The Frituals

Shauna

2

Shauna

The road from my home is closer to the fifth dock than the first. Which means that I have a bit more work to get to my assigned place than Taytra and Father. I am glad I had decided not to wear one of my dresses with a fuller skirt. There are nearly three hundred humans and elves all packed in along the boardwalk. Just as the children of man are tested every year, so are the children of the elves. I weave my way through all these people that talk in excited clumps.

The war of men and elves is long over, but many humans have never meet an elf before their testing. I have met elves several times before, last year being my most recent encounter, one of the many callers that Taytra had. The elf had been quite beautiful but as Taytra said, “I don’t want to have the person I love, watch me die because they will outlive me for another two hundred years,” which I thought was fair.

The elves around me are at least one hundred years old; I guess that is when they are deemed mature enough to be adults. To me, they look like humans a few years older than me, who have the natural glow of life to them. Like they always get a full night’s sleep. Or like they never had to lift a pinky. Well they had those pointed ears too. I wonder if it is annoying to do their hair. Would it catch on their ears? I had once seen two elves lift a cart to help a man whose wagon had broken. They each took a side of the cart and lifted it, so he could slip a new wheel on the axle. They made what would have been hard for half a dozen men look easy.

From the looks of things, the piers are divided into three groups. The third pier was blocked by only elves, while the next two appeared to be for humans. That came as no surprise as the population of man has a much higher birth rate. Where the elves have twenty or so representatives the rest in attendance are the children of man.

I made my way through and found an elf in the pale blue of the queen’s colors. “Name?” he asks, not looking up from the long piece of parchment in his hand.

“Shauna Flynn,” I reply, scanning the crowds for anyone to talk to while I wait.

“Right,” the elf shuffles the parchment up searching for the F’s. “Ah, there you are, oh your birthday was just last month, happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” I say turning and seeing the person I am looking for.

“You are going to have a bit of a wait. About twenty minutes or so. We will call the letters E through H then assign you boats,” he rattles off, already turning to the next person who arrived behind me.

“Thank you,” I say walking towards a tree off to the side. I glance up and tilt my head towards the tree. We can talk without being jostled around here. I press my back to the tree, glancing over to my right to see the tall, dark boy, and catch his eye as he comes over. I turn quickly away from the soft brown eyes.

“What? Are we going to play coy now?” Philppe asks leaning against the tree.

“Well, there are a lot of people here. I don’t really wanna bring attention to myself,” I say looking at a group of elves as they take a boat out onto the water. They all sit with their backs so straight, I can’t imagine that it is comfortable.

“Well maybe they should pay attention to you,” he says. I can feel his gaze turn to me and feel my cheeks betray me as they go crimson. “What? Why does that embarrass you? Is it me or the idea of having to put yourself out there?”

I glance down at the hem of my skirt and kick away a small pine cone. “I still think it is crazy.”

“Us courting?” I nod. “Shauna, I like you, I really, really do. You don’t need to doubt that.” He moves in front of me blocking my view of the crowds before us. Gently he takes my hand, when I try to pull away he says, “Let them look. Who cares? I know your father may not approve of me, but hey—” He nudges my chin up to look at him. “If I can make you blush like that because you feel you don’t deserve me, I must be doing something right huh? Let me prove that to him.”

“I guess I just—”

“Can we have letters C and D at pier two and E through H at pier one for sorting. Thank you,” an elf calls using a sort of cone-like horn to amplify his voice.

“So much for twenty minutes.“ Philippe sighs and glares at the elf for a second for cutting off our conversation. “Please, meet me on the other side of the lake. I have something I want to talk about.” I nod my consent, he bends and kisses my hand and gives it a squeeze saying, “I’ll see you soon.” Then he is off.

I don’t really have time to wonder what he could possibly have up his sleeve when I am carried by the sea of people over to the docks. The boat that we are meant to take is an old, worn out canoe. Its sides are a dark brown, waterlogged from years of sailing from one side of the lake to the other with those being tested to find the Fritual. The elf who paddles this particular canoe moves it as close as he can to the pier, so the edge bumps against it with the pull of the waves. He is kind enough to put a steady hand out to help my fellow passengers and me into the boat.

