by S. K Munt
Adele frowned. ‘Ardhi you’re certain that was the right plane, yes?’ She asked, looking grief-stricken.
‘Of course I am!’ He snapped. ‘The airline is written on the side of it, and the blood on the window next to the seat that was his.’
‘How can you know that?’
Ardhi wasn’t in the mood to explain the biochemistry of mermaids to her, but he saw no other way. ‘We all have the same blood type,’ he said quickly. ‘We all smell the same. Tristan was the only mer on board, and the seat with the blood was the one you booked him into-in first class.’
Adele looked sickened, but then relieved. He could see her struggling with the same thing he was-the guilt going toe to toe with relief that they’d gotten away with it. ‘Then where is he?’
‘Transitioned. When I first got there, there was a dolphin shooting through the water so fast that I just know it was him. He must have been mortally wounded during the crash-I got there within three minutes after all. He had no time to swim free and he wouldn’t have-Golden boy would have stuck around to help if he’d survived.’
Adele bit her lip, tossing him a bottle of water. ‘I guess if you’re convinced, I’m happy. But still....’
‘It would be nice to have a dead body as proof, or to have killed him myself,’ Ardhi agreed. ‘Which is exactly why I’ll have to lie low for a week or so. On the off chance that he survived.’ He took a sip of the cool liquid, happy to wash the metallic taste of blood out of his mouth.‘That will suck, but I’ll have other opportunities to get rid of him. At least now I know what I’m capable of.’ He put down the water bottle and stared at his scorched and numb fingertips, awestruck. His emotions didn’t know where to land-on glee? Triumph? Regret?
‘I suppose so,’ Adele said, squinting into the sunlight, back in the direction Ardhi had just come from. They were twenty kilometers from ground zero, but it still felt too close to Ardhi. There were way too many mers living in Hawaii, and they would have been drawn to the scene of the accident. ‘And it’s not like he knows that you caused the crash anyway.’
‘Exactly,’ Ardhi said, digging a hole deep enough to bury the towel in. Adele was wearing a bikini, which she was already beginning to adjust into a swimming position, and aside from that, they didn’t have any other earthly possessions on them. ‘But I’m telling you Adele-he’s dead.’
Adele smiled tentatively. ‘So this is over? We can go back home and start our lives again?’
‘A fresh start,’ he said with a smile. ‘In a world without Tristan Loveridge.’
‘And my parents?’
Ardhi glanced up at her. Her blue eyes were fretful. ‘I’m not monitoring them anymore Adele,’ he said softly. ‘Or at least I won’t be by the time you join me up north. But just know that if anyone ever hears about my involvement in this-’
‘They won’t.’ Adele said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t risk them like that. Besides, you’ve got me knee deep in this shit with you. I can hardly give the game away without giving away myself.’
Ardhi beamed. ‘Good Girl. So long as you keep your mouth shut, they’re safe. And I know you don’t believe me, but I am sorry I had to hold that over your head. But from my perspective, two human lives are insignificant compared to the future of my kingdom.’
Adele averted her eyes and motioned to the water, reluctant to talk about it and obviously impatient for the big swim to L.A. ‘So we can get out of here now?’
‘Yes.’ Ardhi said. They were swimming to L.A, and then flying from there to Norfolk. ‘Then I go home. With any luck, I’ll be able to send for you within two weeks.’
‘After you, future king Ardhi.’ Adele said, bowing graciously.
Ardhi grinned. He liked the sound of that.
⁓
It seemed to take Bane forever to answer his phone. Each ring, so cold, so orchestrated, was like fingernails on a chalkboard for her. She closed her eyes, holding her breath, ‘Come on, c’mon...’
There was a clunk noise. ‘Ivyanne?’ Bane answered, sounding breathless.
‘Bane?’ she asked, swallowing hard. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Ivyanne.....oh god......’
Ivyanne had never heard a voice sound so dispirited or heartsick. ‘You’re scaring me! What is it?’
‘Oh baby girl...it’s Tristan’s flight. I don’t know how to say this but-’
‘His flight?!’ There was only one way Ivyanne could take that sort of statement given the note of hysteria in Bane’s usually composed, jovial tone, and she began to sink almost immediately. ‘What about it?!’
