by Kyle Shultz
We were silent for several minutes, aside from heavy breathing. Crispin sagged against the wall and mopped his brow. “Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that that was a terrible idea.”
I slumped into a sitting position on the floor and waited for my heart to stop pounding. “Does anyone have any less terrible ideas?”
“What about those torpedoes you mentioned?” Cordelia asked Kiran.
“They might work,” he said. “If the polyps don’t manage to resist them as well. But, if they do work, they’re so powerful that we’ll risk bringing down the tomb in the process.”
“I’m afraid the only way is to get out and fight our way through them,” said Molly.
My jaw dropped. “What, hand to hand?”
“More like magic-to-tentacle, in the case of me, Crispin, Cordelia, and Kiran. You’ll have to use your claws.”
“I can’t go with you,” said Kiran. “The Nautilus can’t be without a pilot. But I can cast a spell on Crispin, Cordelia, and Nick that will protect them from the ocean pressures and allow them to breathe underwater…temporarily. For about an hour, I’d say. I’m just assuming none of you have used this spell before—as I imagine you’re all aware, you can’t cast the same spell on the same thing twice.”
“An hour?” I exclaimed. “Seriously? Why only an hour?”
“There are spells that last longer, but they have…side effects.”
“Such as?”
“Increased irritability, shark teeth, a sudden craving for human flesh…”
“Right. Forget it.” I looked at Cordelia. “Do you think my curse is going to prevent this spell from working?”
“I wouldn’t think so, as it doesn’t pose a direct threat to the curse, but I can’t be sure. Let’s just try it and see.”
“Famous last words,” I murmured.
Kiran waved his hands, sending runes swirling around me, Cordelia, and Crispin. His eyes suddenly widened as if he’d just realized something. “Oops. I forgot to mention…once the spell takes effect, none of you are going to be able to breathe air until it’s finished.”
“What?” Crispin cried. His face went pale, and he started gasping for breath.
“Going to…kill you…Kiran,” Cordelia choked, dropping to her knees.
I’d managed to draw in a deep breath of air just in time, so I decided not to exhale just yet. I scooped up Cordelia under one arm and started to reach for Crispin, but Molly had already hoisted him up. Apparently, mermaid-human hybrids were remarkably strong.
“Get them to the airlock, you two,” said Kiran. “Hurry!”
I shot a withering glare at him, wishing I was able to speak. Molly and I sprinted down the corridor to the airlock as quickly as we could manage with our burdens. Still holding my breath, I began to feel light-headed as she manned the controls to open the inner hatch. We stepped through into a cylindrical space, and Molly shut the hatch behind us. Then she pressed a button, and water began to pool around our feet. She shifted into mermaid form as we were rapidly submerged.
Cordelia and Crispin sucked in deep, welcome breaths of water. “Thanks,” said Cordelia.
I nodded. “You’re welcome.” Talking underwater felt strange and didn’t even seem possible, but somehow it worked.
Crispin showed his gratitude in a considerably more dramatic fashion. He gently took Molly’s face in his hands and kissed her. She blinked in surprise at first, then closed her eyes and leaned into his embrace.
“Crispin,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder, “I do hate to interrupt, but we don’t have a lot of breath to waste on…that.”
He pulled reluctantly away from Molly. “That wasn’t a waste,” he said softly, gazing into Molly’s eyes.
I made a face. “Oh, come on.”
“Let’s get it over with before we all drown,” Cordelia suggested. “Nick, you go first.”
“Why exactly do I have to go first?”
“Because you’re the one who’s pretty much invulnerable. You go to work punching and clawing at those things as hard as you can, and we’ll follow behind, blasting them with our magic.”
“In other words, you want me to wear them down for you.”
“If you would. Thanks.”
I rolled my shoulders and stretched my neck from side to side. “I feel like I should be shouting some profound, inspiring battle cry about now.”
“How about ‘RARRRGGH?’” suggested Crispin. “That one usually works for you.”
I smiled. “Sure. Why not?” I gave a mighty roar and extended my claws. A strong kick with both feet sent me plunging headfirst into the midst of the polyps. Within seconds, I was ensnared in a seething mass of tentacles.
That was not fun.
Our journey across the field of polyps was a seemingly endless blur of hacking, slashing, punching, kicking, and magic-blasting. The first four of those things were all up to me, so I couldn’t help but feel that I was doing most of the work. That being said, when I did get brief glimpses of the others, they did seem to be doing their best. They were all firing off chains of runes that choked the polyps and sliced their tentacles to bits. The problem was, there were always more of them. Halfway across the field, I began to wonder if we would ever reach the tomb.
But somehow, we did. Just when I thought we were finished, I broke free on the other side of the polyps. Battered and exhausted, I swam for the tomb with the last of my strength. I looked behind me and saw that Cordelia, Crispin, and Molly had all made it as well. “Is everyone all right?” I shouted to them.
They nodded. “I never, ever, ever want to do that again,” said Crispin.
“We’ll have to do it again to get out of here,” Molly reminded him.
He moaned. “Did you have to bring that up?”
