Gabriel groans, but his eyes are closed. The rebuilding of cells and tissues through the use of healing magic can be painful and tiring. The doctor told him to rest, and it seems he’s fallen asleep almost instantly afterward. His face still contorts with pain in a restless sleep.
Stacia continues to mumble under her breath about stupid Verona. Stupid? I can’t help but wonder. Why had Verona offered to help at all? Gabriel and Stacia have made her life miserable for many years. Because of their influence, none of the other Mer pay a lick of positive attention toward her. The darling twins have even influenced the adult opinion of the maiden. Yet, when Verona sees a need, she fills it. Selflessly, albeit foolishly.
“Verona?” the man in the other nesting a short distance away calls weakly.
Stacia continues to hold her brother’s hand and murmur to herself. She didn’t want me to go, but she didn’t really seem to want me nearby either. Occasionally, she fluffs the circle of sand around her brother to keep his body raised and in a softer bedding.
Slowly, I meander over toward the other nesting. The man who lays there keeps his eyes focused into the distance for a long while. I study his features. Reddish-blond hair stays by his scalp in close-cropped waves, but his hairline has receded to expose more of the man’s forehead. His slightly turned up nose and the shade of blue-green in his eyes match Verona’s. But what surprises me most is the smattering of freckles across the man’s nose, shoulders, and arms. The sign of a Mer that had walked on land. I swallow past my dry throat. Verona’s father was a bottom feeder.
4
I am uncertain how long I’ve been staring, but eventually I draw the man’s attention. His distant gaze focuses suddenly upon me. “Verona?” he asks.
I frown. Certainly, the man couldn’t possibly mistake me for his daughter.
“Have you seen Verona? Do you know if she’s coming back?” His eyes return to the distance where he focused before. Then I realize it is the same place Verona disappeared to when she left on her errand.
I continue to watch him a long moment. I don’t answer his question, and he doesn’t ask again. We remain that way for another long while, thoughts swarming around my head. Verona’s father was a bottom feeder. He’d faced his reckoning, went on land, and returned to tell the tale. Only a few bare the marks of a Landwalker. I have never seen freckles on a Mer before, but without a doubt, these marks are exactly as described.
“He doesn’t usually say much. When he does, he only speaks about his daughter. Even when she’s here, he asks for her. It seems she’s still the youngling of his memories rather than the nearly adult maiden who sits in front of him nearly every day.” The healer fluffs the circle of sand around the elder Mer’s body.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“His time on land seems to have left him with a degenerative disease. His mind slowly wasted away over the years. Now he has very little of his faculties remaining.”
The man lying in the nesting has deep wrinkles in his forehead as he concentrates on the direction Verona left. Scars mark the man’s back and shoulders from the claws of his clan when he was marked for his reckoning. Everything about the man evokes pity.
Even the feelings of pity I have for Verona deepen. I’ve had enough. Too much emotion. Shaking my head, I return to Gabriel’s bedside, the rational place for me. Overhead, a cloud covers the sun, making the light muted. I find myself staring into the eyes of the dead tuna beside Gabriel’s bed. Perhaps we shouldn’t have gone hunting without alerting the clan. I had been stupid not to realize the danger we were putting ourselves in. Maybe waiting for a full hunting party would have been a better option. The full party may have kept Gabriel in check so that he didn’t rush through the pod and break hunting tradition. Because of the presence of others, his manners would have kept it from happening. Then he wouldn’t be injured and lying in this bed. But it’s irrational to think too much about “what ifs.”
“Where is he?” the Elder calls out before he’s even entered the cove and is still a far way off.
Verona trails behind the Elder, as he rushes into the cove. I slide to the side and allow the family a moment alone. Verona doesn’t approach but instead returns to her father’s bedside.
Gabriel wakes, a mixture of fear and sadness clouding his features. He doesn’t say a word but lays still, eyes wide.
“How did this happen? Who did this to you?”
“We were hunting, Father, trying to capture some Bluefin to help the clan,” Stacia whines, her hands clasped together while she cowers before her father.
