It had been awhile since I’d played, but muscle memory puppeteered my fingers through the motions. The instrumental version of Hello by Evanescence hummed to life and reverberated through the cathedral, melancholy and moving, sweeping me into a world of sweet agony. I’d played it at my senior recital–thought I’d be nervous, but got so caught up and lost in the music that the audience might as well have not been there.
That was the thing with music. You lost yourself in it.
Apparently with archaeology too; I was lost down a rabbit hole of mythology and magic, utterly gone from the rest of the world, hardly even able to recall what it felt like above the Surface anymore. That dry rasp of air on your face, the weight of your feet on the ground…I felt so disconnected from it, almost like that was the dream all along.
I was lost, so lost. Entrenching myself deeper in the spell all the time.
When the last note paraded through the room, I had to shake myself from the clutches of the music. I all but shuddered coming back into myself, blinking away the all-consuming effects.
How surreal, to play my own tune on the instrument that had called me into the Deep.
I stared down at the keys, forgetting Codexious for a moment. Why have you brought me here? I implored the powers-that-be, for the hundredth time. What was there for me here? In a place ruled by fin and fang, where I didn’t fit in and yet was somehow the object of raging jealousy all at once. Because it made perfect sense to envy the misfit.
“That was beautiful,” Coda’s voice brought me back to the echoing cathedral. I was almost afraid to look at him, lest the passion swirling around inside me decide to misconstrue the situation and project itself onto him. There was also a chance he’d be looking at me like he did in the geode caves, and I might not care to put forth the effort to resist him a second time.
Or, let’s be honest, a tenth time–or however many times I’d found it difficult not to look at him like a dazzling piece of meat.
When my gaze did cut to him, I didn’t seem to have mastered fighting the attraction. What if it wasn’t just the music? Wasn’t just the fact that he was a magnificent specimen of a lustful creature?
Then–nothing. That was what. He’d already pretty much told me outright he was attracted to me, but to what end? There was nothing but an ill-fitted scandal to be had down that road. And I couldn’t even really believe I was entertaining the thought long enough to think it through. It was utter nonsense. Not why I was here, not what the underwater kingdom needed at a time like this, and what was I, some hopeless romantic who couldn’t resist a dreamy guy who’d shown her a good time?
So I quenched the feelings like a good, logical girl, blamed the music, and offered him a friendly, casual smile. “It’s been so long, I didn’t know if it would come back to me.”
“Why did you ever stop playing?”
“Oh, you know…just a passing fancy, I guess.” And as I said it, I applied it to the scandalous subject turning about in my head of late, with every intention of putting it to bed for good.
Ugh, don’t use a bed analogy.
Fortunately, there were no beds in Atlantis. So, there, that was nipped in the bud.
And with that, I considered the matter closed. I could be mature about this.
“You shouldn’t have stopped,” Coda said. “You look transcendent when you play. It clearly brings something out from deep inside you. Just when I thought the ocean couldn’t get any deeper, you open a vein and a cavern of rapture swallows Atlantis whole.”
“Ha. You make me sound like a whale.”
“That was not my intent.”
I was just trying to make light of the situation, refusing to let him sweet-talk me.
“But whales are graceful, beautiful creatures,” Codexious defended them, refusing to let me derail his intent. “And you should be so lucky to receive such a compliment.”
“Should I, indeed? Do you liken many girls to whales as one of your common methods of seducing them?”
“Is that what you think I’m trying to do? Seduce you?”
“I just meant–perhaps that is the real culprit causing a hindrance in your attempt to land a mate, and you just don’t know it.”
“Ah, so you think the issue is with me, and I consequently get no credit for the noble reasons one might be picky and prone to stalling in choosing the heir to a dying kingdom.”
