going after them,” said Eric.

Sauer toed off their boots. “I’ll get Nora. She shouldn’t be in the water. Not if all that nonsense about the Blood Tide and her mother is true.”

Eric had forgotten about that.

But before either of them could jump, Gabriella and Nora surfaced. Nora was in a panic, flailing in the calming waves. Gabriella drifted away from her and grasped for the ropes without looking, but missed. Nora vanished beneath the surface again.

“What’s happened?” Sauer heaved themself over the rail and started climbing down the ladder. “What happened to Nora?”

“I don’t know,” said Gabriella. She opened her mouth a few times and swallowed. She stared unblinking into the water. “Eric, the eels are gone, but we’ve got another problem.”

Sauer growled, and Eric grabbed their arm.

“Gabriella,” he said, “please explain what’s happening.”

Sauer pulled their arm free and continued down the rope ladder. Nora surfaced again, breathing hard and choking on water.

“She is drowning,” said Sauer. “Help her.”

“I don’t think she could drown if she tried,” said Gabriella.

Sauer smacked the hull of the ship. “Then what’s wrong?”

“This!” Nora leaned back as Gabriella had, but instead of legs kicking up out of the water there was a shimmering dark blue tail.