Sea and sky merged into one. His upraised head bobbing on the wind-whipped surface like an unanchored buoy, Durgay had trouble making out the horizon line when rolling in troughs of the four-foot swell. Two limitless expanses of blue - one of liquid cobalt, the other an airy azure – vied for dominance in his shifting vision. That competition extended to Mother Sea copying Father Sky’s streaky white clouds wisping high overhead in the rival whitecaps speckling the mirroring ocean.

A yellow-nosed Mollymawk glided serenely into Durgay’s line of sight, effortlessly riding the spring sea breeze like a Portuguese man-o-war drifted aimlessly with the current. Dipping a black wing in graceful salute to the skygazing merman, the smallish albatross soared silently away into the wind with an upward swoop. Floating mesmerised, Durgay watched the contrasting plumaged bird longingly until it became a distant white-bodied fleck lost against the background clouds.

A summoning whistle tugged at Durgay from the undersea depths. Annoyed by the intrusion, the merman gave up on his spy-hopping for the day and submerged into the underwater calm. Diving with the slowness stemming from old age and reluctance, the geriatric leisurely homed in on the call even as the whistled command repeated itself with greater urgency.

His Seaguard captain - a younger, handsomer version of himself – cruised purposefully up over the fringing reef 140 feet below, angling toward the veteran Fisher in answer to the stream of identifying clicks issued by Durgay. Exquisitely spotted butterfly and striped angelfish scattered lazily before the approaching swimmer in a kaleidoscope of bright scales, unhurried flashes of sunburst orange-gold and girdled blue sensing the ascending spearman was not on the prowl.

At least not for fish.

Durgay was the focus of the officer’s search, beckoned to this impromptu meeting. Living in a three dimensional world where time had little meaning or measurement other than the regularity of day darkening into night, the mature merman was nonetheless considered positively ancient after reaching his unmarked fortieth year. Lucky to celebrate life beyond their late twenties due to the rigours imposed by the unforgiving marine environs in which they struggled to survive, Fishers protected and provided for the Cetari; the merfolk. And Durgay, with infinite experience sourced from his elderliness, was numbered among the best.

Durgay deliberately slowed his descent. The tropical seas, luxuriously warmed by the equatorial sunshine, cooled appreciably the further a diver sank. The elderly merman enjoyed spending his free time basking two or three feet beneath the sun-rayed surface, avoiding when he could the indigo deep, which chilled his old bones. He would meet his rising superior in the midlevel boundary of lukewarm no-man’s sea.

Dipping their individual whalebone tridents in ritual greeting, the square jawed Fishers” equalled each other in size and form. Eight and a half feet in length, with a dry weight of over 250 lbs, their hairless blue steel bodies were a beautifully blended amalgamation of man and fish. A horizontally-fluked tail designed for speed attached seamlessly to a powerhouse torso sculpted out of the beefiest muscle; arms bulging with outsized biceps, perfectly tailored to engine complimenting swimming strokes, ended in delicately webbed hands capable of working the elemental tools shaping their primitive culture.

Externally, the melon-headed merfolk looked virtually indistinguishable from one another. Even their humanlike faces seemed carbon copies, from the black pits of their tiny bone-ringed eyes, evenly spaced above a bulbous honker of a pseudo nose, right down to the fleshy lips behind which a mouthful of pointy yellowed teeth, suited to their tough seafood diet, waited to strip clean fish bones or chew up rubbery seaweed.

To the Cetari eye, even the untrained, subtle betraying marks and blemishes picked out a personage. In Durgay’s case, a grumpy conger eel nipped an indelible bite mark out of his left tail fluke when he was still a merboy wet behind the earholes. The hovering pod commander of the Merking’s bodyguard, half the age of the old hand Fisher but sporting an equally impressive tally of hunting scars, was made instantly identifiable by the telltale armband of white pearls he proudly wore signifying his captaincy.

“What’s up, Lasbow?”

The Seaguard boss did not take exception to the oldster’s informality. He accepted nothing less from the merman who, as his mentor, trained him, remaining his closest friend through thick and thin water. “I have a task for you, Durgay.”

His feathery gill slits flapping irritably against his neck, Durgay rebuffed, “I was already busy doing something.”

“Daydreaming topside doesn’t count as a job.”

“Neither does being a pest, yet you’re excelling at that.”

“Don’t make me pull rank on you, Durg.”

The threat was needless. Loyalty would have been Durgay’s middle name, if indeed he possessed a surname. He smiled indulgently at his former star pupil. Durgay long ago turned down the prestigious captaincy eventually conferred on to Lasbow, declining the promotion in favour of continuing to teach promoted Fishers essential Seaguard skills. Deciding not to accept advancement did not preclude obedience to his bossy pal.

“What have you lined up for me now, Las?”

“Myself, nothing. Cerdic, on the other hand, requested you personally.”

Durgay’s stomach knotted up. Invariably whatever chore the Merking reserved for a specific subject was bound to be unpleasant. “This is going to be even more indigestible than swallowing live sea slugs, I take it.”

Lasbow grinned his needle teeth and completed the set-up. “In a word, Princess Lorea.”

