by Tobie Easton
We’re so close now. Clay as a Merman—eee! I can just picture it! I wonder what tail color he’ll have. Tail tones run in families, so expectant parents and their relatives usually have a lot of fun predicting what a baby’s tail color will be. The only reason my sisters and I have such different color tails is that our mom’s is opalescent, which opens up a whole range, but that’s rare. Caspian and his sister both have tails that are slightly different shades of silver, for instance, taking after their dad, whose is slate. My dad and his sister’s tails don’t match as closely as some siblings’ do, but his is copper and Aunt Rashell’s is burgundy, so they’re definitely similar. And her burgundy tail paired with Uncle Kai’s deep indigo meant that when Amy was born, her purple tail wasn’t a surprise.
But Clay’s parents aren’t Mer, so his future tail color is a complete mystery.
I curl my own tail under me as, alone in my room, I sit on the rug at the foot of my bed with the slender box in front of me.
I lift the lid and, for the first time, reach inside to touch the dagger.
The instant my hand closes around the ruby-encrusted iron hilt, hot, luscious magic leeches up through my palm in those same tempting tendrils I sensed calling to me earlier. Now they curl up my arm and into me, whispering, whispering:
Blood. Blood.
My hand tightens on the hilt, ready to drive the dagger through flesh.
The blade crashes to the floor when I wrench my hand away from it.
It lies there, still as death, but alive with more power than I’ve ever felt in an object.
My hand shakes, and I massage it with my other. I never want to touch that thing again. But I need to cast the revealing spell I’ve been practicing if I want to finally learn how to use the power inside the dagger to make Clay Mer.
With the very tip of one of my gold fins, I slide the dagger along the floor until it lies in front of me again, waiting for me in a black, horizontal line.
I sit back down and lightly rest my fingertips on the dagger, one hand toward the blade and one on the hilt.
Its dark pull licks at me. When I close my eyes, all I see is blood. But I push the image down, holding tight to my concentration. Once I’m sure I’m in control, I recite the words to the revealing spell.
But the dagger isn’t a bowl or an old servants’ passage or the walls of Em’s bedroom. It’s powerful in its own right, and it blocks me from learning its secrets. Instead of showing me how to use it, all I see is blood again, gushing from a terrible, fatal wound. Down, down the tip of the dagger and onto my hands. It fills my mouth with copper.
I open my eyes, gagging as I pull my hands away. I don’t want this evil thing anywhere near Clay again. But … if I use all that power to help him, then I’m using it for good.
To banish the sickening red from my mind’s eye, I visualize Clay instead. Clay and me cuddled up in the cozy den of our abandoned mansion, joking and throwing popcorn. In each other’s arms, our lips fused together and his cinnamon scent surrounding me in safety. Swimming together in the ocean, two Mer with an eternity together to look forward to.
I roll my shoulders, bring my fingertips back to the dagger, and speak the words of the revealing spell again. At the taste of blood, the first glimpse of oozing red, I say them again, more forcefully this time. And again.
And again.
And—
I’m standing on a ship in my legs and a long, thin nightgown. The wind whips at my hair and stars twinkle above me in the night sky. A full moon illuminates the dark wood of the ship’s deck.
At the bow stands a waif of a girl, also in a long, ruffled nightgown, leaning far over the railing toward the roiling, black waves.
My bare feet run along the deck, wet with ocean spray. “Careful!” I shout, but she doesn’t respond.
Then I too reach the bow. Below us, five figures swim in the wine-dark sea. Mermaids, but their hair is shorn short, their faces forlorn.
“We traded our hair to the Sea Sorceress for it,” one of them calls up to her in Mermese. She looks about Em’s age, and she’s hauntingly beautiful.
“Take it,” another begs. “Take it and come back to us.” She’s about the twins’ age, her shining hair cut off in chunks. “If you don’t, you’ll die at sunrise.” A burst of water lifts her, and her tail glints in the moonlight as she rises toward the ship. “Take it,” she says again, holding out a spiny, black blade with a ruby-encrusted hilt.
