I woke. Or more precisely, I was prodded awake.

"Stop that," I commanded with irritation to whomever was sticking me repeatedly in the flesh with something sharp. I rolled onto my side and attempted to both sit up and simultaneously get away from my tormentor.

A youthful voice laughed and said, "Did you hear that, Caira? It dares to snarl at me."

Another voice, a mature female voice, replied with equal amusement, "How bold."

I ignored the voices as I opened my eyes and took in my surroundings. Surely I dreamed. Or was this where all drowning victims woke?

Standing to my feet, I made a 360 degree turn and found myself in the most ornate and elaborate cavern from which pillars, posts, furniture, and expansive wall reliefs were all carved from the stone and coral all around. The room shimmered so brightly I had to shield my eyes for a time until they adjusted. And, the room was filled with every colour imaginable. It was an exquisite paradise or grave.

I was further astonished to realize that the enormous cavity was filled entirely with water. I was, then and there, breathing water in and out of my lungs. Surely I was dead then, for no man could breath water. A deep sadness washed over me at the thought of never seeing my parents, my aunts or my siblings again and I began to weep for them.

But my mourning was rudely interrupted by a painfully violent tug on a mysterious chain about my neck, which I had not seen or felt before that moment. I was brought down to my hands and knees with a cry of alarm. I grasped the metal chain that bit into my flesh and wrestled with it.

Who had imprisoned me? What punishment was this? Did the holy book say anything about such treatment of the dead? I was both alarmed and indignant.

Turning to look, for the first time, in the direction of the voices, I spied the culprits. To my great bewilderment, there stood (in truth floated) a half naked adolescent boy and woman. But, that was not entirely accurate. It was better to say a male and female, for these were not human. And they were neither angel nor demon for all I understood of the holy book.

Instead, they resembled the merpeople of folktales and illustrated children's books. Their upper bodies resembled the human form - ribs, breasts, collar bones, two arms, two hands, etcetera - but their lower bodies were elongated, slender fish tails that swished a little beneath them as I stared in utter disbelief at their scaled bodies, taloned fingers and coral encrusted hair.

"It's made quite ugly by that look on its face," the boy said with a laugh. He then tugged on the chain and I found myself face down on the floor.

Struggling to get up to my knees, I grabbed up the chain and yanked it toward me. I was livid. How dare this boy treat me as if I were a dog on a leash. It was inhuman.

He was unbalanced by my movements and I took advantage of the situation by quickly getting back to my feet. I then wrapped the excess chain around my arm and when the boy was just a foot from me I reached out and grabbed his fin like ear.

"Remove this chain from me at once," I demanded of him as he squealed a bit like a pig in distress. Apparently, a merboy's ear was as sensitive as a human child's ear. It seemed to me, with the right pressure, a merboy could be brought to reason and obedience as easily as a human child. I was relieved to know it. 

"H-h-how?" he stammered as he twisted his head and looked toward the woman he called Caira a moment ago.

Caira looked intrigued.

"How?" I repeated with incredulity. Why, taking the chain off could not be so difficult, I thought. "Simply undo it," I commanded him feeling my ire grow.

His large black, seal-like eyes, blink at me several times, as if he was in utter disbelief, and then he turned his head ever so slightly to look at Caira. She appeared quite fascinated in me now.

"Padur is not talking about the chain," she explained. "He's curious how it is that you can understand and speak our language so fluently," she concluded as she moved effortlessly forward on her long fishtail.

"Surely you jest," I said to her feeling utterly confused. For I was only speaking to them in English as they spoke to each other in English too.

"No," she said evenly as her scaled hand, with its deeply taloned fingers, slid across my face and into my hair. She pulled my long, unbound hair from my neck and released the chain, which was latched there. It fell with a clatter to the floor as I too released it from my grip in the next moment.

"You are a curious thing," she said to me as her large seal-like eyes examined me very closely.

I let go of Padur's ear and stepped back from Caira.

"Where am I?" I asked. "And do I live or have I died?"

The two merepeople looked at each other and then laughed uproariously.

I sighed with frustration. This situation was not in the least bit funny and I marveled that they could be so indifferent to my suffering.

