by Dima Zales
As the divine dark liquid had caressed her palate with hints of berries and vanilla, her spirits had begun to soar with sensual pleasure. She had not wanted the moment to end, and had requested “one more movie” at least five times, until she was far too tired to sit upright. Her memory was fuzzy about her final hours of consciousness, but she remembered growing comfortable enough to lie against Trevain’s chest on the couch. She remembered his fingers lazily stroking her long dark hair, entangling between the strands near the nape of her neck. She remembered how soft and warm, how extraordinarily cozy he had been. She remembered thinking that she would give up her kingdom in a heartbeat for this.
She remembered being so overwhelmed by the beauty beyond the television screen that she had begun crying during one of the scenes. Aazuria had discovered with dismay that the one century she had been confined to the water happened to have been the most incredible century in the history of humanity.
“I have missed it all,” she had moaned. “I have missed the entire twentieth century. How can I never have seen a movie? All this technology, all of these new stories. How can he have kept it all from me? I should have been able to experience all of this as it was created!”
“Aazuria, these movies were filmed long before you were born. Some of them even long before I was born. Luckily, they have all been preserved and we can still see them now.”
“You are wrong. It is not the same,” she insisted, tears cascading over her cheeks. “The world has changed so much that I hardly know it anymore. I do not belong here. I want to survive in your world, but I do not know the first thing about this place.”
“I’ll teach you everything you want to learn,” Trevain promised, wiping away her tears. “The world isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We can go and see anything you want to see.”
“Just stay close to me,” she pleaded. “There is too much to take in—I am afraid that I will make too many mistakes. I will stumble and fall on these weak legs. I am so lost here.”
“I won’t let you fall,” he had answered.
She remembered Trevain lightly pressing his lips against hers in a reassuring kiss. But she was not sure if that was memory or imagination of what she had wished to happen. She should have felt embarrassed at showing such emotion—Aazuria had always prided herself on being stone-faced, as was expected of undersea royalty. But Trevain’s warmth easily melted her icy countenance, and she was not upset with herself for allowing this. It was refreshing to trust someone enough to fully relax in their company.
The doorbell rang again.
Aazuria lifted a hand to rub her eyes. She adjusted herself so that she could stretch her legs before carefully slipping out from under Trevain’s semi-hug. She walked out of the room a bit unsteadily at first, but she had resumed her poise by the time she reached the door. She undid the locks deftly. When the door swung open, it revealed that Brynne was standing there.
“Sea-wench,” Brynne said hoarsely.
“Fisherwoman,” Aazuria responded in greeting. She was suddenly alarmed when she realized how unkempt she was. In Adlivun, she never entertained visitors without first suffering hours of intricate hairstyling and elaborate face-painting. She quickly tried to arrange her disheveled clothing to be more presentable, and lifted her hands to smooth her hair. “Please come in.”
“Where’s Trevain?” Brynne asked in a quivering voice.
“He is still resting,” Aazuria answered. “I apologize—it’s my fault. I kept him up all night watching movies.”
Brynne chewed on her lip fearfully. “I need to see him. Can you please get him?”
“Shouldn’t we let him rest?” Aazuria asked. “I can tell him whatever it is…”
“Please,” Brynne said in a hushed voice, completely unalike the brash tone she had used with Aazuria at their first meeting. “Please get him, Aazuria.”
Aazuria frowned, but she nodded compliantly. She crossed the house to the family room and spoke Trevain’s name while touching his arm to wake him.
“Hmmm?” he asked, groggily.
“Brynne is here. She wants to speak with you.”
“Brynne?” he responded, clearing his throat. “Bet she’s here to boast about their catch.”
“I’m not so sure,” Aazuria said in confusion.
“I guess I should find out what she wants,” he said, pulling himself to his feet. He rubbed the wrinkles out of his shirt. He left the family room and headed for the foyer, with Aazuria close on his heels.
