The Siren Queen

Chapter Five

A perfect emotional storm of shock, horror, and grief was brewing in Nerissa's heart. She was sluggishly making her way down...down...down to her home at the bottom of the sea. The muscles in her mermaid tail were starting to ache.

"Need...ride...Rissie...?". Words popped into the Crown Princess's mind.

"Stormer!" Nerissa exclaimed. Lord Zale's giant seahorse was hovering roughly halfway between the surface and the kingdom of Pacifica.

"Strange lady...scared me...can sense...took Zale..."

"How come I can understand your telepathic messages now? I couldn't before..."

"Zale gone...Zale likes you...I like you...until find Zale...Zale north"

Nerissa sat down on the sea-stallion's back, and they began gliding downward to Pacifica. "Are you trying to tell me that until Zale is found, I'm somehow bonded to you in his place...?"

"Sorta...". Nerissa wondered if it was because her bond with Stormer was weaker than the bond between Lord Zale and his seahorse that she could only receive vaguely worded phrases in her brain, as opposed to complete sentences.

"I see...north, you said? Zale is somewhere north...?"

"Yes...Far North..."

"As in the Far North, at the top of the world, covered with ice, thousands of nautical miles away from here...?". Very few merfolk lived up there.

"Yes...I sense Zale...Far North...". A giant seahorse and their bonded rider could always magically sense where each other was. "He loves you...still love you"

Nerissa's heart skipped a beat. She had admitted to herself fairly recently that her feelings for Lord Zale went beyond mere friendship.

"I love him too...what about him and the Siren...?". She rationally knew that she shouldn't take Zale succumbing to the Siren's enchantment personally, but a small part of her could not help but feel slightly betrayed by his atypically cold demeanor prior to his disappearance.

"No...he not love her...still love you...always love you..."

A single bittersweet teardrop formed in the corner of Nerissa's eye, making the surrounding seawater even saltier.

Once she arrived at the palace, Nerissa attempted to inform her parents about Zale's abduction of sorts, but they both just looked at her strangely. "Lord Zale...? Hmm, the name sounds vaguely familiar..." said King Poseidon, scratching his head.

"Is that a friend of yours, sweetie?" Queen Melinda asked.

"My...my closest friend since childhood..." responded Nerissa. Her aquamarine eyes widening in disbelief, she pointed to the pretty bracelet on her wrist. "He just gave me this for my sixteenth birthday. He made it himself...".

The King and Queen of Pacifica continued to stare blankly at their only daughter.

"I dedicated my song at my Ascension ceremony to him..."

"No, you didn't..." insisted Poseidon. "You dedicated it to MerLisa...I was there, after all...!".

"Are you feeling okay, Rissie...?" Melinda questioned, looking genuinely concerned.

"Yes...". The Princess of Pacifica had a suspicion that nothing she could say would make them remember Zale. Her father had told her many times that magic was an extremely unpredictable and dangerous thing, and the enchantment of a Siren's song was universally acknowledged to be one of the most powerful forms of magic in the seven seas. Apparently, Nerissa's parents were bewitched to forget that Lord Zale ever existed.

Would Zale's own family remember him..., pondered Nerissa.

Stormer had been waiting for her outside the pearly gates of the royal palace. "No one...remember Zale...except me...and you...until he...he come back..."

Nerissa and Stormer went to Catalina Hall, and sure enough, Lord Zale's family did not remember him either. "Zale is a nice name", Lady Marisol Delmar, Zale's mother, sighed wistfully. "If I had a merboy, I would've named him Zale..."

"What about...his bedchamber...? Are his belongings still there...? Do you recognize this giant seahorse, at least...?". Nerissa gestured toward Stormer, who was floating beside her.

Lady Marisol's dark eyes looked as glassy as her son's had been. "Whatever under the sea are you talking about, Your Highness...?"

Nerissa returned home with Stormer. "We must...go to Far North...only we...we can save Zale...", the black seahorse declared.

The Crown Princess of Pacifica snuck into the palace's kitchen, grabbed some SeaPro protein bars, and threw them into a bag woven out of sailcloth. Then she scribbled a note on seaweed parchment, and left it on her bed.

The note said "Dearest Family and MerLisa, by the time you find this, I'll be on my way to the Far North. I know this journey seems sudden and dangerous. I never considered myself a particularly brave mermaid, but I can't shake the feeling that I must go. There are answers I need to find, truths hidden beneath the cold ice. Please don't worry too much about me. I shall carry your love with me in my heart, like a beacon in the darkest depths, and I promise I'll be back as soon as mermaidly possible...Nerissa"