Page 1 of The Demons in the Deep: Extended Edition
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When Jewel’s father was eaten by the monster, no one tried to save him.
Jewel’s father had always been so bold, so wise. He had to be, for he had survived under the reign of the three terrible mermaid Queens for years. The people of Kiken Island called him Death-Singer, because he persuaded the great Entity to swallow the swarms of mermaids who had been feasting on humans for decades.
Jewel used to watch him work, back when it was only the two of them, living in a cave in the Realm Below. His father, Rake, made things to help them escape to the surface—to the island. Rake stole treasures from the mermaid Queens, ancient artifacts that turned scaly tails into legs. Jewel himself wore one of the artifacts every day. The belt hung around his waist, a constant humming pressure, keeping him in human shape.
He’d thought that his father was invincible—that after braving the rabid swarms of merlows, and the wrath of the Queens, and the perils of the deep ocean, nothing could destroy him. Rake had been safe on land, leg-wearing and whole. He’d made it back from the voyage, and he’d brought the great Entity to clear away the hungry hordes that surged around Kiken Island.
And then Rake had plunged into the sea to ensure that the wicked Queens would not escape their doom.
Jewel hadn’t seen what happened. Only Kestra, the human girl with the rounded form, the rosy cheeks, and the dark hair—onlyshehad witnessed what happened to his father. She said Rake had been swallowed up into one of the Entity’s many mouths, along with the Queens. She’d spoken softly and piteously to Jewel, with eyes that bled saltwater.
At first Jewel tried to deny it. He told the humans he didn’t believe Rake was dead. Rake had left before, and he would come back.
He always came back.
But in his heart Jewel knew the truth, and in his mind he saw his father’s death again and again. The monster’s maw, opening. The choppy waves bubbling scarlet. No bones to settle beneath the waves, no hair to float and waver in the current. His father had been gulped whole, slithering down the monster’s gullet like an eel might slide down Jewel’s throat.
There was a place under Jewel’s ribs that gaped hollow, like a seaside cave at low tide. The only time it partly filled was when Jewel worked with the hawk-master Takajo, caring for the birds who used to fetch scrawny fish from the danger-laced waters around the island. Now the birds were not so desperately needed. The waters were no longer infested with rabid swarms, and fishermen could come and go at will. So could ships like the one that had carried his father’s allies—Flay, Kestra, and Mai. His father’s friends could go far, far away, to strange lands where they no longer had to think about the Death-Singer who saved the island.
But Jewel thought of him every day, and most nights.
The street outside the hawk-master’s house was broken. During its feeding, the great Entity had shouldered against the sea-wall, shearing off the masonry, along with great chunks of earth. Now the street ended in a sharp drop, a cliff of rock-studded soil with its feet in the foaming waves.
It was the last place his father had been seen, and Jewel paused there every day when, as now, he had finished with his chores for the hawk-master. He stopped at the brink of the broken earth, scrunching up the legs of his pants with his claws, and he stared into the foam far below.
Soon he would head up the hill to the inn of The Three Cherries where he lived with Kestra’s mother. She was kind, because she was human. Females of Jewel’s race were not kind.
Jewel did not know what to call himself. The word for his race was “mermaid.” He was of the High Mermaids, more evolved than the brutish mermidons or the manic merlows. Before their demise, the females of his race had held the power, so the word “mermaid” included only their gender, not his. He had simply been called “male” or “spawn.”
Now he wore legs, and he did useful work. He was not human or mermaid, but something else. Something without a name, except the one his father had given him.
Jewel glanced up the hill toward The Three Cherries. The sun’s rays were fading, and soon he would no longer have to wear the tinted goggles that protected his large eyes from the light. The human woman, Kestra’s mother—she would expect him back soon. If he did not return quickly, she would worry. Sometimes, when he returned late, she caught him by the shoulder and searched his eyes, and asked if he wanted to go swimming with the older males and the surviving spawn, the ones the Entity had not consumed. Jewel had taken off the belt and gone swimming with them a few times. But while it felt good to stretch and thrash his tail, and bathe his eyes in the darkness of the depths, he did not like being with the other spawn. Under the care of the remaining males, they were enjoying more food, affection, and freedom than he’d ever had; but none of them had been on land, and he felt strange around them. He was a creature of the island now.
But he couldn’t help looking down the long cliff, at the glossy dark green of the surface, whipped with white foam.
His heart thumped a savage rhythm behind his ribs. The gills along his throat flexed, and he had to remind himself to breathe through his mouth as his father had taught him.
He’d collected several smooth red-brown hawk feathers flecked with white. He took them from his pocket and crushed them in one hand while he stared down at the sea.
Pretending his father was alive did no good. If Rake had survived, he would have returned by now. Three weeks had passed since the Entity cleared the waters and moved on, bound for some distant resting place.
A gull flapped past Jewel’s head, screeching, and Jewel winced, twitching his sensitive pointed ears away from the sound. Everything above water was so loud and bright, always. But everything beneath it reminded him of claws slitting his skin or tongues lashing him with cruel names. The sea was hunger and want, and an endless craving for kindness.
On the island, humans were pleasant. Most of them, anyway. Some sneered or snarled at Jewel, calling him a fish-boy and demanding he return to the sea. But the hawk-master and Kestra’s mother and others defended him. They kept him close, fed him, gave him salt baths, and spoke kindly to him. His father had put him in their care, so he would stay with them.
Sighing, Jewel lifted his eyes to the horizon. A little more than a week had passed since the great ship sailed away, carrying his father’s friends. He hoped they would come back soon. They each carried a piece of his father in their hearts, and he might feel more whole if they were nearby.
He missed Mai the most. She was small and bright-eyed, like Takajo’s birds, and she hugged him the hardest. When he’d felt the pain of his father’s death too sharply, she had always been there, and somehow he knew she carried the same deep pain, hidden away like treasure in a cave.
Jewel hoped she would come back.
Something flipped and flashed in the lingering rays of the sun—something golden, flaring briefly above the surface before disappearing again.
Jewel narrowed his eyes and leaned forward, pulling off his tinted goggles so they hung by their leather strap around his neck.
Another yellow glimmer in the waves, and the thrash of a golden tail.
