Emerge (40 page)

“That one’ll help replenish the blood he lost Below.” Caspian lays Clay’s head back on the deck, then pulls a small tub out of the copper case and lathers a white cream over the gash on Clay’s stomach. “That’s the last one,” he says, wiping his hands on yet another towel.

He eyes me up and down, searching for wounds, taking in the bruises around my throat.

“I’m fine,” I assure him. “I’ll be fine.”

He stares at me in silent consideration, then turns his gaze back to Clay. To the deep stab wound now so neatly tended. “Tides, what did they do to him down there?”

I open my mouth to tell him, and my throat closes up. I’m not ready to talk about it. But the least I owe Caspian is an explanation. “I got in the way of their ritual. Melusine came at me with a dagger. Clay rushed in front of it to save me,” I force out.

Caspian must want to know more, but he doesn’t push. “Then he has my respect.” He looks at me, and his solid stoicism breaks down. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

He enfolds me in a huge hug. He was scared for me.

By the time he lets me go, I have just one more question. “I know you followed the symbols, but how were you right at this spot moments after we surfaced?”

“It wasn’t quite as miraculous as all that,” he says. “I only had your approximate location, so I’ve been circling this whole area for over an hour. If I didn’t catch sight of you soon, I was going to dive down and search for you.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much for coming.” Now it’s my turn to hug him. Without Caspian, I would be lost. Clay would be dead.

As Caspian steers us back home, I sit at Clay’s side, gripping his hand in mine. I whisper to him that he’s safe, he’s finally safe, and everything will be okay. The sun has risen in the sky and it shines down, warming us.

Clay’s grip on my hand tightens as he opens his eyes.

“Lia, I had this dream you were … ”

His gaze shifts from side to side, taking in his unfamiliar surroundings. He sits up and doesn’t seem to be in any pain. Through the cream on his chest, I can see the wound is closed. He looks out at the shimmering water on all sides of the boat.

“Was … was it real?”

I nod, and manage a quiet, “Yes.”

He stares at my legs then back at my face. “And you had me under a spell all this time?”

He keeps his tone steady, but betrayal lurks just under the surface.

“I didn’t know how else to protect you,” I say, my voice even quieter.

He drops my hand and scoots away from me. He makes the gesture casual, like he wants to rest his back against the side of the boat, but his message comes across loud and clear. I bite my lip to keep myself from crying.

“How am I still alive?” Clay asks, rubbing some of the cream on his chest between his fingertips and staring at it.

I’m afraid that if I talk anymore, Clay will hear the tears in my voice. When I don’t answer, Caspian chimes in from behind the wheel, “You have me to thank for that. I brought some … medicines with me. I’m Caspian.” Caspian turns and nods in greeting.

“Have we met before?” Clay asks, tilting his head.

“I tend to turn up when you’re unconscious.”

“So, Caspian, are you a … mermaid, too?”

I can’t help it; I burst out laughing. All the panic, the fear, the rejection of the day escapes in wild laughter that shudders through my body. Soon, Caspian and Clay are laughing, too. A much needed release.

We dock at my house. We need to tell my parents where Melusine and her father are. Clay’s mom is still out of town, so he agrees to come give a witness statement for official Foundation records.

“Better now than later,” Clay says. “I want to put all this behind me. Move on.”

My face falls. “All this” includes me. Clay wants to move on from me, and I can’t blame him. He keeps a sizable distance between us as we walk up the dock.

The private beach behind my house—meant only for the families (some human and some Mer) who own houses on our street—is almost always empty except for the occasional neighbor. Now, it’s crowded with people. Everyone speaks animatedly to one another. I don’t recognize all of them, but the fact that so many cover their legs with long skirts or pants despite the heat tells me they’re Mer. That’s odd. I thought I knew everyone in the Community. Did we get more refugees? What’s going on? Caspian must wonder the same thing because he raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug.

They’re all so wrapped up in conversation that no one stops us as we go up the stairs to my house. When we walk through the back door, silence greets us. Everyone must be in the grottos.

We stop at the concealed entrance. It feels monumental to bring a human into the hidden depths of my home after a lifetime of secrecy. Caspian understands my hesitancy. He stops walking and gives me time.

All I can think to say to Clay is, “Careful, it’s slippery.”

As we head down the winding stairs to the antechamber, he’s wide-eyed with wonder at the shimmering walls and the velvet water lapping along the slanted floor.

I can hear my sisters’ voices now. And Leomaris’s. And Staskia’s. And my parents’. And … Caspian’s parents’?

