“Thank you.”  Carefully, I wrapped my hands around Rykin’s fin, the way that the king had showed us. “I’ll see you again,” I said firmly, and surprised myself by really meaning that too. If I survived, I would come back to see him. There was no way I would stay, but if I managed to warn my people and prevent more tragedy, I would owe it mostly to King Aegir. A simple visit wasn’t too much to ask.

            Before I could say anything else, I felt the dolphin lurch forward under my hands. At first it was difficult to hold on, and I slid around a bit, feeling the water rush past my face, feeling my hands slip on the rubbery fin. Hurriedly, I adjusted my grip to get a firmer hold. From beside me I heard a muffled grunt, and glanced over to see Eli clinging to his dolphin for dear life. It was a strange way to travel, clinging to the dolphins, legs trailing out behind us in the water, we looked ridiculous. But it was fast.

            Both dolphins were swimming up, and when I worked up the nerve to glance behind me, I saw the shipwreck castle was already growing smaller and smaller, the lights a dull gleam around it. After a few minutes the entire town faded away into the darkness of the bottom, swallowed up by the depths.

            Or rather, we were swimming for the surface.

            My heart felt lighter at the thought. We would be back on land soon. I longed to feel solid ground under my feet, to walk instead of being towed anywhere. To feel fresh air on my skin. Perhaps I had control over water, perhaps the king was even right in that it called to me, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be totally immersed in it all the time. Jotun weren’t supposed to live that way, and certainly humans weren’t made for it either.

            Speaking of humans…

            Eli was staring straight up, his eyes fixed on the water far above us. He was staring at the surface and he hadn’t once looked back at the shipwreck town as it had shrank away nothing. Something told me that he was even more eager to get out than I was. Probably he’d been concerned about being a mermaid snack this entire time. My stomach twisted with a pang of guilt. I’d mostly ignored him since we arrived here. Of course, it was hard to talk to him when he had that mask on, but still, I’d been concentrating so hard on getting the king to help us that I hadn’t really checked to make sure he was okay.

            It was because I was staring at Eli that I saw it, a flicker of shadow in the depths below him, movement. Something was rising up out of the depths.

            I tightened my grip on Rykin’s fin. It could be that King Aegir had forgotten something, and he was sending someone up after us, but somehow I didn’t think that was the case.

            The shadows turned into figures, two figures, swimming fast up out of the deep water, one just behind the other. Voices reached my ears, well…my mind really. Mermaids.

            “Get back here, fool! Do you know what the king will do if he find you—”

            “Are you my keeper, sister? Swim back down and leave me be.”

            I recognized the first voice. Cassa, the copper-haired mermaid who had towed me down when we’d first arrived. And obviously she was with her sister.

            There was a small, cold knot forming in my chest. This wasn’t good, every instinct was screaming at me to run or fight. They were coming to do something…or at least, Cassa’s sister was. What was her name? Tilla, her sister had said.

            “Eli,” I hissed, hoping my voice was loud enough. “I think we have company.”

            He tore his gaze away from the surface of the water long enough to stare down at the water below him, and when Eli caught sight of the twin shadows he went pale.

            “Just hang on to your fish…Penny, and I’ll take care of it if need be.” I shifted the sack I was carrying over one shoulder. It was awkward just hanging on with this thing, I would have to drop it if I had to fight.

            But I couldn’t fight two of them, not in their natural habitat. They were stronger swimmers than me. But, I reminded myself, they had water in their bodies, something I’d figured out earlier.

            The first mermaid came into view, her hair waving like flames around her face as she swam up to us. It was Tilla, and her black eyes were fixed on Eli, her smile wide and wicked and full of sharp teeth.

            The second shadow shot up, turning into Cassa, her dark eyes wide with rage. I could hear her screaming at her sister. “Tilla, you selfish sea-cow! You’re going to get us both in trouble!”

            Cassa reached up with long, slender arms, grasping her sister’s tail and yanking on it savagely, and Tilla screamed and looped around in the water, struggling to throw her sister off.

            Penny and Rykin must have sensed something brewing in the water beneath them, because both dolphins picked up their speed, making for the surface with renewed vigour. I hung on desperately, staring back over my shoulder at the fight beneath us. It was impossible to tell which sister was which, all that could be seen were flashes of fin and scales and bright red hair. Hisses and screams tore into the insides of my mind as they thrashed beneath me, stirring up the water. I wished I could shut them out, they were loud and I could feel the anger radiating off them in waves.

            I really didn’t like this mind reading thing.

            There was one last savage shriek, and then it cut off. One of the mermaids slumped backwards in the water, her tail limp and hanging, her hair floating like seaweed as she sank slowly down in spirals towards the bottom.

            My throat tightened. Was she dead? And more importantly, which one was that?

            I got my answer when the other mermaid looked up and gave Eli a vicious, sharp-toothed smile. Tilla had beat her sister, and now there was nothing to stop her from going after my friend.

            I didn’t know if it would work, but I blasted a mind-message at Penny the dolphin as loudly as I could. “GO!”

            It must have worked, because Penny bucked in the water suddenly, and Eli gave a shout of surprise as he lurched forward. I didn’t know dolphins could swim that fast, but this one did.

            I turned in the water, facing Tilla as she swam towards us. Rykin was still going for the surface as fast as he could swim, and I was barely hanging on, trying to hold the bag of food with one hand and twist myself around to look at the mermaid at the same time. I should have dropped the food, I knew that, but I also knew Eli would be starving by the time we got to land, and that I wouldn’t have time to hunt.

            I wasn’t going to let some bitchy fish-woman make me drop our entire food supply.

            I projected my thoughts at her, the same way that had made Cassa complain I was shouting. “Didn’t your king tell you about my particular talent?”

            Tilla ignored me, she kept swimming, her eyes fixed on Eli. The way she stared at him was so feral and hungry that it made my gut churn. I didn’t want to think about what she would do when she got her hands on him. “LISTEN to me, or I’ll rip you into tiny pieces right now.”

            They gave her pause, just for a moment. Her black eyes shifted to me. “You can’t do that.”

            “Sure I can. You might not be human, with a body that’s nearly all water, but you’re half human. You still have plenty of water in you I could play with, or…outside you. There’s an endless supply.”

            I could still feel the ocean all around me, had felt it since I’d come here, but until now I’d been repressing the feeling, locking myself down. Now I opened up and let the feeling flow in. The tides were the first thing I could really feel, where they were going, the eb and flow of them and the magnetic pull that moved the ocean from one side of the world to the other. The waves crashing up on so many different shores. Again, it was so overwhelming I had to reign it in fast, and I forced myself to contain it to the spot that we were swimming in, just that ten foot radious around us and the mermaid. I was hesitant at first, reaching out, I hadn’t done this before, but there wasn’t really time to be unsure about things. I had to stop her before she did something terrible to Eli.

            The water moved fairly easily on my first attempt, surprisingly so. I held myself back though, and said as loudly as I could in that strange mind-speak that was slowly becoming familiar to me, Back away from him.

            The threat in my voice must have been real enough to give her pause, at least for a few seconds. She turned to me, the motion effortless, and it struck me how easy it would be for her to kill me and Eli. She was so at home in the water, we were in her hunting grounds, and she was a predator. She reminded me a little bit of tales of Medusa, the way she stared at me with blazing eyes, her hair snaking out in all directions as it floated around her face. The way she stared at me, I could see she wanted nothing more than to rip my throat out.