The Merman King

by Michelle M. Pillow

  “Not much matters anymore,” Lucius whispered to the unconscious woman, not knowing what he should say to her. “My life is endless. The gods wouldn’t even let the air stop me, but you’re fragile, aren’t you? I could let you go and save you from all of this. I know the law. I made the law. I know I’m supposed to try, but I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t always know what is best. I just decide which laws and they all follow me without question even though it was my boasting pride that struck us down. Do you want immortality?” He held her tighter in the soaked bedding. “It is in Poseidon’s webbed hands if you live, but I would appreciate it if you tried. You made the dive down. That’s a good start. Now I need you to open your eyes. I wish Althea the Healer was here to do this. She would be much better at it than I am.”

  The woman didn’t move.

  “By order of the king,” he said in his most commanding tone. “Wake up.”

  Nothing.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ he tried telepathically.

  Still nothing.

  “Please don’t die?” he questioned in a gentler voice.

  That too did not appear to work.

  “You are strange creatures, you women from the surface world. Definitely not like I remember you.” Lucius rocked her slowly. “I am sorry I ruined your dress. I think I tore it, but I promise if you wake up, I’ll have the seamstress replace it with ten new ones. I am told women like new garments.”

  With that, he thought to see her eyelashes flutter. A sign? It had to be.

  “Make that twenty new garments,” he said with a nod, feeling as if he’d made some progress. “You’re the ward of the king after all, so it only seems fitting.”

  She stopped shivering, and he studied her wet face. When he’d breathed for her, it had not been the kiss of lovemaking, but in many ways, it was more intimate. He’d transferred life into her, breathing for them both as they dove. He’d felt the moment she awoke, saw the flash of her eyes before she closed them tight. She’d tried to draw the air from him faster than he could give it, and his lungs had burned in pain at the attempt.

  He continued to rock her in his lap as he searched beneath the wet blankets to feel her temperature. The chill was gone. He held his hand flat against her back, willing her to take whatever energy she needed from him.

  “Thank you,” he thought he heard her say, but the word was so faint and the sound of falling water too loud. He could have easily imagined it.

  He held her tighter to his chest, stroking his fingers along her wet back. “Don’t die.”

  “My king,” Althea called, drawing his attention toward the shower room door.

  The slender woman appeared in the doorway and took stock of the room. She was well dressed in the ancient fashion—draped in fine linen rubbed with oil to make the material shine. The dark patterns along the hems were made to represent flowing seaweed. Two metal discs held the garments at her shoulders. The engravings were worn from centuries of polishing. She wore her brown hair in an intricate coil around the crown of her head. Tiny metal beads were stuck in the braid to create the illusion of a crown though she was not royal.

  The healer crossed to the shower cord and pulled it to make the water stop. “Why do you have her in the water? Mortals need to be dry. Bring her to the bed.”

  “She was cold,” he explained, pushing to his feet while still holding her in his arms. Water dripped around them, most heavily coming from the wet blankets. “And the heat from the water worked to warm her.”

  “And all this moisture in the air will fill her chest and settle there. She’ll die of a lung illness before she even regains consciousness.” Althea held up her hand. “Leave the wet blankets. You’re making a mess.”

  Lucius didn’t care about a mess, but he maneuvered the woman in his arms and let the water-soaked covers drop to the floor with a heavy splat. Following Althea’s instructions left him carrying a naked woman against his already afflicted body, and he found walking uncomfortable. He placed her damp body on his bed and stepped back while the healer drew an extra blanket around her.

  “Leave us,” Althea ordered. “If I have learned anything from watching you men bring down women, it’s that you only get in the way.”

  “Will she live?” Lucius asked.

  “If the gods will it,” Althea answered. She lifted her hands to hover along the woman’s chest, sensing for illness. “The best thing you can do for any of us is to go back in that shower and take care of your affliction and let me take care of my patient.”

