Sirens and Scales

by Kellie McAllen

  “Take some time, rest from your journey,” Codexious suggested. “Have a look around. Do not be surprised if you find yourself the center of attention. There will be many eager to inspect our new resident Splittail, I’m sure.”

  “Well, perhaps if I can appeal to all of their sympathies as the long-lost orphan with nowhere to go, I can garnish a turret from each and own half the city by morning.”

  Codexious cocked his head, and it was somehow a sultry motion rather than a quirky one. “You seek to overtake my city.”

  I was pretty sure he could tell I was joking, but reminded myself I should probably be careful just in case. There could be a fine line between one race’s humor and another’s nuclear war triggers. I gave a little scoff just so there was no question. “I wouldn’t know the second thing about governing an underwater city. I don’t even know what you eat, aside from the delicacies served on silver platters at the palace. If you live on jellyfish and I was responsible for overseeing the harvest of jellyfish crops, the populace would probably starve because I can’t tell the difference between a bubble and a jellyfish.”

  “We do not eat jellyfish. They are sacred. And if you fed pockets of air to beings of water, someone would object. Or would you readily swallow fireballs in your homeland just because a new foreign ruler mistook your diet for such?”

  “You make a good point.”

  “Can you really not tell the difference between a bubble and a jellyfish?”

  “Just an example,” I rushed to assure him, lest I reinforce my status as a clueless misfit. It was just the best thing I could think of to assure him I had zero business taking his job.

  “Well then. Now that I don’t have to worry about my kingdom being overthrown… If you’ll excuse me, I do have some matters of state to attend to.”

  “Of course.” It was remarkable that I’d entertained the regent’s exclusive attention at all.

  Even having excused himself, he lingered, milking one last glimpse of the enigma that had wandered through his gates. My skin tingled. What was it like to look upon a human and think her exotic? I found it hard to imagine what was so intriguing about plain skin and gangly, bare legs, at least compared to the glory that was his bedazzled physique. But perhaps there was something about the rawness of my stripped-down simplicity that he found provocative. The same way anyone might gape at someone naked and bare beside someone bedecked to the nines.

  My cheeks warmed at the conjecture.

  Smiling slightly as if he could sense the blood rising to my cheeks–my complexion had always been just dark enough that most couldn’t see the visible evidence when I blushed–Codexious pushed himself away from the window. He drifted backward, grinning coyly all the way, before finally twisting in a sinuous, body-arching flourish and diving back toward the city.

  My heart thrummed strangely in my chest, beating with a rhythm it wouldn’t admit to itself in Codexious’ presence. Same way all secrets come out when you’re alone, when they’re safe to crawl out of the woodwork unjudged and undocumented.

  I swished unbidden to the window, peeking out to watch him take his leave before I even realized it was my intention. His fish-like form squiggled in a swirl of bubbles down toward the avenue below, though he stayed well above it to traverse its length toward the palace. Inaja was back up near his side, keeping pace like a loyal dog.

  A peculiar thing happened as I watched the regent of Atlantis head back through the city. An eerie hum picked up, radiating from the city itself, it seemed, until it began to rise and fall with the cadence of individual voices, ascending to a bewitching harmony that filtered from every crevice, turret and window.

  Mermaids singing.

  Fascination teased my senses. I watched, riveted, while a hundred or more graceful finned bodies eddied out of the nooks and crannies of the city to sing their siren’s song for Codexious as he passed. He seemed indifferent to the practice, swimming onward unhindered, but I, on the other hand, was utterly transfixed–made uncomfortable, even–by the seductive display I could only call a mating dance.

  It would seem Codexious was the prime, eligible bachelor every mer girl in the city had her eyes on. I should count myself very lucky indeed he had dropped all his stately matters to spend the afternoon with the likes of a plain-Jane mortal such as myself.

