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“Your what? ”
Connie didn’t have to wait for the boy’s response. The fear in his face was familiar, fear that Connie herself had felt at home. It was a sheepish fear, a childlike guilt, like Steven had gotten his had caught in the cookie jar. With royalty, the girl imagined that the stakes were higher for talking with humans. It looked like they were going to find out just how high those stakes were.
The hands that tugged out of the bubbling water weren’t as massive as Connie had expected, but the man who crawled up to the surface was still almost seven feet tall. He used the anchor as, well, an anchor point as he walked up into the shallows and drew himself out of the water. The purifiers bobbed away in his stead, as if frightened by his presence. Steven let out the smallest whine, pushing his hands together as Connie gaped up at the man she presumed to be the king.
He had a swimmer’s legs, toned and thick, and a stocky torso to match; the girl could see where Steven got it from. Around his waist, he wore a red-scaled kilt, rimmed with gold, and Connie suspected that it was his tail, magically contained to hide him with human decency. A matching red cape fluttered behind him, somehow dry despite having been submerged moments before. Everything about the man matched Steven’s mysterious aura. As he put his hands on his hips, Connie looked at the way his long hair swayed in the wind behind him, a full brown beard covering up his frown. A string of stones, like Steven’s, were strung around his neck, black and red and swirling with fire.
Wait, he was a king. Connie backed out of the water onto land, letting go of Steven to get on one knee. The girl bowed her head until the salty curls came down over her face.
“Dad—”
“Wait. Young lady, arise.”
Connie got up onto her feet shakily, clasping her hands in front of her. There were probably rules about eye contact and posture and all sorts of things she was ignoring right now. He was a royalty, but whatever that meant, it was lost on Connie. She just had to do her best. She looked up at the king, trying to keep her face as blank as possible.
The man stared down at her in silence before he nodded slowly, raising his eyebrows. He almost smirked as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Not bad. You know your salt.”
“S-sir?”
“You keep it simple. Most humans just freak out and beg for mercy or whatever. You at least kept your cool. Kudos. Isn’t that a human thing? Kudos?”
“...Yes, your majesty.”
“Tell me. What exactly is a human kudo?”
“I, um, I don’t think it’s anything, your majesty. I think it’s just something that people say.”
“Really? Darn.”
As embarrassed as Steven was, judging by his dour face, the boy did seem a lot like his father. Both were curious, moderately jovial, certainly expressive. Connie felt somewhat at ease with the man, despite him being a massive magical creature who had almost squashed her with an anchor. She glanced over to the weapon.
“Were you going to...anchor-ize me?” she asked.
“I know how to use this thing. Don’t worry, I’d never kill a human who wasn’t trying to kill us.”
Not that anyone would try to kill a man of that stature. It was interesting seeing the discrepancy between the prince and the king. Somewhere in their biology, the mermaids must grow, Connie thought, or else Steven was a runt indeed. There was probably magic involved. Always magic, all the time — it was so unsatisfying, but there really wasn’t anything she could do to change or investigate.
“She’s not gonna kill me, dad,” Steven mumbled. “She just got thrown overboard in a storm.”
“Well, that’s a shame. Still, Steven, you know the rules about coming up and talking to humans.”
“But dad, she needs our help!”
The man stuck his tongue in the inside of his cheek as he studied Connie. The girl shifted from foot to foot, letting the silence of the waves take over the conversation. He sighed, shaking his head slowly.
“Young lady, I am King Gregory. You’ve already met my son,” he said, “and that’s about as far as I’m going to let this go. I’m sure you know well enough about keeping secrets to know that we can’t continue down this path.”
“I understand, your majesty. I-I just want to go home to my parents.”
“And that’s understandable. But — what’s your name? Slipped my mind.”
“Connie, sir. Connie Maheswaran.”
“Right. So, Connie, have you heard about mermaids before meeting Steven? As far as you knew, did mermaids exist?”
“No sir,” she said. “They were just part of stories and fairy tales.”
“And we want to keep it that way.”
Connie opened her mouth, but she wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Looking over to Steven, she saw that he was glancing away, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked hurt. The girl furrowed her brow before realization struck her and her eyes widened. She whipped her head back up to the king, her mouth opening again in horror. The man tilted his head before he realized his mistake.
