The Little Mermaids
Rinka
The second mermaid surfaced nearer to Drystan. They were young in appearance—the same as teenaged humans or orcs—with bigger, rounder eyes than any of the peoples of the land. One was fair-skinned and blonde where the other had dark brown skin and black hair, but there was a similarity between them, both in their full figures and their attire, which appeared to be made from an iridescent material similar to the scales of their fish tails.
“You’re getting nowhere fast,” said the darker-haired girl, and both girls started giggling again.
“Our mother said we shouldn’t talk to humans, but you’re not human, are you?” said the other girl.
“No, we’re not. Are you mermaids?” asked Rinka.
The girls laughed and then said in unison, “Obviously.”
Rinka had seen a picture show with a mermaid, but she was certain they had just used an elf in a costume. There were rumors that ships encountered them from time to time, but there were rumors about all kinds of things that almost certainly weren’t real: kraken and giant squids and creatures with mouths so big they formed whirlpools.
Unless…
“Oh Gods, they’re all real,” said Rinka.
“What?” asked Drystan.
“They’re all real. All the creatures. The kraken, the sirens, all of it.”
“The sirens are mean,” said the girl with dark hair. “They took Cordy’s seahorse.”
Cordy, the blonde one, looked sadly into the water. “He was my pet, and his name was Randy. I’m Cordelia, by the way, but you can call me Cordy. And this is my sister Maisie, but you can call her Em.”
“No, they can’t.”
“Yes, they can!”
The girls lunged for each other. Rinka shot Drystan a helpless look.
“Hey!” he shouted. “No fighting.”
Rinka waited for the girls to laugh at him, but they didn’t. They stopped in their tracks, somehow impressed by his authority. Cordy stuck her tongue out at Em, but she retreated back to a safe distance.
“You’re going out to sea, you know,” said Em. “This is a strange boat you have. It doesn’t seem like it’s very good.”
“It’s the best we could do,” said Drystan, a hint of actual hurt crossing his face.
Kids. Their honesty could be brutal.
“Say,” said Rinka, seeing an opportunity. “Could you help us? I’ll bet you can swim way better than we can row.”
“Of course we could,” said Cordy. “But it’s gonna cost ya.”
“Cordy, don’t be mean. They seem nice, and they might be a little stupid.”
“I’m not being mean. You’re being mean. They can hear us, you know.”
“I didn’t say anything mean. I just called them stupid, and I mean, look at them—”
“Girls!” Rinka tried the authoritative voice Drystan had used, and to her surprise, it got their attention. “We need to get back to land, but we can’t climb the cliffs. Do you know a place we could go? Could you help us get there?”
“Oh, you want the river,” said Em. “There used to be land people there, but they all left on account of the pirates.”
Rinka looked at Drystan. She didn’t want to encounter the pirates again, but at this point, they had to take their chances. If they couldn’t find a way back onto the shore, they wouldn’t make it.
“Yes, the river,” she said. “Can you take us there?”
“One story each,” said Cordy. “That’s the price. We’ll take you to the river, but you have to tell us one story each about being on the land. And it better be a good story, too. Is that nice enough for ya, Em?”
Em nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a fair price.”
Drystan smiled at Rinka. “I think we can manage that,” he said. “I think my friend Rinka here would like to hear a story too.”
“Rinka? What kind of name is that?” asked Cordy.
“It’s an orc name,” said Rinka.
“An orc!” shouted Em. “I’ve never seen a real orc before. Where are your fangs? We saw a human boy with his dad once, and he said orcs have vicious fangs.”
Rinka opened her mouth a little, happy to oblige.
“Cool! Look, Cordy, fangs!”
The girls swam over closer to get a better look. “Rinka, tell us your story,” said Em. She grabbed onto the side of the boat and began to kick her tail.
“Hold on!” said Cordy. “I’m coming.”
Cordy swam under the boat—stopping to pull a silly face through the bottom at Rinka—and then grabbed onto the opposite side and started kicking.
The boat rocketed into motion once more. Their tails were incredibly effective: they were moving at least twice as fast as they had before, and the current seemed to have little impact.
Rinka searched through her memories for a story that would be interesting to girls who had spent their lives underwater.
“Have you heard of the city of Arcas Dyrne?” she asked them.
“Yes,” said Cordy automatically.
“No, you haven’t,” said Em.
“Yes, I have!”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Do you want to hear the story or not?” asked Rinka.
“I do!” said Em. “We don’t know what Arkish Deer is though.”
“Arcas Dyrne,” said Rinka. “It’s the biggest city in Loegria.” She paused, and seeing no recognition, added: “The big island to the south of here.”