  But then, what responsible ruler would not want to get a feel firsthand for the notable stranger who had appeared in his city? Any ruler worth a smidge would want to disprove the possibility of a threat himself, and now that he had done that he would probably disappear back into his cloud of politics and palace luxury, and I…

  Well, I would do what any archaeologist worth a smidge would do, and forget all about men and their majestic, mesmerizing muscles, and go in search of the delicious, groundbreaking culture that was exploding around me in unprecedented abundance.

  14

  Contrary to Codexious’ advisement, I didn’t rest a wink. There were way too many discoveries to be made. Atlantis yawned around me, and I was nerding out hardcore over being fully immersed in an anthropologist’s dream come true. I poked back out of my turret, glancing about for where to start my exploration. As I cast off I made sure to note the location of my tower in relation to the other main landmarks, and then I was off.

  The mermaid population was still too caught up in kissing Codexious’ hallowed wake to notice my existence, so I slipped away while I could. I’d developed a lifelong aversion to being the center of attention thanks to the secrets I hid, so I wasn’t anxious to entertain my position as the novelty of the day. Let them fawn over Codexious. I was going in search of ruinous lore.

  I wriggled through the ornate heights of the city, in between towers and under archways, weaving through pillars and skirting hulking statues that might once have been Greek gods but were now missing heads or limbs or in other states of disrepair and decay that made their identities ambiguous.

  I was near the fringes of the city, heading for a grove of broken pillars that framed a tilted stage-like platform, when I noticed a half-buried heap of wreckage below me. A large, unnatural shape plunged partially into a knoll of sediment and rubble–something I might have called roughly whale shaped if not for the sharp angles and lack of pectoral fins. Curiosity snagged, I swam down for a closer look. What first appeared to be some giant underwater flower rotated slightly when I touched a crusty, hard petal, and I jerked my hand back realizing how reminiscent it actually was to a propeller. I ran my fingers along the body of the thing, finding a charcoal-colored, shale-like material under the outer texture of rot. I followed the slant of the object down toward the knoll, discovering asymmetrical geometric panels inlaid in the shale structure that looked as though they were cut from some sort of aquamarine crystal.

  Windows, my wild imagination volunteered. Because for all intents and purposes I would call the thing some sort of vessel or shuttle, crashed into the rubble. Probably a submarine, but for all I knew it had been a beast of the air back when Atlantis was an island above sea level. There was no knowing how advanced a civilization it had been.

  Not without more research.

  Excitement crackled through my nerves, and I felt suddenly very lost without a notepad or sketchbook to pull out of my pocket to document my findings. How was I supposed to record anything for reference? I was entrenched in groundbreaking data and could do naught to claim it for posterity.

  Rubbing the outer layer of residue from the window with my palm, I cupped my hands by my eyes and attempted to peer into the interior of the vessel. Only many-faceted shadows met my probing gaze.

  An alien sort of sigh fluttered through my gills. Whatever my greater purpose in Atlantis might be, one of my first orders of business would have to be getting my hands on whatever tools the merfolk used to document things. The archaeologist in me just could not let all this delectable lore pass me by without committing it to some kind of log.

  I was poking about the edges where the vessel had plunged into the kn
oll when I heard the voices. Muffled but laced with a certain mischief, what could have been the mermaid equivalent to rowdy teenage banter. Drawn out of my personal bubble of excitement, I pushed myself up over the top of the ancient submarine and glanced toward the platform I’d first set my sights on. A slither of fins, a flash of scales.

  Dang it, I wasn’t the only one out here. There went my freedom to nerd out in peace.

  A spurt of inky pastel joined the billowing snippets of fins. A squeal. A laugh. Another puff of pink.

  Frowning, I let myself drift higher in the water, craning my neck to catch a glimpse of what the mischief-makers were doing. After an exclamation of aggression and a third burst of watercolor swirls dispensed into the water, I’d had enough, pretty sure I knew what was going on.

  I didn’t know why or to what extent, but it would seem some juvenile mermaid miscreants were tormenting a poor Pastel ’Pus (my own coined phrase for the octopods).

  And playing with fire while they did it.

