by Ruhi Jain
“I know what the statement says.”
“And yet you’re helping her?”
“The reason Brell’s here —”
“Brell?” Lukas trained his eyes on her, real pain in his eyes. “That’s your real name?”
“It’s Brellitine Grever,” she said slowly, watching his face carefully.
Callum leaned against one of the brooms in the cupboard. “I think we should tell him everything.”
She didn’t know how to begin. The look of betrayal in his eyes almost had her screaming in defence in her mind. She spoke loudly but calmly. “The reason I’m here is to rescue my brother Timothy. Zeldae has him and she’s going to kill him on CreDay.” That seemed to be the simplest, no nonsense way of putting it. Lukas’s face changed a shade and he looked at Callum.
Callum grimaced, but spoke. “You want to know why I’m helping her, why I got her here? She’s the Alora.”
Lukas’s eyes widened. He looked at her, his eyes frantically scanning her face, her eyes, and her lips. Finally, he stepped away from her, his mouth slightly open. “She is prophesied to kill Zeldae?”
Chapter 25: Turmoil
Brell felt her hands go numb. Maybe her ears were playing tricks on her. She threw a desperate look at Callum. “I’m prophesied to kill …” Her voice broke. The words just didn’t sound right.
“… Zeldae. Yes.” Callum turned towards her. “It’s true.”
“She’s the Alora?” Lukas’s eyes mirrored Brell’s shock.
She shivered. “I’m not the one you’re talking about.” She swam backwards, as if that would take her away from the situation. “I can’t be! I would never do that to somebody.” Her voice broke again. Kill. It was too foreign. Too strange. Not me.
Callum pointed to her tail, “The Dreign has never, ever, spun by itself and attached itself to anybody. It was said to only do it for the Alora. This is not a mistake, Brell. It is only because you are the Alora that we are helping you get back your brother. No one has done this before.”
“Alora?” She rubbed her arms to get rid of the goose bumps. This was a nightmare she was stuck in. Her heart twisted with the turmoil raging in her mind.
Lukas began speaking; slowly, at first. He seemed to be recalling a past story. It seemed as if he finally accepted what was going on. “There was a really great fortune teller in Gelled… her blood was the purest in all of the Seven Seas. Every time she would predict something it would always, without fail, come true. Once, she even predicted a war between the Seas, and its winner. The most important prophecy that she has released is the one that we all latch our hopes onto:
When the ruler of the Seven Seas
Shall show her vulnerabilities
The Alora shall appear and seize
The ruler's heart, but not with ease
The Alora quick to disappear
The human helped without a fear
But when needed most returns with death
To end the tyrant's evil breath
She shook her head in defiance. “It can’t be me.”
“It is you. You have been the only member of the group who, apart from me, has been able to enter the castle and has not died.”
“What!” she shrieked.
“In the early years of Zeldae’s rule the rebel group had managed to rescue a few children and prisoners who didn’t deserve to be in prison. Soon after that, Zeldae managed to erect a very strong defence system that is based on pure magic. Now, anybody who tries to unlawfully enter the castle gets killed. We’ve lost so many of our men attempting to save people. Why else do you think Meaken hasn’t saved her sister yet? I’m from the Royal Family, so I’m not affected, but apart from me, you have been the only other person who has managed to enter. That is because you are the Alora.”
Her tail felt weak.
“Anyway, the verses sparked everyone’s interest because —”
“— because the Alora was supposed to be a human. And humans aren’t found in the Seven Seas.” Lukas said, clenching his fist. “Do you want to know why I don’t particularly like humans? They killed my father.”
Her heart sank. “Oh no.”
Lukas didn’t look at her. “I’m sure you have heard of ‘mermaid sightings’ on land.” He said those two words with disgust. “You know, where people claim to have seen mermaids to buy some cheap popularity? Or to gain money? My mother was seriously ill. My father approached a fortune teller who told him my mom would die very soon. Afraid, my dad went on land, where there was supposed to be a cure that cannot be obtained in the sea. Humans saw him emerging from the water, saw his tail change into legs and chased him. They caught him. They imprisoned him.”
