Muri’s tail churned below her in the water, holding her body vertical as she stared up at the surface. The dark shadow of the boat blocked the sunlight that sparkled through the shifting sea. She secured the strap of her satchel over her shoulder and swam a little closer. Overhead, someone moved on the boat, flickering in and out of sight. The underside tipped back and forth, sending out a ring of waves.
The fleet of boats had appeared overhead when she’d entered the bay. Her relief at arriving in the bay, safe from the creatures of the deep, had battled her new fear of interacting with the land dwellers.
Muri mulled over everything she knew about land dwellers. The humans were the ones who went out in boats to gather food—not the fairies. The fairies didn’t like being out on the ocean because they couldn’t swim. Which was lucky, because the fairies were the ones she had to watch out for. They were treacherous, with their magic spells and illusions, and they were selfish as well. The humans were more like animals, slow-witted and easy to stay clear of. But they could still be dangerous, especially when they became angry.
Muri had never seen either a fairy or a human. The merpeople had stopped visiting the land villages when she was a merchild. But she had learned about them from the other merpeople. How was she ever going to survive among them long enough to complete her mission—to find the missing merking?
And what if King Strombidae had encountered a fairy on land? What if he’d had one of their spells cast on him? Was that why he’d never come home?
Muri pushed the thoughts aside. She had a quarter-moon to find him before he forfeited his standing in Glorypool—before he lost the throne and the other mermen fought over who would be the next merking. Probably, King Strombidae had simply lost track of the time he’d been away—almost a full season. He was probably enjoying life on land with his newest wife. His human wife. Number nine.
Muri was to be number ten.
Her stomach twisted the way it always did when she thought of her impending marriage.
Maybe the merking wouldn’t want to come home, though. Maybe he liked this new wife so much, he’d stay on land with her forever and Muri could avoid marrying him. Maybe she shouldn’t even try to find him. She could wait here in the bay until the final day and then swim home and tell everyone he wasn’t coming back.
But if he didn’t come home, his merwives would lose their positions as well. She couldn’t let that happen, even if it meant her own unwelcome marriage.
The boat above her rocked sharply, and the person on board appeared at the edge, leaning over the side. Muri drifted closer as the myriad fish in the water darted away. The person was large—a human man, she guessed, as she watched his shimmering form through the surface. Did the men on land help with the work? In Glorypool, the merwomen
were the ones who gathered the seaweed and checked the nets for fish. The mermen protected the settlement. No one had dared to attack as long as Muri could remember—except for that one incident involving Janthinidae.
The man’s arms plunged into the water and Muri flinched back. The hands closed around a rope and gripped it hard before pulling up and out of the water. Muri could see the brute force of the man, and terror swirled inside her, but so did a hint of fascination. His arms—they weren't tinted green like hers, but bronze like the stripes on the nautilus shell. The sun made the humans that way, Lottiidae had told her, all different shades from pink to brown, while the moon-loving fairies glowed with silvery-gold skin and had eyes like sea lettuce.
All of them had sounded hideous when Lotti described them.
But the man’s arms didn’t look hideous. They looked warm, reminding her of the warmth when lying in the sun on the sand on the island. If only she could see his face . . . . She caught herself before drifting off into a daydream. She should try to see his face—one glimpse into his dim-witted eyes would quell her curiosity fast enough.
A rush of shining fish flooded past, obscuring her view with their silver bodies. Muri flicked her tail and moved up toward the boat. The shark-eye shell tied on a cord around her neck floated up and bumped her chin when she stopped. Lotti had tied it on as Muri prepared to leave Glorypool. Muri would need the shell on her mission.
Lotti would have a fit if she saw how close Muri was to the fishing boat. But if Muri had to walk on land, she needed to see what she faced. If the man spotted her, she’d be gone so fast he’d think he’d imagined her.
He appeared again over the edge of the boat, hauling on the ropes and blocking the beams of light that pierced the water. She tried to piece together his face from the broken slivers she could make out between the glints of sunlight. His nose was as coppery as his arms, and a peak of hair crowned his head, completely different from the long locks of the merpeople. The fish swam closer around her, and she flicked herself up again. Everything was blue up there—bright blue, not
murky like at the bottom of the sea—not like in Glorypool. The colors were like those of the island, but it would be peaceful here, without any merpeople to contend with. She almost thought she’d—
The fish pressed in on her, writhing in panic. A net was closing around them—and around her.
