by Sara Ella
Was that disappointment lingering behind Jordan’s gaze? “I told you he’d calm her.” She released Coral’s hand, backed away, and found the sand-length mirror as if it had been waiting all along.
“You wanted the solo. You were hoping Father would allow our sister’s request.” Coral’s ears burned. How could Jordan be so selfish?
“There you go again with your make-believe ideas.” The middle mersister combed her fingers through her hair, then touched her fingertips to the corners of her eyes, lifting the skin at the nonexistent creases ever so slightly. “You worry too much, little sister. The crown princess has her spirals, but she comes back. She’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”
Fine. A word Coral had come to loathe. A word so yellow, so cowardly, it couldn’t carry its weight in goldfish.
She released a long sigh. Bubbles rose. One, two, three, four . . .
Jordan lowered her hands and smoothed them over the scales on her tail. “What you should be worried about is your performance.” Her deadpan expression chilled the room. She eyed Coral through her reflection. “Or have you forgotten what’s expected of you?”
Coral broke eye contact. “Of course I haven’t forgotten.” Jordan would never let her. “I know my place.”
“Good.” Jordan’s gaze shifted and shadows lay to rest across her lashes. “We’ve waited a long time to show off that pretty little voice of yours. We are our father’s daughters. And so we sing.”
Her voice. Her vice. A curse of its own. Coral swam to her pallet, sat, and drew her tail to her chest. The bedclothes were wrinkled and her pillow slept in the sand. She shuddered. When had the water grown so cold?
“Have you thought of what you will sing for your first concert? We’ve traveled all the way here to our Pacific palace for the occasion.” Jordan twirled before the mirror, a whirlpool of muted silver and green. With each swirl burst a symphony. Silver was the spray of a whale at the surface. Green became fins grazing grains of sand.
“I have a few selections in mind.” The lie was easy, another added to the bucket of fibs Coral had learned to tell over the years.
Jordan joined her on the pallet, plucked a red flower from a pore in the wall, and stuck it into the hair tucked behind her right ear. Jordan may have seen the color, but she had no idea what sound it produced.
Another curse, but this one extended to Coral alone.
Her senses intertwined, two playing as one. The colors made sounds and the sounds created colors. Yet another oddity that would only serve to raise suspicion. Every shade had a note, a melody distinguished by its particular hue.
The Diseased were different, as unique and one of a kind as a mermaid out of water.
“I hope, for your sake, the song you choose is one approved by Father.” Jordan plucked another red flower from the wall and placed it between her silvery locks.
With every wave of the flower’s delicate petals, Coral heard a clap of rolling thunder.
This sort of red boomed. Even with the melodic differences between hues, every shade of red was brash. “I aim to please. I’d never dream of singing something forbidden.” No romance ballads. No heartfelt limericks. Nothing too emotional. Or moving. Or goose-bump inducing.
A simple song to draw sailors to her father’s waters. To drown them in her voice and make them forget who they were. Where they were. Just as they threw themselves at Coral’s sisters each time, along with any treasures they possessed. The sailors belonged to the merfolk before the concert was finished.
Coral was permitted to do whatever it took to keep the humans trapped within their depths.
She was not, however, allowed to speak to them. Or touch them. Or breathe near them. Or do anything with them. Not if her father had anything to say about it.
Draw them in, then leave them stranded. Always wanting more.
“May I tell you a secret?” Jordan’s monotone played in harmony with her somber personality. Her gaze relaxed then, her gray eyes appearing almost blue.
The shift in color played a calming cadence across Coral’s vision. She watched. Waited. Glanced in the mirror. Her own Eyris pearl eyes—not quite green nor blue nor violet—widened in anticipation. Just once she wanted Jordan to admit she, too, hid symptoms of the Disease. Coral would never tell Father. No. But if Jordan shared her secret, then Coral would know for certain.
The Disease was not as much of an anomaly as everyone said.
And everything she’d ever been taught was a lie.
