Cruel and Splendid Mermaids
Julie Catherine
(Broken Mermaids, #1)
Publication date: October 17th 2023
Genres: Adult, Dark Fantasy, Fantasy
For mermaids and humans, the rules are the same: be careful around strangers, be wary of magic and before you dive in, check what’s lurking under the waves.
Nineteen-year-old Ellara Merme’s whole life she’s known one purpose: to mate with men, to procreate, and to bear offspring to fight in Neptune’s underwater army. No problem… There’s just one hiccup. Her siren song doesn’t work.
No one can know.
She’s a broken mermaid with a faulty lure and she has only one week left to make the damaged song work. But all that can change with the ocean’s next deadly storm. Dragged from a shipwreck, mythology says a rescued sailor will be so grateful he’ll fall into anyone’s arms. Even a broken mermaid’s. Still, there’s a reason why merfolk and humans don’t get along. And a lot can go wrong when a girl from the ocean washes up on the shore.
Think mating is easy? Think again.
Cruel and Splendid Mermaids is a first-person dark and playful underwater fantasy. Book one in the Broken Mermaids series.
“About freakin’ time.” Blonde had been waiting for me by the Drop Off platform. Our favorite secret hangout. I was surprised to see her chilling outside, instead of tucked away, hidden under the scaffold shelves. Blonde and I spent a lot of our youth in the underbelly of that stage, making it into our own secret clubhouse since we’d both been Squirts.
We didn’t have to hide too hard.
Most Merme didn’t swim out this far. It was dangerous in deeper sections of the ocean. And the Drop Off was as deep as they come. The stage flirted right on the line. That slight air of danger made the meeting place feel a little exciting.
We were headed to the sea witch’s house.
While it wasn’t disallowed to use the dark arts, no one would exactly advertise they were going to see a psychic for guidance in Merme. It just wasn’t done. For that reason, Blonde and I intended to keep our little visit under wraps. I could see that while she’d waited, she’d planned to be annoyed with me and my tardy behavior, but the plain misery on my face as I arrived softened her down.
“Do I wanna know?”
I shrugged. “I ran into Tas. Barre training 101. I couldn’t exactly say I had plans with the Merme witch and young Blonde.”
“Leave me out of it.” she shrugged. “And you could have. Say what you want. This isn’t wrong.” She defended. “Nothing bad about getting a little mystical help.”
Still, we both looked over our shoulders as we swam.
“Maybe I should have told Tasma to kick rocks and come straight here.” I would have to learn to stick up for myself if I was gonna be a Fert. “Better late than never, right?”
“I waited forever. It looked like I was stood up by some guy.” The word sucked back on her lips.
Like me, Blonde was having trouble becoming a Fert. Her siren voice wasn’t exactly broken, but it didn’t work. At least not as Neptune expected. It whispered on her lips. Her everyday tone was nice and loud, but when it came time to proposition men, she basically went mute. It was impossible for her to turn heads without any sound. And I wouldn’t say this to her face, but her latest haircut didn’t help. The voluminous blonde hair that inspired her name had been the most beautiful swirl in the world. Way prettier than mine. But she’d chopped it all off. Within an inch of her head. Now she styled it into a tiny pixie cut. It poked across her forehead and around her ears. Spunky and flipped. She still looked good. Luckily, her features were precise. She still had a womanly smile. Eyes, mouth, nose, cheeks, almost delicate. But the mermaid wow-factor had been supplanted. You needed a dynamite head of hair. At least, that was my opinion. Not that I’d had much luck in the man department, so sure Blonde. Why not?
“No one would’ve seen you in the clubhouse,” I suggested.
Her look told me to back off. “More than an hour under the scaffold was enough.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, stand up to Tas–”
“–Land a man, I know.” I’d heard all these criticisms before.
Easy to say, hard to do.
But maybe the sea witch would help.
After confirming we were alone on our swim, Blonde and I made the sharp turn into Coral Leaf Bay. Before someone could notice, we slipped between the undulating ferns. The truth-teller lived among the orange rocks. She’d planted climbing vines for privacy. She said it helped her to keep the visions at bay. Although I hoped she could see plenty this morning. I was counting on her wise words. Before she became a sea witch, Abigailya Merme had been a Fert for many years. When she entered the Pause, no-one made her stay in the heart of town. People ignored her magic and dark art quirks. They were happy she lived in the bay. Quinn and the other leaders liked the distance, I could guess. With all her psychic dreams, and potions, and foreseeing of the future, she didn’t exactly put others at ease. Who would want to be neighbors with a witch? Whether any of it was really real… I wasn’t sure.
Blonde and I exchanged glances. Abigailya’s home was a large stack of orange stones, igloo style, curving up in a round hump with a large topside hole.
“Wait,” Blonde frowned.
There was a stillness in the surf. We both listened to the waves.
Her voice dropped down. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Suddenly, something snapped behind us.
Ahhhh!
We both jumped. A baby moray eel poked its head out from an orange rock, saw us, then redoubled its efforts to hide. Blonde and I looked at each other. Our relief tumbled out in a sheepish laugh.
“It’s a bunch of fish, some rocks and an old mermaid. I think we’ll be fine.” I brushed the odd feeling off. But Blonde didn’t perk up and without her help, the eerie feeling didn’t subside. If anything, the silence felt creepier than before. But I wouldn’t back down from this task. Not now. Blonde’s transition would come due in three months. She had some time. My internal clock had three days left.
Three. Days. Left.
At this point, I’d try anything once.
We were seeing the soothsayer today. No matter what.
“Come on,” I started to swim up to the building when suddenly, the porthole netting swung open wide. Blonde and I stopped. Two huge enforcers swam out, their whips at the ready. Their faces concealed. Their hair tucked back. The weapons were pulled out and prepped. Trigger fingers on their hands. I practically fell back in the sea to avoid their abrupt arrival.
“Stand back.” One roughly pushed us aside with their current. The other actually tensed the weapon, as if at any moment we might attack. Blonde and I pushed off the rocks, giving plenty of room, being sure not to make any sudden sounds, holding our hands up high. We didn’t mean any harm.
My mind raced. What was the meaning of this? The truth-teller didn’t have this kind of protection. She was a little old lady living in a rumpled down shack on the outskirts of town.
The guards weren’t for her.
There was only one woman in all of Neptune’s Army who would utilize this kind of show of force. Who would push her weight around.
The leader of Merme.
What was she doing here?
I didn’t have long to wonder, because at that moment, she swam out the front door.
Julie Catherine is an author, screenwriter and playwright.
GIVEAWAY!
—
This sounds like a good book.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by!
Delete