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Chapter 1

The twilight of the Antemidian Kingdom

August 2008

Performing the highest functions in a mermaid state was difficult. The foreign policy itself could give one a headache. There are about five times more countries in the seas and oceans than there are on land, and I had to remember the vast majority.

Fortunately, the Council of Generals always supported me.

Okay, not always. But often.

Well, sometimes...

On one particular day, I felt a bit annoyed. I was aware that at times the palace complex and the surrounding city shook dangerously, and the water near the volcano was hotter and hotter. For those reasons, we considered building a new channel that would direct the lava outside the capital. Thanks to the old channel, the city had survived for thousands of years, even though it was all made of glass.

Big projects take time, though, and meanwhile, the Current Oceanic Neighborhood Crisis Helpline (or the CONCH, for short) acted as a scaremonger rather than actually helping our people. It was founded by Ximena III many currents ago (one current being 125 years). If I could have, I would have liquidated it a long time ago, but I hadn’t ruled long enough to acquire such powers.

Early one morning, one of the ladies-in-waiting brought me the sixteenth leaflet issued by the CONCH—that week. It warned everyone of an earthquake in the district of Turquoise Sands. Of course, nothing happened.

“What a waste of cephalopod ink!” Angry, I rolled up the leaflet. I swam to the window, grabbed a gleaming aquamarine shell attached to the curtain rail (it held the curtain in place), and slipped the leaflet in between the two halves of the shell. I was ready to let the CONCH know how much I cared about its useless work.

“Your Limpidity?” I heard a voice behind my back.

I turned around and saw Amida standing in the western doorway, which was lined with emerald and chalcedony. Amida was the seventh of my twelve ladies-in-waiting. Her wavy golden hair spilled from an elegant bun on the top of her head. She was dressed in a dark green gown adorned with beads, and her aquamarine tail was bright green with silver decorations.

Amida composed songs for me, the ones for humming and the ones with which I would open the Coastal Season. The Coastal Season was our informal name for three weeks during which our most famous vocalists, together with the Antemidian Choir, lured sailors near the rocks and made their ships crash so as to loot them.

I liked Amida's songs more than I liked her. I believed she preferred the sound of my voice more than what I had to say as well. She was never unkind to me, no. But somehow, we had not become close friends in the first four years of my rule.

“Your Limpidity,” I noticed her lips and chin were trembling, “the Council of Generals is requesting immediate evacuation.”

“Huh?” I jumped at the news. “Why?” I couldn’t believe it!

“The magnitude of the earthquakes is increasing. We don’t feel it inside the palace, but…”

It happened in a fraction of a second, I swear. A thin line appeared on the floor. I looked at Amida, about to order her to find a glassmaker, but we only managed to exchange glances. The walls trembled, and a moment later a part of the heavy ceiling, bristling with glass from broken green bottles, collapsed on us.

“For Sal-An-Syon’s sake!” I yelled the name of our most important god, covering my head at the last moment. The skin on my forearms was pierced with sharp spikes. The blood spattered as if around a ghost, then melted in the warm, salty water. The weight that crushed my back for a second nearly caused my tail to bend. I was sure my fins would twist against the floor made of glass shards glued together if it weren’t for the fact that it was gone. The floor had fractured into pieces, and now in the middle of my chamber was a huge hole, expanding rapidly. The next parts of the ceiling and the floor were ceding to gravity. I watched with horror as a massive piece of furniture with gilded knobs, which had been standing in the corner of the chamber, slid down into a newly opened hole.

“The door arch!” Amida frantically pressed her body against the doorway. “The door arch, Your Limpidity! The safest place in the whole—”

I couldn’t focus on her words. I was going to lose everything! My A-shaped glass wardrobe, my mother-of-pearl desk with slender legs made from giant shells, my princely bed, the crystal stool for the caudal fin from the Bermuda Triangle, the meticulously embroidered pillows puffed up with softened sea urchins, decorated with feathers spraying from every corner! All my treasures, every beautiful and colorful thing that I had received and was proud of—the richly illustrated books, the collection of Aztec jewelry—was now either lost in the abyss or crashing against other valuables… Oh no, my ivory stand!

I sensed Amida grabbing my wrist and pulling me towards the door arch. I didn’t oppose. I was too scared. My kingdom! My beloved kingdom... It had existed from the second current of the second starfish (3787 BCE), and now… now, I was terrified to think what would happen next.

“If you think it’s safe in here, don’t move,” I ordered Amida, who was still desperately clinging to the door frame. “I must swim out of here.”

I planned to join the Council of Generals as soon as possible. I was sure they had planned an immediate evacuation to the Atlantic. I had to be there. I didn’t intend to hide when my nation was in danger!

“Your Limpidity, no! The terraces have undoubtedly whammed into the last floor of the palace, and the nearby corridors will tumble down at any moment. We must wait out the earthquake!”

