How to be a Mermaid: A Falling in Deep Collection Novella (9 page)

“He’d better, Oceanus,” the big dolphin king warned. “You know the forces I command are so powerful, they can’t be stopped once they’re unleashed. It’s your son’s job to save the creatures of the sea. He’d better do it.”

The threat lingered in the water around us. The entire entourage of the dolphin king and queen dispersed, led away to various sectors of the palace to wait out the lost prince’s absence. Luckily, none of the sea creatures paid attention to me, so there weren’t any more questions about who or what I was. Finn played the part of the good prince and helped the king and queen dolphin leave the room, leaving me to chat with Ponce.

“Well, this is exciting,”
Ponce said nervously. I nearly jumped out of my mermaid tail at his voice. I’d forgotten he was there.

“Wish you’d stayed behind?”

“A bit,”
the snapper admitted.
“I might’ve miscalculated that one. The last time I saw King Oceanus, he threatened to feed me to the guards. This was worse.”

“Well, thanks for staying ,” I said.

Ponce gave me a sideways glance.
“If I was an octopus, I woulda inked up the whole place.”

“That could have been a good thing,” I murmured, looking at my tail and wishing for the cover it would have provided.

So many unanswered questions. I’d learned that I was becoming a merwalker, that Kai was a prince, and that if he wasn’t returned, my world was going to be in danger. It was easy to communicate with all of the sea creatures now, thanks to the Nereia’s magic. That still didn’t explain how I was able to understand Kai when he first spoke to me right after my meet and greet.

“Hey.”

I looked up, meeting Finn’s eyes. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts, I didn’t see him approach. His sea green eyes met mine and held me there. He was my rock amid the storm of emotions and uncertainties within my heart.

“I know we haven’t fixed your...problem yet. Nereia will be back soon and she can reverse this. Get you back to normal as quick as possible.”

I crossed my arms and let out a breath, trying to ignore the fact that my gills flared instead of the air passing through my mouth. Maybe I was getting used to this.

“I’m honestly more concerned about an impending war against humans. Is that really what Kai’s parents are going to do if he’s not returned tomorrow?”

He hesitated before he nodded. “Levi doesn’t make idle threats.”

“What could Levi and Nadia do?” I asked, not meaning to belittle their positions or authority. They were dolphins, even if Levi was the biggest one I’d ever seen, while humans had weapons and armies—enough to obliterate the planet if we wanted. I had trouble picturing what the king and queen could do against an army like that.

“Everything,” Finn said under his breath. “They would do anything and everything to get Kai back.”

“How?”

“Do you know Levi’s full name means?” he asked quietly.

“No?”

“’Levi’ is short for ‘Leviathan’. As in, he’s the sea monster of myth. Neptune may control the conventional sea creatures, but King Leviathan has control over the more...primal elements of the sea. He could create an earthquake that would break off Kai’s prison and send it into the ocean. He could create hurricanes that would pummel the coasts of every shoreline on Earth. He could call up the deep, dark creatures that you never want to face.”

A shiver went down my spine. I hadn’t known that creatures like Finn existed until now. I certainly never imagined the deep, dark ones that he had mentioned. Visions of the kraken waging war against submarines danced through my head. We had to rescue Kai. The sooner, the better.

I wrapped my arms around my chest, feeling hopeless.

“We’re going to save Kai before that happens,” Finn assured me. It was as if he could read my thoughts. Was that because of the potion or because we were becoming more of a team?

“Why do we only have until tomorrow?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“Because he’s been gone for two weeks already.” His eyes flicked to the doorway that Levi and Nadia left through. “They’re worried for their child.”

“Is there any way to convince them to hold off? There are so many things I could do...”

“No.” He shook his head. “First of all, Levi doesn’t go back on his word. He considers it a sign of weakness. Second, you have nothing to do with it. It’s my job to get him back, and I’ll get him back.”

