Heads Or Tails (The Fairytail Saga)

by S. K Munt

  Ardhi sighed. ‘It’ll be with her, and there are only so many places left where she would have fled to.’ He looked up at Sherri. ‘You’ll have your pick of backpackers to keep you occupied in Airlie, and I’m probably going to need a few more hands on deck anyway so…I guess your priority can become mine...’

  Sherri squealed and hugged him.

  ‘You’re the best! See! This is why I’d die for you!’

  He snorted over her shoulder, but returned the hug-just to feel a warm body against his own.

  5.

  Ivyanne, Pintang and Saraya cut through the water like beautiful feathered arrows shot from a bow. The sand bank beneath them rose to a hilt and up they went, their perfect noses narrowly missing the peak before they dove down on the other side of the trench which dropped a further five meters into water that was both darker and cooler.

  Ivyanne, who was a few meters ahead of the other girls despite the fact that she was pacing herself, spotted a large sea turtle ahead and swerved, then felt the other girls follow in her wake-a synchronized underwater dance perfected by both time and nature. She smiled at the irony of it, tickling the underside of the turtle’s belly with outstretched fingers as she passed. Though they possessed the ability to communicate beneath the surface, they so rarely used or needed it. She hadn’t spent much time swimming with Pintang or Saraya, and yet like a river merging with the sea, mermaids moved together as one instinctively.

  Ivyanne wasn’t used to swimming with female company, not since she’d gotten old enough to venture off without her mother. She’s never really had ‘girlfriends.’ She liked other women, and knew that the mermaids genuinely desired and possibly even enjoyed her company, but there had always been an invisible boundary between her and her people. She supposed it was because their lives took such different paths.

  Or did they? Wasn’t that exactly what she’d brought them out into the bay to discuss?

  Either way, Saraya and Pintang were becoming more and more dear to her everyday, and Adele had been very nice to her the few times their paths had crossed. Of all the awful things that had transpired to bring them together, she was glad to have the other sirens nearby now. It was definitely one change that was for the better, especially now that she didn’t have her mother to confide in anymore. She could talk to men, she could get on their wavelength-but while men forged their own paths through the oceans of time, women rode the same wave together.

  They reached the mouth of the small bay which lay adjacent to Ivyanne’s new home, so she motioned for the girls to stay under while she broke the surface. Swinging around to get a good look at the area, she was instantly relieved to see that the nearest boat was at least two kilometers away, a white blip on the horizon. Garridan, who had swum out ahead to lap the mouth of the bay, was surely keeping a watchful eye out for watercraft anyway.

  The bay was a quiet one, shaped like the groove between the thumb and the pointer finger of a right hand. Ivyanne’s new home was nestled just down from the tip of the left hand point, bordered by a sheer cliff wall that sloped gently down as it headed inland and was overcome by mangroves. From there, the bay formed a wide arc near the shore, before stretching up for a few kilometers to the right.

  It was a shallow bay, one she’d never held much interest in exploring before, but with Ardhi at large, she had to find new, less satisfying and less predictable places to get her kicks. The reef was off limits-he knew all of her favorite haunts and humans swarmed on the rest-so the bay was her best bet. Mangroves clung to one another on the distant shore, inviting fishermen with crab pots during high tide but dissuading them when it was low, as it was then. The water carried a feint trace of diesel-enough to not only throw Ardhi off their scent-but enough to repel him. He was a puritan when it came to water quality, as they all ought to have been. But it was difficult to find anywhere coastal to swim where the waters were as beautiful as Norfolk.

  Ivyanne pressed forward, feeling the weight of the water resist her inch by inch and then part, no match for her strength in it’s pliant mood. As it buffered her rolling limbs it created a soothing pulse that stilled her thoughts and anxieties. God she loved this. How she needed it! Every flick of her tail stretched and elongated her, and she could feel her joints shift to where they needed to be after so many hours of being cramped inside. She wished it was a rougher day-rougher seas taxed and sated her so much more and she needed the pent up energy vanquished from her bones. It was risky to be swimming during the day-but it was a necessary risk. The more stressful her life became, the more she needed the water. Besides, allowing Ardhi to scare her onto dry land with her tail literally tucked in would just be handing him leverage he didn’t need.

