Chapter Four
L ilia hung around the opening of my small cave like an omen. My dearest friend was like that–she loitered before entering any space, not wanting to make waves, but she knew I never minded her company. Lilia was like a younger sister to me; we grew up together, swimming through the currents and traveling with our tribe usually side by side. We attended school together, learning the histories of the tribe, how to hunt, our songs for prayer and festivals, and most importantly, the rituals.
My birthday was tomorrow. All of the anxiety that Lilia hid so terribly was mirrored in me. She had one more season before it was her time to perform the ritual.
The Pearls were wise and guided our tribe through harsh waters, unforgiving storms, and the dangers of the human world for generations. We needed their strength and magic to keep our people as people . Still, the way their eyes moved as one, the way their fins arched and waved together–it unnerved me. The merfolk were blessed by Neptune and Atlana to be more than just ocean dwellers; we were meant to live with our own minds with thoughts and desires that solely belong to us .
When I stayed put in my bed, Lilia finally came in. She laid next to me and we held hands, as much as we could. My webbed fingers made that a bit difficult, but she never brought it up. I didn’t like thinking about how I was a step closer to the ocean dwellers than she was either.
“It’s coming,” she finally whispered.
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t pretend this wasn’t happening. That wouldn’t help either of us.
“Are you scared?”
“Scared?”
“To become a human?” Her tail curled under her and I trailed my hands down her arms. Lilia’s heart was much younger than her twenty-four years. When it was her time, I promised that I would sneak onto the land to help her, no matter what it would take.
“I’m not afraid of walking on the land,” I said, still stroking her arm. Lilia’s white-blonde hair and white-blonde scales made her look ethereal but so young. Her cheeks had never sharpened like the rest of us, and her sweet face made her seem like a merling.
“But, but you are afraid of something?”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.” The truth came out quickly, like it always did with her. My secrets were always safe with Lilia. She never judged and her heart was so open that anything I said would be accepted. She was a gem of a mermaid.
“You can make it quick. So it doesn’t hurt.”
“It will hurt me though,” I mumbled. Lilia sat up on her arm, pushing her long blonde braid out of the way.
“We will sing together until your heart is healed too.” It was supposed to be comforting but it wasn’t. A song wouldn’t change that a human was going to die, and that I was going to be one to make that happen.
“Tell me how I can help, Merrow. I hate just waiting here, like we’re waiting for someone to come and scold us. ”
“Remember when you stole Breena’s headdress?” I said, trying to change the subject. Trying to think of happier times.
“I remember her searching for three moons before it miraculously turned up,” she said sweetly. We both laughed; as sweet as Lilia was, she loved a joke. And she absolutely loved that no one ever suspected her. How she had managed to maintain that aura of innocence was beyond me. Her delicate features and fine bones gave her a sense of grace that people assumed she was above such things. She wasn’t. Lilia was like my mother in that aspect, but she didn’t have the passion in her heart to be a bard. Lilia didn’t know what she wanted from life, but aimless swimming wasn’t it.
“What if I fail?” I finally said after her cheerful laughter faded.
“Then you fail. They can’t honestly place the entire tribe’s future on your shoulders. If you fail, then you’ll help me when it’s my turn and we can be sure we get two humans.” Lilia was also a terrible liar–failing wasn’t an option. Soon some of the young ones wouldn’t even be able to breathe under the seas.
“I think we both know that can’t happen.”
“I don’t understand why our magic has faded so rapidly,” she said.
“Sometimes even blessings can be curses,” I replied. And sometimes, life was simply unfair. More and more of the merlings seemed lost in the currents, unable to speak properly or swim properly; both too much of the ocean and too much of the land in them.
“Merrow, Lilia, come quickly,” my mother said. Her lovely face was creased with worry, and Lilia and I sprung up. Panic raced through me at the way her brows furrowed. Her face was not meant for such emotions.
“What’s happened?”
“A merling has been caught in a fisherman’s net. He’s trapped. We need to get him free before he’s found. There’s so many nets, I don’t know how he got so tangled.” My mother left a trail of bubbles and cloudy water behind her. We swam after her, trying to catch up but my mother was exquisitely fast. We trailed in her wake, until our whole tribe came into view.
The Pearls were there, chanting already, with the rest of the merfolk straining to loosen the nets. There were at least seven of them–the nets had all tangled into one massive knot with the child stuck in the middle. His scales were rubbed raw and his fins looked painfully angled. The merling was unconscious. His limp body made my chest ache, just watching while the rest of my tribe swam into action. He was so tiny, so much weaker than the golden mermaid from last night; he wouldn’t be able to help himself at all. Our warriors, the adult males of the tribe, had their weapons out, trying to saw through all of the ropes. There were just so many ropes, and their coral blades struggled to break through. The rope shimmered in the water as they hacked away at them.
While the rest of us sang and sang, trying to revive his little form, I itched to go to him. The ropes tugged, snagging on some rocks, and they tightened more around the child.
