by Kyle Shultz
“No. She must have used her powers on Kiran.”
“Unless she just killed him.”
“I doubt it. She said she planned on using the Nautilus for something. She wouldn’t have killed the only person who knows how to pilot it.”
“Which way should we go now?”
I shrugged. “Just keep swimming, I suppose. We’ll have to hope that we stumble on it sooner or later. If there’s a whole country down here, it ought to be hard to miss.”
“Right then,” said Crispin. “Hang on tight.” He flipped his tail, and we shot through the ocean at top speed again. The roar of the water in my ears was deafening.
Suddenly, our progress was arrested by a strong current pulling us down toward the ocean floor. Crispin struggled to break free of it, but to no avail. “What’s happening?” he shouted.
“I don’t know!” I yelled back, swimming against the current. “But I think we found Aegiris!”
Spread out before us on the ocean floor was a vast, sprawling city. It was mostly made up of tall, gleaming towers, constructed from some mineral that resembled mother-of-pearl. However, the towers were not symmetrical or even straight. They resembled corals, branching off in multiple directions and interweaving with each other. The whole city was a massive replica of a reef—unless, of course, it was a kind of reef, which seemed the more likely explanation. A trench surrounded the whole of the city, so deep that the bottom was hidden in shadow.
And we were being pulled into it.
“Who’d have thought an underwater city would have a moat?” exclaimed Crispin, shouting to be heard above the roar of the water. He swam against the current, struggling to stay above the trench.
“Maybe we should just let it happen,” I suggested. “It might not be a lethal trap. Perhaps they’re just going to hold us at the border until they can find out who we are.”
A massive reptilian head suddenly rose from the deep, regarding us hungrily with jet-black eyes. It snapped its grinning jaws at us, waiting impatiently for the current to pull us closer.
“On the other hand,” I amended, “perhaps we’re doomed.” I gritted my teeth and tried in vain to swim free of the current.
Just then, something rocketed up to us from the depths of the trench. Another sea monster; only this one was the size of a cow instead of a small mountain. It looked…cute, actually. It vaguely resembled a dragon, but with a much longer neck and a more rounded body. It had four fins instead of legs, and a long, flattened tail. It swam toward us, looking more curious than menacing. The current seemed to have no effect on it whatsoever.
“Maybe he’ll save us,” said Crispin.
“Maybe he’ll eat us,” I suggested.
The sea monster made a high-pitched crooning noise like whalesong, and darted back into the trench. When it returned, it was holding a large rock in its mouth. It held out the stone to Crispin, a hopeful expression on its face.
I shook my head in disbelief, kicking wildly to keep from being pulled into the darkness. “Or maybe he just wants to play fetch.” I looked down at the murky depths below. “I suppose all we can do now is hope that thing won’t chew us up too badly.”
“Or,” said Crispin, “we could scream our heads off. HELP!” he bellowed in the direction of the city.
It occurred to me that this might be a good plan. I added an ear-splitting roar to Crispin’s screaming, hoping the sound would carry all the way to someone willing to help. The sea monster, having dropped the rock after realizing nobody was interested in fetch, added a few loud honking noises to the chorus.
As we drew worryingly close to the gaping maw of the bigger, hungrier sea monster, two figures shot toward us from the city. They stopped abruptly just in front of the trench. They were both mermaids, but they were very different in appearance. One had bluish armor and what appeared to be the tail of a swordfish—as well as two actual swords, in scabbards at her sides. The other had the curling yellow tail of a sea-horse rather than a fish, and wore golden armor. Both of them had pendants in the shape of snail shells around their necks.
The swordfish mermaid said something to us. Naturally, it was in the Undine language, so Crispin and I had no idea what she was saying. We waved frantically in response, pointing to the enormous creature below us and shaking our heads.
Apparently, the message “We don’t want to die” finally got across. The mermaids reached into the current and pulled us both free.
“Thanks,” I said to our rescuers, feebly treading water. “I know you can’t understand us, but thanks.”