But Jordan never failed to disappoint. “As long as you get past that first note, it’s all downstream from there. Easy as a kelp pie.” She drew in three long breaths and her shoulders visibly relaxed. Grandmother had taught them this technique to prepare for their debuts.
“Calms the nerves . . . and the fins,” she had said in her soothing voice the color of a winter sky.
Only a few sunsets left.
Coral tugged on a strand of her spun-gold hair. There must be more to life than fearing the Disease and singing like my sisters before me.
What if she didn’t want to sing?
What if she wanted something different? A life outside her family’s fame and expectations?
Jordan drew three more long breaths before she rose and swam to the archway. She paused. Did she expect Coral to say more?
Coral’s mouth bowed and her insides turned to jellyfish. She didn’t want Jordan to go, despite how she tended to get under Coral’s scales more often than not. Having either of her sisters near almost made up for their mother’s absence.
Almost.
Coral opened her mouth to ask Jordan to stay, then snapped it closed. She ought to practice, prepare for what was to come. Jordan was closest to her in age and knew how to keep what their grandmother called “balance” better than anyone. Never too high or too low, Jordan had mastered the art of in-between. She didn’t keep quiet about her suspicions of Coral when they were alone. Still, Jordan never spoke of it beyond their private conversations. She must have cared for Coral more than she let on.
“Coral.” Jordan sighed, her voice lifeless. She pinched the bridge of her nose and rubbed tiny circles into her skin. “You must learn your place in this family, as I had to.” Her words were gentle, reminding Coral of how their oldest sister used to be. “Otherwise you’ll end up like her.”
Coral’s lower lip quivered. How can she speak of our sister this way? The crown princess practically raised us. I don’t understand it.
Jordan shook her head. “Do what’s expected, little sister. You’ll be better off. I promise.”
Her words latched on to Coral’s heart. “Of course. My only wish is to be your equal.” The half lie grated her teeth like chewed sand. “The Disease is poison. The Disease is death.”
The speech was practiced, precise, clever even. Words she’d been made to repeat year after year. With each season, she’d learned she was different. Once, as a child, she told a schoolmate her voice was the color of a sea turtle’s shell. The mermaid had cried to their teacher, and Coral was sent home for poor behavior.
She never mentioned her gift again.
After that she observed Jordan and the other merfolk her age from a distance. They didn’t respond to things the way Coral did. Soon she learned they didn’t see or hear the same way either. Her world produced the brightest, most brilliant shades of turquoise and aqua and sapphire blue, all mixed with harmonies she couldn’t begin to describe. Blues composed the prettiest sounds. Soft but full of life. Soothing but awakening too.
Jordan hovered between chamber and hall. “Three more days, Sister.” Her tone exuded no malice. Only fact. “Then you must take your proper place beside us.” She floated through the open arch of their shared chamber.
Coral often wished she roomed with her oldest sister instead. But as heiress to the throne, the crown princess had her own private chambers. Yet, until she found a suitor, she’d never be given the crown. Father had brought in many mermen, but the future queen refused them al
l.
Maybe when she finds a match, she can stop singing. When she no longer requires Father to provide.
Coral freed the bubbles she’d been holding as she examined herself in the mirror. Father’s approval was everything. Without it, they’d be left to the wayside. No home. No protection. No longer a part of the family.
Jordan had already been paired with a merman of Father’s liking. They weren’t yet betrothed, but the formalities were only a matter of time. When Jordan turned eighteen before the year’s end, the wedding date would be set.
How long before Father starts bringing suitors around for me?
Coral shuddered, shoving the thought away, refusing to think on it. She was hardly ready to be married.
Coral’s reflection stared back at her. She knew this girl. She saw her every day. But then, in that moment, she hardly recognized herself. Almost as if she weren’t real. “Who are you?”
The mermaid in the mirror did not answer. Coral abandoned the stranger and swam to catch up with her sisters, darkness following close behind. Her heart pounded with each flick of her misfit tail as she glanced back at her namesake.
