Ice Kingdom

by Tiana Warner

  Meela looked at me sharply. “What?”

  “He’s half-human,” I said.

  “So?”

  I lifted my gaze to the queen. “I knew someone. She had a baby with a man—but it was stillborn.”

  “Adaro was not expected to live past infancy.” Medusa closed her eyes, a heaviness about her. It seemed as though it cost her a great effort to speak her next words. “His body was born wanting to be human, but he is cursed with a mermaid’s venom. When the tide pulls strongest, his body will attempt to complete a transformation. He must seek the protection of land until the venom transforms him back to a merman.”

  A silence hardened between us like ice.

  “When the pull is strongest,” said Meela weakly. “You mean, during king tides?”

  The queen dropped her gaze.

  Meela whirled to me, her pulse so strong I felt it on the current.

  My mind raced back through time, making other connections. His disappearances. His hatred of humans. What about our failed assassination attempts?

  “Your Majesty, is this why he’s resistant to iron?”

  “I presume his human genes have to do with it. He discovered it when he was captured by those sailors. He had, of course, spent his youth under the assumption that it would affect him the same as anyone else.”

  Maybe he couldn’t be killed as a merman—but did this mean what I thought?

  “So when he’s in human form …” I said.

  “He is vulnerable,” said the queen, barely a whisper.

  All this time, we had assumed he was invincible.

  This was how we would kill King Adaro.

  Behind us, activity stirred in the entrance. I turned to find the guards who had taken us from our cells.

  “You have what you need to make peace in the Pacific,” said Medusa. “Now you will be escorted back to the Ice Channel. I implore you not to attempt to enter the Atlantic again.”

  “Wait,” I said, feeling like I was trying to shove a giant boulder around in my brain. “What about Adaro’s armies? What about the labour camp?”

  “I have nothing to gain by helping you further,” said Medusa. “I will not be burdened by this.”

  “You can’t ignore what’s happening,” said Meela. “When the Atlantic is being invaded, you’re going to regret—”

  “That is enough!” Medusa rose from her throne, stretching to her full and considerable length. Her eyes shone red, her dreadlocks resembling snakes more than ever.

  A hand seized my arm. I whipped around to find the guards closing around Meela and me. I raised my hands in surrender.

  “These maids are not permitted to stay in my city,” said Medusa. “Take them to the Ice Channel.”

  They dragged us to the door. I twisted to face the queen, panicked.

  “No! Wait!”

  Sure, we knew how to kill Adaro, but we were no closer to getting to him. He still had an enormous army, and we had no way of stopping it.

  We had one last piece of information to bargain with. It was our one option. Letting Medusa have the serpent was better than not getting her help at all.

  “Control is passed by blood,” I shouted from the door. “You can be its master if you kill him.”

  Queen Medusa raised a hand, and the guards stopped. Meela shot me a blazing glare. Her lip curled, like she was ready to bite.

  “It can switch allegiances?” said the queen.

  I nodded stiffly.

  “But it should be destroyed,” said Meela, struggling against her guard. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “With the wrong master, perhaps,” said the queen.

  “If you help us, you have the option to control it,” I said. “If you don’t, you’re leaving it to him—or to us, and we intend to destroy it.”

  There it was. Our last, desperate hope.

  A long, heavy moment passed. I avoided Meela’s eye—though I could feel her fury. Whatever she thought, this was essential. This was our one chance with Medusa, and we needed to share everything we had.

  The queen drifted back to her throne. She caressed the edge of the shell with long, webbed fingers. Her demon form was equal in terror to the beauty I’d seen moments ago.

  When she spoke, her voice was calm.

  “I stay by my decision. I am concerned enough by my son’s actions to help you restore peace to the Pacific—but I will not join your war.”

  My insides plummeted. The guard pulled me onwards.

  “No!” I said, struggling. “Please, Your Majesty. Any day, Adaro’s going to invade the Atlantic, and then it will concern you. Why not get ahead of him?”

  The queen sat back, settling into her throne.

  “You can’t just sit here while humans and merpeople kill each other in the Pacific,” I shouted. “It isn’t right!”

  She raised a hand in farewell. “Good luck, Metlaa Gaela and Lysithea. Give Adaro my best when you find him.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Meela

  Glacial Problems

  A wall of ice towered over us, so pure and blue that I could hardly tell where water ended and ice began. It reached high above the surface and deeper than I could sense. I didn’t remember this glacier from the way over—but the maze of ice and currents made following the same path almost impossible.

  We swam adjacent to the wall and eventually found a gap where the glacier had broken. The chasm, though wide enough to fit a ship, made me feel claustrophobic. Unless we wanted to dive beneath the ice and risk being unable to find an air hole, we would be stuck following the gap until it ended.

  Lysi hesitated for a fraction of a second before entering it, determinedly silent.

  “You’re certainly being quiet, for someone who couldn’t keep her mouth shut earlier,” I said.

  Lysi glared.

  “It was the one piece of information I asked you not to share,” I said.

  “Oh, stop it, Mee! It’s not like you listened to me either, shouting at the queen like that.”

