Chapter 19

My headache thrums against my skull like a drum. Harder than it is to roll out of bed an additional hour before our set training time. Louder than Nex stumbling down the stairs in the darkened house.

“You need lights in here,” he grumbles as he meets me at the front door.

“I didn’t realize how clumsy you are,” I comment as I open the door. The brisk morning air dampens the throbbing to a softer pulsing. “Do I need to hold your hand lest you trip?” I tease.

The street is still shrouded in inky blue, the buildings creating a dark canyon, and I can still see the mischievous twinkle igniting his eyes.

“Maybe you need to hold my hand regardless.”

My cheeks heat and hopefully he can’t tell. Bantering steeped in mild insults has become a familiar game with him. Yet there are times where I can’t tell if we are playing the same game. Or by the same rules.

The western wind carries the song of pine and soil with it, the ice-touched air only enhancing its potency. It steals the blush from my cheeks. The quiet morning is only interrupted by the sound of steel hitting rock, guiding us to the lake shore.

Nex blows warm air into domed hands. “Explain to me again why we are up this early?”

“If the mountain goats are behaving off, I want to see if the fish are as well. Leil keeps talking about how they’ve been acting strange, so I want to see if it could be related to the tremors. And if we are going to still train before any Scavengers show up, we need to be up earlier,” I explain, stuffing my shivering hands in my pockets.

“But why this early?” he whines, his breath fogging the air in front of him. Instead of continuing down the path towards the Market, we turn off into the fields.

“Because this is when the fish herders start work,” I reply as the lake spans before us. Smudged stars dance in the still water, the sharp clinking sound punctuating our steps. Dark silhouettes move along the barren shoreline, and it doesn’t take long to recognize Leil’s silhouette as the tallest.

Stiff stalks of wheat catch on my legs as we follow the curve of the field, the air growing increasingly more frigid. I rub my arms for warmth, but it hardly makes a difference. The heavy fabric suddenly draped over my shoulders does though.

I turn to Nex, the scratchy fabric of his cloak rubbing against my neck. “I don’t need this,” I state, and I lift my hand to pull it off to return. But Nex’s gloved hand stops mine.

“You’re freezing. Stop lying,” he marks his words with firmness while holding my hand in his gently. “Besides, it’s dark out here. I might slip and fall. I need your hand for support.”

I roll my eyes, the slightest smile appearing on my face. I rip my hand from his, but keep his cloak. The smell of rain caresses my frozen skin.

The crunch of walking through the field turns wet, and we approach Leil as he raises his ax.

“I didn’t know fish herding required an ax,” I announce mine and Nex’s presence.

Leil halts the ax above him and spins around, a broad smile warming the air. “It does when the lake is frozen.” He whips the ax through the air and cuts into the lake.

Oh. It wasn’t steel against rock I heard earlier. It was steel against ice. Flakes of ice splinter to every side.

“The ice doesn’t harm the fish?” Nex asks, walking to the very edge of the ice and peers down.

“Not usually. They’re still able to swim around under the ice,” Leil answers, swinging the ax around another time. The ice groans from each cut.

“So the increase in frost storms hasn’t affected them?” I inquire, joining Nex at the fracturing ice on the other side of Leil.

“Nope.” Another whack. “But is that why you’re up earlier than usual at the tail end of a frost storm? To check on the fish?”

A sheepish chuckle escapes me. “Actually, yes.”

Another swing and the ax finally breaks completely through ice. Leil uses his foot to make a larger hole in the ice.

“Admit it. You just want to see if the fish I named you after is the biggest one.”

I shove him hard enough to bump into Nex. “Shut up and just show us those fish you keep ranting about,” I admonish.

Leil turns to me, but instead of another taunt he raises a brow at me, or rather at the cloak wrapped around my shoulders, but wisely doesn’t comment on it.

