"We'll ruin them," Anahera hissed, her voice so ravaged with grief that it was barely understandable. "The humans. The mers who help them. We'll ruin them." Then she curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her midsection tightly, and Aveline held her close. Several moments later, as the blood dissipated enough to release the rest of the pod from their feeding frenzy, they approached as well, all of them trying to hug Anahera or at least rest a hand on her shoulder.
"I'll follow the ship," Desta offered. "I'll discover its name." Though Desta couldn't read any human tongues, she was excellent at remembering symbols down to the final line and curve. There were some mers in other pods who could translate such things, who could tell them what name to ask for when they captured humans for information.
But finding a translator would be unnecessary this time, Aveline realized. Desta could copy it down when she returned, and they would have the name that very day. She knew how to read.
*~*~*
One by one, they worked on tracking down the sailors who worked on The Siren's Blood. But they couldn't seem to find them all—four of them, learning that they were being hunted, retired and moved inland where the sharkmaids couldn't get to them—and for every one of them they found, they discovered tales of other ships that did even worse things, other men and sometimes even mers who tortured sharkmaids for sport, who wore their teeth as necklaces.
Hunting fish and seals became rarer. They survived almost entirely on human flesh now.
The Pup had her naming ceremony. They named her Kalea'lii, or Little Kalea. She stared up at the grown sharkmaids around her solemnly, and said, "I will honor her memory, I promise," and Aveline tried in vain to hold back tears, her arm around Anahera's waist, the other woman's head resting against her shoulder.
*~*~*
"It was a group of mermaids!" the sailor cried, as Uilani held a jagged piece of broken coral close to his left eye. "In the cove on the east side of that island!" he said, barely inclining his head to nod to the left. "They... they were the ones who told us to hunt you! I promise! We never had such an opinion ourselves; we never even knew you existed! They said you were dangerous, they did! That you would make your way on board and kill us in our sleep! Please. Just let me go, let me go and I'll tell my crew, I'll tell them how merciful you are, we'll never hunt you again..."
Anahera stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded once. "Let him go."
The man tugged out of Maata's grip and swam hard back to his vessel. His crewmates were leaning over the rail, calling for him, fear written clearly on their faces. Aveline watched as he reached the landing craft the other humans lowered for him and climbed in, shaking.
"Aveline," Anahera said. "The name?"
"The Devil's Rose," she said. If they reached the cove and there were no mermaids to be found, or if they heard tell of any of the crew of that ship continuing to hunt sharkmaids or other mers, then the man they'd just released would beg to be let off with something so trivial as a missing eye.
"All right," Anahera said. "Come on. To the cove."
They didn't look like murderers, this pod. But then, some of them didn't. The men who had stolen Kalea away: they had looked like murderers, like bad men. All sneering grins and mocking laughter and blood on their hands.
These mermaids just looked frightened.
An act, Aveline knew. She had witnessed interactions between mers herself, where one gave information or even offered payment for the teeth of a sharkmaid, only to whine and cry and claim innocence the moment they were confronted.
Kalea had done nothing wrong. Her only wish had been to eat, to keep herself safe and play pranks on her sister and help raise Pup with the rest of their pod.
Had one of the women here sent out word that sailors would be rewarded handsomely for every confirmed kill of a sharkmaid?
They attacked swiftly, Chausiku slicing open two throats with her well-sharpened claws before a full warning could even be sounded.
The mermaids panicked and tried to swim away, but none got far.
Anahera and Desta had fashioned her a spear, its spike formed from the sharpened bones of one of the sailors they'd killed. Aveline had never used it, but she liked the way it felt in her hand, the way it made her feel more like one of her sisters, even though she possessed no sharp teeth or tough skin.
She stayed at the outskirts of the fight, as she always did, searching for any who may have escaped and tried to call in reinforcements while her podmates were under their bloodlust.
Normally, she never found anyone—her pod was very thorough—but today she saw movement, half-hidden behind a large stone. She swam over to investigate, and found herself face-to-face with a young merman.
Aveline knew what she needed to do, what she had to do. They couldn't let anyone escape: any survivors would get in touch with their contacts in the human world, and then the hunt against them would grow even worse.
She could do it. Stab out with the spear quickly, hit the boy in the neck. It would be over; he wouldn't suffer. The oceans would be just a little safer for her and her pod.
