The next morning, I hit the beach early. I didn’t bother taking anything besides a towel, a water bottle, and my keys. I knew I wouldn’t be back until much later, so there was no need for a good beach book or my phone. Instead, I ditched my stuff under the scratchy beach-grass bush and dived straight into the water. 

The early morning painted the water shades of pastel, less vibrant than in the afternoon dip I’d taken yesterday, but no less colorful nor any less wondrous. I couldn’t help but marvel at all that I could see as I returned to where I’d wandered the day before. There, Lumi, Dominique, and Kei were waiting for me.

“You came back!” Lumi cried, her amber eyes widening as she saw me. She looked back to Dominique accusingly. “You said she wouldn’t!”

Dominique shrugged as she crossed her arms over her chest.

Kei, on the other hand, grinned. “Welcome back to the Undersea!”

“The Undersea?”

“It’s what we call our world, the one that exists along the normal ocean,” he said by way of explanation. “Your land we call the World Above.”

I nodded and committed the terms to memory. “I can’t believe you guys were waiting for me.”

“You’re the most interesting thing that’s happened all year,” Kei declared. 

“And I missed you,” Lumi added. 

Dominique raised an eyebrow. “You’ve only known her for one day!”

“And I missed her.”

Dominique sighed and rolled her eyes before turning her attention back to me. “We should take you to see Madam Rhine. She’ll know what your deal is.”

Kei wrinkled his nose. “Do we have to?”
“Don’t be like that,” Lumi chided. “She’s not that bad.”

Kei looked as if he wanted to protest that, but he didn’t. 

“Who’s Madam Rhine?” I remembered them saying the name before.

“Oh, she’s my auntie!” Lumi beamed. “She’s a super-awesome sea witch, she knows a lot about magic!”

“A sea-witch?” I couldn’t help but feel uneasy, as the term called to mind the villain in mermaid cartoons. 

“Oh, yes, I’m training to be one, so’s Dominique.” Lumi gestured between the two of them. “Granny Noemi is her teacher, and Aunt Rhine is mine.”

“Madam Rhine is very knowledgeable.” The way Kei said the words sounded like they pained him. “She’d know why you’re able to become a mermaid, and if you’re a tide-dweller for sure.”

“But there’s a catch?” 

“She’s very. . . eccentric.” He avoided looking at Lumi.

“He means she’s a little grumpy.” Lumi dismissed him with the casual wave of her hand. “She’s really not that bad once you get to know her!”

“Will I get in trouble if I meet her?” I asked. 

“No, why would you?” Lumi tilted her head, confused. 

But now I was also confused. “Didn’t you say yesterday that I should get going, and that I’d be trouble if other mermaids knew about me?”

“Oh, you’re definitely trouble,” Dominique said. “But it’s better to have Madam Rhine check you out so we know what we’re dealing with.”

I really didn’t like how she was talking about me, like I was a disease or parasite or something. 

“She really will help,” Kei conceded. “And I’m sure you’d like some answers.”

I hesitated. “I would.” 

“Then it’s settled.” Dominique sprang to life, and circled me like a shark. “Follow us to Madam Rhine’s.”

With that, she then took off.

“We’d better catch up.” Kei looked to me again and offered a hand. “Ready?”

“Not like I have much of a choice.” 

He chuckled with a sort of bitterness that only reaffirmed my bad feelings about the whole thing. 

I followed Dominique, Lumi, and Kei further into the water. We passed through a shimmering iridescent force-field of some kind not far from where I found them. Before we passed through, it looked like a pass of open ocean, the deep blue—but once we passed through, it was like I’d entered another world entirely. There was sandy ground all of a sudden, and a sparse little village of underwater cottages in vivid hues.

Cottage is the wrong word. Or at least, they didn’t resemble the cottages that I knew in Wilmington. Closer to the nicer houses in the historic district with the pillars, the architecture of the homes in the Undersea were closer to ancient Greek and Egyptian temples, but smaller, and a little less grandiose, I suppose. 

“Welcome to the real Undersea!” Lumi called back. 

“There’s an enchantment of some kind that the witches cast to keep our home a secret,” Kei explained, answering the questions evident on my face before I could put them to voice. “I don’t really know all the details—but the Undersea kind of exists on top of the normal ocean. It’s all magic stuff.”

