Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  Surely, that couldn’t be right. We’d been friends for forever. Maybe with everything that was going on at the moment, we were all a little crazy

  I tried to put it to the back of my mind. I had more pressing matters to deal with. Whatever Hayden’s problem was, I’d have to deal with it later.

  Ari and I headed back downstairs, bypassing the breakfast room completely, and rushed outside to the gardens.

  I’d escaped from the palace this way once, and if the ladder was still there, I’d be able to do it again. Amazingly, it was still propped against the wall where I’d left it. Ari let me go first, following quickly behind me. From there, getting to the edge of the sea was pretty easy. Ari took my hand as we walked along the clifftop away from the palace. If anyone spotted us, we’d look like any other pair of young lovers out for a stroll.

  About a mile later, we came upon some stairs cut into the cliff face. I knew they were here despite never having used them. I’d made this walk plenty of times with various nannies.

  Ari insisted on walking down in front of me so that he could catch me if I stumbled. It was sweet of him, but now that I was walking behind him, I could see how much pain he was in. He made no sound, but he trod lightly, almost limping with each step. I wondered whether he’d cry out with the agony of it if he still had his voice.

  At the bottom of the stairs, we came to a beach. Usually a small beach, now it was huge with no sea surrounding it. The sea was so far away, it was barely a tiny strip of blue on the horizon. In the distance to my left, the main public beach was full of curious people, fascinated with the phenomenon. The local police and palace guards were doing a good job of stopping them from walking out too far, thankfully. I only hoped we could get out far enough before we were spotted and chased.

  The walk was difficult with legs that worked. I could only imagine how awful it must be with legs that were new and painful. I gripped Ari’s hand hard, letting him squeeze me when the pain became too unbearable for him.

  I liked holding his hand. It wasn’t passionate like it had been in the bedroom before Astrid interrupted us, but it felt natural and safe, the way my hand fit so perfectly in his. It was beyond the most wonderful feeling in the world.

  Below our feet, we stepped over long green and brown strands of seaweed and mollusks in rock pools that would normally have been completely underwater. Dead fish and other ocean animals littered the sand. The sea must have gone out so quickly that they didn’t stand a chance. Ari’s eyes remained focused ahead, but I could see he was finding this hard. These weren’t just creatures to him; they were his friends, his family. With each step, I prayed that we wouldn’t see an octopus. With any luck, Ollie had been pulled out with the tide. Either that or he was still in the underwater cave. I glanced around to see if I could see it, but it wasn’t apparent where it was. Maybe it was further out than the current tideline.

  “How close are we to the sea witch’s lair?” I asked, checking out the ocean to my left.

  Ari squeezed my hand more tightly. “It’s not that far from here.” He pointed to a spot in the ocean that was way too close for comfort. “We are closer to Havfrue, though. We’ll be safe there. She visits the town, but there is no way she’d dare perform any magic under the king’s nose.”

  “She took the tide out under the king’s nose,” I reminded him.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Havfrue is still under water.”

  As we got closer to the water, I wondered what my grandfather was like and whether he’d know who I was. Would he recognize me as his granddaughter? I had the same red hair as my mother, but I took my looks more after my father’s side of the family.

  When we were at the water’s edge, Ari stripped off quickly and leaped into the waves. The look of relief on his face was evident as he swam up to the surface.

  His mood and demeanor changed perceptively as he dipped in and out of the water, waiting for me to pull my boots off. I took off my trousers and sweater, folding them nicely, placing them on the sand next to me, and stepped into the water. It occurred to me that I was going to meet my grandfather, the king, no less, in my underwear. I should have thought this through a bit better, but it was too late to go back now.

  “Are you going to tell him who you are?” asked Ari, pulling me along with him through the water.

  I thought about it. Maybe it would make things easier, but it would also give up my mother who had spent twenty years hiding from him. “No. I don’t think so. I’ll tell him I’m a friend of yours.”

  Ari stopped so suddenly that I crashed right into him.

  He turned and looked right at me. “Knowing a merperson won’t make a difference. The King doesn’t know who I am. If anything, me bringing you to him will make things worse for both of us. He will not take this well. I know you have high hopes, but he hates land dwellers. He probably won’t hurt you, but he won’t be happy about you coming to Havfrue. I suspect he’ll also have a few choice words for me too.”

  “I’m sure we will be fine,” I replied, not sure of anything at all.

  I was beginning to feel more at home underwater. As Ari pulled me along, I marveled at the feel of the water rushing past my face, the feel of the warmth of the sun’s rays penetrating the surface as we dashed through the coral streets of Havfrue toward the large pointed building at the far end of the vast underwater city.

  It was here that Ari brought me. I didn’t have to ask to know it was the royal palace. Although not as refined as the palace I was brought up in, in Trifork, it certainly equaled it for size. Four uneven turrets stood at each corner. But unlike any castle or palace I’d ever seen, the center rose up, dwarfing the towers and ended in a point just ten feet or so below the surface of the water. There were no stairs. People didn’t walk here, so Ari pulled me in through a large opening that I supposed was the front door.

