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Who would want to get acquainted with a rival?
Moran only shrugged his shoulders and hurried to meet her. His purple robe slid like liquid fire down the stairs leading to the roof of the tower.
Desdemona was left alone with the mirror, which stubbornly refused to show her the rendezvous between the king and the dragoness.
Maybe she had jumped to conclusions. Moran seemed to call the guest a scout, not a friend. But why would he need a scout who flies over the sea, when he himself can get all the information about the enemies without leaving the castle? It is enough to give an order to the mirror-observer, and it will show everything.
What really connects the waterman and the dragon lady? From above came suspicious and wild sounds, then something like the singing of a siren. Desdemona never dared to go up and peep. She had already burned herself on the sea chess. She didn’t want to be burned by the dragon’s breath.
The Wooden Queen
“The wooden queen of Aquilania was lost in the stormy waves, it was the turn of the living queen!”
Whoever said that reminded Desdemona of the ship with her dead brothers. That ship, after all, was called the “Queen of Aquilania.” That’s symbolic, considering that it was the current queen who was originally meant to be sacrificed to the sea. Presumably, by taking the ship, the sea would calm down.
Desdemona had the feeling that someone had threatened her from the darkness with a clawed finger. Could the mirror be speaking to her? It was now showing a half-empty ship and a blonde mermaid who was flirting brazenly with the captain.
“This is Yasmin, the eldest of the sea king’s daughters,” explained Moran, who had returned. His date with the dragon lady had ended very quickly.
“Is it your sister? I did not wish to see her.”
“I wished to see her. I thought she’d come around a little since we broke up. But I see she’s gone wild.”
“She will drag that captain down,” Desdemona guessed.
Moran sighed.
“What else do you expect from a mermaid?”
“It is love for a handsome mortal boy.”
“Yasmin often falls in love with mortals, but it ends badly for them. The sea princess already has a collection of skeletons of her suitors.”
“And I thought that if someone brave went down to the sea kingdom and asked the crowned father for her hand, everything would be solved like magic.”
“That’s not likely! The sea king is least desirous of his daughters’ marriage. The thing is, each of them has a special talent that will come in handy to…”
“Is it to sweep away the entire earthly world?” Desdemona said the first thing that came to her mind, for Morgens do not tolerate humans.
Moran was silent.
The flapping of powerful wings somewhere above heralded the dragon’s departure from the castle.
“Sephora reports that we should expect an unusual ambassador.”
“From the depths of the sea, I believe. And how is he unusual?”
“He will be sent to test how well I can handle Aquilania on my own. If the ambassador is convinced I’m not a good autocrat, they’ll send us imposed help from the sea. This is a test. We cannot fail it.”
“And what can I do to help?”
“You can expose the naval ambassador. He won’t look like a waterman.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the Copycat,” Moran snapped his fingers, and a creature that looked like a huge white spider slid off the frame of the trundle. It straightened up to its full height and suddenly became the first minister Ramiro.”
Desdemona gasped.
“I didn’t know his grace was also a morgen.”
“Ramiro is not a morgen,” Moran objected. “Show her the other changes of guise!”
And now in front of Desdemona already was the same handsome Lancier, about whom Vaira chirped endlessly. He smiled impudently at her and showed his fingers with webbing. It was immediately clear that this was not Lancier. In a fraction of a minute, the creature called Copycat took on a succession of guises, from royal advisors to lackeys. Toward the end, it took the form of all the brothers in turn, and even Desdemona’s father.
“That’s it! Enough!” She demanded.
The creature crawled nimbly back behind the frame of the drawer, and from there climbed up the wall. It looked like a fancy ivory ornament.
“It can turn into women, too,” Moran boasted.
As if to confirm his words, the Imitator sat down at the top of the arch and suddenly turned into Desdemona herself, exactly copying her figure, hair and dress.
“It would frighten everyone to death if it repeated the trick in public,” Desdemona turned away from the double.
“But you can drive your enemies crazy that way. Imagine if no one warned you about the Copycat, but you see your copy mimicking you everywhere.”
“And you’re afraid the naval ambassador will come to you in my guise? You can’t tell me from a Morgen unless I give you a sign.”
Moran shrugged.
“It’s best if we both know about the visitor and look him out. If you denounce him, don’t hesitate to tell him you’ve figured out his secret. Father will be pleased to know that my queen is not a simpleton. Then he won’t impose his rules or his help on us.”
“And what if we need his help one day?” Desdemona thought of the sunken temple. Would a sea king be able to take control of that place?
“I’m used to handling everything myself,” Moran disappointed her.
“Why should you cherish your independence when somewhere at the bottom of the sea there is a powerful father who can sink the whole world for you?”
