Swimming Without a Net (7 page)

The next day, Fred found out why her father’s people
were going out of their way to avoid her, no thanks to Thomas, Jonas, or Artur. Naturally.

On the whole, she would have preferred to remain in ignorance. Not that the Terrible Trio had any right to keep it from her. But she sort of understood their reasoning. Sort of.

She had gotten up early, had oatmeal with milk and cane sugar, then gone for an early morning swim. The sun had just started peeking over the horizon and no one else was stirring. Fred was not normally an early riser, but the night before she hadn’t slept for shit.

Stress, she decided. Nerves. Because God knew she’d been exhausted after all the traveling and should have slept like a dead thing. Still, she figured she clocked in maybe two, three hours, max. Depending on when the Pelagic started, hopefully she could sneak in a nap.

Anyway, come sunrise she’d been wide awake. Some kind person had laid out oatmeal, cold cereals, bacon, a variety of juices, and ice-cold milk. She’d bolted a quick breakfast alone, and then headed out.

She swam past the URV into deeper water, curious to see what other varieties of marine life were out and about at this ungodly hour, and had stroked a manta ray. (They were so silky she was always amazed…They were like giant mushrooms with eyes.) That was when she saw him.

He was lean, as most of her father’s people seemed to be, almost too thin. She could count his ribs, even twenty feet away as she was. Due to the glorious clarity of the water she could see him perfectly, even through schools of darting fish.

His hair was the same startling blue as Tennian’s; his eyes the same shade of dark blue—almost black. His long, broad tail was a thousand shades of green, the colors so vivid they were almost hypnotic, rather like a peacock’s tail.

Her tail, in contrast, was shorter and narrower. And it had as much blue as green in it. Full-blooded Undersea Folk were superior swimmers, of course, and stronger than she was. That had been difficult to get used to. Before meeting Artur, she had prided herself on being one of the fastest things in the ocean.

Ha! Not anymore. Not hardly.

I’m staring,
she thought, embarrassed. Too late to cover it now. Better say something.

Morning
, she thought at him.

Without a word, he turned around and began swimming away.

Hey. HEY! I’m talking to you! Thinking at you, anyway.
She darted after him with a flex of her tail.
What, did I get the super secret mermaid handshake wrong?

I do not wish to be seen with traitor’s kin,
he replied, not even turning around. In fact, he was rapidly putting distance between them.

Traitor’s what? Hey! Get your fishy ass back here!

Please forgive my brother,
a new voice thought.
He frets about his reputation so.

Startled, she whipped around to see Tennian swimming up on her blind side.
You!

Me,
she agreed.
Good morning.

Morning. He didn’t even like me! Don’t misunderstand; I’m used to it.
She folded her fist under her chin, thinking.
But he didn’t even
know
me. Usually people have to be around me for at least half an hour before they decide I’m a jerk.

Sometimes,
Tennian added without cracking a smile,
much less than half an hour.

You’re way more talkative underwater, anybody ever tell you?

No.
Tennian was now swimming in slow, lazy circles around Fred.
I am not comfortable with outlander styles of speech. It hurts my throat, though courtesy dictates we try. But I do not have to vocalize now.

Uh-huh, great, good, fine, and while we’re chatting here, what the hell was your brother bitching about? And is he your twin or something? He looks just like you, although he could use a protein shake.

We were born of the same mother at the same time, yes.

Fred was beginning to have a sinking idea what Tennian’s stiff-ass brother had been complaining about. God knew nobody ever talked about her father.

Her mother never talked about him, of course, because they’d only been together the one night. Fred had known by the time she was five that her mother didn’t know a damned thing about her dad…not even that he’d been a merman. Moon Bimm only put two and two together when she was bathing the newborn Fred at home…and her green-haired baby had popped a tail, right there in the baby tub.

But the other Undersea Folk Fred had met? They hadn’t talked about him, either. Which was weird, if you thought about it.
None
of them thought she might want to know about her birth dad? Or if they did, felt they couldn’t discuss him? But why?

It could only be because he’d done something fairly horrid. And what had stiff-ass said? Or thought?

I do not wish to be seen with traitor’s kin.
Yeah. That was it.

Fred sighed internally, then braced herself.
All right. Hit me.

She could feel Tennian’s surprise, and hastily added,
Tell me what he did. Better yet, tell me about the last time a Pelagic was held
.
You and Kertal got a little squirrelly in my apartment when I was asking questions about it, so cough up.

She sensed Tennian trying to decipher Fred’s slang, and realized one advantage telepathy had over verbal communication was that even if you didn’t understand the other person’s exact words, you at least got their meaning.

