Youngest Son of the Water King – 2. The queen and the purple mermaids

“You don’t like the way I look. Yes?” He guessed it.

What can she say to that? Desdemona frowned.

“Look!” Dodger handed her a small oval locket with a man’s portrait on it. “Do you like it?”

The portrait was of a green-eyed brown-haired man with sculpted features.

“He is quite handsome,” Desdemona said. “Did you kill him and keep his portrait as a trophy?”

“Is that all you can think of?”

“Well, the most probable version is that you sank his bride, and she wore the medallion with the portrait of the groom on her breast. And now it’s in the hands of a murderer. Or rather, it is in his tentacles. I can’t get a good look at what’s under your sleeves.”

“You are a silly girl!” Dodger took the medallion from her. “This is not my victim. This is me as I was before the sea touched me.”

“You mean you’re human? Was it in the past?”

“Sebastian de Arigo. I was heir to the earl’s plantations. I was a court dandy and a favorite of the ladies. I was duelist and a bully. Everything changed in an instant, as if a magic water mirror had been held up to my face. There was a tournament on the water, a duel with a morgen drilling the bottom of my gondola to make me drown. He started to drown me, and realized he couldn’t. And all those who were in the clutches of the morgens, but didn’t drown, become like me.”

“They are not drowned! There must be a whole sect of you,” Desdemona remembered the silhouettes in red that had performed the ritual in the rain on the day of the coronation. Were they not the same ones who had not drowned? “But why don’t you drown in water like all men?”

“Even the Morgens don’t know that.”

“So you don’t know anything about your current state?”

“I don’t remember much about the day I changed. I only remember that Morgen clung to me during the water tournament, but for some reason he couldn’t drown me. All he could do was brutalize me and make me (whatever epithet the illiterate common people chose) a chosen one! So this curse, it turns out, is called! In the eyes of ordinary people, we are something like an order of monks. But in fact we are just a community of cripples.

“You are mutants, not cripples,” Desdemona corrected timidly. She was becoming more afraid of Dodger by the minute. His eyes glittered so dangerously and menacingly. God forbid she should do anything to provoke his anger!

“If it weren’t for that, I could woo you, give you roses. I could serenade you without frightening you. I had a picturesque estate with orange plantations. I could propose marriage to you and save you from your stepmother’s cruelty. You wouldn’t be queen, but you’d be happy.”

“What if that’s what all Morgens say when they trick girls into going under?”

“Don’t be deceitful, Queen! You can see I’m not a Morgen.”

What is he, then? Is he a freak who escaped from the circus? Or is he a degenerate of an ancient aristocratic family, where endless marriages of cousins have degenerated?”

“I find it hard to believe you were once more human.”

“We who have not drowned are changing.”

“How does that happen?”

“The body deforms, the mind deforms. I am in anger at people and at the morgen.”

“Why is it? Captains and merchants have drowned, entire fleets have been wrecked, and you alone have been spared by the sea. You’re the chosen ones who didn’t drown like my brothers!”

“Look at me!” Dodger opened his robe. “And tell me whether it was better to survive or to drown.”

Desdemona recoiled, glimpsing a black, slimy body with many bifurcated tentacles. There were no legs, only tails of some kind, twisting in a tangle. And she thought it was hard to turn into a mermaid! How could such a creature live? Unlike Moran, he was a full-fledged monster. There was nothing human left in him.

“I know all sorcery,” Dodger admitted, pulling up his cloak. At least it made him look more like a court magician who had disfigured himself with his experiments than a man of the mire. “For example, I can make a mermaid a bipedal girl for a day, but I can’t make myself human again. So you’re doing the right thing by avoiding me. Moran is at least half handsome, I’m ugly from top to toe, I mean to the tip of my tail.”

“What are you trying to get out of me? Why are you hitting on me in the first place?”

“It is to flirt with you,” he corrected. “I’ve still got all the sympathy I used to have for pretty ladies when I was a beau to match them.”

“Do you mean to say that you have not yet killed or dragged down a single woman of the earth?”

“I don’t drown pretty women, if that’s what you mean. And I don’t live on the bottom either. Our society has to huddle in the swampy backwaters of human settlements, like the marshes behind the capital’s hot districts. We’re monsters, but we don’t hurt women.”

That’s not what she saw! The gutted corpse of a woman in the rain with a sickle wouldn’t leave her mind. Was the ritual performed by the very society to which Dodger belonged?

“How long have you been like this?” She began to ask cautiously. “Have you learned all the habits of creatures like you? You said you were becoming embittered. Does that imply acts of cruelty?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Dodger stopped the interrogation. “Ever since the king turned his attention to you, all our plans had to change. We couldn’t let him see you, but he did. There was nothing I could do, even though I was hovering nearby. I found you, but he found you too. Unfortunately, he’s stronger than the rest of us. And his power will eventually bring down the whole kingdom.”

“What makes you think that?”

“What do you think? Will the Morgen stay on earth forever?”

“That’s why he came to the country.”

“No, it’s just convenient for you to think that. Because if it turns out he can’t stay on land forever, you’ll be a burden to him. How do you take a wife who can’t breathe underwater to the sea?”

“They say there are remedies that allow you to breathe at depth for a while.”

“It is not for you! Darunon’s chosen victim is unaffected by them. So how are you going to follow the morgen to the bottom?”

There is a remedy! What seemed like a curse to Desdemona suddenly seemed like a blessing. She was able to turn into a mermaid once, so she could do it again.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dodger guessed her thoughts. “The only way you can become a mermaid forever is if you become a priestess of Darunon. If you reject the sea god, you’ll never be a mermaid again.”

“How did you know I could turn into a mermaid?”

Did he spy on her? Then he’s always hiding somewhere in the palace.

“I can see the signs of transformation in your face,” he admitted. “I’m skilled enough in magic to see them. And if I examine your feet, I’m sure there are scaly growths on your feet.”

He’s right about that! Desdemona swallowed hard. The gorgeous golden crown of rubies and emeralds pressed against her forehead. Its heaviness was symbolic. Being queen was proving to be very hard. Even with a monster husband who could solve most problems with force and magic.

Maybe she’d tell him about the Dodger. And then the insolent double-talk would be over. Only Desdemona was not a snitch. She preferred to keep quiet about her strange acquaintance. But he kept prophesying, scaring her to the point of palpitations.

“If you choose Moran, you can never become a mermaid, and if you become a mermaid, you can never be with Moran again.”

“But that amounts to a dead end. Without becoming a mermaid, I won’t be able to live together with Moran. I’d just suffocate underwater.”

“It’s a vicious circle that can be broken, but I don’t know how.”