Verse XII

  The Mires. The word had meant nothing to Ardenne when she'd heard it in Baba's chamber. It was one more word in a long day's worth of words unknown to her. The brief explanation Sera had furnished did little to help her understand its meaning. From what was said, it had not sounded much different from the shelf-lands of her home waters, no matter how much distaste the red mer had shown towards it. The next morning, however, Ardenne knew the answer first-hand. They had left Bryndoon that in the late afternoon, slept in a tussock of grass east of the city, and arrived just as the firmament turned its morning silver. Ripples of light flowed across the flats before her, only to be swallowed by the dark browns, greens, and purples.

  The Mires, as she now saw, were a broad stretch of thick mud and slime that had flowed from the heights and down into a natural hollow in the shelf-lands east of Bryndoon. A row of mounts, barely high enough to kiss the firmament at low tide, prevented the mess from continuing into the deeper waters of the abyss. The mud was broken here and there by small patches of grass or kelp, but other than that her eyes could not make out any signs of life. There were no large creatures to be found, and the smaller fishes were hidden in the scant foliage. Sera had told her that things lived in the muck itself, but she couldn't see any of them, either.

  "Understanding why the haggling yesterday?" came Sera's voice from behind her. "And why Baba was willing to give it up?"

  "Yeah..." Ardenne's eyes never left the scene before her. "This will not be easy." Too much open space, she decided. That was the big problem. Along the reef back home there had always been some form of cover in the forms of plume grass, kelp, or sargo. Here, even the few strands of grass wouldn't be enough to hide from a determined predator. "Orcs? Sharks?"

  "Don't stick 'round much in these parts. Get chased off pretty fast."

  "That... does not make me feel any more comfortable."

  The red mer slipped around her side and stuck out an arm with the finger towards the fading distance. "Baba gave a general area to search. Gotta get in and out before any larger beasties notice. Find the package, grab whatever else, get back to collect on it."

  That had been one of the better concessions that Ser had managed to wring out of Baba Rill. The package on its own would pay their way into the palace, and anything beyond that would be traded for credit with the old mer's shop. The two of them had gone over a list of charms, weed poultices, and other odd items, setting prices and deals. Even better, this agreement allowed them to take on some extra muscle.

  "Depths, sis! Would you take a look at that?"

  One of the sisters had just crested the final ridge before the flats. The one with the narrower chin and the pearl in her left ear. Jumilla, thought Ardenne, or Millie. At least she thought that was the right name. She wasn't quite sure yet. The one she'd punched, for certain. It had not been her idea to invite the two of them along, but Sera had made a good argument for it. Looking out upon the Mires, Ardenne had to admit that they could use the extra eyes. And Messra Berenice had recommended them with glowing song.

  "It is very wide," said the other sister.

  "And open." Ardenne turned her head back towards them. "No good places to stop and rest. Or hide."

  Millie settled her flank against the ridge, then pulled away in disgust as the surface slid beneath her weight. "So why would a caravan come this way at all?" she wondered. "Seems a lot of effort for little good."

  "Asked Berenice." Sera was binding her hair back and looking crabby about it. "Caravans out of the Mere Almezzeb use this route, but not often. Only two good reasons: in a hurry or don't want attention. Light floats can clear the heights on the far end and get to Bryndoon without stopping by the port first."

  "Isn't that illegal?" asked Jumie.

  The red mer just shot her a look, as if the answer should be obvious. "Whatever. So, small caravan cuts through here, with a package for Messra Rill, among others. Twelve mers, four floats. Six of them made it out."

  "It's that dangerous?" Ardenne eyed the flats again. Under the brightening light of the firmament, the mud had turned mauve.

  "For a large group, yes. Floats caught the attention of a big school of something. Possibly abominations. Gotta be fast. Now, those way-marks... There." Sera pointed to a rocky outcropping that rose maybe three fathoms above the surrounding muck. "And there." A stand of sickly grass that caught the eyes only because it was a mite darker than the rest of the scenery.

  The first twin, Millie, had a hand shielding her eyes as she peered into the distance. "I'll take your word for it. Not much of anything here, is there. So which are we going for first?"

  "Splitting up, getting both at the same time. You and me, the rocks. Jumie and Ardenne, the grass. No buts," Sera added before the offending word could leave Millie's mouth. "Me and Ardenne have open-water experience. You two have strong arms. That's just how it is." She stared at the twins until both nodded in agreement. "Okay, then. Let's go."

