Page 5 of Chasing Tail
Chapter 4
Ishould have been awake all night. My life was about to change. I was about to go to land for the first time, avenge my sister, and I might not be welcome home when I was done. Instead, I slept like a baby. Everything was coming into place. I was one step closer to killing the druid king. My people might not appreciate it, but I was doing this for them, too.
I woke up refreshed and ready to get started. I ate my favorite breakfast of seaweed and mussels and got started. I knew that the shiny gold pieces on the ships were how humans paid for things. I slipped the enchanted abalone dagger, several gold pieces, and a few jewels into my bag. I grabbed my spear and swum out.
My parents were already gone. They weren’t even trying to deal with our grief together. They had thrown themselves into sentry duty and were seldom home anymore. I still owed it to them to tell them the truth. They wouldn’t be back until dark, long after I was gone. I scratched a note into a shell and left it on their bed.
No one tried to stop me as I swam through our village. They all knew if I weren’t volunteering to stand guard, I’d be out hunting. I was counting on that. Taron was waiting for me, just like we planned. I ran my hand down his rough hide, and we swam away.
We didn’t come across any resistance. We passed several sentries, and we were only stopped when we got to the very edge of our home. I explained what I was looking for and that Taron was with me for protection, and they just let me leave. Taron and I didn’t look back as we started towards land.
Talora didn’t just enchant the dagger to kill the druid king. We didn’t know where he lived or where that ship was returning to. Instead, she spelled the knife to find him. I used to make it a point to never deal with sea witches, but Talora proved quite valuable.
It may take a land dweller ages to cross an ocean in their bulky ships because they weren’t meant to be in the water. Taron and I were built to use the currents to our advantage. We were sleek and fast underwater. Iwas notlooking forwards to being slowed down with pesky legs.
The council opted not to use it, and none of us had tested it, but we learned about legs and the basics of going on land from a mermaid elder. I knew I could manage legs just fine, but I was also sure a lot of what I was taught was horribly outdated.
Taron and I used the dagger to guide our way through the water to the druid king. We avoided other villages, but the closer we got to land, the more the landscape changed. We stopped seeing thriving communities of mermaids and ran across way more sirens.
Mermaids liked to live a symbiotic life. We worked with the sea life. Sea witches and sirens were always welcome because we understood they had their uses. Sirens didn’t like that kind of life. There was only one of them back in my village, and that was because her family had banished her.
Sirens technicallycouldeat seaweed, fish, and other sea creatures, but it wasn’t their preference. They liked the flesh of land dwellers and usually populated areas their prey was likely to go. So Taron and I weren’t in danger from sirens. They didn’t care about us because we weren’t tasty to them. So we passed with little trouble.
We did run into a serious snag. Taron was my age. He was still considered young for a great white shark, but he wasn’t remotely small. He was larger than plenty of sharks that were much older than he was, and there was only so far he could swim before the currents would betray him and beach him.
He had magic inside him now, so that wouldn’t kill him, but I imagined it would be uncomfortable and put us off the path the knife guided us to. Plus, land-dwellers didn’t understand sharks at all. They murdered them on sight and thought they were these vicious killers. They never concluded that the only reason they kept drowning or getting eaten in the water was that people lived here and were invading our home.
“Taron, you have to use the magic and change. I’m strong enough to get us both there.”
“Slight problem, Kishi. Talora warned me about this. I can breathe underwater as a shark or on land as a land dweller, but I can’t do both. So we’re going to have to go off course a bit, so we aren’t spotted before we want to be. They will kill me if they see a shark, and they will capture you if they see a mermaid.”
“We should really rethink only killing the druid king, Taron.”
“Focus, Kishi. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right. I know you can get me to shore without drowning me if I change, but we have to do this carefully, or we’re going to be the ones who end up dead.”
“Swim as close as you can get to the surface and change. Then, I’ll get you the rest of the way there.”
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Taron didn’t get close enough to the surface that his fin broke the water. It was like a current started spinning around him. It shoved me away from him and dragged him further below the water. When I could finally see again, there was a man with legs struggling to swim and breathe.
I swished my tail as fast as I could to get to him. I pressed my mouth against his and helped him breathe as I got us to the surface. When our heads broke the water, I looked around. We were alone. It was dark out, and all the land dwellers were asleep. I could see land and ships in the distance.
“How do I look?”Taron asked.
He could still communicate like we did underwater. He’d never spoken from the surface before. I’d have to teach him.
I took a look at him. He looked good. If he had been a merman, I would have been highly attracted to him. His skin was dark, like mine. My hair was white. Taron’s hair was black and wild. He had the same scar over his eye like he did when he was a shark. He was massive under the sea. He was huge as a land dweller.
“If you had a tail, I’d start a campaign to marry you. Not bad.”
Taron started to tread water and smirked at me. Damn, he was sexy when he did that. Pity he wasn’t a merman.
“Maybe Talora can do that too.”
“Hush, Taron. You’re very pretty, but you’d never be happy as anything but a shark. So let’s get you to land.”
“Look east. There’s an unoccupied beach out of view from those ships.”
“Good call.”
