All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

  Miranda was furious and gasping in pain as she stared back at the faces in the belly of the man-whale. With sudden rage, she reached out to the water around the man-whale and squeezed, freezing it. She screamed in fury, and a dark, cold anger swept through her mind like a flood. Anger over the loss of her father to the evil of the skarzs, anger for the senseless death of Shifter, anger over the invasion of evil men into her world, and anger against the machines they’d created to dispense death with impunity.

  She focused the darkness of all her anger on the machine before her, covering it with more and more ice until the man-whale-machine disappeared from her sight inside a frozen iceberg. She watched in silence as it slowly rose upward, breaking the surface of the ocean with its upper peak, leaving the bulk of its mass submerged. With a deep tremble of grief and a wave of regret, she nudged the new iceberg into a current that would carry it up to the arctic to join itself with giant glaciers there and remain frozen for all eternity.

  When Miranda shared the news of the man-whale with her mother, Helmi became hysterical. She forbade Miranda to leave the waters of the Faeroe Islands for any reason. News had already reached her from her trusted whales that the world of man was ablaze with war on almost every continent, a war not just of men, but also of machines. The madness of Atlantis was rising like a curse from the deep as men once again created machines of mass destruction. This time however, there were no Olympians to smite them all and send them to the bottom of the sea. The eternal hatred of the Hag and her skarzs and the Titans sealed in Tartarus were all that were left of those immortals.

  So the world shook with pain and bled with sorrow as “the war to end all wars” claimed over eight million lives. It wounded more than twenty-one million men and plunged fifty-four million soldiers into the hell of war. It was a war that no one profited from and all suffered for.

  Miranda and Helmi were just grateful their beloved Denmark and the Faeroe Islands remained remarkably untouched, but few parts of the world were that lucky. They felt they needed to do something, so Miranda had arranged for all the family palaces and estates in Europe to be turned into hospitals and orphanages and used a great deal of the family fortune to endow a charitable foundation called Oceanus. It funded the orphanages and created pensions for war widows and disabled veterans, increasing the mystique surrounding the Duchess of Egeskov.

  Holy Mackerel

  Pearl was spinning. She surged up, up, up and out of the water with her hair sweeping out behind her. As she reached the apex of her upward spiral, she flung her arms out, up, and wide to the sky, forming an arc. Through that arc, like a silver torpedo, came Jumper followed by Slammer, clicking and clacking as they sailed over Pearl’s head. Just as Slammer’s shadow passed through, Pearl tucked into a summersault and dove neatly into the water. Then all three of them surged out of the water together. Pearl gave each dolphin’s flipper a double high-five as they scooted backwards in opposite directions, cheering and chittering in delight.

  “You guys were awesome!” Pearl shouted with glee as she clapped her hands and applauded them.

  “Princess makes a good dolphin,” Slammer called back to her in his dolphin chittering eeeh’s and clicks.

  “Jumper wants to do it again! Princess, please do it again!”

  “We want to jump too!” Coral and Prickle squeaked and started leapfrogging each other in a wide circle around Pearl. She giggled at the kits as they chased each other around like a couple of dark grey Frisbees caught in a whirlpool. Sandy suddenly rose up underneath her, creating the little floating throne Pearl was now getting used to. Actually, it was hard to call a twenty-five-foot-wide manta ray little, but Sandy treated her so delicately, it really made her feel like a princess and gave Sandy a dainty persona in Pearl’s mind.

  Patches broke through the surface with a small, half-chewed fish in his mouth. Slurping as he talked, which her mother had always taught Pearl was terrible table manners, he mumbled, “I hate to interrupt the festivities, but is anyone interested in lunch?”

  Jumper and Slammer turned around to look at Patches, suddenly seeing the small fish in his mouth. “Mackerel! Yum! Where are the mackerel? Where are the mackerel, where?” they squealed, rising up again out of the water in excitement.

