Submerged_a mermaid tale
Page 9
Tch. She clucks her tongue. “That’s not a good enough answer. You are too smart a Mer to act without thinking. It would make you a bottom feeder like me to be ruled by your body or emotions.”
My heart seizes in my chest. I snap my head toward her and glare. “I am not a bottom feeder.”
She shrugs.
Why am I arguing with her? She’s right. I’m the same as she is, only I’d learned to hide it better. I sigh and settle back into the sand. I continue to stare into the silence. After a long while, I begin, “Do you remember when we were younglings and we started our education?”
“Uh-hum.”
I remember the day we first met. “You were just another youngling then. No one had stamped you yet with the label of bottom feeder. I was scared and missed my mother. The other younglings began picking on me and calling me a bottom feeder because I was too emotional. But you... you took my hand in yours and pulled me away from them. You told me to be brave and to just come and hold your hand any time I felt lonely.” I never took her up on her offer, but the strength she gave me, and knowing she was there, made all the difference. “Do you remember?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
Somehow, I’m unsurprised. I was just another kid she helped. Back then, she helped everyone as though it was her job. “Well, I do. I never forgot. Later, when they had branded you with the cursed label, I wanted to return the favor. I wanted to come and hold your hand and tell you that you could come to me any time you felt lonely. But I was afraid that I’d get branded a bottom feeder with you. Even the teachers began to treat you differently. Elders and my parents even talked about you when you weren’t around. Things were snowballing so fast that I became frozen in indecision, and I missed the opportunity to comfort you in your time of need.”
Blood rushes hard through my veins and fills my face. I can’t look at her after all that I’ve confessed. Instead, I close my eyes and chew on the inside of my cheek for a moment. Then I continue, “So on the day of your reckoning, I panicked at the thought of you dying and my forever being in your debt. I decided to finally return the favor the only way I knew how.”
The water around her shifts and I feel her draw closer. Sleep begins to drift over me and lull me. Then her voice breaks the silence. “But what about today?”
I blink my eyes open, frowning. “What do you mean?”
“What you say makes sense. You returned the favor within the first few days of my reckoning. But today... what you did went beyond that repayment. You’ve made it so that I now owe you. It was unnecessary, since I could never repay your kindness.”
I swallow the lump forming in my throat. “I... I don’t expect you to.”
She nods. “Okay, but why did you help me today?”
My eyes widen in response, and I think hard for the right answer. I’ve revealed enough about my emotions; I don’t need to make matters worse. I narrow my gaze at her. “I just didn’t want my brother’s reputation sullied by spawning with a bottom feeder.”
Too cold. I didn’t quite intend to be so mean. What was it about her that brought out the best and worst in me? I chew on my lip.
She shivers, and my stomach twists within me. She wraps her arms around herself and shoots her glance away from me, suddenly unable to meet my eyes. Her hands move up and down, rubbing her arms as though she’s cold. I pulled my gaze from her and stared off into the cavernous expanse above us.
“Why did you come here?” she asks.
I shrug and wince from the pain. “My brother will need a few days to cool off, and I need to heal. It’s best we don’t see each other while still in the heat of a disagreement.”
In the darkness of the cave, we both stay quiet for a few moments until a grumble breaks the silence. Betrayed by my own stomach, I clench my hands into fists. Suddenly, she leans over me, her gaze meeting mine with a wide smile. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”
I close my eyes again, trying to calm the fluttering in my heart. “Don’t trouble yourself. I’m fine.”
Sadness enters her voice. “You’re not fine. You’re hungry. Besides, you’ll heal better fed than unfed.”
I grunt.
I feel the current swirl again and then emptiness where she once was. I open my eyes once more, catching the shadow of her form as she slips through the opening of the grotto. I didn’t expect a companion in my recovery, and now she’s promised me a meal? I can’t help but smile in her absence.
Chapter 12
Pain shoots through my body when I shift in my sleep and wakes me. I groan.
“I’m back with some food. Would you like to eat?” Verona’s soft voice comes from nearby. How long has she been here?
I open my eyes and try to remain stoic, but the growls and moans escape my body with each movement as I draw myself up to sit, leaning against the wall of the cave. Darkness surrounds my immediate area as the algae I lean against goes dark. Her hands offer two foods in front of me, two crabs and a bass.
I blink at her. “So, you hunt well now?”
She smiles and nods. “I caught another bass, but it was smaller than this one. I already ate it.”
Did she really defer the better one to me? I smile and tease her, “Smaller? Are you sure you didn’t keep the larger one for yourself?”
Her eyes grow wide, and she shakes her head vigorously. “No way!”
Her voice echoes against the cave walls.
“The lady doth protest too much,” I say as I take the bass from her hands and bite down.
“You’re bigger and need the meat more than I do. I wouldn’t dare eat the larger fish.” Her tone tells me she’s teasing, but there’s care in her voice. I know she wouldn’t take the better part for herself. She’s always been generous to a fault.
