by Kelly Said
The Pearl of Pau’maa let its love light shine, illuminating the ocean around Miki, Harmon and his brother. The brightness tilted, leaned and took aim for the next unmatched Mer in the family.
Creeb.
The Undergarden
Jocelyn Adams
J. Taylor Publishing
Chapter 1
Nixie burst through the surface of the water with a great splash and drew in a gulp of salted sea air. As she swam to her favorite spot in the secluded bay, she took in the tangerine sky. The glowing orb dropped toward the edge of the world and set the clouds aflame. Soon, hundreds of square yellow eyes would blink to life beyond the trees.
With a grunt, she heaved her spindly body onto a flat stone, worn smooth on top by the tide’s constant indecision of in and out. Pale birds gave shrill cries overhead as they circled, searching for their next meal or some shiny treasure to pluck for their collections. She flexed her webbed fingers and toes against the warm breeze. The long silvery strands covering her head itched where they lay along her back, so she bunched them in her hand and twisted to wring out the water.
A tiny sound drew her gaze to the sandy place where liquid met solid. A row of palm trees silhouetted against the sun sent long strips of shadow along the ground. Within the dark and light patches, a pink creature wrapped in blue cloth sat in the sand, hugging its knees to its chest.
She’d never seen a pink one up close. Curiosity urged her back into the surf, her stare locked onto the light threads covering the creature’s head. What was such a young one doing there by itself? Had its guardians abandoned it?
Submersed so only her forehead and eyes peeked above the surface, Nixie propelled herself closer until the sand brushed her chest. Only a few feet from the being, she surveyed the liquid dripping out of its eyes.
She opened her mind and searched for the intricate mental patterns that often accompanied the pink ones. Few others who lived on the hard place thought of anything more than food and procreation, but she found a complex mind in the one before her. Sadness, mostly, and loneliness. The male referred to himself as Wyatt.
Unable to stop herself, she injected her thoughts into his. “Why do your eyes leak?”
A fair-skinned face snapped up, blue eyes scanning the rolling waves. “Wh—who said that?” Wyatt stuck a scrawny finger into his ear and wiggled it.
Nixie popped her head and shoulders out of the surf. “Why do you do that? Has something crawled in there?”
His eyes opened wide as they landed on her. Wiping crystal drops from his face, he jumped to his feet, stabbing a finger in her direction. “I’m not afraid of you!”
She cocked her head, and a frilly leaf of sea grass fell from her shoulder into the water. “Why would you be afraid of me?”
Wyatt’s gaze fell to the ground before rising to peer through his silky fringe. “My sister calls me a ‘fraidy-cat’, but I’m not.”
Nixie grinned. “You’re funny, Wyatt. Why does your heart beat so fast?”
Tiny creases sank into his brow. “How did you—it’s not! I told you, I’m not scared.” Silence fell for a moment as he traced her form with his eyes. “Hey, what are you, anyway?”
She thought for a moment. “I am Nixie, and you are Wyatt.”
One of the arched fur patches above his eye curved up. “Wyatt is my name, but what are you?” His fingers touched the side of his own neck. “You have gills …” His voice fell to a whisper. “… and your skin is, like, invisible … only not.” He scratched his head as if his own words confused him.
Nixie held her arms out. Her iridescent skin took on the appearance of the surrounding water. Swirling blue and green mixed with hints of orange from the sky. She set her stare back on Wyatt. “I am simply Nixie, and my skin changes to suit my surroundings. Why doesn’t yours? Is it broken? Is that why your eyes are leaking?”
Wyatt’s lips tugged up on one side. “Your skin … changes? You mean like camouflage, like a chameleon?”
As she searched her thoughts for the word, Nixie climbed farther along the sand, coming to her knees in shallow water. “What is a chameleon?”
Wyatt shook his head. “Never mind. It’s cool, is all.” His hands disappeared into openings in the blue cloth covering his lower half. “But … how can I hear you when your mouth isn’t moving? Are you some sort of ventriloquist, like that guy I saw on TV once?”