  She pushed faster, far into the chasm. I adjusted the crossbow over my back, checking the bolts in my quiver once again. At least Medusa’s guards had returned our weapons before throwing us out. It was a small comfort.

  We’d debated whether we should try sneaking back into the palace, but decided against it. If we were caught, we would probably face consequences much worse than simply being escorted out. Besides, the queen had made it clear she would not be convinced. Our best option was to get back to the Pacific as quickly as we could if we were going to find Adaro before the next king tide.

  The disappearances Ephyra had noticed made sense now. If Adaro turned into a human during king tides, he would be extremely vulnerable. He would have no hope against me. But getting to him at the right moment would be difficult.

  Lysi said we had half a tidecycle at most. Two weeks. Somehow, we had to make it back to the Pacific and find Adaro before then—not to mention finding a way past his army and the serpent, and tailing him until he left the water to transform. And we had to do all of this before the moon’s orbit and phase matched up in that perfect way.

  I glanced to the cloudy sky, hoping to see the moon. I didn’t let myself think what would happen if we didn’t get to him in time. The world could not afford to spend another six months at his mercy.

  Something groaned in the distance, deep and rumbling. Lysi didn’t seem bothered, so I ignored it. I watched her body wave in a smooth rhythm as she swam a few lengths ahead.

  “You know you put everyone at risk, throwing around that knowledge,” I said.

  “The promise of controlling the serpent was all the leverage we had. We’d have been stupid not to tell her.”

  I huffed. “You’re lucky she decided not to act. It’s better than having her join the fight with the intention of getting the serpent.”

  “Ugh, are you serious? You think it’s better she’s not helping us?”

  Admittedly, it
did bother me that Medusa had refused. If she was as great a queen as everyone said, she would have cared about the war in the Pacific. Sure, this war had yet to affect the Atlantic directly, but lives were in danger, and she had the power to save them. Adaro might have been her son, but he was out of control, and she owed the world as queen to place those thousands—millions—of lives over his.

  “She’s a coward,” I said.

  “She’s not a coward. She told us how to kill her son.”

  “You’re defending her?”

  “I’m saying she has to make hard decisions that we probably don’t understand.”

  The groaning noise came again, filling my head, like a manifestation of my anger.

  At least the queen had made one noble decision. With or without help, we had the information we needed.

  Now I had a merman to kill.

  The canyon widened, the glaciers on either side looming silently. They reminded me of running through towering sequoia trees, surrounded by the smell of dirt and pine and wildflowers.

  A lump formed in my throat. I supposed no matter how much I loved the sea, I would always miss what it felt like to be human. And right now, when even Lysi’s company was lonely, I realised I was homesick.

  There was another, louder groan. Lysi glanced around this time. She caught my eye and turned ahead, continuing resolutely.

  I imagined thousands of Adaro’s followers making this trek all those years ago, leaving the Atlantic behind to build Utopia.

  Lysi’s parents had been among them.

  “Why did your parents follow?” I said.

  She glanced back, brow still furrowed in anger. “What?”

  “Your parents followed Adaro to the Pacific after all his anti-human messages.”

  “It wasn’t that simple. My mom said Adaro made a lot of promises that sounded better than what Queen Medusa offered. Wealth and unity and—”

  “But did they not care about his anti-human messages, or that he tried to assassinate the queen?”

  “I know what you’re getting at, Meela. They aren’t anti-human—”

  The groan swelled louder than ever. A wave of apprehension pulsed from Lysi.

  “So they don’t care enough about humans to let that affect them,” I said.

  “What? No. I think Adaro quieted down about those views for a time to gain more followers. Anyway, can we not talk about my mom and dad? It just gets me all worried about them, and …”

  The noise grew into a long, low rumble. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, or even which direction it came from. I blamed that on my inexperience with my new senses.

  “What’s doing that?” I said.

  Lysi lifted her gaze to the wall of ice on our right.

  It hit me. The rumbling wasn’t in the distance. It was all around us.

  Lysi’s eyes locked onto mine, wide, dilated, bluer than the ice suffocating us from all sides.

  “The glacier,” she whispered.

  The glacier was rumbling? How? What did that mean? The noise intensified, stirring the water until I found it difficult to stay still.

  “Lysi, what—?”

  “Dive!”

  I reacted in the same instant as the surface exploded in a great splash. A chunk of the glacier had crashed down on us. We flew downwards. An icy swell pulsed from the impact, pushing me faster.

  My teeth jabbed into my lip as my body transitioned into demon mode.

  I didn’t need to look to know an unfathomably large wall of ice was chasing us downwards, ready to smash us with enough force to kill. We couldn’t slow down.

  The world was all churning water and ice. The rumbling deafened me as pieces continued to break away from the glacier and plunge towards us.

  How deep was the water here? I couldn’t feel past the chaos enough to tell. What if we hit the bottom and had nowhere to go?

  Lysi shrieked. A chunk of ice drove between us, separating us.

  I used my hands to straighten out, determined not to veer away.

  I heard her shout to me, but her voice was distant and muffled.

  The world became dark. The walls of ice on either side were still thick, leaving me nowhere to go, still, but down.

