Conclave

by Murray, Lee

  Secretly, I think he’s consumed with guilt. When his wife swam off on patrol that day, Uncle feels he should have been with her. Maybe it’s the romantic in me but somehow, that makes him seem more… Merman. I know he wants revenge and to get his sea back, that much he’ll rant about. But he never talks about anything personal. He’s lost everyone except Jaes. But so did I.

  Seems like over the centuries the Tellurian family has been all about loss. They’ve lost a lot of ocean and a good number of lives, and ever since our enemies arrived, we’ve been treading water, floundering around and on the run. I asked Uncle once why we didn’t all band together, get what’s left of the old pods to unite and fight back, but he gave me that look with the mono-brow frown, the one that turns you cold and said, “It’s complicated.”

  As far as I can see, everything is complicated to Uncle.

  “Can I swim in the open ocean, Uncle?”

  “Not now.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.” Sometimes, I feel like asking him, can you turn that frown upside down, Uncle? But I wouldn’t dare.

  The only thing we haven’t managed to lose is money. With a gentle push in the right direction, the humans have unknowingly helped us accumulate a fortune in good investments. The ability to persuade another creature to do something is a gift we Mer inherited from the sirens of Greece and have treasured and used wisely. Pity it doesn’t seem to work very well on the Sprats. I guess they’re not wired that way.

  In the last month, Uncle’s started training Jaes on short patrols. I can’t see how that’s necessary, Jaes is so young. We haven’t come across a Spratonite scouting party for yonks, and the two of them don’t go far because Uncle can’t dive deep anymore. But, still, I worry for Jaes.

  I refuse to go, of course. It’s what my uncle and I fight about the most, but he can’t make me. Uncle thinks I’m simply rebelling. I’ll never tell him the real reason. Under water, we communicate mind to mind. He might find out I have the Blight.

  I lie down, massaging away the last vestiges of pain rippling across my stomach. In some ways, I’m glad for Jaes. He enjoys the patrols and it gives him something to do with his dad. Outside the water, Uncle pretty much ignores him.

  So I shouldn’t complain, right? I’m safe, I have Jaes, I have Anna and Murdoch and on some vaguely psychotic level, my uncle. Apart from homework and exercise, there’s no other structure to my day. I get to choose. I have a boat load of money and everything a lonely little rich girl requires. But the truth is, I crave a change. Anything would do. I’m tired of hiding.

  Murdoch says it’s best to live each day as it comes. I am one of the last females of my family name with breeding potential, so I have to be kept in conclave. It’s all part of the rules Uncle created when we first came here.

  Fearful another attack would completely destroy our family, he decided to put us up on blocks. By his rules, I can swim out into the ocean within the confines of the waters he patrols, but not surface near any other land mass. I can surface here, in the underground caves beneath Conclave Manor, but I can’t go to any human areas unaccompanied. I can use the geothermal springs to recharge my ability to change between Mer and human form, but I can’t actually talk to any humans.

  It’s infuriating! I may look whole on the outside. My skin is shiny and clean, my body is fit and healthy. Well, most of the time. But underneath this sparkly exterior, I’m rotting like a squashy old sea cucumber. It’s not only my body under lock and key, it’s my soul.

  4

  Conclave Manor is big, fancy and well-decorated, but it’s still incarceration.

  Perched on top of a towering cliff face overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the mansion’s two storey opulence is surrounded by Cyprus trees and neat gardens. But go beyond our property boundaries and there’s nothing inland for kilometres. We’re cut off by sea on one side, bush on the other, and our only access to the closest town is by winding gravel road.

  Uncle bought this place because of its isolation, but no doubt the caves sealed the deal. Probably once used for smuggling, the caves at the bottom of the cliff connect to tunnels leading up to the house. One of those tunnels leads to a small pool of mineral-rich water fed by an underground stream. Conclave must have ticked all the boxes, so Uncle signed on the dotted line and, as per usual, got what he wanted. Uncle doesn’t often accept the word No. Anna always calls him a force to be reckoned with. Like that’s a bonus.

