Kingdom of Salt and Sirens

by J. A. Armitage

  She cried out. I wielded my knife.

  Mother looked up at us and clicked her tongue, asking for my silent compliance. “Girls, there is no need for you to fight. Ari, I know going to the human city confused you, but you should still be smart enough to see that this is for the best.” She pushed Erys from her, and he fell. No sound, no attempt to catch himself.

  I looked for his breath and felt only slightly comforted with its shaky rise and fall.

  Mother cleaned his blood from her mouth and pointed to my knife. “You should be the one to finish him. You loved him, and he scorned you. He rejected you.”

  He loved me in a way she could never understand.

  “You can still take his heart and we can put all this behind us,” Mother said.

  I couldn’t even pretend I would, not anymore. “He is my brother. You will not touch him again, and he is coming home with me.”

  She glared, and thunder cracked from outside. Her power. “How can you believe this boy more than your own mother? The humans, that world of men will never accept you. You are my daughter and you will always be a Princess of the Deep.”

  I didn’t answer. I swung my arm to throw the knife at the urns.

  If I could just hit one . . .

  Titera knocked into me and grabbed my arms again. The blade hit the ground near Erys’s fallen form. “Mother, you see how she is?” Titera said, asking permission to strike.

  I felt myself go limp in her arms. I couldn’t reason with my mother. I couldn’t fight past Titera to get to the urns. My blade proved useless time and again and I didn’t have any other weapon except for my voice.

  My voice. I had my voice, but now I needed something more that couldn’t be spoken, something that had only started to respond to me while my proper voice had been gone—a weak uncertain voice that had only gotten in the way. With that stripped away, a new force had risen to take its place. The force that had exposed Vi and killed Lilthe.

  Now I would call it with or without my voice. Mother’s power and mine.

  It had called thunder and lightning with my growing fear and uncertainty, but now I fed it an emotion even stronger than that. A new conviction.

  I might have lost the heart of a prince. I lost everything, but I would not lose my soul.

  I would be Little Sister Anne if I had to, but I would never be the Princess of the Deep.

  I sang out my own song. Hard and raw.

  A sudden shriek.

  The water in the underground stream shifted. The thunder roared. Wind blew in a barely controlled gale. The urns shattered. Their inner ash fell over the rocks like powered snow.

  29

  Somehow, I expected if I could shatter the urns, everything would change, and it had. My mother, a crone past her nineties, stumbled into the underground stream and hit the rocks with a sickening crack, but my sister was now a homely thirty-year-old woman, a human who still wanted me dead.

  She gave a yell, and I felt the wind from her arm.

  Blood blossomed from her back. Then she dropped.

  An empty numbness entered my chest as I looked down. Her breath hitched. The light faded from her eyes. Just standing there, I couldn’t pull my eyes away and only saw the shadow of the man still standing behind her with his arm raised. “Ari?”

  “You-you killed her.”

  Erys dropped the knife—glowing to mark the royal blood it had finally spilt. His eyes still looked dizzy and lost, his legs barely holding him upright. “I’m sorry.”

  Sorry? He was alive. My prince, my brother was alive.

  But what did this mean for the rest of my family? For Serena and the twins? They wouldn’t be sirens anymore. Like Titera before Erys stabbed her, their bodies would be young enough to give them a life. If they were near enough to land. If they could adjust to the change.

  If . . .

  Tears speckled my hands and the rocks by my feet.

  Erys’s arms came around me. Almost falling on me, the boy was trying to comfort me just the same. “I’m sorry, Ari. I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t want him to apologize, but I couldn’t get my tears to stop long enough to tell him so. My remaining sisters were better off. They would make it to land. The four of us would be off the island and have the life my father wanted. I had to believe that.

  I wasn’t sorry, and I didn’t want him to be, but I still needed to cry.

  Salt and a metallic smell came with Erys’s embrace. I pulled away and touched the place on his neck where he bled.

  He winced, but tried for a smile. “You know I was just fooling her. I had a plan. The whole time.”

  Like Hades’s fire he did. “It doesn’t matter. I won’t tell Helene.” He had to get home and marry her so the war would end. And I had to get off the island.

  Our boat was broken, but I ran for a stray board.

  “Do you want to build a raft with me?”

  30

  Erys and Helene had their wedding in secret, but when it was over, trumpets announced the occasion to every corner of the empire. I sat on the kitchen counter at the monastery next to the window and heard every sound.

  I couldn’t hide from them.

  My book was open in my lap, but I wasn’t reading it. I wasn’t much help in the kitchen, either. Since coming to the monastery, it seemed I did nothing but talk. I couldn’t seem to get enough of it. I told Sister Leah everything, even of my gift over the storms that had shattered the urns and helped me so many other times without my notice.

  Leah didn’t curse me once. “It seems to me that your mother never mastered her gift,” she said. Her habit was splatted with dough as she shaped the bread on the table. “It mastered her.”

  I shook my head. “But you hate men too. That is why you chose to live here.” She might be more of a kindred spirit than I thought.