“Hunting? Bluefin?” His face grows redder with each word and the pitch of his voice rises. “How could you be so stupid? We have hunting parties going out in the morning. You should have waited. You should not have gone out on your own. Whose idea was this?”
My heart sinks, and my stomach flips. I back away a bit more. For a split second, Stacia’s eyes dart toward me, then her gaze shifts to something behind me. I turn around to find Verona standing directly behind me and to my right.
“She did this. It was her idea.” Stacia points.
The Elder’s gaze fixes on Verona. He charges toward her. I shake my head, placing myself between him and the maiden. I start to protest, but the current pushes me to the side with a flick of the Elder’s hand.
“You,” he hisses, grabbing Verona but the neck with one hand.
She garbles a response, her eyes growing wide in surprise and fear.
I regain my bearings and rush toward them. This needs to stop. It isn’t her fault. Stacia darts in front of me and grips my arm. Her glare pierces mine and she shakes her head. She hisses a whisper through her teeth. “Let it go. It’s better this way.”
My stomach churns. I can’t let Verona get scolded for my wrong-doing. But if I take responsibility for it now, I know my punishment will be two-fold. Both the Elder and Stacia will punish me. Not to mention, Stacia would have to endure a punishment for her lie.
The elder throws Verona back. She sprawls in the shallows for a moment, her head above the surface in the air before she scrambled back under. She slinks in the sand, as her gaze meets the Elder’s with fear before her gaze drops again.
“You have nothing to say for yourself?” the Elder cries out, clenching and unclenching his fists. His own claws pierce his palms in the force of the squeeze. A small cloud of blood pools around each hand.
Verona remains silent, her eyes downcast.
Why doesn’t she answer? She has nothing to do with this situation. In fact, she helped when she had no responsibility to.
“Verona?” her father calls to her from his bed. His eyes are fixed upon his daughter.
She tilts her head toward him in response but refuses to look at him.
“Verona?” he calls again, a little louder.
The elder peers toward the man lying in the nesting. His eyes narrow and the lines in his frown deepen. “Prospero?”
Ignoring Verona and heading toward the nesting area, the Elder studies the face of the man who lies there. A sneer forms on the Elder’s lips. “It is you, isn’t it, Prospero?”
The man in the nesting answered the same word he’s repeated over had over, his eyes never leaving his daughter. “Verona.”
A wave of cold washes over me when the Elder casts his glare upon Verona. “The youngling doesn’t swim far from home, eh?”
Still Verona doesn’t lift her gaze from the seafloor. Sun brakes free from the clouds overhead and shines down upon everything in the cove, bathing it in bright light, washing out all of the colors.
The elder sniffs, then returns to Gabriel’s bedside, smacking aside the tuna with his tailfin. Once he settles in place next to the nesting, the healer approaches with an apologetic posture. A hard expression returns to the Elder’s face.
“According to your daughter and the other witness, the tuna that struck your son was an Atlantic Bluefin, probably close to five hundred pounds or more. Your son’s spine cracked. I have heale
d the bone damage, but nerves are not so easily repaired. I suggest he rest for a few days, and we can see how much he recovers.”
“Wait and see? This is your diagnosis?” The Elder’s nostrils flare. “Are you not our clan’s healer? What use are you to us when you can only tell us to wait and see?”
The healer’s friendly smile remains, although his eyes have grown cold, becoming more of a grimace than a smile. “A healer can only do so much.”
An exasperated cry rings through the cove as the Elder flings up his hands and turns his back on the healer. Shaking his head, the healer steps away, tending to the other patients in the cove.
“If only you could have been more patient and waited until tomorrow,” the Elder says through gritted teeth. “Now we’ll have to see just how fast you can make your body heal.”
Gabriel blinks, his brow furrowing. “I’m not a healer, father.”
“Then pay for your mistakes.” The elder turns his venomous gaze back on Verona who had returned to caring for her father. “We all must endure penalties for our poor choices.
