Chapter Text
Law only goes to the aquarium because Lami likes the seals.
They go there often enough that he doesn't really worry about her getting lost anymore. The aquarium is quiet on a weekday, especially when there's no school groups. She has a little phone with his and his parents' numbers programmed in if anything goes wrong.
So while Lami runs around visiting the fish and various marine mammals, Law flops down in the mer exhibit to work on schoolwork. It's quiet here, at least.
He remembers that it was a big deal when the aquarium got the mer. It was sold to them from some private collector, and they spent a lot of money retrofitting this exhibit for it. It made a splash (and every article made sure to use that pun). Merfolk are hard to catch and harder to exhibit; they're mostly only held in the biggest and most famous zoos and aquariums. People talked like it proved something about Flevance, that they had a mer.
But that was a few years ago now, and the sparkle has worn off. There's been a few controversies too, over the massively reduced lifespan of merfolk in captivity, the ongoing debate about mer sentience, the ethics of catching wild merfolk. Law thinks there's something else about it, too: a visceral discomfort, seeing something human-shaped behind glass.
His old teacher said that the human appearance was convergent evolution. But Law found a book that said it's just an evolutionary tactic, like butterfly wings that look like owl eyes, and a different book that said genome testing suggested humans and mers had a common ancestor. Whatever the case, everyone agrees that merfolk aren't mammals. They don't look human on the inside, with a bunch of interesting organs humans don't have, and a whole other reproductive system.
But they look human. So they make people uncomfortable.
Law doesn't care. It means the mer exhibit is almost always empty, and people who do come in don't stick around. If Lami wants to spend all day at the aquarium watching the seals, fine, he'll take her here. But he's also going to work on his homework.
He's been stuck on this math problem for ages. He's tried it seven times and gotten seven different answers, but he's pretty sure none of them are right. Scrubbing furiously at his incorrect work with an eraser, the page tears.
Law uses one of the swears his parents think he doesn't know, and slams the notebook and textbook both on the bench beside him. He buries his head in his hands, frustrated and disappointed in himself.
There's a knock on the glass behind him.
He whips around to tell whatever stupid kid is ignoring all the "Don't knock on the glass" signs to quit bothering the mer, and stops dead.
The mer's enclosure is too small for it. It's a massive cylinder, stretching from floor to ceiling, but Law's spent enough time in here to realize that the diameter isn't actually long enough for the mer to stretch out completely. Sometimes it swims in lazy, discontent circles. But usually it hides as much of itself as possible in the fake rocks at the middle of the tank, and watches people pass by.
Law has never seen it come up to the glass. He's definitely never seen it knock to get someone's attention.
It's bigger than a human. Maybe even intimidating, this close. But its face is the most human-like part of it, and it doesn't look hostile. It looks curious, intent.
It taps the glass again, gently this time, and holds up three fingers.
Law blinks.
The mer makes an exaggerated sigh, shoulders drooping, and points-- points!-- down at Law's open notebook, then holds up three fingers again.
Law scrambles for the notebook, and holds it up. "This?" he says, pointing at the equation. "You're saying the answer is three?"
The mer nods.
The book on merfolk Law read, back when the mer was new at the aquarium, said that merfolk only mimicked humans, making them look sentient, but with no more thought behind it than crows copying other birds' songs. Merfolk couldn't really talk, or emote, or converse; they can only repeat what they've seen.
Law hasn't been able to solve this problem yet. And no one's been in here helping him.
"How'd you get three?" he demands. "I've only gotten answers with decimals, and the book says all our answers are supposed to be whole numbers!"
The problem is -7 + 𝑥 + 9 = 11 - 2𝑥. Law thought his problem was dropping a negative somewhere, and then he thought maybe he was balancing the sides wrong, but he's tried it six different ways now and he's certain none of them are right. He doesn't even know where to start with fixing it.
The mer frowns, glancing away, and then brightens. It holds up two fingers, then makes an X with both hands. Then shifts to the side, holds up one finger, and another X. Then leans forward and tips his head to the side, as if asking Law if he understands.
Law looks down at his problem. One side of the equation has 2𝑥, that's right. He knows he has to balance both sides of the equation by adding the 𝑥s together--
But, looking over his previous attempts, he realizes he's been treating the lone 𝑥 as if it didn't exist. Like it was 0𝑥. The mer is telling him that's wrong: he needs to read it as 1𝑥.
