We had a fairly pleasant time for the majority of the trip, until the peculiar incident that occurred when we were crossing the border into the kingdom of Adelaide that is.
SJ was in the midst of going over last spring’s copy of the Century City Summit Review for the eightieth time, which, personally, I thought was a complete waste. This year’s second summit was in about a month, so a new issue would’ve been coming out soon anyways.
Did she really have to be so darn responsible all of the time?
While my overly studious friend perused her totally outdated periodical, Blue was busy showing me how to weave a net large enough to catch a bear. Some girls packed books or games for road trips; she packed rope. That was Blue for you.
I had to say, it was pretty cool. Her ropes class had lent each of its students a ball of enchanted yarn that, when activated with three tight squeezes, instantly transformed into forty feet of climbing rope.
Awesome, right?
I guess my instincts had been spot on—that class really would have been more fun than Singing with Nature.
Unfortunately, my net lesson with Blue was interrupted by the abrupt halt of our carriage just as we were about to enter Adelaide. Something had cut across our path and the driver had barely had time to stop—leading me to slide off the edge of the seat I’d been precariously perched on.
I popped back up and joined SJ at one window while Blue peered out the other.
We were separated from the stream of traffic on the other side of the road’s intersection. The quick stop had thrown off the vehicles behind us too—causing horses, passengers, and drivers alike to become extremely disgruntled.
After looking out the window for a beat, the three of us realized the reason why the border’s crossing guard had not permitted our vehicle to continue. A prison carriage was passing in front of us.
The prison carriage was starkly different from our own method of transport. It was gray and plain. The windows were barred with thick steel poles and the doors had heavy padlocks on them. The whole eerie thing was being pulled by several horses that were black as night and perfectly matched the colors of the sheaths and crossbows worn by the knights riding them.
Our fleet of protagonist-wielding carriages was being escorted by similarly colored knights, weapons, and horses; it was true. But these seemed different somehow. The prison knights practically emanated intimidation—weapons gleaming like dark glass, helmets reflecting inky blackness like holes in space, and horses whose hooves clattered against stone like crackles of lightning.
I studied them and the portable prison they were charged with—no doubt on the way to Alderon to permanently deposit its passengers within the boundaries of the kingdom’s one-way In and Out Spell.
“Magic hunters,” SJ whispered in my ear as she, too, eyed the foreboding spectacle.
I nodded in agreement as I watched them go by.
Magic hunters were dangerous, to say the least. Vicious and relentless, they were an ancient group that had been around as long as magic. Each one possessed a crazy sixth sense that allowed him to detect the scent of magic, and a gift for tracking it as well. And they used these abilities whilst traveling the realm to hunt creatures and objects that carried any form of enchantment they could steal.
I was not exactly sure how they went about taking the magic once they’d cornered their targets, but I imagined it couldn’t have been pleasant. That, after all, was the reason magical objects were typically kept secret, pixies were always in hiding, and Fairy Godmothers lived at a headquarters that floated somewhere in the sky—constantly concealed in the clouds and always changing location.
From our window, I could see that there were two magic hunters riding inside this particular transport. The farther one was more difficult to make out, but the hunter closest to the window had a long, crooked nose, leathery, tan skin, and wisps of gray hair hanging in his ragged face. I squinted to try and see him more clearly, but when I did it was like he sensed me watching him.
His head spun so quickly in my direction it should have snapped his neck. But it didn’t; it only elongated its appearance like an old rooster mid-crow. The hunter immediately locked his cognac-colored eyes with mine. Then he leaned closer to his window so that his face was pressed up against the bars as he inhaled in a deep, disconcerting fashion.
I fidgeted in my chair, reminding myself that he couldn’t get out of his carriage.
SJ noticed the hunter’s strange behavior and glanced back at me to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.
Yup, he was definitely looking at me.
My heart sped up a bit and I felt an odd hole form in the pit my stomach.
The hunter continued staring at me even as his prison transport began to move out of the way. When it had finally gone, and our own vehicle moved forward once more, Blue pointed out the window.
“Was he . . .?”
SJ nodded hesitantly. “Yes.”
Blue shifted toward me. “At you?”
Both my friends stared at me now too, waiting for my confirmation. But I didn’t give it to them.
“Come on guys, of course he wasn’t,” I said.
My eyes darted around for an explanation and spotted the enchanted rope on the seat next to Blue. “It must’ve been the ball of yarn. It’s magic, and he probably sensed it,” I reasoned.
“He wasn’t looking at the carriage in general,” Blue insisted. “He was looking at you.”
I knew she was right. But acknowledging it would have been way too weird. Plus, if I did admit it, she and SJ surely would’ve used their supersonic, best friend powers to deduce that I was freaking out about it. Which I definitely was, but didn’t want them to catch on to. I mean, what kind of aspiring hero gets all flustered because some creepy guy looks at her funny?
Can you say, damsel behavior?
There was no need to come across that way to my friends. As it stood, they were pretty much the only people who might believe I could be something more than that. Giving off the impression that I was so easily rattled would certainly not help the situation.
As such, I swiftly decided that it would be best to shrug off the incident, sweep the matter under the rug and pretend like nothing was wrong in the slightest.
