She had never considered herself a delinquent. Until now. The mermaid glanced back at her spongebed, where pillows, positioned to mimic her body, floated atop just right. She lifted the window as quietly as she could, then paused to listen for any signs of an impending interruption.
As she leaned over, her tail knocked her glittering crown from its shelf. A flash of panic jolted through her as she snagged it out of the water before it could reach the ground. She swore she heard fin swishes — the hiss of fins through the water — outside her door, sweeping fast. A moment of terror came over her. She swam in a tight circle before coming to her senses. It was now or never.
Satisfied, she slid her arms and head through the window, then whirled out into the night. In better light, you could see that the mermaid was a striking, ethereal figure. Her deep maze of honey and marigold eyes, the kind you could get lost in, glowed eerily in the dimly lit noir. Prominent ebony markings along her forehead signaled that she was of royal blood. Upon first glance, her scales appeared gray and tarnished. But as she meandered cautiously, her tail exposed a phantasmagoria of prisms and colors: lilac diamonds, aquamarine gems, onyx lattices. On each side of her half-moon lilac fuzzes sat starbursts of silver and peridot gills that tinged red with anticipation. She adjusted her tankini. It didn’t exactly squeeze in all the right places, but it would have to do for tonight.
She swam across the castle, layered in golden metallic strips. Looming above, the glimmering palace evoked the illusion of light flickering off walls like abalone. She beat her fins rapidly to blend in with the exterior’s visual effect as she lowered bit by bit. At last, she reached the gate. Crouching down, she felt around until her arm discovered a cut-out hole. She squeezed tight and plopped unevenly through the narrow exit. Now on the other side, she saw someone darting away in the distance. With a great flip of her tail, she too disappeared out of sight, eager to catch up.
Her best friend, Athena, with fiery red hair and elaborate jade and obsidian-inlaid braces, slowed to a standstill. “No crown tonight, Princess Pearlasia?” she goaded.
Pearlasia brushed past Athena. “You know I don’t believe in hierarchies. I hate when you put me on a pedestal.”
“Without that crown, you give me no choice but to look down on you.” She reminded the princess, “When you get to rise, so do I.”
Despite Athena’s ego, Pearlasia considered her the coolest mermaid in the sea. Athena’s father rose to become a general in the military around the same time Pearlasia’s father became king. They grew up together and were practically sisters. Athena was her best schoolie, the one mermaid she trusted the most to school to the end of the ocean with.
They swam down to the castle’s moat, at the entrance of the swimway, where merfolk ebbed and rushed through a free-forming tunnel, hovering like underwater ghosts. During rush hour, swimway traffic would grow so dense with mermen that you couldn’t see past six feet. But Pearlasia, like most mer-teens, had never been in the swimway unchaperoned before. “I thought you snagged us fake permits?” Pearlasia asked.
Athena shook her head. Pearlasia balked. Although she was psyched to sneak out, she couldn’t rationalize crossing into the swimway. Now, Pearlasia was on the verge of committing another crime: swimming without a permit.
“I bought us concert tickets instead,” Athena said as she held up two stamped pieces of sandpaper. “Can you believe it? Fifty sand dollars for a dusty lawn!”
Pearlasia could believe it, though. They were sneaking out to see the Beluga Melody, the most famous band in the sea. Pearlasia thought about the consequences, which paled in comparison to seeing her favorite band of all time.
Without warning, Athena illegally hopped in with the school of mermen whipping past. Her back arched with abandon, her dorsal fins flattened, and her hair fanned out in a deluge. Pearlasia scanned the water in astonishment, then envy. She wanted in.
As if reading her mind, Athena rounded the moat a second time, then jutted her arm out and pulled Pearlasia inside. The rush was so intoxicating that urine tinkled down Pearlasia’s rear pores. The short window of time they were flying along the swimway seemed like an eternity. And as they neared their destination, it took everything inside Pearlasia to halt and peel away.
***
They arrived at the venue with less than five minutes to spare. Pearlasia and Athena were fortunate enough to press their way from their assigned section up to the front row. Swiftly, the curtain on the outdoor stage pulled back, and a blanket of fog swept the audience. The infamous white whales of the Beluga Melody sliced through the clouds, their long necks flowing back to their elongated bodies. The lead beluga whale peeled drag as he skated through the gush of water, squeaking out a haunting cacophony. The vibe was as raw and untamed as Pearlasia had imagined it would be.