“Patience is a fish herder’s friend,” he says cryptically before swinging a sack over his shoulder and wading into the icy water. Lose flakes of ice part for him in the water, all while Leil taps the liquid surface in a decided pattern. The water responds by bubbling. Then more bubbles surround Leil, but he keeps tapping. Soon a ring of constant bubbles forms around him, and Leil pulls the sack off his shoulder.

“You guys have always been better behaved when food is involved,” he chides, then flings a handful of something small into the air. It lands on the surface like a wave of pebbles. The bubbles are replaced with a chaotic scene of water splashing and what I think are translucent fins slapping around.

“It looks like there’s thousands!” Nex exclaims, his eyes as wide is the sinking moon.

Leil laughs at Nex’s astonishment. “They’re just excited. Usually they’ll linger near the bottom of the lake and it’ll take longer for them to find me.”

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“I don’t know why you thought you needed a pet. You have 39 of them,” I mumble to myself, struggling to get a clear view of one entire fish. It truly does look like there are thousands thrashing right beneath the surface. Although I’ve visited Leil at the lakeshore many times, I’ve never been able to see more than colorful shadows in the water.

Leil waves his hands dramatically at me. “I can’t cuddle with a fish, Ryn.”

Nex folds his arms. Even without his cloak, he looks perfectly content in his thin shirt and waistcoat. “How did you get into fish herding?”

Leil throws a wide spray of fish food around him, the splashing and thrashing gobbling any pebbles floating on the surface. “I don’t know how much Ryn has told you, but we’ve lived together since we were 12. Her mother took me in when my family… weren’t able to house me.” There’s a beat. A numb and heavy beat that taps against my heart. Leil clears his throat of the memory. “Herders are charged with a batch of fish eggs on their first day. I remember having little to no idea what to do with them. Ryn, Maven, and I had just finished our general education and I was sort of lost. Ryn was helping her mom in the shop and Maven was on her way to becoming an important scribe. I had no direction, but I knew I wanted to do something. My dad was a fish herder, but I knew nothing about fish. Maybe that’s the point. Growing up with the egg batch you get. I just walked into the Citadel and talked to everyone till I talked to the right person. By the end of the day, I was assigned 55 eggs. Maven helped me find the right books to study how to care for them. Ryn brought me countless meals on the evenings I stayed by the shore to watch them. That’s probably one of the main reasons why I named my fish after them.”

Leil shoots me a quirky smile, then dips his hand into the water, pushing a wave towards shore. Spiked fins as large as my face break the surface, and I catch the glimpse of shimmering vermillion scales as a fish glides through the water in front of me. Its fins are almost as long as its lithe body, but the thin membrane of the fins gives off a pearlescent sheen.

“That one is yours,” Leil nods to me while sprinkling the water’s surface with more feed.

“It’s beautiful,” I marvel at the elegant creature dancing in the water like autumn leaves on wind.

“Indeed,” Nex mumbles beside me, but when I steal a glance at him, he’s not looking at the fish that bears my name.

Leil snorts. “She knows. No need to bloat her ego.”

I can’t tell if he’s referring to the fish or me, so I kick the water with the toe of my boot, sending a spray of water at Leil.

It’s a mistake.

As soon as the water is disturbed, the red-scaled fish’s dance ends, and it carves a straight line through the water. Towards me.

The break in the water reveals the sheer size of the fish, which is at least as large as me. Much larger than I had expected. And I certainly did not expect its jaw to unhinge like a snake’s, revealing rows of silver barbs of teeth the length of my fingers.

Its tail fin flicks the water a heartbeat before it lunges out of it. The fins lining its back and belly flare out. I’m witness to the terrifying sight of the massive creature aiming for me.

I stumble back. A gasp catches in my throat, and my heart seizes. All I see is the silver-pierced maw of a monster.

Then my vision goes black.

Black and maroon.

Nothing crashes into me or swallows me whole. Only Nex pushing me back, his back rigid and his hand gripping my arm, holding me behind him. Something warm coils inside my erratic heart.

