The stench of fish dragged Elias out of sleep.
He grimaced before his eyes even opened, the awfulness of brine thick enough to taste, coating the back of his throat like his own spit. Late afternoon light bled through the cracks in the hull. He'd done it again. Another day swallowed whole, same as yesterday, same as the entire month before that.
He almost closed his eyes again.
Until he felt the force of an earthquake. Elias was on a ship.
Right.
He'd even slept through his thirteenth 'birthday', on this damned ship weeks ago. But who would sleep away their last day alive? The crew had barely driven them off yesterday — the smaller, weaker beasts and they had nearly broken the ship open. This morning the hull had crossed into the feeding grounds. The small army stationed specifically to protect the migration had almost not been enough for the adolescents.
And here would be more young adults rather than adolescents.
Knowing this, the crew was still fishing.
So lazy!
It was nothing short of lazy, prideful, but lazy at the root.
It was always seafood.
Elias stood back up, staring off through the gap in the door. The water rocked the ship side to side beneath his feet, Elias struggled to catch his balance after one such beast had slammed into the ship. The ceiling of the communals felt closer than he remembered. Chances were he'd grown. The beams overhead were dark wood, water-stained and warped from decades of humid air rolling in off the ship. Someone had carved initials into one of them.
D.L. + T.M., surrounded by a lopsided heart. Elias didn't know who either of those people were. He could hear movement outside. Loud yelling as well as the shuffle of feet, the creak of cart wheels and cannons. The entire ship was a proper mess.
Elias wished he could have experienced the meat of a bird. like the many generations before his own, told in the tales of old time, or like the Kadesh Tribes. No maybe that was too far, Elias wanted nothing to do with them.
BOOM!
Elias flinched as the cannon fire rattled the floorboards of the communal room. A second later, the ship lurched, the wood groaning as if the river itself had decided to take a bite out of the hull. He pressed his face against the small, reinforced porthole. Outside, two Water-Evolved crewmen blurred past, diving into the churning gray water with their translucent weapons drawn.
Elias pulled back, his heart hammering against his ribs. He knew the drill. If he stepped out of that room, a frantic boatswain would shove a harpoon into his hands and tell him to earn his keep. He'd be expected to stand on the edge and poke at nightmares.
Like I could fight those things, he scoffed, though the bitter taste of envy rose in his throat. He wished he had their webbed skin, their cold eyes, their strength. But then his mind took a sharp, traitorous turn. Did he even want to kill them? They were just like him—caught in the current, driven by force they didn't choose to embody.
Another violent jerk nearly threw him from his feet. The ship wasn't just rocking; it was tilting.
He couldn't see the beast, but he knew the "Riptide" phase when he felt it. A teen Slipkin was beneath them. It wasn't the steady, ignorable power they'd experienced this entire trip though; it was something worse—erratic, playful, and cruel. He felt the gravity of the water shift. The river wasn't just flowing around the ship anymore; it was controlling the ship.
The floor beneath his boots suddenly became a thirty-degree slope. The small group of orca were cycling in a tight 'U' beneath the hull. Trying to dump the Regulars into the drink like salt from a shaker. Elias scrambled for a handhold as he heard a high-pitched, metallic hiss—the sound of the beast's blowhole firing a pressure bullet. A jet of water, pressurized enough to shear through solid oak, punched through the deck boards three feet from his door. After maybe a half-hour it stopped.
The ship moved steadily, cutting through the water with a low, rhythmic creak. The wind was mild. The sky stayed the same sour-milk color, low and oppressive. Some of the kids started to relax. With no attacks happening at the moment, they began to talk, tension eased off the ship.
Only one evolved was lost, and five 'heroic' regulars were lost to the small pack of slipkin
Looking out into the vast sea, Elias watched as a falcon landed on the thick silver railing of the deck as if he felt Elias' thoughts, and wanted to mock him. The vile birds, those scavengers were no more than thieves. The black overcoat and white undering of feathers was known to all as the only animal to be noticed, and cursed by our deadbeat god. and the mark of that curse, the odd scarring that looked like a backwards R was branded, burned underneath each of the vile bird's right eye made them even more loathsome, ugly. People didn't like ugly things, and Elias was no different. He wondered if his emotions would sully the enjoyable flavor he expected a falcon to have. He was sure they at least were delicious.
Elias kept his eyes on the water. The wake spread out behind the ship in a pale V, foam curling at the edges before dissolving back into the dark. It wasn't that he disliked the others. He was just shy. No one had approached him, and he didn't have the guts to walk up to kids he barely knew and start talking.
