Silver Tides (Silver Tides Series)

by Susan Fodor

  “We need to go,” I agreed turning to my father, “may we be excused?” They were my first words to my father; they felt hollow. There was so much I wanted to ask him, but there was no time. We had one week, and the look on Dr. Conneely’s face suggested that it would not be enough.

  King Leo deliberated for a moment, wrestling with letting Daniel accompany me; he heeded Mum’s counsel with a begrudging nod. I was surprised that my mellow mother could harness such persuasive power.

  “Let’s go then,” Daniel, said, his demeanor hard. “I will return to land with the selkie princess.” Daniel’s inability to say my name, threatened to undo my resolve, but I bite my lip and breathed evenly to keep myself from crying. My insides felt like molten lava, searing my heart with disappointment and sorrow.

  “As will I,” Mum said, curtsying to King Leo. Cordulla looked ready to object to Mum accompanying us, but King Leo shot her a hard look, that kept her silent.

  It was hard to believe that hulk of a man was my father and that my mother had loved him. He was so different from Paul, who had pale skin and black hair and his salt-and-pepper mustache. King Leo had a deep brown tan and chocolate eyes and dark hair that had been given golden highlights after years of sitting in the sunshine. For a seal he was hair-free, smooth, and hard, like granite. He was the opposite of Paul in physique, but I wondered if he was any different in his ability to communicate. If I had been different, I would have grown up with them as my parents; I wondered what it would have been like.

  “Charlie Lubeck, you dragged my daughter into this and you will guard her wherever she goes,” King Leo ordered, with an air of frustration. A myriad of emotion played across King Leo’s face as he looked at me, pride, confusion, hope and sorrow. I hoped that I would see him again.

  Charlie dropped his hand from under my elbow stealthily, and bowed his acceptance of the job. I turned to follow Mum and the others down the path, having seen my biological father, but not having really met him.

  “Mya...” said King Leo, fixing me with his eyes that were the same shade as mine, “good luck.”

  I nodded and curtsied. “Thank you, your majesty.”

  He grinned, displaying teeth just like mine. There was something unidentifiable in his eyes, it felt like pride. I stored that in my crumbling heart, not knowing if I would be able to deliver the Heart of the Sea.

  Daniel had already begun marching down the track toward our boat. Mum ushered me along behind him, while Charlie and Dr. Conneely brought up the rear. Each step felt like nails being driven into my heart, as we descended the small hill. The stress of the night made my teeth chatter. Daniel hated me; I had encountered my biological father and been given a quest, that if I failed five people would die. I let the tears slide silently down my cheeks as Mum guided me to the boat.

  Daniel waited beside the boat, impatient for me to board. The moon sent silver ripples across the frigid water; had it not been for the circumstances it would have been romantic.

  "I'm taking her on the boat," Charlie said, when it became obvious that Daniel intended to ferry me to land. "I brought her here, and I'm taking her home."

  "You nearly got her killed tonight," Daniel retorted, jabbing his finger into Charlie's chest. "You're lucky I was there."

  "She knew the risks and was willing to take them. If she wasn't here tonight, you'd be dead!" Charlie yelled.

  "Better me than her!" Daniel snapped. His words gave me hope that maybe he still cared, but the look he gave me confirmed that he was disgusted by me.

  "I agree," Charlie replied passionately.

  "If you're both done beating your chests like cavemen, there's a lot to do and not much time," Mum interjected. "I'll ride with Mya; the two of you will swim either side for added protection."

  I stifled a grin, as the two men took Mum's direction like puppy dogs.

  "Abomination," Mum called, teasing Dr. Conneely, "you're with us. You look much too old to swim in Port Phillip Bay this close to winter, and I want to hear your plan.”

  dr. conneely

  "Thank you, highness." Dr. Conneely smiled, making his face wrinkle like a Tasmanian tourist apple.

  "Don't be too grateful," Mum replied mischievously. "I'm going to pump you like a resuscitation dummy."

