Merman Rising Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Thank you for reading!

  MERMAN RISES

  M.S. Kaminsky

  Copyright © 2020 by M.S. Kaminsky

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a blog, magazine, or newspaper—without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Open Pollinated Productions LLC

  To my family, my husband and to anyone who has ever felt they did not belong.

  With special thanks to my extraordinary advance readers: I could not do this without you!

  CHAPTER ONE

  DELPHIN

  My name is Delphin. A web as tangled as sea floss led to this moment. A moment where I drift deep beneath the sea, ready to record this story shell. The strange events that brought me here started in my pod, long before I’d ever met a human. Are you ready for my story?

  * * *

  If I’d lived the rest of my life and never witnessed an execution, that would have been fine by me.

  Two of Father’s fiercest merrow soldiers led Barron toward his death. Head bowed toward the seafloor, he swam between them. I tried to read the expression on his handsome face. Anger? Sadness? Resignation?

  An enormous throng of merrow swam behind, buzzing with excitement. A rainbow assortment of fins glimmered and sparkled in the eerie light of the abandoned crystal caverns.

  I glanced over and noticed my father, Jahvo, watching. I struggled to keep my emotions hidden, frozen behind an impassive mask.

  Guilt soured my stomach. Shame slithered through my veins. Grief shattered my soul. I did not want to be here. I did not want to witness Barron’s death! I had no choice. I was the regent’s son.

  Barron had been well-respected once. Just a few years older than me, he had a broad chest made strong from combat, eyes that twinkled with his quirky, self-deprecating sense of humor, and he wielded his trident with a dexterity that rivaled Father’s most loyal soldiers, Finner and Teomath.

  Now Barron will die. Because of me.

  For a moment, Barron’s eyes met mine. My throat constricted. I forced myself to meet his gaze, expecting accusation or anger. But I saw nothing. Just a brief flicker of recognition before he glanced away.

  I am a murderer.

  My stomach roiled, and I almost threw up my shrimp breakfast. According to Father, Barron was not worthy of being sacrificed to our Tentacle Lord. Instead, they dragged him into the old forbidden zone to meet his fate. Merrow taunted and jeered.

  Massive arches inlaid with ornate artistic flourishes towered above seaweed-covered statues and broken ornamentation. I’d never swum here before. These abandoned areas were where the decadence of the old merrow ways had been born and died.

  This massive room looked so different from the austere chambers of our pod, which were all white, white, white. We’d risen above the old ways to create something better. Something pure. So I thought.

  Finner forced Barron down to the seafloor. Teomath yanked his muscular arms, binding them behind him with thick ropes made from kelp and seaweed. Blood oozed from several puncture wounds on Barron’s lustrous cobalt and gold fin. A giant chunk of a stone statue loomed above. His death sentence.

  This room once held many statues. Now statues were forbidden. Art was banned. One of the thousand rules that governed our tribe.

  Forty merrow pushed the statue closer to the edge of the ancient ledge. A horrible grinding noise shook the chamber and rattled my bones.

  As they continued to shove the massive chunk of stone toward the edge, Barron’s green-blue eyes met mine. A deep sadness emanated from him.

  I felt Barron try to warn me of something, but I didn’t dare open my mind to his transmission. Father watched. If I lost control, I’d lose everything. As it was, I barely managed to maintain the stoic mask that held back an ocean of sorrow.

  I glanced up when the horrible grinding noise ceased. All the merrow went silent. The stone tipped and fell. It landed with a boom that launched an enormous plume of brown sediment.

  A sharp stab of pain sliced through my chest. Barron lay crushed beneath.

  * * *

  Months later, in nightmares, Barron’s eyes still floated in front of me. What had he wanted to tell me?

  The pain in my chest faded. It never left. An echo of that day. Most times when I had aches or pains, I visited Abalon, our healer. She grew hundreds of sea herbs and remedies for all kinds of ailments.

  Not this time.

  After what I’d done to Barron, I deserved whatever punishment I got. In fact, I deserved far worse.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DELPHIN

  On spawning days, there were no rules. I burrowed deeper into the soft, colorful folds of sea-silk and tried to hide.

  Color was permitted in this chamber but nowhere else. Silks were hand-woven from cultivated seaweeds and dyed beautiful oranges, greens, and yellows. Any other day, I’d have enjoyed their beauty. Right now? Fear muddled my brain.

  When other young mermen my age learned of the lack of rules, they pumped their fists in the air, giant grins on their faces.

  Their glee bewildered me. No rules? Why celebrate that?

  It seemed a horrible idea that invited chaos. I’d learned to navigate our rules. I knew what to expect. There were no surprises.

