by Sonia Faruqi
An argument could be made that it should belong to him, for she had been useless in the deep sea, flopping about limply. Nacre had been right in what she’d said earlier: The Ball of Blue Bottle had served as the gateway to the greatest test of Coralline’s life—the deep sea. Nacre had also been right about the crucial role Izar had played in the test—Coralline would have been unable to voyage through the deep sea without him. In the environment of starvation and sleep deprivation, he had formed her sole sustenance—his hand in hers had served as her only reminder that there existed consciousness outside of herself. He could have abandoned her at any point; exhausted, faint-headed, she would quite possibly not have had the strength to find her way out of the deep sea and would have died there, in the dark.
Izar’s hand reached toward the elixir on the palm of her hand. Coralline feared he would snatch it away, but instead, he closed each of her fingers around it.
Should I become human again, Izar asked himself in the guest bedroom, or should I remain a merman? In other words, should I return to the helm of Ocean Dominion or remain with Coralline?
Sitting at the foot of the bed, Izar examined his identification card. His name was written in small letters below the company name, as though Ocean Dominion were his primary identity and his name a secondary one.
The night of the press conference, Izar had been shattered at the thought of being forced out of Ocean Dominion. Now, when he was co-president, could he truly leave it all behind? All those long nights in his Invention Chamber, all those long days in his office and aboard ships—were they all to amount to nothing? To not lead Ocean Dominion to new heights, to not plunder the ocean floor to new depths, to not see the things Castor was capable of—would that not be as good as death? Could Izar give up everything he’d ever worked for—and that, too, for a mermaid?
No. He’d told Coralline he belonged to Ocean Protection, and he seemed to have come to believe it. His time in the water had muddled him—
The doorknob turned. The identification card in his hand slipped from his fingers. Catching it, he lurched off the foot of the bed and extended his arm toward his satchel on the desk chair, dropping the card just above the satchel—it would waft down into the satchel on its own, as everything lilted and wafted in the water. Coralline slipped into the room just as he plopped down again on the foot of the bed.
“Venant has the flu,” she said, speaking more to herself than him. “It’s severe, but not life-threatening. The waters are getting dark now, and it’s hard for me to tell fronds apart at night, but I’ll prepare a remedy for him first thing in the morning. Probably Virus Vanquisher or Flu Fighter. . . .”
Izar thought of their times together: The moment he’d first seen her, staring at him with her big blue-green eyes; the turbulent morning in Bristled Bed and Breakfast, when he’d saved her from the lecherous brothers; the nervous concentration in her face as she’d prodded his wrist before agreeing to extract the platinum chip; her arm draping his chest when he’d awoken in the Laminaria guest bedroom; the shimmer of her silver-sequined corset at the Ball.
Since the Ball, he’d wondered why he’d kissed her. Now, his mind began to create a list of attributes to describe her—kind, fair, intelligent—but his heart told him that such a list was pointless. His feeling for her could not be reduced to a formula; it was more like a fragrance—impossible to disassemble into constituents. She was a healer, and, somehow, she had healed him. Through her presence, she could continue to heal him.
He would return to Menkar to see his brother and father, he decided, to tell them he was still alive. It would be risky to return to land—Zaurak and Serpens might well try to kill him—but Antares and Saiph must be worried sick about him, and he did not want them to spend the rest of their lives searching for him. He would tell them that he’d met a mermaid and wanted to see if they could have a future together. It went without saying that he would no longer be able to work for Ocean Dominion.
It also went without saying that he would have to destroy Castor.
But the thought of destroying Castor was like stabbing one’s own son, for he’d spent six years developing Castor. He had no other choice, though—it was either Coralline or Castor, and it had to be Coralline. She would never come to know it, but, because of her, merpeople would be saved; they would continue to live.
Upon his return from Menkar to Meristem, Izar would tell Coralline the truth about everything. He would tell her that he had worked not at Ocean Protection but Ocean Dominion, and that he was responsible for the oil spill that had sickened her brother and the dynamite blast that had severed her father’s hand. It was possible she would not forgive him, and, by then, he would already have detached himself from Ocean Dominion. Her refusal would leave him hopelessly adrift, like a log of wood on the waves, belonging neither to land nor to water, but it was a chance he was willing to take.
Coralline approached him, hovering just before him at the foot of the bed. “What shall we do about the elixir?” she asked quietly, her hand unfurling. The elixir’s light broke through the room, making her eyes glitter like liquid crystals.
“The elixir is yours,” Izar said, “for your brother.”
“But how will you become a human again?”
“I think I can transform without the elixir, actually.”
“What? But how?”
“I’ve been thinking about it. When that Ocean Dominion ship strung me up in the air in a fishnet, my gills prickled, and my tail hurt as though a saw was cleaving it into two. I believe it’s because I was about to transform into a human again. When you slashed me out of the net and took me into the water, the merman-human transformation was thwarted, and so I ended up remaining a merman. It’s just as well, because the men would have shot me if they’d seen me come back to life in the net. In the air, my body seems to automatically become human, and, in the water, it automatically becomes merman.”