  Ivyanne ducked back under and waved the girls on, leading them along the rocky shoreline, halfway to the tip. There, she found the small cavern area she had been frequenting since moving there, usually with Garridan as her only stoic company. The rocks, stacked twice as high as her at standing height, created a sort of canyon, seven meters deep, but less than a meter wide. They’d be hidden from sight in there, and the scent of the ocean was overwhelming in the very best way.

  She breathed it in deeply. She missed Bracken, The Seaview, and the little beach house her mother had gifted her with back in the Cumberland region-the scent of the ocean had wafted through every dwelling there, whereas the new house was too elevated and new to catch that heady, salted and slightly fishy smell she craved so. And it still reeked of fresh paint and upholstery-those scents overwhelming what the breeze carried in in every room except her own.

  Ivyanne reached the end, and pulled herself up onto a flattish rock, tucking her tail up to her chest, steadying herself on the wall. ‘Cute spit, huh?’ She asked Saraya, who surfaced first.

  ‘Very cute,’ Saraya smiled at her. ‘You’re not morphing?’

  But Ivyanne shook her head. ‘I don’t think we should anywhere other than in front of our place. Between your pinkish scales, and Saraya’s electric blue ones, we leave a pretty obvious trail.’ She pulled her hair over her shoulders, so that it concealed her breasts. ‘And I know Ardhi will be looking out for mine.’

  ‘I saw Garridan covering ours with sand yesterday.’ Pintang said. ‘I thought he was being a neat freak, but now I get it.’ She was floating in the water, making no move to cover her own small but perfectly formed breasts. She and Saraya were so much more comfortable with their bodies than Ivyanne herself was. They were used to playing the role of the siren, the seductress-craving male attention and companionship-whereas Ivyanne was used to being the bait avoiding the hook.

  Secretly, Ivyanne wished she could be a little more like them-not to just exist in her skin but thrive within it. But every time she tried-chaos ensued!

  ‘So what did you want to talk to us about?’ Saraya asked, getting straight to the point. ‘Or is this just a ploy to get out of the house while the guys are still underfoot?’

  ‘A little of both.’ Ivyanne smiled. Lincoln and Tristan were getting on okay, but that had never lasted long before so she’d made a break for it before the inevitable downswing could occur. Or before Tristan could quiz her about what had happened that morning-a quiz she didn’t have answers for. ‘I need to run a rule amendment by you girls before I settle on it.’

  ‘Ivyanne, sweetheart-you’re queen,’ Saraya drawled. ‘The only thing you have to run by me, is how high I’m supposed to jump.’

  Ivyanne laughed. She didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t used to sending out orders, and that because Saraya had twenty years on her and was used to being privy to information on every mer in the kingdom, Ivyanne sometimes regarded Saraya as the superior.

  ‘Okay well... still... you worked closely with mum, so you’d know how she felt about this,’ she turned to Pintang. ‘And this will impact your life, quite considerably.’

  Pintang raised an eyebrow. ‘You have my attention.’

  Ivyanne took in a deep breath. ‘I want to put a cap on Marked children,’ she sa
id. ‘So that once they turn fifty, they’re released from their obligations.’

  Pintang’s hand clapped to her mouth.

  ‘Oh my god, are you serious?’ Saraya took her arm. ‘Ivyanne, that’s not an amendment-that’s a brand new law. Is that even workable?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Ivyanne said. ‘How many Marked children have been wasted?’

  Saraya snorted. ‘Um so far... all of them.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Ivyanne said. ‘And how many are there?’

  ‘In general, or just eligible?’

  ‘Either way.’

  Saraya didn’t pause to calculate. ‘The records state that one hundred and thirty seven Marked have been created since the beginning. Three of which are eligible for you now, well, two given Ardhi’s loss of sanity, or one, when you take in Bane’s sexuality….’

  ‘How many other boys-under one hundred, but too young to be considered yet?’

  ‘About eleven, I think,’ Saraya said. ‘Average ages two to eight... but that’s as good as it’s ever been.’

  ‘And girls? Like Pintang? Under fifty?’

