Her middle sister was none the wiser to the little mermaid’s moral dilemma. Jordan was sound asleep on her pallet, her chest rising and falling, mimicking a steady, rolling wave.
Why must Coral hear every swish of a fin or release of a bubble within a league of the palace walls?
A stingray of jealousy speared her straight in the chest as she watched Jordan dream without a care or worry in the sea. Jordan was a true example of what their father wanted in a daughter.
Coral lay back down and closed her eyes. Forced calm and exhaustion into her bones. One angelfish, two angelfish, three angelfish, four . . .
Her eyelids snapped up.
Then down.
Then up again.
For the love of pearls, why is it so quiet?
This time when she sat up, Coral flung her seaweed covers off her tail. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well embrace it. She swam to her sister and hovered above her for a beat.
“Jordan.” Coral’s whisper, the color of an ombre sunset, was the only sound aside from Jordan’s steady breathing, which released in flashes of dulled light. “Jordan, are you asleep?”
Jordan didn’t move. Not so much as a stir or a roll or a wiggle. She slumbered as if anchors weighted her eyelids. Her delicate hands rested over her middle. Long eyelashes never fluttering.
“Well, Sleeping Beauty . . .” Coral’s words brushed the space above Jordan. “I guess it’s me, myself, and I.”
When Coral was certain Jordan wouldn’t notice her absence—which meant she wouldn’t tell Father—she moved to the door and grabbed her kelp shawl off a hook on her way out.
The deep greens of seaweed and sea grass produced the same notes. Not a waltz or an upbeat melody. More reminiscent of the droning processional of a mermaid on the wave to her grave.
The dank and quiet corridor sent a shudder up her spine, only adding to the deathly feeling draping her frame. A single lantern fish guarded each alcove she passed. Ugly, mute creatures, and the lot of them blind. Their glow let off just enough light so she could navigate the darkness.
The light did little to make up for their eerie presence.
Coral wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders and turned a corner, listening for any sound of life within the palace walls. Something was missing, but what? It wasn’t that she heard noises at night. But now the lack of whatever she didn’t hear set her on edge.
She rounded another corner and hesitated. The future queen’s private chambers loomed before her. The majesty of the entrance alone intimidated the fibers beneath Coral’s scales. The arch towered, the surrounding walls inlaid with pearls and sea glass and other natural sea stones. Curtains waved through the water like jellyfish tentacles, inviting her in and warning her to stay away at once.
Coral’s chambers would never look so grand or lavish. She didn’t mind, of course. Something about luxury made her feel smaller, less. Would she ever shine as brightly as the crown her sister was destined to wear?
What am I doing here? It’s late. The crown princess will be asleep. It would be rude to wake her.
Coral bit the inside of her cheek. Hesitated. Now that she floated inches away from her sister’s quarters, the absence of what had vanished was a shipwreck. Shattered. Broken.
The crown princess wasn’t here.
Coral could almost hear it. The lack of her sister’s breathing. The absence of her soothing presence. Her momentary inexistence stopped Coral’s heart and shot lightning through her nerves.
Her stomach turned twice over. She swallowed the putrid taste of polluted water that suddenly filled her mouth. She scrunched her nose and rubbed it hard to rid herself of the sour scent. Without another thought, Coral crossed the threshold and entered the room.
Moonlight glimmered in watery waves, spilling over the seabed like pearls in the sand. The first princess’s pallet was empty, the covers perfectly laid, though it was well past the midnight hour.
And then a sob harpooned the night.
Coral followed the sudden sound to the archway leading onto the balcony. A winding staircase that once belonged to a thriving, above-water metropolis rose to the surface. Chunks of steps had been broken away as if bitten off by a sea monster. Coral imagined for the tiniest inkling of a second she was a human girl with long, slender legs, gracefully taking each step. Where would she walk? To whom might she run?
Coral swam farther. Faster. A sudden vision captured her. There, at the crest of the stairs where she supposed something grand must have stood. She pressed toward her sister, pausing only a moment for fear she might scold Coral for surfacing before her birthday.
When Coral’s face greeted the air, she blinked away ocean droplets and looked up at her sister’s face.
The crown princess sat on the broken staircase’s ledge, which looked more like a jagged rock piercing the surface than a forgotten piece of a lost city. Her tail bobbed, half in and half out of the sea. She sobbed again and her shoulders shook.
When Coral floated closer, her ears picked up her sister’s muffled words.
“My prince never loved me,” she said. “He never will.”
Her prince? Her sister had fallen in love with a prince?
Theirs was the only merdom for thousands of nautical miles. When would she have met a merman from another—
Coral gasped and placed her fingers to her lips. No. Her sister wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Coral refused to entertain the idea further.
She reached to touch the crown princess, but her hand fell shy of her sister’s exposed scales. She removed her shawl and drifted nearer. “Sister.” Draping the shawl over her sister’s lap, Coral placed her hand there to rest. The situation invited both foreign and familiar feelings. With her tail covered, the future queen appeared almost human. “Is everything all right?” Coral asked.
Another sob released, this one slow and shuddering. “All right.” She patted Coral’s hand. But she didn’t make eye contact. “Yes, Sister. I’m fine. Okay.”
All right. Okay. Fine. Empty words with empty meanings. Words Jordan had said were the quintessence of a mermaid’s vocabulary.
“The more you say them, the truer they become,” she told Coral for years. “If you say you’re okay, then you are. If you voice you are fine, what’s to stop you from being so?”
Coral had challenged Jordan’s view.
“But,” she asked the first time Jordan said this, “what if I’m not fine? What if I’m not . . . okay?” Coral bit her tongue after the questions spilled forth. Hearing them aloud made them sound ridiculous somehow, though she couldn’t pinpoint why.
Jordan glared through the mirror’s glass.
At the time Coral squirmed in place, a hooked worm.
Jordan swam to her side, patted her twelve-year-old head. More akin to slaps than kind reassurances, her pats stung. “There, there, sister dear,” she crooned. “We don’t speak about such things.”
And they didn’t. Ever again. Still, Coral wondered . . .
Did speaking a word to the outside truly change what took place within?
She circled the crown princess now so she could view her fully. The moon washed her sister’s Abyss-black hair in an ethereal glow. Coral’s vision shifted and the shadows around them altered. For a moment she saw her oldest sister as she had been in their younger years. Sweetly smiling. Rarely bothered by anything.