Morning dawns, and the day of the hunt begins. Schools of tuna travel slowly through the waters. The same Atlantic Bluefin we’d hunted yesterday wouldn’t likely move more than ten miles from the location where we’d found them. This time, a wide party of Mer, mostly male, with a few female, would join in the hunt. Only six or seven tunas are needed for the clan to feast.
“Bailey!” My brother, Brandeeb, draws near, a wide smile on his face.
I wince. When Brandeeb smiles, it’s not good news for me.
He sidles up next to me and reaches for my head to put into an arm-lock. I dodge him, but not before one of his Mer-claws rake the back of my neck, causing a shallow scratch. I hiss at him as I straighten and glare into his eyes.
His smile doesn’t falter. “So, I hear you got the darlings in deep trouble yesterday. Or… maybe it wasn’t you, and it was that bottom feeder the twins are always showing her place.”
My spine remains stiff, but the muscles in my shoulders lose some of their tension. He’s only here to ridicule me. I can handle that. At least he’s not here to make my life worse. I nod and swim away. Wait. I think upon his words. He hinted that the accident yesterday was my fault. I shook my head. No, he’s just messing with me. Brandeeb doesn’t know anything. As I leave him, he doesn’t call out or follow, to my relief. But behind me, I hear a snicker.
The party of hunters is much larger than necessary. Some come for the social aspect, not really to kill or work as much as to discuss, supervise, and coach from the sidelines. A spectator sport. I hate that aspect of hunting. It was one of the reasons I had suggested getting the hunt done without an audience yesterday.
As a group, we approach the school of tuna, the bulk of which remains in a condensed pod. Bringing this many Mer to the event has its advantages. The sharks get panicky in the presence of so many predators larger than them, and they disperse, leaving the danger of the hunt to the average five-hundred-pound tunas.
“Stay out of the way, little brother,” Brandeeb says as he swims close by and nudges me with his shoulder.
I frown and ready my spear, but inside, I have no intention of using it. There are too many hunters for the number of fish we need, and there are older, more experienced hunters than me. This sort of hunt is for the older set or the novices whose mentors want to bring them out and get them a first stab at a tuna.
I glance about. Stacia isn’t there, and neither is her brother. Loneliness overwhelms me. Normally, the twins take up my whole sphere. Because of their presence, I didn’t realize how I had no other friends. The rest of the Mer my age were mere acquaintances. For a moment, I feel as though I’m the bottom feeder again.
A group of mermaids have collected to the side. They point and giggle, cheering on Brandeeb as he goes past them, flexing his muscles. Showing off. I turn away. I’m not interested in that preening type of behavior, and I never realized how much I’d rather be alone than be friends with those shallow minded Mer.
A father and son swim by close to me. The father leans in toward his son who couldn’t be more than three years my junior. “Stay close to me. When the tuna’s fight or flight instinct kicks in, they are blinded for a moment. Their emotions take over their behavior, and they have no rational thought to put it in check. When any animal allows itself to be ruled by emotion, it becomes dangerous and unpredictable.”
“What do you mean?” the son asks, adjusting the grip on his spear. He gets the shaft caught on the webbing between his fingers before getting a better hold.
“A tuna gravely injured the Elder’s son yesterday.” The father frowned, and he lifted his gaze to meet mine. “Let that be a lesson to all of us about the dangers of the hunt.”
My stomach drops. How could the father have known about my part in Gabriel’s injury? Even the Elder didn’t know. I shrink from the man’s gaze, but he turns away almost as quickly as his eyes had met mine and darts toward the crowd around the school of fish.
I swallow. Guilt constricts my heart. The hunting party moves with the fish, and the white noise they create moves farther away from me. What am I doing here, anyway?
Tightening the grip on my spear, I leave the hunting party and head to the convalescing cove.
Low tide. I enter the shallow cove, the surface of the water barely above my head, while my tail slaps the white sand beneath me. I understand that shallow waters help the patients to stay warm and heal faster, but this seems a bit too shallow, in my opinion. I skirt the rocks and survey the patients.