Brell buried her face into her hands. “Oh God …”
“His hair dried. And so he …” he trailed off. “I got to know this from the fortune teller. Saw it all happen through that glass orb. Saw the most dreadful thing I could ever see in my whole life. It still haunts me.”
Brell wrapped her arms around his shoulder and gave them a squeeze. This time he didn’t flinch. “I’m so sorry, Lukas.”
“The fortune teller wasn’t wrong.” His voice choked up. “Zeldae sent an army of her men to kill sick or unhealthy or old people because they were a ‘drain on resources’.”
Callum crossed the room and hugged Lukas too. Lukas didn’t cry, but he was shuddering. A few minutes later, he spoke up and Callum disentangled himself.
“Because of that I hate Zeldae.”
“And you don’t like humans either.” Brell slowly unwrapped her hands from his shoulders, a dreadful pain seeping into her. Why should it hurt her so much?
“I like you.” He said, staring into her eyes with the intensity of the sun. “You don’t seem all that bad.”
“Alright,” said Callum, looking everywhere but at them. “Let’s get on with the prophecy.”
Lukas blinked. Suddenly, he seemed embarrassed. “Yes, where were we?”
“Vulnerability.” Brell whispered, an amalgam of emotions swirling inside her.
“Oh yes.” Callum said. “Zeldae is vulnerable at the eclipse when she has to transfer a human heart into her body and so at that time, all around the stage are guards. Don’t you see? The prophecy says that when Zeldae is most vulnerable — during the eclipse — the Alora — a human — shall appear and seize Zeldae’s heart. The heart that would come from Timothy. And then you will escape and disappear with the help of others — the rebel group. You will reappear when you are needed the most and kill Zeldae.”
She felt faint and she pinched her shoulders to make herself focus.
“That’s why she made the statement about the human… because you are dangerous for her.” Lukas said, awed.
“What statement?” she was befuddled.
Lukas and Callum exchanged uncertain glances. “You know, the one about humans being in the Sea.” Callum said.
“No, I don’t.”
Lukas took a deep breath. “You should know this… seventeen years ago, just a day after this prophecy was released, Zeldae issued a statement, which read: ‘Any human found in or around the Seas be captured immediately and handed over to the Queen herself. The captor will be handsomely rewarded with three thousand Shiiks’.”
She hadn’t realized that the price on her head had been set even before she had been born.
Callum said, “My mother Sylvia and my Aunt Lily knew that one day a human would come. Their mother told them about the Dreign and the crystals which would help find the Alora. They told me.”
Lukas’s eyes swivelled between the two of them. “What crystals?
Brell put forward her wrist. The two grey crystals and the one black one glittered on her pale skin like diamonds. “These. They grant me wishes.”
Callum squeezed her shoulder gently. She saw Lukas’s eyes fix on Callum’s hand that touched her shoulder and saw his mouth twitch. “The day I met you in the woods, Zahraa told me that I would find the Alora and because of her I was on
land. I wasn’t hunting. When the Dreign attached itself to you, it proved that you were the Alora.”
“Who is this ‘Zahraa’?” she demanded.
“Do you remember you went to a fortune teller? That’s Zahraa. She is actually much, much more than a mere fortune teller. She is an enchantress, the most powerful of her kind since she descends from an uninterrupted line of pure blood.” He looked away. “They say that she has tapped into so much of her innate magic that she can freely travel into the past, the future and even roam the present. But because she uses her powers very selectively, Zeldae is unaware of her existence.”
“You never told me.” She shot at him accusingly.
“You would’ve gotten too scared. And your current visit to Gelled is only to save your brother. The prophecy says that when Gelled will most need you, you will come back and kill Zeldae.”
She nodded. “You’re right! I am scared of the prophecy.”
