by James Riley
“I can handle slow,” Jack said.
Lian winked at him irritatingly, then led them to a wall on the opposite side, and another horrifyingly tiny vent. She pushed, pulled, and inched her way in, scraping off a few scales on her fake tail as she went. Jack looked at Phillip with a sick look, then followed her in.
What felt like five of the worst years of his life later, Jack pulled himself out into a new room, this one with coral bars all around the open walls.
“Um, I think we took a wrong turn somewhere,” Jack told Lian, who put a finger up to her lips.
“No talking,” she whispered. “They shouldn’t be hungry—I think they were just fed—but let’s not give them any excuse.”
“Them?” Jack said, then felt a wave of water brush against his back. Jack slowly turned around to see row upon row of jagged, rough teeth swimming right over him.
“Man-eating sharks,” Lian said as another of the twenty-foot-long fish swam directly below them, its black eyes dead as some sort of undead monster. “Well, merman-eating sharks. All of the ones in here have attacked merfolk at one point or another. The merpeople don’t kill them, since the sharks are just doing what comes naturally, so they lock them away for safety reasons.”
“What do they feed them?” Jack asked as one of the creatures swam by with something red and unpleasant hanging out of its mouth.
“Usually fish,” Lian said, swimming away slowly. “But if you didn’t tell the Sea King what he wanted to know, you’d find out what else pretty quick.”
Every inch of Jack wanted to swim away as fast as he could, but Lian kept barely moving, each of her strokes displacing almost no water whatsoever. Jack tried to match that, but anytime a shadow fell over him, he couldn’t help himself, he had to kick away as fast as he could.
“Jack!” Phillip shouted, then yanked Jack down as one of the creatures swam right through the spot Jack had been in, its tooth-filled mouth open wide in anticipation. “That one had been watching you,” the prince told him. “I think we should exit this area as fast as possible.”
Up ahead Lian pushed herself into yet another crevice, and Jack was never so happy to see one. The monstrous creatures were far too large to fit into such a small space, but why was she taking so long to go in?!
“Any time you’re ready!” Jack said, his voice rising as his panic did. The creature that had narrowly missed him had already circled around for a second pass, and his dead black eyes locked on Jack’s.
The mermaid finally disappeared into the crevice, but it was too late. If Jack tried to get in now, the creature could bite him in half as he wriggled up inside the vent.
“GO, Jack, I will protect you,” Phillip said, pushing Jack up to the opening.
“From THAT?!” Jack asked.
“GO!”
Jack quickly yanked himself up and desperately pulled himself in, but it was slow going; the vent was just too narrow. Below him he could almost feel the creature approaching, closing in, its mouth wide open…
And then Phillip punched the creature right in the nose.
The shark reared up, then swam right past the prince, its dead black eyes looking almost surprised. But surprise wasn’t going to work more than once. Jack moved as fast as he could, finally giving the prince enough room to start in as well.
“HURRY!” Phillip hissed as Jack made his way up. Fortunately, the crevice opened just ahead into a new room, so Jack quickly pulled himself out of the way. He glanced down into the vent, but saw only darkness.
“Phillip?” Jack asked.
And then a hand popped out, almost stopping Jack’s heart, until he realized it was still attached to an arm. Jack quickly pulled Phillip up and out, and the prince seemed whole enough.
Well, except for the huge hole ripped in his pants’ leg.
“Let us never do that again,” Phillip said, his eyes wild.
“Shh,” Lian said, smacking the prince in the back of the head. She swam slowly forward, listening to voices from the other room.
“Let’s not forget, we need to get Jack and Phillip before we go!” said May, and Jack suddenly felt a world of tension drain out of him, just knowing that May was alive, okay, and feeling good enough to be complaining pretty much as usual.
“We will,” said another voice, one that sounded like the mermaid from the Sea Witch’s lair. “But first we must find the Sea Witch’s songbooks!”
Lian’s eyes narrowed, and she inched forward.
