I lied. But here's your update. And I'm debating on cutting it off here. It's getting into epic fantasy and world building, and I'm sure most of you started off reading a romantic thriller. Got a few more chapters left. But eventually I'm going to need to figure this out.
Mostly I'm just brain dead from driving 36 hours.
Chapter 20
Zen was already waiting for her at the table when she swam in, puffy eyed and groggy from having cried herself to sleep. As the kitchen hands moved to get her breakfast ready, the pale, freckled merman brought up a bone box of beautiful, transparent, rectangular blocks, not unlike Janga blocks. He motioned to her to watch as he then drew out a tiny butterfly net holding a single, glass-like jellyfish. He put it's opening down on the table so the jellyfish glooped up into the net. Then, after counting to ten, he flipped the net over, releasing the jellyfish.
He swiped out block after block in a blurr. A small cage-like tower started to form, in which the jellyfish swam up through. Up and up went the jellyfish and its tower, till at the last moment, where it seemed the jellyfish would finally escape him and float off into umbrella-jello bliss, Zen grabbed the last three blocks from the box and caped off the tower. It teetered dangerously from the force and both Mai and him stuck out their hands to catch it as it eventually tipped.
Glittering blocks splattered everywhere.
The Chef's broad hand stopped the tiny jellyfish. Looking, as always, annoyed with Zen's presence, he carefully eased the jellyfish down into the butterfly net Zen held out for it. Once recaptured, Zen laid the flat of the net against the table top.
"Gotvii," he said to her as the Chef slid a skewer of carefully broiled eel and a coconut before her. "Game. Build fast to catch jellyfish. Have to use all blocks. Person to breaks tower loses. Person to lay last block wins. Jellyfish escape, both lose. Want to play?"
Mai was delighted. A distraction. Just what she needed.
Once she had inhaled her breakfast they set to work. Mai was horrible at it. The first few times she ended up knocking down the tower, one of which she feared she had squashed the poor baby jellyfish to death. It wasn't till the fourth time that she finally got a hand for balancing the little blocks, but then her and Zen's hands kept crashing together as they tried to build on the same spot, which would then make the tower wobble.
The game ended when her grandmother entered to summon her to her language and etiquette lessons, which were always attended by one or more of the other seven matrons, who seemed just as delighted, if not more, at having a young princess to teach.
Her brain still spun with words and rules when lunch came in, carried by the usual male servers, but she preferred it that way. Keep her head full. Leave no room for Naru or sunlight or strawberry milkshakes to slip in.
After lunch, her grandmother and another matron, one Mai couldn't remember the name of and tried to hide that fact from, fussed about with her hair and blouse. The belt they looped about her scaled hips this time was layered, looking even more like a skirt. It's length ended just half a foot before her fins, but almost gave the impression of combining with them.
"Okay, what's going on?" Mai asked as the matron took hold of her chin and commanded her to close her eyes. The cool touch of an ink tipped stick touched her lash line.
"I'm taking the chance to fulfill one of my life dreams," said her grandmother, voice light with withheld laughter. "I'm taking a daughter shopping. Now, be careful, or I fear I'll have no choice but to spoil you rotten."
Even Mai, who had never been that big of a shopper (never having the money to do so, being raised by a single mother), perked.
"We're going outside?"
The smile her grandmother gave her dropped a dollop of warmth into her stomach. For the first time, Mai could feel the love of her grandmother right down to her toes. She couldn't help but think, in wonder, at what she had been missing all those years since her mother's mother had died of an accident.
Most new and wondrous of all, Mai found she didn't want to disappoint this beautiful, silver woman. She wanted to give her reason to smile more like that when she looked at her. She wanted to be the daughter she longed for. She felt, in that moment, that she'd go shopping and let her dress her up as much as she liked.
Before they left, a circle of bare-chested, burly mermen greeted them in the entrance hall. They had the same black sheaths looped to their sides as the Vovo and his comrades had, along with spears and necklaces of teeth and obsidian.
In the face of their muscles and teethed jewelry, Mai faltered, just a bit intimidated. Memories of other guards, ones with too-hot hands that yanked her out of water filmed with her own vomit, rose unbidden to her mind.
But then they all smiled at her, gently, and truly, and bowed to their tail fins as one.
"There's more this time," said Mai, somewhat nervously. Six, as a matter of fact. When they had visited Lucris her grandmother had only brought two.
"We're going where there's more people," said her grandmother, as though it should have been obvious.
"But why would anyone want to attack us anyways? I mean, if there is as few of us as there is…" Mai trailed off uncertainly.
