Jack rubbed his eyes, and Lian was back, still screaming at him.
“You threw everything away! Do you realize how pathetic that is?!”
“I did what had to be done,” he told her, pushing himself to his feet, only there was nothing to push on. Everything felt too uneven, too much like liquid to get any kind of purchase. Again the young boy and girl floated up, and he watched as they looked into a well on top of a hill.
“It’s gone,” the boy said with a pathetic frown. “There’s no way we can reach it.”
“You’re gonna be in so much trouble!” the girl told him, laughing.
The boy seemed to realize this, and an evil look came over his face. “I’m gonna tell them that you lost it!”
The girl stopped laughing abruptly. “What? You’re lying!”
“So?” the boy said, grinning at her. “I’m telling on you!” With that, the boy turned and ran toward the edge of the hill they were standing on.
“NO. Don’t!” the girl yelled, running after him.
“I’m telling! You can’t stop me!”
The girl screamed in frustration, then pushed the boy hard in the back.
The boy yelped in surprise, and then tumbled over the edge, right down the hill.
“Oh no!” the girl yelled, looking around in every direction. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and dove after the boy.
“STOP THAT!” Lian screamed, and the scene of the boy and girl exploded in all directions, drifting away like smoke in a breeze. “You don’t get to see that, not anymore!”
Now that the other image had disappeared, Jack found himself sitting in some kind of walled city, empty buildings all around. And then he realized what that meant.
This was the city in his dreams. How had he ended up here? And hadn’t Lian said this was where something had been locked away? What did it all mean?
“What was that? Who were they?” Jack asked, shaking his head in confusion.
“You don’t get to know that,” Lian spat, then kicked him in the side. “You LOST that privilege when you threw away everything you could have been, like some idiot!”
“Who are you to tell me anything?” Jack growled at the girl. “You don’t belong here!”
“Oh really?” she asked, then picked him up and slammed him against the brick wall behind him. “You don’t get it, do you! You haven’t learned a thing! The Charmed One didn’t teach you, so I’m going to, if I have to kill you to do it!”
“You’re just mad because I beat you,” Jack shouted, grinning widely at her. “If I hadn’t held you back, you would have captured them. I won!”
“NO!” Lian shouted, slamming a fist into the wall hard enough to break it. “You lost, but you’re too stupid to see that! You sacrificed yourself for nothing! You turned heroic!” She said the word like it left a foul taste in her mouth. “Don’t you get it, Jack? What needs to happen for you to understand that YOU ARE NOT THE HERO IN THIS STORY!”
With that, Lian dropped Jack to the ground hard, but for some reason her words stung more than the impact. “Shut up!” he yelled. “You don’t know what happened! I… I couldn’t—”
“You couldn’t what?” she demanded.
“I couldn’t… I couldn’t save her!” Jack said, pushing to his feet and taking a step toward the girl, his anger pushing the pain away. “I told May her grandmother was Snow White, but I was wrong, and look what happened! I freed the Wicked Queen, and it was MY FAULT. And now I can’t even save a whole city full of innocent creatures, let alone the one person in this entire world who doesn’t treat me like scum because of my father! I failed, okay?! I failed in every possible way! I couldn’t beat you, I couldn’t beat the Sea King, I couldn’t do anything. There was no way. You were faster than me, smarter than me. Every single thing I tried, you saw coming. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t hide, I couldn’t outwit you.”
Lian laughed mockingly. “Why would you ever think you could?!”
“Shut up,” Jack said quietly. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You think you’re so talented now, Jack?” she asked. “You think you’re some kind of magical hero, someone who can move faster than people can see and knock arrows out of the air? Well guess what, Jack! There are only about a hundred Eyes who can do exactly what you can do, only they can do it faster, better, and a thousand other things besides! You don’t have their experience or their training. All you have is your head.” She shook her own head disgustedly. “But even that you seem willing to throw away the first chance you get!”
Lian gestured, and a window opened in the brick wall. On the other side Jack’s body was being dragged behind Mako toward the Sea King.
