Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  Most of the guests had already been escorted out, but there in the hall, looking at me in a way that made me feel even worse, were Hayden, Astrid, Hayden’s parents, Anthony, and my father. My mother, the one person I was the most worried about, was nowhere to be seen.

  I steeled myself for one hell of a talking to when I heard my mother’s cries from behind me. I turned just as she launched herself at me.

  “Oh, thank goodness, you are alright.”

  I put my arms around her as she sobbed into my shoulder. Judging by the expressions on the faces of all those around me, they were just as confused as I was.

  “Erica,” my father began, taking a step toward me. “Your actions have...”

  “Stop!” my mother yelled, holding her hand out toward him, palm facing him. “Don’t. Can’t you see she’s been through enough already? I’m taking her up to my room so I can look after her. You can sort this out down here, can’t you?”

  My father was behind me now as my mother was still hugging me and speaking to him over my shoulder, but I could well imagine the expression on his face. I’m pretty sure it echoed my expression of complete bewilderment.

  “What about the wedding?” asked someone. It was Lord Harrington-Blythe.

  My mother pulled herself back from me and faced him. Her lips pulled back tightly. “Can’t you see my daughter is under enough stress? I don’t care about the wedding. Do what you will.”

  With that, she took my hand and led me away from everyone up to her top-floor bedroom.

  Despite the way in which she spoke to everyone else, I was still expecting a huge telling off as soon as we got to her room. It was her idea to have this wedding, after all. It was she that planned every little detail, and it was she who had insisted that I take part in it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sitting on the bed. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  She handed me a dress of hers to put on. I pulled off my wet clothes and eased myself into her dress. It was slightly too long for me, and I’m sure my hair dripping all over it was damaging the delicate fabric, but my mother didn’t seem to notice or care, so neither did I.

  I sat down beside her and placed my hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. This whole thing was baffling me, but I knew to rush her wouldn’t work. I was just happy that I didn’t seem to be in any kind of trouble.

  “I thought...I thought...” she sniffed, the tears rolling freely down her face. I got up and grabbed a tissue from her nightstand before returning and handing it to her. I’d never seen her lose her composure like this. I couldn’t even remember a time when she’d apologized for anything, whatever she was saying sorry for, would have to be huge to get her worked up into such a state.

  “I’m sorry too,” I offered for the want of anything else to say. It felt like I should be the one apologizing after all. This just started her on a fresh round of tears. She drew me into a hug, almost squeezing the life out of me. I wondered if this was all a ploy, and she was indeed trying to murder me by constricting my airway, but she let go and sat back, allowing me to breathe freely again.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and took in a deep breath. It took her almost a minute to compose herself and steel herself to talk to me. “I have something to tell you. Something that I hoped I’d never have to share with anyone. It was so long ago, I’d almost convinced myself that it never happened, that it was some kind of dream, but then...”

  Her voice trailed off as though she was remembering some long-forgotten memory.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I encouraged kindly. She was making no sense as it was.

  She nodded her head slightly and mopped up the tears with an embroidered handkerchief she’d pulled from a pocket. The tissue I’d passed her lay unused but crumpled on the bed.

  “I really didn’t want to tell you this. You, of all people...”

  “Please tell me,” I urged. If she didn’t begin to talk soon, I was afraid she’d begin crying again.

  “A long time ago, around about the time I was your age, I didn’t live here in Trifork. I lived somewhere very different indeed.”

  This was new information. I’d always been under the impression that my mother had been born here. I had no grandparents on her side, and she’d always led me to believe that she was an orphan down on her luck when she met my father at eighteen, and they’d fallen in love. It was a story of forbidden love as she was a commoner. I’d always found it so romantic. Echoes of my own romance with Ari popped into my head. Ever since I’d first met him, I’d had this thought that we’d end up like my own mother and father. Of course, now, I wasn’t sure. I barely knew the guy and now, I realized all these thoughts I’d been having were simply silly teenage dreams. I tried to smother the crushing disappointment and focus on what my mother was trying to tell me.

  “Where do you come from then?” I asked her, deliberately keeping my voice low so as not to upset her further. It felt like I was trying to encourage a scared bunny rabbit. This was so not the mother I knew.

  She could barely look me in the eye as she spoke. I knew that whatever she was about to say was difficult for her. She took a deep breath and began to speak again.

  “I was a woman of the ocean when I met your father.”

  I furrowed my brow in confusion. A woman of the ocean? What exactly did that mean? And then it dawned on me.

  “Are you trying to tell me that you are a mermaid?”

  As she looked up, I saw something in her eyes I’d never seen before but was completely familiar with. I’d seen the flecks of purple in Ari’s eyes.

  “Yes,” she replied simply. “Yes, I am.”

  15

  A secret uncovered

  I gaped at my mother open-mouthed. “Does Daddy know?”

  “No,” she answered, shaking her head, “and I don’t want him to know. He thinks I’m from Trifork just like you did. I told him the same story I’ve always told you, told everyone.”

