The Sea King's Daughter (5 page)

I just wanted to get away. I broke away and made for the door and pushed through the throng of guests, rudely elbowing bodies aside.

Someone clutched at my arm. Grandmother, of course -- no one else boasted such a steely grip. Still, her voice in my ear was soft as a sea sponge. "Nyx," she said. "I know this is difficult for you, but you really ought to stay. You should say goodbye to your sister. Make up with her before she leaves. She loves you, you know. We all do."

Grandmother's unexpected sympathy sent me over the edge, and I began to cry quietly. My chest rose and fell in little gasps. "No, I can't," I said. "I can't forgive her, not ever."

Grandmother gave me a little shake. "You're acting like a selfish brat," she said, her gentle tone abruptly gone. "Don't you dare pout and spoil Thetis' wedding."

"I haven't spoiled it. She looks happy enough to me."

"Please, Nyx. Go to her."

"I won't. If she cares so much, she can come to me. She's the one who ought to apologize." With that, I turned my back on Grandmother and fled. As I swam down the long hallway toward the gardens, I heard her call my name. I ignored her. I didn't stop in the gardens, or at the palace gate.

I wanted to swim as far as I could, as fast as I could, to put Grandmother and Thetis and everyone else behind me. I slipped out a side door and swam away from the palace, over the village rooftops, and out into the Inland Sea.

As I shot past, a handful of silvery sars darted away in all directions. A silky manta ray exploded from the silt, sending a plume of dust into the water. A curious sea bass swam up, looked me over, then wriggled away.

When I finally came to a stop, gasping for breath, I closed my eyes and floated for a moment as I tried to get my bearings. When I opened my eyes again, I saw at once where I'd ended up. I rubbed my arms, feeling the little bumps that rose on my skin. Even the scales on my tail seemed to stand on end.

The black mouth of a cave gaped before me. It looked like something out of a nightmare, familiar and yet terrifying.

It was the cave of the sea sorceress.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The sea floor stretched barren and lifeless before me. Rocks jutted from the smooth, sandy bottom. Nothing moved. Eerie silence rang in my ears. There were no fish, no plants, not even a solitary starfish or sea urchin in sight. Down this deep, the only light was the distant gleam of the sun.

A shiver crawled down my backbone. The mouth of the sea sorceress' cave nestled between two pillars of stone, angling down into the ground. I hesitated and glanced back over my shoulder as if Thetis might come after me. But no, she was laughing and feasting with her new husband.

I entered the cave.

Inside, the roof loomed over my head and the walls seemed to close in around me. Broken clam shells littered the ground. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that the cave curved around to the right and narrowed to a passageway barely wider than my shoulders. The tunnel's walls bristled with razor-edged dog's teeth clams.

I held my breath as I swam into the dark, narrow crevice in the rock. I took care to keep my distance from the poisonous clam shells. If I touched one it would slice into my skin, and the cut would swell and fester.

Now I swallowed hard and wondered if I should turn back, but it was too late. The tunnel was too narrow. I could only go forward, slowly, carefully, without brushing up against the rocks or the venomous clam shells.

What if the sea sorceress was only a story? What if she didn't really exist?

Worse, what if she did?

With a last flip of my tail I surged out into a vast underground chamber. Luminescent algae clung to the rock. It threw off a faint, eerie glow. At first, I thought the chamber was empty. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that someone -- or something -- must live here. Bones littered the floor. My breath caught in my throat before I realized they were only the slender bones of fishes. Natural rock shelves jutted out from the wall. The shelves held clay vessels and round, flat pots and tarnished bronze jugs. I squinted into the crevices and shadowy corners. No one, and nothing, moved.

I swam toward one stone shelf on the curving wall. A cut-glass jar caught my eye. Something vile swam in milky liquid -- an organ, or a fetus, some graying piece of flesh that had once lived and now hung suspended in its own juices.

I looked away, shuddering, and saw the huge, two-handled clay amphora in the center of the chamber. I'd seen similar amphora before. They usually lay broken and crumbling on the sea floor, not far from shipwrecks.

This one was whole, and large enough to that I could have climbed in with room to spare. The painting showed two human males engaged in a boxing match. They wore leather thongs wrapped around their fists. Their bodies were slim and muscular. Like Lysander's, I thought. They reminded me of him.

Rounding the amphora I discovered a second painting, this one of the goddess Athena. She wore a high-crested helmet and a small goatskin cloak fringed with snakes. Her expression was solemn, almost fierce. I frowned at her and she seemed to frown back.

A clay lid fitted over the top of the urn. What would I find inside? Magic potions, golden treasure, dead bodies? I shivered, but it was a delicious shiver. I was drawn toward the urn by my curiosity and impatience. I reached out and touched the rough clay surface. Nothing happened. My confidence grew. I pushed at the lid and it shifted a fraction. Made bold by my success, I grasped the handle with both hands and tugged. The lid came away, teetered, and slipped to the floor, falling slowly in the water. I  peeked into the jar.

She exploded out of the jar with an ear-splitting screech. Her arms thrashed. Her tail slapped the water.

She knocked me over and sent a thrill of horror through my body. Her eyes were wild, her hair a tangle of knots and bones and bits of shell. Her face was gaunt and drawn, almost unlined, neither young nor old. Decay ate at her tail, dulling the gray-green scales and leaving shreds of flesh to float in the water like dingy threads. She babbled nonsense syllables. The sounds streamed from her mouth like air bubble.

I floated in place, so scared I couldn't swim away or even move. Would she kill me? At that moment, I didn't doubt she might. Then, as she grew calm and her tongue began to falter, I saw the fear in her eyes. She was talking to herself, not to me. I'd disturbed her sleep.

She reached toward me with gnarled, grasping hands and fingers like slender reeds. "Doris," she said. "You've come back to me. You've come back."

