Page 1 of Storm and Sea (Storm and Sea Saga #1)

Il Messaggero

Marzo, 1961

Despite its size and impact on the lives of every organism on Earth, the ocean remains a mystery. More than eighty percent of the ocean has never been mapped, explored, or even seen by humans. A greater percentage of the moon has been mapped when compared to the sea.

While there is still much to uncover, Italy’s leading oceanographers have already made groundbreaking discoveries. Earlier this week, oceanographer Dr. Raphi mapped the first of what he suspects to be hundreds of deep ocean canyons he’s dubbed ‘trenches.’ They range deep?—

“ M ..mi…misteei?”

Atreus narrowed his eyes, demanding the letters on the page stay still.

“M— mistray—m…”

Atreus stumbled over the jumble of letters. The more he stared at the washed-up newspaper, the more the words taunted him. He’d found it dried out on the beach, and the black-and-white photos of men on boats sparked a flicker of hope that maybe some of the words would be familiar enough to decipher.

Guilt ate at him as the symbols refused to make sense. All Giovanni’s efforts to teach him to read were wasted. He could handle three-lettered words like ‘and’ or ‘sea.’ He’d even patted himself on the back for quickly identifying the word ‘earth.’ He tried challenging himself with one of the longer ones like ‘mystery,’ but…

“My…Mi…eery?”

The sound coming off his tongue didn’t sound like a word so much as a random jumble of sounds.

“Damn it!” he cursed. Crumpling the paper in frustration, he tossed the ball out the open window where it would fall over two hundred feet before sinking into the ocean.

Atreus ran a hand through his thick curls, irritated. He wanted to impress Giovanni, to prove that he’d been practicing his letters over the winter. Of course, his stupid brain wouldn’t cooperate. He’d stared at the page less than five minutes before the letters began flipping and switching places like rowdy seal pups.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said to the random assortment of things he’d scavenged over the years, “I don’t need to read to do my job.”

He tugged at a long strand of curly hair, wondering if Leo’s mom might be willing to cut it for him. It always turned out better when she cut it, instead of the uneven chunks he hacked off with a rusty knife in front of a shattered mirror propped against the wall.

Human hair was such a pain. It grew back way too fast.

He eyed the piles of his treasures, wishing they would talk back for once. Anything from fraying ropes, fishing gear, and the occasional tire washed ashore on his beach. He’d also found heavier objects like an entire wooden chair, panes of glass, and metal scrap on the ocean floor, likely remnants of old ship wreckage.

“As long as I work hard, he’ll be….”

What? Proud? Happy? Satisfied with his employee’s work? Atreus knew it was likely the last of those options, but a small part of him dared to hope it would be the first.

He took a steadying breath, trying to calm the anxiety that churned like a whirlpool in his chest.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow was the official start of the fishing season. He’d waited all winter for this day—all those miserable, freezing months when he was starved for both food and company. Forced to survive on his meager shellfish trappings and food stores, Atreus was disappointed with how much weight he’d lost. He’d done everything in his power to remain in shape, keeping his muscles strong and ready for hours and hours of lifting fishing nets. But even more than the lack of nutrition, he was starved for the company of people. Atreus hadn’t spoken a word to another soul in over two months. Other than his magpie’s nest of random things, he was alone. He didn’t mind the cold; in fact, Atreus rather enjoyed it. But he hated winter. Going so long without seeing another face made him feel like the last person alive.

The fishing season couldn’t have come at a better time. He was down to his last half-dozen cans of sardines, and his traps hadn’t caught anything in over a week. If he waited much longer, he would need to resort to stealing his food. The thought alone made Atreus sick, bringing unwanted flashes of his younger days to the surface.

Thirteen winters—that’s how old he was when his father left. Every day, he’d waited on the sandy shore. Hour by hour, time stretched like a drought, leaving behind nothing but a husk of who he used to be. Yet his young heart dared hope for the day his father would come back.

He never did.

In those early days, Atreus learned the true meaning of the word hunger. It was an emptiness so painful he feared his stomach would cannibalize itself. But he survived. He fought. He adapted.

And if not for those starvation-fueled acts of desperation, he’d never be where he was now. He would never know the kindness in the hearts of humans—or one human in particular. Atreus’s stomach tightened with guilt at the memory of his first meeting with Giovanni.

He’d been desperate in those early days of isolation. At thirteen winters, Atreus was skin and bone, barely strong enough to swim the quarter-mile channel that separated his lighthouse from the island of Baia Vita. His body trembled as he dragged himself onto the beach, the weight of his decision beating down on him as though he stood beneath a cascading waterfall. He was trespassing now, sneaking into the territory of the most terrifying creatures in the world—humans.

