by A. L. Knorr
I curled my fingers around hers and pried them from my wrist, relieved to see that I had the strength to do so. I didn’t know what this woman’s abilities were, or her intentions. All I knew was that my heart was jumping around like a jackrabbit that didn’t know which way to go and I was trapped inside a massive aquamarine crystal without a way out.
Her dark eyes widened as she looked down at where I had pried her fingers loose and freed my wrist. Perhaps she thought she was stronger than me as well. I took a steadying breath, telling myself silently to at least pretend that I was the one who was in control here. We were surrounded by razor-sharp shards of aquamarine. Both of us had access to deadly weapons if we wanted them.
“Who are you?” I asked, stepping back.
Her hand slowly drifted down to her side. “Do you not know?”
I shook my head. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re the one who has come to free me. After all this time.” She reached for me again and I took another step back.
“My name is Shaloris,” she replied. “What is your name?”
“I’m Targa.”
“You’re Mer.” Her dark gaze seemed to take me in as an individual for the first time since her eyes had opened. “You have the look of the Mer.”
“And you’re Atlantean?”
Her gaze went fuzzy again and her focus went inward. She took a few shallow breaths and her eyes misted. Her glare snapped to my face again, sharp and focused. “How long have I been in here?”
“I don’t know.” My voice was softer now. Now that she didn’t have a face out of a horror movie, I felt sorry for her. “A very long time.”
“Thousands,” she said on a tremulous whisper. “Thousands of years?”
“I think so.”
I expected her expression to break, for tears to fall, for horror to contort her features once again. But instead, a panicked joy suffused her face, and the tears that came appeared to be those of happiness. She reached for me again and this time I didn’t step back.
Her hands found my elbows, her dark eyes smiled into mine. “She said it would be thousands. It is time. I was right!”
Her hands swept up my arms and to my shoulders, her palms found my cheeks and touched my face with a tenderness that both frightened and disarmed me.
“You must release me,” she said. “I revoked the curse years ago.”
My skin prickled at the mention of the curse. A yawning dread opened wide in the deepest part of me. “But the curse continues, unless a siren wears a piece of the aquamarine that surrounds you. So it was you? You made the curse?”
“I did. I tried to revoke it. But it seems that as long as I live the curse shall go on. End my misery, end the misery of your people.” Her tone went soft and breathy and another tear slipped down her cheek. Her eyelashes were wet and stuck together, her eyes shining and glassy. “You must kill me.”
My insides shriveled in on themselves. How could I kill this piteous creature? How could I kill, period?
“I don’t know if I can,” I whispered. She still held my face and her touch was as tender as a mother.
“You are sweet and kind,” she said, her hands dropping to take mine. “This task has been set before you and no other.”
“Why?” I almost wailed. “Why me?”
“Ah.” The sound slipped softly from her throat. A sound of quiet understanding, a moment of revelation. Her eyes shuttered closed and she released my hands to wipe her face. “Without understanding, we cannot find the courage to do what we must. You do not understand.” Her eyes opened again and she looked me full in the face. “You do not know my story.”
I shook my head.
She put her hands together and began to rub them back and forth. The sound of the dry skin of her palms gave me the shivers. She looked as though she was preparing to do something, warming up.
“I have strength enough to give one last gift,” she said, now lifting her hands and blowing into her palms. “When you see, you shall have the strength to do what must be done.”
Without another word, she reached for my face again. With the touch of her palms on my cheeks, the world around us blurred and all I could see were those large, dark, shining eyes. Eyes that were deeper than forever.
Eighteen
Shaloris was seated on a wide flat rock a few meters above the teal water. Tender waves curling with foam kissed the edges of the red beach. A hot hard sun sent its heat and light down, undiluted by clouds. She pried the kernels from a head of grain snagged from a nearby field, popping them into her mouth and chewing them into a gum. The olive skin of her hands was tanned by hours in the sun.