“You think you can defeat the Sea King with your sword, Jack?” Lian asked him. “How’d that work for you the first time? Why do you think my Queen hasn’t ever attacked the Sea King?! Because she’s scared of him! He’s too powerful down here. She can’t defeat him. So she waits for her opportunity, Jack. Because she’s clever, and wise, and always ready to take advantage of weakness. And she saw weakness here, Jack. Weakness on your part. Weakness on the Sea King’s. And she’s already set things into motion, thanks to you.”
“What things?” Jack asked, his anger being replaced by a feeling much closer to shame.
“If the Sea King’s too powerful in the ocean, where do you think she wants him?” the girl asked him, her eyes burning with fury.
Jack felt a tug as Mako slapped his body in the face with his tail over and over, trying to wake him up.
“You’re saying—,” Jack started, but Lian interrupted him.
“The sword is just a tool, you idiot!” she yelled as the walled city began fading away. “Stop depending on it, and start using your head again!”
With that, Jack woke up to an extremely displeased Sea King.
A very displeased Sea King with a glowing golden trident aimed at Jack’s chest.
“You invaded my lands, human,” the Sea King said, his voice strangely calm. “You escaped from the cages I put you in. You attacked my soldiers.” Abruptly the merman unfolded to his full height. “For those crimes alone, I might have granted you a swift death. But then you STOLE MY DAUGHTER FROM ME.” His eyes flashed, and a bolt of solid light exploded from the trident, crumbling the coral floor just inches from Jack’s chest. “For that, you and all your kind will be wiped from the face of this world!”
“Your Majesty,” Mako said, holding up his hands. “It is possible that we do not know the full story. Your daughter has… left before, in the company of humans—”
“With that prince!” the Sea King roared, then turned to Jack. “Tell me truthfully, Eye. Is the human prince behind this?”
It wasn’t easy to think under that kind of withering gaze, and Jack wasn’t really in the best frame of mind to begin with. “Behind this?” he said bitterly. “There’s the pirate who’s working for him, we think, but Bluebeard’s been pretty much useless in all of this—”
“He is involved?” Mako said. “But she… she said…”
Whatever else the merman intended to say was drowned out by the most horrifying roar of rage Jack had ever heard. The whales guarding the throne room fled in fear, and the remaining coral began to crumble to the floor, huge pieces falling with enough force to crush the life out of a merman… or Jack. Mermen and merwomen screamed, fleeing for their lives, leaving Mako and Jack alone with the Sea King, walls tumbling and crashing around them.
“We shall wipe their species from this world,” the Sea King roared amidst the chaos. “Starting with the prince! FROM THIS MOMENT ON, WE ARE AT WAR!”
CHAPTER 31
Alone in what was left of the throne room, Mako roared in frustration, then smashed his fists down on the coral floor beneath him, cracking it.
“Bad day?” Jack asked, his own head beating like a roomful of drummers.
Mako turned to him with a furious look on his face, then abruptly sighed, shaking his head.
r /> “I could help, you know,” Jack said, pushing on the sides of his head, which made no difference. “I mean, I know where Meghan’s going. If you let me go, I could—”
“Oh, there’s no letting you go now,” Mako said. “I don’t care if you could end this entire invasion without so much as a bruised fin. The people demand your execution, so that’s what they’ll get.”
“Execution?” Jack asked, his throat going dry, ironic considering how much water was passing through it.
“Publicly,” Mako said. “Morale reasons, of course. Invading our kingdom and whatnot. If it’s any comfort, I know that… that Meghan chose to leave. Plus, you seem far too stupid to be as evil as the Sea King believes.”
“That’s not really any comfort,” Jack said. “Because, well, execution?!”
“You’re going to need to move past that,” Mako said, picking Jack up by his seaweed bindings and throwing him over his shoulder. “I can make it easier on you if you’d like.”
“You can make getting killed in front of thousands of merpeople easier?” Jack asked. “Well see, now you’ve got my attention.”