The ropes started hoisting up, and some of the warriors abandoned their blades to yank with all their might on the ropes to drag them back down. Humans were trying to retrieve their catch, and we could not let that include this poor child.
This wasn’t going to work. He needed to get out!
The Pearls chanted and sang, their voices raising with the rest, but still nothing happened–the merling’s tiny form remained motionless.
“Lilia! Come on!” I pointed to the coral blades for us to help the warriors. Some of the child’s scales floated in the water from where the ropes rubbed them away.
“He isn’t going to wake up! We have to get him out!”
Her eyes widened when she realized what I was trying to get her to do–Lilia shook her head no, but my fins moved on their own, gliding through the water until I hovered next to Caspian. He was the same age as me, and we attended all of our classes together, until it was time for him to learn to fight. His body was muscular, and his tail was thick and powerful. Caspian was a terrifying warrior, but his gentle heart made him hesitate too much. He tried ripping through the ropes with his bare hands, but they did not budge.
“Let me help,” I begged.
“Sing, help wake him. We’re doing our best, but there’s just too many damn ropes,” he said through gritted teeth. His muscles strained against the nets, doing little to break through. The child was so young, his fins had barely even split. Every second felt like an eternity as he stayed so very still .
The fishing nets moved across the ocean floor and I grabbed Caspian’s arm, my nails digging into his forearm, and he tried to comfort me. “See? He’s waking–”
The net moved again, but it was clear that it wasn’t the merling moving it. The humans were. The net vibrated in the water, making it harder to see as it slowly rose. It was stuck on the rocks that the warriors dragged in, but as the net lifted higher and higher, the ropes strangled the child.
“Keep chanting!” Breena bellowed and the mermaids’ song grew louder and louder, but still nothing.
I darted off, bending down before the mess of ropes and the child. He was still breathing, but his pulse was erratic and weak. The ropes crushed and strangled his tiny frame. Several knots had bits of his fins tangled in them. One of the warrior’s blades was on the seafloor beside me and I went for it. The blade was much heavier than I expected and I struggled to wield it, but I used the tip for leverage, trying to loosen the knots instead of cutting through them.
“Merrow! What the hell are you doing!” Caspian shouted and the songs all stopped. Everyone was focused on me, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was this child’s life. Caspian swam over, shouting at the warriors to stop swinging their blades where I might be struck instead of the rope .
I worked on the netting like it was my life on the line instead of his, like if I could just get free of this damned webbing, everything would be okay, everything would work out, and no one would die–
“He’s out! Merrow, you’re brilliant!” Mother shouted and she rushed over to hug me, as Caspian helped me lift the child out of the nets just in time before they worked themselves free and sailed back to the surface.
“You saved his life,” Lilia said.
“Not really–”
“You did Merrow. Your nimble hands and brave heart saved him,” Mother said. My throat felt like it was closing, and I tried to smile. He would be okay; the wounds were bad, but they would heal. The Pearls’ magic would be enough to heal him until I went through with the ritual. Then we’d have enough magic to make sure his tiny body would heal fully and properly.
Tomorrow, my life as I knew it changed forever. One week. One week to get this human to fall in love with me enough to follow me into the sea. Tradition weighed nearly as much as the ocean itself for the White Tides, and our dedication to ignoring change and logic boiled me with rage.
“Sometimes we overcomplicate things,” I snapped, surprised the words came from my mouth, and swam off. The ritual was just hours away now and I felt more trapped than the merling. At least he would get to live a long full life, free of any rituals. The male merlings grew up and became our hunters, our workers, while the women controlled the tribe and used the magic. The male merlings had no magic at all, and part of me was so envious that I felt sick with it.
I’d swam off without paying attention to where I was going. It didn’t matter. My mother’s song would bring me home, no matter how far I traveled. The Pearls would see me, the elders would call–there was no escape .
In the open ocean with nothing but the sea to hold me, I was trapped and drowning.
How funny that would be–a drowning mermaid–when the world above believed us to be myths and fairytales, full of joy and glamor. But that wasn’t really true; no one’s life was ever that simple.
We have to kill for our beauty and our magic just so we can keep breathing. Where was the beauty in that?
I must have swam upward, because I felt the sunlight warming the ocean. There were no shadows around me, no signs of humans or land, so I poked my head up and gazed at the sky. It was so blue; it was a shade that couldn’t exist in the ocean, a color so fresh that it was blinding. The sun was in the sky, but hidden by clouds. My eyes burned, first from the lack of water and then just from how bright everything was. The land above was nothing but light. The land in the distance seemed so far away, but I saw the land dwellers’ handiwork from here. They built towers and structures so high that I wondered how brilliantly terrifying it would be to stand on top of them and look down. Would the ground even be visible? Did they care? Humans so desperately wanted to escape their worlds that they’d follow a song into the seas and drown, would they also walk off their towers to fly?
I’d be finding out sooner rather than later at this point. The light of day turned pink, meaning it would finally be dark on land, at least for an evening.
