Paranormal/Futuristic
The Seal and the Sea Nymph
By L
Sep 1, 2007, 05:52

Heaving a pain soaked sigh, Byron extended a finger to trace the name etched into the smallest of the three headstones.  “Seth”, he whispered.  A flickering smile dimpled his cheek as he remembered how the easy-going teen had shadowed him at every opportunity.  The slight boy had begged Byron relentlessly for blow-by-blow accounts of his dangerous military adventures.

"Some hero I turned out to be, huh?" Byron gulped against the constricted knot in his throat. Unpinning the trident badge from his dress whites, he lifted the hard won icon that distinguished him as a Navy SEAL to his lips.  “Miss you, kiddo,” he said, tucking the trident into the nest of forget-me-nots that grew at the base of Seth’s headstone.

After a long moment of silence, Byron solemnly replaced his hat.  Drawing his towering form up, he clicked his heels to attention.  With his angular jaw set against his reeling emotions, he saluted the fine folks who’d plucked him as a young boy from the rushing storm surge of a late season Hurricane.   When nobody had stepped forward to claim the odd, mute child who seemed only to animate when he came within eyeshot of the ocean, the Burke’s had adopted Byron.  They’d never failed to love him like one of their own. 

In time, Byron’s obsession with keeping water in sight had softened somewhat.  Still, when he announced his intention to join the Navy, his parents didn’t appear at all surprised.  They joked that their water born son was simply heading home.

“Mom, Dad...”  Byron paused, framing their beloved faces in his mind.  “I’ll never stop blaming myself.” Three years had passed since the couple had been shot as they sought to rescue Seth from an intruder.  The pain sprang fresh every time Byron thought of that night—and how he’d failed to act in time to save his family. 

He’d just returned from a grueling tour spent pursuing terrorists across Pakistan’s wastelands.   A drink with teammates after checking out at the command led to an eagerly parted set of legs that went on for miles.  Temptation chased with tequila proved a deadly distraction.  That meaningless dalliance had cost his family everything.

In the years since the tragedy, Byron had volunteered for mission after punishing mission, hoping that the perilous pace would assuage his guilt-ridden heart.  The reward for his uncommon commitment to danger was an even deeper sense of aloneness.   What good was this life without loved ones to fight for?

At the insistence of his senior officers, Byron recently agreed to cash in an outrageous accumulation of leave time.  Perhaps he’d use the downtime to try and dredge up some clue to his heritage that might lead him to a long, lost relative.

At least that’s the part of the story he told his commanding officers.  

There was more—much more.

On the night of the murders, he’d pursued the killer all the way to the shoreline.   Fingers digging into the bastard’s trachea, Byron spun him around.   Black eyes, soulless like a shark’s, crackled with challenge.  Kill me if you can.

Deja vous slammed Byron to his knees.  He had looked into those bottomless eyes before.  With that fleeting second of distraction, the killer broke free and dove into the inky breakwaters never to be seen again.

Random killer or calculating assassin? Byron couldn’t go on living without knowing the truth.

A balmy wind whipped across the graveyard, calling his thoughts back to the here and now.  His amber gaze reflected a ridge of granite colored clouds cresting the eastern horizon.   With any luck at all, Hurricane Blanco would slam into Blackbeard’s Cove by dawn. 

Byron had every intention of making camp on the oceanfront tonight so he could meet the storm—and any buried memories it might reveal—up close and personal.

                    ***

Sirenia had spent her morning tracking the dulcet tones of her sister’s siren-song to the barrier mangroves that encircled Maidenhead Lagoon. 

She found Arabeth sitting in a tangle of prop roots that jutted from the water to form a natural chair—the Wishing Throne, they’d dubbed it as young mermaids.  The sisters came here often to spill their troubles into the phosphorescent sea, begging their prayers drift from their cloistered home to seek Triton’s ear.

“Has the morning sickness struck you already?” Sirenia asked.

Arabeth shook her head no, and blew out a quivering sigh. 

“Then perhaps the rising storm troubles you?" Sirenia offered, leaping on long legs across the soggy ground that stretched between herself and her older sibling.

“Neither…” Arabeth bowed her head and idly swished her pale legs through the illuminated waters. Though glowing sea-life whirled away from the mermaid’s ankles like waterborne fireflies, the glittering display did nothing to brighten her troubled gaze.  She squeezed her eyes shut and began to hum again. Her melancholy tune drifted aloft on the wings of a rising mist and rolled out to sea on its vaporous billows.

Her sister’s persistent elegy caused Sirenia's heart to contract with concern. “What brings you to sing such a miserable tune?” she asked, sliding her strong hands beneath the curtain of Arabeth’s hair to lift one blue-black curl to her lips in a customary show of deference.

