In the Between Time

by Krystyne Price

  He didn’t fight. He didn’t try to escape. He merely hung there limply suspended and it was only upon looking a second time at the men holding him that the masks sparked a memory. Once in a kampun near the rajo’s residence she’d overheard several men discussing a murder that had been committed by a gang of men called the Lunan. They’d been talking about how to, or even if they should, go after them and bring them to justice for their deed. The men that were described sounded more like animals than merans and Sirena had struggled to believe any merans could do the things these were being accused of. But the one thing about it that stuck with her more than all else, was the fact that Lunan wore masks. This had angered the men she’d eavesdropped on, for they went on at great length about how one could never know if their own neighbor was one of them.

  In the moment, Sirena shivered as she realized she was witnessing their murderous ways firsthand. The two Lunan tossed the unconscious man into the middle hut and then two other Lunan lit it on fire. With him inside it.

  She wanted to scream, she wanted to run to the man’s aid, but what could she, a mere meranlan only seventeen years of age, do against twelve huge men? They all had weapons, mostly pisadas and some large pisas. They each carried a torch and obviously had no qualms about setting things ablaze. But it was when a blood-curdling scream came from the middle hut that Sirena also became aware of one very stark reality that she’d always refused to believe existed: these men lived by no Code. No morality. No consideration for their fellow meran.

  The man was burning to death while the Lunan stood around the hut in a lopsided circle laughing and cheering. “That will show you to try to keep us from our goals!” one of them hollered.

  Sirena had been terrified into a state where she couldn’t move a muscle. Logically she reasoned that they would see the fourth hut and would come to burn it – and anyone inside at the time – to ashes. But far worse than that, if they did find her within, she knew precisely what they would do to her. Anala had warned her to guard her wana at all costs for as an ima, she was never meant to copulate unless the daris decreed it so.

  Of course Sirena had discovered that never kept imos from copulating to their heart’s content, even going so far as to try to bed her when she was naught but a meranlee!

  The victim’s screams at last tapered off. The stench of burning flesh wafted to her and that was what woke her from her frozen state. Without another thought, without even grabbing the few items in the lemdi skin pack she had inside the hut with her, Sirena bolted out the door and rounded the circular hut, hoping to put a lot of distance between her and the Lunan before they realized there was another place to investigate.

  She had gotten away. They hadn’t followed her. But she had seen for herself what they were capable of.

  They had no conscience. No restraint. No Code. And now she and Mateo were their prisoners.

  Chapter Two

  Now Jafo was the one pacing, tail fins twitching and flicking to and fro the only hint that his seemingly calm face was an act. He’d managed to fashion a bed of sorts for Daria out of some tumba that grew in copious amounts along one side of the pintu’s outer wall, and she was sleeping soundly with the tidakam held tightly to her chest. Ajibo and Pana should have been here hours ago; his concern for their well-being wrestled at the forefront of his mind with this monumental decision that a dari had thunked into his lap without any warning whatsoever.

  Talk about being forced to grow up sooner than you anticipated. Never mind learning for the first time that these fabled beings actually existed. Oh, no, Jafo had done one better than that by coming face-to-face and talking with one. Because of course he did.

  What in the name of Palimo’s broken staff did Jafo know about being an imo? Nino had said he’d be transformed into looking like one if he took the role on. He pictured Nuelo in his mind, and another imo named Barlo that he recalled having met when he was a merlee. Their hair was as white as an ikanar’s skin, just as Nino’s had been. Their eyes were the blue of hauyne crystals, and they shone as though lit from within. Just like Nino’s. Their skin was a very pale blue and it occurred to Jafo that it was roughly the same hue as the tone Daria’s skin had taken on when she got too cold. Their tails were the same hauyne blue but the scales were…well, almost metallic in nature whereas even mers with shinier tails didn’t appear to have metal scales like the imos.

  Of course, Nino had had no tail with which Jafo could make a comparison to the imos, but all other things being equal, the imos appeared to be actual children of the daris. Well, tails and fins notwithstanding. But still.

  He looked down at his own yellow and white tail, slithering it back and forth like the side-to-side movements of a balat, and wondered how it would look hauyne blue. How it would feel. How he would feel, being transformed into an imo and by his grandmother’s missing teeth, they could actually do that? Change his genetic structure so completely as to alter his entire physical appearance? All Jafo knew about genetics was this color tail plus that color tail equals these possible combinations, and the same with skin and hair and eye color. These things were taught by the educators of childhood, but that was all when a merman’s sperm met a merwoman’s egg, not manipulation after the fact.

  He supposed it was just as possible as a dari shimmering into existence in the submerged entry to their ancient city. A dari with legs. Whom Daria had called Grandfather. What even?

  If the Tale of Origin as inscribed upon the wall of the kerajo’s sacred palace was true, it was these very same daris, Nino and his peers, who had literally created both mers and merans with their own science. Artifacts such as the tidakam, and structures which used to be above water whose ruins now dotted the entirety of Mera’s oceans attested to the daris’ superiority in many ways. But the very notion of altering an existing mer so completely flummoxed young Jafo.