For most merfolk, who relied less on visual senses, music was the heart of their society — mermen communicated primarily through song. Verses of grand ballads served as repositories of the ecological knowledge that helped their species survive, even through years of rampant disease and low prey abundance. Merfolk’s euphonious language held tightly onto secrets that allowed them to dominate the sea.
But their songs were not like those of humans.
In fact, a human couldn’t hear a merman even if he tried. Mermalian songs extended beyond words. Music was something to experience, something to feel. Vibrations flowed through Pearlasia’s limbs, her chest cavity, and tingled through her spine like an emotive blood vessel. As the vibrations stimulated her body, the muscles spasmed and contracted into a dance. When the lead singer described his first love, Pearlasia — although she herself had no experience in that department — could perfectly vibrate a mirror image of his agony.
Pearlasia belted out pops and squawks and whirrs and clicks as best as she could. Normally, it required an average of three years for a mermaid to master an entire call, or ballad. But Pearlasia was determined to learn the entire Beluga Melody album by the end of the summer, just in time for ninth grade. Each call could last for hours, and most varied every time they were expressed. A call, when done right, could travel thousands of miles through the ocean while remaining imperceptible to the human ear. Those who mastered calls, especially those as complex as the Beluga Melody’s, were highly respected in society. Singers were the record keepers, like swimming libraries.
Together, Pearlasia and Athena trilled and grunted and clicked and moaned like foghorns. These songs were more than music — they were prayers. And this particular song, Unrequited Anguish, was a prayer for Pearlasia on the eve of her fourteenth birthday.
***
From outside the castle, Pearlasia gazed up at her bedroom. The window was closed shut, not as she left it, and a hard ball of dread settled in her stomach. She lifted the doormat, checking for the spare key. Suddenly, the door swung open, throwing harsh light over her. Isis, their palace-keeper, burst out. Pearlasia hesitated, fearful.
“Happy birthday, princess,” Isis managed. Not wanting to be rude, the princess replied with a curt thank you.
The maid was a petite woman, yet somehow she carried the entire castle on her shoulders. Her stoic demeanor scared Pearlasia. Quite certain she was in trouble, Pearlasia grimly followed Isis to the kitchen.
Isis had finished stacking three tiers of a soft-shell crab cake, coated in edible gold flakes, on a cake pedestal. Manatee whipped cream drenched each layer. Pearlasia’s mouth watered as she sat down at the counter and sampled the creamy icing. Isis didn’t budge. “Well, aren’t you going to eat with me?” Pearlasia questioned.
She just stared at Pearlasia, her soulless eyes unblinking. Although Isis was the help, she preferred to take the lead. She bowed to no one, not even the king. “I suppose one bite wouldn’t hurt,” Isis said as she cut two servings. Pearlasia added a few spicy fish flakes, her favorite condiment, onto her slice before taking a bite. She didn’t expect to eat more than one helping, but the cake was so delicious. Each morsel melted instantly on her tongue, releasing a ginger aroma, followed by a slowly intensifying spice.
After a while, there were only a few bites left of the entire cake. Isis let out a great belch and bid her a good night. Soon after, the princess found herself alone in the kitchen.
Pearlasia had a hard time going to sleep that night. So, she stayed up, wondering if fourteen would be so different from thirteen. For the first time, she would enroll in a public academy, rather than learn from a private tutor. She’d have a chance to make friends outside of her brother, Triton, and Athena. She might even meet a merboy and fall in love, like the lead singer of Beluga Melody. Hopefully, he wouldn’t break her heart. Eventually, dawn came, and Pearlasia’s restlessness finally gave way to sleep.
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***
Upon waking up, Pearlasia started to hiccup and was unable to stop. She didn’t mind the first bubble as it floated from her mouth. Hic. But she couldn’t contain her frustration when the next shimmering droplet followed and hung inches away from her nose. Pearlasia tried the usual remedies. She held her breath, hic, imagined scary thoughts, hic, and downed the disgusting salty water around her, hic, hic.
