Page 6 of She Who Was Once the Sea

I would know. A larger, quieter voice answered.

And somehow, without even realizing I’d given them permission to do so, my feet began moving. One step at a time, I followed Brother Lucas down the hill and towards the city, until we, too, were swallowed up by the towering stonework.

Whatever I expected of the monastery, the Fratelli Monastery was decidedly not it. From the outside, the building appeared as nondescript as the rest of the city—several stories of smooth, faded orange stone, lined with windows and a few balconies, with plants and flowers cascading downward from higher floors. In fact, it blended in so well with the surrounding architecture that I found myself concerned about being able to find it, especially in the dark. There were no obvious street numbers or building names, no plaque to signal the presence of an ancient order of holy warriors… just plain stonework.

As surreptitiously as possible, while Brother Lucas fumbled with a set of keys from his pocket, I pulled out my phone and dropped a pin on our location. Home, I labeled it, even as my mind fought the designation. Chicago was home.

Chicago would probably never be home again.

Finally, after what felt like an inordinately long time, Brother Lucas succeeded in opening the door.

"This lock will be the death of me," he muttered as he pushed the heavy wooden thing aside and gestured for me to walk ahead of him. "There’s a trick to it, but only Brother Marco has been able to master it. The rest of us simply struggle."

I chuckled agreeably and took in my surroundings as he continued to talk.

"Whatever you do," he said, pushing the door closed once more with both hands, "never leave without your set of keys. All the doors automatically lock, and you will be locked out. And good luck getting anyone to answer the bell. I swear, it’s like a game of not-it, especially early in the morning."

A piece of me stored away his advice for future use, but I was admittedly only partially paying attention. Because the inside of this monastery, if one could even call it that, was nothing like I’d imagined—in the best possible way.

The room was circular, and the floor was polished white marble, so shiny it could almost be used as a mirror. The walls were stark white and modern, with a series of six black doors evenly spaced around the circle like spokes on a wheel. The main door, behind us now, was the seventh in the room. Between each door was a small pillar topped with a vase of red roses, and above those, a series of paintings.

Those were what truly caught my attention.

Each one depicted a different scene—the painting on the furthest left was peaceful. Humans and merfolk breaking bread along the shores of an ancient canal. The next showed a council of men, the original Fratelli, as indicated by their robes, arms out, trying to reason with the same merfolk, who now looked vicious and angry. As I moved rightward through the story, the images became darker and more bleak. A child washed up on the banks, fish-people hanging from hooks… in each one, those same merfolk morphed into something more and more sinister. Finally, the most modern-looking of the images, a group of the Fratelli, banded together, facing off against a gray-skinned, fanged monster with gills along its neck.

I swallowed, eyes drawn to the deep crimson of the blood dripping from the creature’s fangs. I’d heard the story about the Rossaia monsters—how they were once gentle sea creatures who worked hand in hand with the people of the city before their greed and jealousy turned them into vicious, bloodthirsty killers—but I’d never seen it illustrated so… vividly.

"Don’t worry," Brother Lucas’s voice was gentle, but amused, beside me. "They don’t actually look like that. Brother Alfredo—the artist—was a bit of an exaggerator, especially in his old age. He hadn’t been in the field for at least a decade when he painted the last story, and his memory was… shall we say warped by his own prejudices."

"So they’re not as terrifying as this?"

He scoffed. "I didn’t say that."

I raised my eyebrows.

"In reality, they’re much more terrifying because they don’t look like this. In the darkness of the new moon, when they emerge to hunt, they look no different from you or me, or any other innocent human you may come across. And because the great bulk of them come from the Old King’s family—you’ll learn about that later—most of them are, unfortunately, extremely beautiful women."

I couldn’t stop the snort that escaped my lips. "I can’t imagine that they’d be that beautiful," I said derisively. "Surely nothing so wicked could remain beautiful with a rotten soul?"

Brother Lucas didn’t answer. He just laughed and strode towards the third door from the left, once again not bothering to check whether I followed.

Eventually, I did, worried that the door would close and lock behind him, leaving me trapped here in the foyer with the disconcerting paintings.

As it turned out, that door was actually an elevator. It lacked buttons, but I assumed that was because it only went to one of the many floors in the building. Before the doors slid closed, I glanced once more at the picture of the vampiric monster on the wall, this time looking at its eyes. They seemed to glow, even in the matte finish of the paint. I found myself biting the insides of my cheeks, an unbidden rush of fear bubbling up in my stomach.

This is why you came, that small, loud voice whispered in my ear. To do something bigger with your life than working behind a desk and answering emails.

This is what I came for. Monster hunting had found its way into my life, and I was determined to heed its call.

Chapter 2 - Marella

Ialways wished that we’d been granted the freedom to sleep inside the stone. But that would have been too much of a mercy, I suppose, and the witch was not known for such things. And so, each and every month, we remained awake, day in and day out, as we watched the world pass by from the center of Piazza Centrale, the square in the middle of the city’s historic center. Frozen in place, surrounded by water that flowed through and around us but which we were unable to feel or taste, nothing but a tourist attraction for the thousands of people who milled about the square on any given day.

There was an inscription on the base of our fountain-prison, right in front of where I stood, legs crossed and breasts exposed, which told a story, in both English and Italian, of how our statues came to be.

It was a lie, of course, one which depicted the Fratelli as heroic holy men who liberated the city from a horde of angry monsters and suggested that the depiction of us that existed in the square was a means to honor what we once were—beautiful, peaceful creatures made to work with and serve the men of the city.

Each time I awoke, I tried to smash the inscription to bits. But it always pulled itself back together with the sunrise, even as I found myself solidifying once more into stone.