by Sonia Faruqi
“We can’t pay attention to rumors, Abalone.”
“Well, everyone else does—Ecklon’s mother, Epaulette, in particular. She’s never liked us to begin with, and now she’s adamant that Ecklon should cancel his wedding to Coralline. Sepia told me that our neighbors are laying bets on whether or not Ecklon will ditch Coralline. Most are betting that he will.”
Abalone knew and followed gossip with the same passion and precision with which Trochid knew and followed science. She had not been surprised at Rosette’s rumors; she had spread similar rumors herself twenty-five years ago, in order to ensure that it was she who married Trochid. There was a particular art and subtlety to the propagation of rumors; they were like the loose hair buns she often wore, appearing effortless and natural from outside but tightly pinned underneath, so as not to unravel.
“Don’t worry,” Trochid said. “Ecklon loves Coralline, and she loves him. It’s as simple as that.”
But it was never as simple as that, Abalone knew. Trochid did not know the lengths to which mermaids such as Rosette, and Abalone herself, went to secure good marriages.
Abalone found herself wishing, as she had repeatedly over the years, that Coralline were more like her. She wished Coralline had inherited her golden locks rather than having infernally black hair—hair that looked just like Rhodomela’s. She wished Coralline paid more attention to edible algae than remedial—on feeding a merman’s stomach rather than healing it. She wished Coralline took an interest in corsets, hair arrangements, homemaking. She wished Coralline were clever rather than intelligent, wily rather than kind.
Ever since Coralline was a young mergirl, Abalone had tried to influence and change her, and she would continue to try until the day she died, but she sometimes fretted that it was hopeless. After all, it was not easy to change people. If her marriage had taught her anything, it was that.
Glancing at Trochid, Abalone asked herself: After twenty-five years of marriage, how could it be that she and he felt differently about everything under the sun, including their children? (Everything that she considered to be a vice in Coralline, he considered a virtue.) Were they a happy couple? Would Trochid have been happier with the mermaid he was supposed to have married, twenty-five years ago? Had Abalone done the wrong thing by stealing him away, as Rosette was now trying to steal Ecklon away?
Coralline peeked out from around the wall of the Telescope Tower, a solitary structure that stuck straight out of the sand like a pen. She and Izar had found it easily—it was precisely southwest of Blue Bottle, as Venant had said.
“Where is Pavonis?” she whispered. “We’ve been here awhile, and he should have arrived here soon after us. Do you think Limpet and the two other constables injured him so much that he can’t swim?”
“I hope not,” Izar said.
If anything happened to Pavonis, she would never forgive herself. Life without him greeting her at the window and making sarcastic jokes was a life she could not bear to imagine. Could it be that he wasn’t here because he was dead—just as his best friend, Mako, was dead? Coralline collapsed against the wall, limp as a starfish at the thought.
“Look, Coralline!” Izar cried.
She jerked her head up. She held her luciferin lantern over her head, but in the darkness of night, she could see close to nothing. She could feel, though, what Izar must also be feeling—a rising swell of water. It was a swell she knew, but it did not shove her away by its power, as it usually did—instead, it nudged her weakly. It was Pavonis, but Pavonis debilitated.
No sooner had Pavonis’s snout come to a stop than Coralline threw herself at him, wrapping herself around him as tightly as a bandage of pyropia. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Pavonis!”
There was a stiffness to his flesh. Coralline recognized it as surely as she would recognize a change in a mattress upon which she’d lain all her life. “How are you?” she whispered.
“Fine.”
“He’s not fine!” said a low, tremulous voice. Coralline held her luciferin lantern toward the line of Pavonis’s mouth. Altair was slipping out from within, a flame of orange. “I’m shaking myself, and I was safe and sheltered in his mouth throughout the altercation. He stayed there blocking the door for long, very long, to ensure you got a head start, Coralline. When he eventually removed himself from the door, the constables followed him, but he swam fast enough to lose them.”