  *

  "Is this really such a good idea?" Ardenne whispered to Sera as the other two cached their gear at the base camp they'd prepared on a modestly clean expanse of bare rock. The four of them had changed into the shabbiest work clothes that Sera could find on short notice. Possibly bought off the rag line of someone's house in Bryndoon. Possibly stolen off that line. The hunter hadn't bothered to ask.

  "Get in, get out, fast as possible. Two groups are better for that."

  "Yeah, I get that. But still..."

  "Gave you the one you didn't assault, didn't I?"

  *

  "Tell me again, sis, why did we say yes to this?" Jumilla was quietly asking of her sister in that same moment.

  "Because we need information, and this Messra Rill seems like a handy mer to know."

  She let out bubbles of annoyance. "Well, when you put it like that..."

  "At least you don't have to go with Ardenne," Jumella pointed out.

  "Messra Chest-Puncher? Yeah, good luck with her."

  *

  The outcropping was larger than she'd thought. Sera realized this as she and Millie approached. They came in low, a few hand-spans above the muck, and their strokes sent up small puffs of silt in their wake. The stones rested in contrast against the deep blue-green of the morning waters, dark in spite of the light filtering down from the firmament. Here and there, patches of barnacles caught the eye with their lighter colors. Her eyes noted spots where nearby rocks had been scraped clean recently. Traces of barnacle were in the midst of being covered by the same muddy tarnish as the rest.

  "I've never seen a place that was so dirty," said Millie softly.

  There was nothing to do but nod at that. She'd heard the tales about this place, and now she was glad to have brought the grubbiest work clothes for everyone. A place like this would ruin any outfit quickly. Or hair. Sera checked the snood on her head, fixing the knots carefully before swimming onward.

  *

  Of all the emotions to flush through the waters of her mind, homesickness was not one that Ardenne would have expected. Yet that was exactly what she was feeling as the two of them approached the muddy patch of plants. The Mere Le?na was lacking in tall grass stands, and the one before her now reminded her of home. At least in spirit.

  The mess of grass and smaller weeds was wide and thick with mud. Parts of the dark green foliage were coated with slime, leaving them brown and sickly. Jumella and Ardenne took a wide current around the patch, watching it warily. The plants had an anchor under all that muck, and the line between grass and mud was as sharp as a knife. If anything from the caravan had fallen into the grass, then it was not obvious from the edges.

  "How are we going to find anything in all of that?" Jumella wondered.

  "If we had twenty mers and some curved shell blades, I'd say to cut it all down," said Ardenne. "As it is, I'm going to have to go in there."

  "You are not serious..."

  "Wish I weren't." Ardenne pulled a handful of greenery from the edge of the patch, separating out the longer blades of grass and cutting them off at the base. "But first, how are you at weaving?"

  Verse XIII

  Rhiela had a headache, and its name was Deirdre min Thesia. Or should that be 'her' name? The headache was not a person, but the object of her frustration had been at one time. The third canto of the Discourses of Deirdre min Thesia slipped from her fingers and joined its forty-nine sisters on the floor beneath her flukes. Each flat, broad scallop shell was covered with the thinly etched letters preferred by the court scribes. She had stared at the lines until they danced before her eyes, but she still could not get what the old philosopher had been writing about.

  "Ahem, 'There is a pleasure in the boundless waters, and rapture in the lonesome reef. There is society, wherein none intrude, and from the depths music beyond belief. I love not my fellow mer the less, but Nature ever more, for these interviews in which I steal from all I may be or have been before. To mingle with Her essence and feel what I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.' Canto forty-three, verse four." The recital finished, Marai opened her eyes and smiled.

  "Why are we even studying this if you have it all memorized already?"

  "Can you tell me what Messra min Thesia meant by it?" Marai countered. After a pause of three beats, the lavender mer continued. "For her, the definition of personality was that which could be identified as personality by another person. She saw personality in everything, for all is a part of the Goddess and the Goddess is a part of all."

  Rhiela retrieved the fallen shell. "So then, why doesn't it sound like the part I'm reading? Er... 'Personality is of the mind, and none can truly know the mind of another. It is the display of personality that defines the person, and the observation of the display that defines her status as a person...