  All fantasies of my standoffish afternoon falling away, I kicked toward the dislodged platform riding a righteous wave of indignation. I’d always had zero tolerance for animal cruelty, and whatever they were doing to poor Mr. Pus, I was going to put an end to it without thought to my irrelevant ‘plain Jane mortal’ status. Glorious, fearsome mermaids or not, they were going to swim for the hills by the time I was done with them.

  I reached the rearing side of the platform, grabbing the crumbling lip and pulling myself over so that the miscreants came into view playing in the opposite row of pillars. They indeed resembled juveniles–shorter, less luxurious fins, fewer curves on the girls and lesser muscles on the boys, and their eyes were only rimmed in the faintest colored cobwebs. But what was most notable about their appearances were the spotted sashes tied about their waists, and some kind of tar-like substance smeared on to seal the sash over their gill areas.

  They were gathered around a single pillar, jabbing a long rod at a hollow in the column. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what was hiding in there, but before I could confirm that my gaze was drawn to the secondary cluster of mermaids loitering around a large, broken statue off the left side of the platform. They were giggling and passing around a small conch shell, drawing it to their lips and…smoking something out of its chamber? Tilting her head back, the mermaid with the shell issued a stream of lavender ink into the water in front of her face, and then leaned back against her statue perch in ecstasy.

  Frowning, I sent my gaze back to the ones jabbing at the pillar. That’s when I saw the conch shell secured to the end of their prodding stick, and the turquoise tentacle wrapping around the pillar that stemmed from inside the hollow. Having seen enough to guess what they were doing, I was now close enough to see they were trying to maneuver the prod in such a way to plug it into the creature’s…well, his inking orifice, for lack of a more dignified term. Then he would squirt ink into the shell, and they would take it over to their hang-out spot and smoke the stuff out of the shell pipe.

  What dopes. Didn’t they know the risks of intoxicating themselves with the same stuff the octopus could use to subdue them? It could crawl out of the woodwork while they were in their drugged-up, comatose states of euphoria, and strangle them all like they deserved.

  Unless they planned to kill it once they had all extracted their desired dose. Probably their plan, if they were smart as well as stupid.

  My blood boiled.

  “Ay!” I yelled, startling them as I surged into the picture. Their formation refracted from the pillar, half a dozen pairs of alien eyes snapping to me. It occurred to me in that moment that, teenagers or otherwise, they could probably rip me to shreds with their…siren fangs, or whatever predatory features they possessed. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid of a few juvenile fish-faces, whether or not I should be. “You want to get blitzed on octopus juice, all you have to do is let him ink you. Get that conch-rod out of his face!”

  If only because my intrusion was the last thing they expected, they hung back. But I saw the moment their initial alarm faded back into narrow-eyed superiority.

  “The human mot,” one mermaid hissed, identifying me. “I’d heard a Splittail had breached the city, but I didn’t quite believe it.”

  Apparently ‘splittail’ was a common term for those with legs.

  “Look at her toes!” one of the boys cajoled. “Like tiny little phal–”

  Another mermaid elbowed him in the sash-covered ribs, cutting him off. “Jander, don’t be vulgar. We should say hello. Don’t mind my friends,” she directed coyly at me. “They don’t know anything about keeping your enemies close.”

  Someone behind her snorted.

  All right, so we could definitely add ‘jerks’ to ‘dopes’. No surprise there. Basically your typical teenagers. (Okay, that wasn’t fair. But it was the vast majority of my experience.)

  “You wound me with your biting originality,” I said dryly. “Don’t forget to hug a shark while you’re keeping those enemies close. Of the two of us, you definitely want their teeth in your side. I mean ‘on’ – on your side.”

  Her gloating smile faded. “What are you doing out here? They just letting you run amok?”