I realized then it might easily become a touchy subject, and I probably shouldn’t joke about it. “Actually I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, and I think I’d like to accept the compliment and rock the whale thing.” I frowned, suddenly. “But, out of curiosity–how does a female of the mer-species respond to being seduced with the unlikely flattery of being likened to the biggest, blubberiest creature in the sea?”
Codexious shrugged, propelling himself so he was parallel with the ceiling and back-stroking casually about the room. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t go around seducing them.”
“Ever?” I found that hard to believe.
Curving backwards out of his drift, he circled back toward me. “Mermaids mate for life,” he said, surprising me. “You don’t go around seducing one unless you’re going to stick with her, forever.”
How…unexpectedly noble. I’d just assumed, given the promiscuous behavior that I’d seen displayed among the flocks of mermaids, that it was rather the opposite. But evidently the lot of them were just…good and ready to settle down forever with the regent of Atlantis, and so did not hesitate to pull out all the stops. I could argue that the way Coda had danced with some of them didn’t exactly look platonic and innocent on his part, and he’d certainly been flirting with me lately, but there must still be a fine line between flirtation and seduction, which I was ignorant to distinguish.
“Oh,” I said, rendered just a little bit speechless. Mating for life. What an archaic, beautiful sentiment.
If only it was more that way in the human realm.
I couldn’t help but look at him in a new light, cancelling all those prospective grandchildren I’d speculated he might have, recalculating the lustful, provocative image I’d developed of him into something far more principled and honorable.
While I’d always entertained platonic relationships myself, I was rather a special case, plagued by unusually high standards for my generation, considered old-fashioned–and made fun of for it–by my peers, and otherwise scared away from revealing my anatomical abnormalities where temptation might quench my values. But how much self-control would it take to fight the urge for hundreds or even thousands of years?
Even I was astonished.
“Not so, above the Surface?” Codexious asked.
I thought about it, becoming rueful. “For some. Fewer and fewer, though, it seems. It used to be this sacred thing, and it’s still celebrated like it is, but… Many seem to find it hard to stay the course.” Sandy and Vince were a prime example.
Coda was frowning. “How hard can it be? Mortals live such short lives. It would be a fleeting commitment at best.”
It was a difficult subject for me to discuss. Not so much because it was a sensitive issue that had affected my family, although that was part of it, but because it was hard to explain or even figure out where I stood. Growing up on the cautionary tale of Sandy’s misery and divorce had always made me determined not to end up like that, and I’d told myself my whole life I would take pains to find ‘forever love’. If I was aiming for it, I had to believe in it, and yet there was still that gray area–the part of me that simultaneously hated Vince’s guts for leaving Sandy but also recognized she was infinitely happier without him. He’d betrayed and freed her. I wouldn’t put them back together in a million years, and yet…there would always be a part of me that believed in the sacred thing they had started, a part of me that wanted to shake Vince and scream ‘It didn’t have to be like this!’
I gave a wry huff of a chuckle at Coda’s comment, then grew thoughtful. “I don’t think it’s always about not
being able to. Sometimes when there are more tears than laughs, they just decide life is better apart. It’s like they decide their lives are too short. That they’ll miss out on other, better things if they stick with one thing. Or that it’s easier to start over with a clean slate than fix complications. I don’t know. I’m more of a quality over quantity girl, myself.”
“Perhaps your mermaid heritage showing through.”
It was a disheartening suggestion, that such a trait might only be explained by the mer side of me, that the ideals I’d developed for my life on land could be something that was lost to the human race. “Perhaps,” I granted solemnly, wondering if the apocalypse had reached us as well, up above the surface–just manifesting in a very different way than the wastelands and famines of common prophecy.
What if the apocalypse came from within, a matter of the human condition itself–the troubled waters of the soul, the wastelands of the heart, the polluted skies of human nature and the long, cold roads of wandering, lost spirits?
A depressing thought, and yet I couldn’t help but feel it was the perfect analogy for so much of what plagued humanity, these days. An apocalypse of souls, burning and festering and rioting in the streets.