  "...'As the Mother of All is reflected in all, so too does all contain those aspects of the mother such that it is recognizable by all. It is thus that one may recognize herself in the all, and that this commonality of self, while not identical between particulars, may still be defined broadly as the person.'..." Rhiela made a face. "That's twistier than a bore-worm's shell."

  "And yet it means the same thing."

  "Which is?"

  "That Messra min Thesia would have no issues with referring to Tilly the octopus as 'she' or 'her,' and the mitera would have a fit."

  Golden hair went everywhere as the princess shook her head. "But why?"

  "Because Deirdre min Thesia held a very broad definition of what it meant to be a person, while the old dames of the Temple do not? Because all things are equal in the eyes of Cythera, but in practice some things, some people, are more equal than others?" Marai shrugged. "I get the impression that the argument became political at some point in the middle. The last few discourses, the Apologia, were taken from Messra min Thesia's defense at the trial."

  "Did she win?"

  "I suppose so," said Marai. "We're reading her thoughts and positions now. The Temple would have had the shells all smashed ages ago if she had lost."

  The princess chuckled. "Either that, or your mother got her hands on a dark water copy and is hoping that no one realizes."

  "The trial had to be centuries ago," Marai pointed out.

  "More the reason for no one to realize!"

  The lavender mer let loose another flurry of bubbles from her gill slits. "If you say so, Rhiela." She settled down against the wall of the princess's chamber and fidgeted with a matched pair of conch shells. They were a special study of hers, a project she worked on when inspiration took her.

  "Did you ever get those to work?"

  "Um, sort of? I've been following Mother's notes, but you know how she is. The runes line up, but the syntax is broken. I think she's skipping grammatical components at random intervals, to see if I can catch them."

  "It's all gibberish to me."

  "That is because you keep neglecting your studies."

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Shush, Marai."

  Her friend ignored the command and continued. "I think I've got most of it pinned down." Marai held the whorled shells to her lips and murmured. The nacre around the mouths of each conch shimmered slightly.

  Rhiela took one of the conch shells and swam to the other end of the chamber. She held the open end to her ear and waited. An echo welled up from the inner chambers of the shell, a random babble of vibrations that came together to form a whisper: "Hello." The sound curled around the lip of the shell, caressing her ear lightly before fading into the waters.

  She brought the conch to her lips and whispered, "Hello, yourself," in return, making sure that none of the sound slipped past the shell and into the open water. "So I guess it works, then?"

  Marai, now listening carefully to her own shell, nodded. More words flowed delicately from the whorls of Rhiela's conch, tickling her skin. "Do you like it?"

  "Of course I do. These are amazing." The princess had to keep her voice low, but every word vibrated with excitement.

  "They used to be in common use among the mers of Le?siatre, Mother told me."

  "That was a long time ago, Marai."

  "I know. None of them survived the War of the Black Flow. Mother had to reconstruct the rune-work from bits and shards."

  "And then never did a thing with it," Rhiela noted.

  "Well... that's Mother for you." These words were released from the conch in a low hiss that expanded as it slipped into the open water. Rhiela lowered her shell and swam to where her friend floated. The lavender mer was holding the mouth of the conch at eye level, examining it carefully.

  "It's fun," the princess said. "But not so convenient. I can just come over to talk. I don't see what the fuss would be."

  Marai continued her examination of the shell as she said, "It can go a lot farther than across a room. I think. In Le?siatre, these were used to communicate across the city, or maybe even across the breadth of the Mere Le?si."

  There was a thought that caught Rhiela's interest. "So, how far can they go?"

  "Ah..." A thoughtful look took control of her friend's face for a five-beat. "I'm not sure, actually. I didn't see anything to bind the distance in the rune-work or its syntax. So... they work until they do not?"

  "Okay then, let's test them!"

  "What, now?"

  "Sure!" Rhiela flicked the tip of a fluke towards the Discourses, still piled upon the floor. "My head's tired of this, and I need to relax a little before this afternoon's appointment with the mitera. So... let's go!" With that, she clutched the shell to her chest and pushed away with her tail. She was out of the room before Marai could say a word.

  "Oh, Rhiela..." The lavender mer sighed and, with a shake of her head, followed in her friend's wake.

  Verse XIV

  For a place so famous for the hazards of its passage, the Mires were quiet in the morning hours. The light of the firmament had shifted, and by Sera's estimation they were well into the third hour, moving into the noon. The promontory of bald rock in the midst of the muck rested without care for the mers exploring its crevices, and nothing else seemed to be paying attention.

