Ilakiki sat on her favorite seat, the farthest point of several large rocks rising from a shallow bank of seafloor, and watched the smudge of darkness she believed to be a ship struggle its way toward her. Wind swirled around her, pushing her hair into her eyes and whistling as it bent around the sharp points of the rocks; below her, the sea writhed. Rain as sharp as ice pricked at her cheeks and shoulders, encouraged her to take shelter in the water and let this ship pass. She squinted against the rain and ignored the temptation.
There was no letting it pass. With the news of Kaikuiniimiala’s death, Ilakiki knew she would never again be able to let a ship go, even if there were no weapons on board, even if it meant drowning women and children, even if it meant she would have to do it knowingly, on purpose this time. All humans, even little ones, were dangerous. She had to accept that fact now if she was to be effective.
A streak of lightning split the roiling sky, and the ship was close enough now that she could pick out the sharp points of the weapons along its sides: metal spears attached to thick ropes, long strands of netting sharp enough to slice through skin and scales, short, heavy clubs with iron-tipped spikes. A warship. The tension in Ilakiki’s shoulders released a little, and she watched quietly as it bucked over the increasingly-violent waves toward her rocks.
When it was close enough that she could distinguish the shapes of individual humans from each other, she clenched her gills tight against the air, opened her mouth, and began to sing. The words of her song could not form in the air, but the melody carried, a faint hum under the roar of the wind. It was an old song, a calm-song mothers sang to their hatchlings to encourage them to come out of their eggs for the first time. She threaded her voice between the rumble of the sky and the sea, wrapped it around the hull of the ship like individual strands of seaweed around fingers.
And then she heard it. A voice, raised above the sound of the storm. A single human, shouting a single word:
“Mermaid!”
The ship erupted; humans scrambled up from every corner, swarming the deck like fish on a feast. Their voices layered over each other’s. “Earplugs in!” “Arm yourselves!” “The rocks, watch the rocks!” They scattered across the ship, grabbing at spears and nets. One rushed to the front of the ship, where a spear gun jutted over the railing, and with the sharp end of the spear, he traced the outline of the rocks.
There. Ilakiki swallowed hard, letting her gills flare once to draw what little breath the rain could offer, and fixed her attention on the human behind the spear gun. Her voice swelled with the purpose a target gave it.
The human stopped swinging the gun around for a moment and fumbled at his pant pockets, turning them inside out. But his pockets were empty. He turned back to face his companions and shouted, but the words were lost to the wind and waves.
Ilakiki kept singing.
The desperate searching of the human’s hands slowed. She focused all her attention on him, driving her voice against him, into him. He turned again, slowly, to face back out toward the rocks, and the ship was close enough now that she could see his expression, his face stilled but his eyes wild, his mouth slightly open and his chest heaving with the effort of his breaths. He stared out at the rocks and met Ilakiki’s eyes. Their gazes held. Ilakiki smiled through her song.
“Victor!” one of the other humans shouted. “Victor, don’t listen to her!”
But her human did not appear to hear his fellow. Around him, other humans began to quiet—the shouting from the ship gentled, and more faces appeared along the railing wearing similar blank and desperate expressions—but she kept her eyes on her human.
The ship struck the rocks with a violence that made a few humans stagger and fall. Human screams and the scrape of wood on stone joined the crash of waves and rumble of thunder in the night air. The ship listed to one side.
The human at the bow, momentarily released from Ilakiki’s song by the impact, tried to regain his feet, but the ship was too far over, and the deck was slick from rainwater and sea spray. Things were beginning to shift position, slipping from one end of the deck to the other; one human not far back from the spear gun screamed as one of those sharp nets tangled around his legs. Both he and the net slid into the water.
The waves lifted the ship and smashed it against the rocks again, again, again. Each impact tore another hole into its side. Ilakiki was still singing, but only from habit now, only to herself. No matter how many times she had seen a ship torn apart, she never really got used to it.
The ship did not last long against the waves and rocks and soon fell beneath the surface, leaving the humans to fend for themselves against the storm—and the mermaid who was waiting for them.
She dove off her seat and swam to her human, who was clinging to a plank that had torn free of the ship, his legs thrashing in a desperate attempt to keep him back from the sharp rocks. She curled her tail around his legs, her arms around his body so he could not fight, and tugged him off the plank and into the water. He struggled anyway. He was strong, stronger than she was, and, if he realized that, she knew she would not be able to hold onto him long enough to prevent him from making it back to the surface.
