In the Between Time

by Krystyne Price

  But he didn’t. He sensed danger in spades and yet curiosity always having been one of his biggest problems, he couldn’t help but point to the gray one’s chest and ask, “Why do you bear this symbol upon your skin?”

  The stranger looked down at the white mark and then returned his gaze to Jafo’s. “I don’t even know who you are. Why would I tell you anything of my marks?”

  Marks? Plural? Jafo wondered what other ones the man had that were hidden from sight. “I am Imo Jafo,” he introduced himself with a small nod of his head. “And you?”

  The stranger sneered but kept his distance with his komros. “I don’t think I’m going to tell you, Imo.” His eyes roamed to the tidakam. “What is this dark magic you hold?”

  Magic? Jafo looked down at the tidakam. Yes, he supposed those who didn’t hold to the ancient ways might think it so. That could work to his advantage, actually. If No-Name intended to do him harm, he might be able to use the tidakam as a scare tactic, whether or not he actually tried to invoke its power.

  “Sorry, that’s on a need-to-know basis.”

  “I need to know.”

  Jafo narrowed his eyes, the need to protect outweighing his usually healthy sense of self preservation. “No. You don’t.”

  The stranger looked up to the right. As though answering a call Jafo hadn’t heard him make, the soton removed itself from the wall and floated toward the man, revealing Jafo’s one-time exit hole had been covered with something which blocked it entirely. Jafo couldn’t tell what the substance was and guessed if it’d come from the creature, he didn’t want to know.

  “I would suggest, merlan, that you tell me what I want to know, and hand the object over to me as you do.” The stranger held out his hand arrogantly, as though everyone he gave orders to always followed them without question.

  Jafo swam a couple finswishes backward. He didn’t want to get too close to Daria and Ajibo, thus making them visible in the glow should the men swim closer. But he also was running out of room to maneuver, and that soton looked hungry.

  What could he do?

  This was his first test as Daria’s Protector. Whether arranged by the daris or not, it filled him with indignation. Yes, he had made the choice to be transformed, but to test him with a monster soton and six men? He was against impossible odds and hadn’t even been an imo long enough to really know everything he was now capable of.

  You know what you can do, if you listen to your inner voice.

  Some inner voice. It was Nino, and he knew it. That’s not my inner voice, it’s yours.

  Nino didn’t respond and Jafo wondered if he really should be angering the only dari he was on a first-name basis with in this situation.

  Probably not.

  His inner voice, huh? Okay, he’d try it. Against his better reason he closed his inner eyelids. His outer ones remained open only a slit as he turned inward and asked for help keeping Daria safe from these strangers. He raised the tidakam into the air until it was level with his face and it began glowing brighter. Brighter. Envisioning tendrils shooting out from him into the foreheads of each man present, he concentrated and got a sensation like he was flinging parts of himself outward.

  The first startled cry of pain made both sets of eyelids fly wide open. He stared in disbelief. For there were tendrils – six of them – going from the tidakam to the forehead of each man. The other five were writhing in pain but seemed unable to break free. Only the dark gray one remained steady, though his eyes betrayed that he was also in agony.

  That wasn’t what Jafo had wanted to do! He wanted to simply freeze them in place, not harm them! Imos didn’t want to do harm to others!

  The soton roared…actually roared with some kind of voice that slammed into Jafo’s eardrums and made him fumble the tidakam. Stunned, he moved back a few fin-lengths while trying to keep hold of the sphere. Concentration thus broken, the six men and the soton struck.

  The first sucker punch to his gut made the tidakam fly out of his hand. The next thing he felt was the strong grip of a thick tentacle slap around his waist and crush the white telin covering his zaka. Jafo screamed in pain; it felt like he’d been punched right in the zakalas and he wriggled and squirmed trying desperately to get away from the soton’s grip.

  But he couldn’t. As the soton squeezed him tighter and tighter, Jafo could think only that he had failed his very first test. And Daria.

  * * *

  “You expect me to believe all this?”

  Mateo pouted.

  Sirena frowned. “You think your own son lies to you?”

