I follow the trajectory the trident had followed to see Dover. He’s without a weapon now, obviously, but he’s still fighting. About half of the selkies are helping the wounded one, but the rest are converging on Dover for revenge. The merman grabs the nearest selkie and wallops him, punching him in the side of the head.
Baltic smacks a selkie on top of the head with his trident. Not the typical way to fight with the weapon, but it worked to at least stun the creature.
The selkie in Dover’s grasp leaps free, out of his hands, and slams into Dover’s upper chest. As much as I would love to stab the selkie, Dover’s arms are flailing, and I’m just as likely to hit him as I am the selkie.
Worse, the selkie Dover struck with this trident is dead. The other selkie guards have abandoned their brother, but one of them as the trident clamped tightly in his mouth. He goes to stab Adra, who barely manages to block the blow.
All around me, selkies are attacking my friends. No one is talking, which gives the fight an ominous silence aside from grunts, cries, and wails. I do my best to continue fighting, but I’m tired, and my body longs to rest.
Come on, Rillia. Snap out of it. Your dad fought. You can fight too.
My trident guides a selkie to back away, but another slams into my back. The strike is so hard that I drop my trident. Before I can recover it, the first selkie’s already holding it in her teeth. She flutters away and scrapes the prongs of the trident into Edlyn’s side.
Dover’s constantly getting struck by the one selkie. The water near him is tinged red.
The others aren’t faring much better, and my stomach clenches as I hold up my hands.
“Please, stop!” I beg.
“You surrender?” one of the selkies tormenting Baltic asks. Until now, he’s held his own, but once the one gained the upper fin on Dover, the mob surrounded him.
I swallow hard. The fighting has gotten out of hand, and despite our training, we’re overwhelmed. The same number or not, they are older, more experienced, and stronger. We never should’ve attempted this. Never. I had been stupid, and my foolishness will not result in any of my friends’ death. Not when being captured will prevent it. Although they might not let their captives live long…
“Do you surrender or not?” the selkie beside the one biting my trident asks.
I close my eyes, unable to look at my friend’s faces as I nod.
The selkies are rough in their haste to bind us. They might be in their seal bodies, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t mastered maneuvering about quickly, and they quickly remove all of our weapons and bind our wrists together with seaweed. They even tie us together in a line using even more seaweed.
“I’m sorry,” I mumble to Adra, who is in front of me. The selkies are guarding us as they guide us into their kingdom.
“It is not your fault.”
“By the tide, how isn’t it?”
“We chose to come.”
“You didn’t want to. You were right.”
“Was I?”
“Adra, you’re confusing me.”
She chuckles, which elicits a glare from a selkie. Adra lowers her head. “If you are only ever on the defense, you can never win,” she murmurs. “You were right.”
Adra hadn’t ever gone to strike them, only ever to block their blows. Yes, in battle, only being on the defensive side of things will lead to your capture or death.
The same goes for war.
I clear my throat. “You attacked us. Why?”
“Why did you attack us?” a selkie demands.
“Why were you spying on us?” another asks.
“Why do you think?” I snap.
A fin slaps the back of my head so hard that my vision darkens for a second. I shake my head, and my stomach protests, churning violently.
“You attacked us,” I mumble. “That’s why we attacked you. But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You want war.”
“Maybe we want peace,” another selkie says. He flicks his fin, possibly at the selkie who struck me.
“Peace?” Dover asks. His voice sounds strange, and I try to look behind me at him, but he’s last in line, and the others block my view.
“Peace for all marine life,” the selkie continues.
“So long as all marine life is under the thumb of your new queen,” I suppose.
The selkies fall silent. After a bit, I begin to laugh.
“What is your plan? Force us to join you, and then our combined might will go after the sirens? And then all three of us against the might of the sea dragons? Because the sea dragons will never be ruled by another, even if we were to all fight together. Your new queen must be a few krill short of a—”
I watch the fin come toward me. Right when it’s about to slap me in the face, I duck, but the selkie readjusts in time to strike me anyhow.
“Your insolence will not be forgotten,” one of the selkies says. I wish they would call each other by name because it’s hard to separate them. They all look so similar in their seal forms.
“Insolence is my middle name,” I quip.
“Gag her,” one orders, and the selkie who obeys is so rough as he complies that my mouth almost bleeds from his efforts.
“You’re making things worse,” Adra mumbles.
“We know what they want now,” Talise whispers from behind me. “Rillia’s right. They want war, and I bet she’s right about all of it—the sirens, the sea dragons…”
“What good is our knowledge if we can’t alert the others back home?” Adra counters.
I want to say that we need to have one of us break free, but what are the chances of that? Despite using their tiny fins and their teeth to tie the knots in the seaweed to cuff us, the selkies are master knot-tyers. There’s no way we can unbind our wrists.
Then again, we don’t need our arms in order to swim. We just need our tails free. Yes, we’re knotted together, but if we all swim together, perhaps we can make a break for it and swim our way to freedom.