  Lucius glanced down to where his arousal stood tall and painful. Curse the gods for this inconvenience. He eyed the wet red clothes he’d thrown on the floor. Water seeped from the material to form a puddle. He didn’t want to leave. What if this was the last moments of her life?

  The gods had distracted his surfacing with a woman. Was she an offering to make him content beneath the waves? To stop him from returning to the surface? Did the gods see them rising to the top and want them kept in their place? Would the decisions he made affect the outcome of this woman’s story?

  “I can hear you breathing,” the healer muttered. She’d closed her eyes as she touched the woman’s chest.

  Lucius walked back, watching what was happening in his room as long as he could before the image disappeared from view. Hurrying to the shower to bathe properly, he couldn’t get the image of the red-soaked garment on his bedroom floor out of his mind. Perhaps it was what it represented—the red blood of mortality soaked by the ocean, another relic from the surface world—or perhaps it was simply that the material had touched and held soft breasts and feminine curves in a way he could not.

  Lucius found his soapy hand on his member as he stroked himself under the rain of the shower. She had to live. He was king, and he would command her to do so. He imagined her breath was still in his lungs from when he breathed for her on the dive down. The soft skin of her body beneath the wet blankets had been so delicate to the touch, very unlike the pleasure nymph dolls they were given to fight the affliction.

  She had to live. She had to live.

  Lucius groaned as he met his release. The bittersweet sensation eased the physical ache inside his body but did nothing for his lonely soul.

  Chapter Five

  “Some think this afterlife is a horrible place, but I don’t think it’s all that bad.”

  Aidan wouldn’t stop talking even though she didn’t open her eyes again. Olivette had made that mistake once already, and her babysitter had since felt the need to fill the silence. First, it had been a woman who wouldn’t quit touching her, and now it was this man who wouldn’t stop talking at her.

  “Mortality is so final. Think of all the things we can do and learn if we are not on a finite time schedule. Anyway, where was I? So they stopped worshipping Poseidon and began to worship themselves as gods upon the earth, taking what they were given for granted and becoming lazy. They raided their neighbors, took more than they could use in five lifetimes…well, mortal lifetimes.”

  “You said this part already,” Olivette muttered, still not opening her eyes.

  “I knew you were awake, my lady, but I wanted to make sure the information was heard. It’s important we do this before you come out of your euphoria. Otherwise, it’s a lot harder to process that you’re living in the lost city of Atlantes with merfolk.”

  Olivette finally looked at him. Aidan wore a kind expression that shone from his brown eyes. Compared to the giant merman who’d carried her through the water, this man was slighter in stature, with short brown hair. His brown wool shirt and pants seemed straight out of a hippy commune. “I would hardly use the word euphoric for what I’m feeling right now. I feel like there is a fifty-pound weight on my chest. My throat is raw. I’m having nightmares about tentacles. And you’re a mermaid.”

  “Man,” Aidan corrected. “I’m a merman. I assure you, I am no maid.”

  “My head is throbbing.” She pulled the covers over her head, not wanting to argue the Englis
h language. She frowned and pulled them back off. “If you’re Greek, and the gods cast you down, how are you speaking English?”

  “Don’t try to find the rational in the irrational,” he instructed. “It’s part of the magic of the place.”

  “I don’t believe in magic,” she said, partly to be difficult.

  “But here you are, talking to a converted merman at the bottom of the deep ocean,” Aidan laughed.

  She glanced around the lavish bedroom. A circular pedestal held the rectangular bed like an indoor gazebo, with a column at each corner. The blue, yellow, and white décor reminded her of being carried through the palace, blurred memories of tiled walls and ancient statues. Each large decorative vase on the floor stood well over six feet tall. She could imagine the hundreds of thousands of dollars each one would go for on the open market. The creamy-yellow blanket over her body was thin, but she found the room neither too hot nor too cold.

  “Converted? You mean you chose this?”