‘Wahine...I’ve been trying to call...it’s bad Ivyanne, very bad.’ Bane seemed to draw in a deep, shaky breath. ‘Sweetheart, I think Tristan’s plane just crashed off the coast of Molokai!’
Ivyanne’s scream was muffled as she slapped it back in with her own hand, dropping the phone with the other. It clattered to the ground beside her as her backside slammed into the pebbled ground. It felt like she was freezing to death despite the sun bearing down on her, and like the blood in her body had rushed to her ears, blocking out the sound of everything else but her heartbeat. She pressed the heels of her hands to her lowered temples and moaned, letting the agony inside her manifest physically, trying to free herself of it. Tristan’s plane had crashed. Why could she still feel the sun?
‘Ohmigosh Ivyanne what is it?!’ Pintang’s voice sounded far away.
Her phone was pushed back into her hands and Ivyanne took it, hands shaking as though she suffered from Parkinson’s, struggling to grip the little white device. Numbly, aware that voices were lifting and swirling around her, Ivyanne put the phone back up to her ear.
‘Is he dead?’ she asked numbly.
‘I don’t know baby, I don’t know!’ Bane practically wailed. ‘I got a message from him telling me that his flight was about to crash on the water near Hawaii, and to get ready! I assumed he wanted me to wrangle the troops and get survivors. He must have gotten enough reception, and had been scared enough, to warrant turning his phone on, to warn me. He also asked me to tell you that he loves you...’
Ivyanne broke into what she supposed was the mer equivalent of a hot sweat. ‘Are there survivors?’
Suddenly, Lincoln’s face came into focus, looking more upset than she’d ever seen him before. It was odd to see such a tall body folded to a kneel.
‘What happened? His plane crashed? Is he okay?!’
Lincoln could have been an actor on a screen. She almost reached out and touched his face, to make sure he was real. That any of it was real.
‘Yes!’ Bane said quickly. ‘Most of them! Everyone would have been fine if the plane hadn’t cracked in two after hitting the water. I’m down at the site now, a few of us have been here for an hour, getting people out of the water, while I manned the boat and phone, but it’s all so chaotic! At the moment they think there are three dead and seven missing-that’s a pretty good number out of over one hundred and fifty people.’
A tear slipped down Ivyanne’s face. She hadn’t even felt it form. ‘But you haven’t seen him, have you?’
There was a ragged sigh on the other end. ‘No Wahine, I haven’t, and that bothers me-a lot. He texted me to come and help beforehand-and I did. So why hasn’t he found me yet? Where is he?’
‘Three dead?’ Ivyanne asked, softly. ‘Do they know who the dead are?’
‘Tristan no!’ Pintang suddenly shrieked, her fingernails digging into the fleshy part of Ivyanne’s upper arm. ‘No no no no NO!’
‘Not officially-they’re going off a head count. But they know one of the dead was a flight attendant who was killed on impact, and the other two were pretty messed up when the plane split where they were sitting. But I do know he’s not one of them-he was sitting in first class, and the split happened further back than that.’ There was a pause. It was long enough for Ivyanne to hear Pintang sobbing beside her. ‘What scares me is the fact that the front half of the plane flipped-his half. Quite a few people got near fatal b
lows to the head. But Tristan wasn’t one of the ones being made a priority for treatment either.’
‘But if the plane crushed on water....’ Ivyanne’s voice trailed off.
‘There wouldn’t be a body,’ Bane finished for her, ‘just a dolphin.’
‘No no no...not another!’ Pintang wailed. ‘Not happening! Tell Bane he’s wrong!’
Ivyanne’s face dropped into her knees and she began to sob. She felt the phone being taken from her hand, and she let it go easily, unable to bear another second of the conversation that was ripping her to shreds. Tristan could have survived, she knew that-he would have been the most likely to survive of all the passengers on board. One, he was tough, two, he could swim.
But where were the missing seven? Where did bodies go during a plane crash? If he’d been knocked unconscious and flung from the plane, he could have been drowning without knowing it. Her chest seemed to cave in on itself.
