attention was distracted by the Copycat. He crawled along the ceilings of the arches to the basilica and took the form of a lady of fire.
Moran seemed to have called the dragon lady Sephora.
“What do you and the fire-breathing lady have in common?” Desdemona dared to ask.
“Well,” Moran reluctantly stretched out. “She is much older than me. That’s what’s causing all the trouble.”
“Is it a few years older? I thought you were a hundred,” Desdemona snickered.
Moran pretended not to feel the pinprick.
“She is a few millennia older. But that’s a small thing to her. Creatures like her only add beauty and strength over time. It’s humans who age quickly.”
That’s right! Desdemona’s sad. She’s human. And she’s to be sacrificed. And if they don’t sacrifice her, she’ll grow old anyway, and she won’t be able to be Moran’s mate anymore.
“Won’t you grow old?”
“I’ve only grown a hundred years, but have I reached maturity?” said Moran sullenly. “At the bottom, I am too young, and if you tell my age to people, they will be stunned.”
“It wasn’t age that stunned me,” Desdemona admitted. “What does it matter how many hundreds of years old a creature with a pleasant ever-young face is? It is the fact that you’re half human and half morgen…”
“I don’t know if I was born this way or if the legend is right. My father split me in two with a sword when my mother tried to escape him back to the humans. I am one half Morgen, one half human.”
Even Desdemona heard the legend of Lilophea in the Adar’s wilderness. It seems that the princess who escaped back to the land, the sea husband issued an ultimatum: if she did not return, they would have to divide the children equally. Half the mother would take back to the land. Half would stay with the father in the sea. Lilophea’s sons were an uneven number, and it became necessary to cut the odd seventh son in half. Lilophea apparently did not have any mermaid daughters at that time. Hearing the ultimatum, she returned. But was it really like that? Or was Lilophea not going to leave the sea kingdom forever from the very beginning? Apparently, the princess had a flighty temper. She could only banter with her consort. It would be a shame if something bad really happened to Moran because of her jokes.
“Do your brothers have different bodies? Did they inherit any human traits from their mother?”
“Normal watermen have blue skin and shell-shaped growths on their temples and foreheads. You wouldn’t mistake them for humans if they wore an ermine robe over their shoulders.”
“Are the chosen girls sacrificed to such creatures?”
Moran remained sullenly silent.
“Who is a sea god to you: an annoying nuisance to unlimited power or an insignificant inhabitant of the sea?”
“The sea itself is becoming dangerous!” Moran squinted at the waves like an attacking enemy. “It belongs to my father and brothers, not to me. That is why I am here. In the kingdom my mother would return to if she could leave the depths.”
“What happens if the sea can’t do without a victim?”
“In that case, I have a friend named Sephora who can turn the waves into fire. There are talismans that turn a pool of water into a pool of fire. That’s how we met. I fended off a big bay that wasn’t my father’s, and she flew by and the water turned to flames. I almost got fried, but Sephora saved me. Then it turned out that she had befriended my mother long before I was born. I was attracted to her for nothing. To her, I’m the child of an old acquaintance, that’s all. But she can ignite the entire sea around Aquilania if you ask her to.”
Desdemona’s heart is relieved. So Sephora is no match for her! But there was another cause for concern.
“It is to turn the whole sea into fire! Is that possible?”
“It’s a last resort,” Moran said.
“And you have to do it for something?”
“If my enemies are suddenly stronger than I am, which is unlikely,” Moran said. “Sephora could ignite the entire ocean. That’s something we can negotiate with her. The bad thing is that then we, the Earthlings, and all those who live in the water will die in the fire.”
So there’s no way out. If it becomes necessary to fight Darunon, the country will either burn or sink. Desdemona returned to her room, looked at the bouquet of luxurious lilies that Moran had brought her in the morning, and realized that beautiful flowers no longer pleased her. For the abyss was near. The floor beneath her feet no longer felt like she was about to become a mermaid with a tail and a creepy sea god pulling her to the bottom.
“The wooden queen has already sunk, it’s the turn of the living queen,” she repeated, looking into the magic mirror.
The mirror immediately showed her a piece of wood from the bow of the ship that was bobbing in the waves with mermaids splashing around it. It was part of a carved female figure, the kind usually used to decorate ships. Indeed, it looked like a statue of a queen. In the salt water of the sea, the wood would quickly rot and turn black. There will soon be nothing left of the beautiful figure.
Desdemona could not recall this figure or any other adorned the bow of the sunken “Queen of Aquilania.”
She is queen now! Is the queue for her?
“Come to me!” The voice was definitely not calling from the mirror, but it suddenly showed the sunken temple. Its spires and domes curved in relief over the inky black water. The sun was setting, illuminating them with bloody light.
Desdemona felt a sudden impulse to go to the sea. It was as if someone whispered in her ears:
“You were born to swim, not to walk on land!”
It hurt to step. It was as if small broken glass had fallen into her feet. Desdemona took off her shoes and examined her feet. Scales had erupted under her heels and toenails. Her feet had become like two fish.
“Swim!” said a commanding voice.
Was it the wind itself whispering? Desdemona looked around for the speaker, but she had no strength left to stand on the shore. She found it hard to breathe. She didn’t remember how she had fallen into the sea. The corset that squeezed her breasts had burst, or she had torn it. Instead of the exquisite brocade of Aquilania, a stiff purple scale stretched across her chest. It felt like armor. Her legs, once in the water, were joined by a tail and long fins.
So she’s a mermaid! It was in real life, not in a dream. Desdemona struck the waves with her tail and darted forward. No sailboat could sail that fast. She had the feeling that she was flying ahead of the waves. There was only one thought in her mind: she had to hurry, because someone was waiting for her. That someone was calling her. The call came as if from the sea floor, but she had to swim forward to the horizon.
Overhead, seagulls shrieked frantically. The wedding ring somehow didn’t sound the alarm. Apparently it was itself surprised to find itself suddenly on a mermaid’s hand instead of the queen’s finger. Desdemona had deceived it so often that it must have thought she had quietly traded it for something. Pearl yawned sleepily, but didn’t raise a panic. Apparently it had grown tired of its past mistress and felt more comfortable on the silent sea maiden’s finger.
It was worth diving deeper under the water for a moment and Desdemona saw a stunning world of bright colors, magical fish and sea wonders. Singing shells shone in the depths, lacey networks of seaweed swayed, sandy pyramids were towered. Sunken treasures glittered. But she had to hurry. The call, coming from afar, pulled her forward magnetically. The sky above the sea was darkening rapidly, a storm was coming. A storm was about to break. Desdemona