by Sonia Faruqi
The blood rushed to the capillaries in Coralline’s skin. Her former self, prior to the elixir quest, would have cowered and sought shelter, but her new self surged toward Castor. She collected a rock and hurled it at his head. The path of the rock slowed with water resistance, and it bounced off his neck as haplessly as a pebble. Castor’s head rotated toward her, and his eyes seemed to register her. She had the sense there was someone there, behind the eyes, looking for her. It would be Izar, of course, controlling Castor from the surface.
Coralline spotted a tawny tail from the corner of her eye—Naiadum, approaching her. Bolting toward him, she pulled him aside—just in time, for a bullet tore past his shoulder. She tugged him into the kelp forest, such that they were both concealed among the green.
Altair and Kuda were there as well, glowing orange and red among the holdfasts of kelp but shaking so severely that Coralline could not fix her gaze on either one. And then a gargantuan shape arrived to the other side of the kelp, and her heart leapt in fear that it was Castor, but the shape was long rather than tall—Pavonis. Thank goodness for Pavonis, thank goodness for Kelp Cove itself—the ring of kelp acted as a cover.
“Pavonis, please take care of Naiadum, Kuda, and Altair,” Coralline directed. Turning to Naiadum, she wagged a finger at him and said, “Don’t you dare leave Pavonis’s side!”
He nodded, his amber-gold eyes terrified.
“Uh-oh!” Altair screeched. “It’s happening!”
“What is?” Coralline frowned.
“I spent all my life in a coral reef, hiding, meek and weak, and now here I am, in the most dangerous of circumstances—delivering my many children!”
Altair’s back arched, and his belly contracted. A minuscule seahorse, the size of a fingernail but fully formed, propelled head-first out of his belly, and flew upward. Altair’s belly contracted again, and a stream of little seahorses flew out like little beads, each one a miniature copy of either of its parents. With every contraction, a full cluster of seahorses erupted, dozens at a time. “They will all be killed by that monster!” Altair shrieked.
“Our babies will all die on the day of their birth!” Kuda wailed.
“Not if I have anything to do with it!” Pavonis growled.
He rotated, such that his snout pushed aside the layers of kelp and his face pointed diagonally downward above Altair. He opened his mouth wide, until it formed a dark, low tunnel. As the newborn seahorses flew up, they collided against the roof of his mouth, then bounced about within. His filtering pads, separating his mouth from his throat, meant that he would not be swallowing them, but keeping them safe in his capacious trove.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Altair and Kuda cried together.
Coralline could not help but smile, despite the shots ringing outside. Pavonis had earlier known Altair only as Minion, and now here he was, protecting Altair’s children. Naiadum, meanwhile, was watching the birth of the seahorses with wide, mesmerized eyes. Coralline warned him again to remain close to Pavonis, then she slipped back into Kelp Cove.
Castor stood at the center of the arena. Trampled by his feet, two hundred chairs were now in splinters, their fragments so fine that they resembled broken shells more than slate. Castor’s head swiveled, and his eyes found her. The insignia over his chest rotated slightly. She knew he would shoot her, yet her gaze was riveted by the scar across his jaw. She felt as though she was looking at Izar, and, though it was a monstrous side of him she was seeing, she could not bring herself to turn away.
A sharp click sounded. A bullet tore out of Castor’s navel. Coralline found herself pushed out of the way. Regaining her balance, she turned around to thank her savior. The person was Rhodomela, but the veins in Rhodomela’s neck were standing out, and blood was gushing out from a hole in her black bodice, diffusing through the waters like a pot of overturned ink.
Izar awoke with a start. He touched his indigo scales and the gills fluttering along the sides of his neck; everything was as it should be. Looking around him, he saw that he was hovering midway between the surface and the seabed. The first time he’d transformed into a merman, when Coralline had found him, she’d told him it was strange that he’d been hovering midway between the surface and the seabed—it had made her think he was neither merperson nor human, for merpeople tended to sink when unconscious and humans tended to float. Izar realized now that he was midway between the surface and the seabed because he was both merperson and human.