“The Ogre is a hero!” Nacre said, her twittering tentacles creating shifting shadows over Pavonis’s head, “and I am a heroine, for having orchestrated the escape. The Pole Dancer may wear a coronet, but I’m a Queen. While he was shuddering in the Ogre’s mouth, I was riding atop the Ogre’s head—”
“Stop calling Pavonis an Ogre and Altair a Pole Dancer!” Coralline snapped. “And this is not the right time to be drowning yourself in praise.”
“In her defense,” Altair said with a sigh, “much as I hate to admit it, Nacre did play a crucial role in the escape tonight. If not for her skillful snooping, you would be at the Wrongdoers’ Refinery at this moment, Coralline, awaiting trial for the murder of Tang Tarpon.”
“Yes indeed!” Nacre huffed. “The least you can do is give me a little credit, Coralline, and learn how I did it all. I was lounging in the Laminaria guest bedroom and was just about to do my second-favorite thing in the world, snoozing, when I was called upon by fate to do my first-favorite thing, snooping. I heard Limpet return home and tell Linatella that he’d come to learn you were wanted for murder, Coralline, according to a scroll the Constables Department of Blue Bottle had just received from the Constables Department of Hog’s Bristle. Limpet and his fellow constables decided to await you at the door and to arrest you upon your return from the Ball of Blue Bottle. When the Ogre—Pavonis, I mean—returned from his day-long excursion around the city, I attracted his attention by waggling my tentacles from the guest bedroom’s windowsill. He approached me, I clambered onto his head, and we swooped down to the rocks to gather the Pole Dancer—Altair, I mean. Like the three constables, the three of us awaited the two of you.”
“Thank you, Nacre,” Coralline said, feeling guilty for how she’d spoken to her. “And thank you also, Altair.” Turning back to Pavonis, Coralline stroked his side and asked, “Where exactly are you hurting?”
“In my inner ear.”
“What?”
“I’m hurting from this conversation.”
“This is not a time for jokes, Pavonis. You should not have taken a beating for me. Oh, how I wish I were an animal apothecary, so I could help you!”
“You can help me by going inside the Telescope Tower. I think we lost the constables, but it’s possible they’re still out and about, searching. I don’t want my efforts to have been in vain.”
Nodding, patting him once more, Coralline turned to the door of the Telescope Tower. Drawing a deep breath, feeling quite beggarly, she knocked on the door.
“Well, hello,” said Venant, holding the door open for Coralline and Izar to enter, as though he’d been expecting them.
His living room was small and cluttered, with two old, low settees scattered with books, pens lying idly in the curve of their spines. “We are each grains of sand in the billowing vastness of the universe,” stated a placard on the wall; Coralline recognized the sentence as belonging to The Universe Demystified. A large map of Meristem hung next to the placard, settlements marked on it as bubbles. Coralline found it ironic that Venant, who’d helped map the Milky Way galaxy, lived in a place that was not even on the map of Meristem—how strange that an explorer of the universe should have such a narrow personal universe.
Venant shuffled aside some books to make room on the settees, and Coralline and Izar took a seat across from him.
“I’m sorry for how I spoke to you at the Ball,” Coralline said, her cheeks flushing. “I will always admire you and your work. I didn’t mean what I said.”
“Think nothing of it.” Venant’s slight smile reminded Coralline of her father’s.
“I also lied to you.” Ignoring Izar’s warning look, she continued, “I am the principal suspect in Tang Tarpon’s murder. He was stabbed by a dagger. I was about to pull out the dagger, but a loiterer saw my hands wrapped around the hilt and assumed that it was I who had stabbed him.”
Coralline had not told Limpet about Tang’s murder and had been chased away by him; if Venant wished them to leave, she would rather leave now.
Venant frowned at her for a long, unblinking moment. “I can’t imagine your having done it—” he began, but his words were interrupted by a cough that racked through his chest, juddering through each of his ribs. “Excuse me . . . I’m not well,” he spouted out from between hacks.
