by Ameriie
That left only one more ingredient to gather: three silver scales taken from the tail of the merman I wished to fall in love with me.
I still wasn’t sure how I would get close enough to Prince Lorindel to cut three scales from his tail, but the royal concert was tonight and he was sure to be there. Surrounded by his horrid entourage, no doubt, but they couldn’t spend the entire evening at his side. And I only had to get close enough for a moment.
Three scales. Three insignificant little scales, and by this time tomorrow, Lorindel would be mine.
I shut my eyes, clutching my bag to my chest. Brave Lorindel, who had slain an elusive frilled shark and brought its body back for the entire kingdom to feast on. Kind Lorindel, who had labored beside the working merfolk to build shelters for creatures who had lost their homes in the aftermath of a devastating surface storm. Fair Lorindel, with his cunning, boyish smile. Good Lorindel, who was destined for greatness, who would be king, who would need a queen.
I opened my eyes, buoyed by the longing that pulsated beneath my skin.
I would be that queen.
My tail twisted in the wet sand as I turned away from the ship, shifted the bag on my shoulder, and pushed myself upward. I kept hold of my knife, ever wary of predators, but my thoughts still drifted toward my spell and my prince.
I ducked beneath the mast of the ship, which had fallen ages ago, its massive sails long eroded by the water, and was gliding over the ship’s bow when a form rose up before me. I cried out and tried to stop, but my momentum carried me straight into the merman’s chest.
A chuckle vibrated in the water around us. Hands gripped my shoulders, easing me away from him. My heart skittered as I recognized the face—that perfect, beautiful face. Lorindel’s mouth was wide and amused, his black eyes locked onto mine, his blond hair swirling in the current.
“This is a surprise, Nerit,” he said. And oh, my name, in that voice. A shudder cascaded from my neck to the tip of my tail. “What are you doing so close to the shallows?”
“I—nothing,” I stammered before amending it to, “Just looking.”
I swallowed hard. His hands were still on my shoulders.
He was so close. Never once had he been so close to me, other than perhaps a brief passing in the coral halls of the Sea King’s castle. There had never been a reason for him to be so close to me. I was no one.
“Looking for what?” There was mirth in his expression. His eyes held me in place, as resolute as a barnacle clinging to the body of a ship.
I thought of the barnacles in the bag that even now bounced against my side. I thought of the spell book lying in my cave, the ingredients scrawled out by some ancient hand. I debated if I had any reason to lie—but then, what would I say if not the truth?
“Barnacles,” I whispered.
“Barnacles?” His voice had a laugh in it. “Those mean little suckers? Whatever would you want with them?”
Before I could formulate a logical response, his hands were tracing down my arms, past my elbows to my wrists and, finally, my fingers. Every gliding touch sent a flurry of tingles across my skin.
“You’re hurt,” he said, his brow dipping with sympathy as he lifted my hand. The pad of his thumb traced mine. The tip of his tail brushed against my fin.
His tail. He was so close, and I was still holding the knife.
But how could I take three scales now without him noticing?
“Is this from the barnacles?” he asked, indicating the wound that had stopped bleeding.
I nodded.
A sly glint entering his eyes, Lorindel took my thumb into his mouth.
I squeaked. His tongue rolled over the tip of my thumb and a current of desire rocked into me. I dropped the dagger. The bag slipped from my shoulder, sinking toward the deck of the ship.
I swayed toward the prince, swooning, yearning . . .
“I’ve got it!”
Lorindel jerked back, fast as a skittish triggerfish. Turning his head to one side, he spat, his face blanching. “Took long enough.”
I spun around.
Lorindel’s three closest confidantes surrounded us—the twins, Merryl and Murdoch, eagerly flapping their gold-tipped fins, and beautiful, silver-tailed Beldine, the girl who had long been rumored to be Lorindel’s future bride. She was holding my sack, already clawing through it while the others watched, smirking.
My brain was still fogged from Lorindel’s touch, and it was a long, muddied moment before I could grasp the reality. This—all of it—had been a trick. A diversion to get my pack.
Mortification burned across my skin.
“Barnacles, just like she said.” Beldine pulled a strip of wood from the pack. “Along with some fish bones, snail shells, and—” She gasped and recoiled.
I knew what she had seen before she reached in and pulled out the single octopus tentacle, holding it between her fingertips as if afraid it would bite her. She threw the tentacle onto the ship’s deck and turned a repulsed scowl toward me. “No, you didn’t. You witch.”
I cringed. “Witch” was not an insult lightly used. Our elders told tales of sea witches long dead. They were said to be sickly, slimy creatures who fed on fish spines and used their cruel magic to bring misery upon innocent merfolk who stumbled unwittingly into their path.
“Nerit,” said Lorindel, his previously tender voice now as rough as coral, “tell me the creature wasn’t alive when you took this.”
I glanced at him, my jaw unhinged. He looked angry, but also . . . ashamed.
Of me?
I tried to back away, but the twins were there to stop me, and I had nowhere to go.
