Mermaidia: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  Instead of being safe, she’s immediately thrown into prison, where she now wants nothing more than to escape—until she meets Triton, Poseidon’s son. He visits her daily, caring for her, making sure she stays alive. But what is his true motive? And can she trust him when he offers to help her escape?

  And does she really want to leave when she discovers she might be falling in love with him?

  FURY is a 15,000-word novella, Book Two in the Crescent Moon Bay series. This novella can be read before or after FATHOM.

  Fury © 2020 Merrie Destefano

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  GLOSSARY:

  Bairn: Child.

  The Burning: When Selkies come of age and are ready to mate.

  Cailleach: A legendary sea witch with great magical powers.

  Hinquememem: A sea monster that hunts and eats Selkies, one of the most feared creatures in all the Seven Seas.

  Na Fir Ghorm: Blue-skinned mermen and mermaids who live in the ocean near Scotland. Some believe they are fallen angels. Also called the Blue Men of the Minch.

  Neptune: Title of the Selkie Sea King.

  Poseidon: Title of the Na Fir Ghorm Sea King.

  Rìoghachd: Large city under the ocean, in the Na Fir Ghorm kingdom.

  Shiant Islands: A small group of islands in the Minch—a strait in northwest Scotland.

  Talla Na Cloinne: The Hall of Children.

  Tràigh Neamhnaidean: Pearl Beach, the entrance to the Na Fir Ghorm underwater kingdom.

  Riley: 15-years-old

  In the near distance, the Shiant Islands rose above the water like great hump-backed whales, all sides covered with rich green vegetation. Overhead, the sky filled with the song of gulls and puffins and black-legged kittiwakes. It was the sound of my salvation.

  I was sure of it.

  I’d been swimming for nearly a month, grateful for the young bowhead whale and the pod of dolphins that had taken turns keeping me afloat during the worst of it. Together, we’d managed to survive the Drake Passage and had skirted the Graveyard of the Atlantic.

  Then we caught the tail end of a subtropical cyclone and I thought we would all perish.

  Brutal hundred-foot-tall waves crashed down upon us; the sky and the moon disappeared for days; it felt like we were fighting King Neptune himself—

  It was as if all the sea gods knew what I was doing and they were all crying out, no, do not let her pass—

  My traveling companions formed a ring around me and they buffeted the storm, taking the brunt of it upon themselves. If there are any heroes in this tale, it is them. Brave, valiant creatures—in all my fifteen years, no one had ever fought so hard for me.

  The waves thundered, the skies filled with tridents of lightning, the ocean floor called my name, daring me to plunge to my death—

  Riley, Riley, Riley.

  But, thank the true gods, I didn’t die.

  Instead, five of my precious dolphins fell into the Great Deep, taken by the Lords of the Underworld. My companions would never chatter again or fly from wave to wave with beaming grins.

  They were dead because of me.

  My heart was stone. My hands were ice.

  My arms were weary and a gnawing fear settled in my chest.

  Once the storm passed and I was within sight of the Shiant Isles, the remaining convoy of bowhead whale and dolphins continued on their journey to swim the Seven Seas. I was alone now. I should have stayed with them. I should have pretended I was one of them, instead of longing for a family of my own kind.

  Instead, I swam through cobalt blue waters, wondering what madness had driven me here.

  The Na Fir Ghorm had to take me in, I told myself again. I was an outcast and a runaway.

  There was nowhere left to go if they refused me.

  I pulled myself out of the water onto a narrow beach. There I struggled against my instinctive desire to clothe myself in human flesh. It was always my disguise when I left the sea: long dark hair, pale skin, the tale of my travels woven in ink on my left arm.

  Not this time.

  Instead, I forced myself to remain in my Selkie skin, a glistening coat of iridescent green scales, one hand shielding my eyes against the setting sun. I held my chin high, despite the unceasing wind that whipped through the straits. I wondered how many ships lay in the belly of this narrow passage between the islands and how many of those wrecks had been caused by the Na Fir Ghorm.

  The legendary Blue Men.

  And here I sat, a green girl, awaiting their arrival.

  They weren’t the only ones who could command the wind and the sea. That would be my gift too, though I was still too young. Once the Burning came, I would possess more power than they ever dreamed of having.

  That was what I planned to offer them—the abilities I would have once I matured.

  I was wrong.

  I had something else they would want much more.

  They may have studied me for hours. If so, I wouldn’t be surprised. They’re a cunning sort, their tongues slippery and filled with deceit—much like I am at times. I’ve often wondered if I was like that before I met them or if I learned their ways in the time we spent together. Like begets like, or so I’ve been told.

  Meanwhile, the moon crept, inch by inch, across a darkening sky until finally, it disappeared behind a bank of thick clouds. Then sky, waves, and rock all drifted into shades of black and gray, and if my eyes had not been fashioned for such darkness I would have been blind.

  Just as they hoped, I suspect.

  For that was when I noticed the sea coming to life all around me, man-like shapes rising up from foam and curling wave. I forced myself not to startle as they moved nearer, the water hissing from their skin. Just like the legends claimed, they were fully human from the waist up, though they carefully concealed their undercarriage beneath the ocean’s surface.

