“What language is that written in?” Trevain asked, pointing at the symbol on Corallyn’s arm. “What does it mean?”
“Much like our sign language, we have a universal undersea writing system,” Aazuria explained. “It is extremely old—it dates back thousands of years to the first undersea civilization. I believe I am babbling this history lesson to avoid facing the matter at hand, and I will just get to the point. The symbol means ‘Surrender’ and the little arrow at the bottom right corner indicates that it is a command.”
“I see,” Trevain said, nodding to pretend he understood. In some part of his mind the information was registering, and he was forming a favorable opinion of the concise writing system, but in all the parts he could currently access, all he could think about was what Corallyn had suffered.
Naclana sighed. “The rest of the message on the other body parts demands that we ‘Surrender Visola ASAP or Adlivun will be razed.’”
“Then it’s decided,” Visola said. “I’m going.”
“No. Without you we will lose for certain. We do not have anyone else who can lead the army. No one has the knowledge and experience…”
“Sure, there are tons of folks who can lead. Plus Queen Amabie is here.”
“Our troops need you, Viso. I need you. Name one other person who could take your place.”
“Trevain will do it,” Visola said with a shrug.
“Me?” Trevain asked. “No way. I’m the least qualified out of everyone…”
“True, little grandson.” She reached out and pinched his cheek. “For now you are unqualified, but it won’t be that way for long.”
Aazuria was glaring at both of them. “I will not sacrifice your life, Visola. That is not how bargaining with me works. I am not going to make it so easy—if he thinks that sending me my murdered sister is going to grant him permission to murder my friend, he is mistaken.”
“Do you think I don’t know this man?”
“Obviously you did not know him well enough before you swam down the aisle with him.”
“You gave me your blessing,” Visola said angrily. “I know one thing: he won’t stop until he gets what he wants.”
“We do not have enough evidence to judge his level of determination,” Aazuria said. “What he usually wants is you, and you are pitifully easy to get.”
Visola’s mouth sputtered as she tried to yell five words at once. “Wha— ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Trevain said, raising his hands and stepping between the two women. “Ladies, calm down.”
“She started it,” Visola mumbled.
“Yeah, she did,” Trevain said, turning to his fiancée. “Zuri, maybe this isn’t my place… but don’t you always say that have you implicit trust in my grandma’s opinion? I hardly know her, but I have seen enough to trust her. Everyone in Adlivun speaks highly of General Ramaris. Maybe you should consider her words, and let her go.”
“Thanks, Trevain,” Visola said with surprise. “Wow, you actually stood up for me. I’m blown away.”
“If I can help in any way,” he offered, “if you need a fast boat…”
“No,” Aazuria said, holding up her hand. “We will go before a carefully chosen council and decide this together. This conversation is closed and no action will be taken without a consensus.”
Visola put both of her hands in her hair with exasperation. “You and Queen Amabie will control the consensus!”
“A council sounds like a good idea,” Trevain said.
Naclana cleared his throat, reminding them that he was still in the room. Their heads snapped to look at him. “I hate to have to ask this: would you like to see the other symbols?” Naclana asked.
“Is that really necessary?” Trevain asked.
“It’s necessary,” Visola said.
Aazuria imagined Corallyn’s head severed from her body with a symbol carved into her forehead. She still felt nothing. She supposed that she would not feel anything again until Vachlan had paid for this. “I will look at them,” she said.
Trevain’s eyes fixated on an unusual breed of mushroom.
Chapter 8: Desperate and Convenient
In a dark, submerged room of the glacier, a small figure was quietly huddled as she hovered within a decorative dome of ice. In the bedchambers of the palace which were underwater, many chose to rest in these hollowed out spherical beds. This well-padded and extremely comfortable furniture was traditional to Adlivun. Mermaids of other clans and those who dwelled above often commented on how nonsensical these globular enclosures seemed at first, but after relenting and spending a night in them every doubter hastily converted. Many even declared that they had experienced the most restful sleep of their lives.
With arms wrapped around her knees, and blankets wrapped around her shoulders, Alcyone did not want to leave the comfort of her ornate waterbed. She had dearly missed this luxury in the decades spent on hard flat beds on land; after a time she had gotten used so to them that she had almost forgotten. She felt safe in her orb, the way she used to feel as a child. She could close her eyes as she floated, her arthritic bones gently supported by the water, and feel at peace with herself. It was almost as though she had never wasted away on land, almost as though her body had not deteriorated very close to the point of being dust. She was not even two centuries old. She was only one-ninety-seven, but she looked more ancient than Queen Amabie who was nine-eighty-seven.
So then, when she had all but accepted herself as dead, when she had taught herself to never look into mirrors to avoid seeing glimpses of her own corpse staring back at her, how was she still breathing while Corallyn no longer was?
She was so distracted in her misery that she did not notice the movement in her room until someone was standing right outside of her bed. She lifted her eyes to see her youngest son with an unusually serious expression on his face.
“Are you ready yet, mom?” Callder signed.
Alcyone was briefly surprised at how quickly Callder had picked up enough sign language to converse. Death did not make the everyday chores of the living disappear, and it seemed that Callder and Trevain had been keeping up with their classes.
