A Mer-Tale

By Jan Goldie

Land-trapped, teenage mermaid Thala Tellurian has the power to transform from Mer to human form. But she lives a sheltered life, smothered by the rules and protection of her self-obsessed Uncle. Isolated, bored and forbidden to delve into her family’s bloody past, Thala feels like a prisoner and longs for change.
So, when visitors from a rival pod reveal a hidden agenda and plan a risky journey, Thala dives straight in. But it’s not until she’s face to face with her family’s lifelong enemy that she realises she’s in deep trouble and terrifyingly unfamiliar waters.
A Mer-Tale is a story about discovering your strengths, facing your fears and exposing long-buried secrets to the light of day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jan Goldie
• Release date: Nov 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9780473297022

Jan Goldie

Hi!I’m a New Zealand based author working on a YA fantasy series. First book The Dangers of Being Brave & True is available now. Book 2 of the Broken Spell series is out in early 2024.I've been writing from the get go with experience in web content, UX, marketing and journalism as well as a heap of creative projects. Plus, I'm a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors, Tauranga Writers, Bookrapt and SpecFicNZ.You can find more details at jmgoldie.comInstagram: @authorjmgoldieTikTok: @jmgoldie

Book preview

One thousand years ago. Earth.

The ocean is paused for the day ahead. A pale pink and gold sky brightens, widens and breathes light across the shivering water, infusing it with a life of its own. A pod of orcas breaks the watery mirror into a spectrum of colour and transforms it with foam and splash. Before long, they are out of sight.

Somewhere above, a low growl crescendos to a roar, like an approaching train. Black dots grow in size until they block out the light. Their descent causes a subtle vibration across the sea, as if the waters of Earth are trembling in fright. Soon the thick, bitter stench of fuel fills the air and the shapes draw closer, now oblong blobs of molten metal hurtling downwards. They speed faster and faster until, just before impact, thousands of parachutes stay their headlong rush, leaving them hovering fifty metres above the ocean’s crown. The noise lowers to a hum.

They hover, like hot air balloons above a meadow. More than five hundred sleek, black hulls gleam in the light of the morning sun, set out in orderly rows, as if they are new cars on the lot.

At exactly one hour and one minute after their arrival, a thin, black hose slithers from the side of each vessel and disappears into the water below. Thirty-one minutes later, the hoses withdraw, sucked back up into their invisible interiors, like push button tape measures.

As one, the parachutes snap away from their bonds and the ships tilt their noses toward the depths and dive, their svelte submarine grace propelling them below the surface in seconds.

The silky parachutes float on the surface, like puddles of milk. Then they, too, begin to sink, until nothing is left but the glassy surface of the open sea.

I tiptoe along the hallway, keeping to the centre of the carpet runner. My fingers trace brocade wallpaper and familiar picture frames, but my eyes fix on the unpredictable floorboards to either side of the soft runner. A squeaky one to my left… I step over it. That creaky couplet to my right… I work my way around them. I’m exposed here, like an antelope chancing an open savannah. The lush carpet with its soft pink and brown swirls cushions my footsteps, and with each step I come closer to learning the truth.

I’m almost at the kitchen. Only the storeroom after that and I’ll be there. But the kitchen will be my biggest challenge. If Anna hasn’t stepped outside then I’m in trouble.

I’ll be back in a minute, Murdoch.

It’s Anna. I freeze. Her solid, flat-heeled footsteps echo across the kitchen’s wooden floor as she strides in from the courtyard to dump a pile of freshly cut herbs on the counter. The kitchen fills with the earthy scent of basil. I can hear Jaes and Murdoch chatting out in the courtyard. They must be deciding on our daily boot camp. I’m surprised Murdoch hasn’t tracked me down to join in.

Anna runs her hands under the tap and plods back outside. Once you’ve finished, you better go and get your cousin, Jaes. She needs a workout too.

What did she mean by that? I’m as strong as a swordfish and twice as fast. Anna chats with her brother for a while, and then I hear the sound of the peg basket drawn along the wire of the washing line. She’s back on schedule.

Anna likes things to run on time. Washing out of the machine by 10am and on the line to dry in the incessant blasts of coastal wind that give my bed sheets a fine coating of salt.

I edge forward, passing the gaping hole that is the kitchen’s enormous entry, and quicken my steps as I pass the storeroom. I’m almost there.

