Chapter 9

Of all the places I could've swam too, I went straight to the palace. I had heard Byron calling out my name but I'd chosen to ignore him. My old familiar room of the palace, the one place where I learnt all of the languages of the ocean. Where I'd played with friends, had fun and spent my nights dreaming of who would mer bond with me. Now it only remained empty, quiet and desolate.

I cocooned myself within my kelp hammock and lamented my loss. Byron's words had devastated me. I was the very cause of my species destruction, so how could I be it's saviour? My father should've saved one of my older brothers. They were upstanding mer who didn't have strange ideas as I did.

I wallowed in my heart break. My despair gripped me tightly and I couldn't see beyond my own pain and loss.

"Coral?" Byron's voice jolted me to alertness.

How did he find me? I was royal and could out swim any normal mer. Then again, he wasn't a normal mer. Byron was a blue moon mer and human mixture. I still wasn't sure what to think about that either.

"Coral, I know you're here because the animals I could understand told me you came here. I can't enter through all of this kelp. All I want to know is that you're okay." Byron called out to me.

As badly as I wanted to continue ignoring him, I couldn't bring myself to act that rudely. Byron had shown me his honest mer self. He'd shown me someone I never expected to find.

With a deep sigh, I slipped from my hammock and made my way to the outer edges of the palace. The kelp opened for me with a gentle wave of my hand. Byron stood on the other side still struggling with the kelp.

"It's here to protect the palace." I told him.

Byron flew backwards, startled at my sudden approach, "Coral," he relaxed the second he saw me. "You really do have a golden tail. I didn't imagine that."

He swam closer and peered at me. I swam swiftly away, not wanting to have him examine me. After hearing his story tonight, I didn't want him to know who I was. His hand grabbed hold of my wrist before I could go too far, so I stopped.

"You're royal," he murmured, but I didn't reply. "I've got about a billion questions, but I can see that I freaked you out so I'm not going to ask any of them." He stopped talking and the pause between us extended.

"I'm staying here tonight."

I had no clue why I'd said such an inane thing. Maybe it was having his fingers against my skin and warming the frozen parts of me. Maybe it was the awkwardness I received by the way he watched me. I didn't know.

"Where is here exactly?" Byron waved an arm out towards the giant rows of kelp that kept my home secure.

"The palace." I stated.

"Do you mean the palace of the royal mer?" he sounded awed.

"I'm mer royal, not that it means much nowadays." I murmured the last part.

He released his grip on me and tucked both hands behind his back. A couple of swift blinks later, and his shock managed to overwhelm him. I guess he didn't expect one of his employees to be mer, let alone royal mer.

Silence stretched between us. Byron refused to look at me and started frowning. He kept his hands behind his back, gulped in a breath through his gills and his look of awe returned.

"I'm not quite sure how I'm supposed to act now." Byron admitted as he stared at the sand beneath his tail.

"What does that mean?" I couldn't understand this strange way he'd started acted.

"Should I bow, or call you something like your majesty, or what?" his words managed to distress him and only confuse me further.

"Bowing? What does bowing have to do with anything?" I asked with a perplexed frown.

"When an average person faces royalty, they have to bow or curtsy and call the royal person your majesty. That's how I'd greet a royal in the human world." He said as he performed a weird convoluted bow.

Were humans really this strict? It wasn't something I had noticed when I interacted with them. Everyone had a rather casual air, but then I guess none of them were royal.

"We're mer, and that sort of thing is of little importance." I wriggled my fingers at him so he'd stop his silly behaviour.

"How do I act then?"

"Why would you act any differently to how you always have?" I became exasperated with these crazy ideas of his.

"Because you're royalty." He exclaimed.

"Did I act any differently because you turned out to be my boss at work? No, I didn't, so why would you need to change how you act just because I'm royalty?" I crossed my arms and glowered at him.

"Royalty is a hell of a lot different to being a boss at work. You're... you're..." he trailed off and considered what to say.

"It doesn't matter anymore whether I'm royalty or not. The number of mer are still the size of plankton. As a species we cannot hope to come back from that." Loss crept into my voice, a deep despairing loss that I couldn't hold back.

"Coral, I... wait a moment, if you're royalty then you must be Coralina. You're the mer my dad searched for, you're the one." His jaw dropped open and a second later he started coughing after swallowing a mouthful of water.

"I spent just as much time searching. Two years ago I gave up my search. Up until then, I searched the ocean every day for survivors. I only gave up when there was nothing left to hope for." I snapped.

"Then why didn't you and dad find each other?" Byron wondered the same thought that I had puzzled over.

"If only I could answer that." I said with a shake of my head.

"Do you want me to address you as Coralina? Or do I have to say princess Coralina? I'm  not sure what to call you." Byron returned to focusing on my name, which seemed of little importance to me.

"That's what you're worried about?" my exasperation returned.

"I'm not here to upset you, and my comment about my dad did that. I changed the subject because you weren't comfortable talking about it."

"Oh." I lowered my head feeling a bit embarrassed at my outburst.

"Why didn't you try the Royal Call?" Byron changed topics back awfully fast.