I pull my arm out of his hand and step around him, only to find Leil with both hands wrapped a round the tail fins of the fish, dragging it back into the lake.

“You good?” Nex forces out.

I don’t respond. I just watch how the creature writhes in Leil’s strong grip, turning and spinning like it’s trying to get to him.

“What is that thing?” I stutter, my shudder from nothing to do with the cold.

Leil finally manages to wrestle the creature into deeper water before releasing it. But it doesn’t charge Leil or even splash water at him. He turns and slowly wades back towards me and Nex. His hair hangs in wet locks around his face.

“They’re shy but fiercely protective of their herder. Nothing personal,” Leil states with an apologetic look on his wet face.

“I think I just grew an immense amount of respect for you, Leil,” Nex exhales before drawing in a steadying breath. “I thought the fish would be the size of my hand.”

“Small fish wouldn’t yield much if we farmed them. These fish are lake snakes technically, and are great for farming. They’re usually smaller, but through attentive farming they’ve only grown in size.”

“It would’ve been nice had you shared that little piece of information at some point in the entire time you’ve been a fish herder,” I snap, hands firmly planted on my hips, though my knees feel wobbly.

Leil only laughs, tapping the surface of the water again to draw straggling fish — or lake snakes — back to him. I apprehensively watch a blue-scaled lake snake gracefully circling Leil.

“Yeah, but this way was more fun,” he winks at me, and I have to swallow my instinct to throw a rock at him. I don’t want any more lake snakes jumping at me.

Nex’s warm breath suddenly wraps my ear. “Maybe you need to play nice more often,” he drawls, that antagonizing shine in his eyes shifting towards something more suggestive. I elbow him in the ribs.

“What about during the tremors? Do they behave any differently during those?” I redirect and keep an eye on the red scales that’ll sometimes wink at me from the murky water. Every now and then, a larger lake snake with midnight black scales slithers through the throng, prodding at the ones feeding till another retaliates.

“The tremors will stir up the sediment on the bottom of the lake, hiding the fish. So mostly it just makes our jobs harder because we can’t find our herds and they can’t find us.”

“They don’t come when you call?” Nex teases as he folds his arms over his chest.

“I’d like to point out that my herd came when I tapped the water. It takes a lot of practice and trust building for that,” Leil notes proudly while wagging a finger at Nex. Then his finger stops.

“Leil?” I prompt, but his gaze is focused on something behind Nex.

Without another word, he trudges out of the water and walks along the iced shoreline. The crisp wind breathes colors of indigo into the horizon, so I can tell that when Leil sits down on his haunches, he’s staring at a green rim at the edge of the shore.

“What is it?” Nex asks and walks with me over to Leil.

Leil fingers the green line. “I’m… not sure. This is an algae line. Algae usually floats on the surface of the lake and it’ll leave a line when the water levels lower in summer due to evaporation. But it’s spring. The thawing mountain snow should raise the water levels, not lower it enough to leave an algae line.” His hand traces the 6-inch space between the frozen surface of the lake and the dark green algae line.

“It wasn’t there before?” I follow the line with my eyes, and notice it running as far as I can see along the shore into the dull darkness.

Leil shakes his head slowly, his focus still on the line. “No. I haven’t noticed it till right now. And no one else has mentioned anything either.”

“Surely the water level varies every now and then out of season. It’s not a cause for concern?” Nex tries to cushion the tension, but I watch how stiff Leil is. How uncertain he looks. I’ve never seen him like that before. Not since his family was dragged away.

Leil shoots to his feet and ties his sandy hair up. “I need to check the rest of the shore. I’m going to notify the other herders and see if they’ve noticed anything near them. I’ll see you guys later.”

His leather boots leave soupy prints in the shore as he marches away from Nex and I, towards the closest silhouette standing waist-deep in the water.

Nex sighs beside me. “I assume you believe this correlates with the other incidents?”

I don’t look away from Leil’s retreating figure, my eyes narrowing. “Yes. But I don’t know how.”

He sighs. “I think I do.”