Chapter 16
Despite what your parents tell you, you can become a mermaid if you try hard enough.
The impossibly dark cave, lit only by a water nymph’s tail, wasn’t as eerie, unpleasant, and harrowing as I’d thought it would be. We swam for hours, our eyes never leaving the swishing pink tail ahead of us.
My mind reeled with so many questions, I felt like my brain actively expanded in my skull. Who was Marielle, how did Hesper know her, what debt did the nymphs owe Hesper, why did she seem to know of me, and how was I able to breathe underwater?
“Hesper?” I whispered. I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her right beside me.
“Yes?”
“Why are we able to breathe underwater?” One question had to be answered at least.
“These are the enchanted pools—remnants of Starfall. Marielle and her people are stewards of the ancient waterways and have magicked them so that anyone who wishes to can live with them—water nymph or not. But if you mean them or the world harm, a death by drowning is probable.”
Hesper didn’t push me in the water to exasperate me. She did it to test me. If I’d had any intent of evil, even a hint of it in my heart, she would’ve known. That’s why she never told me where we were going today. She couldn’t risk someone knowing that information without fully trusting them first.
But how could remnants of Starfall still exist?
Perhaps before the land fell into ruin, bits of it escaped before the fall happened?
That was not unheard of. Lore Isles existed only because a dragon fire ravaged the southernmost part of the Golden Isles centuries ago.
Legend said that a bit of the land broke off, sprouted legs, and walked somewhere no fire could ever reach it.
Lore Isles—surrounded by the sea and filled with glimmering pools within.
“You can ask your questions, Clara. I know you have them,” Hesper said.
“Am I allowed to speak in here?”
“Of course,” Marielle answered far ahead of us.
“How, uh, how do you two know each other?” I sounded so pathetic. But I simply had to know.
“Care to tell that tale, Hesper? You will tell it better than I,” Marielle said.
“It’s not that great of a story,” Hesper replied in a low voice.
Something cold settled into my stomach.
“We cannot run from the stars,” Marielle sang through the nothingness.
Hesper sucked in a breath beside me and began.
“I was there when Starfall fell into darkness and became the Witherings. I remember little of that time. One day, there was home, there were the people I loved, and then the next… there was nothing. I became nothing, knew nothing of myself; all the people I loved were dead.”
I wanted to reach out to her, to grasp her hand and give it a comforting squeeze like Rosie had done for me countless times.
To have lost everything to the point of being nothing, of being entirely void…
But I didn’t reach out; instead, I kept swimming alongside her, hoping my silence wouldn’t be misconstrued as my own fear of what she would say or not being interested in her past. She kept on.
“Thanadyn—only a shadow at the time—sent for me.”
If I could have screamed out in horror in this underwater cave, that’s what I would have done. Thanadyn—Hesper knew him.
“He wanted me as a weapon, honed and cruel. I had been a dragon rider before everything happened.”
Dragons? Thanadyn and dragons? Hesper’s past was shaping up to be something of legend, a terrifying one at that. I thought the dragons kept to their Keeps in the far north, never leaving their trove. If Hesper rode them, then there must have been dragons that weren’t evil. At least not then.
“The dragon riders were sacred protectors of Starfall.
But we were not bonded with our dragons.
If a bond had been in place, I think I would have died.
To lose everyone as well as a bonded companion would have cut my thread of life irrevocably.
And, at the time, I wished it had been cut.
Better to fade away than to be forced to live in the ashes.
I was the last surviving rider, one of the last survivors in all of Starfall, and Thanadyn was clever.
He saw an empty vessel trained for war and sought to fill it.
“In my grief, I had no strength to fight his magic. His evil. Withering magic, it carves you out then redefines you. I had no defenses against it because I had lost the one thing that could fight it,” her voice rasped.
My heart clenched.
“Hope,” she finally managed to say. “Hope, I didn’t have any.
I didn’t have a family. I didn’t have love.
I didn’t have a sense of self. The perfect prey for withering magic to wreak havoc on.
” She took a breath. “The darkness enveloped me, and I became another minion for the Prince. I completed quests for him, but really, they were just killings, and I had lost too much of myself to fight against his power. But the worst part was that I was still aware—I wasn’t mindless, though I wished to be.
And I spent centuries doing his bidding.
“The last quest he sent me on was one hundred years ago. I was meant to eradicate the bits of Starfall that fell into the in-between realms. Starfallians with seeing magic, sensing the Prince’s descent into evil, had warned others of what was to come.
Many left, but some stayed, trying to enchant bits of the land to go elsewhere.
They had little success, as the land had already fallen into darkness with the Prince. But the water nymphs had found a way.”
Questions I’d had since the beginning began to fall into place. When Hesper saw Margast, it was not taunting I read on her face. She recognized him. They had seen each other before, long ago.
If I remember my lore books correctly, fae’s powers were connected to their kingdoms. If Starfall fell, then whatever Hesper’s power had been fell with it. She would have been forced into an immortal life with no one she loved nor the powers she had cultivated.
“I hunted the water nymphs for weeks, my mind set only on bloodshed, even though my heart beat elsewhere. After weeks of searching, I found an entrance on the outskirts of Fennings Forest. A crescent moon appeared in the trees, and I entered. When I dove into the pool, the murky blackness clouding my thoughts disappeared. I realized what had happened, what horrors I had enacted, and what Thanadyn planned to do.”