If I hadn’t been there to distract Finn, if I hadn’t fallen over the side, if I hadn’t needed to be rescued, Kai would be safely home now. Angry tears wanted to fall, but I held them back. If Kai was staying strong, so could I.

“I want to help,” I said.

Finn grabbed my hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “I know. Don’t worry, Nereia will come through and we’ll save Kai by tomorrow night.”

“Like she came through for me?” The sarcastic response popped out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Finn smirked. “You’re allowed to feel that way. I don’t blame you. She
did
do something drastic to you. But while my aunt may do a lot of weird things, she always knows what’s important. Saving Kai is the most important thing right now. And...” He faltered, casting his eyes away from me, “…and changing you back is a priority as well.”

“I promised Kai I would help him,” I said. “I’ll do anything I can.”

He looked back at me with those sea green eyes, and our gazes locked. Despite the fact that I now breathed through gills, I still held my breath, waiting for his response. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, he nodded.

“I’ll keep that in mind, Tara.”

“Finn.” We both turned at Oceanus’s voice. The king was an imposing figure, using his size and his presence to intimidate us. It was working on me. “You can see what your failure has caused, Son.”

Finn nodded slowly. “I know.”

No, it’s not your fault, Finn!

“We’ll have to scramble tomorrow in order to avoid war,” Oceanus said.

“I know.” Finn stood stoically in front of his father. “I’ll do everything I can to succeed.”

The king grinned, satisfied. “Good.” He turned his gaze on me. “And you, merwalker,” he added, indicating me. My knees would have been knocking together if they weren’t inside my mermaid tail. “You stay here,” he commanded.

“What, as in the palace?” Finn cut in, alarmed. “I was going to take her to Nereia’s place to wait for her, or she can go back to the surface. There’s no reason for her to stay.”

“There’s every reason for her to stay,” Oceanus said, as if it was the only obvious solution. “We can’t have her going to the surface and blabbing about Thalassa and all of this.” He spread his arms wide.  “Our very livelihood is at stake if she talks to the humans.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” I blurted.

“That would make her a prisoner,” Finn objected. “When she hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“She has,” Oceanus snarled, “by becoming a merwalker.”

As if I had any choice in that. Not that I really knew where I’d go if I didn’t stay at the palace. My thoughts went back to Christine and Neptune and the others who would be worried about me. Guilt twisted inside me. I had promised I wouldn’t take off without letting Christine know where I was.

That felt like a lifetime ago.

“So you’re going to keep her here?” Finn demanded.

“She has proof that we exist,” Oceanus groused. “You know what happens when humans suspect us to be real.”

Oceanus gestured to Finn, and at first, I didn’t know what he was referring to. Then I realized that he was talking about the scars. What had happened there? I felt sick thinking about it.

The muscles in Finn’s jaw worked as he addressed his father. “That wasn’t her fault.”

“It was her species’ fault,” Oceanus rumbled, “and it’s her species’ fault that we have to work so hard to keep our way of life. She is a merwalker—proof that creatures like us exist. If we let her go, we’d be at her mercy. A war with Levi would be the least of our worries.”

I tried thinking about it from Oceanus’s point. If I could show researchers and fishermen my gills and my swimming prowess, there was a possibility that they’d invaded Thalassa to learn more. Mermaids snatched from the depths, ready to be experiments on land. I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t be the reason for it.

“Your Highness,” I said, my voice coming out like a squeak. “I would never betray your world to the surface. Besides, if Nereia changes me back to a human, no one would ever believe me.”

At my words, Oceanus regarded me with suspicion. “True. I know that you humans have trouble believing in anything that you can’t see.” He stroked his beard. “I’ll consider it. Until then, you are banished to the lower dungeons.”

Lower dungeons sounded terrifying, yet I didn’t have a choice. It was better than being thrown into a prison for the rest of my life, right? I still held onto the hope that he would let me go once Nereia turned me back.