And if he does that, then the rest of the problem is suddenly easy, and the answer--
--is three.
He looks up at the mer. The mer looks back. A faint smile plays at the corners of its mouth.
"You solved this," Law says. He leans forward to ask how and why and maybe prove it! but that's when there's a call from the entrance to the exhibit.
"Law!"
He turns around to see Lami standing there, frowning.
"Yeah?"
"I'm hungry," she informs him primly.
And he's annoyed to be interrupted, but Lami rarely has an appetite lately, so he's grabbing his books and shoving them into his bag without a second thought. He pauses as he stands, and glances over his shoulder at the tank. But the mer has retreated back to his rocks to hide again, and Lami's tapping her feet impatiently, so Law picks up his bag and follows her out.
But the encounter replays in his mind, over and over again.
---
Law's parents ask how his day went, and he doesn't tell them that a mer helped him with his math homework, even though he can barely remember what else happened today.
Partly because-- well, he's supposed be be staying with Lami, when the two of them go to the aquarium. Lami's eight: she's old enough to keep from falling into the tanks herself. Law's not worried about her. But mostly, Law just knows that his parents won't believe him, and he doesn't want to try to explain something that they'll only brush off. He doesn't have any proof: just one strange story.
So he needs evidence. Which means he needs to do research.
After supper, he excuses himself and retreats up to his room. He boots up the laptop his parents got him for his homeschool work (a blatant bribe to cheer him up, while he was still complaining about being pulled out of school and having to move to a whole new city) and starts by just looking up merfolk.
Immediately, he has more information than he knows what to do with. The Wikipedia article at the top of the results doesn't tell him anything he didn't already know from hanging out in the mer's exhibit, but it's still a good starting place. Merfolk are like platypus, it says. They don't fit quite right into any standards of categorization developed by humans. They're fish, sort of, except for the fact that they look like humans, and some people argue that they actually should be classified as mammals-- which is different than what the signs at the aquarium say, and what Law's heard before.
Scrolling through the article, Law finds that's only one of the debates raging over merfolk. There's another argument over their reproductive systems, about whether they should be classified as having one sex or two. Apparently their reproductive systems can switch between ovaries and testes and back again; sort of like clownfish, except it goes both ways.
The question of how they breathe is apparently fraught, too. They seem to be able to breathe on land or in the sea (which is one of the pieces of evidence used for the argument that they should be classed as mammals), but there's a fringe theory that claims they only hold their breaths outside of the water, like the opposite of seals or whales. There's an addendum in that section that notes that the primary study on which the theory is based has been roundly criticized for unethical treatment of its subjects.
The debate Law is really looking for is almost at the bottom of the page, but the section is shorter than he'd expected. Only a few sentences on the whole question of merfolk sentience. The section is written in a notably cagey tone, cautiously overusing passing voice. Criticisms have been made against the captivity of merfolk since the late 60s. Activist groups have lobbied against the use of merfolk for entertainment, but have been met with resistance.
Resistance from who? And why? And, Law thinks, clicking back out of the page, why does it seem like there haven't been any real studies done on whether merfolk are like people?
A few articles later, he has more information but no less frustration to show for it. Studies have been done on merfolk's capacity to problem-solve, to feel pain, and to reason, but what they've found above all else is that merfolk are universally uncooperative. Nothing works to bribe them, not giving treats or withholding food, not presenting interesting tools or leaving them in unstimulating environments. They will not perform for humans, no matter what sort of pressure they're put under.
Except that the mer at the aquarium had solved a math problem for Law. It hadn't even acted like it was anything special. Like it solved that sort of problem all the time.
One book, uploaded as a PDF by the authors themselves on their website, has a very different approach than most of the studies Law finds. Only a year old, it's a collaboration between an anthropologist and a marine biologist. They claim to have talked to a pod of merfolk. They claim that merfolk are not only sentient, but intelligent, thoughtful, and social. The authors even go so far as to say that many merfolk learn the languages commonly used by humans near them. Not only listening comprehension: some of them can talk.
If they outright disagreed with all the other studies, Law would write them off as frauds. But they don't, really. Because all the other studies say that the merfolk won't interact with them. All the other studies are working with captive mers, in closed environments. This book says that the scientists worked with wild mers, in their own territory.
