Coral

by Sara Ella

  He was stuck. A rat in his trap. His father wanted control. Power. Why would Merrick enroll in school and waste money on courses that might not apply five or ten years down the road? He was doing his father a favor by taking time to figure things out.

  “Nikki fancies you.” The man’s change to the original subject interrupted Merrick’s thought train. “She is her father’s weak spot. And you are hers.” He glanced at his watch. “A car will be here in . . . twenty-nine minutes to retrieve you. I suggest you be ready on time.” With a firm glare, he resumed his paper perusal. “Put on an ironed shirt. Maybe a clean pair of slacks? I’m sure that’s a lot to ask, considering, but I have faith you can accomplish as much.”

  Merrick had half a mind to stand there. To wait and see what might happen if he was not, in fact, on time. If he didn’t bother to change at all. But then his mother entered the room.

  And everything altered.

  “You boys getting along, Hiro?” She called his father by the shortened version of his first name—Hiroshi—taking her place behind him. She rubbed his shoulders.

  The sight made Merrick physically ill.

  His father was a villain. To call him “hero” sounded wrong.

  Hiroshi patted her freckled hand and the stoicism melted away. Merrick’s mother was the only one who inspired the man to feel something other than disdain.

  Merrick shoved his hands into the pockets of his two-day-old jeans and clenched his fingers.

  “Yes, of course, Lyn.” His father cleared his throat. His tone softened. “We were discussing a certain date with a certain daughter of Marcus Owens.”

  The setting sunlight shone through the western window of their house. Merrick’s mom blushed at the exact moment the rays hit her cheeks. Her strawberry freckles, the same shade of her hair and eyelashes, seemed to catch fire. “Nikole?” The way his mom said Nikki’s name made her sound not so bad. “She’s lovely. Where are y’all going?” His mother’s southern accent slipped through her syllables as it so often did.

  His father eyed him and Merrick cleared his throat. “Gary Danko.”

  She arched a brow. “Do you have a reservation?”

  Merrick wasn’t much of a planner, and Mom probably suspected he’d dropped the ball on this one.

  She knew him too well.

  “I took care of it.” His overly organized father patted her hand again. A seemingly kind gesture, but one that would lead to manipulation.

  If tonight went poorly, his father would find a way to blame her. She was too soft on Merrick, Hiroshi would say. He would beat her down with his words until she eventually became little more than a puddle of tears in the bathroom. Never screaming. But quiet condescension was worse.

  Merrick clenched his fists again, this time so hard he could feel the white reach his knuckles.

  He hated that sound. The sound of the heartbroken sobs she tried to hide beneath the noise of a running shower. It had been months since he’d heard it, but he would do anything to avoid it, even if it meant bending to his father’s will. Again.

  The man checked his custom-made Rolex for the second time. “Twenty-two minutes now, Son. Gary Danko will wait for no man. You’d better get changed.”

  Merrick did as he asked, though his teeth grated and his stomach turned.

  Because Mom was right there. Her presence blurred his vision, made him lower his guard. One minute he was drowning, sinking into the whirlpool his shark of a father created every time they spoke.

  Then his mother was there, drawing him back out again.

  Of the four of them, she was the smartest, the most clever.

  She was the one who taught him that if he wanted to avoid the sharks, his only salvation, his only escape, was to swim. Not away but with. Side by side until, eventually, they considered you an equal.

  If he wanted to defeat a shark, Merrick would first have to be one.

  He swallowed his protests as he trudged upstairs to his room. He found his clean slacks but refused to iron them. Rolled up the sleeves of his collared shirt to his elbows, if only because his father thought the look was lazy. Merrick threw his blazer over one shoulder and checked himself in the mirror.

  “We’ll see who gets bitten first.”

  Four

  Coral

  The night’s quiet stung, waking her. Sometimes silence was the loudest sound of all.

  Coral sat up in bed and tucked her mess of hair behind her ears, only to have it float stubbornly back in her face. She spied Jordan through the darkness. Her sisters must have heard the music at the surface too. Had it moved them the way it had Coral?