“How can that be?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Did you realize this before the deep sea or after?”
“Hmm . . . Before, I suppose. Why?”
“Because if you didn’t need the elixir, I don’t understand why you would enter the deep sea with me and risk your life to look for it.”
Izar chuckled. His contemplation moments ago had clearly been an exercise in mental circles, for his actions suggested that his decision was made—he chose Coralline over Ocean Dominion. “I love you,” he said softly.
Coralline’s heart fluttered.
As a healer, she had always cared for others. No one had ever cared for her as Izar had in the deep sea. In Mintaka’s cavern, when she’d looked at Izar’s face, in that true light, she had felt as though she were glimpsing his true self. She had felt as one with him, and it was that oneness that she’d wanted to preserve, she realized now, when she’d refused to leave his hand in front of Pavonis, Altair, and Nacre.
“I think I love you, too,” Coralline whispered.
23
Hummer
Half a dozen luciferin orbs traveled above Izar and Coralline, but their glow was beginning to dull, for rays of dawn had started to lash the waters outside. It was an ingenuity of nature, Izar thought, that the bacteria inside the glassy spheres glowed automatically in the dark and faded automatically in the light; it was equivalent to lightbulbs switching themselves on and off and also moderating their own intensity.
Izar turned his head to look at Coralline, next to him in bed. Though one hand of hers was clasped with his, her other hand was tracing circles over the pale-pink shell at her throat.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said, but she did not meet his eyes.
Izar slipped out of bed and fumbled through his satchel on the desk chair. He extracted the amber scroll from his gray tin, then slipped back under the blanket. Unrolling the scroll, he perused the single line scribbled on it: Find Tang Tarpon. He will guide you to the elixir. Below the line, at the bottom-right
corner of the parchment, only the letter O remained in the name of the author; the rest of the name had been erased when Izar had held the parchment under the faucet at Ocean Dominion. Izar turned the note over and ran his thumb over the embossed P&P logo Tang had noticed in its top-left corner.
“When we were in Tang’s house,” Izar said, looking at Coralline, “he said that this logo is of a stationery shop called Printer & Parchment, located in Velvet Horn. I’d like to trace this note back to that stationery shop and locate this person whose name starts with the letter O. According to the map of Meristem in Venant’s living room, Velvet Horn is just a short distance away from here. It should be a swim of about an hour or so, I think.”
“But why do you want to trace the note?”
Because Izar wanted—rather, needed—to know: How had he come to possess the note? What was he even doing in the ocean? How could he transform automatically between human and merman? There was a chance he would find the answers to these questions by tracing the note to its source. But he could not find the words to explain any of this to Coralline. It was, more than anything else, a hunch.
“You can consider it a personal errand,” he said. “I’ll explain when I’m back. In the meantime, I’m sorry to ask this—I know you want to return home with the elixir as soon as possible for your brother—but would you give me just this morning to see if I can trace this note? Maybe you can prepare a remedy for Venant while I’m gone? I promise I’ll be back to you no later than noon. Then I’d like to accompany you to Urchin Grove.”
“What? Why?”
Izar had been hoping for enthusiasm, but he could understand her alarm—things were moving at lightning-speed between them. “Don’t worry, I won’t enter your home or meet your family,” he clarified. “I just want to see you home safe. After that, I’d like to return to land, tend to some unfinished business, then return to you as soon as possible in Urchin Grove.”
“What then?”
“Then I’d like to give us a chance. A real chance. I’d like to move to Urchin Grove to be with you.”
Coralline’s eyes widened, then blinked so rapidly that her eyelashes made Izar think of windshield wipers.
“We can discuss the details later, but may I accompany you to Urchin Grove before I leave for land?”
Coralline nodded slightly. Then she swiveled away from him, reached a hand into her satchel on the floor, and turned to face him again. The room was suddenly lit by the elixir, which she placed on the palm of his hand. He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her.
“Venant warned me that constables were here just yesterday, looking for me,” Coralline explained. “He told them he’s never seen me before, but he said they seemed dubious, because they had heard he’d been seen talking to me at the Ball. He thinks they may return this morning. In case they do, I’d like to ask you to carry the elixir with you. If they catch me, I’d like you to take the elixir to my brother. If they don’t, I’ll take the elixir from you when you return from Velvet Horn.”
Izar curled his fingers around the silver sphere; the light disappeared in his fist like a smothered flame. He buried the elixir in an under-compartment of his satchel, in order to hide its light.
Coralline whirled away from him and dug again through her satchel. When she turned to face him again, she handed him a pen and a notepad embossed with algae. “You can use these in case you need to write directions or anything else while tracing your elixir note,” she said.
Izar smiled at her, and she smiled back, but the smile did not reach her eyes.
“You said we’d leave for Urchin Grove when morning turned to afternoon,” Pavonis said through the window. “It’s afternoon now.”
“Yes,” Coralline agreed, from her perch on the windowsill, her gaze roving the waters for a sign of Izar’s indigo tail.
