“He will never be whole,” I said, “after what was done to him.” But I realized that wasn’t what they meant.
“And if he doesn’t?” I asked, finally.
“What is lost? The harm is over.”
“Come into the water with us,” the male urged me. “Come and love with us.”
“I am afraid,” I said.
Which wasn’t true. All Arukh knew fear, we lived with it all our lives and never admitted it.
But that wasn’t why I didn’t want to go.
I thought of the Prince, of the street shaman, of the prostitute. Empty vacant lives, alone and solitary like Arukh. For them, for us, there was no one who was not, in the end, a stranger. An enemy.
Only power mattered. The power over others. Over lives. That was the only power over your own life. I understood the Prince all too well.
“Trust me,” he’d coaxed, and killed Mira.
“Trust us,” they coaxed me now.
That was the Mermaid’s secret. I had thought them simple. They simply did not understand aloneness, or power. They knew each other. They did not take, they shared. There was no one who was an enemy. No one needed to be a stranger.
I thought of Tashifar.
Poor foolish Tashifar who chained himself to falling idols. And yet, he’d believed, he’d loved, he’d held on to something that he conceived as greater and better than himself. Was he not better than the Prince?
I thought of Vhoroktik.
Mad Vhoroktik who denied her true nature with every breath. Who despised everything that she was. Who struggled by force of will to be something she was not. And yet, she was loved by those she embraced. In her tears for Khanstantin, hadn’t there been something true within her?
I thought of my little nameless Arukh. So desperate for something besides the emptiness that was our nature that she followed me. So desperate that she would bind herself to what she thought I was.
Perhaps we could be more than what we are. Empty burning creatures screaming down into an empty burning void.
We are born alone. We will die alone. But perhaps we do not need to live alone.
“Arash,” Cara said, “do not fear us.”
“Arash?” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means alone,” she said. “It means the lonely people.”
“It is a good name,” I said quietly.
“Trust us,” she said, once more.
They waited.
They did not laugh as I stood and removed my tunic. Shook off my boots. They did not hoot or call as I dropped my clothes and weapons.
Naked, I found that I did not have the courage to look at them. They waited, silently.
I slipped into the water, into waiting arms.
About the Author
Den Valdron, is a reclusive writer, originally from New Brunswick, currently living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Over the years, he has published in print and online a variety of short stories of speculative fiction, and articles on obscure pop culture topics.
Like many writers, his previous occupations have included mechanic, carpenter, schoolteacher, journalist and ditch-digger. He is currently an aboriginal rights lawyer.
He loves B-movies and tries to be nice to people. The Mermaid’s Tale is his first published novel.
Books by Five Rivers
NON-FICTION
Al Capone: Chicago’s King of Crime, by Nate Hendley
Crystal Death: North America’s Most Dangerous Drug, by Nate Hendley
Dutch Schultz: Brazen Beer Baron of New York, by Nate Hendley
Motivate to Create: a guide for writers, by Nate Hendley
Stephen Truscott, Decades of Injustice by Nate Hendley
King Kwong: Larry Kwong, the China Clipper Who Broke the NHL Colour Barrier, by Paula Johanson
Shakespeare for Slackers: by Aaron Kite, et al
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Macbeth
The Organic Home Gardener, by Patrick Lima and John Scanlan
Stonehouse Cooks, by Lorina Stephens
John Lennon: Music, Myth and Madness, by Nate Hendley
Shakespeare for Readers’ Theatre: Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, by John Poulson
Beyond Media Literacy: New Paradigms in media Education, by Colin Scheyen
FICTION
Black Wine, by Candas Jane Dorsey
88, by M.E. Fletcher
Immunity to Strange Tales, by Susan J. Forest
The Legend of Sarah, by Leslie Gadallah
Growing Up Bronx, by H.A. Hargreaves
North by 2000+, a collection of short, speculative fiction, by H.A. Hargreaves
A Subtle Thing, by Alicia Hendley
Sid Rafferty Thrillers, by Matt Hughes
Downshift
Old Growth
The Tattooed Witch Trilogy, by Susan MacGregor
The Tattooed Witch
The Tattooed Seer
The Rune Blades of Celi, by Ann Marston
Kingmaker’s Sword, Book 1
Western King, Book 2
Broken Blade, Book 3
Cloudbearer’s Shadow, Book 4
King of Shadows, Book 5
Sword and Shadow, Book 6
Indigo Time, by Sally McBride
Wasps at the Speed of Sound, by Derryl Murphy
A Method to Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil, edited by Michell Plested and Jeffery A. Hite