Well, he did know some of them. They were all from his Isle two age group, after all. But something about the crossing made them all feel like strangers. Maybe it was the growth coming. The change. Maybe it was the fact that Elias didn't have friends to huddle with like everyone else did. Or maybe it was simpler than that.
Maybe it was because this felt like being escorted to his death.
Deep down, he knew they were only trying to help. Trying to save the regulars from themselves.
But it still felt how it felt.
One of the Evolved crew—a young man, maybe in his twenties, with smooth blue-gray skin and gills that fluttered when he breathed—walked past. He had a coil of rope over his shoulder, and he moved with that weightless grace they all had.
He glanced at Elias, then away. Didn't say anything.
Elias watched him go.
There was the reason he felt so– forced in all this.
The Water-Evolved were overwhelmingly superior. A teenage evolved had twice the fast-twitch muscle fibers of an adult regular in their prime. They weren't just stronger. They were faster, more agile, more explosive. Their raw strength might've tested similar on paper, but in practice? The force they could generate wasn't even close.
Elias was nothing in comparison.
He looked down at his hands. Thin. Bony. The knuckles too pronounced, the skin rough from scrubbing fish scales and hauling nets. He flexed his fingers, felt the tendons move under the skin. And Elias was very athletic for a regular.
Even still, what could these hands do?
Not much.
He closed them into fists.
Elias didn't sulk for long, preferred not to stay in that negative mood. Elias went back to watching the continental river when two kids walked past him toward the bow.
The boy was tall—taller than Elias remembered him being even a week ago. His name was Daven. Elias knew him vaguely from the island. Used to help with the fish nets. Back then he'd been wiry, scrawny in the shoulders. Now his frame had filled out, his shirt pulling tight across his back in a way that looked uncomfortable.
The girl with him was Sela. She'd been in the sleeping house two doors down from Elias. She'd been small, round-faced, and quiet. Not anymore. Her face had sharpened, the soft curves of childhood replaced by angles. She walked stiffly, one hand pressed against her lower back.
"Still hurts?" Daven asked.
"Yeah." Sela grimaced, rolled her shoulders. "Woke up with new ones this morning. Right along my ribs."
"I've got them on my thighs now. Both sides."
"At least yours don't show."
Daven pulled at his collar, revealing faint red lines running up the side of his neck. "These do."
Sela winced. "Shit."
Yeah, that's the river. Elias thought silently, shaking his head.
"It's all so weird." She said it flatly, like she'd had this conversation a dozen times before. "And we're almost do–"
"LINES SECURE! HOLD FAST!"
The ship lurched. Not violently, but enough that a few kids stumbled. Elias grabbed the railing, held on.
The crew was moving fast now. Three of them at the sails, two at the stern. The woman in the kelp coat was standing at the bow, looking down into the water.
Elias followed her gaze.
There.
Just beneath the surface. A shadow. Long, sinuous, moving parallel to the ship. It was hard to tell how big it was. Big enough.
"What is that?" Sela whispered.
No one answered.
The shadow kept pace with them for maybe two minutes. Then a spear came from the deck, both shapes dove, and disappeared into the dark. One of the crew went to go and retrieve their weapon, hanging by a thick rope tied by the rail.
The shake forced Elias onto the side, leaning on one hand the other gripping at the railing. As he stood, he felt a bulge in his pocket, once again reminding him of the content Elias opened the front pocket of his satchel and looked at what his old caretaker had given him.
It was a copper carving. Small, no bigger than his thumb. Smooth, polished wood. A fish. Simple, stylized, the kind of thing you'd make with a whittling knife and too much time.
He turned it over in his hand.
On the underside, carved in tiny letters: You're stronger than you think.
Elias stared at it. Then he put it back in the pocket and closed the flap and scoffed. He wasn't stronger than he thought. He knew exactly how strong he was. Weak. Mortal. Soft. But he appreciated the thought.
Elias pocketed the carving and leaned back against the railing, letting his head tip against the damp wood. The ship rocked beneath him, steady and rhythmic. His gaze drifted across the deck.
As the breeze picked up viciously, Elias' eyes caught sight of the evolved that'd fought off the second attacker being helped up by the rope.
Pulling him up was a woman. Another evolved, obviously. Pale bluish skin, gills fluttering along her neck. The man patted her on the back and walked off. Minutes later she was still standing near the starboard railing, coiling the rope. Her hands moved clumsily, fingers tangling in the loops, and she kept stopping to look at the rope like she'd forgotten what she was doing with it.
