Her hand slaps my face. I narrowly miss her claws against my cheek. Black spots crowd my vision, and I blink at my mother, whose expression remains unchanged. My heartbeat pulses in my cheek as it stings.
“Not good enough. Nothing you’ve ever done has been good enough. Why did I ever decide to have a second youngling?”
She grips the air in front of her, and her gaze drops to her hands. Her voice has grown deeper, but each word stabs me in the heart like a knife.
My brother chuckles as he peers at me from behind my mother. His smile is mocking. “They always say that talent and intelligence are distributed among the offspring, and often not in equal measure.”
My mother shakes her head. “You still have not answered the question. Where have you been?”
“You were angry with me, so I stayed away. I remained at a distance, reminiscing about when I was a youngling and we visited the waters around the island of ponies.” I meet eyes with my brother, grasping for some way to get him to agree with me and dilute my mother’s fury. “You remember the cave we found that time? I found it again.”
My mother’s brow wrinkles, the fire in her eyes diminishing. “Reminiscing?”
I nod.
Brandeeb cocks his head to the side. “The cave, huh? I’ve been there a few times. Not the wisest choice of place to lay your head, but safe enough for a Mer, alone in the deep.”
My face flushes. Amazingly, he backed me up. My mother blinks at my brother and then returns her gaze to me, her shoulders relax, and her public mask is back in place.
“Don’t do it again, understood? You need to be home before sunset so I don’t stay up all night with worry.” She points to her face. “These bags under my eyes and wrinkles were put there by your impertinence.”
With a sigh, she swims away. My brother draws himself up and raises his chest, swimming just over me enough to have to look down at me. I raise my gaze momentarily before returning it again to my mother as she swims away.
“Were you really at the cave?”
I frown at him. “Where else would I be?”
He shrugs, his gaze flitting about before he leans in a bit. “You have another’s pheromones on your skin. I smell a female.”
I wince.
He laughs. “Thought so. Wonder if mother smelled it, too.”
My jaw tightens. I almost correct my brother before he assumes too much, but then what could I possibly say I was doing instead? I could never tell Brandeeb the truth. It’s better if I let whatever he’s imagining remain. If he knew the truth, he’d tell mother, possibly even the Elder. Brandeeb had always loved to point out my flaws and inadequacies. I wouldn’t give him another one on a silver platter.
He huffs when I refuse to say another word, much less look at him, and starts after our mother. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding and start for the convalescing cove.
I frown when it occurs to me on my swim there that my mother hadn’t tried to keep me with her as though I were an obstinate youngling. She’d only told me to return by sunset. I shake my head. Had she forgotten, or had my taking off instead of sitting obediently by her side in the sand helped her realize she might be picking a battle she’ll never win?
The cove appears before me, the same as it was before. Gabriel’s and Verona’s father’s are the only two nestings which are occupied. The healer sat in the sand next to the nesting of Verona’s father. Gabriel lay in his nesting alone. Though I’d come to check on Verona’s father and to talk to the healer, I head over to Gabriel’s nesting instead. It just feels right, because his sister isn’t there to block me or ask me to do something I don’t want to do.
I settle in the sand beside Gabriel. His arm is draped over his eyes, and blond hairs peek out from behind his ear. In a steady rhythm, his chest rises and falls. Then he winces and pulls his arm from his eyes.
He blinks a few times before his gaze finally rests upon me. He quirks an eyebrow. “What are you doing here?”
I shrug.
He shakes his head. “My sister is especially angry with you.”
I shrug again. “She’s angry with anyone who disagrees with her.”
He barks out one laugh before he settles back into a frown. “But you... you never disagree with her. It was probably the thing she liked most about you.”
I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter.”
He laughs and shakes his head in return, his brown eyes sparking with snark, then the light fading a bit. “It’s been three days, and I still cannot feel my fin. Nothing from about the belly button down, at all.”
I blink and frown. “Nothing at all?”