I faked a bemused smile and shook my head. “Please, Blue. Don’t be ridiculous. It was the yarn. What other explanation could there be?”
Blah, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak, blah, blah . . . blah.
I didn’t know about the rest of my classmates, but that’s what I heard while our guest speakers were talking.
It was a few hours later and all Lady Agnue’s and Lord Channing’s students were crammed inside of a massive amphitheater at Adelaide Castle. We were supposed to be taking notes and taking advantage of this great lesson in diplomacy, but this lecture had gone about an eternity too long and my attention span was wavering.
Every year our schools’ diplomatic field trip was hosted by either Adelaide or Whoozalee (the two kingdoms by the sea) because they represented a perfect model of diplomacy. The reason? Their relations with each other, and their relations with the rest of Book and Mer (the city under the sea) were critical to our realm.
Since these two kingdoms were the only ones with uninhibited oceanic borders, they alone shared the responsibility of fairly controlling the fishing trade for our entire realm. Meaning they had to indefinitely respect borders, regulate fishing restrictions, and maintain peaceful relations with the mermaids of Mer who were apparently super temperamental, and none too pleased about having to share their ocean in the first place.
Basically to sum up, these guys were experts in diplomacy.
I knew I really should’ve been paying attention. Understanding that kind of political mumbo jumbo was a key aspect of being royal. Then again, how many hours could a human being truly listen to a lecture about fishing?
“Lara, Lila, Lonna, Lita, Lindsey, Lauren,” the speaker in the seashell necktie on stage continued to lecture.
“What’s he going on about?” I whispered to Blue, who was sitting between me and Jason.
“Langards,” Blue said under her breath.
“Man guards?” I repeated back.
“No,” Blue whispered a bit louder this time. “Langards. Mer’s royal family.”
I nodded and pretended like I knew what she was talking about.
The guy on stage with the seashell necktie suddenly bowed and people began to clap. I clapped too—thankful the speech was over and that we could go to lunch. I assumed we would be having fish. I liked fish.
A little lemon, some tartar sauce, maybe a side of bread . . .
My stomach made an audible rumbling noise at the thought. SJ, who was seated to my left, evidently heard the noise and glanced at me in shock. My face turned red and I clapped louder to drown out the embarrassing, un-princess-like sound.
When the applause died down I readied myself to get up but, instead of dismissing us, our headmistress introduced someone new—a woman in a royal blue jacket and matching pencil skirt. This woman who proceeded to take the stage was Sarah Steinglass. She was the Adelaide Ambassador and the Book government official in charge of preserving and updating the realm’s Sea Silence Laws.
“Thank you, thank you,” Ms. Steinglass said. “The Sea Silence Laws were enacted before most of you were born. However, I am proud to be here and discuss specifically why, in the years since their passing, Whoozalee and Adelaide’s diplomatic relationship with Mer and the entire realm has improved so dramatically.”
Ms. Steinglass had a conflicting air about her. I would’ve described it as the type of aura a person gave off when they seemed nice, but you couldn’t help but feel like they were holding something back. It was as if she had a secret coldness in her nature that she didn’t want people to catch onto, so she overcompensated with smiles slightly too big for her face.
Aside from her hollow perkiness, another distinguishing factor about the Adelaide Ambassador was her size. She was pretty short—even from the back of the room that was obvious. Equally apparent was the fact that her voice inherently boomed like it belonged to a person twice her height, allowing her to project even to the farthest corners of the amphitheater.
Despite her generally off-putting persona, I actually wanted to listen to this particular lecture of hers. I didn’t know the full story behind the Sea Silence Laws and was truly curious about them.
Sadly, the introduction Ms. Steinglass had given was misleading. Her talk about the aforementioned set of regulations was fairly generic and a lot of those basics I already knew.
A long while back the Mer-people became very difficult and uncooperative with us land folk. They used their undersea magic on humans that made them upset, entranced sailors with their siren voices to sink ships for sport, and cut fishing lines whenever they felt like it. As a result, over time the Sea Silence Laws were put into place in order to separate us from them as much as possible.
Basically, it worked like this. The ocean was divided into certain sections that we humans could not sail out on and sections that the Mer-people could not swim into. Simply put, the sea was divided in two parts: the area within fifty miles off the coast was traditionally ours and the deep waters—anything past that—was Mer-people territory.
The other key aspect of the Sea Silence Laws was that Mer-people and humans were forbidden from speaking to one another. Like at all.
It was kind of harsh if you asked me. Honestly, I couldn’t believe the Adelaide royal family even tolerated it. The queen, after all, was the famous little mermaid princess who once fell in love with, and eventually married a human prince—her husband, the present king of Adelaide.
I supposed the two of them must’ve caused quite the scandal back in the day when they first got together, since there were literally, like, a zillion government-mandated laws against it. Although, given that they’d managed to stay a couple I figured that true love really could conquer all.
Anyways, more to the point, after their union our hydrodynamically designed heroine and her prince lobbied for years to try and get the Sea Silence Laws overturned. But to no avail. With the endorsement of the Fairy Godmothers, the ambassadors of the other kingdoms voted against repealing the laws time and time again.