I didn’t listen to her.

“Amida, do whatever you believe best, just save your life. If you meet other ladies-in-waiting, help them, please. I must leave.” I turned my back on her and swam into the nearest corridor. Usually it was dark, but now pale light was falling on the intricate wallpaper crafted from seaweed and fishnet. I glanced up and saw that there was no ceiling here either. The same had happened to the room above; I could see the fresco from the seventh floor. It would have to be the emergency exit. I planned to see if it were still possible to escape by this route and then return to Amida.

I quickly swam towards the fresco. It depicted two tritons and one siren, who held each other’s tails in a clockwise fashion. They were our gods Sal-An-Syon, Um-Nah-Mel, and Ala-ne-ra... Inside the circle they formed was a whirlpool, and above all of them, the artist had placed an inscription in ancient Antemidian: An Temidia.

At that time, our country had a different name, so these words had only one meaning: Do not forget.

Right… No matter what was happening, Antemidia would never be forgotten—even if I died.

I approached the edge of the fresco and began to move my fingers over it, trying to find the handle of the trapdoor. I moved it and pushed the fresco down and aside. It moved away with a screech, opening the passage to the brightest space in the palace, the attic. The sun's rays were passing through the glass ceiling and walls, creating flickering patches on the mosaic floor. The temperature was as hot as in a greenhouse.

I quickly opened the door and got outside. There, the water was colder, and the strong current pushed me immediately to the right, away from the attic. In spite of it, I looked down to see what was happening to my kingdom.

And I shivered. The collapsing vaults were nothing, just nothing, compared to the hollow devoured by misfortune. Here, as far as the eye could see, was rubble and ruin. Small, rainbow-colored fish were swimming around as if drunk; some mermaids were rushing past me like I was transparent.

Suddenly, something tumbled down loudly behind me.

I turned away to see if the sound had come from the palace, but it was gone. Disoriented, I glanced down, trying to ignore a group of tiny milk-white fish with carbon-colored dots. The attic was lowered by at least fifteen meters! My palace was sinking in the mud.

I desperately hoped that Amida had changed her mind and left the door arch to swim up, but it seemed unlikely... She believed she was safe in there. And now she would be buried alive!

Thank Sal-An-Syon that Tony was away. But wait, what about Araminta? And Utau?!

There was no way I could check on them. The trapdoor was blocked by broken glass, and the palace windows were made of unbreakable glass, so nobody could sneak in. And even if I somehow got inside, the chances of getting more people out were slim.

I felt warm tears in my eyes that immediately blurred in the sea water. I wanted to help them, but I had no idea how.

The current stripped the jewelry from my tail and wrists. Golden chains with watermelon tourmalines disappeared somewhere in the depths. I still had the princely crown on my head, but who was a princess without her most important subjects?

Nearby, there wasn’t a single sea creature anymore. Only a few mermaids were still swimming around, their silhouettes blurred by a curtain of dust and algae. Some carried the bodies of their relatives, others the trunks with their life savings. Waves were pushing them about; I was the only one unaffected, bound as if by a malediction to the dying dream of Antemidia… Oh, my misfortunate homeland!

I covered my mouth with both hands, asking myself what I should do, in which direction to swim. I had no idea where the Council of Generals was right now. Aunt Alisha had moved to Brazil two years after I was elected, and I could never remember her address. I thought about leader Leticia Alvarez from the Gulf of Mexico as well. We had a personal union, and we helped each other whenever we could…

I looked down. If I reached the sea bottom, the rubble or corals might tear me up, or I could be swallowed by one of the constantly growing abysses, the names of which I wouldn’t be able to recall. I prayed to Sal-An-Syon that the lava wouldn’t flow out of the sea floor, because in that case, no one would survive.

Suddenly, something grapefruit-pink flashed in the distance.

Araminta’s tail! It was so characteristic. Although she was from Atlantis, she was one of my ladies-in-waiting and my best friend.

“Araminta?!” I dived down.

She heard me and turned around. Her black curls gleamed with salmon-pink streaks; her coral necklace and cyan tunic waved on the current.

She dropped the uneven boulder that she was holding in her hands. She must have been trying to save someone.

Waves that had spared me up to this moment suddenly roared with double strength.

“ARAMINTA!” I shouted. I wanted to use that legendary voice—for which every mermaid was famous—to call her, but I was so stressed, so scared that I couldn’t focus. The fury of heaven had awakened the wrath of the ocean, and I was in the epicenter. How could I sing in such a moment?

“ARAMINTA!” My throat hurt from human-like screaming. “SWIM AWAY!”

Even though boulders were falling everywhere, I kept going down. On the left, a house had just collapsed. The Victory Column standing only a few meters away was next. A bruised mermaid body slid off the rock shelf and disappeared into the abyss. I hastened, swimming as fast as I could. In less than a minute, I was ten meters away from my friend.