Skin of Silver, Eyes of Bright

By Maria Rachel Hooley

Once, there was a young woman who fell so deeply in love with someone she could not have that she lost all hope, and in that despairing, she threw herself into the sea, wishing it would claim her. The sea is not to be toyed with or wished upon, but that is another story. What this young woman did not know, what she did not remember is that she already belonged to the sea. She was a mermaid princess who had long ago been transformed into a human. Yet the sea remembered her as her mother took her into the depths to unbreak a heart not meant to love a mortal. But love is not fickle. It is everlasting, and even an older promise to a merman who watched her from grow up from afar and loved her beyond measure could not change fate’s decree.

I should know. I was that long lost mer princess, and this is the story of my return to the mermaid realm.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maria Rachel Hooley
• Release date: Sep 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463350942

Maria Rachel Hooley

Maria Rachel Hooley is the author of over forty novels, including When Angels Cry and October Breezes. Her first chapbook of poetry was published by Rose Rock Press in 1999. She is an English teacher who lives in Oklahoma with her three children and husband. She loves reading, and if she could live in a novel, it would be Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn.

Book preview

Chapter 1

All my life I had lived under the mystery of my birth. Where had I come from? To whom did I belong? And why had it been King Orsino who'd found me—King Orsino, father to the man I’d loved more than life for as long as I could remember? I’d lived with these questions so long I’d begun to believe I’d never find the answers.

Yet my world of beaches, sunlight, and Orlando had been replaced by cold water and darkness, a darkness so pressing it bruised my skin.

When people say they desire the truth, what they really mean is they want a palatable variation, not anything to make them question all they think they know. If I had once been a mermaid, my body was now that of a human. It made no sense, and in that confusion, I savagely fought the woman who now held me captive. Unfortunately, what I had wasn’t much against her will. I knew Orlando would be frantic as he searched for me. He still suffered from his wounds, and once I had been declared dead, it would destroy him. Then again, I might as well be dead. Orlando was my life.

Let me go! I mentally yelled, jerking savagely, but she paid me no mind. Above, the ribbon of moonlight faded, and I felt almost paralyzed. Finally, I willed myself to stop fighting.

Why are you doing this? I asked.

It’s the best thing. Her firm voice brooked no argument.

I wanted to ask, Best for whom? but I settled on Am I your prisoner?

She let out a sigh of bubbles, the last of the air leaving her lungs. Hardly. Her answer sounded almost haughty like she needn’t deign to speak it.

Then why am I being dragged like this against my will? The panic surged again as I realized how unmoved she remained. The words filled my head, and I wondered if she understood my emotions as well as my words. She must have understood something as her grip cinched down even harder.

Because you are my daughter, and it is high time you returned to your world before the humans destroy you. She might as well have spat the word ‘humans.’

I don't want to go!

Your mind has been too corrupted with human things to think properly. Your will is not to be trusted, nor are the liars you left.

Anger burned in her tone, not that I understood why. I fought her as hard as I could, but she paid no more mind to me than the toddler I’d been when I’d first been cast onto Orsino’s beach all those years ago.

You’re wrong! I shrieked. Whatever you believe, I’m no mermaid!

Oh, really? That at least stopped our downward progress. I didn’t know how much deeper she planned to take us, but I feared the future and its chilling depths. Still, what she said next left me colder and more afraid still. Look at your legs—or what’s left of them.

I didn’t want to, but it’s impossible not to give in sometimes, even when you know it’s the wrong thing to do—the very thing that will change everything. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you just can’t change things back. That’s the history that becomes us—or the history we become.

My gaze slowly drifted downward. At first, I couldn’t see anything in the dark water but as my eyes adjusted, I saw a glimmer in the water and felt my leg muscles cramping, the flesh pulling taut, stinging worse with each passing second. When it felt so unthinkable I didn’t believe I could take it, I lifted my dress and saw flesh peeling from my thighs like jellyfish tentacles, reaching for the other leg. When they found it, they wrapped around it possessively, stinging all the more.

I didn’t understand any of this. It was one thing not to drown as I should have, and long before now, but this—this was something altogether different and far more terrifying.