“Coral,” her grandmother used to croon. “My sweet little Coral with the coral-colored tail.”
Coral had loved looking at her tail because of that. Its hue stood out among the rest, singing a tune of life and joy.
Now she frowned. Because, for the first time, the color was silent.
She ignored the irregularity and swam faster. Hoping in her depths that she was simply too tired to see the song.
At the palace’s broad arched entrance, Jordan joined the crown princess in the courtyard. They paid respects to the memorial paving with their mother’s and four lost sisters’ names inscribed. The queen’s miscarriages were rarely talked about—two before their oldest sister, then one before Jordan. The final preceded Coral. It was said the Disease took them before they inhaled their first bubbled breaths. Coral lagged behind and offered her own salutations, bowing her head as each of their names surfaced in her mind.
Queen Oceane.
Hudson.
Pearl.
Aqua.
Isla.
Coral drowned her emotions and opened her eyes after a spell. She focused on the mermaid who would be queen. The first daughter. Her best friend and forever confidant. Her oldest sister stared toward the surface, brow knit in waiting. The way she could so easily switch from pained to poised fascinated Coral. Like night and day. One minute the sun shone brightly, and the next it was drowned by night’s blanket of gloom.
A broad shadow passed overhead, the signal her sisters had been awaiting. Every time it was the same. Sailors crossed through their waters and, drawn by her sisters’ duet, they became lost. Forgetting the cares and worries of their human lives, leaving them behind for the empty promises of shallow words playing on practiced melodies.
Coral’s entire existence was torn between who she was supposed to be and who she truly was.
A mermaid whose sole purpose was to drown every sailor who crossed her path?
Or a girl who felt things she shouldn’t but longed to experience at the same time? A girl who wondered if the dreaded illness her family feared was dwelling within at that moment?
The raging war inside burned and bruised, each day wearing on her resolve to act the part she was expected to play.
As her sisters rose, Coral neared the memorial stone. She removed the flower from her hair, kissed it once before she placed it upon the raised gray rock. The colors contrasted, but their songs synced.
Gray was tragedy. Red was agony.
She swam double-time back through the palace halls. The remnants of a sunken city, years before her time, sang a sad melody of loss and regret. Stone columns and archways led to hundreds of identical rooms, all lamenting the deaths of merfolk long passed. Rooms filled with nothing. No life. No song aside from that which brought lives to an end.
What would her father say if he knew she could see and hear every color she swam across? What would he do if he learned his youngest had no desire to follow the path he’d set before her?
He’ll treat me like the crown princess. Then at least we’ll be united. Maybe together we can sway him.
It didn’t matter.
Because Father never looked at her.
Coral was a reminder of all he’d lost. A torch carrying the weight of the deceased queen and the four merbabies who could have been but never were.
Emotions rose but she shut them down. At the point beyond the southern palace gate, Coral swam ever faster. Past the three pointed rocks with their constant foreboding. Beyond the reef comprised of colors so vivid, her tail faded in comparison. Over the sunken ship that arrived when she was three. And there, just there at the edge of the wood, waited a cliff. And in the heart of that cliff lurked a dark cave. An ominous cave. A cave into which no merman, maid, or child would dare venture.
Coral lifted her head and entered. She’d escaped here a hundred times before.
She held no fear of darkness.
Light always awaited her at the other end.
Black and cool for but a fleeting moment, the interior of the cave gave way to luminous moonlight. She swam upward, flipping and tumbling in momentary freedom. She wasn’t actually disobeying any rules. While she was forbidden to break the surface until the day she turned sixteen, this seemed different. No human would find her here, hidden among the jagged rocks far enough from shore it appeared blurred.
The evening air chilled her face. Coral pushed herself up onto the ledge of a low rock and wrung out her hair, a crazy mess of coarse tangles. Spear-like stones surrounded her as a circular fortress. Waves kissed the walls from the other side, spraying her face with salt and foam. She inhaled the fresh air that seemed to lift her higher. While the water weighted her when she breathed it in labor, the air seemed to relieve every ache brought by her sister’s sobs. By Father’s lack of concern.
