by James Riley
“Yes. My eyesight has adjusted, and I explored a bit before you showed up. Unfortunately, the coral is strong, so I weakened it as much as I could by picking away at it, then—”
“Then kicked off the wall, right into me,” Jack finished. “Great plan, up until the part where you almost knocked me out. Where’s May?”
Phillip gasped. “The princess was taken as well?! Jack, you were supposed to protect her once I was removed from the situation!”
“How could I have been so stupid, not to realize that?” Jack said. “Seriously, put that genius mind of yours on a better way of getting out of here than hitting the bars really hard, ’cause it’s just wasted analyzing all my mistakes. I can’t wait to see what you come up with!”
“Perhaps your sword?” Phillip said.
Jack stopped, blushing hard, glad the prince couldn’t see him. But after a quick reach to his back and finding no sword, Jack thankfully switched back to sarcasm. “Oh, fantastic idea! It’d help if they hadn’t taken it from me!”
“It would appear that we are trapped here, then.”
“Either that,” Jack said, sitting down on the coral floor, “or fed to sharks. We’ll know either way in an hour.”
“An hour?” Phillip said, punching his hand. “We do not have much time to escape and rescue the princess, then.”
“Let’s hope your escaping skills are as good as your grasp of time measurements,” Jack told him, feeling around on the ground. Somehow the coral floor grew right into the walls, as there wasn’t even a seam.
“Perhaps we could get help,” Phillip suggested as he picked away at the bars. “Perhaps we could find this mermaid princess, the one her mermaid sisters mentioned.”
“Oh, I’m sure she’s coming along at any second,” Jack told him. “I bet she’ll randomly show up here and poke her head in these bars to chat. ’Cause that’s so likely to happen.” He rolled his eyes. “Your grasp of reality frightens me sometimes.”
“Speaking of reality,” Phillip said, his tone darkening, “I believe it is time to explain to me how the Eye speaks to you in your dreams.” Jack just grunted, so the prince continued. “Stories say that the Eyes typically kill the strong but infect the minds of the weak-willed in order to better control the populace.”
“Do those stories have a twist ending?” Jack asked, his anger rising. “Seriously, I love when they end all crazy.”
“One story that I have heard begins with a small puppy—”
“Okay, ENOUGH!” Jack said, standing up and confronting what he first assumed to be Phillip but turned out to be the wall just to the right of the prince. Adjusting on the fly, Jack turned his anger away from the innocent coral and back to Phillip. “I’m not weak-willed, I’m not being controlled, and I’m not turning into an Eye, Phillip!”
Phillip sighed. “Unfortunately, that is what I would expect someone being controlled to say. I cannot take the chance, not with the princess’s safety. This new Eye, the girl… she affected you. Perhaps you are even now leading her to us.”
“Like that would ever happen!” Jack shouted. “That girl has no idea where we are!”
“Oh, hey you two, what’s going on?” said the last person in the world Jack could have ever wanted to speak up at that moment.
Abruptly a glowing white sword lit the water.
And then, so did a second sword.
On the other side of the bars floated a mermaid with a red fishtail and dark brown hair. And in each hand was the sword of an Eye.
“You two really should have worked on your disguises a little better,” mermaid Lian said, looking them up and down. “I can’t tell you how little I believe you’re mermen.”
Jack growled in frustration, then whirled around, punching with all his might through the bars, straight at Lian.
His fist stopped less than an inch from her nose, but the mermaid never moved.
“Oooh, so close!” she said with a smile, then drove the flat of Jack’s own sword down on his hand. He yanked his hand back, throbbing to the very bone, but he wasn’t going to give Lian the satisfaction of knowing it hurt.
“It’s okay, I already know,” she told him, and he growled again. This couldn’t be happening!
“Why are you here?” Phillip asked her. “We are trapped, what more could you want? Do you wish to gloat?”