I’m sorry Christine
.
I’m sorry that I disappeared again tonight
. I thought briefly about asking if there was any way I could tell them that I was okay. I thought about escaping and heading back to land and leaving it all behind me. I’d stay a merwalker, sure, but at least I would be out of prison.

Then what? I’d be stuck somewhere between both worlds. I’d never be able to set foot in the ocean again, because I’m sure King Oceanus would do everything to bring me back to prison. The very idea of it was terrifying.

No, I had to stay to sort this out. I had made a promise to Kai that I would help him, and the best way to do that was here. With tomorrow’s deadline, I didn’t have time to go back as a human and find a way to release him.

“Okay,” I said. “Show me where I’ll stay.”

“You’re not the one who’s a prisoner,” I told
Ponce as I swam into the small, windowless room. It definitely felt like a prison. “You don’t have to stay.”

“What else am I going to do?”
Ponce said, exploring the room himself by going in long, wide swirls.

I laughed. “I’d still be searching the ocean if it wasn’t for you,” I told him truthfully.

Actually, I’d been shocked when Ponce offered to keep me company in my cell. After everything, I would have thought he would have split at the earliest possible moment.

“Thank you for staying,” I told him.

“
Don’t mention it
.”

Curiosity got the better of me. “You said you were here before? Why?”

The fish gave his best shrug, which consisted of his fins gesturing up and down. “
Finn saved me from a human’s fishing net once,
” he said. “
I came here to formally thank him and his father. Oceanus is...uh, Oceanus.
” Yes, I could take the hidden meaning in that statement. “
Finn is great though.
”

“Yeah. Yeah he is.” I rubbed a hand against the hard coral walls. “You were caught in a net? I’m... I’m sorry.” I know I wasn’t the one behind the net, yet I still felt responsible.

Ponce considered this for a moment before speaking. “
Both of our species have bad examples. There are good ones too. I don’t hold it against you.
”

“Thank you
.
”

I swear, the fish blushed at my gratitude. I smiled at him, glad that I had found a friend like him in the wide ocean. He was great company and helpful when I needed him the most.

As if my quietness was an off-switch, Ponce started swimming in wide loops, back to his usual self. Now was the time to get settled in here for the night. I hoped Nereia would come back soon.

I truly was a prisoner. The space was only about 12 by 12 feet with low ceilings and rough, sandy walls. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem for my height, except that, by swimming in three dimensions, I could easily bump my head on it. It was a windowless cell with a single, solid door that kept us tightly within it, like a clam holding onto a pearl. When we first arrived here, the shark guard that had led us down here had pushed the door closed so hard, the entire room shook, unsettling some sand and debris that filled the space. The guard was now stationed outside the door in case I tried to leave.

I felt suffocated, like all of my energy was being drained from my soul down here. I shivered and rubbed my arms, although it wasn’t cold here. Just depressing.

My legs were itching too, which concerned me. I had never worn my mermaid tail this long before, and I was starting to worry that a rash might flare up due to the silicon or saltwater being trapped between my skin and the tail.

Now that I finally had a bit of privacy, I could check to see what was happening.

I started peeling myself out of the tail.

“Oh my god, what are you doing?”
Ponce screeched, swimming into my view.
“Why are you tearing your skin off?”

I waved him away. “It’s a fake tail, remember?”

“Oh,”
Ponce said, although he didn’t sound convinced.
“Does it hurt?”

“No,” I said, tugging it down over my hips. Now it was a matter of sliding out of it. “It’s just itching and...”

At first, I couldn’t quite understand what I was looking at. I mean, I’d already pulled off the tail, so why was there another tail under it?

I screamed, kicking my way backwards. I hit the wall with a thump, banging my head. My fake mermaid tail floated away, forgotten.

“What? What?”

I covered my mouth, trying to keep from screaming more. “I...I...”