He shakes his head again. “The doctor keeps poking my lower half with needles, but I’m numb. The anti-inflammatory herbs he’s giving me taste awful but don’t seem to be doing a thing. This tail of mine feels like a swollen, dead weight.”
I swallow. I don’t know how to respond to that, but I look at his tailfin in new light. If a part of the body becomes this useless, it will anchor him down more than it will do anything else. What would his family do with him? It wasn’t often a person stayed in the convalescing cove for long term. I chance a glance toward the healer who still sits with the father in Verona’s place. It seemed as though her father had been staying here long term. Perhaps the healer had allowed it. Would he allow the Elder’s son to stay as well?
“I see what you’re thinking, but I don’t want to be anything like that old bottom feeder across the way. I’m young, strong, and healthy in every way except this one. He picks up the end of his tail with his hands and then releases it. The tail drops unnaturally to the nesting floor.
My frown deepens, and guilt surfaces within me. They blame Verona for this, but it had been my idea from the start. If the Elder and his court knew it was me, would they have sent me instead? I shiver. Or would they send me in addition to Verona? I honestly don’t know. I’d never heard of two bottom feeders being sent out on a reckoning at the same time.
“Sitting here, in the prison of my own body, it’s given me a lot of time to think. I know I’m not going to be able to do the things I’ve always done in the past. But then, I think about what those things were, and I’m not very proud of myself. So, I’m not going to be able to pick on the bottom feeder anymore? I’m not going to be able to go on hunts.” His voice cracks, and he blinks a few times before continuing. “I can’t blame my sister. She went along with things because I suggested them, too. Or you. We fed off each other, like it was a contest to see which of us could be crueler... and often I won.”
I nod, speechless, my eyes meeting Gabriel’s brown ones. The two of us never really had a connection as friends. Mostly Stacia hung on to me, and I followed her. I never got the feeling that either of them led the other. They nearly have a hive mind, like some schools of fish do when they swarm. It seemed as though they both made decisions together without ever discussing it with one another. But since his injury, now that he lay in a nesting, Gabriel has changed. Even the way he’d approved of how I had disagreed with Stacia, seemed unlike him.
“It’s a shame she’s being blamed for this. She’s the bottom feeder anyway, so it was her fate to go on a reckoning, but this situation,” he says while gesturing toward his own tail, “isn’t her fault.”
“It’s mine,” I whisper, my gaze dropping toward the sand.
“Get over yourself!” Gabriel growls. “The world doesn’t rest on your shoulders. You’re always taking responsibility for things you shouldn’t, and the result is guilt. You run around guilty, and it makes your back hunch over while you rub your torso.”
I blink at him.
“You try to hide it, but I’ve seen it. Stacia has too. Probably most everyone around you for a while has noticed.”
My frown deepens, and I shake my head slowly.
“It makes no difference,” Gabriel continues. “There’s a point. And you need to get it through your head that you can’t be responsible for me and my decisions. Nor Staci
a’s. Just take care of yourself. Life’s too short, and you never know when you’ll end up dead... or worse.”
“This is not—”
“Yes, it is. Sinking like an anchor to the seafloor and never being able to swim with the current again? It feels like a curse. I cannot imagine what is going to happen to me from here. I’ve never heard of another Mer in this position. Have you? Something must happen to them, right? Mer must get injured like this, where they have no healer to repair them.”
I nod my head. I’d thought the same thing. I’d never seen nor heard of what happens to Mer when they are in the same state as the one I see before me. The tide has dropped with the setting of the sun. Overhead, the surface is less than a meter away from where I sit. If I reached my hand upward, my fingertips might touch the air. Does Gabriel do that while lying here? Does he reach out his hand and attempt to feel a part of the world from his bed that he otherwise would miss if he were in deeper waters?
“There you are.” Stacia’s voice breaks our reverie.
I glance over at Gabriel whose eyes have already shut. Is he faking, or had he really fallen asleep while I was lost in my thoughts? I blink then turn my gaze upon Stacia, who enters the cove with a wide smile on her lips.