  “That way,” Patches indicated with his left flipper, then he turned to talk to Pearl, but all he got was a mouthful of water as her tailfin slapped the surface to give her an extra shove as she raced ahead of the dolphins toward their favorite delicacy. A second later, as Patches slurped his last gulp down, he watched the kits as they chittered and followed their mother who had raced after Pearl and the hungry dolphins. “Well, I guess that ends this afternoon’s entertainment,” he muttered.

  Bon Voyage

  Valdemar had known he was not immortal. Though he might live to see a thousand years, his daughter could live to see twenty thousand. So, just as he had raised his mortal sons to rule after him, he instructed her to eventually control the duchy. He always sat her by his side when the annual reports for the estate arrived at the Faeroes Manor House, and they read through them together. When he was killed in the Battle of Krakatau, Miranda was devastated, but more than competent to take control of the estates.

  Once, shortly before he died, Valdemar had taken Miranda to a ballet based on Hans Christian Andersen’s, The Little Mermaid. She had thought it very grand and funny to see the story of her parents’ courtship elaborately produced as if for her own personal enjoyment. Of course the ending was totally wrong, and she had urged her father to contact the author and set the story straight. He had laughed at her and told her that everyone liked the story just the way it was.

  That was her father—full of laughter, warmth, and wisdom, and he appreciated a good secret. The one secret he shared with his daughter was how much he missed certain worldly comforts. He loved her mother and loved the sea, but the mortal man in him still needed to feel connected to the land. Miranda’s fascination with the land gave Valdemar an excuse and a reason to keep that connection alive, just as her love for him drove her to keep their “special treats” safe for the future. Her mother had never shared their times together on land. Helmi was always nervous on land and literally out of her element.

  Initially, the Knights Templar had always maintained the family treasury. Valdemar had belonged to the order before he went to sea. They were a most unique and unusual order, and knew more about the realities of paganism, arcane magic, and the divine creatures both in and out of the sea, than any other order in the world. Her father’s dealings with them had always been quite open.

  Every year after visiting Neptune’s stony remains in the winter palace, Miranda and her father would take a chest of jewels and other fabulous treasure to Burgunderholm. There the Templars had built their biggest fortress and four church strongholds on the granite isle in the Baltic Sea. They had secretly begun their construction during her fathers’ reign as King Valdemar I, and he had set up the duchy and the estate before he left his throne.

  Every so often, to keep the Templars under control, he would bring a trinket from the Alexander Library, or one from Atlantis. “Someday,” he always promised them, “when the time is right, we shall return the Holy Grail to the Knights Templar.” But, there was always some war, or some political or theological debacle to use as an excuse to keep it safe for a little while longer.

  After the destruction of the main chapter house in France, the Templars became increasingly more secretive. Valdemar and Miranda then began to work through the guilds and created advocate firms to service their ducal estate.

  On one particular trip to Denmark, for the meeting with the advocate, Miranda carried with her a very large collection of jewels and gold from the sea palace treasure cave. Every year or two her father had presented a few diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires to his trustees to be sold. The funds were deposited into their ducal accounts to keep everything running smoothly.

  “How do you know how much they will sell them for?” Mir
anda had asked Valdemar the first time he took her with him to introduce her to their advocates.

  “They are required by our contracts to sell only at top current market rates. The Duchy of Egeskov has a reputation for presenting only the finest gems and pearls for sale. Since the offerings from our estate are rare, and so coveted, the prestige of any Egeskov collection purchase usually drives the price of the gems above current market value,” he explained.

  After handling the affairs for a few decades from the Faeroes Manor, Miranda deemed it time to return to Denmark and attend to the fiscal welfare of the duchy in person. She had severely depleted the accounts with her Oceanus Foundation after World War I and needed to infuse the estate with more funds. The sale of the gems, gold, and pearls, had to be stretched out over the next few years in order to avoid creating a glut on the market and driving down the prices. But the coffers of the duchy needed an immediate infusion of funds, so she had brought a few extremely rare Sumerian and Babylonian pieces of jewelry. She had decided to arrange a museum tour that would create a fevered bidding war and fetch a king’s ransom for each piece when she finally decided to sell. There was still enough chaos left from the war to mask their sudden appearance on the market. In the competitive world of academia, experts and curators always worried greatly about an ancient treasure’s authenticity, but seldom about where it came from.

