by Tobie Easton
“Mr. Zung gave me a lot of good advice.” Caspian’s lips purse and his eyes take on a faraway quality.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“What advice?”
“Oh, just about the different currents available to me for next year.” The smile he pastes on his face at the end of the sentence is off somehow. And something in his eyes has turned stormy. He stares at me like he wants to say more but isn’t sure if he should. Isn’t sure if he wants to say it to me.
What was it he told me the other night? I try to get the wording, the inflection exactly right when I say, “You can tell me about it. If you want to.”
“It’s nothing.”
My body deflates. Why would he want to confide in me? I’ve confided in him because he’s the type of person it feels good opening up to. He’s proven it over and over. Me? No one would want to show me their soft, vulnerable underbelly. All I’ve ever proven is I’ll stab it with a dagger.
“It’s just …” He pauses. “I basically have three options, and I don’t know which one to pursue. But it’s not a big deal. I’ll figure it out.” The twisting and knotting of his usually smooth features tell me this is more important—more troubling—to him than he’s admitting.
If I wanted to get him to spill his secrets, I know exactly how I’d angle my body towards him, which timbre I’d set my voice to, what words I’d use. I even know how I could get him to favor whichever of those three options prove most advantageous to me. But what I don’t know is how to just … listen. Be here. Help. So, instead of using my words, I use his again. “We don’t have to talk about this. But if you think it will help …” I let the sentence trail off, the way his did when we talked about my mother.
He takes a deep, heavy breath, gills wavering. Did I do it wrong? Is he getting up to go? “The first option would be continuing my linguistics studies with a lereean”—that’s a cross between a paid internship and an apprenticeship—“directly under Mr. Zung. He’s the head of the entire department, and he usually doesn’t take on lereeti. I can’t believe he even offered that.”
“I can.” A hint of a smile ghosts over his lips, but then they slip into a frown again. “That sounds like an excellent opportunity,” I say. So what’s weighing him down to the bottom of the sea?
“It is. It is,” he rushes to acknowledge. “I’m so lucky. And grateful that he offered.”
Yeah, like the opportunity just dropped from the surface and has nothing to do with the skills Caspian has spent a lifetime teaching himself. I will myself not to roll my eyes. “But …?”
“Nothing! It’s just, there are two other options.” I nod, trying to look encouraging instead of impatient. He listened to me; now it’s my turn to give him the time he needs, no matter how odd and unproductive it makes me feel. “The second option would be attending a human college, like the twins do, and studying human linguistics. Most applications were due already, but a lot of good schools have rolling admissions, or I could serve as a lereeti to Mr. Zung for a year until it’s time to apply. Moving forward, the palace will need more Mer who speak human languages other than English. I could take my pick, study whichever human languages I want, then bring that knowledge back with me.”
A deeply ingrained distaste for placing value on anything human rises unbidden in my throat, especially on placing it equal to an opportunity in the Mer world. I force the reaction down with both fins. Caspian doesn’t feel that way about it, and he needs me right now. I don’t trust myself not to say something that’ll come out sounding udell, so I nod again.
“And the third option would be to study Below. Some schools that closed at various points during the wars are starting back up, finding professors who are still alive and reopening their doors. There’s one in particular Mr. Zung told me about, out in Maqmillan, that’s already gathered some of the best language scholars so it can specialize in training students in different Mermese dialects to aid reunification efforts.”
I know what I’d do. In a heartbeat. This isn’t about you, a tiny voice in my head reminds me. Let him talk. “You like all three options?”
“I know how incredible all three are. How fortunate I’d be to take any one of them.” Despite his words, he looks more conflicted than ever. Then a smile spreads across his face, wide and convincing. “The Foundation job has been my dream since I was little. I could learn so much from Mr. Zung. And the job Below involves using the dialects I’d be learning to help in the local communities right away, so I could do a lot of good. And even though I’d never thought of studying in the human world, the field of human linguistics is hundreds of years ahead of ours because of our wars. Not only is it fascinating, but I could pioneer new research down here afterwards and do a lot of good that way, too.” Even after he gushes about how amazing everything is, that wide smile doesn’t light his eyes. They still storm.
“Yes, I get that all the jobs offer sunshine and rainbridges, but what about—”
“Bows,” Caspian says. “Rainbows.” Since the word doesn’t exist in modern Mermese, he approximates the English version using Mermese sounds, the same way I did a second ago when I said “rainbridges.”
“Really? But humans love bridges.” When I first learned the word, I couldn’t wrap my brain around why anyone would want to avoid water; the concept was one of many that made humans strange and foreign. “And they’re shaped like bridges.” I draw an arch in front of me in the water with my hand.
“Oh, yeah, they are,” he says, and for a second, his expression shifts from conflicted to amused. Interested. “I never thought of it that way, but they’re also shaped like hunting bows, so … rainbows.”
“Ohhh, got it. Rainbows. Thanks.” I smile, and he smiles back. It’s a small smile, but real this time. “My point is, I get that there are all these very positive things about each job, but that can’t be all.” If it were, he wouldn’t look so miserable. “What aren’t you telling me?” Better question: what isn’t he telling himself?