“Did you see? Were you at the clearing when the bottom feeder got the reckoning she deserved?” She chuckles and places a hand over her red lips demurely.
I shake my head and swim up from the surface of the sand, ducking to avoid the surface.
“Lower your voice,” I growl at her, my gaze darting toward the healer and the old man in the nesting. Neither look our direction. Still, I lean in toward her. “She did not deserve this treatment. She did no one any harm at all. You lied when you told the Elder it was her idea to hunt. It was mine.”
Stacia coos and places her hands gently on my biceps and then blinks up at me. “No, love, it’s not your fault. And she never said a word differently. Provided that everyone agrees she’s guilty, including herself, well then, she’s guilty.”
A screeching noise starts, and it takes me a minute to realize the sound is only in my head. I’m grinding my teeth together. I release the tension, and my jaw aches from the pressure. “You know the truth.”
“Truth is relative.”
“Falsehoods do no one any good.”
She laughs, this time, deeper, throatier, and haughty, like her expression. “It certainly did you some good. I didn’t see you running up to my father to tell him the truth. You may as well have pointed the finger at her yourself.”
Cut, slash, stab. Right to the core. My chest aches from her sharp words, and a lump forms in my throat. I swallow it down. “No one wants to be bottom feeder. And I’m starting to believe no one should ever be bottom feeder at all. The whole system is barbaric, and it only gives the court more power than they should have. If the Elder and his court truly cared about everyone in the Bermuda township, they would care about the hurt, sick, poor, and those they believe beneath them.”
She shakes her head with a huff and shrugs her shoulders. “You sound like a renegade.”
“I’m starting to understand the position.”
She glares at me, narrowing her green eyes. “No. You need to take responsibility for your actions. You accepted my accusation the minute I pointed the finger. You accepted it because you knew you were guilty and found yourself relieved when the finger wasn’t pointed at you.”
I wasn’t going to let her sidetrack me by piling on the guilt. Right now, she’d say anything just to keep me in check. When I’m feeling guilty and inadequate, she feels most at power. I take a deep breath. I will never win an argument with this maiden. She’ll never attempt to see reason from my position, and I have no intention of letting myself return to my position of servitude. So I shrug and start away.
“Where are you going?”
I continue without answer. I’m tired of answering her question, much less listening to her at all. Instead of turning about as I know she would like, I dart away faster, cutting through the current with water magic.
Chapter 9
Late morning, and I know that I’m early, but I can’t help myself. I have nothing better to do then to spy on what the bottom feeder might be up to. I forage through my family’s food stores and stab a portion of tuna with my spear before I take off. She’s so useless as a hunter, it wouldn’t surprise me if she’d not had anything to eat today.
I swim to the north and west, and decide to start at the reef where I’d left Verona the night before. Would she still be there? She could be anywhere in the entire ocean, provided she didn’t get too close to a Mer township. The marks on her body would prevent her from getting any help from Mer-kind but also might cause her greater harm than good.
From a distance, I spy Verona as she starts away from the reef. My heartbeat quickens and a feeling close to happiness blossoms in my chest. I nearly call out to her, but hesitate, as she swims even more to the west, focused on something. I wonder if it’s food, but then I realize she’d forgotten to carry the spear with her.
Foolish.
Then I hear the low hum of an outboard motor. My gaze shoots up toward the bottom of the small boat. Small boats in the middle of the ocean usually only mean one thing. Divers.
My chest tightens, and my stomach churns. Why is she swimming closer to the boat? I frown and rush toward her. I pull up behind her and reach out for her, but then I pull my hand back. Instead, I clear my throat. “It’s amazing that you’ve even survived seventeen years, born as stupid as you are.”
She gasps and whips around, her hair concealing her face for a moment. Then her blue-green eyes meet mine. My heart flutters in my chest, and blood rushes to my face. To hide my reaction at seeing her, I shove the spear I’m holding between us, the portion of tuna stabbed on the end still. There’s a knocking at the wood above our heads, and I frown as my eyes are drawn to the boat not far off.
