Free The Woken Gods by Gwenda Bond

eyes as I skirt around the revelers’ disturbing activities on the floor. “Yes,” I hear the woman say, and she adds, “get your blessing.”
    Every muscle in my body wants out of here, to do anything besides take another step closer to the tank. Black water sloshes over the top, and a head three times the size of mine emerges. “ Cooome close to me,” the sage says, in a voice thin as liquid. He has to push back when another sage forces up beside him. “Let us show you truuuth ,” the new one says, and the voice is more feminine. So there are fish- women sages, too.
    I am the center of attention of the revelers, angry at the fact their blessings have stopped, as all seven of the sages mass at this end of the tank. They hiss, coaxing me to come to them and be shown truth.
    “Stop it.” I can’t think of anything else to say.
    They don’t stop. If anything, the order amuses them. Well, maybe it’s amusement. Their reactions are hard to read, their eyes fathomless flat discs in their half-human, half-marine faces.
    “I’m here about my father,” I say.
    “You want to know why he attacked youuu ,” the first sage says, pressed into the corner of the tank by his fellows. “Our cousin Anzu was told to protect your father. You are a threat. He saw youuu as a threat.”
    I swallow. That monster attacked me on Dad’s behalf? “Is my father here?”
    “ Youuu are . ” They chant it.
    The reveler lady pokes my shoulder. “They don’t talk to us. Who are you?” she asks.
    “No one for you to worry about. You can leave me here.”
    The moment I turn from the tank, one of the sages’ tails caresses the bare skin of my neck. Cold, wet, scaly. I dart away, and the hiss-chatter-maybe-laughter gets louder. Bree and Tam are stuck between the rest of the revelers and me. I look at them, and tick my head toward the reveler lady. “You guys go with them. I’ll stay.”
    “She loooves us . ”
    “She’ll stayyy …”
    “The threat will stay foreeever . ”
    “Blessed ones leeeave her…”
    The sing-song hiss makes me nauseous.
    I expect giggles and protests from the dismissed revelers, but the woman bows her head to the sages. The others steeple their hands in a semi-universal gesture of respect as they shuffle back out. The wish of the seven sages is their command.
    But Tam and Bree aren’t going. Of course.
    “All three will see truth.We willshow youuu . ”
    “I just want to see my dad,” I tell them.
    More hissing and, “There’s a price. Truth is the price. Cooome to us . You three. Then we miiight tell.”
    I refuse to ask anyone to do this for me. The pictures Bree made without anything like the sages in front of her are enough to make me regret bringing her here forever. The nightmares she’ll have… And Tam, he doesn’t owe me this.
    But they exchange a look with each other and move to the front of the tank before I can step in. “Don’t–” I start, already too late.
    The laugh-hiss of the sages fills the chamber, two tails swiping down to Bree and Tam’s open mouths, their tongues extended – if not with the abandon of the departed revelers, at least with determination. Both of them close their lips and step back as soon as the tails retract. They clutch each other’s hands.
    “You too or it’s for nothing. Cooome here, daughter. ” I don’t know which ones beckon for me, and it doesn’t matter. Now that Bree and Tam have gone this far, I have no choice.
    The water sloshes as I approach the tank, open my mouth and put out my tongue like when I was tiny and had a sore throat and Mom would use a flashlight to say strep spots or no strep spots. As a tail delicately deposits a drop of foul black water onto my tongue, I hang onto that memory of Mom. I step back and close my eyes. My plan is to try my best to resist whatever the droplet’s supposed to do .
    But the room I’m in… suddenly it’s home. I’m in Dad’s room. I remember coming to myself over the shirt and the money