The Siren Queen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen:

"Turn back, little mermaid...! Go home, little princess...! Turn back, little mermaid...! Go home, little princess...!" the eerie yet undeniably beautiful voice of the Siren Queen endlessly repeated as Nerissa swam into a long corridor that was filled with about five feet of chilly water, even though she was currently nowhere in sight. Because the Crown Princess of Pacifica had thought to stick kelp up her ears, she was mostly unaffected by the Siren's song.

Powdery white snowflakes fell from the high ceiling, landing on Nerissa's nose and eyelashes. She was pretty sure that it wasn't usually possible to snow indoors.

All over the ice walls, there were moving images. Nerissa might have compared them to movies projected on a theatre screen, if such a thing had existed in her world. Being surrounded by them on all sides made her feel increasingly dizzy.

The scenes on the glassy walls were not in living color, but they were nonetheless as clear as crystal. After staring curiously at the moving pictures for a few seconds, Nerissa discovered that they were definitely not random, meaningless images.

She saw that the streaming image in front of her depicted a scene of two very young merchildren happily playing together. It reminded Crown Princess Nerissa of herself and Lord Zale, when they were little. In spite of her plugged ears, she soon realized that if she concentrated, she was able to vaguely hear dialogue coming from the moving pictures. The little mermaid was apparently named Tempest, and the young merboy's name was Poseidon...

"Poseidon..." Nerissa echoed to herself. Was the little boy in the moving image her father, King Poseidon, as a child? Their facial features did indeed look similar.

The moving picture to the right of that one showed Tempest, when she was a little older, spending time with her family. She had a sister called Marisol, which was also Zale's mother's name. That could just be a coincidence, couldn't it...? Nerissa recalled how Greta stubbornly believed her to be her late daughter who had somehow returned from the dead just because they shared the same name and happened to have similar coloring, and didn't wish to jump to far-fetched conclusions like the strange, elderly mermaid had done.

The dialogue in the next moving image sounded much louder and clearer than the previous ones, for some reason. It depicted Tempest and Poseidon as teenagers. Tempest said "I always wish we had the same birthday, Poseidon...so we could Ascend together".

Nerissa couldn't resist letting out a gasp. She had said the exact same thing to Zale many times!

Poseidon then reassured Tempest that she could tag along on his Ascension. Just like me and Zale, thought Nerissa.

The subsequent moving picture showed Tempest upset that she was forced to miss Poseidon's Ascension because she and the rest of her family had to attend her great-great-grandparents' 100th wedding anniversary party down in MexiSea, a merfolk kingdom which was located a thousand nautical miles south of Pacifica. Both sides of Lord Zale's family had originally been from MexiSea, but they immigrated north to Pacifica a few generations ago. Nerissa cracked a subtle smile as she remembered how much her and Zale both enjoyed working on their Family Reef projects for school.

Nerissa's jaw dropped, causing some of the snow that continued to fall from the ceiling to settle into her mouth, when she saw the following moving image. Unlike all the other ones so far, Tempest wasn't in it at all. Instead, it depicted Poseidon's Ascension, where he spontaneously rescued a human girl around his age from drowning. The Crown Princess of Pacifica's growing suspicions were confirmed when the girl clearly said "Wait, please don't go...you saved me. At least tell me your name...I'm Melinda...". She had just witnessed her parents' first meeting. The Poseidon in the moving pictures was in fact her father in his youth, although it puzzled Nerissa that she couldn't recall him ever mentioning a childhood friend named Tempest.