“Nothing. Really. I feel guilty even just mentioning—”
“Ugh, guilt.”
He raises an eyebrow. I put up both hands. “I get it. Guilt is important.” Boy do I. “Feeling it is important.” That part comes out quiet. “But you haven’t done anything to be guilty about. It’s okay to know the jobs are great and still feel something negative. Feelings aren’t all rainbows.” I articulate the word in its correct version. “Sometimes feelings are dark, and that’s okay. So, out with it.”
He leans forward, elbows on his tail. “The jobs make me …” He shakes his head, searching, searching, searching until he finds an accurate word.“… afraid.”
This time, finding the correct label doesn’t give him the satisfaction it usually does. The word wrenches its way free, but he stays locked up in it.
Afraid? “Afraid of what?” I keep my voice passive, nonjudgmental. Another skill I learned from him.
“All of it. Well, not the Foundation job. Not the one I’ve been dreaming about and preparing for. But the other two.” Still leaning on his elbows, he throws his head back and stares at the ceiling. “I don’t know how to live in the human world. Not really. I mean, sure, I grew up in the Community. I know how to speak English and walk to the mall and say hello to the neighbors and buy groceries. But I’m not like Lia. I’ve never been to human school. My family and I barely even used the top stories of our house! Most days, between school and home, I never left the grottos except to swim in the ocean. How am I supposed to live and work for years in the human world? I don’t think I can.” It all explodes from him, a long dormant volcano erupting after centuries beneath a placid surface.
“You—”
“And the job Below is worse. It’s so much worse.”
His voice breaks, and in the pause that follows, I ask, “Why?”
“This palace, it’s a lot like the Community. Rebuilt by the exact same people to feel safe and familiar. But
out there, far away from the palace and my parents and the Nautiluses …” He springs up from his chair and flings an arm toward the closest amber window. “I know even less about that world than the human one, and it shouldn’t be that way. That’s the world I was supposed to be born into, the one where I’m supposed to fit. And it … it …”
“Scares you?”
His blue gaze bores into mine.
“It terrifies me. I don’t know how to live in it.”
“So that’s why you want to stay at the Foundation?”
He hesitates. “I thought about it all the way home, and the Foundation job feels … right. My instincts are telling me to grab the job I’ve always dreamed of and not let go, but”—he runs a hand through his hair—“what if I shouldn’t trust that feeling?”
His voice is strident, burdened with emotion. I was never allowed to take that tone at home—irrational, my parents would have called it. I shift on my coral tail. I don’t know what to do with this much emotion except use it against someone. The best I can do is ask, “What do you mean?”
“All those kids in the Community and their parents, for all those years, saying I’d grow up to be a nothing, a no one, or that I’d do something evil, like my aunt. No matter how hard I worked I couldn’t overcome my family’s reputation, the stain of sireny.”
“But now that you’ve helped break the curse, everyone’s forgotten. They see you as a hero.” Because he is.
“I haven’t forgotten! And what if the only reason I want to take that job so badly is to rub it in their faces? To be some big shot at the Foundation and prove I made it? To prove they were all wrong about me. Lia would say that’s not me, but picturing myself in some fancy Foundation office as a big boss, operating at an intellectual level that those …” I think he wants to curse, but even in his anger, he checks the impulse at meanness, “kids who excluded me and talked about me behind my back could never fathom? That image of myself makes me feel …”
“Powerful? Validated?”
He nods.
“It’s tempting, isn’t it?” I could so easily use this as a bonding moment, but I resist the urge. “Look, you imagining yourself in some Foundation office, all decked out in a suit or a strand of top shells, isn’t the same as me or my father lusting for power. You can’t blame yourself for wanting to defy the expectations of idiots who underestimated you or for aspiring to be successful.”
“Does that mean I take the Foundation job?” He hovers right in front of me, his face a question. “I don’t know what to do.” Then more to himself and riddled with distress: “And I always, always know what to do.”
I used to know what to do. A few months ago, right and wrong were so clear to me. As long as I stuck to the plan, I was doing the right thing, so every choice was like crystal. Now I’m confused most of the time. That storminess in Caspian’s eyes? I feel it, too.
But at least in this moment, I can help clear up some of Caspian’s confusion. He needs to—no. I can’t give him advice on this. It’s so important, and … I make bad decisions. I’m a bad decision-maker. Isn’t that what everyone keeps telling me? The Tribunal, my father at the trial, my therapist, even Caspian in nicer words. Staring at his face, torn and vulnerable, eyes begging for someone to help him, I rear back. Not me. I’m not the one to help him decide his future. “Have you asked your parents? Or”—just say it, just say it, just—“Lia?” She’s his best friend, not me.
“They’ll tell me to do what feels right. And the only option that feels right is the Foundation job.” Because it doesn’t scare him. Because it would be safe and familiar, and he could settle into that comfortable image of himself.
But if deep down he really wanted to take that job, he’d be having this conversation with the people he knows would tell him to “do what feels right.” He knocked on my door instead. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?
When I don’t respond, he says, “My parents and Lia would tell me to choose the one that makes me happy.”