“Oh, the dragon island! You’re from the dragon island? Can you fly?” asked Em.
Rinka laughed. “No, I can’t fly. Only the king can fly, and his family, I guess.”
“Have you met them?” asked Em.
“The royal family? No,” said Rinka. “I can’t say that I have.”
“We know the king of the ocean. And his husband too,” said Cordy. “They’re really nice.”
Rinka was previously unaware that the ocean had a king, but she nodded politely and didn’t admit it.
“So Arcas Dyrne was built by the dwarves first. They built it underground, a great city beneath the surface. But when they allied with the elves, they allowed the elves to build upwards, and when the dwarves created the manufactories, the humans and orcs moved in too. And even some of the smaller folk, fairies and hobgoblins and pixies, left their homes to come live where the action is. So Arcas Dyrne is for everyone, all kinds of people living together.”
“It’s like that where we live too, only everyone we know can breathe underwater,” said Em.
“It sounds really great,” said Cordy. “Why did you leave?”
“It is pretty great, but I’m not the only person that thinks so. So many people want to live there that it’s really expensive. I lived with my human friend named Alison in a tiny flat on the seventh floor of a building that needed a lot of work, and even then, we could barely afford it. And once she left, I couldn’t afford it at all. But she’s made a home for us in Wilderise—the land just over there. That’s where I’m going.”
“What’s the seventh floor?”
With Drystan’s help making models out of seawater, Rinka explained to the girls the concepts of floors, stairs, lifts, and a number of other ideas she had taken for granted but which seemed exotic and fascinating to the little mermaids.
Fascinating for a time, at least. By the time Rinka had finished explaining underground rail-wheelers to them, they had grown bored of Rinka’s admittedly shaky explanations of modern engineering.
“It’s your turn, Mister?”
“Drystan.”
“We’re almost there, Mister Drystan,” said Cordy. “Tell your story, quick.”
Rinka could see no change in the cliff-lined coast, but there was an area jutting deeper into the water near the horizon. The river must have been on the other side.
“Alright,” said Drystan. “I’ll tell you a story about the school where I worked—”
“No!” shouted Cordy.
“We hate school!” cried Em.
The girls had stopped kicking.
“You hate school?” asked Drystan. “I had no idea.”
He smirked. Rinka could see it—he had known he’d get this reaction. He was teasing them.
“Tell us a love story,” said Em. She looked between them, her big brown eyes flashing back and forth. “Are you two in love?”
Rinka looked wide-eyed at Drystan, who was also caught off guard by the question. “We’ve only just met,” she said.
“Oh. That’s too bad,” said Em. “Tell us a love story anyway,” she said to Drystan.
“All my love stories ended in heartbreak,” he said. He looked at Rinka.
He was being sincere.
“That makes two of us,” she said.
He smiled.
“Did you cry? Tell us a story where you cried,” said Cordy.
“Cordy! That’s so mean.”
“I’m not telling him to cry again. I just want to hear a sad one. Don’t you?”
Em reluctantly nodded. “I do want to hear a sad one,” she said.
“Okay,” said Drystan. “But we’ve got to get to shore before it’s dark. Can you listen and kick at the same time, like before?”
“Yes, sir!” said Em. She made a silly little salute and resumed, her sister not far behind.
“I was seventeen the first time I fell in love,” said Drystan. He looked at Rinka, and she wasn’t sure how to react. She wanted to listen, wanted to hear more about him, but she was worried, too, about what she might hear.
“Was she pretty?” asked Em.
“Beautiful,” he said. “To me, at least. I was wildly in love with her the way you can only be when you’re young, when you’re so excited that it’s finally happening for you that you don’t notice all the things that are wrong. When you’re blind to everything that isn’t exactly how you wanted it to be, how you pictured it your whole life. It was a deep, all-consuming love that almost drove me mad.”
Rinka flushed. She had never felt anything like that. There had been men, but it truly had been one disaster after another for her. Her own childhood sweetheart had been a young orc her mother had encouraged her to see who kept her from her friends and treated her more like a slave than a partner. She had never loved him, and although she’d felt the promise of it once or twice since, it had always ended in disappointment.
The girls were entranced. “How did you meet her?” asked Em.
“Did you get married?” asked Cordy.
“Almost,” said Drystan. “We were engaged. We met at a ball—she wasn’t the girl I was supposed to go for, but she was from a good family, and my mother wanted me to be happy, so she helped broker the engagement after we’d spent the season getting to know each other.”
“Why didn’t you get married?” asked Rinka before she could stop herself. The girls nodded at her. It was a good question.