“That’s two.”

“Not if you run them together.”

If he were capable of furrowing his eye bones, Durgay would have frowned. Instead, he clicked his annoyance. “She’s a spoilt sprat.”

“That’s her in a clamshell.”

“What am I supposed to do with her?”

“Be her babysitter.”

“I’m too old to go swimming after a silly mergirl whose only claim to fame is throwing a wobbly better than a temper tantrum prone octopus.”

“And I’m not getting any younger listening to this. You have your assignment. Today, you’ll be chaperoning Cerdic’s eldest stepdaughter, soon to be my intended.”

Reaching out, Durgay placed a webbed hand on Lasbow’s shoulder and squeezed. The captain pulled a face from the phenomenal strength left in the old merman’s grip. “You were my brightest herring, Las. Yet your taste in merwomen is worse than mine. Do you love her?”

Clasping the oldster’s forearm firmly in response, Lasbow voiced, “Her tongue sports more barbs than a stingray’s tail and she’s meaner than a moray eel disturbed from its day nap. It’ll be a union of convenience. I get my fin in the crevice to the kingship and Lorea scores this!” He struck a classic bodybuilding pose, showing off his buffed physique.

Durgay chuckled, far more impressed by Lasbow’s ambitions. “Always the planner, my boy. That’s why I swum aside when offered the captaincy, giving you the chance to realise your potential.”

Surprise played across Lasbow’s angular features. “I always figured you didn’t want the position.”

“Who wouldn’t covet becoming the second most influential merman in Pah Ocean? Not to mention the perks – having every pretty mergirl swoon at your tail. I made my choice for the greater good of Castle Rock. You display a tendency for thinking beyond the reef. Never lose that. It’ll take you far and benefit the Cetari immensely, King Lasbow.”

Lasbow blushed from the unsolicited praise, his rippling muscles purpling with embarrassment. “Best I show you where the princess loiters. Her Royalness will order us chopped into chum, making her wait so long.”

Swimming in unison, the pair of Fishers” descended into cooler, darkish water. Cruising downwards through a shoal of scarlet jewelfish massed on the outer slopes of the coral heads like a plume of underwater flame, they steered over the landward side of Bounty Reef. A mosaic of vibrant, living colour played out beneath them as strikingly red, blue, and purple coral terraces strove to outshine adjoining formations.

Deceptively botanic in shape, they were in reality hundreds of colonies of minute animals linked together in undersea imitations of terrestrial vegetation, unnoticeably battling for space on the crowded reef. 200 feet down, individual coral polyps grouped to form the feathery strands of fern-like sea fans, delicate “twigs” branching out in a nine-foot spread of stinging tentacles sifting the wafting current for microscopic foodstuffs. Often reaching a century in age, these plant mimics anchored themselves to an island’s rocky roots in competing plantations, waving in the nutrient-rich ocean “breeze” of the deeper water where their fragility could not be damagingly buffeted by coastal wave action.

Swinging upslope to the sun-splashed depth of 100 feet, Durgay and Lasbow crossed above the constructing stony corals. Exuding a secretion of limestone, the chalky skeletal cups of these hardier polyps formed the building blocks of the reef, playing host to a bewildering variety of molluscs. Knobbly-skinned sea slugs, liveried in royal gold and purple, inched laboriously through a forest of tubular sponges, outpaced by crawling bristleworms, the millipedes of the sea. Cone shells – rapacious marine snails armoured in a beautifully spiralled casing belying the lethality of the voracious hunter within – waited for nightfall, emerging to pursue victims with unrelenting slowness, killing marine worms and even slothful fish with a deadly nerve poison injected by its barbed tongue. Nightmarish as a predatory shell was, the bottom-hugging octopus took the blue ribbon for fearsomeness. Ranging over the reef and seabed like giant aquatic spiders once daylight faded, the tentacled octopi ruthlessly preyed on fellow molluscs, entangling and devouring crayfish, crabs, and bivalves with gluttonous abandon. Altering body pigment and texture to blend masterfully into the background, essentially pulling a disappearing act, this many-armed ambusher did not rule the coral roost, itself persecuted by unfeeling sharks and eels. But nightfall was many hours away and the sun arced high over the idyllic tropics, keeping the nocturnal predators banished to daytime hideouts in rock crevices.

“What’s the very first lesson you drill into a rookie Fisher, Durg?”

The point of Lasbow’s unexpected query escaped the old timer. “You tell me. It’ll show at least one thing I taught you did sink in.”

Lasbow recited the homily verbatim. “ ‘Linger at the surface late makes for perfect shark bait’.” Cetari poetry left much to be desired. “Yet you persist in spyhopping. Just what exactly are you looking at up there?”

Overwhelmingly communal, individual solitude came to the merfolk in the privacy of their innermost thoughts. Personal prying was accordingly taboo. Affronted by Lasbow’s probing, Durgay deigned to answer out of consideration for their longstanding comradeship. “The past, the future. Take your pick.” It was intentionally not a detailed elaboration.

Taking the hint, Lasbow shut up.