“So you keep looking, and I’ll go get the boys,” May said, and her voice got louder as she spoke, as if she were swimming closer.
“Aha!” the mermaid said. “I think I found them! And by the way, that direction leads to the shark pens. Stay with me if you want to be safe.”
“Ah,” Lian said as she swam out into the other room. “But what if you’re the one in danger?” With that, she drew both her swords and flew out of Jack’s view.
Two women screamed, and a third voice, a masculine one, shouted, all before Jack could even move. And then one of the women went silent, and the entire room exploded with light.
CHAPTER 26
Less than ten minutes earlier, May had swum slowly through what felt like a crowd of hundreds of merpeople, the end of her dress trailing about thirty feet behind her. Apparently formal dresses on mermaids weren’t quite the common thing that Meghan had presented them to be, considering everyone was staring.
“Isn’t it a little late at night for all these people?” May whispered, a smile frozen on her face as she faked a friendly queen of England wave at the onlookers.
“Merfolk sleep throughout the day,” Meghan answered quietly. “We are not slaves to your light cycles as you land folk are.”
“That’s exactly what we call them too, light cycles,” May said. “Nice one.” She glanced around at the crowds, all of which seemed to have stopped whatever they were doing to watch them. “Maybe next time you do this, pick a slightly less conspicuous outfit?”
“Oh yes, I’ll happily pick between all the fin-hiding disguises I typically have on hand,” Meghan said. “Just swim with confidence. They will assume you are from some lesser merfolk kingdom, here for a royal visit. They’re probably more impressed by the expense of the gown than by you.”
“Right,” May said. “I’ve always known I was less impressive than what I was wearing.”
“That’s a beautiful dress!” one little mermaid girl called to her.
“I made it myself!” May said, her fake smile cracking a bit. “Now run—uh, swim along. Nothing to see here.” The little girl smiled shyly, then flippered back to what May assumed was her mother. The mother was staring too, but with less believing in her eyes. Uh-oh.
“Maybe try for less attention, not more?” Meghan said. “The palace is just ahead. We should be out of the public eye in just a moment, so try to keep things under control, please.”
“Ah, control,” said a familiar merman’s voice from behind them. “So easily lost, right, Princess?”
Meghan froze, causing May to swim right into her. They both flipped around (slowly in May’s case, considering her thirty-foot dress) to find Captain Mako smiling at them, his hands clasped behind his back.
“You haven’t introduced me to your friend, Meghan,” he said, then turned his gaze to May. “Though I must say, she looks familiar. Please, give me a hint where I’ve seen her. I could use a leg up here.” He smiled. “Silly me, using a human expression like that. I can’t imagine why!”
Meghan’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here, Mako?”
He swam a bit closer. “I was actually looking for you, and here you are. And with such a lovely mermaid beside you… wearing one of your dresses, if I’m not mistaken?”
“You cannot tell my father,” Meghan said, her voice low and dangerous. “Please, I must do something for this human.”
“Must you?” Mako asked, his voice lowering as well. “And what might that be, if I can ask?”
Meghan winced.
“There are things that I did in the past that I haven’t yet made up for, and—”
“The human prince,” Mako whispered, his tone dropping even further in temperature. “Is that what this is? They’re here to bring you back to your human?”
“No!” Meghan said. “How could you even think such things, after all this time?”
“Because we’re speaking with a human girl not two fins from us!” Mako whispered more forcefully. “What else am I to think?!”
“It has nothing to do with him!” Meghan said, her low voice rising as well. “They needed the help of the Sea Witch—”
“Who is dead,” Mako said. “End of story, it sounds like.”
“I can help them,” Meghan said. “And if you have any feelings for me whatsoever, you’ll get out of my way and let me do just that!”
“But why humans?!” Mako asked. “I can’t help but think—”
“Oh yes you can!” Meghan said. “You can think, but you don’t! This doesn’t have anything to do with that human!”