Her grandmother gave her a sad little smile. "My little dear, why should number effect it? They are still people, with differing opinions and differing ways of dealing with those who think differently from them. Human or merfolk, there will always be those who seek to harm those in power, whether they handle that power righteously or wickedly."
With that solemn message hanging above them, they set out into the sunlit and coral colored waters.
It was much like her first day. Merfolk dropped what they were doing to make way for her and her grandmother. As she had been taught, Mai kept her eyes to the ground in order not to meet anyone else's. Pebbly sand made up the roads, and now and then she caught the stern, streamline fins of their guards kicking up small clouds of dust and smaller stones. Where they came, the crowd quieted to a murmur, and Mai longed to know what they said.
At one point Mai stole a glance at her grandmother. She had her chin held high, her hands folded before her, and her long, gorgeous silver hair trailing behind her like a banner. As Queen, she was strong enough to appear so. Mai, as the still illiterate lost princess, did not, and thus had to keep her head down for safety's sake. Though safe from what, Mai did not know, and her grandmother's explanation had been vague, at best. Something to do with some male's seeing eye contact as a possible invitation to courtship.
And that had just made Mai feel like she was being treated as a dog in heat.
Unbidden, Naru's face rose to her mind, and she squeezed her folded hands hard.
"I'm sticking with you. I will make you happy; I can't stand for you to be otherwise. If that isn't love, than I will make it be."
Without thinking, she knocked the heel of her hand against the side of her head—hard. She didn't have to look up to know her grandmother would be giving her one of those stern looks.
Fortunately, she wasn't scolded in front of the city, and after a good fifteen minute swim they made it to the open and crowded marketplace. Mai tentatively lifted her head up and found a pentagon shaped clearing of buildings, where little stands had been built up against stone walls and painted slabs of coral floated above doorways, etched with slanted words Mai only recognized as Mermish. In the middle of the square as a large, flat stone, like a stage or platform, which had been left meticulously clean of any coral, algae, seaweed, or sea life. Several merfolk were seated about it, some munching sticks of various fish and seafood, others with mesh bags of their shopping tied to belts around their waists.
Before her eyes could accidentally meet their staring eyes, she brought it back down.
"What kinds of things did you have an interest for on land?" asked her grandmother, all sternness gone and the excitement from that morning back.
Mai had to think harder than she would have liked. "I-I liked to read. Books and stories and the like. I doubt you have anything to read in English down here, though."
"You never know," she said cordially. "How about clothes? Music? I heard you enjoyed Gotvii from the Chef. Would you like your own set?"
Gotvii, gotvii…oh! "The jellyfish tower game?"
"Yep. And we could-Oh! This is too much. Let's just jump right into it. First off, books! Something for my granddaughter to read."
And as though regressing several decades, her grandmother grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her through the square towards one of the coral-sign-marked stores and into the opening.
Inside was a clear, clean long room, lit via open skylights in the roof and globes of luminescent jellyfish in the darker corners. The walls had been crisscrossed with boards to look like a whinery, but rather than bottles, the diamond-shaped cubbies held rolls upon rolls of dark seaweed, with cores ranging from bone to jewel-like fish scales to mother-of-pearl.
While the guards took their stations outside and inside the store, the queen fluttered to the front to a stone counter, where an elderly merman stood at the ready, head bowed respectfully. As her grandmother talked to him, Mai wandered over to one of the cubbies and eased one of the scrolls out. Hoping she didn't somehow get herself in trouble by doing so, she slipped off the beginning and unrolled the sturdy, beaten-seaweed paper. In milky bright ink, the slanted, scratching writing of the merfolk trailed down its length in neat columns. She touched the print with her finger, but it didn't blur or smear. Another roll showed her a darker ink, one that could have been harvested from an octopus or tar beneath the ocean floor, though it showed up because the scroll itself was made of beaten red seaweed, rather than the dark green of the previous roll.
Fascinated, she barely noticed when the wizened merman slipped up to her side and with an armful of scrolls.
"Young princess…"
Mai jumped, apology already on the tip of her tongue, before seeing the scrolls he offered her. Gingerly, she picked up the first one.
"What are…?"
"Scrolls in English," he said, voice reminiscent of the breeze of ocean currents. "There are more, but these are what I thought would interest you most. They consist of the merfolk history, mythology, and various other pieces of fiction."
She smiled gratefully as she took up the others he held. "Thank you. Your English is really…refined. Were you a teacher once?"
He gave her a warm smile. "My wife is one of the maitre-ders, and I am, well, I guess you could say I'm a great-uncle to you of sorts."
Before Mai could think of what to say to this, her grandmother had drifted over with her own armful of scrolls, beaming.