I screamed, horrified not only by the riot of pain but also the way my body was changing into a creature that had no place in a sane world. I was fast becoming something Orlando could never love, even were I to see him again.

The merwoman spat a disgusted sigh and started swimming again, hauling me like a bag of refuse. The greater the pain, the more difficulty I had seeing in front of me, until I finally saw nothing but blackness and couldn’t move. Even the feel of water rushing over what was left of my legs was excruciating. Still, we kept going. Once or twice, I must have passed out and regained consciousness during the endless descent. I would never be able to return. A cold settled over me, causing my teeth to chatter uncontrollably. If I had thought the human world had harsh winters, the icy thrall which now claimed me chilled me far worse.

Stop fighting the change. At this depth, it comes no matter what you do, my mother ordered, her tone just as icy as the pain that gripped me. I could tell my suffering meant nothing to her, and that knowledge only broadened the chasm between us.

In that blatant dismissal, I longed for my very human father. Even were he unable to remedy the pain, he wouldn’t have ignored it, making me feel small and inconsequential as this woman did, a woman who did not know me.

I gritted my teeth. It didn’t make sense, any of it. Why would she drag me from the humans if she didn’t want me?

I heard a whistling sound—shrill and inhuman—and it added to my confusion until I realized my mother made the sound. I didn’t know why, but I wished she would stop. Its harshness only added to my pain, and when I thought it could not get worse, a reciprocating whistle answered just as loudly and demanding.

I reached to touch my head, hoping to ease the ache. Nausea assaulted me, and I found myself vomiting what little I’d managed to keep down since hearing of Orlando’s wedding. Oh, yes, I had intended to miss the ceremony, but not like this. Now I was going to miss the rest of the life I had thought I would have, too.

All at once I felt the water swirling and churning around me, rather like the motion of waves when the prow of a boat chops through them. Something was coming. From the depths, I saw a merman rising toward us. Although the water was dark, his skin glowed silver so brightly I could’ve seen him with my eyes closed.

More shrill whistles broke my fragile thoughts. I groaned and tried to drive them out. Both merpeople now gawked at me.

The sound? my mother asked. Does it hurt? Here again, there was no warmth in her tone, nothing that would have told me she was my mother. There was no concern, just a sort of detached curiosity like I was some kind of experiment.

Maybe that’s all I was to her. Who could tell? I still didn’t know what she wanted me for and how her desires should be so much stronger than mine to be with Orlando.

He is not the one for you, her voice broke into my head. He was never meant to be the one for you, and you should have realized that by now.

Her words were barbarically cruel. Were my mind not spinning so furiously, I would have been able to focus and try to escape, but I was beyond that.

Take her to be healed, Kalellandri she ordered the merman.

I wanted to fight as he slipped his arms around me, but I had nothing left to fight with. Every bit of energy had been expended trying to stave off this incredible pain, and where had that gotten me but much deeper in the heart of it. He turned me so he could cradle me against his chest.

Still I tried to fight. A feeble push was all I could manage, and it was nothing compared to his raw strength as he crushed me to him, one arm encircling me as my mother drifted away. I tried to push the merman back again, but that only made him frown. I could tell that through half open eyelids as I glanced up at his pale, silvery face, so hauntingly beautiful in the dark. He had long, blond hair instead of red like mine, and it floated around his head. His eyes said he was older than I’d ever know, and he was definitely more beautiful than anyone my eyes had ever seen. Even so, he, too, was cold.

I would not struggle, Haleallanah. It will only bring more pain, at least until your tail grows back properly. His eyes were dead, and I felt as though I sank in bright blue water no mortal man had ever swum in. I was cradled in the center of magic, and all I wanted to do was let go of everything.

As if that would solve anything.

The strong hands holding me would not let go—my mother’s orders, no doubt. Was she my mother? Who was I? Alannah? Haleallanah? I didn’t know. I was lost as I had ever been.

I don’t know how long I drifted in the dark where pain ceased to exist. I didn’t have to think about the past or wonder about the future. Nothing existed anymore. Nevertheless, that bliss was short-lived and abruptly ended as agony shot through my forehead, forcing me to open my eyes. Pain had anchored itself in me, and now I had to find some way to hold onto consciousness, but the harder I tried to seize, it the farther I felt myself falling into the nothingness until I drifted into the dark.