Except the selkies put us in a jail cell that is in the shadows of their massive sandcastle. With hundreds of selkies swimming about, we’re in plain sight.
How are we going to break free?
We aren’t going to be able to.
Not unless we fight for it.
Chapter 7
Once the door to the cell clangs shut, the selkie guards swim all around us.
“You’ll never get out of here.”
“The queen will sentence you for your crimes once she is available.”
“You’ll die here, away from your family and friends.”
“You aren’t even truly marine creatures.”
I narrow my eyes at that one. Just because we have a humanoid top half for both of our forms doesn’t mean we do not truly belong to the sea. Even Adra seems put off by that remark.
“This one looks familiar,” one of the selkies says, eyeing Adra. “How many mermaids have blond hair and a silver tail?”
“Not many.”
“Who cares?”
The selkie eyeing Adra begins to cackle. It’s a strange sight, almost comical, to see a seal laugh, not that I can appreciate it given the circumstances.
“She’s related to the queen,” the selkie says.
Adra stiffens.
“Maybe the queen will want to hold them hostage to force their queen to do as we want.”
“The queen must be notified about them and especially that one.” The selkie nods toward Adra.
“I’ll tell her.”
“No. I will. I recognized her!”
“Not if I tell her first!”
How puerile. The selkies are acting like children as they swim away, trying to outrace the others in their attempt to inform the queen. It doesn’t escape my notice that they hung around the cell until they realized just how important their quarry is.
The cell. It’s more of a cage. I can’t tell what the bars are made of. Maybe bones? Whatever they are, the bars won’t bend. It’s as if they’re soldered in
to place.
Edlyn gestures for the others to move in place so she can undo my gag. I lick my lips and swallow. Ugh. They did make me bleed.
“What are we going to do now?” Talise asks.
“We have to get out of here,” I say.
“Because that will be easy.”
“I never said it would be, but… we’ll have to fight our way out.”
“Guys…” Adra whispers.
“A fight. Great.” Dover groans. He looks terrible. By far, he’s fared the worst of us all.
“I don’t see how we can fight our way free,” Talise protests. “We couldn’t fight them with tridents. Without them…”
“I never said it would be easy,” I inform her, “but we can’t stay here and do nothing.”
“There’s nothing else we can do,” Talise says. She sinks as much as the seaweed rope around our waists will allow and crosses her arms.
“Guys!” Adra shouts.
We turn to face her.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
Baltic laughs. “You’re keeping us alive, so why are you apologizing?”
He’s not in much better shape than Dover. His laughing is a good sign.
“None of this is your fault,” I assure Adra. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”
“Assigning blame won’t help any,” Dover says. “What’s the plan?”
“We can try to rush them once they come to take is to their sandcastle.” Baltic shakes his head. “It’s like they never grew up. Seriously? A sandcastle for their monarch?”
“They might bring a lot more guards and make a procession out of bringing us to her,” Dover points out.
“What if we use the seaweed rope to try and choke them?” I suggest.
“That might work for one but only one.” Baltic grimaces. “Edlyn, what are you doing?”
She has her back to me, so I haven’t been paying attention, but she turns toward us. “I’ve been trying to undo the knot,” she says.
“Good luck with that,” I mumble.
“Yeah, it’s pointless.” Edlyn sighs.
“Or maybe not,” Adra says. She reaches into her blond hair and removes a sharp hairpiece.
Edlyn gasps. “Where did you get that?”
“From my aunt.”
“It’s beautiful!” Talise exclaims.
“Beautifully sharp.” I almost grab it out of Adra’s hand but then hesitate. “Can I?”
“You may,” Adra says.
I quickly work her knots and free her before knotting the seaweed again, this time much looser. “If it comes undone, retie it loosely so you can free yourself when it comes to it.”
“Great. We’ll be free,” Dover says, “but we still won’t have a weapon.”
“No, but we can each have seaweed rope to try to choke more than one,” I say.
“And we have this.” Baltic yanks the hairpiece from me and holds it up while beaming.
We quickly free each of us. Talise has fallen quiet, I notice.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“What if… What if we remove one of the selkie’s skin? Can they survive underwater without it?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Adra says. “It might kill him.”
“We could do it, grab the skin, you all swim away, and I’ll toss them the skin and follow after you,” I suggest.
“That’s too dangerous,” Adra cuts in.
“Dangerous, yes,” Dover says slowly, “but it’s a solid plan.”
“And if that selkie dies?” Adra asks. “There will be no way to prevent war.”
“War.”
I bristle. That singular word didn’t come from any of my friends.
A selkie is slowly heading for us. She looks rather agitated and upset, and her black eyes narrow as she halts before our cage.
“You and your kind are why there will be war. Do not be so naïve as to think that we would attack you without provocation.”
“Why would our king and queen want war with the selkies?” I demand.
“And what exactly did we do to provoke the attack?” Dover asks.