Muri’s heart thudded. She grabbed for the net, trying to pull herself up, but the opening at the top shrank into nothing, held tight by the grip of the man above. She dragged her body through the fish toward the edge of the trap. She tugged at the stiff ropes, trying to widen the clam-sized holes as the net pulled tighter, but the ropes were too strong. The fish-catcher had trapped her in his net and was pulling her toward the surface.
She glanced up. She had only a few moments before those hands were on her. The rough fiber of the net scraped her cheek as she twisted through the fish, positioning herself and reaching for the knife in her belt. She jerked it out and pressed it to the net. She sawed at the rope and felt a snap as the first strand of twine broke. Faster, she had to go faster. She worked the sharpened stone blade of her knife until the entire rope split, ripping open a wider hole. She sawed at a second spot and another rope popped open, and another. The hole grew, with fish bodies spilling from it to wriggle away toward the dark depths.
The whole net jerked upward, and warm water hit Muri’s head. Surface water, warmed by the sun.
She snapped one last rope and ducked her head through the opening. Her hair swirled up and around the net. She pulled it down and pushed with her tail. Something else caught at her neck. She strained against it and it broke, releasing her from the trap as the man hauled the net up, with fish spilling from the hole she’d cut.
She inhaled a lungful of seawater and let it out slowly, willing herself to stay calm. That had been so close . . . and she wasn’t even on land yet! Why had anyone thought she should be the one sent to find the merking?
She focused on the silvery fish slipping through the water around her, letting the flicker of their glimmering scales sooth her nerves. She could do this. She just had to go up on land and sneak around until she found the merking, and then she’d dive back into the sea and swim home and no land dweller would be able to stop her.
A cluster of fish tumbled past. As their chaotic motion sorted itself out, a prickle crept up Muri’s spine. She ducked her head, stealing a glance over her shoulder. The fish-catcher’s net still hung in the water beside her, with fish wriggling out of the hole. Muri turned and lifted her head.
The man in the boat stared down at her. Her heart thudded as she stared back. This close, she could see his wide, dark eyes and his parted lips. He clutched the ropes of the net, the motion of his muscled arms arrested. She stared back, horrified. But also . . .
A wave rocked the boat and the man stumbled forward. Muri’s view wavered as the water sloshed above her. He caught himself on the edge of the boat and began to lift his head back toward her.
Muri darted down, away from the warm sun and the danger. A few moments passed and nothing came after her.
A muted shout reached her. He must’ve seen what she’d done to his net. She didn’t need to hear the words to know the man was angry. The stories were true, then—the humans’ anger came like a summer squall, the surface calm one moment and battered by rain the next. She never should have swum so close to look. What if she met the man in the village later today? What if he saw her and knew she was the one who’d cut his net?
That thought was silly. He’d never notice her once she had legs. And as fast as his anger had come, maybe it would leave just as fast—he wouldn’t be angry forever. And Lotti would never know Muri had almost been caught.
When she neared the cold seafloor, she dared to look back. Far above, above the water, the muted shouting had stopped. The net was gone, pulled all the w
ay into the boat. Only the dark hull remained on the twinkling surface.
Muri checked for her satchel as she swam along the sand, continuing on toward the village. The bag still hung around her body, and nothing had spilled out. She reached for her shell necklace. It was gone.
Muri had lost Lotti’s shell. Ten seas, what had she been thinking?
She knew how dangerous the humans could be. Lotti had warned her not to get too close until she was disguised. And she’d almost been caught in a fishing net! She’d been so distracted by that man, and it could have cost her everything.
What would he have done if he’d caught her? Land dwellers didn’t see merpeople often, Lotti had said. They revered the merpeople as mythical beings, with superior abilities and the merking’s magic. That’s why it had been such an honor for the merking to choose one of the humans as his next bride. So, the fish-catcher probably would have been surprised to find her in his net. But what an introduction—she certainly wouldn’t have looked like a mythical being, pressed among the fish and trapped within the ropes.
But Lotti had also said humans wanted the merpeople’s power for themselves. What would the man have done? Would he have let her go? Or kept her as a hostage to barter with, with the merking? Muri was strong, but against those arms, would she have been able to escape?
Now she’d lost Lotti’s shell and wouldn’t be able to communicate with her sisters—to call for help or to ask for advice if she needed it. Every time she disobeyed orders, it ended in disaster.
Muri tamped down the worries. She’d simply have to find King Strombidae without help or advice. And she wouldn’t get distracted again. She’d complete her mission and be safely back in Glorypool as soon as possible.