And the book is the only one that talks about merfolk like they could solve a math problem.
"Sweetheart?"
Law looks up from his computer screen. His mom is in the doorway, smiling at him fondly. She looks amused.
"It's bedtime, kiddo."
"Oh." Law glances down at the computer on his screen to discover that it's twenty minutes after he was supposed to be in bed. "Sorry, I was reading."
"I figured." His mom comes in and sits on the bed across from him. "Anything interesting?"
"Just about merfolk," Law says, grasping for a way to explain his sudden interest. "The aquarium just has stupid kiddie signs about everything. I wanted to know what real scientists say."
"Looking for reputable sources," his mother says with a nod. "Very responsible of you."
"Yeah," Law says. He frowns, and closes the case. "You know there's a couple of scientists who say that merfolk can talk?"
"Hm," his mother says, neutrally. "I've never heard that before."
That's his mom's way of saying that she thinks it's bullshit, but doesn't want to crush his interests.
"Usually if someone's saying something totally different than anyone else, it's just conspiracy theory bul-- nonsense," Law says. "But there's a bunch of other studies that say they can't make any definitive statements about whether or not merfolk can think, because any mer they're studying just refuses to engage with the study. So what if-- if you could get a mer to trust you enough-- what if they could talk?"
Before he even finishes talking, he knows his mother is too skeptical to be convinced. She's doing a good job of hiding it, but, well . . .
Everyone knows that merfolk are just animals. Everyone knows it, so how's Law supposed to convince anyone that it might not be true?
The mer's exhibit at the aquarium has two sections. Law usually spends his visits in the underwater exhibit, where they can see into the tank and under the water, but there's also an above ground portion. There's a whole outdoor walking path between all the large outdoor pools, including the mer's. Nobody ever goes there, though, because the mer spends almost all it's time at the bottom of the tank.
Law can't talk to the mer through glass. But if he could convince the mer to go to the top of its tank, then the mer would be able to hear him. And maybe-- just maybe-- it might talk back.
---
It's three agonizing days of waiting (and reading and rereading the book he'd found) before Lami asks Law to take her to the aquarium again. She seems a little surprised by how little he argues about it, but she's too excited to see the seals to question it.
He does go to the underwater exhibit first. Fortunately, the mer is swimming in restless, uncomfortable circles instead of hiding in the rocks, so it catches sight of Law quickly.
He waves.
It pauses, drifting in the water, and tips its head to the side.
Law points up, towards the sunshine and open surface above.
The mer frowns, nose scrunching in one of those decidedly human-seeming expressions. It glances up, then back down at Law.
Law can't explain himself more clearly without words. He heads out of the exhibit and up a flight of stairs outside. There's no one out here at this time of day except his sister, and she's too busy cooing over the seals to even notice him. He heads down towards the mer's exhibit at the end.
There's a few rows of stadium-style seating in moulded concrete around the water, probably erected in the vain hope that the mer might be trained to perform tricks at some point. The tank itself is enclosed with a railing, and Law leans over it, trying to see into the water.
There's a splash at the opposite end of the pool, and Law looks up in time to see the flick of an orange fin, and ripples.
And then the mer pops his head out of the water in front of him.
Law reels backwards, startled, but catches himself on the railing before he falls.
The mer looks even more human, poking its head out of the water, still low enough that Law can't see its gills.. Its blond hair is sodden, plastered to its face and dripping into bright red eyes. It reaches up to push its hair back and blinks at Law.
Law opens and shuts his mouth. "I-- I wanted to thank you for helping me with my homework the other day," he says. "I appreciated it."
The mer's ears flick like a cat's. They're the least human part of its head, extending out, elf-like, into long, frilly orange fins. There's a long tear in one of them. The mer examines Law carefully, and for a second, Law thinks it might talk back.
Then it turns and dives back underwater, quashing Law's hopes.
Law stares into the water for several long minutes, waiting to see if it'll come back. When he can no longer deny that the mer isn't coming back, he sits down on the the ground. He sits with his back to the tank, and pulls out his notebook again. But instead of working on math problems like he's supposed to, he flips to the last page of the book and starts sketching.