“No! Oh Neptune, no, we’re not going to — again, we aren’t murderers,” Gregory stammered, hands out and open.
Connie let out a breath, putting a hand on her chest to feel her racing heart. Steven put his hands on his sides and glared up at his father. The king rescinded his hands awkwardly, curling them up into loose fists as he closed his mouth. For a second, the three of them stood in silence before Connie finally managed to get up the courage to speak again.
“So, what does that mean?” she asked. “Am I sworn to a royal decree of silence?”
“It means that he’s gonna wipe your memory,” Steven interrupted. “There’s this potion, and we give it to humans when they see us, and they forget everything about us.”
“If we could trust you, we would, but you have to understand that if we help you get back to find your family, and you travel back to land, we can’t really control you there,” Gregory added.
Well, that was that. Connie nodded carefully, crossing her arms over each other as she thought about her options. But there really didn’t seem to be any. It made sense that there was a magic potion to keep her under wraps, as much as it made sense for there to be any potion whatsoever in this world. The more she thought about it, the less she was disappointed. All things considered, it was a small price to pay for getting back to land.
As she looked over at Steven, she couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt and not the smallest rush of longing. Without friends back home, this summer had sent her a possible blessing in the form of a literal magic mer-boy, and she was going to have to let him go with her memories if she wanted to go home. No, that wasn’t right: she had to let go of him because she wanted to go home. It was back to hanging out with her parents, staying by herself at school, living in a world where there was no magic and no wonder and where she would bury her head in books for the whole summer.
What a life. Living on a tropical island and being friends with mermaids was another possibility, but that couldn’t have lasted forever. All magic was fleeting. Her parents would always be looking for her, and someone would find her eventually. And then what? They’d squeeze her for all the information she could and the mer-society would be ruined. It was probably ruined anyway by how much Connie put the mer-prefix in front of all the words subconsciously; when Gregory had mentioned the word ‘murderers,’ it had corrected to ‘mer-derers’ and she couldn’t get it out.
King Gregory sighed and knelt down in the surf. He gestured for his son. The boy looked at Connie for one plaintive moment before he pulled himself over the sand to the man. Steven turned around and laid down with his tail in the water, crossing his arms and resting his head on them with a sulking expression. When the waves came up to his face, he blew out little frustrated bubbles through his nose.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t help, Connie,” the king said.
“Well, thank you, sir, but how?”
“We have plenty of scouts that I can send out to check on boats and try to get the area under wraps. Once they locate your parents and their boat, then we can try to lead them here to the island. Probably with dolphins.”
“You guys talk to dolphins?” Connie gasped.
“They’re jerks,” Steven said.
“They’re...occasionally ornery,” the king corrected. “Be nice, Steven.”
“Yes, dad…”
That could all work out. The merfolk couldn’t transform directly into giant fish, it seemed, but getting dolphins or other creatures to do the work for them turned the wildlife into magicians in their own right without exposing the true magic of the world. Rescue dolphins were a more plausible explanation than mermaids. Connie nodded and blew out a breath, standing in determination.
“Yes, your majesty!” she said. “I’ll do whatever I can on here to keep your secrets safe.”
“Cool! Uh, thank you.”
“Is...something the matter, sir?”
Gregory chuckled nervously, rubbing a hand on the back of his head. From his side, Steven couldn’t keep a smirk off his face.
“Look, you’re cool with the whole king thing, and I love it, but I’m not your king,” the man said. “I’m the kind of mer-king, a different ruler. I have no human jurisdiction. And I’m okay with you being all humble and that, but just, you know, you don’t have to.”
“With all due respect, sir, I would feel kind of weird if I didn’t. It’s pretty — well, ‘human’ to go up to someone else’s king and act like a jerk. And I don’t want to do that.”
“That’s really mature of you, young lady. I appreciate that.”
“Thank you, sir!”