The world was so quiet when I woke. I had been dreaming of Orlando, of lying in his arms as I had the last night as we camped. For the length of that dream, I was unbelievably happy before I had been whisked into this darkness, Orlando was betrothed to another.

When I opened my eyes, I found the world swirling in various shades as the water took on a life of its own, pressuring different areas of my body and my legs in particular—or what had once been my legs, legs that were now a long flash of silver that didn’t seem like it should exist in this world or any other. It was magical, and I felt the most non-magical being ever created—too plain to be a princess and too human to be a mermaid.

It would have been nice if someone had let me in on this little joke of who I was supposed to be before I misled myself. I’d never believed in old wives’ tales, and now I found myself becoming one.

Trying to orient myself in a place I knew nothing about, I glanced around, my head pounding. Maybe if I pretended the pain didn’t exist it would just leave.

Although I expected to find darkness, a soft glow illuminated the area around me, the gentle light rising from the plants along the ocean’s floor. Whether they had simply chosen to grow in the circular pattern surrounding me or whether someone had planted them that way, I knew not.

Ah, she stirs. At last.

A male voice. I found him floating near a sort of wall. Why there was a wall or any type of structure didn’t make sense because the merfolk didn’t need such things. And I quickly realized the walls were so different--rounded.

In my peripheral vision, I saw the merman—the same one who’d presumably carried me here. Try as I might to closely examine his features, I couldn’t, now with such a vicious pain thrumming in my head.

When I finally faced him from my horizontal position, the first thing I saw was his long hair—a deep gold set against his pale skin. He seemed all the more foreboding, the tip of his tail swishing slowly to and fro while he were waiting on me.

Still here, I whispered, trying to sit up—not that it did any good. There appeared to be a force in the water that sensed my movements before I made them and wrapped around me.

The more I felt restrained, the harder I fought against it.

You really should take it easy. You’re not as well as you should be, hardly enough to be fighting the healer, the merman said.

The healer? I thought. I saw no healer, and he clearly was not referring to himself. Go away— I mentally shouted, as if that would work. I was desperate enough to try anything. While I was an adopted human princess, clearly, I held no sway whatsoever here. If the merman was any indication, the only thing I would receive would be scorn and distain.

You know I cannot leave, he replied calmly. The queen requires that I watch over you, especially until you are stronger. His placid expression never shifted. That, coupled with the pain, infuriated me.

Then let me go home! Even in my thoughts, my voice sounded way too desperate—frantic.

Don’t you realize you are home? This should have been your home all along. Another calm response as his bright blue eyes regarded me so completely, I felt transparent. He saw everything I was--not that I cared. He held no importance in my human world, which was where my heart lived.

Having a tail doesn’t transform all of me! It never will! I snapped, hoping to ruffle his calm a bit. I was raised by humans, and I think of myself as human even with a tail. Besides, I’ve heard enough legends to know what kind of trouble your kind brings.

He cocked his head to one side, and only the twitch of his lips revealed that I had struck a nerve.

"The trouble that we create? he mused. The queen was right to bring you home. You have lost your way if you think having legs is all you need to be human. You are very lost, indeed."

Distracted by the argument, I had forgotten about the water doing its strange thing on my skin—or perhaps I hadn’t wanted to remember it—but now, as it surged over my skin in a heated rush, it reminded me of human hands. Perhaps the merman had been referring to the water when he’d spoken of a healer? Such wasn’t an idea I had an easy time wrapping my head around, but it was a possibility no less.

As if in response, the water massaged my former legs—and the area was so tender right then I screamed. I didn’t think I could take it. If Orlando or Orsino had been with me, either would have held me and tried to distract me. Probably any human would have done that, but I was not among humans. The merman stared blankly at me.

Perhaps you should focus less on the world you left behind and more on the world you have found yourself in.

Although I desperately wanted to lash out at him, I couldn’t focus my thoughts enough to answer. The mounting pain scattered any words until all I knew were the sounds and sensations which claimed me. Besides, he clearly had a disdain for human life, so what could I say that would matter? He had already made up his mind, so I bit my lip and tried the best I could to endure. It wasn’t long until I started screaming again, which prompted the aquatic giant to swim closer, albeit reluctantly, and look at my face.