She swam up until her head poked above the ocean surface. The bare masts of the fishing boats were far out in the water. A cliff rose up from a rocky beach a few hundred tail-swishes away. Farther on along the coastline, the buildings of a village came down to the water—Woodglen, they called it.
Muri gaped in awe as a thrill shot through her. Woodglen was only a small village for the humans, but compared to Glorypool, it was sprawling. Glorypool had only a cluster of huts beneath the water, and the only building on the island was the merking’s hut at the hot springs, high up in the jungle. But here in Woodglen, row upon row of rooftops climbed up the hillside over the bay. At the top, the colorful tops of unusual trees rose over the buildings. And behind that were smooth towers with pointed tops soaring up toward the clouds.
In a short while she would walk through a human village!
It was dangerous. But as she examined the village, excitement wove its way through her dread. She had never been anywhere away from Glorypool in her twenty-three seasons.
Everything she knew about the land dwellers had come from the older merpeople like Lotti. The merwomen talked to pass the time while they gathered food or wove baskets, telling the stories passed down for generations about the other creatures of the world. Many of the merwomen, even the ones just a few seasons older than Muri, had been to land villages before. Regular patrols to the nearest villages—those on the islands
east of Glorypool and along the northern coast of Sylvania to the west—had been maintained for ages to ensure the land dwellers weren’t plotting against the merpeople. While the mermen had patrolled, the merwomen had stolen into the villages to gather supplies. But even with their desperate need of provisions, the merking had ended the visits. It was just too dangerous to venture onto land.
But now Muri would actually see the outside world and one of the villages for herself. Those stories she’d heard would help her blend in among the humans. They might even save her life. The exhilarated tingle spread to her tail fins. She would see humans firsthand. Maybe she’d even bring home her own stories to share with the other mermaids.
The angled houses and the taller buildings in the village had unnatural corners—like gigantic crystals of rock filling the hillside. What else would she see once she walked down the lanes between them? From this distance, nothing moved.
She again gazed along the towers rising up into the clear sky. That must be the castle where the human king lived. Strombidae had intended to marry a human princess, so the castle might be a good place to start searching for him. Maybe he’d gone on living at court after the marriage. He’d intended to bring the bride back to Glorypool—he’d had an air-filled glass chamber built specially for her and placed it beside his royal hut on the seafloor—but maybe he’d been enjoying life on land and didn’t want to return.
Lotti always said nothing was as nice as Glorypool, with the island right there for trysting and spawning—despite the island’s monkey population—and the beach water warmed by the volcano . . . but Lotti always thought everything was better in Glorypool. And she always thought everything was better if it stayed exactly as it already was. Maybe Strombidae had found something on land that he liked better.
Muri ducked back under the water and swam for the beach. She pushed through a cloud of eelgrass and the sand bumped her tail. A moment later, she pulled herself out of the waves and onto the sand. She exhaled her last breath of seawater from her lungs as she began using them to breathe air.
It had been a while since she’d been above the surface. Ever since Strombidae had noti
ced her the previous spring and chosen her as a future bride, none of the other mermen had dared lie with her. Not that she’d minded losing their attentions—sometimes trysting was fun, but sometimes it was more like a chore. And the mermen never liked it if they saw her yawning in the middle of it.
But she had liked visiting the island—seeing the flowers and eating fruit and being in the warm sun . . . and she’d visited many times before the merking chose her. But after he chose her, no one would take her to the island and risk the displeasure of King Strombidae Murkel of Glorypool.
A gull flew over, its cry piercing. Everything sounded high-pitched in the air, fast and clear. “I am Muricidae,” Muri said aloud, testing out her voice in air as she lay on the sand and waited for her tail to dry. She spread her fingers over the gritty texture beneath her, packed hard as the tide went out and left it to dry. She inhaled the cool spring air, inhaling the stink of eelgrass, baking where it had caught on the rocks. Strange scents crept in beneath it—maybe from the grasses up at the top of the cliff, covering the hillsides between her and the village. Near the island, the seasons were less obvious because of the constant heat emanating from the base of the volcano.
“I am Muri,” she said again, her voice clearer. “I seek Prince Murkel of Merlandia.” A prince! Ha, what a bizarre lie. And to say he was the prince of a distant coastal kingdom called Merlandia, with prosperous farms and mountains filled with gemstones. That was the story the merking had concocted to woo his human bride. Muri snorted. Lotti’s explanations about humans never added up—if the merpeople were mythical beings revered by the humans, why had the merking had to tell lies to win over his human bride? The humans didn’t tolerate multiple wives, Lotti had said, as if that explained it.