The reason Coralline had thought of a green moray eel when she’d first seen Venant was that there was a greenish hue to his complexion, she realized now. She almost rose to examine him, but she pressed her tail down onto the settee with her hands, in order to remain where she was. Just as she could not treat Pavonis, given that she was not an animal apothecary, she could not treat Venant, given that she was a fired apprentice apothecary.
“Please help us find the elixir,” Coralline said, when Venant’s cough had settled.
“I know the deep sea seems terrifying, and I confess I’ve never ventured to it for that reason myself, but it is there that you will find the elixir—so long as you seek the light.”
“What stretch of deep sea do you recommend?” Izar asked.
“Swim straight that way,” Venant said, his hand pointing out the window behind Coralline. Noticing the luciferin lantern sticking out of her satchel, he continued, “Feel free to take an extra lantern with you, that one on the side table there. Also, I should warn you: Constables do occasionally visit my home when searching for suspects, so I suggest you start your voyage to the deep sea early in the morning.” After a vigorous cough, he sputtered, “Now, I’m afraid I must retire.”
Rising from the settees, Coralline and Izar followed Venant out the living room window. Venant’s bedroom was directly above the living room, and he entered his bedroom through its window, calling over his shoulder that the guest bedroom was directly above his.
Izar entered the guest bedroom first, followed by Coralline. The Telescope Tower narrowed as it ascended, which meant that the guest bedroom was even smaller than the living room. It contained a dilapidated desk, a worn chair, and a bed adorned with a ragged blanket. Coralline would have liked to ask Izar to sleep on the floor, or anywhere but the bed, but the room was so tiny, there was no space on the floor. As she wavered next to the bed, Izar collapsed on the blanket on his stomach. He turned his face to one side, closed his eyes, and, in a matter of moments, started making a series of repetitive noises, like the snorts of a grunt sculpin.
Perhaps he was unwell, too, Coralline thought, as everyone else seemed to be—Venant, Pavonis. She came to hover horizontally over him, and, smoothing his chestnut curls back from his forehead, touched his brow with the back of her hand. He did not have a fever, at least. And yet he continued to rumble rhythmically, monotonously. Perhaps these were sounds humans made as they slept, she thought.
As she looked down at his face, she wondered whether it could be true, whether he had feelings for her, as Nacre had asserted. Was that why he’d kissed her at the Ball? Why had she kissed him back, though? . . . Because she’d had a momentary desire to betray Ecklon, as Ecklon was betraying her. Yes, that had to be it.
She did not have the heart to nudge Izar awake and ask him to find alternate accommodations. She started to drift to her side of the bed, eager to rest her head on the pillow—but she jumped along the way: An eye was watching her through the window.
“We need to talk,” Pavonis said coldly.
“Are the two of you sharing a bed tonight?” Altair asked Coralline.
“Yes, but—”
“Did the two of you share a bed last night?” Altair persisted, in an interrogative tone that reminded Coralline of Ecklon.
“Yes, but nothing happened.” Coralline dangled her lantern over the smattering of stones from which Altair’s voice was emerging, but he had camouflaged himself so thoroughly that she could not locate him. His voice seemed to be spewing out of a vacuum.
It was Altair’s extremities that turned orange first—his star-shaped coronet and the tip of his tail—and then the rest of him blazed to life, forming a contorted, glowing arrow the size of Coralline’s hand. “Will you be journeying into the deep sea with Izar?”
“Yes.” The vehemence of her reply told Coralline that her decision was made—she would be exploring the deep sea, even if it killed her.
“What about Ecklon?” Altair asked.
“What about him?” Coralline said impatiently.
“What about him! You are to marry Ecklon in just ten days, and yet you are cavorting with a human, spending not only your days but also your nights with him. Do you even realize that you’re at the center of a lurid love triangle?”
“No.”
“I knew it was a bad idea to leave on this Elixir Expedition without Ecklon,” Altair continued, somewhat hysterically. “I knew—”
“Izar and I haven’t done anything,” Coralline snapped, though she supposed it wasn’t quite true: Her lips were still tingling from their kiss at the Ball.