Mako smiled. “I like you, human. And for that reason I will help, even if you don’t see it as such.” Mako whipped his tail up and slapped Jack in the back, something sharp piercing his skin.
“That is my sting,” Mako said as Jack’s muscles began to convulse. “Sorry for any pain it causes, but in moments you won’t feel a thing… or be able to move. At least you’ll go to your great beyond painlessly.”
“Painlessly?!” Jack tried to shout, but nothing came out beyond “Guuhhhh.”
“You may not appreciate it now, but you will, trust me,” Mako said as Jack’s entire body went numb. “Now I have to hand you over to the execution team. The King wants his soldiers moving out within the hour for the invasion, so I won’t be around to witness your death. That said, I wish you all the best in your afterlife.”
Mako sighed as he handed Jack’s unmoving body to two other mermen. As they carried Jack away, he watched Mako rub his eyes and shake his head. “All this pain, all this death, all for some stupid teenage crush. I really hope it’s all worth throwing your life away again, Meghan.”
CHAPTER 32
Cheers filled the ocean as Jack was carried… somewhere. It would have been nice to see where he was going, but not being able to turn his head or even move at all made things a bit difficult. Still, hearing the chants of “Kill the human!” did help set the mood.
All he could see as he was carried was the ocean floor, broken every so often by something squishing down over his eyes, something that looked like fruit, maybe. It might have felt like fruit too, but he couldn’t really speak to that either way, considering he couldn’t feel anything.
His merman guards didn’t seem to mind the fruit, or whatever it was, being thrown at him, as they’d occasionally stop to apparently give the assembled mob a better shot. Overall, Jack actually did come to appreciate Mako’s gesture. This would have been a lot worse if he could have felt it.
The mermen carried him up some carved stone steps in the ground, around and around in a spiral, each circle smaller than the last, until they reached the top of some sort of discolored rock platform, high enough for the crowds to see them. They twisted Jack over onto his back, and for a brief moment he saw how many merpeople had come to see him get killed.
Stretched out in every direction, thousands of civilian merpeople screamed and yelled for his blood.
Really? That many people wanted him dead? That many people he’d never met, never done anything to? For a brief moment he forgot about his paralysis and just yelled at the stupidity of the whole thing with all his might, going off on the bloodthirsty merpeople for a good minute before remembering that his mouth wasn’t moving and he was just moaning out what really were some pretty harsh insults.
“By the order of the King of the World,” a merman just beyond Jack’s vision began saying slowly, as if he were reading it, “this human child has been accused of gross treason against the merfolk and their realm. The human has been found guilty and will therefore receive the maximum penalty: death.”
A cheer rose from the mob, and Jack went off on them again silently. Stupid paralysis!
“Bring in the shark!” the merman yelled, and Jack’s blood froze. Shark?
Behind him he heard two or three mermen yelling back and forth, and a lot of thrashing in the water, the sounds of metal chains clanking and straining overpowering the yells every so often.
The sounds grew closer and closer, then everything seemed to pause. For a brief moment Jack desperately wished he could move just to see what was happening, while a smaller, smarter part of himself realized he was far better off not knowing.
“Open its mouth!” the merman closest to Jack yelled. Open its mouth?! Jack’s eyes opened wide at the idea of—
Wait, his eyes moved! He glanced around frantically but couldn’t see much more than he’d been able to before, thanks to his head still being paralyzed. Still, Mako’s sting seemed to be wearing off, if slowly, which could be very, very bad. There really was no worse point in the process for him to start feeling something, not with a shark’s mouth opening behind him.
Above him the moonlight wavered as something passed over the ocean’s surface. Jack shot his gaze upward but he couldn’t make out what it was. It sounded as if the crazed mobs didn’t have any more luck, as merpeople began muttering and crying out themselves. Like they had anything to be complaining about right now!
“I said get its mouth open!” the merman yelled, and the chains clanked as the shark apparently thrashed angrily.
