Immerse

by Tobie Easton

  How could I let this happen? What kind of best friend am I? I should have protected him, I should have … what? I warned him, again and again. If I do anything now to separate them, say anything about why he should stop spending time with her, he’ll accuse me of trying to control him … and he’d be right.

  But I have seen zero evidence that she’s learned from her past mistakes the way he says she has. I still think her trying to help Caspian escape from Ondine must have been from some ulterior motive we haven’t figured out yet. Maybe something else she plotted with her father, maybe the same something else that’s tied to his escape and the spell he’s planning. So, I do let myself say one last thing: “I don’t trust her.” My gaze pleads with him to understand, to wake up.

  “And you’re so good at knowing who to trust?”

  I reel back even though his words are quiet. Memories of Ondine, of the sirens I trusted as friends press into me. I trusted them with my life, and almost forfeited it. Caspian has regained his composure since my question about his feelings for Melusine sent him floundering, so he offers me an apologetic eyebrow raise and says, “Look, Lia, Melusine’s trip to visit Sea Daughters is already scheduled. Give her a chance. She can do this.”

  Hope blossoms inside me. Not because I think for a second Melusine could prove me wrong (yeah, right), but because I don’t need to worry about warning him again. I don’t need to quash his love for her at all. She’ll do it all by herself—tomorrow. When she’s at Sea Daughters, she’ll do something to double-cross us. Once she does, her true colors will show themselves and Caspian will know what she is. I don’t have to convince him; I just have to sit back and let Melusine bite her own hook.

  My throat constricts a little at the knowledge of how heartbroken Caspian will be. I hate that he’ll be in that place again. But the sooner it happens, the easier it will be. Later, as I get lost among research konklilis in the library once again, I reassure myself that tomorrow she’ll finally show Caspian who she really is.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Melusine

  Tomorrow comes faster than tomorrow’s ever come. I set out early, accompanied by three guards who don’t speak a word to me. One sits up front with the carriage driver, the other two hold onto bars on the back with one hand and keep their other hands on their spears. I don’t know if they’re here to protect me or to protect others from me. The carriage itself is splendid. It isn’t like the gold ones reserved for members of the royal family and their guests, but like all palace carriages, it has the circular shape of a moon shell, this one of hammered bronze. Four giant sea horses carry it through the water, changing from deep purple to midnight blue to magenta to bright yellow as they swim, blending into the surroundings of rock formations, schools of fish, and coral forests.

  I sit alone inside, on the padded bench that wraps around the edges of the carriage’s gleaming walls, a thick seasilk seatbelt strapped around my waist to keep me from floating about as we move.

  Normally, solitude doesn’t bother me—it’s been my steady companion since childhood—but sitting in silence through this long carriage ride gives me too much time to think. About all the wrong things.

  I should use this time to strategize, to anticipate every possible current my conversation with Ondine’s little sycophants could travel and what exactly I would say for each. But every time I’m midway through one predicted scenario, an errant thought bubbles to the surface and latches on, making me veer off course.

  Caspian, walking with me in slow circles around the ballroom, his legs a hairsbreadth from touching my own. Caspian, taking hold of my hands in his larger ones. Caspian, telling me he believes in me in his low, trustworthy voice. Caspian, smiling a small, surprised smile after my lips pressed against his smooth cheek.

  No. I need to think about Jinju and Dionna and the other two. The ones I met and tricked into leaving so I could try to help Caspian escape. Nixie and Thessa. I need my thoughts to stay on them.

  But … Caspian.

  I sigh. I refuse to be some stereotypical, love-addled teenager. Wait, love? Ha, no. It’s just an expression. Caspian has been my only true confidant for months and the only person who believes in me, so I … care about h—I care about not disappointing him. That doesn’t mean I …

  Jinju and Dionna and Nixie and Thessa. What will they say? Come on, Melusine, focus, for sea’s sake. You agreed to do this, and now you have to do it right. A shiver slithers through me at the thought of them. Jinju, Dionna, and the other sirens.