Gabriel sleeps in the nesting to my left. His features twist and contort in pain, or maybe he’s having a nightmare. Surprisingly, Stacia isn’t there. To my right, across from him, lays Verona’s father. Prospero, the Elder had called him?
I’ve come to see Gabriel, but curiosity pulls me toward the man on my right. His eyes fix in the distance, and his bottom jaw hangs slack. Dementia. The Mer is suffering beyond what any healer could ever reach.
“Verona?” the man asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
I settle into the sand beside his nesting. He glances over me with the slightest acknowledgement before returning to eyeing the deeper waters behind me. We both sit in silence for a long moment. The Mer’s lips move, but not a sound comes from them.
“What are you looking for?” I ask finally.
He doesn’t answer or even look my direction.
I frown, but continue to sit with the Mer. Overhead, the sun reaches its zenith, and the waters fill in from the ocean allowing more space between the top of my head and the surface. The doctor goes about, tending to his patients, smiles at me, but doesn’t approach. Across the way, Gabriel stirs in his bed.
I frown and watch him as he settles back down again. The cove is peaceful; I give it that. A lone jellyfish dances in the sunlight above, and a small school of minnows swims by. It’s still and quiet, and there’s not much chatter from Mer or fish. The moment soothes my soul.
“What are you doing?” a harsh voice breaks my silent reverie.
My throat constricts, and my stomach twists. I turn around and meet eyes with Stacia. Her forehead wrinkles as she tilts her head at me. She eyes me and then the Mer in the nesting beside me. “Who is that Mer to you?”
I shake my head, my jaw clenching. “He is nothing to me. I only studied him to satisfy my curiosity.”
Her frown deepens. “Your curiosity about what, exactly?”
My lip twitched. “This Mer has the obvious markings of a bottom feeder. Are you not curious about them?”
Her forehead smooths out as she nods once. “Ah. It is a curious thing, isn’t it? His dementia has roots based in the time he spent on land, from what I understand. He was never quite right upon his return and slowly degraded.”
I nod, finding my gaze lighting upon the man once more. Could he hear us? Did he care what was said about him? Not even a facial tick happens in response to her words. He doesn’t shift a muscle i
n his bed.
Stacia loops her arm in mine and pulls me over toward the nesting where her brother lays. The moment of peace I had was gone the instant she spoke. Now I suffered as I listened to her prattle.
There is a wide gap between being alone and being lonely. Somehow when I sat beside Verona’s father, I didn’t feel lonely at all. The Mer paid me no attention, so I sat nearly alone, but the loneliness I felt at the hunt and now feel in the presence of Stacia’s rambling had been distant.
“There she is again.” Stacia’s tone grows deep and menacing. Louder than it had been before, as though she wants the object of her scorn to hear her. “What business does she have here? She should at least have the decency to know her station.”
I glance back toward the Mer in the nesting across from us. Verona now sits in the space I occupied moments before. Her father focuses on her though he doesn’t seem to know who she is. He pleads with her, “Can you bring Verona here? I miss her so much. There’s so much I need to tell her.”
“I’m right here, Father. Say what you need to.”
He shakes his head. “No, I want to tell her myself. I’ll wait.”
I shake my head and focus back on Stacia who continues to frown at the pair across from us. I clear my throat. “If that’s her father, why should she not be able to visit him? What does her station have to do with her ability to do that much?”
Stacia blinks, her eyes widening in surprise. “Really, Bailey? Are you taking her side in this?”
The pit of my stomach feels as though I swallowed a rock. I bow my head slightly. Peace. I need peace. “I didn’t mean to do such a thing. Forgive me.”
She huffs, and then places a hand on my shoulder, her claws digging as deeply into my skin as they can without actually breaking it. Unpleasant, but not exactly pain-inducing. “This cove is too crowded. Gabriel should recuperate at home. I’ll speak to father about it, no matter what the healer says.”
I nod, and she scratches the bare skin on my shoulder lightly, just enough that a few droplets of blood are pulled from my flesh and disperse into the surrounding water.
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