The observation pool refused to soften the edges of reality with seafoam filters or nostalgic hazes. It showed the world exactly as it was. Disappointing. Dry. Painfully and excruciatingly awkward.
I had been watching them for the better part of an hour. A silent carriage ride through the mediocre Prince’s mediocre kingdom was as thrilling as watching sand moisten. My tentacles were coiled tight beneath me. The knot of anxiety and frustration mirrored the tightening in my chest.
“Seduce him,” I hissed at the water. My voice vibrated against the stone walls of the Trench. “Seduce him, you fish-faced, drooling psychotic. He is right there. He is practically vibrating with… something. Just lean forward and show him what you’ve got.”
She didn’t. The boy sat on the wooden bench of the carriage with his eyes focused on every single thing that wasn’t her. He looked polite. That was the worst part. An angry look would imply passion. A disgusted look would imply a challenge. But he looked polite. He looked like a man waiting for a dentist appointment that was running twenty minutes late.
Avis sat opposite him. She was bathed in the light of the moon and the glow of the lampposts. She was trying.
Gods, the girl was trying. She was batting her eyelashes with enough force to generate a small wind current. She was puckering her lips in a way that I assume she thought looked inviting. It actually made her look like a grouper gasping for oxygen. Drool pooled in the corner of her mouth.
“She has no game,” I muttered and dragged a hand down my face.
“She has absolutely no game. I took her ability to speak, yes, but I didn’t take her ability to seduce. She simply never had it.”
Avis leaned forward. She closed her eyes. She clearly decided that if words failed her, melody would not. She opened her mouth to hum. She tried to recreate the siren song she heard in her own head.
To her, I am sure it sounded lush and romantic. To the rest of the world, it sounded like someone ripping the teeth out of a group of walruses. It was a screeching moan that vibrated with atonal misery.
Devan flinched violently. He almost fell out of the carriage.
“Whoa!” he said. He held up his hands to stop her. “Please. Don’t... don’t strain yourself. That sounds painful.”
Avis stopped. She looked confused. She smiled again and wiped a string of saliva from her chin.
Devan offered a pained smile.
“You know,” he said. “It really is a shame we can’t figure out where you belong. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
Avis beamed. She thought he was expressing concern.
“If we knew where you came from,” Devan continued, “we could send you back home immediately. You must miss your family. And I know... well, I know everyone at the palace would be so happy whenever you finally find out where you’re supposed to go. So you don’t have to stay with us anymore.”
I stared at the pool.
“He’s trying to evict her,” I whispered. “He isn’t courting her. He is trying to figure out the return policy.”
Devan flinched. “Especially after the aquarium.”
Avis looked at him. She heard the ticking clock. She decided she would go for it. She stood up in the carriage, looked him straight in the eyes and then straddled him.
Devan’s face was electric with shock. “What... What are you doing!? Miss… please!”
“She’s actually trying to climb a mountain,” I noted. “Subtlety is not in her toolbox. But maybe he’s about to be.”
The carriage took a sharp turn. The violent jostle of the carriage caused the horses to become spooked. One took off to the left, the other took off to the right. The driver dove into the road to save himself. So much for Royal protection. The horses broke free from the carriage, and now Avis and her victim were careening down the road. They were bouncing around so hard that it almost looked like they were actually partaking in the act of human lovemaking. And then that’s when it happened.
She kissed him. She planted her lips squarely on him and she gave it her best.
“Yes,” I whispered and leaned over the pool. “Grab him. Make this man your King.”
The carriage crashed into a fruit merchant’s cart. The sudden crash caused her to fall backward, removing her mouth from his face, throwing her into a pile of fresh apples and oranges. She was surrounded by fruit.
She then tried to sing. She tried to speak. He steadied her. He grabbed her by the shoulders with a firm stare at her face.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, then wiped the drool from her chin. Still trying to speak. This stupid girl. I didn’t tell her that she had to win him over with a kiss. I told her that she had to marry him. Marriages and kisses are not the same thing.
“Why did you kiss me?” he asked. “And why does your mouth taste like you ate fish two days ago?”
Oh. Because two days ago she was a fish. Now she’s a fish who can’t swim and a rapist, apparently.
It was over.
It didn’t matter that I had been generous. We were at the end of day two. She had four days left.
You cannot turn a fish-flavored attempted rapist into a beloved bride in four days. The architecture of his perception was set. He could only see a psychotic maniac. She was a deviant, and he saw her for what she was. He did not see a queen. I waved my hand and slashed through the projection. The water went dark. The image of Avis’s crushed face dissolved.
I turned away from the pool and paced the length of the cavern. My tentacles moved with agitated energy. They slapped against the stone floor and churned the silt.
“She is going to fail,” I said to the empty room. “She is going to fail, and she is going to turn into a barnacle, and I am going to lose.”
I looked toward the garden. I could see the empty hole waiting for her.
“I don’t want a barnacle,” I hissed. “I want the alliance. The only way to get that was the treaty. That would be the only key to the gate, unless I somehow managed to get my hands on the Spear.”
If Avis failed, Lir remained unchallenged. The prejudice against the Deep remained absolute. I needed this marriage. I needed the political leverage of a union between the Surface and the Sea.