Drystan sighed, looking out over the water. “I got so swept up in at all—I went from barely speaking to any girls other than my sister to engaged in a few short weeks. I didn’t notice how she felt. Or if I did, I wrote it off as nerves. Gods know I had plenty of them myself.”
“What was wrong? She didn’t like you?” asked Em.
“She did, but not because of who I was. She liked me because of what I had. Because my family was rich, and she liked beautiful things. It took me a while to see the difference. It was ultimately when I saw a pair of servants together—they were really, truly in love—that I realized she didn’t love me at all. And I didn’t love her, not the person she really was. I didn’t even know her.”
“What did you do? I thought you said it broke your heart, but it sounds like you broke hers,” asked Cordy.
“No,” said Drystan. “I broke my own heart. The love was real, and it was intense. But the person I loved didn’t exist. I told my mother I couldn’t marry her. She was furious, but she understood in the end. My father, on the other hand…”
“My father would skewer me if I did that,” said Cordy. “But what about the girl? What happened to her?”
“She was humiliated. Angry. She avoids me to this day. But she went on to marry well, and as far as I can tell from a distance, she’s happy. Happier than we would have been together.”
“That’s sweet,” said Em. “You’re holding out for your true love.”
“That’s stupid,” said Cordy. “You hurt that girl for no reason. What if she would have grown to love you?”
“I guess I’ll never know,” said Drystan. “But I don’t regret it. And I don’t believe in true love, but once I’d realized the woman I loved wasn’t real, I couldn’t stay with someone else. It wouldn’t have been fair to her either.”
Rinka had watched him closely during the entire exchange, and she could tell there was more to the story, something he wouldn’t say. Maybe it was because of the girls, or maybe it was something he didn’t want to admit to her, but there was something left unsaid.
The girls asked a few more questions but were disappointed with his responses as they finally rounded the cliff, bringing the river into view.
“Well, I’ve heard better stories, but we’re here,” said Cordy.
“You’re so mean, Cordy,” said Em. She turned to Drystan and Rinka. “I liked your stories. If we swam up the river, could we come visit you someday? Our mom doesn’t like for us to go too far inland, but I bet she’d let us if she could come too and meet you.”
“I’m not sure how far the river is from where I’m going to be, but I’ll come back one day,” promised Rinka.
“Look, Cordy, there’s a whale!” said Em.
Rinka leaned over the side of the boat to get a better look. In the distance, a dark shape broke the surface, sending a burst of water into the air.
“It’s Charlie. Can you make it the rest of the way on your own? We want to go see our friend,” said Cordy.
“I’m sure we can manage from here,” said Drystan. They were only a few hundred feet from the river delta now. The land to either side of it was relatively flat, gently sloping up to cliffs on one side and mountains on the other.
“Thank you for your help,” said Rinka. The girls were already beginning to swim away. “I’ll call on you when I make it back to the sea.”
The girls waved behind them, too interested in the whale to give a proper goodbye.
As they rowed towards the river, Rinka could see a few small wooden structures on the side nearer to the mountains, boarded up and long since abandoned. If pirates had been here before, there was no sign of them now.
The river was wide and slow, the current weaker and easier to traverse than the rocking ocean waves had been. As they approached the abandoned town, they saw the ruins of a bridge and a disused dirt road leading out of town uphill and into a forest.
“What do you think?” asked Rinka. “Up the river or into the woods?”
“I vote for the woods,” said Drystan. “I’ve had enough of the water for a while.”
Rinka agreed. The road must have led somewhere once. Chances were, it would still. And although she was ready to help Drystan with the boat in whatever way she could—perhaps there was some energy within her he could tap if nothing else—she didn’t want to end up in the same situation as the last night, his body so weak he couldn’t stay awake.
“Would you mind if I took a moment to rinse the salt from my skin and out of my clothes?” asked Rinka. They were still damp anyway, but at least the cool blue water of the river would get them a bit cleaner.
“I’ll do the same,” he said. He moved to the other side of the broken bridge out of view.
As she pulled the tangles from her red hair loose beneath the surface, she thought of Alison. She was due to meet her friend that very night, but she had no idea how far she was from Sudport, let alone Herot’s Hollow. She hoped she’d make it somewhere in time to at least send a pigeon before Alison began to worry.
The sun was still high in the sky, the air warm and breezy as Rinka donned her yellow dress once more. She caught Drystan stealing a glance as they met on the road.
He carried something in his arms—a folded sheet.
“I found it stuck under a rock,” he said. “I thought it might come in handy if we’re caught out at night.”
