I raced Merrick out of the palace, beating him, for once. I waved at Zale as we left the safety of the Palace, swimming quickly. Once we were out of sight, I stopped. “I took a current here, Merrick, but do you want to find a sailfish to take us back?” Sailfish were huge, and the fastest swimmers in the ocean. Riding one was always a fun time.
We caught a slow current, looking for a sailfish. When he finally spotted one, we swam out of the current, calling to it. We both grabbed the dorsal fin tightly, with both hands. The sailfish bucked at my touch and I let my tail melt into his. As the bubbles from the swim ran past us, I watched a school of colorful Angel Fish try to keep up with us. They even had a 400 meter head start and we completely left them in the bubbles.
We spun to a stop a few yards from my rock. As the sailfish sped away before some fishermen could catch him, Merrick and I stared up at the air above us. The full moon was fractured by the water, the waves making little ripples on the greenish surface that the moon had underwater. Merrick was holding the golden Trident pendant that he wore around his neck. It was a gift from his mother the day that she had died.
I didn’t want to go through the skin of the water, into the air. It always hurt when my gills closed up and my airways opened. It was one of the things that I was scared of, including the door at the end of the South Wing and cruise liners putting down anchors.
Anchors were truly frightening. They ripped up the coral beds, making deep grooves in the ground that couldn’t be repaired. They were huge, heavy, and very destructive. I could feel my heart start pounding at the very thought of them.
Merrick glanced over at me, a mischievous smile on his face. “What if I didn’t go back to the Palace? I’ll stay here, and wait for that boy to show up. It must be more exciting out here than being stuck inside all day.”
I sighed at the grin that he gave me. It was big and cheesy and it almost always made me cave. I only gave him half of what he wanted this time. “You can stay until the sun goes up. Then you need to go back to the palace. Tell His Grace that you stopped for something.”
He spun a summersault in the water, his iridescent green fin shining. I held onto his hand for support before we started to go into the air.
Drowning in air. That’s the only way to describe this awful sensation. I couldn’t breathe while my gills agonizingly, slowly closed up. Water that I had previously been breathing spewed out of my mouth, burning through my nose. I had a sharp pain in my lungs as they begin working again.
Suddenly, it was over. I took in a huge breath, gasping and coughing out the last of the seawater. Merrick and I drug ourselves up onto the rock thankful that it was over. A group of college kids were out on their boat and one of them spotted me. Before he could call to his friends, I sung the song and he turned back to whatever they were working on. They left soon after, without another glance in our direction, so I stopped singing for the night.
We stayed up for a little while longer, talking about things that I had seen on my watches. I fell asleep in the middle of telling him a story about a man who caught a sting ray on his fishing pole. It was actually a funny story, but I didn't think that he heard those last mumbled lines.
The gold and pink of the sunrise woke me just in time to let Merrick go on his way. “And don’t hang around. I have enough to worry about without having to make sure that the Humans don’t remember you.”
Just before he dived down into the water, he muttered, “Good Morning to you too.”
I sang the rest of the day, my hair drying in the wind and my comb losing the poison. I plucked the old spines off the comb handle and replaced them with new spines from an urchin on my rock. As I ran it through my hair, feeling the awakening effects of fresh poison, I spotted him.
Rickie was on the beach, wearing the same orange trunks that he had been wearing the first time. He was running something along his board, stopping to talk to a pair of girls wearing bikinis. I sang louder to make sure that nobody but he saw me. I waved my hand in the air until Rickie finally looked up and saw me.
He yelled something to a man building a castle of sand with a little girl, and when the man nodded, Rickie sprinted down the beach toward the waves. He paddled ferociously toward me, splashing everywhere. I rolled my eyes; could he be more attention getting? I slid off the rock, toward him. It didn’t matter if people saw me now. I looked like any other human girl from the waist down.
He reached the rock, lying out on his surfboard. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be back. It’s been almost four days since I last saw you. I didn’t give up though. I’ve been here every day.”
