The Sea King's Daughter Read online

  The Sea King’s Daughter

  By Miranda Simon

  Text copyright © 2012 Miranda Simon

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER ONE

  On that fateful day I swam up toward the sun, up through icy currents and warm pockets, dark shadows and mote-filled shafts of light. A school of fork-tailed pomfrets scattered as I passed. The sea clutched at me as if it did not want to let me go.

  I gave one last kick of my tail and -- at long last -- broke free.

  The Inland Sea spread out before me, the water a deep and brilliant blue. It shone in the late afternoon sun like an sheet of burnished copper. A sliver of land smudged the eastern horizon. I studied that smudge with awe and curiosity.

  I had never in my life seen land before.

  For all of my fourteen years, I'd lived in my father's dim and dreary palace on the sea floor, just waiting for this moment. Everyone said I was too young to surface, too young by two long years. They said breathing air might kill me, but I was willing to risk it.

  I closed my eyes and sucked in my first-ever mouthful of air.

  At first, it didn't hurt. My gills pumped once, twice, and then three times as they expelled my last underwater breath. Silken ribbons of water slid down my neck, trickled over my breasts, and dripped back into the sea.

  The air exploded in my lungs. I retched, dragged in another breath, then cried out against the piercing ache in my chest. Wave after wave of pain tore through my body. It was like the time I'd dived too deep, down into the barren darkness of an undersea caldera, when the pressure bore down on me until I feared my ribs would crack. This was much worse. This pain felt larger and hotter than the burning orange orb hanging in the sky above my head.

  I hadn't expected surfacing to hurt so much. I flailed my arms and thrashed my tail. I longed to fill my lungs up with cool water. I could make the pain stop. I could dive down again into the murky depths of the sea and never surface again until my sixteenth birthday.

  But I was too stubborn to quit. Instead, I swallowed another mouthful of air and willed my body to accept it. Then, despite the pain, I took a fourth breath, and a fifth. My gills flapped listlessly against my neck, faltered, and lay still.

  My throat and chest still ached. But gradually, very gradually, my heart slowed to its normal speed. Each breath grew easier. The choking, desperate feeling vanished.

  I splayed my webbed fingers wide to tread water.

  I was breathing air.

  I'd wanted to surface ever since I could remember. I was sick to death of twilight blue, of dusky water and wave prisms playing lazily against volcanic rock. I dreamed instead of the upper world. When I was 11 years old, I begged to go along with Thetis, the eldest of my five sisters, on her sixteenth birthday. She sat before the mirror that day and arranged a wreath of pearls in her hair.

  "Please," I said. "Please, Thetis. I'll do anything."

  She shook her head. "You can't go along, Nyx. Your lungs aren't ready yet. Besides, you're just a child. Why are you in such an dreadful rush to grow up?"

  Even then I was already restless, contrary, and dissatisfied with everything. I scowled and swam fidgety circles around my favorite sister. "I can't wait five more years. I just can't possibly. I want to know what it's like up there."

  Thetis' long curls floated about her face like a cloud of squid ink. "Try to find a little patience, Nyx," she said. She cupped my chin and turned my head this way and that, studying my sour expression. "You've got a certain darkness in you, little sister. It makes me frightened for you."

  That day I struggled in my grandmother's arms. I wanted to follow Thetis as she floated demurely toward the upper world. Grandmother gripped my shoulders until bruises bloomed on my milk-white skin, bruises colored yellow like the water that hangs in the holds of sunken ships.

  And so I waited.

  I waited three long years, counting the days, striving to be good and always falling short of my family's expectations. A thousand times, I'd swum toward the sun and floated just under the waves, trying to see the upper world without breaking any rules. Finally I thought I'd explode if I waited any longer. What could two years matter? I felt old enough. I knew I was ready.

  An hour ago I'd swum out from the palace alone. I'd surfaced, and I'd survived. My too-young lungs hadn't failed me. I hadn't choked on the air or drowned myself in the wind. All the threats and warnings had come to nothing.

  Now that I could breathe, I took a second look around. I'd never seen anything so fresh and new and joyful as the scene before me. Tilting my chin up, I saw strange gray-and-white animals swimming in the air. They wheeled about like black bream circling a coral reef. Birds, Thetis had called them. Seagulls. Their harsh cries filled the air. After the silence of the sea, even their unmusical melodies fell on welcoming ears. Usually I heard nothing but low tones and the sound of distant whalesong.

  I began to swim east toward the wedge of dark land. The sun was a hot weight on my shoulders. Even when I closed my eyes, I could still see, through my lids, the redness of the sunlight.

  Down below there was hardly any light at all. Only at noon, when the sun's rays pierced the water just so, did a soft glow fall over the palace grounds. The rest of the time we lived in constant twilight. It was just one of the many things I hated about the sea.

  Sometimes I hated everything about my life. I was always full of disgust and rage and other ugly, selfish feelings. I longed to be good and kind like my sister Thetis, but I could never manage it. Sometimes my restlessness frightened me, my anger that came from nowhere and was too big, too terrible, to keep inside. It burst out sometimes in unexpected places, making me say cruel things to my sisters, my teachers, even to the servants.

