Chapter Text
The storm on the surface had been brewing for a while.
Qifrey had seen the flashes of lightning even this deep down underwater, watched the fish scatter and dart away from currents’ vicious churn.
He really ought to be tucked away in his cave right now, but the girls had lost their pet jellyfish and he could not for the life of himself find it. He suspected that it had drifted somewhere near the surface; he couldn’t be sure where exactly.
It would have been smarter to return home. He should have returned. He was about to. But it was the cracked pieces of a hull that caught his eye suddenly, sinking swiftly through the water. He darted out of the way and watched as it disappeared down the depths.
Flash.
Lightning illuminated the silver scales of his tail so that it looked almost white.
Flash.
The silhouette of a boat loomed far above him.
Flash.
The boat was breaking.
Pieces of it tumbled downwards – wayward bits of paraphernalia, tangled cords of rope, netting, a beam of steel. Qifrey dove out of the way as something hard and strangely shaped plummeted towards him. There was, evidently, no jellyfish. His instincts had taken him the wrong way once again, and the girls would be worried sick by the time he’d finally get back.
He turned on his tail and kicked, intending to descend into safer depths again when he tasted something through the current – sharp, metallic. His gills flared. His head jerked sharply upwards, and that was when he saw it.
A human.
Two arms, two legs, flailing weakly. A white shirt billowed against the water like bell of a jellyfish. A ribbon of blood drifted and dispersed through the water.
Qifrey should leave.
Humans were dangerous – this, he knew. They massacred mer like him for sport, devoured shoals of fish with their nets, spilled suffocating gallons of oil into the ocean that turned the waves to rainbows.
The gods had decided. This human was going to die.
He thought of Coco and her too-inquisitive eyes. The reaction she’d had after he’d told them all the story of the sea witch and the mariner — not worried-eyed like the other girls but frowning thoughtfully. She’d twisted a piece of seaweed in her fingers.
“You said so yourself that humans are people just like us. People who just happen to live on the surface.”
“Yes,” Qifrey had relented, “they are. But they’re dangerous. They’ll hurt us.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re monsters,” she drew her tail up to her chest. “It’s not fair, what Sir Easthies said.”
Now, Qifrey cursed. He beat his tail and propelled himself on, seized the human around his waist and tugged him upwards. The human offered no struggle. His limbs had gone slack and now trailed limply through the water. His head lolled listlessly onto Qifrey’s shoulder.
There was a cut in the human’s side that leaked small red clouds through the water. Qifrey could only hope that the wreckage would keep the sharks at bay. He tightened his grip on the human and kicked hard, swerving sideways away from the rapidly deteriorating ship.
Qifrey broke the ocean’s surface with a gasp, opening his mouth to suck in lungfuls of cold night air. His gills rippled. Rain poured down from the blackened sky in grey torrents, hammering an incessant rhythm against his skin. It was a sensation he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. Gods, how he hated rain.
He swam onwards to the dark splotch of land he could just make out in the distance and dragged the human along with him, head propped up on his shoulder. Twice Qifrey nearly dropped him before he readjusted his hold and carried on.
The rain gradually slowed to a more manageable drizzle. A thin sliver of moon could be visible somewhere among the swamps of grey clouds before it was gone again in a blink.
Qifrey reached a stretch of beach and dragged the limp body onto the wet sand. The grains clung to his skin, his scales, his hair — clumpy and irritable. He hauled himself up so he was positioned directly above the human and stared down at his face.
Male, Qifrey had deciphered that much already.
A sailor, perhaps. The man’s features were hard and tanned by the sun, creases on his skin carving deep shadows under the eyes and accentuating the scraggle of an unshaven beard.
Qifrey touched the man’s neck. Laid his head on his chest. Listened. The pounding of his own heartbeat seemed to drown out the rest of the noise.
What if the human was already dead? Had this all been for nothing?
The cold wind was making Qifrey’s fingers clumsy. There was the issue of the wound, too, growing sticky and wet, darkening the sand beneath it.
“Wake up,” Qifrey hissed. He smacked the man’s face none too gently. “Open your eyes!”
He wasn’t moving. Wasn’t even breathing. Qifrey pressed down on the wound, trying to staunch the bleeding with his fingers. He rolled the man on his side, gave him a good thumping. Come on, he’d swallowed lots of water, hadn’t he? Why couldn’t he cough it up?