“Have you eaten anything at all?” I ask.
She shrugs and lifts her chin, trying not to look at my catch, but her ravenous eyes have already betrayed her. “I had a few crabs.”
Yuck. No one eats those bottom feeders if we can avoid it. They are better used as bait. I curl my lip. “Crabs?”
She nods, crossing her arms over her chest as she sinks lower in the current. “They were easy to catch.”
I sink lower in the current with her, happy to be drawing away from the danger at the surface. I peer down at her from above. “Of course, they were. Scavengers. Bottom feeders. Dirty and opportunistic. I suppose you might feel kinship with them.”
I wince at my words. I’d meant to say it jokingly, but that wasn’t the tone my voice had carried.
“I’m not dirty,” she says, pouting.
This childish side of her tugs at my lip, but I try not to smile. I yank the piece of the tuna from the spear and toss it toward her. “Whatever you say.”
She grasps the hunk of meat against her chest, her brow furrowing for a moment like she’s considering dropping it. I frown at her. Surely a bottom feeder cannot have so much stupid pride that she’d reject the first bit of real food she’d had all day? After several seconds, her forehead smooths, and she takes a dainty bite of the tuna. Then she peers up at me through her lashes. “Would you like some?”
“I’ve eaten already. That one is yours.” I stab my spear into the sand as we sink to the ocean floor. My gaze returns to the boat that has been idling above our heads for all this time. The outboard motor is off, but no divers have come under the surface, no fishing lines. Strange.
Verona continues to eat the fish while staring at the boat with me. Her appetite is good. The wounds on her back are swollen, red, and angry looking, but I can see the shallower edges have already started to heal.
Overhead, the outboard motor on the boat starts up, and it sits for another moment. I swim up toward it a short bit, keeping an eye out for any more strange behavior, but it just turns about and heads away. Relief relaxes my shoulders. W
hen I turn back around to Verona, she has finished her tuna and is staring at me. I frown. “The coast is clear. Let’s get the salve.”
With a nod, she follows me as we dart for the reef nearby. I sink close to the bottom and reach under the reef in the hole where the shell is hidden. Verona has already approached me and turned her back toward me. Her trust and vulnerability shake me for a moment, and my hands begin to shake. My skin tingles at the thought of touching her again. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and work to calm myself.
“Will the clan be moving to northern waters with the waxing of summer?” she asks, breaking the moment of silence between us and waking me from my emotional state.
“Of course,” I huff, spooning the salve with my fingers and then rubbing it aggressively into her wounds once more. Her back tenses against my touch. “A few will stay behind here in the waters of the triangle.... I plan to stay.”
Her head turns toward me a little, but she stops, hesitant. “Really?”
I’m so stupid. Of course I plan to stay, but it can’t be for her. She can’t know that. In my frustration, I finish the salve and slap a hand on her shoulder to let her know I’m done and then make up a story.
“I’d heard from my father that some of the Mer have joined an expedition.” I use some of the story he told me to make up a lie. I pull away from her to return the clamshell to its hiding place. “I’ve been following a group of divers who appear to have dug a Spanish galleon. The humans seek treasure, but I seek knowledge. I’m hoping to find some literature among the ruins. Buried books tend to keep for a bit before the water destroys them.”
She nods, but her shoulders fall a bit. Is she disappointed? My heart flutters again.
I swallow and raise my voice to hide my chagrin, pulling my gaze from hers. “The salve is doing good work, and your wounds are healing quickly. I believe I need to come tomorrow to check on it once more, but that should be all that’s necessary.”
My glance returns to her, and her brow furrows again. Her gaze has dropped to the sand. I clear my throat, trying to remain logical, undeterred. Her eyes meet mine again at the sound. I continue, “Stay west of this reef, understand?”
Submerged_a mermaid tale Page 6