Bloodthirsty creatures without the ability to change. They were landlocked and had a penchant for ending the lives of anything that swam too close. For years, Atreus’s father filled his mind with stories of humans and their greed and cruelty. He even showed Atreus scars on his body as evidence of their ruthlessness. As a child, the sound of a human boat puttering too close sent him shivering to his father with tears in his eyes.

But those were the days when he had someone to depend on. Now, there was no one.

Nobody to help him navigate the world. Nobody to teach him how to fish. How to maximize his resources. And when the easy-to-catch crustaceans on the seafloor migrated out of the bay… Atreus had nothing to eat.

And for weeks, he withered away. The beast of hunger grew so insistent that he tried to eat the kelp his father was so fond of, only for the vile sea plant to climb back up his throat as he wretched.

When starvation and a lonely death waited at his doorstep, Atreus faced his fear. Braving the human territory, he clambered onto their shore, the air thick with the scent of men. They smelled of oil and earth, instantly identifiable. A scent he’d learned meant danger. Instead of running away, he pushed further into the island until his feet no longer touched the sand but cobbled streets. His cadaverous body shivered as he crept behind a school of land dwellers. They milled about, busy with whatever it was humans did. Atreus ignored them, his focus narrowing to what his body so desperately needed—a stall brimming with fish. Fresh, cleaned, mouthwatering fish.

Atreus watched as humans exchanged what appeared to be shiny rocks for fish, and his heart sank—he didn’t have any shiny rocks. Nerves billowed out of every pore, and Atreus felt the ghostly swish of his tail, even though it wasn’t there.

He had no choice but to take what wasn’t his.

Slinking behind a low wall made of red cube rock, Atreus waited for the school of humans to look away. When the moment finally came, he sprang forward, grabbing three fish at random, their slimy bodies slippery in his arms.

“Excuse me,” a low voice boomed behind him.

Atreus jumped, dropping his loot, ready for a harpoon to pierce his chest. Beetle-black eyes bore into him, and Atreus gasped as the largest human he’d ever seen loomed like a mountain. The man-beast was built like a bull shark, with massive shoulders and tree trunk arms. His face was covered in curled black hair, sparsely tangled with strands of silver.

Atreus was so paralyzed with fear that it took him a moment to register the words the human had spoken. They shared the same language—something his father, despite all his cautionary tales about humans, had never thought to mention.

Of course, this human had no idea what Atreus truly was. Without water on his skin, Atreus appeared perfectly human, which was likely the only reason he was still alive.

“Please… I didn’t mean to…” Atreus pleaded before a fit seized his lungs. His dry throat felt like it would crack from the strain, and he’d soon swallow blood.

The mountainous human picked up the scattered fish and wrapped them in black and white paper, which Atreus would later learn was ‘newspaper,’ before handing him the bundle.

“Come back tomorrow for more,” he said and turned away.

Atreus ran from the square, down the beach, and behind an outcrop of stone before he dared look back. Nobody followed. Tears ran down his cheeks as he crouched, eating the fish raw, confused by the incredible act of mercy.

Memories of the deep white scars along his father’s back and ribs resurfaced. The wounds were cruel. Deliberate. Given to him by humans in seas far to the north. So how had Atreus managed to escape without so much as a scratch? He didn’t ponder too long as his eyelids drooped, his belly full for the first time in months.

Three more days passed before the beast of hunger bared its fangs and gnawed at Atreus’s stomach. He swam to the human town, chased by its insistent pangs. The monstrous man was there, working his stall, conversing with the other humans. Atreus cowered at his booming voice and wondered why the others didn’t run in terror. Instead, they approached him like a friend.

Atreus only dared to leave his hiding place after observing the pleasant exchanges for the better part of the morning.

The hulking man’s eyes found him quickly, and Atreus half expected him to shout, to tell him to get away like the scavenging mongrel he was. He hadn’t expected the terrifying creature to soften. The human’s features relaxed, and the lines at the edges of his mouth and eyes became more prominent as his face contorted into a bushy smile.

“I was worried about you, ragazzo . Glad you decided to return.”

And it was that smile that changed Atreus’s life forever. It was meant for him. There because of him. More than the pangs in his stomach, Atreus realized how starved he’d been for it—for someone to look at him and be glad he existed.

