Coralline trembled, offended by Altair but unable to deny his logic.
“Stop preaching, Pole Dancer!” Nacre’s tentacles waggled at the greatest speed Coralline had yet seen. “Coralline is not going to turn back now, not when she’s so close to the elixir. You just want to go home because you’ve been useless throughout the Elixir Expedition. Pavonis has led and navigated; I have eavesdropped and orchestrated. What have you contributed to this Elixir Expedition, besides your unsolicited sermons? Nothing, that’s what. Coralline may be too blind to see through your veneer, but I’m not: You just want to return home so you can continue to live your boring little life in your boring little reef, where you can start your boring little family!”
“How dare you, you unbearable wretch!” Altair said, in a voice like a cracking urn. “Coralline may be unable to see through your veneer—your desire to manipulate and control her, just like her mother!”
Coralline shivered. She had heard Nacre rant before—and Pavonis as well—but Altair losing his temper was as unprecedented as her father shouting in anger.
“What do you think, Pavonis, about the idea of my entering the deep sea?” Coralline asked, drawing the lantern toward the line of his mouth.
“I’ll accompany you. Nacre and Altair will not be joining us, thankfully, given their inability to withstand the pressures of the deep—pressures both internal and external. I myself have always dreamt of venturing into the heart of darkness. It will be the height—or rather, the depth—of adventure.”
“You can’t enter the deep sea with me. You’re injured.”
“I’ll be fine by morning.”
“You won’t. I can’t examine you now, in the dark, but I don’t need to be an animal apothecary to know that you must be severely bruised—if not worse. It’ll take at least a few days for the pain to go away, and then at least a couple of weeks after that for a complete recovery.”
“Don’t you understand?” Pavonis said. “Even in the best of circumstances, you can never trust a human. In this human’s case, in particular, I’m willing to bet my snout he’s keeping a secret from us—a secret that would change everything. In the deep sea, if the two of you do find the elixir, he might well kill you for it. He might well take the elixir, transform to a human, and return to land, without anyone being any the wiser. I can protect you, Coralline, as I always have.”
“You have always protected me, it’s true, and I am grateful for it, but I don’t need protection anymore.” Coralline paused, as her statement sank in.
“Stop with the bravado!” Pavonis said. “You do need protection.”
Just a short while ago, the sight of Pavonis arriving at the Telescope Tower had filled Coralline with relief; now, she clenched her hands at her sides and quivered, hurt by his words.
“Let’s all go home, Coralline—” Altair began.
“We will not go home—” Nacre interrupted.
“Stop telling me what to do with my life, all of you!” Coralline bellowed. “I’ll make my own decisions. I wish I hadn’t embarked on this Elixir Expedition with all of you. I’m glad you won’t be with me in the deep sea. Good riddance!”
Holding her lantern high above her head, she rose rapidly up to the guest bedroom, knowing that three sets of eyes stared after her.
21
Abyss
Coralline took her own lantern, and Izar took Venant’s lantern from the side table in the living room. They swept out the window just as rays of dawn were starting to lacerate the waters.
“Do you see them?” Coralline asked.
“Who?”
“Pavonis, Altair, and Nacre.”
Izar cast a glance about the vicinity of the Tower—Pavonis was as difficult to miss as a helicopter; as for the other two, they were, in general, too small for him to notice. Coralline’s eyes scanned the waters thoroughly, her face falling when she failed to locate them.
“I was mean to them last night,” she confessed. “I think they’ve disappeared because they’re upset. I would have liked to apologize to them before leaving, but I can tell they don’t want to talk to me.”
“How can you tell?”
“Altair and Nacre can’t go far alone, given their species. They’re probably watching us as we speak, Altair camouflaged, Nacre hidden in some crevice. Pavonis is probably not far from here either. . . . I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I was awful to Venant; I was awful to them.”
“Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re under a lot of pressure.”
“That doesn’t justify anything.”
“We don’t have to enter the deep sea, you know.”
“Venant said the elixir is in the deep sea,” Coralline said in a mechanical voice. “I must get it to save my brother.”
Izar swallowed his guilt—if not for his oil spill, she would not be in this situation to begin with. When he had awoken this morning, he had found Coralline curled to the other side of the bed like a partially coiled snake. The line of her shoulders, the narrowness of her wrists, even the slant of her chin—everything about her had looked as fragile as china, and he had been loath to wake her up, let alone urge a trek into the darkness. But she’d awoken on her own soon after him and had said they must hurry. Facing away from each other, they had changed under the shifting glow of the luciferin orbs traveling the ceiling. They had turned around to discover that they were both wearing gray—dull attire to match their dull mood.
Now, they proceeded in the direction indicated by Venant last night. They traveled just over the seabed, which sloped downward, then started to plummet as precipitously as a cliff. The level of light began to dissipate abruptly, such that Izar had the sense he was voyaging through angry storm clouds. Having assumed the darkness would commence slowly, he felt thwarted by its rapid approach, as though he was being subject to a sudden burn when he’d registered for a slow flame.
But the burn kept intensifying.
Sheets of blackness folded in all around them. The darkness of the deep sea was not of night but of eternal night, Izar saw, and so it was constituted of a different fabric, like air from a different planet. It was torturous—Izar felt as though he’d blindfolded himself, and, with every flick of his tailfin, the blindfold was growing tighter.
He turned his head toward Coralline. Though he could feel her presence by his side in the ripples of water, he could not see her until he held his luciferin lantern in her direction. He extended his hand toward her, and she extended her hand toward him simultaneously. Their fingers intertwined, and a shiver tingled down his back. He asked himself why he’d kissed her at the Ball. He could think of no answer.
Lights appeared and disappeared all around them like fireflies in a forest. Unlike fireflies, though, these glimmers approached him and Coralline, brushing past their skin and scales. In the darkness, it was impossible to make out the colors and patterns of the animals—only their sparks and silhouettes were visible.
“Why are they approaching us?” Izar asked Coralline.