‘Ivyanne,’ she felt Lincoln’s hand on her shoulder, shaking her. ‘Honey, it’s going to be okay. They’re going to find him, I swear.’
Ivyanne expected to be relieved that she hadn’t been on the flight, but she wasn’t. At that moment, she wished for death more than anything. How could she live, knowing that he had died, believing that she didn’t love him enough to share her life with him? Roan, Nigara, Ardhi, now Tristan...it really did seem like every man who dared promise himself to her was destined to go to an early grave!
‘Don’t touch me!’ Ivyanne hissed, brushing his hand off her shoulder. ‘I’m cursed. I’ll kill you too, Lincoln. You better run now, while you have the chance.’ Before he could say anything else so inaccurate as: ‘It’s okay,’ Ivyanne got to her feet and ran away from him, away from them all.
She stopped once, near the edge of the restaurant, to vomit into the bushes, her hand going to her stomach protectively as it heaved again and again. When there was nothing left to come up, she ran down the hill, bile in her throat, the sobs coming so fast that she could barely breathe around them.
Part Two
10.
Winds of change swept across The Seaview region over the next week, bringing a drop in temperature that all of the locals-mers and humans alike-felt chilling their very bones. It was as though the very atmosphere was imprisoned by mourning, which stretched across the sea and fingered the hearts of mers across the Pacific and beyond. Their tightly knit society had not suffered so deeply since the Tsunami, and all over the loss of one man.
Ardhi’s parents had come to visit with Vana on Bracken Island when they had learnt of the news, to offer their daughter and the Courts moral support. Barely a word about Ardhi was spoken, and if they were upset that the loss of their own son was overshadowed by the loss of Tristan-they didn’t show it. They kept their heads bowed and their mouths shut, though Lincoln did see tears pooling in the mother’s eyes frequently.
Lincoln was heartsick about it all-more than he could have imagined being over someone who had angered him so in life. But in death, Tristan’s presence seemed to swell and grow more golden. As the days passed with no sign of him, Lincoln’s mood darkened further. The east coast of Australia and West Coast of America were stunned by the news-and Tristan, who had done a few appearances on talk shows over the past year (so Link had learned from Adele) was a hot topic of discussion in the media as well. He and an American basketball player were both missing and presumed dead, and they, along with a six year old girl who had been on life support for three days but was coming good now, were the main focus of the stories.
Seeing Tristan’s face flicker up on the nightly news stung. Lincoln would have desired a friendship with someone like Tristan if Ivyanne hadn’t been an issue, and he berated himself for having wished unspeakable things upon his rival, who’d been a man beneath the situation. At night, Lincoln thought about what Tristan’s last moments would have been like, and he wept.
Ivyanne remained in a catatonic state for the first three days and Vana kept her in her room, never leaving her side for more than a few minutes. There was a heavy, sombre atmosphere which fell upon the island home like a shroud, enclosing all who set foot there. Even swimming became overlooked, and after the first two days, everyone began to suffer from chapped lips, waxen skin and red eyes.
Lincoln reluctantly went back to work on the Tuesday, realizing that Ivyanne wouldn’t be coming down from her room in the near future and he wasn’t much use to her lounging about downstairs while being eyed suspiciously by Ardhi’s folks. With him, Ivyanne and Pintang out on Bracken, the remaining staff at the resort were being overworked and so he returned to grant them some time off. To his relief, Sherri’s pretenses towards flirtation were non existent once he’d returned, and Lux didn’t follow him there. They were just girls again-and he was the front, and only runner for king.
That was, if she forgave him for what he’d done and said to her in the days before Tristan’s death.
The bar was adorned with so many flower arrangements addressed to Ivyanne that it looked like a wedding was about to take place. Word had spread amongst the guests that the strikingly beautiful and sweet waitress had lost someone close to her in the then-infamous plane crash in Hawaii, and at least half of them had ordered flower deliveries from the tiny florist in Seaview. Some of them were three days old and starting to turn, so Lincoln had them taken into the cold room after dinner, in an effort to preserve their life, vowing to take them all out to Ivyanne the next morning so she could enjoy them.