  She wanted to ask.

  She didn’t dare.

  Her birthday fast approached. She needed to decide what she would perform. Coral would be safe with Father’s favorite, of course. A haunting melody that drew the sailors in. But every time she opened her lips to begin the first note, it stuck in her throat.

  Coral peered at Jordan again. Sound asleep. What could it hurt?

  The tune from the surface found its way deep into the place where her soul would be if she possessed one. It rose up and out, caressing Coral’s tongue. Vibrating across the plane of her lips as a gentle hum. The song soothed her fears for the crown princess in a way nothing else had. It made her feel . . .

  Warm. Real. Human.

  She let the song die as quickly as it had begun. Treachery. What would her father think? Coral’s insides mixed with guilt as her gaze found Jordan again.

  Her middle sister was none the wiser to the little mermaid’s moral dilemma. Jordan was sound asleep on her pallet, her chest rising and falling, mimicking a steady, rolling wave.

  Why must Coral hear every swish of a fin or release of a bubble within a league of the palace walls?

  A stingray of jealousy speared her straight in the chest as she watched Jordan dream without a care or worry in the sea. Jordan was a true example of what their father wanted in a daughter.

  Coral lay back down and closed her eyes. Forced calm and exhaustion into her bones. One angelfish, two angelfish, three angelfish, four . . .

  Her eyelids snapped up.

  Then down.

  Then up again.

  For the love of pearls, why is it so quiet?

  This time when she sat up, Coral flung her seaweed covers off her tail. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well embrace it. She swam to her sister and hovered above her for a beat.

  “Jordan.” Coral’s whisper, the color of an ombre sunset, was the only sound aside from Jordan’s steady breathing, which released in flashes of dulled light. “Jordan, are you asleep?”

  Jordan didn’t move. Not so much as a stir or a roll or a wiggle. She slumbered as if anchors weighted her eyelids. Her delicate hands rested over her middle. Long eyelashes never fluttering.

  “Well, Sleeping Beauty . . .” Coral’s words brushed the space above Jordan. “I guess it’s me, myself, and I.”

  When Coral was certain Jordan wouldn’t notice her absence—which meant she wouldn’t tell Father—she moved to the door and grabbed her kelp shawl off a hook on her way out.

  The deep greens of seaweed and sea grass produced the same notes. Not a waltz or an upbeat melody. More reminiscent of the droning processional of a mermaid on the wave to her grave.

  The dank and quiet corridor sent a shudder up her spine, only adding to the deathly feeling draping her frame. A single lantern fish guarded each alcove she passed. Ugly, mute creatures, and the lot of them blind. Their glow let off just enough light so she could navigate the darkness.

  The light did little to make up for their eerie presence.

  Coral wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders and turned a corner, listening for any sound of life within the palace walls. Something was missing, but what? It wasn’t that she heard noises at night. But now the lack of whatever she didn’t hear set her on edge.

  She rounded another corner and hesitated. The future queen’s private chambers loomed before her. T
he majesty of the entrance alone intimidated the fibers beneath Coral’s scales. The arch towered, the surrounding walls inlaid with pearls and sea glass and other natural sea stones. Curtains waved through the water like jellyfish tentacles, inviting her in and warning her to stay away at once.

  Coral’s chambers would never look so grand or lavish. She didn’t mind, of course. Something about luxury made her feel smaller, less. Would she ever shine as brightly as the crown her sister was destined to wear?

  What am I doing here? It’s late. The crown princess will be asleep. It would be rude to wake her.

  Coral bit the inside of her cheek. Hesitated. Now that she floated inches away from her sister’s quarters, the absence of what had vanished was a shipwreck. Shattered. Broken.

  The crown princess wasn’t here.

  Coral could almost hear it. The lack of her sister’s breathing. The absence of her soothing presence. Her momentary inexistence stopped Coral’s heart and shot lightning through her nerves.