  Sometimes -- like today -- I just had to run away.

  I heard a muted splash behind me. A dorsal fin sliced the water. Flukes slapped the surface. A dolphin whistled in my ear. She grinned at me. Her black eyes twinkled with mischief, as if she understood and approved of my disobedience. I stroked her slick blue-black skin.

  "Ios," I said. "Where are your friends?"

  She dived down, coming so close that she brushed my stomach with her back. When she surfaced again a few yards away, two companions flanked her. The three dolphins spun and leapt in the salty breath of the sea. I watched their intricate ballet, swimming with them, feeling the warm water slide over my back.

  Hair fell over my eyes. I ducked my head and snapped it sharply back just to hear it smack my spine. The sound disturbed a seagull bobbing and floating on the sea. The gull launched himself into the air with a squawking, shrewish scream of outrage.

  Ios circled back to me. Her mouth opened in silent laughter. I laughed too. We frolicked until the water shone gold with the sunset.

  I ached to explore, to learn, to discover more about this
world I'd only heard about in tales. I wanted to see sailing ships up close, as more than slow-moving shadows blocking out the light. I longed to see the things I'd only heard about in tales: trees and mountains, goats and dogs, temples and houses, and most of all humans, those strange creatures who crawled about the land with legs in place of tails.

  All my life, I'd listened to the stories about humans and their world. My father, my tutors, and my older sisters painted the upper realm as a frightful place, a place of horrors. Thetis had gone up just that once and never returned. It wasn't safe, they said. Humans were uncivilized, disagreeable, filthy creatures. Our tails were a thousand times better than those fleshy pink appendages called legs. "The sea is the source of everything good," my father was fond of saying.

  Still, I'd fallen in love with the whole idea of the human world. I liked to spin fantasies about it. In my father's palace, I felt like a misfit and a failure. In my imagination, humans lived in a place of perfect happiness and beauty -- a paradise marred by none of the sea's imperfections.

  Now I would get a chance to see it for myself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Violet and dusky rose streaked the sky. The wind kicked up white-tipped swells. It pushed at me like an airborne current, cold and strong. I sighed and rubbed the hard little bumps on my arms. I could hardly bear to go home.

  Still, my explorations would have to wait for another day. On this night I had to sneak back to the palace and hope my grandmother hadn't yet noticed my absence. Even on the most exciting day of my life, I was not eager to earn Grandmother's wrath.

  In one smooth movement, I flipped over and dived.

  My tail smacked the surface and then I was gliding down into the sea's blue depths. Water flowed back into my welcoming lungs. My gills revived and flapped merrily against my neck.

  For the first ten fathoms, sunny light laced the water. A shoal of sardines floated by, flashing their silver bellies. Deeper still came a milky layer pulsating with algae, spores, eggs, and living filaments, followed by a cold current that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. My dread grew with every passing minute. I felt like an escaped prisoner returning to captivity.

  The sea bottom shone with an eerie reflected glow. Floating fleshy threads in violet, gray, and yellowish green blanketed each rock. Mullet sucked at the weeds with thick white lips. As I glided over the sandy bottom, I stirred clouds of dust and algae into miniature whirlpools of gloom.

  Far off in the distance, a shark prowled with his escort of pilot fish. I left him alone, and he ignored me, too. I wasn't prey. Only a starving shark would pursue me -- and then I was fairly certain I could outswim it.

  Only one thing really frightened me when I went out alone. On the way back to the palace, I had to pass by the cave where, according to rumor, the sea sorceress dwelled. I didn't fear octopii or electric eels or any other hazards of the deep, but the dreaded sea sorceress was still the stuff of nightmares.

  "You do know what happens to bad little mermaids, don't you?" my teachers and nannies would ask, whenever I neglected to study my lessons or committed some trifling crime. "She'll come and get you in your sleep, the sea sorceress will. That one feeds herself on sweet, tender little maids."

  I was deep under the water now. Jagged, pale stones littered the sand on the sea floor. The dark mouth of the cave gaped at me. Rumor said that desperate souls sought out the sea sorceress for her spells and potions, but I didn't know anyone who admitted to meeting her. I shivered and swam on, hurrying to get home.

  My muscles ached by the time I neared the palace. I crested a red coral reef and there it was, its four towers reaching for the surface. Barnacles crusted the palace's stone walls. The oyster shells on the roof glistened black in the light that filtered down through a hundred tail-lengths of water.

  My sisters would be at work on their gardens in the palace grounds. I swam faster, flicking my tail behind me until its movements matched the hammering of my heart. I hoped Grandmother hadn't noticed my disappearance. She'd given me a tongue lashing the day before, when I'd hidden myself away for less than an hour.

  Galatea saw me first as I slipped over the lacy ironwork gates that surrounded the palace. She was tending a grotto full of kelp, fire coral, and small flower-like white algae, all cunningly arranged by her pudgy fingers. She boasted that her garden was the best in the kingdom. Each of my sisters claimed some special quality -- Thetis was the kindest, Ino the most charming, Nysa the loveliest -- but I was the best at nothing, unless brooding and dreaming could be counted as talents.