  A cool, crisp breeze gusted through Miranda’s open window in the Faeroe Island Manor House with the tantalizing scent of spring, her favorite season on land. She could sit for hours in their orchards under the burgeoning branches of blossoms, drinking in the fragrance and watching the petals that broke free scamper on the wind. She had been packing all morning, excited to be sailing back to Denmark for the first time in over fifty years. It was the first time since her beloved father died, and the first time since the “war to end all wars” had ended. It was the first time since she had seen the machines of man enter the depths of the sea, bringing destruction along with them. She would wear the traditional veil of her duchy, but this time the veil would be one of mourning and not mystique.

  There were papers that needed to be signed and obligations to be transferred. For the first time in over six hundred years, there was no Duke of Egeskov. Thankfully, like all wise parents do, her parents had made provisions for such a time. The advocate firm of Bruun & Gottorp had administrated the affairs of their estates in a most efficient manner. Her father had been extremely clever with the checks and balances he’d created for the trustees. The duke or duchess always retained the absolute power to change or adjust them at any time. That, and the generous annual performance bonus for the estates advocate, had ensured that very little misuse of funds or assets had occurred over the centuries.

  Aside from taking care of the legal family business, Miranda desperately needed some excitement. Her father always understood that. Her mother had been weeping for over sixty years! It was not a long time for a woman who was two thousand nine hundred and sixty-three years old, but Miranda was not yet eight hundred, and it was oppressive to her.

  She loved her mother dearly and was afraid to leave her alone for long, but she desperately missed her father too. That was why she wanted to return to their lovely little castle on the Isle of Funen, which had always been Miranda and Valdemar’s special place. Miranda wanted to do the things they had done together. Their “special treats” he’d always called them—playing the piano, strolling through the gardens, racing across the cliffs on horseback, going to the opera, and to the ballet.

  The castle was strong, solid, and ageless, just as her father had been. It rose up from the middle of a small lake like a pair of narwhal tusk piercing through the arctic ice. Two towers on each side of the castle, with a drawbridge in the center, gave it a lovely symmetry and real medieval charm. The towers even had arrow slits and scalding holes, which besides giving it an air of fascination and danger, served as a reminder of all the history and conflict its strong walls had protected the family from over the centuries.

  The walls were double thick to protect against cannon fire, and the entire castle was riddled with all kinds of secret passageways and staircases, which made playing hide and seek with her mother’s trusted selkie servants almost as fun as playing in the Coral Palace with Shifter. Miranda couldn’t use her mermaid powers to camouflage on land, but she could slip through a secret panel or spy on the selkies through eye slits in a portrait.

  The castle gardens were the one place that had really fascinated her mother. It had given her father a special joy to create a sea of flowers for Helmi. He’d filled the garden with all kinds of splashing fountains so she was always surrounded by the sound of water to make her feel safe as she walked through a sea of flowers.

  Fuchsia flowers became Helmi’s favorite. She said they reminded her of schools of tiny vibrant fish in the coral reefs hiding in clumps of seaweed. She loved to walk in the herb garden at night, look up at the stars, and smell the fragrant lavender, mint, thyme, and rosemary.

  That was the best thing about land, her mother would often say. The way things smelled in the air was so different from the way things smelled in water. One small vase of roses, or one white Casablanca lily, could fill a castle with a scent the way music could fill a ballroom with sound.

  At the Manor House, the wall mural that depicted her grandfather riding across the waves in a giant shell chariot swung slowly outward. Helmi, dressed in long, flowing white robes like the Celtic goddess she was, stepped through the mural, crossed to Miranda, and hugged her fiercely.