A red-headed girl lay on her back nearby, her skirts lifted up to her thighs. Her eyes were closed as she basked in the sun, arms and shoulders bare. The sleeves of her tunic gown had been taken down and tucked under her arms. She’d made an effort to bind her thicket of wild red locks into a rope down her back, but short, tight curls sprang out in the humid air, framing her head and ears like a halo. The sun turned her hair to a bright copper fire. She had the porcelain skin of the Mer.
“Will you not swim, Mel?” asked Shaloris
Mel cracked an eye open and a green eye leveled on her friend. “Why do you refuse to call me by my true name?”
“I have known you as Mel since the day we were born. I cannot think of you any other way.”
“You must,” Mel replied, coming up to sitting. She got to her feet and began to untie the blue-green sash at her waist, the color of their father’s house. “Mother says it is a sign of respect for a siren to be called by her full name.”
“She said your Sovereign has to be called by her full name.” Shaloris tossed her head, feeling her dark locks swaying against her back. “You are not Sisinyxa, you are just Mel.”
“Eumelia,” replied the other, dropping the sash and loosening the ties at her ribcage. “I am the king’s daughter; I should be addressed with more respect than other sirens.”
“And how should I be addressed in that case? I am also the king’s daughter, should I invent a longer name to show I deserve reverence?” There was a teasing disdain in Shaloris’ voice. It was not a new topic between the girls, and the teasing tone was not new either.
Eumelia shoved playfully at her sister’s shoulder with her foot, shucking the last of her dress. She stood shamelessly naked in the sunlight.
“We do not randomly make up our siren names,” Eumelia replied, eyes rolling and hands on slim hips. “The sea gives them to us.”
A snort came from Shaloris in response to this. “Yes, the ocean gods hosted a ceremony and christened you thus.” She lifted her arms and put on a serious, haughty expression. “No longer are you Mel, of your mother Hypatia and your father King Bozen the first, Defender of Atlantis and Protector of the Weak and Defenseless. You shall now be called Eumelia, thirteen-thousandth of your name, Minnow among the Many Mer.”
Eumelia watched her sister’s theatrics, a crooked smile on her mouth. She even laughed, a little. “That’s not how it happens and you know it.”
“Right, you just hear it,” Shaloris replied, the booming voice now gone but the disbelief still present.
“You’re just jealous. You wish you were a siren, too.”
Shaloris shrugged. “I like that you have a tail, you can escape this––” she gestured loosely at whatever lay behind and beyond them, “––whenever you want. But mother says I have magic.” The darker girl’s eyes glinted. “Magic more powerful than any Mer could hope to possess.”
Eumelia burst out laughing. “You are Atlantean, what magic could you possibly have? You have these.” The redhead pointed to her neck where a line of gills appeared and opened, waving as if saying hello. “So, you have less than half the magic that I have.”
“She didn’t mean that kind of magic,” Shaloris replied, though she looked doubtful as to what kind of magic exactly her mother had been referring to.
Eumelia grew serious and thoughtf
ul. “She does have something though, your mother,” she said softly. “She is the only woman my own mother is afraid of, I think.”
“Hypatia afraid of Valgana?” Shaloris scoffed. “What a joke.”
Eumelia looked out to sea and was thoughtful for a time. The wind lifted their hair and raised gooseflesh on Eumelia’s skin.
“They will try to separate us soon,” said Shaloris quietly. She got to her feet and stood in front of her half-sister. “I heard them talking.”
Eumelia’s dark eyes widened with alarm. “Our mothers?”
“No, my mother and our father. He still comes to visit her sometimes.” Shaloris cast a sidelong glance at her half-sister. It was not entirely devoid of impishness. “Does he ever visit Hypatia?”
Eumelia shook her head. “Sometimes she cries. I hear her at night. It’s confusing because Father really loved her, and loves her still. I can tell.” She gazed at the horizon, looking faraway and sad, but only for a moment. Her gaze snapped to her sister’s face. “What did you overhear?”
“My mother wishes they had never let us play together. She says they should have raised us apart.”
