The entire prologue of my book Sisters of Vipers, which is on sale for only $1 all month long!
The octopus had turned itself gray and wedged itself between two rocks.
At twelve years old, Kelp had the nimblest fingers and thinnest claws out of the sea demons in his pod, but not even he could squeeze deep enough into the crevice to get that octopus.
“Leave it be,” his father said as he slowly swam by.
“Trust me, an octopus isn’t worth losing fingers over.”
“Of course you would say that, you don’t even like octopus.”
“Why would I? Fish taste infinitely better.”
“We have fish every single day!”
“Because they taste better than octopus.”
Kelp hissed. The octopus was watching him, its sideways pupil boring into his own.
“And besides, soon you have to take Mola to land.” Father’s voice became unusually gentle, he knew it was a sensitive subject, as most things relating to adolescence are.
Kelp wanted to groan, but he kept a calm expression and nodded.
Most sea demons gained the ability to turn their tail into a pair of legs at about ten. Kelp couldn’t do it until a few months before his twelfth birthday. He was assured this was normal and that he just needed to give himself time, but he hated how weak it made him feel. All around him, other demons his age were exploring the bright new world of the land, while all his efforts had rewarded him with unusual and painful panging in his muscles.
“I’ll never do it,” he’d lamented. “I’m not strong enough.”
“Calm down.” Mother had said. “You’re almost there.” But he could tell the way he’d said I’m not strong enough nagged at her. Kelp had been born too early, too small. He barely survived infancy. Since all sea demon parents name their babies after an attribute of the child’s, this ordeal had earned him his very name. Kelp. Small and thin, but durable. Flexible. Flourishing, under the right conditions.
Kelp could go on land now, but that place did not hold good things for him.
Due to having just gained the ability to walk, he relied on a stick of driftwood to help him balance like most of his peers. Sometimes, the sea demons would run into humans their age, and that always filled him with shame. The humans, keeping their distance, would run and leap and climb while Kelp dug his stick into the sand and tried to perfect his walking posture. It didn’t help that his sister, Mola, had gained her land form far younger than he had, and was already walking as a toddler, much to the jealousy of both her brothers. Gull, just about a year older than Mola, could still only swim and loudly longed to experience the magical world of land. Kelp wondered if he would look less pathetic while walking now if he had been able to start learning when he was her age.
Mola was a special case, he reminded himself. Mola was a hybrid who had been born on land. Kelp’s pod had found her alone on the beach, just hours old, and claimed her as their own.
Hybrids were half-human, half-demon, and completely unwanted. Most of the time. Kelp didn’t really understand it, and all the adults he’d asked so far said he was too young to know all the details just yet. What he had learned to grasp over the years was this:
In some places, humans and demons were free to intermingle and have as many babies as they wanted. This island, Alapora, was not one of those places. Kelp and his pod migrated with the tides, but they always came back here, and if he hadn’t loved the tropical waters he lived in, he would have believed that to be unfortunate. Humans and demons had once had much more equal standing here, but over the years, they were forced apart. Demons now had free reign in the jungles and the seas, while humans stayed mostly within their own communities they’d carved out of nature. Up until recently, the remaining exception to this had been the Crestwave pod, a pod of sea demons who exerted impressive control over their oceanic territory and even had a home on land where they were seen as equals to some humans. But the last of the Crestwaves had just died last year, and pieces of the newly available territory had been seized by any demons strong and scary enough to claim it for themselves. The fighting amongst the groups was terrible and frightening, and Kelp had heard Songs, whistled underwater messages that travel long distances, about Boulder, a demon who was rising to the top amongst the carnage and seemed primed to seize all of the former Crestwave territory.
And now in the midst of all this, his parents were sending him up to land with his two-year-old sister. Alone. He’d been told time and time again that they were far away enough from the fighting to be safe, but that still guaranteed nothing to him.
But still he went without complaint.
