Page 41 of Midnightsong
“I saw sentinels taking a family with three young children up to forty fathomspans and directed them to seek refuge there. I took them to another, deeper cavern.”
“Oh!” His uncle flashed him a disarming smile. “Thank you so much for catching that and showing them to safety. By the Goddess, some of my sentinels do not know what they’re doing.” He shook his head side to side, lips turning downward. “Thank you for helping that family. I knew I made the right choice in making you my high advisor.”
“But–”
Saeryn swam off. Kaden rubbed his eyebrows, a flutter traversing his stomach. Saeryn’s last words should have made him feel good. He felt anything but.
Kaden moved his tail up, down, up, down, slow and steady, meandering back to his chambers from outside the palace walls. The bizarre council meeting played over and over in his mind.
His input wasn’t valued at all, contrary to Saeryn’s claims, and he was so much in the dark he might as well be in the black trenches in the depths of the seafloor.
A form torpedoed into him when he entered the palace from the middle level, knocking him onto his side, and he twisted his torso and tail to regain his horizontal position.
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” It was his cousin, Aiereka, clutching a seaflute, eyes wide and mouth open. “Hold on.” She spoke into her seaflute. “See you later, okay? I wish I could see you soon. Okay, love you too.” The mermaid tucked her seaflute away in the pouch at her waist before Kaden could hear who was on the other end. “I’m so sorry. I’m late for my dance troupe.”
Kaden raised a cheeky eyebrow. “Who was that?”
He gave her a playful nudge and she looked at the stained-glass floor.
“Nobody. Just a friend. Sorry can’t stay to talk. I’m going to be late.”
“Aiereka, a moment? Quickly, I promise.” She stopped, her shoulders dropping and chest deflating. “I’ve hardly seen you since you and your father arrived and your quarters are only some tailkicks down the hall.”
“I know. Father keeps me busy,” Aiereka mumbled. “I have a full tidesday worth of classes with my tutor and then I have dance and racing. And when I get back to my quarters, truthfully, I’m exhausted and don’t have the energy to socialize.”
“I understand. Let me know if you need anything.” Kaden patted his cousin’s shoulder. “Take a break every now and then, okay? Let your body rest.”
Her tailfins vanished around a bend at the end of the hall. How much was Saeryn overworking her?
At least she had a purpose.
What was Kaden’s? He could never be helpful, and from the council meeting he attended, that couldn’t have been more obvious than a dislodged bushel of seaweed smacking him in the face.
He continued back to his own chambers, passing through the kitchens, the guest quarters, and a flat, empty chamber connecting one hallway to another.
Memories came like a flood of family gatherings in his youth. Talking with Saeryn when he asked about his place as the second son. Where his uncle kindly reminded Kaden to remember his place and let Cyrus take the lead. That he only wanted to protect him and not subject Kaden to disappointment when he grew up and needed to take a backseat to his older brother.
If he couldn’t get the council, whom he had grown up with, and his uncle, his own family, to spare a moment's thought for his concerns, what hope did he have that his people, who distrusted him, would listen to him?
His own pity drowned him as he pushed his door shut. That was all he was. A useless spare.
Seventeen
Angie
As she emptied out a canof whitefish and tuna pâté into Lulu’s food bowl, Angie’s mind was glued on the three teens the mer took a week ago. The authorities had closed the beach to analyze the area.
The teens had been identified as attending the local high school and had a reputation for stirring up trouble and starting fights.
Angie drove by Shoreline Park and the beach twice that week. The desolate parking lot and endless stretches of rock and sand haunted her mind. The debris the mer had washed up still littered the shore. The water was tranquil and there had been no sign of the mer resurfacing, at least, not to her knowledge.
She remembered how fast news of the mer had spread in her tiny Creston town. Here, with people having easy access to each other because of their phone reception, the news spread much faster.
The last image she had of the park was of rows of signs blocking off the entrances, the words ‘PARK CLOSED’ harsh and thick in red ink.
The details of their investigation sounded on her television while she walked back to the kitchen, tossing the empty cat food can into her recycling bin. What happened that day? Why were the mer there in the first place? She asked Kaden, but with him being in Alaska, he didn’t seem to have the first idea.
“I didn’t know the mer were attacking humans again,” he had said. The horror in his voice when she told him about the killed teens was unmistakable.