The truth was that the octopus had been alive when I had taken my blade to one of its eight legs, holding the beast down with the flat of my palm while I sawed it off. This wasn’t my choice, though. It had to be taken alive, for the spell to work.
My bottom lip began to tremble. I looked from the prince to Beldine to Merryl to Murdoch. All of them stared at me with the disgust I’d almost—almost—grown used to.
Merryl cursed beneath her breath, an odd tinge to her pallor as she looked down at the tentacle. “It’s just like the sea horses all over again.”
Of course she would bring up those damned sea horses, hateful girl. It should have been long forgotten, but they refused to forget. It was one of my earliest attempts to perform a spell from the old books, and I had required a ring of sea horses strung together in a protective circle. I had hunted down fifty of the tiny creatures, and ever-so-carefully pushed a needle through each of their spiraled tails, pulling the string through their flesh, one by one.
It was only a small wound. It wouldn’t have killed them. And the spell would have given me the ability to command schools of fish. For weeks, I had dreamed of my own personal entourage of butterfly fish that would follow me everywhere I went. There were days when I still dreamed of it.
It would have worked, too, if Beldine hadn’t found me, thirty sea horses in, and started shrieking as though she’d just seen a murder. Lorindel and the twins had not been far behind, and Lorindel had forced me to release the creatures. And the looks they had given me . . . the look he had given me . . .
That was the moment I realized I was different from them, somehow, and Lorindel’s sneer spoke plainly that my differences were not endearing. In fact, my interest in long-forgotten magic was barely above tolerable.
I feigned indifference, and over time that indifference became a well-crafted shell. For years, I pitied those around me, those who were not enlightened to the possibilities of enchantment. Those who would live their trivial lives and die without knowing what it was like to undo a piece of the world and weave it into something new. I mocked the insignificant worries of my peers. I judged their silly gossip and believed myself above them all.
But I was a fool. For all the time I’d spent with my condescension, I could yet find no fault with Prince Lorindel. Years had passed. I was more alone than ever, and now I was desperatel
y, agonizingly in love.
“You’re sick,” said the boy twin, Murdoch, lowering his face toward mine. I backed away, but he persisted. “You should be cast out with the bottom-feeders before your foul blood poisons the rest of us.”
“N-no,” I stammered. “I didn’t do anything. That tentacle wasn’t . . . It was . . . I just found it . . .”
“You’re lying.” Lorindel rounded on me, drawing closer until he was all I could see, as close as he’d been before, but this time I found myself shrinking back, searching for a way to escape the gaze that burrowed into my skin. “That was a beast of my father’s kingdom, of my kingdom—and you mutilated it. And for what? A silly spell in some book?”
My heartbeat quickened, racing now. All my nerves teemed with the desire to flee, but I couldn’t move, not even to escape Lorindel’s wrath. Even now I found myself hoping that I could make him see that I had no other choice. He must know that I had to do it, that I had loved him for so very long, that anyone would have gone to such lengths . . .
But my thoughts stumbled and finally halted—he knew.
He knew about the spell. They all knew.
“How?” I whispered. “How do you know?”
“We saw you leaving your cave this morning,” said Murdoch, “and thought we’d take a look around.”
Merryl folded her arms over her chest. “Always been curious to know what you do in that creepy place, all alone every day. We found your morbid collection, all those macabre little trinkets . . .”
“And then we found the book,” said Beldine, gliding closer to me. “Conveniently left open to a spell meant to force someone into falling in love.” She clicked her tongue. “You shouldn’t have written Lorindel’s name on the pages, sweet Nerit. It made it all a bit too easy to figure out.”
I turned to the prince, pleading. “I meant no harm. I only thought . . . I’d hoped that if . . . if I could . . .” My chest felt as if it would cave in as I appealed to Lorindel, reaching for his hands, but he pulled away before I could touch him. “Please, Your Highness, you don’t understand. I . . . I love you. I always have. I would do anything . . .”
“Then you will hold your tongue, and you will never speak to me again. You disgust me.” His eyes narrowed, lacking any hint of pity. “I order you to leave my sight before I’m sick to my stomach.”
As a sob quaked through my body, I turned and fled.
I swam as hard as I could, my cries swallowed up by the sea. I had only one place to go. Only one place that had ever felt like solace in a kingdom where everyone hated me, had always hated me, where no one even tried to see beneath my shell and understand how I wanted to be one of them, I wanted to belong . . .
But when I arrived at the entrance to my cave, I drew up short.
They had destroyed it. Clay pots were shattered on the floor. Squid ink had been smeared over my artwork and notes. Skulls and bones and fossils were left broken and scattered in the sand.
No longer a sanctuary, this felt more like a tomb.
With a wail of agony, I turned and swam upward instead.
I lay sprawled on the sandy shore, staring at a dark sky that swirled with gems. I had been shivering for hours, my teeth chattering with every gust of wind, but I liked the cold. It was numbing, and the breeze had dried my skin, leaving rough trails of salt over my body.
Lorindel hated me.
For years, I had imagined myself invisible to him, and I had hoped the spell would change that. I had dreamed so many times of the day, that moment, when his eyes would pass over the crowd and find me, more brilliant and deserving than any other mermaid in the kingdom. I had known we were meant to be together. I had believed it down to my bones.