They made their way along the road and into the woods, walking for miles without meeting another traveler. The road was poorly maintained, covered in places with so many branches and so much debris that it was hard to see where it continued.
At last, just around sunset, the road left the woods into a clearing. There, it met another road, and this road had a signpost.
In the direction they’d come, Gull Bay—8 had been scratched out.
To the left, it said Sudport—32.
“Well, we’re not making it back to pick up our things tonight,” said Rinka.
Drystan gestured to the signposts to the right.
Fossholm—7.
Herot’s Hollow—12.
“Seven miles. That’s doable,” said Rinka. “My friend Alison will be waiting there.”
But Rinka had not considered the terrain. The road up from Gull Bay had been mostly flat through the valley, but as they met the main road, it climbed into the aptly named Hill Country. Their progress was slow, slowed further by the encroaching darkness, the light of the full moon obscured by clouds that had rolled in from the sea.
Rain began to fall off and on, and yet Rinka pressed ahead.
“We have to keep going,” she said. “I’m supposed to be there by now. Alison is going to worry.”
“Rinka, you can barely walk,” said Drystan. He’d been trying to get her to stop for over an hour now. “You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. We can barely see, and it looks like the road is never going to level out. We can make it there in the morning once we’ve rested. A carriage could even come by and get us there sooner. But I don’t think we can make it further tonight. Let’s rest for a while. Alison will worry for a night, but I’m sure she’ll be relieved when she sees you tomorrow.”
He was right, as much as Rinka didn’t want to admit it. Her feet hurt so much—her shoes had been gone since she went overboard—she could barely move them. But they were so close. Just a few hours away…
“Fine,” she said. “But only for a quick nap. Then we’re back on the road.”
Drystan led her from the path a few feet until he found a low-hanging branch. He draped the sheet he’d found over it, using rocks to anchor it to the ground.
“I don’t suppose you could magic us a feather bed?” asked Rinka.
“I’m afraid not. Or I could, but it would be gone the moment my head hit the pillow.”
Rinka understood.
The makeshift tent was small, too small for even one of them to lie down without their feet hanging out the end.
Drystan cleared the ground as best as he could with a magic burst of wind, and then he removed his shirt and placed it down to give Rinka something better than the dirt to lie on.
“Thank you,” she said as she collapsed to the ground.
He lay down beside her, careful to keep a few inches of distance between them even as it forced him to lean against the sheet.
The nearness of him awoke her in spite of her exhaustion. They had touched before—his strong arms pulling her from the water, his hands holding hers as he showed her the force of his magic—but this was different. Facing him in the dark, she felt as if the energy still flowed between them, invisible and powerful. A vital pulse, something both careful and wild, that was in the tent with them and that was them, together.
“Rinka?” he whispered. There was no one around, not for miles as far as they knew, but he kept his voice low all the same. “Are you still awake?”
She nodded, not daring to speak, knowing he could feel the movement.
His hand moved at his side, fumbling in the dark for her. It reached her shoulder and then her ear and then moved to cup her cheek.
She sighed even as her body tensed.
And then he traced the line of her jaw to her chin and then up to her lower lip, his fingertips brushing the soft skin impossibly lightly.
She drew in a breath, her lips parting under his touch. Her heart raced, the pulse so loud in her own ears that she thought he must have been able to hear it too.
And then there was a laugh—bright and clear—but it didn’t come from Rinka or Drystan.
It came from outside the tent.
Rinka snapped upright. “What was that? Girls? Did you follow us here?”
That wasn’t possible. They were miles from the water now, and the laughter wasn’t the same as the sweet giggle of the mermaids, anyway. It was musical, melodic, and it went round and round the tent in an impossibly fast circle.
Drystan’s hand was in his pocket, and in a moment, Rinka’s eyes caught the glimmer of a dagger as the coin changed shape once more.
He tore back the sheet. A light floated in the darkness, a glowing orb as large as a fist, a shimmering yellow and green that laughed as it flew.
“Fairy fire,” he said. “A will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Can it hurt us?”
“No,” he said. He pocketed the coin and retrieved his shirt from the ground. “It wants to help us.” His eyes were aglow in the light of the strange creature, his face awed and filled with childlike wonder.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “We might manage to get that feather bed for you tonight after all.”
Rinka was uncertain—all of the stories she’d heard about following lights into the woods at night ended in death or disappearance—but Drystan knew things about the magic of this world beyond even her wildest imaginings.
And she trusted him, she realized. She knew he would not bring her into harm’s way. Not intentionally, at least.
So she followed behind him as the light led them deeper into the woods, hoping there would be a bed wherever it led them.
Only one bed, ideally.