Mola toddled onto the soft pale sand of the shore, already giggling with excitement. Kelp managed to stop her just long enough to pat down his loincloth, made of woven seaweed and excellent for navigating both the land and sea. He then made sure Mola’s own tunic of seaweed was wrapped comfortably around her body. He then righted himself with his stick and they set off.
The sun was low in the sky, but wouldn’t set for a long while. Normally that mattered nothing to a sea demon whose eyes could easily see in the dark, but nighttime emboldened Boulder’s jungle demon allies.
“We won’t be up here long, all right Mola?” He told his sister. “It will be getting dark soon.”
She nodded eagerly, but he doubted she fully understood.
The one benefit that the widespread fear brought was that there were now far fewer people around, so his chances of public humiliation were slimmer.
Kelp took note of a strangely shaped rock formation sticking out of the sand. It was a landmark he could sense by clicking with his Extra Sight to help him find their way back to where they’d come from. He would need to teach Mola how to refine her own abilities soon, she still often whistled and clicked with the obliviousness of an infant despite already being two. Maybe on land he could show her how long to hold your clicks and whistles, how long to wait until they bounced back off of objects and you could see them in your mind.
The duo set off on their walk, one significantly more enthusiastic than the other.
“Kelp!” Mola pointed at the trees in the distance, where the jungle met the shore.
“Kelp! Kelp is over there!”
No Mola, those are trees. Not a kelp forest, a tree forest.”
They’d had this lesson a couple times already. It was common for even sea demons six times Mola’s age to mix up sea things and land things as they learned about the entirely new world, so he wasn’t worried she wasn’t learning or anything.
A bright red bird flew overhead.
“No, bird. Remember, bird.”
“Yes, you remembered! Yay, cloud!”
Mola giggled, and someone else laughed with her.
Mola, still giggling, reached for the air with her chubby hands, smiling at something he couldn’t see. Then there was a flicker of light above her head, and it darted away like the bird Mola had just seen.
Before he could process what just happened, Mola broke into a run, following the light far away from him.
Why was she so fast? Why did he have to be so slow? Why did she have to go and just keep going, seemingly unstopping, for far too long, until she finally ran out of breath at the door of an unfamiliar building by the ocean.
This was no ordinary building. It was massive, and crafted with the same elegance as the temples of worship he saw in human cities when he’d dared to peek over there during his trips to land. But instead of reliefs of gods and ancient warriors, fish and whorling symbols had been carved lovingly into the gray stone. This was unquestionably a place that held its head high, and expected anyone who entered it to do the same.
To his horror, Mola knocked on the door.
“No!” he wheezed. He hobbled up to stand beside her at the doorstep, shielding her a little with his body, ready to apologize to whatever rightfully annoyed human would open the door. No human wanted a demon on their doorstep around these parts.
Kelp had seen a lot of humans, usually from a distance. He had never really gotten that close to most of them. So he was not exactly a human expert. But he was fairly certain a human was not supposed to look like the person standing in front of them.
She was human-shaped, with the standard arms and legs and torso and all that, but her skin was as translucent as a jellyfish. She wore pale clothing and her dark (but still translucent) hair was in a long braid down her back.
“Name?” she asked politely.
“Uh.” Kelp swallowed hard, barely able to think through his shock. “Kelp?”
“If it is your name, why do you sound so unsure of it?” she asked teasingly.
She cut him off by laughing. “I’m just joking. I just like to pretend, to toy with our guests sometimes, I like seeing their faces. Come in, come in.”
Helpless, as if he was pulled by a riptide, Kelp and Mola followed the woman inside.
The hallway was decorated minimally, with only a few elegant carvings here and there.
“I-I’m not sure we’re actually guests.” Kelp spluttered. “We weren’t invited.”
“No one needs an invitation to one of these parties.” she said, smiling.
“Yeah!” Mola said in agreement.
“Why did you come through the human entrance?” the woman asked. “We do have a special underwater gateway for sea demons, you know.”