  Peeking through a gap in the silks, I watched Crusock and Sirena pass hand-in-hand. Sirena giggled. Crusock nipped the nape of her neck.

 
Crusock had bullied me since I was a fry. I wasn’t surprised to see him with Sirena. She’d always been a sucker for muscle heads. They drifted into a silk love nest in a flurry of bubbles and hands. Touching, stroking, caressing.

  I shut my eyes and took a deep breath of water. Barron’s face flashed in my mind. I saw the stone descend.

  That could be you next.

  No. I have my plan.

  I hoped Krenil was right. Our plan felt solid when we’d talked it through. Now it felt as fragile as minnow bones. I ran it through my mind for the umpteenth time.

  I’d tell Father I fell asleep in the sea-silk. I’d explain that my excitement about the spawning the night before took its toll. It wasn’t that I hadn’t wanted to spawn. I’d passed out from sheer exhaustion. My father’s advisor, Krenil, told me there was another way I could become an initiate. Without spawning. He hadn’t gone into specifics but that was my out.

  I’d dreaded this day for several moons. Krenil assured me it would go better than expected. Wrong. It was about to get worse. Much, much worse.

  A hand shot through the folds of sea-silk and smacked my backside hard enough to sting.

  “I thought I heard you!” Chrysalis was one of the older, more experienced mermaids and now she’d found me. I’d tried to cloak my thoughts, but that was not one of my strong points. Especially when I got nervous.

  Father had encouraged her advances at our last Regent’s dinner. In fact, he seemed to find my discomfort humorous. Chrysalis made bawdy jokes that made me blush and finned me under the table. My sister theorized that she wanted the power I might hold one day. I was more pragmatic: Chrysalis wanted nothing more than to eat me alive.

  Chrysalis ran her hands along my chest down to my belly. I thrust my tail down in the sandy surface that lay beneath the undulating sea-silk and rocketed out into the maze of passages. Okay, she might have found me, but she hadn’t caught me—yet.

  On spawning days, there were no rules.

  That meant there was no rule that said I needed to make it easy for her! Perhaps time would run out before she caught me? I swam hard and fast. If she did catch me, I could blow my whistle, though Krenil told me it was a last resort.

  There were laws, rules, and regulations for everything in our pod. Rules for when and what we could eat. They regulated sleeping times; half the pod slept during the moon, the other half during the sun except during celebrations—this was for safety.

  Other regulations dictated what we wore and when. In the many passages that crisscrossed our pod, mermaids swam to the left, mermen to the right. I didn’t know the purpose of this—it just was. There were regulations about when we could enter the open sea—never except during the Hunts, which only happened twice per year for certain initiated merrow.

  Hunts were another example when there were few rules—not no rules, but few enough to make me uncomfortable. When I became Regent, I’d banish Hunts, although I hadn’t mentioned this to Father.

  Rules kept us safe. Regulations kept us secure. Laws kept things certain. Most of all, order kept us alive.

  My mind ran through escape routes as I gathered speed during a long, straight stretch of open water. Chrysalis swam close behind, laughing.

  “Oh, how fun you are, cheeky Delphin!” She squealed with another burst of laughter. “You know I love a challenge.”

  Most of the other mermaids and mermen had already paired off. I zoomed past a few—grunts and guttural sounds rose from sea-silk nests.

  My sense of direction was horrible. Lost, I barreled through the maze of sea-silk and careened down a dead-end. I took a sharp left, then a right, zigzagging back-and-forth. My hesitation cost momentum. Chrysalis gained.

  “Sweet Delphin! So frisky! So cheeky!” Her laughter and giggles followed close behind. “So speedy!” She sent out a probe, seeking my thoughts. I barricaded fast but not before she caught a glimpse. Damn it.

  “You poor thing!” she transmitted. “You are nervous.”

  We merrow communicated to each other by transmitting mind-to-mind. It’s not that different from human speech. Well, except for one thing. It’s also possible to read a merrow’s mind if you’re rude enough to breach their defenses.

  My heart hammered in my throat. Nervous? Try terrified. I needed some way out of this predicament. Perhaps a little known dictate, edict, or precept? Anything. But I came up empty. Rules and regulations would not help me now.

  I remembered Krenil’s advice. Krenil was more a father to me than my own. Although I couldn’t tell him the whole truth, it was he to whom I’d confided my fears.

  “Well, if you get found in your comfy hideaway, then blow your mother’s whistle,” Krenil said with a suppressed smile. “I will make an excuse and come call you away on urgent business.”

  “The Hall of Order is so vast and far away,” I’d said. Krenil spent most of his time there. It was all the way on the other side of the network of passages I called home.

