Forgive My Fins

by Tera Lynn Childs

  “She’ll kill me in my sleep,” I complain.

  “No, she won’t.”

  “You don’t know that, Peri,” I insist. “She hates me. This is the opportunity she’s been waiting for all her life.”

  “You’re royalty,” Peri says, as if that makes everything better. “Dosinia knows that killing you would be high treason. She might dye your hair purple, but she won’t kill you.”

  Leave it to Peri to be all logical in a situation like this. Sharing my room—my room—with Dosinia is like moving in with a great white shark who has a taste for mermaid.

  Dosinia and I should be close. Growing up, we should have teamed up against our boy cousins. Kitt and Nevis were (still are) total nightmares who put spider crabs in our beds and jellyfish in our sandwiches. Even though they were just as mean to Doe, she always liked them more than she liked me. Played with them instead of me. I’ve never understood why.

  “Maybe I can just sleep out here in the gardens,” I suggest. “We’ve done it before.”

  “Be serious, Lily.” Peri picks a caulerpa frond and slides it behind my ear. “With the spring current as strong as it is right now, you’d be in Bermuda by morning.”

  “This is so unfair.” I know I’m whining, but I don’t care. “It’s my room.”

  “Stop whining.” Peri pulls my head out of the anemones. “You still haven’t told me all the juicy details about your terraped cargo.” She glances at the palace gate, where Cid and Barney are showing Quince how to drive a wakemaker (like a golf cart but water powered). “He’s cute.”

  I jolt up. “He is not cute.”

  Peri gives me a look that says, You’ve got to be kidding me.

  “All right.” I scowl. At her and partly at him. “He’s not hideous looking.”

  She lifts one elegantly curved brown eyebrow.

  “He’s…” I narrow my gaze in his direction just as the wakemaker takes off, leaving him flipping backward through the water. Rather than act upset or hurt, Quince spins out laughing. His big, bright smile gleams in the bioglow from across the gardens. When he catches me looking, he gives me two thumbs up, like that was the coolest thing ever. “He’s got assets,” I finally—and very, very reluctantly—concede. “He has a nice smile.”

  Not as nice as Brody’s, of course, but no one’s is.

  “The boy’s a certified hunk,” Peri says, sizing up Quince like a slice of kelpberry pie. Then she turns to me, pinning me down with her gray-green gaze. “But last I knew, you were full-on hooked by Brody the swim wonder. How’d you wind up bonded to the neighbor boy?”

  I give her the brief play-by-play—without the part about my fins curling or how nice and warm his lips felt or how he made me kiss him again before going underwater or how he didn’t have to try that hard to make me. When I’m done, she doesn’t say a word. Just plucks another frond, rolls onto her back, and lets it flutter in the current.

  “Well?” I prod.

  “Well what?” she replies.

  “Don’t you think that sucks rotten fish eggs?” Why isn’t my best friend commiserating with me about how awful this situation is? Shouldn’t she be outraged at his forward behavior and agreeing that we should have a pair of dolphins drop him in the Arctic? I kick up from the anemones and twist around so I’m floating in front of her. “I’ve told you the stories. Like about the time he spent a week following me to and from school on his motorcycle—never said a word, just rumbled along ten feet behind me the whole way. And that he slams my locker shut every time he walks by. And how he always manages to ruin every possible moment of progress I make with Brody. I mean, don’t you think he’s the worst slime to ever sink fin on the ocean floor? He’s just so mean and rude and—”

  “Floating right behind you,” Peri says, not looking away from her anemone grooming.

  I freeze. Maybe she is just messing with me. Or she’s mistaken. Or—

  “Talking about me, Princess?”

  Of course. I close my eyes and gulp in a deep breath before spinning around. “Quince, I—”

  “No harm, no foul,” he says, waving off my apology. He’s playing like it’s no big, but I see something in his eyes—I sense something in him—that says it’s bigger than he’s admitting. I feel it. He doesn’t relent, though. “That wakemaker is some piece of power.” He gestures back toward the gate, where Cid and Barney are now trying to wrestle the wakemaker back into the tower garage.

