Free The Vast and Brutal Sea: A Vicious Deep novel (The Vicious Deep) by Zoraida Cordova

into a run.

Rule number five: Don’t piss off Grumble. I mean Karel.
    As I run back to the village, I notice the soft change in the moons. They do move. Not very far, but a purple light falls over the village, which is as dark as it ever gets down here without being pitch black.
    Leaves crunch hard in front of me and I draw out my dagger. She chuckles in her translucent form.
    “I know you’re there, Yara.”
    I turn, but I don’t know if I’m turning the right way because I can’t see her. Then when I look closely, I see the soft ripple in the air. She blinks her tiger eyes and then shows the rest of herself.
    “Put that away, Land Prince.” She walks ahead of me with her quiver full of arrows and bow around her arm.
    “Do you always walk around here fully loaded?” I jog to keep pace with her.
    She looks at my harness with my dagger in the front and the scepter in the back. “I hope Karel hasn’t made you change your mind.”
    “He’s not that scary.” I shake my head, but I’d be a fool to say Karel doesn’t rattle me. So I’m going to be the fool and not say it, just think it. “I have to go through with this, Yara. My people, the ones here, the ones on the other side, they depend on it.”
    She doesn’t say anything for a long time, just walks alongside me even though I don’t know where I’m going.
    “Why aren’t you as angry as Grumble?” I ask. “I mean Karel.”
    She stops and watches the sky as the purple darkness deepens around us. “I was much younger when we came to the Vale of Tears. I’ve grown up here. It is my home, more than the river I was born in. For Karel, for many of the older generation, it will always be a place of banishment.”
    I think of Coney Island, the beach, Layla sitting on our lifeguard tower with the sun in her wavy hair. No matter where I end up, that will always be my home. The thought of it weighs down on my chest. I breathe fast, like it’s going out of style.
    Something falls from above, right at my feet. I pick up the purple apple and brush the dirt off the skin. Unlike the weeping trees, this one holds its branches up, reaching toward the sky. Its leaves are as dark as the skin of the fruit it gives.
    “The goddess tree,” Yara says. “The only one we’ve found in the Vale.”
    I hold it out to Yara.
    She shakes her head, but I see her body stiffen. “Too sweet for my taste. The kids gobble it up.”
    I hold it closer to me to see if she’ll stop me from eating it.
    “It’s time to eat,” she says, pressing her hand on mine until I lower the fruit from my lips. “You’ll spoil your appetite.”
    I throw the fruit behind me.
    We pass the tent where I’m staying on the outside of the village square, and I’m feeling a little bit better because at least I can trust Yara. There’s a massive fire pit that looks like it gets regular use, and people are surfacing from the river, from tents, hopping out of trees to gather around for dinner. Off to the side there’s a wooden dais that looks like it’s hardly ever been used.
    “This is the town square. We have dinner collectively every night.”
    “Is that like a family tradition?”
    She shakes her head. “To make sure we’re all accounted for.”
    I follow her as she walks past the tent they shoved me into when I first got here. “The tent of the elders. Isi is our leader. Karel and I are in charge of training our children. The Tree Mother is—”
    “The oracle,” I offer. She doesn’t deny it, but she also doesn’t confirm what I’ve said.
    “You don’t look so old,” I joke. “I mean, to be an elder.”
    “You should know better than anyone else how deceptive our exterior is.”
    We walk in silence for a bit, passing eyes that follow us with unabashed curiosity.
    “I feel like I have something on my forehead.”
    She licks her finger and rubs it between my eyebrows. “It’s gone now.”
    “That’s gross.”
    “You asked,” Yara says. “We haven’t had a court visitor