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They’d returned to the main living area when a cheerful voice hailed them from the dwelling’s doorway.
“Indigo.” Andre’s mother smiled warmly on the young mermaid, who looked younger than Andre. “Lovely to see you. What brings you by today?”
“Hello, Auntie,” the newcomer responded, swimming forward to embrace the older mermaid. “I came looking for Andre, actually.” She looked curiously from him to Merletta. “But maybe it’s a bad time?”
“Not at all,” said Andre. “Let me introduce you. Indigo, this is Merletta, a friend from the program. Merletta, this is my cousin, Indigo.”
“Merletta?” Indigo looked Merletta over a little too casually. “We haven’t met before, but I think I saw you…at Andre’s birthday celebration.”
Andre sighed. “She’s not my girlfriend, Indigo, there’s no need to be weird about it. She’s a fellow trainee and a friend.”
“If you say so.” There was the hint of a smirk on Indigo’s face, but the look she sent Merletta was friendly enough. “So you’re a trainee as well. Hopefully we’ll be seeing much more of each other, then!”
“Uh, will we?” Merletta asked.
Andre shouldered his cousin with familial ease. “Indigo is about to turn sixteen. She plans to apply to the program. She’s inspired by my example.”
“Hardly,” snorted Indigo. She flashed her cousin a grin. “It was more that I figured if you could get in, surely it can’t be too hard.”
Andre rolled his eyes, but he clearly didn’t mind her banter. Merletta examined the two of them surreptitiously. They didn’t look much alike. Indigo’s skin was pale, like Andre’s mother’s. Clearly Andre’s coloring came from his father. Her hair was almost as fair as Tish’s, and her tail was a pale blue that shimmered as she swam. The whole impression made her seem insubstantial, which Merletta could already tell was an illusion.
“That’s exciting,” Merletta said in belated response to Andre’s announcement. She smiled at Indigo. “Good luck, I hope you get in.”
“Thanks,” said Indigo. “Me too.”
“I’ll just see Merletta out, then I’ll be right with you,” Andre told his cousin. “But if you’ve come to nag me about the entry test again, nothing’s changed. I’m still not allowed to tell you what’s in it.”
Merletta said a hasty goodbye and followed Andre into the small garden outside his front door.
“Will you be all right, going into Tilssted by yourself?” Andre asked when they were alone.
“Of course,” said Merletta cheerfully. “Honestly, it’s probably the safest place for me these days.” She grimaced. “I don’t know how they all recognize me, but there seem to be a lot of people there who would be only too ready to intervene if I ran into trouble.” She chuckled as she thought of her familiar, uncultured Tilssted folk. “More aggressively than necessary, probably.”
Andre grinned. “Well, I’ll leave you in their capable hands, then. See you tomorrow.”
Chapter Eight
Turning away from Andre’s home, Merletta hastened northward. She’d planned to pick up the promised shells from Tish’s workplace—an errand to which she half-regretted committing—earlier in the day, when everyone would be busy with work and she could dart in and out. Arriving close to lunch time risked being drawn into socializing. And although she didn’t object on her own behalf, Tish might not like it. It wasn’t exactly consistent with Tish’s expressed desire to be kept out of “whatever it is you’re caught up in”.
But Merletta didn’t want to dwell on the discomfort of her oldest friend’s decision to distance herself from their friendship. Tish was her history—the closest thing she had to a family record.
Merletta frowned as her thoughts returned to Andre’s family’s slab. It was impressive, no question. But something about it wasn’t right. Andre’s mother had claimed that it went back as far as the Center’s written history, and that the first entries were made only a few generations after the triple kingdoms were founded.
But although there had been an impressive number of names on the slab, there surely hadn’t been enough to cover the triple kingdoms’ whole history. It was possible Andre’s mother was mistaken—she hadn’t seemed especially confident in her understanding of records, and why should she be? The Center took care to keep everyone outside its circle ignorant about the finer details of such things.
Still, the explanation didn’t satisfy Merletta. She’d formed the impression from her basic studies that the triple kingdoms had been around much longer than that—the instructors spoke of the three founding brothers as though they were in an ancient past that was almost lost to memory.
Plus, there was the question of their language. The Center claimed that developing a written version of the language of merpeople was one of their civilization’s greatest achievements. But Heath spoke the same language as Merletta, and she had personally read written records from the island of Vazula in her own tongue. The matching language couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. It pointed unarguably to some common origin between her people and Heath’s. Even the appearance of names from Heath’s society in past generations of merpeople supported the idea.
And there was no forgetting the shocking detail which had so thrown Merletta when she completed her second year test. The watchword in the middle of the maelstrom—that code which she would apparently require in order to access records necessary for her higher studies—was none other than Vazula. That alone convinced her that the history of her people was tied not only to land and humans, but to the island itself.
And the records she’d seen on the island had surely been written longer ago than the family history in Andre’s house had begun. How was it possible that merpeople had been connected somehow with the inhabitants of Vazula, who had apparently left the island hundreds of years ago, when their underwater civilization supposedly hadn’t yet existed then?
Something definitely didn’t add up.
Merletta was distracted by the question all the way to the shellsmith tower, barely noticing the transition from Skulssted’s wealthy streets to Tilssted’s grimier water.
She looked up at the tower, her heart sinking at the cheerful voices and clatter of bowls. She’d arrived at lunchtime, as she’d feared.
