Cimmerian Shade: A Limited Edition Paranormal Romance & Urban Fantasy Collection

by Kiki Howell

  In the deepest concave of the clear azure waters was a beautiful castle, fit for the Royal Family. The castle was big and expansive with walls of coral and spires of conch shells. The roof was fashioned with elegant oyster shells that opened and closed with the ocean currents baring the glittering jeweled pearls snuggled inside, fit for the crown of any queen. The arched Gothic windows were made of colored sea glass, gathered before the royal wedding. The light flickered off of, and through, the beautiful colored glass to dance patterns across the castle floor of shells and abalone shards. The castle entrance was guarded by the Royal Guard of Sea Stars, a position of honor, humility, and grave responsibility, handed down with pride from father to son.

  The Sea King had built the castle for his bride who, shortly after giving birth to their last daughter, left His Royal Highness a sad and lonely widower. For many years now, the King of the Sea lived in the castle with his princess daughters, his aged mother and his loyal subjects. The King’s mother was proud, elegant and wise. She ran the castle home smoothly and efficiently. She was held in the highest regard for the way in which she managed the household, raised her granddaughter princesses – there were six in all – and cared for the Sea King’s subjects. She wore twelve oyster shells along her tail to signify her revered position while all others could only don six. She was very strict with her charges allowing them few dalliances or interests outside of their studies or their splendid gardens along the outer castle walls.

  The princesses each had a beautiful garden patch that reflected their personalities: one was in the shape of a whale, one the shape of a mermaid, another the shape of a conch shell. The gardens shimmered in varying colors throughout the day and night, reflecting the living nature of the ocean below. On clear calm days, the skies above the ocean’s surface sent the warming rays of the sun, surrounding the castle and gardens below. Bathed in the flickering light from the sun of purple hues to turquoise ribbons of fluid currents, the young princess tended her small garden outside the castle walls, planting and moving sea flowers of scarlet, blue, and purple. Her garden was in the shape of the sun and with the same loving tenderness as the nurturing sun, she planted and toiled in her garden lovingly each day.

  Of the six daughters, the youngest was the most beautiful with skin that was as pure as pearls are luminescent and as soft as a sea flower. Her cheeks were flush with color and her lips a natural flaming scarlet. Her eyes were the color of the sky above, reflected in the sapphire sea, indigo flecks and cerulean arcs throughout. Her hair was long; ribbons of crimson, woven with curls of satin and silk.

  While all the other sisters were giddy and playful, darting eagerly about the castle halls and windows, mischievously through the corridors of sunken ships and walls of coral reefs, the youngest princess was shy, quiet and thoughtful, longing for something, but she knew not what. She hungered for her life, for excitement, and had a pounding yearning about which she could not speak respectfully with her sisters or handmaidens. And the notion of approaching Grand-Mamére with this raging, restless exhilaration was perplexing, even outrageous.

  Ever since she was about fifteen, her body ached with a desire no one ever mentioned. Her sisters did not discuss their transformations as they grew into their bodies and fins. This made Saira feel different, so different in fact, it made her wistful and listless, the constant coursing of her blood at rates and pounding speeds exhausting.

  She happened upon a statue in the likeness of a handsome young man on one of her ship wreck excursions. It surely had fallen to the ocean floor from a sinking sea vessel. She collected the stark white marble statue and placed it in her garden, tending to the flowers and plants surrounding it daily. She had planted a red rose flowering sea willow behind the statue and as she grew with age, it grew with her creating a private grotto for her and her young man. The branches grew out over the statue and swayed, hanging to the roots and flowing back and forth gently across the deeply hued purple sand. This young man hadn’t a scale-covered tail as she, but separate limbs upon which he stood. She had never seen such a creature, longing to meet one just once before her father betrothed her to another. Night after night she had dreams of her human and in them his hands and lips touched, tasted and aroused her to the point that she’d wake up tingling and needy and with those dreams of passion surrounding her in the darkness. She found herself alone and it was not his hands, but her own hands, that were thick with her heat.

  Her grandmother told her one day she would allow her to swim to the surface when the moonlight glowed bright enough to light the sky so that she may climb upon the crags and watch the sea vessels pass in the night. The little princess begged her grandmother regularly to talk of air fish called birds that cawed and sang in the night, darting playfully and diving between the sky glitters she called stars. There were some things known to her as land and trees and fragrant earth flowers that lived above us that she longed to see and smell as she couldn’t smell those blooming in her own garden. She listened intently to the stories of men and women without tails that lived above the sea in the sunlight she so loved.

  “But when, when dear Grand-Mamére...when, pray tell?” she implored.

  “When you have reached your eighteenth year,” said the dowager Grand-Mamére, “you will have permission to rise up and out of the sea, as have all your sisters before you, to sit on the rocks in the moonlight, while the great ships are sailing by, and then you will see both forests and towns where humans make their homes.”