  Were they fallen angels, as some myths claimed?

  I hoped none of them would notice the blood on my fingertips—I’d been unconsciously fretting and gnawing on them throughout my journey. Even now, I couldn’t stop the churning in my stomach or the fear that thudded through my veins.

  “Are you alone, girl?” one of them called to me, the accent of his words sounding as if he came from another century.

  “Yes,” I replied, my voice quivering.

  “She’s a brave lass, then,” another said, somewhere to my right.

  “Brave or foolhardy,” yet a third said with a laugh. I hated to admit it, but this third male was younger than the rest and I had a hard time not staring at his broad shoulders and quick smile. “Mayhaps she’s touched with madness.”

  They all laughed at me and I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Is it foolishness to need help from your distant brethren?” I asked. “Have I not plainly exposed who and what I am, despite the danger to myself?”

  As far as I knew, the Blue Men didn’t eat Selkies. But there were other rumors almost as bad, rumors I’d decided had to be false.

  “What sort of help are you needing, child?” The first Blue Man spoke again and that was when I noticed the spires of coral twisted like a crown in his thick curly hair. This was the Na Fir Ghorm King. He held the inheri
ted title of Poseidon, just like the Selkie King held the title of Neptune.

  This Poseidon King was the one I must convince.

  “Shelter,” I told him, remembering to keep my chin high, my words clear and loud. They were not going to like what I had to say next. No one in the Seven Seas would. “I’ve been orphaned by the Hinquememem and beaten by my own kind.”

  I heard a sharp intake of breath when I dared to speak the name of that horrid beast aloud.

  Poseidon caught me with a stony gaze. We all knew that merely speaking the creature’s name could conjure the beast, like magic. It could appear in an instant.

  Or at least that was what we believed.

  We lived and died by our tales of magic.

  “You be orphaned, then?”

  I nodded. It was only a half-lie, so it didn’t count. I had tried to go home several times, but each time the Hinquememem chased me away, threatening to eat me alive. It caught my scent, back when we were both fighting to survive, back when our blood had mingled in the water—

  The Hinquememem hunts those it loves.

  It was my curse to be loved by that beast.

  “I’m not surprised your kin beat you, with that lying tongue and the clear marks of royalty on you.”

  I lifted my chin higher and clenched my teeth. I knew the scars of abuse ran across my back—they would take years to heal. And as for my royal blood, little good it had done me up to this point. I had just enough to make me stand out in a crowd of my own kind, but not enough to secure me a seat in the Selkie High Court. So, let the Na Fir Ghorm say what they would, as long as they granted me sanctuary. I’d heard rumors of their beautiful underwater kingdom, how it had been carved in underground caves and how they breathed air in their cities of pink coral and black rock. Despite my ability to live beneath the sea, I preferred the land of air. It’s what I was born to.

  “You know our rules?” Poseidon asked, a serious tone in his words that made me tremble.

  “I do.”

  A shiver ran the length of my spine. I slid a glance at the younger male again, wondering what his place was in this clan.

  “Once you join us, you may never leave, no matter your true home or the distant call of your kin,” Poseidon said.

  “Unless I complete one of your rhyming riddles.”

  He pulled his shoulders back and ran his gaze over me again, as if wondering whether I would be worth the trouble. Finally, he nodded. “Aye, unless you answer one of my riddles with rhyme.”

  The moon chose just that moment to peek through the clouds, revealing them all before me, at least four and twenty Blue Men, skin the very same shade as the water that lapped around them.

  The youngest one, the most handsome of all, grinned as if he suddenly knew a dark and delicious secret. I was too young for the Burning and, yet, every part of my body flushed with warmth when he looked at me that way. I turned my gaze aside, hoping he couldn’t see the blush on my skin, the way my green scales would take on a pale golden glow.

  “And you must make a blood oath this very moment, one that cannot be broken, not even by the sweetest rhyme.” The Na Fir Ghorm King seemed to know that I had no choice.

  And he was right.

  I was a runaway, an outcast, and I was constantly hunted by one of the most dreaded monsters in the world. I had no place of safety left. I needed protection if I was going to survive. In a year or two—after the Burning came upon me—then I would have options. Then I would be able to conjure storms worse than the subtropical cyclone that had almost killed me.

  But until then, I was but a child, my only friends those few sea creatures who heeded my call—the dolphins, whales, sharks, octopi, walrus, and seals.

  So I made a blood oath with him that very moment, cutting my arm with a sharp piece of shell lying on the shore.

  Without even knowing what request he was going to make.

  Then they led me down into their underwater kingdom, Poseidon swimming ahead of us, his coral crown glowing in the murky water. We were met by viperfish and chimaera, all of which turned and fled the moment they saw us. Nearly every creature, in the water and on land, feared the Na Fir Ghorm.

  I found a place in their swarm beside the youngest male.

  He smiled at me, his dark hair streaked with shades of green and blue, his skin nearly invisible for it was the same shade as the water. And at his waist—that was where the difference between us was most apparent—there began the shimmering scales that formed an elegant tail, so long that it made him nearly twice as tall as I was.

