As always, thank you for reading! Let me know what you think of the story so far!
Disclaimer: I do not own Mako Mermaids or any of its characters/ideas. I also do not own a tigerfish. All OCs are my own creation.
Chapter 13: Sacrifices
"Are you nervous?" Dillon asked me.
We were walking down the stairs to get to the utility room under my house. The room was directly under the living room of the house and right next to where we parked our cars. The top of the driveway was covered by the house. Before my parents passed, the utility room was just full of lawn tools and old knick-knacks. Apparently, Aunt Mimmi had since filled it with ingredients for potions and other relics from the sea.
"A little." I simply replied.
It was about three o'clock in the morning. I looked up into the night sky through the back of the driveway and saw the full moon and the North Star. Dillon looked back at me and took my hand in his as we walked through the doors of the room.
"Normally," my aunt said as she started to pull bowls and vials off of the shelves, "I would wait until morning to perform magic; however, we need a full moon."
"Northern Pod mermaids, like Mimmi, know the best spells and are usually the most powerful of all mermaids." Dillon said, helping her set the ingredients on a table in the center of the room. "Especially if they are the daughter of Nerissa."
I stood in the doorway of the room, admiring the hundreds of tubes and vials that lined the walls. Each vial was made of beautiful glass that sparkled under the lightbulb in the center of the utility room. The vials were all neatly labeled with exotic names like "red coral extract" and "ambergris".
"Can you hand me that vial to your right?" Aunt Mimmi asked, pointing to an orange vial with the label "Tigerfish Egg Concentrate".
I carefully handed her the vial and she put it on the table in front of her. I shut the door to the room and walked next to Dillon so that I was facing my aunt.
"This," she said, pointing to the orange vial, "turned out to be the secret ingredient all along. The tigerfish eggs contain a powerful substance that gives mer-people the ability to control their transformations. It was the major game-changer during the refugee crisis."
"Does The Immitis know about the secret ingredient?" I asked, looking at the small orange container.
"Not yet." She replied, holding up the vial to look at it. "I am one of only a few people to know what this is and how to obtain it. In order for it to remain a secret, vials are mass-produced from pre-harvested samples. The vials are then shipped around the world in unlabeled containers."
"This is why those two goon on the pier turned into mermen as soon as I got them wet." Dillon said.
"I hadn't even noticed their tails." I said in shock. In my defense, it was dark on the pier; however, it explains why they were both unable to get up.
"Do you want to be the one to make the potion?" Aunt Mimmi asked as she finalized the arrangement of the ingredients.
"Really?" I asked, surprised that she trusted me with such a daunting task.
"Absolutely!" She said, beckoning me to join her on the other side of the table. "Consider this your first lesson.
"Before we start," she said to Dillon, "would you mind handing me that seashell box behind you?"
Dillon handed the box across the table. She opened it to reveal two rings identical to the one that I found in the water.
"Where did you get these?" I asked in disbelief. I never thought that I would see that ring again.
"One of them is mine," she said, placing one of the rings on her right index finger, "and the other one is yours."
She took my hand to slide the ring onto my finger. It fit as perfectly as it did on the day that I first found it.
"These are moonrings." She said, admiring the ring on my finger. "They harvest and store moonlight to be used in times of need."
She turned off the overhead light, allowing moonlight to flood into the room through a small window near the ceiling. The rings instantly began to glow, shining bright blue light throughout the room. She turned the light back on and adjusted the ingredients in front of her.
"Let's get to work," she said, "we don't have much time left."
She instructed me to carefully add all of the ingredients one-by-one into a large mortar. Some of the substances included wakame kelp power, anemone toxin, and Humboldt squid ink. After I combined all of the ingredients together with a pestle, it was time to add the tigerfish egg concentrate.
"You have to be extremely careful with this." My aunt said as she handed me the vial. "If you add too little then the potion will be completely ineffective."
"What happens if I add too much?" I asked as I carefully took the cork out of the top.
"Don't worry about that." She said, with a look of concern on her face.
She handed me an eye-dropper and told me to put in exactly three drops. I could feel my hands shaking.
I slowly added the first purple-tinted drop to the black potion. As soon as the concentrate dissolved into the mixture, the potion went from being black to silver.
"What just happened?" I asked, taking a step back from the table with the dropper in one hand and the vial in another.
"That's good," my aunt said, "the color change means that it's working. Go ahead and add two more drops."
I carefully added another drop to the mixture and watched the color change from silver to gold.
"This is so cool." Dillon said as he looked into the mortar.
I added the final drop and watched the color change once more from gold to bronze.
"Perfect!" Aunt Mimmi said as I put the vial back on the table. "You did an amazing job, Merissa!"
"Really?" I replied, still shaking a bit.
"You are going to make an amazing student." She said sincerely while putting away some vials.
"What happens now?" Dillon asked as he helped her put away the ingredients.
"Now," she said as she turned off the light, "we add magic."
"You need to put the potion on areas of the body where the flow of blood is most accessible in relation to the skin." She said, pulling out two small paintbrushes from a drawer. "Meaning that it needs to go onto the sides and back of your neck, your wrists, and the insides of your knees and elbows. This allows the magic to be better able to get into your vessels."
I got up and laid on the table with my knees slightly bent and the insides of my arms facing up. Aunt Mimmi handed a paintbrush to Dillon and they went to work. Luckily, my hair was still in a ponytail so they were able to easily access my neck.
"How do you feel?" She asked as she painted the mixture on my wrists.
"I feel OK," I replied, "it is a little cold though and kind of stings."
"That is because of the anemone toxin." She said as she moved up to my elbows. "It will fade away shortly."
I lifted my head slightly so that Dillon would be able to easily reach the back of my neck. He was so focused on spreading the potion on just right. It was kind of cute.
After they both spread the remaining potion on the backs of my knees, it was time to do magic.
The full moon had been illuminating the entire room, making both the vials and moonrings sparkle in its light. Even though I was surrounded by people who cared about me and in a safe place, I felt a wave of panic wash over me.
I suddenly sat up.
"I don't think I can do this." I said, on the verge of hyperventilating.
"What do you mean?" My aunt asked as fear and concern washed over her face.
"This is just too much," I said, feeling myself start to shake. "Everything was normal twelve hours ago. Since then, I have almost been killed and learned that I am part of an undersea war. Now, I am about to turn into a mermaid with magic that I don't understand. This is just too much at one time. I'm scared."
I felt my throat starting to close up out of shock and fear.
"Hey," Dillon said, coming right next to me and putting his hand on mine, "I know you are scared and I know that you are overwhelmed. This is something that is very scary for all of us and we wouldn't be here if we had the choice. I promise you, though, that I will be by your side through all of it. We will teach you everything you need to know. You are surrounded by people who love you unconditionally and will support you no matter what. You are the strongest person I have ever met, Merissa, and you are the only person I know who has overcome so many obstacles in their life only to come back with more courage. Find your courage, now."
His words never failed to bring me back to state of peace. Even though this was a new challenge, I have faced many of them before. I knew what I had to do. This was for my parents and Mimmi and Dillon and Erik and all those who came before me to make sacrifices for those that they cared about.
I laid back down on the table.
"I'm ready."
Hooray for cliffhangers! Stay tuned and thank you for reading!
-Crispin Robb