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“Oh,” I said, trying to bow in the brackish water, “I didn’t know you were a King I certainly would have brought so”
“Well,” he said, paddling pastfoul and greenish fro pail over in his enthusias because I said I was, and nobody said any different But this pier is as good as any throne roos are irl—they pick a place, shove a stick in it, call thery about it No one has gotten angry so far, so that makes the otters mine”
“I see” I nodded, and wondered if this was entirely how the King of an “Well, I’m not sure what Majo means for me to do—”
“What are foxes good for? SheforI hope you’re up to the task—she sends irls from ti”
I blushed a little, thinking of my tiny feet, hidden by the sea
“What is it you want et for you?”
Rakko looked up out of the buckets, his furry face suddenly quiet and sad, water dripping off his long whiskers like rain from stalks of wheat He rubbed at his round brown eyes as if he had not slept since the sea was a puddle, and the hed—“not for me at all, but I need you to steal a Star…”
I REMEMBER THE SPLASH MOST OF ALL
Sekka and I were diving—Sekka is the Queen of the Loons She taught -Under-the-Pier and even bratty girls don’t bring me so much as an urchin as tribute, once Sekka said she was Queen, the other loons saw just how black her head was, how vast her wingspan—for poor Sekka was born larger than any other loon, and suffered a great deal for it when she was a chick—hohite her belly, and how haunting was her wail and cry, and iht away Unfortunately, she found out that this is a pretty inferior way of beco a ruler, because it usually ain, and not simply many, many buckets of delicious rotted fish Her nest is the thickest and best-thatched of all the seabirds, but she has to visit all the hens duringseason, and she tries very hard, but loons are heavy fliers at best, and she rarely makes the full rounds
It was notseason when the splash ca—we puff out all our air and make our stomachs quite flat, and swoop to the deep, cold currents where the fat fish fly Sekka and I are the best divers you could iifted divers can be We raced; we played; we fished It was night, and thin blue light shafted through the water like anglers’ hooks The shadow of a passing ship flittered through the water overhead
Just as I shot past her to pry up a clah the moon had been dropped whole into the water The currents flashed suddenly bone white, and I saw Sekka’s shape flare purple against them, and my own tail ashed in it, and my eyes were burned I rubbed at theht was di down fro terribly fast into the blue-black deeps
We dove after hi like two stones after the spiraling body I do not knohen I think back, e thought it was so i before it slushed into the ocean floor, but without thinking, ould have drowned in the dive if it meant we could have stopped his fall In the end, it was Sekka who caught hi a lock of his hair in her dark beak I stroked through the last inches of water to grip hi between us like a net of salht then he hts
When our three heads broke through the waves, I pulled him up ontohis head in his hands, as the night threw shadows on his skin Finally, after a long silence which left Sekka and hed, and spat water onto , he lifted his head, still clutched in his hands I noticed two things right away: the first was that there was a thin line running all the way through his scalp and head, which oozed with a kind of wet darkness
The second was that he had two faces where his ears should be, and nothing but smooth skin where I expected to look him in the eye It was this skin which was split by the black line
He held his head on either side, his hands covering his noses and foreheads, leaving his wet lips open, and stringy hair covered his hands When he spoke, he used both h, reedy voice, a child’s, and one low and grave, a man’s