Happy? Seriously? That’s terrible advice. These are the people he’s dealing with? Okay, he needs me.
“Stop. Right there. We have to swim to the beginning on this. First of all, you’re thinking like a human. I don’t mean that in an udell way. I mean you’re thinking like a human when you’re not one.”
I prepare myself for a surge of defensiveness, but Caspian’s eyes light with genuine interest. “How?”
I lean forward, my elbows resting on my tail now too, and say slowly, “You can do all three.”
He looks puzzled, so I explain. “You’re immortal now. You have time to not only have all three of those careers, but as many as you want. You can study a thousand languages, Mer and human, become the foremost linguistics expert in the ocean.” Then, because I don’t want to offend him by excluding where he grew up or the humans that live there, I add, “In the world.” He really could be. Excitement rises in me like high tide.
It must rise in him, too, because he blinks with realization and smiles, open-mouthed.
“So, really,” I say, “you’re not choosing between these options. You’re just choosing which one to do first.”
“That’s”—his face clears and his shoulders drop their weight—“way less overwhelming.”
Now it’s time to share the part he may not like as much. “And if you want to keep all three on the table for the future—if you want to achieve something really extraordinary someday, which with your capabilities, you can—then you don’t want to just pick the one that makes you feel good and happy. You want to choose the one that scares you. That’s the one that will push you the most, so you’ll learn as much as you can for whatever you take on next.”
“I never thought of it that way.” Caspian falls against the backrest of his chair. “But I think you’re right.”
I am right. It’s the first time I’ve felt right in a while.
He sighs. “I feel so much better. Still scared about what my next move should be,” he admits, “but more klaniss.” That’s a nuanced, poetic word that doesn’t translate well into English, except into a clunky hyphenate: excited-scared. On the cusp of the thrilling unknown. Caspian looks right at me then, and I lose my wave of thought. “Thank you,” he says.
Warmth spreads through my chest and cheeks. “You’re welcome.”
It isn’t until an hour later, once we’ve spread a game of spillu out and are sitting on the floor with our tails tucked under us as we play, that my mind drifts back to the letter.
“Can I ask you something?” I move my onyx killer whale along the board, then clip it in its new square.
“Sure.”
“Why are you nice to Clay? Even when you were still trying to get with Lia, you helped him.” Is he secretly still trying to get Lia to see him as more than a friend? Does he still have feelings for her? “Why? Why are you making vocab lists for the guy Lia’s dating instead of you?” If you can call weird mind-chatter through a magical bond “dating.”
Caspian gazes down at the fine-carved ivory of his polar bear piece and lets out a single laugh, more bitter than I expected. “Trust me, I’ve wondered that myself.” He shrugs. “He asked me before the trial, and it’s admirable of him to want to learn Mermese.” I raise my eyebrows so he knows I’m not buying that all that’s behind this is some mutual love of learning. “He’s a decent guy, and he’s suffered a lot.” Caspian looks away from me, but then levels me with a serious expression.
I nod. We both know what I did.
“He’d never even met me when he and Lia became close. It’s not his fault she …” We both hear the words he doesn’t say: it’s not Clay’s fault that Lia isn’t in love with Caspian. “Basically, I decided, if I can help, I should.” He says that like it’s a no-brainer, but it never would have occurred to me. The words roll over in my brain like river rocks. Caspian sighs and adds, “I just always thought Lia and I were so right for each other.” He moves his piece a few place
s and clips it to the board.
I snort. I can’t help it.
“What?”
“Well, you’re just so not.”
“Yeah, because Lia doesn’t feel that way about me. I’ve accepted that.”
“No, because you’re just not right for each other.”
“Maybe you and I shouldn’t talk about this.”
I choke back my nerves and mention the unmentionable before he can. “Because of the other night? Don’t flatter yourself. I was upset and I just wanted to turn my brain off for a while. That’s all it was.” Was it? Shut up. Of course it was. “I don’t want to hold hands with you and make googly eyes at each other. Got it?” The words come out with more bite than I intended. I take my turn.
“Got it,” he says, barely above a whisper.
Good. I can’t have him thinking of me as some clingy teenage girl mooning after him. I’d rather die.
He scoots his polar bear forward and re-clips it. “So … what do you mean then? About Lia and me?”
“Truth?”
He nods.
I infuse as much kindness into my voice as I can when I say, “You’re both too noble for your own good. If you were a couple, everyone would take advantage of the two of you, and every hard decision would wrack you both with guilt and confusion.” He opens his mouth to argue, so I add, “Just like this one about your job opportunities did.”
His mouth closes as his brow lowers.
I move my piece again, closer to his. “I’m not saying you don’t work as friends. Clearly, you have for a long time.” That history runs deep through their veins. I saw it when I first met the two of them, glued together at that gala. “But she’ll never understand the pain you’ve felt—everything you’ve been through as an outcast for all those years. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“She tries …”
“I’m not saying it’s her fault.” For once, I don’t think it is. “But her life has been too perfect for her to ever really get you. And you’d rather shield her from it than talk to her about it, so if you were together, you could never really give her all of you. You’d always be holding back.”