  He had never studied religion, nor any of the old ways. Apart from his extensive readings of etchings and drawings out of curiosity, and because of his impending apprenticeship, he’d had nothing to do with the more esoteric side of life until he’d darted into Daria’s sphere.

  If he chose to become Daria’s Protector, then it essentially meant leaving everything behind. His sinpod. His abode. And what of his plans for becoming a scribe? The apprenticeship with Wujio? He had heard that imos never took wives and indeed kept themselves pure and chaste for the daris. What did that mean, that he’d die with his wano intact? Now there was a depressing thought. But perhaps imos lost those urges? That was an equally depressing thought.

  Jafo rounded the front left corner of the pintu for about the hundredth time and decided that perhaps a look at the night sky would help bring his thoughts to order. Also from atop the roof he might very well be able to see Ajibo and Pana and at least set his mind at ease as to their whereabouts. The last thing he needed on top of materializing daris and a five-year old merling with a magical pink tidakam was for her father to go missing and leave him completely alone caring for her. He didn’t know how to raise a child. Further still how to raise a prophesied one.

  When had his life become this implausible?

  Quietly he stole through a small hole, a missing piece of the south-facing wall now lying at an odd and half-buried angle in the sands below, and slowly swam up to the roof.

  His head unexpectedly popped out of the water.

  Jafo jerked back under the surface and took several deep breaths to satisfy himself that he wasn’t drowning in the air. Had he misjudged the distance from roof to surface that badly? There was no way he could have done so; he’d been here so many times he would know exactly how high to go and how low to stay with his eyes closed! Then why had his head gone above in spite of him floating waist-height alongside the rooftop?

  Jafo looked up and frowned. He was so near the surface that he could see the rain making patterns on it. It was too close. Why? How? He let himself rise just enough that his eyes broke the surface. The sky was dark with clouds but the rain was not pelting
as it sometimes did. It was softer, more gentle. There would be no stargazing or Bula sighting this night, but—

  He held his breath, raised his head completely out of the water and stared. For there, jutting above the surface as it never had before was the sculpted statue of a four-legged beast with hair that covered its head and face. The pintu’s ceiling was flat, save for a series of six square pedestals that became smaller and smaller as they rose one atop the other over its very center. And that was where the statue was located. Always, since the very first time he’d explored the pintu in its entirety, the tip of the statue’s head had rested three inches from the surface.

  Now the entire statue was above, including about a inch of the first pedestal block upon which it was perched!

  Staring until at last his burning lungs forced him beneath again, he heaved several large breaths of water but not because he was starved for it…it was because what he’d just seen made no sense. How had the waters receded some six feet since his last visit around a month earlier?

  Then it hit him: the prophecy. “And when the portents are seen the waters shall recede. The waters shall return to the machine and the land shall come again. The merans shall know mer, and the mers shall know meran.” He swallowed hard. “It will be the beginning of end and the end of beginning.”

  Jafo raised himself again so that his eyes were above the surface, and stared at the statue of a beast which one etching had called a sikuci. The child with hair of fire had come. The waters were receding. And a dari was trying to recruit him into imohood. His heartbeat fluttered and seemed to stop entirely as the realization washed over him like a north-frozen current.

  It was true. It was all true.

  * * *

  Sirena had been expecting, at the very least, to be raped and then dumped at the side of the road and left to die. Instead, the end of their long journey had brought them into the middle hours of day without any further physical contact after having been manhandled and tied up. The sun was well above and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. She was soaked and miserable and her wrists and ankles were chafed from the rough rope used to bind them. Mateo had, against all odds, fallen asleep. At least, she hoped he was merely sleeping rather than unconscious or worse.

  Rough hands hauled her from Gacia’s back and tossed her to the muddy ground like so much sampat. They were more careful with Mateo and that frightened Sirena, for perhaps it meant they knew full well what the child was that a Lunan now held cradled in his arms. Struggling to her feet and stifling a groan over the mud now caking her legs and zuki and other places she didn’t care to think about, she opened her mouth to ask what they were going to do with her and Mateo, but didn’t get the chance to speak.

  “I’ve never seen an ima before. I didn’t know they existed.”

  Her eyes turned toward the Lunan who had spoken. He was relatively dry and yet she saw no shelters anywhere near them. He approached and leaned down so their eyes were level. At only five feet in height Sirena was small even for a woman, but this man towered over her, and she guessed him to be at least six-and-a-half feet tall. Well-muscled and smelling like he’d not bathed in over a week, the hard glint behind dark brown irises made her silently cry out for Aea’s help.

  But Aea didn’t answer – as usual – and Sirena was left certain that this Lunan would soon try to stimulate her. And that if she didn’t become so, he would take her anyway. The thought made her want to break down and cry, and maybe even beg for mercy, but she composed herself the best she could, holding her chin high.

  “You would make a welcome addition to my bed,” the Lunan stated like that was an option he was considering. His hand cupped her cheek in a surprisingly gentle manner.

  She recoiled from his touch. “It is forbidden to lay hands upon an ima!” she spat as she took a couple of steps back.

  “Only if you follow Code,” he retorted, lazily shrugging a shoulder and grinning beneath the mask. “Which we don’t. Right, komros?”