No matter what she tried, every thirty seconds or so, her chest would convulse. The involuntary gasps of air resulted in one gossamer sphere after another. She ran her hands through her curly lavender tresses, out of options and deeply annoyed. Any day but today.
Floating in her spongebed, Pearlasia stretched her arms out and looked around the opulent room. Outside, a sea bass stared through the window. It was as if the fish looked straight through Pearlasia, all-knowing, providing her with an imprint of her own gaze.
“Pearlasia! Happy birthday!” she turned around, caught off-guard by her brother, Prince Triton. Even at sixteen, Triton still had a cherubic baby face. Everyone was puzzled about exactly where his dirty blonde coils descended from. Pearlasia had a few ideas, but she kept those to herself.
Even though their bedrooms were right across the hall, Pearlasia and Triton had a gaping disconnect. She didn’t remember exactly when it started. But when they were merchildren, merely fry, the two were the best of friends. Pearlasia would collect seashells and Triton would hoard all the pebbles. They used their trinkets to decorate sandcastles, the kinds that required lots of forethought and extraordinary determination. Their first attempts at sandcastles were replicas of where they resided, with two wings and a shimmery layered exterior, surrounded by a circular moat. Later models incorporated whole militias of sea beetles, painted flags, and chemicals to bleach the sand stark white.
But as time went on, Triton no longer wanted to play king, he wanted to emulate a dictator. It started with demoting Pearlasia to a builder rather than a mer-queen. Triton’s madness grew until he was fully in charge of the entire process. He belittled Pearlasia every chance he’d get. Over time, he decided that building sandcastles was for “babies and mermaids”.
Triton left Pearlasia no choice but to throw all her energy into Athena, who was coming around more frequently for play dates. But sandcastles, some imaginary and some real, continued to topple down on Triton. Their parents referred to this time as Triton’s troubled stage. It got better with time, but the relationship between the two siblings was never the same. Pearlasia just wanted her brother, her confidante, back. If only he’d say the word, she wanted desperately to tell Triton that she’d build him a fortress out of sand. A place where he wouldn’t have to prove himself as a prince.
A place to just be.
Triton pounced on Pearlasia’s comforter of fuzzy Pompeii worms. “You’re all over The Sand Print!” he remarked. The Sand Print was Atlantica’s local newspaper, printed on slabs of pressed sand daily. Triton showed her the cover.
Pearlasia cocked an eyebrow. She hardly resembled the sketch. “What does it say about me?” She nestled under Triton’s slithery, orchid blue tail while he read aloud.
“Same thing it says every year. Despite being one year older, Princess Pearlasia has yet to part sand. ‘Without demonstrating any gifts or powers,’ an inside source warns, ‘It will become increasingly difficult to marry her off.’”
Clearly, Pearlasia thought, this inside source didn’t know anything worth sharing. But the worst she or her family could do was counter the information. That would only provide false credence to the rumors.
Pearlasia snatched the paper out of Triton’s hands. “What do they-?” she paused mid-breath. Hic! This time, the bubble that emerged was more enormous than the last. It was massive!
“Woah!” Triton gasped so hard that he flipped backwards. “Do that again!”
“I really don’t want to,” she protested.
“Try some sea poppy.” Triton winked as he headed out the door. “Works every time.”
“Isn’t that what got you kicked out of the Academy in the first place?” His smirk was a glaring admission. Thanks to getting caught with an inhalant, Triton was now forced to repeat his freshman year.
“You can’t get kicked out if you take a leave of absence.” There was no getting through to him, Pearlasia considered.
In solitude again, she fell back on top of her covers. Pearlasia just wanted this all to be a dream. She tried going back to sleep, so she could wake up and be an unassuming thirteen-year-old again. But the more she yawned, the more she hiccupped.
She counted backward to the last entry on her wall calendar: two weeks and one day. Over two weeks since Pearlasia missed her period. She was too afraid to tell anyone. She slipped out of bed and pressed her palm against her usually flabby tummy. It felt rock solid.
Pearlasia lifted her shirt to her chest, then pivoted to her reflection toward the bedroom’s glass wall. The gravid patch, the area where a mermaid’s abdomen met the tail, appeared slightly more olive-toned than she remembered yesterday. Hic. Another bubble escaped from her mouth and swirled around the corner of the room like a tsunami-brewing funnel. Not wanting to spend the day brooding with bad energy, she smacked the bubble between her palms and popped it. Pearlasia seriously wondered if the next hiccup would kill her.