“I’ll explain later,” Moran was withdrawn.
He led Desdemona out into the garden and to an arbor, which was braided by a blue sea tree with a scaly trunk. Moran plucked one fruit from it.
“Would you like a taste?”
“It is to lose your mind or your memory?”
“It is to learn to hear the gossip that the waves carry to the shore.”
Sounds tempting, but Desdemona didn’t dare.
“Some other time,” she promised. The tree moving its living roots beneath the gazebo frightened her a little. Besides, she still didn’t know how much she could trust Moran. He was courteous to her. It was easy to fall in love with him, but it was a little scary to trust a morgen.
The basilica behind the garden with its doors ajar clearly displayed sculptures of gods that looked like they came from the sea. Desdemona gazed at them mesmerized. The marble figures were beautiful and frightening. She had seen something like them before in the cathedrals of the city. The goddesses had tails instead of legs or shells in place of ears, the gods had gills and scales.
“These are the original gods of the land,” Moran explained. “I have seen them all alive, and to me they are not gods at all, but only my father’s subjects. This is the statue of Ariana. You call her Pheean, the goddess of the waves. Apparently, that’s how the name was heard by someone who heard it only as an echo of mermaid talk.”
Desdemona’s attention was distracted by the Copycat. He crawled along the ceilings of the arches to the basilica and took the form of a lady of fire.
Moran seemed to have called the dragon lady Sephora.
“What do you and the fire-breathing lady have in common?” Desdemona dared to ask.
“Well,” Moran reluctantly stretched out. “She is much older than me. That’s what’s causing all the trouble.”
“Is it a few years older? I thought you were a hundred,” Desdemona snickered.
Moran pretended not to feel the pinprick.
“She is a few millennia older. But that’s a small thing to her. Creatures like her only add beauty and strength over time. It’s humans who age quickly.”
That’s right! Desdemona’s sad. She’s human. And she’s to be sacrificed. And if they don’t sacrifice her, she’ll grow old anyway, and she won’t be able to be Moran’s mate anymore.
“Won’t you grow old?”
“I’ve only grown a hundred years, but have I reached maturity?” said Moran sullenly. “At the bottom, I am too young, and if you tell my age to people, they will be stunned.”
“It wasn’t age that stunned me,” Desdemona admitted. “What does it matter how many hundreds of years old a creature with a pleasant ever-young face is? It is the fact that you’re half human and half morgen…”
“I don’t know if I was born this way or if the legend is right. My father split me in two with a sword when my mother tried to escape him back to the humans. I am one half Morgen, one half human.”
Even Desdemona heard the legend of Lilophea in the Adar’s wilderness. It seems that the princess who escaped back to the land, the sea husband issued an ultimatum: if she did not return, they would have to divide the children equally. Half the mother would take back to the land. Half would stay with the father in the sea. Lilophea’s sons were an uneven number, and it became necessary to cut the odd seventh son in half. Lilophea apparently did not have any mermaid daughters at that time. Hearing the ultimatum, she returned. But was it really like that? Or was Lilophea not going to leave the sea kingdom forever from the very beginning? Apparently, the princess had a flighty temper. She could only banter with her consort. It would be a shame if something bad really happened to Moran because of her jokes.
“Do your brothers have different bodies? Did they inherit any human traits from their mother?”
“Normal watermen have blue skin and shell-shaped growths on their temples and foreheads. You wouldn’t mistake them for humans if they wore an ermine robe over their shoulders.”
“Are the chosen girls sacrificed to such creatures?”
Moran remained sullenly silent.
“Who is a sea god to you: an annoying nuisance to unlimited power or an insignificant inhabitant of the sea?”
“The sea itself is becoming dangerous!” Moran squinted at the waves like an attacking enemy. “It belongs to my father and brothers, not to me. That is why I am here. In the kingdom my mother would return to if she could leave the depths.”
“What happens if the sea can’t do without a victim?”
“In that case, I have a friend named Sephora who can turn the waves into fire. There are talismans that turn a pool of water into a pool of fire. That’s how we met. I fended off a big bay that wasn’t my father’s, and she flew by and the water turned to flames. I almost got fried, but Sephora saved me. Then it turned out that she had befriended my mother long before I was born. I was attracted to her for nothing. To her, I’m the child of an old acquaintance, that’s all. But she can ignite the entire sea around Aquilania if you ask her to.”
Desdemona’s heart is relieved. So Sephora is no match for her! But there was another cause for concern.
“It is to turn the whole sea into fire! Is that possible?”
“It’s a last resort,” Moran said.
“And you have to do it for something?”
“If my enemies are suddenly stronger than I am, which is unlikely,” Moran said. “Sephora could ignite the entire ocean. That’s something we can negotiate with her. The bad thing is that then we, the Earthlings, and all those who live in the water will die in the fire.”