But I could no longer deny the truth. I was not invisible to him. I was contemptible.
I decided then, staring at the stars, that I would never again return to the sea. I would die here on this shore, cold and alone. Perhaps I deserved it. Surely I didn’t deserve to be loved, for, otherwise, wouldn’t I have found someone to love me by now?
Yes. This would be the fate of poor, pathetic Nerit. Perhaps a human fisherman would someday find my bones whitened in the sun, and I would become a legend. It was a better fate than any that awaited me beneath the waves.
“Hello? Miss?”
I gasped and jerked upward, spinning my body around to see a human male picking his way over the driftwood and scattered stones.
My hair prickled.
The man paused when he took in my expression. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if you were a girl or a seal. You were lying so still—I thought maybe you were hurt.” He moved closer, stepping over a large piece of driftwood. “Are you . . .” His question trailed off as his eyes swept down my body. I didn’t know if he noticed my nakedness first or my long tail, but either way, he froze. His eyes widened.
I turned and began to scurry down the beach toward the waves. The tide had gone out while I’d lain there, and the ocean was much farther away than I’d thought, but my arms and tail were strong as they propelled me across the sand.
“No—wait!”
I paused.
I didn’t know why. I knew that I shouldn’t. Every story I’d ever heard of man told me to escape into the water and never look back.
Perhaps I was not so keen to die on this beach as I’d thought.
Maybe it was my broken heart, or some part of me that was enchanted by the idea of this being, this man, calling for me. Wanting me to stay.
This man who didn’t know me and therefore could not yet despise me.
I licked my lips and looked back over my shoulder.
He hadn’t moved. His hands were held out, perhaps in an effort to keep from frightening me any more than could be helped. In the faint moonlight, I could tell he was not beautiful, but neither was he unfortunate to look on. He was of slight build, with dark hair cut short and a rather pointy nose, almost beak-like. When he smiled, though, he had a pronounced dimple in his left cheek that was very nearly charming.
He was smiling now.
I swallowed.
“Hello,” he said, barely above a whisper, as if to be louder would startle me away. And perhaps it would. My fingers were still burrowing into the sand. My tail was a twitch away from pushing me the last length into the water.
“My name is Samuel,” he said, taking one step closer. When I did not move, he dared to take another. “And you are a dream sprang to life.” His gaze slipped down to my tail again, one curious, rapturous look. “And you’re beautiful.”
The compliment struck my heart as fast and sharp as a hunter’s harpoon.
His stunned gaze found mine again, and he seemed to grow bashful. His attention dipped to the sand, then to me. Out to the ocean, and back to me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You probably have no idea what I’m saying. Can you speak? Do . . . do your kind have . . . a language? I wonder if maybe . . .”
“I understand you.”
His eyes widened again.
“My name is Nerit.”
He stared at me for such a long time that I thought maybe he had forgotten there were ocean and stars and sand at all. Maybe he had forgotten all the world but for me. It was the first time anyone had looked at me like that.
Samuel eased himself down into the sand and smiled his warm, dimpled smile. Then he asked me to tell him all about the world beneath the sea.
I came to the same beach every night after that, and always Samuel was waiting for me. We were both shy at first, nervous and bumbling. But soon talking to Samuel became as natural as swimming through the salt-heavy waters. We would stretch out beside each other and I would be hypnotized by the cadences of his voice. I loved to listen to him. I loved how he hardened his consonants and drawled his vowels. I loved the stories he told. Tales of sailors lost at sea who came back telling of merfolk and Sirens.
He told me of the townspeople who laughed at them and those who believed.
He told me how he had once had a sweetheart, but she had married a man who wasn’t poor like he was, and how he had spent the last three years of his life trying to be happy for her.
Weeks passed before Samuel dared to touch me. A brush of fingers through the tips of my drying hair. Then a knuckle against my shoulder. He never touched my tail, though he often stared at it with mystified awe.
“You must be beloved,” he said one night, a month after our first meeting. “You must be admired and doted upon by all your brethren in the sea.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Samuel cocked his head and furrowed his brow in a way that was adorably human.
I considered lying. I was pleased by the idea that Samuel saw me that way—beloved—and I didn’t want to destroy such a perception. But I couldn’t lie to him, not after he had told me so many truths.
“No, Samuel. I am . . . not well liked by my kind.”
Samuel frowned. “How can that be?”
“They think I’m strange. My whole life I’ve been shunned, mocked for my talents, and pushed away . . .” I swallowed hard and forced my tongue to still, worried I’d said too much. Would Samuel begin searching for the reason now? Would he, too, begin to see whatever horrible traits the others saw in me?
A hand pressed into my lower back, just above where skin met scales. I sucked in a surprised breath and dared to raise my eyes. Samuel was closer now, his eyes full of sympathy and kindness. It was baffling to me that I had ever looked at him and not thought him handsome. Now I was certain he was the most beautiful creature in this world.
“They are jealous,” he whispered. “They are blind fools who cannot see the treasure before them.”