My frown deepened. “I thought you said Atlas bore children with his ‘harem of mer-wives’. And I heard two mermaids gossiping about joining your harem at the ball. How does that fit in with mating for life?”
Coda grunted, but it was the most eloquent grunt I’d ever heard–a fluid, almost creamy sound. Did you really just liken his voice to ‘creamy’? “A trendy fantasy among lovesick mermaids, harkening back to the one and only harem ever established in the mer-kingdom. My father’s. Successful perhaps because he was a first generation and still retained a level of promiscuousness from his pre-mer tendencies. But some would argue that it wasn’t successful at all, and contributed to his overall unrest and madness.”
So the girls on the other side of the pillar at the ball had just been dreaming, courting toxic euphoria and madness same as so many humans did, with their drugs and unhealthy relationships and a dozen other indulgent fixations that weren’t always so great in the long run.
There it was again. Signs of the inner apocalypse.
Where were these profound little conjectures coming from? There I went, opening another vein and feeling like a cavern was spawning beneath me, this bottom-of-the-ocean sabbatical an ever deepening journey indeed. Curse that inking pipe organ, for tempting me back into the throes of boundless, ravaging emotion, music turning me into a dramatic, tormented artist type.
And yes, it was undoubtedly the music’s fault. It couldn’t have been that conversing with Codexious sparked an intellectual, emotional side of me, that he got me thinking or left me moved, because then I’d have to accept that it was definitely more than his lustrous physique and exotic appeal that had me pegging him as a dreamy specimen of the male species.
For the first time I didn’t have to hide the secrets of my physical being from a man I might deem a romantic candidate under different circumstances–indeed, my physical being was liberated and well on display–but circumstances being what they were, I had to hide everything else that clamored inside me to pull us closer toward one another.
He had a queen to name, and I had a purpose to determine, and we were just confusing the two. I didn’t even know which world I belonged in, so I had no business treading anywhere near the path he had laid out for his queen. And as for my purpose, well… I was still waiting for the Deep to speak to me again. But that would not come in the form of Codexious whispering sweet whale nothings into my ear.
I had a greater purpose in life than just being someone’s wife and queen. Somebody else could lay in Codexious’s non-bed moaning to flattery of blubber and immensity, and I…
I would go to this ‘deep ocean’ that everyone spoke of, that infamous crater that lurked even beyond this fathomless dimension that hid the legend of Atlantis, and even if I had to sneak past the beasts that Atlas son of Poseidon had perished fighting–maybe at long last, the Deep would meet me face-to-face, and tell me what the hell it wanted from me.
Chapter 22
I said that to myself, but it seemed every time the aurora changed color, I was back in that cathedral with Codexious, and somehow we were on to composing songs together, to see what a human-mermaid collaboration might sound like. I knew then that if I ever fulfilled my purpose down here and found my way back to the mortal realm, I would in turn find my way back to the instrument of my youth, and I would play the song we had coined and think of him.
And forever after, the regent of Atlantis would be tied to that one mystical thing that could reel the heartstrings out of me like helpless fish on a line.
He was gutting me, and I refused to acknowledge it.
It was the music, always the music.
The music that caused a constant state of euphoria in his presence. The music that made his eyes gleam brighter with luster and my heart beat faster with angst. The music that made his laugh like a symphony and the troubles he faced seem like far-distant matters for another day.
The music that I looked forward to surrounding myself with every chance I could.
I didn’t know what I was doing. I’d never thought I was much for lying to myself, but then again–I had spent the better part of my life pretending the ocean didn’t run in my veins, pretending I could walk away from my heritage and outdistance the tide and laugh off the call of the Deep that had always left a throbbing crater inside me. So, maybe I was actually an expert at lying to myself, had been my whole life.
It was only a matter of time before somebody noticed. I was still living in a fantasy where time didn’t exist, thanks to Coda’s little riddle that banished night and day from Atlantean culture, but certain others were not so keen to let our little dalliance-that-wasn’t go on unchallenged for all of eternity.