  “Yeah,” I agree, trying to make up for acting like a sea witch by being extra nice. “It takes a little getting used to. The trick is letting out the clutch real slow.”

  He flashes me another brilliant smile. “I’ll remember that next time.”

  Peri makes a really loud yawning noise behind me. “Time for me to head home,” she says. “Gotta get the little cousins tucked into bed.”

  “Do you have to go now?” I spin around, pleading with my eyes for her to stay. To not leave me alone with Quince.

  “Yes.” She gives me a meaningful look, one that says, I can’t save you all the time. “Besides, between Doe’s party and your”—she shrugs at Quince—“return, I’m wiped out. I’ll be asleep before I float through the door.”

  Then, before I can argue or beg or threaten blackmail, she waves good night and swims away. I watch her disappear through the gates. It’s not like I’ve never been alone with Quince before, but now it feels different. Now he knows the truth about me—the whole royal truth—and I’m beyond nervous about facing him.

  Finally I turn around.

  “I—”

  “I’m wiped, too,” he says before I have to make verbal sense of my thoughts, saving me from saying something stupid. “Your dad said you’d show me to the starfish room?”

  “Sure,” I say, my stomach sinking a little. I’m not sure why I feel bad that he’s giving me an easy out for the night. I mean, I don’t want to hang out with him. Right? “It’s one floor down from my room in the southwest tower.”

  We swim in silence to the palace main entrance. It’s slow going because he’s trying to swim on his own, but he’s getting better. He’s figured out how to combine the simple breaststroke pull with a dolphin kick. Still way slower than my normal speed, but pretty impressive for a human who couldn’t swim this morning.

  I get the feeling he’s really trying to make the best of this. Which only makes me feel worse for ripping on him to Peri.

  “You know, I didn’t mean what I said,” I explain, filling the silence as we move through the main hall and toward my tower. “I don’t really think you’re mean and rude. Well, not mean, anyway. You can be a little rude, but that’s no excuse for my—”

  “Lily.”

  I’m not sure what stops my babbling apology—it could be his commanding tone or the fact that he’s used my actual name for once. Either way, my mouth snaps shut.

  “It’s okay.” He doesn’t look at me as he speaks, which makes me feel like even more of a sea slug. “Really. I know you didn’t ask for this situation any more than I did. I won’t hold your emotions against you.”

  “I—” I can’t believe what he just said. It was just so…nice. “Thank you. I really am sorry, though. I just want to get through tomorrow, get the separation, and then get back to our regular lives.”

  “Back to Brody.”

  “Yes,” I say, ignoring the chill in his voice, the sudden tension in his body. “Back to Brody. Back to Seaview. Back to everything that was normal before last night’s dance. It’s not about you,” I explain. Not entirely about him, anyway. “It’s about me. That’s all.”

  Quince stops swimming and looks directly into my eyes. “I get it, princess. Really I do.” One side of his mouth lifts in a mocking smile. “I want to get back to normal too.”

  There are some serious undertones in his last statement; I’m just not sure what they are.

  Several seconds tick by as we look at each other, like we’re both trying to figure out what’s really going on. For the first time, I a
ctually try to tap into the bond, to reach out and read what he’s feeling. I focus in on Quince and open my mind to him.

  I’m struck by a sudden sense of longing that is much stronger than anything I’m feeling. Is that how badly he wants to get home?

  I feel even worse for being so angry at him. All he did was kiss the wrong girl, and in an instant his life on land was yanked away. The least I can do is help him have a good time while he’s here.

  “So where’s this starfish room?” he asks, bursting our intensity bubble.

  Without a word, I turn and swim for my tower, knowing Quince will follow.

  “This is it,” I say. A quick twist of the handle, and I push inside what has always been one of my favorite rooms in the palace. I have kind of a thing for stars of any kind—probably because we can’t see the real stars from the ocean floor. You have to swim to the surface to see them twinkling above. Besides having the predictable starfish-shaped accessories, the starfish room has a bioluminescent-painted ceiling of stars. As I float into the room, I twist onto my back and gaze up at the starry surface. It makes me a little homesick for land.

