Mermaid in Manhattan

Chapter 1

Iris

Iris broke the surface with a flick of her pearlescent green tail, sending droplets scattering like diamonds in the morning light.

Humming softly, she pulled herself up onto her favorite sun-warmed rock, arching into a lazy stretch that set water rolling down her arms, the salt water glistening on her skin.

Was there anything better than a refreshing swim in the summer sea? Perfect temperature. Perfect lighting. Zero responsibilities.

She reached back to wring the water from her hair and felt something crinkly in the strands. Not seaweed—unless seaweed had started using packaging.

With a sigh, she pulled out a plastic wrapper, the logo faded to oblivion by sun and salt.

“Seriously?” she muttered, crumpling it up. She reached back into her hair, this time encountering a length of broken fishing line. Once again.

“Oh, come on.” She carefully untangled it from her pink waves with the patience of someone who had done so way too many times, then folded it up with the wrapper like she was collecting ocean-trash trading cards.

For the life of her, she couldn’t understand why it was so hard for trash to make its way into a garbage can.

Humans.

Flopping back, Iris closed her eyes and tried to forget the trash as the sun dried the water on her skin.

There was a flutter above her, interrupting her perfect solitude. Sure, it could be a random gull. But nope. She didn’t even have to open her eyes to know who it was.

Montague Featherington.

Monty, for short. Drama, for long.

Iris had named him herself when she’d been eight and going through her ‘everyone deserves a ridiculously formal title’ phase. Right before she’d stolen an enchanted pearl—that she totally wasn’t supposed to take—that, when gifted to the pelican, granted him the ability to speak.

He had been loving the sound of his own voice ever since.

“Hey, Monty,” she said, shading her eyes with one hand. “How are you doing?”

“How am I doing?” he repeated, already winding up.

“Emotionally adrift. Spiritually soggy. And some thieving seagull stole my favorite thinking rock. What does he have to contemplate? Which human he’s going to mug today?

The gulls have no interiority. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

” He nodded his giant beak for emphasis.

“But I am hanging on by a feather. And sheer spite. Allow me a melodramatic sigh.”

Iris smiled. “You can borrow this rock if you promise not to monologue at it.”

“Tempting, but I prefer the acoustics by the cliff. Better echo.” He ruffled his feathers. “Shouldn’t you be with Her Majesty?”

“My mother?” Iris blinked. “Why?”

“Because, dearest sea spawn, you mentioned a super important meeting last week. With capital letters and everything.”

“That’s today?” Iris yelped, the edge of her tail slapping the water and sending droplets flying.

“According to my internal calendar and innate sense of dramatic timing—yes. And you’re thirty-two minutes late. Not that anyone’s counting. Except me. And your mother.”

“For Triton’s sake!” Iris yelped, vanishing beneath the waves like a startled fish and launching into a desperate, splashy sprint.

Her mother, Tatiana, was a lot of things: powerful, elegant, and entirely over Iris’s shenanigans. Being late to a meeting she’d had a week’s warning about was just another notch against her.

If she was lucky she would be sentenced to eel duty again. The royal singing eels were a barbershop trio who couldn’t harmonize to save their slimy lives and never, ever slept.

If she wasn’t lucky, she’d be forced to massage the crabs at the royal spa. And they were entitled and pinchy.

By the time Iris reached the seafloor, her stomach was in knots as she pictured her mother seated on her seashell throne, tapping her fingernails against her arm in irritation.

“Hey, Carl,” she called to the palace gate guard, who pulled open the massive whale-boned gates with the weary look of a merman who’d seen too many late princesses in his time. “Don’t say it,” she added.

Carl said nothing. His eyebrow, however, spoke volumes.

She shot past the palace’s lush kelp gardens, where electric-blue gobies darted between fronds, blissfully unaware that they were being watched by snarly kelp dragonettes.

“Nice stripes,” one dragonette heckled. “Did you lose a bet with a zebra fish?”

Up ahead, the bioluminescent coral towers stood proudly, inviting merfolk and sea creatures alike.

