by Aratare, X.
Spencer never believed his mother’s assertion that he was a Mer king’s son, so his world is rocked to its foundations when he discovers she was right. How will he handle being both Mer and royal?
Here’s a sample from that story:
CHAPTER ONE - DESTINY
Spencer Long waited for his destiny to emerge from the waves.
The stars wheeled overhead and the waves crashed against the snow white sands of Ocean Side. Under the moonlight, the sand glowed like diamond dust In moments, merman, Lord Aemrys Liseas, would surface out of that jet black, night-gilded sea and bring with him all the answers that Spencer so desperately needed to know about himself and his ancestry.
Spencer was convinced that Aemrys would know who his father was. Aemrys would be able to confirm that his mother was not crazy when she had told him again and that his father had come from the sea. And maybe, just maybe, Aemrys would know if both of his parents were actually still alive under the waves.
Somewhere.
Out there.
“Your father came from the sea, Spencer,” his mother had said, her voice whispery and low when he was twelve-years-old. Her dark blue eyes, the color of that same sea she spoke of, darted around, checking to see if any of the nurses or doctors could overhear what she was telling him. They discouraged her from talking about her delusion that Spencer’s father was a merman at Wintervale Sanitorium. But she was telling him all the same even as his own discomfort rose.
“Mom, let’s talk about something else,” he pleaded. “I got an A in English and --”
“Spencer, we have to talk about this now,” she said, her voice feather light, but insistent.
Her hold on his upper right arm increased so that it was almost painful. Though his mother was terribly thin, down to skin and bones since she was institutionalized as opposed to the athletic California girl she’d once been, her grip was like steel. He gritted his teeth but didn’t say or do anything that would let her know that she was hurting him. Whenever she realized that she’d caused him pain she would always look so stricken and he knew that she would start cutting herself again as punishment. So he stayed silent and simply gritted his teeth.
“Why, Mom? What’s so important that we talk about him now?” Spencer tried not to let his aggravation leech into his voice.
Talking about his father, a man who had left his mother before he was even born, held no interest for him. His mother’s fantastical tales about the man -- that he wasn’t actually a man but a Mer and a royal Mer at that! -- were so ridiculous that it was hard for him to keep a straight face. Actually, talking about his father made him angry, because he was pretty sure that his real father was a bad guy, someone who had taken advantage of his mother’s mental illness. Part of him feared that maybe she had been raped and he was the result. He loved her so dearly and his heart ached whenever he thought of anyone hurting her. He believed that his very existence probably hurt her, which was why she made up this elaborate fiction about his father.
But she didn’t appear hurt at the moment. She seemed invigorated, more alert and aware than he had seen her in months. She licked her lips almost frantically before she said in the lowest of whispers, “Because he’s coming.”
Alarm raced on tiny insect legs up his spine. The gleam in her eyes was unsettling. The drugs that they had her on normally dulled her manic moments, but not this time. It was as if this latest mania was so strong that it had simply bypassed the medication.
“What? Who is coming?” he asked.
“Your father.”
Spencer was already shaking his head. He cast a look around for one of his mother’s doctors. She’d claimed his father was coming ashore for them once before. It was what had gotten her institutionalized. She had nearly drowned them both in an attempt to swim out to where his supposed merman father was waiting for them in the sea.
Spencer’s voice was as firm as he could make it even as his heart was racing as he said, “Mom … no … he’s --”
“Coming to get us.” She gave him a stern look like the ones she used to when he claimed to have done his homework when really he’d gone to the beach to surf for those two hours after school and before dinner. “He’s coming to shore tonight and we have to meet him. Midnight tonight he’ll swim up to the shell beach. You know the one? It’s where we used to go every Friday afternoon and have bonfires and picnics.”
Nausea born of dealing with his mother’s delusions all his life rose up in him. That she would use the one place where he had happy memories with her to fill in her delusion actually hurt. “I don’t think that’s … that’s going to happen, Mom.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean you don’t think it’s going to happen? It will, Spencer, but I need you to help me get out of here so that we can meet him together.”
There was no way he could get her out of the locked grounds of the Wintervale Sanitarium even if he wanted to, but if he said that she would just keep on at him so he made up a few excuses why he couldn’t spring her and then go hang out at the beach at midnight, “It’s not a good idea to be out on the beach at night. It’s dangerous. Plus there’s school tomorrow and --”
“But don’t you understand, honey, that we’ll be living with him? Under the waves in a huge city. You’ll go to school there with the other Mers.” She looked into his eyes with a tremulous smile on her lips, willing him to believe that this was a wonderful, glorious thing. Why didn’t he see it? her gaze seemed to say. Why wasn’t he thrilled? her trembling lower lip asked.
“Mom, have you been,” he paused and swallowed, already knowing this was going to lead to a fight, but pressing on anyways, “taking your meds?”
She went rigid and that bright shine in her eyes became tears. He had hurt her so badly saying that. “I’m not crazy, Spencer.”
“No, I know you aren’t,” he lied.
“Your father is coming tonight to get us. You have to be there. He’s been waiting to meet you for oh, so very long,” she said. “You won’t disappoint him. We’re going to leave this place and never come back. He’s told me how bad the land is. How awful humans are and he’s right! We need to -- where are you going?”
Spencer had taken a step back from her. She tried to tighten that vise like grip on his upper arm, but he used a burst of his own strength to shake her off. He had never done that before and he saw a flash of shock and hurt that he’d done it. Even though he was just twelve, his body was all muscle from his constant hours of surfing.
“Mom, stop.” He held up a hand as if he could physically stop her from talking about her delusion.
“But, honey, your father --”
“Is not a merman!” he shouted, a dam suddenly bursting inside of him. His voice echoed in that white, sterile room where they kept the shades drawn and sunlight could only filter in around the edges. “He’s just some dude who left us!”
He felt the doctors and nurses all turn towards the two of them. The other patients in the room went still. Everyone was listening. Maybe that should have given him pause, should have made him reconsider what he was going to say next. But it didn’t. Now that he had popped the cork off of his emotions he simply could not stop.
“He’s not coming back, Mom! He’s not going to be on the beach! He’s gone! Don’t you get that? He’s fucking gone! He doesn’t want us! He doesn’t love us! Don’t you get it? Don’t you fucking get it?” Fighting back angry tears, Spencer spun away from her and run from the room.
That was the last time he had ever seen her.
That night she had somehow escaped Wintervale. The police had found a witness that had seen her wading into the surf at midnight just off of the shell beach. Her body was never found.
After that, Spencer had dreamed of her. He had dreamed of her swimming in forests of kelp beneath the waves, fish darting around her, coral beneath her fluttering feet as she smiled and gestured for him to swim out to her. These dreams were so vivid and real that often his sleeping body would rise fr
om his bed and he’d awake on the beach, curled on the sand, one hand stretched out to the water. The doctors had told him it was misplaced guilt that made him sleepwalk. His last encounter with her had been so traumatic that it made sense he would dream of her and try to get to her. And he had believed them.
Until three months ago when he had unexpectedly been asked to join a special project at Miskatonic University led by Dr. Rebecca Cleave. During their first meeting, the brilliant geneticist had told him that mermen really did exist.
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