  The whole thing was ridiculous, but I could see in her eyes it was true. It still didn’t explain why she’d wanted me to marry Hayden or why she was so scared of the ocean. As a mermaid, or former mermaid, she should love the water.

  “So, what happened?” I cajoled. “You said this started when you were about my age.”

  She nodded. “I was happily living out at sea, keeping away from the land dwellers. We keep to ourselves. Most people think we are imaginary, so few land dwellers have seen us. We knew how to keep away. Our greatest law was to never speak to those with legs. It was an easy law to keep as I never saw anyone with legs until one day I was swimming away from the town when I saw a man in the water. He was so strange to me. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was a recreational deep-sea diver. I guessed he was looking for coral or oysters. I didn’t know which. He was wearing a black wetsuit and goggles. On his back, he wore oxygen canisters. As I’d never seen a human before, I thought the wetsuit was his skin, and the goggles were his eyes. At first, I was terrified, but after a while, I became fascinated. The way he swam with flippers. He was, quite frankly, the strangest creature I’d ever laid my eyes on.”

  I tried to picture a deep-sea diver. For a woman who had never seen clothes before, I could quite well imagine how strange he would look to her.

  “Every day I’d go to the same spot, and every day there was someone else diving. I guess a tour company took tourists out. One day, I decided to follow the boat to see where it went. It was foolish, and I knew at the time, I’d be in so much trouble from my parents, but the compulsion to find out about the land dwellers was too much.”

  “I guess disobeying one’s parents runs in the family,” I butted in. She gave me a wan smile and carried on.

  “The boat came back here to the public jetty. I swam along the seafront until I saw a completely different type of land dweller. In reality, he was just wearing normal clothes, but I didn’t know that then. He was out in the garden, just walking around mumbling to himself. I fell in love with hi
m instantly. He was so handsome and looked so worried about something. I hid behind some rocks, desperately wanting to go up and speak to him, but I couldn’t. I had a tail. There was no way I’d be able to get across all the rocks without legs, and if I did, I was afraid I’d scare him. So, I did something so terrible, something so stupid that to this day, I regret it with all my heart. I went to the sea witch.”

  “The sea witch?” An image of a green hag flying around underwater on a broom sprang to mind. A witch was another creature I’d thought was imaginary before this last couple of weeks. Nothing surprised me anymore. I was willing to bet if a leprechaun riding a pink unicorn strolled into the bedroom, I’d not batter an eyelid.

  “She was...is the sea’s most ferocious woman. She is the equivalent of the mayor up here and has some serious clout. Most of the merpeople are terrified of her. I was terrified of her, but I wanted to meet your father so badly that I mustered up the courage and sought her out.

  “She told me she would give me legs on two conditions. One, that I would never be able to return to the ocean. My tail would be permanently gone, and two, that she would steal my voice.”

  I tried to wrap my head around what she was telling me.

  “But you have a voice,” I pointed out.

  She hung her head again. “I thought that I would need my voice to talk to your father. How else would I get to know him if I couldn’t talk to him?”

  I thought back to all the times I’d spoken with Ari. The only time I remembered him using his audible voice was the first time we met when he saved me. I hadn’t thought about it before now, but I wondered if he’d made a similar exchange with the sea witch. I’d seen him with legs after all. Unlike my mother, he kept his tail too. He was able to be one way in water and another on land.

  “So, what did you offer?” I asked. The look on her face was enough to tell me that it was something terrible. Her eyes, already brimming with tears, began to overflow.

  “I offered my firstborn child. At the time, I was so young that thoughts of children were so far away in the distance. I wasn’t even sure I’d have children. It seemed like a good exchange, and for a time, it was. That was until I found out I was pregnant with you. I worried so much throughout that pregnancy. I spent the whole nine months waiting for the sea witch to jump out and claim what was hers. When you were born, the fear only got worse. I begged your father to move inland, but he refused, saying that this was his ancestral home and the royal palace. I couldn’t tell him why I wanted to move. I was scared he’d hate me if he found out what I was.”

  She wiped her eyes with the handkerchief and carried on, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Instead, I developed a fear of the ocean. I’d not been back in such a long time; it was an easy fear to make up. The irony was that the place I’d come from, the place I’d grown up in was now my greatest fear. I kept you, and when your brother came along, him too, away from the sea. I’ve spent the last eighteen years being terrified she would come and take you away from me.”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  “She’s tied to the ocean like the rest of us are. It takes a great deal of magic to give people legs, and she only gives if she can take more back. The few merfolk that have come onto land have stayed here. She is too important down below to leave, although I know she craves it. She has been biding her time until you step foot in there. I hoped that would never happen, but then you jumped onto that boat.”

  I thought back to the sound of my mother’s screams as I fell into the water on the day the Erica Rose sank. Knowing what I knew now, I felt sick at what I’d done. If only my mother had told me the truth long ago.

  “She appeared almost straight away,” my mother continued. “I don’t know how, but I believe she could sense you. I saw the black shape in the water coming right for you. Everyone else thought it was a particularly bad storm, but storms don’t look like that. It was the witch that brought the Erica Rose down.”