The sea-horse Undine held up her shell necklace, and the swordfish one did the same.
“Thanks. I know you can’t understand us, but thanks.” My words echoed from the shells, pitch-perfect. Then both the necklaces began to glow with a bright green light.
“There we are,” said the sea-horse mermaid, in perfect Logrish. “You two all right?”
The other mermaid guffawed in disapproval. “Why don’t you offer them a nice plate of shrimp scones while you’re at it, Ciara?” She drew her swords and aimed them at our throats. “They’re invaders! They’re probably working with the humans!”
“Oi!” Ciara frowned. “Don’t get snippy, Edda! Anyway, they don’t look like invaders to me! One of them’s an Undine, for pity’s sake!”
Edda sniffed the water. “I can smell an enchantment on him. I don’t think he’s a natural Undine.”
“Neither is the King! Now, put your swords away!” She motioned to the baby sea monster, who was nuzzling Crispin. “Look, Nerys likes him!”
“Ah, is that your name?” Crispin rubbed Nerys under her chin. “And you’re a girl. Sorry, didn’t realize that.” The creature trilled happily.
“I don’t think the opinion of a keffyldur hatchling is relevant to this discussion,” said Edda.
Crispin leaned over to me. “Why do they have Talesend accents?”
“Because we do, I expect. Those shell-things seem to be using my voice as a guide for the translation.”
“And how come they look so different from me and Molly?”
“There are hundreds of different subspecies of Undine,” Edda snapped. “Of course, if you were a true merman, you’d know that already.”
“Wait,” said Ciara, hoping up her hand to silence her fellow guard. “Did you just say Molly?” she asked Crispin.
“Yes.”
“Molly Beaumont?”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“The princess?”
Crispin and I both hesitated. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know anything about her being a princess, but—”
Edda jabbed her sword against my chest. “Why are you here?”
I resisted the urge to growl at her. “We’re here to warn you.”
“About what?”
“The return of an old enemy of Aegiris.”
Edda snorted. “We know all about that. The humans are getting ready to attack us again. They’ve found some way to use one of our own battlesongs against us.” She motioned to the trench. “If it weren’t for the powerful warding spells we cast on that moat, we wouldn’t even be able to use magic in this city right now. As it is, if we go outside the barrier, we lose all our powers instantly. Not to mention the fact that we’ve got human skeletons walking around on the sea floor.”
“But the humans aren’t causing it!” Crispin protested. “They’re not doing anything to you! It’s the queen!”
“What?” Ciara gasped. “But…why would she attack the city?”
“Not the queen you have now,” I clarified. “The Unqueen. The one you got rid of a while back. Nasty, psychotic, fond of crashing ships and creating undead armies. Ring any bells?”
“By the Kraken,” Edda murmured.
“Is Princess Molly safe?” asked Ciara.
Crispin shook his head. “I’m afraid not. She’s possessed by the Unqueen.”
“Come on,” said Ciara, without hesitation. She motioned for us to follow her
. “You need to speak to the Queen and King.”
“What?” Edda exclaimed. “A fake merman and a…whatever he is…show up with some wild story about Princess Molly being possessed, of all things, and you just want to invite them into the royal palace? Are you out of your mind?”
“Look around you, Edda!” Ciara snapped. “We’re all in danger! Greater danger than this kingdom has seen in centuries! These two might be our only way of figuring what’s actually going on! Besides, if they do turn out to be dangerous, I’m quite certain the Queen and King can handle themselves.”
Edda clutched her swords in a white-knuckled grip. “We made a oath to keep them safe.”
“Exactly. But we also made an oath to protect their descendants. If Molly’s in danger, then we need to save her at any cost.”
“Wait, wait, hold on.” I waved my hands to get their attention. “Their descendants? Are you saying that your current King and Queen—”
“Queen and King,” Edda corrected. “She wears the Crown of Aegiris, not him.”
“Whatever. Are you saying that they’re the ones from the story? Molly’s ancestors?”
“Of course they are,” said Ciara, looking surprised. “Undine live for thousands of years.”
