Kyros swam forward. He could still taste his mother’s tears. The memories he’d stirred up were hard on her. She’d never gotten over her daughter’s death. What parent ever did?
He approached the island. If it was as he remembered, not much more than a sandy peak topped with a mound of seaweed and crabs.
He knew nothing would be left of the crime—not a clue to what happened that fateful day a hundred years ago. In his mind, he could see it clearly… as if it had happened yesterday.
Kassi had gone missing—longer than usual. His twin sister had given their parents fits. She was always wandering off, exploring. But she had never stayed away overnight—until that dark day.
The whole village had gone to search for her the next morning. Everyone else searched the sea, but Kyros had known where to look. He looked on the tiny island.
She’d brought him there once before, confiding in him that it was her favorite place to be. She’d even pulled herself onto shore—against his protests. But Kassi never listened to him, and that time was no exception. She’d wanted to show him what happened to her hair when it dried. She lifted a mirror to watch her reflection. Her long, black hair blew in the wind. Her eyes sparkled as a smile crept across her face. Her hair curled and puffed over her head like lumpy coral. He couldn’t help but laugh at her. She looked beyond ridiculous. Kassi laughed too, giggling so hard she nearly tipped over. Even now, he smiled at the memory as sadness squeezed his chest.
Today, Kyros surfaced again. The island looked different—barren, lifeless—as if a curse were upon it. He approached the atoll and remembered exactly where he’d spotted the keel of the boat—just fifty yards offshore. A familiar sickness twisted his insides as the memories flooded back. No human had ever sailed to the island before. But years ago, on that dark day, there they were.
Kyros hadn’t hesitated to surface. He cared not that the humans would see him, that he was breaking the law by showing himself to them. The need to find and protect his sister was overwhelming, a desperation.
The smell of blood assaulted his mind as his vision of the past played from his memory. The humans were shouting—two men. They scrambled around a net. Kyros had no idea what they were saying. One of the men cried out when he saw Kyros, and they both looked at him in horror—their voices now silent. Kyros examined the scene.
He couldn’t see his sister, but it was too strange a coincidence that she was missing and humans were there, in her favorite place. A net hung over the side of the boat, jumbled in a tangle of seaweed and flopping fish. The scent of blood saturated the air. Then he saw something that shouldn’t have been in a fishing net. Long, brown hair tangled around the thin, interlocked ropes.
Kyros dove under the water, swimming straight down. Turning sharp, he shot back toward the surface. He broke through, traveling at top speed, and crashed down on the ship’s deck. The humans screamed and ran inside the craft.
Kyros dragged his body across the wooden surface, to the motionless lump hidden in the net. The wind blew icy across his skin, the cold penetrating deep into his body, as the reality of the situation speared him through the heart. His sister hung lifeless, her eyes still bright, her head caved in above her temple—her blood fresh. A metal rod lay nearby, smeared with her blood. The former chill he’d felt was burned away by his sudden fury.
At sixteen years old, he was not yet full-grown, but he was still larger than either of the human murderers. They might have screamed. Kyros had no recollection of it. The only scream he heard was his own—a mixture of pain, anguish, and rage as he mercilessly tore them apart. When they were dead, he returned to his sweet sister, cut the ropes, and carefully pulled her body from the net.
The next few months passed in a blur. The village elders must have disposed of the ship and the bodies. They never mentioned it. No one ever spoke of the humans or Kassi again, but from that day on, an invisible barrier existed around the island. No one went near it.