  And Lia, waiting back at the palace for me to fail. Waiting to prove, to herself and (much more importantly) to Caspian, that I’m as evil as she says I am. Am I?

  How is what I’m about to do different from the last time I said yes to taking a risk—when I agreed to move to the surface, siren Clay, and perform the ritual to take back control of the curse? This time you’re not hurting anyone, an inner voice murmurs. Is that the key difference? And is that even why I agreed to do this? For Clay, because I hurt him?

  I don’t have time for this existential flotsam. Does it matter if I’m doing it for good or for glory? For Clay’s future or for Caspian’s smiles?

  Or for … myself? To prove I’m capable of something … anything … that isn’t evil?

  None of that matters. Not now. All that matters is the goal. Find out how to use the dagger to make Clay human without arousing the sirens’ suspicions that I’m aligned (waves help me) with Lia.

  Light filters in through the carriage’s window, muted by the amber window panes but unmistakable. We’re almost there.

  When a guard comes in and escorts me out the bronze entranceway, I close my eyes in preparation, but it barely helps me adjust to the brightness outside. We’re close to the surface now, and golden sunlight filters through the cerulean water. It evokes a memory of the first time I surfaced with my father, when we came to the Community of Landed Mer. The undiluted sunlight was one of the strangest things to get used to, so bright and hot and unforgiving.

  It is a relief when the guard pulls me into the shadow of a rocky mass that stretches up as high as I can see, breaking the water’s surface far above my head. We’ve reached the island.

  At first glance, the rock face thick with ocean greenery looks the same as it did when I snuck here to help Caspian, the same as it did when I came here as a little girl with my father to visit Ondine. But as the guard and I swim forward, the first difference greets us. To the side of a large rock protrusion lies a deep crevice large enough to swim into. The academy’s entranceway used to be cloaked by powerful magic. Ondine’s magic. Now that crevice just sits there all the time, visible to the naked eye. I run my fingertips along its rocky edges. It’s a subtle change, but a jarring one.

  “What are you waiting for?” The guard asks. “Go on.”

  I swim into the crevice that will take me to the academy. It’s only big enough for one Mer at a time, and I can feel the guard at my back. We swim upward, the craggy walls tight on all sides.

  I halt in front of a stone door that was never there before. It’s narrow, crammed into the passageway where no one intended it to go, but where, without Ondine, it’s now necessary. The guard reaches around from behind me and knocks. Having him so close in the tight space makes me swallow down claustrophobia. Then the door opens, and a sharp-looking woman holding a ring of fishbone keys stares down at me.

  “You’re here,” she says, like she wishes I wasn’t. “Come along.”

  She gestures me forward, in front of her. Only once I’m squeezing past her in the tight space of the rocky corridor do I realize, despite her stern expression, she’s probably too cautious to turn her back to me. Me, the infamous criminal.

  I continue swimming upward until the corridor opens up and my head breaks the surface of the water.

  The inside of the island is as dazzling as ever.

  Cool mist hits my face, arms, and chest as they emerge from the waves. I now swim waist-deep i
n a huge cavern whose domed ceiling arches above ground, letting white sunlight stream in through high openings carved in intricate shapes. I squint up at them; a few of the larger openings have been carefully filled in now that Ondine’s wards no longer hide them from the rare human scientist who comes to check the island nature preserve above. But an abundance of light still pierces through the smaller openings that remain, sparkling off not only the walls but also the indoor waterfalls that flow in from outside at all different heights in glimmering cascades.

  The enlivening song of rushing water can’t drown out the harsh voice of the woman who introduces herself as the new headmistress. She has none of Ondine’s mystery, none of her allure. At best, she appears competent but mediocre. She instructs the guard to return to the door. With him blocking the door and his two colleagues outside guarding the crevice entranceway—the only entranceway, now that the top of the island has been closed off—I couldn’t escape if I tried. But I don’t want to escape the academy.

  I want to go farther in.

