The King and His Sea

Chapter 2

"Look at the tail on that one!"

"She's just alright."

"Just alright? Her hair is the perfect shade of violet, her breasts are like two pearls, and her tail looks strong enough to fight off a squid, and you say she is just alright?"

"What about her over there, by the kelp? She is beautiful."

"You always had a weakness for the bright-scaled, orange-eyed ones, Keltrain."

The orange-haired mer-wym in the distance stopped swimming to wave and blow a kiss to the three mermen harvesting pearls. Keltrain waved back while Finley just smiled and Rory rolled his eyes.

"Keltrain, if you spent half as much time on admiring what's inside their heads instead of their tails and scales, you'd be beholden already," Finley said.

"Says the merm who would probably go with a whale shark or a giant clam or a...human," laughed Keltrain.

"Besides," Rory said. "What's the use of being beholden anyway? Nothing but boredom and duty."

"Yeah, as opposed to this glamorous alternative of watching all your options go swimming by? No thanks," said Finley.

"But we get to swim after them if we want," Keltrain said. "But when you're beholden, that's it. No more fun, no more thrills; just roe and work."

"So go, swim after them!" Finley said as he pried open an oyster. "Nothing's stopping you."

"Maybe I don't want to right now," Keltrain said slyly. "Besides, if I left work again this week, Rory's father would pitch a harpoon through me."

"That he would. You've missed enough days to make Aergia seem productive," Rory said.

As the others laughed, Rory frowned when he opened the next oyster. Instead of gleaming oyster meat, with a precious, ivory pearl inside, he found black necrosis. He sighed deeply; that had been the fifth one he found this week. He would have to tell his father. Normally, he would only find five in a whole year, much less in one week. Setting it aside carefully, Rory packed up his pairing knife and satchel full of pearls.

"I found another rotten one. I've got to tell Father about this," he said.

The others became somber with worry.

"I'll meet up with you prawn-heads later. Mind taking care of the rest of these?" he asked.

"Yeah, don't worry about it," Keltrain said.

"I guess," Finley said.

Rory swerved his tail at Finley, who deftly dodged it.

Rory started swimming in the direction of the Coral Palace. The oyster fields were nestled in shallow reefs from the rest of the inhabitants of Pacifica. He waved at several passing merpeople, who were swimming to collect their day's catch, visit the local healer for minor wounds, or watching their offspring play in the lively, colorful reefs.

Suddenly, he heard the soft sound of crying. An older mer-wym hovered outside of her coral abode, her shoulders heaving in the familiar, painful way of desolation. Rory swam closer.

"What is the matter, Venerable One?"

The mer-wym looked up, her face red and blotched from crying.

"It is my beholden. He is very sick, and I think he's dying."

"What?" A tendril of fear snaked into Rory's heart. "What happened to him?"

"We don't know!" The elderly mer-wym sank in the water, despair dragging her down. "He has never been sick in years, he's always been strong enough to haul in hundreds of pounds of fish in a day, but last week he was struck with...with...weakness. He became so weak, so gray in his face and skin, and he started to vomit up a black bile. We've never seen anything like it."

Rory hesitated. As the prince, it was his duty to help every merperson in his kingdom, but he did not want to contract whatever was ailing this poor merman. Still, it may not mean immediate sickness for him if he inspected the elderly merman from a distance.

"Show me, and I will inform the king," he said.

The white-haired mer-wym gestured with her hand to enter.

As he swam into the cave, Rory tried to stifle any expression of shock, to not make the Venerable Ones panic. But it was difficult when the merman lying in the soft hammock of kelp was so thin, so graying, so wasted. He heard labored gurgling coming from the merman's gills, like they were caked with mud. Seeing enough, Rory gestured for the mer-wym to follow him out of their abode.

"Do you know of anyone else with this sickness?" Rory asked softly.

The elderly mer-wym sighed raggedly. "Actually, just yesterday Meredith from the Brackish Waters said her roe had all perished. Every last one. I don't know if it's the same, but you can go and see her. She lives a little way from the mouth of the river, just past where the groupers gather."

Rory thanked the elderly one and swam that way. He swam now urgently, trying to still the panic rising in his throat. He saw the small rocky cove near the groupers that must have been the abode of Meredith and her beholden. He called softly into the cave.

"Meredith of the Brackish Waters?"

"I am here. You may enter."