Uncle’s study is on the right and, as I approach the ornate door, I notice it is slightly ajar. I can hear Uncle pacing inside. I sneak to the opening, careful not to lean on the door. Carefully, I peek through the gap.

The phone blares. I jump, almost lose my balance and just manage to fold myself against the wall as Uncle strides past the gap to grab the home line.

Hello?

He listens. I catch my breath.

No, I don’t think that will be necessary, but thank you. His voice is clipped and quiet.

With the phone in the left hand corner of the room, this might be my only chance to catch a direct look at Uncle’s desk. He’ll have his back to me. I steel myself, plant my feet and swivel ‘til I’m directly in front of the door. Then, pushing it with one finger, enough to mimic the action of a small breeze, I take a peek.

Uncle faces the window, his broad back a wall of tension. He’s dressed entirely in black. To the right, I can see his huge desk. There it is. A message in a bottle.

I can’t believe Jaes was right. An actual message in a bottle. Not a letter. That would be far too practical. Not an email, by the winds, that would be too modern. No. Here, at Conclave Manor, it seems we’ve taken to communicating by something even slower than snail mail—sea snail mail?

The bottle stands to attention on Uncle’s carved coral desk, like a lone soldier on guard. I can make out a scroll, secured with a wax seal the colour of dried blood, trapped within its blurry, glass exterior. The bottle is green, opaque and solid. How will Uncle get the message out? I shake my head. What are we, pirates? For reef’s sake, couldn’t they use a phone? Perhaps it came from a far-off pod asking for help. The Sprats aren’t operating in our waters now. Perhaps they’ve moved to other areas and are terrorising other people like us? But, surely, news like that could be communicated using human technology. It isn’t as if we don’t have access to it.

Right. Well, thanks for letting me know. Uncle’s voice startles me, and I realise I’ll be in full view when he turns around. I backtrack along the hallway, slip into the reading room and throw myself down into my favourite wicker chair, hands drawing comfort from its smooth mahogany arms and deep, squashy cushions. That was close. If he’d seen me lurking outside the door I would have got an earful.

I breathe out my nerves and roll my shoulders. The reading room smells like old books and dusty newspapers. Magazines crowd tables in high piles. I reach for the nearest, National Geographic. Turning to the bookmarked story, I stifle a giggle. ‘Mermaid—the Myth.’ Sometimes, I feel like emailing them a video of me to say, ‘Hey, science guys, look, a tail!’ But I know I never would. It’s an unspoken rule that we no longer commune with humans. No good has ever come of it.

The low hum of an appliance sounds from the kitchen. Anna is whisking something up for lunch. The scent of cinnamon wafts down the hall.

A loud crash brings me upright. I leap to my feet and race for the door, then stop in realisation.

So, that’s how you get a message out of a bottle.

We Mer are real. There’s nothing mythological about us. We’ve inhabited Earth’s seas for millions of years. But about one thousand years ago, all that changed. The Spratonites arrived and suddenly we were kicked out of our own home. Now we slum it in the human world.

The last time Tellurians and Spratonites battled, I was ten years old. The same age Jaes is now. Uncle came back from that fight a changed man. His patrol made it to the Spratonite stronghold deep beneath the tropical waters of the Pacific Ocean. He returned wounded, and to this day he won’t tell us what happened or what he saw.

What I do know about that terrible day is that we lost more than two hundred souls in less than two hours and, although the Sprats had been regularly plaguing our family out of their waters for hundreds of years, from that day on they’ve left us alone.

We lost more than lives that afternoon. We lost hope. We could no longer safely live at sea for any length of time. Soon after, we moved here, to Conclave Manor.

Up until then Jaes and I had lived in a community, a place full of family and friends. No matter what happened, there was always someone to talk to or give you a hug. Even though I’d lost my mum and dad years before, I felt loved there and listened to. People indulged my constant need to chat and question, and Jaes, cute and irresistible at five years old, was spoiled rotten. But when three quarters of those people disappeared in a single afternoon and most of the rest scattered in fear, Jaes and I were left with Uncle.

Even before the battle, Uncle had never been someone I warmed to. My late father’s brother, he used to be broad and stocky like my dad, but a heavy brow lined with bushy eyebrows and a tendency to grunt made him look and sound like a cave man. Let’s say, if I saw him coming, I swam the other way.

After the battle, he scared me. His recuperation took months and soon after, he contracted Blight. A sickness affecting our men more than our women, Blight has a debilitative effect on the lungs and gills.