LEGS

Part One – The Sea 

Matthew

            I rolled my chair over to my aquarium so I could see how the blue tang was doing. He was a new addition to my collection and although he’d passed quarantine, I had to be diligent about keeping an eye on him and the rest of the aquarium inhabitants. Marine life is a fine balance. 

Kind of like my survival at Carmel High.

Fish-boy. For the last month or so, I’d been known as Fish-boy at school, thanks to Ethan and Tyler and the rest of the asshole jocks they hung out with. So what if I did my independent term project on marine invertebrates? 

Although, I had to admit, Fish-boy was an improvement over ‘psycho’ or ‘mental case’.

But it didn’t matter what they called me, the fact was that I was an outcast. A geek. A nerd. A loser. And more recently thanks to Teddy abandoning me: a loner. 

I was at the bottom of the high school social strata and apparently needed constant reminders of just what a loser I was. Not that there was any fear I would make an attempt to move up the ranks; I was always going to be a nerd. A nerd who was into fish. And Jacques Cousteau never made it into any ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ lists.

Mom said kids like Ethan and Tyler were intimidated by my ‘smarts’ (her word, not mine). 

But what she didn’t realize was that everyone at school had a long memory of what had happened after Dad died. It didn’t even matter that it had been three years since; I was still known as a freak. And it had very little to do with my ‘smarts’. 

My aquarium was my only solace, the only thing that gave me true pleasure. It seemed so chaotic and random, but at the same time, in perfect harmony. What someday I hoped my life could be like. Maybe after suffering through the hell that was high school and finally getting to college, I could get a fresh start. Where no one knew what had happened. Where I wasn’t a freak. 

Satisfied with the tang’s smooth integration, I turned off the aquarium light. With a sigh, I turned to my computer to start in on my homework, wishing I could just fast forward through the next year so I wouldn’t actually have to live through the agony that was my life at school. It really was hell; every day a new adventure in humiliation and torture.

There was no way of knowing that everything was about to change. If I had known, I never would have bought that expensive tang.

Morven

“I’m scared, El. What if I hate him? Or what if he hates me?” I said suddenly over the mind-link.

Elutia looked up from her book. My sister always had her face in a book, reading some of the same ones over and over until the squid ink faded from the seaweed pages.

“You won’t hate him. And how could he hate you? Unless maybe you outswim him in the agility games or something.”

She pushed her blonde hair away from her eyes, but it drifted back on the current; the main reason I kept my own brown hair fairly short. She called my cropped hairstyle boring and totally unsexy; I called it practical. And it's not like I was trying to be sexy. Being sexy was the last thing on my mind; I wasn't boy-crazy like my younger sister. Quite the opposite.

“But really, Morven. You shouldn’t worry about that. I’m sure Father’s going to find you a great man to marry. You’ll see.” 

I groaned.

My sister looked over at me. “I’m so jealous that your time is coming. Your birthday is just a few weeks away and here I have almost two more years until it’s my turn. I don’t understand why you’re not more excited.”

“I’m not excited because it’s not what I want. I don’t want to get married and certainly not to a stranger.

“You know it’s your destiny to get engaged on your sixteenth birthday. You can’t deny your destiny.”

Am I a slave to Destiny, whatever it is?

“I think my destiny is to be an adventurer.”

Elutia frowned. “You can get plenty of adventure from books, she said through our mind-link. But she wasn’t just talking; I could feel the tentacles of her mind trying to infiltrate mine. She was trying to snoop my brain. 

I rolled my eyes at her attempt to probe beyond what I was offering via our telepathic conversation. I wasn’t hiding anything, but I shut her out anyway, hating how nosy she could be. “I read enough at school. And anyway, I don’t want to read about other people’s adventures. I want to have adventures of my own. Don’t you want to live a little?”

She sighed, her eyes dropping back to the book. “I am living. And other people’s adventures are just fine with me. I don’t feel the need to constantly test Father’s patience.

She was referring to me asking father if I could go up toward the surface to have a look around. 

Predictably, he’d had one of his temper tantrums, his lips pursed as he yelled over the mind-link. “Morven, why? Why would you want to see the surface? It’s hot and bright, not to mention dirty. The surface fish taste tinny and the water is almost unbearable. We are meant to stay down here, in our home.”

I was afraid to tell him I didn’t just want to see the water at the surface; I wanted to see beyond it. I craved seeing the world of humans, the air-breathers of legend.

I’d dropped my eyes, ashamed of my wanting to go see the world above.

“Forget it, young lady,” Father said. “The stories aren’t true. You can’t turn into a human simply by drying out. And you won’t find a sailor to save and fall in love with. It’s all myth.”

“But Father, my life is boring. I need adventure. And I’m not ready to get married.”

He’d laughed then. “You’re not even sixteen, Morven. How can you be bored with your life? And all girls get engaged at sixteen, you know the way of our people. It’s how it’s always been done.”

Mom nodded, but not without sympathy. I wondered if she had wanted to get married when she was my age. I didn’t dare ask, though.

I shrugged. “We never do anything. I go to school and then hunt part-time. That’s hardly an exciting life.”

Father glanced over at Mom. She gave him a withering look, as if to say, we’d better do something or she’s going to go up to the surface anyway. Mom was way more intuitive than Father.

But he just shook his head before turning back to me. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is a fine life. You have a job so you can buy things, you’re getting an education and you’ll be married soon and will begin to give me grandchildren. What more do you want?”

How could I say everything?

“I don’t know.”

“Morven?”

I looked up at him. He glared at me, his bright eyes holding my own fast.

“I’m serious. Don’t you go on up to the surface. It’s dangerous and you don’t have the experience to avoid the nets and everything else that goes on up there.”

Like I couldn’t avoid a net. I’d won awards for being the fastest, most agile swimmer in our community. “Yes, Father,” was all I said.

“And you’ll see; your life will get plenty exciting soon when I return from across the sea with your fiancée.”

That was not the kind of excitement I’d been hoping for.

“Promise me, Morven. Promise me you won’t go up there on your own.”

“I won’t, Father. I promise I won’t go to the surface on my own.”

My fingers were crossed behind my back.  

I’ll take my sister with me.