  There were worse ways to spend a morning. Cleaner, for certain, but also worse.

  "This is boring," her companion of the hour complained. Millie and Sera were examining yet another crevice in the rocks, the fourth so far. The promontory shed boulders like a Mezzegheb tent-dancer shed kerchiefs, and the rocks were better at hiding what was under it all. Not one clue, not one piece of fallen gear or shredded float material had been found.

  "Better 'n the alternative," the red mer noted. "Gotta notice the shine 'round the shadow."

  "Huh?"

  "Not a mer what ever died of bored, but plenty what got claimed by excitement's jaws."

  The twin chuckled. "Heh, that sounds like something from one of Granny Liesa's stories."

  "Not familiar with those. Lay one on me."

  "Seriously?"

  "Well, don't shout it or anything," Sera told her. "Just a thing to pass the time."

  After a beat to collect her thoughts, Jumilla began: "Once there was a silly little urchin..."

  The story unfolded as they made their slow, silent strokes around the edge of the boulders. The little urchin was a creature of appetites and very little wit, and Sera had the impression that the character was the butt of many a joke in these stories. For whatever reason, a choice bit of sweet root or a yummy, wriggling worm, the urchin had gotten into a patch of muddy bottom and couldn't work her way out.

  Sera could commiserate with the spiky little idiot, even as she chuckled.

  The urchin's friends all tried to help her, but none could get a good grip because of all the spikes. Finally the clever starfy with her five thick fingers lined with suckers managed to work one through the mud and lift the urchin from below. It took tremendous effort, but the urchin was freed. And what did the silly little thing do?

  She complained. The entire time, she was sitting on a patch of sweet mud left by the roots of the delicious local grass, happily munching along as everyone worked to free her. Now Sera commiserated with the starfy. The spiky little one deserved to get thrown back into her mess.

  "... And so the starfy learned that it doesn't always pay to be nice to some people," Millie finished, to the appreciative chuckles of her companion.

  "Your granny has lots of 'em like that?"

  "Not my granny, exactly. She's more like everyone's granny, back home. And her stories? Dozens, scores, hundreds. I don't know how she remembers them all. I certainly can't recall more than a few favorites well enough to tell them."

  "Did a good 'nough job there." The fifth and sixth crevices had proven fruitless as well, empty and barren. They'd circled almost halfway around the promontory by this point, but with no luck. There couldn't be too many places left to search. Sera hoped they found what they were looking for before anything else found them.

  "Heh, thanks. It actually feels a little strange, telling it to someone who's never heard it before. Seems like everyone back home has heard Granny Liesa's tales, so usually I've got competition to get to the end. Everyone wants to say the last line!"

  "They do, huh? Not too surprised. Mers are like that anywhere. From the Mere Kazahn, right?" she asked. The twins remained a puzzle to solve, and now was as good a time as any to get some answers. "City of Valden?"

  "Er, yes." Millie rolled her shoulders as she stroked along. "Nowhere else to be from, in those waters."

  "Couldn't quite place your accent at first." The red mer gripped the edge of an overhang and pulled herself up without a beat of the tail. There was already enough silt obscuring the waters, and she needed a clear line to see... "Ah, looks like something here."

  "Really?" The twin pulled up beside her to see. Just past the ridge, almost below their very noses, there was a large hollow. Between the blackened rocks, silt and sand had accumulated until a small, even plane of sediment had formed. At one end of the hollow were lodged three floats, ripped and deflated. Tattered edges flapped in the currents.

  "It's about time!" said Millie. She pushed off the ridge and darted towards the wreckage.

  "Hold up!" Sera called as the other mer swept towards the deflated floats. She was a firm believer in knowing the numbers, and something did not add up here. For instance, she knew from Baba Rill that the caravan had lost two floats in the attack. Here, she could see three.

  They all looked the same at first glance; all three sported the same caravan markings. Sera stared harder through the murky waters, and the details came into focus. Caravanners decorated their floats with banded designs. The patches of color were blocky and easy to tell from a distance, while closer in a mer could see the fine curls and paisleys that gave a float's history. The one in the middle matched the patterns of color, but lacked any finer detail.

  Millie could not see so well or so far. That much had been evident from things the mer of Valden had said as they searched. Her eyes did not notice the oddities until she was close enough for the oddity to see her. The thing that was not a float rose up, its colors spreading, thinning across its skin until they were gone.

