The King and His Sea

Chapter 3

Rory swam into the cove. The mer-wym Meredith was hovering over an empty shell, looking as if she had forgotten something important. But her eyes simply stared out, empty and blank.

"I'm sorry, my prince, that I do not have anything to offer you. What brings you here?"

"To see you, kind Meredith. The elderly mer-wym who lives near the coral informed me of your tragedy. I was wondering if there were anything I could do to alleviate your grief," Rory said.

Meredith simply stared. "Gone," she whispered. "They're just...gone."

Rory paused. He felt the roes' absence and all their potential like a void, a bottomless chasm.

"Meredith...words cannot describe how much I want to take this pain from you. How did it happen?"

Meredith clenched her fists. She gripped her hair and tore at it and flung the decorative pieces of coral lining the walls off.

"Meredith!" Rory said. He reached out and gripped her arms. "Meredith, stop! It will be alright; I don't know how, and I don't know how to make this right, but please believe it will get better. It won't always be like this." Rory didn't fully believe the words coming out of his own mouth; there was absolutely no guarantee that any of this would get better. He couldn't bring back her roe, and he didn't even know why they had died.

"My lady," Rory gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. "Have you heard anything from upstream, from the River Folk?"

Meredith shook her head. "No. In fact, I haven't heard anything from anyone since the last full moon. Not even from my cousin, and she and I never fail to meet every crescent moon."

Rory frowned. "No one? Not the messengers, not the couriers?"

Meredith sighed. "No. I know the strangeness in it, but I haven't cared about it at all. I'm too tired to care. I haven't cared about anything since..." She looked toward the small, jutting mound near the entrance, where a ring of beads encircled the roe's grave.

"I understand," Rory said. "Thank you, Meredith. I will go to the River Folk myself, and ask if any of them have suffered any tragedy like yours.

Meredith nodded. "Perhaps I will go into Pacifica. Or I will simply stay here with my roe, my precious roe."

Rory's heart wanted to break for her. He wanted to take on the burden of her pain, for at least a little while, for even just an hour, to give this poor mer-wym a respite from her grief. But the only way to help her was to find the source of the death, the sickness. Rory swam out of the cove and upstream toward the river.