I pointed to the door of the mausoleum. “Just so everyone’s aware, if there some kind of unbreakable magical lock on that thing, I will probably burst into tears.”
“So will I,” said Cordelia.
“Me too,” said Crispin.
“Not to worry,” Molly assured us. “I know the runes that will unlock it.” She flipped her tail and propelled herself toward the door. It was made of stone, and had an emblem on it shaped like a trident. She held her hand over the symbol, and several concentric circles of runes appeared. As she closed her eyes and focused, some additional runes materialized in the center of all the rest. The circles flickered and vanished, and the door slid open with a loud scraping noise.
“Come on,” said Molly, beckoning for us to follow her inside.
We swam after her and found ourselves in a spacious vault. There were stone shelves all around us holding a variety of objects that must have belonged to the Sea Witch. Gemstones, golden chalices, coins, necklaces, swords, armor, books, scrolls…I couldn’t believe all of this even fit inside the mausoleum.
But there was something very significant missing from the ensemble.
“Where’s the body?” I wondered aloud. “Or the casket, or the sarcophagus, or whatever’s supposed to be in this place.”
“There doesn’t seem to be one,” said Cordelia.
“Should I be worried about that?”
“Probably.”
“Look at this stuff,” said Crispin, awestruck.
“She was quite the collector,” Cordelia remarked, swimming along the shelves and examining each item in turn. As she touched them, runes blazed in the water around them. She studied the symbols carefully, talking to herself in a low voice as she did. I guessed she was trying to figure out the magical function of each one.
Molly unrolled a few of the scrolls—which apparently were made of some waterproof mermaid paper—skimmed over their contents, then tossed them aside one by one. Eventually, however, she opened a scroll whose contents made her smile in satisfaction. “The Stanza of Souls and the Stanza of Silence. Perfect.” She also picked up a coral necklace and slipped it over her head.
“Finding what you’re looking for?” asked Crispin.
Cordelia removed a fork from the shelf and glowered at it. “Well, I’m not having any luck at all. This rusty old thing isn’t even enchanted, for pity’s sake.” She tossed the utensil aside. “What on earth is it doing here in the first place? Wait—” Her eyes fell on a small dagger near where she’d found the fork. She picked it up and squinted at the strings of runes that materialized around it.
“This might be—” she began, then hesitated. “No. No, that doesn’t make sense.”
“What?” I asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Well, when I first picked it up, I thought the enchantment on this dagger might be for changing merfolk into humans. Similar to the Clawthorn Rose.”
“You mean by stabbing people?” I rubbed the place on my arm where Cordelia had wounded me with the magic thorn. It still pained me a little when the weather was bad. “Why is magic so violent?”
“The thing is,” said Cordelia, “that’s not what this is for at all. The spell on the blade won’t change Undine into humans. If I’m reading these runes correctly, it’ll change humans into Undine.”
I scratched my head. “Well…that’s weird. But maybe the thing we’re looking for is somewhere else in here.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Molly, sounding deeply regretful. “To be honest, what you’re looking for doesn’t actually exist.”
We all stared at her in surprise. I already had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Something was very wrong.
“What do you mean, Molly?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm and even.
She winced a little. “I’m sorry. I really am. But very little of I told you this morning was true.”
I tried to read her expressions and mannerisms. I could even hear her heartbeat. It wasn’t quickening. She was perfectly calm and perfectly sincere. Just like she had been when we spoke to her that morning.
“You…lied to us?” Crispin looked like he’d just been punched in the face. “I don’t understand. What’s this all about?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” My jaw clenched. “She’s evil. She has been from the beginning.”
“No, no,” said Molly. “It’s not that simple. I’m not evil. I really wanted to help you. But she has been using you all along. Just like she’s using me.”
“You’re working for someone else?” said Cordelia, still clutching the enchanted dagger.
“I’m not really working for her. I’m…sort of being possessed by her.”
“You’re possessed?” Crispin shook his head in disbelief. “But…you don’t act possessed! Your eyes aren’t glowing or anything; you’re not talking in a weird voice—”
“That’s not how it works,” said Molly. “Not in this case, anyway. The Molly Beaumont you know, she’s real. This is my real personality. But my memories have been manipulated, and everything about me is under her control. Even my emotions.”
“Fine,” I barked. “Get to the point, then. Who’s this person you keep talking about? The Sea Witch? Let me guess—she survived somehow. All those fairy-tale villains find a way to cheat death.”
“No. Not the Sea Witch. The Unqueen.”
“The who?”
“You know her better as the Little Mermaid.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Truth
“Oh, of course!” Crispin slammed his fist into an urn on the shelf nearby, shattering it to bits. “It figures. The Little Mermaid is an evil magical entity that goes around possessing my girlfriend. That’s just brilliant.”
I put a hand on his arm. “Crispin, this is not the time for a temper tantrum.”
I knew it was a callous thing to say. I also knew exactly what I was doing. The look of stunned grief on Crispin’s face was all too familiar to me—though this time, his pain ran deeper than ever before. I had to try to distract him. Even anger at me would be preferable to the hurt Molly had just inflicted.