Lincoln stood at the bar, gazing out over the dark water as Livia and Remi tidied up the restaurant, thinking about how different his life was now. All of his rivals were gone. Ivyanne was as good as his, and yet he couldn’t seem to draw any excitement from that knowledge. She was so morose, so withdrawn into herself, that he didn’t know if she had anything left to give. The sparkling, virginal, effervescent teenage girl he’d fallen for now resembled a grieving widow. Somehow, the loss of her innocence was the biggest tragedy of them all.
The only thing he took comfort from was the knowledge that Ivyanne called out to him in her sleep-they’d all heard her the night before. It was like a tiny flashlight glow in a dark tunnel.
Lincoln knew that a passionate reunion wouldn’t be in the cards for them for some time-she was still hurting too much. It was painful, to see her in such agony over another man-but it couldn’t be helped. He’d failed Ivyanne when she’d needed his understanding before-he wouldn’t do that to her now. When Ivyanne came to her senses, she’d see a patient, apologetic and grateful man waiting for her-even if it took forever to win back her heart.
⁓
‘It’s a curse!’ Vana paced madly along the floor, chewing on her bottom lip, knowing she wouldn’t be satisfied until she tasted blood. ‘It has to be!’
‘No, your majesty-’ Saraya went to say.
Vana whirled on her. ‘Four-Saraya. Four men willing to marry her-all gone! Great, powerful men, the best of our kind...blown out like candles!’ She felt her chest constrict when she thought of Tristan’s beautiful face, like a light was shining from within him. How would she face Simon Loveridge, who had donated two son’s lives for nothing?
‘Roan,’ Eka Wood said softly. ‘Nigara...my Ardhi-’ her voice broke. ‘Now the Loveridge boy.’ She lifted her morose brown eyes to Vana. ‘I’m inclined to agree.’
‘Something’s trying to tell us something,’ Vana said, and then threw her arms up to the roof. ‘But what? I should stop trying to breed my people? Are we some sort of affront to nature that the universe is trying to rid itself of?’
‘Don’t be preposterous!’ Joakim said quietly, his dull blue eyes alighting briefly with indignation. ‘You can’t think for a second that nature is trying to stamp us out-we serve it first and foremost.’
‘I agree,’ Pintang piped up. She’d made everybody a beautiful chicken salad which had barely been touched, and she was now lying on the couch while Saraya did the dishes. She met Vana’s eyes over the back of the plush blue
couch, resting her head against the soft fabric. ‘Am I the only one here getting the message, loud and clear, that Ivyanne is, and always has been, destined for Lincoln Grey?’
Lux looked up from her fingernails, frowning. ‘Really?’
Pintang shrugged. ‘It’s no more an unlikely theory than a curse. I don’t like it-in fact a few days ago I was ready to drown him myself.’ She shot Lux a pointed glare. ‘But-’ Pintang continued. ‘I believe that life throws obstacles in our path when we take the one leading us away from our destiny. It happens to humans all the time-so why not us?’
Vana didn’t want to think about that. She rubbed her eyes, knowing that if she allowed herself to believe that, she’d have to carry the burden of all four deaths on her own shoulders. But how could a match between Tristan and Ivyanne ever have been doomed? They were so compatible, so brilliantly suited to one another. Everybody thought so-the majority of the kingdom at least.
But Vana couldn’t deny the bond between Lincoln and Ivyanne either. She’d spent the past twelve years trying to quash it. But no matter what she did, there he was with his pure human heart on his sleeve.
Is Pintang right? She wondered. If I’d let Ivyanne love her human back when she was a teenager, would her life had followed a different, but equally prosperous course to the one I had planned for her? Would Roan and the others all still be alive?
‘So what do I do?’ When she lifted her gaze, four serious faces were regarding her somberly.
Pintang shrugged. ‘You’ve tried everything else. We might as well try nothing and see what unfolds.’
For the first time, Vana saw how red Pintang’s eyes were, and how puffy the skin beneath them had become. Then she remembered the fight Pintang had started with Ivyanne over Tristan, and Vana felt another wave of guilt. She had inflicted so much pain by pressing her will. Pintang had now lost her brother and the boy she cared for.