Say what you would about maternal expectations and unending royal pressure, but the palace? The palace was magic.

Coral spires, glowing towers, water that hummed with music—this was home.

As she glided through the halls, she ignored the pitying looks from those she passed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Iris sang as soon as she swam into the throne room, breathless and trying for repentant but likely landing somewhere more along the lines of ‘guilty puppy.’

Queen Tatiana didn’t even blink. Her icy-blue gaze swept over Iris like a glacier.

“I do not have time to be kept waiting, Daughter.”

Translation: you’re in so much trouble.

Her pink hair danced in the water around her as her cool blue eyes took in her daughter. “But, indeed, your dedication to shirking your royal responsibilities ends today.”

Great.

Crab pinches were definitely in her future.

Or maybe a squid-ink graffiti cleaning detail.

“It is time for you to marry.”

Well, then.

Iris blinked.

“I’d rather take the eels.”

Her mother didn’t flinch. Not even a twitch. Which made it so much worse.

As a princess, Iris understood that marriage was a non--negotiable. And likely heavily influenced by her mother. That said, she was young; she had time. Hopefully, by then, all the obnoxious mermen who thought it was appropriate to comment on her seashell bra would be married off to others.

“It’s going to be Osiren, isn’t it?” Iris asked. Her mind conjured up images of the last time she’d seen him—bench--pressing a defenseless manatee to show off his bulging biceps for a group of giggling mermaids. Iris loved her people, but she had to admit, they could at times be a tad superficial.

Unfortunately for Iris, that gene had skipped her. She didn’t particularly care about the size of her potential partner’s muscles.

That was probably why she spent so much time reading the pressed-kelp, shell-bound books in the royal library. Even if there was an extremely limited supply thanks to a general preference among the merfolk for socializing rather than reading.

But those books were full of complex men and women who had motivations outside of sensual escapades and decorating their hair.

That said, she’d known for many years that, politically, her marriage would be to someone important.

Like it or not, Osiren was the son of her mother’s closest confidant.

And, sure, Osiren had abs for days.

But he also had the personality of wet driftwood.

She’d rather marry the manatee.

“It is not,” Tatiana said.

A chill ran down Iris’s spine.

Oh, no.

That meant it was someone worse than Osiren. Which shouldn’t have been possible, and yet, here they were.

But for the life of her, Iris couldn’t think of a single councilman who was anywhere near her own age. The prospect of being forced into marriage with a man old enough to be her own father made her heart sink.

Sure, she knew that no matter how much her heart ached for a real, genuine love connection, she was always meant for an arranged marriage designed to further a political agenda. The best she could hope for was to learn to care for her spouse.

“Who is it?” Iris asked, sounding like a sea urchin was caught in her throat.

“Finn Westrock,” the queen announced.

Finn Westrock?

Iris blinked.

“I’m sorry—who?”

That wasn’t a name; it sounded like a brand.

Was he one of the mysterious, brooding finfolk? Or, perhaps, one of the deeply emotional selkies?

Iris might not mind a marriage with one of them if a union between sea creatures was what her mother was seeking.

“What is he, then? Selkie? Finfolk? Siren with a tragic backstory?”

“He is a human.”

Iris stared. “A human human?”

“Yes. A land-dweller. Bipeds. You’ve seen their trash.”

Iris couldn’t stop the laugh from bubbling up and bursting out.

“Oh, thank you, Mother. I was in desperate need of a laugh.”

“I assure you, this is no laughing matter.”

Iris’s heart sank. “You want me to marry a human? On land?”

“Yes, darling. That is where the humans live.”

“But that’s not where I live! I sunbathe on rocks; I don’t collect husbands from them!”

“You know just as well as I do that you are more than capable of living on land.”

Capable? Yes. Willing? Absolutely not.

“Mother …”

This could not be happening. She loved the ocean. It was her home. It was all she ever knew. She’d never technically even been on land. The closest she got was sunning herself on a rock. But she always panicked when she dried too much and started to see skin replace her lovely scales.

“I’m afraid this is non-negotiable, Iris.”

