“The human’s nudity suggests a penchant for indecency.” This was a low, tremulous voice, a voice that seemed to have strong opinions but a fear of voicing them.
“Who’s speaking?” Izar asked sharply.
“Let me introduce you to everyone,” the mermaid said. “I’m Coralline Costaria, and this”—she patted the shark—“is my muse, Pavonis.” Crossing her eyes to look at the snail on her shoulder, she continued, “This is my mother’s muse, Nacre, and in here”—she tapped the satchel gently—“is my father’s muse, Altair.” A tiny orange head, the shade of marigold, peeked out from over the pocket of her bag.
“What’s a muse?” Izar asked, looking from the shark to the snail to the seahorse in confusion.
“An animal best friend.”
Why would she think he cared about her family zoo? “Who’s speaking?” he repeated impatiently.
“We are,” she said gently, with a pitying expression, as though he might be mentally deficient. “All of us.”
But of course they were, Izar thought—merpeople could speak with animals because they were just a bare breed above animals themselves. It was strange, this new world below the waves, but he should focus, he told himself—merpeople-animal friendships were the least of his concerns at present. “Do you know how I can become a human again?” he asked Coralline.
“No.”
“If I knew how you could transform back to your hideous self,” Pavonis snapped, “trust me when I say I’d be the first one to tell you.”
How would he transform? Izar wondered. What if he remained like this for the rest of his life? The thought made him feel as trapped as though a rock lay upon his tail. His glance fell to the satchel at his hip. Its color had deepened from murky-green to bottle-green, and the fabric was flappable rather than stiff. It quite resembled the satchel at Coralline’s hip, except that hers looked ready to burst at the seams. He should show Coralline the gray tin he’d found on his office desk, he thought. Perhaps she could make sense of the half-shell and amber scroll in it. In fact, maybe the scroll would hold some clue about his transformation!
Excited at the thought, he hurriedly unzipped his satchel. He saw the gray tin, but it was accompanied by a large drawstring pouch. Izar opened the pouch to discover that it was full of shells. He collected several in the palm of his hand—they were round and spiraled, pigmented and pointed, of various sizes and shapes. Did Alshain think that Izar, like a little girl, was a collector of shells? Cursing, Izar released the pouch, wishing he could slam it against the giant’s head instead.
“Perhaps you’ve lost your mind in your transformation,” Pavonis said.
Coralline caught the pouch before it could drift away with the currents. “Why are you throwing away your carapace?” she asked.
“My what?”
“Your currency.”
“Oh. How much is it in total?”
She extracted shells from the pouch one at a time and placed them in his hands, which he joined together. “You have four moon snail shells, worth one carapace each,” she said, in the slow, instructive tone of a school teacher. “Three wentletraps, worth two carapace each. Two slipper limpets, worth five carapace apiece. One scallop, worth ten carapace, and one cerith, worth twenty carapace. And you have one conch, worth fifty carapace, as well as one whelk, worth a hundred carapace.”
She did not hand these two large shells to him but examined them with reverence, clutching one in each hand. She must be poor, Izar thought.
“In total, you have two hundred carapace,” she said.
Izar had calculated the same, using the denominations she’d mentioned. He was more comfortable with numbers than most people, but she also appeared to be able to do sums fast. He’d hired dozens of men over the course of his career, but never a woman—there were hardly any at Ocean Dominion, except for a few lethargic, middle-aged creatures in the marketing department. Had Coralline been a woman rather than a mermaid, and had he ever interviewed her at Ocean Dominion, he would likely have hired her.
The carapace pouch provided further evidence that Alshain had known Izar would transform rather than drown. With this currency in hand, Izar would be able to pay for his own food and water in the ocean—just food, rather: There would be no need to drink water, of course, given that it was filtering through his gills.
Coralline returned the whelk and conch rather reluctantly to his pouch. Izar funneled his hands and poured in the remainder of the shells. Putting the pouch away, he then opened the gray tin and showed her the half-shell. “Is this a weapon?” he asked.
She ran her index finger over its ridges, then over its ragged edge. “No,” she said at length. “It’s half of a lion’s paw scallop shell, but I can’t imagine why it’s torn in half.”
Izar showed her the scroll next. It was no longer as starchy as cardboard but was instead as malleable as a banana leaf. It unrolled smoothly in his hands and, in the water, was easily legible.
Find Tang Tarpon. He will guide you to the elixir.
—O
Coralline read the note with him—out loud, seemingly for the benefit of her zoo. The name of the author, scribbled in the bottom-right corner, had gotten washed out by the tap water to which Izar had subjected the note. Only the first letter of the name remained, the letter O. The reason the note had started to bleach under tap water must relate to osmosis, Izar thought now, a process by which molecules pass across a membrane in order to equalize the concentrations on each side of the membrane. The salts within the material of the note must have leached out in the salt-deficient environment of tap water.
“How strange!” Coralline cried, her eyes the size of quarters as they met Izar’s. “We’re searching for the elixir, too. We’re on an Elixir Expedition!”
“This is one bad coincidence,” Pavonis muttered.
“What is the elixir?” Izar asked.
“A legendary life-saving potion made of starlight,” said Coralline, “thought to be prepared by a magician named Mintaka.”
Izar considered himself a man of level-headed rationality, but his possessions at present did not indicate it; rather, they were the belongings of a palm-reading mystic: a pouch of colorful currency, a half-shell, and a note about a magical elixir. He looked down at himself: at his slippery scales, now fully indigo. Was his current state not some inexplicable magic trick itself? And could this inexplicable form of magic, the elixir, revert the horrendous trick?
“Do you think the elixir can transform me back to a human?” Izar asked.
“I’m not sure,” Coralline said. “Its purpose is to save life.”
Well, to transform him back to a human would be to save his life—so he would take that as a yes. He touched his left wrist—the platinum chip embedded beneath his veins bonded him to Ocean Dominion by blood and bone. Even if it killed him, he would find a way back to the company he loved, the company he was to lead with Saiph.
There was an olive-brown paste on the palm of his right hand, he noticed, sticky and adhesive, covering the gash he’d acquired when he’d clutched the half-shell in Ascella’s apartment. He looked at Coralline questioningly.
“The toothed wrack salve will help your cut,” she explained.
“Don’t get me started on your sentimentality again, Coralline,” growled Pavonis.
Izar didn’t care about his cut, he didn’t care whether he had a hand or not, he just wanted to be human again. Pavonis was right—Coralline did seem sentimental despite being smart. “Where can the elixir and the magician be found?” he asked her.