Deeper still, I slunk. The farther I wandered, the more enthralled I became by this forbidden world forgotten by Father’s confining reach. Inch by wicked inch I ventured into the hollow. The spell of the unknown was broken by the snap of hungry jaws followed by the cold slap of a slimy tail against my hip.
Frozen by fear, my head slowly swiveled toward the cave’s other inhabitant.
The shimmer of light that managed to filter through the blackness illuminated the silver silhouette of a hungry barracuda.
Self-preservation should have kicked in and sent me rocketing from the cave in a blur of elbows and tailfins. And it probably would have … had my gaze not flicked to the two wriggling baby zebra sharks left behind in an otherwise ravaged nest. The rest of the family was most likely somewhere in the digestive tract of the carnivorous fish.
Before I could even think to swim away, the predatory beast turned on me in a blur of fins and teeth. My hands rose defensively, every muscle in my body tensed for the moment those jagged jaws sank into my flesh. Magic was not my intention. Knowing of its horrifying side effect, it never was. Even so, green shimmering tendrils instinctively licked from my fingertips in the same type of fear response in which others would simply shudder or cringe. The rampaging fish was reduced to a defenseless clam that collapsed to the ocean floor and bounced twice before settling into the sand.
In a perfect world that would’ve been the end of it. Crisis averted. Unfortunately, the icy quivers wafting up from tail to brow whispered that the worst was yet to come. Body convulsing in terrified tremors, I crumbled to the ground, curling my fins to my chest. Cocooning myself with my arms, I tried to block out the nightmare that always came next.
“Vaaaanessa.” Stale breath, reeking of decay, assaulted my cheek.
“No! Go away!” I forced the words through chattering teeth, the sea swallowing each tear that slipped passed my tightly squeezed lids.
“My sweeeeeet girl,” the gravelly version of my mother’s voice, made raspy by death’s rough touch, murmured. Something cold and coarse stroked the back of my head, tangling in the loose strands of my hair. “I only wish to care for you.”
A choked sob caught in my throat, leaking out in a plaintive whimper. “Please. Please, just leave me alone.”
“My baby … left all alone with no one to protect her tender heart.”
Swallowing hard, I pried one eye open to risk a peek around my arm. The once exquisite Queen of Atlantica knelt beside the remnants of the egg casings the sharks hatched from. Fingers, gnawed to knobby bone, gently stroked the backs of the orphaned pair of hatchlings. Bones creaking, she gradually turned my way.
For a moment my gills clamped shut with fright.
Vacant amethyst eyes provided a startling contrast to her putrefied, ashen complexion. Decayed flesh dangled from her perfectly sculpted cheekbones, exposing the time-rotted teeth beneath. Black hair rode the current around her face, each roll granting glimpses of festered patches where hair had fallen away to reveal bare skull beneath.
“Just like them.” Stare shifting back to the sharks, she considered them with a tilt of her head. “You need friends, my darling girl, and they need protection.”
Sea bugs skittered out of a slash in her cheek and reentered through her ear canal, causing bile to scorch up the back of my throat. My churning stomach made averting my eyes a necessity. I chose the shark babies as my visual safe haven. There was no denying they were newly hatched. Their scrawny black hides, dotted with white spots, were barely the length of my palm. Mother was right, left to their own devices they didn’t stand a chance. Without help, they would be a meal to some passing creature before night fell.
Biting my lower lip hard enough to experience a bark of pain, I shook my head in hopes of waking from that dismal reality. “No, I can’t. If I help them …”
The words trailed off, some part of my whirring mind still afraid to offend my long dead parent.
Mother sank back on her tail, hands folding in her lap in a chorus of snaps and creaks of putrefied tendons. “If you use your magic to help them, my presence will linger. And, in your mind, that is the worst fate of all.”
“You … aren’t supposed to be here,” I stated in place of an explanation, my tone a blend of apology and fear. When dealing with an entity that, if angered, could rip her face off and throw it at me, the importance of manners and conduct seemed crucial.
