“I love you,” I told her.

“You have been everything for me,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “My arms when I wasn’t permitted to row, my legs when I wasn’t permitted to dive. My lips when I couldn’t defend myself from Mother. Now I need you to be my hands, Nor.”

I bit my lip to stifle my cries. But if Zadie could not do this on her own, I would be the steady hand that she lacked.

I lowered the net until the first tentacle was hovering just above the bare skin of her thigh and hesitated once more. “Zadie, I...”

Before I could stop her, she reached out, took my hand, and forced it down. Horrified, I wrenched myself out of her grasp and dropped the net, but the tentacles that had made contact were already adhering to her skin. Zadie winced as the tiny stingers grabbed hold of her leg, pulling themselves toward her.

Biting my lip was no longer enough. I bit my own hand to keep from screaming. The translucent blue lines clung to Zadie’s leg, even as she began to tremble, even as she started to squirm away from the pain. Her skin reddened, then blistered. I watched in horror as the tentacles appeared to melt into her flesh.

“Get them off!” she wailed finally. “Please!”

“How?” I shrieked. I used my hands to scoop up seawater and tried to rinse away the tentacles, but the few that came off took strips of my sister’s skin with them. In my frantic attempts to help her, a tentacle brushed against my arm. The pain was so excruciating I finally allowed myself to scream, knowing Zadie’s suffering was a thousand times worse.

Desperate, I pulled her up beneath her arms and dropped her over the side of the boat, holding her afloat with one hand while I used the side of Father’s spear to scrape off the remaining tentacles and as little of her flesh as possible.

By the time we were finished, Zadie was unconscious, and the water around us was dark with blood.

      7

   After I’d hauled her back into the boat, we lay there for a while as I tried to steady my breathing. I couldn’t afford to pass out, not when Zadie’s eyes remained closed, when she was so pale and motionless beside me. I needed to get us home as quickly as possible, but first I cut the rest of the jellyfish free of its net and slashed it to pieces with the spear.

Though the wound on my arm burned with every stroke of the oars, it was already healing. I could hardly bear to look at Zadie’s leg as I rowed. Her right thigh had borne the brunt of the wounds, though a few stray pieces of tentacle had brushed against her left thigh and lower abdomen. Her face was pale in the moonlight, but the wounds were a harsh red even in the dark. The venom had entered her bloodstream almost immediately, and she was hot with fever. If I didn’t get help soon, I was afraid she really could die.

But with Zadie unconscious, it was up to me to get our parents, to explain what had happened, to help care for her. And I was afraid. Afraid that they would blame me, that Zadie’s plan wouldn’t work and they’d still send her, or send Alys instead, and then Mother would blame me for that, too. I was afraid for my sister, afraid that Sami wouldn’t be able to look past these wounds. And worst of all, I was afraid of myself. Because I hadn’t just allowed something like this to happen to the person I loved most in the world. I had helped, even if Zadie had forced my hand in the end.

I rowed harder as our house came into view, then quickly tied the boat to a pillar. I wiped the tears from my cheeks and scrambled up the ladder. “Mother! Father!” I yelled into the dark. “Help!”

I could hear them stirring on the other side of their curtain, but not fast enough. Father sat up as I threw the fabric aside. “What is it, child?” He used the word child when he couldn’t tell which one of us was speaking.

“It’s Zadie,” I managed around the lump in my throat. I had never cried so much in my life, not even when I’d cut myself on the blood coral. “She’s been stung by a maiden’s hair.”

Mother, who had been grumbling in her sleep, sat bolt upright. “What?” she cried, her voice shrill with fear.

My hands shook as I bent to help her up. “We were swimming, and we didn’t see it until it was too late.” The words were a lie, but the sorrow and terror were all too real. “She’s unconscious in the boat. I didn’t have the strength to bring her up.”

“Thalos, no!” Mother screamed. My parents flew past me. I heard Father splash into the water, then Mother’s shriek as she looked down through the door.

“My baby!” she cried. “What has happened to my beautiful baby?”

I was hit with a sudden memory of the day of the incident, when I was the one limp in the boat. What has happened to my beautiful baby? Mother had said the same thing about me. My knees were suddenly weak and watery, and I slumped onto the floor of our house, unnoticed.

Lanterns began to glow in other people’s houses at the sound of my mother’s screams. Father was shouting for help.

“Get Elder Nemea,” he commanded, gently handing Zadie up to Mother through the door.

It took a moment to realize he was speaking to me. I forced myself to my feet, grateful for the chance to leave. I couldn’t bear to look at my sister’s legs, at the horrific results of what we had done.

Once I was back in the boat, some of my strength returned, and I rowed harder than I’d ever rowed before. I had to force myself to stop at Elder Nemea’s house instead of continuing out of Varenia and away from Mother’s screams.

The old woman was already coming out of her house when I arrived. “What is it, girl?”

“It’s my sister,” I called between breaths. “She’s been stung by a maiden’s hair. She’s unconscious.”

“Zadie? No, this can’t be!” She disappeared back into the house and emerged a moment later with a heavy satchel. The village doctor would have been preferable, but he had died last year in a shark attack before he could fully train his apprentice daughter.

I took the satchel and helped her into the boat, then rowed home as quickly as I could. By then several people had gathered in boats around our house. Nemea and I hurried to the bedroom I shared with Zadie, following the sound of Mother’s sobs.

“Move aside,” Nemea said to my parents as she stepped past them, already removing salves and strips of cloth from the bag. Zadie lay on the bed, still unconscious, her brow beaded with sweat.

“How could you let this happen?” Mother screamed the moment she saw me. “How could you be so foolish as to take your sister night swimming at a time like this?”

I could have said it was Zadie’s idea, that I hadn’t wanted to go. I could have told Mother the truth, and part of me wanted to. But as my eyes fell on my sister’s leg, on the missing flesh and pooling blood, I knew I could never betray her.