  The thing had not noticed Sera yet, but that was only because its attention was focused on Millie. The mer was back-stroking as fast as she could manage, but the abomination had the advantage of reach. It was an octopus, mostly. Its thick tentacles stretched without the hindrance of bones within them, and the suckers on their undersides could catch things with nothing more than a passing graze.

  Sera hated octopodes. It was a gut feeling that kept her clinging to the rock ledge as the monster shed the colors of the floats it had mimicked and opened its eyes, each wider than her outstretched hand. Here and there, scales flashed where there should be rubbery flesh, and the way it used several of its tentacles to stand upon the rocks was not natural. With four tentacles pointed down for support and three more reaching for her companion, she had an impressive view of the shark-like maw on its underside. The abomination's first tentacle was rooted just below the mouth, like a thick tongue had been stuck to its chin.

  She tried to keep a critical eye, to decide a plan of attack, but somewhere in the back of her head a voice kept whimpering: Hate octopodes, hate octopodes, hate octopodes...

  The thing made a grab for her new friend before the red mer could make the voice shut up.

  *

  Jumilla gritted her teeth and brought the hammer down onto the broad forehead once more. The heavy stone on its kelpen cable was slow in the water, but once it was moving, it was hard to stop in any manner that did not cause damage to something. This was her third attempt to stop her hammer's fall with the octopus-thing's face, and it had the same reaction as before. The flesh gave way, the skin bending under the impact and the eyes with their strange pupils bulging outwards. And then, the hammer bounced off and the creature's head flowed back to its original, bulbous shape. She could not tell if she'd hurt it or not, but she readied herself for a fourth swing. That persistence was probably what had kept her alive thus far.

  The thing still had a tentacle around her tail, and she could feel it twitch when she hit. With each blow, it loosened its hold, only to tighten back fast before she could slip away. This was getting her nowhere fast, and nowhere was a dangerous place to be.

  And where was her supposed partner during all this?

  *

  Counting the hammer strikes was all well and good, but by now Sera could tell that the thing didn't have a skull for the twin to crack. There had to be a brain in it somewhere, though from the beating its forehead was taking, it was obvious there wasn't anything important to break there.

  Hate octopodes.

  She could have screamed at herself. Would have, if she could get her jaws working right. Twenty years old, well traveled and with more adventures behind her than she would care to admit, and still even little octopodes were hard to face. With the mimic before her, it was all she could do to hold stead against the rocks.

  Hate octopodes.

  As she hesitated, two more tentacles latched onto Millie. The mer flailed and bashed, but without bones to break or organs to rupture, there wasn't much good the hammer could do to the rubbery arms of the abomination.

  "Depths! You gonna help me here?"

  She'd promised Berenice, though. Promised that she'd look out for the two young mers from Valden. That she'd continue a promise that Berenice had made to their mother.

  Hate octopodes...

  But...

  Hate to break promises more.

  Her tail kicked hard and she was launched ahead before the thought finished its float through her mind. In front of her, the monstrous mouth grinned wide, with row after row after depths-damned row of conical teeth mashing against one another. One last thought crossed her mind, one last Hate..., and then she stopped thinking and started acting. Her right hand pulled a knife from its sheath and jammed it into the monster's terrible excuse for a tongue. Her left hand slipped into a pouch and found the last few wads of Ferga's Rest, wrapped in a neat bundle of kelp.

  That was right; she was a big mer now. And what she hated, she dealt with. The mimic's mouth opened wide with pain, giving up its rows of teeth for full display. Wide enough to see past them and into the gullet. More than wide enough for her to shove the entire package of Ferga's Rest right in.

  It was a gamble, she knew, though the paralytic worked on shark and delphin as well as mer. Her arm pulled out right before the jaws clamped down, mashing the purple-veined clay to a thick paste between them. Did it work on abominations, now that was the question.

  The body of the beast flushed with color. Red, pink, blue, yellow, violet in chaotic succession as blooms of pigment erupted across its skin. Millie groaned as the gripping tentacles spasmed and pulled tighter, and then the mer sighed when the abomination went slack. With a slow moan of expended gas bladders, the mimic sank to the cloud of silt and sand.

  Yes, it worked. No telling for how long, though. Sera waved to Jumilla, then pointed at the two floats. It was time to grab and go.