“How could I ever have been ready for this?” she responded. Her body was so sluggish that she felt too tired even to move her hands in speech.
“Are you coming to your friend’s funeral?” Callder asked.
Alcyone pulled her blankets around her tighter. Corallyn had been the person she had been closest to outside of her family. It disturbed her that the young girl had never gotten the chance to grow up, and never would. Corallyn had lived for almost a century, but there were so many stages of life she would never experience. Alcyone leaned weakly against the concave wall of her bed.
“I only just found her again. We didn’t even get a chance to catch up on the last sixty years…”
Callder tried to follow the motions of his mother’s hands, but he could not understand all of the words and phrases. He could, however, see the despondent look on the old woman’s face. He had not spent much time around Alcyone for the greater part of his life during which she had been locked away, but it surprised him how sensitive he was to her every emotion. Perhaps it was latent memory which was bubbling to the surface which helped him to know her, or some kind of innate familial understanding. Then again, he had always been good with women.
“Are you going to get dressed, mom?” Callder signed. “Want me to grab some clothes for you?”
Alcyone shook her head in refusal, but Callder moved to her closet anyway. He slid open the ice doors, and looked with confusion at the carved shelves of floating fabrics. He reached out and selected a dark colored dress. He was unable to see its precise color since his eyes were not well-accustomed to the dark. He returned to his mother and held out the dress for her examination.
“Issh tdhiss…” He had opened his mouth and begun to speak, but he quickly remembered that he could not understand the deformed sound of his own voice underwater. The larg
est complication about needing to use sign language was that he could not hold objects while speaking, or multitask as much as he normally did with his hands. Many of the sea-dwellers could read the motions of each other’s lips, but he was not comfortable enough to do this yet. He laid the dress out on his mother’s bed, and used his hands. “Is this good, mom? Do you like this dress?”
Alcyone looked down at the garment blankly. She shook her head.
Callder nodded and picked it up, returning to the closet to select another. When she refused a second dress, he repeated this half a dozen times before he began to grow impatient. “Mom, you have to help me out. What do you want?"
“I want Corallyn to not be cut up into six different pieces,” Alcyone responded.
Callder sighed, causing a visible stream of swirling water and bubbles to leave his mouth. This momentarily startled him. Sighing underwater was like exhaling on a cold winter’s night, and seeing one’s own breath visible in a pale puff of vapor against the dark night sky. The world was so new, yet so natural.
He found himself leaning against the opening of the dome-bed, and feeling quite helpless. When he had initially woken up from his injury, and first laid eyes on his mother, it had taken him some time to recognize her. Once he had some concept of what was going on, he thought that it meant the end of his problems. Every person always retains some hope that someday their estranged family will find its way back together, and when that happens, everything will be okay again. Callder had instantly resolved to himself to quit his drinking and get his life together the moment he saw his mother’s smiling face.
Now, he was no longer sure.
“What kind of dress should I get?” he tried asking Alcyone again. “Why is this one bad?”
She had not stopped staring at the dress on the bed. “It always seems to happen this way, doesn’t it? One moment you’re planning a wedding, and the next you’re choosing what to wear for a funeral.” Alcyone tore her eyes away from the dark fabric and looked up at her son. “Do you remember when your dad died?”
Callder swallowed and nodded. He did not want to bring up those memories. His brother had asked him to bring his mom to the funeral, but he did not think he could stand to see her like this. He did not want to force her to get out of bed, and he did not want to seem annoying and pushy. She was hurting.
“I’ll leave this dress with you, mom,” he signed. “I will come back soon and see if you’re ready.”
When Callder had exited the room, Alcyone reached out with one hand to grasp the fabric. Her other hand still held the blankets tightly around her small body. She soon discovered that her fingers were shaking too much to pick up the material. This debilitating tremor had not been as pronounced since she had come to live underwater, but now it seemed to be back with full force. Alcyone took a deep breath of water as she released her blankets and tried to use both hands to pick up the dress. She succeeded in bringing the fabric a few inches higher before she lost motor control again, and her anxiety began. The dress floated in the water, blatantly accusing her of being powerless.
As she tried to control her shaking hands, she wondered whether it would have been better to remain in the psychiatric facility. She had missed her mother and her sons, and the Vellamo family, but she felt like she was cursed. As soon as she was reunited with them, awful things started happening when they had lived for so long happily without her.
Was she a boon or a burden in her children’s lives?
The dress was not appropriate. She needed another, but the closet was too far away, and even if she could find the energy to swim over there, her hands would be shaking too much to dress herself. Even if she could dress herself, she did not know if she could find the energy to make it to the funeral. It was a private ceremony, and it was not being held too far away, but she did not think she could withhold her tears in front of her friends and family. She could not bear to look at Aazuria’s unreadable expression, and know that although the princess appeared unmoved, she was surely anguished by the loss of her sister.
Alcyone felt the water stirring around her, and she felt a pair of strong arms being wrapped around her. She saw a flash of long red hair, and she knew that it was her mother. Visola hugged Alcyone and kissed her cheek affectionately.