“Don’t!” But the girl at the bow doesn’t hear me. None of them do.
Her long hair thrashing behind her in the salty sea wind, the Little Mermaid takes the dagger. Her sisters bid her farewell, but she doesn’t say a word as they disappear beneath the waves. Because she can’t.
She gave up her voice to the Sea Sorceress in exchange for making her legs permanent so the prince she loved would never find out what she was. That’s the biggest detail Hans Christian Andersen got wrong, but he got the ending right. The prince chose another girl—a human princess—to marry instead of her.
Today, I realize. He married his princess today in this strange vision-world where the ocean’s salt scrapes against my face as I watch my ancestor live a story I’ve heard my whole life. That means tonight—right now—is his wedding night, and since he married someone else instead of her, the Little Mermaid will die at sunrise as she agreed to when she bargained with the Sea Sorceress.
Unless she uses that dagger to kill her beloved prince and get her tail and immortality back. But she won’t. She can’t because she loves him too much. Instead, just like I did, she’ll drop the dagger. But she’ll drop it into the sea, off the bow of this very ship. And because she valued a human life above her own immortality, the instant that obsidian blade touches the ocean, it will strip all Merkind of our immortality and curse us all with human lifespans. Her love will unwittingly enact the curse that Clay’s and my love breaks exactly two centuries later.
Which already happened ten months ago—man, time travelly visions are confusing. I force myself to stay in the present (well … the past) as I follow her along the creaking deck and we descend into the depths of the ship’s largest cabin.
The prince sleeps in his bedchamber behind thick, velvet curtains, in the arms of a human princess with plump, rosy cheeks. It’s her wedding night, and she smiles in her sleep, her head resting on the chest of her groom the way I like to rest mine on Clay’s.
Honeysuckles, most likely from the wedding ceremony, decorate the room, and the warm air hangs heavy with their sweet, heady perfume.
The Little Mermaid’s hand shakes as she holds back the velvet curtain and stares at the couple. Stares at the prince she loves so deeply. Then stares at the dagger gripped in her other hand.
Moments pass. Anguish contorts her pretty features, which bear just the slightest resemblance to my mother’s. I want to rest my hand on her shoulder, to comfort her, but she won’t be able to feel it, so I hang back by the wooden bedpost.
Every drop of her attention lies on her prince, his handsome, strong face softened with sleep.
He murmurs and shifts against his embroidered pillows, lost in a dream. A wistful smile graces the Little Mermaid’s lips, as if she wishes more than anything she could be there, lost with him in that dream, too.
She leans forward and places the gentlest of kisses on his forehead.
Then she raises the dagger and slices into him.
What? “NO!” I scream. I reach to grab her arm, but my hands pass straight through. The same happens when I try to press against his wound to staunch the bleeding—my hands pass through the giant gash she’s made on his thigh, and they come away clean despite the blood now pouring forth.
So much blood. She must have hit his artery. The bedchamber fills with screams. His quickly die out as he slips from the world, his eyes staring up in shock at the Little Mermaid until they glaze over, empty. His bride’s screams continue as, woken from her peaceful sleep by the horror aro
und her, she shakes him by the shoulders and shrieks and sobs. It’s no use—she can’t wake him. He’ll never wake again. Never see the impending sunrise.
Even though no one can hear me, I’m still screaming, too. “This doesn’t happen. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen,” I repeat over and over. I’m going to be sick.
I have to get out of here. But I can’t move my leaden limbs. My ancestor leans close to the prince, and as his blood spills onto her hard-won legs, something … glitters. Scales!
Just a few at first, one for each drop of crimson blood. Then, before my eyes, the thing that never happened, happens: her legs transform back into a gorgeous, glittering tail.