  Nods and murmurs of assent were their responses.

  “Lucky for you we have somewhere else to be.” This man, whom Sirena pegged as the leader simply by observing how the other seven men looked to him as he spoke, turned away from her to address her captors. “Where did you find them?”

  The one Sirena recognized as the man who’d carried Mateo to the lemdi’s back stepped forward. “As were your instructions, Vago, we moved to the south in an attempt to determine from whence the captive originated.”

  Captive? Sirena listened intently. Could they have Omaro? Ghano? If so, the singular use of the word meant they had only one of the two, which probably didn’t mean good things for the other. At least now she knew the Lunan leader’s name. Not that this helped their situation any. And really, she didn’t know if this captive was Omaro or Ghano, or some other poor soul fallen victim to Lunan deviousness.

  “Using the lemdi as bait as you desired, we drew the child and the ima out from a nearby cave. I left Dandino behind to search it.”

  Vago turned toward Mateo, still in one of the man’s arms, and considered him for a moment. “Excellent work, Yanko.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps this is his meranling, then. But if so, why take him away? There’s nothing special about him.”

  Sirena frowned. Nothing special? What, did Lunan see copper-redheaded children every day?

  “I know one way to find out.” Vago snapped his fingers at the Lunan holding Mateo, and then a second time at Yanko. “Take them to the chamber and see that they are unable to escape. Seal them in if you have to. We’ll be gone so long they’d be dead by the time we return anyway.”

  “I thought you wanted to keep that baruo around for a while.”

  “That was when I thought he had something special.” Vago’s eyes darted to Sirena, who lowered hers so as not to meet his gaze. “Now, if he’s been neraking an ima, then that’s pretty special, but it will do us no service and we have a transaction to complete many miles distant.” He nodded behind where Sirena stood. “Go. Upon your return we will depart.”

  Yanko cut through the ropes binding Sirena’s ankles so she could walk. She and Mateo were then taken to the tip of the small bluff that had been at her back. She was guided about halfway along the downslope to a valley with a small grove of trees in the middle of it. But rather than going further into the valley, Yanko pivoted her, putting her face-to-face with something she wouldn’t have known was there had it not been for this vantage point: the entrance to a cave barely tall or wide enough for her to pass through unmolested.

  Whoever their prisoner was, Sirena and Mateo were about to find out. If indeed Yanko and his komro sealed them in, however, curiosity would soon give way to dehydration, hunger and death. She stumbled but managed to stay to her feet as hopelessness seeped into her very bones. The further they went down the long passageway, the chillier it became and Sirena wondered how fitting it was for an ima to be buried alive in a place such as this.

  And how sad it was for all of Mera that Mateo would be, too.

  Chapter Three

  “Jafo?”

  “Yes, Daria, I am here.” He swam quickly from the front door of the pintu back to the bed upon which Daria reclined. “Are you well?”

  “I think so,” she said, sitting up and placing the tidakam down on the stone floor. Her eyes scanned the pintu. He knew what she was looking for; for the past six hours he’d been looking for the same mers.

  Her eyes met his but she didn’t ask the question, as though simply afraid to. He moved to seat himself next to her. She climbed into his lap. “I have hunger, Protector.”

  Protector. As far as Daria was concerned, that’s who Jafo was. But could he allow a five-year old to dictate his entire future like that? On a whim? Maybe she just liked him because he’d gotten her away from the raksi though truth be told, Talo and Nuelo had done more to that end than he...and lost their lives as a result.

  Or maybe it was a merling crush. That’d happened with a girl in the next
set of caves from where Jafo had grown up. Little Kira, from the age of four, had followed him around like a lost child until she was six and her sinpod moved to another derah for her father’s work. He, as well as everyone else in the vicinity, had heard the tantrums she’d thrown when her parents had told her of the impending move. And then she’d left her home, swimming away to his, begging him to keep her hidden so they’d never find her.

  Six-year old merlings didn’t always operate on a lot of logic. In due course Jafo’s mother had discovered Kira and taken her back to her parents, but the entire incident had caused some embarrassment for Jafo and he’d endured endless teasing from Jama about ‘younger women’ seeming to be his thing.

  Oh, for the love of the daris…Jama. She was another thing altogether. He worried about her and all this sneaking around she was doing. Had he not been so preoccupied with Daria, he would have swum her straight home and taken his elder brother role seriously…if for no other reason than to ensure her safety. If he became Daria’s Protector, he wouldn’t be there anymore to do things like that. You already haven’t done things like that…for you do not know even now whether Jama is safe, because you chose Daria over her.

  He really hated it when his conscience pointed out his failings, which it did frequently. But it was right. He held Daria close as he realized that in essence, he already had made his decision in precisely the manner his conscience had declared. He had chosen Daria over his own sinpod.

  That feeling of failure returned ten-fold. What if Jama hadn’t made it home safely? Jafo wouldn’t know unless he went home to find out. And that cemented his next step. Whatever did or did not occur where Pana and Ajibo were concerned, Jafo had to go home. He had to speak with his parents about this huge decision and more than that, wanted to see Jama with his own eyes to know she was safe.