“There!” someone yelled, and abruptly everything got darker as row upon row of teeth filled Jack’s vision. His head had just been placed in the shark’s open mouth, a mouth barely held open by some massive but straining rusty iron chains.
“Release the chains on my mark!” the merman said, the sound muffled by the shark’s mouth. Jack wouldn’t have thought that odors would really travel underwater, but the smell in the shark’s mouth definitely did, reminding him vividly of the giant who’d tried to eat him. Not the most pleasant of memories to pop up here at the end.
The cries of the crowd intensified, but Jack couldn’t make out what they were yelling anymore. The merman to his side began counting down from ten, the shark struggling against the chains with every count. Somewhere, Jack thought he heard the sound of metal striking metal. Was that the chains?
“Three!” yelled the merman, and the teeth inched closer to Jack’s neck. Involuntarily Jack flinched, nothing moving—wait, a finger twitched. Now two fingers! Oh, please, not now!
“Two!” the merman yelled. Feeling returned to Jack’s arm, but he couldn’t move it. Something was tying him down.
“ONE!” the merman yelled, and Jack flinched, squeezing his eyes shut desperately as the chains released….
And then the sounds of the crowds came crashing over him like a wave, light shining through his eyelids.
Jack hesitantly opened one eye to find a man with a black coat, a blue beard, and an upside-down glass jug over his head, attached by suspenders to his belt, smiling down at him with an enormous grin.
“Captain Bluebeard arrives just in the knickers of time once again!” Bluebeard roared, then drove a curved sword down onto the ropes tying Jack down.
Freed, Jack used his barely moving arms to roll off the platform, then threw a look behind him. There, three pirates wearing dirty clothes and glass jugs held the chains of the shark, pulling desperately against the struggling beast of a fish. Jack looked the shark, easily twenty feet long, right in the eye, and the shark stared at him right back.
“I would have been soooo tasty too,” Jack told the creature, then laughed in its face.
Bluebeard held out a hand to help him up, so Jack took it, wobbling wildly as if his legs weren’t quite done being paralyzed.
“Not the steadiest boy, are ye?” the pirate asked.
> “I was stung by one of the mermen,” Jack mumbled as best he could, glancing around to try to figure out what was happening, which apparently was nearly impossible, considering how crazy things were. Everywhere he looked, pirates with glass jars or jugs over their heads fought against mermen, sword to trident. And yet, that wasn’t the oddest thing.
Was that the entire full-size pirate ship enclosed in a bottle?
“Ain’t she beautiful?!” Bluebeard declared, following Jack’s gaze.
“It’s your boat… in a bottle,” Jack said, his head rapidly not wrapping around the concept. “Wha?”
“The rightful name be ‘ship’ if ye be valuin’ yer hide,” Bluebeard corrected. “Don’t be callin’ my baby no boat, if ye please, you land-livin’ lubber-buss! Not when we’re bein’ goodly enough to rescue you!”
“Rescue?” Jack asked, glancing around at the pitifully small amount of pirates fighting the incredibly large amount of mermen. “We might be in a little trouble, if this is all you’ve got.”
“Don’t worry about it, boy,” Bluebeard said. “My boys have ’em.”
One of the biggest mermen, this one wearing a black shark’s head hood, pushed himself off the ground. “YOU!” the merman yelled, swimming toward Bluebeard. As he swam, he absently grabbed two of the pirates’ jugs and smashed them together, breaking them and releasing the scruffy-looking men’s air supply. While those two frantically swam back toward the ship’s bottle, the shark’s head merman headed straight for Bluebeard. “See if you can take me by surprise again!”
“Alrighty!” Bluebeard roared, then winked at the men holding the shark back. They immediately dropped their chains, releasing the shark straight at the enormous merman, who suddenly seemed a bit less intimidating.
The merman put both fists together, then swung them around straight into the shark’s eye. The shark thrashed in pain, then changed direction and swam away for easier prey.
“Maybe worry a bit,” Bluebeard admitted with a grimace. “That’s a big fish-man, isn’t it?”