Another head tilt didn’t help her decipher what he’d said. “Ven … trill … what is T … V?”
A bright laugh burst from Wyatt, though Nixie didn’t know what had amused him. “It’s TV. You know, like movies at home. And a ventriloquist can make a puppet look like it can talk.” He squinted, and at the same time his expression flattened to reflect something Nixie took as concern. “Isn’t your mom worried you’re out swimming by yourself?”
“Mom? You mean a guardian?”
“Yeah, you know, parents? Mom or … or Dad?” His grin turned upside down.
A twinge of loneliness crept into her chest. “I have none.”
“Oh.” His bare toe dug into the sand. “My dad’s dead, too.”
“Dead? Do you mean he’s gone to the Undergarden?”
Wyatt’s foot stopped its fidgeting, and his gaze locked onto hers again. “Is that like Heaven?”
“It’s the place where the lost ones go to play.”
“Uh …”
“Is that why your thoughts are sad? Are you alone now, like me?”
Wyatt kicked a shell near him, and it skittered across the shore. He shook his head. “Mom and my step-dad fight a lot. I sneak out until they’re done.” His shoulders lifted in a half-hearted shrug. “They never miss me.” A new glimmer shone in his eyes, one Nixie didn’t understand. “Is that where your parents are? The Undergarden?”
She thought about her beginning, waking in shallow waters far from the beach, under the fireball’s rays. “I have none now, nor ever. I wasn’t, and then I was. If a guardian gave me life, they didn’t stay to tell me.”
Wyatt leaned closer. “But then how did you eat and all that when you were a baby? And … how old are you? I’m nine.”
“Old? You mean age? I’ve seen one hundred and nine full moons, and I fish when I’m hungry. Don’t you?”
“Oh.” He squinted at the water. “Do you have legs or fins under there? It’s too dark for me to see.”
Nixie jumped out of the water and landed on her feet. She wobbled on legs that rarely held her weight until she stood only an inch or so taller than the boy.
Wyatt’s face glowed as red as the horizon before he slapped a hand over his eyes. “You’re not wearing any bottoms.”
“What is bottoms?” She glanced left and right but found nothing he might have been referring to.
Twinkling eyes peeked through a gap in the boy’s fingers before he closed his digits together again. “You can’t go around naked, at least not on the bottom. Mom says there’s a law or something.”
With a scrunched brow, Nixie looked down at her body. “I don’t understand. You don’t like the way I look?”
Wyatt dropped his hand but his gaze stayed fixed on her feet. “You look … pretty.” His toe dug another hole in the sand as his head made a slow tilt up. “I guess if you don’t care, then I don’t.” Smirking, he gathered a glob of kelp into his hands and stepped into the water. “Last one to the drop-off is a seaweed head.”
He threw the tangled ball, catching Nixie on her right temple in a wet splat before running into the surf. Laughter peeled out of him, like the bells from the pointed towers beyond the trees every seventh light.
The sound made her heart swell, and a smile slid across her lips. She’d never had a friend before, at least not one who knew how to play. Only the odd dolphin that came to swim with her once in a while.
Releasing a twitter of her own, she splashed into the water behind him. “Swim fast, Wyatt. I’ll be there and back twice before you even get started.” She dove, her webbed feet propelling her past Wy
att with the speed of a shark on the hunt. Upon reaching the drop-off, she sped back and circled him several times, dousing him with water while he giggled and tried to grab her without success.
They had something Wyatt called a contest to see which of them could hold their breath longer. After only a few minutes, he thrust himself to the surface. Nixie followed wondering if she’d hurt his feelings by outlasting him.
“You’re the best swimmer I’ve ever seen. Maybe you can teach me some tricks to get better?” he said, gasping through a grin to regain his breath.
Nixie beamed. “Your funny hands aren’t good for swimming, but I’ll try.”
“I’ll bring some of my sister’s snorkeling fins next time.” He stuck his toes out of the water and wiggled them. “Hey”—his eyes grew wide along with his smile—“did you see that giant starfish on the ledge? I’ve never seen one so big.”