  Her stomach turned twice over. She swallowed the putrid taste of polluted water that suddenly filled her mouth. She scrunched her nose and rubbed it hard to rid herself of the sour scent. Without another thought, Coral crossed the threshold and entered the room.

  Moonlight glimmered in watery waves, spilling over the seabed like pearls in the sand. The first princess’s pallet was empty, the covers perfectly laid, though it was well past the midnight hour.

  And then a sob harpooned the night.

  Coral followed the sudden sound to the archway leading onto the balcony. A winding staircase that once belonged to a thriving, above-water metropolis rose to the surface. Chunks of steps had been broken away as if bitten off by a sea monster. Coral imagined for the tiniest inkling of a second she was a human girl with long, slender legs, gracefully taking each step. Where would she walk? To whom might she run?

  Coral swam farther. Faster. A sudden vision captured her. There, at the crest of the stairs where she supposed something grand must have stood. She pressed toward her sister, pausing only a moment for fear she might scold Coral for surfacing before her birthday.

  When Coral’s face greeted the air, she blinked away ocean droplets and looked up at her sister’s face.

  The crown princess sat on the broken staircase’s ledge, which looked more like a jagged rock piercing the surface than a forgotten piece of a lost city. Her tail bobbed, half in and half out of the sea. She sobbed again and her shoulders shook.

  When Coral floated closer, her ears picked up her sister’s muffled words.

  “My prince never loved me,” she said. “He never will.”

  Her prince? Her sister had fallen in love with a prince?

  Theirs was the only merdom for thousands of nautical miles. When would she have met a merman from another—

  Coral gasped and placed her fingers to her lips. No. Her sister wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Coral refused to entertain the idea further.

  She reached to touch the crown princess, but her hand fell shy of her sister’s exposed scales. She removed her shawl and drifted nearer. “Sister.” Draping the shawl over her sister’s lap, Coral placed her hand there to rest. The situation invited both foreign and familiar feelings. With her tail covered, the future queen appeared almost human. “Is everything all right?” Coral asked.

  Another sob released, this one slow and shuddering. “All right.” She patted Coral’s hand. But she didn’t make eye contact. “Yes, Sister. I’m fine. Okay.”

  All right. Okay. Fine. Empty words with empty meanings. Words Jordan had said were the quintessence of a mermaid’s vocabulary.

  “The more you say them, the truer they become,” she told Coral for years. “If you say you’re okay, then you are. If you voice you are fine, what’s to stop you from being so?”

  Coral had challenged Jordan’s view.

  “But,” she asked the first time Jordan said this, “what if I’m not fine? What if I’m not . . . okay?” Coral bit her tongue after the questions spilled forth. Hearing them aloud made them sound ridiculous somehow, though she couldn’t pinpoint why.

  Jordan glared through the mirror’s glass.

  At the time Coral squirmed in place, a hooked worm.

  Jordan swam to her side, patted her twelve-year-old head. More akin to slaps than kind reassurances, her pats stung. “There, there, sister dear,” she crooned. “We don’t speak about such things.”

  And they didn’t. Ever again. Still, Coral wondered . . .

  Did speaking a word to the outside truly change what took place within?

  She circled the crown princess now so she could view her fully. The moon washed her sister’s Abyss-black hair in an ethereal glow. Coral’s vision shifted and the shadows around them altered. For a moment she saw her oldest sister as she had been in their younger years. Sweetly smiling. Rarely bothered by anything.

  Now her sister appeared sunken. Her lips relayed she was okay. But her face?

  Her face was one belonging to a poor, tortured soul.

  Except mermaids didn’t have souls.

  So why, then, did the emotion behind her sister’s expression suggest otherwise?

  Coral caressed the crown princess’s pale hand as if it were fashioned from sea glass. She squeezed it and her sister’s lashes lowered. They stayed there for a moment, just the two of them. When her sister opened her gemstone eyes, she looked straight into Coral’s. The crown princess blinked rapidly, and that’s when Coral saw it.

  A single tear, pooling in the corner of one eye.