  Every one of the Na Fir Ghorm possessed a tail like this.

  It was the weapon that made humans fear them.

  Legends claimed this was what they used to churn the waters and sink ships. That much I knew. But when I later found out what they did with the human survivors, it would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

  We swam down and down until the water blackened and the sea life around us began to glow. A trail of bioluminescent plankton led us toward a rocky canyon, narrow and twisted and lined top to bottom with sharp granite. We had to enter in a single file, our bodies twisting between the dagger-like rocks. Several times my scales caught on the granite and my blood began to pool around me. A school of tiny fangtooth fish wriggled out of hiding and began to swarm about me, nipping at my wounds. I hadn’t seen this type of fish before and didn’t realize their bites were poisonous until it was too late. My skin turned numb. My thoughts became slow and confused. The young Blue Man following behind me must have seen what was happening. He let out a shriek that caused all the small fish around me to die, their bodies falling limp to the ocean bottom.

  Triton—that was his name and I would later learn that he was only a few years older than I was—wrapped one hand around my wrist and, with his help, I was able to continue swimming through the treacherous passage. Even so, my wounds stung from the fish bites and I felt myself growing weary.

  “Hurry, now. She’s been bitten,” he called to his clan, using a form of telepathy that thrilled through me as well.

  Those ahead of us began to swim faster.

  The passage widened a bit, but my thoughts were even more cloudy now and my movements sluggish. I felt as if I was sinking rather than swimming. Something latched around my waist and for a moment I worried that a sand eel or a stingray had found me.

  In my weakened state, I wasn’t able to command any sea creature, no matter what it was.

  Thankfully, it was Triton, one arm about me, holding me close as we continued the rest of the journey. I never saw the doorway, for my eyes had shut by then, but I know it must have been glorious, carved with warnings and magic spells, for that was how every other doorway in their kingdom looked.

  I awoke, sometime later, on a beach.

  My stomach ached and every bite on my skin stung like I’d been burned. When I opened my eyes, I was now surrounded by a group of Blue Women. These must have been the female Na Fir Ghorm, wearing the shape of humans, their shimmering tails gone. At the edge of the blue crowd, I caught a glimpse of true human flesh. Two human women stood with heads bowed, thick iron shackles about their necks, wrists, and ankles. I would learn later that they were slaves and that their tongues had been cut out. The shackles prevented them from swimming to freedom, for they would sink if they ever made it past the city gates.

  I didn’t realize it at first, but I was on the beach known as Tràigh Neamhnaidean, the entrance to the Na Fir Ghorm kingdom. I was in an underwater land and, yet, here we all breathed air just like those who lived in the world above.

  All these things I realized in a moment. Then the Blue Women descended upon me, each of them wearing bits of coral woven through their long green-blue hair. They kicked me and they bit me and they pummeled me with knuckled fists.

  “Beast!” one cried.

  “Selkie monster!”

  “Kill it before it spawns—”

  And then somewhere in the midst of the beating, my skin turned to huma
n flesh. They all stepped back as if I had burned them.

  “What is this creature doing here in the Royal Court? She belongs with the other slaves!” one of Blue Women cried. She towered over me, more anger than fear in her voice. The coral crown in her hair almost matched the size of the King’s. Even in this well-lit cavern, her crown glowed.

  “Step aside and give her room to breathe!” a deep voice boomed behind me. It was their King, himself, his eyes like fire, a fierce iron trident in his right hand. “The Selkie belongs to me and you may not touch her again.”

  “My Lord, have I not been a good wife to you?” the Na Fir Ghorm Queen asked, the tone of her words softening, almost pleading. She tilted her head, her long hair flowing like sea waves around her, and even I had to admit she was more beautiful than anyone I had ever seen before.

  Poseidon touched her face with his left hand as he gave her a sweet, winsome smile. “Amphitrite, you know that I love you.” He even leaned close enough to brush his lips against hers. Then, his mood darkened. His hand slid around her throat, his fingers pressing so hard that she began to gasp for air. “And you know that you may not disobey me, wife. What matter is it to you if I take another bride into my harem?”

  “It matters deeply,” Queen Amphitrite protested, her voice now a faint whisper, salt tears glistening like diamonds in her eyes.

  He pulled her even closer, kissed her brow, and then he tightened his grip further.

  “What matter is your own life?” he murmured in her ear.

  “Great,” she wheezed, her head bowing.

  “Aye, ‘tis great. You submit, then?”

  He loosened his grip only enough for her to answer.

  “I do...my lord...my king...my husband,” she said, her faltering words like the croaking of a frog.

  He released her then and she fell to her knees in the sand, gasping for breath, a fish out of water, her mouth flapping open and closed, her hands shaking. I thought for sure she would be silent now. I was wrong. Her gaze caught mine and I saw the hatred in her eyes. “She is too young...by Na Fir Ghorm law, the lass, whether human or not, must be fully grown.” She paused only long enough to pull a raspy breath into her lungs. “This one is just a child. No more than twelve or thirteen summers, I wager.”