Nevertheless, the king and queen valiantly continued to fight the good legal fight over the years no matter how many times their efforts were shut down. Well, until their daughter disappeared, that is . . .
It was super tragic really, and it remained the greatest unsolved mystery of our realm. Princess Ashlyn had been a Legacy at Lady Agnue’s—a royal and the eldest daughter of everyone’s favorite aquatic protagonist. She was a few years older than me, so I’d never had a class with her at school and had only ever seen her in passing. But people said she was the sweetest girl you’d ever meet on land or sea. Not only that, but she was also quite gifted. Due to the genetic combination of her parents, she was born with a special set of powers—breathing underwater and the ability to swim at incredibly fast speeds.
Like a mermaid with two legs instead of a fishtail, or just a super cool, ocean-oriented human.
However you see it, it’s a pretty epic princess power. Unlike my own princess powers of sass, snark, and screech-singing. Which (let’s face it) are far from being worthy of admiration.
Sadly, this princess’s story did not end as magically as her abilities or bloodline would have suggested. One night about a year and a half ago when she was home from her final year at Lady Agnue’s for Spring Break, Ashlyn vanished without a trace. No clues, no witnesses, nothing. She just flat-out disappeared.
Both the entire realm and the entire ocean were searched for months on end. But she never turned up. Nor did any solid evidence of what had happened to her. All the Godmothers in charge of the investigation found were a fanny pack with Ashlyn’s name embroidered on it at the bottom of the ocean thirty miles off the coast, and a trail of footprints outside her bedroom that disappeared when they reached the edge of the cliffside. Beyond that, though, absolutely nothing. Whatever must’ve happened to Ashlyn that night at sea was shrouded in as much mystery as it was morbidity.
Everyone had their own theories about what fate had befallen the princess in the depths of the ocean. Personally, my money was on a shark attack. Which I felt bad even thinking, seeing as how that would’ve been a pretty awful way to go for such a nice person.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what kind of affect all this had on the king and queen.
My eyes wandered over to the far left side of the stage where the rulers of Adelaide and Whoozalee were seated.
The human queen of Adelaide sat in her throne—no longer a mermaid, and certainly no longer little. Instead she seemed old, tired, and more mortal than most. Her formerly bright, flowing hair was pulled back tightly in a restrained up-do with a tiara constructed of gold and seashells. Her facial expression was blank. And even from my nosebleed seat in the amphitheater I could see the emptiness in her deep blue eyes.
No. It was clear she was never the same after losing Princess Ashlyn.
She and the king did have another daughter—Princess Onicka. The young princess was seven years old now and apparently had the same powers as her older sister. Of course, it was not like she was ever allowed into the ocean to use them. This was partly because of the Sea Silence Laws, but anyone sane knew that it was mainly because her parents would never let her out of their sights.
The tiny, auburn-haired Onicka presently sat in a mini-throne next to the queen. She fidgeted relentlessly and was clearly bored and wishing she were elsewhere. I could relate.
I shifted my attention back to center stage.
Good grief, was this women really still talking?
I just had one of the longest mental tangents ever and the end of Ms. Steinglass’s speech didn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. As a consequence, my vision and mind began to grow blurry.
Yes, in retrospect it was a bit rude of me to nod
off in the middle of someone’s presentation. But in my defense, I had held on for as long as possible.
My ill-timed nap was short and filled with choppy dreams. I kept seeing all these small, different-colored Xs popping up against a white backdrop. There were blue ones, yellow ones, and red ones, and their numbers were multiplying quickly—eliminating the empty areas across the washed out background of my subconscious.
The space of my dream was almost entirely filled with their various colors when one, sole black X appeared in the center of the dreamscape. It was the same size as the others at first. But then it began to grow larger and larger, moving at an angle that made it seem like it was headed straight toward me. In fact, I was almost certain that the now giant, black X was about to crash into my metaphysical face when suddenly—
SMACK!
No, the X in my dream had not actually hit me, but someone else certainly had. I woke up from the jolt of the impact at the back of my head and discovered that people were beginning to file out of the auditorium. My friends stood around me with bemused, surprised expressions on their faces. I looked at them, perplexed, rubbed the base of my skull where I had been struck, and turned around to find its source. Daniel was standing in the row behind me with his eyebrows raised and his smirk aimed in my direction.
“Did you hit me?” I asked in disbelief.
“You were asleep and it was time to go. Somebody had to wake you up.”
“I can’t believe you hit me in the head!” I hopped up from my seat—my cheeks hot with anger and embarrassment.
“Calm down, Knight. It was more like a friendly swat.”
“Oh yeah? Well in that case, come here. Let me give you a little friendly swat in return.”
“I told you their truce wouldn’t last a day,” Blue said to Jason. “I win.”
“It only counts if she hits him back,” Jason clarified.
“Fight, fight, fight,” Blue chanted under her breath, egging me on.
SJ, however, swiftly intervened before the situation could escalate to that. “Relax, Crisa,” she said as she patted my shoulder. “He did not mean anything by it. Besides, you can get him back later. It is lunchtime.”
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