“What do we do for this test?” A young man whose last name is Hilton asks, peering over at the murky water.

The elf shrugs. It is a movement that seems strange for an elf to make but also looks entirely normal for this elf.

“How do you do a test if you don’t know what to do?” the other girl in the boat asks. The elf shrugs.

“You are up first Miss Edward, as your name comes first,” the elf says pointing to the girl.

“But what do I do?” He shrugs a third time. “Ugh” she grumbles and dives in with a large splash.

While I wait for the girl to resurface, I sit looking over the edge of the boat at my reflection. I watch her go down a few feet, swim in a circle, then head back toward the surface.

“Well, are you going to help me up?” she pants splashing around in the water as she struggles to get back into the boat.

I help the elf drag her up into the boat then glance over at the elf, who gives me a nod and I turn towards the water. I take a deep breath, filling my lungs with the murky, lake air before jumping in head first. Unlike Miss Edward, I enjoy swimming. I streak downward like an arrow, my hands forming the point high over my head, the weight of my dress helping to pull me down. At about ten feet under my downward pull slows and I begin drawing the water with steady strokes. I have always loved the water, I spent many summers swimming and trying to scrub the smell of the lake water from my hair. As I reach the deeper water it becomes dark and murky, I glanced up at the surface, and I can see broken white reflections of the water. Fish slowly pass me as I begin to swim towards the right. Through the water, a dark cave comes into view. I quickly swim over toward it even though I’m starting to feel the tight pinch in my chest telling me I need air.

I’m feeling slightly lightheaded when I decide to take a look inside. I kick hard as the fabric of my dress bunches up around my calves. A small stream of bubbles escaping my lips when I accidentally kick the side of the entrance. When I look inside the dark opening, I am shocked by what I see inside. A beautiful girl with long black hair that fans out around her in the ebbing flow of water sits on a rock. Leaning back casually like she is bored of sitting down here in the depths of the lake. She has skin as pale as porcelain and dark, almost black looking eyes. But most striking is what she has instead of legs. She has a tail; the scales shimmering a soft green in the dim light. When she sees my head poke up around the edge of the cave, she pushes herself forward with her tail, so she hovers just below me.

“I am the Ragna, can you understand me?” Her soft voice is beautiful and captivating like the sweet bells that the children play on celebration days. My heart longs to stay with her in the depths and just take in her beauty, but my brain is starting to send frantic signals to my limbs urging them upward. “Take a breath,” the Ragna says calmly taking in my upward glances. I stare at her aghast for a moment till she repeats: “take a breath.” I shake my head, kicking back toward the entrance. “Shauna, please. You are meant to find me. But I need you to breathe. You will be able to, finding me was your first step.”

I process this slowly, at least it feels like an eternity, either this whole thing is a hallucination, and as soon as I take a breath, I can rush to the surface this weird trance broken, or she is real and being serious. How does she know my name? I take a shallow, tentative breath. I am surprised when as I do so I feel a tingling sensation on the side of my neck and a bubble of relief in my lungs. When my fingers find the skin on my neck, they are met by three raised slices of skin. Gills.

“Wha—what?” I splutter my voice sounding muffled and strange under the water.

“I told you that you would be alright. I felt a difference as soon as you entered the water,” the mermaid says. I had gone swimming in the lake before. Just last week I had gone swimming with Philippe but not once have gills appeared.

“Why? Why did this happen now?” I ask slowly, still trying to process the way that my voice sounds under the water. It is like a child’s weak attempts at the flute compared to her’s.

“It happened today because your powers have been awakened. It would only happen when the water magicks are strongest. Shauna, for obvious reasons, you cannot stay down with me much longer or people will begin to worry. So I will be brief, you, my dear, are going to meet with the queen today. Yes, you heard me correctly. The Queen, Moraine, will send for you. She will know what to do from there, but you must trust her completely.”

“Wait, so does this mean I passed the test?” I ask stupidly pointing to her, to my apparent gills, and to the lake at large.

The Ragna smiles. “Yes my child, you are the one we have been waiting for.”