Eumelia cocked her head. “We both grew up at the palace, we shared nannies and tutors. It would have been impossible.”
“When we were little,” Shaloris lowered her voice, “my mother asked that you and Hypatia be sent away, to Okeanos perhaps. So you could be raised with your own people, instead of among Atlanteans and humans.”
“I like living here,” Eumelia insisted, taking her sister’s hands. “I like Atlantean life. Besides, plenty of Mer choose to make their home here, not just us.”
“You don’t like the humans,” Shaloris pulled her hands gently from her sister’s grasp and averted her eyes from the siren’s nakedness. Sometimes Eumelia’s lack of modesty embarrassed her, though she tried to hide it. She wished she could be so free with her own body.
Eumelia shuddered. “No, they are vile and simple creatures.”
“That’s your mother talking.”
Eumelia shrugged. “Maybe. But they are easy enough to avoid. Just don’t go to the markets or the festival days. Stay at the palace or go to the temples.”
“The markets and festivals are the most fun! I do wish you would come, just once.”
“Mother would never allow it, and I would not care to be among the human stink anyway.” The girl’s eyes sharpened and her look grew intense. “But we must not let them separate us. Let’s make a blood pact!”
Shaloris frowned. “I’m not going to cut myself.”
“It is better if we do. It will be more serious that way,” Eumelia insisted.
Shaloris would not be convinced. “Let’s just make a promise.”
Eumelia rolled her eyes. “Fine, but the gods will not hear it.”
“We’ll hear it and that’s all that matters.”
The two girls crossed arms at the wrists and took opposite hands, giggling a little.
“You first,” Shaloris said as the wind picked up their hair. Quite a sight the two girls would have looked to an observer. One girl tall and finely dressed in white and emerald green, her long hair blowing and swaying in the wind. Another girl with hair like a prairie fire, naked as the day she was born, her shape still lacking the curves of womanhood.
“I promise that no matter what my mother desires, she will never keep me from my sister, Shaloris.”
“What about father?” whispered Shaloris, sounding serious and doubtful.
“Well,” Eumelia hesitated, “he is the King, we must do what he says.” She tossed her head and her face relaxed. “He would never do that anyway. It is our mothers who are at odds.” She squeezed her sister’s hands. “Your turn.”
Giggling, Shaloris took some time to say her own version of the same words.
“Now kiss my cheeks, as I kiss yours. For a promise must be sealed with a kiss.”
“Like a wedding?” Shaloris wrinkled her nose.
“Kind of like that.” Eumelia puckered and leaned toward her sister. They exchanged a kiss for each cheek.
“Now tilt your head back to the sun, eyes closed,” Eumelia instructed.
Shaloris obliged.
“Now spit into the wind.” Eumelia made a rude horking sound in the back of her throat.
Shaloris burst out laughing. “Disgusting! You’re just making things up.”
Eumelia turned her head and spit in the direction of the wind, a fine round gob any farmer would have been proud of. “Well, you wouldn’t do a blood pact.” She shrugged. “There has to be some kind of body fluid involved.”
Shaloris released her sister’s hands. “I’ll give you fluid,” she cried, and shoved her sister hard toward the edge of the low overhang and the deep waiting water below.
Eumelia squealed with delight and turned her fall into a graceful dive.
Shaloris’s eyes widened and her eyes hungrily took in the transformation that passed over her sister’s frame in the space of time it took for her to hit the water’s surface.
Eumelia’s legs melted as if made of wax and quickly fused, transforming into a lime-green tail. It flashed wickedly in the sun. The splash was small as she slipped beneath the waves, leaving Shaloris to watch in amazement from above. Mel’s lithe frame curved deep underwater and shot toward the surface, breeching in front of her sister and spinning for effect. Her long red braid had come undone and her hair was a rust-colored fan spraying droplets in every direction.
