by Lucia Ashta
Did I ever truly have a choice? Things had become overwhelming since Marcelo entered my life. And with him came magic.
“The danger to you now is greater if you don’t learn magic and how to protect yourself.”
I sighed, defeated. I assumed there must be some terribly pressing reason why I needed to learn magic.
“All right. I’ll learn magic. I should be ready tomorrow, after a full night’s sleep. I just feel so tired right now.”
He nodded. I turned away from him and toward the fire. Over my shoulder, I asked, “And my family? What do they think happened to me?”
“They think you’re dead.” My heart sank to join my stomach in the nether regions of my body. There, my heart and stomach churned, feeling every ounce of my anguish.
“Gertrude too?”
“Yes. And Winston and the Count of Chester as well. So Winston’s no longer hunting you, if that makes you feel better.”
It didn’t. Not even a little bit.
I pulled the covers up to my chin, and I started to cry.
I cried at everything that had happened to me over the last three years, for the time I’d lost to the merpeople that I could have spent figuring myself out, for the loss of parents I didn’t even like and sisters that didn’t understand me. I cried because people I cared about, like Maggie, believed they’d never see me again, and perhaps they wouldn’t. Most of all, I cried for Gertrude, the sister who adored me. I was certain she would have suffered over the notion of my death. I wanted to see her, to hold her, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to.
I cried because it didn’t sound like Albacus and Mordecai did much to save me; because Marcelo did save me, because he cared about me, and I realized that I cared about him too. I mourned that he was twenty-four and I was twenty, but we were in the bodies of a nineteen-year-old and a nearly seventeen-year-old.
I let the tears flow because the fire was beautiful and the blankets were warm and because I loved the feel of Marcelo’s supportive arm along my bare back.
I cried mostly because I felt safe in the embrace of this man I hardly knew, but I trusted. I could hear the sound of his beating heart pulsating through thick layers of blankets, shirt, and sweater.
I cried until the tears dried up, the well exhausted. And all the while Marcelo held me without saying a word.
Then I turned and leaned my head into his chest, my uncovered and naked back oblivious to the cold, while he stroked my mermaid hair for longer than I could count.
When I finally tried to speak, he shushed me.
There was no need for words.
He helped me back down onto the chaise lounge, propped my head onto a pillow, and tucked the blankets around my body, readying me for sleep. He kissed my forehead lightly and moved away to the fire. He crouched in front of it with a determined look on his face.
I knew he wouldn’t leave my side that night, and with that comforting thought, I drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 10
The early morning sunlight streamed through one of Marcelo’s two windows and traveled poetically across the wall. When it arrived at the settee, it shone upon my eyes. I opened them.
My dreams had transported me back to the underwater world.
For over three years, I’d woken inside a gargantuan oyster shell. Now, I pushed back hot blankets, uncovering myself from the waist up. I was used to seeing my nude upper body, and it reaffirmed that I was in the world that had become my home. In that groggy space of half-sleep, I assumed the blankets concealed my sparkling blue tail.
I looked around, growing rapidly unsettled as I took in the low flames of the hearth and other telltale signs of Marcelo’s room that were still unfamiliar to me. I saw the bed and swiveled to get a better look at it and who might be in it. When I moved, without thinking, I also moved my legs, and I felt the movement of two distinct parts instead of one.
With anguish rising in my throat like bile, I tore at the rest of the blankets, yanking and kicking them off my legs. I gasped. Where was my tail?
A sound came from my right. I whipped my head around to meet it.
It was Marcelo. My gasp startled him awake. It took him several breaths to understand the source of the interruption. When anxious memories of me by the fireplace came flooding back, he whipped his blankets off and flung himself out of bed.
He plodded toward me as I stared at him, still trying to comprehend the scene as it unfolded.
“Clara, are you well?” Concern etched across his face, visible even under the dark shadow of a stunted beard.
I stared at the patchwork of long scars that marred Marcelo’s otherwise flawless chest, and it all came rushing back to me: Mirvela, three years of my life forever lost to the merworld, Marcelo’s courageous rescue and, once again, my complete nudity before him.
But this time, an unexpected turn of my own courage came: to embrace life as it was instead of through the vantage point of regret. I mourned heavily last night. This morning, what remained was simply what was, and that would have to be good enough.
I smiled a smile that reached clear, crystal blue eyes. “Good morning, Marcelo.” I didn’t need to answer his question. He saw that I was well.
I didn’t hide the nudity that the merworld had accustomed me to but that was foreign to the human world. I was beautiful in my natural state, and I felt it then. There was no reason to hide.
I stared deep into Marcelo’s eyes, mesmerized by mine. I recognized a fire there that burned as heartily as the one in the hearth to my side.
This time, I didn’t shy away. I enjoyed his warmth. I allowed him to appreciate every bit of me for exactly who and what I was.
Then, I shook out my two human legs and sat up. I might have entered the merworld a frightened young woman, but I’d come out of it empowered to step into my womanhood and the magic that was part of it. I just hadn’t recognized it until right this moment.
Today was the tomorrow I’d been waiting for all those years ago when I first arrived at Irele.