  “I chose to live here because I loved a man too much. My Aaron died of a fever before we were to wed. After that, nothing could satisfy me but my god.”

  I looked back at my book. I read it all, but I still had so many questions. So many inner voices tugged at my heat that I didn’t even think a god would satisfy me.

  “I thought I loved Prince Erymanthus, but he hurt me just the same. Sometimes, I think I hate him. Things were . . . simpler before him.” I pushed my book away. “Perhaps I will never marry or use my voice again. Then I could be Sister Anne and live here again, couldn’t I?” I wouldn’t have a thing to do with men or my power over the wind. “It would keep me pure.”

  “You would be just as pure if you committed yourself to a good man or found another way to bless others with your song. You may have whatever feelings you wish and make the wind blow through the trees, but you will still be pure so long as you only act to help and serve others.”

  “But when my mother tried to use her gift for the elements, everyone said it was a sin.” The mark of a bloody old god, even before Mother used it to kill her prince.

  “If your mother had this power before swearing to Valadern, then the power didn’t come from him, and neither does yours.”

  “Then where did it come from?”

  “I don’t know.” With those words, humbly admitting her limitations, Leah seemed far wiser than any other woman I had met. “And I can’t say everyone will like it. There was so much corruption in the old magic and powers that many can’t see it without linking it with evil. They say the monks felt the same about their sexuality, that it was better to abstain than risk even the appearance of corruption. But it is a beautiful gift for some, used at the proper place and time. Take the vows if that is what you decide your heart is leading you to, not simply to run from something else.”

  Where was my heart leading me? It had taken me away from the sea, but what came after that? Probably not a church. I still wasn’t a saint or storybook hero. Leah might be willing to brush over my heritage now, but she might not feel the same if she heard me sing and knew how close I truly had been to fulfilling my mother’s dark oath.

&n
bsp; I rejected her once, but maybe part of me would always be a Princess of the Deep.

  The priest’s boarhound brayed out in the church’s graveyard. I turned and looked through the open window. I recognized the muscled frame of the young guard at once, but the priest yelled and kept on yelling when the newcomer didn’t say anything to defend his intrusion.

  I couldn’t let that stand.

  Just because Jonas couldn’t speak, didn’t mean he was stupid.

  “What happened?” I signed and said the words, watching for his answer. “Jonas says you should train that damn dog better. He never went near your bloody graves until Cerberus started chasing him, but he’ll talk to me out in the yard if you would prefer.”

  Jonas’s smile stretched across his face, and he shook his head.

  “Fine. Jonas didn’t swear. That was just me.” I slid off the counter and out through the window, leaving the priest to wrestle with his dog. I brushed and straightened the skirt of my stola before speaking to Jonas. “What did you need?”

  “Prince wants you to come home.”

  Leah stuck her head out the window after me, frowning at the movement of his hands. “You understand that?”

  “Of course.” It seemed more people should. “He says Erys wants me to come to the palace.”

  Leah laughed. “I don’t know who he thinks he is fooling. No groom would think to send for you on a day like this.” She moved back into the kitchen with a smile that said she already knew how our conversation would end.

  Erys would send for me, even on his wedding day, but I did not miss her meaning. She thought Jonas had come on his own. She thought he liked me.

  I looked again at his broad shoulders and soft smile.

  “Look what I found for you,” Erys had said, the night after telling me what kind of man he wished I would have. Someone kind, steady, and strong. Someone who never yelled. Something out of my storybook. He spent all night looking for someone who spoke with his hands and quizzed Jonas’s family to make sure he would fit every other qualification. Paid them more money than they saw in a year, asking for only three things in return. “Teach sister. Guard sister. Be nice.”

  Erys really had everything planned from the start. My pushy, meddling, unbelievably sweet brother had been playing matchmaker, and I had been too distracted to notice. “Erys sent you?”

  “Prince said to get you because . . . I did not like being left behind last night. Prince was hurt and you were gone and no one knew why. I asked Prince what happened, and he said you came here. He said he already told you to come back, and you said no, but I should try anyway because he not like me pacing. He is nervous about wedding, and ‘I not helping.’”

  “And why do you want me to come back? Do you simply wish to hear how I lost my voice? How I regained it?” He must already know something since he hadn’t seem surprised to have heard me speaking to the priest and Sister Leah, but I still wanted to tell him. “I am the daughter of a princess, but I made a foolish bargain with a witch and siren of the sea. She took my voice, but I have taken it back from her and made it my own.”

  He nodded. “Your voice is beautiful. I knew you must be a singer.”

  “And do you also wish for me to be your sister?” I had to ask him now, while I could accept either answer.

  He rolled his eyes. “I have too many sisters. You are not my sister.”

  My voice had left me again, but with Jonas, spoken words didn’t matter. I signed the words I needed. Secret words, meant only for the two of us to share. “Then what am I?”

  “You are strong. You are brave. You are . . . princess.” He was so close and earnest it seemed I read the answer from his eyes instead of his hands. Everything from him had always been so certain and clear. “You will be whatever you wish to be.” He kissed my hand.