  I can’t speak until we leave the main cavern, dive through one of the waterfalls to the hidden cave that lies behind it, and swim through a series of downward-sloping tunnels to classrooms and student lounges that are completely underwater. But even once my voice works again, I say little. I know whatever flood of positive publicity the academy received from Lia’s two-minute-long attendance would be utterly ruined if I chose to matriculate here. No wonder this Mermaid isn’t greeting me with smiles and a welcome buffet.

  The question is, how will I be greeted by the Mermaids I really came to see? The headmistress gives me a perfunctory tour, and as it draws to a close, she says, “When I received the additional request for you to spend part of your visit conversing with a few of our students whom you already know, my initial instinct was to refuse. Why should I”—she stares down her nose at me—“inflict your influence on our pupils?”

  I bite back a scathing response. It isn’t her condescension or cruelty that bothers me—it’s the power she wields. If she doesn’t let me see those girls, this entire trip will have been for nothing.

  My heart pulses in my ears. A sizeable, scared part of me wants her to refuse to let me see them. Even without access to Ondine’s magic, those girls are fully capable of casting spells to hurt me in any number of ways if they suspect I lied to them last time I was here—or that I’m lying to them now. There’s no guarantee the protection spell I practiced will hold up in the face of their magic. The part of me that’s averse to danger and values self-preservation imagines her saying no so I can leave the way I came, retreating to the safety of the carriage and the palace. After all, this isn’t my fight.

  But the rest of me is stubborn and abhors failure. Not to mention … my mind fills with a perfect picture of Caspian’s face awash with disappointment as the realization dawns on him that Lia was right not to trust me. Another image flashes, quick as a quillfish, of Lia curled up in the corner of the couch in Caspian’s room, looking lost and defeated when she thought there was no way for her to learn to use the dagger and help Clay. I blink. Where did that come from?

  I bring my focus back to the present. Unbeknownst to the headmistress, her next words will determine whether Clay has any chance at becoming a Merman.

  She speaks agonizingly slowly, relishing the sound of her own voice the way most mediocre people do. “Yes, why should I let someone like you anywhere near academy students?” She impregnates her pause with self-importance. “Fortunately for you, some people stick to their principles, and we here at Sea Daughters Academy believe in giving our girls the choice. Teaching them that their voices should be heard.”

  And what did their voices say? Will they meet with me?

  “They’ve agreed to show you around and answer your questions about attending school here.” Her pursed lips make it clear she disagrees with their decision. “You have one hour.”

  I expected excitement or at least relief at her words, but knotted seaweed grows from the pit of my stomach, twisting its way up into my chest as she leads me through another series of tunnels and knocks on a door.

  I settle into an enigmatic smirk I haven’t used in a while. Showtime.

  The door opens to reveal a Mermaid about my age or a little older with a shimmering pink tail and long, straight black hair complete with two pink streaks, one on either side of a decidedly beautiful face. Jinju.

  Behind her, a few other Mermaids float about the room, listening as Jinju speaks.

  “Dal deet roliiga, MerMatr—uh, Headmistress.”

  “Here’s your guest for the afternoon.” She says “guest” like she may as well be saying “burden” or “dangerous beast you foolishly agreed to look after.”

  As much as her tone rubs away at my dignity, she may be doing me a favor. Lia might insist these girls are nice, but they’ve been raised by Ondine to seek out power, especially the kind of power only found in the most dangerous magic. The more dangerous I seem, the more they’re likely to respect me.

  Which means the current headmistress only does me another favor when she says to Jinju, “Your faculty advisor is in her room just across the hall if you have any trouble, and you can feel free to come get me in my office anytime” before she leaves and Jinju holds open the dormitory door for me to swim inside.

  Sea sponge beds in giant cockle shells line the walls, standing across from one another. Most are decorated with personal mementos—colorful pillows, sketches of siluess fashions, strands of pretty beads and sea glass—but one at the end remains conspicuously empty and closed tight, like a clam you would toss away instead of eat. Was that Lia’s bed?

