Immerse

by Tobie Easton

  “No, it’s not.” Em says. “Aurelia,” she softens her voice, attempting to be diplomatic even through her anger at me, “I know how much you love Clay, but you can’t let that cloud your judgment. It’s impossible to turn a human into a Merperson. You must know that.”

  Defensiveness rises in me, but she means well, so I keep my tone patient. “Like it was impossible to break the curse and restore our immortality? Like it was impossible to reverse the potion blocking Clay’s memories? Like it was impossible to bring peace to Merkind under rulers with a rightful claim to the throne?” I let the questions hang in the dehydrated air of the lab so my sisters feel the weight of them. “Look, when Clay first asked me, I thought it was totally impossible, too. But then we did some digging.” I tell them about how Clay and I have been researching and that I’d been losing hope, until I realized I’d misinterpreted the story of the Little Mermaid.

  The implication of the Little Mermaid’s humanity registers on each of their faces. The twins’ identical sets of eyes alight with intrigue, and Amy’s eyebrows shoot up as she smiles, excited to believe. When Em’s jaw drops, satisfaction bursts in my chest. (So I’m a little petty. So what?).

  “Wowza,” Lapis says.

  I tell them about how Clay figured out the dagger is the key and how, based on everything I learned from Ondine about the spell that the Sea Sorceress used to imbue it with power, that idea checks out. I offer Amy an apologetic expression as I mention what I told Uncle Kai to ensure he ordered the evidence from the trial brought here.

  “Hey, reviewing the evidence could actually help them catch Filius Havelock,” Amy says with a shrug. She leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees. “But even if we can get the dagger past whatever security they set up, do you know how to use it? In a magic, non-stabby way, I mean.”

  “I’m working on that,” I answer. “I’ve been building my magic every day since I got back from Sea Daughters. Ondine taught me how to sense magical energy. Once I have the dagger, I should be able to sense its energy and know what to do next.”

  “Should?” Lazuli asks.

  “I won’t know for sure until I have the dagger in my hands.”

  Em speaks for the first time since realizing I may have a shot. “Let’s say, for a moment, you could transform a human into a Merman. You can’t ask us—ask Amy—to help you break the law.”

  “I would never do that,” I say, sounding as grown-up and serious as I can under Em’s scrutiny. “I would never have let my plan get this far if it meant breaking the law again. I wouldn’t put any of you, or Clay, at risk like that.”

  “But, but we’re talking about magic based on the Sea Sorceress’s spell, and even before that, stealing evidence!”

  “Borrowing,” I say. “Borrowing evidence.”

  “Don’t do that,” Em says, like she’s babysitting me the way she used to and caught me sneaking away from the time-out cave in the grottos. “Don’t play with semantics. This is too important.”

  “You’re right,” I say. “It is important. It’s critical. That’s why I’m not basing this on semantics. I’m basing this on laws.” I speak slowly, making sure not only Em but each one of them understands. “When I was researching in the legal section of the varellska, I found a passage on court proceedings for our Community stating that all evidence in closed cases within the Community becomes the property of the Community itself.” I pull a large, cream diadema shell from my bag. “You can listen if you want,” I say, handing it to Em, who places it against her ear. I cued it up this morning in case we got this far. Now, with night pressing in on us outside the small lab and everything I’ve revealed inside these walls, this morning could be days ago.

  Once Em finishes the section, she rests the massive shell in her lap. “I don’t see how—”

  “Just wait.” I pull out a second shell, this one even bigger, and pass it to Amy, who passes it to Em. While she’s listening, I summarize in low tones for the others. “That one is from the Foundation bylaws. It says all property of the Community can be accessed by any member of the Community in good standing with proper Foundation approval.”

  Finished, Em stands from her stool, walking both shells back to me. “Those two statutes aren’t meant to have anything to do with each other. The right to access Community property is intended so that Mer can lease houses owned by the Foundation and use the grotto system.”