Crispin, however, completely ignored me. It was as if he and Molly were the only two people in the room. “Look, I—” He swallowed hard, closed his eyes for a moment, then tried again. “I have to know…was any of it real? I mean, I thought—I really thought that you liked me. We’d only known each other for a couple of days, but I thought…”
“Of course it was real,” said Molly. She reached out to touch his face. “All of it was real. I do like you, Crispin.”
Crispin flinched away from her hand as if her fingers were dipped in poison. “Stop,” he said, in a choked voice. “Just stop. Can’t you just be…evil? Laugh maniacally and sneer about your brilliant plan? That—that would make things easier.”
“I know how much this hurts you,” she said. “I only wish I could show you how much it hurts me. But she won’t let me.” Her face showed only mild sadness. She moved closer to him, her hand still extended.
I swam between them and growled. “Don’t touch him.” She had already wounded him in a way that I would never be able to repair. I had to stop her from driving the knife in deeper.
“Shhh.” Molly put a finger to her lips. “She wants me to tell you her story. She wants you all to know why you’re here, and why you’re going to die.”
“Sorry,” Cordelia snapped. “Not really in the mood for stories right now.” Runes blazed around her left hand as she readied a spell. In her right, she brandished the magic dagger.
“No, Cordelia,” said Molly, in a kind but firm tone. She fingered the necklace she had just put on.
A polyp suddenly burst through the floor behind Cordelia, and long tendrils wrapped around her, binding her arms to her sides before she could cast her spell. She cried out in anger and struggled to break free, but it was no use. The dagger slipped from her fingers and sank to the floor.
“Don’t,” warned Molly, as I moved to try to free Cordelia. “Don’t get any closer to her. The queen will make me break every bone in her body if you do.”
I forced myself to stop, watching helplessly as Cordelia fought in vain against the tentacles.
“This pendant allows me to control the polyps,” Molly explained. “It also lets me create new ones. You can’t do anything to stop me. Will you please just be patient and listen to the story?”
“All right,” I said, deciding it would be best to play along for now in the hope of finding some means of defeating her. “Go ahead. Tell us.”
“Here’s what actually happened,” said Molly. “The Little Mermaid was the daughter of a powerful Sea King. He ruled all of Aegiris. But he was captured and murdered by human pirates while trying to defend his family from them. His grief-stricken daughter inherited the throne after his death, and vowed revenge on all humans.”
“This is a waste of time!” Crispin shouted at me. “We have to do something!”
“Quiet, Crispin,” I said sternly. “Go on, Molly. What happened next?”
“The queen commanded her court enchantress—also known as the Sea Witch—to create a powerful song. One that would lure sailors to their doom, and linger in their very bones even after they drowned. Once their minds and souls had departed, all that was left of them would be hers to command. Before very long, she had a vast army of the dead. One day, she sang her song to the royal barge, intending to kill the prince of Caledon and leave the country in disarray. That way, her undead army’s attack would be even more successful.”
All the while Molly spoke, I edged backward, feeling along the shelves for something, anything, that I could use to defeat her. I didn’t want to hurt her; she was most likely innocent in all of this. But I would do whatever was necessary to protect Cordelia and Crispin.
“When the barge broke apart on a reef and the prince sank to his doom, swimming even deeper as the song urged him on, the Sea Witch took pity on him. Knowing that he would fight her every inch of the way and drown before she could ever drag him back to the surface, she did the only thing she could. She knew that Undine minds were immune to being controlle
d by song-magic. So she quickly created the dagger Cordelia just found and used it—”
“—to turn him into a merman,” I guessed. “You’re saying the fairytale’s been completely backward all along?”
“That’s The End for you,” said Cordelia. “The real story always comes as a surprise.”
“In time, the Sea Witch and the prince managed to convince certain traitorous members of the queen’s court to turn against her. They claimed that she was killing innocent humans and that her reign of terror had to be stopped. She, of course, knew that there was no such thing as an innocent human.”
“That’s not you talking, Molly,” said Crispin.
“Shut up,” I ordered him. “Let me handle this.”
“The queen attacked Caledon with her armies, but even as the War of Land and Sea broke out, the Sea Witch led a coup against her. She fought on the side of the humans and overthrew the rightful queen.”
“And how did she defeat her, exactly?” I pressed.
“I’m sorry,” said Molly, with regret. “She won’t let me tell you that. All I can say is that even though everyone believed her dead, the queen lived on in the lullaby the witch had created. She became part of it; her fury preserved in living music. And then Kiran Dhakar found the song.”
“And then it found you,” I surmised. “You were looking through the artifacts to make sure there was nothing dangerous in them, and you somehow got possessed by the song.”
“I’m not really a descendant of the Little Mermaid,” said Molly. “She changed my memories so I would tell you that, but she’s letting me remember the real ones now. I’m actually descended from the Sea Witch and the prince. They went on to rule Aegiris together and live in peace with the humans—the last thing the Unqueen wanted for her people. But she remained trapped for millennia until a suitable host came along—me. She needed someone with Undine blood in their veins. Her voice has become one with mine.”
“Fight it, Molly,” Crispin begged. “Please. You can fight her.”