Chapter 11
“Let’s get to learning some magic,” I said as I stood onto a sheepskin rug that bordered the chaise lounge chair. The blankets crumpled to the floor in an inelegant heap. My legs felt strong even though I’d last used them to stand when I was sixteen.
Marcelo stared at me, rooted to the spot. I was quite different from the woman who’d cried to exhaustion in his arms last night.
“Come on. You said it was urgent that I learn magic as soon as possible. Let’s get to it then.”
But Marcelo didn’t move, although the hint of an impish smile turned up one corner of his mouth.
“What is it? Why aren’t you moving?” I asked.
Now his eyebrows lifted too. “While I don’t have any problem whatsoever with your current state of dress, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to prance about the castle like this.”
Prance? I’d never thought of myself as a prancer, but part of me liked the idea. I supposed, however, that Marcelo was right. Even if I was perfectly comfortable with my nudity in front of him, I didn’t want the old magicians to see me this way.
“So what do we do?” I asked. “The only dress I had at the castle must be in the depths of the water.” I groaned. “And the beautiful comb you gave me is gone too.” I’d forgotten it until now. There was no need for combs in the water. My hair had floated freely behind me, a halo of red.
“We’ll need to have a wardrobe made for you. I’ll see to it that the seamstress takes your measurements today, but it could take her weeks to complete the order. We’ll have to improvise until she can deliver the first of your dresses.”
Marcelo rubbed his chin while he thought. “I’ll have to use one of those blankets for now. You need to stay warm as your body adjusts to being out of the water again. Which pattern do you like the most?”
I looked down at the blankets, unenthusiastic about the idea of wearing a blanket around for the rest of the day. “I guess the red and gray
striped one is fine.”
“Very well. Please stay still and close your eyes until I finish,” he said as he began to close his own eyes.
But I’d done this with him once before, when he helped me by cleaning my yellow dress on the road to Irele, and I knew he wouldn’t open his eyes again until he completed his magic.
Defiantly, I kept mine open.
I watched him transform. The man, barefoot and naked from the waist up, became something else. I realized that it was his power that made him look so different. Like me, he’d grown immensely in my absence. Convinced beyond reason that it was within his reach to find me, he’d worked tirelessly, not only in his search, but also in improving his magical skills. In the end, more powerful magic could only be helpful in whatever he’d come up against once he found me.
He’d mastered another level of magic in these last few years. His face relaxed, as if he were lazily watching clouds float across a summer sky. He spread his arms out to the side as if in a gesture of welcome, and then the magic began.
The gray and red striped blanket untangled itself from the others and rose into the air, where it moved to drape around me. It hung there, relaxed, just as the magician who manipulated it.
Then came a flurry of motion. The blanket wrapped around me tightly. It stretched and shrunk to hug every curve of my body closer than if a seamstress had labored for hours to make it so.
My dress now possessed its basic elements: a bodice, skirt, and sleeves. Next came the refinements. The sleeves puffed in accordance with the time’s fashion, and the skirt grew fuller.
I closed my eyes. Marcelo would soon finish.
“It’s not high fashion, but it’ll have to do for the next few days,” Marcelo said, reminding me that he’d also grown up in a wealthy family that cared about such things.
I opened my eyes again, and he looked at me. “Do you suppose you need a slip and corset and all those other undergarments women wear?”
“Oh no. Please no. Not yet.” I was already feeling compressed and uncomfortable. I’d enjoyed the lack of restrictive women’s clothing in the underwater world. “I might need socks and shoes though. This stone floor’s frigid.”
Marcelo looked this way and that, until he settled on a hand cloth next to the washbasin and two leather cushions. They floated over to me. Marcelo closed his eyes again and the hand towel became two socks and the leather cushions became shoes.
Marcelo looked to check his work. “Inelegant, no doubt.” He frowned. “Are they comfortable?”
I walked around a bit. For shoes that were halfway between elf shoes and slippers, they were remarkably comfortable.
“I guess I don’t know what women’s shoes look like,” Marcelo said. “I’ve never paid much attention.”
“They’re quite comfortable, Marcelo. Thank you. Now is that it? Can we get on to this magic learning bit?”
As we weren’t worried about appearances anymore, I didn’t need to bother with putting my hair up or anything else.
He grabbed the shirt and sweater he’d laid on a chair next to his bed and pulled them on. “Yes. Let’s go.”
He took my hand and led me toward the door.
The magician led his initiate into a world as bizarre and unknown as the merworld had ever been. Had I known what awaited me through the study of magic, perhaps my step would’ve been less assured.
But I didn’t know what was in store for me. So I stepped through the threshold of Marcelo’s bed chamber in my elf shoes with my head held high, long, red witchy hair trailing behind me.
Chapter 12
Wary of my experiences walking through the castle halls, I paid close attention to the path Marcelo took. Soon, however, I realized he wasn’t walking a route by memory. Instead, he was looking for certain markers that determined which way he should turn. Once, he decided to go one way, and then quickly turned around and reversed his direction.
“I’ll teach you how to navigate the castle. In the meantime, please don’t go anywhere without me,” Marcelo called over his shoulder.