I stared at her. Doris, she'd called me. My mother's name.

"I'm Nyx," I said. "Doris was my mother. Did you -- did you know her?"

She cocked her head to one side, looking puzzled. Her eyelashes fluttered. The mad light in her eyes died out a little. She sighed. "Of course. You're the child. The child who caused it all."

"What? What do you mean?"

"Yes, I knew your mother. She was -- for a long time, she was my friend." Her shoulders began to shake, and I realized she was weeping.  I gathered the tatters of my courage around me like a cloak, and, taking a deep breath, I inched toward her. I was wary, thinking it might be a trick. But her grief seemed real enough.

I laid my hand on her bone-thin shoulder, trying not to flinch at the touch of her skin. She was warm underneath the water's chill, warm as Thetis or my father or Lysander when he lay unconscious in my arms.

"It's all right," I said, crooning the way Thetis would when I cried in her scale-slick lap. "It's all right, I promise. Please don't worry."

She lowered her hands from her eyes. They were pale green and transparent like the water on the surface of the sea when I cupped it in my palm. Their clarity startled me. The skin around her eyes was swollen and red, etched with creases. Her eyes crinkled when she smiled.

"Thank you, child," she said. "You fear me, yet you are still so kind."

I lifted my chin. "I'm not afraid of you."

Without warning, her hand snaked out and caught my arm. Startled, I tried to wrench away. She held me fast, like a sprat caught in the steel jaws of a barracuda.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Listen to me," the sea-sorceress hissed. "Listen to me, child. I'll tell you the truth if you can bear to hear it."

"Please," I said, my voice shaking. Her talon-like nails bit into my flesh. "Please let me go. You're hurting me."

She released her grip. I propelled myself backward in the water. My heart still thudded in my chest. "What do you mean, you'll tell me the truth?"

"They've lied to you, I'll wager. All these years they've lied to you. What do you know about your father?"

"My father? I know everything about him. He's -- he's the king, and a good man."

She laughed. "Ah, yes. Your father, King Nereus."

"That's right." I set my hands on my hips, challenging her to speak ill of him.

"But you see," she said, her face screwed up into a crafty expression, "King Nereus is not your father."

I stared at her. Shock and disbelief stilled my tongue.

"Did you never wonder," she went on, "why you don't look at all like him? There is nothing of the king in you."

I found my voice. "No, it's not true. You're -- you're nothing but a crazy old merwoman. How could you know anything about me, or about my mother? How dare you accuse her of -- of --"

"Adultery? But, my dear, it's all true. I know. I was there."

Hysterical laughter caught in my throat. "You? With my mother, in the palace? Look at you. You'd never get past the gates."

"I wasn't always . . . thus." She reached up and touched her tangled hair. "I knew Doris better than anyone. Isn't that why I'm here, exiled to this cave? My mother was your mother's nurse. Doris and I grew up side by side. She confided in me as she did in no one else."

There was something in her eyes that made the sea sorceress's words ring true. I knew, then, that I should clasp my hands over my ears and swim as fast as I could through the narrow tunnel, into the mouth of the cave, out into the sea and back to the palace. But my curiosity got the better of me. I couldn't turn away.

"Tell me," I whispered.

The sea sorceress shook her head. "Your mother -- I loved her like a sister, but she was so unhappy, so lost and impulsive. She married your father on a whim, despite the difference in their age."

"She loved him," I said. "Didn't she?"

She shrugged. "She was looking for someone to take care of her. Nereus promised to make her happy. And he did -- for a while. She loved her daughters, your sisters, more than anything in the world. The king granted her every wish. Let me show you something."

She turned her back on me and swam across the underground chamber.  She opened a clay casket resting on one of the ledges. A moment later, she returned holding a bracelet of intertwined golden seahorses. She handed it to me. I turned it over in my hands and
studied the intricate design. The workmanship was identical to the seahorses that edged my mother's mirror.

"Nereus gave her that, and she gave it to me," the sea sorceress said. "He bought her anything she wanted, and plenty she never asked for. He worshipped her."

"Then why? What went wrong?"

"Oh. Who can say? She was always restless, your mother. Always looking for something better. She'd have terrible fights with her mother-in-law, your grandmother. She was bored. She felt trapped. One day, before you were born, she met an ambassador from the court of a foreign king. So handsome, and such a silver tongue he had! I begged her not to do it, but she went away with him."

"She left my father, and my sisters?" I shook my head in disbelief. "How could she?"

"Oh, she wasn't gone long. She came swimming back a few months later, full of apologies and remorse. She said I was right. She should never have gone. Nereus took her back, of course. When you were born, he claimed you as his own. He wouldn't let anyone say differently, though of course we all knew you couldn't be his child."

"And then my mother died."

The sea sorceress turned her face away. "She died. It was your grandmother's fault. That spiteful old woman drove her to it."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, she wouldn't let Doris forget what she'd done. She'd never liked your mother anyway. Day after day, she threw it back in her face, about you, about the ambassador, about what a wicked woman Doris was. Your father never stopped her, either. I'll never forgive him for that. Probably he'll never forgive himself, either."

"I don't understand. My mother died by accident."

The sea sorceress shrugged. "Maybe."

"It was! She ate a pufferfish without knowing it was poisonous! She didn't mean to do it."

"Oh, Nyx, we'll never know the answer to that. Maybe it was a mistake. I don't know. But I was wild with grief." A shadow passed over her face. "I blamed your grandmother, and your father. I was raving, half-mad, shouting accusations right and left. I wanted to tell the world about how Doris ran off, about your parentage, everything. I was a fool." Her lips twisted into a bitter smile. "It was your grandmother who sent me into exile, here in this cave. Your father went along with it."