Lelas swam past me and reached the ball before I did. True to form, she stretched out a finger and ran it along the smooth curved surface. Before turning around, she glanced back only long enough to look past me to Nalu.“Is it real?”
“Yes. It is alive.”Nalu swam past me but stopped before reaching Lelas. His brilliant-blue tail glistened in the refracted light of the room, as did his skin. His coloring reminded me of Finn’s beautiful golden hue. I wasn’t sure if that made me like him more or less.
This time Lelas didn’t look back, but swam above the ball, then over to the other side, as if inspecting to see if some trick was involved.“Will it be all right?”
“Most probably.”
At this Lelas jerked her head to Nalu, her eyes flashing.“Probably?”
“Typically, we release them, but at times, Queen Akamaii wants to have them for celebratory feasts.”Nalu’s tone was apologetic, lest he be blamed for the queen’s desires.
“But she eats it, not just kills it?”
“Yes. We don’t kill for the sake of death alone.”
Lelas nodded, satisfied, and returned to her inspection.“It’s beautiful.”
I closed the distance between us, Wrell and Therin joining as well. Like Lelas, I couldn’t refrain from stretching out to touch the glass.
Perched on a pile of sticks and coral on the bottom of the glass was a tiny scarlet bird, probably about six inches tall. It cocked its head from side to side, its curved hummingbird-like beak slashing back and forth as it inspected us. The bill was a warm salmon color, the only other hue besides its bright-red feathers and black wings and tail. It hopped into midair and hovered in the middle of the ball, wings beating so furiously they blurred in its speed. It darted toward us, its beak crashing into the glass. It dropped to the twigs, dazed. After a moment, it hopped back up to the tallest point of its perch and inspected us once more.
Hating to tear my eyes from the beautiful bird, I gaped at Nalu.“You have a bird.”
“Yes.”
“Under the ocean.”
He nodded, looking at me like I was daft.“Yes.”
“How?”
He made a dismissive gesture.“I know not. Such things do not intrigue me. There are others that capture birds to show off in this room. There are better things to see in the ocean than are on land or in the air.”
Lelas continued to stare at the bird, completely captivated.“I have only seen birds from time to time, and then only the white and black ones that are on the surface of the water. I did not know birds could be as brilliantly colored as the fish in the sea.”
Nalu looked somewhat embarrassed he’d criticized the bird when Lelas was so enamored. I wanted to tell him to get used to it. She’d never met an animal she didn’t fall instantly in love with.“I can ask Palila if she can show you how she… acquires the birds. I know she would enjoy someone else being interested. She always wants to talk about things that fly through the clouds.”
Lelas turned to me, but went back to gazing at the bird before she even finished her thought.“If there are creatures such as these flying over the earth, it is no wonder humans have tales of mermaids desiring to live on land. I doubt they are legends.”
I lost track of how long we stayed, the four of us captivated by the tiny creature—so small and beautiful, so foreign, so many miles under the ocean inside an island. Even Nalu seemed to begin to be genuinely interested in the bird, probably feeding off Lelas’s enthusiasm, before he reminded us that Queen Akamaii was waiting.
Thirteen
BRETT WRIGHT
The wizenedqueen smiled as we entered the room we’d been in the day before. Her gaze passed over us individually and came to rest on Lelas and Nalu, once again holding hands. Any sense of distrust or uncertainty that Akamaii had the day before seemed to have been alleviated. Whether it was memories of Wrell, that we proved trustworthy through the night, putting her faith in the fairy-tale love come to life before her eyes, or a mixture of it all, who could say? Whatever it was, I couldn’t suppress a thrill of excitement.
Like the queen, something had shifted in me during our time with the Scarus. Since embarking, I’d been quick to assume the four of us could be on a fool’s errand. An errand we had to do, a quest we had to see through to whatever conclusion we would find, but a fool’s task nonetheless. Maybe it was seeing the Scarus tribe, mortal, but so plentiful in number, made up of families of young and old. Maybe, like Akamaii, seeing Lelas and Nalu’s love was inspiring. Maybe it was just a bird flying around miles below the surface of the ocean. Whatever caused the queen’s loss of skepticism and my own sudden surety, I was filled with the conviction that not only were we going to discover what was happening to the missing mers, but that we would find the key among the Scarus. A home run after our very first swing.
The queen was seated somewhat more comfortably in her canopy-bed throne. She sat, her back only slightly curved forward, at the pinnacle of the artful pile of coral and jewels. This time, Laban sat somewhat behind her—lower than her but close enough to reach out and touch her, should he need to. What surprised me even more than the queen sharing her throne was the tiny merboy on Laban’s lap. By human years, I would have guessed him to be four years old, past toddler age but full cheeks still retaining the last bits of baby cuteness. The boy’s tail gleamed bright, contrasting against the dull and sickly looking hues of Akamaii’s and Laban’s scales. At our approach, he lifted his head from where it had been resting on Laban’s chest, his eyes growing wide as he stared first at my legs and then Wrell’s abundance of quills. I tried to imagine Syleen holding a child in the same manner, and I couldn’t quite picture it. Though the Chromis might not have a queen, and she definitely wouldn’t wear a jeweled crown, she seemed more the typical elite picture of royalty than Akamaii and Laban. At the moment, they seemed more like ancient grandparents than anything else.
“I trust your rest was rejuvenating. I am certain your journey has been a tiresome one.”Queen Akamaii addressed Wrell but swept her gaze over all of us.
Wrell imparted an image of the five of us asleep in the darkness of Nalu’s room combined with a warm feeling of gratitude. On the heels of the vision came one of the scarlet bird enclosed in the glass ball.
At the thought, I jerked my eyes up from their subservient position, expecting to see Akamaii angry at our snooping. Instead, her smile widened, pride filling her cloudy eyes.“I am glad you met her. It has been many years since we have had this particular species. It is one of my favorites. I do believe I could spend weeks simply staring at its delicate features and graceful movements. So much like swimming, yet so very different.”
I was dying to ask how they were able to capture birds and keep them so far under the water. Even if they were able to trap a bird somehow, I couldn’t fathom how they kept the pressure at such a depth from crushing the glass ball.