  Saraya winced. ‘Thirty-two or three...and sixteen under ten years old.’

  Ivyanne raised an eyebrow. ‘So the rest are married?’

  ‘Around forty are married, they make up the middle-aged category, like Isabelle and Mano. Fifteen to twenty five widows, widowers, old crones, mothers... and a few like Garridan, who are considered ineligible, due to infertility.’ She paused. ‘And nine are deceased.’

  ‘What happened to Garridan anyway?’ Pintang piped up. ‘If he’s this hot now, he must have been delectable in his prime! How is he single?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Ivyanne said. ‘I feel weird asking.’

  ‘He’s had it rough,’ Saraya said sadly. ‘His mother Athalia had triplets, you know.’

  ‘Triplets?!’ Ivyanne squeaked.

  Saraya nodded. ‘But that was a long time ago, when our lives were a lot more primitive. She had them quite early due to malnutrition. Garridan and Simone-Tristan’s mother-survived, but the third didn’t. I think they had to struggle with their health until they were about four. Maybe that caused the infertility.’

  ‘Wow,’ Ivyanne breathed. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know that.’

  Saraya nodded somberly.

  Ivyanne sighed. ‘Well I think I made my point. Unless I manage to have forty kids-half of each, in the next forty years, there’s no way that these eligible Marked children are ever going to fulfill their destiny.’ She shrugged. ‘I say, when they hit fifty, they’re free to do whatever they want-within reason.’

  ‘Where’s the petition?” Pintang demanded. ‘I’ll sign!’

  ‘But wait-there are issues with this-’ Saraya said quickly. ‘You’d still need to keep a very close eye on the Marked.’

  Ivyanne nodded. ‘Of course. Every one of them would still have to abide the rules until they hit fifty-and if there’s an only child situation going on, then I’d expect that child to wait for either one of my own descendants, or a full blood turned by an elder to keep the blood line pure as they do now.’ She shrugged and turned to Pintang. ‘You’re cousin turned a human for Lumi before he died, and Ardhi chose to wait for the Court bloodline for personal reasons. So it makes sense to keep you around too in light of what has happened, and in case I have a boy….’ She paused, seeing Pintang’s pretty face scrunch up unhappily. ‘But the thing is….if it takes me another hundred years to have a boy, there could be over forty younger, eligible girls trying to elbow you out of the way by then. It’s not fair and by then, your parents may have died without having changed someone for you first. If I’d been a boy, it may have been different but-’

  ‘Are you flirting with me?’ Pintang joked. ‘Because it’s quite a tempting notion….’

  ‘Oh ha ha!’ Ivyanne splashed her. ‘My point is that Tristan’s been free to sleep with whoever he wants for thirty years because he can’t impregnate a human with a mer child. We’ve always thought that was a fair rule, because he’ll never have a mer family of his own, but you Marked daughters are being ripped off too and wasted in the process, and I see that now. After your fiftieth birthday, you’d be free to have a half breed with a human, if you choose to, or at least do the thing that could make children, for recreational purposes.’ She winked at Pintang. ‘It may dilute the blood, but hopefully, the Marked parents who do turn full-blood humans for their own kids will balance that out.’

  Saraya pursed her lips. ‘They’ll still be banned from breeding with us Court-Zara’s though, right?’

  Ivyanne nodded, trailing her fingers nervously across the skin of the cool water, which was lower in temperature there, shadowed by the crevasse walls. Every movement they made, every splash of the wave against the rocks was amplified prettily by the natural enclosure.

  ‘That I can’t change. Take the Londeree's for example-Dalton and Bane are fine because they can’t have children. But if Bane was to hook up with you Saraya, that would make Grace and Leah ineligible as well. I still want fifteen Marked families….I just don’t have to have access to every single child born within each line.’

  ‘That sounds fair.’ Saraya agreed, taking a stray piece of seaweed off her hand and throwing it at a nearby rock. ‘I think Vana would have approved...after a lot of coaxing.’

  Ivyanne looked at Pintang, whose opinion counted the most. ‘It’s still restrictive I know, but is it better?’

  Pintang’s head bobbed wildly on her fragile-looking neck. ‘Absolutely!’