  Dr. Conneely boarded the boat, unperturbed by Mum’s teasing. The boat cut through the silver sea with surprising ease as Mum aimed it toward Queenscliff. Despite having a full view of Daniel, his eyes never met mine; he simply swam like a fish carried on the tide. I knew that staring at him like a lovesick puppy was creepy, but my eyes wouldn’t leave his golden locks illuminated by the moon. Charlie flicked some water at me, and shot me a reassuring look. But there was nothing that would fill the gapping wound in my affections.

  Mum spoke too loudly, as much to grab my attention, as to be heard over the roar of the motor. "So, where is the Heart of the Sea?"

  I forced myself to focus on the conversation; even if Daniel hated me, I still had to save his life. Knowing that he was happy and alive somewhere would be better, than if I’d failed, and he’d died on account of me. That knowledge alone helped me stow away my heartbreak to mourn at a better time.

  "In Cornwall," replied Dr. Conneely, capturing my attention.

  "Cornwall as in the United Kingdom, England, London, and all that? How is that possible if the Heart of the Sea was stolen from Atlantis?" Mum mused skeptically.

  “Where is Atlantis?” I asked, trying to keep up with the conversation.

  “It’s not far off the Great Ocean road,” Mum informed. “There’s a curve in the road, near a cliff face, I can show you one day. If you drove off that cliff into the water and kept driving for about twenty minutes you’d be right above Atlantis.”

  “You’re car would never survive that,” Charlie joked from the water.

  “Nerd humor alert,” I groaned, shaking my head. “So how do you know that the Heart of the Sea is in Cornwall?”

  “That’s where everyone immigrated from; they simply went home,” Dr. Conneely shrugged.

  “What do you mean?” Mum asked, confused. “Legend says that the Heart of the Sea was stolen over a thousand years ago.”

  Dr. Conneely chuckled with a sound akin to a chest cough. “That’s the merfolk version. The fact is Atlantis was built around the eighteen hundreds, after the merfolk and selkies followed the first fleet to Australia in 1788. The Heart of the Sea left in the mid-eighteen hundreds, after everything had been built.”

  “Over one hundred and sixty years ago,” I calculated, my tongue poking out with the strain of mathematics. “School left out the part of Australian history, where mythical creatures followed the first ships to Australia and built a city under the sea.”

  “Nerd humor,” Charlie taunted.

  I imagined that only siblings could be as annoying and likable as Charlie. Reflexively, I grabbed Charlie’s jocks and threw them at his head.

  “Hey,” he protested, grabbing them in his teeth and flinging his wet underwear onto my shoulder.

  “Gross,” I shuddered, pitching the jocks onto the boat bottom.

  “You loved it.” Charlie chortled.

  I considered throwing Charlie’s jocks out to sea, but I glanced at Daniel shooting me a death glare, and Mum and Dr. Conneely were giving me the if you children are done playing look. I focused my attention back on Dr. Conneely.

  “The finfolk claim it was stolen; you said it left. What is the Heart of the Sea?” Mum fixed Dr. Conneely with a keen look. I hadn’t even noticed the difference, but Mum was weighing every word that the old man was saying.

  “I don’t exactly know, but I know how to find it,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “So you know it’s somewhere in the United Kingdom, and you have a vague idea of what it may be, but not really,” Charlie barked sarcastically. “Brilliant! This should be a cinch.”

  I licked my salty lips, wondering if I had volunteered for a fool’s errand. No one knew what the Heart of the Sea was, or w
here to find it, and somehow I was supposed to locate it. I wasn’t even like the others in our group; I was human.

  “We will find it,” Dr. Conneely said passionately. “I’ve seen it in the future.”

  “A vision makes it so much more plausible,” Charlie barked.

  “Mya will return it,” Dr. Conneely affirmed. “The mermaids have long prophesied that an alien would return light to Atlantis.”

  I was about to object and insist that I was an earthling, but Daniel interrupted, “The mermaid’s are prone to delusions.”

  “Mya is the alien, neither mermaid nor selkie, she will return the Heart of the Sea,” Dr. Conneely said confidently. “I have seen it,”

  “Mya is most definitely a selkie,” Mum said in clipped tones.

  “Then why didn’t she turn into a seal and dispatch her attacker on the island?” Dr. Conneely asked.

  “She’s a late bloomer,” Mum concluded. She looked at me reassuringly, as though that were the full extent of my problem, not that I was a human throwback.