Jittering with excitement, Nixie dove without a word, retrieved the bumpy orange star and returned to the surface. “You mean this one?”
Wyatt grasped it, turning it over in his hands. “This is so cool! Look at those spines!” His fingertip made a gentle pass over the spikes on the creature’s back. “Did you know starfish can drop off an arm if it gets eaten, then grow it back? Wish I could do that.”
Nixie didn’t know that. What else might he be able to tell her about her home? Reveling in his excitement and wealth of knowledge, she dove again in search of something else to show him.
• • •
Silver moonlight blanketed Nixie as she lay on the sand beside Wyatt. His breaths were heavy after their long swim. The waves bumped her as they surged inward, rolling her closer to the boy. His skin was warm compared to hers.
Nixie caught a worry lingering in Wyatt’s thoughts. “What is a ‘stepdad’?”
His fingers curled into tight fists at his sides. “He’s not my real dad. He’s just a guy Mom married after Dad died so she wouldn’t have to work.”
“Married? Is that like a mating?”
Wyatt’s jaw flexed for a moment. He shrugged before pointing at the sky. “That’s Orion’s belt.”
Nixie gazed at the winking lights above, wondering why he’d changed the subject. “Orion’s belt?”
“Orion is a constellation, at least that’s what my real Dad told me when I was little.”
“Constellation?”
“Yeah. You know, stars.” Excitement pulled his voice tight as he swept his pointed finger to the right. “That other one that looks like a measuring cup is Ursa Minor. Dad said it means ‘bear’.” He gave his head a scratch. “I wonder why they call that a bear when it looks like my mom’s measuring cups.”
With a cock of her head, Nixie studied the boy’s grinning face as the incoming tide lapped at her legs. “What is measuring cup?”
Wyatt let out a jingling laugh. “It measures stuff for cooking, you know, like a cup. Don’t you have cups where you come from?”
She shook her head. “What is cooking?”
The laugh came again. “You’re so funny. I like you, Nixie.”
A smile curved her lips, her chest puffing up with joy. “I like you, too.” She pointed webbed fingers at the lumps beyond the trees. “What are those tall things with the yellow eyes that light up after the fireball disappears? Is it some sort of beast?”
He sat up and turned in her indicated direction. “Those are apartments.” His shoulders popped up and down. “The yellow squares are lights people turn on when it’s dark out, so they can read and stuff.”
“People? Read?” Nixie squinted at the lights, as if seeing them better could help her make more sense of Wyatt living in such an odd place.
Wyatt’s brow scrunched up. “Wait—how do you know English?”
“English?”
“Yeah, the words we use to talk.”
She thought it over for a moment. “When pink ones speak, they often have images in their minds. I listened and learned.”
“I wish I could do that. Read people’s minds, I mean. It’d be cool for when my sister blames me for something. Or to find out why Mom cries so much. Why don’t you talk out loud like I do?”
Nixie opened her mouth, but only a grunting sound came out. “I don’t know how.”
Wyatt reached out fingers and touched her gills. “How long can you breathe out of water?”
“I can breathe air, too, but the fire in the sky dries my skin, so I have to rewet my body once in a while.”
“So you really don’t have a mom? I mean, kids come from a Mommy’s belly. That’s how my Mom said I was born, anyway. It grosses out her new husband when she talks about stuff like that.” He snorted and dug his fingers into the sand. “Or maybe you came from an egg, like a turtle?”
“I don’t know.” She turned to stare at him, fascinated by his excitement and enjoyment of her company. “What is kid?”
“Oh, like a baby, a child, me.”
“Like offspring, then. And what is husband?”
His sigh told of some complicated thought going on within. “When grownups love each other, they get married. Afterwards, the man is called the husband, and the woman is called a wife. It’s kind of like mating, only different. Did you know Canadian geese mate for life, only lots of humans get divorced?”
Nixie’s questions rolled out one after the other, and Wyatt answered. The darkness she sensed in his thoughts lifted a little more with each new fact he shared. She learned that the pink ones called the round fire ‘the sun’ and the fur on his head ‘hair’. They divided time into days, weeks, months and years, and Wyatt called the current month ‘June’. He said he’d soon be finished going to something called ‘school’, and that would allow him to come to the beach more often. She paid particular attention to that comment.