  “Like you, it chose me. I was rescued from a shipwreck. I was born in eighteen-ninety-three in a southern county of Scotland.” As he said the words, she started to detect a hint of a Scottish accent, as if what she expected to hear was what she could actually hear. He continued, “I worked as an historical scholar. We were sailing on the Bella Donna to Africa to explore the great pyramids. Everyone was very excited about the buried treasures of the desert. Our boat was attacked by a scylla—do you know about the scylla?”

  Olivette shook her head in denial.

  “It’s a sad thing. When the Merr are out in the isolation of the ocean for too long, they go insane. Eventually, that insanity causes them to lose themselves. They begin to take on the traits of the water, losing their identity, their pigmentation, their reasoning, becoming angry water spirits. In their confusion, they attack any signs of life from the surface world. That’s what happened to our ship. A scylla attacked it and we sank. I was fortunate that the Merr hunters were tracking the scylla to bring it home. The captain of the Bella Donna was superstitious and believed women on a ship to be unlucky, so it was only us men. For me, that proved right.”

  “But your ship crashed and there were no women. How is that lucky?”

  “Since there were no women onboard Demon the Hunter saved me and brought me here.”

  He was saved by a demon? Why not? It’s not like this situation could get any stranger. “You’re saying if there was a woman they would have saved her instead of you and you would have drowned?”

  “Exactly.” Aiden nodded. “It is good to see you talking. Do you have a name?”

  “Yes,” she managed with a small cough.

  “And it is?”

  “Olivette Waller.”

  “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Olivette,” Aidan said with a gentlemanly nod.

  “What do they want with us?”

  “To save us. To learn from us. To show the gods they have changed and are good people.” Aidan waved a dismissive hand as if she asked all the wrong questions.

  “What if I don’t want to convert? What if I want them to bring me home?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “Those who come down cannot go back up.”

  “So they’ll hold me prisoner because I can’t swim that far?” Olivette tried to sit up, but her desire to do so was no match for her physical inability to move.

  “Because you’re one of us, or you will be soon.” Aidan sat back in his chair and contemplated her. “What job did you have above?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered. She didn’t meet his gaze as she turned her attention to the wall and tears seeped out of her eyes. She wasn’t sad, necessarily, but weak and overwhelmed and tired. She was becoming a mermaid?

  “Lady Bridget was one of the first to come down in recent times. She was working as a scientist aboard her vessel when it was wrecked by the scylla, and has contributed greatly to the community with her knowledge and research. Lady Lyra has provided many fashionable designs to the seamstress. Lady Victoria discovered a way to cure the scylla when we bring them back from the ocean. She nearly died when she became one herself. Before that, every creature died a horrible death. Now there is hope that we can bring our people home. And Lady Cass—”

  “I’m a florist,” Olivette interrupted so that he’d stop listing out every accomplished woman in Atlantes. He was beginning to sound like her mother, pointing out how she could be living her life better. “I arrange flowers into pretty configurations. But since that business failed, I have also walked dogs, waited tables, delivered cars from one lot to another, worked concessions at a race track, cleaned houses, cleaned offices, cleaned pools, and had the misfortune of signing on to serve cocktails aboard an evening party cruise dressed like Mrs. Claus’ slutty sister, even though it’s spring. So, unless there is a big call for fish walkers or elf waitresses, I’m not sure I’m going to have all that much to contribute to your society.”

  Her throat hurt, but the diatribe had been worth it. She felt a little better after the rant.

  “You were serving drinks when the scylla hit your boat?” Aidan verified. “Is it true the king brought you back? Not one of the hunters, Demon or Brutus?”

  “King?”

  “King Lucius,” Aidan clarified.

  “I don’t know who he was.” Olivette remembered a man holding her, swimming with her, carrying her into the rain and then into softness. But the images were a blur. She saw a flash of bright blue eyes, of longer dark brown hair, of a blue tail coming out of the ocean onto a rocky ledge, only to mold into strong human legs.

  “But you remember your ship being wrecked?”

  “I remember…” She took a deep breath as she recalled being assaulted by Tanner. She felt the memory of his hands trying to grip their way up her skirt and pressed her legs together. Another hot tear slid down the side of her cheek. “Who is King Lucius?”