"Oh darling, you are not dead, but you may soon wish for death," she smirked.

I ignored her, refusing to be intimidated by her. Perhaps this was some fanciful dream sequence and I was really in Emmi's bed sleeping the afternoon away after staying up all night with the stranger. Thoughts of him made me both angry and sad. Where was he now? Would he come and rescue me for this place, dream or not?   

A thunderous voice interrupted my pensive thoughts as it roared, "Where is it? The half-breed?" His voice was positively dripping with disdain and hatred. I had never heard anyone speak so in all my life. It was shocking.

I whirled around to face a truly majestic looking merman, who practically flew into the cavern with fire in his eyes and a great spear in his hand. Even the Roman god of the sea, Neptune, would be hard pressed to look as imposing and as kingly as this creature.

He wore gold and pearl armour on his upper body and a coral shaped crown of sparkling gems upon his head of grey-green hair, which spilled out all around him is soft watery waves. His face, like Caira's and Padur's, had the same large black seal-like eyes, wide lips and a sea turtle-like nose. He was not the least bit handsome, but he was mesmerizing.

Behind him was a small guard of gold and pearl covered soldiers. Each had a spear in his right hand and a pearl shield in his left. Instead of a crown, they wore helmets and their sea-green hair, which appeared to be part seaweed, part coral and part human hair, flowed endlessly around their shoulders and backs. 

I could not recall a single tall tale from my youth that described merpeople in this way. The writers or tellers of such tales always made merfolk very human in appearance. I thought it strange, if I were only dreaming, that my imagination could conjure up such inventive characteristics. They were both a fascinating and frightening sight to behold.

Caira, who had slunk behind me at some point after this merman's dramatic entrance, gave me a solid push and I was sent stumbling ahead until I came to rest in the middle of the expansive cavern. 

"Here she is, King Senan," Caira shouted. "We knew not that she was a halfbreed. Padur's pet, Avrawn, brought her to us only this hour. Take her."

I looked back at her for a brief moment before turning my attention to King Senan, and saying in my defense, "I beg your pardon sir, but I am no halfbreed." I wasn't the least bit sure what that was. However, I was certain from his and her tone that it was something regrettable, something hateful.

The formidable king looked stunned and his blue-grey face went ashen. There was a great gasp from the soldiers who flanked his right and left. I, for my part, did not understand what was so shocking and looked all around believing that someone else must have entered the room.

"We must silence her at once," an old voice said from behind the soldiers.

"Silence me?" I asked with growing curiosity. "What have I done or what will I say that needs to be silenced?" I petitioned them all. In my short life, I had rarely said a cross word to anyone and could not imagine there was any need to forcefully silence me on any account.

The soldiers parted and a very elderly merman appeared from between their ranks. His scales were a dull grey and his hair as white as snow and as long as his own tail. He held a scroll in his right hand and a golden feathery looking fish spine in his left. His black seal-like eyes bore into me, but I was not frightened. What did the dead or the dreaming need to fear?

"Cut out her tongue," he hissed at the king as he lunged toward me.

I lept out of the way and bounded up toward the ceiling. It had not occurred to me, until that very moment, that since I was immersed in the sea, I could swim. Swimming through a room, even a cavernous room like this, seemed counter intuitive to me. After all,  I had only ever walked or run across a room before that moment.

"You'll do no such thing, " I commanded the old merman. "You will not a lay a finger on me to harm me," I told him with absolute conviction. Dead or dreaming, I was not about to allow this strange, cruel creature, to hurt me in any way.

"See how she speaks," he hissed at the mer-king. "It is just as the prophecies have foretold. You must take hold of her now. Snuff her out before Eamon can perform the ritual."

I felt a force wrap around me in the next moment and drag my unwilling body right to King Sanen. He wrapped a single taloned hand around my neck and began to squeeze. Suddenly terrified that I would die again somehow, though I could not fathom it, I reached out with my hands and tried to pry his fingers from my neck. I also kicked at him with my feet in an effort to dislodge me entirely from his grip.