“You do? Oh, we came because my sister ran to the door and knocked. I was- we were sent on land for unsupervised walking practice.” Why am I telling her this?
The long hallway the woman was leading them down was coming to an end. The chatter and laughs of a party were growing louder and louder.
“Here we are.” the woman said.
He was standing in the biggest room he’d ever been in in his life. The walls were inlaid with carvings of silver fish, gold had been put into the walls, and gemstones twinkled from the eyes of the carvings. In the center was a pool of water, the underwater entrance the woman had mentioned. At the furthest wall of the room, a staircase led up, up, and up. Kelp had never seen a staircase in real life before, only in his father’s stories of how people lived on land.
I did it, Father. I actually saw a real staircase. For a split second, all his pain and exhaustion disappeared, and he was filled with pride at the story he’d tell his parents.
“Oh!” an unfamiliar voice cried. “There are some new guests I haven’t greeted, one moment.”
Before Kelp processed what was happening, a shirtless young man as translucent as the woman had walked up to him, grinning. He wore a white cloth around his waist, and his long hair flowed freely down his shoulders.
“Oh! Uh, hello. I’m Kelp.”
“Good evening Kelp. Welcome to the Crestwave Manor. Unfortunately, our hosts are a little busy at the moment, and I have been given the task of greeting people in their stead. Is there anything you need?”
“Somewhere to sit would be nice.” he admitted sheepishly. I’ve never walked this far in my life, I think, and I hope he can’t tell-wait, did he say Crestwave Manor? As in the Crestwave Manor? Am I really in the headquarters sought after by some of the most terrifying barbarians in the land, surrounded by ghosts?
His heart began to pound, and his steps were shaky as he was politely led over to a waiting empty mat to sit on. Despite his apprehension, he lowered himself into it gratefully out of necessity. His legs hurt in ways he didn’t know were possible. And if I need to make a run for it, I need my strength. He sighed. Stupidly, he hoped that no one would offer him something to drink. Sea demons could not drink liquids, they got all their hydration from the food they ate. He didn’t know what would happen if he choked to death on a ghost drink at a ghost party he wasn’t even supposed to be at.
“You look exhausted,” the translucent man noted, concerned. “Do you want to hear a joke? You look to be in dire need of a joke.”
“...will saying no get me killed?”
“Not unless you die of laughter!”
That got some laughs out of some nearby creatures who overheard. So much for thinking I wouldn’t get publicly humiliated today.
Kelp swallowed, licking his dry lips and looking around. He wondered if he seemed as monstrous to these beings as they looked to him.
He was an adolescent sea demon, so he was already taller than most humans by at least a head. His own head had short black hair more comparable to fur. His eyes were almost nothing but black, and he had to stretch them very wide for anyone to see the whites. His nostrils were two slits in his face above his nearly lipless mouth, and they both opened and closed very tightly to prevent water from entering them while swimming. His mouth was full of sharp yellow teeth, and the voice that came out of it was high and raspy like all sea demons, sometimes sounding as if it was being forced in hard bursts out of his throat. His skin was gray and often a bit slimy, and he had whorling dark markings and some scars branching over his torso. His only item of clothing was the seaweed loincloth wrapped around his hips.
But no one seemed afraid in the slightest.
Maybe it’s because I hobbled in here with a walking stick and a toddler. If they saw me at my full strength, they’d really be scared.
The host who’d helped him to the seat was still hovering very close by, seemingly distracted.
The man winced a little. Kelp didn’t know why. “Yes?”
“I don’t want to hear a joke, but I’d like to hear some answers. Who are you? What are you? And who are all these people? And why are none of you afraid of Boulder?” his voice rose unintentionally. “I’m sorry if I sound rude, I’m just so confused-”
“Oh.” the man blinked, looking almost as confused as Kelp was. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I thought you knew. I should’ve guessed by your expression-” he cleared his throat. “Well, Kelp, this manor was the ancestral home of the great Crestwave pod, and I-we-” he gestured to the crowd. “Are now ancestors ourselves. We come back here once a year for a night of revelry. The reason we do not fear Boulder is because he and his cohorts fear the likes of us. Ha!”