She drops the obsidian dagger; it comes to rest in a pool of red on the blood-soaked bed sheets, its mission complete.
The scene blends like oil paint, and I topple backward, falling into myself, into my own body.
I wrench my eyes open to the sight of my own rug in my own quiet room, my head pounding.
That … that isn’t what happened. She loved him too much to kill him; she sacrificed herself instead. That’s the truth. But what I just saw was so real, every detail, down to the cloying scent of honeysuckle and blood. How …?
Then realization clunks into my stomach. That isn’t what happened. It’s what was supposed to happen.
The dagger has shown me its intended use. The reveal spell has worked. But all it’s shown me is what I already know.
Dread hollows out my chest. No. No, there must be more. The dagger needs to reveal how I can use it to help Clay—not murder him.
I have to go back in.
I wipe tears from my face that I didn’t know were there, flicking pearls into the surrounding water. Then, I place my hands on the dagger and recite the spell words again.
I’m back on the ship, sea wind whipping around me, stars twinkling above, unaware of what’s to come as they nestle in the silent sky. The Little Mermaid leans over the edge. She takes the dagger from her sister. I follow her inside. Blood and screams and honeysuckle. She gets her tail back, and I open my eyes in my room.
No! There must be a way to see more. To see what else the dagger can do in the future. Fighting down an almost overpowering wave of nausea, I conjure up an image in my mind of Clay. Clay smiling, radiating happiness, as I stand beside him, my hands hovering over the dagger as I cast the spell we’re searching for and he transforms into a Merman.
I picture it in as much detail as I can, my imagination choosing a deep, forest green tail for Clay, the same color as the swim trunks I helped him pick out to wear to the trial.
With that image firmly fixed in my mind’s eye, I bring my fingertips back to the dagger and recite the words again.
Ship. Little Mermaid. Dagger. Prince. Blood. So much blood.
I open my eyes, gasping and sick.
For the rest of the day and into the night, I go in over and over, trying everything I can think of to get the spell to show me something different. Something I can use.
Every time it’s the same, until I can’t watch anymore. Even though logic tells me that this murder never happened, that all that blood was never spilled, my heart can’t stand it.
And neither can my stomach.
I swim as fast as I can to the trash chute in the old maid’s quarters behind my room, but I barely reach its downward flowing current in time. I vomit until I’m empty, my insides burning.
Copper still lingers in my mouth and nose. The prince’s glazed eyes and slack face still haunt me.
I have no idea how to use that dagger to do something good. With it stowed under my bed, I lie awake all night.
“Are you all right?” Caspian mouths the next morning as we sit listening to MerMister Pelagios’s mathematics lecture on the Nerean theorem and I fight to keep my swollen eyes open. I nod and try to pay attention, but thoughts of the dagger swirl in circles through my mind.
They’re still swirling hours later, when I go with Caspian to the Magic Department so we can help his grandmother and her team by sorting through submissions for new spell experiments.
“Have you versed yourself in all the guidelines?” Caspian’s grandmother asks me when she approaches.
I hand her back the besklili I’ve just listened to on the department’s guidelines for categorization. “Yes, MerMatron Zayle.”
“Good. Any questions?”
I shake my head. “The directions were super clear.”
“I need to get back to the approval committee then. So much to do. You keep those heading our way.” She inclines her head at the lidded baskets of shell submissions in front of me.
“Will do.”
“Thanks again for coming in to help us,” she says, shooting me what can only be described as a grandmotherly smile, even though she no longer looks a day over thirty. “I feel much better having you here than that Melusine.” What? “Although I must admit, she certainly got a lot done.” She taps the table. “All right, I’m off. You let Avalonia over there know if you have any questions.”
MerMatron Zayle leaves, and I direct my shocked expression at Caspian, who’s already hard at work next to me sorting through Mermese scrolls, pretending to be engrossed in a translation.
“What did she mean, Melusine was here?” I ask as he continues to successfully avoid my gaze.