So there’s no way out. If it becomes necessary to fight Darunon, the country will either burn or sink. Desdemona returned to her room, looked at the bouquet of luxurious lilies that Moran had brought her in the morning, and realized that beautiful flowers no longer pleased her. For the abyss was near. The floor beneath her feet no longer felt like she was about to become a mermaid with a tail and a creepy sea god pulling her to the bottom.
“The wooden queen has already sunk, it’s the turn of the living queen,” she repeated, looking into the magic mirror.
The mirror immediately showed her a piece of wood from the bow of the ship that was bobbing in the waves with mermaids splashing around it. It was part of a carved female figure, the kind usually used to decorate ships. Indeed, it looked like a statue of a queen. In the salt water of the sea, the wood would quickly rot and turn black. There will soon be nothing left of the beautiful figure.
Desdemona could not recall this figure or any other adorned the bow of the sunken “Queen of Aquilania.”
She is queen now! Is the queue for her?
“Come to me!” The voice was definitely not calling from the mirror, but it suddenly showed the sunken temple. Its spires and domes curved in relief over the inky black water. The sun was setting, illuminating them with bloody light.
Desdemona felt a sudden impulse to go to the sea. It was as if someone whispered in her ears:
“You were born to swim, not to walk on land!”
It hurt to step. It was as if small broken glass had fallen into her feet. Desdemona took off her shoes and examined her feet. Scales had erupted under her heels and toenails. Her feet had become like two fish.
“Swim!” said a commanding voice.
Was it the wind itself whispering? Desdemona looked around for the speaker, but she had no strength left to stand on the shore. She found it hard to breathe. She didn’t remember how she had fallen into the sea. The corset that squeezed her breasts had burst, or she had torn it. Instead of the exquisite brocade of Aquilania, a stiff purple scale stretched across her chest. It felt like armor. Her legs, once in the water, were joined by a tail and long fins.
So she’s a mermaid! It was in real life, not in a dream. Desdemona struck the waves with her tail and darted forward. No sailboat could sail that fast. She had the feeling that she was flying ahead of the waves. There was only one thought in her mind: she had to hurry, because someone was waiting for her. That someone was calling her. The call came as if from the sea floor, but she had to swim forward to the horizon.
Overhead, seagulls shrieked frantically. The wedding ring somehow didn’t sound the alarm. Apparently it was itself surprised to find itself suddenly on a mermaid’s hand instead of the queen’s finger. Desdemona had deceived it so often that it must have thought she had quietly traded it for something. Pearl yawned sleepily, but didn’t raise a panic. Apparently it had grown tired of its past mistress and felt more comfortable on the silent sea maiden’s finger.
It was worth diving deeper under the water for a moment and Desdemona saw a stunning world of bright colors, magical fish and sea wonders. Singing shells shone in the depths, lacey networks of seaweed swayed, sandy pyramids were towered. Sunken treasures glittered. But she had to hurry. The call, coming from afar, pulled her forward magnetically. The sky above the sea was darkening rapidly, a storm was coming. A storm was about to break. Desdemona did not notice the impending danger.
“Swim to the temple!” Someone called out.
The temple! What direction is it in? Desdemona looked around. There are only waves. They are getting stronger and higher. The water is getting darker and darker. Soon it will be pitch black.
Desdemona had sailed so far that the shores of Aquilania were no longer visible behind her. She had only been at sea for a few minutes. Can mermaids really swim so fast? She hadn’t been a mermaid all her life and suddenly she was. It was just before her nineteenth birthday.
Alarm bells went off in her brain. What if her transformation was a birthday present, followed by a deadly ritual? A voice, coming from an unknown place, was calling her to the temple. Which temple, she somehow never doubted for a moment. The sunken one!
But how was it to get there? And should she go there at all? She’s not crazy enough to willingly sacrifice herself. She has Moran, her lover and her king. She should go home to him. He’s more important than some creepy deity demanding tribute in girls’ lives.
In defiance of the calling voice, Desdemona turned and swam back to the shores of Aquilania. Someone was very angry with her. She felt someone’s fury gathering over her like a black cloud. As luck would have it, there was a thunderstorm. It was the beginning of a storm. A gust of strong wind literally threw Desdemona under the water. In the depths was a little calmer. Jellyfish and swordfish tried to swim away from Desdemona. Probably they feel that she is an enchanted mermaid, not a real one. But who bewitched her? Was it an ancient god who’s been waiting for her for a long time? She’s not even sure if he even exists or if it’s just a scary legend to scare the people. She’s never seen Darunon with her own eyes. And she’d do well not to in the future.