It'd hard to capture the planes of the mer's face without it in front of him. Something about its face is a little different than a human's. Maybe its eyes are a little larger, or the planes a little more angular? Whatever elusive quality it is, Law can't remember it clearly enough to draw it. Something he could feel, but not see. Something that--
Water drips onto the corner of the page. Not onto the drawing, but almost onto Law's hand.
He looks up and drops his pencil.
The mer is mostly out of the water, settled down onto the decorative rocks at the edge of the enclosure, and leaning over the glass railing around the enclosure. Law thinks absently that it's not a very well-designed enclosure, to let the mer get close enough to the guests that Law could practically reach out and touch him, but he's mostly distracted by the sudden realization that the quality he wasn't able to draw is the faint iridescence of the mer's skin, caused by the thousands of tiny, almost transparent scales on its upper half.
The mer looks at the picture, brow furrowed, and then looks up at Law. Their eyes meet.
Law swallows. "My name's Law. What's yours?"
The hand resting delicately on the railing by Law's shoulder tenses for a moment. Then the mer takes a breath. "Why do you want to know, little hatchling?"
His voice is low, a little hoarse, and halting, as if uncertain how exactly to deliver the words. He doesn't sound angry. The care with which he enunciates doesn't leave much room for emotion, but there's tension strung through his shoulders as he watches Law and waits for a reaction.
Law hesitates. What does he want?
He wants to know, but suddenly that feels inadequate. Even cruel. How much of a risk is the mer taking by talking to him at all? But lying feels worse.
"I found a book," Law says slowly. "It said that-- that merfolk could talk. And not just mimicry, like the other articles and stuff said."
The mer's expression twitches, then smoothed out under an icy facade.
"Everybody else, they all made a big deal of how the mers they were researching didn't do anything during studies and stuff," Law says. "But the one that said merfolk could talk was the only one that made it sound like a mer could help with my math homework. And it said that merfolk were basically people like humans. So I wanted to know if it was true."
The mer's tail drifts in the water. His fins, massive and diaphanous, flutter even in the still water. They're torn too, ragged at the edges.
"Cora," he says, finally. "You may call me Cora."
Law's heart skips a beat. Cora-- Cora. The mer has a name. The mer really can talk.
(In ten years, Law will look back on this moment with embarrassment and relief. Embarrassment, because he should have had more of a reaction. He's only thirteen, here and now; he doesn't know how astonishing this really is. How much of an olive branch Cora is holding out, and how much of a risk he's taking.
And relief, because if he had known, he surely wouldn't have reacted as well. It's only because Law really is just a kid-- who barely knows anything about mer, whose medical knowledge is limited to overheard conversations and Wikipedia rabbitholes, who has the powerful ability of every kid to see himself as the protagonist of a story, and thus entitled to experience strange and impossible things, making them entirely natural-- that Law reacts as if this was merely exciting.)
Brightening, Law scrabbles for his dropped pencil. "Can I draw you? I was trying, but I couldn't make it look right."
Cora peers down at Law's sketch. "That's all you want? A drawing?"
"I'm trying to get better at drawing people," Law explains. "Faces are hard to get right."
With an elegant little twist, Cora settles more comfortably onto the rocks, resting his head on his arms. Law sits cross-legged on the ground and turns to the next page to start a new drawing.
As he starts sketching out the shape of Cora's head, the mer watches him.
Suddenly, Cora says, "I see you here more often than any but the workers."
Law blinks. "Oh. Yeah, I guess I must be."
"And the visitors don't usually linger so long in any one gallery," Cora adds. "At least, not in mine."
It feels weird, suddenly, to think about how much time Law's spent in Cora's exhibit. If Cora's a person, then he's probably been watching Law all along, waiting for him to leave him alone. Like when your parents decide to come in your room and start up a conversation while you're trying to read.
"Sorry," Law says, awkwardly. "My sister likes it here, so I bring her whenever she asks. But I have homework that needs doing and your-- your gallery is quiet."
"That would explain the math," Cora muses. "But littles like you usually come in groups or with your parents. You're here alone?"
Law sets down the pencil, feeling the pit in his stomach that's been there since his parents told him they were going to have to move. "Yeah. My parents are working, but I'm homeschooled. Uh-- that just means that I teach myself instead of going to school." He hesitates. "School is--"
"I know of school." Cora sounds amused, not offended, so Law figures it's okay.