It was that smile that Atreus craved now. After a long winter of isolation, with only a few sparse glimpses of his human home, the hours couldn’t pass quickly enough. He paced, circling his lighthouse home over and over, looping around the dead beacon in the center like a vulture. He needed something to do. Something with his hands.

There wasn’t much for resources on his small patch of land. He could walk around its perimeter in less than two hours. And he had. Probably over a thousand times in his seven winters of isolation. Or was it eight? He wasn’t sure. Atreus wished he’d kept track of time when he was younger, but by the time it occurred to him, the years bled into one another. For that reason, Atreus wasn’t sure how old he was. He figured somewhere between twenty and twenty-two winters.

Surrounded by a crescent-shaped sandbank on one side and a steep cliff on the other, Atreus’s lighthouse stood isolated, cradled by a grove of trees that shielded his solitary refuge.

From his glass-paneled home, he had an unobstructed view stretching for miles in every direction. Yet the sight that captured his attention—the one he’d stared at with longing for months—was much closer: the island of Baia Vita.

“I’ll be there tomorrow," he whispered, breath fogging the pane of glass. “One more day.”

One more day until he would see Giovanni. Until he would laugh with his best friend Leo and hear about all the trouble he’d gotten into over the winter. Just one more day,and he’d be waving to the familiar faces in Saul’s café and Signor Rossi’s gelato shop on the corner.

One more day.

And he’d be home.

Atreus sighed in frustration as he reorganized his dwindling food supplies for the third time. His ear twitched, and a moment later, the sky growled somewhere in the distance. A storm was coming, large and aggressive by the sound of it. He’d have to pull his traps from the water if he didn’t want the violent waves to wash them away.

With bare feet, Atreus made his way down the tight spiral staircase leading to the base of the lighthouse. He tried not to let old memories wander as he walked through the house. Anything worth having was long gone from this place. Stripped bare after decades of abandonment, it was the perfect hiding place for Atreus and his father to live—far away from human dangers and the judgments of his own kind.

Memories of shared meals, nighttime stories, and stupid jokes clung to the walls like seaweed on rocks after high tide. It stank of happier times. After his father left, the stench became unbearable.

So, Atreus moved his few belongings to the top of the lighthouse, where only a broken beacon kept him company.

“He didn’t leave. He abandoned you.

Couldn’t wait to leave behind

his pathetic excuse of a son.

You weren’t worth staying for.”

A voice whispered in his mind. Not his voice, or at least, he didn’t think it was. It didn’t feel like his. But it was in his head, so what else could it be?

“Your father couldn’t get away fast enough.

You were nothing to him?—

just a dead weight he couldn’t wait to drop.

You’re not worth anything.

You never were.”

Atreus shook his head as though the words were an insect buzzing in his ear. He scolded himself for letting wayward memories crawl from the shallow grave where he’d buried them. This place was a ghost of his youth, and he would gladly leave it behind.

Yet, it still served a purpose. The house acted as an effective deterrent for thrill-seeking humans who occasionally invaded his island. Most of the time, they didn’t brave the ‘haunted’ lighthouse, but on the rare occasions they did, they never made it past the first floor. Atreus wrecked the place into a state that promised only the most morbid hauntings .

He was quite proud of his handiwork, with broken shards of glass littering the floor (away from his walking path) and the deliberately placed smears of blood in the shape of handprints. He’d used fish’s blood to set the scene and was happy with the result. Nobody would bother him here. Nobody would discover the creature that haunted the lighthouse.

“The freak not even a father could love.”

Atreus silently exited his home, feet sinking into the soft carpet of grass that finally bloomed after a long winter of frozen ground. The scent of a storm wafted into his nose, promising one hell of a battle between the sea and sky.

“Why did you have to come now?” Atreus cursed at the mass of gray swirling above him.

If the rain didn’t stop before tomorrow…

He shook his head, not allowing the thought to manifest. The storm would pass in time.

It had to.

Atreus filled his lungs to full capacity, tasting the spray of the sea. It was his favorite smell in the world—the salt, the untamable force of nature, the birthplace of life itself.

When Atreus was one with the sea, he was whole.

He allowed gravity to guide him over the cliff, eyes closed, relishing the whoosh of air as he dove. He fell, and the sea welcomed him home. The cool water stung his human flesh, but only for a moment. Because within the span of a heartbeat, Marvassa took his body.

The change .