The bleeding was getting worse, spreading across the sand, staining Qifrey’s fingers red. At this rate there was almost no point, the man was going to die.
Unless.
Qifrey hesitated.
He could sing.
An ability that was strictly forbidden to use on humans. A grave violation of the pact.
But this man was bleeding out before him and he was going to die if Qifrey didn’t do something now.
Impulsivity was a fatal flaw, Qifrey knew, just as much as things like hubris and obsession. He needed to think slowly and rationally.
But the situation at hand was beyond rational.
He opened his mouth.
It started as a hum: a soft, lilting, a tune he’d picked up somewhere he couldn’t remember — he’d sing it to the girls as he tucked them to sleep. The words that came to him were the alien tones of some ancient mer dialect — smooth, soaring notes that threaded up around themselves like the swirl of schooling fish; rising trills and clicks and intertwining melodies.
Qifrey had been told that the words told a love story to the ocean, celebrating its life, beauty and danger. He sang them loud and clear, improvising a new refrain and adding parts in. He touched the wound; the bleeding seemed to be slowing.
The man jerked suddenly. Coughed. Qifrey stopped singing. He seized the man by the shoulders, turned him over and kept him upright as he hacked and choked out mouthfuls of seawater.
He was shivering hard now, goosebumps rippling over his arms, lips turning purple. The ragged remains of his shirt were offering him little warmth.
Qifrey hadn’t realised humans were so fragile. It occurred to him that not only they couldn’t breathe underwater, but it was quite possible that they could die of the slightest cold as well.
The man looked truly wretched, black hair plastered all over his face like limp seaweed, clothes ripped and waterlogged and half falling away completely. His teeth chattered as he tried to speak, fingers scrabbling to pull himself up to a sitting position.
Their eyes met. Qifrey flinched.
The man’s eyes were dark blue like the deepest depths of the ocean. Slightly bloodshot, red-rimmed, but wide open and fixed on Qifrey’s face with a sudden clarity.
“It’s you,” He rasped. He tried to get up, slumped sideways. Qifrey leaned back. “What’s your name?”
“Nobody.”
He shouldn’t have spoken. He shouldn’t have been here at all, stayed around long enough to let this human see him. Stupid, stupid, some teacher he was meant to be.
Qifrey pushed himself away, manoeuvring awkwardly on the sand before he lashed out with his tail and gave himself that extra shove to slip back into the water.
“Please, wait!” The man’s fingers closed on air. Qifrey saw him propped up and shivering on the edge of the beach, expression twisted into something like urgency.
“Why did you save me?”
Qifrey himself did not know the answer.
“Forget you ever saw me,” was all he could say.
The man’s next words were swallowed by the waves as Qifrey flicked his tail and dove deep, deep into the ocean.
He somehow found the jellyfish floating aimlessly several lengths beneath the wreck of the boat. He scooped it up in his arms and swam hard and fast, not stopping once until he saw the entrance of a familiar cave ahead, its entrance decorated with Tetia’s shells and braided strips of seaweed.
Qifrey slowed as he neared, forcing himself to regulate his breaths, squeezing the jellyfish so hard for a moment it spasmed before he realised how tightly he was holding it and let go. His arms were shaking a little and from what, he didn’t know. He drifted in through the rooms in a daze and stopped.
Three little mermaids peeked guilty around the corner. Coco, Richeh and Tetia.
“Master Qifrey! You’re home!”
Tetia launched herself at him and hugged him fiercely. The force of it made Qifrey fall backwards and nearly knock his head against the limestone wall behind him.
“Tetia!” He tried to smile. “You really shouldn’t be so full of energy this late!”
“We were so worried!” Tetia let go of him and reared back, hair floating like a pink cloud around her face. “You always say it’s bad to go out in storms but you did just that!”
She was right, after all. He knew she had every reason to be mad at him.
“I’m sorry. But look!” He withdrew the slightly squashed jellyfish. “I got Puffpuff back!”
At that, the jellyfish compressed sharply and propelled itself out of Qifrey’s hands. The girls could not suppress the way their eyes lit up with delight and relief. That was almost enough to make the whole ordeal worth it.
“You still get three angricheh points,” Richeh told him sternly.
“I understand,” he said.
