Coral & Bone

by Tiffany Daune

  “I’ll leave you to rest,” Dax said, making her jump slightly. “You can get changed.” He nodded toward the hooks. “It looks like my mother had some clothes brought up for you. I’ll come back in a bit and we can talk.” Before she could say anything, ask him any of the questions swirling in her head, he placed his hand over the round copper dial. The doorway parted and once he stepped out, the door slid shut behind him.

  This was horrible. She should have stayed outside. Why had she let him bring her here? She let out a heavy breath as she looked around the dome. Where in the world was here anyway? Dax had called this place Elosia. He had called it a realm. Heck he had called Earth a realm. None of this made sense.

  A slated wooden platform rest across the floor to fill the curve of the dome. Halen made her way to the clothes hanging from the hooks. Avoiding the corset altogether, she chose a top made from a dull gray fabric. A shimmering oval piece like a sequin clung to her finger. Fish skin? She held the top against her chest. Turning, she caught her reflection in the fractured mirror. Even if she wanted to wear it, it was too small. “Doesn’t matter,” she said to her reflection. “You’re getting out here.” She wasn’t going to wait for Dax to come back. She was going to find a way out. He mentioned the portals were doorways and they were connected to earth’s water. That meant if she could find just one of these portals, she could go home.

  Heading back to the door, she shoved her hand against the copper dial. When the metal of her bracelet hit the metal on the door, a loud chime pierced the air. She snapped her hand back. “Shush.” Cursed thing. Using her other hand, she pushed the dial in and tried to spin it to the left, like Dax had done. Nothing happened. She tried again, this time turning it to the right. Nothing. She kicked the door, and screamed out in frustration.

  The window. She would try the window. Some of the spheres had balconies, if she could lower herself down to one and then maybe climb down the stilt frame-work…

  Glancing across the sphere, she knew right away the window was too small. Maybe not for a cat, but definitely too tiny for a fourteen-year -old girl. Fifteen. Halen thought of her birthday, and her chest cinched with fear. How long had she been away from home? Was she fifteen now? Had she missed her own birthday? Her mom would be freaking out. She had to get back to her. Sparks charged under her skin with each frantic thought.

  Swiping the moisture from the window pane, she peered outside. The lapis river was a thin line at this height. She had no idea how many stories high she was. When looking up, the bubbles had seemed closer to the ground, but now from the top, her stomach fluttered. Even if she could get out the window, she was too high.

  “This is not good.” She paced the sphere, going around and around. Her insides were restless, swelling with each thought that crossed her mind. How could this happen? None of this was real. The sparks quickly turned to flames. She couldn’t calm the crazy seeping into her bones. She shook her hand trying to tame them, but it was too late, and like the windshield, the window burst from the frame and shattered at her feet. She screamed and wind rushed through the window, picking up the hammock and rocking it on its hooks. Halen ducked as a pillow launched toward her head. As she lifted her hand to block the next pillow, the fragments of mirror sprang from the wall. Flames licked her memories, the hems of curtains igniting, her mother running into the room, screaming, begging her to stop.

  “No!” Halen screamed, and a fissure ran up along the seam of the dome. She crouched on the floor. “Not now.” Tucking her head to her chest, she wrapped herself into a tight ball, wishing she could fold up like an origami crane and fly away.

  Seven

  Daspar sat on the couch with his head in his hands. Tage was careful not to startle him. Only last week he had accidentally thrown a water sphere at her. It missed her by inches. She wasn’t sure what surprised her the most; that he had cast a spell by accident, or that he missed. Daspar never missed. He was off his game. “Hi.” She sat beside him, tucking her leg under her side.

  Daspar raised his head. “You’re awake. I was starting to get worried.”

  “Why? How long have I been sleeping?”

  “You lost a day.”

  “That long?”

  “You had a fever that wouldn’t break. Damn mermaids.” His eyes were creased, the rims dark from lack of sleep.

