Of Poseidon

The sun is going down. These woods probably get pretty creepy at night.”
    She clears her throat, still giggling a little. “Okay. Concentrate. Right.”
    “So, this time, when you take your foot off the brake, the car will go on its own. There, see?” We slink along the road at an idle two miles per hour.
    She huffs up at her bangs. “This is boring. I want to go faster.”
    I start to say, “Not too fast,” but she squashes the gas under her foot, and my words are snatched away by the wind. She gives a startled shout, which I find hypocritical because after all, I’m the one helpless in the passenger seat, and she’s the one screaming like a teapot, turning the wheel back and forth like the road isn’t straight as a pencil.
    “Brake, brake, brake!” I shout, hoping repetition will somehow penetrate the small part of her brain that actually thinks.
    Everything happens fast. We stop. There’s a crunching sound. My face slams into the dash. No wait, the dash becomes an airbag. Rayna’s scream is cut off by her airbag. I open my eyes. A tree. A freaking tree. The metal frame groans, and something under the hood lets out a mechanical hiss. Smoke billows up from the front, the universal symbol for “you’re screwed.”
    I turn to the rustling sound beside me. Rayna is wrestling with the airbag like it has attacked her instead of saved her life. “What is this thing?” she wails, pushing it out of her way and opening the door.
    One Mississippi … two Mississippi …
    “Well, are you just going to sit there? We have a long walk home. You’re not hurt are you? Because I can’t carry you.”
    Three Mississippi … four Mississippi …
    “What are those flashing blue lights down there?”

22
    IT’S ALMOST a straight shot from the Jersey Shore to the Cave of Memories, where the Archives live. Galen reaches it within hours. Above him, the thick Arctic ice serves as a first defense against the prying eyes of the humans.
    For centuries stacked on centuries, the miles-thick layers of frozen past was the only defense needed. Now, though, humans have figured out how to send down their robotic cameras. Many of the ancient Syrena relics, which once sat out on the seafloor in plain view, were moved to chambers of the cave. Which is a shame, since access to the cave is restricted to Royals and Archives.
    He passes a site where huge Roman columns used to loom over Syrena visitors, as if in welcome. Now it’s just an abandoned plot of ocean floor, gray and cold for more reasons than the temperature. Galen shakes his head. Humans really do ruin everything. No, he tells himself. Most humans ruin everything. Not all.
    He reaches the portal of the cavern. Two Syrena trackers allow him entry without question. No doubt they sensed him before he even made it as far as Greenland. The narrow portal opens into a wide corridor that looks like a giant jaw full of thin, sharp teeth. The rocks growing down from the top almost touch the growths from the bottom. Galen hopes that if humans ever do infiltrate this site, they’ll feel like a meal.
    Even if they dared to travel past the mouth and into the belly, they’d be hard-pressed to find anything foreign that hadn’t been a natural part of this place for thousands of years. The Cave of Memories spans for hundreds of miles, a maze of passages and tunnels and chambers. Some are too narrow for even an eel to slip through. Others could accommodate an army of humans. The relics, the history of Galen’s kind, are hidden away in the deepest parts, through the most complicated passageways. Finding the way out would be impossible, even with the most advanced human technology.
    But the Syrena have a natural tool to guide them: sensing. The Archives no longer need sensing in the cave; having exercised and stretched their memories to full capacity, they can find their way without it. Galen grins, thinking of Emma’s irritated expression at learning Syrena have photographic memories, according to Dr. Milligan. She’d almost fallen out of her chair when Galen scored higher than her on their first calculus test.
    As he rounds a narrow bend, Galen picks up on Romul’s pulse and follows it through another convoluted mess of passages. Romul is waiting for him in the ceremony chamber, the place where mating records are kept. Galen has never found Romul here before. He wonders if it might have something to do with Paca’s lineage . Is he trying to prove she has Royal blood?
    Romul bows