  I don’t let my gaze linger on it, aware that four sets of eyes study my every movement, some curious, some critical.

  Jinju’s is the most critical of all. She drinks in every detail of my demeanor, clothing, and accessories. I’ve chosen my scarlet siluess studded with mother of pearl and embroidered with silver thread. It’s fine enough that anyone with a discerning eye could tell it’s expensive, but not so fancy that I look like I’m trying to impress them. The only jewelry I’ve put on is a red fire opal ring that belonged to my mom. I’ve also stuck a black murex shell in my hair, its ends sharpened to points. Not only could it serve as a weapon if the sirens choose to attack, but paired with my volcanic ash–rimmed eyes and criminal reputation, it adds a subtle taste of villainous allure. I’m a study in casual, well-bred sophistication with an edge.

  “So you’re Melusine,” Jinju says. Lia and Caspian told me she was the leader, but even if they hadn’t, I would have known in an instant. Not only from her posture, tone, and initiative, but also, and most importantly, from those two strands of bright pink in her hair. Hair color like that—shimmering the exact same color as a Mer’s tail—comes from performing the most ancient, richly powerful spells and strengthening your own innate magic until it manifests. Jinju has tasted power.

  But her headband tells me something else. She wears it close to her hairline, with the pink strands coming out from behind. I would bet my last ruby she’s hiding black roots, so she doesn’t have to see the daily reminder of what she’s lost now that her access to Ondine’s power has dried up and such spells are beyond her. But even without the ancient spells, it seems she’s retained her role as head of this little group.

  I meet her gaze—and I don’t look away. “Obviously,” I answer, infusing the word with boredom and superiority. She needs to view me as an equal, starting right now, or I have no chance of getting any of these girls to tell me what I came here to find out.

  Jinju’s eyes narrow. “What are you really doing here?”

  I let my lips curl into a smile. “Very good.” A non-answer to throw her sense of authority off balance—with just a touch of flattery to sweeten her attitude toward me. Old lessons never die; my father would be proud.

  “So, um,” one of the other girls pipes up from behind Jinju, “you’re not really here for a tour of the
school?” There’s a hint of shyness in her voice, but also genuine curiosity. Unless I’m mistaken (which I rarely am), this is Dionna. A stunning turquoise tail stands out against her dark brown skin, but instead of a matching streak of turquoise among the tight black curls of her hair, she wears a single strand of turquoise beads at one temple. Like she cut the turquoise strand out, then wanted it back. Hmm.

  I scoff at her question, putting a hand on my hip. “I have a lot more on my mind than where to study”—I flit a dismissive hand through the water—“dolphin communication or classical konklilis or whatever it is you do here now.”

  “Told you, Di,” Jinju says.

  “Darn,” says the youngest-looking girl, a blond maybe about sixteen with a tail the same light green as manatee grass. She too has cut out whatever color she had in her hair, but she hasn’t replaced it. She wears a babyish barrette of jingle shells, no doubt to clip back the shorter, cropped strand. “We were hoping you really wanted to start classes here.”

  “Why?” I ask, like I barely care. “So enrollment can nosedive?”

  Jinju snorts.

  “Well, if you were here,” the blond one—Nixie or maybe Thessa, I forget—continues, “there’d be someone for all the other girls to hate more than us.”

  The only girl who hasn’t spoken yet glares.

  “What, Thess?” asks the blond one. “It’s true.”

  Ah, so this one with the gleaming white tail and somber face is Thessa. She’s the only one who has let her hair grow without interruption or concealment. A pearly white strand floats up from brown roots. She looks at me and says, as if giving a report in her oration class, “Some of the other girls whisper about how, since we were the closest to Ondine and were with her the night she disappeared, we must have done something to disappoint her, and that’s why she left. They blame us for not being able to go up top on the island and in the lagoon anymore even though they don’t really have a reason. Nixie is most likely correct in supposing that your presence here would take the focus off us, at least for a time.”