“Oh, nothing so classless,” the mermaid said, her tail flicking gently in the water, somehow keeping the rest of her body almost entirely still despite the flow of the water. “I’m actually here to let you two out.”
Both Phillip and Jack raised an eyebrow, and the mermaid laughed. “Oh, don’t look so surprised. I didn’t say I was going to help you, just let you out.”
“And why would you do that, then?” Jack asked as he glared at her with all the hatred in the world, hoping she felt every last ounce.
“Well, first I’m going to take the three of you back to land,” she told him, counting it off on her fingers. “Then I’m going to deliver you all to my Queen.”
“That’s not going to happen!” Jack told her in a deep, intimidating voice. “Well, maybe the first one. Okay, so one of those things is going to happen, but it won’t be the second one—”
“Be still,” Phillip told him, his focus on the mermaid.
“Wow, you’ll just let anyone control you, won’t you?” Lian said to Jack. “Me, the princey prince here… Does May order you around too?”
“No one controls me,” Jack told her.
“Except the Eyes,” Phillip said.
“And anyone else you happen to meet,” the mermaid sniffed. “Anyway, you need to get back to land, so let’s get going.” She paused. “Oh, and third, if you’d let me get to it, is that we’re going to kill the Sea King’s daughter.”
As Jack and Phillip just stared at her, stunned, Lian slapped her fin on the ground impatiently. “Seriously, I don’t have all day, and that’s a long list! Are you ready to go or what?”
CHAPTER 24
Oh, wow,” May said, staring at Meghan, who wouldn’t look at her. “But it wasn’t your fault. It was your father.”
“He couldn’t believe it!” Meghan shouted, still not looking. “I told him exactly what happened, that I had performed the magic, not her. But he wouldn’t accept that I had done such things! And for that she paid with her life.”
“Well, that’s completely tragic,” May said, “but apart from all that, I’m not really seeing where all the beating up on yourself comes in.”
Meghan turned, her eyes burning a deep yellow. “Consequences are consequences, whether we expect them or not. And I must live with the fact that I caused her death.” She shook her head slowly. “I cannot see… my human prince. I have moved on. Anything I felt for him, it’s passed.”
May sighed. “Listen,” she said in her most sympathetic voice. “I feel for you, I really do. But it’s time to put on your big-girl pants and get over yourself.”
Meghan looked up, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry?”
“You should be!” May shouted, the fake sympathy pretty much forgotten. “Honestly? I couldn’t care any less about all this tragic prince-mermaid love. I just want to save thousands of fairies before they get burned by dragon fire. But I can see how your problems are much more important than their lives.”
“That is none of my concern,” Meghan said, and turned away again.
“You know, I would have asked the Sea Witch,” May said quietly, “but she isn’t exactly around to help me now, is she. Why is that again?”
And there it was, a guilt card ten miles high by an infinite miles long. Meghan, meanwhile, slowly turned to look at her, appearing to have some trouble forming words, she was so in shock, and May didn’t blame her. If May had been Meghan, she would have hit her May self over and over with her bright green tail. But May wasn’t Meghan, she was May. And May had things to take care of. The last thing she was going to do was just leave those fairies to die, all because she’d released the Wicked Que
en back into the world.
“You’re right,” Meghan said quietly.
“I’m what?” May said, a bit distracted by her own guilt.
Meghan shook her head. “You’re right. If not for me, the Sea Witch would be here now to choose whether to return to her people and save them all. Perhaps this was her chance to reconnect with her family. And maybe I… could begin to make up for what I did to her.”
“Yes, you could,” May said, “and I like where you’re going with this. But maybe let’s not forget who’s really at fault here. Namely, your father, the crazy guy with the trident.”
Instantly Meghan’s hands flew through the coral bars and grabbed May by her shirt, then yanked her hard against the coral. The mermaid pulled her own head to the bars, and with fangs bared and eyes blazing, she stared right into May’s soul. “You will NOT say such things about the King of the World!”