  “Quite right, I should finish telling you the story. King Lucius has ruled the Merr since before they became Merr. He is the reason Poseidon cursed these people. I have been collecting the stories of those who were there when it happened. Not many like to talk about it, but I have been able to piece together this much. The short version is that Lucius proclaimed he would never die, for he never wished to leave his bountiful kingdom paradise on Earth. That the land he’d created with his sword and his will was more beautiful than any kingdom of the gods, and they could stand to learn a few things from the Atlantean people.”

  “And Poseidon didn’t like that, broke off a piece of land, and buried them under the ocean,” Olivette concluded succinctly. “I’m sure the god said something clever like, ‘If you want this land and immortality so badly, well fine, take that’.”

  “Someone has told you this?” Aidan asked, appearing hurt that his tale was taken away from him.

  “No, it’s just easy to deduce where the tale was going. Man pisses off gods. Gods put man in his place. We’re under the water in what looks like a giant dome—if my fuzzy memory of the dive serves—so I can only guess how they were punished.” She sighed. Her voice was becoming fainter. “Are you sure you’re not a fiction writer? It’s an interesting bedtime story, and I can’t come up with a better explanation right now.”

  “It’s not fiction. It’s the truth. Poseidon cast Ataran down, trapping them so they could never walk on mortal soil again. They can’t even breathe the air. Atlantes is doomed to drift along the bottom of the ocean at the whim of the currents.” Aidan’s tone wasn’t as conversational as before. “King Lucius was a man of his time, so you must not think poorly of him. He is a very good king, and he saved your life.”

  “You don’t know what happened. The boat I was on didn’t get hit by anything. It didn’t sink.”

  “I know that if the king saved you, then you didn’t have any other options and would have died,” Aidan argued.

  “You said Ataran. I thought we were in Atlantes.”

  “We are. At
aran is what the country is called, the actual land. Atlas is the city. Atlantes is the whole thing,” he explained.

  “Ataran. Atlantes. Atlas. Aidan.” The headache became worse and she didn’t want to talk anymore. “The Merr do like the beginning of the alphabet, don’t they?”

  “Why, yes, they—” Aidan began to laugh.

  “What are you doing? I said to watch her, not tire her out.” The healer appeared in the doorway. “Aidan, I told you, she doesn’t need to hear your stories right now. She needs sleep.”

  “Althea,” Olivette muttered. Another ‘A’.

  “Yes, my lady?” the healer queried.

  Olivette didn’t answer as she closed her eyes. All she wanted was silence and to be left alone.

  “Aidan, leave,” Althea ordered.

  “King Lucius,” Aidan’s voice stuttered. “How long have you been—?”

  “Aidan,” the healer insisted.

  Olivette turned her attention toward the door. Through the doorframe, she saw someone push up from a sitting position on the floor. She hadn’t noticed his arrival.

  “Aye, yes, yes, I’m leaving. I’ll see you at home, my beautiful,” Aidan told Althea as he left.

  Althea placed her hands on Olivette’s face. Olivette tried to jerk away from the overly familiar touch. The healer’s hands radiated heat, sending tiny vibrations through her skull. The pain in her head began to lessen. Hands moved to hold her throat, and Olivette coughed as the fingers tightened. She breathed easier.

  Olivette watched, no longer trying to stop the healer. The touch continued over her body, moving almost mechanically along her chest and stomach. Her flesh tingled. She met the blue eyes of her merman rescuer. The king of the Merr. King Lucius.

  The king didn’t speak, didn’t smile or frown. He watched as one would an unamusing show. His clothing appeared straight out of Ancient Greece. The white, rectangular shirt draped over his solid chest. Two brooches held the sleeves together at his shoulders. A gold belt wrapped his waist. The shirt fell to his thighs. Beneath he wore snuggly fitted pants. A purple sash draped one shoulder before reaching around his waist and was held in place by one of the brooches. The leather sandals appeared out of place with such stately attire.