  But, now I know, not nearly as homesick as Quince.

  “This is a bedroom?” Quince asks, floating in after me. “Where’s the bed?”

  “There.” I point at the shell-shaped piece in the center of the room.

  “O-kay….” He swims over and eyes the bed skeptically. Not your typical box-spring four-poster, sure, but if I could get used to sleeping on a flat mattress, he can spend one night in a curved shell. Then, as he awkwardly turns to inspect the room, his gaze lands on the sculpture in the corner. “Whoa.”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask. We both swim over to the three-dimensional, twisting column made of every variety of blue shell found in the sea. My favorites are the sand dollars, dotting the deep blue swirl with spots of brighter, almost sky-colored blue.

  Quince runs a hand hesitantly over the curves, as if he might accidentally send all the shells scattering into the current. Then I hold my breath as his fingertips linger over one of the sand dollars.

  “Such a bright blue,” he says. “I’ve never seen them this color.”

  I try to ignore the fact that he’s fixating on my favorite part of the sculpture. Instead, I focus on being educational. “Sand dollars are naturally very colorful,” I explain. “But when they die, they gradually pale to the white shade we see on land.”

  “Then are these”—he touches one gently—“alive?”

  “No.” The thought of a living sculpture makes me smile. It’s a pretty cool idea, but keeping the shelled creatures alive and in place would be a major effort. “The artist treated recently deceased sand dollars to maintain the color. It’s a flash-freeze technique that can preserve anything from sand dollars to starfish to yards of rainbow-colored seaweed.”

  “That’s amazing,” he says, turning his awe-filled gaze on me. “You are amazing.”

  No, I think, I’m just an average mermaid. But when he looks at me like that, I almost feel amazing.

  “Sleep as late as you like,” I blurt, uncomfortable with the sudden comfortableness of the situation. The longer he sleeps, the less time I have to spend trying to figure out what to say to him. The less the chance I’ll say something mean or stupid. “I’ll find you before the ceremony tomorrow night. Until then, just lay low and—”

  “Hold on,” he interrupts. “You think I’m just going to stay curled up in your guest room all day? No way. If I only get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore a mermaid kingdom, I’m not wasting the opportunity. I want to see…everything.”

  “Be serious, Quince.” I try to reason with him. “You can’t just swim around Thalassinia, looking in houses and—”

  “I know.” Quince swims close, so close that I can feel his body heat in the water. “You can show me around.”

  “Uh-uh.” I shake my head. The last thing I want to do is spend more time in his company. Especially with the bond messing with our emotions—or at least mine. I’m already softening toward him, even though I know it’s just the bond.

  “Come on, princess,” he murmurs, floating closer still. “I’ve been pretty good about this whole mermaid thing. I think I’ve earned a personal tour.”

  My shoulders slump. He has me there. He is taking this really well. No tantrums or freak-outs or even disbelief. And if I were in his shoes—or rather, his biker boots—I’d want to take a look around, too.

  “Fine.” I relent. “I’ll give you the royal tour.”

  He grins, and I have to consciously stop myself from smiling back. No good can come from forming a stronger connection with Quince.

  “I’ll meet you in the breakfast room,” I suggest. “We can leave from there.”

  I turn away before his smile infects me. I’m almost through the door when he says, “Good night, Princess.”

  Without turning around, I say, “Night, Quince.”

  As I swim up to my room, I wonder how it happened that Quince and I are actually being civil to each other. Clearly, the bond can make miracles happen.

  Dosinia is floating outside my room—our room, I remember with a groan—when I get upstairs. Like she’s been waiting for me.

  “Getting a good-night kiss from your bond boy?” She crosses her arms over her chest and kicks one hip to the side. “He’s decent looking, I suppose. If you go for terrapeds.”