  “Of course not!” Omaro spat, then scrubbed a hand down his face. “Look, I’m sorry, all right? It’s just…” He shook his head and tweaked the end of Mateo’s nose with his thumb and forefinger, eliciting a lessening of the pout. Omaro sighed and looked directly into Sirena’s eyes. For a moment he seemed to falter, but then regained himself. She wondered why. Perhaps attraction, for her mother had always told her men would be overly attracted to her.

  Of course, Sirena’s experience or rather, lack thereof, indicated otherwise. Still, Omaro was a handsome man and she was drawn to his strength. The problem was his attitude. Pain still dwelt deep within him for reasons she suspected he didn’t even fully understand.

  “Things I have discovered about my life lead me to believe none of it has been as I thought.” Behind Mateo’s head, he gestured toward the little man. “Including this.”

  Mateo looked up and back. Sirena wondered if somehow he knew what Omaro had been trying to hide. It hadn’t occurred to her that any meran wouldn’t want the honor of fathering a prophesied child. But she tried to see it from his perspective. Yes, his wife had perished by the teeth of a nagala. Yes, the woman had birthed something so obviously not of Omaro’s loins and then Mateo had mysteriously appeared in place of the merling. Which Omaro had thrown into the ocean. Aea’s acknowledgement of the merling’s existence, however, at least gave Sirena confidence that the twin had survived somehow.

  Twin. To think of Mateo, a meran with legs, as the twin of a mer who swam with the fish boggled her brain. But right now she had to focus on keeping Omaro and Mateo with her. To ensure Omaro didn’t run off again, leaving her without any way to be the child’s Protector.

  Not that she’d yet decided to give her assent to that particular job.

  “Father, Sirena is my Protector.”

  Sirena nearly got whiplash from turning to stare at Mateo. Could he read her mind as Aea did? But he wasn’t looking at her; his eyes held Omaro’s.

  “I must remain with her, Father.”

  “She’s your Protector?” Omaro asked, disbelief rocketing his eyebrows up into arches. He looked at her and she felt her face heat up.

  “Yes, that’s what I told Aea.”

  “Aea? Who…is that the woman who was here when I woke up?”

  Mateo nodded enthusiastically. “She’s my grandmother, Father!”

  “Your grandmothers aren’t either named Aea,” Omaro corrected him. Mateo’s jaw jutted out stubbornly as he continued, “Your mother’s mother was Marita and my mother was…” He stopped, looked up at the glow from the water that lit the cavern’s ceiling and then said more quietly, “Her name was Kirona.”

  Mateo shook his head with such force that Sirena feared for the health of his neck. He jumped from his father’s lap and crossed his little arms over his chest. “Only Kirona is my grandmother of this realm.”

  Realm? Sirena frowned. What other realm was he implying the existence of? For surely if the daris had once dwelt upon Mera, they were within the same realm as mers.

  “Aea is my other grandmother.”

  Omaro’s expression grew dark. Sirena sensed he was thinking of something from his own past. She wondered if it had to do with Ziana. Mateo refusing to claim Ziana’s mother as his own grandmother certainly raised eyebrows, for it meant he didn’t feel Ziana was his mother. Which pointed to a mer. The more likely scenario, Sirena believed, would’ve been that Om
aro never told Mateo about Ziana to begin with. Yet would he not have asked after his own mother? Or…was he simply birthed already knowing? So many questions clouded her mind now, but the one that made her head begin to ache was, could a daughter of Aea’s actually be Mateo’s biological mother? Was that the mer who had birthed him?

  Sirena’s headache increased so she stopped the circuitous question-everything moment. “All I need to know,” she said, laying a hand upon Omaro’s shin and yes, he was still nude and how she wished he’d do something about that, “is that you will not take Mateo from me again.”

  “You have no claim on him, Ima,” Omaro stated.

  Mateo moved to her side. “She is my Protector.”

  “I haven’t exactly agreed to that yet, small one.”

  He turned his little face up to look at her. “But you will, won’t you? I need you, Ima, to protect and guide and educate me.”

  “That’s my job.” Omaro rose to his feet, everything fully on display. Sirena averted her eyes. “Enough of this talk. We must find Ghano.”