I gingerly touched the surface of my right thigh. Scales. Even though I still had two legs, they were covered in magenta scales. My eyes trailed down my scaly legs to my swimsuit bottom, then to my feet and toes. Except that my toes weren’t there. The base of each toe was still apparent and long, gossamer fins unfurled from them, like I was in the middle of growing my own mermaid fin.

“What’s wrong?”
Ponce asked.

“I’m…I’m turning into a mermaid,” I mumbled, stating the obvious. “I didn’t have scales before all this.”

As an experiment to see if those fins were actually my toes, I wiggled them. They really were mine.

Tears threatened to start up again. I rubbed my eyes, trying to stopper the tear ducts with pressure.

“Well, you look fine now,
” Ponce said.

I chuckled bitterly, clenching my hands into fists. “Thanks.”

I took a deep breath through my new gills. Was this going to be my new reality? Being stuck in a palace prison, living as a mermaid with rules that I didn’t understand?

Now that my legs were out of the mermaid tail, I realized that the itching wasn’t just from fish scales sprouting; my legs were actually trying to merge together to create one long tail. Before my eyes, my inner thighs tried to suction to each other. I felt like I was going to be sick.

“Do all humans have skin?”

“Most of us,” I said, using humor as a defense against my anxiety.

I forced my legs apart, not wanting to see them zipper together. Inevitably, it was going to happen, and the longer I was in the sea, the more I’d have to fight my legs from sticking together.

I was going to have to let my legs fully transform into my tail and I was still wearing my bikini bottom. It would suck if my legs fused together while I still had it on.

I’d have to take it off and let nature—or whatever it was—run its course.

“Can you turn around, Ponce?” I asked, self-conscious about what I was going to be doing. He looked blankly at me. “I, uh, need to take this off.”  I plucked at bikini bottom to illustrate my point.

The fish’s eyes went wide as well.
“That’s not a part of your skin too?”

I stifled a laugh, a real one now. “No, this is something that human women wear when they go swimming.”

Actually, thinking about it, Ponce had no idea what was underneath it, nor would he recognize my private parts. I was eventually going to have to go around without anything there anyways, so I might as well start now.

I slipped the material off, grimacing as I felt the scales again. I wasn’t going to freak out. This was going to be reversed.

I let go of the piece of clothing and it floated towards the ceiling to join my discarded mermaid tail. If I was going to have a real tail now, I had no idea how I was going to retrieve that tail for my next performance. If I ever wanted to do another performance.

“Whoa, that’s cool,”
Ponce exclaimed.

At first, I thought he meant my swimsuit floating the top of the room. No, he meant my legs fusing together. As if they sensed that there was nothing blocking them from becoming one fin, they immediately began to combine and become one long, magenta tail. I felt my bones split and rearrange to extend my spine into the tail with loud crunching noises. I shuddered at the sensation, turning away as I became a full mermaid for the very first time.

Wasn’t this what I had wanted for all these years? Fantasy dreams like this didn’t come true for most people. I didn’t know what to think about it. I
did
know that I wanted it to be my choice though.

“Is it over?” I asked after the clicking and the movement of my bones stopped. I no longer felt two appendages, just one tail that felt strange and alien in the water.

“I guess so?”
Ponce said.
“How do I tell?”

I looked down at the entire magenta tail where my legs used to be. The sheen of each scale glittered like a thousand sequins, reflecting even the dim light in the room. My fins looked like the wings of a dragonfly.

Despite everything, I was entranced, if only for a second. My fear was gone. Only some curiosity at my new body remained.

The door to the room opened unexpectedly. As a reflex, I tried reaching for something, anything to cover up the lower part of my body. My old mermaid tail and my swimsuit bottom were up on the ceiling, so the only thing within reach was Ponce. I grabbed him and covered up where my lady bits normally were.

Finn stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the light behind him. Stunned, I looked up at him as he paused, taking in the scene.

“Wow,” he murmured.

While I was too shocked to actually move, Ponce squirmed in my hands.