Aveline's grip shifted on the spear as her mind trying to prepare her for a killing strike, and then suddenly there was someone between her and her target.
The young girl with the white-blonde hair. She hadn't seen her in months now.
"No!" the girl said, holding out her hands in supplication. "Aveline, please. You can't do this."
She started to argue, started to explain to her that she had to, but then a name floated into her consciousness, and suddenly, it was all she could focus on.
"Harriet?" she whispered.
Then the girl disappeared as the ocean around Aveline turned black, and her eyes began to burn.
Octopus ink. The boy must have opened a vial of it.
She swam back out of range, rubbing at her eyes, and several moments later, once her vision had finally begun to clear again, Anahera swam up to her, her teeth red with blood.
"Did you find anyone?"
"Were—Anahera, were there ever any mermaids in this pod named Harriet?"
"No," she said. "What an odd name. Did you find anyone?" she asked again.
Aveline hung her head. "I'm sorry."
"What happened?"
She thought about bettering her role in the story, saying that he surprised her, that she never had a chance to act. But though she didn't know much about her previous life, she did realize that she wasn't that good of a liar. "I couldn't do it," she whispered. "I hesitated. He was..."
Was what? Was terrified and young and had had the same pained look in his eyes that she remembered seeing in Anahera's when her sister was pulled out of the water?
"Was what?" Anahera asked quietly. "Was more important than the safety of our pod?"
"No, no, of course not—"
"After we took you in!" she shouted, drawing the attention of the others, and Aveline wrapped her arms around herself as she was surrounded. "Shared our food, protected you from the humans! You couldn't even get rid of one of our enemies? Maata took down five!"
"I'm sorry," Aveline said, unable to meet her eyes. "I'm so sorry, I had the spear, I just couldn't..."
Anahera sighed, and then put a hand on her arm, tugging her close. "No, I'm sorry," she said. "It's all right. I shouldn't have been so hard on you. You'll do better next time, won't you?"
"Yes."
"And don't fret about this one escaping. Ink vials are a defense used by younger merfolk. Now that it's alone, it won't survive long."
Reunion
"There they are," Anahera said, motioning to the two mers swimming in the water close to the human ship. One, a female, had a gnarled, twisted tail, and Aveline was baffled that she could move through the water at all, even with help.
They had heard tale upon tale of The Sappho, a ship where humans and mers worked in tandem. Anahera had been obsessed with it after first hearing of it, insisting that they would bring down every human on the ship and every m
er who betrayed their own kind by sailing with them.
Aveline was unsure of this goal—none of the stories said that The Sappho killed mers, after all—but whenever humans and mers interacted, things always went horribly wrong, and mers were most always the ones who suffered for it.
"Aveline," Anahera said. "Circle around to their front; keep them from reaching the ship. Uilani, Kalea'lii; to their left. Subira, Maata, to the right. I'll come in from behind."
Uilani nodded her understanding and darted off through the water. Aveline swam as well, diving underneath the two strangers and coming up in front of them. She started to speak, to tell them that they had a moment at most to defend themselves and give her some reason to let them live—but then she saw the man's face.
She knew it. She had seen him before; had spared—
Seeing recognition cross his face as well, she opened her mouth, unable to think of any words. And then the merman was past her, dragging the younger mer with him, and lifting her into a small craft that dangled a few feet out of the water. He hauled himself in afterward, and still, all Aveline could do was stare.
"What's wrong with you?" Anahera snapped. "You were supposed to distract them until we—"
"I know him, Anahera," Aveline said. "I recognized—"
"Never mind that now; they're getting away!"
Maata hissed in anger, and leapt for the small boat.
*~*~*
"What's the matter?" Isabelle asked, as Kai started to haul them back up to the deck. She'd barely had time to catch a glimpse of the small, blonde mermaid—used to be human, had a black tail just like hers—before Kai had practically flung her into the landing craft.
"I've seen her before," Kai said. "She travels with—"
Isabelle screamed as something gray vaulted out of the water, and instinctively threw her arms up to defend her face. The sharkmaid's teeth sank into her forearm rather than her neck. Kai yelled for the others to haul them back up, the landing craft dropping a couple of feet between when he let go of the ropes and when the crew caught hold of them again.
