The Poisoned Crown: The Sangreal Trilogy Three

‘Maybe it doesn’t speak our language,’ Ezroc suggested, so Keerye tried the other tongues he knew, the click-click of secret Dolphinspeech, the croaking of Penguin, the burble of Smallfish and even a few words of Shark, but the grouper never spoke at all. Presently it turned aside, heading west towards the shadow of sunken rocks.

This was reef-country, and now they grew very wary. Above the corals the shallow water was green with sunlight and teeming with smallfish, but there were deep blue chasms in between where the merfolk might hide, and cruising sharks in search of more substantial prey than yellowstripe and fairyfin, and dark clefts which might conceal monsters they had heard of but never seen, creatures of the tropical waters who didn’t venture into the north. Giant sea scorpions, crabs whose pincers could slice a selkie in half, things part fish, part reptile, which had no name and no real species, armoured with spikes and spines, their flippers half way to feet, their mouths agape with rows of dagger-teeth. Ezroc felt himself safe enough in the air, sustained on near-motionless wings, but concern for Keerye made him fly low, and the selkie was both reckless and curious, diving to peer under every rock. They met a turtle coasting the reefside who told them he was the last of his kind; his mate had been gone twenty years, searching for a place to lay her eggs.

‘Do you know any islands?’ Keerye said.

‘If I did, my mate would have buried her eggs there, and I would have found her again,’ the turtle replied. ‘The islands are all gone. Swim to the absolute south, and you’ll find only sea-swirl around the Pole, and the sun that never sets shines on the endless waters without even a rock to break the surface.’

Keerye asked the same question of those smallfish he could persuade to listen, a green octopus that was slithering over the coral, a frilled purple sea slug and even a passing shark. The smallfish responded with bubbletalk, meaning little, the octopus turned red and disappeared into a crevasse, the sea slug tied itself into a slow-motion knot and rippled away, and only the shark snapped a coherent answer.

‘There are islands,’ he said, ‘but you must move fast, to catch up with them.’

‘Which way?’ asked Keerye. ‘South?’

‘South – west – east.’ The shark flicked his tail by way of a shrug, and glided on.

‘The Floating Islands,’ Keerye said. ‘That’s what he means.’

‘I don’t trust him,’ Ezroc said. ‘My father says, a shark is a stomach with fins. He doesn’t talk, he just opens his mouth.’

But Keerye was too eager on their quest to take warning.

They met the mermaid on a night of shooting stars, at the full of the fourth moon since they left the Ice Cliffs of home. On an unknown signal the corals released their spores, uncurling like smoke into the sea-surge, glittering with reflected light, until both sky and sea seemed to be heaving with the dust of stars, and leaping fish, come to feast on the coral’s beneficence, left phosphorescent tracks like meteor-trails through the black water. Keerye lay on his back in the sway of gentle billows, made careless by the beauty, luxuriating in the night magic. ‘The sky fires of the north are lovelier,’ he insisted, but the star-glitter was mirrored in his dark eyes as he turned his head this way and that. Ezroc sat the wave beside him, skulling with web feet, dazzled by the wonder of it. Neither of them saw the watcher until she was very close.

Her hand brushed Keerye’s tail, feeling the strangeness of his fur, flinching away and returning to touch again. The selkie, whose reflexes were lightning, somersaulted and caught her arm, holding her though she wriggled, fish-like, trying to escape. Her skin felt cold and slippery, like bladderwrack. He forced her head out of the water and saw the gill-slits in her neck widen as she gasped in the alien element. Her wet hair looked black in the starlight but he guessed it was darkly purple, and the sheen on her arms was like pearl. Her eyes were unlike his, being narrow and slanting, with no whites; he could not tell their colour.

She was small, barely half his size; he guessed she was still a child.

‘You’re merfolk,’ he said. ‘Are you alone?’ And, when she didn’t answer: ‘What is your name?’

Her mouth opened and shut, but no noise emerged.

‘What is your name?’

‘Maybe she can’t talk out of water,’ Ezroc suggested.

Keerye had never met merfolk before, but he knew enough of them from rumour and hearsay. ‘She can talk,’ he insisted.

