“No, but we have to turn over every stone.”
“Until the skin is found, we aren’t able to return home. You know this.”
“Why can’t we just storm the Hydria? We all know one of the merfolk took it.”
A selkie’s skin has been stolen. No wonder the selkies are so upset! That is almost seen as a worse crime than killing one of them!
If they truly believe we stole the skin, then yes, I can understand their attacking us, but why do they accept that we are responsible for that terrible act?
If they find the skin, they’ll be happy. They’ll leave us be. There won’t have to be war after all.
I slowly swim above the boulder and wave to the selkies. “Hello. I, ah, I overheard about the skin, and I—”
“A mermaid! What is she doing here?”
“I bet she—”
“If you bet that she’s going to visit her siren friends, you would be right. If you bet anything else, you would be wrong,” I say dryly. “Just why are selkies swimming so close to the sirens? Are you planning on attacking them like you did the merfolk? No? Good. You’re just looking for that missing skin, and I want to help.”
The selkies glance at each other. I can see their disbelief and fury in their seal faces, and I can’t help feeling more than a little disenchanted by their reaction to my appearance. Why do they feel such hatred toward us? Why are they so certain we’re the thieves?
“Why would you want to help us?” one of the selkies asks, swimming right up to me.
I stare him down. Strangely, he looks familiar.
Recognition flashes in his dark eyes. “She was one of the ones to swim into Aquilina! She was the one to spy on us by wearing the coral!”
By the tides, what are the chances that one of the guards is in this lot?
I grind my teeth before dipping my head and nodding. “Yes, I was one of them.”
“Not just one of the party! The spy!”
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’ll admit it, but I only wanted… It’s going to sound false, but I just wanted to make things better. I only wanted to learn why you attacked us. I want peace. Truly, I do.”
“What do you want to bet that she was going to the sirens to get them to side with the merfolk against us!”
“No! Not at all! I swear to you—”
“What good is the word of a merfolk? Especially one who has already proven to be deceitful.”
The selkies glower at me, all swimming closer, inch by inch on the advancing waves.
I make a point of patting my hips and running my fingers through my hair. “I am unarmed,” I inform them.
“Only because we still have your tridents,” the guard says with a sneer.
I swallow hard. Until this moment, I forgot we left our weapons behind.
“If I wished anyone will, I would have brought along another trident,” I say firmly. “I did not, but believe me, we have more than enough tridents back in Hydria.”
“Do you hear that? She is threatening us!” another selkie cries.
“If you want to be threatened, I can threaten you,” I say, my tone dry.
One selkie, who moves a bit slower than the others, pushes toward the front. I think he might be older than the others, but I cannot be certain of this.
“What is it our queen wanted to do with the merfolk?” he asks, his tone aged, his words coming out staccato.
“For her to be brought to the dungeon in the bowels of the castle where she would rot,” the guard says gleefully.
I eye him. “I don’t think you want to do that,” I say airily.
“Of course you would say that. You don’t want to die of starvation.”
I give him a wide smile. “You don’t want to return to your queen empty-handed.”
“Exactly, and we won’t. We’ll be bringing you.”
“When she sent you out to find the skin? Isn’t that more important?” I point out. “Let me help you.”
“She doesn’t care about us,” the old selkie says.
“That’s where you’re right,” I say. “But I don’t want war. I don’t want you to blame the merfolk for something we didn’t do. Let me help find the skin. Then, there can be peace beneath the waves again.”
“She’s lying,” one of the selkies says.
“If she does find it, it’ll only be because she put it there in the first place,” another says.
Exasperated, I sigh. “Do you honestly think I—”
“We don’t have to continue talking to her. Let’s gag her and be done with it.”
I flare my nostrils and force myself to not swim backward. How in the world did I end up in such a terrible position yet again? I avoided their waters for a reason!
“If you want war, then go ahead. Take me back to Aquilina. Put me in your dungeon. Know that more selkies will die because the merfolk will fight you tooth and nail and tail. Or you can use your heads and your brains. You do have brains in your seals, don’t you? I am willing to help you, and what are you going to do? Kill me? Seriously?”
The selkies say nothing and advance on me.
By the tide, I don’t have a good feeling about this.
Chapter 10
The maw of the selkie guard has me tensing up. Without my trident, I am not entirely helpless. I’ve been training in other weapons and also in several martial art disciplines, but I’ve always only used those moves while in my human form and with my legs. Doing so underwater will be a challenge, but it’s the only way I can defend myself.
“Go ahead. Attack me,” I say.
“It’s not going to be an attack,” the guard growls.
“If you think I’m going to come quietly, you think wrong,” I say.
The guard launches at me, but I explode upward, flip in the water, and grab onto his fin. He swims hard, but I have a tight enough grip with both hands that I don’t release him. The selkie spins in a tight circle, and I release him and wrap my arms around the thick neck of the old selkie.
He flips onto his back, so his belly faces northward, toward the surface, but I tighten my grip. One surefire way to hurt anyone of any species is to go for their eyes, but do I want to fight that hard? It’s also kind of a dirty way to fight too, and if I want to convince them I’m on their side, maybe I shouldn’t.