I nodded to his shoulder, even though he couldn’t see me. He didn’t need to tell me. I wasn’t taking any more risks with the castle and its hidden dangers.
A thought occurred to me. “How do the servants walk through the castle if the hallways are constantly changing?”
“The castle only changes for wizards and witches. If people don’t have magic in them, they’ll always experience the same, fixed castle.”
He stopped to open an unremarkable door. “Don’t step in. Just look.” I was very careful to do exactly as he said. An animal roar and a foul stench assaulted me as I stuck my head in the room. I quickly pulled it back out, and Marcelo slammed the door shut.
“That’s why there are rooms, like this one, that never get cleaned,” Marcelo continued calmly, as if he hadn’t just opened the door on a dragon, or a lion or, at the very least, a ferocious house cat.
“Are all the servants non-magic then?” The castle hadn’t struck me as well-kept when I first entered it. It would make sense if the staff couldn’t even see all of its rooms.
“Some are; some aren’t. Robert can do some magic, and he’s been here for a very long time. He’d already been here for a very long time when I arrived. He knows the castle as well as I do.”
“Which one’s Robert?” I wondered if he might be the man that escorted me to the dining room. He looked old.
“Tall. Thin. Bald.”
“Is he also unfriendly?”
“He can be, yes.”
“I met him when I first arrived.” But the memory was faint. It seemed like a long time ago.
It had been.
“Robert does small magic. He’s the one who keeps the candles in the main areas burning all the time.”
I nodded appreciatively. It didn’t seem like small magic to me.
“Ah,” Marcelo said. “Finally. This is what I was looking for.” He angled us along a narrow hallway, down another set of stairs, and we emerged in the hall that led to the entry foyer. I recognized my surroundings. It was one of the very few places in the castle I’d been.
“I think I’ll be all right now,” I told Marcelo, while I looked down at our clasped hands. “I won’t stray. I promise.”
Marcelo blushed, and I found it endearing.
Our privacy ended the next moment. The echoes of four pairs of footsteps preceded their owners. Albacus walked out of the dining room first, followed closely by Mordecai. Robert emerged after them, and then the middle-aged woman who’d abandoned me to my room and the ill-fated journey alone down the stairs.
The brothers looked genuinely happy to see me. Albacus outstretched his arms where he stood. “Welcome back, Clara,” he said jovially, the napkin tucked under his chin wagging like the wattle on a turkey. “You look healthy and well.” I expected him to say that he hoped I’d had fun on my vacation next. He made it sound as if I’d gone away to the baths for a few days.
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what to say.
“We’re glad you’ve returned,” Mordecai said, a little more appropriately and with a meaningful glance toward Marcelo. The brothers both knew that, without Marcelo, I wouldn’t be standing here.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Would you please join us for breakfast? My brother and I were just finishing up,” Mordecai said. “I believe we have much to discuss.”
We did have much to discuss, I agreed, and I entered the dining room with Marcelo fast on my heels. He wasn’t prepared to let me out of his sight yet.
The conversation didn’t turn to my experience in the merworld as I expected it would. Instead, it drifted to more concerning topics.
Chapter 13
The servant woman, whose name was Elsa, quickly brought out two more place settings, putting Marcelo and me next to each other at the halfway point of the table. Comically, Albacus and Mordecai sat on opposite ends of the very long table, each taking the seat at one of the heads.
Albacus spoke in a loud voice to allow his brother to hear him. “Clara, we must begin your magical training right away. There’s no time to waste.” He spoke as if no time had passed since he said almost the same thing, setting the time to begin my training for the very next day. That was more than three years ago.
“My brother’s convinced something very bad is soon to pass. Isn’t that right, Mordecai?”
“Aye. It will,” Mordecai said.
“Clara, my brother’s very good at consulting the runes. You’ll learn to heed his warnings,” Albacus said.
“Runes?” I whispered to Marcelo. The Count and Countess of Norland made sure there was no mention of wizardry or anything else that defied rational explanation in their raising of a young lady of the upper class.
“Yes. Runes, child.” Apparently Mordecai’s hearing was acute, especially for a man of his apparent years. “Runes have been used since ancient times. They’re very accurate in their predictions.”
“They’re used for fortune telling,” Albacus added.
“It’s more than fortune telling,” Mordecai snapped. “The use of runes is a science, an accurate science to be used for more than fortune telling.”
“Yes, yes, well, tell the girl what the runes have shown you lately,” Albacus said.
“The runes show dark magic becoming very powerful and presenting a danger to us. They also warn of somebody akin to a traitor in our midst. This is something I haven’t seen before. I admit, I don’t yet fully understand.”
“Is the danger to us specifically?” I asked, emboldened to ask questions by the gravity of what Mordecai said.
He nodded distractedly, the beads that capped the braids in his hair echoing his affirmation. “But it’s also more than that.” His voice became distant, as if he were one of the very fortune tellers he scoffed at, reaching into another place to retrieve the answer to my question. “It’s a threat to everyone of our kind. All magicians are at risk with this dark magic.”
“It’s a very serious issue,” Albacus amended, unnecessarily.