the guard returns to his post.
“May I?” Marty pulls off the red-and-white MTA tape and reaches
inside the box. He pulls out a long, rectangular glass box. Inside is
a cluster of neon flowers that glow in whites and pinks and purples,
their stems twisting on themselves, alive.
“Orchids. They grow in salt water, best in the shade,” Marty says.
The king’s laughter is booming, wondrous. “This is most
acceptable.” A girl, a slightly bluer version of Thalia, walks up and
carries the flowers away. Marty bows and steps to the side, which
leaves just me and Layla.
I do as my mother said and unzip the backpack. I empty out the
front pocket onto the shell tray. It’s all computer parts and
mismatched pieces of earrings and bracelets that my mom keeps in one
of her treasure trunks. I unzip the small front pocket and pull out a
captain’s eyepiece. It’s made of a bronzed heavy metal. I pull it to
its full length and hand it to my grandfather.
He holds it to his eye on the wrong end, and I hold back a laugh,
because I don’t want to be the one to tell the old man that he’s
holding the glass by the wrong end. But he corrects it himself and
jumps a bit when he holds it right at my face. He laughs, a rumble
like thunder, and claps his thigh. “Tell my daughter she still knows
me well.”
Sure. Good. Glad you like it. I wonder what kind of grandfather he
would have been if he were in my life. Would he have broken the
fifty-year rule and come to see me sooner? Would he have dressed up
for Christmas and been a wet Santa with treasures from the bottom of
the sea? Would he have taught me whatever mermen teach each other? I
absently run my hand along my smooth chin. He wouldn’t have to teach
me how to shave. But maybe how to catch a mermaid?
“And now,” he says as he looks down at Layla. “For you.”
The whispering and giggling starts again. How am I supposed to be
their king when they clearly don’t even like humans?
Layla digs into her pockets. She’s got on these shorts that show
off her golden, powerful legs. She pulls out a pack of gum. She pulls
off a sliver and puts it in her mouth. She chews and chews and nothing
is happening, so the laughter continues.
She blows a bubble between her lips until it gets as big as a
basketball, and then it pops. Some of the court mermaids jump at the
echo of the pop; they touch their coiled hair and fix their pearls as
though they’re appalled that she would dare frighten them so. Behind
us the mermaids watching the spectacle from the fringes of the lake
smile with approval, and part of my nervousness washes away.
Layla hands the pack to my grandfather, who takes it almost
greedily. He does as she did, and soon all the wrappers are scattered
around his feet. I think about when Layla and I had contests to see
who could fit the most gum into our mouths, and our jaws would hurt
from chewing so much. She smiles with her mouth full of gum now, the
same way she did then.
My grandfather chews and chews. “Masticating food that never ends.
Wonderful. It reminds me of eating various fruits all at once.”
Marty leans into my ear and whispers, “I haven’t the heart to tell
him that there are zero fruit servings in that pack of gum.”
When the king frowns, my heart sinks. “The flavor is all gone.”
The mer-court jeers. My grandfather, the Sea King, swallows his
gum and sits back, pleased with himself.
It’s strange, almost painfully funny, how I have never known him,
and suddenly, unexplainably, out of thin air, I love him. I see my
mother in him, and I wonder if I’m in there too.
He bows his head to Layla, the lines around his eyes spread with a
smile. “I accept your gift. And you are welcome as a guest of Tristan
Hart.”
She bows her head to him and links her fingers with mine.
Everything about her is buzzing, and that makes me drunk and happy and
dizzy. Since we’re both alive, I guess this means she loves me .
An orchestra plays cellos and violins that look like they were
made from the mast of a ship and strung with gold, and trumpets and
horns made out of endlessly coiled shells.
My eyes are everywhere at once-the girls jumping off rocks, the
women holding merbabies, the princesses mingling in their private but
open tents. I try to picture my mother sitting by the throne under one
of those canopies with her hair done up in shells and pearls, watching
as purple girls play the harp for her. I can’t see her there trying to
be a good and proper princess. I know she’d be in the middle of the
lake, dancing, mingling, being the life of the party.
We pick food off opulent trays passed around by more pretty pink
girls who might actually be boys. It’s hard to tell. Layla elbows me
because I’m not eating enough. She says it’s rude to not eat
everything they give you. Like the time her dad made some Ecuadorian
delicacy, which was really just guinea pig, which, no matter how you
cut it up and put it on the grill, is just a big fat rat. But I ate it
then, just like I’m eating whatever this delightfully green chewy
stuff is now. For Layla.
Marty sucks on the inside of a clam, which makes Layla wrinkle her
nose.
“Unlike other fey,” he says, “merpeople are the only ones whose
food you can eat. Land fairies can keep you in their courts if you so
much as lick honey from their spoons-or various other parts-”
Layla snorts, taking a sip from a fizzy pink liquid. Her eyes
squint when she smiles so hard. I never noticed how long her eyelashes
are, how black against the smooth honey of her eyes.
Marty hits me in the shoulder to get my attention. “Hey, Tristan,
check this. What do you call a thirteen-year-old mermaid?”
I shake my head and Layla shrugs. “What?”
“A mer teenie!” He slaps his knee and wipes a fake tear from the
corner of his eye.
Layla rolls her eyes but laughs as well. “Lame.”
For the first time, I notice Kurt’s scowl is missing. I spot him
over by the tents shaking hands with some older men. “Who are those
guys Kurt’s talking to?” I ask Thalia.
Her yellow-green eyes narrow. “Ugh, that’s Elias. He’s the son of
Ellion, herald of the East. They’re nasty folk. Nasty, nasty.”
“Tell me how you really feel,” Marty coos at her, wrapping an arm
around her shoulder.
I’ve never heard Thalia dislike anything, so in my book they’re
not good news. Elias is the grizzly guy I noticed before, bordering on
steroid-big with hair and eyes as black as tar. At first it looks like
he’s wearing silver arm plates, but when he crosses his arms over his
chest, I can see it’s just his scales.
I scratch at my wrists where my own scales want to come out. I let
them. One by one, they surface, starting at my wrist and ending in a
splatter around my elbow. My grandfather glances over at me, a smile
tugging at his severe mouth.
Layla is staring at my arms. She doesn’t say anything. I can feel
her amazement.
Elias is joined by the girl with the white-blond hair in a conch
shell. She plays with the black pearls around her neck. Her skin is
the white of clean snow. The pink of her lips form a tight smile. She
bows at the men he parades her in front of, and then returns to the
shade of her tent.
“That’s Elias’s betrothed .” Thalia notices me staring too long.
“I forget her name. She’s the daughter of the North herald, but to
settle her father’s debt she agreed to marry Elias. It was a thing.”
“Better watch out there, little mermaid, you’re starting to talk