“Good grief,” said Crispin, as we followed Ciara and Edda toward the city with Nerys the keffyldur swimming alongside us. “We’re about to meet the Sea Witch.”
The fur on the back of my neck stood up. “I really, really hope Molly wasn’t lying about her not being evil.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Sea Witch
The city, as it turned out, was just one of many in the vast kingdom of Aegiris. Ciara and Edda laughed at our initial assumption that their proud nation was that puny. They explained that this particular city’s name was Coria.
“It’s on the boundary between Aegiris and the Selkie Nation,” Ciara explained. “The Queen and King are only here right now because of the recent unrest. The capital city, Llyr, is further out in the ocean, hundreds of miles from here.”
“Selkie?” Crispin echoed, spinning around in a playful dance with Nerys.
“Seal-people,” she explained. “They live in the straits between Caledon and Fionn. We have a close diplomatic alliance with them. One of the Undine princesses married a selkie prince about a hundred years ago, you see.”
“That’s right, Ciara,” Edda mocked. “Just tell them all about our political structure so they can figure out our strategic weaknesses. There’s a smart idea.”
“Oh, be quiet, Edda.”
Coria didn’t have streets, as such—understandable, since nobody here had feet for walking on them. The seafloor was decorated rather than paved. Looking down, we saw all manner of corals and sea anemones, arranged in intricate, colorful patterns. It was living artwork on a massive scale. Instead of roads, we followed tunnel-like pathways leading through the curving, branching towers. Glowing fish swam all around us—the Undine equivalent of street lamps, apparently. Occasionally, we would swim past irregularly-shaped windows. Undine gawked at us through these, uninterested in the three merfolk passing by but astounded by the sight of me. The children were particularly intrigued. Several waved, and some even swam out to follow us in small crowds, but Edda kept shooing them away with sharp commands in her native tongue.
Soon, we arrived at the largest of the coral-like buildings. It was gold in color, unlike the iridescent white towers everywhere else. Its towers snaked out in all directions, reaching toward the moonlight gleaming down from the surface. We swam toward a window about halfway up the structure. Two heavily-muscled shark-mermen stood on either side of it, brandishing spears that appeared to be made of bone. Unlike the other species we’d seen so far, they had dorsal fins protruding from their backs.
“We require an audience with the Queen and King,” said Ciara. “It’s very urgent.”
The shark-man on the left looked at Ciara in confusion and barked something in his own language.
“I’m speaking in our visitors’ language out of courtesy,” said Ciara impatiently. “Use your translator, please.”
The shark-men were both wearing snail-shell pendants like the mermaids. Grumbling in annoyance, they lifted the necklaces at the same time Ciara and Edda lifted theirs. The Logrish words I’d spoken before echoed between them as they glowed green once more.
The first shark-man spoke again. “I said, this is highly irregular. Bringing strangers right up to the royal palace.”
“Exactly what I said,” Edda reminded everyone, folding her arms across her chest-plate.
Nerys swam away, probably sensing the tension in the air. Water. Whatever.
“And what’s that animal there?” demanded the other shark-man, pointing to me. “It looks like some kind of land-creature. Why is it wearing clothes? And how can it survive this far beneath the surface?”
I bared my fangs. “It can understand everything you’re saying.”
“We have to see the Queen and King,” Ciara repeated. “It’s about Princess Molly.”
“What about Molly?”
A face appeared in the window—a beautiful, dark-skinned mermaid with a white-and-blue-striped tail and yellow fins. Her sea-green armor was emblazoned with various symbols that I suspected were military medals. From her face alone, I would have assumed she was in her late forties, but her long, flowing hair was silver-gray in color. The crown on her head was encrusted with multi-colored gemstones. She regarded Crispin and me with polite curiosity.
“You’re the Sea Witch!” Crispin exclaimed.
I smacked a hand to my forehead. “Crispin, honestly—”
“We try to avoid using that phrase down here,” said the Queen, directing an austere frown at Crispin. “It’s rude.”