"I don't want to deal with this stuff right now." With a quick flick of my tail, I let the kelp fall back into place as I returned to the palace grounds.

"Wow, this place looks like it could be absolutely spectacular." Byron gushed as he followed me.

"It is spectacular."

"Why don't you want to tell me the truth about anything including your name?" he asked.

"You said you wouldn't ask." I pointed out.

"That's true, but now that I'm here my thousand questions just keep spilling out."

I bit my lip and stared around at what used to be my home. I had no trouble in telling Byron the truth. It was what he'd think of me afterwards that bothered me.

"You're right, I am Princess Coralina. The day it happened was the day my father would've taught me how to do the Royal Call. It was my naming day. Everyone attended because of me. The destruction of my species is all because of me." I admitted as I tightened my arms around myself and tried not to cry.

"Oh, I didn't realise."

"I have wanted to do the Royal Call but what if I did it wrong? It could send any mer deeper into hiding. How would that help me or the future of my species?" I explained my plight.

"Coral, none of what happened is in any way your fault, none of it." Byron said as he swam closer to me.

"Yes, it is! Without calling all the mer to my naming day there would've been more survivors. This," I waved my arms around at the emptiness of the palace. "Is all my fault."

"Coral, you're seeing this only from your own perspective. Yes, it happened on your naming day, but you weren't the one who did the damage." Byron touched me lightly on the arm, but I flinched away from him.

"My father hid me. I came back out to find the waters red and pieces of mer floating in the water. It was... horrific. That's when I knew I was the last one. I was the last one to survive that slaughter. I would have to always live with knowing that I was the cause of the destruction of my species." I spoke with difficulty, but I told him the worst.

"I'm sorry you had to endure that tragedy, but you're wrong about one thing." He raised a finger at me.

"I'm sure I am." A derisive chuckle escaped me.

"You're not the last one," he clasped hold of both my shoulders and made me face him. "You're not the last mer. I'm here in front of you as proof that you're not the last of your species."

He pointed out an obvious fact that didn't seem to have sunk fully into my mind. I was no longer the only one of my species. I dragged in water through my gills and saw the situation for the truth it was.

Byron was mer. Sure he was part human, but he was also mer. There really was another mer besides me. If Lin was his father, then there were at least three of us left.

There may be even more in hiding. If I hadn't found Lin then the chances were much higher of others hiding away. Maybe I'd have to try the Royal Call.

"I'm no longer the last mer." I whispered.

"On a technical side of things, you were never the last mer." Byron said.

"I've spent the last hundred years believing I was the last, so a technicality doesn't matter." I swished aside his words.

"You've spent all of that time thinking you had nobody left?" Byron appeared upset.

"Yes."

"That must've been awful, Coral."

He held his arms open to me, and without any thought I fell into them. Having his arms wrapped around me had to be one of the best moments of my life.

A sense of warmth, security and contentment fulfilled me. It reminded me of my father's hug, comforting and safe, a reminder that I was no longer alone.

Emotions gripped me hard and my body shuddered against his. The relief and utter joy of finding another mer surrounded me. Never in my life had I felt so complete. My world so long filled with despair and loneliness now had light and life. There was a future for mer. It was a future that I never thought I could have.

"Coral, show me where I can set you down to have some rest." Byron said once I began to calm.

Only then did I realise that Byron had one hand held in mine while the other wrapped around me. His tail had twisted around mine in an intimate way that I had never expected.

I pulled away from him, took a deep breath of water through my gills and stared at him. He wouldn't relinquish my hand, but in a way I didn't want him to.

"We should sleep and we can go over everything else in the morning." Byron said as he stroked a hand over my hair.

"Have you, uh, spent the night in the ocean before?" my bold words were out before I could stop them.

"Yes, I've spent a lot of nights with my father."

"Do you want to stay here tonight?" I asked.

"In the royal palace?" he sounded surprised.

"Yes."

"I'm happy to stay anywhere with you."

"Come on."

I nudged him forward, clicked my fingers to illuminate our jellyfish glow lights and swam back inside. He made gasps of awe that sent all of my sad emotions away. His fascination made me smile and soothed something inside of me that I could never explain.

"For all of the movie images that try to do this justice, I can tell you now that it's doesn't even compare." Byron said as he continued to glance around.

I could only agree. Our palace was quite a substantial place. If ever we had trouble, we could've easily housed all of the mer who used to exist. It stood tall, broad and as Byron had said earlier, spectacular. From off the wide arched entrance sat large circular towers with spires that rose high into the ocean.

Once inside, the walls had decorations of all the creatures of the ocean. Scenes of the past with the mer showed the many stories of our history.

Off to the left and up inside one of the circular towers was my room. I had always loved the way I could see any visitors coming to the palace from my tower. When I was younger, I would sit for hours to watch the mer come and go.

I swam towards my room and with Byron still holding my hand, he followed me. With out a word, I curled up in my hammock that rocked gently in the current, and Byron joined me.

We were together and I couldn't be any happier about that. There were other mer and that emboldened my happiness to beyond ecstatic.

Today had been a momentous day within my life. It was a day that I could never have imagined yesterday. I could see a future now. I could see my life through different eyes. Today was the start of a new day for mer.