  So now it’s home sweet home. Always coated in a lick of salt, the house’s constant need for maintenance fills Murdoch’s days with backbreaking tasks, most of them involving coats of paint and window cleaning. But inside, it is an oasis of calm, richly appointed luxury, like a five star hotel.

  All the living areas and kitchen are downstairs. I spend a lot of time doing home-school work at the big wooden kitchen table while Anna cooks and cleans and potters around. There’s a vegetable garden and washing line outside, with a small lawn area surrounded by trees, gnarled and bent by the wind. It’s there, in the courtyard, that Jaes and I exercise. We call it boot camp. Uncle developed the drills years ago and we do it every day.

  Upstairs, seven neat bedrooms peel off a wide hallway like exit lanes from a highway. Two are beautifully decorated but empty and bedecked with dust covers, kept for guests who never arrive. Jaes’ room next to mine is spacious but has its own kind of stinky boy smell, the floor covered with clothes, the walls complete with Star Wars posters.

  Anna’s room is across the corridor. It looks like an insane florist once slept there. The walls are decorated with the loudest floral wallpaper and the carpet is a mass of wild colour and bloom. Murdoch’s room is basic apart from a home entertainment system and a big LazyBoy chair that he sits in to watch sport on his own because Anna won’t let him watch it in the living room.

  Uncle doesn’t watch television. His room is at the end of the corridor, a small brown space with a giant bed and many bookshelves. Each night I hear him wheezing.

  Looking around my room, I wonder what I’m worried about. According to the human world, it’s a teenager’s dream space. A four-poster bed boasts pink and purple swaths of tulle. A walk-in wardrobe with hundreds of outfits. I have my own TV and computer, a huge mirror and the best view in the house.

  I pull myself upright, feeling better, and gaze out the window. Somewhere out there, the Sprats are going about their strange alien business, completely submerged in an unimaginable, underwater world. From what I’ve heard, they look a bit like us, but smaller and uglier. Shimmering, scaled tails and humanoid features, but green tinted and pale from always being under the sea. As a kid I’d eavesdrop on the adults talking about them, pretending to be asleep as they described our enemies’ fighting techniques, their fierce strength, the rows of small sharp teeth and the way they yelled “Spraton!” like a battle cry. My nightmares were full of their small, eyelid-less expressions.

  These days my dreams are filled with the roll and crash of the rhythmic waves on the rocks below Conclave. Every dream is watery and I am always in Merform. It almost feels like I’m a true Tellurian of old, living under the sea for long stretches of time and seldom taking human form. Almost. Sometimes, my dreams take me there, back to an old Tellurian city my ancestors were born in. Its undersea turrets loom against the glow of electric eels, phosphorescent coral and the faint light from above, foreign and eerie. But in my dream it is home. We have no possessions except the shells on the ocean floor, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Most times a Merwoman is by my side, stroking my hair, pointing things out, whispering funny secrets. I know who she is. My grandmother, Sheeh Tellurian, a fierce leader and fighter. Lost when I was only four years old, I still remember her. My mother’s mother, she had dark hair, green eyes, strong limbs. She refused to surrender her territory and live mostly on land, and she paid the price. When I wake from these dreams, the touch of her lips on my forehead and the weight of her arm around my shoulders lingers like a familiar song.

 
I find the tablet in my top bedside drawer and swipe through photos of Jaes and birthdays ‘til I come to the one and only photo of my parents. My mother is dark-haired and tall, in human form. Short and stocky, my father turns a dark bearded face toward the camera, tossing wavy long hair. Their skin is pale toned with a touch of pearlescent blue like my own. Their eyes are wide and green. There’s something about the way my dad holds his mouth that I recognise, but there’s nothing in my mother’s looks that ties her to that warm, caring touch which guides me in my dreams. She is a stranger.