She laughed.
The ship creaked along with the slap of water against the hull.
She continued laughing, few of the regulars knew her name but one thing that was known was this woman, superior as she was, was a pitiful, manic fool.
Elias frowned.
The woman tilted her head, still staring at the rope. Then she dropped it and walked away, leaving the coil in a messy pile on the deck.
She stopped in the middle of the deck and just stood there. Head tilted slightly, eyes unfocused, like she was listening to something no one else could hear.
One of the other crew—a younger male evolved with webbed hands—walked past her, said something Elias couldn't make out. She didn't respond. Instead she continued staring off into the distance, seeming lost in thought.
The man frowned, and touched her shoulder.
She blinked before looking at him. Smiled.
The woman stayed where she was for another few seconds. Then she turned and wandered toward the stern, her movements loose and unhurried.
Elias watched her go.
And these are the people I'm supposed to rely on for my safety. Elias thought, among many more hateful comments, but they remained unvoiced. Over the time he'd been at sea so far Elias did engage in few, passing circles of gossip. He didn't like inserting himself into other people's business, especially uninvited, but that particular evolved—Kallena—had become the subject of, or the bunt of a few jokes and rumors.
From what he'd pieced together, Kallena was forty-six. A beautiful forty-six. Tall, lean, athletic, with a face clearer than most evolved her age. No stress lines. No wrinkles. None of the deformities that usually came with time, though Elias knew the river had something to do with that. She had a sharp chin, thin lips, and large almond-shaped eyes that gave her an almost vulpine look. Like the foxes some people kept as pets.
But none of that was why people talked about her.
Kallena was one of the youngest evolved ever dispatched. She'd been sent to oversee Isle two just a few months before her forty-first birthday. An early arrival to the Land of Endings, and an almost immediate departure back out. That meant she'd been stationed on Isle two for over five years now. And in all that time, she'd developed little to no tolerance.
There were other evolved on the ship who'd been there longer. And even his care taker, for instance—she was fifty now, had been sent at forty-two, and would spend at least a year more in the second isle. But even so, Kallena was suffering. Her tolerance was unusually weak. And the damage dealt probably wouldn't undone for two more years. If she was lucky.
It was a reminder. A plain, ugly example of exactly why these migrations existed in the first place.
The rope remained a tangled mess on the deck, a silent testament to Kallena's fading mind. Elias watched her wander off, but he didn't have the luxury of lingering.
"Elias! Unless you've figured out how to stare the salt off the hull, get over here!"
The shout came from Javier, a man with skin the color of seasoned teak and a patience that Elias tested on an hourly basis. Javier was currently wrestling with a massive, brine-soaked crate of supplies that looked like it weighed twice what he did.
"I'm coming," Elias muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets and trudging over. "And for the record, staring is a valid form of observational data collection. I was merely noting the degradation of her motor skills. It's a safety concern."
"It's a 'mind your business' concern," Javier grunted, nodding toward the corner of the crate. "Grab the edge. Lift on three."
Elias reached down, but instead of lifting, he paused to adjust his grip. "You know, if we actually used a lever-and-pulley system for these mid-deck transfers, we'd reduce the strain on our lumbar vertebrae by at least thirty percent. The way the crew organizes these hauls is fundamentally prehistoric."
Javier sighed, a long, weary sound. "One. Two. Three. Lift."
They spent the next hour moving crates. Elias wasn't silent for a second of it. He complained about the humidity's effect on the wood. It wasn't that the two of them were close, Elias actually was pretty confident Javier didn't like him much. But Elias couldn't stand to be silent for days on end. He thought about a lot of things, and Javier tolerated him at least. Since the two of them were often sent on the same types of chore runs, Elias at least felt comfortable.
By the time the sun began to dip, painting the sky in bruised purples and oranges, they retreated to the mess area for a bowl of something that vaguely resembled fish stew.
"It's a matter of physics, Javi. You're talking about a fully grown Weaver squid as if it's a common overgrown mackerel," Elias said, poking a grey chunk of protein in his stew with the air of a man conducting an autopsy. He leaned in, his voice dropping to that intense, frantic pitch that usually meant a lecture was coming. "Their webs could literally snap this entire ship. A regular human—even one as 'capable' as you think you are—would be wrapped and drained of fluids before you even cleared your throat."
