Page 22 of Female Fantasy
My dream.
The sacred wish I dared not whisper aloud.
To be mer. And have the chance to swim away from my reality to a utopia below.
Could it be?
A lump forms in my throat.
“So there are certain humans who have the ability to grow a tail or sprout wings?”
Ryke grimaces. “Correct. But most elders who bear that secret have joined the underworld without passing on their knowledge. At this time, the majority of humans who do have mer or maecena in their ancestry have such small amounts that they lack the ability to shift. The ones who do have theability might not be aware of it, so that power sits dormant inside of them. There is no way of knowing, of sensing who has the gift.”
What a waste. Rage fuels me as I think of those missed opportunities.
“How tragic,” I whimper.
Ryke reaches out for me, then pauses. My air bubble is blocking him out, I realize.
“Perhaps in some ways,” he says. “But not in others. For we soon realized that there was a reason the Great Furnace left our kind on different planes. A motive for our dissociation. When men, mer, and maecenas breed, there is a cost. A deadly one.”
“Deadly,” I repeat. “Deadly how?”
Ryke blows out a tight breath. It’s clear to me now that he is nervous.
How odd to see this great man so visibly uncomfortable. Brought down by something as mundane as apprehension.
“During the act,” he says, gesturing vaguely, “a subset of mer discovered that if one party takes life by way of creating it, the entirety of the slain creature’s energy transfers to the surviving partner. For when two come together to form one body, for fleeting seconds, they combine souls, energies. If one light is snuffed out, the other grows brighter, stronger, more powerful. It is a dark magic.”
My mind races, attempting to understand the subtext beneath his cryptic message.
“Are you telling me that if a mer murders a man during acoupling, they have the ability to become some sort of super mer?”
He gulps. “In not so many words, yes.”
“Why would anyone ever agree to that?” The words burst out of me.
“So many questions,” Ryke whispers. “Different reasons. To bless their line by siring a child with the ability to shift. For love. And of course, it can happen by force. When ancient humans began to catch on, they avoided the waters, refusing to leave their ships. But mer are able to manipulate sound waves in the same way that maecenas can fiddle with air currents. There are certain frequencies we can hit that humans are not used to hearing. Sounds we can make. Songs so seductive to humans that they know not what they are doing until they are already dead.”
My heart rattles against my ribs. I think back to the stories I grew up hearing. Tales of missing townspeople. Warnings to avoid the creek cottage. The old wives’ tale of the sailor who yearned for his missing maiden so much that he drowned in that love. Is all the folklore true, then?
Have all my nightmares come to walk in the light?
“And these mer are the sirens? Those who use their song to drink the life force from their human prey like fine wine?”
“Yes.” Ryke’s eyes grow dark, his voice dangerous. “After my family outlawed such practices, preferring to mate with humans in peace, a small group of transgressors banded together and developed a plot to continue the ritual in secret. Eventually, their numbers grew, and their magic became sostrong that they staged a coup. They slaughtered my mother and my father. I can still see my sister’s child limp in my arms. I barely escaped and went into hiding in the only place I knew where only those with the ability to shift could find me.”
“On land,” I breathe. “At the creek cottage.”
“Hidden in plain sight,” he confirms. “Now the sirens rule beautiful Atlantia, this utopia you see around you, with fear and malice. They recruit innocents and force them to sing. So bigoted that they routinely hunt down mer with the ability to shift, with human blood in their lineage, and deliver the killing blow. My land has become segregated, stagnant. We are under a dictatorship. But I have long been plotting my vengeance with my brethren hidden above.”
I look at this man—no, this mer—who carries the weight of the underwater world on his shoulders. And I wonder why he would waste his breath on a commoner like me.
“And are you ready?” I ask instead. “To fight?”
His lips curl. “No, little minnow. Not yet.”
“Then why are we down here?” It takes everything in me to stifle a scream. “Aren’t you risking your life and the lives of those in the resistance? The future of Atlantia?”