I was en route back to my turret after a day–that is, after a cerulean aurora–of pipe organ composition with Coda, when I was ambushed by a burly merman I’d seen far too little of lately, if regular bodyguard standards were to apply.
“Inaja,” I said, surprised.
The blue-haired merman loomed like a taciturn shark, very serious.
“Um…to what do I owe the pleasure?” I glanced beyond him to the opening to my tower, where about six turquoise tendrils were peeking out around the edges of the entrance, Pastel always alert to my return. Sometimes he followed me to the cathedral and loitered about the cavernous chamber while we played, sometimes he preferred to lurk in the shadows of my room undisturbed and nap the day away.
“A word of caution,” Inaja began, bringing me back. Uh-oh. Nothing good ever started with that. A quizzical, almost wary expression worried my face. “I am not here to fault you–I know you are not familiar with matters of the depths.”
Um, okay, so I’d done something wrong? Offended someone?
“But Codexious…is in a vulnerable position, and has not always maintained a pristine track record where his own sense of discretion is concerned. Indeed, sometimes it is the opposite of discretion that seems to rule his actions.”
So was this about me, or Coda? “Inaja, if I’ve done something–” I began, hurrying to assure him I was more than willing to smooth over any cultural faux pas.
But, “Coda has always had a dangerous obsession with things outside of his ken,” Inaja informed me bluntly, speaking over my attempt. Er, what? “It is not his fault–he was jaded by a life of excess, treated to every imaginable luxury and comfort as a royal of the sea, as a grandson of Amphitrite. He has had it all, and so it is only the new, the extreme, that excites him. The monsters of the deep ocean like his father. You.”
I was too blindsided by the implications to respond, all willingness to right an offense withdrawing behind a more guarded front.
“And for once in his life,” Inaja blazed onward, “he is duty-bound and finding a sense of purpose, laboring for an honorable thing. I beseec
h you…please. Let him focus on his duties without pulling his focus. It is no small matter he must settle. It is the magnificent, twice-worthy queen of all the sea he must choose. Do not confuse that decision.”
All quizzical sentiment curdled into a sour taste in my mouth. I frowned, rubbed the wrong way by a few things in his speech. Just shy of throwing it all back in his face, however, I became conflicted, because underneath the offense it was clear he had come as an ambassador truly invested in his friend and regent. I bit my tongue, choosing my words carefully.
“What do you mean, ‘the monsters of the deep ocean like his father’?”
“There is so little you know about Codexious.” He almost looked rueful, saying it–just not in a way that suggested he ever hoped for me to learn more, at least not first-hand. “He is legend across the many seas for doing what his father could not. For breaching the deep ocean and conquering the beasts there. Or have you not noticed the scars that grace his body? The whispers among admirers?”
A strange feeling moved through me. Confused, unsettled…almost queasy, though I would never let one man’s perspective rattle me without investigating it for myself. Still, the way Codexious had talked about his father meeting his demise because of his own folly, delving into the certain doom of the deep ocean…it was perturbing, learning he’d courted the same foolhardy risk, hearing that the charming man I’d been spending all my time with lately was a hypocrite.
On the flip side was the ripple of awe and admiration due him if he had indeed been to the deep ocean and back and lived to tell about it.
Inaja’s little cautionary monologue had me all tied up in knots. Better to leave Codexious’ character and exact identity as a matter for another time, determined by my own probing, and stick to the main concern Inaja had raised. It cost me nothing to negate those concerns, even though a certain deep-seeded insecurity took offense at the suggestion that I might not be ‘worthy’ of something due to my half-breed status. While implied, that was not necessarily what he meant. At least, not at the core of the matter. The facts were on his side in that I was not cultured in the ways of the deep or well-versed in the ways of his people.
Pillars of the Deep Page 19