“Rash, foolish teenagers. You shouldn’t be locked up. You should be sent back to your parents so they can lash you,” she says with a sneer. “The fighting is not for the likes of you. Did you honestly think the… six of you would be able to do anything against us?”
“We just wanted to learn why you attacked us,” I say honestly. “If… Why do you think you attacked?”
“If you must know, ask your king and queen,” she says.
Her bitterness seems genuine, and my stomach twists. She believes what she’s telling us.
What if she’s telling the truth?
“Please, just tell us,” I beg, but she’s already swimming away.
“Ignore her,” Baltic says, swimming between the bars and myself so I can’t watch her swim away. “She’s lying. Isn’t she, Adra?”
“She has to be,” Adra says, but she doesn’t sound convincing.
Talise squints and pulls Adra and me closer to her. “You don’t mean to say that we might’ve come here and been captured for no good reason?”
“My aunt wouldn’t have done this,” Adra protests.
“But the king might’ve?” I question.
Adra lowers her head.
“Why didn’t you say this beforehand?” Talise demands quietly.
“Because I didn’t want to think that our king would start a war without warning our people,” she whispers back. “Besides, all they are doing is purely defensive measures. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘we want war,’ now, does it?”
“That’s a good point,” Talise admits. “So, she was lying.”
“I think so,” Adra says.
“Look alive,” Dover says, “or dead. Whichever, but fin’s up. They’re coming.”
“Who has the hairpiece?” I ask.
Dover slips it to me. “They hate you, so they’ll go after you first.”
I push it back into his hand and argue, “They might check me for weapons.”
I move away before he can give it back and try not to stare at them or do anything to suggest I’m still belligerent, but I am. I am so angry and furious about being captured.
“You are to be—They cut through the knots.” The seal’s face twists with murderous rage.
By the tide, are you kidding me? They noticed. Of course they did.
“What do you want to bet they have a weapon on them?” another asks.
“I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Dover slips closer to Adra and hands her back the hairpiece. I move to block their view of her, and I have to assume she puts it back in her hair.
“Which one is related to their queen?”
“That one.”
“And which one fought the hardest?”
“They all did.”
“And the one who wouldn’t shut her mouth?”
“Her.”
I grin. “Yes, guilty on that charge, I’ll admit. If you want, just take me. I’ll go and talk to your queen, and I’m sure we can get this whole thing situated.”
“You act as if you are part siren, but you aren’t. You’re nothing but a mermaid. You don’t know your place yet in the current of life.”
I smile as warmly as I can at the selkie. It’s fake, and he knows it, but the gesture remains for whatever it’s worth. “Can anyone know their place in the current of life? Until we die, that is. Life under the water is such a complicated business, don’t you agree?”
“Listening to you babble is a complicated business.”
I laugh merrily, and so do my friends.
I jerk my thumb toward my fellow merfolk. “I bet they agree. I promise that with the—”
“You can promise all you want. You came here. You attacked us.”
“We thought that you struck us first,” I say smoothly. “This has been nothing more than a giant misunderst
anding—”
“You were spying on us,” he continues. “Do you admit your guilt to that charge?”
“I… I do, but, as I said, I thought—we all thought that you had struck us first. We wanted to know why. To hear…” I swallow hard. I don’t want to say it, but I force myself to. “To hear that our king and queen… might be the reason for your attack… We didn’t know.”
“You swam into our waters with the intent to deceive.”
This female voice is as clear as a bell, sharp as a barb, and graceful as an angel fish, not to be confused with an angelfish. The selkies part for a grand seal who can only be their new queen.
Although she is not my ruler, I lower my head and avert my gaze. “I apologize for my actions and those of my friends. We were wrong. We realize that now.”
“You only realize the error of your ways because you were caught.”
“Ignorance is our main crime,” I venture. My heart beats so loudly I wonder if everyone can hear it.
“Ignorance is no excuse,” she says. “I have heard enough. Bring them to the bowels of the castle where they will rot in my prison.”
“Why not feed us to some animal and then send the bones to our king and queen?” I ask bitterly.
“Do you wish for death?” She laughs. “Or is it that you do not approve of the way your king and queen run things? I can only assume that the lot of you had received some training at the Magical Hunters Academy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have even considered spying on my waves. Am I right?”
My friends and I say nothing.
“I thought as much. Your silence is rather telling. Take them away.”
The Queen of the Selkies swims away. The guards turn and watch her swim, and they do not move until she enters the castle. Wow. Drama queen much?
The guards open the cell. Adra’s first, and I can’t believe how quickly she bullrushes the guy, just plows into him. I’m right behind her, but I pull her back in, and the guards gradually all enter the cells. My friends and I are in the middle, but that gives me an idea, one that I can’t possibly convey to my friends.
“You had better start behaving,” one says.
I beam. “We should hug it out.”
“What did you just say?”
“Hug it out,” I repeat.
I swim up to him, give him a big hug, and twirl him around. Frantically, I nod to my friends, and they all do the same.
Mermaidia: A Limited Edition Anthology Page 53