Durgay decided to pose his own question. “Why did Cerdic single me out to be his childcare service? There must be a dozen younger Fishers, yourself foremost, willing to leap at the chance of playing escort to Miss Underseaworld.”

“Precisely the reason for the Merking picking you,” Lasbow shared. “Who wants a flotilla of virile studs floating around an unattached daughter of theirs, when a harmless old codger can be trusted to accompany her.”

“Cerdic thinks I’m safe?”

“More than that. He’s under the impression you fish for the other side and can’t sully Lorea.”

Stunned as a mullet left Durgay lost for words.

Lasbow drolly chided his guru. “It’s your own fault. Due to you constantly schooling with the guys, nobody ever sees you with a merwoman.”

“I’ve been waiting for the right one to swim along,” protested the aged Fisher. The fact it was taking several decades in no way reflected his eligibility.

“But don’t fret, old pal. I set Cerdic straight, telling him you weren’t that way inclined.”

Durgay smiled with relief, running a hand over his ridged skull. His reputation remained intact.

“I made it clear to the Merking you’re just a plain old merman hiding an impotency problem.”

“Gee thanks, Las. In an instant I’ve gone from being gay to a geriatric who can’t get his trident up.”

Lasbow shrugged unapologetically. “I figured I was doing you a favour.”

Teeming with life, Bounty Reef fanned outwards in a sheltering umbrella from a conic upthrust of sedimentary rock lifting off the ocean floor to break the surface in a 400-foot tall sea stack. Designated Castle Rock by founding Cetari colonists tiring of their nomadic ways, the towering sandstone chimney was the remnant of an islet of grim cliffs long since eroded and washed away into the sea by sculpting waves during a much colder era. The breccia foundations anchoring the pinnacle against the demolishing deep were peppered with grottos; an undersea warren of grandiose caves housing the entire merfolk populace of 3,000 souls.

Floating impatiently in the gaudy coral gardens outside the gaping mouth of one such palatial cavern, Princess Lorea awkwardly crossed her slim arms across her uninhibited cleavage after spying the partnering Fishers coasting her way. Radiantly beautiful, her enviable looks embellished by the string of royal black pearls ornamenting her graceful neck, the bosomy teenager’s jet eyes scowled at the approaching mermen. The lone Seaguardian hovering unobtrusively in the background at a discreet distance stiffened at the arrival of his commander and instructor. Eager to impress, he snapped his trident to attention and for his effort was dismissed without a word of praise from either superior.

“Mmm, Captain Lasbow, so nice of you to join us,” Lorea clicked snappily, her tone regally haughty.

“Forgive my lateness, Princess,” Lasbow contritely returned, bowing smoothly. “I assume you know Fisher Durgay, at least by repute. He’s your escort for the day.”

“Do not be so forward to presume our thoughts, Captain.” Pointedly refusing to acknowledge the elder merman, Lorea continued addressing Lasbow. Aside from the fulsome breasts and paddle-shaped tail, she appeared similar to her male counterparts, though 100 lbs lighter. Gender dimorphism between the Cetari sexes was minimal.

“We were expecting you to join us on our outing, Lasbow. It would have provided you the chance to…entertain the royal person.”

And given your stepfather an excuse to keelhaul me across the jagged reef quaked Lasbow. “The Merking thinks it prudent having an older Fisher convoying you, Princess.”

“As did we.”

The Fishers promptly bowed as Queen Minoh drifted unannounced out of the cave complex, her head crowned by a circlet of twined seagrass cradling a fist-sized black pearl worth a king’s ransom over the middle of her forehead. “It would be most unseemly to have the royal daughter gallivant about the high seas chaperoned only by her fiancé. The gossipers will have a field day.”

“Oh mother!” Lorea pouted. She unfolded her arms teasingly slow, making a sultry show of setting her boobs free, ensuring the ogling Lasbow enjoyed a full view of what he was missing out on.

Loath to be outdone by her flirtatious daughter, Cerdic’s unattended wife swished off her tail sensually, parading immodestly before the tantalised Seaguard officer like a model on the catfish walk. While not as busty as the princess, the queen flaunted a mature beauty just as alluring. Durgay was especially enthralled by the fifty-something queen’s seductively girlish figure. Lorea turned away from her exhibitionist mother in disgust. Minoh was such a coquette!

Durgay nudged his friend warningly; theirs was a dangerous captivation. Every Fisher knew Cerdic as an insanely jealous merman with the clout to turn any of Minoh’s admirers into fish food. Strange he wedded a merwoman whose hobby was making mermen jellyfish in her hands.

Lorea huffily swam away downslope. “Come merboy,” she commanded Durgay.

“I’m a merman,” he corrected the snooty princess.

She glanced back with mocking eyes straying to his pelvis. “That is not what we heard.”

With an indignant sweep of his flukes he trailed behind her like a baitfish on a hook.

“Enjoy yourself, dear,” Minoh called after her departing daughter. “Mind you stick close to home. The open ocean currents do one’s complexion no good.” Slipping her arm around his, the Merqueen led the unwilling Lasbow away into the nearest grotto, chatting, “Swim with us, darling boy. Are not the coral gardens gorgeously pretty?”

* * * *

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