  “Drop it, Doe,” I say, pushing past her and into the room. “I’m not up for this right now.”

  “Oooh, trouble in paradise?” She hurries in after me, hovering as I swim to my dresser and pull open the bottom drawer, looking for a sleep shirt.

  The drawer is full of sequin- and pearl-and glitter-covered tops. Definitely not my style.

  “Where are my clothes?” I demand. Jerking open the other three drawers, I find them all equally full of Dosinia’s frilly and borderline-trampy wardrobe. The girl does not get the concept of understatement.

  “Sorry,” she singsongs, swimming over to the bed and floating down onto the spongy mattress. “I had to put my clothes somewhere.”

  Scowling, I repeat, “Where?”

  She gestures at the big steamer trunk under my window. It was a present from Daddy for my twelfth birthday. He’d salvaged the trunk from an old shipwreck and had it restored and waterproofed so it wouldn’t fall apart. I flip open the shiny gold latches and pull up the lid, only to find the entire contents of my dresser tossed into the trunk in a giant messy pile. I don’t have the energy for a fight, so I just grab a top and head for the bathroom.

  Doe follows me.

  “He’s not your usual type,” she says from the open doorway. “You usually go for the mossy-mouthed, untouchably popular guys. This one seems like he knows where to find trouble without much looking.”

  She sounds…intrigued. That’s the last thing I need.

  “Let it go, Doe,” I beg. I duck behind the bathing curtain and change out of my tank top. “He’s only here for a day. Not worth setting your hooks into.”

  “If you say so.”

  When I emerge, she’s not in sight. A quick peek into the room, and I see her slam my trunk shut.

  She acts like such a guppy.

  “Why did you have to come back tonight?”

  I can’t see her eyes because her back is to me, but I can tell from the tone of her voice that she’s on the verge of tears.

  When a mermaid cries underwater, it’s not like on land. Her tears just dissolve into the water around her, mixing their salty drops into the salty sea. The only indication that she’s crying is her eyes. No matter what color her irises are usually, when she cries they turn into a sparkling shade that matches her scales. I know from experience that mine turn gold. And Dosinia’s turn bright pink. Like the anemone field in the garden below.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” I explain, swimming around behind her. “I had to get him here as quickly as possible so I could get the separation and move on with my life
. It’s just…bad luck that it happened to be tonight.” I place one hand on her shoulder, next to her fuchsia-colored mer mark. “I didn’t mean to ruin your party.”

  She laughs and shrugs off my hand. “Ruin?” she asks like it’s a ridiculous notion. “Are you kidding? It was the social event of the year.”

  She turns and looks me in the eye for a split second before jetting over to the bed and settling in on what has always been my side. But rather than argue—about the bed or the party—I just quietly take the other side and sink in. Besides, how do you argue with a girl whose eyes are sparkling brighter than the moon?

  12

  Quince eyes the breakfast buffet in the main dining hall as if it might get up and swim away. I don’t know what his problem is. The spread looks amazing. There are mounds of scrambled eel eggs, toasted sea fans, strips of pickled kelp, and a variety of local fruit mixed with some land fruit—the kingdom has a trading agreement with some human merchants who prize the giant conch and other shells we can provide. And, if you love sushi—I dare you to name a mermaid who doesn’t love sushi—we have just about every variety of nigiri, maki, and inari you could dream of.

  Grabbing a plate, I start piling on Thalassinian delicacies.

  “Care to introduce me to the menu, princess?”

  I scowl at Quince, ready to deflect whatever insult he’s getting ready to hurl, but he looks genuinely concerned about the buffet.

  “You don’t eat sushi, do you?” I guess.

  “Not if I can avoid it.”

  Rolling my eyes, I point out the eel eggs and sea-fan toast. “Take some of those.” I scoop up a spoonful of fruit and dump it on his plate. “This should get you through the day without having to resort to raw fish.”

  He gives me a relieved look and then piles on a plateful of my recommendations. I don’t have the heart to tell him what they actually are. He’d probably put them back.