“Your job right now is just to get Timmy out of here.”
“I can help,” Lukas muttered. He paused, judging their reactions. “I want Zeldae to die for obvious reasons. I’ll help Su — sorry, Brell, in any way that I can.”
Callum thumped his shoulder in a brotherly manner, reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. He frowned as he scanned it and then whistled softly.
“What is it?” Brell and Lukas said in unison.
“CreDay is in two weeks.”
Brell looked at both of them. “I have a plan. I can’t search for my brother unless I know where he is, so instead of searching for him myself, I could follow Sir Thomas Red to my brother, when he goes to strengthen the Cage.”
Lukas frowned. “How do you think you’ll get past the guards?”
She lightly tapped her wrist. “I’ll use the crystals to grant me invisibility. I know that once Sir Red strengthens the Cage, I won’t be able to get to Timmy —”
“You might.” Callum pointed out.
She ignored him. “— but I just want to see him. I want to tell him that he’s going to be okay.”
“That’s a good idea,” Lukas said. “You meet him, and then you also tell him that on CreDay, you’ll be there to save him so he shouldn’t panic if he sees you.”
Brell nodded, a huge lump forming in her throat.
Callum looked at Lukas. “You’re going to be in Gelled till CreDay right? You need to find out exactly when Red is going to strengthen it and tell me, so I can tell Brell.”
“How? You can’t just parade into the servants’ quarters.”
“Through the Dreign.” Callum explained the concept to him.
“So you both can just communicate with each other whenever you want?” Lukas stared at them. “Doesn’t he irritate the hell out of you?”
Callum scowled and Brell smirked. “He does. He’s always so stiff.”
“And when he does finally give you attention it’s with a lot of impatience, right” Lukas pointed out.
“Like he has more important things to do in life.” Brell laughed.
“I’m standing right here.” Callum scowled again. “We have more serious things to discuss.”
“Fine,” Brell said, sobering down. “How do I save my brother on CreDay?”
“The group is working on that.”
Lukas punched him lightly in the stomach. “What group? Hey, I’m lost here.”
Callum swatted him back, and then said, “Lukas Tract, welcome to the Sacri.”
*
Brell slowly sipped her soup and thought about the prophecy. She didn’t think that it was real. Surely, she would never kill a person, would she? Plus, she doubted anything would ever compel her to come back to the sea once she had left it. Still… the facts around her were lining up in eerie coincidence.
Hazel was sitting next to her in the hall.
“How are your knuckles, Susan?”
Brell had unwrapped the gauze from her hand in the morning to find her wounds completely healed and what was remaining of the bloody mess were only small pink scars. But she had applied a fresh gauze to make her hurt seem normal.
“Much better, thanks.”
Hazel stirred her soup slowly. “They are making the soups thinner and thinner by the day.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Hey, why did you come back to the dormitory so late last night?”
Brell shrugged. “Something had happened when I was serving during dinner. The chandelier fell and Zeldae, she… stopped it mid-air. I was just so shaken up.”
Hazel was staring at her open mouthed, soup dribbling down her chin. When Brell looked at her she quickly shut her mouth and began eating. “I just heard about it from Meghna. I can’t believe you actually saw that …”
“Yeah, me too.”
Figgie opened the doors to the hall. “Everyone up!”
Brell got up and was about leave the hall with Hazel, when June blocked them.
“Where is it?” She hissed, her black eyes narrowing into slits.
“Where’s what?” Hazel frowned.
“My hairbrush you idiot! I’ve seen you looking at it before like you want it and today it’s missing!”
“And you think I stole it? I didn’t, June.”
“Of course you did! You’re just jealous of me because I have a boyfriend and am cared for. No one ever cares for you.”
Hazel tilted a bit backwards and looked June in the eye. There seemed to be an unspoken back story to this conversation. Brell saw her lips trembling. “Don’t bring my parents into this.”
