Page 6 of They Call Me Blue

“When an elf dies, their spirit becomes one with the Korring-Marr, transcending time and space to integrate with our ancestors. It is the only time we know true peace.”

–Selik of Cliffstone, High Priest of the A’sow Tribe.

“ A sshole!” I smack my would-be-assailant square in the chest. It’s like hitting a rock. “You scared the crap out of me.”

Fenris—the chieftain’s son and my “supposed” best friend—takes a step back, raising his hands in a show of peace. There can be no peace between us. How dare he scare me like that?

I shove him harder this time, and he snickers, barely budging from his spot on the ground. “I got you good, didn’t I?”

Frowning up at him, I set Nirissa down and bare my teeth.

Although we’re both sixteen, Fenris reached his Age of Majority last year and is nearly twice my size, with the body of a fully grown elf.

Dressed in hide armor, I’ve never felt so small in comparison.

But small or not, I’m not about to let him push me around.

“I may not be able to out-fight you,” I say, “but I can still poison you in your sleep.”

He sticks his tongue out like we’re twelve. Leaves are tangled in his long silver hair, only adding to that boyishness.

“She wouldn’t really poison you,” Nirissa says, raising her arms, silently commanding Fenris to pick her up. “Arri loves you too much.”

My cheeks burn as hotly as my bandaged hand, and I bare my teeth at her too. Just whose side is she on?

Bending low, Fenris scoops my sister up and sets her on his shoulders. Nirissa winces when he readjusts her the wrong way, and the playful mood sours, a somberness filling the air as he examines her exposed thigh. “What happened, bug?”

She tells him about the verncat. I cut her off before she can mention Lyrick’s name. “Nirissa didn’t cry at all when I stitched her back up. The healers are going to be so proud when I tell them. Do you know if Morena made it?”

Fenris shakes his head. “I haven’t been back to camp yet. I . . . I wanted to find you before the funeral.” He lowers his voice to a whisper and leans in close. “I need to talk to you in private.”

“Hey, keeping secrets isn’t nice,” Nirissa pouts.

“I’m sorry, bug,” Fenris says. “It’s just boring grown-up talk.”

Unconvinced, she crosses her arms and glares at him.

“You must be hungry. I have some jurry berries that I’d love to share with you.

” Fenris points to the tree he jumped from.

At the midpoint swings a black hammock—not at all concealed by the tree’s thin black branches and even thinner blue leaves.

The fact that I didn’t notice it speaks volumes to my survival skills, and I know I’m never going to hear the end of it.

At the mention of jurry berries, Nirissa forgets what Fenris was talking about and demands he take her to them.

I resist an eye roll as he obliges, swinging her onto his back and carrying her up the tree.

Their voices echo as she chatters away about how I forced her to eat fish eggs and wouldn’t let her bathe in elgrew-infested waters.

When Fenris climbs back down, he’s got a leather sack hung over his shoulders. Nirissa remains in the hammock, shoving green berries into her mouth, their sticky yellow juice dribbling down her fingertips.

The perfect diversion.

Fenris swallows. “You should sit.”

“What’s in the bag?” It’s huge and lumpy and, judging by the darkness in his cheeks, much heavier than my baby sister.

He doesn’t answer right away and instead hefts the bag to the ground, letting it drop in front of me. Metal clangs inside it. “Please, Arden. Sit.”

His serious tone prompts me to obey.

I lower myself to the muddy ground, short blue grasses crunching beneath me.

Fenris does the same, letting that big bag obscure his face.

A leather cord holds it together at the top.

He takes a deep breath and unknots the laces, the edges unfurling into a large blanket. My heart sinks at the contents.

Biting the inside of my cheek, I reach for my dad’s burnt journal.

It crumbles beneath my fingertips, the scorched pages flaking off into the dirt.

The rest of his stuff lies in a sprawling heap: a blackened telescope that doubles as a walking stick, the lenses warped from heat and cracked beyond repair, cogs and wheels attached to nothing, dried sealants and shriveled pastes stuck to their bronze containers.

A life’s worth of research and invention, gone.

“I salvaged what I could,” Fenris says, his voice gravelly.

Wiping my eyes, I glance up from the pile. “Why do you have this?”

“I . . . I was assigned scouting duty outside your dad’s hideout. He saved my life.”

Fenris reaches into his cuirass and withdraws a pair of goggles with green-colored lenses and a strap made from sinew—an invention Mom and I created that hadn’t been tested yet.