He raised his arms over his head and swung his tail side to side, rising steadily through the waters until his head crested over the waves. His vision adjusted easily to air, for he had been human just a short while ago. Alshain’s trawler formed a dot in the distance—Deneb was returning to Menkar. Izar turned his head to look at Saiph’s ship, Vega. The bronze-and-black insignia of Ocean Dominion glistened on its side, a fishhook slashing the letters O and D in half. Izar had had the logo painted especially large on this vessel, so that all, near and far, would know the coat of arms to which the ship belonged.
Dipping his head back into the water, Izar swam toward Vega, figuring that Castor would not be far from the ship that had brought him. His head crested again only when he reached the ship’s shadow. He was about to toss his tailfin into the air and dive down, when a voice stopped him: “Son!”
His face slackened, all tension in his shoulders released—such was the effect of the voice of his father.
Turning around, he squinted in the direction of the voice. In the shadow of Vega floated a little dinghy, approaching him rapidly. Antares was rowing it, his head tufty, his face flushed, his steel-gray eyes beseeching. “Don’t believe anything you may have heard about me!” he called. “None of it is true. I’ll explain everything. Come to me, my boy!”
Izar felt sick and hollow, as though an empty punch had landed on his stomach. He’d believed everything he’d been told about Antares—by Zaurak, by Osmundea—but now that he was looking at his father, he could hardly believe any of it. For twenty-five years, Antares had raised Izar as his son, caring for him, protecting him; at the very least, Izar owed him a chance to explain.
Izar’s tail slashed through the water as a knife cuts bread. He arrived at the dinghy more quickly than he’d thought, having forgotten the power of his tail. But he wished he didn’t have a tail—he wished he were the man his father recognized. He wrapped his hands around the boat’s rim and extended his head over the water, while keeping his neck submerged, so his gills could continue to breathe.
He felt something in the water near him, as though someone was arriving, and he looked down. Whoever it was seemed to have shifted, such that he couldn’t see anyone. He looked up again at Antares, to find that Antares’s eyes had darkened to the gray of storm clouds and were glaring at him, the brows together. His hand darted forward, grabbed Izar by the neck, and lifted him out of the water. “All the wealth your Castor creates will belong only to me and Saiph!” he yelled.
Even if Izar’s gills had not been flattened against the sides of his neck, he would have been unable to breathe. His father wanted to kill him. He had known it theoretically, in what Zaurak and Osmundea had said, but to see it, to feel it—it was paralyzing. He hung in the air as passively as a sack of potatoes.
Antares’s other hand gripped a knife, its steel blade glinting like a mirror. It slashed toward Izar’s neck.
Another hand appeared at the same time, this one from the water, clasping a half-shell; Osmundea leaned toward Antares and stabbed him in the heart.
Antares released Izar and the knife, such that both fell into the water. Upon gulping two deep breaths through his gills, Izar rose over the rim of the dinghy and looked in. Antares lay dying on the floor of the boat, unconscious, the half-shell protruding from his ribs. Izar’s blood stilled in his veins, and he found himself gasping, crying, not for the loss of Antares as he saw him but for the loss of Antares as he had thought him.
“I couldn’t save you from him last time, son,�
� Osmundea said gently, “but I’m glad I was able to save you this time.”
“Izar!” a voice shouted. Shading his eyes with his hand, Izar looked up toward the bow of Vega. Saiph was glowering down at him from the rails, his charred-kale eyes blazing.
“I’ll never forgive you for this!” Saiph screamed. “I’m going to kill Coralline today, and I’m going to kill you soon after. Every day of the short remainder of your life, you’re going to spend looking over your shoulder.”
Izar’s tailfin flicked up in the air like the flukes of a whale, and he dived down into the ocean alongside his mother.
Coralline sat concealed among the holdfasts of kelp, her tail extended in front of her, Rhodomela’s head on her lap.
The bullet had torn through Rhodomela’s ribs, on the left side. Coralline’s hand pressed into the area to try to quell the flow of blood, but it dribbled out steadily from between her fingers. She wished there was something she could do, but a bullet to the chest, so close to the heart, was fatal, she recognized instinctively. All her life, Rhodomela had spent saving others, but now that she needed saving, no one could save her.