The king stood up. Gregory smiled down at his son, who only rolled his eyes as the man smiled at Connie and crouched with his legs together. With a mighty shove, he pushed off the ground and jumped, spraying the water of the shallows up into the air as he dove backwards into the drop-off. Connie raced to the water’s edge and looked down in the water, but everything was obfuscated by the waves. The transformation took mere seconds before the king rose up again. He shook out his hair with a grin. Behind him, Connie could see the expanse of his tail in the surf, keeping him afloat. Most of his bare torso was out of the water. It must have been magic keeping him upright, because otherwise the strength of the tail would have to be monumental.
“I’ll get my scouts on straight away,” the man said, nodding to the girl.
“Dad?”
Steven was sitting up now, resting against the sand. It was strange to see someone so comfortable in the waves. His human half, if that was even the right terminology, looked just as normal as a kid Connie would see back home. The transition into scales was immaculate, though it felt a little strange to be looking around the boy’s waist. The young merman shuffled awkwardly, resting his hands together.
“Can I stay and play with Connie?” he asked. “I don’t really wanna go back right now.”
King Gregory sighed and gave Connie a pitying look. The girl stood her ground with a strange frustration welling in her chest. She had seen that look before. It was similar to one her parents had when they asked about Connie’s friends from school. It was a look that adults had when they knew their children didn’t have much of a social life. The eyes were heavy with that eternal and annoying pity, as if a child’s desire for friendship combined with their inability to make friends was burdensome to the people around them.
Well, Connie was having none of it. The girl stepped forwards into the surf and knelt in the warm water, grabbing Steven’s hand and pulling it close. The boy whipped his head around in surprise, redness rising in his pale cheeks.
“Can he, your majesty?” Connie asked, deliberately raising the excitement in her voice. “It’d be great to have company while we wait for your scouts.”
The man sighed and put his hands on his hips, or where his hips would be if he had them just under the surface, and nodded reluctantly. Connie felt Steven squeeze her hand, and she couldn’t help but squeeze back.
“Once we find your parents, we’ll be back to make sure you’re safe and that we can move out quickly. Steven, you can stay with Connie, but as soon as I say, you have to come back. Understood?”
“You got it, dad!”
The king nodded to the children and slipped back under the surface. With a mighty tug, the anchor groaned from its position on the beach, dragging a line through the sand as it slowly slid past Steven and Connie back into the water. The girl watched it vanish from sight as she let out the breath she had been holding.
“Doesn’t it bother you to have your clothes all messed up like that?” Steven asked.
Connie glanced down at her jeans. The clear saltwater was already soaking into the denim, and she wished she was wearing a bathing suit underneath, but it didn’t matter.
“Nah, I’m okay.”
“Thanks for sticking up for me like that. I think my dad woulda let me stay anyway, but… Well, it means a lot that you want me to stay.”
“Hey, as long as I can have some company, why not, right?” Connie laughed. “Besides, you saw how I thought I was going crazy. I like being by myself, but I probably would go crazy out here.”
“It’s nice to have a friend.”
Connie stood up, and Steven jumped into the shallows. He moved a short distance away underwater to presumably get himself refreshed before he surfaced again, smiling up at Connie with those perfect ruddy cheeks. He was right: it was nice. There was so much different about the world now in the girl’s eyes. In a day, she had survived a storm, washed up with no injuries, and discovered a magical race of beautiful creatures. And she didn’t have to go through it alone.
Before they went anywhere, though, Connie knew what she had to do to take care of herself. The girl walked over to where one of the purifiers was tethered and pulled it in. It had been long enough that she could see a mouthful of clear water accumulating in the basin. The water was warm when she lifted the reservoir to her mouth, but it was unsalted and perfect to quench the thirst she didn’t know she had had. At least she didn’t have to survive for much longer, hopefully.
“I’ve never had water without salt,” Steven said, swimming over.
“Wait, really? You only drink saltwater?”
“Yes? It’s everywhere. It’s water. Like, I don’t understand why humans can’t just reach down and drink it.”
“Yeah, I don’t know. My mom probably does. She’s a doctor and she knows a lot about the human body. I bet she’d love to study you and see how your magic works.”
“I think I’ll pass on that.”
Steven looked uncomfortable at the prospect. Honestly, she couldn’t blame him. All his life he had probably been told about what humans did to creatures to see how they worked, and the secret existence of mermaids, if it was made public, would send the world on a hunting spree. Even if the magic was powerful enough to keep other humans away, it would be a time of fear, of war, a place where anyone who had interacted with humans would be guilty of dooming the species.
