Wrell slowed suddenly and turned toward me, the filtered sunlight glistening across his chiseled chest highlighting the mottled burnt flesh and his superhero jawline. Hell, maybe it had been the prospect of getting to spend a lot of time alone with Wrell that had prompted my sudden buy-in for this half-baked scheme. He gave me a reserved smile as he nodded at me. Yep, definitely the most likely possibility… and not a bad motivation for searching around the entire ocean.
An image of the three of us curled up on top of the sand, Wrell buried beneath it, came into my mind. It only took me off-guard for a moment before I caught on. I shook my head, wishing I could direct my thoughts to him instead of the whole group.“No, Wrell, I don’t need to rest.”
A dark eyebrow rose toward his closely shorn hair.
“Okay, maybe slow down a little bit, but I don’t need to stop. Not yet.”
Therin reached behind him and pulled his long white-blond hair away from his face.“We have come far enough that it is unlikely Zef would be able to easily find us, since he is not privy to our destination. We can stop and rest, Brett.”
I shook my head again.“No, really, I’m fine. If we could slow down a bit, that would help.”I almost made a snarky comment about the ridiculousness of Zef being the bogeyman but caught myself in time. “How could he be privy to our destination? We’re just going to swim around aimlessly until we run into another tribe of mers and hope they don’t try to kill us.”I hadn’t even put that bit of information together yet. Saying it out loud, orthinkingit out loud, made me realize how truly ridiculous our plan was.
Therin’s face twisted in a quizzical expression.“Why would we swim aimlessly?”
I paused, unsure how to answer. That seemed too obvious to need a reply.“How else will we find other mers?”
“We are going to the Scarus tribe.”
I think Lelas must have been saying something to Wrell, because at Therin’s words, she whipped her head toward him, her shoulder-length blonde hair lashing about her face.“We are?”
Therin nodded.“Forgive me, Lelas. I had forgotten you were not present when we made our plans.”
“Neither was I.”I chose to ignore that I sounded like I was whining.“How are we going to find a specific tribe? They could be anywhere, just migrating around the ocean like us.”
“The Scarus are one of the tribes that have a permanent home. We know their location.”
Lelas turned and beamed at me.“I have always wanted to go where the Scarus live! I’ve only heard stories about how beautiful it is.”
“Why haven’t you been there before? I thought you’d been everywhere. You’ve only been swimming in the ocean for almost seventy years!”
Therin spoke before Lelas could reply.“I was under the impression Syleen told you of the other tribes.”
“She did. She said mers don’t get along and if the tribes happen to run into each other, they both go their own way. If one of them refuses, then fighting breaks out.”
He nodded.“That is true for those of us who refrain from using the sea at the cost of its health. There are those tribes that do not take that into consideration. They have staked their territory, and out of respect for their choice, we do not infringe on their space.”
As typical with Therin, I had to take a moment to translate his meaning. Lelas had spoken often about our tribe moving frequently so we wouldn’t take too much from the sea life around us. Spreading out our impact on the ocean instead of overusing one space. However, now that Therin brought it up, I remembered Syleen mentioning tribes that stayed in one spot. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
I looked back and forth between Lelas and Therin.“Where do the Scarus live?”
He pointed toward the west.“In the mountains, north.”
No sooner had he spoken than Wrell sent an image that flashed through my mind of coral reefs and brilliantly colored fish. It only took me a second to realize where we were going, and I felt the same excitement Lelas expressed. Hawaii. It had to be. No other coral reefs I knew of were even remotely close to us. Wild-goose chase or not, I was finally going to see some other waters beyond the western American coast. Lelas was going to love it!
“How long has it been since you’ve been there, Therin?”
“I have never been there. As I said, we do not invade the Scarus’s territory. To my knowledge, none of our tribe has been within a couple of days’ journey of their waters.”He glanced toward Wrell.“With the exception of Wrell, of course.”
I nearly asked how Wrell had been there, but remembered what Syleen had said before I brought up something that was none of my business. Wrell had been adopted into the Chromis tribe when he was a child, after his mother had been killed. When he’d grown up, he had gone to search out the Volitan tribe he’d been born into. I wasn’t sure if they were a migrating tribe or not, but it made sense that Wrell would have gone places members of the Chromis tribe wouldn’t go. I looked over at him.“Did you meet any members of the Scarus tribe?”
He simply nodded.
I looked back at Therin.“What makes you think they are still there?”
“If the Scarus tribe had moved or changed their behaviors, we would have seen them during our migrations.”
Yeah, ’cause the ocean was tiny. No way a small tribe of mers could have been overlooked. Goose chase was the understatement of the year.
“So, we go and try to find the Scarus tribe, and then what?”