“And you aren’t supposed to fear what you are.” Head snapping in my direction, accusation narrowed her eyes to deadly slits. “Magic is a part of who you are, just as it was for me. Deny it and you deny yourself.”
“I–I can’t.” Face crumpling, my eyes pleaded with the ghoul for a bit of understanding.
“Vanessa,” with a lift of her chin, she glared down the bridge of her upturned nose, “do you wish for me to become cross?” Voice eerily hollow of emotion, the underlying threat was potently inferred.
Suppressing a whimper by clamping my teeth on the meat of my palm, my breath came in ragged pants. Seeing no other alternative, I reluctantly waved one hand toward the sharks.
Tiny bodies jerked, vibrated, and began to swell. I didn’t grant them an abundance of size or maturity, just enough for them to handle themselves in that area of volatile sea.
Two little heads poked over the edge of the rocky were they huddled, their mouths slightly agape as if they had just finished a snarky punchline and were awaiting my guffaw. Despite my macabre companion, an almost smile tugged at the corners of my lips, prompted by their sweet faces. The sharks responded with giddy appreciation. Fervently snapping their whip-like tails they darted my way as fast as they were able, their frames now measured about the length of my arm from wrist to elbow. Their gracious thank you came in the form of one coiling around my neck while the other brushed his clammy hide against my cheek.
“Yessss,” Mother purred, the intensity of her gaze making me even more leery of her intent. “Your new friends need names to make them … real. To make them allies.”
With the sharks twining their way up my arms, my thoughts ventured to the accident that stole my mother from me. The unfortunate catastrophe which robbed her of life and beauty, and left behind that deteriorating form with skin drooping below her left eye to expose a bony socket and strings of tendons.
Two separate pirate ships, with their cannons thundering and crew plundering, were oblivious to the regal merqueen paddling beneath their ongoing battle. She was departing the island of Lemuria where she visited frequently on diplomatic missions of goodwill—or so I had been told for years. The swashbucklers were so distracted by the severity of their battle that they had no clue a member of mer royalty struggled for life beneath them. She found herself trapped between a rocky crest and the sternpost of one of the ships. Her cries for help went unheard. Her final gasps were drowned out by the petty scuffles of air breathing filth that weren’t worthy to bow before her, much less snuff the life from a beloved noble. Yet while they and their ships ventured off into the horizon, Queen Titonis was reduced to a rotting pile of parts that would plague her eldest offspring by simply existing. Her life could have been spared by one careening canon ball striking at that pivotal moment.
A scattering of floating wreckage and cast off cargo would have equated one treasured life …
“Floteson and Jetteson,” I murmured, my voice cracking with emotion.
The young sharks squeezed my arms in a delicate embrace of approval.
“Are you okay?” a meek voice inquired from behind me.
At the sound of the intruder, Floteson and Jetteson darted behind the nearest boulder, peeking out in the interest of self-preservation.
Mother sucked in a shocked breath that reeked of sorrow and decay. Her crumbling hands clasped over her long-stilled heart. “My boy, look at how handsome he’s become.”
My own fear and well-being fell clear out of my head. Bolting off the ground, I cruised straight for my brother, needing nothing else in the world excep
t him out of there. “Get out of here, Triton!” I yelled in a tone as sharp as a blade’s edge. “You should’ve taken the hint I didn’t want company when I ignored your incessant shouts in the courtyard!”
“I was worried about you. I didn’t want you to be alone—”
“Even though that’s exactly what I want?” I snapped.
The pain that etched itself into his features would have squeezed my heart in a constricting fist, had our mother not picked that moment to close the gap between her and her unsuspecting son. I cursed my own weak inadequacies for not toughing out the horrific aspects of her jarring spirit to learn more about her. I didn’t even know if she could actually harm anyone. What I did know was that I had no intention of acquiring that knowledge at my brother’s expense. Bristling as her clawed hand rose, I recoiled at the seemingly loving gesture of her gnarled knuckle tracing over his jawline.
