Female Fantasy
My eyes devour Ryke, ripping apart each tendril and patching him back together.
His stature: shoulders back, neck long, head raised.
The dip of his lips, his straining Adam’s apple.
Strong, defined muscles.
Dark, lost eyes.
Dominance and confidence radiating from every inch of his body, from the top of his head to the tip of his tail.
Royal.
“So, you are no simple mer,” I state, my eyes narrowing.
He sucks in his cheeks. “It would appear not.”
“You are a prince.”
“So they tell me.”
Beneath our bubble in the sky—the sea—applause breaks out among the spectators in the amphitheater, and the performers bow.
Instead of rose petals, the mer throw pieces of algae and coral in appreciation.
Thick braided ropes pull the set pieces from the stage, and the audience disperses, swimming in all different directions.
Ryke moves his body slightly in front of me, a show of protection.
Even though he is meant to be in hiding himself.
I take a deep breath.
“Start at the beginning, my prince.”
He turns back to me and smiles, the corners of his mouth twisting as my stomach knots.
“As you wish, princess.”
“I prefer minnow.”
That smile stretches into a grin wider than the four corners of the Earth.
“Our tale begins as most do: with the creation of man. The Great Furnace carved its clay and let the fire burn, giving form to man, maecena, and mer, all in the same breath. Then he carved into thirds. The maecenas would rule a star in the sky, hidden from sight by a thick layer of cloud. Men would prosper in the in-between, dwelling on land where all things grow, good and bad. They would harvest crops and dig their heels into the earth. And the mer would rule a realm beneath the ocean floor, concealed by the sandy false bottom. A valley of seaweed, a haven of salt water. Our bodies evolved to allow us to survive in our separate terrains.”
“Evolved?” I dare to ask. “So your tail is not, then, a product of this magic you speak of?”
“No, my minnow. Man, mer, and maecena share certain attributes. We all begin life through our lungs, chant our prayers through hopeful lips, and hold our loved ones in our arms. But man was born with formidable legs to walk upon the Earth’s surface.
The mer were given great tails with which to navigate the tides.
And the maecenas? Well, they sprouted white eagle wings so they could soar into the atmosphere and look upon the planets.
Now, the Furnace made us so, forged these worlds in an attempt to keep us separate but powerful.
And for good reason. But of course, over the millennia, curiosity got the best of a few wayward travelers.
Mer met man. Man met maecena. And a few mated, giving the children of certain—but not all—bloodlines the ability to shift, as I can. ”
All the blood rushes from my brain to the organ in my chest.
My dream.
The sacred wish I dared not whisper aloud.
To be mer. And have the chance to swim away from my reality to a utopia below.
Could it be?
A lump forms in my throat.
“So there are certain humans who have the ability to grow a tail or sprout wings?”
Ryke grimaces. “Correct. But most elders who bear that secret have joined the underworld without passing on their knowledge. At this time, the majority of humans who do have mer or maecena in their ancestry have such small amounts that they lack the ability to shift. The ones who do have the ability might not be aware of it, so that power sits dormant inside of them. There is no way of knowing, of sensing who has the gift.”
What a waste. Rage fuels me as I think of those missed opportunities.
“How tragic,” I whimper.
Ryke reaches out for me, then pauses. My air bubble is blocking him out, I realize.
“Perhaps in some ways,” he says. “But not in others. For we soon realized that there was a reason the Great Furnace left our kind on different planes. A motive for our dissociation. When men, mer, and maecenas breed, there is a cost. A deadly one.”
“Deadly,” I repeat. “Deadly how?”
Ryke blows out a tight breath. It’s clear to me now that he is nervous.
How odd to see this great man so visibly uncomfortable. Brought down by something as mundane as apprehension.
“During the act,” he says, gesturing vaguely, “a subset of mer discovered that if one party takes life by way of creating it, the entirety of the slain creature’s energy transfers to the surviving partner.
For when two come together to form one body, for fleeting seconds, they combine souls, energies.
If one light is snuffed out, the other grows brighter, stronger, more powerful. It is a dark magic.”
My mind races, attempting to understand the subtext beneath his cryptic message.
“Are you telling me that if a mer murders a man during a coupling, they have the ability to become some sort of super mer?”
He gulps. “In not so many words, yes.”
“Why would anyone ever agree to that?” The words burst out of me.
“So many questions,” Ryke whispers. “Different reasons. To bless their line by siring a child with the ability to shift. For love. And of course, it can happen by force. When ancient humans began to catch on, they avoided the waters, refusing to leave their ships. But mer are able to manipulate sound waves in the same way that maecenas can fiddle with air currents. There are certain frequencies we can hit that humans are not used to hearing. Sounds we can make. Songs so seductive to humans that they know not what they are doing until they are already dead.”
My heart rattles against my ribs. I think back to the stories I grew up hearing. Tales of missing townspeople. Warnings to avoid the creek cottage. The old wives’ tale of the sailor who yearned for his missing maiden so much that he drowned in that love. Is all the folklore true, then?
Have all my nightmares come to walk in the light?
“And these mer are the sirens? Those who use their song to drink the life force from their human prey like fine wine?”
“Yes.” Ryke’s eyes grow dark, his voice dangerous.
“After my family outlawed such practices, preferring to mate with humans in peace, a small group of transgressors banded together and developed a plot to continue the ritual in secret. Eventually, their numbers grew, and their magic became so strong that they staged a coup. They slaughtered my mother and my father. I can still see my sister’s child limp in my arms. I barely escaped and went into hiding in the only place I knew where only those with the ability to shift could find me. ”
“On land,” I breathe. “At the creek cottage.”
“Hidden in plain sight,” he confirms. “Now the sirens rule beautiful Atlantia, this utopia you see around you, with fear and malice. They recruit innocents and force them to sing. So bigoted that they routinely hunt down mer with the ability to shift, with human blood in their lineage, and deliver the killing blow. My land has become segregated, stagnant. We are under a dictatorship. But I have long been plotting my vengeance with my brethren hidden above.”
I look at this man—no, this mer—who carries the weight of the underwater world on his shoulders. And I wonder why he would waste his breath on a commoner like me.
“And are you ready?” I ask instead. “To fight?”
His lips curl. “No, little minnow. Not yet.”
“Then why are we down here?” It takes everything in me to stifle a scream. “Aren’t you risking your life and the lives of those in the resistance? The future of Atlantia?”
Ryke sighs long and hard and turns to face me fully.
“This is where you come in, Merriah.” My name.
He has called me by my given name. “When I escaped to shore, I was able to bring along something very valuable. An artifact that has been in my family since the first cinders of creation. An ancient conch rumored to have once belonged to the first mer king, Hippios. My greatest ancestor. When someone blows the conch, an alarm of sorts sounds—the primeval war cry of our people, calling all mer to battle. By blowing into that which you called a horn, my minnow, you accomplished three things. You instructed my troops to ready themselves for a fight. You alerted the sirens to my location. And you instilled hope in the hearts of Atlantians. You are both a hero and a curse. Though of course I cannot blame you. The conch creates a whistle of the highest frequency, one barely discernible to the human ear—which is why, I presume, you were unable to hear it.”
A shiver runs down my spine.
I can barely murmur the truth.
“But I did hear it,” I confess. “And what’s more, the instrument called out to me. It was as if we were shackled to each other by the bonds of fate.”
My entire body shakes as I ask my next question. “Why did the conch sing to me, Ryke?”
I watch as he clenches his fists, his knuckles turning white.
Fighting, it occurs to me.
Fighting the urge to burst through my air bubble.
“That, little minnow, is your very best question yet.”