Marielle’s tail swishing slowed a bit as if she, too, remembered the story. Whether with fondness or terror or both, I couldn’t be sure.
“I knew I needed to help them and that I would die doing so. The Prince would have me executed for my treachery, but I did not care. Marielle greeted me, and I told her everything. I warned her of the Prince’s plans, that his withering magic would creep into their waters and suffocate them all.
I could not give them much, but I could give them time to seek out a plan.
I sent back word to the Prince, misleading his magic and his minions to the northernmost part of the Witherings.
The misdirect only bought the nymphs a few days, but it was enough.
They found their way beneath the lands and into Lore Isles. They were safe there.
“The Prince sent for my execution the next day. I went on the run, leading his minions anywhere but the entrances to the waterways. I shed the blood of many men who had been taken by darkness. Light might have still been in them—it was still in me after all—but I couldn’t bring it out of them. Then came the dragons.”
My stomach went cold.
“They tried to burn me out of hiding. Fennings Forest lies in ruins because of me. The realm almost toppled, overtaken by fear one hundred years ago, because of me.”
Patti’s family. Patti herself. They were alive when Hesper roamed this earth as a killer. And the burning that set off the realm into a moment of collective terror was because of Hesper. What a terrible weight to bear alone.
“Thanadyn sent my own dragon after me. Circe was her name. She knew my smell, how I would hide, my defenses, all of it. I shot her out of the sky. And it almost broke me all over again to do it. But Thanadyn had forced the dragons into cruelty with his power, and there was no saving them as they ravaged the forests. Their only hope was death. I took down as many as I could as I stood in the ashen graves of Fennings’ people.
Death was everywhere. Because of me. And his magic would never stop destroying everything in its path until it found me. ”
“The Prince is to blame for all light lost in those days,” Marielle said kindly. Her voice was a welcome reprieve from the heaviness of Hesper’s tale.
“How did you survive?” I asked. Hesper seemed to be all power and soldier, but she could not outrun a legion of dark forces forever. Yet here she lived.
“Eldrene,” Hesper replied. “By fate or by some other force, I ran into her Train. We struck a bargain. She would offer me sanctuary from his magic if I swore allegiance to her. So I did. My first task was taking down more of his minions one by one. There are few left of them now.”
So that’s why she never would tell me the details of her tattoo. The bargain didn’t just represent Eldrene’s deal; it represented a time in her life when killing was her only means of survival. It was her penance for the years she’d spent in darkness.
Yet Hesper was also the reason the Prince’s power was still confined.
He had the capability to enact atrocities against Nestryia, but she’d weakened his ranks to the point of nothingness.
She’d saved countless lives, but she had no true freedom.
And she wouldn’t, not until Eldrene’s power was restored.
She was my protector, but she was also a protector of many, it seemed.
Whatever stones lay around my heart chipped a bit at hearing her story.
I didn’t want to be on this journey, I missed my home more than words could say, but I still had a home to return to.
She’d lost hers so long ago that she likely didn’t even remember it in full. I couldn’t imagine that kind of pain.
Once again, it astounded me as to why I’d ended up here in the first place. I swam with a fae that saved the world and a princess who created her own, with all my hope resting on a seed pack that hopefully still remained dry.
Light shone through the end of the tunnel, golden rays dancing in the waves beyond. We were swimming into something more substantial than the magical rock pool we came from.
The sea.
The tunnel gave way to a rich ocean world. Fish of all kinds darted in and out of brightly colored corals. Ornate seashell homes littered the bottom of the sea floor, and mermaids swam in and out of view.
A few days ago, I had seen only the darkness of my first thirteen years of life and then Moss.
Now, I looked upon creatures I’d only read about in books, in a land almost impossible to reach.
The thrill of adventure sang through me as I watched an entire world ebb and flow.
Even if I did not succeed in Dwindle, at least I saw wonders along the way there.
“Welcome, my friends, to Lore Isles. May the darkness following you not overcome you.” With one final mischievous smile, Marielle dove back into the depths below.
Hesper and I swam to the light above. We emerged into the balmy breeze, and I gulped it down in mouthfuls. She began to swim toward the shore, but I stopped her.
“Hesper.” She wouldn’t look me in the eye, but I knew she listened. “Thank you for sharing your story. I know it had to be difficult.”
“Nothing some ale can’t fix.” She made an attempt at her usual cheeriness, but her smile did not reach her eyes. I swam closer to her, taking her hand in mine. She seemed surprised.
“I—um—I’m certainly not a bard with my words, but the darkness you walked through alone brought hope to many.
” My words were minced, not enough. What could I have possibly said to her?
I had no words of comfort, I only had what I knew to be true.
“So, whatever you still carry with you, I hope you allow some light in, too. Because that’s what you did for the realm—let light in. ”
She looked at me then, her eyes soft and glassy.
“Well, thank you,” she said hoarsely. “Princess.” She winked and made for the shore.
“Don’t call me that!” I splashed wildly in the sea.
Already, I could hear music bursting from the shores. A different kind of music than I’d ever heard before—more percussive than melodious, like a heartbeat. The smell of spices filled the air with new aromas I’d never experienced before. Lore Isles was already everything the books said and more.
An adventure waiting to happen.