May nodded quickly, the water suddenly dropping in temperature about fifty degrees. And that was a drop of fifty degrees Celsius, which she really had no idea how to convert, but she knew meant it was way colder.
“If you so much as raise your voice about my father again, I will abandon those fairies to whatever deity they worship,” Meghan told May softly, then slowly let lose her grip on May’s shirt and dropped her back to the seafloor.
“Right,” May said, her pulse racing a marathon. “Nothing but compliments for your dad from here on. So, speaking of that other thing, how about you just magic me and my friends straight on to the Fairy Homelands, then?”
“No magic,” Meghan said, glancing around. “My father would know. That is why the Sea Witch had her lair so far from his palace. But even that is not safe, not with him on guard against your little friend, the Eye. No, we must get closer to land. That’s where I did my own magic the first time, just to be sure he didn’t find out.”
“Which he obviously never did, so that plan is foolproof,” May said.
“It wasn’t the magic that alerted him, girl,” Meghan said, bending over to pick up an overly large piece of coral. “It was a young merman who followed me out of concern, then told my father for the same reason.” She sighed, fitting the coral between the bars of the cell. “He’s not going to be happy about this either.”
Things started to fall into place. “That Mako guy?”
Meghan nodded. “It was a long time ago, and I know he had good intentions…. I’ve come to forgive him now. But it was years before I could even look at him, and years past that before I could develop feelings for him.”
“Maybe less of the soap, and more of the opera,” May said. “We’ll get you back up to Bluebeard, who can take us to land, where you can sing us to the Fairy Homelands, and everyone’s happy!”
“Bluebeard is waiting for you, correct?” Meghan asked. May nodded, and Meghan continued. “If my father learned that Bluebeard was even on the seas again, let alone this close—whether I intended to return to the human world or not—it would mean war, and terrible deaths on both sides.” She glared at May. “NO ONE must know about this. Do you understand me?” With that, she braced the coral, then pushed as hard as she could.
The coral bars exploded apart, and Meghan knocked the remaining bits out of the way as May watched in awe. Each of those coral bars had felt like solid rock to May. How strong were the merpeople?
“So, keeping a low profile is definitely on the plus side,” May said. “But there are two small leggish problems with that.” She kicked up with her legs, and wiggled them at Meghan as she pointed at them.
“Stop that,” Meghan said with a little disgusted look. “It’s a bit unseemly.”
May stopped immediately, raising a questioning eyebrow. “But you… Your prince had legs.”
“I tried not to look,” Meghan sniffed. “Regardless, we can cover your shame with a formal dress.”
“You have dresses long enough to cover your tails?” May asked. It seemed odd at first, but why wouldn’t they? It’s not like their feet needed to touch the ground for any reason. Really, the dresses could be—
Meghan handed her a bundle tied in seaweed. “This one is around forty fins long.”
May stared at the bundle in much the same way Meghan had stared at her kicking legs. “Uh, right. So where are we going?”
“To the Sea Witch’s old home, in the palace.”
“I thought you said—”
Meghan sighed loudly. “She performed her magic in her cave. You really think a civilized person would live in such a dank, colorless place?”
May started to say something about how she thought all fish lived in caves, then decided it might be better to actually shut up for a second. Meghan watched her warily, then continued.
“We need the Sea Witch’s songbooks if I am to find the magic you say we’ll need. After we find them, we will go free your other human friends. We do not have much time. When an hour has passed and my father realizes you have escaped, he won’t stop until he’s flayed the skin from your bones like human fishermen cruelly do to marine life.”
May swallowed hard. “You all were a lot cuter in the cartoon, you know.”
CHAPTER 25
Almost faster than Jack could follow, Lian sliced a hole in the coral bars using both swords, circling them in opposite directions. As soon as the coral bars fell into the cell, the swords disappeared into sheaths on her back just as quickly. “Ready, ladies?” she asked, gesturing politely for them to exit.