  I stare into the middle distance and focus on my own reflection in the tablet’s glass. Compared to their elegant strength and beauty, I look like a midget elf. Short black hair that I cut daily to horrify my uncle. Pale skin and a mouth that appears painted-on pink.

  I swipe through the old pictures again ‘til I find one of me at my fifth birthday party. We scanned it in a few years ago. In the background, Anna leans over the table, clearing away party mess. I’m in the foreground, holding my doll. Typically, I’m wearing shorts and a pink t-shirt and stuffing a kelp cookie in my mouth. My long dark hair frames a solemn face. Why aren’t I smiling?

  My throat feels tight and I swallow the sensation ‘til it clears. I bite my lip. Tears are a useless waste of time; they get you nowhere.

  “Thalassica Tellurian, get down here and finish your school work!” Anna’s voice echoes up the stairs.

  “I’ve finished!” I yell back, quickly wiping my eyes.

  “Don’t make me come up there!” yells Anna, stomping. “You haven’t even done your exercises today!” Full name usage means I’ve really ticked her off. I throw a longing glance out the window. The ocean shivers, a moving blanket of shimmering possibilities. None of which I can pursue.

  “Coming!” I yell.

  5

  I change into three-quarter length black leggings and a turquoise singlet top, then head downstairs. Once in the courtyard, I run through Uncle’s drills on automatic pilot. Jaes and the others are nowhere to be seen.

  Reach, stretch, lower, thrust and spin. The late spring weather has me sweating after a few minutes. I’m glad Uncle isn’t around. Sometimes he watches, barking out advice.

  “Straighten your leg, Thala. You want a Sprat to spear you? Throw yourself into the backwards handspring with power, Jaes. Our enemy is quick in the water and will take any opportunity you give him.”

  And he never left without reminding us why we’re there. “These exercises give you tools to fight. Use them if you have to but never be afraid to turn and swim away. Stay alive.”

  So melodramatic! Of course, I’ve never had to face those ugly arse Sprats, so what do I know? Jaes and I used to take turns being ‘fat King Sprat’ so we’d have the pleasure of killing one. We even created a special move. Murdoch pretends to be fat King Sprat holding one of us from behind, his thick arms wrapped around our neck. As one of us dives at the fat King, the one being held goes limp, slipping downwards. The attacker thrusts their fingers into the alien’s vulnerable eyes, thereby causing him to release the prisoner and allowing us to knife him to death. It’s great fun on land but even better when we train in the water.

  Boot camp takes about half an hour. I finish and plod into the kitchen, wiping the sweat off my forehead with the back of my sleeve. Anna frowns at me.

  I wouldn’t call Anna Aegis a fat woman, at least not to her face. But she does have a number of unnecessary folds that people in my family would call… superfluous. As a child, I found her roundness comforting. Hiding behind her portly spread, I could find safe harbour from the sharp stares of Uncle. She is the mothering type, but she isn’t weak. She suffers no fools. We love her for that, my cousin and I.

  Today, though, she is on the rampage.

  “Can I have something to eat?”

  “No, sit down and do your history,” she says, pointing at a pile of books.

  “I don’t understand how knowing the names and reigns of our ancient rulers has the least bit of significance to my life now,” I reason, throwing myself down at the kitchen table.

  Anna puts her hands on her ample hips. “Don’t start, Thala. The past is always important,” she says. The skin across her shiny, apple cheeks stretches taut.

  “Yes, but how is it relevant? None of those hierarchies exist anymore. We’re powerless. We live predominantly on land and have nothing in common with our ancestors, except maybe Siren skills. All that stuff about Merwizards and spells is hogwash. Besides, I’m not getting tested on it...”

  “Thala, there were Merwizards in our history and they did make spells, some of which exist to this day...”

  “But that’s only legend,” I insist.

  “Thala, the history of our people is incredibly important…”

  “And you will be tested.”

  With dark circles under his eyes, and dressed in a black shirt and trousers, Uncle looks like a cat burglar and appears just as quietly. But his long straggly hair and beard give off an unkempt air, as if he’s just got out of bed.