When Brynne laid eyes on Trevain, she stopped wringing her hands. She was deathly still and quiet for a few seconds before she tried to speak. “Trevain…” Brynne’s voice caught in her throat. She paused, and tried to speak again, but no sound left her lips. She tried again. “Trevain, I…” She shook her head, screwing up her face before she burst into tears.
Trevain did not move or speak as he observed the strange behavior of the brunette. Finally, he turned his back on the women, clenching his fists. “No. I don’t want to hear it.” He turned around and headed upstairs.
Aazuria was bewildered by the whole situation. She knew that something serious had been silently communicated between the longtime co-workers, but it escaped her understanding. She stared after Trevain’s retreating back, seeking understanding in his tired and angry gait, before returning her gaze to Brynne. “What is wrong, dear?”
Brynne was now sobbing uncontrollably, and she had fallen against the marble-topped console table in the foyer. Her shoulder had knocked over a large glass vase holding fresh flowers, and it was rolling off the edge and crashing to the ground. Aazuria knew that she could not catch the heavy vase in time, so she pushed Brynne back to prevent the woman from being cut by the shards of glass. Aazuria felt a few sharp pieces graze her own legs as the container smashed on the marble floor. Brynne fell to the ground a few feet away from the vase, and was whimpering as she stared at the water from the vase spilling all over the floor. The water had surrounded Aazuria’s bare feet, tinted with a few droplets of blood from where the glass had cut the woman’s skin. The fresh forsythia blossoms lay scattered gracelessly on the pile of broken glass.
“I’m so sorry,” Brynne said wretchedly. She began sobbing again.
Aazuria moved to her knees and tried to put her arm around the distraught woman to console her. “Come and sit down,” she insisted, using her strength to support Brynne as she helped her up from the ground. She guided the distressed brunette carefully around the floral glass carnage, and deposited her safely in the nearest couch. Brynne moved compliantly along in a daze, and once she was sitting, she collapsed and placed her head in her hands.
“Brynne,” Aazuria urged gently. “Will you please tell me what has happened?”
“It’s Callder,” Brynne said between gasps. She could not seem to catch her breath as her sobs shook her whole body. “Callder’s dead.”
16
Aazuria was rendered speechless. She remembered the lively young man she had spoken to only a few days ago. He had been full of vibrant energy and blunt, unsophisticated honesty. He had been a slightly more primitive and mediocre version of his big brother. But it did not seem possible that…
“I should have married him. I should have married him,” Brynne was moaning. “This is all my fault.”
“What do you mean?” Aazuria asked numbly. She had grown confused again.
Brynne tried to control her sniffles enough to speak coherently. “We dated for a while. A few years ago. You know how it is: close quarters on the ship, working together every day… he always made me laugh.” The brunette smiled through her tears. “But I thought… I thought he was beneath me—he had a lot of bad habits. Maybe if I had accepted one of his many proposals things would be different. Sometimes men change when they get married, don’t they?”
“I do not believe it works that way, dear,” Aazuria answered softly.
“He killed himself,” Brynne whispered. “At least I think he did. He was acting crazy. He s
aid he saw a woman in the water…”
“What?” Aazuria sat up to attention. She looked at the other woman grimly and infused her tone with hardness. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Brynne nodded, wiping her nose on her sleeve and trying to calm her gasping breaths. “I… I was cooking. He took me aside. He asked me if I would reconsider marrying him if he was the permanent captain of the Magician. I laughed—I laughed at him and said that Trevain would sooner appoint me to that position than a lazy ass like Callder. Then he got angry and said something weird… he said that if I didn’t want him, he was going to go with the woman in the water…”
“What did she look like?” Aazuria demanded.
“What? What does that matter? He was just saying nonsense…”
“Any detail you remember matters!” Aazuria responded firmly.
“I think he said that she was blonde,” she said, sniffling. “She was wearing a black dress with some strange necklaces…”
“Necklaces?” Aazuria gripped Brynne’s shoulders. “This is not a joke. What kind of necklaces?”