Her tail was bleaching fast. There was a particularly stark quality to the bleaching—the black scales were not fading to intermediate shades of gray, then white—but were switching suddenly from black to white, one scale after another, as though they were being rotated. There was something beautiful about the white scales—just as there was something beautiful about a bleached coral reef—but there was also a ghastliness to it.
Rhodomela’s lips parted, a whisper emerged. Coralline bent her ear to Rhodomela’s mouth. “I see you’ve conquered your fear of blood,” Rhodomela said. Her eyes twinkled, then turned soft and smooth as a salve, as she continued, “I would be proud of you if you were my daughter.”
Tears blurred Coralline’s vision, and she blinked them away; she did not want her vision to cloud now, during her last moments with Rhodomela. Her face crumbling, she clasped Rhodomela’s hand. Her fingers met no resistance in Rhodomela’s, nor any response—she did not have the strength to clasp back. With every passing moment, Rhodomela was becoming less and less anchored to the fleshiness of life.
There was a rustle to the other side of the kelp. Coralline looked up sharply. The fronds were parting before her. Castor must have located her; he must be stomping toward her in order to kill her, but she held Rhodomela’s hand more tightly—she would not leave her side, not even if Izar’s monster shot her a dozen times.
The fronds parted more, then it was not Castor but Abalone and Trochid who burst through the kelp. Cringing to see Rhodomela’s condition, they came to hover horizontally over her.
“Thank you,” Trochid said, his dark-brown eyes moist. He removed Rhodomela’s hand gently from Coralline’s, and grasped the limp fingers with his own. “Thank you for saving my life when my hand was severed. And thank you for saving my daughter today, and for guiding her into becoming the lovely mermaid she is.”
Coralline looked from her father to Rhodomela. The two of them could not glance away from each other; it was as though they were alone in the kelp forest. Coralline wondered whether they were thinking back to when they’d been young, when they’d held hands just like this, when they’d dreamt of a life together.
The sound of weeping broke their gaze. “I’m sorry,” Abalone wailed. “I’m so sorry.”
Her mother rarely cried, and Coralline had never seen her cry as she was crying now, her cheeks flaming, her eyes liquid gold. From beneath a scrunched forehead, she met Coralline’s eyes. Coralline nodded emphatically—her father and Rhodomela needed to know.
“It’s my fault the two of you weren’t together,” Abalone said. “Rhodomela, the day Trochid was supposed to propose to you, I lied to you that he’d proposed to me. I stole him away from you!”
Trochid and Rhodomela looked at Abalone, but only fleetingly. The light vanished from Rhodomela’s eyes, and the final scale of her tail turned from black to white.
Abalone and Trochid sobbed, hovering to separate sides of Rhodomela. Coralline closed Rhodomela’s eyes with a hand, then shifted out from beneath her. Abalone and Trochid extended a hand down in unison, such that Rhodomela’s head was now cradled in their joined hands. “Where are you going—” Abalone began, but Coralline did not hear any more, for she’d darted out of the kelp forest.
Facing away from her, Castor was stomping steadily toward the kitchen; with every step he took, the pearl-white sands quivered. People inside the kitchen were screaming—they’d assumed the space a refuge, but it had become a cage—they could not escape, for he would simply shoot them if they swam out the door or window.
Castor was looking for her, Coralline knew, and he seemed to think she’d be inside the kitchen. She’d left Ecklon for Izar, and here was Izar in the form of this demon, trying to kill her—the thought made her laugh without mirth. All of this was her fault—Rhodomela’s death was her fault, any other death today would also be her fault—because if not for her, and Izar’s desire to kill her, Castor would not be here.
Swimming toward Castor, Coralline hurled herself at his leg from behind. It was like hurling herself at a boulder—she felt the impact more than he did, and, sliding aside, rubbed her shoulder. But the collision served its purpose. Castor began turning around with small, stuttering steps—he seemed to find it difficult to balance on the uneven ocean floor. His eyes had an easier time than his body, though, and located her swiftly. The Ocean Dominion insignia across his chest rotated ten degrees, in preparation to shoot.