A Quiet Place, by J.W. Schnarr
Things Falling Apart, by J.W. Schnarr
And the Angels Sang: a collection of short speculative fiction, by Lorina Stephens
From Mountains of Ice, by Lorina Stephens
Memories, Mother and a Christmas Addiction, by Lorina Stephens
Shadow Song, by Lorina Stephens
YA FICTION
My Life as a Troll, by Susan Bohnet
Eye of Strife, by Dave Duncan
Ivor of Glenbroch, by Dave Duncan
The Runner and the Wizard
The Runner and the Saint
The Runner and the Kelpie
Type, by Alicia Hendley
Type 2, by Alicia Hendley
Tower in the Crooked Wood, by Paula Johanson
A Touch of Poison, by Aaron Kite
Out of Time, by D.G. Laderoute
Mik Murdoch, by Michell Plested
Boy Superhero
The Power Within
Hawk, by Marie Powell
FICTION COMING SOON
Eocene Station, by Dave Duncan
Cat’s Pawn, by Leslie Gadallah
Cat’s Gambit, by Leslie Gadallah
The Tattooed Queen, by Susan MacGregor
Bane’s Choice, Book 7: The Rune Blades of Celi, by Ann Marston
A Still and Bitter Grave, by Ann Marston
Diamonds in Black Sand, by Ann Marston
YA FICTION COMING SOON
The Great Sky, by D.G. Laderoute
NON-FICTION COMING SOON
Annotated Henry Butte’s Dry Dinner, by Michelle Enzinas
Shakespeare for Reader’s Theatre, Book 2: Shakespeare’s Greatest Villains, The Merry Wives of Windsor; Othello, the Moor of Venice; Richard III; King Lear, by John Poulsen
YA NON-FICTION
The Prime Ministers of Canada Series:
Sir John A. Macdonald
Alexander Mackenzie
Sir John Abbott
Sir John Thompson
Sir Mackenzie Bowell
Sir Charles Tupper
Sir Wilfred Laurier
Sir Robert Borden
Arthur Meighen
William Lyon Mackenzie King
R. B. Bennett
<
br /> Louis St. Laurent
John Diefenbaker
Lester B. Pearson
Pierre Trudeau
Joe Clark
John Turner
Brian Mulroney
Kim Campbell
Jean Chretien
Paul Martin
www.fiveriverspublishing.com
Black Wine
ISBN 9781927400357
eISBN 9781927400364
by Candas Jane Dorsey
Trade paperback 6 x 9,
306 pages
October 1, 2013
Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Crawford Award, and Prix Aurora Award.
An old woman hangs in a cage; a young woman slaves on a rich lord’s estate. How does a woman discover and assert her identity in a primeval, barbaric world? From slave dens to merchant cities to isolated mountains, Candas Jane Dorsey’s novel is a powerful exploration of gender, identity, and freedom.
From Mountains of Ice
ISBN 9780973927856
eISBN 9780986563027
by Lorina Stephens
Trade Paperback 6 x 9,
268 pages
September 1, 2009
Sylvio spent the past decade banished from Simare’s court, stripped of land, ancestral home and title - from Minister of National Security to back-country bowyer. But not any bowyer; Sylvio creates bows from laminations of wood and human bone, bows that are said to speak, bows known as the legendary arcossi.
And now, after a decade, he is called back to the capitol, summoned by his Prince whom he suspects is a patricide and insane. His very life is in danger and with it the country he has served through all his days.
From Mountains of Ice is a story of love, endurance and the meaning of honour.
88
ISBN 9781927400234
eISBN 9781927400241
by Michael R. Fletcher
Trade Paperback 6 x 9,
400 pages
June 1, 2013
The dream of Artificial Intelligence is dead and the human mind is now the ultimate processing machine. Demand is high, but few are willing to sacrifice their lives to become computers. Black-market crèches, struggling to meet the ever-increasing demand, deal in the harvested brains of stolen children. But there is a digital snake in that fractally modelled garden; some brains make better computers than others.
88, a brilliant autistic girl, has been genetically engineered and raised from birth to serve one purpose: become a human computer. Plagued by memories of a mother she never knew and a desire for freedom she barely understands, she sets herself against those who would be her masters. Unfortunately for 88, the Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan have other plans for her.
Griffin Dickinson, a Special Investigator for the North American Trade Union, has been tasked with shutting down the black market crèches. Joined by Nadia, a state-sanctioned reporter and Abdul, the depressed ghost of a dead Marine inhabiting a combat chassis, Griffin is drawn deep into the shady underbelly of the brain trade. Every lead brings him one step closer to an age-old truth: corruption runs deep.
An army of dead children, brainwashed for loyalty and housed in state of the art military chassis, stand between Griffin and the answers he seeks. But one in particular, Archaeidae, a 14-year old Mafia assassin obsessed with Miyamoto Musashi, Sun Tzu, and Machiavelli, is truly worthy of fear. Archaeidae is the period at the end of a death sentence.
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