I nodded, unsure of what to say to that. Besides, there was so much to take in! Now that we’d passed the barrier, I could hear music. All kinds of it, melding together with voices and instruments in the loveliest, most haunting melodies I’d ever heard. I wasn’t really an orchestra or band or chorus kid, so I couldn’t really describe it. But for all that I loved Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter, what I heard in the Undersea was at another level. 

There were other mermaids about, mainly women and girls with colorful tails and pastel hair, who paid us no mind as we passed by. They were working over cobalt-blue flames that somehow worked underwater, with bottles that looked like jewels. Some had sparks trailing from their fingers. Others cradled pearls with a glow that simmered just under the smooth surface. 

“They’re sea-witches,” Kei explained, his voice dropped down to almost a whisper. “They tend to live just outside the major cities, so they can protect the barrier, and so the rest of us are safe from their experiments.”

“Experiments?”

“They figure out spells, alchemy, the secrets of magic.” Kei’s expression darkened. “Important work—but they’re very closed-off about it.”

I nodded, that made sense to me. I tried not to gawk, to make it too obvious that I was new. After all, I wasn’t turning heads yet. A hurricane was building in my stomach as we followed Lumi and Dominique to one of the magnificent cottages. 

What would Madam Rhine be like? And what would she do to me?

“You don’t think she’ll turn me into a flounder or something, do you?” I whispered to Kei.

“Madam Rhine?” He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head in thought. “Maybe—“

I pulled my hand out of his. “I’m out of here, then—“

“I’m sorry, it’s possible, but not likely.” He looked truly apologetic. “Bad joke. Kind of.”

“You’re not helping.”

“Are you two coming?” 

We turned our heads to see Lumi peeking her head out of the doorway to Madam Rhine’s cottage.

Kei looked to me. “It’s your call.”

I looked to the cottage, then back to the blue all around, from whence I’d came. It was tempting, to just turn tail and flee. I could pretend none of this ever happened, go back to my epic plans for a summer romance and forget all about the mermaids and the Undersea and any of the dangers that lurked below. 

But this was also the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me. I couldn’t let it slip out of my fingertips just because I was nervous.

“As long as she doesn’t turn me into a flounder,” I muttered, as I followed Kei inside. 

The inside of the sea witch’s cottage was dark, with the main sources of light coming from the large pearls presented on shelves like altars. The rest of the built-in shelves were stacked with either books that seemed undamaged by the water or more jewel-like bottles like the ones I saw outside. They lined wide corridors that twisted and turned, leading to a central area with a cobalt blue flame and a black cauldron. Behind the cauldron was the mermaid I supposed to be the fearsome Madam Rhine. 

She was younger than I would have guessed. At least, she looked younger than my mother. I’d approximate a guess in her early thirties, but something about her golden eyes seemed older than that, more ancient.

How long do mermaids live?

I remembered reading the original Little Mermaid once in a book of fairytales with exquisite, intricate watercolor illustrations. Hans Christian Andersen’s mermaids lived to be three-hundred, before they turned to seafoam. I wondered if that was true, and if it were, how that translated to human aging. 

Madam Rhine had deep violet hair in a high ponytail with perfect spiral curls that drifted and floated gracefully while mostly maintaining its shape. Her tail was the same dark blue as Lumi’s, and she wore a loose, gauzy top that was jet-black with long sleeves that billowed and swayed the way you might expect a witch’s to.

She narrowed her eyes as she regarded me. 

“You’ve brought quite the oddity home, Lumi.” Her voice was deep, with some gravitas to it. She tapped her chin with slender fingers laden with golden rings. “A mermaid who is not one by blood.” She emerged from behind her cauldron and began to circle me. “She bears the marks of the World Above, of their kind, but she is marked as one of us as well—but not in the way that halflings are.”

“My name is Mika,” I offered, mostly because it was really uncomfortable to be talked about in the third-person. 

“So it is,” she said coolly. She stopped in front of me, and was silent. “Where did you find her?”

“She just showed up around here outside the barrier yesterday.” Lumi shifted uncomfortably, her hands behind her back. “She says she fell in the water and saw a Fathom and—“

Madam Rhine put up a hand, and Lumi stopped talking immediately—so quickly that I wondered if Madam Rhine had cast a spell.

She narrowed her eyes again and stretched out her hand in front of me, the tip of her finger almost touching my collarbone. 

That’s when I felt it. 

The call of the power inside me, the pink light. Of course I’d felt it earlier, when I’d passed deep enough to transform, to breathe underwater. But it was stronger now, and surrounded me again. It shone, filling the sea witch’s cottage with light. 