  Coral backed away and their hands disconnected. She shook her head. “Sister . . .” She had no words. Mermaids could not cry. They had no tears to shed. This was impossible. Unfathomable.

  Unless . . .

  What if the Disease . . .

  Could the Disease make a mermaid . . .

  Human?

  Another shiver racked Coral’s being. She swallowed, focused on her sister, studying the way the tear doubled in size, then slipped silently down her cheek and over her delicate jaw.

  The crown princess’s brows were knit and scrunched, her tail trembling beneath the shawl.

  “My prince never loved me,” she whispered again. “He never will.”

  Coral’s chest tore in two at the shadowed sound of her brokenhearted words. “Sister . . .” She licked her lips and consumed her fear. Waves lapped against her neck and her hair floated around her. Maybe her sister was referring to Father. He was a prince once, after all. “Father loves you. He means well, he—” Coral couldn’t finish the sentence.

  The crown princess tilted her head to face Coral. “Not Father.”

  “Who then?”

  “You wouldn’t understand. You’re too young. What I’ve done . . . It’s forbidden. Now Red Tide comes,” she said. “It seeks out those like us.”

  Coral winced. “Us?”

  Her sister cupped her cheek with one palm. “You have remained the sweetest of us three, Coral. The most sensitive. If you are not careful, you will fall prey to the Disease as I have.”

  “But what if—”

  The crown princess hushed Coral again with a single finger to her lips. She shook her head. “I know what you’re thinking. Nothing can be done for me now. Red Tide is . . . inevitable.”

  Coral’s lower lip quivered. Why did she feel six instead of nearly sixteen? “You can fight it.” Her statement was a plea. Please fight it, Sister. I can’t lose you. She blew her hair from her eyes, too desperate to bother hiding the fact she had eavesdropped on her sister’s earlier conversation. “I know things with Father are tense, but—”

  “Tense?” The hollow sound of her sister’s laugh caught in her throat. “There is so much you don’t know, Coral. Nothing can be done. Father would banish me if he knew. I welcome Red Tide. It’s an easier fate than what he would plan.”

  “No!” Coral’s soft cry became a full-on yelp. “I won’t let it take you! We will go to Father together. Whatever you’ve done cannot be as bad as
you claim.”

  Coral’s throat tightened. She couldn’t find words fitting for the moment. If her sister had lost her hope, what could Coral say to help her find it? She swallowed. “Red Tide. Will. Not. Take. You.” Each syllable required extreme effort. “It can have me, but it cannot have you.”

  “I am afraid”—her sister swept away a lock of hair that had been stuck to Coral’s forehead—“you do not have a choice.”

  Coral’s eyes burned, but no tears released. The tear her sister shed had long since dried, but a trail down one side of her face left its mark.

  The tear had been real.

  When the someday queen placed her arm around Coral’s shoulders and drew her in, holding her the way she had so many years ago, the little mermaid wished on every sea star in the ocean that she could cry as humans did.

  Perhaps her sister was right. Perhaps Red Tide was inevitable.

  Her own hope sank. Was she foolish to believe their curse might be cured or controlled?

  “Promise me something.” Slender fingers stroked Coral’s hair, running through the tangles and loosing them with tiny tugs.

  Coral nodded into her sister’s embrace. She usually possessed more words than anyone. Now she felt as hollow as an abandoned crab shell.

  “If you ever find love, true love, hold on to it.”

  Coral gulped against the lump lodged in her throat. “Why?”

  “Because,” her sister breathed. “True love makes life, even a broken one, worth fighting for.”

  Coral turned her face into her sister’s shoulder and inhaled her saltwater taffy scent, unsure how to respond or what to ask. Coral’s pulse thump, thump, thumped against her skin. She wished the sound wasn’t so red.

  Red brought heartbreak. Red brought doom.

  “True love is a rare treasure, as mysterious and unfathomable as life on land.” The crown princess tilted Coral’s chin with one finger so they were eye to eye again. “But do not be deceived. Not all who claim to love truly do. Be wary to give your heart away, lest it be tossed into the Abyss, never to beat again.”