“I have to go up there,” I said.
It wasn’t a question anymore. I marched to my vanity and swept a pile of dried seahorse skeletons onto the floor. I grabbed a fresh slate and a piece of chalk.
“Options,” I muttered. “I need options.”
I looked at the Narissa husk I had been cultivating. It was beautiful. It was a masterpiece of biomancy. Her red hair with those blue eyes and a figure that defied physics... but... with my wit and prowess? It is a disaster.
“Oh, Octavia!” I bellowed, “You stupid pleco!”
I wouldn’t be helping Avis. I would be burying her. I am too much, I realized. Vanity and frustration curled in my gut.
“I can't turn off the charisma. If I go as a woman, I become the competition. No man on two legs can resist all of this. And I cannot be the competition. I need to be the catalyst.”
I erased the sketch of Narissa from the slate.
“Who else?” I asked.
A face flashed in my mind. A face that looked disturbingly like my own, but thinner, sharper, more chaotic.
“Refelda,” I said. The other sister.
“I could summon her,” I mused. “She’s... well, she’s a woman. She’s less... than I am in every way... No. She has the long-term memory of a goldfish and would get bored. Far too insecure.”
Of course, I was alone. I’ve always been alone. I always handle things myself and I’m not about to change now.
“If I can’t go as a woman,” I said. My voice dropped to a whisper.
“And I can’t send a proxy...”
I looked at the slate. My hand hovered over the black surface.
“I have to go as a man.”
The thought made my skin crawl. I have worn many shapes in my studies of the flesh without physical revulsion. But gender is memory.
I looked at my reflection in the dark glass of the cauldron. I saw the voluptuous curves of my current form, the jet black hair, the paled blue skin, the sprawling excess of my femininity.
I fought for this shape. It had been carved out of the raw genetic material of my birthright. I had to strip away the Octavius that my father loved and build the Octavia that I needed. The woman who I am.
To go back? To voluntarily step into the skin of a man? It felt like a betrayal. It felt like putting on a prison uniform after years of freedom.
“It is a disguise,” I told myself. I gripped the edge of the vanity so hard the stone cracked. “It's not you. It's a costume. Just another temporary switch of aesthetic. This is nothing more than bioluminescent nipples but… dry.”
I took a deep breath and filled my gills with the cold water of the trench.
“It's the only way,” I reasoned. “A man is not a threat to Avis’s romance. I can be a mentor, an ally. I could be the uncle that the little brat invoked. If I go as a man, I can guide Devan. I can steer him toward her. I can do what the two-toned mute failed to do.”
I looked back at the slate. I wiped it clean. I began to draw. The artist in me took over to suppress the dysphoria with the sheer joy of creation.
“If I have to be a man,” I murmured. “I am going to be a spectacular one.”
I sketched broad shoulders. A sharp, aristocratic jawline. High cheekbones that could cut glass. Buns. Now that’s an ass.
“He needs to be older,” I decided. “Authority. Gravitas. Someone Devan will instinctively respect but relate to. A man he can get dirty with.”
I drew a thick head of hair. Ginger, to light the fires of passion. I made it trimmed but sweeping with a dappling of distinction. I added a neatly trimmed beard. Distinguished rather than wild.
“And the eyes,” I whispered as I shaded them in. “Cynical. The eyes of a man who has seen the world and found it wanting. Devan will love that. But intelligent. Devan’s so desperate for someone who doesn’t fawn over him.”
I stepped back to admire the sketch. He was handsome. Unreasonably so.
“Now backstory...” I muttered. “Father. No! I’ve got it. Having searched high and searched low. Why was she lost? I know.”
“I am a genius,” I declared.
I turned to the cauldron.
“Clear the vat,” I said to the empty room.
I waved my hand. The beautiful Narissa husk dissolved into sludge.
“Trash,” I muttered. “A liability.”
I began to pull jars from the shelves. I ignored the delicate essences of pearl and silk I had used for the female form. I grabbed the heavy jars.
First thing in the bubbling brew, shark cartilage. So they take seriously my tutelage. Next some scales from a swordfish's tail, to guarantee that I come out male. Granite dust is an absolute must. For the jaw, for the density, for the trust. I need the weight and I need the mass. Add in some steel to harden that ass. Sea cucumber adds some worth. Gives it weight for the mirth of the girth. Fresh dolphin fin down into the hex, for that lovely V-shaped abdominal flex. That gives other men a complex. Bull-kelp extract, heavy and dark, testosterone fuels the masculine spark. Lots of it, dripping with musk and with bone. It gives the scent of reasons to atone. Seeing the way that her body deflated, I am adding fishnets to keep it all... elevated. I refuse to look like that poor little sobfish, walking around like a surfaced blobfish. Two drops of blood from my own tentacle to make each glorious testicle. I'll add some hair from a merman I sheared, to give myself that Daddy beard. Then I'll grow hair wherever I see fit, and once I'm done this dude'll be a hit. Some see a prince; I see a bore, but with my guidance, I'll make him see more. With me as a he I'll make the Prince see. He will trust in my thrust and listen to me. I'll get the stupid princess her prize, and get my treaty with this disguise. I'll have to lock myself in a cage inside. I must be quick before my spirit has died. Let the pot simmer until it has brewed. I will take a deep sip and I'll be a dude. And once it's over I'll return to the sea. But first I'll make a man out of me.