At first it felt great, like the sun on my skin at the beach. But like the sun, the heat lingered too long and it grew more intense, more powerful. 

Inside, where the power harkened from began to burn, an internal fire that tore through my lungs. I struggled to breathe. It was too much, but I couldn’t speak, or I was sure I would begin to vomit the fire inside, that surely was there—

“Stop!” Kei cried. “You’re hurting her!”
At once, the light was gone, and Madam Rhine withdrew her fingers. I struggled to take in air, as the feeling of fire ebbed away with the flow of the water. I looked to her in bewilderment and hurt, unsure of what had just happened, what exactly she had done. Her expression was indecipherable.

She turned to Dominique. “Fetch Madam Noemi.”

“My granny?” Dominique blinked in surprise.

“I won’t repeat myself.” Madam Rhine turned back to me. “Go, and quickly. Your grandmother may be the only mermaid in all the seven seas who would know and recognize this power.”
Dominique bowed her head. “Yes, Madam Rhine.”

She then swam off, leaving a trail of bubbles in her wake. 

Madam Rhine turned to Lumi. “You did well for once in reporting her to me.”

“Oh, well, thank you—“

Madam Rhine raised her hand again. Lumi’s lips continued moving for a moment after, before she realized that no sound was coming out. 

“As for you—“ Madam Rhine turned to Kei. “Don’t you have anything better to do with that menagerie of yours?”
Kei, to his credit, didn’t look scared of Madam Rhine. “I’d rather stay with Mika, if you don’t mind.”

Her golden gaze intensified.“I do mind, and you should mind your elders, Kei Islandflight.” 

He looked to me. “She’s human and she’s scared—“

“And she’s the least of your problems if you do not leave my house now.” Madam Rhine crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve tolerated your infatuation with my apprentice long enough. Leave now, or I’ll be explaining why to your parents why I am returning you in a jar.”

Kei blanched, but held firm. 

My heart beat fast—I didn’t want anyone being turned into a frog or something for my sake!

“It’s okay,” I lied. “You can go, I’ll be alright.”

He locked eyes with me, silently calling my bluff. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded. “I don’t want you getting in trouble.”

“Fine.” He glared at Madam Rhine. “I’ll leave.”

Which left me alone with her and Lumi. 

A long, tense silence ensued, only to be broken when Dominique finally returned with her grandmother. Madam Noemi, as I’d heard her called by Madam Rhine, was a gracefully elderly woman with a braid of full silver hair as pale as moonlight, with shrewd blue eyes. She swam more slowly than Dominique, but her mere aura commanded the room.

Madam Rhine bowed her head to Madam Noemi when she answered. “I apologize for summoning you here like this, but you were the only one I could turn to.”

“No need to apologize, my child.” Madam Noemi’s voice was clear and strong, and she looked to me. A mere flick of her eyes up and down over me, and I felt as if something had pierced through to my very core, or like I was made of glass and she could see something inside of me obscured to all others, including myself.

“I can see that my apprentice was not exaggerating your findings.” Madam Noemi smiled at me, a very grandmotherly one that made me forget that I was dealing with a witch. “You are a very rare jewel indeed, my dear. What is your name?”

“Mika. Mika Audrey.”

She nodded. “Mika Audrey, I do believe I must ask for you to accompany me to the palace, to meet the Queen of the Undersea herself.”

I wondered how much time had passed underwater. “When do you want to do it? I don’t want to be gone too long. My parents don’t know about what I am.”

“Is that so?” Madam Noemi’s eyes twinkled. “I suspect that there may be more to all of this than meets the eye, Mika Audrey.”

She turned to Madam Rhine. “It will take some time for me to organize an audience with Queen Amphrite anyhow. Even one as renown as I cannot have royalty at her beck and call.”

Madam Rhine looked displeased with this outcome, but said nothing. 

Madam Noemi looked back to me. “I’ll send my dear granddaughter to fetch you when I am ready.”

Dominique also looked displeased, and like Madam Rhine, also said nothing.

Just who was this old lady, that she was able to command the likes of anybody sans royalty?

“Keep an eye out and an ear to the water, my dear,” Madam Noemi continued. “I should hope to have answers for you rather soon.”

“I will, Madam Noemi.”

Madam Noemi laughed and patted my cheek. “It’s Granny Noemi to you.”

She looked over her shoulder to Dominique. “In the meantime, escort her back to the surface.”

Dominique looked positively murderous, her hands clenched into fists at her side. “Yes, Granny Noemi.”