An awful storm brewed overhead, and the thunder made me flinch. The lightning tried to split the sky in half, and I sank beneath the waves. For one terrible second, I imagined the lightning hitting the water and everyone being electrocuted from the energy of the storm. It was time to go home before I was missed, and before I did something else rash–like swim away forever.
“Merrow, I found you,” Lilia said. Her breathing was labored, and her normally perfect braid was a mess of tangles .
“Are you alright?”
“You swam off, and we were worried.”
“I just needed some space to breathe. How’s the merling?”
“Alive, thanks to you, and in a world of trouble for following a boat and trying to catch one of the fish from the nets. He’s alive though, because you thought about something past our magic.”
My laugh held so much bitterness, I worried it would feel like a slap to Lilia. I flexed my webbed fingers and she cast her eyes down, “Magic isn’t always at the top of the list of options for me.”
That wasn’t completely true–my magic was just as strong as other mermaids, but having webbed fingers sometimes made the spells feel awkward, like I wasn’t enough of a mermaid to deserve the magic from my song. Magic was for the human parts of me, and my hands didn’t quite fit the look.
“It’s not noticeable,” she said, pulling my hands to her chest.
“I know, but I’m already more fish than person at this point. I need every trick I can think of.”
“You just have to do the ritual, and then everything will be fine. And then it’ll be my turn. And there will be more magic than the tribe has seen in twenty seasons.”
“Is it even worth it?” I whispered, and Lilia turned. Her tail curled around me, and instead of bringing comfort, it just reminded me that I was less than a person. More creature, less mermaid.
“Oh Merrow, of course it is. The magic… it’s not just about us surviving, but think of all the good we do in the waters. We heal the injured. We clean the seas. We protect the ancient creatures from the humans. We do so much good, and how can we continue if we return to being just sea beasts?”
“It’ll be quick, right? I’ll just convince the human to come to the sea with me, like we’re going to just play in the water. Humans like playing at the shoreline. It shouldn’t be too hard. ”
“Very quick. I’ll be there to grab his legs and pull him under. Once he’s gone, you’ll harvest the soul. Easy.”
“Right, easy.”
We swished easily through the soft waves, and headed back to the tribe. Lilia led the way; even though she assured me it would be easy, this would all be over soon, I didn’t believe her.
Lilia and I swam together, meeting with my mother and Breena, and a few of the elder mermaids. The spot they chose would be where we performed the ritual tomorrow. Open water, but close to the surface, closer than we preferred to be. It was time for me to see my doomed target. The elders already worked the spell, swimming in circles, swirling in and out between each other. The water changed to a blood red and my stomach cramped. They chanted and sang, four warriors at each of the winds to protect against any wayward predators.
The Pearls were in the center of the spell. They used conch shells and lobster claws–yanked straight from the poor creatures–to anchor their magic. Music and blood blending together to find the target. Their faces were too young and too old looking all at once, my stomach churning even though I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
I’d never seen this spell before. I never wanted to see it again. The Pearls conjured a horrible magic, making their noses bleed and their eyes turn the same bloody red, chanting until they were practically screaming. I felt like screaming too.
A face slowly came into view. At first, all I saw were vivid green eyes that made me gasp. Humans had green eyes? That seemed so odd to me–green was one of our colors. How could the humans also have it? Then the shape of his nose came into being, long but not too long, and then finally lips and chin. It was striking how similar they looked to merfolk. My own face was just as similar–with a smaller nose–but he seemed so familiar, like this wasn’t a foreign beast, but something much, much closer to me .
Sand colored hair appeared on his head, soft and bouncy. The humans didn’t have water to suspend their hair and make it dance in the waves. What made it move so easily? His green eyes looked so far away. Not because he was on the land, but because he seemed to be searching for something. Maybe he knew already, deep down that his life was not his own, but it was mine for the taking.
The spell broke in a clap of energy that rippled through the tides, and it broke me from my thoughts. His face stayed in the water though for me to gaze upon.
“Come child, you must learn his name so you can find him on the land,” one of the Pearls said. They had no names, no identity outside of being one of the Pearls. I bowed my head as I approached her.
The three of them took my hands, surrounding me, pulling me to where the man’s face was.
“Breathe in his image. Learn the contours of his face. Understand the depths of his eyes,” they said in unison. My heart fluttered, beating too hard in my chest.
Too stunned to speak, I stayed perfectly still, not even daring to tread water.
“Child, do not be afraid. You are part of the White Tides. You are strong. You are beautiful. You are full of brine and life. Prepare your heart.”
“I-I’m prepared,” I stammered, knowing it was a lie. They smiled in unison. Everything in unison. The three of them weren’t actually identical, but they tried to be. They held their heads in the same position, moved their tails as one and the colors of their scales all in varying shades of purple. Their purple eyes were haunting and ancient, the lines of their faces all creased in the same places to make their noses look like hooks.
“His name is Owen Harper.”
This was just the beginning.