“Why can’t Shelly marry this Finn man?”

Iris’s younger sister notoriously loved the land. She dreamed of little else than stepping out of the ocean for good and living among the people and creatures above sea level.

“You know Shelly is too young.”

“She’s not that much younger than me. It can wait a year. Even two.”

“It cannot.”

“Why?”

“It will be too late by then. There is an election going on in the surface world this fall. Your betrothed has promised to create legislation that will make the ocean safe from land pollution. As such, this marriage must take place in ninety days. Before the upcoming election.”

“Ninety days? Mother, please, I beg you, choose someone else.”

“That is not an option. It must be someone who can represent all merfolk. As a princess, that is you. Tomorrow, you will go on land, and you will meet your groom. I won’t hear any more arguments about it.”

Iris had to try one last time. “You’re really sending me to live on land. With a stranger. For … for politics?”

Tatiana simply raised one elegant hand.

That was the end of it.

And maybe Iris had known, deep down, that her protests were pointless.

But that didn’t stop her heart from plummeting like a shipwreck.

She knew her mother could be unbending when her mind was made up. She would not be swayed by the emotions coursing through her middle daughter right then. And Iris would rather not cry in front of her mother.

She swam off, rushing through the halls, out the doors, past her beloved kelp gardens, and through the gates.

She didn’t stop.

Not at the spiraling reef towers where she and her sisters used to play tag. Not at the swirling sandbar where the dolphins came to dance. Not even when she swam past a current singer whose haunting melody faltered mid-note as Iris rushed past with tears clinging to her lashes.

She just kept going.

The pressure in her chest built with every stroke, like her ribs were tightening around her heart. Her tail flicked harder, faster, until the water around her blurred. She passed a jelly lantern, its tendrils pulsing with light.

She didn’t look back.

When she finally slowed, her breath caught on a sob.

She curled up by an old coral graveyard. The dead reef felt like her soul: bleached, picked over, and completely out of its element. Its wasted potential, the evidence of the harm the humans had inflicted upon her people, called to her as she folded forward, burying her face in her hands.

How could her mother ask this of her? To leave not only her home, but her homeland, the only thing she had ever known and loved, the people she had been committed to serving. Albeit a couple of minutes late. She wasn’t perfect. But she cared.

The fish found her soon enough, as they always did.

A sleepy trumpet fish twined gently around her wrist. A pair of pygmy seahorses nestled in the crook of her arm like living jewelry. Even a spiny lionfish hovered, not close enough to sting, but near enough to lend its quiet, comforting presence.

They brushed against her skin, teasing through her hairlike strips of seagrass, offering comfort she hadn’t asked for but desperately needed.

She hadn’t summoned them. But heartbreak, in her, always echoed through the currents.

And so the fish came, determined to comfort her through it.

It was a strange phenomenon that didn’t happen for either of her sisters.

Iris always felt a little guilty, feeling like her emotions removed their free will.

It felt like a cruel sort of irony that they would gain theirs just as she was losing her own.

There had to be a way out of this.

She could try speaking to her mother again. Maybe if she caught her in her private chambers, not on the throne, she might be able to appeal to her mother, not the queen.

It was a long shot, and Iris had little faith in her mother bending.

But if she couldn’t get her mother to call off the contract, and she was unable to do it herself, that did leave her with one other option.

She could get her prospective husband to call it off.

The more she thought about it, the more genius it seemed.

The fish, satisfied with a job well done, swam back to their lives as Iris straightened.

It could just work.

She would have to be careful.

If it got back to Tatiana that she’d been deliberately difficult or hostile, she would be in a world of trouble.

If, however, she simply made herself undesirable to her new fiancé by being …

aggressively mermaidian—insisting on absurd rituals, making up wildly exaggerated mermaid customs that they must follow, mentioning impractically extravagant living accommodations—she might just be able to get this human to rethink his desire to marry one of her kind.

She was going to make this Finn Westrock guy regret the day he asked for a marriage contract with a mermaid.

Operation: Horrify the Human was officially underway.