“I, too, don’t understand why we’re still here if you have the elixir, Coralline,” Altair grumbled. Rising from the seabed, he arrived at her elbow at the windowsill, his dorsal fin beating so fast that it was transparent. “You prepared a remedy for Venant, and he’s feeling better, yet we’re still here.”
“Yes,” Coralline said absentmindedly.
She’d had second thoughts about Izar when they’d lain together in bed. She should have told him she was engaged, but she hadn’t because she was planning to end her relationship with Ecklon immediately upon returning to Urchin Grove, given that he was betraying her. She would tell Izar about Ecklon later, when Izar returned to her from land, by which time Ecklon would be a part of her past, not her present. When Izar returned to her, she and he would begin a relationship built on a foundation of honesty.
“Where is the elixir?” Nacre asked, appearing over the top of the windowsill, her tentacles dangling downward above Coralline’s head.
“It’s with Izar.”
The three animals cried out in unison.
“The elixir is for Naiadum,” Coralline clarified, “but Izar is carrying it for now. Don’t worry: It was my idea. He’ll give the elixir back to me as soon as he gets back.”
“From where?” Pavonis demanded.
“A personal errand.”
“A personal errand . . .” Altair repeated sickly.
“You young fool!” Nacre screeched, her tentacles jerking wildly. “You lost the elixir just when you had it!”
“Izar won’t return,” Pavonis growled. “He’s probably on his way back to land as we speak, where he’ll soon begin prancing about on his ugly legs. I was right about him—we should never have trusted a human. And I was wrong about you, Coralline—I thought you were smarter than this.”
“You’re wrong, all of you!” Coralline cried. “You don’t know Izar like I do.” She glared at each of them in turn, then sprang off the windowsill to create distance from them.
“What’s that, there?” Nacre called, her tentacles waggling in the direction of the desk chair.
A flat, soft-edged rectangle lay on the floor next to the chair, Coralline saw. Picking it up, she turned it over. The face stamped upon it was Izar’s, but, with the aloof eyes, callous lips, and terse forehead, it was a face she hardly recognized. Ocean Dominion, stated the top of the card.
The directions Izar had scribbled on the notepad turned out to be accurate. Printer & Parchment, announced the placard outside the hole-in-the-wall shop. “I’m Chiton,” said an elderly merman from behind the counter in introduction, his face like a withered pear.
Izar caught his breath, placing his hand on the counter. It was not easy to navigate underwater, without any landmarks, a fact that led him to newly appreciate Coralline’s shark. After much meandering, after requesting directions of a merman he’d passed, Izar had finally managed to make it to Velvet Horn.
There was no sand-clock in Printer & Parchment, but it had taken him well over the hour he’d estimated to arrive here. He would have to rush in order to return to Coralline in time.
“Is this paper—parchment, rather—from your shop?” Izar asked hurriedly, unrolling the amber scroll and handing it to Chiton.
Chiton turned it over, thumbed the embossed logo, and nodded.
“Do you know who wrote the note?” Izar pursued.
Chiton produced a microscope from underneath his counter. Placing the parchment on the counter, he bent his head over it, closing one eye and positioning the other just above his microscope, muttering to himself as he read the single line.
“I believe this note was written by one of my long-standing customers, Osmundea Ranularia,” Chiton said, looking up at Izar. “I recognize her handwriting, because I’ve printed lots for her over the years.”
The old merman offered Izar directions to Osmundea’s home. Izar wrote them down carefully in Coralline’s notepad. Upon following the directions, he found himself knocking on the door of a small, rounded house at the end of a row, hemmed with a little garden. As he waited at the door, he started to return the notepad to his satchel, but a little square drifted out from within. It started to
float away, but Izar caught it and turned it over. It was a portrait of a merman, a handsome fellow with a vertical cleft in his chin and traces of dimples in his cheeks. Who was he? Izar wondered. And what was his portrait doing in Coralline’s notepad?
The door opened.
The mermaid who hovered before Izar had indigo eyes and scales, just like his own. There was a one-inch-long horizontal scar along the side of her mouth, appearing a direct extension of his own. “You found me,” she said in a breathless whisper.
Her voice was soft in the center and frayed about the edges—he knew this voice, from a long, long time ago, and his face almost crumpled to hear it. She held the door open, and Izar slipped inside her living room, his mind buzzing with questions. Who was she? How could he so resemble her? How could he recognize her voice? He wanted to ask her, but he could not unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth. He took a seat on the settee across from her.
“Will you let me tell you a story?” Osmundea asked, her eyes as gentle as cotton swabs.
Izar felt himself give the slightest nod.
“There was once a young mermaid in Urchin Grove who lived with her parents and sister. She taught a class called Legend and Lore at Urchin Liberal Arts Academy. She focused on two areas of legend and lore: the elixir and hummers. Do you already know about the elixir?” Upon his nod, she continued, “In that case, let me tell you about hummers. The word hummer derives from half-human, half-merperson. Hummers are a unique breed of people—people who have one human parent and one merperson parent. Any sort of interaction between humans and merpeople is exceptionally rare, let alone any children—so you can imagine how rare hummers are. They are, in fact, so rare as to fall in the category of lore.