  “Hey, I’m okay.” She smiled. “They just caught me off guard.”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, his fingers digging in deep. “You can never be off guard. The mermaids will kill you. They have killed many more before your time, kiddo. They won’t stop now.”

  “They saw the bracelet. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “At least you didn’t get those wounds for nothing.” He nodded toward her legs.

  Her calf was bruised all the way up to her knee, her veins black with mermaid venom. It would take a few days to run its course. She might even puke a few more times, but at least it was just surface wounds. A mermaid could penetrate your soul, inflict wounds that would never heal. “That fish barely touched me.” She grinned.

  “And they won’t be touching you again.” Daspar rose to his feet. Shuffling through the papers on his desk, he found a yellow manila envelope and set it aside. He slid on his leather jacket.

  “Where are we going? Did you find Halen?” Tage leapt to her feet and grabbed the car keys.

  “Toss me those,” he said, holding out his hand. “You’re not dressed.”

  Realizing she was still in her pajamas, she threw them.

  He caught them mid-air. “I haven’t found her. And I’m not about to lose track of you. You’re going to stay put.”

  “The hell I am. You need me. I’ll get changed.”

  “The mermaids saw you. That’s good enough.” He grasped the timer from his desk. It was a long glass flute with bulbs on either end. One side was filled with black sand, which he had said came from the ash of a volcano. He had recently added it to his collection. A collection of freaky weird old junk. Antiquities, he called them. Spooky crap would be a better description. The piece she hated the most lay in his top drawer. A magnifying glass, its handle the claw of some bird with black talons. The thing creeped her out.

  Clutching the sand timer in his fist, he walked over to her. He tucked a wisp of her loose hair behind her ear. “You’ve done enough for now. Your parents would be proud.” He smashed the end of the glass against the marble coffee table. The bulb dropped off and shattered on the floor.

  “What are you doing?” She stepped away from him, but not far enough.

  Reaching around her, he scattered the black sand at her feet. Under his breath he whispered, “Lusmanus, Creponium, Tinumula…”

  “No!” She butted his shoulder with the palm of her hand, but he shoved her back.

  As he poured more sand his whispered incantation grew louder, until her ears rang with his voice and she could not think to summon a spell of her own. Within seconds she found herself standing dead center in a black sand circle.

  She shook her head. “You can’t do this! You need me!”

  He shouted now and the sand burned with a flame.

  “No! Let me go!” She thrust toward him, but was repelled by the heat.

  Daspar pressed his hand downward and the fire extinguished. The black sand spun to blood-red. When Tage tried to step out, her foot stung with a sharp prickles. Though the flames were no longer burning, she still could not cross the sand border.

  “Let me out!” She shouted.

  Without glancing back, Daspar grabbed the envelope, and from the drawer he pulled out a dagger. She had seen this knife once before. The handle bore the sleek body of a mermaid, her tail wrapped up and around the blade. The steel-ridged teeth of the blade reflected Tage’s stricken expression.

  “What are you going to do?” she screamed. “Where are you going?”

  Ignoring her cries, he walked out the door, leaving her trapped in the crimson circle.

  Eight

  �
��Hello?” Samira’s voice filled the sphere.

  Halen unfolded her arms from around her legs. She stretched out her stiff muscles. Her cheek pressed against something hard and cold. Where was she? When she opened her eyes, she groaned. She was still in the stinking sphere. She thought maybe, just maybe, she had been dreaming. Fat chance.

  Samira stood over her with Dax behind her, his arms crossed. Samira’s sharp green gaze fell on the broken glass. Halen waited for her to chew her out. She deserved it. She had burst the bubble into a hundred bits. Stepping over the shards of rock and glass, Samira motioned to a girl who Halen hadn’t even noticed. “Nelia, please go and bring something to clean this up and a little something for Halen to drink.”

