30
Fire and Water
From the living-room window seat, Coralline surveyed the scene in the living room.
Naiadum sat at the dining table, reading one of his children’s stories, The Magical Fairy Basslet. Abalone sat on the settee, stitching a frilly yellow corset, Nacre on her shoulder. Trochid sat at his desk in a corner of the living room, perusing two thick volumes: Calcium Carbonate and The Animated Lives of Anemones. Coralline was happy to see him immersing himself in books from his past career, but she did not understand it. She had asked him about it, and he had demurred that he would tell her soon enough.
She turned her head and patted Pavonis’s snout, just outside the window.
A knock sounded at the door. Coralline swam to the door and pulled it open. It was Izar, looking dashing in a royal-blue waistcoat, his chestnut curls smooth on his forehead.
“The hummer’s here!” Naiadum announced, as Izar swam into the living room. Naiadum considered Izar an exotic creature and had asked Coralline if he could have him as his muse. With a laugh, she’d replied that he could ask Izar himself when he grew older.
Trochid smiled at Izar, got up from his desk, and joined Abalone on the settee. Abalone focused resolutely on her stitches, holding the fabric up to her nose, such that her eyes almost crossed in her desire to avoid the sight of Izar. Coralline nonetheless led Izar to the settee across from that of her parents.
“I have something to tell all of you,” Trochid beamed. “I’ve decided to return to work as a coral connoisseur at the Under-Ministry for Coral Conservation. I start tomorrow!”
“I’m so happy for you, Father!” Coralline exclaimed, as she rose and hugged him.
“But how will you work without a hand?” Abalone asked. “How will you hold a microscope, parchment-pad, and pen, all in your one hand?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“I may be able to help with that,” Izar said. He unzipped his satchel, extracted a parcel bundled in twilight fabric, and handed it to Trochid.
Trochid opened it to reveal what looked to be an artificial hand, with a malleable band around the wrist, four fingers, and a thumb—so life-like that it even had veins across the back of the hand. Coralline looked at Izar quizzically, as did Abalone and Trochid.
“It’s a prosthetic,” Izar explained. “It won’t have the full range of functionality of a biological hand, but it should be good enough to hold things like a pen or microscope and to perform most day-to-day activities.”
His eyes wide with wonder, Trochid wrapped the prosthetic’s band around his stump. He then flexed the fingers of his new hand, at first slowly, then fast. The prosthetic seemed flexible in all the ordinary ways of a hand—the wrist, the knuckles, the fingers, all could crook and bend. He reached for the fabric on Abalone’s lap and held it up between two fingers—the grip was as steady as that of tongs. “This is a medical breakthrough in the ocean, isn’t it?” he asked Coralline incredulously.
She nodded.
“How did you devise it, Izar?” Trochid continued.
“I suppose I started thinking about artificial hands years ago,” Izar replied sheepishly.
Izar had constructed a whole, towering, multi-functional machine in the form of Castor, Coralline had seen with her own eyes. Compared to Castor’s two arms—called the crusher and the dragon, Izar had told her—this prosthetic would have been a relatively easy feat, but it would still have taken many hours of laborious experimentation. She smiled at him gratefully.
“Given that the loss of your hand was my fault,” Izar told Trochid, “this prosthetic is the least I can offer you.”
The day of her failed wedding, Coralline, Izar, Abalone, and Trochid had all sat on these very settees, and Izar had told them all the truth about everything—Ocean Dominion, the coral reef dynamite blast, the black poison spill. “I forgive you,” Trochid had pronounced easily, continuing, “All that matters to me now is that you make my daughter happy.” Abalone had examined all of them coldly.
Now, Abalone snatched the yellow corset out of Trochid’s grasp and resumed her stitches.
“I also have an announcement to make, Mother and Father,” Coralline began, taking a deep breath. “Izar, Pavonis, and I have decided to move to Blue Bottle.”
The fabric slipped out of Abalone’s hands. Ensnaring it with his prosthetic, Trochid grinned at Coralline and Izar like a child with his favorite toy.
“Whyever would you wish to leave your family and village?” Abalone demanded.
“In Urchin Grove, it may take decades for people to get accustomed to the idea of desmarestia not as a poisonous acid kelp, but a healing algae. In Blue Bottle, I think patients will be more open-minded to the use of desmarestia, and I’ll be able to truly develop as an apothecary. But more than that, I like Blue Bottle. Izar, Pavonis, and I all do.”
Pavonis slammed his tailfin against the wall in agreement.
“Good for the three of you!” Nacre piped.
Altair drifted up into the window frame in front of Pavonis, a flame of orange. Were Nacre and Altair not bonded to Abalone and Trochid, they might have liked to come, too, Coralline thought.
“You don’t have a job there, Coralline,” Abalone said. “How will you support yourself?”
“I don’t need a job. I’m going to start my own clinic.”
“And how will you afford that?”
“With the one thousand carapace Rhodomela left me.” Coralline and Osmundea were the only two people Rhodomela had named in her will.
“That dear, darling apothecary.” Abalone sighed, shaking her head so hard that a golden lock tumbled out of her barrette.
Coralline and Osmundea had organized Rhodomela’s funeral. Abalone had wept loudest, crying, “I owe Rhodomela the lives of both my husband and daughter.” Abalone no longer referred to Rhodomela as the Bitter Spinster, nor did she abide by anyone else doing so—when Sepia had whispered the term at the funeral, Abalone had looked ready to slap her face.
A tear had trickled down Trochid’s cheek at the funeral. Abalone had clasped his elbow, but he’d pulled his arm away.
They’d spoken few words to one another since Rhodomela’s death. Today was the first time they were sitting on the settee together, Coralline noted, and that, too, only because a guest was here, Izar. As far as Coralline could tell, her father, with his forgiving nature, was trying to forgive her mother for her trickery, but the wound was still too raw. The wound would heal eventually, Coralline expected—if not for Trochid’s sake, then for the sake of Naiadum, who was still young and dependent on both parents—but, like Trochid’s stump, it would take months to heal, and things would never be quite the same again. Coralline hoped her parents would remain together.
“I think it’s an excellent idea for you to start your own clinic,” Trochid said. “What will you name it?”
“I was thinking of Coralline’s Cures, but I’ve decided on The Irregular Remedy, in memory of Rhodomela.”
“You don’t want to appear irregular!” Abalone protested.
“But I do. I’m planning a full shelf called Exotic Experiments.”
“You’re turning your life into an exotic experiment.” Abalone glanced pointedly at Izar. “A word in private, Coralline.”
With a swish of her tailfin, Abalone swam into Coralline’s bedroom, trailed by Coralline. Abalone closed the door behind them and turned to face Coralline, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes blinking fiercely.