Kelp was going to pass out. From both fear of spirits and Boulder, and the realization that he’d walked further than he ever had in his life and was now exhausted.
“Easy, easy. Have you never seen a ghost before? I can assure you we are not dangerous in the slightest-”
He had not. They did have ghosts in the sea, jellyfish-like wraiths that could not be sensed by clicking and only seen far under the water. But just because he knew they were out there didn’t mean he’d ever expected to be invited to one of their parties. What-
It’s the Night of Spirits. Exhaustion had made him foolish and uncaring. He had forgotten that tonight was the famous Alaporan celebration of the Night of Spirits, when the spirits of the dead walked among the living for a night and a day. Or was it a day and a night? No matter, it was all the same difference in the end. Ghosts could interact with the living outside of dreams right now, that was all he cared about. Being demons, his pod worshiped nothing but the tides and the sea they lived in, and performed no rituals but celebrations around birth and death. He barely ever thought about the Night of Spirits or other goings-on of the land people. But up until now, his closest exposure to the Night of Spirits had been watching people performing ceremonies on boats and beaches from afar, rituals meant to guide the souls of those who had died at sea back to land. He heard they worked most of the time. Sometimes they didn’t. He looked around, wondering if any of the ghosts before him had been brought home by that very ritual, and how it would feel to die so lost and far away from your natural habitat, and how he might learn what that felt like himself if something went wrong tonight-
The man was still trying to talk to him, but he had stopped listening. The man was swiftly quieted by a woman’s voice saying: I think he needs a moment.
“Yes, I just- Mola. My sister. Where’s my sister?”
“She’s in good hands with the mothers.” the woman assured him, at the same time the man said:
“Your sister?” in an inquisitive tone.
“Where is she?” Kelp asked again, looking around frantically. He saw Mola standing, babbling contentedly to a circle of women who were fawning over her. Some of the women had swollen bellies, others were clutching small ghostly children of their own to their breasts. Kelp suddenly remembered the tale of his own premature birth and his world swayed a little as he realized he and his sister could’ve ended up ghost babies themselves.
“You said that girl is your sister?” the young man asked again.
“Would you happen to know if she was found? Alone? With no adults in sight?”
Kelp nodded, just barely. His head was wobbling with the weight of all these strange events and he feared it may fall off if he moved it too much.
The man paused, mulling over this information. He looked the most serious Kelp had seen him so far. One of the women scooped Mola up and gave her a kiss on the cheek. Mola giggled.
“So, are you going to explain, or are you just going to keep staring pensively off into the distance?”
Now it was Kelp’s turn to make the man laugh, even though he hadn’t intended to be funny.
“I think I’m going to keep staring pensively off into the distance. You’ve given me a lot to think about, Kelp.”
“I’ve given you a lot to think about? I’m talking to a ghost in the Crestwave Manor who knows things about my baby sister’s birth family!”
“There’s no need for this to be a fight, Kelp.”
“I’m not trying to fight you, I’m just-shocked.” he deflated a little.
“As you have the right to be.” the man said heavily. “I’m sorry, Kelp. I didn’t mean to distress you so much. There’s just- there are many things you don’t know.”
“That’s obvious. And it would be really helpful if you could at least give me a hint about what I’m missing here.”
The man sighed, seeming to get aggrieved in earnest now. “As much as I’d love to tell you, it would involve a lot of painful memories for myself and many of us here. And I’m just not sure now is a good time.”
“Well, when is a good time?”
“And your sister, how old is she?”
“Hmm. All right then, I shall tell you the truth in ten years’ time.”
“Ten years? Wait, are you joking?”
“I am not. You said you did not want jokes, you wanted answers. So I’m giving you the best answer I can right now. On this date, 1-...” he trailed off at the look on Kelp’s face. “Right. Sea demons keep their time through the movement of the water and moon. What is it now?”