  Krenil’s droopy eyelids had opened and closed. He tapped the bone whistle that hung around my neck. It didn’t look like anything special. A piece of rudimentary carved bone on a rough-hewn seaweed rope necklace. I only wore it because it reminded me of my mother.

  “No worries, lad. Your mother’s whistle was made from the larynx of a Trillium Whale. One could hear their calls throughout the seven seas and beyond. That is until they went extinct, thanks to humans. Blow. I will find you no matter where you are. But only whistle as a last resort, mind you. It will put me in a somewhat awkward position.”

  Chrysalis had a single goal: to initiate me and make me hers before the next moon. Before the most important Hunt of the year, all young men of age needed to be initiated. Part of me hoped that somehow as I spun, twisted, and turned throughout the maze of sea-silks, that she’d tire. From the shrieks of delight coming from behind me, Chrysalis enjoyed the chase.

  I swam so hard I thought my head might pop like a pufferfish. When I dared take a quick look behind me, I’d lost her. I slowed. If I hadn’t, my heart might have burst right out of my chest. I drifted a bit and when I looked up, Chrysalis swam right in front of me. I tumbled into her waiting arms and she grabbed me and pulled me close.

  “Got you!” she screamed as her mouth opened and her tongue penetrated my lips.

  “Your heart beats so fast. Don’t be scared.” Chrysalis snapped my upper lip with her teeth, drawing blood. I grabbed for my whistle but before I could put it to my bleeding mouth, she wrapped her thick arms around my torso, her grip tightening. Something in my chest cracked.

  “This is supposed to be fun, silly. Relax.”

  Fun? She might eat me alive!

  “I’ll be more gentle.” She nuzzled against me and gyrated her body back and forth against mine. Her breasts pressed against me like two giant loaves of sea sponge bread. I squirmed beneath her as I tried to pull my right hand up to my chest to grab the whistle.

  “Mmm, yes, more. It feels soooo good when you do that.” Chrysalis moaned so deep a trail of hairs rose along the nape of my neck.

  She reached down. I tried to jerk back but her hand darted beneath my waist and reached to grab… nothing. Only water. My parts remained retracted. Hidden within my body. Could you blame them?

  “Oh!” Surprise and anger clouded her face. She shoved me away. “I thought you enjoyed my company!” Her mouth curled in a snarl.

  “How could you possibly think that?” I said without thinking first. Seeing the flash of rage in her eyes, I tried to backtrack.

  “I mean, it’s not you… I just… sorta… tired out.” I managed a garbled, disjointed mind-to-mind transmission.

  “No need for excuses. I understand.” She flung her hair over her shoulder. The water around her practically boiled. She swam away, then turned. “Oh, and, Delphin? You don’t need to worry, my sweet. I won’t mention your… performance to anyone.”

  Chrysalis shot me a sarcastic wink and swam off into the sea-silk maze.

  CHAPTER THREE

>   DELPHIN

  I panicked. Not wanting to see anyone, I rushed through unused back corridors on my way to find Krenil.

  Blackened slime-covered crystal walls surrounded me on all sides. Father’s improvement mandates left these for last. They were not yet plastered with the smooth white material that covered most of our chambers. These dark, narrow passages were used to transport building materials and for servants. They circled the main areas.

  My sister, Ariella, told me that the crystal had been beautiful once. Hard to imagine. Many things had changed since the old times, generations before my sister and I were born.

  Tango, my pet dolphin, found me and followed. He’d been perplexed that he hadn’t been allowed to enter the spawning room. His cool, slick, blue bottlenose nudged itself up beneath my armpit.

  “That tickles, Tango! Quit it!” He knew how to get a laugh out of me. Even when there was nothing to laugh about.

  After Barron’s execution, we’d explored the forbidden areas of our pod and discovered an abandoned palace. Admittedly, it was much more fun to hang out there.

  We’d found a garden of story shells. Each colorful shell held its own story, as diverse as they were beautiful. Ariella listened to one about the human world that existed above the seas. She’d been obsessed with it ever since.

  “Delphin?” A familiar voice. Ariella shot a pulse of echolocation, our way of using sounds waves to see. I spotted her collecting conch shells in a shadowy recess. “I’ve been looking for you.” She grinned. “Ready for more exploration?”

  “No. Enough. I can’t go there again. It’s against the rules. Besides, I need to find Krenil. It’s urgent.”

  She swam out and bumped me playfully with her tail. “C’mon, you know you want to. Maybe you’ll find another story shell?”

  Ariella’s face broke out into a broad smile. She rolled over onto her back and swam in front of me, her long silver hair exploding around her face. Despite her large size or perhaps because of it, Ariella was the most graceful swimmer I’d ever seen. I was biased. Ariella was not only my sister but also my best friend.