The process is slow with you, Haleallanah. You fight too much. Let the water inside you, and it will be over.

The water was what was changing me? Anger surged through me, and I purposely stopped the normal aspirations of my body. It was a matter of reflex right now, not necessary because I didn’t have to breathe anymore.

The merman waited a few seconds, patiently watching me, and when he realized what I was doing, his eyes widened.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. You think you can stop what is to come because you choose to? No. If the change doesn’t take you, you will die at these depths. Perhaps you wish that, but I won’t allow it.

His words scrambled themselves in my head, and I offered no answer. Frustrated, he took a gasp of water and rushed toward me, closing in the distance between us, knowing I could never fight him off. I had no strength left.

Our lips met clumsily, his forcing mine apart. For a moment, I was shocked, so I didn’t do anything. He took those precious seconds to propel the water from his mouth to mine.

A burst of unbelievable pain rampaged through me, and I would have screamed again had his mouth not covered mine. As it was, my body could handle no more, and I blissfully lost myself to the darkness once again.

Chapter 2

"D on’t you remember how I taught you to use this?" Orlando asked as he stood before me on the beach, the waves gently rolling in and out as the bright sunlight glinted off the sword he held.

Of course I do, I retorted, raising my sword to meet his. I’ll prove it.

He laughed openly. Sure you will. You’re holding it wrong.

Setting his own sword in the sand, he slowly stepped around until he stood behind me. The wall of his chest pressed against my back when he draped his arms around me so he could adjust my grip. My heart leapt, and my fingers trembled as he tried to move them, every bit as stunted by his touch as the rest of me. He was all I longed for, and I didn’t think he would ever understand how much I loved him.

I leaned against him and kissed his cheek.

What was that for? he asked, smirking. The sun lit up his profile and shimmered through his hair, lightening the dark strands to a deep mahogany.

Because I love you. My voice was raw. I lingered there, not the sword, my grip, or proving anything. There was only Orlando. In the moment, I waited for his response. While I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt he loved me, I wanted—no, I needed—to hear it from him.

When the words didn’t come, I felt crushed. Don’t you love me? I asked softly, terrified something had changed.

He shrugged. I would, but the truth is you are dead. You drowned, and I must move on. You never should have gone running into the waves. I would have fixed things, but you never gave me the chance. It’s your fault. His grin shifted to a straight grimace and his gaze averted from me.

He should have been devastated had he truly felt as I did, but his words didn’t change his demeanor, and only when I pulled away did I see Maelin, in all her bridal glory, had approached. She wore a long dress that I recognize. Orlando’s mother’s. Long, white sleeves of lace and a high neck. The train dragged behind her forever.

No! I yelled as the horror sank in. Orlando would forget me. He would close the chapter we had written together and begin a new one. Maelin would be his future. He turned toward her, his arms open wide to receive her. They embraced, his mouth covering hers.

Haleallanah!

The voice did not come from Orlando. He would never have called me by that name.

Blinking, I found myself still in the ocean’s depths. The merman floated there, hulking close by, his arms folded across his chest.

You started screaming, he said, calmly, seemingly unshakeable.

I was dreaming. As I looked up at him, I saw some small gems floating near my face. Puzzled, I scooped one into my palm. What is this?

He leaned over and pried my fingers back. When his fingers touched mine, the warmth of his skin surprised me.

I do not know. He frowned and peered closer. I’ve never seen anything like them before. I opened my fingers all the way and watched the jewels slip from my hand to float a short distance away before sinking to the sandy bottom.

A strange frown crept over the merman’s face—the first real evidence of any emotions beyond annoyance and frustration, but I didn’t understand why these strange gems would have such an effect on him.

I take it I have to have someone guarding me.

Correct. The calm suddenly rebounded, almost as if the emotions which had only just crossed his face had never been there.

So why is it always you, then? Why not someone else?

It’s what I have been told to do. A wry smile touched his lips. You’d prefer someone else?

"No one asked me. If anyone cared, I wouldn’t be