Taking another approach, I softened my tone to a nurturing hush. “Triton, I beg of you. Leave … please.”
Crossing his scrawny arms over his bowed chest, Triton shimmied on the obstinate smirk of pre-pubescent wickedness. “Or what? I’m not afraid of you, Vanessa.”
A normal day, a passing fancy, and I would have used my sass to cut him to the bone until he turned tail and fled. Such a thing wasn’t even taxing. I knew all his deep dark secrets: like he still sucked his thumb during thunderstorms, and he was terrified of blowfish because I once told him they only inflated after sucking the soul from a nearby mer. Be that as it may, I didn’t have it in me to snip and exchange words. My only goal was to spare him from the poltergeist that could turn on us both at any moment.
Flicking my tongue over my bottom lip, I did the best impression of someone unphased and unaffected as I could muster. “If the only kind of help you came to offer is mulish drivel and a nasty attitude, I’ll decline. Thank you.”
“You don’t need to be harsh,” Triton countered, his face folding into a pout.
Mother’s face had morphed into a flare of such hatred it made my pulse pound with terror for him.
“My baby boy,” leaning in, she breathed him in with a deep inhale—the unsuspecting Triton batted at the water beside him as if shooing away a bothersome shrimp, “it pains me to see so much of his loathsome father in him.”
“It’s not my fault that things didn’t go your way today,” he continued. “I want to play with manatees and you—”
“Need to become the next ruler of Atlantica,” a sharp female voice interjected from the cavity of the cave entrance.
Triton and I spun to found Queen Amphrite leaning one shoulder against the jagged cave wall, her opposite hand jabbed onto her hip.
Sucking water through her teeth, Mother withdrew from Triton’s side as if she had suddenly been scalded. Tilting her head, she exposed a gaping wound oozing with brown sludge.
“Atlantica’s replacement queen,” she mused through blackened gums and browning teeth. “I would despise her if I didn’t view her only as little more than next victim of Poseidon’s false promises and twisted sense of affection.”
I wanted my brother out for the sake of his own well-being, and instead we were drawing a crowd. As heroic endeavors went, this one was a disaster.
Oblivious to the criticisms from the beyond, Amphrite lifted one brow at Triton in candid indifference. “Leave,” she stated, in a tone that left no room for discussion.
Mouth opening and shutting, he stammered, “I-I was just t-trying to—”
One delicate hand raised to halt him. “Don’t care. Didn’t ask. Get out.”
Mother’s cracked lips curled back in a predatory snarl. “Pink hair, an overabundance of skin, and she dares to speak to my child that way? The things I would do to her if she wasn’t Poseidon’s bride. That in itself is a cruel enough fate … for now.”
Grateful for the assist, I nodded my encouragement to Triton that he should obey the reigning queen.
Reluctantly, he turned to leave, gazing back with the protruding lower-lip of a pitiful-guppy. He wanted me to change my mind, of that I was well aware. However, considering I was riding high on a tidal wave of relief at that growing distance between him and our corpse mom, any sort of interjection would not be happening. Dejected, he hung his head and paddled from the cave’s mouth, undoubtedly to linger nearby.
A heavy silence swelled in his absence. Amphrite flitted around the perimeter of the cavernous space, inspecting it with what seemed to be genuine appreciation. Mother matched her kick for kick, stroke for stroke, always positioning herself between the new queen and myself. While still a notably uneasy situation, my inner protective beast had been satiated by Triton’s departure. It was far less stressful knowing I could freak out accordingly. I’m not too proud to admit I fully intended to leave Amphrite to fend for herself if Mother so much as said boo in an untoward tone.
Swallowing hard, I shattered the crushing hush. “If the purpose of you tailing me was to suggest I pursue becoming queen, you should know I’ve written of nothing else in my private scrolls since I was four years old. Unfortunately, that particular dream died this very day. I believe you were there for its execution.”