“He mentioned shark’s teeth… lots of shark’s teeth. Callder’s always had a thing for them. He said that she had beckoned him to go away with her—and that he would go if I didn’t stop him. I just laughed and told him it was his lamest pick-up line yet, and I went back to cooking. He left, and skipped dinner, but I thought it was because he was mad at me. He usually gets moody like that after I reject him. Except no one has seen him since then.” Silent tears began to fall over Brynne’s cheeks again. “God, it’s all my fault.”
“It is not your fault, Brynne.” Aazuria closed her eyes. A black dress and shark’s teeth. This cannot be what I believe it is. My people wear green, and whoever lured Callder was definitely not one of us. The only sea-dwellers who wear shark’s teeth are… but it cannot be them. We defeated them ages ago in Japan! It cannot be the clan I am thinking of—but who else would dress like that? It seems that Trevain and I share a common enemy—whether he is aware of their existence or not.
“What does it all mean?” Brynne whispered.
“It is not good news,” Aazuria told her honestly. “Listen to me, Brynne. Do not go out on the water anymore. Do you hear me?” When the woman nodded, Aazuria sighed. “Thank you for the information.”
“Trevain was right. He’s always right.” Brynne hugged her legs against her chest. “We shouldn’t have been so greedy. I should have listened to him. He’s going to be so broken-hearted when he finds out. Callder was all he had.”
“He has us. We need to be there for him.” Aazuria squeezed the other woman’s shoulder gently. “I should check on him.” She left Brynne and began to climb the stairs to the second floor, already feeling the heaviness of Trevain’s grief. When she reached the corridor, she was stopped by a small hand on her arm.
“Is death usually this frequent for these land-dwellers?” Corallyn asked in a whisper.
“I do not believe so,” Aazuria answered. “Go down and sit with Brynne. Try to cheer her up a little.”
Corallyn nodded and darted off. Aazuria noticed that Elandria was standing in a cracked doorway. The two girls looked at each other knowingly for a moment.
“It is them, is it not?” Elandria asked. Her hands were shaking with fright as she signed the words. “The Clan of Zalcan. It is happening all over again. They are going to massacre us. The same way they wiped out the Bimini Empire. The same way they razed Yonaguni. Soon Adlivun will join these fallen kingdoms…”
“Not if I can help it,” Aazuria signed back. “Yonaguni might have been destroyed, and Queen Amabie might have had to perform an emergency evacuation, but she defended her people. We helped her fight them off in the fifties with minimal losses—and if Zalcan did have the audacity to reorganize, we will just disorganize and dispose of his men again. We will send dispatch messengers to ask the Ningyo for help.”
Elandria responded hesitantly. “Sister, we need to take definitive and immediate action. Perhaps we should also evacuate everyone and move to a different location… it is too dangerous to remain here.”
Aazuria stared at Elandria’s hands, unable to respond. She did not know where they would go. Many of her people had never been on land, and were rightly terrified of land-dwelling society. They could not run north, for with the approaching winter, the Arctic would be too cold for even the northern mermaids to survive.
“Aazuria?”
Nodding, the princess tried to display strength on her face. “Do not worry, Elan. We will figure this out shortly. I am going to check on Trevain.” Excusing herself from her frightened sister, she walked down the corridor towards Trevain’s room. She knocked once, lightly. Upon hearing no response she opened the door a tiny bit.
Trevain was sitting on his bed and staring at the wall.
“Trevain,” she spoke softly.
He slowly turned to look at her, and lifted his eyes piteously. “Zuri,” he mumbled. He had overheard her sisters calling her by the nickname over the few days that they had spent together, but this was the first time that he had used it himself. He shook his head wretchedly. “Please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
She could see that he knew the truth of what had happened, even though he had not heard it himself. How could he be sure if he had not listened to Brynne’s story? Maybe he felt that if he did not hear the words, he would not have to accept them. “Are you sure…” she began.