  “Whatever the statutes are intended for, they’re recorded right there, and together, they mean a member of our Community has every right to access the dagger.” Finding that beautiful overlap of legalese while nestled in one of the varellska’s captain’s chairs swept me up in a crosscurrent that felt like destiny and sent me straight for Uncle Kai’s office, where I finally set Project Mud in motion. “Since the dagger is an item in evidence in a case prosecuted within the Community, not the palace, it’s under Foundation jurisdiction. Em, since Mom and Dad stepped down when they started campaigning for the throne and put you in charge, you’re still technically head of the Foundation.”

  Em shakes her head. “Aunt Rashell—”

  “Is our envoy until Mr. Havelock is recaptured and you return Above, but you’re still the one with the authority.”

  “I’m not going to check evidence out for you. I’d have to lie to my colleagues about why I need it, and I won’t do that. Not to mention that if you actually end up being able to use the dagger with Clay, my lie would become public and my credibility would be smashed. Not just as head of the Foundation but as heir to the throne. You can’t think I would—”

  “I don’t think that. I know you wouldn’t, and I’d never want you to.” I stand now, taking Em’s hands in mine. Even though what I’ve just told her is the absolute truth, I’ve still never had to ask more of her than I’m about to, and I’ve never been less sure what she’ll say. “I want to check out the dagger myself—take on all the responsibility for what happens when I use it—but I need your help to do that. You’re the one with the power to grant me permission to check the dagger out of evidence.” I don’t phrase it like a question because she’s not ready to answer—not yet. I just let the facts float on the surface.

  Em shifts her weight onto her bare heels, the most she can back away without letting her careful composure slip, without letting go of my hands. “Even …” She clears her throat. “Even if I gave you permission, Mom and Dad would find out the second you tried to check out the dagger.”

  “She’s right,” Lapis says. “It’s an ancient magical artifact.”

  “A cursed ancient magical artifact,” Amy adds.

  “There’s no way Mom and Dad would ever let you near that dagger without a really good explanation,” Lazuli says. “And you can’t give them any explanation without telling them that Clay remembers you, and why he remembers you.”

  They expect me to be deterred by their words, but I’m fighting to keep a smile from my lips. Their arguments prove that all of them, even Em, have followed my logic this far and are at least willing to entertain the idea. Can I steer this ship the rest of the way? “That’s why we have to be sneaky. Legal, but sneaky.”

  Lapis scoots her stool closer to mine. “How—”

  Em interrupts. “I’m not trying to be annoying or nitpicky …” Really? “… but before we all get carried away, is Clay sure this is what he wants?”

  “I was wondering that, too,” Amy says. She rests a hand on my knee. “I know you two really love each other, but becoming a Merman …”

  “I know,” I say. “It was his idea. At first, when we couldn’t find any clue how to do it, I thought he’d eventually let it go. You know, focus on college apps or an upcoming gig and move on. But he just kept looking, desperate to find a way.” Picturing his face, so determined, so sure we could pull it off even when I wasn’t, makes me ache with missing him. “I’ve told him—a bunch of times—that I don’t want him doing this for me. He’s said over and over that he isn’t. Well, not
just for me, anyway. He loves the ocean and our world.” It’s my duty to speak for Clay right now, down here where he can’t speak for himself, so I let his passion rise in me until I’m brimming over. “He wants to have a future here with the person he loves, and that should be his choice. But right now he doesn’t have full legal rights, no protection from inhumane treatment like having a part of his mind stolen. As long as he’s human, he’s in danger under our laws. It isn’t fair.”

  Em’s mouth forms a grim line. “I am glad you got him his memories back. What the Tribunal did wasn’t right.” My conversation with Em after the trial flashes into my mind. Even through my grief, I’d pitied her that day. Out of all of us, she was the one most disillusioned by the whole thing, because she was the one who believed in our system the most. “Clay has been hurt at the hands of Merkind.”