“It really doesn’t, so maybe we should move on now?” May said. If there were a slow-conversation Olympics, these two would have been standing on the podium with medals around their necks a half hour ago.
Both of them glared at her.
“She is right, there’s no time for this,” Meghan said. “And people are starting to notice. I need to do this. I can do it with your help or without it, but I will do it. Which will it be?”
“I’m coming, of course,” Mako said, “if just to ensure your safety.”
“Oh yeah, the defenseless human in a mile-long dress can be pretty dangerous,” May pointed out, and this time ignored their glares. “Seriously, clock’s ticking.”
Meghan turned and swam into an upper floor of the palace, and Mako followed her, leaving May alone with far too many merpeople still staring. She gave them the queen wave one more time, then swam as fast as she could after them, twisting into and out of dark hallways until she almost plowed into Meghan, hunched over a moss-covered rock in the middle of a dark, sparsely furnished coral cave.
“Help me move this,” she told Mako, who muttered to himself a bit but followed her orders.
“Let’s not forget, we need to go get Jack and Phillip before we go!” May said as they muscled the rock out of the way.
“We will,” Meghan said, pushing herself into a hole left beneath the moss-covered rock. “But first we must find the Sea Witch’s songbooks!”
Meghan pushed herself in deeper until just her tail stuck out, as Mako watched both her and May with some suspicion.
“So you keep looking, and I’ll go get the boys,” May said, swimming away from Mako. The merman captain was a little too annoyed for her taste, and that look didn’t seem to be headed toward happy anytime soon.
“Aha!” Meghan said, wriggling out of the hole holding several thin stone tablets. “I think I found them! And by the way, that direction leads to the shark pens. Stay with me if you want to be safe.”
“Ah,” said a voice from the direction May had been heading in. “But what if you’re the one in danger?”
With that, the darkness lit up as two glowing swords both struck out, heading straight for Meghan.
May and Meghan both screamed in surprise, while Mako shouted something that May couldn’t understand, as a mermaid, a glowing sword in each hand, backhanded one sword into Mako’s face and threw the other right at Meghan’s heart.
Meghan’s eyes lit up like the sun as she began to hum, and lightning exploded from her hands directly at the sword….
Which did nothing to stop its forward momentum.
What did stop the sword’s momentum, however, was Mako’s hand as he grabbed the blade in his palm. The pain from both the Eye’s attack and the sword’s cut were clear, but neither showed on the merman’s face as he tossed the glowing sword back behind May, then turned to face the Eye.
“Oh, come on,” the Eye said, looking annoyed. “You’ve got no chance here, fish-man. You versus me? You’re slower than your tide!”
“Then it’s good he’s got help,” said a familiar voice, and relief washed through May like a flash flood as she realized it was Jack. He slowly swam into view, the sword Mako had just thrown in his hand and Phillip at his side.
“Ready to try this again?” Jack asked the girl.
She smiled. “More than you know!” the Eye said, and just like that, everything fell into chaos.
CHAPTER 27
Jack moved to attack, but before he made it even a foot, he crashed backward, Lian’s tail slamming into his chest faster than he could see. Bouncing off him, the Eye crashed into Mako, sending the merman tumbling into Phillip, while a stray lightning bolt from Meghan almost hit May before Lian smashed the mermaid into the coral wall hard enough to knock her still.
All this happened before Jack could even move again.
As Jack slowly pushed himself up from the ground, gasping for water, Lian picked up Jack’s sword again and waved it around a bit. “I hadn’t ever held the sword of another Eye before meeting you,” she said. “The Charmed One must have been pretty powerful! He’s done things to this sword, changed it somehow. I’m impressed!”
“You’re gonna be… a lot more… impressed in a second,” Jack said, still on the ground.
Mako shouted some sort of war cry and attacked again, ducking under Lian’s sword as she swung it at him, only to find her tail hitting him right in his face. Phillip managed to avoid getting hit this time, moving to stand in front of May… or at least he tried. Lian grabbed his arm as he passed by and spun him around to throw him into a humming Meghan, knocking another bolt of electricity into the coral wall, this time exploding an enormous hole in it straight to the water outside.