“Full moon, low tide, the fifteenth day of the ninth tidal cycle of the year, thirteen-hundred and sixty-seven.”
“All right then, on the fifteenth day of the ninth tidal cycle of the year thirteen-hundred seventy-seven, come here. Do not come without Mola present, it is her truth after all.”
“All right. Is that all I have to do?”
“Do we have an agreement, Kelp?”
That doesn’t sound so bad.
“What if I can’t make it? What if something happens and I can only come in eleven years? Or twenty?”
“That is fine. I can wait.”
“How am I going to find you if I don’t even know your name?”
“I forgot to tell you my name?” the man smacked himself on the forehead. “I am Matlaihutl.”
“Matlaihutl.” Kelp tried out the name in his own mouth. It came out with clunky syllables, a drawn-out airy M and an odd emphasis on the hutl, the result of his demonic voice. He felt ashamed of not being able to capture the true musicality of Matlaihutl’s name, but the man himself did not seem offended in the slightest.
“Now, do we have an agreement, Kelp?”
Kelp had once swum by an underwater ravine. He had hovered over it, marveling at how if he wanted to, he could swim in it, going down, down, down...
In that moment, he was unnervingly aware of just how deep the ocean was, and how not even the oldest and wisest of sea demons in all existence knew all of its secrets.
This was how he felt now. He was floating almost powerlessly over a sea of secrets, terrifying in their incomprehensibility.
Matlaihuitl’s eyes were almost as dark as the depths of that water. And the look in them was calm. Patient. He would wait for Kelp’s reply.
Kelp did what anyone preparing to take a deep dive would do and took a very deep breath.
“Excellent!” Matlaihuitl was jovial again, but there was now something heavier in his eyes that Kelp could not quite place. He was now burdened somehow. They both were.
But the celebration around them had resumed, so soon the atmosphere felt so light and gleeful that secretive promises and hidden truths hardly seemed to matter. At some point Matlaihutl even picked him up and spun him around as they both laughed and laughed and laughed...
Kelp didn’t know how he made it back home. One minute he was laughing with the ghost man, the next he was floating, gratefully back in sea form, blearily rubbing his eyes while his father shrieked.
“What could you possibly have been doing up there? You were gone for hours! I searched and searched but couldn’t find you, and your sister was crying from exhaustion by the time you finally staggered your sorry self back to the water. Oh, and might I add that you were leaning on the arm of a stranger? A strange creepy looking human-like man?! And when I clicked at him, I couldn’t sense him?” he shouted as if it was Kelp’s fault. “There was just nothing-poof! Like he was made of thin air and my sounds couldn’t bounce off of him. And yet you were holding onto his arm!
“Yes! Your mother said it was probably fine but how could she say that? I mean, he was more of a boy than a man really, but still! He didn’t even tell me his name!”
“Good to know. Him and I will be having some very strong words about what my son is and isn’t allowed to do on land, especially with invisible, formless, men-!”
“Quiet, you don’t want to wake up Mola and Gull.”
“Her and your mother are floating above the water right now so it’s easier for Mola to breathe.” Kelp’s father sighed in a cloud of bubbles. “I don’t-I can’t-what-just, come here, Kelp.”
Kelp swam into his father’s arms and gratefully accepted his hug. He needed something to help him feel tethered to reality right now.
“I just want to know that you’re safe. That’s all I want.” his father whispered.
“I don’t think I was in any danger up there.” he whispered.
“I’ll tell you all about what happened. But right now, I just want to sleep.”
“Want to sleep holding onto me like the old times?” very small sea demons hung onto the arms of their parents while they slept so they wouldn't float away.
“...maybe. Yes. I don’t want to feel alone.”
Father flipped onto his back, and Kelp held onto the crook of his arm and closed his eyes. That night, and for many more nights to come, he would dream of laughing ghosts in a grand house.