First Phillip, then Jack, slowly swam out of the cell as Lian waited impatiently. As soon as Jack’s feet floated to the floor, he looked at Phillip, who nodded.
Immediately they both threw themselves at the Eye.
Just as fast, she slammed both boys into each other, then flipped around, grabbed their arms and yanked them up behind their backs.
“Well, that was impressive,” she said, pushing up hard as both Jack and Phillip groaned in pain. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t have time to beat you two up every other minute. So I’ll just say this: I can always tell my Queen I couldn’t find you, then leave you to the Sea King. And that is going to be one unhappy father when he finds out humans killed his daughter.”
“We will not help you just to save ourselves!” Phillip shouted.
“We could at least consider the idea,” Jack hissed at the prince.
Lian laughed. “If it helps, Your Princeness, you’d also be saving your darling May. Do you really want to sentence her to death, or is it better that she stay alive with a grandmother who loves her?”
“The Wicked Queen is not capable of such emotions,” Phillip said as he struggled against Lian, who barely seemed to notice.
“I’ll admit she can be a bit… heartless,” Lian said, then giggled. “Sorry, inside joke. So you’re saying you’re okay with leaving May here to be eaten by sharks, then.”
“NO!” Phillip shouted through gritted teeth. “I shall do as you say. But the moment you—”
“Sure, sure,” Lian said, then looked to Jack. “What about you, genius? You willing to throw away your life, or your princess’s, just to spite me?”
Jack just looked at her for a moment. “You do make it sound tempting, but no. You’re right. I can wait for a better time to take you down.”
Lian raised an eyebrow but nodded. “That’s close enough to a yes. Well, then, let’s get to killing mermaids! First, to the Sea Witch’s old place.”
The tunnels they found themselves swimming through dove and rose at random, sometimes spiraling around before emptying out into other passageways. Lian didn’t seem to have any problem with directions, as she never even hesitated when picking a new tunnel.
Even the tunnel that led right to a dead end.
“Whoops!” Jack said with a wide smile. “Looks like someone’s lost!”
Lian just rolled her eyes and pointed up. “Try not to be so stupid,” she said. “It’s hard, but give it a real effort. You don’t have to just think in four directions when you’re underwater.�
�� With that, she kicked off, shooting right into what looked like the ceiling, but instead slipped into a crevice just big enough for a human or merman to slip through.
This tunnel, if you could call it that, wasn’t really much more than a vent in the rock, narrowing as it went. If Jack hadn’t seen Lian slip through ahead of him, he’d have doubted if he could make it through. Still, his shoulders scraped harshly against the rock at times, and the tight quarters began making Jack nervous for some reason, as if the walls had been waiting for just the right moment to collapse, and now was that time. Knowing his luck, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
Just when Jack thought he couldn’t take any more of this, that he had to get out of the tunnel now, Lian grabbed his arms and pulled him up into a room glowing with yellow light.
Not yellow light. Golden light. Gold. Gold, gold, gold, everywhere.
“One of the Sea King’s treasure rooms,” she said, pointing at the incalculable treasures all around them. Piles of gold coins large enough to dive into filled most of the room, barely held back from overflowing into the vent they’d just crawled through.
But it wasn’t just gold. There were vases full of red opals, blue rubies, and orange sapphires. A statue made entirely of a black rock that seemed to suck the light out of the room around it. Priceless books. Well, the books hadn’t stood up too well to the water, but the rest was still impressive.
“Spoils of war from attacking humans,” Lian said. “When the Sea King first declared that no human was allowed in or on the water again, most didn’t believe him. So mermen sank ship after ship until the message got through.”
“I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying everyone’s stories today,” Jack said, “but aren’t we in a hurry to get out of here? Maybe save your uplifting history lessons for your next victims.”
“Someone’s cranky!” Lian said indignantly. “Anyway, we have to go slow. Any alarm here will warn the Sea King, and that will mean we all end up fish food.”