  Galatea smiled unpleasantly, showing her teeth. "You're in awful trouble, Nyx. Grandmother wants to see you right away."

  At fifteen, Galatea was the sister closest to my age. She disliked me because I was prettier, and -- despite my sharp tongue and wicked ways -- my father's favorite. Like my four other sisters, Galatea was obedient and cheerful, pleasing Grandmother with her modesty and her many accomplishments. It gave me a secret thrill knowing that, although I was the youngest, I had just seen a world Galatea would not know for another year. I wished I could taunt her with it.

  Instead, I flicked my tail rudely in her direction and swam away. I passed through carved stone arches into the great hall of the palace. Grandmother's chambers were west of the throne room. The scrollwork on her door showed merfolk cavorting with octopii.

  I knocked. My stomach tied itself in knots as I waited for Grandmother's command. Her high-pitched voice answered with an imperious "Enter."

  Grandmother stood before a full-length mirror framed with milky seed pears and twining silver flowers. A small woman, with tiny childlike hands and rounded shoulders, she somehow managed to seem imposing. Grandmother held her back straight and her chin high, ignoring me as a maid put the finishing touches on her headdress. Silver-gray streaked her hair. She wore it piled high and woven through with sprays of beaten-gold leaves. One mummified starfish dangled from each ear.

  In her youth, the merfolk called my grandmother the most beautiful maiden in all the seven seas. Her beauty hadn't faded much, but her proud expression and the thin set of her lips drained the warmth from the room. I folded my hands behind my back and stared at the white quartz tile on the floor.

  "Nyx," she said at last. "This is the third time in a week you've gone off alone, without an escort." Her voice was heavy with disappointment. "When my son returns from his journey, I will have to tell him his daughter has disobeyed me. Think of your position, my dear. This is not proper behavior for a child of King Nereus. You must learn to act more like a princess."

  I adopted what I hoped was a contrite expression. "I'm sorry, Grandmother."

  "You must promise me," she said. "Promise you won't run off again."

  I clenched my teeth. I couldn't bear the thought of waiting until I was sixteen to explore the human world. My heart thudded in my chest, but I shook my head. "I can't promise that, Grandmother. It's -- sometimes I've just got to be alone. If you could try to understand --"

  Grandmother lifted her eyes to the heavens and sighed, expelling a great rush of shimmering bubbles. "Great Poseidon! What am I to do with this impossible child?" She squinted into my face. "You will tarnish your father's reputation, Nyx. Think of that the next time you go running off."

  My lips trembled. "You don't care about me at all. You only care how things look to others."

  Grandmother's expression hardened. When she spoke, her voice was dangerously quiet. "That's quite enough, Nyx."

  "No," I said. "I'll go where I want, do you hear me? I'll do whatever I want. You can't stop me. You're not my mother."

  "No, I'm not," Grandmother said. "But if she were here, she'd be ashamed of you."

  "That's not true! If my mother were here, she'd understand. She'd know how I feel. She'd see why I hate this place, why I hate my life, why I -- why I hate you!"

  Grandmother flinched. "Go to your chambers, Nyx. Y
ou'll remain there until I send word."

  I hesitated a moment. "Go," she said, in a great and terrible voice.

  I turned and fled out of her chambers, up the winding stone staircase, past the tarnished statues of my ancestors in the hallway, and into my own rooms. Sobs tore at my chest. I threw myself down at my vanity table and laid my head on my arms.

  Grandmother's cruel words rang in my ears.

  Would my mother truly be ashamed of me? I'd never known her. She died when I was still an infant. Hardly anyone in the palace would speak of her. Only Thetis told me stories about her, and only after much coaxing. From Thetis, I knew that our mother had loved to sing and that she often told her daughters stories about the gods and heroes. But Thetis also said that Mother had dark moods, when her sadness seemed to overwhelm her, quenching the light in her eyes. Often even my father couldn't break through her gloom. I imagined I was like my mother in that way. She'd been unhappy, too.

  Sometimes I felt like the only spiny urchin in a garden of delicate white flowers. Thetis and my father pretended I belonged, but the rest treated me like a changeling. Mostly I didn't blame them. I did and said spiteful things without really knowing why. I sassed my tutors, lied to my grandmother, and ran away whenever I had the chance.

  Sometimes I stole combs and pretty trinkets from my sisters, not because I wanted their things but to make them hurt the way I did. I always imagined that these petty thefts would make me feel better, but nothing helped for long. Sooner or later I ended up in that dark, bottomless caldera where I hated myself, my life, and everyone around me. No sunlight could ever penetrate that deep.

  I reached out to trace the carvings on my prized possession, a silver mirror. It was the one thing of my mother's that now belonged to me. Perfect little golden seahorses danced around the outer edge. The handle was a miniature statue of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. My mother Doris had modeled for the statue. When I was a child I'd whispered my secrets into Aphrodite's tiny shell of an ear and imagined that my mother heard me.