Coral’s tail rested in the water below, swaying this way and that. The sea garden she’d tended sprang forth from the nooks and crevices of the rocks in every shade. Deep-green sea grass. Bright-pink hibiscus with its sun-yellow tongue. And purple sea hollies. Spiked and menacing, but a beautiful sight to behold. She grazed one with her fingertips, absorbing the song their rainbow produced.
A sound she didn’t recognize beckoned her from beyond the rocks.
She startled and slipped, splashing back into the deep pool.
The sound echoed.
The urge to peek over her stone fortress seeped into every hidden crevice within. The moon shone high above the ocean waters. Soon her sisters would make themselves known. She should go. She should . . .
The song resounded a third time. Gold, pure, and shimmering.
What would one glance harm? Even if the sound was human, they were far enough away. No one would see her. Her sisters would be preoccupied and Father would never know. Coral had been here before. No one had ever noticed the glances she’d stolen from her secret place.
Coral pulled herself up enough to peer over the closest rock. In the distance, stars twinkled, blowing her kisses from the heavens. The moonlight lit the coast, illuminating the land palaces beyond. They were smaller than her palace, but somehow so much more inviting. Entirely white with warm yellow windows that called “hello.” With stairs descending to the shore, the palaces stood nestled in so many shades of C-sharp green and lullaby periwinkle. The vision was glorious.
Beautiful.
And that song. It wasn’t grandiose like the concerts her sisters often gave.
It was lovely. Simple. And oh so warm.
But the beauty of that simple harmony was quickly destroyed by her sisters’ song.
Coral covered her ears and shut her eyes, diving beneath the surface to avoid the chilling sound. A sound so black it terrified her as much as the Abyss. Their call meant death, and she could not cope. The feeling inside grew hotter.
Mermaids. Cold. Death. Destruction.<
br />
Humans. Warmth and color and life.
Everything was backward.
Maybe the cure for the Disease was nowhere in the ocean.
Could humans hold the key to a cure the merfolk never imagined existed? Father might be in denial about his oldest daughter’s illness, but he couldn’t ignore her pleas forever.
Coral dove into darkness, swam toward home.
She must do whatever it took to stop the Disease from destroying her sister.
And she must do so before Red Tide came again.
Two
Brooke
After
This is not my home.
This is not my bed.
After all this time, it’s finally come to this. A facility. A treatment plan.
A nightmare lurking in the day.
Why did I agree to this?
Three blinks and a gulp of oxygen open my eyes to a shard of light slicing the puffy bedcovers. Vague snippets of memory piece together in a rough outline, reminding me how I got here. One word, maybe two, for each bullet point. The in-betweens remain intentionally blank. Too many triggers in those middle spaces. Glass half empty? No, but thanks. I’ll take it completely hollow if it means I can avoid drowning.
The heater shuts off, making way for new sounds. Water trickling. And steam? I crane my neck. A miniature stone fountain and a diffuser, spraying something smelling of citrus and lavender. The effect soothes but also stirs a familiar warning. One that says these are devices used to manipulate. To make me feel safe and comfortable so they can get whatever it is they want.
Nice try. Not gonna work, though. I’ve only agreed to come here out of desperation. At a loss for anywhere else to go. This is my cliff. My deserted island. My means to an end.
I sit and take in the room I have all to myself. I arrived late last night and immediately crashed. Exhausted from the good-bye I wasn’t quite ready to say. Now, in the light of day, this isn’t what I expected. No sterile hospital bed or cold linoleum floor. Instead, the room is homey, cozy even. Everything in me wants to sleep for days. The fatigue never falters. There have been times I’ve slept eighteen hours and still didn’t feel rested. Other times I’m awake all night, unable to calm my thoughts.