  Two sturdily built mermen swam quickly over to us and opened their mouths to speak. One had long pale blue hair that rippled out behind him in the water and huge chest muscles that must have taken a lot of working out to acquire. The second was no less bulky, but his hair was slightly shorter, falling just past his shoulders and was the same shade as a ripe banana. When they did speak, the noise that came out of their mouths was not words, or at least, no words I could understand. It sounded like just noise. Small bubbles rose to the surface as they spoke.

  Ari answered them in the same way.

  One of the mermen, the yellow-haired fellow, turned on his tail and swam deeper into the palace.

  “You can talk!” I exclaimed, even though I wasn’t sure that’s exactly what he was doing.

  “Only down here. The sea witch knew what she was doing. She wanted to hurt me. Taking my underwater voice wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “How would it not hurt you?” I asked him, trying to understand.

  “I worded that wrong. It would hurt me, but not as much as not being able to talk to you. I guess she didn’t expect me to have the bond with you or she would have taken my underwater voice too. In case you were wondering, I requested an audience with the king. Normally, I wouldn’t have a hope of getting to see him, but I knew that bringing a human down here would give me a fast track pass to the royal room.”

  Seconds later, the blonde man returned and gestured us toward a corridor. My heart pounded as we swam. The corridor became smaller and smaller until we were swimming through no more than a tunnel. At first, I thought a trick was being played on us, and we’d end up coming to a dead end. But then, it opened out into the most beautiful room I’d ever seen in my life.

  It reminded me of an aquarium my parents had taken me to as a child. I’d begged my mother and father to be able to go out onto the sea so many times, that they’d finally taken me to Trifork’s biggest aquarium as a compromise. It was the only time I’d seen my mother around sea creatures and not be scared. Knowing what I knew now, it was because she felt at home there, and the sea witch couldn’t get her. The biggest attraction at the aquarium was a
long glass tunnel that wound through the actual tank, so it felt like you were underwater without having to get wet. I was mesmerized by how perfect everything looked. That is what this room looked like. The sand covering the floor was pristine, the coral decorating the walls, a perfect pink color, and the fish that swam through it were the most beautiful kinds such as neon blue angelfish, orange and black striped clownfish, and beautiful purple fish with fanlike tails. It was as if it had been curated that way. I looked up to see that we were in the very center of the palace, the part that ended up in a point. Small windows let in shafts of light and at the very top was a cage. Inside the cage, which took up about two-thirds of the space in this grand hall was a shark, a massive white shark about four times the length of me with a huge set of monstrous looking teeth. Ari shook my hand violently to bring my attention back from the terrifying shark above us. There in front of us was a sight so much worse, a sight that chilled me to my core. It was my grandfather, and boy, did he look mad.

  22

  The King

  My grandfather’s voice boomed out, echoing off the walls and sending the shark above into a tizzy. Long, white hair fanned out behind him, and his long, silver-white beard was tied at the front with a gold cord, stopping it from floating up in front of his face. His tail was bright green, much brighter than any of the other merpeople’s tails and had a luminescence about it that was right at home in this beautiful room. I wondered for a second if my mother’s tail was the same color before she lost it to the sea witch. I had no idea what he was saying, so I followed what would be protocol in my own palace and bowed deeply to him.

  His laugh was not something that needed a translator. It was so loud, the walls around us shook. All I could think was that if he laughed any harder, the shark’s cage was going to fall down.

  “The land dweller bows at my feet,” he said. I could understand him now, but his voice sounded strange underwater. He was speaking in my language for my benefit, although why my bowing down to him would be considered funny was anyone’s guess.

  “I’m guessing you are here because you want my help. It doesn’t surprise me that the king of Trifork would send a young girl to do his dirty work, but I consider it exceptionally disrespectful of him not to come himself. Land dwellers are trash, and so, my girl, are you.”

  Anger bubbled up within me. Who did he think he was? I’d not opened my mouth to speak to him, and he’d already pegged me as trash. It took everything I had not to swim right up to him and tell him exactly who he was calling trash. The heir to the throne of Trifork and more importantly, the heir to the throne here. Ok, it wasn’t just moral indignance that stopped me. The fact I could barely swim, and the knowledge that if I let go of Ari’s hand, I wouldn’t be able to breathe underwater were also contributing factors.

  Ari spoke to him in their weird language. I couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying, but I could tell by the way the king spoke, that it wasn’t going well.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, panicking, but Ari didn’t answer. He was too busy arguing with the king.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Ari began to tug at my hand.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, using all the force I could muster to pull against him. It was no use, he was so much stronger than me, and my swimming ability was practically nonexistent, to say the least. “Stop!”

  “We can’t stop, not unless you want to be that shark’s lunch.”

  “You’re joking, right?” I asked, letting him pull me now.

  “Do you want to hang around to find out?”