She bent her head toward him and pressed her lips hard against his. The human stopped thrashing against her hold, for a moment too surprised and confused to move. Ilakiki twisted her fingers into knots in his hair and leaned her shoulders and chest against his; his eyes closed slowly, and his own hand came up to press against the curve of her back. His mouth opened. A thin stream of water trickled between their lips.
His eyes flew open again as the water touched his tongue, and he started to pull back, but Ilakiki tightened her grip on his legs and his hair and did not let him move. “Do not be afraid,” she whispered in the language she had heard the humans speak on the ship. Her lips brushed softly against his as she spoke. His skin was cooling in the cold water. She untangled one hand from his hair and ran her fingertips very gently across his face, tracing the line of his cheek and chin and down to his throat. He shuddered. “Do not be afraid,” she said again. “There is no danger.”
For a moment, he stared at her, distracted again. Then his eyes rolled back until only the white edges were visible, and his head slumped against her hand.
She pressed her fingertips against the side of his neck where his heartbeat fluttered, fast but faint, giving up. But she knew from all her years of experience to never let a human go until she could no longer feel his pulse, so she waited, her lips still just brushing his, the fingers of her other hand still knotted in his hair.
It did not take much longer; his heartbeat stuttered once, resumed for a few desperate beats, then stuttered again and finally stopped. The sea had leached all the warmth from his skin, leaving it as cold as her own. She put a hand to his chest, but that, too, was empty and cold.
She unwrapped her tail from around his legs and pulled away from him. He floated there for a moment, pale against the darkness of the sea, before the pressure of the next wave shoved his body toward the rocks.
Ilakiki turned back to the surface, searching for the next pair of thrashing legs.
The storm finally blew itself out. The sun came up, piercing holes in the clouds and illuminating the destruction from the night before. Ilakiki did not look at it as she swam away, but she had seen it often enough that she could picture how it must be: the bodies strewn on and around the rocks, bruised and bleeding where they had been smashed against the rocks or ship debris, arms and legs tangled in bits of rope and netting.
Ilakiki closed her eyes against the image and swam a little faster.
At a good speed, her cave was only a ten-minute swim from her rocks. It was one of the reasons those rocks were her preferred post: aside from being large, sharp, and half-submerged, she could make it there within a few minutes of a scout’s report.
The cave itself was a simple stone one she had inherited from her kuma. Kaikuini had offered her the right to make her home amongst her rocks so she would not need to travel at all for a ship, but Ilakiki liked the bit of space between her home and her post, the chance it gave her to escape from the bodies that littered the sea after a night like this.
Her ama’a, a bright young one who had joined her just a few months ago, was waiting at the mouth of the cave, drowsing with the tip of her learner’s spear buried in the sand and her head resting on the hilt. “Anaka,” Ilakiki greeted her as she went in.
Anaka startled back into alertness and followed after her. “Good morning, kumaku. Did you have a successful trip?”
“I did.” Ilakiki perched on the small stone shelf that served as her resting-place and set to untangling the knots the wind had blown into her long dark hair.
Anaka touched Ilakiki’s hand. “Allow me, kumaku,” she said.
Ilakiki dropped her hands gratefully, and Anaka picked at the tangles. She still was not used to having an ama’a, and at moments like these, she wondered why she had resisted it so long. It was nice having someone else to help her tidy up.
Then she thought about how many inexperienced ama’ai were killed by humans each year, about the brutal wounds she herself had received as an ama’a, and cringed at the thought of Anaka trapped in one of the humans’ sharp nets or pierced by a spear from their spear guns.
“Oh!” Anaka said suddenly, interrupting Ilakiki’s grim thoughts. “Kaikuini sent a message last night.”
Ilakiki frowned. “Kaikuini?”
“That is, the new one. Um…” Anaka hesitated, unsure of the new queen’s name. It was possible, Ilakiki supposed, that she had never heard it.
“Keialani.” Ilakiki squeezed her hands together and was glad that Anaka was behind her, unable to see her face; it gave her a moment to compose herself. “What did she want?”
“She wants you at the palace in three days.”
“What?” Ilakiki twisted around, ripping her hair free of Anaka’s hands. “Why?”
Anaka shook her head. Her eyes, usually wide even for Trench-folk, bulged with surprise at Ilakiki’s violent reaction to her news. “She did not say. Are you well, kumaku?”
Ilakiki took two deep breaths, concentrating on the feeling of the water through her gills. The familiar sensation soothed her, though her frown remained. “I am well. Bring the message.”
Anaka vanished but was back in a moment with the message cupped in her hands. She held it out toward Ilakiki, who plucked it from her hand and caressed the very top of the small round glass bubble that held the message. The bubble shimmered, glowing softly yellow in the dark cave, and Keialani’s voice, still as clear and calm as Ilakiki remembered it being, echoed through the room.
