combined offspring of Lilophea and the waterman were more sea than earth. With Moran’s arrival, Aquilania might become merely a colony of his father’s maritime domain.
Desdemona looked out to sea through the opened door of the balcony and shuddered. Was there another bonfire by the shore? She squinted. No, it was a flap of bright red cloth fluttering in the wind, resembling a dancing flame. And the cloth is a shapeless cape over the narrow shoulders of some troubadour composing songs right on the shore. There was something familiar about him. Desdemona listened to his voice and recognized Dodger.
He sat on a boulder at the edge of the surf and sang in all sorts of songs:
“She’s as fresh as a rose,
Like a lily of the valley
Like a pearl of white,
But she loved the beast of the sea.”
The rhyme was lacking, but the meaning was clear. Desdemona sharply slammed the glass doors leading to the balcony. She was queen now and would not let anyone tease her. The crown, by the way, was pressing hard on her forehead, even though it was elegant. She wanted to take it off, but she couldn’t. The crown is a symbol of her power, however flimsy. All major power is in Moran’s hands, or rather in his tentacles. All the lives of the people of Aquilania are now in his hands.
“It took a king to crawl out of the sea to strike fear into the hearts of the people of his state, didn’t it?” Dodger was already here. He easily climbed to the balcony, swung over the railing and silently opened the shutters. A lute dangled from his belt at his shoulder. On one broken string was a live rose.
“This is for you!” The guest caught up, pulled out a flower, and held it out to Desdemona. She did not dare to take it.
“That for the queen just one rose is too modest a gift?” He said sarcastically. “I hear you adore roses.”
“Were you spying on me with Moran?”
It was the kind of conversation he could only overhear under their bedroom. When playing sea chess with Moran, she confessed to him that roses were her favorite flowers.
Dodger didn’t clarify where or what he heard. Maybe his hearing is so sharp that he can pick up all the whispers of the people in the palace from the sea.
“Strange, isn’t it? The king came to take care of his country only to have it flooded. All the souls of those who waited for him here are in danger. They’re about to migrate to the sea.”
“And what if he is not so cruel?” Desdemona did accept the rose and immediately pricked herself on the thorns until she bled. You should be careful, but when you’re with someone whose face you can’t see, you get nervous.
“Nobility is not in the taste of the morgen,” the Dodger gritted his teeth angrily. “I remember being drowned.”
“You must be from the society of those who survived and didn’t drown. They call you the Chosen Ones.”
“Is it the Chosen?” He chuckled softly.
“Are you amused?” Desdemona took offense. He probably considered himself cursed rather than chosen, given his grim appearance. He’s not handsome and he’s definitely not human. The red cloak most likely hides a body disfigured by sea contagion. Dodger might be a leper.
“You’d better go, Moran could return at any moment.” Desdemona decided to get the annoying admirer out of the bedroom as quickly as possible. How come only monsters were attracted to her?
Only fragments of his face could be seen under the Dodger’s hood, but even that was enough to realize that he was ugly.
“You don’t like the way I look. Yes?” He guessed it.
What can she say to that? Desdemona frowned.
“Look!” Dodger handed her a small oval locket with a man’s portrait on it. “Do you like it?”
The portrait was of a green-eyed brown-haired man with sculpted features.
“He is quite handsome,” Desdemona said. “Did you kill him and keep his portrait as a trophy?”
“Is that all you can think of?”
“Well, the most probable version is that you sank his bride, and she wore the medallion with the portrait of the groom on her breast. And now it’s in the hands of a murderer. Or rather, it is in his tentacles. I can’t get a good look at what’s under your sleeves.”
“You are a silly girl!” Dodger took the medallion from her. “This is not my victim. This is me as I was before the sea touched me.”
“You mean you’re human? Was it in the past?”
“Sebastian de Arigo. I was heir to the earl’s plantations. I was a court dandy and a favorite of the ladies. I was duelist and a bully. Everything changed in an instant, as if a magic water mirror had been held up to my face. There was a tournament on the water, a duel with a morgen drilling the bottom of my gondola to make me drown. He started to drown me, and realized he couldn’t. And all those who were in the clutches of the morgens, but didn’t drown, become like me.”
“They are not drowned! There must be a whole sect of you,” Desdemona remembered the silhouettes in red that had performed the ritual in the rain on the day of the coronation. Were they not the same ones who had not drowned? “But why don’t you drown in water like all men?”
“Even the Morgens don’t know that.”
“So you don’t know anything about your current state?”
“I don’t remember much about the day I changed. I only remember that Morgen clung to me during the water tournament, but for some reason he couldn’t drown me. All he could do was brutalize me and make me (whatever epithet the illiterate common people chose) a chosen one! So this curse, it turns out, is called! In the eyes of ordinary people, we are something like an order of monks. But in fact we are just a community of cripples.
“You are mutants, not cripples,” Desdemona corrected timidly. She was becoming more afraid of Dodger by the minute. His eyes glittered so dangerously and menacingly. God forbid she should do anything to provoke his anger!
“If it weren’t for that, I could woo you, give you roses. I could serenade you without frightening you. I had a picturesque estate with orange plantations. I could propose marriage to you and save you from your stepmother’s cruelty. You wouldn’t be queen, but you’d be happy.”
“What if that’s what all Morgens say when they trick girls into going under?”
“Don’t be deceitful, Queen! You can see I’m not a Morgen.”
What is he, then? Is he a freak who escaped from the circus? Or is he a degenerate of an ancient aristocratic family, where endless marriages of cousins have degenerated?”
“I find it hard to believe you were once more human.”
“We who have not drowned are changing.”
“How does that happen?”
“The body deforms, the mind deforms. I am in anger at people and at the morgen.”
“Why is it? Captains and merchants have drowned, entire fleets have been wrecked, and you alone have been spared by the sea. You’re the chosen ones who didn’t drown like my brothers!”
“Look at me!” Dodger opened his robe. “And tell me whether it was better to survive or to drown.”
Desdemona recoiled, glimpsing a black, slimy body with many bifurcated tentacles. There were no legs, only tails of some kind, twisting in a tangle. And she thought it was hard to turn into a mermaid! How could such a creature live? Unlike Moran, he was a full-fledged monster. There