Kai struck the sharkmaid hard in the side of the head and she released Isabelle's forearm, turning on him with a snarl. Isabelle flailed at her with her uninjured hand, punching the sharkmaid's shoulder. She hissed in pain as her knuckles scraped against the rough, gray skin. Then Kai lashed out with his tail, knocking their attacker over the side.
"What happened?" Jo asked, helping Isabelle onto the deck. "Hope! Silence! Need you here!"
"Sharkmaids," Kai said, as Harry raced up to them. She peered over the side, ready to shout a challenge down to their attackers. But amongst the gray faces and toothy snarls, there was—
"Ave!" she screamed. "Jo! Jo, they have Aveline!"
Even as she and Josephine scrambled into the landing craft that Kai and Isabelle had so recently abandoned, time seemed to slow down. All she could see was her sister's face, confused and panicked, staring up at her from the water.
She was a mer, then. Enslaved by a sharkmaid pod, most certainly terrified, but alive: her sister was here. If she had to kill every one of those sharkmaids, she would—
But even as the landing craft hit the water and she raised her spear, Aveline was screaming. "No! Don't!"
"It's all right," Jo said. "Ave, come on! We'll get you out!"
"I'm not... they're not—no!" she cried, when one of the sharkmaids swam too close and Jo stabbed out with her own spear, striking the creature in the side.
One of the sharkmaids, the largest, bared her copious teeth as the wounded one swam back to the safety of the pod. "Kill them both," the leader hissed.
"Don't!" Aveline yelled, grabbing hold of two sharkmaids' arms as they started to swim forward. "Anahera, this is Harriet! Remember? The girl I've seen!"
"One of the humans who left you to die, no doubt!"
"No, I don't think so," Aveline protested, even as Harry let out a barely-intelligible curse. "I think she's safe."
"She's human!"
"So was I, once!"
"And you're lucky you no longer have to bear such a curse," Anahera said, touching her cheek gently. "Ave, dear, you have always been too soft. If seeing this will disturb you, you have my permission to leave until we are done. Maata. Uilani," she said, saying their names like an order as she nodded toward the landing craft.
The two glided forward again, teeth bared, and as Jo and Harry readied their spears Aveline darted forward, too, stopped only by Anahera's tight grip on her arm.
Aveline spun, striking Anahera across the face with her free hand.
She froze, looking just as stunned by what she had done as Anahera did. Even Uilani and Maata turned, wanting to see what had made the remaining sharkmaids gasp in horror.
For a long moment, both Aveline and Anahera were silent, staring at each other. Finally, Anahera reached out, pulling her into a brief hug before pushing her away.
"Go, then," Anahera said quietly. "Go with them."
"But I wasn't—that wasn't what I meant, I'm sorry, I—"
"Your choice is made, Aveline."
"You can't. Please. I don't know any of them, not truly, I don't—"
Anahera didn't say anything else, didn't blink, and finally Aveline turned, swimming past Maata and Uilani, who each gave her a tight hug before letting her close to the landing craft.
"We will not strike this vessel," Anahera said. "In deference to your choice. Goodbye, little sister."
"Goodbye," Aveline said, her voice thick with tears, and then she was clinging to the side of the landing craft as the sharkmaids circled nearby, watching them warily. And though Harriet's self-preservation instinct made her want to keep an eye on the sharkmaids and make sure they didn't change their minds about attacking, she couldn't take her gaze from her sister.
Aveline stared up at her and gave her a hesitant smile, and then looked to Jo.
"I... I have seen you as well," she murmured. "We were friends, weren't we? You were my friend."
"Yes," Jo whispered, her own voice hoarse. "Yes, I was."
FIN
About the Authors
ANGIE BEE
Angie is a tatterdemalion of a fangirl, writer, and pop culture pundit. Very fond of gothic horror, modern mythology updates, the supernatural, road trip narratives, noir, magical realism, found families, and the bizarre — all of which features heavily in her writing.
STEPHANIE RABIG
When not writing, Stephanie can be found hanging out with her kids, making steampunk hats, or trying in vain to buy every pint of Ben & Jerry’s in the store. Loves include fairy tales, mythology, tea, chocolate, and The Avengers. Come say hi on Twitter at twitter.com/stephrabig, and keep an eye out for new projects at stephanierabig.weebly.com.
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