“Don’t think this makes up for scaring us like that!” Tetia scolded, then laughed as the jellyfish tickled her by the tentacles.
It took a while for Qifrey to corral the girls back into their shell beds again. He tucked them each away one by one and quietly covered the lamps of bioluminescent kelp.
Coco was the last to be settled down. Qifrey could feel her watching him closely. He didn’t meet her eyes, instead studiously adjusted the bed to make it as comfortable as possible, tucking the jellyfish in beside it. It was her turn to sleep with it tonight.
“Did you meet someone?” Coco asked.
Qifrey went very still. When his words finally came, he was choosing them carefully.
“I did. Just someone who was lost in the storm. I helped him get back home.”
Coco looked as if she wanted to ask more, and for a moment Qifrey was afraid she’d somehow dig the events of the night right out of his mind. But all she said was, “Okay.”
She let her head drop against her bed and reached out to squeeze Qifrey’s hand. Qifrey squeezed back, then released it.
“Sleep well, Coco.”
“I will.”
He slipped silently out of her room.
He couldn’t sleep.
He stayed up instead managing their small seaweed farm, cleaning up the cave and watching the crabs pick fights on the seabed.
_______________________________
In Qifrey’s younger years, he’d been fascinated with the human world.
He’d collect trinkets and slip away from Master Beldaruit the first chance he’d get, darting up to the surface to peer at the boats and the humans. What he especially liked, though, was the sky at night. It was black and huge and full of millions of twinkling lights, stretching in an endless tapestry.
It would be a while before he’d realise that such things were called “stars”.
During the daytime he used to huddle by the rocks in view of the beach, watching the human children play. They would build little mounds of sand, or dig holes, or splash in the shallows. Qifrey wished he could join them. He was a lonely little mer in those days.
On one particular afternoon he’d snuck free from Beldaruit again and made straight for the surface. The beach was empty, except for a boy with black hair crouched further back on the beach, building something. Qifrey hovered by the shallows and watched.
To his amazement, the boy seemed to be constructing a castle out of sand. This wasn’t one of the lumps the other human children would attempt to carve, or even a structure made from an upturned bucket, soon to crumble away. No, it was a delicate construction with spires and bridges and little windows. Qifrey ached to get closer, but he would not dare.
He stayed by his rock, entranced, until an adult human shouted a name and the boy looked up and ran obediently to where he was called. The moment he was gone Qifrey had pulled himself up onto the shore and dragged himself over, painstakingly, to take a closer look.
He marvelled at the detail carved in the sand; the way the walls were somehow constructed to be flat and curved in places and the narrow bridges that rose across spiralling towers.
The castle was still unfinished. The left side of it was an unshaped lump. Qifrey touched it gingerly, picked up some sand and tried to fix it into a shape. The sand fell away and he realised to his horror that one of the towers was listing precariously sideways.
Frantically, he tried to push it back into form with his fingers but the cracks in the wall only widened until the whole structure sloughed over. Qifrey had looked at the ruined creation in despair. The human boy had spent so long on this, and now it was destroyed.
He would have stayed there longer, struggling to repair the castle had it not been for the return of the boy. Qifrey’d been so busy with the castle he hadn’t noticed anyone approach until a voice cut through the silence.
“Are you a mer?”
Startled, he’d fallen backward. Looked up to see the human boy some paces away from him, staring with wide eyes. Qifrey realised that the boy had left his plastic shovel behind and had returned to retrieve it.
“I think I’ve seen you before!” The boy didn’t seem angry at all that his castle had been ruined. If anything, he was excited. His words came out loud and fast. “Father says mer aren’t real, but you’re real! You’re really pretty. Do you really breathe underwater? Do you eat fish? Can you talk?”
Qifrey realised the boy’s eyes were blue. Which was funny, because Easthies always said that human eyes were awful and black as mud, whatever mud was. Easthies said lots of things in that pompous way of his.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!” The boy said quickly.
But Qifrey was already sliding backwards in a panic. He fell face-first into the sand before he pushed himself awkwardly up with his tail and fled for the water. He slipped in the shallows and swam, deeper into the currents and away.
When Vinanna eventually found him wandering among the seaweed fields she returned him sternly to Master Beldaruit. He accepted all their chastises without complaint.
For a week, he did not return to the surface.
He went on with Beldaruit’s lessons and did not look up at the distant sunlight rippling through the waves. He did not dare. He went on with pretending that nothing had happened.