Okay, so not the eyes. While still holding onto the selkie, I use my tail to flick away another selkie. They’re too thick and heavy for me to throw, and most of the martial art moves I know require me to plant my feet, something I obviously can’t do with my tail.
But I can duck and roll and evade. At one point, two of the selkies collide into each other in their earnest attempts to ram into me.
“Do you really want to continue this?” I ask. “Because I can do this all day, but it’s not productive. I wanted to see my siren friends. Whether or not you believe me, that’s on you, but I do know this, and you can’t disagree—you’re not looking for the skin right now. You aren’t doing as your queen asked of you.”
The selkies eye me suspiciously. I hate that they don’t trust me. Even though they came at me to hurt me, I never struck them! Not one of them!
“Or did your queen not ask you to leave Aquilina and look for it?” I venture. “Did you leave without her knowledge? Without her permission?”
The selkies glance at each other, and I smirk. Ah, yes, that is precisely the case.
“You wish to be heroes. I understand. It would be wonderful if you could be elevated in the esteem and opinion of your new queen. No one will have to know if I find the skin. I’ll pass it onto the lot of you, and you all can be hailed as heroes.”
“And what would you want in return?”
“Peace.”
“Peace?”
“Yes. That’s all I want.”
“But you came—”
“I told you why a hundred times.” I smack my forehead. “You don’t believe me? What can I do to get you to believe me? All I want is peace.”
&nb
sp; “It can’t hurt any to have her help look,” the old selkie says slowly.
“You can’t be serious,” the guard says.
“Why shouldn’t we believe her?” another selkie asks.
“You didn’t see how hard she fought,” the guard grumbles.
“She doesn’t have a weapon on her. She didn’t come here seeking selkies. She came to see the sirens. Why? We don’t know for certain, but perhaps we have more to gain if we accept her help,” the other selkie suggests.
I smile, grateful that at least one of them is willing to listen to me. “I only want to help. Well, that’s not why I swam out here, but I’m willing to help. Why don’t you stay here and check in the waves?” I suggest.
“And where will you look?” the old selkie asks. There’s a hint of reproach in his voice, but I ignore it.
“All of the stories I’ve heard about seal skins always had the skin thief be a human,” I say. “I won’t risk any of your skins being taken too. I’ll go to the surface.”
The guard selkie eyes me suspiciously. “You actually care?”
“Despite your hurting my friends and me, yes. I truly do not want war. If this is why you attacked us… We would never take your skin. Not one merfolk ever would! We never have before, so why would we now? Is that truly why you attacked us?”
The old selkie flaps his fin toward the guard, but the guard nods stiffly and says, “Yes. We were told by the queen that we had every reason to believe the merfolk were responsible for the skin being taken.”
“So she doesn’t want to take over all of the ocean?” I ask aloud even though I probably should’ve kept the thought to myself.
None of the selkies answer that, so, once more, I’m left to wonder just what the queen’s true motive is. She claimed she had reason to believe the merfolk had been behind the stolen skin, but that’s a lie. It has to be, which means the queen is purposely deceiving her people. Why? To what end?
There’s no point in wondering. All I will do is coming up with more questions. The only one who knows the truth is the selkie queen, and I hope to never see her again.
“You should not speak of her,” the guard says angrily. “She is far superior—”
“I am about to do you a favor,” I say dryly. “Perhaps you shouldn’t insult me?”
The guard flares his nostrils, but he says nothing, so I nod to the selkies and slowly cut through the water, climbing toward the surface. The moment my head pushes through the water and I can breathe in oxygen from the air, I tilt back my head. Once again, I squared off against the selkies. As before, I didn’t think about my inner sea dragon. It’s just as well I hadn’t. Revealing myself as a mermaid with the ability to shapeshift into a sea dragon isn’t smart. It just isn’t. Even my friends don’t know about that part of me, and I’m not about to tell selkies that detail before Baltic and the others.
As always, I head toward a secret cover and transform into my human self. Although it’s winter, there are always at least a few people on the beach. They ignore me as they lay sprawled out on their towels. No one is in the water. It’s too cold for their frail bodies, but no matter the temperature, submerging beneath the waves feels like home.
Swiftly, I walk along the beach, keeping my distance from the humans but observing them discreetly. The selkies had only been looking for the skin. They weren’t looking for the woman or man the skin belonged to. This wasn’t the case of a man looking to steal himself a beautiful woman of the sea to be his wife. This might be the work of a fisherman or a hunter, someone who longs to have trophies of kills in their home.
The thought infuriates me, and I scowl.
“Mommy, why does she look so angry?” a young girl, maybe four, asks her mom.
“Camilla, hush. That’s not very nice.”
“Frowning’s not nice. Hey, lady, you should smile more.”
I halt and face the girl. “I would smile, but someone stole something very important.”
The girl blinks a few times and wrinkles her small nose. “Someone stole something. What did they steal?”
“A very important item.”
“What item?”
“You don’t need to worry about it, but that’s why I’m frowning. I’m sad.”
