The Glimmering Sea

CHAPTER TWO

Faro rose from his chair. ≈You are my beloved daughter and I thought to have a few more years before being faced with this conversation about your Metamorphean Rites. There will be pain, and it will not be easy, but as your father, it is both my responsibility and my joy to be with you the whole way. I understand how unexpected this is.≈ He took Armida's hand. ≈Merfolk have been honored with the ability to take on two forms. The form you know and a human form. You will transform during the ceremony. You will live in your human form during your training with Uncle Torquato prior to a year of Marean service.≈

There was that word honor again.

With the shock of hearing these details, Armida could not process the idea of physical alteration. The questions about what that meant hung unformed but she would not yield lightly. ≈What does Marean service entail? Do I have the freedom to choose?≈

Faro offered a wry smile. ≈I'm afraid not. During your ceremonial return to Marea, the Antichi will reveal if your service will be in the ocean or on land among Terrans.≈

Land? Before her father could say more, Armida dared to close her mindpath so she would not hear anything else. If she was being accused of tantrums, then she'd give them one. She bolted from her homecave.

It was bad enough her mother hadn't expressed concern over her near-miss with the Terrans, but the theft of three years of her life and the lack of empathy for what she would soon face made it so much harder to take.

Her disgust at the possibility of living among Terrans was unrelenting. Did the others in her birthpod know all along what the Rites entailed? Surely not. Her friends Rinaldo, Isabetta, and Delfina were born in the same season as Armida, and they had said nothing. She shook her head. She knew it had been kept from them as well. This secret was an unforgivable matter. To allow pups to live their youth believing a lie—that the Metamorphean Rites were a simple ceremony to celebrate leaving childhood—was a betrayal.

Muck. How have I been this naïve?

Armida would no longer be afraid to examine everything they had taught her. Everything. If they wanted her to be an adult, they'd better be prepared. If they chose to neglect the ocean, she would monitor the water without their help. She'd never heard her parents express a single word about grimewater and it wasn't worth asking them. They'd shrug her off as they always did. Child. Not-child. Whatever suited their purposes.

She swam as if she could drown her thoughts in the turbulence of her wake.

✧✧✧

Armida turned back at the ridge marking the eastern border. Her exertions had solved nothing. She still faced an unfathomable change to her life.

But here her brother was, swimming toward her, welcoming her with a gift. Paolo had always been attuned to her and knew when her spirits flagged.

He held a garland of shells lined with shiny nacre. They were intermixed with ivory pearls and small gems the color of first kelp. He teased Armida by circling her, offering the garland, and then pulling back before she snagged it. Armida remembered her glee as a merpup playing Jump Fish when dolphin pups used their agile movements and long snouts to nudge Marean kelp balls away from her grasping fingers. She recognized the same joy in Paolo as his eyes filled with delight.

Laughing, Paolo draped the necklace around Armida's neck and fastened it with a simple gold toggle. How long he must have worked on it. Her heart clutched when she saw the large green gem at the center. The stone had been salvaged from a shipwreck in the Terran year 1485—the year of her birth. She decided at once it would be a bond-necklace and thus represented a lifelong promise. Hers was a commitment to all that it meant to live in and care for the sea.

≈It is lovely. The centerstone is the same green shade as your eyes.≈ The same shade as the eyes of his entire pod. Each birthpod shared eye color; Armida's pod had gray eyes, her parents' blue.

Armida fingered the necklace, grateful she would always have the gift as a touchstone for the most important thing in her world—Paolo. He had filled a gap in her life with the unconditional love her parents no longer offered. She promised herself he would never have the doubts she had. His trust in her was worth her own life. A yearning for his innocence and playfulness surged in Armida, along with an urgency to protect him, to keep him secure within the colony's domain.

A humming energy disrupted the water.

≈Hello, my friends.≈ Rinaldo dove and somersaulted between them. ≈How's my favorite merpup?≈ Rinaldo grabbed Paolo's hands and swung him over his head and back as Paolo laughed. ≈I need to speak with Armida. Why don't you join your friends for a while?≈

≈Already? You always want to be alone with her. You said I was your favorite merpup.≈ A pout trembled at the corners of Paolo's mouth.

≈Your sister isn't a merpup anymore. Here, watch me.≈ He dazzled Paolo with an eddy created by spinning until the water took on a life of its own.

As Paolo rode the coiling spiral, Rinaldo's soft gray eyes fixed on Armida. ≈What's wrong? You've been masking your thoughts. I sense your reserve today more than ever.≈

They had been podfriends for as long as either could remember. After Rinaldo's mother disappeared ten years ago, he was raised with Armida's cousin Isabetta. He hadn't been born in Marea, but his shared gray eye color confirmed he was born in the same season, so was considered part of her birthpod. No one talked of his mother, and Armida knew that bothered him, although he was never treated differently because of her absence.

Armida offered him a half-smile.  ≈You've been told, have you not? What we face in a week? Marea asks too much of us.≈  She shook her head, brow furrowed.  ≈We are only sixteen! It is three years too soon! Why us?≈

Rinaldo took her hand and drew her further from the frisky pups. ≈So what if they didn't tell us sooner? Why worry about things that haven't happened yet? I look forward to the Metamorphean Rites and the Initiate training abovewater.≈

≈They have told us little about what to expect.≈

≈They've told us enough. It all leads to our year of service. After that, we will be independent Mareans, free to do what we want. I, for one, am excited at the prospect.≈

≈And I, for one, would like to know more. Are you not curious at all about how the Antichi will decide? I want to know if I have to leave Marea. How will they communicate? They aren't even real.≈

≈Maybe not real like us. It's possible they will choose land for us both.≈

≈Yes, that is exactly my point. Unlike you, not everyone is drawn to the land. Until more is certain, I will not rest easy.≈  Armida was heavy and hollow at once. Heavy with the growing distance from all she had known and hollow with the space Rinaldo would leave behind.