  “What aren’t you telling us?” Mum accused, unimpressed by his assertion of the fact that I was not a selkie. Mum had a look in her eyes that said her mother sensor was tingling.

  Dr. Conneely chose his words carefully. “Highness, in the mid-eighteen hundreds the world was a different place for both selkies and merfolk. They lived together in Atlantis as allies and friends.”

  I felt a small rush of hope that if there had been peace in the past, perhaps we could cultivate peace in the future. Maybe Daniel and I had a chance. I glanced at Daniel, but he was unmoved. My heart sank again.

  “Pfft,” Charlie disagreed, but Dr. Conneely ignored him and continued.

  “The generations that remember it are all but dead here, but off the Cornish coast they still live together. Yet despite our close relations there was never intermarriage between the merfolk and selkies. It is impossible for tailed merfolk to intermarry with anyone but his or her own kind. The shape-shifting finfolk were obsessed with gaining a soul through marrying humans. Daniel’s kind are rare and generally come with a mate. So it was unheard of for merfolk and the selkies to intermarry,” Dr. Conneely continued. “The princess of the merfolk, Celeste, was very beautiful and kind; she and the selkie prince, Adrian, spent much time deliberating over the fate of their cities...”

  “City—there is only one underwater city, Atlantis,” Daniel said tightly.

  “Yes, there was only one underwater city, and the floating invisible city that the finfolk sunk after the lights went out,” Dr. Conneely informed.

  “That’s heresy!” Daniel yelled.

  “That makes it no less true.” Dr. Conneely sighed heavily.

  The selkie’s hatred for the merfolk seemed a little more rational, in the face of having their home destroyed and being forced to live on Seal Rock.

  “Be quiet and let him finish!” Charlie yelled across the boat.

  “Celeste’s Other took a long time in arriving; the selkie prince set about stealing her heart, which was not hard since she loved him from the moment she saw him. When they told their parents, they were outraged and called their love an abomination. When Celeste’s Other arrived, they purposed to marry her to him.”

  I interrupted Dr. Conneely. “Are you saying that this whole war is about a selkie and switcher falling in love with each other?” The irony of the situation wasn’t wasted on me, the rift between the selkies and merfolk was started by an illicit relationship, much like the one Daniel and I had shared.

  “There was a little more to it than that,” Dr. Conneely continued patiently. “Celeste and Adrian ran away before the wedding, and when they left, the lights went out in Atlantis. Some say that Celeste stole a jewel from the throne room that powered the city; other’s say it was Adrian’s way of ensuring their escape. Either way Atlantis was cast into darkness by their departure. The finfolk ransacked Lamér, the selkie floating city, and sunk it to the bottom of the ocean trying to find the Heart of the Sea. Laws were written to limit relations between the people and no one was allowed to speak of it. Since the treaty, rumors of the merfolk being murderers and selkies wanting to re-inhabit the city have abounded. With all the secrecy and lies the truth has been lost, that selkies and merfolk are to work together for the good of all. Separately the merfolk become monsters and the selkies die before their time.”

  “So it wasn’t about Celeste and Adrian, it was about the Heart of the Sea?” I asked slightly relieved.

  “It was about both,” Dr. Conneely replied evenly, “it was the mid-eighteen hundreds and people lived and thought a certain way. The selkies and merfolk lived together but never intermarried. Celeste and Adrian challenged that custom, and the light being taken from the city was the last straw. The merfolk announced that Adrian had kidnapped the princess and taken the Heart of the Sea, and that every selkie would be questioned until they were returned. The selkie king disagreed, saying that Celeste had corrupted Adrian into betraying his people. The war unfolded from there.”

  “Where did you read this? How do you know?” Mum challenged, her eyes ablaze.

  “Celeste and Adrian were my parents,” Dr. Conneely said simply.

  road to home

  “That’s not possible; you’d be over a hundred years old,” I scoffed, feeling relief that maybe he was wrong.

  “One-hundred and fifty-three this year,” he agreed, earnestly.

  “Great, we’re in the hands of a crazy person,” Charlie yelled, exasperated, from the water beside me.