Javier didn't look up from his bowl, methodically chewing a piece of hardbread. "I'd just get under the mantle," he said nonchalantly. "One good twist with a serrated blade and the nervous system shuts down. Easy."
"Easy?" Elias let out a sharp, incredulous huff. "It has three hearts! Meaning you'd have to hit four points simultaneously. You're essentially saying you could out-maneuver a creature that moves via jet propulsion while you're struggling to stay afloat in a heavy swell."
Javier finally looked up, a faint, dismissive smirk playing on his lips. "Maybe your a bad swimmer, but I for one was the fastest in our group in the water. They even let me hunt a few times."
"Speed is irrelevant," Elias snapped, his ego bruised by the accusation. Elias was also one of the more athletic, and his care taker had practically forced him to learn to hunt on his own. Which is why the blasphemy was so nerve racking to Elias. "Maybe—and this is a massive 'maybe'—if you lived long enough to actually get the title of Evolved, you'd have a fighting chance. They're actually trained for this, actually fast enough to make these arguments."
He glanced toward the corner of the deck where the Evolved usually gathered, his mind drifting back to the pale, gills-fluttering woman from earlier.
"Even that one over there," Elias muttered, nodding vaguely toward where Kallena had been wandering. "Probably couldn't take one down. She'd be drooling over herself the whole time—maybe if she had the right situation and a little help, her genetics would do the work yours simply can't. We're just... meat in a shirt."
Javier stared at him for a long beat, then let out a low, tired chuckle. "You're a real charm, you know that? A real inspiration to the common man." He stood up, slapping Elias on the shoulder hard enough to make the stew splash. "Give my ears a rest. I'm going to go be 'meat in a shirt' somewhere else."
Elias huffed, feeling that familiar prickle of being misunderstood, even though he knew Javier was mostly poking fun. He finished his meal in a flurry of agitated, small bites, then stood up. "I'm going to the lower supply passage. The airflow there is superior for curing wood anyway."
He left Javier with a stiff nod and headed below deck.
The corridor leading toward the secondary hold was narrow and low-ceilinged, smelling of old hemp and stale salt. The lanterns were dim, swaying rhythmically with the roll of the ship. Elias found a small nook tucked between two heavy water barrels and the bulkhead. It was a tight squeeze—his knees almost touched the opposite wall when he sat down—but it was isolated.
He pulled out the piece of driftwood he'd been working on and opened his knife. Scritch. Scritch. The wood was stubborn, but he liked the resistance. It gave him something to focus on other than the creaking of the hull.
He was focused on the grain, on the pressure of his thumb, when the light in the passage was suddenly swallowed up.
A shadow didn't just fall over him; it seemed to press into the nook, bringing with it a scent like stagnant lilies and cold copper. Elias didn't look up immediately, assuming Javier had followed him to apologize or offer more "advice."
"I told you, Javi, the airflow here is—"
The words died in his throat. There was no laugh. Only a wet, fluttering sound—the rhythm of gills working hard in the thin, damp air of the passage.
Elias slowly tilted his head back.
Kallena was standing directly in front of him, her tall, lean frame folded awkwardly to fit under the low beams. She was so close that her shadow completely enveloped him. Her bluish skin looked translucent in the amber lantern light, and her large, almond-shaped eyes were unfocused, staring at a point just above his left shoulder.
"Can I help you?" he asked.
She didn't answer. Just kept staring.
He shifted, uncomfortable. "Uh. Do you need something, or—"
"You're small," she said.
Elias blinked. "What?"
"Small." She tilted her head, like she was examining him. "Weak. Soft."
His jaw tightened. "Thanks."
"You'll die on this crossing." She said it matter-of-factly, like she was commenting on the weather. "Most of you will."
"Yeah. I've heard."
"But you especially."
Elias's hand tightened around the knife handle that was now in his pocket.
She smiled. Not cruel or mocking. Just... absent. Like she wasn't really seeing him at all.
"Get away from me."
She didn't move.
"I said get away."
Still nothing.
Elias stood. Fast. The movement brought him closer to her, but he didn't care. His pulse was hammering in his ears now, his vision narrowing.
"What's your problem?" he snapped. "You just walk around saying shit like that to people? You think that's funny?"
She blinked. Focused on him for the first time. Really focused.
"Funny?" she repeated.
"Yeah. Funny, what wouldn't be funny to a idiot, an fool that was made to resist the river, and couldn't even avoid the mental fog"
Her smile widened.
And that was when Elias realized he'd made a mistake.