The potion began to churn. It turned a deeply violent indigo. It boiled with a heavy, rhythmic thump-thump-thump like a giant heart beating in the dark.
I stood before the cauldron. This was the hard part. Becoming a woman would have been a compression into a form that aligned with my spirit.
Becoming this...
I looked down at my body. My beautiful and terribly voluptuous body. The suckers on my tentacles twitched as they sensed the threat. My breasts, heavy and proud, rose and fell with my breath.
I was about to butcher myself. I was about to carve away the woman I had built to wear the mask of the man I had escaped.
“It's just a role,” I repeated. My voice shook slightly. “It's just a play and I am the lead.”
I dipped the ladle into the indigo soup.
“Four days,” I promised myself. “Four days in the suit. Get the ring on the girl. Get the brat married. Get the treaty. And then... then I burn the suit.”
I raised the ladle.
“A simple tetralogy,” I whispered.
I drank. The pain was immediate.
The sensation differed from the slicing pain of creating my tentacles. The nets tightened inward around me. I finally understood what my tentacles had been doing all this time. This was a crushing and grinding pressure. It felt as if the ocean itself had decided to collapse in on me.
My tentacles retracted. The bones grew into them as they snapped and fused. They calcified into the rigid, unforgiving structures of femurs and tibias.
“Ghhhuuuhhh!”
The sound tore out of my throat, guttural and deep.
My hips, those glorious hips that swayed with the current, ground together. They narrowed and locked into the utilitarian shape of a male pelvis.
Then came the grief.
The pressure moved to my chest. It was a severance. My breasts, my beautiful, heavy girls. They detached from the muscle wall. They fell away from my body. They floated in the water before my eyes.
I watched them drift. They were perfect. They were mine. And then they dissolved into clouds of black mist.
I screamed. I screamed because I hated this. I hated the restriction. I hated the loss. I felt the testosterone flooding my system. The bluntly aggressive chemical signal dulled the sharpness of my emotions.
My skin knit back together across my chest. It raised in hard ridges. The perfect pectorals and abundant abdominals were scar tissue.
I was cut, literally.
I fell to the floor and writhed in the silt. My skin burned. The blue hue bled away and was replaced by a sun-weathered bronze. The smooth, mucus-slick texture of my flesh hardened and became rough and hairy.
I clawed at the sand. My fingers shortened. My nails thickened.
And then it stopped. The grinding ceased. The burning faded to a dull ache.
I lay face down on the ocean floor. I felt... small. I felt light, but in a bad way.
Like I lacked gravity. I pushed myself up. My hands were large. Hair grew on the knuckles. I touched my face. Bristles. A beard. A jaw that felt like a block of wood.
I stood up. My center of gravity was wrong. I was top-heavy. I was breathing. This didn’t make any sense.
Gills! Just below my ribs. Well, I would have to hide these, that’s for certain.
I stumbled and caught myself on the vanity. I looked in the mirror. A man stared back. An utterly gorgeous man.
I was tall. Imposing.
I had a devilishly handsome mouth and icy blue eyes that looked like they had seen the bottom of a whiskey bottle and the bottom of the ocean but found them both equally boring. I was exactly what I drew. I couldn’t help but notice that I was someone I wish I knew.
“Well,” I said.
The voice was a shock. It was a baritone rumble. A few octaves lower but it still had a melodic range. It was a powerful note.
“Hello, stranger,” I said to the reflection.
I turned to the side and checked the profile. No breasts. No curves.
Just flat, hard planes of scar tissue.
“I look,” I mused and tilted my head. “Like I’m about to colonize something. Or inseminate it. Neptune rising! Why am I so horny!?”
There was a stir at the entryway. Dot and Speckle had returned from the lagoon. They slithered in with the current. They stopped dead when they saw me. They flared their mantles and hissed, not recognizing the predator in their home.
“At ease,” I barked.
They flinched. They knew the authority, even if they didn’t know the face.
“Mistress?” Dot squeaked, confused.
“Mister,” I corrected. My voice was clipped and authoritative. “For the next four days, you will address me as Mister.”
I rolled my shoulders. The suit was tight, but manageable. The dysphoria was there. It was a buzzing in the back of my skull.
I pushed it down. But I was screaming. I thought that this voice had been loud when I was Octavius. The years it took me to have finally found the woman under the surface. I fought to reel myself in, just to throw myself back now. It was injustice.
“Four days,” I continued reminding myself. “And I can be myself again.”
I already missed my hips. My breasts. I was so flat. I began to cry.
Don’t judge me! Real men cry!
“Get the contract,” I ordered myself. “Get the bottle with the voice. Leave the tears behind.”
I looked up toward the surface. Toward the moonlight filtering down through the water.
“It will be a drag,” I whispered. A wolfish grin spread across my new, bearded face. “Oh, but it will be drag.”