  “Something you could teach me a thing or two about, clearly.” I had no great love for teenagers–hadn’t even when I was one–but their antics didn’t scare me. They did not want to get in a battle of wits with someone whose regular vocabulary included casual words like micromorphology, dissemination, mitigation, stratigraphic, and on down the line. Even if I didn’t want to bother coining clever retorts, I could spew archaeological terminology at random that would leave their heads spinning, and they would think I’d said something that was simply more sophisticated than their underdeveloped little fish brains could comprehend. “Look,” I said instead. “I have no interest in your teenage shenanigans beyond kicking your finned butts if you bother Mr. Octopus again. Or did he ever stick a conch shell in your inking orifices to deserve the same in return?”

  They all blinked their shimmery cobweb eyes at me, clearly not expecting the floundering splittail to rise to the occasion and stand up to the elite legends of the sea.

  “Get lost,” I added sternly for good measure, while I had them caught off-guard.

  Looking none too happy about taking orders from the likes of me, they gritted their fangs and bit their tongues and slunk away. Whether it was because they responded to the authority in my voice or just decided a little mischief wasn’t worth the trouble of going through my determined front, it was impossible to say.

  What would I have done if they’d decided to call my bluff and terrorize me as heartlessly as they’d been tormenting Mr. Octopus? I didn’t suppose Atlantis would take kindly to a stranger waltzing in and beating up its youth, even if I could claim self-defense. But I had no doubt I would desperately need some defense if a gang of mermaids, youth or otherwise, decided to rough me up. I could only imagine that ‘roughing someone up’ in the savage world of the sea was akin to a shark feeding frenzy.

  And besides, they may have been teenagers relative to adult mermaids, but teenage immortals were just as likely five times my age with five times the physical prowess. I would be a goner without putting up a vicious fight.

  But today I didn’t have to find out what it would be like to tussle with juvenile mermaids. For whatever reason–maybe even that they knew their regent himself had offered me asylum–they took their ilk and swam off to wreak havoc elsewhere. I watched them go, making sure they disappeared into the murky film of the distance before turning back to their poor little cornered victim. Swishing cautiously around the pillar so I could peer–from a safe distance–into the hollow, I found a knobby, shadowed eyeball staring back. Pulling himself deeper into the crevice, he sucked in the ends of his extremities after him until all that was left was that eye, keeping watch for any aggression I might direct his way.

  I sighed. “I know. There are jerks everywhere. Apparently, it’s not
just a land thing.” I glanced around conspiratorially before leaning in, ever so slightly, and cupping my hand next to my mouth to whisper, “Next time, just crap in their shells. Trust me, they won’t be back for more.”

  The eye blinked at me. A rush of affection gushed through my maternal places. Aww. What a sweetheart. Never mind that he might ink me into oblivion, sit on my face, and strangle me like a ruthless sea serpent any second.

  “Anyway. Stay out of trouble, okay? I may not be around to flaunt my shark-like prowess next time.” Winking at my huddled new friend, I backed away and kicked back toward the submarine wreckage to leave him in peace.

  My, I was making friends quickly, wasn’t I? First the triton-wielding Mer Cop that had me thrown in prison, now the angsty youth who would undoubtedly spread the word that I was a prudish party-pooper…

  Probably time to make some real friends, Sayler. As I returned to my exploring, I resolved not to butt heads with anyone else until I had at least a few more people–ahem, beings–on my side. Luckily the regent of Atlantis seemed to have a soft spot for me, but he wouldn’t be with me every hour of every day. Because if he was, I might as well be his queen.

  There I went, plotting to overthrow his kingdom again.

  But no, Codexious could not be my only ally. And while he seemed to think I would find myself at the center of harmless curiosity at the hands of the rest of the population, it was clear from the teenagers’ ‘splittail’ derision and general talk of enemies that I would not find myself so popular with everyone.

  15

  I had just settled back in my turret for some actual rest when I had a charming visitor. A metallic, royal blue swordfish wandered up to my window, and while at first I thought he had merely come to check things out, I noticed a peculiar bauble dangling from his sharp nose. Cocking my head, I drifted over to take a look, and found a small slate tied with a ribbon to his snout. The slate was creamy white and had a fancy message scrawled across its face. The ribbon was membrane-like, translucent but with an oily shimmer and a pattern like dragonfly wings.