“Lemme go!”

I released him like I’d been holding onto a live wire. “Sorry.”

Finn recovered enough to speak. “Hey Ponce, can you step outside for a bit?” he asked.

“With the sharks? No way.”

Finn frowned. “They won’t eat you. Right now, I want to talk to Tara in private. That’s an order,” he added.

Sulking, Ponce swam through the doorway. When he was clear of the door, Finn pulled it shut behind him, throwing us back into darkness. My eyes would have to readjust to the light in here, so I could no longer read his expression.

“You’re fully a mermaid now,” Finn said, his voice neutral.

I swallowed reflexively. “Yeah. This was hiding underneath my fake tail. It just happened.” I gestured at the single tail. “Can you tell that I was—am—human?”

“No. You look like you’ve always been a mermaid.”

“Certainly doesn’t feel that way.”

“No,” Finn agreed. “I imagine it doesn’t.”

Anxiety was taking hold now at why he was here. “What did you want to talk to talk about?”

Silence filled the space between us. Finally he said, “I have something to return to you.”

My eyes were still adjusting, but I could see for the first time that he had something small in his hands. I squinted at it, trying to discern what it was.

“My necklace,” I said, recognizing the stone carving. My hands flew to my neck in a reflex that I’d had for as long as I’ve had the necklace. In the midst of everything, I’d almost forgotten about it.

“I didn’t have a chance to return it to you,” he said sorrowfully. “I didn’t want to keep it any longer. Not when I wasn’t its rightful owner.”

I tried thinking back to the first time I had woken up and he had shoved it in my face, like it was evidence of foul play against Kai. He had seemed so intense in that moment. I realized that it would have been because Kai had commanded him to save me when he should have been trying to find a way to save the dolphin.

“I’m sorry for getting in the way of your rescue mission,” I said, closing my eyes.

“I’ll help you put it on,” he said.

Wordlessly, I swept my hair aside so that the back of my neck was exposed. I felt the weight of the necklace hit my collarbone as he swam to my backside to do the clasps.

I’m not going to cry. Or swoon.

An awkward pause passed between us, as if we both realized the intimacy of this gesture at the same time.

“I’m sorry too,” Finn murmured.

“For what?”

“I...I treated you like a criminal when we first met.”

“I can understand that,” I said honestly. “I mean, I was right by Kai’s pool when you saw me. I know how that looked.”

“Yeah, still doesn’t mean it was right.” He came around to face me, his expression taut and grim. “We’re not savages. I should have looked at all of the evidence.”

“No, I...” I searched his face. “I understand. I think.” My eyes fell on the scars marring his body. “You were right to be suspicious. My kind has really hurt you in the past.”

I reached out and touched one of the scars, entranced by them.

“It was a fishing net,” he said. “I got caught up in it trying to save a mermaid who’d been swimming with a school of fish.”

“Does that happen often?”

He gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve learned to avoid traps like that. Although it makes it hard to save the creatures that get caught up in it.”

“Thankfully, you escaped.”

His eyes softened momentarily. “Luckily she did too. It would have been bad for everyone if humans found a mermaid in their nets.”

I opened my mouth to ask who it was because I somehow knew that this was important, yet the words didn’t come out. My first reaction was that it was his girlfriend, so I didn’t want to linger on that image.

He picked up on my question for me. “It was my mother,” he said softly. “She was out swimming with her subjects, being the gracious queen she was.”

I could see why Oceanus treated me with such hatred. “Where is she now?”

“She passed on a long time ago,” he said without emotion, although I knew that feeling. It was how I told people where my dad was. It was how I could avoid reopening those wounds.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly.

He glanced at me. “Don’t be. She lived a long and good life. She was a kind ruler.”

“I’m mean, I’m sorry for everything.” Sorry for being human. Sorry for keeping him from saving Kai. Sorry for feelings I probably shouldn’t have.