The Maidening Ceremony

Chapter Thirteen - Scene 2

Everything indicated Arilya had arrived for her last training session with Mills. The Maidening Ceremony was closer than ever and her career training had reached its conclusion. The next time she went to school, she would be the official teacher.

It seemed pointless for Millicent to tell her any more about life before becoming a mermaid – those stories would only give Arilya hope when it was impossible for her to have more than the life she had now. Finley would not be her husband, one of the other cocky, snotty mermen would be. She would never know the joy of love returned, or the happiness marriage can bring. Her hope was gone.

She did not realize this. She came bouncing into her mentor's cave like the happy little larks Millicent had once fed from her garden wall, many many years ago. Her voice was almost singing as she exclaimed, "The best is yet to come, Mills! I can feel it!" She laid her bag of knitting on the bed and pranced around the room, full of an energy unseen in our Community.

Millicent tried to keep her voice steady, not wanting to completely destroy her good mood, but knowing, eventually, she would have to do much worse in telling her she should not love Finley any longer. "What do you mean?"

"Remember telling me about kissing?"

"Yes..."

"I kissed Finley!"

"You did what?" All steadiness gone, Millicent looked at her with a mixture of admiration and aggravation. Arilya could not know how much that kiss would haunt her as time wore on.

"I kissed him. And I hugged him. And I told him how I can love but no one else can."

"Why did you do that?"

"I had to. He is my best friend. I needed to tell someone."

Millicent grabbed the girl's arm. "You cannot tell anyone else."

"There is not anyone else I want to tell."

She loosened her grip. "How did he react?"

"He thought I was crazy. Well, really, he thought you were crazy at first. For telling me that stuff. He did not understand. But how could he, right? He is like the rest of the Community – he cannot love."

That statement calmed some of Millicent's worries. If only Arilya had stopped there, but she did not.

"But I think maybe he can learn to love. Maybe if I keep working on him, showing him what it means."

"Arilya, please, do not get your hopes up."

She ignored the Elder. "The kiss was a bit of genius on my part, really. Before I did it, I told myself if he did not like it, if he pushed me away and called me crazy again, that there was not any hope for him and I should try to forget about him."

"That sounds..."

"But he did like it! He did! He thought maybe you were on to something after all. He does care about me, I can tell. He just cannot get as far as love, yet."

"Arilya, slow down. He cannot love you. He does not have the ability. He is not capable of it."

"But he can learn."

"I do not think so."

"Why not? Have you ever tried to teach anyone, other than Samuel?"

"It has never happened. Ever."

"But it happened to me."

"You did not learn, you were born with it."

"But that must mean we as a Community have the ability somehow. How else could I have been born with it?"

Millicent did not have an answer for that.

"Besides, how do you know I was born with it? I could have learned it."

"From who?"

Arilya did not have an answer for that. Millicent sighed. "I know you were born with it because of your tail."

"My tail? Why, because it is red?"

"Yes. In all the time I have been here, no other infant has developed a red tail and no one else in this Community has shown the capacity for love."

"That could be a coincidence."

"I do not think so." Millicent pushed off the bed and swam to the center of the room. "You asked me, when we first started these sessions, why I wore a drape around my tail. I do it to protect myself from the ridicule and slander of the Community and my fellow Council members. Newer merpeople have never seen it and the Elders are too self-absorbed to remember." Reaching for the knot holding the garment in place, Millicent looked Arilya in the eye. "You have been so trusting, so ready to believe every word I have told you. Thank you for that. But now I will give you proof, what little proof I can, that what I have said is true. All those years ago, who really knows how many now, when the ship went down and the Sorceress cursed me and the others to this life, I was a lot like you. I stood out from the crowd. Samuel was part of the reason I hid, but this was another part."

She loosened the knot andgriped one side with each hand, still holding the drape closed over hertail. "The others laughed at me, calledme a freak because I was different. No,not because I was different, but because I looked different. They could not comprehend just how differentI was." Her fingers relaxed; she let thefabric fall. Arilya stared, mouth hangingopen, eyes wide, at Millicent's bright red tail.