Fathom by L. Standage (spanish books to read .TXT) 📕

did merpeople get here?” I asked, making it sound like they were aliens or foreigners.

Seidon finished another swig of water and shrugged. “How did humans get here?” he asked.

Huh. Good question. “Well, there are several schools of thought. Creation. Evolution. A big bang in the middle of the universe. Do merpeople have your own stories?”

“Sure we do. All our stories are mostly myth. One of the legends says we are descended from Nereids, the offspring of the god of the ocean, Nereus. Another legend says humans weren’t first at all but that they evolved from merpeople. But the main belief, the one that we’re all taught as children, is that when the first humans began populating Earth, a group of them went to live near the ocean. They grew to love it so much, they began to worship it. This made the god of the humans angry, so he banished them to the ocean as a punishment. Of course, humans can’t survive under water for long, so they were doomed to die. But Nereus took pity on them, gave them the tail and gills of a fish so they could survive, and also provided them with the ability to return to the Earth if they wished, but only if they left a sacrifice.”

“What kind of sacrifice?” I asked with foreboding. “They didn’t have to kill anyone, did they?”

“No, no, it can be anything. But it has to be something of great worth to the individual. A piece of treasure, a keepsake, even a memory can be given up. Marinus, for example, left his little finger.”

My mouth dropped open. “That’s why he’s missing a pinky?”

“Certainly. But a finger is a pretty cowardly sacrifice, if you ask me. The pain of losing a body part is sufficient, but as he knew he wouldn’t be going back, he only gave up his little finger. It’s something he wouldn’t miss or need too much. If he hadn’t stolen a vessel, he could return to the ocean and get his finger back.”

“Reattached and everything?” I asked in astonishment. Seidon nodded.

“Of course.”

“Wow. So it’s like collateral?”

“Right. After the transformation, we can stay on land and lose our sacrifice, or we can return home and reclaim it.”

“Wow…” I said again in a whisper.

“Did you have to give something up?” asked Sam.

“Yes. Everyone does. Even me. I gave up my favorite wracken. It’s autographed.”

“What’s a wracken?”

“It’s a ball used for a sport we play…sort of like that soccer stuff Samantha showed me on the toplap yesterday.”

“Laptop,” Sam corrected.

“Yeah, that. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Don’t worry, Liv and I aren’t much into sports.”

Just the boys who play them, I thought to myself with a smirk as I watched Sam batting her eyelashes.

“How long will you stay here?” I asked.

“Cordelia and I have to stay here at least three more rounds, or days as you call it. When we come on land, we shed our scales. It takes seven days for the membranes to grow back beneath our skin.”

“You’ll turn back into a fish in three more days?” Samantha asked. Seidon laughed.

“I’m a merman, not a fish.” He grinned. “And no, the scale membranes are underneath my skin. Once we return to the temple of Nereus and reclaim our sacrifice, the skin on top will dissolve, our scales will appear, and our legs will fuse back into a tail.”

“Ouch, does that hurt?” I asked.

“Turning into a human did. Mostly just the bones moving. I don’t know what it feels like to turn back, but from what I’m told, it’ll be a similar to becoming human.”

I cringed and flexed the bones in my own legs.

“Salt water is like acid to you?” said Sam. “If you were to go into salt water after seven days, your skin would melt off?”

Seidon laughed again.

“Not at all. Transformation is a process; much less dramatic than it sounds. It took nearly a day to turn human. We first have to go back to the temple of Nereus, but we can live and move under the water because of our gills—”

“Can I see your gills?” I interrupted, then shrank back. What I’d asked could have been incredibly rude. But Seidon smiled, lifted his hair, and turned his head. I leaned across Samantha and gazed with fascination at the skin behind his ear. It looked like two small, deep cuts.

“She’s obsessed with fish stuff,” said Sam. Seidon laughed and turned back to us.

“Are most humans not interested in marine life?”

“Not as much as me, I guess,” I said. “Do lots of mermaids come on land?”

“Merpeople. And no. Most of us don’t like to bother with the whole sacrifice and metamorphosis thing and just stay put.”

“What about the pressure of the water?” I continued, eager for answers to everything I’d been wondering. “Most people can’t survive at certain depths.”

“We’re not as deep as most people might think, but it’s the same as with any kind of marine life: we’ve adapted. We also have natural barriers surrounding our cities to lessen the pressure, as well as keep them camouflaged. It varies among the different types too. Deep sea merpeople like us can survive elsewhere, but we’re used to the dark and the cold.”

“Don’t you have any light?”

“Not outside our cities.”

“And how do you communicate? You obviously can’t use your speaking voice under water…can you?”

Yet again, Seidon chuckled.

“No, we can’t use our speaking voices under water, except in air pockets. Everyone has at least one in their home and there are several in our cities. There’s a few other different ways we communicate too. One is a language more like singing than talking…sort of like whale song.”

“I heard it!” I exclaimed. “In the vessel. It did sound like whales. Only a lot prettier.” And a lot freakier, but I didn’t say that.

“It’s another way to communicate, but most of the time we also have a kind of telepathy. It’s very limited,” he said when he saw the look of amazement on my face, “mostly it’s used in close conversation if