  “I assure you, I’m not insane,” Dr. Conneely disagreed. “That’s why Cordulla calls me an abomination. I am a selkie-merfolk crossbreed, the best and worst of both. I’ve seen the world change and I’ve changed with it. As I grow older I’ve seen glimpses of the future.”

  The conviction of his words filled me with renewed despair. If Dr. Conneely was insane then he was leading us on a fool’s errand, and if he was telling the truth there was no healing the rift between the selkies and merfolk.

  “You understand that what you’re saying is hard to take in,” Mum said with apprehension.

  “Let me show you,” Dr. Conneely replied, leaning forward and putting his palm to Mum’s forehead. To Mum’s credit she didn’t recoil from the rodent featured doctor.

  Mum’s eyes flashed like she was in another place; her eyes followed the empty space, like she was watching someone cross a stage. Tears began to well in her eyes, and I got up to push him away from her, but Dr. Conneely broke away from Mum before I could do anything.

  She looked at me and wiped tears from her eyes. “You will find the Heart of the Sea.”

  My knees buckled returning me to a seated position, the fear in Mum’s eyes unnerved me.

  “Show me,” I ordered Dr. Conneely.

  “I wish I could, princess, but my visions are for specific people.” Dr. Conneely shook his head. “They are given by God for a purpose and I can only share them with those I’ve been told to.”

  Mum continued to wipe tears from her eyes. “We can trust him,” she said. “I saw it.”

  “Fine.” I sulked, crossing my arms across my wet clothes and shivering.

  The shore crept up quickly as Dr. Conneely answered our questions. My body was numb from the cold as I stepped out of the boat. Charlie bounded out of the water, transforming mid-step to help me out of the boat before Daniel could.

  I let him hold my hand in his warm palm to help me out of the boat. “You forgot my clothes.” He winked. “I know you prefer me like this; I saw you peek.” If Daniel had delivered the same line, it would have been charming, but from Charlie, it was merely comical. Soliciting a smile.

  “I can smell wet dog,” Daniel said harshly, pushing Charlie away from me.

  “Here’s your clothes,” Mum said, barely containing a grin, as Charlie bumped Daniel out of the way to help her onto the deck we had taken the boat from.

  “You can help the good doctor,” Charlie instructed Daniel. “I have to ge
t dressed.”

  Daniel’s jaw clenched at Charlie’s insolence as much as the task.

  We made our way to the carpark in tense silence. There was so much I wanted to say to Daniel, but I didn’t have the words. To save Daniel’s life I would uphold my end of the bargain and find the Heart of the Sea. I would carry myself like a princess and refrain from staring at Daniel doe-eyed or heartbroken. I pushed the mountain of pain that wanted to crush me out of my mind, as I held my head up regally.

  Everyone dressed under the bridge, while I stood alone in the dark rubbing my freezing arms. Charlie stood beside me in companionable silence. He seemed to sense that I was hurting and he let me maintain my dignity, by not bringing it up.

  The others emerged quickly, not wanting to waste time. We climbed up the embankment and onto the pier that led to the carpark. Charlie broke away from our group and disappeared into the shadows. A few moments later Charlie wheeled his motorcycle into the light, where Daniel gave him a look that should have killed him.

  “Come on, babe,” Charlie teased goofily. “You wanna ride back with me.”

  I shook my head, unable to keep from grinning; the boy had enough comedic timing to be on a sitcom. I was glad Charlie was coming; he was going to be good for laughs; a necessity when dealing with heartbreak.

  “Everyone can ride with me,” Mum said tactfully. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Charlie.”

  “Yes highness.” Charlie bowed gracefully, before mounting his green motorcycle. He waved at me like a scene from Hot Shots and rode away.

  We entered the abandoned carpark where two lone cars were parked under the lights.

  Mum paused and pushed her business card into Dr. Conneely’s hand.

  “This is my number,” Mum told him. They exchanged details quickly, as my teeth began to chatter. “Call tomorrow; we all leave for the United Kingdom in the morning.”

  The last few steps to Mum’s car were painful. My legs were filled with pins and needles from the cold, another piece of evidence that I wasn’t a selkie. Mum couldn’t open the door quickly enough for me. The minute the door clicked, I wrenched it open and bounded into passenger seat.