Free Swimming Without a Net by MaryJanice Davidson

know. No one ever saw him again, and no one speaks of him. It was assumed, once King Mekkam discovered your existence, that your sire perhaps came ashore that very night and lay with your lady mother. It was the last documented sighting of him, at any rate.
    Fred made a mental note to never, ever tell this to her mother. Moon Bimm still had the hippie’s romanticized view of life, and The Night Fred Was Conceived was one of her more cherished stories.
    The mysterious stranger showing up on the beach. Moon, tipsy on cheap wine, and lonely. The drunken fuck (or, as Moon called it, “the tender, life-making lovemaking”). Followed by five months of morning sickness and, eventually, a mer-baby.
    No, she’d never tell Moon that the only reason her dad had come ashore was because his people had thrown his ass out.
    She also made a mental note to find out how, exactly, Mekkam had learned of her existence. Because Artur had alluded to that last fall, hadn’t he? He’d told her, while they were in her mother’s kitchen at the Cape Cod house, that his father had sent him to seek her out.
    I’m getting it now! That’s why no one spoke of it to me. Why everybody keeps dancing around my questions. Do they blame me for what my dad did? They must. But that doesn’t make any sense…Anybody who knows I’m his kid also knows I never met the guy. So are they really that dumb?
    She’d been deliberately provocative (she didn’t know any other way to be), but Tennian didn’t rise to the bait.
    Not…dumb, Fredrika. But family is all, to the Undersea Folk. Responsible for everything, the author of everything. We believe personality traits are passed down as easily as hair color and tail length. Some of us…
    Reluctance now, extreme reluctance, and Tennian looked away from Fred, snatched a damselfish from the middle of its school, and disposed of it in four chomps. All this with the absent air of someone biting their fingernails. Fred struggled mightily not to barf. The blood didn’t bother her; the casual carnivorousness did, not to mention the sight of Tennian’s needle-sharp teeth. Some of us believe that if your sire could act in such a treacherous way, so might you. But for the prince…
    What about Artur?
    He is most fond of you. Surely, she added, waving away the blood and scales, this is nothing new.
    Oh, he’s babbled something along those lines. I wasn’t paying much attention.
    You may wish to. Fred could sense Tennian’s dry amusement. He has made no secret of the fact that he wishes to make you his princess. And but for that…
    Are you telling me if Artur wasn’t sweet on me, nobody’d want me around?
    I cannot tell you what might be, or might have been, Tennian said tactfully. Only what is. Or was, if I have that knowledge.
    Fred floated for a few seconds, thinking. Then: So your twin gave me the cold shoulder, but not you? How come? Not that I’m complaining. But nobody’s come ashore since I got here. Except for Artur and the king and you, nobody’s talked to me. I’m apparently the guest of honor, but nobody’s even tried to look me up. So why are you being so friendly? Relatively speaking.
    I like your friend, Tennian said shyly. The blond one. I never knew a surface dweller could be so loyal.
    The blond…Oh, Jonas! For God’s sake. Jonas was why Tennian was breaking The Mermaid Code of Silence? He’d laugh his ass off when she told him. Assuming she decided his ego wouldn’t go all Fourth of July from the stimulation.
    His Highness says your friend has kept your secret for many years. For a surface dweller that would be accomplishment enough, but your friend is different.
    You don’t know HOW different.
    As a man of science he could have gotten a great deal of gold if he had whispered the right thing into the right ear.
    Jonas isn’t a big fan of gold. He likes to play the stock market, when he’s not raiding the racks at Nordstrom’s.
    Whatever he likes to play with, Tennian thought at her