Abalone knotted Coralline’s fishtail braid at the end. It formed a black rope that draped Coralline’s left shoulder, falling to her waist. Abalone then embedded a dozen cloudy periwinkles within the plait, the tiny shells glistening in the braid like a constellation of fog-draped stars in the night sky.
She asked Coralline to rise, then whirled Coralline about by her shoulders. She traced two circles with a stick of rouge over each cheekbone, then smeared the color outward with her index finger. “I want you to look prettier than Rosette just this one day,” she said. When Coralline looked again in the mirror, she found that her blotchiness from crying had transformed into a rosy glow.
Abalone’s eyes met Coralline’s in the mirror, glimmering as brightly as globules of knotweed. “Your engagement party bodice is modeled after the latest fashion in Blue Bottle, the kind of sensational high fashion Urchin Grove has never seen before. Aren’t you just itching to see it?”
Coralline nodded, a little unnerved by her mother’s enthusiasm.
Abalone slipped out of the room, returning with a corset in her hands. Diagonal stripes of orange-and-purple sequins traversed it like full-body bandages, as though intending to mummify its wearer in shimmer.
“I can’t possibly wear this—”
“Of course you can. I took precautions to ensure you fit.”
Before Coralline could protest, Abalone swept the bodice over her and proceeded to button it. It had a high collar that reached Coralline’s throat and long sleeves that reached her wrists. Its buttons, a medley of bright, mismatched shells, formed a column along her spine. As Abalone closed the buttons one by one, the sequins pricked Coralline’s skin like hundreds of blunt needles, and the stiff fabric constricted her ribs. She shivered with itchiness, wishing she could scratch her back by sliding up and down against a wall. But she remained in front of the mirror, her reflection making her think of a puppet being prepared for a mysterious sacrifice.
“I have another present for you, too,” Abalone announced. She handed Coralline a book, Appropriate Muses for Mermaids. “We must speak about the Ogre.”
“Please don’t start on Pavonis, Mother.”
“I can’t help it. I should have stopped your silliness when you were young. I pleaded and scolded for you to find a more feminine muse, but I should have placed my tail down and insisted upon it. I know you’re attached to the Ogre, but only mermen, never mermaids, have sharks as muses. It’s a breach of convention for a mermaid to be accompanied by such a large creature. You know the rule of thumb: A mermaid’s muse should never be more than half her length. The Ogre is five times your length. I think you should try to find yourself a pretty little snail, like I have, or maybe a seahorse, like your father’s muse, Altair. Another possibility is to be un-mused, of course, like your brother and the vast majority of merpeople.”
“Pavonis has always been there for me,” Coralline said crossly. “I will never leave him.”
“Well, what if Ecklon leaves you because of him?”
“What?”
“Ecklon’s mother, Epaulette, is even more traditional than I am. I’ve heard that she jeers at you behind your back because of the Ogre. As soon as you’re married to Ecklon, Epaulette will urge you to replace the Ogre with another animal. You have to consider the wishes of your mother-in-law-to-be from now on, and place them before your own.”
“I don’t care what Epaulette thinks,” Coralline snapped. “My animal best friend is my own business.”
“Don’t be disagreeable. It doesn’t suit you.” Abalone left Coralline’s bedroom in a flutter of gold.
Coralline swam to the window and looked out over the reef garden; Pavonis wasn’t there, fortunately, and so he wouldn’t have heard what her mother had said. Despite the stiffness of her bodice, she managed to fold herself into the cradle of the windowsill, and she sat there gazing out over the garden, hoping its sight would calm her.
Cultivated by her father, the reef garden sprawled around the house in the shape and colors of a painter’s palette. Loose green tentacles of snakelocks anemone danced together, their lilac tips undulating gently. Green sea urchin crawled along the reef; Coralline remembered the time she’d pricked her fingers on their spikes as a mergirl—they were sharper than her mother’s sewing needles. A blanket of colorful jewel anemones grew along an overhang, with brilliant, golden-tipped tentacles. Coralline algae carpeted several rocks in bright pink; coralline was her father’s favorite algae, because its encrusted strata indicated the health of a coral reef. It was her father who had named her Coralline.
The Costaria home was ordinary, an inverted bowl in shape, but the coral reef just outside its windows was extraordinary—it was said to be the most beautiful in the village. Everyone said Trochid had a reef thumb—he had only to look at a reef for it to flourish. As a coral connoisseur for the Under-Ministry of Coral Conservation, he had been responsible for the well-being of most reefs in Urchin Grove; now, in his retirement, this was the only reef he tended. The thought made Coralline sad.
“Congratulations on your upcoming wedding,” said a low, tremulous voice.
Coralline looked down. Just beneath the windowsill swayed a small, brilliant orange form, his tail coiled around a tuft of turtle-grass. Her father’s muse, the lined seahorse Altair.
Trochid had found Altair as a fingernail-sized baby seahorse, living in a bleached coral reef where he would almost certainly have died from a lack of sustenance. Trochid had brought him home and deposited him in his own thriving coral reef. The two of them had bonded immediately; part of their bond related to their preference for quiet and solitude, Coralline thought. Altair had never once left the reef, believing the world outside to be full of “moral confusion and peril,” as he’d once told Coralline.
“Congratulations to you as well,” Coralline said with a smile. “Father told me yesterday that you’re expecting.”
Altair camouflaged, becoming indistinct among the grasses. When he glowed orange again, the lines that outlined his neck area—and served as the source of his species name—shone particularly white. He bobbed his coronet, a tiny, star-shaped crown atop his head. He then cast a glance about for his mate, Kuda, red in color. Coralline looked at Altair warmly: Seahorses could change their color, brightening and dulling at will, but they never changed their mate. If either Altair or Kuda were to die, the other would likely never seek another mate. They cemented their bond with a quivering ritual dance every morning, in which they spun around and swam side by side, their tails entwined. Seahorses were the most romantic animals in the ocean, Coralline had always thought.
“You’re looking rather shapeless, Pole Dancer!” Nacre cackled.
Looking about, Coralline found the snail clammed to the wall, her tentacles pointing at Altair’s pregnant, slightly protruding belly. Nacre called him Pole Dancer because he, like other seahorses, needed to wrap his tail around something, usually a strand of grass, in order to avoid getting blown about by the currents. But what was Nacre doing in her room? Coralline wondered with a flash of irritation. She must have climbed off Abalone’s shoulder without Coralline noticing. It was not the first time Coralline had caught the snail in her room, spying and snooping. Coralline didn’t know Altair well but liked him well enough; Nacre, she found as galling as nails on shale.
The waters outside the window swelled and shifted, and they would have pushed Coralline away from the window had she not wrapped her fingers around the windowsill. Pavonis came to a stop before her, the size of a ship. She extended a hand through the window and patted his yellow-spotted back.