There are two crabs Verona has brought me, and though I turn my nose up at them, I crunch through the shells and eat them both as well. My hunger is satiated quickly with all of the meat, and I can almost feel it distributing through the fibers of my muscle tissues, helping me to heal. I meet eyes with Verona and find her staring at me while I was eating. I look away again, blood rushing to my cheeks and my heart fluttering again. I whisper, “Thank you.”
She wraps her arms around her tail and folds it closer to her, settling in the sand next to me. “Rest. I can keep watch for you.”
I scoff. “There’s no need. This is an undiscovered cave. It is neither in the Chronicles of Mer or on the human maps.”
She nods. “Then I’ll keep you company.”
I lift and drop my good shoulder in response and stretch out in the black sand, my eyes closing. “Stay. Go. It makes no difference to me.”
A lie. Having her here with me is paradise. Her presence comforts me in a way I’d never felt before, and I honestly don’t want her to leave. I’ve been too used to keeping my faults hidden. If she knew how vulnerable I am, would she abuse it, too? Would she lord over me, the way everyone else does when they discover how important they are to me, or how they fulfill a need within?
Quietly, she begins to talk. Her cadence is even and her tone light, picking up the conversation we’d had yesterday. “I don’t remember much before my branding. There are so many more memories of being treated as a bottom feeder that I can’t recall a time when I was treated as any other youngling.”
I open my eyes, but guilt keeps me from looking toward her. I don’t want her to remember that I was the bottom feeder before she became one. I don’t want her to recall how she took on the moniker to save me. Instead, I just blame society. “Our fickle culture.”
“Fickle. Yes.” She clears her throat and stretches out in the sand beside me.
Our eyes meet, and mine widen. I try to look away, but somehow, my gaze keeps returning to hers. She smiles at me and takes a shallow breath. “I don’t remember... you... treating me like the others did. You ignored me instead of abusing me.”
My lips part, and I’m on the verge of apologizing... of telling her
everything. She’s an enchantress. Her eyes tug at my soul, and each movement of her body heats up my insides. All my vulnerabilities come to the surface. I clamp my mouth shut, chewing on the inside of my cheek instead. I can’t. I can’t open myself up so much.
“Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for never hurting me.”
A stab to the heart. It was never enough to not hurt her. I should have protected her. I should have stopped being a coward and taken on the label of bottom feeder myself. I could have saved her. She has nothing to thank me for. I blink several times and wince as I turn my body away. “I need to get some sleep. Try not to be so noisy.”
“Okay,” she says in a sing-song way, and I hear her settling in the sand next to me. For a long time, I listen to her gentle humming that fills the cave with a strange music and watch as the darkened spot against the cave wall lights up again from the outside of the form my shadow has made with the bioluminescent algae. Her presence warms me in much the same way. Eventually, I just close my eyes and listen to her until I fall asleep.
FOR TWO DAYS, VERONA is my constant companion and total provider. She leaves me, usually while I’m asleep, and returns with armloads of fish and shellfish for me to eat. She never eats with me as she says she feeds herself while she’s out so she has more room to carry the items she wants to bring me. But I wonder if she’s eating well enough.
When she returns this morning, carrying her usual catch, I sit up quickly and catch myself starting to smile before I school my facial expression into my usual frown. The pain in my side is more of a dull ache now, and my muscles have finally released their tension. I’m healed enough where I could leave the cave and return home, but this is a moment that I wish would never end. I’m not ready to go back to the way things were.
“Two sea trout for you today.” Her wide smile makes me feel as though she doesn’t mind providing for me the least bit.
I nod. I wish that I could just accept her kindness, but it makes me feel guilty. She spends most days chattering and talking while I spend the day telling her how noisy she is and how she can leave me at any time. Still, she persists.
She sits in front of me and hands me the fish. I start chewing slowly, my eyes on the fishes.
“What is your line of study now?” she asks.
So, the conversation has finally turned back to me. Has she run out of things to talk about, or does she realize I’m better and is trying to ask me when I’ll leave her?
When it takes several moments for me to answer, she continues herself. “I prefer the warmer seas of the south, but I know a lot of Mer head north for the summer. What about your family? Do you tend toward the nomadic usually, or do you stay here in Bermuda all summer?”
My heart sinks, and my stomach churns. I don’t want to talk about my family. I don’t even want to think about them. Instead, I take another bite of my trout and keep my eyes fixed upon my food.
As usual, she takes this as a prompt to continue herself. “I don’t remember you leaving with the caravan each year, but I really didn’t watch them as they left. For me, summer was always the easiest and best time. With fewer Mer around to remind me daily of cursed state, I could spend more time studying quietly without interruption.”
I chuckle. “So, you spend all your time studying and still stayed at the bottom of the class?”
She shrugs. “I don’t think anything I did would change my state. Even when I thought I’d improved, my placing in the class remained unchanged. I think that tradition made it so that once I was solidly named bottom feeder, I could do nothing to pull myself up.”
I frown. “Things are not supposed to be that way.”
“It’s the way things are, even if they aren’t supposed to be.”