“You don’t have parents. Face it.” June sneered, placing her manicured hands on her slim waist.
Brell slipped in between them and glared at her.
“If she says she hasn’t taken it, then she hasn’t.”
“How do you know she’s telling the truth?”
“I don’t. I just believe her because I know who she is. Hazel would never hurt anybody, let alone steal something from them. You should be ashamed of yourself for even thinking that she did, and upsetting her like this.” She wrapped her fingers around Hazel’s arm and began slowly taking her towards the door. “Did you ever think that maybe you just misplaced your brush?” she called over her shoulder.
When she had shut the hall door behind her, she rubbed Hazel’s back.
“You okay?”
She toyed with her fishtail-braid as she said, “Yes. Thanks Susan… for standing up for me.”
Brell led her to the line where Figgie was giving out the duties. “That’s what friends do. Do you… want to talk about it?”
Hazel gave her a small smile.
“Maybe later,” she said.
“Of course.”
She knew all too well the feeling of not wanting to share your personal life with anyone. She took her list of duties from Figgie and read through them quickly.
“I have to go Hazel, my first duty is to dry the clothes of the Royal Family.
She grabbed her arm.
“Wait, that’s my first duty too!”
Brell grinned. “They must have a truckload. Come on!”
She slid her hand into the air bubble to check if the clothes were dry or not. She could feel air, and not water at the tips of her fingers. For a moment she wondered what it would be like to be human again and then quickly dismissed that thought before it took up all her attention.
“CreDay will be in a few days.” Hazel said as she moved to the bubble machine, which was the size of a lawn mower with a nozzle at the end that let go of air bubbles that stuck to the narrow wires that twisted and turned as they found their way up to the ceiling. They were in the laundry room. She hadn’t seen it before when she was with Erene. “And we will have so much work to do. Cooking, cleaning and serving. Even thinking about it makes me want to scream.”
Brell stiffly put a red suit into the air bubble in front of her, focusing on moving her fingers and trying not to react to the unknowingly dreadful words that poured out of Hazel’s m
outh.
“Could you tell me about it? I’m new and I want to know more about what all we need to do on —” she hesitated, “CreDay.”
Hazel continued popping the clothes into the air bubbles. “Well for starters, we need to clean all the guest rooms since the nobles from all over the ocean will be visiting. Five mermaids will be appointed to each family during their stay to attend to all their needs. Next comes the enormous amount of food to be cooked which the chefs do, but we have to serve all the people who come to witness the Transfer.”
“Transfer?” Brell blurted out without thinking.
“Yes, Transfer. The procedures through which the Great Queen transfers the human heart into her body?” She gave her a strange look. “Don’t you know?”
“I do.” Brell said quickly, hurriedly checking all the garments in front of her. “Just… um…. my parents didn’t tell me about it much.”
“Your parents never told you?”
Brell looked down at her hands. They had become rough over the past month, and more calluses had formed over her palm. “Never,” she whispered. “They’re dead, you see.”
Hazel stopped working and gently put her hand on her shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too. Guess we’ve got something in common.”
“How did it happen?”
She gazed at the fine lines on her hands, trying to absorb each ridge and groove and trying to forget the past which she wanted to push away and never feel again.
“Maybe later.”
“Of course.”
*
Brell fumbled for the cleaner in the storage cupboard and then shot to Callum’s room, where her duty was to clean his room. Again.
But she knew this time it wasn’t coincidence. Callum must’ve somehow gotten to know when Red was going to arrive and had placed her at his room so if she needed to leave then she was free to and no one would be suspicious. He and Valery would be packing their bags for Corfer, so no one would notice her slip away.
She entered the bustling room of merservants and porters quietly and set to work. Quickly flashing a signal through her Dreign to Callum to inform him she had come, she kept her eyes on the door to see when Lukas was going to enter. After all the pain humans had inflicted on him, she hoped her friendship with him wouldn’t get strained. Being carefree was something she felt only with him, and she missed it.