He passes the goggles to me, and I run my fingers over the smooth glass, remembering the mornings I spent with her hand-carving them, coating the lenses in that slimy green goo before tempering them in tongs over the fire.

Those mornings are gone now.

She’s gone now. And Dad . . .

“What happened to him?” I ask, already guessing the answer. There’s only one reason Fenris would be carrying his belongings to me.

“I didn’t see the elgrew until it was too late.

” He looks at the ground, his head hung low, his voice even lower.

“When the fires started, your dad took his goggles off and gave them to me. He said I was faster anyway. That I’d have a better chance at escaping.

I shouldn’t have accepted them. . . I should have . . .”

“They worked?” I ask, my voice cracking.

“They worked.”

Around us, dusk speckles the horizon in shades of orange and emerald green.

As the sun sets, Fenris’s pupils expand, consuming his gray irises, then his sclera until they’re entirely black.

Darkeyes like him and my dad are rare. At night, they have perfect vision, but they’re also sensitive to light.

A single fire can blind them for hours—or at least it could have before now.

I reach across the ruined objects and grab Fenris’s hand, my vision watery. “It’s okay,” I tell him, swallowing hard. “Thank you for bringing his stuff back.”

He pulls his hand away, still not meeting my gaze. His black eyes are dark-rimmed. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him back.”

For a moment, neither of us speaks. I turn the goggles in my hand—goggles I made for Dad, goggles that might have saved him if he hadn’t been so selfless—and pass them back to Fenris, setting them in his lap. “You should keep them,” I say. “He wanted you to have them. I want you to have them.”

“Arden—”

“Go. I need to tell Nirissa before she finds out for herself.” Blinking, I force myself to stand. I have to be strong for her; I'm all she has left.

Fenris doesn’t move.

“Get out of here,” I snap. “I’ll meet you at the funeral.”

Slowly, he rises then pulls me into a tight hug.

All the fight drains from my body. Burying my face into Fenris’s stomach, I collapse against him, and for the first time in three days, I let myself cry.

Glowflies buzz overhead, igniting the night sky in pulsing purple dots. Frogs croak in the distance and the air becomes heavy with the stench of algae, rain, and sulfurous muck.

Though we haven’t reached the swamp yet, I can smell and hear it everywhere—which is more than can be said for Nirissa, who limps silently beside me. She hasn’t spoken a word since I told her about Mom and Dad. She hasn’t let me hold her either.

“Bug, your stitches are starting to tear. Please let me—”

She swats my hands aside like I’m an annoying insect, then hobbles past me, feet squishing through the decaying leaves.

I follow closely behind, gently turning her by the shoulders when she starts going the wrong way.

The solid ground becomes wetter, softer as we near our tribe’s sacred burial grounds.

Silver moonlight bathes our surroundings, peeking through the heavy rain clouds.

“You’re wrong about Mom and Dad,” Nirissa says finally. “They’re going to be at camp, and you’re going to look really dumb.”

I wish that were true, but wishing won’t bring them back. Still, I don’t argue with her; I don’t see the point when she’ll see the truth soon enough.

Up ahead, spotters guard the edges of the Lycean Swamp, hiding in blue reeds that are twice as tall as I am, wielding longbows crafted from spine trees.

Thorns jut from every surface of their bows and the tips glint red with varn —a stinging poison.

Masks conceal the spotters’ faces. Dark leather armor conceals almost everything else.

As we approach, the spotters stiffen. They scan the moonlit forest behind us, then lower their bows once they realize who we are . . . Well, most of them do.

The spotter closest to us steps out of the plant cover and angles an arrow directly at my chest. Her fingers tighten around the grip of her bow, gray knuckles turning white. “Of course she made it,” the woman hisses. “Of all the people who deserved to live—”

“Drop your weapon. Don't start that shit here.” Another spotter steps from his post, walking toward her.

She glances over her shoulder, bowstring still drawn tight, voice cracking. “I don’t know why you’re defending her. It’s her fault they’re all dead.”

I blink. “What are you talking about? The Hunters would have come with or without me.”

The woman scoffs. “Is that what you think? Is that what they told you?” Lowering her bow, she withdraws a crinkled letter from her cuirass and stomps toward me, shoving it against my chest. “Hunters travel in groups of six, Arden. They don’t bring armies unless they’re hunting you.

None of the other tribes have losses like ours do. None of them—”

“I said that’s enough.” The other spotter steps between us, and the letter goes floating into the mud. I bend to pick it up, my fingers curling over the ripped and tattered edges.