Young Writers Society

Cove sighed to himself, staring at his room’s ceiling. Unlike the throne room’s ceiling, the ceiling was black stone. Bubbles of air danced along the rough rock, unable to rise to the surface. The ceiling was completely undecorated asides from that.

He twisted his hair in his small hands, watching it dance in the current.

He liked the dark. Even if he couldn’t see much, he liked that he could be left with his own thoughts.

He looked at his tunnel door. His nerves tugged at him. Tomorrow he would be fifteen. Tomorrow he’d be seeing the surface. That terrified him. He twisted out of his bed, kicking up sheets of sand below him. He swam up to the ceiling, stretching his tail fin.

He should go to his altar. It would probably ease his nerves, he reasoned. He thought about the statue at the centre of it. He looked down at his bed. Debating whether or not to go to the statue, he twisted his face into a snarl. It was mainly directed at himself. Why couldn’t he make up his mind? He should probably just go to it. It’d ease his mind.

He darted to the sea floor, holding his breaths so that bubbles didn’t fly to the surface. He crawled through the tunnel with his hands, sometimes flipping his tail to get through faster. He hoped his sisters wouldn’t hear him. He felt painfully secretive to be doing this, but it was something that was outlawed.

Even if it was illegal, it gave him a lot of closure on subjects he never would’ve thought cleared.

He reached the end of the tunnel, to the large room where he got ready for tomorrow morning. He swam louder now, but was careful not to wake any of the guards. He finally reached the courtroom. In the moonlight, he careful noticed that there weren’t any guards around. He sighed at himself, thankful that nobody was around. Still, he swam quietly so as not to disturb the nightlife of the reefs. It would be conspicuous for the other fish around the reef to see royalty creeping through there.

Calmed down as soon as he slid through the massive stone spires that held up the palace. He swam quickly out into the open sea, just to throw other people off of his track. Then, he turned back around and found his way to the sea cliffs. He looked against the black, corral-covered stone for a few seconds until he saw yet another tunnel. He darted into it, and saw an intersection of two tunnels. He chose the one that went upwards, and swam for a long bit. He always kept heading upwards and turning right. Soon, he hit an empty expanse. He threw his head up out of the water, feeling truly fresh air.

He didn’t feel like this was the surface, so it didn’t contain the same thrill he’d be feeling tomorrow. If anything, being above the water here was unpleasant. He jumped over a sandbar and went back into the tunnel system. Now, the black volcanic rocks were jagged and sharp. He slowed down, making sure that he didn’t hit any rock. He breathed loudly, feeling the walls close in on him. His breathing got more and more shallow until he reached another cave. This time, it didn’t have a patch of breathing air and was nearly pitch black. The only thing that separated this cave from the others was that it was full of moonlight. A skylight above him shone bright moonlight in.

Directly in front of him was a tall marble statue. Kelp grew on its broad shoulders. Its tail split in two, and instead of fins, it had elongated hands. He tapped them with his webbed fingers, peeling off a thick layer of green algae. He curled his lip and got to work. He rubbed the tall statue clean of algae, and pulled kelp off of it. He threw it all up onto the surface, careful that his head never broke water. That was for tomorrow.

Oh Poseidon, Tomorrow was going to be stressful.

He could hear the muffled cries of animals on the surface, so he lay low for a while. He meticulously made sure that the algae was out of even the crack in the statue’s ears. When he was mostly, done, he sat down on the sea floor in front of the statue. Its short hair shone in the moonlight. Its eyes, which had inlaid blue sapphires, glowed.

“Please hear my prayers, ancestors,” he whispered. He whipped his head around, in case anyone had heard him. Nobody was around. “Please give me strength tomorrow. Ease my nerves. I have nothing to offer you,” he said, like he was reciting a prayer he was never taught. “For if I did offer you something, I’d be executed. So all I can do is keep you clean for future tides to come. Please protect me if that were to ever happen.”

He stared the statue in the eyes, for once unsure of what it was. Was it even a mermaid? He shook his head. “I’m sorry for thinking such thoughts. You have watched over me and kept me safe since the day I met you.” He looked at himself in the sapphires’ reflections. “Tomorrow, my life will change in so many ways. I’m unsure if it’ll happen just on prayers to my mother’s Gods. So I ask you. Please make my life change tomorrow. Anything, dear statue. I’ll be forever in your debt if you do.”

He looked down at his clasped hands, then pulled them away from each other. He kissed the statue’s four hands, something that his grandmother said people did in the old days. Kissing an altar’s hands was something she said was associated with witchcraft, but to him it seemed like a respectful thing to do.

He should probably bring it offerings. Maybe tomorrow’s regalia. Maybe the statue would appreciate it. After all, it wore a shirt, so it must be a female.

He made eye contact with the statue one more time. “Thank you for listening to my prayers.” He threw a quick smile at it, thankful that he at least had something to talk to. He wanted to thank his grandmother for telling him about altars, but he was afraid it would get him executed. His father probably wouldn’t pardon him, even if Cove was his child.

Before leaving the cave, he scooped the kelp that was on his fingers and threw it out of the skylight and onto the surface. He quickly washed the slime off of his fingers by dipping them back into the water. He then went on the journey to leave the cave system.

He stopped at the cave with the sandbar when he heard someone else swimming through the caves. He immediately went back behind the sandbar and hid in a cave with a dead end. Why would someone be in here? It was the middle of the night!

His mind was only set at ease a small bit when he saw a pair of moray eels slithering their way through the tunnels. He pressed himself against the wall as he saw them float upwards. He heard another splash behind them. Then, he saw the slender shape of a mermaid passing through in front of him. He bit his lip, terrified that someone had followed him.

The mermaid didn’t even look his direction, but instead followed the morays upward. He sighed, but pressed himself against the black tunnel for a few moments just to be sure the mermaid wouldn’t find him

Then, he burst out of the tunnels. He jumped over the sandbar and kept on going downwards, turning left every time. He turned to harshly one on his way down and snagged his hair on a jagged edge. He tore it from his head, biting back a sting of pain. He went to far downwards and ended up scraping his shirt on the rock. He heard a loud ripping sound. Shocked, he floated there for a few seconds, staring at the translucent fabric. Then, he quickly snatched it form the tooth of stone and kept on fleeing.

Finally, he was out of the tunnels. He had to catch his breath a little bit closer to the palace. As his gills slowly rose up and down with each breath, he thought about that other mermaid. She was definitely a girl. Did she know about the statue or was she looking for Cove?

He bit his lip, sinking down to the sea floor. He made sure that there weren’t any flounders hiding in the sand before sitting down. Was she a witch or did she just have an altar in that cave system, too? Cove didn’t get a good enough look at her to see what she was wearing. He swore under his breath, flattening his pointed ears, before rising up from the sea floor and swimming back towards the palace.

As he carefully waded through the tunnel to his room, he made sure that he held his breath. Bubbles ended up being louder in the tunnels for some reason, and he didn’t want to explain why he was still up.

Somehow, even with the encounter with the other mermaid, his mind was at ease. He felt like the statue was watching over him, even with its four hands. He found his way into his room and lay down on his bed. He covered his lower body with a layer of sand to hold him down. Then, he shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind.

In a few minutes, the thoughts that he were having were so tired and fuzzy, that they ended up just fading from his mind altogether. Soon, he was asleep.