What was bride number nine like? How would she adjust to living in the sea? Muri had seen the air chamber that would be the new bride’s home and gotten chills up her spine. She’d tried to imagine the opposite situation—herself kept in a tank of water on land. To be trapped like th
at would be awful. But the humans were different. They didn’t think much or have many emotions. Still, would bride nine be happy in Glorypool? How would she react when Strombidae turned away from her and moved on to a new wife?
When Strombidae moved on to Muri?
Ugh. She never liked to think about what it would be like as the merking’s wife. It was a great honor, and that was what mattered, not whether she liked the look of him or took pleasure in lying with him. The other merwomen thought him handsome with his long, dark locks and regal nose. But Muri’s heart had sunk the moment he’d noticed her—which had happened only because she’d spoken out of turn. She had to learn to obey, or she’d never survive as his wife.
Which she never would be, if she failed to find him.
She pulled herself up the sand until the tip of her silvery blue tail was out of the water. Already the breeze was drying her scales and her legs were forming. She pulled off her satchel and removed its contents: a human dress, a pair of foot coverings, a scallop shell filled with clay to hide the green tint of her skin, and a length of twine to tie back her shiny dark hair. Her golden eyes with their large pupils for seeing in the depths of the ocean would be impossible to hide, but Lotti said humans weren’t careful enough to notice each other’s eyes.
Muri gathered up her hair, remembering how it could have snagged in the fish-catcher’s net. Having hair down to her waist was such a bother, especially now that she’d be out of the water for days. It would be tangling in snarls and catching on things. But merwomen never cut their hair. Once when she’d suggested it, Lotti had been horrified.
But what if Muri had gotten stuck in the net? And what if her hair drew attention—that fish-catcher’s hair had been short as a monkey’s. Wasn’t she safer without it?
She took her knife from its sheath and held a fistful of hair out, pulling the tresses taut against the blade. No one was here to stop her.
But soon she’d be hom
e, where the rules applied.
Down the coastline, the village beckoned, as if it were daring her to make the first cut. Muri closed her eyes. She would say . . . She would say no one else in the human village had had clothes like hers, and they’d mostly had short hair, and the humans had all been staring at her. Cutting her hair had been necessary to blend in. She sucked in a deep breath and felt a surge of joy at defying the rules of Glorypool. She sliced the knife through her hair and tossed the cuttings into the water with the swirling eelgrass.
She gathered another fistful, then another, shearing them away one after the next until her hair had all been cut. The damp ends brushed her shoulders. A shiver of unease ran through her, thinking of Lotti, but the feeling was too late to prevent what she’d done. Lotti had sent her on this dangerous mission. She was doing what she needed to do to succeed.
Out on the bay, the sails had risen on a few boats that moved toward the village. The sun was still high, but noon had passed. Maybe those fish-catchers had filled their boats and were done fishing for the day. Or maybe one had given up for the day because of the gaping hole in his net.
Muri imagined his face again, broken by the sunlight and waves, and his strong arms reaching into the water. The way he’d stared down at her. Maybe she would see him in the village, but he wouldn’t know she’d cut his net. He wouldn’t notice her once she had legs and with her now short hair, but she’d get a closer look at the man who’d almost captured her.
Or maybe he would notice her—maybe he’d think she was a pretty human and try to talk with her. Or maybe she’d speak to him—she could ask him which road led up the hill to the castle as an excuse to hear his voice in the clear air.
Nonsense. She couldn’t let anyone notice her, and she definitely couldn’t talk to any of them.
With a sound like the shushing of windblown sand, her scales disappeared and her shimmering tail faded into legs. She stretched them out and slowly pushed herself up to her knees, getting used to the feel of them after so m
any moons. The rock wall that towered over the narrow strip of sand blocked some of the wind, but a few gusts tossed her shortened hair. She stood, balancing in the wind until she grew steady.
She bent for the dress and wrung out the seawater. Once the dress stopped dripping, she flapped it open and hung it over a rock hot from the sun. Lotti had shown her how to put it over her head with her arms through the holes.
Clothing made sense for land dwellers in the wintertime, but now? In the hot sunshine? Muri was tempted to ignore Lotti’s advice, but the older merwoman had insisted—humans did not walk about naked, and if she did, they were sure to notice her and maybe even lock her away for it. And the human men reacted strangely to nakedness, unable to control their animal-like lust at the sight of even a single bared female breast. Muri was used to the mermen pulling her up on the beach for a tryst, ...
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