But Qifrey was restless. He longed to see the endless stretch of blue sky again, the beautiful lights glittering at night in their thousands. It was so boring underwater, so dark and dreary.
There came a point when he could not keep himself anchored any longer. He mustered up his courage and swam up to the surface, let his mouth take great gulps of clean sea-salt air, found the usual rocks where he usually hid to watch the children. He paused.
Two red, roundish objects were waiting for him there.
For a few moments Qifrey only circled the rock, examining the objects suspiciously from all angles.
They weren’t perfectly round, now that he was looking closely. They had a slight taper around their bases, and there was a pucker at the top where a sort of stick protruded. He’d never seen anything quite so red before.
He climbed up onto the rock and poked at one of the objects. It was hard. It rolled backwards under his touch and fell with a plop into the water.
Qifrey prodded it. It was floating.
He wasn’t sure what had possessed him to do so, but he seized the object in both hands and sunk his teeth into it.
He spat it out because he was surprised by its taste. He’d never tried anything so sweet before.
He ate the whole thing, even the crunchy middle bit, and ate the second red object on the rock as well.
Then he’d dived back underwater and vowed never to come to the surface again.
Qifrey did return, of course. More of those objects were waiting for him. He’d eat them all on the spot and swim guiltily away. Much later, he would learn that those objects were called apples.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 ·｡
“Master Qifrey,” Coco said one morning as they were harvesting seaweed in the garden. “What’s an apple?”
Qifrey startled so hard he nearly dropped his cutting tool. “Where did you learn that word?”
“Oh, um,” Coco seemed a little surprised by his reaction. He tried to relax his expression into something more neutral. “Richeh found something in the water while she was collecting kelp with Euni. Master Alaira said it was an apple.”
“Ah,” Qifrey said. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Alaira had always had a bit of a fiery rebellious streak, something Qifrey had fretted over as they’d grown older. She knew things they shouldn’t – all the secrets they’d shared as fry. Of course she’d know what an apple was.
Realising Coco was still waiting for an answer, Qifrey said, “An apple is a type of fruit. It grows on the surface.”
They spoke no more of this matter. Coco seemed to have accepted that that was all Qifrey was going to say.
The days passed in their usual, slow-moving rhythms. Qifrey taught the girls how to hunt tuna and harvest ink from the squids without receiving a vicious bite. He’d notice the shadow of boats overhead and would quietly draw them away to the safety of the deep. He saw the way Coco would glance wonderingly upwards at the sunlight shifting through the layers of current, and then she would look away again. But her eyes were always drawn inevitably to the surface.
It worried Qifrey, a little. Reminded him too much of himself.
That afternoon, the girls were supposed to be out with another instructor from the Great Hall doing a special test. Qifrey had wanted to come as well but he’d stayed back. It was that worrying tendency of his, Alaira called it, rather like a mother whale. It could be overbearing at times if he didn’t moderate it. For whatever reason Qifrey had found himself feeling even more anxious as of late; had he unintentionally been projecting it on the girls? Perhaps he’d been more rattled by recent events than he’d like to admit.
He talked to the jellyfish instead as he worked on shelling the molluscs for dinner. Puffpuff seemed to greatly dislike the nickname Qifrey had given it and had a habit of darting away in an erratic direction every time he called it so.
That didn’t stop Qifrey from persisting. He liked Puffpuff. It was a cute name, although Richeh disagreed. She’d flatly told him that it was too on-the-nose.
He was still speaking animatedly to the jellyfish when a delivery grouper stopped by his cave with a stone tablet clenched in its mouth. It waited by the entrance, opened its jaws, and waited patiently for him to retrieve its message.
Qifrey accepted the tablet.
His eye flickered over the inscribed message.
He suddenly felt very cold and off-balance, as if he’d swum into the wrong arctic current, one that swept him sideways in an uncontrollable swirl that left his gills fluttering, struggling to draw breath.
Coco is missing.
The tablet slipped from his fingers. Before he realised what he was doing he’d kicked with his tail and launched himself out of the cave – up, up and further upwards still – sending schools of fish scattering, bubbles frothing, the water warming and lightening around him until he could see blue of the sky ahead, rippling and distorted through the waves.
His head and shoulders broke the surface of the water and he felt the heat of the sun against his face.