Arabeth’s recently consummated breeding moon would soon bring the inevitable news of her pregnancy, elevating her status to royalty.  Sirenia would then come bound to the care and protection of her sister’s child.  Then Arabeth and her lover, Ba’at Rath, could concentrate on pampered lives as the clan’s only proven breeders in this generation. 

"A child, Arabeth!” Sirenia crooned, pressing a lightly freckled cheek against her sister’s.  “We’ll finally welcome a merling among us!"  Sirenia's strong hands kneaded the tautly beaded muscles of the older mermaid's slight shoulders.  “I can hardly wait to hold him…”

Arabeth lifted a shaking hand and placed it over Sirenia's larger one.  "No, little sister, stop!" she commanded.  Her frail shoulders reflected a weighty agony as they slumped closer toward the water.  "Triton…has not blessed me.”

“Of course he has,” Sirenia said.

Arabeth lifted her swollen eyes to her sister’s face.  “Then explain why it is that your breeder’s mark is rising.”

Sirenia’s hand flew to her forehead to touch the pearl of skin between her eyes.  Her heart rolled as she remembered the adolescent years she’d spent searching her reflection for the phosphorescent sign that would prove her ripe for breeding.

Stunned by her sister’s insensitivity, Sirenia’s brows fused into an irritated scowl. “You tease me as cruelly as Ba’at Rath himself. You know such a thing isn’t possible.  I’m a dominant.  I was called to guard you, your young…”

Arabeth’s narrow jaw set in anger. “My time for lovers is over,” she spat.  “It is I who should be lifting your curls to my lips." 

Sirenia's forehead wrinkled with confusion. “I don't understand—the Elders witnessed your third mating with Ba'at Rath.  Plans for the naming ceremony have already begun…”

Arabeth yanked her legs from the water.  Festering fin buds protruded from her swollen ankles.  “Ba’at Rath has spent my last chance to bear young.”

A sharp gasp escaped Sirenia’s lips. Unable to believe her eyes, she sank into the shimmering water beside Arabeth’s legs.  Reaching out an inquisitive finger, she slid it down the length of her sister’s shin. A rough rising of scales nicked her flesh.  “But pregnant mermaids cannot surrender to the call of the waters…"

"They can if their lover’s seed falls shy,” Arabeth whispered, voice brittle with emotion.

"But Ba’at Rath is..."

“A liar!" Sirenia’s mother finished. The crone mermaid, Mar-ala, crashed from the mangroves to join her daughters at the water’s edge. Silver shot curls thrashed about her powerful shoulders as she thrust an arm out to capture Sirenia’s angular jaw.  She cupped Sirenia’s chin, raising her to face to the verdant light.  “Your rising mark confirms our fears,” Mar-ala whispered. “Arabeth has exited her final moon as barren as the day she began it.” 

An agonized cry tore from Arabeth’s throat.  She slid from the Wishing Chair, moaning as she submerged herself in the waist deep water.

Mar-ala settled her hands firmly onto Sirenia’s shoulders.  “I can scarcely imagine by what wisdom Triton has appointed you our last hope for the future.”

Sirenia dragged a shaking hand through her unkempt mane as the implications of her mother’s words washed over her. “I’m not the Chosen Daughter of Triton.  Arabeth is.” 

“So we believed.  But with Arabeth’s moon wasted, you stand next in line.”

“But I’m a dominant,” Sirenia cried. “No man’s seed can overcome my constitution.” Her blue eyes scoured her mother’s face for some sign that she’d be spared mating with Ba’at Rath.  Nothing she saw in Mar-ala’s troubled, gray gaze brought her comfort.

Spinning around, she extended a hand to her more delicately wrought sibling.  “Please, Arabeth, get up. You are everything I am not.  Mating, motherhood—these are your rights of submission. Not mine.”

Arabeth buried her face in her hands and cried harder. 

Sirenia hauled her sister onto quaking legs and drew her into an embrace. “Never have I seen such a beautiful mer! You were designed by Triton to live a breeder’s life.  Fight this…”

“I can’t,” Arabeth sobbed.

“You must!” Sirenia said, thumbing tears from her sister’s eyes. “You might conceive next time…”

Arabeth wrenched herself from Sirenia’s embrace and sank to her knees, surrendering to the call of the waters.  “Are you really that simple, Sirenia?  Can you not understand why there can be no next time?”

“I believe faith can make anything possible.”

 As if in answer, Arabeth’s mottled tailfins unfurled and fanned across the ocean's luminescent surface.

