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The Mer prince swam closer, laughing at the foolishness of humans. Why had they gone out so far when a storm was coming? Had they no sense of the wind?

A flicker of orange caught his attention, and he swam closer, keeping beneath the water so that the waves did not hinder his progress.

When he raised his head above the water again, he saw that the mast was ablaze. The lightning must have struck it.

Men were running about, slipping and sliding on the wet deck as the little ship pitched violently upon the waves. Screams of pain and panic rose as fire spread from the mast to the sails, and a little knot of guards clustered together on one end, as far from the swinging boom as possible.

The mast cracked, and the chaos intensified.

The storm was already dying, but the humans could not yet perceive this. Their voices were high and shrill. A wave tipped the ship precariously to one side, and then a high, clear voice screamed.

The singer!

Kaerius surged closer, his eyes sweeping across the deck of the ship. It tilted the other way, and she screamed again.

Her voice abruptly cut off.

The Mer prince ducked beneath the water, his eyes searching the frothy sea.

He clicked and listened for the echoes, but there was so much chaos in the water it was more difficult than usual to find what he sought. His strong tail and arms took him beneath the ship to the other side, where he found that more than one of the soldiers had fallen overboard. They were spitting water and shouting, their words so garbled by the waves in their faces that Kaerius could barely make out what they said.

“His Majesty!”

“Where is the king?”

Someone had already lowered a dinghy, which swung violently against the side of the ship a few feet above the water. Kaerius thought it was more likely to kill someone in the water than it was to save them.

A young sailor had come down in the little boat, risking life and limb to do so, and he loosed the ropes from the bow and stern as soon as the boat touched the water. He extended an oar toward another man who thrashed a few feet away.

Kaerius tasted blood in the water, and he ducked beneath the waves again to locate it.

There. A little dribble of blood from that man’s head. He was unconscious and would already have sunk beneath the waves but for two guards, who were struggling to keep his head above water while the boat drew closer.

Kaerius gave the boat a solid push toward the men. He watched the two men in the boat and the two in the water struggle and finally succeed in getting the injured man into the dinghy.

“Where is the princess?” one of the guards gasped.

“I thought…”

They looked around, but they could not see her.

The Mer prince sank beneath the waves, singing softly. He smelled no blood from any source other than the injured man, but there were large bodies in the water.

A tiger shark. A school of sunfish not far away. A thousand smaller fish still large enough to be tempting prey, and even smaller creatures. Pieces of cargo from the ship thrown overboard as the storm began in a futile attempt to gain enough speed to reach the sheltered harbor before the worst of the tempest. He sang to warn the shark away, and it lazily retreated into deeper water.

There. An unfamiliar sound shape. He flashed toward it.

The princess! She sank slowly, her dress floating around her in a filmy cloud like an enormous jellyfish. Her eyes were open, but she did not react when he approached. Her mouth was open too, her jaw slack, and her tiny white teeth, so dull and strange, were visible in the shadows.

He reached for her hand, and he was startled to find that her skin was incredibly soft, like the inside flesh of an oyster, though not at all slimy.

Humans needed air, and she had none.

He took her in his arms and surged toward the surface.

He did not want the humans to see him, but he did not want this strange, vulnerable creature to die, either.

Why should he care about a human? He could not think of a reason why she should matter to him, and he told himself that he felt only curiosity, not concern.