  She sniffed. “It’s funny. Everyone else was worried that you’d drown. I was almost hoping you would. Anything would be better than being taken by the witch. She takes of you what she can and leaves you with nothing. No bargain or exchange with her works out well for the person doing it, no matter how good she makes it seem. In exchange for my legs and my life up here, I have spent the last eighteen years in fear.”

  I could see the tears welling in her eyes again. This was so difficult, and my heart was breaking for her. To have kept all this a secret for so many years. The shadow she lived under must have been terrible.

  “When I heard that you’d been found alive and had been brought back here after the Erica Rose sank, I was so happy. That was until you told me who had saved you. I didn’t know who it was, but the way you described him, I knew straight away it was a merman. I could see it in your eyes that he’d made an impression on you. That’s why I tried to tell you that you’d imagined it. I hoped that you’d pass it off as a hallucination, but you didn’t let it go.

  “The night of the ball I saw you kissing him. I knew it was him straight away. The mermen all have long hair, but I’ve yet to see it in a male land dweller.

  “It was then that I convinced your father to announce your engagement to Hayden. I told him it was the right thing to do. He was skeptical, but I was insistent. He works away from home so often, making royal visits and such, that it was easy to tell him this thing between you and Hayden was real. I just had to convince you of the same thing. It didn’t work, though, did it? You were already besotted with someone else. I could see it in your eyes.”

  I sighed. “I’ve never had any interest in Hayden that way.” I wanted to ask how the wedding had gone, but that story was for another time. I had to know what happened next.

  “I know. I’ve always known. I was trying to protect you. I hoped that marrying Hayden would put an end to all this with the merman, but I can see that it won’t. The thing is, you can’t be with him. I don’t know how she didn’t catch you that time you visited him in the ocean, but you saw her today. If I’d not had all the guards out on the ocean as soon as I saw that Astrid wasn’t you, she would have gotten you. I have no idea what she intends to do with you, but I know it won’t be nice. I’ve seen her cut off girls’ hair and keep them as slaves. I’ve known her to kill for just one drop of blood for her potions. I can’t let that happen to you.”

  She dissolved into tears again.

  My mind whirled at all this new information. It explained so much. My overwhelming love of the sea despite never having been in it. It was because I was half mermaid. My long hair, too red to be natural, was nothing like anyone else’s I’d ever seen, and even though I didn’t have the flecks of purple that Ari had or that my mother had shown tonight, I did have bright green eyes.

  It also explained my mother’s morbid fear of the water, of why she had kept both Anthony and me away from it. She wasn’t scared we’d drown, she was scared the sea witch would take us. If the witch couldn’t get me, it made sense she’d go for Anthony.

  I hugged my mother tightly. I’d never felt close to her. I felt like the barrier between us had finally come down. Now, I knew what she was and what I was. For the first time, she felt like the mother I’d always wanted. I knew we had a long way to go, but if anything good had come out of this mess, a better relationship with my mother was all I could hope for.

  My thoughts turned to Ari. I’d thought he had just decided not to turn up. I’d thought he’d gotten cold feet, but if what my mother said was true, another, much worse thought came to me.

  “Ari, the merman had legs the night of the ball. Do you think he was able to do that because of the sea witch?”

  She gave a long sigh. “Undoubtedly. There is no way he would be able to walk without her help. I’m surprised she let him have his tail back afterward, but I guess he’s willing to offer her more than I was.”

  “More than your firstborn child? What more could he offer than that?”

  “I d
on’t know, but the fact that he didn’t come for you tonight tells me that she didn’t get what she wanted. I’m so sorry, Erica, but she must have taken him instead.”

  16

  The sea witch

  My heart sank as I took in the implications of her words. A few minutes ago, I’d thought that the worst thing in the world to happen to me was to be stood up by Ari. But I’d take that over him being kidnapped by a sea witch who liked to kill people any time she felt like it.

  “We have to go rescue him,” I said, standing up from the bed.

  My mother adopted a look of horror.

  “We can’t! You can’t! I told you how powerful she is. Everyone under the water is afraid of her. My own parents refused to have anything to do with her.”

  “I thought your parents were dead?”

  My mother bowed her head. “They are alive. I haven’t seen them in twenty years. Once I was out of the ocean, I couldn’t ever go back. They don’t know where I am. If I’d told them, they would never have let me come.”

  I shook my head. This secrecy had been going on long enough. My poor mother had spun herself such a web of lies, that now, she was the one coming unraveled.

  “I can’t leave him out there. He saved my life. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t be here having this conversation.”

  “I know,” she replied. “But we can’t beat her. Our only way to stay safe is to stay away from her, to stay on land. The second we go into the sea, she will be upon us and I doubt she’d let you get away again.”

  I thought of a way around it. “What if we don’t go in the sea? Hayden’s father is an admiral of the Navy. He has a whole fleet of ships. We send them all out to sea and find him that way.”