Even though Clay’s stomach looks healed, I don’t want to chance getting it wet. Besides, the grottos get deep, and he doesn’t have a tail. So, instead of moving farther in, I call out, “Hello! I’m home, and I really need to talk to you.”

I expect my family to be shocked beyond belief at the sight of a human in the grottos. Instead, I’m the one who’s shocked.

When my parents enter the antechamber, I gasp. They’ve changed. These are not the parents I left this morning.

The wrinkles around my mother’s eyes and mouth have vanished; the skin on her whole body is tight and glowing. Her hair, always beautiful, is now as lush, shining, and free of gray as any of my sisters’ hair.

My father has hair! My father, who’s been balding for over a decade, now has a head of thick, dark hair. Even more striking, the soft, cushy potbelly that usually sticks out above his tail has been replaced by a perfect six pack. My dad has abs … so weird.

Caspian stares at his parents with equal fascination. They look like they did when we were toddlers.

And no one—not his parents, my parents, my sisters, Stas, or Leo—seems surprised to see Clay. They shift to make room as a woman I don’t recognize enters the antechamber from the inner grottos. She’s breathtaking, with flowing auburn hair, almond eyes, and nearly translucent white skin. She swims to the edge of the water, where Clay and I stand with Caspian.

“So, Aurelia,” she says the words to me, but her gaze fixes on Clay, “this must be the human you broke the curse with.”

Broke the curse? There’s no way to break the curse. Melusine and her father wanted to twist the curse, manipulate it to gain power. I want to tell my parents this—to tell them everything—but that’ll have to wait. Instead, Clay gives his formal statement that the Havelocks kidnapped and attempted to kill him, and Caspian and I describe their location. My parents know where the palace is, and my father heads upstairs to call in a Foundation team.

“We need to retrieve them,” my mother says. “Before they can take credit Below for what’s happened.”

“What
has
happened?” Caspian asks.

“As far as we can tell, all adult Mer in the Community, and possibly Below as well, have reverted back to their stasis ages,” Caspian’s father answers in a baritone so much like his son’s.

Before the curse, Merfolk stopped aging at around thirty—what we call reaching stasis. That’s why there was such a commotion outside … and why I didn’t recognize some of the Mer! They must’ve looked decades younger than they did the last time I saw them. My eyes flit to the beautiful Mermaid with the auburn hair. Her almond-shaped eyes are the same blue as Caspian’s and her radiant garnet tail shimmers beneath her in the water.

“MerMatron Zayle?”
I ask.

“Olee?”
Caspian whispers.

Caspian’s grandmother smiles.
“Didn’t I tell you I was a looker in my day?”
Then she turns to Clay and switches to English. “How are you feeling, young man? It seems my potions worked wonders, if I do say so myself.”

“Fine, thank you,” Clay answers. He tries to maintain eye contact with her, but his focus keeps shifting to her tail. To all their tails. “Kind of like I jumped … er, dived into one of my mom’s fairytale books but, yeah, fine.”

“Glad to hear it,” she says just as my father comes back downstairs, transforms, and returns to my mother’s side in the water. “Now, I have a theory about all this,” Caspian’s grandmother continues, “but I need to know exactly what’s happened to see if I’m correct.”

Since Caspian was never Below with us, and Clay was unconscious for most of it, the explanation falls on me.

I try to recount every detail, every word Melusine and her father said about the curse, every step they performed in the ritual. Once I reach the end, Caspian’s grandmother has me start all over again, and when I get to the part where Clay got stabbed, she interrupts me.

“So you chose a human’s life over Melusine’s promise of immortality for all of us?” she asks, her voice serious.

I nod, feeling kinda guilty.

“Thanks so much, Lia,” Lapis says sarcastically. Amy shushes her from where she swims next to Staskia.

“You must really love him.” A mix of awe and incredulity colors Emeraldine’s voice.

Both of them fall silent when Caspian’s grandmother poses her next question. “Then you attacked Melusine, risking your own life to save this human’s?”

I remember grabbing Melusine’s arm, hitting her with my tail. Then Mr. Havelock holding me back as Melusine came at me with the dagger. I nod again.

“You were willing to die for him?” she asks.

“It’s not like I was looking forward to it. I was scared,” I confess. “But I thought maybe while they were killing me, Clay might escape.”

My parents stare at me in silence. They look … proud?

“But you didn’t make your escape,” MerMatron Zayle says to Clay. “You swam in front of the dagger to save Aurelia’s life. Isn’t that right?”