  “Mother!” Miranda returned the hug and added a gentle kiss on her cheek. “You didn’t need to un-tail and climb up all those steps from the grotto. I would have come down to say good-bye.”

  “No, Miranda. If I am going to let you go, I am going to sit in Valdemar’s chair in our chambers like I always did and watch you sail out of sight. I want to be with his things when you go so I won’t feel so terribly alone.”

  “Mother!” she scolded, “you won’t be alone! Your selkies are with you, and I shall be back in just a few months. I promise!”

  At that particular moment there was a knock on the chamber door and Kaja entered. She was a selkie who, forty years before, had given up the sea to marry a fisherman, and she still looked youthful for a woman who had borne a herd of bairns and run the manor for over twenty years. She wore the simple signature ring of narwhal ivory that all the handmaidens to the queen wore, bringing them good health and a very long life.

  “Your Highness!” she smiled and deeply curtsied when she saw Helmi. “How wonderful to see you in the Manor again!”

  “Bless you, Kaja,” Helmi said with a sigh. “Could you bring some tea to my rooms and some mandel kager too? It was Valdemar’s favorite cookie, and I would like to have some with my tea.”

  “It would be my pleasure, Your Highness.” Kaja clapped her hands in delight. Baking the crunchy buttery cookies, famous for their mélange of almond, cardamom, and cinnamon, was one of her special skills. Kaja scurried happily out of the room with a smile. Serving at the Manor House was a great honor for the locals, and they were very well paid. The Manor was sometimes empty for months or years at a time, and they really seemed to enjoy themselves when the family was in residence.

  It was much the same with their staff at the dainty castle in Denmark where Miranda was going, and she felt a sudden urge to be underway. So, she hugged her mother fiercely and swept out of the room into her waiting carriage without looking back.

  The ride down the narrow winding gravel road to the dock was long, but the rhythmic sound of trotting hoofs and rattling wheels was soothing and hypnotic. Before she knew it, Miranda was stepping onto the dock where the family yacht stood waiting for her to sail

  Empty Bed

  Two large, leather wingback chairs sat against the heraldic tapestry, facing a large bay window that overlooked the cove. Helmi looked more like a kitten than a queen, all curled up in the one on the right. It was more worn
than the other, with the cracks and supple luster fine leather gets when well used. It was Valdemar’s chair that she sat in to watch Miranda sail away on his yacht. She sat there long after it disappeared over the horizon, thinking of him, missing him, needing him, and wrapping herself in the scents and textures of his personal possessions. This room had been his favorite place. For all the fears she’d harbored about Valdemar spending time on land, it had been the sea that killed him.

  “The Hag is a menace to us and everyone in the world, my love,” he had scolded her when she balked at the idea of her king leading an army into battle. “Do you think we are safer sitting here in these walls of stone, or deep in the bosom of the sea?”

  “Yes, Valdemar, yes!” she had shouted at him. For the first time in their life together, she had yelled at her love. “You, Miranda, and I can live forever, wherever we choose, and the Hag will not dare to threaten us.”

  “That will not stop her from spreading havoc everywhere else!” he shouted back at her. “You are a queen, not a scullery maid! You have a duty to protect your subjects whether they have flippers or legs, whether they swim in the sea or walk on land. If the threat to them comes from her, then you and I must deal with it.”

  “Then I will deal with it if I have to. I will be the queen that you want me to be, but I will not risk you in battle. The Hag is no match for me.”

  “What if she succeeds and releases the Titans? Do you think you can take on Cronos single-handedly? That is what’s at stake here. A battle is a game of strategy, Helmi, full of danger and sacrifice. You must command masses of soldiers, choose when to challenge, whom to risk, how to control and use the terrain. You know nothing of that. I do, and I will be there no matter what the risk, to make sure this is the last time the Hag threatens our world.”