  “Learn about the past, Thala. Learn from our mistakes.” The words come out in a throaty wheeze. When he’s not looking, I roll my eyes.

  He limps over to the kitchen bench, snatches a knife and starts hacking at a loaf of bread. At least he’s eating again. His thin human form is unappealing. I know better than to engage him in this argument. Every now and again, he feels the need to get involved and subjects me to days of dark moods and stern reprimands. Then, just as quickly, he disappears to his study. Today, he’s unreadable and gloomy.

  “Yes, Uncle,” I say. I open an ancient book and pretend to read. I wonder if Anna knows about the pile of glass in Uncle’s study.

  Our silence seems to mollify him, because he spreads his bread with fish paste and hobbles out.

  Anna huffs. “I can almost see your dislike written in big letters across your face, Thala,” she hisses. “You need to hide your thoughts more carefully if you are to fool anyone into believing you want to study, or that you have any warm feelings for your Uncle, who is, may I remind you, one of the last members of your family alive on this planet.”

  Anna clears away Uncle’s mess with a swipe of her ever-present cloth, crashing the knife against the plate in her fury.

  “He has great plans for you, you know. If you would knuckle down and learn, focus on what needs to be done. He’s given you everything: this house, all those fancy gadgets in your room...”

  I turn to face her, my fists clenched. “What are you talking about, Anna? Great plans? He never tells me anything, and you and Murdoch never say a word. I have no idea what plans he has for me, and it’s about time someone filled me in because you might find I’m not willing to knuckle down and go along with what needs to be done.” I can feel my face turning red. “And don’t even mention the idea of Jaes and I hooking up because I’m not about to succumb to the breeding programme with a ten-year-old, got it?”

  Anna’s mouth drops open in shock. The colour drains from her face and her large frame sways. She takes her time placing the cloth on the bench and wiping her hands on her apron before replying.

  “For reef’s sake, Thala. We don’t even know yet if you’ll be gifted with the ability to breed, and where in the ocean did you get the idea that Jaes and you might…”

  “I heard my name! Don’t talk about me, talk tooooooo me!” yells Jaes, breezing in to grab a kelp cookie from the pantry. He punches me on the arm as he goes by. He’s hot and sweaty in board shorts and a t-shirt. There’s sand on his neck.

  Anna puts on a cheerful face, runs a hand through his hair and tries to spit-wash the sand.

  “Get away!” He pushes her off. “What are you guys on about, anyway?”

  Anna looks over his head to meet my eye, her head shaking imperceptibly.

  “Nothing, Fishboy,” I say and punch him back. We wrestle our way out of the kitchen and into the hall.

  “At least I’m not a kina head,” he says, pointing at my sticky-up ha
ir and laughing.

  I clip his own mop of brown hair. Sunlight has striped it with bronze. “At least I’m not a shrimp, short-arse.”

  He screeches and flies at me, hands extended, head low.

  At the last moment, I step aside and his momentum carries him, arms wheeling, down the hall until he falls and head butts the carpet.

  “Ow,” he says, rubbing a carpet burn.

  I shrug. “Don’t try and out-boot camp me, Jaes.”

  “You shouldn’t say arse,” is all he says.

  Something about it strikes me as funny, and I give him a quick hug before we’re punching and kicking and rolling around the floor again. It only stops when Uncle’s voice booms from the back of the house.

  “Thala, I require your presence in the study, please!”

  Dammit, thought I’d get out of testing, but the old codger remembered. I push Jaes off and tweak his nose. “Go take a swim in the mineral pool, Shrimp. You look a bit too human these days.” Jaes’ mouth twists but he knows I’m teasing. He gives me one final kick, then sprints upstairs to his room.

  Uncle’s in power position behind his giant desk. I stand in front of him.

  “Thala, I realise I’ve been neglecting you lately,” he says, fingering his beard. All the better to live a normal life, I think, and stare at my feet.