“I’m sorry that I haven’t gotten dressed yet. I wasn’t feeling well, mama.” Even forming simple words was challenging for Alcyone’s shaking hands. Visola noticed this. She gave her elderly daughter a kind smile.
“I know, dear.”
Visola reached out and squeezed Alcyone’s hand gently. Alcyone was surprised by the sudden infusion of strength which this gave her. She looked down through the dark, and saw that her mother’s hands were badly damaged. There was a tiny cloud of blood surrounding Visola’s knuckles. Alcyone gasped and released her mother’s hands to speak with her own.
“Mama, what happened to you?”
“Got mad about a little girl in a box. Blamed bedroom wall. Broke fingers on rock-solid ice.”
Alcyone frowned deeply. “Mama, I don’t want to scold you, but…”
“I can still speak perfectly in sign language, so no real damage is done.” Visola wiggled her fingers to demonstrate. “We all have our ways of coping. It just made me so sick to my stomach that Vachlan did that to Corallyn.” Visola paused, staring at a fixed point. “I know that he changed. I know that he did horrible things since he left me. I just never thought… I never really believed…”
“That he was pure evil?” Alcyone signed with disgust. “And that man is my father. Is he even human?”
“He’s British.”
Alcyone smiled. “Mama, your British jokes stopped being funny in 1914.”
Visola clasped her hands together, and forced herself to be cheerful and to appreciate the moment before speaking. “Most mothers would be devastated at the insinuation of being uncool and obsolete. I’m just happy that my little girl has returned home to call me names. More motherly-insults, please, Alcie.”
“You’re old-school, mama. So passé and… fogyish. Definitely yesterday’s news.” Alcyone grinned.
“Oh, you kids these days,” Visola said, smiling. “You think you know it all! When I was your age, I had to swim everywhere because the boats were crap! In the winter, with no clothes and no shoes.”
Alcyone laughed. “I like this; it makes me feel younger too.”
Visola peered through the dark into her daughter’s eyes before growing suddenly serious again.
“Can you keep a secret, baby?”
“Of course, mama. What is it?”
“I have decided that I’m going to see your dad, kiddo.”
Alcyone felt as though she had been struck. “Mama, no! What if he hurts you?”
“It’s okay. We used to have a safety word for that. It was Albuquerque.”
“That’s not what I meant. What if he really, really hurts you?”
“I expect that he will, Alcie. Better he hurt me than chopping up little girls.”
Alcyone stared at her mother for a moment, seeking comprehension. “Aazuria will never allow it,” she finally responded.
“Yes, that’s why it’s a secret. I’m not telling her.”
“You’re choosing to betray Adlivun for my father? How can you do this? Aazuria is more our family than Vachlan—she looked into an audience of men and was somehow able to pick out my son. She saved my life. She just lost her sister, and she couldn’t bear to lose you too. I couldn’t bear it, mama.”
“Alcyone, my star. You know how you meet someone, one person in your entire life who really gets under your skin?” Visola paused to give her daughter a sad smile. “Your dad’s face has never stopped haunting my dreams. Please understand that I have to do this. I’m going to sneak away during the funeral.”
Alcyone knew that she could not disobey her mother’s wishes. She trusted her. “I understand, mama. I felt that way about John. The boys’ father, John Murphy. Isn’t that a boring, common name? It’s
so American.” She nodded, blinking away nostalgia. “I couldn’t tell him my name was Alcyone, so I said Alice. For a moment in time, I forgot everything and became that person. Alice Murphy, a fisherman’s wife. We were just regular ol’ John and Alice…”
“I wish I could have been there at your wedding,” Visola signed.
“It was nothing special. I had no friends or family on land, and I knew no one. It was a marriage of desperate convenience—I needed John to take care of me.”
“Love is often both desperate and convenient,” Visola responded. She picked up the dress which was laid out on the bed, and began to undo the clasps on it. She reached out and gently began to peel the layers of blankets away from her daughter. “Here, let me help you get into this.”
Visola helped her daughter to slip out of her nightgown and into the green dress that Callder had chosen. Alcyone felt embarrassed that her shaking hands were so incapable that her mother’s broken fingers were doing what she could not.
“I was supposed to take care of you in your old age,” Alcyone said as Visola adjusted the gown. “This is all wrong. It’s all reversed. You already took care of me once.”
“Maybe your father will beat me until I’m crippled and you’ll still get a chance to take care of me.”
“Mama! That isn’t reassuring.”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” Visola said with a smile. “Truth is that I’m the luckiest mother ever to have enough strength to take care of my daughter twice. I wouldn’t trade this for anything.”
Alcyone looked at her mother solemnly for a moment before speaking in a pleading voice. “Don’t go, mama. We have been separated for so long. Now after just a few weeks together…”
“I must, Alcie. Trust me on this. Will you help me? Sometime after midnight, pretend like you just discovered I’ve gone missing. Tell them to hold off on their attack, okay? Do anything you can to stop them from attacking Zimovia. They won’t be successful.”
“What if they won’t listen to me?
“They will. Here, stand up sweetie, let me look at you.”
Fathoms of Forgiveness (Sacred Breath, Book 2) Page 7