  ‘Fifteen families…’ Saraya repeated. ‘That’s a minimum of fifteen saved per generation. I really do think those are good odds.’

  ‘Holy shit!’

  A ripple of alarm caused every nerve-ending inside Ivyanne to alight with a furiously violent charge. All three girls heads snapped upwards in unison to discover a rugged looking young man staring down at them from the outcropping above. He was a human, and a stranger.

  And from his vantage point, he’d already seen more than any human stranger ought to have.

  ‘You’re fucking mermaids!’

  Ivyanne’s alarm morphed into something she’d never experienced before and temporarily robbed her of her breath when she saw that his incredulous expression was focused solely on her. She inhaled sharply, and his eyes drifted to her chest, drawn by the movement.

  Ivyanne stared back, but it was his mouth her gaze fell upon. There was nothing remarkable about it and yet she twitched from her scalp to her flukes, her body overcome with the need to rise and press her own against the human’s, to breathe in deeply of what was so forbidden-so vulnerable and yet so dangerous.

  Dangerous. Threat. Secrecy. Siren. Ivyanne’s tail flicked reflexively as her natural instincts kicked in. She had a problem-and there were only two ways to fix it. And one of those ways was going to be a whole lot of fun.

  But before she could beckon to the boy, a gentle humming caused her head to turn. That’s when she saw-and remembered-that she wasn’t alone. Saraya had already vaulted herself up onto a higher rock and was gazing at the boy adoringly.

  ‘Come here,’ her assistant said, her voice rich and throaty, arching up on the rock in a way that pressed her bare breasts together. And like a soldier reporting to a sergeant, the boy slowly turned to stare at the brunette instead, his expression now confused and openly aroused.

  Behind Saraya, Pintang was singing with a secretive and utterly bewitching smile that Ivyanne did not recognize. In fact, Ivyanne could barely recognize either woman in that moment, for they weren’t women-but creatures. Beautiful, beguiling and lethal creatures of the sea.

  Like her.

  Bile rose in Ivyanne’s throat as the reality of what she’d been about to do-kiss a strange boy to rob him of his will and memory and derive pleasure from it-hit her like arctic water. She slipped back down the rock, skin crawling as the human part of her rebelled against the witch.

  *

  ‘And girl you make it hard to be fa
ithful…’The sweet voice alerted Tristan to the moment Ivyanne re-entered the house. He jumped her.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said, wrapping his fingers around her slender arm and dragging her towards the front of the house.

  ‘What’s going on? Tristan! I’m dripping water everywhere! And wasn’t your flight at lunch? I told Lincoln you were leaving early.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Tristan set his jaw turned left in the main hall and hurried Ivyanne into the first door he found. ‘You can’t be parading around the house-Saraya’s got a human in her room!’

  ‘He’s here?’

  Tristan paused once he’d pulled her across the threshold of the room, noticing that he’d dragged her into the library. Only it wasn’t the same library he’d seen in photos- unlike the other rooms, it had been overhauled-and it was magnificent.

  Someone had installed heavy, black lacquered shelves along one wall that were literally stuffed with books to the ceiling. Purple walls and plush velvet couches contrasted against the cream and stark black. The only piece that seemed out of place was what he recognised to be Ash Court’s old beaten roll top desk near the window. It’s surface was cluttered, a fact made more obvious by the brilliant light streaming in from the window behind it, picking up traces of glowing dust in the air.

  ‘Um, Tristan?’

  Tristan felt a tugging on his arm and looked down to discover that he was still gripping Ivyanne. He yanked her into the room and shut the door behind her, trying to re-arrange his thoughts which was difficult now that he’d been distracted.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, locking the door before glancing back over at the shelving, his fingertips twitching to stroke the spines of the books. ‘I was momentarily blinded by the awesomeness that is this room. Did you hire a decorator?’

  Ivyanne chuckled. ‘No, I did it myself. I figured it’s the room I’ll be using the most, so I might as well make it reflect me. This and my bedroom, of course. The rest is great as it is.’

  Her pleased and proud expression did funny things to his heart. ‘You did this? I thought you said you didn’t know what your thing is yet from a design stand point?’