  I’ve never heard Em speak more like a future monarch. And I’ve never heard her sound more full of regret.

  “I understand why you want to help him make this choice when so many choices have been taken from him,” Em says. “But what if you did it? What if you made it work? What about afterwards? Everyone down here knows he’s human. He testified at the trial. You know how firmly we believe in tradition, especially the Mer Below. He’d never be accepted. Wouldn’t we just be making his life worse?”

  The genuine worry twisting Em’s features makes me want to hug her for the first time since we set foot in this lab. It’s time.

  I pull out the last shell in my bag, a modest frog shell, and hold it up to her ear. Then I explain exactly what I’d need her to do

  She’s quiet for a long time.

  Finally, I say, “This time, I want to work inside the law to help him. After everything he’s been through,” everything he’s been through because of me, because of us, “I owe it to Clay to try to do this for him.”

  More earnest words I’ve never spoken.

  Em’s brown eyes so like my own meet mine, and for the first time, she looks at me like I’m an adult. An equal.

  “I’ll do it.”

  All around the circle, we inhale. But when I move in to hug her, she holds up a hand, halting me. “I want to be clear: I’m not helping because I forgive you for sirening, or for any of it. Not yet. I’m doing it to make things right for Clay.”

  My throat tightens. I don’t like her words, but I can live with them.

  In silence, Em returns to her seat.

  “On that super depressing note,” Lapis says, “can we go back to the part where we get to be sneaky? At least that sounded cool instead of maudlin.”

  I settle back on my own stool and let my gaze rest on my cousin as she twirls a lock of her strawberry blond hair around her finger. “Well, it all starts with Amy.”

  “I got ’em! I got ’em!” Amy whisper-shouts when she zooms into my room on her light purple tail a week later.

  My stomach flips.

  It’s late evening, so all the scientists and interns have long left for dinners at home and it’s easy for us to meet in the small electronics lab again. Em waits ten minutes before joining us to avoid suspicion, and the twins wait another five after that. By the time they swim through the whooshing evaporation barrier, I’m vibrating to the split ends of my staticky hair.

  Amy carefully moves an old telephone with a spiral cord aside. “Remind me to put that back,” she says, switching to English now that we’re in a dry room. She empties a bag seemingly full of art supplies out onto the long metal table. Among her volcanic charcoal pencils, maiden’s hair paintbrushes, and rolled up scrolls of bleached art algae, two darker scrolls tumble out from the bottom of the bag.

  “Where were they?” Em asks.

  “In my dad’s home office in my parents’ suite. He brought them there so he could go over them with my mom while she’s here this weekend.”

  “We should hurry, before your parents notice they’re gone,” I say.

  “My mom rode in from a week Above this morning. My parents will be … reuniting for a while.”

  “Props to Aunt Rashell and Uncle Kai!” Lapis says. “Good timing, Aims. They won’t be noticing anything but their bedroom ceiling any time soon.” Ew.

  Lazuli laughs, but the rest of us wrinkle our noses.

  “Stop. Now.” Amy scoops everything else into the bag and rolls both dark scrolls out next to each other. Together, they cover the metal table in a giant, complex blueprint too big to fit on a single scroll.

  The twins use their hands to keep one side from rolling back in on itself, while Em and I take the other.

  Tilting our heads from angle to angle, we hang on Amy’s every word as she runs her index finger along the plans and describes the drawings of one security measure after another.

  With each one, my stomach plummets lower. How can we …?

  When this plan started bubbling up to the surface of my mind during my first visit to the library’s legal section, I figured I’d need Em to authorize me to check out the dagger, Amy to gather intel on the security measures, and the twins to masterfully distract some guards. But this? My gaze shifts to the very center of the blueprints. That? Then to the far left corner. THAT? It’s all so far below and beyond what I had in mind. I can’t expect my sisters to risk dangers like these to help me and Clay.