“My Singers,” she said, “in three day’s time, I hope to welcome you into my palace. There is much to be discussed.”
The message silenced, and the glow of the bubble dimmed again.
Ilakiki felt her frown deepening. “Hm.”
“Perhaps it has something to do with—” Anaka bowed her head and pressed her right hand to her heart in respect “—the previous kaikuini’s death?”
Ilakiki turned the message over between her fingers as though some further explanation might be found on the glass. Then closed the message into her fist and straightened. “Well, then. To the palace we will go.”
Anaka stared for a moment at the fluttering edge of her tailfin. When her voice came, it came hesitantly, uncertain. “Kumaku, I did hear Kaikuini ask only for her Singers, but do you think there is any way I could come, too? I have never seen Kaikuini’s palace.”
Ilakiki smiled. Dear sweet Anaka—she also was not quite used o being an ama’a. “Yes. You can come, too.”
“Oh!” Anaka turned a delighted somersault. “I have heard that the princesses’ flowerbeds are the most beautiful thing in the queendom!”
Ilakiki tried to push down her smile and sound appropriately stern. “You must be on your best behavior.”
“Of course.”
“Do not speak unless spoken to, and do not expect to see Kaikuini or the princesses.”
She nodded, her enthusiasm unshaken. “I understand, kumaku. You will not even know I am there.” She grabbed Ilakiki’s hand and squeezed her fingers. “Oh, thank you! Kaikuini’s palace!” She dropped Ilakiki’s hand and returned to combing out her hair.
Ilakiki frowned at the message. She had not been back to the palace since she had first been taken here as a young one, and it was not a place she wished ever to return to—there were too many people, too many memories, she did not want to face.
But Kaikuini had ordered it, and she was not now, nor would she ever be, in any position to question what Kaikuini ordered.
They left the next morning, Ilakiki speaking the words that would bind the message to them so they would be able to get into the palace. Anaka was talkative at first, too excited to contain herself, and she commented on every fish that flashed across their path or coral they swam by as though she had never seen coral or fish before in her life. Ilakiki did not try to silence her; she could guess how much this trip meant to her—not everyone was allowed to go to Kaikuini’s palace—and she let her excited young ama’a talk herself out.
It was a trip Ilakiki had never expected to take again, and retracing the route from her barracks to the palace made her feel strange, too much like the young thing she was when she had first gone to her kuma. She spend the first day of the trip distracting herself as well as she could by focusing on Anaka’s chatter.
“I heard you have been to Kaikuini’s palace before,” Anaka said at one point near the end of the first day, as they were settling down to rest in a reef Ilakiki remembered as being about halfway to the palace.
Ilakiki smiled tensely and picked the meat off the bones of one of the spiny little fish she had caught for their meal. “I have.”
Anaka’s eyes brightened with interest. “When? Why?”
Ilakiki shook her head and continued to eat. She did not answer the questions.
On the second day, they starting seeing others along their route, and while Ilakiki was at first annoyed by the way Anaka would call out to those swimming past, greet them good morning and ask them where they were going, she became glad of her friendliness when a few who were also headed for the palace joined them. It was she who kept the conversation going and thereby freed Ilakiki from having to think of things to say.
She had never been comfortable around those she did not already know, and in her years of being a Singer, she had lost all the social graces she might have had at one time. Listening to Anaka and the others chatter about the weather and the war—as if any of them knew anything about the war—Ilakiki decided that she was probably better off not seeing anyone but Anaka and a few scouts, and limiting her communication with anyone else to messages. At least none of them insisted on asking who they were and why they had been invited to the palace as their traveling companions did.
Ilakiki tried to catch Anaka’s eye, shake her head to warn her not to answer the question, but Anaka was not looking her direction.
“Ilakiki is one of Kaikuini’s Singers,” she said.
There was a general rustle of fingers and fins then, and the water around them seemed to drop a bit in temperature. Ilakiki fixed her eyes on the next ridge of seafloor and kept swimming as though she could not feel the way the others were looking at her now, as though she were a strange beast they could not decide if they should fear or reverence.
One who was barely out of the egg came up beside her. “Singer?” she said, her voice almost too low to hear.
Ilakiki nodded once to show she had heard the little one.
“Have you ever seen a human?”
Ilakiki glanced down at her. “I have. Many of them.”
The little one’s eyes widened, and she edged closer. “Really?” Her voice gained some strength in her excitement. “What are they like?”