“I don’t want to think about it,” he said, turning away. His voice cracked as he spoke. “I know Brynne. The wrath of that girl! She gets angry; she rages and rampages. She rips everything apart—but the only thing that could possibly make her cry… is if something happened to Callder. She loved him, even though she wouldn’t let go of her pride and admit it if you held a gun to her head. I can’t face this right now. He’s my little brother. He wasn’t perfect… isn’t! He isn’t perfect… God!”
Trevain buried his head in his hands. Aazuria went to his side. She could feel despair emanating from his body almost like a physical thing as she seated herself next to him. She put her arms around him, and rested her head on his shoulder. She hoped that her touch was comforting and motherly, but she didn’t feel very strong. Elandria’s words were floating through her mind. She thought of Bimini.
For thousands of years, the ruins now known as the Bimini Wall had been home to a thriving and prosperous undersea settlement in the Caribbean. That was until about a hundred years ago. An army of anarchist sea-dwellers from various clans and kingdoms all over the world had banded together under a revolutionary leader to form the Clan of Zalcan. They had ferociously attacked the Bimini Empire.
The underwater war had been waged for many years, causing a massive amount of collateral damage in the form of land-dweller casualties. The area became known as the “Bermuda Triangle” to superstitious seafarers. It was a well-known technique that mermaids used against each other, to attack ships or nearby surface settlements and bring huge numbers of suspicious investigators to the area, making it unlivable. In the 1940s, Bimini finally fell. The inhabitants of the empire were forced to relocate to nearby land, or to other underwater settlements. Adlivun had gained quite a few citizens from the fall of Bimini.
Aazuria’s thoughts and memories were interrupted as she felt Trevain tighten his grip on her. She was pulled away from her focus on maritime warfare and returned to the second story of this land-based dwelling. She was returned to the sorrow of the terrestrial man of whom she had grown so fond. She felt a consuming rush of anger, thinking of how both worlds and so many lives had been ravaged over the past century due to the cruelty and selfishness of the Clan of Zalcan. She hoped that they were not really the ones responsible for the minor attacks on the outskirts of Adlivun and on fishing boats in the area. There was still no confirmation; it could be anyone. But in her heart, she knew what was coming—just as Trevain had somehow known.
“How did you sense that there would be danger?” Aaz
uria asked him softly, feeling his soft grey hair under her fingertips.
He did not move from where he weakly rested his head against her chest before he responded in an empty voice. “It was just a stupid feeling. I don’t know. I was being irrational…”
“But you were right,” she answered. “Did you see or hear anything?”
“I thought I saw some dark shapes in the water. It really gave me the chills.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Why?” he repeated blankly. “I don’t know. Some old story I heard or something. I… I’m a fool. I shouldn’t have let them use my boat.”
She bit her lip before speaking. “It is too dangerous out there now. You know this as well as I do. There are forces at work which aggressively seek to cause you harm. You must promise me that you will not go out on the water again. Please say that you will not!”
“I don’t think I’m in any state to do so anytime soon, Aazuria,” he answered. “I mean, I will have to eventually. People are counting on me. But this… first Leander and now…” The strength seemed to drain from him as he exhaled all of his willpower in a single breath. “I need to lie down.”
He pulled away from her and moved to lean back on the pillows. She stood and unfolded the blanket from the foot of the bed, tugging it over his legs to keep him warm. He extended his hand to her.
“Zuri, would you stay with me?”
She took his hand and slipped under the blanket with him, hugging his arm and resting her forehead against his shoulder.
“I never considered leaving.”
17
A week had passed since Brynne had showed up sobbing at their door. Trevain had hardly left his bed. He found it impossible to accept that his younger brother was truly gone. Whenever there was a noise in the house, he asked Aazuria to check if Callder had returned home. She did everything he asked without question. She took care of him, bringing him meals and encouraging him to eat. The princess spent endless hours chatting with the captain and trying to lift his spirits. She even slept beside him every night because she could not bear to leave his side.