  Ghano. Yes, Sirena had almost forgotten him! “Did the Lunan capture him?” she asked.

  “I do not know. Ghano escaped with Mateo.” He looked down at the child. “What happened to him?”

  “He left me in a small cave and never returned,” Mateo replied. “I don’t know where he is.”

  Omaro looked grim. Sirena felt the same way. Then something caught his eye ahead of him somewhere. Sirena turned to look and gasped when she realized the water in the pool was no longer placid. It rippled as though something beneath as making it move. But what could it be?

  A head popped up out of the water, followed by shoulders, a torso and a waist. And more. It was all Sirena could do to breathe. The woman she beheld had strange colored skin, with a greenish tinge to it, but it was what lay beyond that…

  “What the nerak?” Omaro said, striding forward.

  The young woman quickly ducked back under the water. Sirena reached the pool’s edge just in time to watch whoever it was swim away through the passage under the cave wall. From what she could see through the water, it had a tail of mixed green and lavendar with translucent fins. Wait, tail? Fins??? By my ancestors’ pakanis…an actual mer!

  Omaro stared at the passageway, disbelief oozing from every pore. Mateo was grinning ear to ear. Sirena was stunned.

  “You see?” Mateo said cheerfully, clapping his hands together loudly. “I told you!”

  Sirena crouched down so they were eye level, more certain than she’d thought herself capable of of. “Yes, Mateo. I will become your Protector.”

  Having seen a mer for the first time with her own eyes, what else could Sirena do? There was no room for disbelief. No room for fighting with an emotionally constipated meran, strong or not. All there was, for her, was the fact that she’d been created for a reason. And that reason was all of five years old right now. Fifteen years distant the prophecy’s fulfillment would be complete and the daris…Aea probably included in their numbers…would be returning to judge the merans and mers of Mera. Given how upset Aea had gotten over the way women were not equal to their male counterparts, Sirena now wished she’d given her mother’s lectures and fights for justice more credence. For what more had Anala been trying to do than that which Aea wanted?

  Her shoulders slumped at the thought of not even knowing now where her mother was. Mateo wrapped himself around her and she rose with him in her arms. “Thank you, Protector.” He leaned back to look into her eyes and smiled.

  She returned the smile and then directed her attention at Omaro. Ultimately, the success of her Protectorship was wholly dependent on his ability to accept any of this. When at last he met her eyes, he nodded dumbly.

  Something warm bubbled inside her belly that made her partly want to vomit and partly want to dance like no ima should. Perhaps they would be able to see Mateo to maturity after all, she and Omaro. Whether more would happen along the way for the two elder of the trio, remained to be seen.

  It felt like he’d read her thoughts, for Omaro looked down at himself and only then seemed to realize his state of undress. “I, uh…it would appear I have lost my pakan.”

  “And your pakanis,” Mateo giggled.

  Omaro’s high cheekbones splotched crimson, visible even though his skin was so dark.

  “Yes,” Sirena replied succinctly, turning her back to the naked man. “I will forage for food. Why don’t you try to find something to…cover yourself?”

  “In here?” Omaro asked incredulously. “It’s a cave! What do you want me to use, rocks?”

  Sirena was fully prepared to point out that it was his job to figure out what to cover himself with, not hers, but a distant shout broke the cavern’s echoing silence and Omaro tensed at the same moment Sirena did. The Lunan. Surely by now Vago had discovered the bodies of his dead men. He’d probably been searching the tunnels and caves for hours and was finally getting close to this place.

  But where could they go? Risk running back out the way they’d entered, only to come face-to-face with Vago? He’d kill them for sure, for what Omaro had done to Yanko and Qitaro. Sirena whipped around, staring at every smooth, curved wall, every stalactite. There was a large stalagmite near the far wall and she ran to it, hoping to find some other way out there. But there was only solid rock behind it.

  Three more shouts told Sirena that Vago’s men had gotten closer. Her eyes lit on the pool, and on the passage through which they’d just seen the mer swim.

  Omaro picked up on where she was going with the gaze and shook his head. “Oh, no. I’m not going in the water. Don’t forget I lost my wife to a nagala!”