"I knew we could depend on Jin! Look at all he's found you! We're getting every one and you can read to your heart's content, isn't that wonderful?"
Mai didn't know what to say. She could only stutter her thank yous over and over as Jin packed away the dozen or so scrolls into mesh-shopping bags, which were then tied to the belt of one of their guards. Jin just smiled that same, blanket-warm smile and assured her that he was more than happy to supply a fellow lover of stories.
Back outside, more than a little of her grandmother's excitement had returned to Mai, allowing her to push Naru into the far back corner of her mind.
The two of them drifted from stall to stall, eyeing jewelry, clothing, and all sorts of things Mai had never dreamed could exist under the ocean. A whole new aspect of her life came to life, and Mai even became comfortable with the watching eyes of the merfolk as she fluttered after the long fins and hair of the queen.
By the time her back was beginning to hurt from swimming and the waters above had begun to shadow with late afternoon light, all of their guards had at least one shopping bag tied to their waists and Mai was happily munching on a delicious sweet wrapped and baked about a long, polished fish bone. Her grandmother was telling her of the festivals often held in that square on their way to finding a seat around the empty platform. Just as the skirts of their fins and belts fluttered to a rest, Mai's eyes caught something just outside her vision. A dim flash of something above. She looked up, expecting to see just the sheen of filtered sunlight on folk swimming above, but stopped.
"Grandma, what are those ropes for."
The queen looked up. The ropes in question started out high on the city's walls and seemed to end in midair, held taunt by some invisible tarp. Dozens of them ranged about the city's walls until they grew too small in the distance but all held taunt and still, so more like sticks than ropes.
"Ah," she said. "Can't believe I forgot. That is the, well, I guess you could call it a sonar shield of sorts. You can't quite see it from underneath, but it's a fine layer of mica plates, layered and set in such a way that they absorb sound waves. In that way, any humans happening to sail by will only see a flat ocean floor. While efficient, it is often damaged in storms, so there's an around the clock crew who keeps it in repair. Ah, see, there's one now."
The merman in particular was darker in color, sort of a muggy brown with a back crisscrossed with belts. He paddled up the wall with quick, short spurts.
"A repairman," said Mai, licking her fingers clean. "Kind of like Zen then?"
Her grandmother just shrugged. "You mean the black boy, I'm guessing."
Mai frowned. She wouldn't think of him as 'black'. His skin was very pale, almost too much so, but then, merfolk had a different understand of that term. Now that she thought about it, Mai had yet to see any dark-skinned merfolk, so perhaps Zen really was 'black'.
"I know Zen is a boy and all, but I get the feeling you don't like him very much. The Chef's always glaring at him too."
Her grandmother shifted, a solemn sort of air settling in around her. "Us…older folk tend to have a harder time forgetting. It has nothing to do with him, persay, but…well, it's not a necessarily important story. I'll have a talk with the Chef, though."
But now Mai was curious. "Forgetting what? Was his family traitors or something? Is he some exiled prince of another country?"
The queen shook her head with a smile. "Oh, dear, no wonder you liked reading. No. Not quite." She hesitated. "Well, I suppose it isn't all too important. You see, back in the day when we merfolk could afford to be at war with one another, Zen's family had been a separate tribe of their own; mercenaries, of sorts, though mercenary is too tame a word."
Mai's eyes widened. "His family was ninjas?"
This time the queen tipped her head back and laughed all the way down to her belly, drawing the gaze of several shoppers. "Ninjas? I never thought of it that way, but that is the most accurate word I've heard for them yet. See, because of their natural black scales and hair, Zen's family was naturally adept at hiding within the depths and shadows of the ocean. Because of this they'd also spend hours baking in the sun to darken their skin and were well versed in the many uses of seafloor tar and silent weaponry. Assassins, mercenaries, or these ninjas, they all fit, because the end point is that they made their living off of war.
"But little over ten years ago, when the pact between the Five Kingdoms was made to preserve our species rather than focus on our inane squabbling, part of the truce was to eliminate this black tribe and their ways. Together, the Five Kingdoms slaughtered them, scattered the hiding places of their secrets, and agreed to never again dig up their secret combinations."
At Mai's wide-eyed, numb stupefaction, her grandmother gave her a sad little smile.
"As you have probably guessed, not all of them were killed, otherwise Zen would not be here. The youngest of the children were spared. It didn't seem right to those to kill those so innocent, so they were scattered to various kingdoms and raised as one of their own. Yet, as I suspect is the case with the Chef and some of the others, it is difficult to shake off the old knee-jerk reaction to avoid those with the tall-tale black scales and hair. The Chef specifically had some bad run-ins with Zen's family in his younger days that are hard to forget."