  My heart fluttered, a sudden longing to explore this possibility no matter how it had originated or ended. I took his hand and felt the warmth and power in his palm. A storm still ragged in my heart, but he was a rock, an anchor that could silence everything with a look.

  I could have really kissed him, like I had wanted to kiss Erys, and I knew Jonas would let me. Part of me still desperately wanted to, but for now, just holding his hand was enough.

  I couldn’t swear myself to another man right now. I couldn’t swear myself to a god.

  Torn between two fierce powers, I couldn’t just run from one to another. I wanted to find my own voice first, discover the depths of my own soul, before merging it with someone else’s.

  I wanted to sing out my gifts and have the wind answer. A song of hope. A song of love and a summer rain. Singing for those that couldn’t. If I kept searching and exploring, one day I might find a proper place and match for myself. Until then, I wanted to get back to the palace.

  My prince, my brother, my new family was waiting.

  And Jonas was cute.

  THE END

  Author’s Note

  The Little Mermaid- Have you ever read the original Hans Christian Anderson story of the Little Mermaid? Do you hate it? I would certainly understand it if you do! It’s a very different story than the popular Disney version. The prince marries another princess. The mermaid dies. Tongues are cut out. Tongues! It’s gritty and dark and strange. But it’s still one of my absolute favorites.

  You see, in the original version, the reason the mermaid falls in love with the prince and longs to become human is because humans have something she and all the other mermaids do not have. The humans have an eternal soul that carries on after death.

  Mermaids are doomed to become sea foam.

  So, the virtuous but naive mermaid, saves the prince from drowning, and then goes to the Sea Witch willing to trade anything to become human. The Sea Witch proposes an impossible bargain. Along with feeling pain as she walks, the mermaid has her tongue cut out—losing her beautiful voice. Then she must get the prince to fall in love and marry her in three days.

  If he does, she will remain human and gain a soul.

  If he doesn’t, she will immediately die—becoming sea foam.

  Naturally, the prince doesn’t know any of this. He is searching for the woman who saved him and vows to marry her, but all he remembers is her beautiful voice. He is kind to the mermaid, welcoming her to the palace as a sister, but is eventually drawn to marry another singing princess.

  The mermaid knows she is going to die, but the other mermaids trade their hair to the Sea Witch to give their youngest sister another chance. If she kills the prince, she will become a mermaid again and not die. But when the little mermaid goes in and sees the prince asleep, lying next to his new bride, the mermaid realizes she still loves him and cannot kill him.

  She drops the knife and accepts her death.

  This is the beautiful part. Because of her virtuous actions, the mermaid doesn’t become sea foam. She dies, but also gains an eternal soul, something she longed for at the beginning.

  The Little Mermaid isn’t a romance. It’s a story of a young woman’s struggle to truly understand pain, joy, and selfless love. She gains a human soul. Romances are lovely, but when writing this story, I wanted it to still have some of the depth and dark beauty of the original story.

  Christianity- Christianity often gets a bad rap in historical fantasy books, if it is mentioned at all. But many of the morals we take for granted in western society spring from Christian roots. Before that, most of the world followed pagan values that looked a little more like Game of Thrones. As a Christian myself, I was hungry to show another side of things and how these values might have clashed and evolved in a city similar to Ancient Rome.

  Add that to the well-known mythology of sirens in that time and the soul imagery in the original Little Mermaid and this story started to write itself.

  Ancient Rome- As a fantasy author who writes character-driven stories, I don’t worry too much about being historically accurate in the language or settings that I use. However, I did do some research on Ancient Rome to give
Solis some of the flavor I was looking for.

  Big shout out to Philip Matyszak for his book 24 Hours in Ancient Rome. It is extremely reader friendly and very helpful in that respect.

  Sign Language- There was sign language in Ancient Rome! Unfortunately, none of it was written down or standardized in a way that I could possibly duplicate here. So I made the artistic choice to use American Sign Language when describing the signs used by Ari and Jonas. I figured that, if I was going to have everyone speak mostly modern English, I might as well have them use more modern sign language too.

  Plus, sign language is a beautiful language that I really wanted to include in one of my books.

  You- Thank you so much for reading DEPTHS: A Tale of the Little Mermaid. If you enjoyed the story, please consider leaving a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Your feedback can make a huge difference in increasing this book’s visibility and improving future novels.

  You can also reach me directly at sjacquebooks@gmail.com or my website sjacquebooks.com.

  Those that sign up for my newsletter will receive a free short story and other extras.

  Falling by Scarlett Kol

  Copyright © 2019 by Scarlett Koll

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  1

  Once upon a time, someone said “Heaven knows no pain, because it knows no sin.” This person lied. Or maybe they’d just been misquoted and in need of a better publicist, because I’d definitely sinned up here, and as I waited outside the Court of Heaven for my name to be called, my knotted stomach hurt more than an eternity of torture in Hell.