“I don’t frown when I’m sad,” the girl says.
“No?”
“Nope. I cry!” she says proudly.
“You also cry when you’re happy and when you’re mad and all the time,” the mom says wearily.
“I do cry a lot,” the girl admits. “Do you cry a lot?”
“No. Not anymore.”
The mom perks up and looks at me for the first time. Her gaze lingered on her daughter until now. “Do you mean to tell me there’s hope?”
“Why did you stop crying?” Camilla asks. Sometimes crying makes me feel better.”
“I used to cry because I missed my mom.”
“Why? Did she go away on a trip?”
“You… You could say that.” I’m not about to tell her that I had been crying about my mom dying.
“When she comes back, you can give her a big hug,” the girl says. “Maybe you’ll even cry again!”
“Cry from being happy. It’s possible.” I force myself to give her a tiny smile.
“Will she be back soon?” the girl asks.
I wince.
Her mom clears her throat. “Honey, how about we leave the nice girl alone?”
“But she’s my friend!” Camilla beams at me. “You are my friend, aren’t you?”
“Of course, but I should be going.”
“Already?” Camilla groans. “I wanted to bury you in the sand.”
Bury. Hmm. Could someone have buried the skin in the sand?
“Why don’t you bury your mom?” At her mom’s wide eyes and pursed lips, I quickly add, “Her feet. Bury your mom’s feet.”
“Can I, Mommy?”
“I suppose.”
Camilla shrieks with glee and gets to work while her mom catches my gaze and mouths, “Thanks.”
I wave and hurry on. My eyes burn, and I hate that I’m so weak, that I’m almost ready to cry just because a little girl unwittingly reminded me of my mom’s death. I should be celebrating. Only recently, I learned something huge and epic about my mom. I even share a massive secret with her, but all I can focus on the moment is that she’s gone.
Just like the skin.
There are only a few areas on the beach that seem to have been dug up lately, but when I pretend to push the sand around to make a castle, I find nothing worthwhile buried within the mounds.
None of the people on the beach seem to be fishermen or hunters, and I walk along the boardwalk. No one is bragging about any magnificent finds, and nobody is talking about seals either.
I’m not willing to give up just yet, and I walk off the boardwalk. There are all kinds of shops and restaurants, and the scents make my stomach churn. It’s not that the food doesn’t smell delicious. Humans are even commenting on how delicious the pizza smells. Whenever I’m depressed, my appetite just goes away, and I can’t bear the thought of eating.
I check a few pawn shops, not that I think a seal skin will be for sale there, and eventually, I leave the shops behind in favor of apartments. California is built so tightly compacted that buildings are almost on top of each other. There aren’t any spaces between them, and there isn’t a place for hunters to hunt. Well, there is a forest close to the academy, and I head that way. Nope. No sign of the seal skin there either. Where can it be?
Even more frustrated now, I cross over to Magical Hunters Academy grounds. There might be a witch on campus. Sure enough, I find one. Her hair is red, and I don’t know her name, but I blurt out, “Please, I need your help. Can you do a spell for me?”
She scowls. “I can’t do spells.”
“You can’t?” I stare at her as if she has three heads.
“Not all witches can do spells. There are different kinds of magic, and… Never mind. What do you n
eed?”
“Help locating something really important.”
“What?”
“A seal skin.”
“A seal skin?” she repeats.
“From a selkie.”
“Oh.”
She motions for me to follow her, and she guides me to a cottage. Inside, she rummages through a trunk and mixes together some stuff. I guess she’s doing a potion instead of a spell? I’m not sure, but eventually, she shakes her head.
“I can’t locate any seal skins. I’m sorry.”
I sigh. “Thanks. I figured it would be a long shot to ask.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“No. Thanks. Bye.”
Dejected, I return to the sea. For once, when the waves wash over me, I don’t feel at peace. If anything, I feel even worse than before.
Where can the seal skin be?
Chapter 11
The selkies aren’t where I left them, and I have a decision to make. Should I go home? No. I promised the selkies I would help look for the sealskin. I’m still willing too. Since Symphonia is so close, I’ll head there. I don’t think the sirens would’ve taken the sealskin, but my friends might know something. It can’t hurt to see them. A ton of selkies goes to the academy, far more than just the five in the band. Now that I think about it, there aren’t any sea dragons who attend currently, but that’s just as well. I wonder if it’s because merfolk attend. Or maybe it’s because they train themselves. Sea dragons are said to hatch out of their eggs knowing how to fight. They have no choice but to remain in the water at all times, so it’s not as if they could be truly effective as hunters or executioners, not unless their prey were also paranormal marine creatures.
Well, not every single one of them had to be in the water at all times. Clearly, that hadn’t been the case for my mom. By the tide, I wish I could talk to her. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel so strange about this secret part of myself.
Shoving those uncomfortable thoughts aside, I head toward Symphonia. There aren’t any guards, which makes me feel relieved. At least the sirens have peace.
A group of sirens swims by. One breaks off and swims over to me. “Rillia! What are you doing here?”
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