Desperate for an intervention, Sirenia whipped around, facing Mar-ala. “Right this, Mother.”

 Tears beaded at the corners of Mar-ala’s eyes. “Ba’at Rath’s failure to impregnate your sister has wasted her third—and final—breeding moon.”

“And you can rest assured Ba’at Rath will come sniffing your musk trail by nightfall,” Arabeth hissed, lips stretching thinly across her teeth.

Guilt crashed over Sirenia as she endured Arabeth’s bitter expression of heartbreak.  “Ba’at Rath finds me hideous.”

“Ba’at Rath would woo a moray if it would insure him a son—and a throne.”

Sirenia shivered.  She’d played witness to Ba’at Rath’s idea of intimacy.  Custom bound to witness Arabeth’s first mating, she’d watched, horrified, as her sister endured his degrading intrusions.  Even the throes of passion-swell could not check the tears that had streamed from Arabeth's eyes.

When it was over, Sirenia had spooned her sister’s frail, bruised body against her own.  While Arabeth sobbed, Sirenia urged her to remain focused on the grand prize—the precious baby that would save their kind from extinction.  “You will be revered as a queen…the savior of our kind”

Later, Sirenia had slipped away from Arabeth’s side to answer call of the waters.  Fins flashing in the pale moonlight as they parted the lagoon's luminous surface, she thanked Triton for sparing her such degrading debauchery.

Now, I am next.  A guttural cry of disgust tore from her throat.  Wrapping her arms protectively over her breasts, she cringed against her rising fears. “No!”

Mar-ala settled her hands firmly onto Sirenia’s shoulders, shaking her slightly. “Your dawning moon obligates you to couple.”

“I don’t love Ba’at Rath.” Brows melding, Sirenia lifted her chin.  “Nothing could prevent my womb from spitting out his seed.”

“You would risk Clan by indulging your heart?” Arabeth charged.

Before Sirenia could fire back a retort, a screaming gale tore across the mangroves. A lifeless live oak snapped and splintered.  The crackling deadwood swooned dramatically, crashing heavily to the ground.  Something—a spooked animal perhaps—rustled in the sheltering sea grasses behind where the mermaids gathered.

“Shush!” Mar-ala whispered.  Lifting her face to the wind, she scented the torpid air.  As her eyes swept the dense thickets, an agitated colony of bats dropped from the rustling wall of vegetation and fled inland.  

“Who’s there?” she demanded.

A great blue heron snapped her head up from the shallows.  The eel she’d won in her efforts plopped back into the water. The great bird stood motionless on one leg, wings readied to flee. 

The wind died down, and the mangroves once again fell silent.  The heron relaxed, dipping her head back into the water. 

Whatever threat the lush grasses had concealed was gone.

"Do you think Ba’at Rath was watching us?" Bile seared Sirenia’s throat as she imagined opening her untried sex to the arrogant merman’s assault. “What if he already knows his seed fell shy?”

“Calm yourself,” Mar-ala commanded.  “Too much precious time has been squandered on Ba’at Rath.  Seizing her youngest daughter’s trembling hand, she led her into the wind-whipped water to kneel next to Arabeth.

“Listen well, Sirenia. Our future depends on you.  Do you remember the story that you and Arabeth begged after as children?  Of Triton’s Lost Son?

Sirenia nodded. Wondering why her mother would choose this moment to bring up a crib yarn, her brow pleated.

“Ba’at Rath convinced your sister that he had seen the carvings for himself—that they revealed his birthmark proved him the Lost Son. 

 “He tricked her?”  Brows slumping with sympathy, Sirenia slid her blue eyes toward her sister. “With a fairy tale…”

Arabeth nodded.

“The tale was created by the Ancient Mothers,” Mar-ala rasped, “to pass prophecy from mother to daughter, so that when the time came, Triton’s Chosen Daughter would know how to recognize the mark of the Lost Son…”

 “I thought I was the Chosen Daughter,” Arabeth cried, clasping Sirenia’s hands into her own.  “I thought my baby was destined to lead us into a new age. But I’m not her. You are…”

Mar-ala cupped her hands on Sirenia’s shoulders.  With a trembling hand, she lifted one of Sirenia’s springing curls to her lips, and kissed it in deference.  “Before this storm breaks, you must enter Open Waters and travel to the mother mangroves.  It is written that deep beneath her core, the ancients erected an underwater shrine.  In that shrine they left carvings which reveal the true mark of Triton’s Lost Son.  Find them.  Memorize the mark and seek out the Lost Son.  Mate with him three times before your moon wanes.  Welcome his seed with a joyful heart, my daughter, for therein lies our future…”