"My sister . . ." Law hesitates. "Last year, she just collapsed in the middle of the day. My parents took her to the hospital, and they found out that she was sick. Really sick. And the hospital where my parents worked couldn't treat it, because their pediatric facilities were too small. So instead of driving into the big city every time Lami needed treatments, we just moved here."
He hasn't quite forgiven his parents yet for pulling him out of class right at the start of a school year, but even so, he understands why. He doesn't even miss school, really. He's already far ahead in his work, and he's going to ask his parents if he can try testing out of grade eight and skip up to nine.
But he does miss home. The big house by the hospital, the pond where the frogs spawned, the church down the road. He hates being scooped up unexpectedly, all his plans and expectations thrown off.
He hates that Lami's sick.
"And it was just easier to do homeschooling instead of trying to find a new school for me," Law continues. "So I'm home all the time. My parents try to make sure one of them is home, but they're both doctors and so they have to work a ton. We really need the money."
His parents don't know he knows that, but Law's been skulking in the hallways at night to listen to their conversations. They've been talking about trying to find someone who's willing to babysit him and Lami for them; maybe a particularly experienced pediatric nurse would be willing to take the job. But that might just cost them more money than working full time.
"So," Law says, with an exhale that's just shy of a sigh, "When they're not home and I'm taking care of Lami, and she's feeling up to it, sometimes I take her to the aquarium. She likes the seals."
"But you don't stay with her?"
"I--" Law huffs. "I don't want to. I have work to do! I want to be a doctor, and that means I have to do really really well in school. Everyone says that grade eight doesn't matter, and it's not a big deal for my grades to slip a little bit because anyone would understand, but it matters to me."
School's the one thing Law's always been good at. Nobody but him thinks it's important. Other kids thought he was no fun. Even his parents think he should relax and not worry so much. But if Law doesn't have his grades-- if he's not the smartest person in his class, even now that he doesn't have a class-- then he doesn't have anything left.
"Ah," Cora says simply, and nods.
Law shoots him a suspicious glance.
"It sounds very difficult," Cora adds gently. "I would be simply devastated to learn that my brother was so unwell."
Law starts. He hadn't known that Cora had a brother. He's only ever seen the one mer in this exhibit. Without thinking, he opens his mouth to ask if his brother is at a different aquarium, and then remembers the plaque by the tank that says Cora is a rare wild-caught mer.
Cora's brother probably isn't in an exhibit. Cora's brother is out in the wild. Cora might have a whole family out there, that he hasn't seen since he was caught. And Law doesn't even know how long ago that might have been.
Law's parents made him move away from home, from everything he knew, and even though it was for Lami's sake, he still kind of resents them for it. Maybe he resents them a lot. But at least he's still got them. At least he knows Lami's just down the boardwalk, watching the seals.
He tries to imagine being taken from his home and put in a zoo, to be stared at by people who don't even think he's a person.
It makes him feel . . . very small.
"Do--" Law hesitates. "Do you miss him?"
There's a certain way ice sounds, when you're crossing a pond and it cracks underfoot. Law's never fallen into a pond, but he's tripped into icy puddles, and he knows the shock of it, the cold that's almost pain. He imagines that, but with the terror of falling into deep water, and the horror of the dark.
All of that appears on Cora's face, for just a moment. A moment of breaking ice, and discovering the deep water underneath.
"Very much," he replies.
Law looks at Cora through the glass of the enclosure. Short enough for Cora to lean over it, if he wants. Law had thought that it was bad security, but-- Cora's still here.
Maybe he could get out of his tank. But that's probably not enough to let him actually get out.
Law swallows, and closes his notebook. "I think I should go find my sister."
"I think that's a good idea," Cora replies, but he doesn't sound like he's chiding Law. Just sympathetic.
Shoving his notebook and pencil into his backpack, Law stands up. "If . . ." He hesitates. "If I come back, can I talk to you again?"
Cora considers him for a moment, then gives a nod. "I will talk to you." Emphasis on that last word.
Law grins, and shoulders his bag. "See you soon, then." He heads towards the exit of the exhibit, but stops before turning the corner to look back when he hears a splash.
Cora's gone already, only ripples showing where he dove under the water.