  The girl was taller than Samira, though only by a few inches. Her hair was a deep auburn shade and was cut short with choppy layers. She wore a plain sand-colored skirt tied like a sarong. On top she wore a dull, mossy-green netted shirt which matched her eyes. Her gaze shifted toward Dax for a moment as if she were trying to tell him something.

  He grasped the girl’s shoulder. “I can handle this, if you want.”

  “You are needed here.” Not taking her eyes off Dax, the girl bowed her head and left.

  Side-stepping the broken glass, Samira crouched next to Halen. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Halen’s muscles ached with a fevered chill, the same way they had when she had blown out Josh’s windshield. “I’m fine,” she lied.

  Samira eyed her with a suspicious stare. “Nelia will bring you something to make you feel better.”

  Halen met her gaze. There was nothing that could make her feel better.

  “You need to learn to control your temper,” Samira said.

  “My temper?” Halen asked. Samira had a familiar look, one she had seen on her mom’s face so many years ago. She would never forget that accusing stare, or how guilty it made her feel. Did Samira know about the sparks? How could she? “You think I did this?”

  Dax unwound the hammock and taking the blanket from inside, he used it to sweep the shards of mirror into a pile. When he was done, he stepped back and leaned into the curve of the wall, but he would not look her way.

  “I know you did,” Samira said. “You might not have meant to do this, but you did. The sooner you admit to yourself…”

  Halen’s eyes filled with tears, and she brushed them away. She hadn’t meant to blow out the window. She never meant for things to get out of control. The problem was she didn’t know how to stop until the damage was already done. Her hands trembled and she tucked them between her legs. “Do you know what’s wrong with me?”

  Samira smiled. “Halen, you have a wonderful gift—magick runs through your veins. You just need to learn to tame it.”

  “Magick? Like spells?” Halen asked. “I don’t know any spells, and I certainly don’t know how to use magick. Do you think I’m a witch?” She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. Magick—yeah right.

  “We know you’re not a witch. A witch doesn’t have your kind of power.”

  “Power?” Halen whispered.

  Samira sighed. “There’s no simple way of putting this. You have the essence of magick in your blood. You’re a siren—half-human—half-Elosian. But you’re not just any siren, you are the rarest—you are a blue moon siren.”

  “A siren?” Halen asked. This was not the explanation she had been looking for. She was hoping for something a little more believable. A witch might have been better. “You’re wrong. I’m a normal girl,” she said, though looking at the cracks and fissures, she knew better. She had always known she was different. She just didn’t know there was a name for her kind of different. Siren. The name played through her thoughts once more.

  “You are human and well, you are also one of us.” Samira’s tone warmed.

  “That’s not possible.” Halen traced the fine black marks running along her veins. Veins black because she had been attacked by mermaids.

  Samira placed her hand on Halen’s shaking leg. “Every day is filled with impossibility, until you chose to see the possible. Once you make the shift to see, life is a less frightening journey.”

  She was wrong. Everything she saw was terrifying. Mermaids and magick belonged in fiction. So did other realms. “You’re asking me to accept this? Something I don’t even understand?”

  Samira’s smile reached her eyes crinkling like folded paper in the corners. “We will help you understand.”

  Dax cleared his throat. “I think it’s better if she forget all of…”

  Samira cut him off. “There is no going back—not now,” her tone was sharp. But when she looked back to Halen she smiled once more. “Do you mind if I show you something?” Samira reached for her arm and Halen recoiled from her touch. “I won’t hurt you.” She held out her hand again. “Really, this may help you believe what I’m saying is true.”

  Halen wasn’t sure anything could make her believe, but she held out her arm anyway. Samira gently grasped her arm in her small hands. She then ran her finger across Halen’s birthmark, starting at her shoulder and down to her wrist. “Each symbol represents a phase of your life. Did you know that?”

  Halen shook her head.

  Samira traced the swirls just behind her shoulder. “This mark tells me your birthday is tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Halen craned her neck back so she could see.