  We swam quickly through the tunnel back to the entrance of the palace, and as we exited the main door, three women swam past us. Three gorgeous women with vibrant green tails and hair the exact shade as my own. Without a doubt, these were some of my mother’s sisters, but Ari didn’t stop, not even for a second. He must have really believed the threat my grandfather issued. He didn’t stop until we were at the water’s edge. I pulled myself out and dried myself off the best I could on the sweater I’d left there, before pulling it over my head.

  The way my grandfather had treated us went around and round in my head as Ari did a few flips in the water before he too pulled himself back onto the land.

  I knew it was going to happen before it did, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sickening sounds Ari’s body made as his tail turned into legs. Nor could I get over the horrifying expression of pain on his face. When he was completely changed, he lay panting on the wet sand.

  Turning from human to merman and back again was going to end up killing him.

  As gently as I could, I wiped the excess moisture from his legs, dabbing them rather than rubbing, but with each touch, no matter how delicate, he cried out in pain. His skin looked angry and sore, like someone had rubbed sandpaper all over it, and as he turned to take the trousers from my hand, I could see the agony etched into every line on his face.

  The walk back to the palace was a slow one. Although much stronger and faster than me underwater, Ari was walking much slower here on land. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell that it was much worse for him now than it had been previously. I was almost having to pull him along in the sand to get him to move at all.

  The beach was so crowded with people now, that it was inevitable that someone would spot us. My red hair was hardly discrete, and so it was the palace guards who ran out to meet us. As soon as I let go of Ari, he collapsed onto the sand.

  With help from the guards, we managed to get Ari back to the palace.

  My father was waiting for me in the grand hall.

  “There you are!” he said, looking excited. “What’s the matter with him?”

  I turned to the guards holding Ari. “Please take him to the infirmary and get the nurse to look at his legs.”

  Ari was in too much pain to protest. I wasn’t even sure he heard me through it.

  “Actually, it was that chap of yours I wanted to speak to,” my father cut in. “He seemed so knowledgeable about the mermaid city that I thought I’d ask him some questions.”

  I watched the guards carrying Ari away. It felt like part of my heart was going with him. “Not tonight, father,” I mumbled. “He’s not well. Maybe he’ll feel well enough to help you in the morning.”

  “Oh, damn shame. Henry has managed to call in some of our ships that were already out at sea when the tide went out. We are going to strike tomorrow. I was hoping he’d have some advice.”

  My mouth dropped open in shock, but before I had time to say anything, Henry came out of the conference room and pulled my father away.

  I wandered down to the infirmary, my head reeling. I’d had a bad experience in Havfrue, but that didn’t mean I wanted it destroyed. Ari had mentioned that they were ready if we attacked, so did that mean they would attack back?

  It didn’t bear thinking about and all this because of a twenty-year-old grudge from an old crone who just happened to know magic.

  Ari was barely conscious when I got to the infirmary. He was lying on a bed with his legs exposed. They looked even worse than they had at the beach. They were scaly and covered in some kind of cream.

  “The nurse put it on,” he said sleepily when he saw what I was looking at. “It’s supposed to help burns. I told her I hadn’t been burned, but she didn’t know what else to do.”

  I looked around the room to see if Lucy was around. I didn’t want her overhearing what I had to say next. It was only after I’d made sure that she was completely gone that I realized that she wouldn’t hear us anyway.

  I sighed and lowered my head until it came to a rest on Ari’s chest. He ran his hand through my hair lightly, giving me goosebumps.

  “Has the cream helped?” I asked, gazing down at his legs. They still looked so sore. I wasn’t surprised the nurse thought he was burned.

  “Not really, but the pills she gave me to sleep are doing a great job.”

  I sat up and looked down at his face. He was wearing a slopp
y grin and looked almost drunk. His eyelids were drooping.

  “My father is planning to destroy Havfrue tomorrow morning,” I said to him. “They’ve brought in some of our ships.”

  Ari giggled. “Have they really.”

  I nodded, knowing that none of this was sinking in. Whatever the nurse had given to him was strong stuff. He closed his eyes. I waited for him to reopen them, but he was already asleep.

  I really hoped the cream on his legs would help, but I doubted it. They looked like they were dying. Thinking of the sea witch and how unfair she was, I thought maybe they were.

  With a heavy heart, I left the hospital wing and headed slowly upstairs to my room. I was so tired, but everything was buzzing around in my brain. Ari was hurt, his home would soon be destroyed, and he was completely out of it in the infirmary.

  I’d just reached my bedroom door when my mother apprehended me.

  “I’m not even going to get angry,” my mother said evenly. I turned to her and tried to keep focus. She sounded resigned to everything now. She’d hidden from this mess for over twenty years and now that it had all caught up with her, she’d completely given up. “Just tell me this. Did my father mention me?”

  “I didn’t tell him who I was,” I replied. “I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

  I waited for her to tell me she hadn’t wanted me to go to see him in the first place, but she didn’t. She nodded her head and then pulled me into a hug.

  “You are going to be the death of me, you know that?”

  “I’m sorry, mama.” I was, but I knew it was an empty apology. What I’d done today was bad, but after hearing what my father was about to do, not to mention the pain that Ari was in, I was planning something so much worse.