  She could barely wait until she reached her fifteenth birthday, let alone her eighteenth! She would be old and promised by then if her father had his way! Saira was afraid that so many daughters had tired her father of the tribulations of finding them husbands and providers.

  The little princess watched year after year as her sisters all reached their eighteenth year and rose to the ocean’s surface to see what treasures lived above the palace below. Each year came and went and the five older sisters one-by-one returned from their journeys to the surface with wonderful stories of lights and towns, music and song, bells and foghorns, flocks of white swans that flew across the sky together like a white trail of wedding lace made of sea coral bleached by the tossing surf.

  Each sister princess had different experiences to relate. But all spoke of love, laughter and music, so much music. The upright humans must me a happy lot to be dancing and singing all the time, she once told her oldest sister, Paerla. She smiled a wicked twisted smile and told her that yes, they were a happy lot, holding one another very closely while they moved in harmony to the music and song. It was like watching the fragrance of a sea rose waft across the wharfs where the young teens, not much unlike them, would steal away to dance together. They pressed their bodies so closely together that not even a blade of grass could be seen.

  Paerla said, one night she watched the young uprights from the crag, a precipice jutting up from the harbor that all the boats avoided when docking. She watched in silence as the young people danced then pressed their lips together. The young men’s hands would move all across the girls’ bodies and find their way under their garments. The girls would pant and huff, squeal and squirm. They seemed excited and pleased by the attention, the kiss, and especially the hands that made their way to all the small privacies human girls kept to themselves. Yet, once the young men opened their eyes to the pleasures of the flesh and sharing the joys of letting the girls touch them too, the girls were quite agreeable.

  Smiling, Paerla added that the girls, once bitten by the men on their lips, it seemed to her, seemed very agreeable indeed to the point of aggression. The young women would remove the men’s belts, untuck their shirts and drop their pants. The upright men had organs outside their bodies that looked like thick shafts and pointed skyward when the kissing and petting reached a fever pitch. One of the town girls liked to drop to the ground in front of the men and kiss the shaft that jutted from their midriff. It was ever so exciting to watch. The man would hold her head tightly to him as
she sucked his shaft deeply into her mouth while they moaned, froze, pounded their shaft down her throat and then screamed! Paerla said that one time she thought the man was in pain and felt compelled to intervene, but as she got closer to the wharf, the man moaned again, as she watched, moved violently fast, then shot long spurts of white cream all across the girl’s face, then smiled. Clearly, he didn’t need any assistance so she’d hung in the shadows to bear witness to what they did next.

  “What did they do, what did they do?” Saira begged.

  Paerla explained that the man dropped to his naked knees and embraced the young girl. She wiped her face with her fingers and then sucked the white juice off each finger as she smiled at him very suggestively. She slipped a finger in his mouth too and then they kissed passionately, fell back upon their clothes and made love. He kissed her neck and breasts, then put his slippery finger up inside her between her small slender legs.

  “The young girl squealed with delight and pushed herself harder against his hand,” Paerla added.

  “Why, why would she do that?” Saira couldn’t understand.

  “Well, she must’ve liked the way it felt because she asked for more, more fingers and harder. I don’t think she would’ve done that if she didn’t like the way it made her feel.”

  “I suppose so...”

  Five long years she waited to reach her eighteenth year; finally, it arrived. Saira decided the first thing she wanted to see was how they danced to the magical music that had them rubbing their bodies together in harmony just as Paerla described. It sounded painful at first then euphoric. The descriptions Paerla added were exciting to her and made her heart race in anticipation. During the intervening years, Saira would often pretend to dance and kiss with her marble prince in her garden as she spoke of love and romance to his deaf ears. She wondered if she prayed to the Goddess of the Coral Hearts long and hard enough, if her kiss would bring her prince to life in the iridescent garden where she spent her days tending the flowers and her nights dreaming of love.

  That never happened, of course, but who’s to say that it wouldn’t’ve one day? Especially if she was good and deserving but most of all patient. But, young Saira couldn’t be patient. She wanted to be eighteen and free to live, love, and dance. Mostly dance!

  After what seemed like forever, it was Saira’s year. Grand-Mamére declared the day a celebration and said she would help prepare the little mermaid for her journey to the surface, just as she had her all her older sisters who came before.

  She took the young princess to her mother’s dressing room and sat her upon the open-shelled tuffin in front of the ornate vanity adorned in mother of pearl, carved shells, sea coral, pearls and sea glass. Once seated in front of the dramatic mirror, the little princess mermaid sighed with impatience and her Grand-Mamére began with her hair. In her hair, she wove ribbons of sea flowers, pearls, small shells and locked them into place with colored coral clasps. She pulled it up, in curls and braids and when she was finished preparing her grand-daughter, the old dowager-mother looked at the young princess with pride for she looked as royal a princess as she had ever witnessed. The most beautiful child was now a most beautiful woman befitting her royal station and prepared for her formal introduction to life.