“I’d better get back.” With a yawn and a stretch, Wyatt stood and brushed the sand from his backside. “I’ve got school tomorrow.” He trotted along the sand. At the edge of the trees, he turned and waved his hand. “See you tomorrow, Nixie.”
She raised her hand to mirror his, the loneliness from before their meeting resettling around her heart. Sighing, she pushed her sadness aside and swam into the depths toward her cavern to wait for Wyatt’s return.
Chapter 2
Wearing a broad smile, Nixie waded in the shallows under the midday sun, the same as she’d done every day for two full cycles of the moon. Wyatt called the warm season ‘summer’, and they’d enjoyed every moment of it. Only seven more sunrises until Wyatt had to return to school, and their visits would return to darkness.
More of the pink ones had come to the beach in the hot weather, so Nixie had led Wyatt to a deserted inlet farther down the bay. It took longer for him to arrive each day, but his company was always worth the wait.
The sound of quick footsteps beyond the trees met Nixie’s ears. She stopped and tilted her head to listen, holding a hopeful breath. One foot fell harder than the other, and a familiar squeak from his shoe joined it. His blond head with hair sticking every direction appeared in the shadows a moment before he rushed into the sunlight.
“Hi, Nixie!” He bounded to the edge of the water holding a flat, white item in his hand. “I think I know what you are.” His smile beamed brighter than the day itself.
“What is that?” She crawled along the sand with tentative movements. Could the flat object speak? She couldn’t sense a mind, but maybe it could hide itself.
Wyatt glanced at the floppy thing in his fingers. “I went to the library this morning. The old lady there printed this paper out for me on water sprites.” He came to his knees in the sand as Nixie edged closer.
Although she had no idea what ‘library’ meant, she peered at a black image of a skinny female creature with webbed fingers and toes like hers, though its hair was short and dark. “Water sprite?”
His finger pointed at the creature’s face. “Yeah, this is from a book of old legends that some guy drew. He must have seen somebody just like you. This one’s eyes
are smaller than yours, and yours are shaped more like a cat’s, but the rest looks like you.”
Nixie’s lips parted, and her eyes grew wide. She’d never seen herself before. “Is that really what I look like?”
Wyatt snorted. “You don’t have any mirrors down there in the ocean?”
Curiosity swirled in her mind. She wondered how Wyatt saw her. An idea flashed to life, and she gasped. “Look at my face, Wyatt.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Why?”
“Quiet.” She slipped her hand around his wrist and allowed his thoughts to replace hers. After a few dizzying seconds, her own features came into focus through his eyes. She passed fingertips over her full lips. They held the color of the sea, sparkling as the sun touched them. Her night-black irises peered out from behind long silver lashes.
Nixie released Wyatt with a smile. “Thank you.”
His chest rose and fell in a hurry. “Whoa. Can all water sprites do that?”
Her amusement disappeared, and a pang of emptiness filled up her belly. “I’ve never seen another like me.”
“Really?” A large wave rushed in and toppled Wyatt over. He took a sharp inhale, while his arms splashed, wetting and ruining the floppy white image he’d brought with him.
She twittered a laugh at his flailing limbs.
“Never?” He tried to right himself. “I was thinking last night … you probably shouldn’t let anyone else see you. I watched a movie once where the government took a person with special powers to a building and experimented on them.”
“Gov … ern … what is a movie?”
He laughed. “Just don’t let anyone else see you, okay?”
Although she didn’t understand why, she agreed, to make Wyatt happy. “Okay.” Nixie scooped up water in her webbed fingers and doused his hair. “Race you to the drop-off, seaweed head.”
Snickering, Wyatt waded a little farther into the water, his gaze darting to the open sea. “Only if you give me a head start so it’s fair.”
“Deal.”
After stripping off the clothing from his upper body, he dove in head first, legs kicking up a spray that cast an arch of colors through the air. Nixie waited a few breaths before jumping in after him.