  “This is going to rock!” Lapis says.

  Em swallows as she stares at the blueprints, but she doesn’t object.

  Amy and Lazuli start brainstorming out loud, throwing ideas back and forth for how we could get past the obstacles.

  We’re really doing this.

  I dive in. “I think I might have an idea for this one,” I say, tapping a spot on the scroll, “but,” I drag my finger to another, “how are we going to manage this one?”

  Four voices rush to answer me.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Melusine

  Should I answer? I stand here, staring at my closed bedroom door, picturing Caspian wading on the other side. He spent the last few days Above, so we haven’t seen each other since the night …

  I don’t want to open the door.

  He tried his damnedest to keep things from getting awkward that night. He even took me down to the qokkiis and showed me how to make his family’s version of spaghetti from long strands of elongata seaweed. It came out tastier than I’d expected, and I could picture him eating it as a little boy. He looked pretty funny with sauce all over his face. The memory of our laughter almost convinces me to turn the doorknob, but the memory of my mouth on his neck, of his hands on my arms pushing me away is stronger. My skin heats.

  I can almost feel him in front of me, his presence radiating through the thin barrier between us, pulling me toward him. Urging me to open the door.

  He knocks again. “Melusine? It’s Caspian.”

  His low baritone rolls out, easy and calm. I analyze it for notes of hesitancy or judgment but don’t find any.

  I could so easily pretend I’m not here. Or can he feel me, too?

  “Melusine?”

  Ultimately, it comes down to one simple question: do I want to see him?

  Water flutters against me as I open the door. His face greets me, as handsome as ever, his brows angled slightly with concern, his blue eyes a question I don’t know how to answer.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey. I thought I should let you know I delivered your letter. I saw Lia this morning.” Of course he went to see her first. “I gave her the locker number and combination for where I put it with my vocabulary list, and she gave it to Clay.”

  “So, he could have it by now?” My heart speeds up.

  Caspian nods. “Writing Clay that apology …” He swims forward, closer to where I float on the other side of the door frame. “It was the right thing to do.” He says those words like they matter more than any others.

  “It was?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want to come in?”

  “Yes.”


  But as he swims past me, he keeps as much distance between our bodies as possible in the small doorway, and once he enters the room, his eyes land on my bed then dart quickly away.

  The awkwardness I feared now creeps in. I brought it, so I have to banish it.

  I swim toward the small sitting area off to one side of the room and settle on a long, embroidered couch, so Caspian can choose how far from me he’d like to sit.

  He doesn’t sit next to me on the couch, but he doesn’t sit far, either, choosing the finback chair closest to my armrest.

  I should offer him something to eat or drink, but I have nothing. “How was your visit Above?” I ask before silence has a chance to make the moment more awkward.

  He shrugs. “It was nice to stay with my friend Arroyo and see some guys from the Community. They were all really excited to hear about what it’s like staying in the palace. And Lapis’s new boyfriend Beck was one of my guards, so I got to know him a little. He seems like a good guy.”

  I could care less about whether one of Lia’s sisters will eventually have her heart broken, but the Nautilus family is important to Caspian, so I bite back my reaction and ask, “Your parents just let you go up for a visit? Even with …” my father still out there somewhere “… the current security risks?”

  Dad, where are you? What do you want me to do? Why didn’t you—

  “No. They only said yes because I scheduled a meeting with Mr. Zung to discuss my plans for next year. He was down here for the coronation, but he’s back up at the Foundation now.”

  “And you met with him?” Or was it just a cover so he could make the drop-off to Clay?

  “Of course I did.” Because he wouldn’t lie unless he really had to. Strange, when lying is so much more expedient. I’d always assumed adherence to the truth was for the unimaginative. Those too stupid to lie well. But Caspian is anything but stupid.

  I don’t know anyone else our age whose talents have earned him a private audience with the foremost expert in his chosen field. “How was the meeting?”