  And so, the final thing the old woman did was to place a wreath of white lilies woven with baby’s breath sprigs in her grand-daughter’s hair, and every flower leaf was half a pearl. Then the Queen Mother ordered eight great oysters and eight great starfish to attach themselves to the tail of the princess to show her high rank and order.

  Protesting the weight, Saira told her Grand-Mamére the weight of the oysters and starfish was too great and they hurt her so. The Queen Mother, ignoring the comment, frowned at her grandest of granddaughters.

  “Pride must suffer pain. You are a Royal Princess and are therefore required to conduct yourself as such, above the sea as well as below, in pain or not. It is in this way that you will never forget who you are, from whence you came and your royal heredity. The weight of the oysters and starfish will remind you to behave according to your stature in life and marine society. If you are reminded constantly of your heavy royal burdens and responsibility, you will never bring shame to the clan, your sisters, or your father the Sea King.”

  After hours of being dressed, primped, poked, counseled, and prepared, the eager princess could wait no longer.

  “Please, Grand-Mamére!! It will be dark and nightfall before I break the surface of the sea and all will be too hard to see!! I don’t want my day to be over before it has begun!”

  It was then she kissed her Grand-Mamére farewell and rose through the water with the silence and grace of a bubble to the surface. She broke the surface and took her first breath of human air to the sound of music, sea bells, foghorns, and so many things she could not distinguish or name. The sea was calm and quiet; the air was mild. The fresh air stung as it entered Saira’s lungs with a sweet biting fragrant taste she did not recognize and as she licked her lips she turned toward the west. The sun had bid the day adieu and it appeared to her as though it was shooting plumes of scorching red and golden streams into the indigo night until at last it was gone for another day. The parting of the sun, her most favorite thing forever, brought her sadness but anticipation, too. She knew she would see so many things before the sun rose to greet her on the morrow to kiss the night sky farewell for another day.

  She could barely wait to begin.

  She swam towards the beach, to get closer to the noise and life above her world but she couldn’t see as much as she could hear. She didn’t see any humans dancing or rubbing against each other and kissing their lips. Perhaps later. She would return when the music grew louder and the laughter reached a high energetic pitch. She was certain they would come to the wharf to dance, Paerla said that they always did this time of year when the night air was still and warm hanging humidly in the departing day as night fell to cool the sky. So, she swam back out to the reefs and pulled herself above the crag to sit in awe of the night sky and take in everything around her. She felt so alive. She felt so grown up!

  She was too excited to do anything other than breathe, and move her fin in the reassuring comfort of the ocean waves hitting the crag with a rhythmic harmony. She watched as the dolphins, long her friends, danced and played in celebration of her birthday and her adult emergence into the world. When she splashed in the waves, her heavy fin reminded her of the attached oysters and starfish. Her tail was heavy with their weight.

  “Oysters and starfish, awake! You are free to relax here while I explore the human’s harbor. You needn’t protest, I need not your help or protection. I am an adult now and can care for myself, but I will come back for you in the morning so I can take you home. We can return home together, with you on my tail as Grand-Mamére expects. You will have a peaceful rest and I will be free of the burden of your weight. But it must remain a secret that binds us forever. Do you agree?”

  The oysters and starfish nodded in agreement as they hadn’t a choice anyway. She was royalty and they but her mindful minions.

  So much to enjoy, so much to absorb that she hadn’t noticed the sailing vessel in the harbor, until she heard the singing, which then drew her eyes in the direction of the musical vessel. The men on board went about their work as they prepared for the evening. The ship was large, with three masts and only one sail set. The anchor had been dropped in the sanctuary of the mouth of the harbor and the ship swung, almost in harmony it seemed to Saira, on the tether to the beat of the music, the breath of the wind, and the swell of the surf. The men were laughing, singing and dancing as they worked to raise the anchor onto the deck. It was enchanting to Saira and she could not resist the festivities. The little princess swam closer and closer then around the ship, peeking in the portholes and clear cabin windows at the stern. As the waves lifted her up high enough to see in, she saw several beautiful, well-dressed people and among them was the most beautiful of all, a handsome prince, with st
riking black hair and eyes the shimmering color of sea opals, sea blue to pearlescent white.

  “Happy twenty-first birthday, to our Prince,” she heard them cheer as they sang and danced in celebration. She was delighted that they shared the same day of birth and joyful festivity.

  The ship sailed slowly out from the harbor and anchored once again at sea as the celebration continued. She was disappointed that the relocation of the sailing vessel was taking her away from the harbor and the activities that were of keen interest to her on the wharf. But, she could not resist the allure of the young handsome man with whom she shared the same date of birth. There was something, some things, that piqued her interest from which she could not refrain. Perhaps her destiny lay somewhere within reach of this beautiful young man. If there was any truth to that which she felt, Saira was compelled to see it through. She cast a quick eye over her shoulder to the wharf and the activities that promised an unfolding of adult secrets of which she had heard little but was seduced to pursue.