A crack in the rock formation revealed itself once they were closer. Lirik fit herself through it, and Yemi trailed her through a shallow trench on the other side.
“What were those things?” Yemi asked, though she could have been talking about a number of things.
“The Hollow,” Lirik replied.
Yemi frowned. “Are they Mer?” Until now, she’d assumed “the Hollow” Helene was content to let have her was a euphemism for the vast oceans in which she’d been invited to drown.
“The Hollow are the lost. Some Mer regret allowing Ursla to save them, so they shun her. When they cannot adjust to our world, they become a danger to it, so they are banished and usually end up beneath the city in those shadowed trench lanes. They lose themselves. And for want of food, they feast on each other.” A clearing appeared ahead of them, and on the other side, blue light glittered through a curtain of kelp. Lirik pulled back the thick strands.
“Every story you’ve heard that saw the sea folk mirrored in divinity was about the Mer. Every nightmare you’ve had about being eaten alive, drowning in seas of your blood and the dust of your own entrails, has been about the Hollow,” Lirik said as she motioned for Yemi to go ahead of her.
Yemi found herself in the shallow end of a grotto the shape of a fishbowl. Cubbies carved into the worn, rounded walls were stuffed with algae-crusted trinkets, flotsam, and jetsam from the world above the water. She peeked above the surface to where the cavern continued. Here, waterlogged books and cracked paintings on wrinkled canvas overfilled the lower shelves of a warped bookcase and were stacked on the flat of stone surrounding it.
It was beautiful and strange all at once—a curation of barely notable nonsense, and yet someone had taken the time to haul it here, lovingly.
“What is this place?” she asked Lirik.
“Arielle’s cove,” Lirik replied. “I always knew it existed but only found it a few years ago.”
“What?” Yemi gasped.
Her grandmother had told her tales of looted shipwrecks and obscure stories from other lands; Yemi had written them off as fictions from an old woman’s imagination. But the paintings, the kitsch, the weathered masonry of foreign figureheads were all real. So were the happier memories of her family alive and intact and in enough peace for storytelling instead of battle planning.
Yemi found herself beaming.
“Thereit is,” Lirik said.
Yemi drew up onto the rocks and dragged herself over to the bookcase. Some of the volumes were ancient, and many of them were written in languages she didn’t recognize.
She shook water droplets from her hand to trace her fingers along the places where her grandmother had tested writing her name in ink on the backboards of old volumes.
“What was she like?” Lirik asked, stretching across a rock as if it were a chaise.
“My grandmother?” Yemi raised an eyebrow. “I guess I would say… ‘effervescent’? Spirited. Bright. And, as I’m coming to discover, potentially shortsighted.”
It was difficult to contend with these revelations about her grandmother, a woman she’d defended viciously all her life but may have earned the criticism she received. She’d made choices that wrecked lives not through malice, just selfishness. And not just the lives of Men. She’d upended two entire worlds. But being in this space, the cavern where she’d collected her innocent dreams, Yemi felt her affection for humanity more keenly. Arielle had been trapped by the nature of her birth, like anyone else. It was hard to make her a villain.
Lirik’s intense gaze brought her down from her own thoughts.
“She made her decision based on one man’s feelings for her without accounting for the inescapable feelings of a million others,” Yemi said. “Turns out those feelings mattered, too. Love doesn’t work the way she thought it did. Had she fallen for a carpenter or fisherman… Well. The consequences have been dramatic. They’ve left me lost, which is why I find myself here.”
Lirik nodded. “I know about the wars. They made their mark here, too.”
Of course they did,Yemi thought. This was where the dead and dying ended up.
“The wars killed thousands, and then the fish disappearing from the north ruined livelihoods, and we were blamed for it. Men can’t seem to decide if we are gods or lesser creatures. They killed both my parents, then stole my throne. My mother suffered greatly first.”
“How will you avenge her?”
Yemi was surprised. “You know, you’re the first person to expect vengeance from me. As queen, I’m supposed to be above it.”
Lirik shrugged. “What’s the point of power if you can’t use it?”
Yemi smiled slightly. “That’s also why I’m here. I assumed the seatof the Mer realm would have an army substantial enough to rival the one I mean to take back. But Her Majesty was not forthcoming.”
“You’re about fifty years too late, I’m afraid.” Lirik sighed. “The exodus. Things fell apart when Triton died.”
“You were here fifty years ago?” she asked Lirik.