Shaloris gasped in amazement. She took off her own dress and jumped into the waves, making her own more subtle transformation. The girls played in the vast underwater world beyond their great city home and all talk of fathers and mothers, stinking humans, festivals and temples ceased. They were part of the ocean and its peace.
The sun had passed overhead and shadows were reaching their fingers across the land when Eumelia and Shaloris finally returned to the beach, two innocent children giggling together.
Eumelia spotted Hypatia and lost her smile. Her gaze and silence soon drew Shaloris’s eyes as well. In a moment the girls were young princesses of Atlantis, and carefree no longer.
Hypatia did not approach; she stood on the steps and waited. Her unsmiling presence looking down like a stone gargoyle was enough to get the girls moving.
Eumelia dressed herself, and then helped Shaloris with her ties and her wet hair, looping it up and ribboning it on top of her head.
Shaloris climbed from the beach, acknowledging Hypatia from a distance with a wave. Hypatia did not acknowledge her in return. Shaloris walked the shoreline in the opposite direction, to where her caregivers waited with horses to return her to the heart of the city. She had her own mother waiting for her.
Nineteen
Shaloris walked barefoot across the cool marble of the temple floor. In her upturned palms she held a woven basket full of fruit. The smell of summer’s bounty filled her nose and she inhaled deeply before setting it on the floor beside a sparkling pool surrounded by other gifts.
Her chaperone and two Atlantean guards waited near a market stall not far away, probably drinking. The guards prevented any other visitors from entering the temple while the young princess was inside, unless of course those visitors were other royalty.
When Shaloris heard feminine voices and shoes being removed on the other side of the thick pillars separating the inner sanctum from the outer courtyard, she was consumed by a desperate desire to hide. Irrational as it was for an Atlantean princess to hide in a temple built by her own people, not even caring who it was she was hiding from, still she bolted. Driven by an impulse too complex to understand, she scampered from the inner sanctum and hid behind one of the many pillars on the opposite side of the courtyard.
The temple was open to the front, but backed by a solid wall of pink Ethiopian marble. No one would pass by her. She would wait until the other royal visitors left, and then she’d have the sanctum to herself again. Shaloris set her back against the marble and slid down unt
il her bottom rested on the cold marble floor. Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and waited.
There were sounds of baskets being set down and the water being touched, the ripples being watched while a question was held in the mind of the one who did the rippling. It was a ritual as old as Atlantis itself.
“You must make him a gift.”
Shaloris’ eyes popped open at the sudden sound of Hypatia’s powerful voice. The siren made no effort to soften her tone for respect’s sake.
“Mother, shhhh.” It was Mel, of course. Eumelia, Shaloris corrected herself in her mind. It was still difficult to think of her sister as anyone but Mel. “You’ll be heard.”
“I want the gods to hear,” Hypatia replied, not lowering her voice.
“I wasn’t worried about the gods, so much as the people waiting outside.”
“They are inconsequential. Why should we be ashamed of taking what is rightfully ours? I want the gods to know that I have seen the signs in the water. The throne will be yours, but you must make King Bozen a gift. An impressive one. One that no one else can make. One that he will love. One that will guarantee he will name you as his heir.”
“Is there such a gift?” Eumelia asked, her voice thick with doubt.
Shaloris pressed her lips on one another in an effort to keep laughter from leaking out. It was silly of them to think that the next heir to the throne would be chosen based on a gift.
There was the sound of a small slap, and that was enough to choke off any humor Shaloris saw in the situation. Her dark brows drew down.
“Stupid girl,” Hypatia muttered. “Must I do all of the thinking for you? Do you not want the throne?”
“What if I don’t?” Eumelia responded, though her voice was haughtier than ever. Shaloris knew that Eumelia wanted it, she was just being difficult for her mother.
“Then you are an idiot who doesn’t deserve it,” Hypatia snapped back. “But you’ll get it. You’ll get it and I’ll counsel you. You think I’ll sit by and watch while Sisinyxa is given a place on the council?” The sound of a hiss followed this rhetorical question. “I’ll be the first and only siren in Atlantean government.”