And again: ‘What is your name?’

‘Denaero,’ she said at last. Her voice sounded thin and strange in the air, more accustomed to carrying underwater. ‘I am Rhadamu’s daughter. If you hurt me, he will kill you.’

‘We won’t hurt you,’ Ezroc said. ‘We wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

‘If you answer my questions,’ Keerye amended.

‘I answer or not, as I please,’ said the girl, trying to toss her head; but Keerye held her by the hair. ‘I am not afraid of you, even if you eat me.’

‘Why should I eat you?’ Keerye demanded, startled.

‘Selkies eat merpeople,’ Denaero said. ‘We are fish. Lungbreathers eat fish. That is the way of things.’

‘I won’t eat you,’ Keerye said. ‘You are too small. When we catch fish which are too small, we throw them back.’

‘My father is the High King,’ Denaero declared. ‘When the Festival of Spawning is over, he will come looking for me, and hunt you with spears. You will be stuck full of spears till you bristle like a sea urchin. You won’t be so scornful then.’

Keerye laughed out loud at her defiance and her pride, and the girl sulked, then laughed too, ducking her head underwater when he let go her hair to inhale her native element.

‘Why must we talk like this?’ Denaero asked, meaning above water. ‘Can’t you talk undersea?’

‘I can, but Ezroc can’t. He’s a bird,’ Keerye explained.

‘I heard, there are birds that fly through the water,’ Denaero said, not wanting to appear ignorant, ‘called pinwings. If you can fly underwater, why can’t you talk there too?’

‘I’m not a penguin,’ Ezroc said. ‘I’m an albatross.’

The girl shivered, and shrank away. ‘A windbringer,’ she said. ‘I thought they were only in stories. Is it true, you can fly round the whole world in a day, and you bring ice storms from the north to destroy us? Did you bring the ice now?’ She glanced from side to side, as if expecting ice floes to emerge from nowhere.

‘I don’t bring ice,’ said Ezroc. ‘I don’t want to harm you.’

‘The stories say you are much bigger,’ said Denaero, recovering her courage.

‘He’s only young,’ said Keerye. ‘Like you. When he’s full grown, his wings will be as wide as – as the entire reef.’

‘Could I ride on you then?’ Denaero begged suddenly. ‘Could I fly – really fly – up in the sky among the stars?’

‘Well …’ Ezroc temporised.

‘One day,’ said Keerye. ‘But now we are on a quest. We are looking for islands. Do you know of any?’

‘Only in stories,’ Denaero said. ‘The Goddess ate the islands. She is always hungry. Once, there were whole kingdoms above the sea, full of creatures that didn’t swim, and strange people, neither merfolk nor selkie. I wish I could have seen them. But the Goddess swallowed them all up. Then she devoured the islands, one by one, crunching up the rocks that were their bones. There are no islands any more.’

‘We heard there were Floating Islands,’ Keerye persisted, ‘south of here, or east, or west. Have you seen them?’

The girl’s face changed; her hair lifted of its own accord, rippling with sparks.

‘Those are not islands,’ she said. ‘Don’t go near them … Listen!’ She dipped below the waves, the better to pick up vibrations, reappearing a moment later. ‘The Festival is over,’ she said. ‘My father is coming to look for me. If he finds you, you will be stuck full of spears like a sea urchin. I do not want that. You must swim fast, fast, till you come to the Great Reef Wall where the sea boils and the steam goes up a hundred spans into the air. If you can cross that, you will be safe. But you must go fast. Your swimming makes an echo-pattern that we can detect from far away; that was how I found you. If my father senses it, he will hunt you down.’

‘How far to the Great Reef Wall?’ asked Ezroc.

‘Can’t you stop the king?’ Keerye said.

‘I will leap and dance in the water and make a great splashing which will overlay the echo-pattern, but you must go now. Please!’

‘Thank you,’ said Keerye, and he kissed her cold little cheek.

‘Thank you!’ cried Ezroc, and he spread his wings, driving himself into the air.

The mermaid held her hand to her face for a second or two, as if she feared to lose the imprint of the kiss, though it was a gesture she had never known. Then she forgot it in the wonder of the bird’s rising.