Tennian blew out a breath, making a stream of bubbles that startled a wrasse into darting away, and seemed to be thinking hard about how to begin.

Finally:
Your father, Kortrim, felt that good King Mekkam’s family had been in power quite long enough. Six generations…and seven, once Mekkam is no more and Artur is king. And Kortrim was able to talk many of the young ones into assisting him, ones bored with our hidden life and hungry for more power.

Palace coup, eh? Fucking great.

Fred was still trying to grasp the idea that her father,
whom she’d never much thought about, had been a traitor. Someone who had tried to overthrow Mekkam and his whole family. Someone who likely would have
killed
Mekkam, Artur, and the rest of the royals.

The thought made her heart want to stop, but she forced herself to follow it to its logical conclusion.

Yes, of course her dad would have executed Artur and the others. He would have had to. Rule number one after a hostile takeover: get rid of the old guard.

I cannot believe,
she thought, and hoped the thought was private,
that I’m descended from a murderous betraying asshole.
The asshole part? Not such a surprise. The betraying murdering part? Ugh. She tried to imagine the circumstances which would lead her to try to get Dr. Barb fired behind her back (or even to her face)…and hit a blank wall.

She and Tennian were floating rather than swimming, letting the current take them back to shore. Fred impatiently batted a grouper aside.
So in your tactful way, you’re telling me that Dear Old Dad tried to overthrow the monarchy.

Yes.

What was his beef with Artur’s dad?

She could sense Tennian’s hesitation and added,
Well, fer Crissakes, don’t stop now!

Your sire felt that the accident of birth enjoyed by the king’s line was no reason to keep a crown.

Huh?

His mind-touch.

Whose
? Fred was utterly mystified.
Mekkam’s? Or Artur’s?

Both. All.

Mind-touch?
All right, this is clearly a cultural thing, so Fred would decipher that later.
Never mind. Obviously Dear Old Dad failed, otherwise he’d be King Dear Old Dad and I’d be Princess Fred.
Now that was a laugh!

And may be still.

What?

Yes. He failed. In fact, many of those he thought he had brought to his side were only pretending so they could report his duplicity to the king.

So the betrayer got betrayed. Okay, that’s interesting. I guess. Actually, there’s a kind of elegant irony to it. So, what? They killed him?

Oh, no!
Fred felt real shock behind Tennian’s horrified thought.
We never. We NEVER. We are not like surface dwellers, to take life so lightly!

All right, all right, calm down.
Fred decided it wasn’t a good time to remind the younger woman that she was half–surface dweller.
So if they didn’t kill him, and if he isn’t here, then where…?

Banishment.
The thought was as flat as a sugar cookie, but not nearly as sweet.
It is our most severe punishment.

I bet.

The ocean is vast. And I do not have to tell you how dangerous it can be. It is…a difficult place to face alone. It is one thing to go off by yourself for a day or two, but for the rest of your life? And our kind are much, much longer lived than your mother’s.

Fred was feeling pretty horrified herself, and tried to keep it from Tennian. No sense in scaring the girl into clamming up again.

She tried to imagine living in the sea her whole life, only to be cast out by everyone she had ever known. Water covered three-fourths of the planet; it would be beyond awful to face all that alone.

Not for a year or two. Not for a decade or two. But for decade after decade after decade, leading into centuries, until…How long
was
the life span for an Undersea Folk, anyway?

Not to mention…

That’s a good way to get killed, isn’t it? Without the group to protect you, to look after you…I mean, he
must
have died. Artur was sure of it, or he wouldn’t have told my mom he was prob’ly dead.

We think…but we do not know. No one ever saw him again, and no one speaks of him. It was assumed, once King Mekkam discovered your existence, that your sire perhaps came ashore that very night and lay with your lady mother. It was the last documented sighting of him, at any rate.

Fred made a mental note to never, ever tell this to her mother. Moon Bimm still had the hippie’s romanticized view of life, and The Night Fred Was Conceived was one of her more cherished stories.

The mysterious stranger showing up on the beach. Moon, tipsy on cheap wine, and lonely. The drunken fuck (or, as Moon called it, “the tender, life-making lovemaking”). Followed by five months of morning sickness and, eventually, a mer-baby.

No, she’d never tell Moon that the only reason her dad had come ashore was because his people had thrown his ass out.

She also made a mental note to find out how, exactly, Mekkam had learned of her existence. Because Artur had alluded to that last fall, hadn’t he? He’d told her, while they were in her mother’s kitchen at the Cape Cod house, that his father had sent him to seek her out.