  “It’s the only way out, Omaro!”

  “It’s not safe for him!” he retorted, pointing at Mateo.

  “This way!” a distant voice yelled from somewhere in the entry tunnel.

  “They aren’t safe for him either,” Sirena countered, pointing toward the tunnel.

  Omaro’s jaw moved. He looked like he was about to unleash a string of curse words not unlike those Yanko had belted out during the fight, but he restrained himself and instead said in a very soft voice, “I don’t know how to swim.”

  Sirena shook her head. “That makes two of us. How hard can it be, though?”

  “It is not difficult, Protector.” Mateo grabbed one of her hands with his right and one of Omaro’s with his left. “Come, I will show you.”

  “You’ve never gone swimming! I wouldn’t let you near the only lake we came across in our travels!”

  Mateo gave him a smile that Sirena could only consider wicked, in an innocent, childish sort of way. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t go swimming, Father.”

  “There’s a glow! Come on!”

  A glow…the tidakam! Sirena ripped her hand away from Mateo’s and sprinted toward the wall near the entryway, where she’d left the glowing sphere after healing Omaro.

  “Sirena!” Omaro barked.

  Vago’s men burst into the cavern. She whirled around toward Mateo and Omaro and felt the moment when her ankle twisted on a small step up in the rock. “Go! Take him now! Go, Omaro!” she yelled, then cried out when her hip connected with the tidakam.

  She heard a loud splash but couldn’t see what’d happened, for when she raised her head with tears of pain streaming down her face, she found herself surrounded by Lunan.

  Chapter Eight

  No. He would not be defeated so quickly. Daria’s well-being, and possibly the entire fate of Mera, rested at least partially in his hands. Grandiose thoughts, maybe, but they did the trick to keep him from letting the soton have its way. Jafo flung his right hand out as the beast whipped him up so fast he barely had time to duck his head before slamming into the ceiling. It felt like every vertebra had been cracked but he was still able to move.

  “Stupid beast…” he managed to churn out amongst all the crackling pain that zig-zagged throughout his torso.

  Jafo saw that No-Name now held the tidakam in his
hand, yet its glow had decreased to the point where he could barely make it out. Good. That meant it wouldn’t respond to the baruo. Was he supposed to call men things like that since becoming an imo? No matter. He was livid enough to curse now and ask questions later.

  Arm still outstretched, he called out to the tidakam and ordered it to his hand. Its glow increased, startling No-Name, who tightened his grip on it and looked up at him. Since the soton had Jafo well in hand…er, tentacle…the gray one’s goons were just hanging back watching the show. Which meant they had no idea Ajibo and Daria were there.

  Well, if this worked, Jafo was about to give these intruders their scales’ worth of show.

  Once more Jafo called out to the tidakam, ordering it to bow to his will no matter what may try to impede it. The soton reared up and slammed Jafo against the wall again, cracking the back of his skull and making him see spots before his eyes. No, wouldn’t give in. Couldn’t. Mustn’t.

  “Come to me!” he bellowed, projecting it like a tidal wave from the deepest parts of his mind.

  One of No-Name’s men shrieked when the sphere’s light suddenly burst into full brilliance. Even the soton faltered. Jafo kept his hand outstretched as best he could, which wasn’t easy to do being flung about like a piece of umba stalk.

  The tidakam slapped against his palm. His hand closed reflexively around it and his mind forced a column of pink out from the sphere directly into the forehead of the soton. All bets were off. Nuelo had murdered the raksi to keep it from killing Daria. What Jafo was about to do, was no different. Something he remembered his father telling his mother once when she’d despaired over not being able to find a scribe to take Jafo under their tuteledge, filtered into his thoughts.

  We’ll keep trying. Our sinpod doesn’t give up.

  “We sure as baha don’t.” With that thought firmly in mind he lashed out, mentally projecting something that was a mixture of fear and anger directly through the pink column and into the beast’s brain. It screamed again, something that sounded so unnatural and was so loud it made Jafo’s eardrums vibrate, little piercing stabs seeping into his skull.