His hand only responded by squeezing more tightly, but that is precisely when I realized I could still breath. If he were trying to choke me to death, then it wasn't working because here, in this world, whether dream or not, I did not breath air but water, which meant I must have gills. He would have to injure my gills, wherever they were, in order to destroy my air supply and suffocate me. The thought was startling but welcome.

And suddenly the fear a dying over again left me and I began to laugh with great relief as I dangled precariously from his outstretched arm. He shook me violently in response as he roared with anger or indignation or both. I could not help but grin.

"There are other ways to kill her sire," the old man whispered in his ear.

The old merman then reached for my hand as he spoke, but I twisted and kicked at the old man. I was not going to die, or die again, for him or for this horrendous king who went around trying to kill innocent women. For, no matter what they said of me, I knew I was innocent of the charges. I had never done anything to deserve death. Not even during my rebellious teen years, if I even had any.

One of my wild kicks caught the scroll in his right hand and sent it flying from his fingers. He let out a deep, mournful cry and everyone gasped as if I had cut his arm from his body. King Senan released me and everyone, Caira, Padur and the king included, quickly fell to the ground, prostrate, as the scroll bounced and unfurled all the way across the room.

The scroll bucked and twisted as if it were a living creature, and the words upon it morphed into three dimensional images that tried to leap from the parchment. The king, the soldiers and the old man began to wail, but no one moved as the scroll and the images written on it became more and more violent. The noise level in the room reached a fevered pitch and I thought I might scream myself because of the incessant racket.

Why didn't the old man just pick up the scroll and roll it up once again? It seemed like the most obvious and simplest solution. Unable to stand the tremendous confusion of sound that now filled the entire cavern, I briskly walked over to the nearest end of the scroll and began to roll it back up.

It didn't take long before the room fell completely silent again. The silence was bliss. I smiled as I looked around at the prostrate and quaking merpeople. They did not seem relieved at all.

Squatting by the old merman I tapped him on the shoulder with the scroll and when he turned to look up at me I offered him his scroll with a pleasant smile on my face. Now that all was calm and quiet, I was feeling forgiving.

He just stared wide-eyed at it. I shook it a little in his face and said, "Come now, take it. It is yours after all. There's no need to sulk."

At the sound of my voice the whole room came alive again. Everyone shot up from the ground and looked around. They seemed in a bit of a panic. I wasn't sure what they were looking for or what they were so afraid of.

I put my hands on the old merman's arms and helped him straighten up from the floor.  Afterwards I saw that the golden fish bone quill lay on the floor near the king and I walked over to scoop it up. All eyes were on me as I placed it in the old merman's left hand.

"It seems you dropped this in all the commotion," I said to him kindly, feeling a little relieved to see the scroll and gold feather restored to him.

He inclined his head ever so slightly toward me, but then, in a vicious voice cried out, "Kill her now!"

Suddenly furious that he should treat me so after I, in good faith, restored the scroll and the quill to him, I felt certain he deserved neither. Without much thought beyond that, I ripped them both from his hands and lept into the space above the center floor before the king's soldiers could grab me or run me through with their spears. With the scroll in my hands they were once again immobilized. All of them fell to the floor and lay with their faces to the ground.

"What have you done, Fiach?" the king cried out to the old merman as he too was forced to the ground by some unforeseen pressure or cultural practice that I knew nothing of and could not comprehend.

"You should have killed her the moment I told you to," Fiach defended himself with bitterness in his voice.

My anger subsided the moment I realized I was not in danger anymore, and I swam back down to the king and the old man. I was not fool enough to get too close though.

"I think one of the two of you should explain to me what is going on or you risk me opening up the scroll."

"Don't say a thing," Fiach hissed at King Senan.

"If neither of you speak, I'll not only open the scroll but I'll tare it in two and break the fish bone quill you use to write upon it," I threatened. It was an empty threat. I really had no intention of destroying this obviously supernatural  scroll. I wasn't even sure if I could. However, the old man and the king did not need to know that.

Fiach cried out with alarm, and I saw his resistance was immediately broken by the promise to destroy his scroll. Clearly it was a holy relic of some kind and precious to him, the king and maybe all merpeople.

I felt satisfied. Finally, I was going to get some answers.