Jack groaned loudly and pushed himself to his feet as best he could.
“You might just want to stay down,” Lian said, not even looking at him or breathing hard.
Mako roared and attacked once more, and this time Lian sighed as her sword went back into its sheath and she blocked every one of his attacks with just one hand. “Seriously,” she told him, effortlessly moving faster with every blow, “any time you want to stop this would be fine.”
One last block, and she smashed him in the face with the hilt of Jack’s sword, then turned to find Jack plowing right into her… or at least that was the idea. Instead Lian was suddenly two feet to the side, and Jack slammed into the coral wall.
Uh-oh.
“Uh-oh is right, Jack,” she with the smile. “That almost had a shot at working. Kinda like your whole try at saving all those fairies for your little princess. How’s that going for you, by the way?”
Jack took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus… only something else seemed to take over instead. His eyes went black, and time seemed to slow down, as it had in the past. Without thinking, he grabbed a piece of broken coral from the wall and whipped it at the spot where Lian was standing, then leapt to her side just as quickly.
Lian dodged the coral, throwing herself into Jack’s path. Jack’s momentum slammed her into the wall right next to Phillip, and in the fraction of a second when she was dazed, Jack grabbed his sword from her hand and held it to her throat as the color drained back into his eyes.
How had he just done that?!
“Oh, that’s fun,” Lian said, blinking. Her sword leapt off her back and slashed Jack’s out of the way, freeing Lian. “Looks like someone else took over there for a second, huh?” She swam just out of Jack’s reach, watching him closely. “I’ve always wondered how good the Charmed One really was. Maybe now’s my chance to find out?”
And then Lian attacked.
Every time Jack struck at her with his sword, she easily parried it, then slapped Jack with the flat of the sword. Over and over this happened, each time humiliating Jack, if not hurting him. Whatever had helped him before, when time had slowed down, wasn’t doing much now, and Jack quickly grew angrier and angrier. Finally, roaring in frustration, Jack l
aunched his sword out—and at the last minute reversed it, driving the hilt as hard as he could right into Lian’s face.
The Eye pulled back at the last moment, and Jack’s attack barely missed her nose. “Oh, well done!” she said, almost looking surprised. “But maybe it’s time to stop messing around.”
With that, faster than Jack could see, the Eye slammed him against the coral wall. Before Jack could even blink, Lian was there, grabbing his shirt and crashing him into the opposite wall.
“Fun, huh?” she said, then launched a flurry of punches into Jack’s stomach more times than Jack could count in the span of a second.
“Is it fun to play at being an Eye, Jack?” Lian asked. “Was it fun thinking you were outwitting my Queen? How about showing off to your little friends with one of our sacred swords? That must have been so entertaining for you!”
Jack tried to focus through the pain, and launched out with his sword, but Lian just snorted, not even bothering to move. Instead she clapped her palms on the blade, yanked it from Jack’s hands, and slammed the hilt back into Jack’s chest.
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said, slapping Jack in the face with her tail, then slamming him down into the floor. “You can’t save them. You can’t even save yourself! You play at being some kind of hero, but you’re not. You have no idea who you really are, and you never will!”
His chest heavy, and with sparkles bursting in front of his eyes as he struggled to breathe, Jack looked up to see Lian drop his sword right in front of him, almost tauntingly. “I’d take that away from you if I thought you could do anything with it,” she said. “But as much as I’d love to keep having fun here, I don’t have any more time for this. I need to make sure the mermaid princess dies first.”
“Good luck with that,” Captain Mako said from the hole in the coral wall. He grinned, pointing outside. “Half my army is on their way here right now, just seconds away. The sharks will feast well tonight!”
Lian sighed, then knocked the hilt of her sword into Mako’s head—only for him to lock both arms around her waist and pull them both over backward, right out the hole in the wall.