I folded my arms on his board, resting my chin on them. He was right in saying that it had probably been four days. The journey to the Palace is very long, even when you’re riding a sailfish. “You didn’t speak to anybody about me, right?”
He shook his head. “My dad asked me what was wrong, but I lied and told him that I had had a hard day at school. Nerin?”
“Yes?”
He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Why did you come back if you’re at such a risk of being seen here? Why would you come back?”
“Mostly because it is my job to be here.”
“I remember now. You were going to tell me what you are, but you started acting weird and left. After threatening me, I might add.” He looked at me sternly, expecting an answer this time.
This was as good a time as any to get him to follow me. I stared into the eyes that I now knew to be blue, watching him stare into the black depths of my eyes as I said softly. “All in good time.” I tried to put on my most alluring voice, trying to seem mysterious and mystical. “Follow me, and you’ll find out all about us. Come with me, and you’ll see the Mer.”
He seemed to be in a trance, completely oblivious to everyone but me. I had him by a hand now, pulling him farther and farther into the water. He was about to slide off the board when he said, “I can’t breathe down there. I’m Human.”
I kept my voice to a soft purr. “Keep your hand in mine, and you won’t drown.” I entwined my fingers into his. “As long as you’re with me, you’re completely safe.”
He looked dubious, but stayed with me as I went into the water completely. He pushed off the board, seeming frightened as we went further into the water. The pain of going into the water wasn’t nearly as bad as going into air, so I withstood it. He apparently felt no pain, since I was letting him breathe. I smiled while he freaked out. After a while of him frantically looking around, I smiled. “See? You’re perfectly safe. Try talking.”
When he did, bubbles came, while when I spoke, none did. “I-I-I can breathe. Underwater. I’m breathing underwater!”
He gave me a huge triumphant smile. I rolled my eyes at him. “You know, that’s not much of an accomplishment, since I’ve been doing it all my life.”
“How do you do it? You must be helping me to breathe somehow.”
I turned to the side, showing him the gills that were now prominent on my neck. “I breathe like a fish, but it’s magic that you can breathe.” He started to loosen his grip on my hand, but I held tight. “If you let go of me, even for a second, you will drown. That is, if the pressure from the water doesn’t kill you first.”
He looked frightened, so I laid it on thick with my calming voice. “Come. You’re completely safe. Let’s catch a current before somebody figures out that you’re gone.”
I pulled him out farther, until I spotted the snake of lighter water that signaled the current. I tried pulling him toward it, but he protested. “Nerin, I can’t go in there. It’s the riptide. It’ll pull us out so far that we can’t get back.”
“That’s the idea. Besides, you’re underwater, so it doesn’t feel as strong as if you’re swimming half in the air. If you ever want to leave the palace, you can take another current back.”
That seemed to lull him, so I floated by the current, waiting for the right time to swim in. It slowed for a fraction of a second and that was where I strike. Once we were in the center of the current, id didn’t feel as though we were being pulled along as well. The only way I could tell that we were moving was the fact that I could see schools of fish and sharks being left in our bubbles.
As we went deeper into the water, Rickie could no longer see. I had to reassure him that he was perfectly safe, but he still looked stressed. I let him sleep while we took the long trip, using my freshly toxic comb to stay awake. I tried to get him to eat some sugar seaweed, but he refused with a disgusted look on his face
Slowly, ever so slowly, I watched as the pupils in his eyes got bigger, first swallowing up the blue, then taking all the white until his eyes were completely black, like mine. He must have thought that his eyes were just adjusting to the complete darkness, because he didn’t look worried, just amazed. He peered out of the current to catch glimpses of colorful fish, coral gardens, and families of Mer.
When I saw the Palace coming up, I tensed, swimming out of the bend in the current just in time. Rickie gave me a confused look, saying, “I thought that you were taking me to the Palace.”
I pulled him along toward the fake mountain. “Everything isn’t as it seems.”
I do have a few Nitpicks though.
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