I start in on my second trout in silence. For once, she doesn’t continue pelting me with questions and lets me eat. Once I finish, I settle again in the black sand. She no longer needs to put an application of salve on me, because my wounds have already healed. Though there’s a dull ache in my side, it only causes me to wince while changing position. My eyes search the cavern around me, and I watch the small bits of life that seem happy here in bioluminescence. The life inside the cavern is interesting to look at but not very edible. Each of the fish within are barely bite-sized. I imagine the red ones are poisonous. I’ve watched Verona studying them, and it’s made me survey them myself. Eventually, I close my eyes, just reveling in her presence. I feel her stretch out in the sand beside me, her eyes on my face. I remain still, causing my breath to remain steady, even while my heart is racing. I want to pretend I’m asleep, because I like it that she spends so much time just watching me when she thinks I’m not paying attention.
After a long while, I hear her snoring softly. My eyes snap open, and I turn my head her way. A broad smile spreads across my lips unchecked. Her mouth hangs open slightly, and she pulls her fin up to her arms, lying in a ball. I watch her face as it contorts into several expressions while she sleeps. I want to reach out and touch her face, but I hold back. If I get started, I may never want to quit. These days have become precious to me. I lean back, and weave my fingers together behind my head. When she becomes restless, I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep again.
She leans towards me, waving her hand in front of my face, but I make no change in my expression. I’d rather she think I am still asleep. “I’ll be right back,” she whispers.
She turns away, and I feel the current push from her tail fin as she leaves. I wait a couple of seconds, and then I opened my eyes to watch her. She gets to the opening of the tunnel and stops with one hand on her spear and the other hand upon the wall. Her head leans towards the opening, as though she is listening. And then I hear it too.
Brandeeb’s deep voice echoes into the tunnel, and my chest clinches in response. “The entrance is tight, but once we get in it opens up. Bailey and I found this when we were younglings.”
We are trapped.
I panic as she spins around and returns toward me. She whisper-shouts my name, reaching for me without looking. She hasn’t noticed that my eyes are open. She shakes my shoulder as though trying to wake me, her own gaze darting around the cavern as though looking for a place to hide. There is none; I already know. I pushed her hand away. “What?”
Her hands grip the spear she holds as she says, “They are coming. Brandeeb is here.” My eyes widen, and the indistinct voices coming from the tunnel continue to shatter. There is nowhere for us to swim, nowhere to hide. I grab Verona by the wrist, and shoot upward, my chest heaving with labored breath. I pull her straight for the entrance. She doesn’t resist my pull, but her reluctance is painted all over her face.
Once we reach the entrance, the voices grow louder, seemingly inches away. I push Verona against the cavern wall and put a finger to my lips. She nods and continues to hold her breath. She pushes her spear into my chest, but I shake my head because I’d rather she keeps it. Then I dart past the entrance to the other side of the wall and flatten against it.
In the tunnel, I hear Brandeeb shush his companion. But in a perfectly audible whisper, he says, “Did you see that? I think I saw shadow against the light.”
His companion grumbles. Blonde curls are first to poke through the tunnel entrance. Then Brandeeb turns his head towards Verona. Her expression is one of great fear as she shrinks back against the wall. I wait no longer. I launch toward my brother, dragging him by the neck and yanking him the rest of the way out of the tunnel. Together, we both fall to the floor several yards in. A panicked yelp comes from within, and to my surprise, two Mers emerge from the tunnel. One grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me from my brother. The other is holding my brother in the same manner.
Blood thickens in the water, and I feel my side wound ache as it has opened up again. But on Brandeeb’s chest, four new long claw marks are raked across. From ear to neck, he has one long half-healed scar that is much deeper than any of mine. I can smell the pheromones of the Mer holding me. It’s Kellum.
Brandeeb glares with venom at me. “What resolution? My brother is determined to keep me from what I want. And on what grounds?”
I scowl at them both but remain silent for the moment.
The wicked gaze my brother lays upon me suddenly turns into a poison smile, and he eyes Verona for the first time, drawing the attention of the other two Mer to her position. “Do you want to keep her to yourself, brother? Is she your concubine?”
Verona’s eyes grow wild, like a panicked animal. She grips her spear to her chest tighter. Why is she just staying there? She needs to go while she still has a chance. I glare at her and yell, “Get out of here!”
Her panic gaze fixes on me, and then she darts into the tunnel toward open sea.
“After her!” Brandeeb screeches.
My brother and Wade dart after her, but I switch my position to holding Kellum back. He struggles against my grip, but I’m too weak. After slapping me with his tail fin, he escapes and follows after the other two. I dart after them as well. My broad shoulders barely clear the opening of the tunnel. My tail slaps against the top and the bottom with each stroke as I swim through it as fast as I can. Finally, I break free into the open. A blue haze covers everything as far as the eye can see. The sun has already set, and only the faintest blue light remains. We have minutes before we will be in total darkness except for the circle of the full moon smiling from behind a cloud. I feel disoriented, for it’s the first time that I even know what the sun has been doing for the last three days.
I find the silver glint of three tail fins darting after another. They are not far away, but my breath has become more labored, and I don’t know how much strength I have. My heart sinks, and my stomach turns. Will they really catch her? And will I truly allow harm to come to her again?