The Maidening Ceremony

Chapter Twenty-One - Scene 3

           

Once Arilya was sure Mills had left her alone, she sat up.  Her eyes burned and felt extraordinarily heavy.  The white shells she had been forced to wear were digging into her skin and she still could not coax them off.  Her head was fuzzy and weak.

"Finley is gone.  He is dead," she kept muttering to herself.  Only hours before he had been telling her he loved her and now he was gone forever.  They had not gotten married, at least, they had not married each other.  She would never know what it would feel like to live an ordinary life with the man she loved.

And, "Oh God," she thought, "I am married to someone else."  Japhet.  Technically, he was her husband now.  She felt sickness rising up her throat and did not try to hold it down – it burst from her mouth and floated upwards.

Up.

She followed its progression in her sight.  There were tiny cracks and holes in the roof of the cave, her vomit found those places and continued its journey upwards.

"Maybe I should go up, too."

How had her life come to this.  Not only was Finley gone and she found herself married to another merman, but she had taken a life.  She had killed William out of anger and revenge. And it did not make her feel better at all.  Should not she have felt better for avenging Finley's death?

Up.  She just wanted to go up.

She wanted to be gone, like Finley was gone.  She hated this place.  She hated all of the merpeople – the way they had treated her like a second-class citizen, the way no one understood her.  She hated them all.  She hated herself the most.

"I cannot be here anymore.  I would rather die than live here without Finley."

Up she went.

Up, off the bed and out of the cave.  Up, past the rows of other homes.  Up, to the purple haze, the forbidden border, beyond which lay the dark and unknown.  Sharks and stingrays and giant squids and eel and jellyfish.  They would spot her red tail and she would be no match for anything that attacked.  She could not defend herself and she did not want to.

She went for it.  She could see a thin patch of the border; Finley had explained the thinner parts were the easiest to get in and out of.   She aimed and kicked her tail urgently.

"I am coming for you, Finley."

She burst through the border and kept zooming upwards.  There was no fear left in her.  No sadness.  No hope.  Only determination.  Finley was up, somewhere.  She could feel it.  She would go up, she would find him.  She swam harder and faster, but felt no exhaustion.  She smelled and heard other creatures as she passed by them, but she was gone too fast for them to take interest in her.  No sharks followed her red tail – it was a blur.

Higher and higher she rose, never looking back, never stopping to think if she would be missed.  It did not matter.

A light pierced the water, she could see more clearly than she ever had before.  She strained her eyes, searching for the source, but it was up – up higher still.  She realized she must be close to the surface.  It was hard to believe.  She had been told about it, but had no proof it existed until now.  It was so close.  She stretched her arm up.  A fingertip broke through, it was no longer in the water.  Then her entire hand was out.  Then her forearm; she was almost completely through.  Her head buzzed, ringing sounded in her ears.

Wind blew on her face, shesaw the blue sky and the bright sun, then everything went dark.

~The End~