“I saw nothing that should diminish your hopes or aspirations in the slightest.” Amphrite’s dainty fingertips brushed over a notched-out section in the cave wall. She rubbed the algae collected by the swipe away with the pad of her thumb. “That said, your little outburst made it appear as if seeking your father’s approval is of greater importance to you than that gilded trident.”
“I may smite her just for the fun of it.” Mother’s pointed, gray tongue pressed against her top teeth, as if envisioning exactly where she would begin her games.
Hitching one brow, I contemplated encouraging her sport. Thinking better of it, I crinkled my nose and bitterly deadpanned, “If you had known my father longer than a moon cycle, you would know the throne would be easier to attain than his good favor.”
“So target the easier mark … and claim it,” Amphrite countered, letting one slender shoulder rise and fall in a casual shrug.
“Infuriating little ambergris.” Spinning on me, Mother’s irises dilated to manic, black pits of carnage. “Let me talk you through how to disembowel her. You’ll find the process therapeutic.”
“Maybe another time.”
“Pardon?” Pink brows pinched in confusion.
Clearing my throat, I forced an awkward smile. “Catch in my throat. Apologies, Your Majesty. What I meant to say was, with all due respect, Triton received the apprenticeship with the Royal Guard. If you know your Atlantica history, you are aware that the last eight rulers have—”
The darkness morphed Amphrite’s hair to a violet veil which fanned around her angelic face. “Apprenticed with the Royal Guard. Yes, I know. But eight in a line of how many?”
“You come from a family of glorified magic peddlers.” Lurking behind the unsuspecting queen, the words seeped from Mother’s lips in a sinister hiss. “What could you possible know of royal matters?”
Raising my hands, I let them slap to my sides in exasperation of the fickle moods of the living and dead. “Are you suggesting an alternative that could break the long running streak?”
Tossing her hair, Amphrite granted me a smile that would make the stars envy her sparkle. “By finding yourself a far better tutor … namely, me.”
I felt Mother bristle beside me. Yet before she could utter further off-color, overly descriptive commentary, I interceded on her behalf. She may have been a deteriorating shell, prone to homicidal inklings, but she was my deteriorating shell prone to homicidal inklings.
“Is this the part where you offer to be the mother I never had? What is it you think you could teach me? How to braid my hair and apply sea flower to my lips without any bothersome creases?”
In a blink Amphrite floated in front of me, the rush of water and bubbles from her breath tickling over my cheeks. “Your mother ended up dead on the humans’ shoreline. I have no desire to be her. I
wish only to be your teacher, coach, and,” the corner of her mouth curled up in a carnivorous smirk, “… friend.”
“And what do you hope to get in exchange for this invested time and effort?” A flap of my fin and I rose to match her in height, if for no other reason than to hint that it took more to intimidate me than a painted sea siren.
“If all goes according to plan?” Scooping the water with cupped hands, she pushed back to a less intrusive distance. “I get the ear of the queen when you take the throne.”
As inconspicuously as I could, I let my stare flick to my mother.
“Do not trust her,” she warned. “Such a young, vibrant beauty that agrees to a union with a man at your father’s station in life has motives all her own. Mark my words, she will use you to further her own cause. No throne is worth that.”
Looking back, I had no solid proof that the putrid form haunting me actually was my mother—Mother Ocean knows she didn’t look or smell like her. Even so, she made a valid point I couldn’t ignore.
Raising my chin, I stared down my nose at Amphrite in the same haughty fashion I watched Poseidon address his subjects with countless times. “You have the ear of the king—among other things. I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with that.”
“We shall see about that,” Amphrite glowered, and kicked from the cave without another glance back.
Chapter Four
M y mother sang me to sleep that night. It was not the tender moment I remembered. Her jaw unhinged mid-melody and sent her scrambling to reattach it. It wasn’t until the early morning sun waved down in softly waving diamonds that the lingering effects of magic wore off, and Mother faded into nothingness once more.
Rise of the Sea Witch Page 4