My heart pounded. I just knew we were going to get fed to the keffyldur after all.
To my great relief, the queen’s frosty reserve suddenly melted, and she burst into a hearty laugh. “Your faces,” she chortled, her eyes dancing with mirth. “I’m Saoirse, by the way. Difficult to spell, easy to pronounce. Seer-sha. Got it? Lovely.”
She didn’t appear to have any problem with the Logrish language—she wasn’t even wearing one of the shell necklaces. She beckoned for me and Crispin to enter. “Let them in, boys,” she said to the shark-men.
“But, your majesty—” the one on the left spluttered.
She gave them a stern, motherly look. “What have I told you about being overprotective? I said, let them in.”
The Undine all reluctantly drew back, and Crispin and I swam toward the window.
“Leave us,” the Queen commanded everyone outside as we entered.
Slowly, they drifted away, leaving us alone with the “witch.”
The chamber where we now stood—or rather, floated—was a huge throne room. The floor was tiled with seashells, and the walls and ceiling were covered in intricate mosaics made from multicolored coral. They depicted a variety of scenes that I presumed were from Undine history, and were surprisingly lifelike. One showed Saoirse, younger and with dark hair, wrapping her arms around a drowning man. Another showed the same man as an Undine with the long, spiny fins of a lionfish. He was looking down at himself in surprise and anger, while the Sea Witch tried to soothe him. A third mosaic showed the two leading an army of merfolk against a hideous, gray-skinned woman with tentacles, spiky fangs, and large, jet-black eyes. Finally, there was a scene of the prince and the Sea Witch on their wedding day, holding hands.
My eyes focused on the monstrous face of the Unqueen. I recognize her, I realized.
“You’re certainly not something we see down here every day,” said Saoirse, jerking me out of my reverie. She was sizing me up in amazement. “Not ever, in fact. If I may ask, what is your species?”
“I’m a Beast, ma’am,” I explained. “Capital ‘B.’”
“Ah,” said the Queen, nodding slowly. “I should have realized it before.” She raised a hand to my hairy cheek. “You do resemble him—
though fortunately for you, not that much.”
Realization dawned on me. “You knew Prince Bastien?” I fought to stifle the memory of watching my predecessor’s transformation through a magical window on the past. I didn’t like to consider that I might in any way be connected to the horrific creature he became.
“Yes, I knew him,” the Queen said softly. “And Anwen. But we’re not here to talk about them. Tell me about Molly.”
“Do we have visitors, dear?” A tall, broad-shouldered merman swam through an archway on the other side of the room. He was identical to the lionfish prince depicted in the mosaics, aside from his gray hair and beard. He wore golden armor, as well as a smaller and less-ornate crown than his wife’s. “Good grief,” he exclaimed, as his eyes fell on me.
“They’re friends, Niall,” the Queen assured him.
The King pointed at me. “Even that one?”
“Yes.”
This seemed to satisfy him. “Pleased to meet you, then,” he said, shaking my hand and Crispin’s enthusiastically.
“They’re here about the trouble we’ve been having,” the Queen explained. “And they have news about Molly.”
A worried expression came over the King’s face. “Is she all right?”
“I think we’d better explain from the beginning,” said Crispin. He elbowed me. “Go ahead.”
“Me?” I spluttered. “Why do I always have to be the one to give the long explanations?”
“Because you’re more of a windbag than I am.”
“Am not!”
The King chuckled. “If I didn’t know better, from the way you argue, I’d think you were brothers.”
“We are,” Crispin and I said in unison.
The monarchs stared at us, thoroughly confused.
I nodded. “Right. Explanation. Here we go.”
I told the entire story from the beginning—complete with footnotes from Crispin, who couldn’t help but interrupt even though he’d shuffled off the storytelling duties onto me.
The King and Queen seemed rather dazed by the time we were finished.
After several long moments of uncomfortable silence, Niall said, “So, in essence, you both got turned into storybook creatures by well-meaning but misguided people?”