“Coralline!” a voice called. Ecklon arrived beside her, his waistcoat stained, his hair rough and tousled. He grabbed her hand as though she was his bride.
A click sounded. Ecklon jerked Coralline’s arm. A bullet sailed past her side, traveling so close to her skin that she felt its heat.
Pavonis and Menziesii materialized above Coralline and Ecklon. The whale shark and spotted eagle ray swam together toward Castor from overhead. Bullets exploded out of Castor’s navel, but there was a confusion to them—he did not seem to know at which of them to aim, and he seemed unable to shoot overhead, for his navel could not point up, but only forward.
Pavonis stopped behind Castor, and Menziesii stopped to the side of Castor’s neck. His whip of a tail flashing, Menziesii fluttered his wide, navy-blue wings next to Castor’s head. The resulting ripples seemed to blur Castor’s vision, for he started shaking his head side to side, as though to clear his eyes. Pavonis, meanwhile, swung his tail powerfully into Castor’s back.
Castor fell to his knees. It was as though a house had fallen—Coralline felt the impact in each of her bones, even the narrow bones of her fingers. But Castor did not stay down long. Placing one leg in front of him, he started to rise onto the other.
Coralline could try to make some sort of algal paste to smear over his eyes, she thought. She could not think of the specific algae now, but if she rummaged through the kelp forest, ideas would come to her. And she was not carrying her apothecary arsenal with her at the moment, but there would be implements in the kitchen that she could use to grind algae, including a mortar and pestle. Pavonis would continue to slam into Castor from behind, Menziesii would continue to distract him through his ripples, and Coralline, together with Ecklon, would find a way to blind him—
A bullet tore through Coralline. Her chest convulsed, her tiara flew off. She looked down numbly. The bullet had struck her in almost the same location it had struck Rhodomela, among the ribs, to the left side. A red splotch was expanding through the pink and ochre shades of her bodice. A stinging pain was radiating through her, but she found that did not mind it. She’d longed to die; finally, death had found her. Mintaka had been truthful, after all, in her curse: You will die soon after the light dies.
Ecklon pulled Coralline into the kelp forest, as Coralline had earlier pulled Rhodomela. He settled among the holdfasts of kelp with her head on his lap. His hand landed gently on her forehead and smoothed b
ack her hair, which was coming loose now that her tiara had tumbled off. His silver-gray eyes held an unforgiving expression, but Coralline knew their ire was directed at himself: He’d saved her from life in prison, but he’d been unable to save her from death.
Her parents came to hover horizontally over her, as they had over Rhodomela, both of them continuing to weep. Naiadum sat next to her, staring at her with a befuddled expression; though he’d come within a hair’s breadth of death himself in the black poison spill, he was still too young to understand the finality of it.
Coralline felt a slight movement on her right shoulder—it would be Nacre, clambering on. Altair and Kuda, meanwhile, were somewhere on Coralline’s left; she could see their orange and red colors from the corner of her eye. Pavonis’s white belly started rollicking above everyone, his eye trained on her. He would have liked to speak, Coralline knew—they’d been best friends since she was two; she’d known him longer than she’d known Naiadum—but he could not open his mouth, because Altair and Kuda’s hundreds of children were in it. She was glad he could not speak, for then she would cry—if she could.
She had always hoped her death would be a little like falling asleep, but it felt more like a rapidly spreading fever. Her body was paralyzing from the inside-out—first the bones, then the organs, then the muscles. Her tail was bleaching fast, the bronze giving way steadily to white, remnants of color lingering primarily around the corners of her tailfin. She could smell her blood in her own nostrils, and she felt dizzy, but not from the smell of her blood—rather, the loss of it. For what it was worth, she had finally conquered her fear of blood, as Rhodomela had noted. Blood was simply what her body was composed of, she saw now, just as the ocean was composed of water.
The fronds of kelp parted, but it was not Castor who burst through. It was a figure with indigo eyes and tail. She must be imagining it; she had to be hallucinating, but then he spoke: “You must be her husband,” Izar said to Ecklon.