  Samira nodded. “Look, this dot is the month January, and these little starbursts, the day and the year.”

  “You’re making this up.” Halen said, even though Samira had guessed the right month.

  “No. I have interpreted many birthmarks. All Elosians, even half-Elosians have a birthmark similar to yours.” She stopped at the black smudges, their circles overlapping like a Venn diagram. Samira bit back her lip.

  “What? What do the two circles mean?” Halen asked.

  “Let it be,” Dax said to his mother. His jaw tightened, and Halen could hear his teeth grinding together.

  “No!” Halen shouted, and she quickly looked to see if anything shook or cracked. “I want to know what you see,” she said to Samira. “I deserve to know,” she said to Dax. “You said you would explain. You brought me here. Why?”

  Samira spoke. “He brought you here to protect you.”

  “From the mermaids?”

  “Yes, and from others.”

  “I don’t understand. Is being a siren a bad thing?”

  “Depends who you’re asking,” Samira set her arm down. “Engaging with humans that way is against Elosian law, but it does happen.”

  “So basically sex with humans is forbidden,” Halen said, and Dax coughed as if he were trying to cover her words.

  “Yes, it is forbidden,” Samira said.

  Halen thought of her mom, Miss Rules. Halen wasn’t even allowed to date, which was one of the reasons she hadn’t told her about Josh and the windshield incident. If all this was true, and she was a part of this world, why hadn’t her mom told her? This was huge! Why lie? It should have been her mom telling her what her birthmark meant, not a stranger. Anger flickered along her arms and the wind rushed through the window, sweeping up the hammock. Dax caught the hammock, and his eyes narrowed on Halen. She swallowed back hard, as he stared through her. The wind ceased and Halen turned her attention toward Samira. “What do the two circles mean?”

  “This is what makes you special,” Samira said.

  “Special how?”

  “Mother, I really don’t think…”

  Samira spoke, “You were born on a full moon—correct?”

  Halen nodded.

  Samira traced the second circle. “You were born on the second full moon of the month—a blue moon. Your birth is a very rare occurrence, my dear child. Only a blue moon is visible by all three realms at the same time. Though here in Elosia, it is just a reflection, but a very powerful omen. During your birth, your soul captured the essence of the blue moon. Every part of you, your cells, your thoughts, your soul
—all of you is connected to the three realms.”

  Halen’s thoughts were swimming with blue moons and sirens, and, mermaids and magick. Her heart beat double time. This was absurd. This was the craziest thing she had ever heard in her life. She wasn’t a siren. She would know if she had a connection to the realms; she would feel it. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she have some inkling the realms even existed if she was connected? Her mind flashed with her sketches of Dax and she shoved them away. No! She was not going to accept this—none of this was real. Yet, she couldn’t deny she could do things others couldn’t.

  Samira continued. “The magick that flows through your veins is manipulated by your emotions and manifested through nature. Unlike magick that can be learned, you can harness the elements in all three realms to fulfill your desires.”

  Halen thought of the fire she had started, when she was a little girl, and the exploding windshield. They had both happened because she was angry. Just as the sphere had cracked with her frustration, when she found she couldn’t leave. Her emotions led to disaster. This was not some magic trick. “You’re wrong about me,” Halen said.

  “You need time to get to know yourself. At least now you are aware, and in time you will see your potential, but first you must learn to tame your anger.”

  Halen’s gaze fell to the blanket of glass. Her potential was dangerous.

  “You can’t take her to the council,” Dax said.

  “Who are the council? Are they like your government?” Halen pulled her arm back from Samira. “What do they want from me?”

  The door slid open and Nelia stood clutching a broom made of dark green husks. The silence was deafening when she entered the sphere.

  Patting Halen’s leg, Samira said, “We can talk more later. Please rest. This is a lot for you.”

  “I don’t want to rest. I want to go home! I want to know why you are keeping me here. Is it because I’m a blue moon siren?”