“Lia, don’t.”
Don’t what? Ask a perfectly reasonable question about why someone convicted of potentially fatal magical crimes would be in the Magic Department?
He drags his gaze up from the scroll. “I can’t get all the Mermese scrolls that need translation sorted by myself. More are coming in every day.”
Oh, right, their little “We Read Written Mermese” club. Ugh. You know, Caspian taught written Mermese to himself. Melusine just learned it from her father. That’s waaaay less impressive. Even if it is a dead language with hundreds of symbols …
“She only had access to Level One healing scrolls, nothing else.” He continues before I can interrupt. “And shouldn’t it be up to my grandma to decide who gets to help in her department?” I hear what he doesn’t say: not up to you.
“The words ‘Melusine’ and ‘help’ never go together. And here I thought you wanted to be a linguist,” I joke. He doesn’t laugh.
“Well, she did help,” he says, picking up the next scroll. “I would have asked you to come too, but I didn’t see you. Where were you yesterday?”
“I was … with my sisters.” I haven’t told Caspian anything about getting the dagger. I didn’t want him to worry or to try to talk my sisters and me out of sneaking it from the vault. He would have wanted to protect me—protect all of us—from the risk. I was planning to fill him in on everything once I had it safely in my possession, but that was when I thought the reveal spell would show me how to use it.
If he can sense that I’m keeping something from him, he doesn’t push. We fall silent next to each other as we sort.
I can’t help the way my thoughts immediately drift. I know how important this work is to fostering magical innovation, but after yesterday all that matters to me is figuring out how to use the dagger. I thought getting it would be the hard part. My sisters and I didn’t face electric locks and armed guards and voice sensors and a giant jellyfish and a frickin’ SHARK so I could fail now.
But there’s nothing I can do on that front while I’m in this room, so I force myself to focus on the task at hand where I may actually do some good. Sorting the spell submissions is a little tedious, but not difficult. If a submission is based on a spell that isn’t categorized as dangerous and never has been, it’s automatically a Level One spell. Since those are low risk, I don’t need to check them right away. New Level One spell experiments can start as soon as the submission is filed with the department, so no one is waiting for a response on those. These other ones take priority because until they receive official approval, no work on them can start for safety reasons. That means no progr
ess until someone authorized by MerMatron Zayle can review them.
The department is working day and night, but there’s a huge backlog. Knowing I can help speed up that process, even in a small way, makes me feel—
The doors to the room slam open.
Three guards zoom inside on strong tails. And head right toward me.
I tense, fear shooting to the base of my neck. Did they find out I snuck into the vault? Have I gotten my family and Stas in trouble? I drop my hands under the table, so the guards won’t see them shake.
“Princess Aurelia, you’re needed in the throne room at once. Filius Havelock has been captured.”
Chapter Thirty
Melusine
The news rocks through my whole body.
My father has been captured.
A small part of me expected him to never be captured, to outsmart the authorities until they gave up. Then he would come back for me. He’d rap on my amber window late one night when the guards were changing shifts. He’d say he was terribly sorry and he’d have a logical explanation for why he left without me, as well as an ingenious plan for how we could escape together this time. He’d take me away to build a new life where no one knew our past and we could start again, fresh and clean of all of it.
But none of that is to be.
My father has been captured.
“Can you tell me anything else?” I ask the guards who swam right into my room while I was doing homework without so much as knocking. “Is he all right? Is he hurt?”
“We’ve told you all we’re authorized to disclose.”
“All you’ve said is he was captured. Is he in the palace? Can I see him?” Do I want to see him? Do I want to see the man who abandoned me without a word? I wish the answer were no. I’d like to think my self-respect would make me want to wait until he sent me a message begging me to visit him so he could apologize and explain everything like in my childish fantasy. But he’s my dad, and right now, all I want to do is make sure he hasn’t been stabbed or spelled during his arrest.