***
Light fell through the partially open ceiling into the hallway, dappling Pearlasia’s cheeks. As she entered the dining hall, the dripping cloud of bleakness above her announced her melancholy without a word. Pearlasia peered from the corner of her eye at her mother, Queen Amphitrite, waiting impatiently with her arms folded. Deep wrinkles of concern creased under Amphitrite’s eyes. And yet, underneath all the stress, her mother’s curly brunette hair, green eyes, and perfectly shaped fish lips yielded an unmatched beauty.
Amphitrite was unlike any queen that came before her, a fact that filled Pearlasia with both pride and dismay. Unlike her predecessors, Amphitrite once held the title of Miss Atlantica. Her sophistication, coupled with her incredible shapeshifting abilities, made her first choice as queen throughout several kingdoms. Together, she and King Poseidon were a force to be reckoned with. It was rumored that Poseidon had eyes and ears everywhere, and no one was above reproach. But unlike most mermen, Pearlasia knew better. The driving force behind her father’s ambition was none other than the queen.
Amphitrite finally broke the silence. “Out all night, I suppose?” Not wanting to get in trouble, Pearlasia shook her head no. “It’s one thing to bail on your brother and I for breakfast, but I will not allow you to disgrace your father!” She pressed her lips tightly together in a fury.
Suddenly, Amphitrite snatched Pearlasia by her right ear. “Ouch, mom!”
Amphitrite dragged her into the outdoor hallway that split the castle into two. A hydroponic garden fluttered in the center with begonias, lemon-yellow poppies, and rose quartz lotuses in full bloom. A golden mesh canopy stretched above the garden to create an ombré shading effect from the flickering sun rays. Amphitrite dragged Pearlasia around half the garden’s length before exiting through an oval door.
Reluctantly, Pearlasia entered through the foot of the grand staircase. The castle decor suddenly changed from lighthearted to intense, as thousands of calcified shark teeth jutted out from the walls and ceiling in the space. Limestone and gypsum rods on the wall suspended Bushels of Neptune to form a hanging garden. Shadows of sharks’ teeth created a directional vortex that led upstairs and into the throne hall.
Immediately upon entering the hall, Pearlasia and Amphitrite curled their fins upward until their tails reached their foreheads in a ceremonial bow to none other than King Poseidon.
Poseidon was a handsome half-man, half-fish god with a sturdy build and a bottom half likened to an electric eel. Pincers stuck out from his temples and sliced through his jet-black hair down to his beard. He sat atop an open shell with orca whales chained at its end.
“Pearlasia!” Poseidon’s voice boomed as the two broke their poses, “Happy birthday, my future queen.” Filled with glee, Pearlasia dashed across the concrete floor to her father’s throne. Poseidon lowered his spear as Pearlasia elatedly hobbled up to the arm of his throne.
When Pearlasia talked to her parents, she spoke only in the highest manner — with grace and class. Gods knew Amphitrite would have it no other way. “Thank you, father,” she replied with a beaming smile, then snarked, “I still haven’t received a ‘Happy Birthday’ from my dear mother.”
“Is that so?” Poseidon sighed in disdain. “I wish you two would get along.”
Amphitrite, now also at the throne, folded her arms again and gave Pearlasia the stare down. Knowing her mother would never budge, Pearlasia smiled to lighten the mood.
She got the urge to burp again. Her gills opened and took in the water, which tasted sugary but smelled acrid. Then a slight rumble made her head spin. Overcome with an unknown sensation, Pearlasia’s neck started to stretch unnaturally. Vessels around her eyes enlarged and darkened to black. Pearlasia let out a forceful grunt as tears suddenly took over. She slumped off the throne, down the stairs, onto the floor. The pain became too agonizing to fight any longer, and somewhere, deep inside, Pearlasia could feel her heart giving up.
Hic.
A bloody bubble, the size of a pear, ejected from her mouth. Amphitrite screamed while Poseidon rushed to grab his daughter. By the time Poseidon scooped Pearlasia in his arms, the princess had already suffered a thousand small deaths.