  Verse XV

  Ardenne looked over the stand of grass from an angle she had never before considered: straight down from a height of three fathoms. It did not ripple in the currents, she noticed. The mass of foliage was tangled upon itself, leaves growing into knots that barely swayed under the motion of the water. Here and there were spots where the grass had been damaged recently. The plants were bent over or flattened enough to be noticeable. She and her partner of the moment now floated above the larger of those spots.

  "Are you certain you're all right in the head?" Jumella asked her one last time.

  "Certain. Sera's the crazy one," said Ardenne. She pause, then added, "Though it might be catching."

  The nacre blade of her knife glimmered in her hand. The sharp edge of the shell-work had been good for cutting small clumps of grass along the Grandest Reef, and Ardenne hoped that it would be enough for the job here. A long kelpen cord was tied to her waist at one end, and to her spear at the other. It was fast, crude work that would have left her grandmother clucking in disappointment, but the eight tail-lengths they had strung together would cover the fathoms below with length to spare. With Jumella's hands on the spear, Ardenne would be able to pull out at any time.

  "Hold on tight, please."

  "Like a limpet on a stone."

  With a pivot and a tilt, the hunter dove into the heart of the mess below. It rose up to meet her, to swallow her up.

  In the midst of the green, all Ardenne could see was black. The grass was smothering her. The tangled blades blocked the light of the firmament and the silt lingered in the water, clogging her gills. The hunter had to wipe a hand across them every few beats.

  Grab a handful of grass. Cut it. Discard it. Wipe her neck. Repeat.

  Slowly was she clearing a bald spot in the midst of the green, revealing the mud and stones that anchored its roots. Here and there were scattered trinkets, evidence of mers come and gone. Little of it looked to be the dropped caravan goods. Rather, Ardenne saw decorative shells, clothing clasps, good luck charms and jewelry, even an old knife sticking out of the muck. Its haft was plain and worn; by the color, it was probably bone. She tugged at it. The blade wouldn't be in good shape, but it ought to help.

  It did not want to come out of the mud. She pulled some more, drawing thumb after thumb-length into the open water.

  Not probably, she realized. It was definitely bone. What it was not... It was not a knife, not a spear, not anything else that was made or shaped by the hand of mer. It was just a bone. By the look, it had been a forearm at one time. Recently.

  Ardenne pulled hard on the makeshift rope just as the foliage behind her began to shake.

  *

  "Oh, depths." Jumella blew the words out of her mouth in a stream of bubbles. The kelpen rope had almost jumped out of her arms from the force with which Ardenne had yanked on it. She pulled hand over hand, meeting more resistance than she should have. Her eyes followed the straight line of the rope down. The hunter was hard to see; her clothing and coloration blended so well that it was hard to tell where the mer ended and the grass began. It clung to the mer's body in odd ways.

  Wait. Not clung. Held on.

  *

  Down below, Ardenne did not have the time to scream or swear. If the grass and muck had smothered before, now it was wringing and strangling. Individual blades of grass wrapped her around like ribbons. They came at her from behind and to the left, so her knife hand was still free, but it was all she could do to keep the grass at bay. For every one that she cut, another two seemed to come at her.

  She winced as she sliced through one blade that had found its way to her neck. Her shell-knife drew faint swirls of blood where it passed too close.

  And then, the rope around her waist went slack.

  *

  Jumella may have lacked the special fringed scales of her galda sisters. She could not rise on the thermal currents as they could. However, a life on the spire of Valden had taught her to dive with the best of them. Her eyes might strain to find the details below, but the flow of movement was not so difficult to see. She saw that all the strange grass came from the same direction, saw that it came together in one spot, saw that spot -- and no other -- move with complete disregard to the currents.

  She arched her tail, flipped around, and dove at that spot spear-first.

  *

  The shockwave rocked Ardenne as something large and heavy came to an abrupt stop in the waters nearby. The grass wrapping her flukes, her arms, her neck, all went slack. The foliage fell away by itself.

  "I do not know what I hit, but it must have been important," came Jumella's voice from behind her.

  The hunter turned around to see the big mer yanking on the grass. The plants were not anchored to rocks or muck. Instead, what Jumella pulled loose was a soft body, like a dull brown slug. It was an arm's length from mouth to tail, and grass grew densely from its back. The reef-hunter's spear had pierced it through.

  With blood leaking from a dozen minor cuts and limbs aching from the strain of struggle, Ardenne swam over to Jumella and hugged her with what strength she had left.