I’m getting it now! That’s why no one spoke of it to me. Why everybody keeps dancing around my questions. Do they blame me for what my dad did? They must. But that doesn’t make any sense…Anybody who knows I’m his kid also knows I never met the guy. So are they really that dumb?

She’d been deliberately provocative (she didn’t know any other way to be), but Tennian didn’t rise to the bait.

Not…dumb, Fredrika. But family is all, to the Undersea Folk. Responsible for everything, the author of everything. We believe personality traits are passed down as easily as hair color and tail length. Some of us…

Reluctance now, extreme reluctance, and Tennian looked away from Fred, snatched a damselfish from the middle of its school, and disposed of it in four chomps. All this with the absent air of someone biting their fingernails. Fred struggled mightily not to barf. The blood didn’t bother her; the casual carnivorousness did, not to mention the sight of Tennian’s needle-sharp teeth.
Some of us believe that if your sire could act in such a treacherous way, so might you. But for the prince…

What about Artur?

He is most fond of you. Surely,
she added, waving away the blood and scales,
this is nothing new.

Oh, he’s babbled something along those lines. I wasn’t paying much attention.

You may wish to.
Fred could sense Tennian’s dry amusement.
He has made no secret of the fact that he wishes to make you his princess. And but for that…

Are you telling me if Artur wasn’t sweet on me, nobody’d want me around?

I cannot tell you what might be, or might have been,
Tennian said tactfully.
Only what is. Or was, if I have that knowledge.

Fred floated for a few seconds, thinking. Then:
So your twin gave me the cold shoulder, but not you? How come? Not that I’m complaining. But nobody’s come ashore since I got here. Except for Artur and the king and you, nobody’s talked to me. I’m apparently the guest of honor, but nobody’s even tried to look me up. So why are you being so friendly? Relatively speaking.

I like your friend,
Tennian said shyly.
The blond one. I never knew a surface dweller could be so loyal.

The blond…Oh, Jonas! For God’s sake.
Jonas
was why Tennian was breaking The Mermaid Code of Silence? He’d laugh his ass off when she told him. Assuming she decided his ego wouldn’t go all Fourth of July from the stimulation.

His Highness says your friend has kept your secret for many years. For a surface dweller that would be accomplishment enough, but your friend is different.

You don’t know HOW different.

As a man of science he could have gotten a great deal of gold if he had whispered the right thing into the right ear.

Jonas isn’t a big fan of gold. He likes to play the stock market, when he’s not raiding the racks at Nordstrom’s.

Whatever he likes to play with,
Tennian thought at her seriously, without the slightest flicker of a smile,
he does not do so with your reputation, or your life. I was…unaware of that quality in bipeds. It has made me wish to speak with them, when I never wanted to before.

That’s why you’re talking to me? Because I’ve got good taste in friends?

Well, as they say, you cannot choose kin, only allies. And you chose well. It made me think you would be wise in other things as well. Oh, I
am
sorry! That was rude of me.
Tennian used a tiny bone to pick her sharp, sharp teeth.
Did you want me to catch something for you?

Good God no!
Fred calmed herself as Tennian’s eyes went wide in surprise at the vehemence of her tone. Thought. Whatever.
I mean, no thanks. I’m allergic.

Allergic?

Fish makes me sick.

Fish…makes you ill?

Yeah, but don’t worry. I eat plenty of vegetables, protein, stuff like that. Really, Tennian, don’t worry.

It makes you ILL?

Well, remember, I’m only half Undersea Folk. Luckily, Mom and Sam were vegetarians, so it was never really a…Are you all right?

Then Tennian did something that amazed Fred: she laughed so hard she ended up upside down, her long blue hair actually dragging in the sand as she clutched her stomach and rolled back and forth in the current.

Ho ho ho
, Tennian thought, rolling, rolling.

Fred watched her for a long moment, unamused. Finally:
You’re an odd duck, Tennian.

ILL? It makes you ILL? Ha! Ha! HA!

I could really
, Fred added,
get to dislike you.

Oh, I hope not,
Tennian said, shaking sand out of her hair.
Because I think I will like you.

You think you will like me?
Fred was amused in spite of herself. Or, maybe, because of Tennian.

Oh yes! You and I will be great friends, I think. You will pretend I annoy you, while you secretly become more and more fond of me.

Think so?

Tennian put a small white hand out to Fred who, surprised, took it.
Of course. Because you are lonely, as am I. And lonely people have to stay close to one another. Do you not find that is so?

And Fred, who disliked being cornered on any subject, couldn’t help a nod of agreement.