“Infidelity is not an act,” Altair countered quietly, “but a feeling.”
“Well, Ecklon need be none the wiser about anything,” Nacre quipped. “Also, Coralline and I have it on good authority that Ecklon is betraying her.”
“What authority?” Pavonis said.
“A sage,” Nacre said conspirationally.
“A sage!” Altair sputtered. “A fortune teller! You’re making life decisions now based on a fortune teller, Coralline? Is that how bad things have gotten?”
“I know what you mean,” Coralline said, “and I felt similarly at first, but the sage was uncannily right about everything else about me. I don’t see how she could be wrong about this. Either way, what do you want from me?”
“I want you to understand,” began Altair, “that entering the deep sea with Izar—relying on him wholly for survival, as he will rely on you—will forge an unbreakable bond between the two of you. For that reason, and for the reason that a mission to the deep sea is known to be suicidal—I suggest we turn back now and return home. You may be immoral these days, but do not fool yourself into thinking you are immortal. If you return home now, you will not save your brother, but you will at least save your relationship with Ecklon. If you enter the deep sea with Izar, you risk losing not only your brother, but also your own life, and the life you are soon to share with Ecklon.”
Coralline trembled, offended by Altair but unable to deny his logic.
“Stop preaching, Pole Dancer!” Nacre’s tentacles waggled at the greatest speed Coralline had yet seen. “Coralline is not going to turn back now, not when she’s so close to the elixir. You just want to go home because you’ve been useless throughout the Elixir Expedition. Pavonis has led and navigated; I have eavesdropped and orchestrated. What have you contributed to this Elixir Expedition, besides your unsolicited sermons? Nothing, that’s what. Coralline may be too blind to see through your veneer, but I’m not: You just want to return home so you can continue to live your boring little life in your boring little reef, where you can start your boring little family!”
“How dare you, you unbearable wretch!” Altair said, in a voice like a cracking urn. “Coralline may be unable to see through your veneer—your desire to manipulate and control her, just like her mother!”
Coralline shivered. She had heard Nacre rant before—and Pavonis as well—but Altair losing his temper was as unprecedented as her father shouting in anger.
“What do you think, Pavonis, about the idea of my entering the deep sea?” Coralline asked, drawing the lantern toward the line of his mouth.
“I’ll accompany you. Nacre and Altair will not be joining us, thankfully, given their inability to w
ithstand the pressures of the deep—pressures both internal and external. I myself have always dreamt of venturing into the heart of darkness. It will be the height—or rather, the depth—of adventure.”
“You can’t enter the deep sea with me. You’re injured.”
“I’ll be fine by morning.”
“You won’t. I can’t examine you now, in the dark, but I don’t need to be an animal apothecary to know that you must be severely bruised—if not worse. It’ll take at least a few days for the pain to go away, and then at least a couple of weeks after that for a complete recovery.”
“Don’t you understand?” Pavonis said. “Even in the best of circumstances, you can never trust a human. In this human’s case, in particular, I’m willing to bet my snout he’s keeping a secret from us—a secret that would change everything. In the deep sea, if the two of you do find the elixir, he might well kill you for it. He might well take the elixir, transform to a human, and return to land, without anyone being any the wiser. I can protect you, Coralline, as I always have.”
“You have always protected me, it’s true, and I am grateful for it, but I don’t need protection anymore.” Coralline paused, as her statement sank in.
“Stop with the bravado!” Pavonis said. “You do need protection.”
Just a short while ago, the sight of Pavonis arriving at the Telescope Tower had filled Coralline with relief; now, she clenched her hands at her sides and quivered, hurt by his words.
“Let’s all go home, Coralline—” Altair began.
“We will not go home—” Nacre interrupted.
“Stop telling me what to do with my life, all of you!” Coralline bellowed. “I’ll make my own decisions. I wish I hadn’t embarked on this Elixir Expedition with all of you. I’m glad you won’t be with me in the deep sea. Good riddance!”