“Well, I won’t do anything like that,” Connie said quickly, taking a breath. “Magic is magic and you’re you, and I’m just gonna leave it at that.”
“Thanks, Connie. I’ll leave your human stuff alone, too.”
“Do you wanna head out to the bay?”
“Okay! The shallows go out a lot farther.”
The rock barrier was the only obstacle that Connie had to traverse before she crossed over the crescent onto the main beach, the place where she had first washed up. Steven followed her in the water, and she smiled as she watched his form waver and shimmer underneath the surface. It was beautiful to see the creature in his natural habitat. The thoughts were strange, but the truth was that somewhere, mermaids had split into a different species, and whatever human half Steven had wasn’t actually human. Connie wasn’t ready for that revelation, but it was easy to ignore. ‘Half-human’ worked for now.
Crossing over the barrier onto the beach, the girl once more took stock of her surroundings. On the other side of the crescent, the beach stretched on for a good half-mile before turning and curving backwards around the island. Once more, Connie knew that she was only assuming it was an island. If she had been truly marooned here, she knew she would have had to walk around and make a map, creating some sort of survivalist existence all by herself. For now, she looked to the left, where she had first woken up, at the stretch of beach that seemed to go on forever before disappearing. There were a string of archipelagos some distance away, smaller islands with more boulders and trees. There were only the hints of cloudy wisps in the sky from the storm that had stretched over the horizon not hours before. Time passed quickly, and the weather could change in an instant. At least with the flatness of the ocean, she could easily see any boats on the horizon. But as she stepped into the water and scanned, there wasn’t a speck in sight.
“Do you miss your parents?”
Steven’s head and shoulders were poking up from some distance away. He bobbed curiously, his pink royal necklace sinking around his neck and collar. Connie began to walk out into the surf after him. He was right — the sand really didn’t have much of an incline. When the boat arrived, Connie knew she would have to walk out a ways.
“Of course!” she said. “My mom and dad were really nervous about me coming out at all. I had to take a two-week intensive nautical training course and swimming lessons before I could even think about it. They’re probably worried sick.”
“They’re gonna come, don’t worry. We have the three royal scouts, and they’ve been around since I was born! They’re the best, and they’re gonna find your parents no problem.”
“I hope so. Man, I hope Captain Marty hasn’t left me for dead.”
“We can go anywhere in the ocean and find boats. Don’t worry, we’ll see them,” Steven assured.
Connie was up to her waist by the time she came around to Steven. The boy grinned and swam in a circle around her, his head sticking just above the surface of the water. Connie waited until he passed right in front of her, then slapped her hand against the surface, splashing Steven in the face.
He didn’t splutter, but he looked surprised. With a grin, he sat back in the water and pushed off before raising his tail and slapping it on the surface. The force sent a wave over Connie’s torso, pushing her back into the warm surf. The swimming lessons paid off, and she stabilized easily in the surf before the two children came back up, laughing at each other. What use was a splashing contest against a boy who lived underwater.
Even in her clothes, Connie felt in her element. The sun and the water were beautiful. There was a new hope in her heart and a new joy in her friend. Their time together would be short, but there was a magic in knowing that it existed at all. The potion of memory was an unfortunate sticking point. Connie thought of all the ways she could cheat her body into remembering. But that wouldn’t be fair to the king, to Steven. And it was magic. All her logical instincts had no place there.
Instead, Connie took a breath and dove underwater. She opened her eyes to the sting. Steven was already there, smiling at her with a perfect grin. The feeling emanating from his smile was shared. Steven just wanted a friend, and Connie had wanted… What did she want? Maybe she hadn’t known what she had wanted until now.
The water was so clear that it took ages for it to fade to blue. Little schools of yellow fish darted around them. Hermit crabs trundled across the white sand in search of food. Connie pushed herself away and gestured to Steven. The boy swam up and took her hand. The girl kicked along, and Steven swam with her, pulling her through the water as fast as they could go together. Sunbeams shone through the water as they explored the shallows. Connie’s lungs burned, but they burned brightly. She could hold her own. She could hold it until the day was done.