The more I tried to stop thinking about it, the more my mind replayed the scene. My ears still rang with the shouting crowd, clashing weapons, and splintering boat, which seemed to grow louder as time passed. The smell of blood and iron lingered in my nose. I saw the swinging keel, the red clouds in the water.
It was the Massacre all over again, except this time I was on the other side of the surface. Somehow, I’d thought the merpeople would be reluctant to attack. Had I expected everyone to be like Lysi? Instead, they’d moved in to kill those humans without hesitation. They even seemed to enjoy it.
“You’re all … prickly,” said Lysi, bringing me out of the memory.
“Thinking about the boat,” I mumbled.
I could feel her looking at me. I kept staring ahead. Swimming in silence through the open ocean, its emptiness felt absolute. We’d stopped to gorge on a school of fish, but since then, there was no sign that anything besides the two of us existed.
“They were doing what they’ve been taught,” said Lysi.
“Weren’t you taught to do that, too?”
“Yes, but I have you.”
“So? What if you hadn’t met me? Would you be into killing and, and—?” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Mee, our kind has spent years hearing how humans are worthless, and how we own the water and humans have no right to be here.”
“And they believe it?”
“Adaro promised to unite the seas under one crown. He’s doing that by uniting everyone with a common enemy.”
It was working. Hate and fear were powerful enough to build a kingdom on. Thinking about Adaro’s strategy made my pulse race with anger. He had trained an entire generation of merpeople to believe humans needed to be extinguished.
Desperation cinched my chest, pulling me northwards as if by a rope. The sooner we found Adaro, the sooner we could end all of this.
Lysi made a sound as though she were about to say more. I glanced at her, but she closed her mouth.
“What?” I said.
She shook her head.
“Lysi.”
She cast me a sideways glance. “Well, is it any different from how you were raised?”
I looked away, taking a minute to squash the surge of outrage. My face grew hot. She was right. Everyone on Eriana Kwai believed mermaids were an invasive species that needed to be pushed back to the Atlantic. The whole purpose of the Massacres was to force them away from our home.
War was not one-sided. For centuries, humans had been overfishing anything edible, capturing and tagging anything intelligent, and killing everything else. We had made it easy for merpeople to treat us as the enemy.
“They teach us that feeding on humans is no worse than fish,” Lysi said gently. “Both are made of meat. Both are a relative.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The idea was beyond argument.
Lysi took my hand. “He doesn’t understand the most important part of existence. The mind, the soul, everything that makes us feel.”
Her touch calmed me, and I squeezed her fingers. I had to remember that Adaro’s concept of the relationship between humans and merpeople was that we were all just part of the food chain. But I knew love, and I had those in my life who returned it. That we were made of flesh and bone was the smallest part of what it meant to be alive.
“Do you think anyone else feels the same?” I said.
“I think lots do. They’re just afraid to say it.”
We pressed on through the bluish murk, the world vacant on all sides.
Some time later, ripples told me something big was swimming towards us. I stopped. We hadn’t encountered anything other than fish since leaving Deiopea and the captives.
“Lysi?”