“Li’ili’iku,” one of the older ones said, her tone scolding, “it is not polite to speak to a Singer.”
Then it was a shame she had not announced it immediately and prevented the others from joining them in the first place.
“Oh.” The excited light in the little one’s eyes snuffed out, and she drifted back to the side of the one who had scolded her—her mother, Ilakiki guessed, or perhaps her sister.
But being rude did not stop a few of the others from whispering to each other. “I heard they have teeth like sharks,” said one.
“I heard they have arms like an octopus,” another answered.
“I heard,” said a third, and Ilakiki recognized that voice as the one who had scolded the little one for her questions, “that the blood that pumps through their veins is not silver but black and slimy, like oil, and that is why they cannot breathe in water.”
Ilakiki stopped swimming, turned toward the group behind her, and lifted herself upright so that she towered above the others. They all startled to a stop. “It is true,” she said. “Everything you have heard about humans is true. They prowl these waters like sharks, and they will kill you if you ever even think of going to the surface.” She frowned down at her ama’a, turned again, and continued swimming a bit above the others. “Come, Anaka.”
She could hear Anaka following after her, but she waited until they had left sight of the others before speaking again. “That was foolish of you.”
“I apologize, kumaku,” Anaka said quietly. “I meant only to be friendly and answer their questions; I did not pause to think about how they would react.”
Ilakiki stopped swimming and turned to look at Anaka, who paused, too, and bowed her head. She pushed a mouthful of water out through her teeth. “You are on a lonely path, Anaka,” she said at last. “This trip might be a good time to consider if you are truly fit for it.”
Anaka looked up and opened her mouth as though to say something, then closed it again and returned to staring at her hands.
“This is also a good time for you to stop speaking.”
“Yes, kumaku.”
She reached over and brushed her fingers once through Anaka’s hair. Her finger caught on a knot. “And a good time to begin tidying up. We will be at the palace before nightfall.”
Anaka put her hands to her hair and began picking at the tangles.
Ilakiki smiled. “Come along.”
As they got closer to the palace, the seafloor began to change, from the long stretches of flat brown sand that marked the open sea to the towering rocks and corals that formed maze-like paths between them. There were more people here, swimming between the great columns of rock, harvesting corals to take back to the palace, shouting at little ones that chased each other along the paths.
Ilakiki smiled as Anaka stared around her, her mouth opened slightly in awe. “This must feel something like your old home,” she observed.
Anaka shook her head and continued to stare up to where the rocks disappeared into the darkness of the water above. “The Trench is nothing but a few old rocks. But this is…” She hesitated, searching for the word. “This is extraordinary.”
“You cannot see the tops of the rocks from here,” Ilakiki said, guessing that she was trying. “Most of them extend right to the surface.”
Her eyes came briefly off the columns; she met Ilakiki’s gaze with a smile. “If I did not thank you before for bringing me, kumaku, I am thanking you now.”
They wound through the columns, dodging others at every turn. Ilakiki could not remember this place ever being so busy, and though she knew her way through the towering mazes of rock and coral that surrounded the palace, she was starting to feel a little lost in the people and noise.
Soon, however, the columns of rock and coral opened up into the Queen’s Valley, in the middle of which sat the palace and gardens. Anaka gasped, and even Ilakiki felt a sudden shiver run through her.
It was a remarkable sight. The palace itself was magnificent, built long before harvesting coral from the colorful shallow reefs was too dangerous to be allowed. Patterned bricks of pale pink and deep green made up most of the outer walls; the Great Hall, which could just be seen along the farthest edge of the palace, was made entirely of diamond and gold, materials that could not be found anywhere else in the ocean. Ilakiki’s nursemaid had once told her the story of where it came from, told her of a human who was enamored with a long-ago kaikuini, and when he asked her what she wanted most in the world, she said she wished to hold the air and touch the sun, and the next day he showered her with diamonds and gold, the closest thing he could manage to her actual request.
Radiating out from the palace walls on all sides were the princesses’ gardens, and they, too, like the palace and the maze of rock and coral, were extraordinary: colorful flowers on long, flexible stems, planted in circles and rows and patterns; bits of shell and pearl and glass angled to catch the faint glow that always shone from the palace so they gleamed; even a few statues, chipped and broken, that were pulled from sunken ships. The whole small valley was surrounded by a carefully-maintained border of tall green kelp that had always made Ilakiki feel penned in.
She glanced over at Anaka, who seemed to be having a hard time grasping the idea of so much luxury and leisure, and smiled again. “Are you ready?”
Anaka nodded silently, and they made their way down into the valley.