  My entire body ached with exhaustion, ready to give up, when the crashing finally slowed. A wave picked me up, carrying me away from the breaking wall and towards the adjacent one. I beat my tail desperately to avoid colliding with it.

  “Lysi?”

  I couldn’t sense her. Had she gotten carried on the same wave?

  Casting my senses for her, I caught something enormous stirring below, coming towards me. More ice? Had it bounced off the bottom? This didn’t make sense.

  It was definitely ice. And it was coming towards me, fast.

  My insides plummeted. It was the bottom of the breaking glacier. The iceberg’s centre of gravity must have changed. It was flipping over.

  I cast around desperately for an escape. It was no use. The ice rose towards me, an unstoppable wall.

  The roaring current drowned my scream. I wanted to call to Lysi, ask her what to do, but my throat seized with terror.

  I tried to race out of the way, but the wall slammed into me with a painful crash. The ice pushed me upwards so quickly my stomach swooped.

  Cold wind hit my face as I broke the surface. The wall of ice was horizontal, and continuing to flip.

  “Lysi!”

  I was sliding, helpless, unable to grip anything. Ice and sky and water whirled.

  Then I was sliding off the other side, still grasping for anything I could hold onto. I sucked in a breath before being plunged back into the water.

  I pushed away hard, putting distance between myself and the iceberg. It continued to roll, sending currents and whirlpools that tried to suck me back towards it.

  I used my webbed hands to push harder, diving towards blackness. I had to go deeper, further than before, down to safety. I passed the point of comfort, the depth pressing my eyes and ears, and still, I kept swimming.

  The world became pitch black. The waves still tossed me left and right.

  I reached the floor and stopped myself with my hands. I planted my fingers in the sand.

  Far above, the enormous glacier continued to move, swapping its crystal blue bottom with its weather-beaten top. Shards of ice twice the size of me rained down in a thunderous storm. But they stopped, floating, before they hit me. I was safe down here.

  I cast my senses around. The only sign of life was those tiny glowing creatures.

  “Lysi?”

  The sound drifted into the void. I waited. An endless moment passed that might have been a minute or an hour. My pulse rattled in my eardrums.

  The emptiness of the water hit me more than ever. All I sensed were moving currents and vast walls of ice, trapping me there with growing dread.

  Should I try to find Lysi, or continue on? What would she do? I decided she would definitely try to find me. Then I doubted myself. Maybe she assumed I had swum to safety, or kept moving in the direction we’d been headed.

  I waited in the intense pressure and darkness. Slowly, the chaos overhead subsided.

  “Lysi?” I said again, if just to hear a voice.

  Nothing. I turned, casting my senses carefully in each direction.

  She probably wouldn’t have swum as deep as this—below the twilight layer. She would’ve been able to handle the current more easily.

  I began to rise. Then I remembered Lysi telling me to go slowly when rising from depths like this, because depressurising quickly was painful.

  I moved westward, rising gradually. No signs of life.

  A knot of terror swelled in my heart, making it hard to think. No, Lysi would be all right. She’d always survived on her own, so this would be no different. I just had to find her.

  By the time I made it to the surface and found myself still completely alone, I really began to panic. I considered
doubling back. Could we have gotten that far from each other? Had she been flipped to the opposite side of the broken glacier, separated from me by a giant wall of ice? Or had she been crushed beneath the falling shards?

  I shook my head, refusing to believe that.

  “She’s fine,” I whispered. Lysi was a more agile and experienced swimmer than me. If I’d gotten away from the iceberg, so would she.

  Even once I calmed the fear of what happened to Lysi, the idea of continuing alone was terrifying. I barely knew how to be a mermaid, never mind trying to survive the most extreme conditions as one.

  Movement stirred ahead. My heart leapt. I jetted towards it—and stopped, cursing. It was a school of fish.

  I chewed my lip, then made a decision. I would keep going. The school, at least, had a much larger presence than I did. If Lysi was nearby, there was a good chance she would feel the activity.

  I approached the school from the side and made a wide arc like Lysi had taught me. I picked up my pace, expelling some breath so I created a vortex of bubbles that acted like a wall around the fish. They bunched tighter until they were a giant, swirling, silvery baitball.

  I crossed my arms and admired my work, wishing Lysi could see my accomplishment. I glanced around.

  Come on, Lysi. Where are you?

  Lysi and I had barely eaten since being ejected from the Atlantic, and I was so far past the point of hunger that I was trembling. Or maybe it was from panic.

  I watched the silvery swirl, debating whether I’d be able to hold down a meal. Then, in the distance, something else moved. I turned, concentrating on where it had come from. It was the right size to be a mermaid.

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  My heart pounded. I thought I felt an aura but couldn’t be sure. It could be a dolphin, for all I knew. Why was this so hard to sense? I wondered if transformed mermen and mermaids ever had control of their senses to the same extent as merpeople who were born with them, or if I was doomed to be subpar.

  Whatever it was moved towards me. As it drew closer, I sensed a presence too complex to be an animal. It had to be a mermaid.

  “Lysi?”

  “Hello?” came the reply, and the male voice proved it was definitely not her. “Did you call me Lysi?”