The ability to transform from one state to another with the caress of water. Human skin evolved into a mosaic of scales and fins in less than a second. As he immersed himself in the frigid sea, Atreus’s body relaxed, shifting from a warm-blooded land-dweller to a cold-blooded creature born of the ocean. An extra weight materialized in his lower back. Atreus flexed his powerful tail, fins rising in a display of sharp spines and hooked barbs. A shiver rippled through him as he reclaimed his true self.

Atreus was Mer.

He kicked at the water, marveling at how his webbed feet sliced through it with far more efficiency than his stubby human toes ever could. The sensation reminded him of the legless fountain in Baia Vita’s town center. Humans knew of Mer only through myths and cautionary tales; creatures conjured from their imaginations rather than reality. The fountain depicted a Donna del Mare —a supposed sea goddess—with the upper body of a voluptuous woman and a single fishtail forming her lower half. Atreus had to suppress a laugh the first time he saw the sculpture. She was supposed to be regal and mysterious, but to him, she looked more like a manatee with hair.

Luckily, Atreus retained all four of his limbs upon transformation—but he did gain a powerful tail, so at least that part of the legend was accurate.

He ran his tongue over pointed teeth, enjoying the feel of elongated incisors behind his lips. Humans, with their flat teeth, relied on tools to hunt. They lacked the sharp claws and barbed fins that made Atreus deadly. Not only was their eyesight poor in the dark, but they were completely useless beneath the water.

He’d once seen Leo return from a swim with red, puffy eyes. That was when Atreus learned that humans kept their eyes closed underwater to avoid the stinging salt. The idea baffled him. Worst of all was how often Leo had to surface. Atreus’s best friend remained below the surface for only two minutes before coming up for air.

“That’s it?” Atreus asked the first time he watched his friend dive.

“What? Think you can do any better? Go on then,” Leo challenged.

Of course, Atreus refused. He was careful to stay away from the water’s edge whenever a human watched.Even his best friend.

But right now, he was alone and free to be himself.

Atreus pulled deeply, a sensation akin to inhaling, letting the seawater flow through the gills at his neck. The delicate layers fluttered as they extracted life-giving oxygen from the water. Even if he never surfaced again, Atreus wouldn't drown. And that is exactly what most Mer did. Live their lives hidden in the sea. Away from humans. They were content with life beneath the waves, never knowing the kiss of a summer wind. Atreus often wondered what it would be like to live as the others did.

“But you aren’t like the others.

Are you?”

Atreus didn’t need the reminder as he concentrated on untying the empty lobster traps.

The Mer in the local village, hidden within Baia Vita’s bay, were covered in scales of varying shades of peridot and moss. Their bodies were small, fins rounded, and they blended into the kelp they so diligently farmed. Not for the first time, a pang of longing struck hard as Atreus imagined what his life might have been like if he’d been born to look like them.

From a distance, anyone who spotted him beneath the waves would say he was a unique shade of cerulean blue, that is, until they got close enough to see the truth. Sporadic scales in varying shades of indigo, séance, and cobalt mixed with flecks of midnight made him look like a mosaic of cool tones. These colors spread to his fins, where the purple became more dominant, and when the sun hit him just right, hidden streaks of magenta blended the outer edges of his dorsal and tail fins.

As a kid, he’d taken pride in having an identical tailfin color to his father—a vibrant purple fading to magenta along the spines. But therein lay the problem. While his father’s body was entirely purple, Atreus’s scales were predominantly blue. Something was wrong with Atreus, and it all started and ended with the color of his scales.

They never spoke of his birthplace—his home tribe across the sea. Even mentioning it soured his father’s mood faster than fish skins left to rot in the sun. Over the years, though, using scraps of discarded comments, Atreus had managed to piece together this much:

His home tribe wanted him dead.

From the moment he was born, Atreus had been marked for death—all because of the color of his scales. But that hardly seemed like a good enough reason to murder an infant.

Atreus didn’t fully understand it, and his father refused to explain. It was the threat to his life that forced his father to take him in the middle of the night and flee. Leaving behind a life Atreus would never know.

A mother he’d never remember.

Atreus sentenced his father to a life of exile for the crime of being born. He supposed that, after years of isolation, his father had enough. And left.

“Shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

They wanted you dead.”

The voice hissed at him, each syllable a cruel reminder that his very presence was a crime in someone’s eyes. Not for the first time, Atreus wondered if things would have been better if he’d been silenced as a babe. Never a burden .

His head shot up as the sound of a rumbling engine hummed above him. The underside of a boat glided across the surface as it returned to the harbor. Likely escaping the incoming storm. The sound of an engine alone would have sent most Mer diving beneath rocks.

Atreus smiled. He didn’t need other Mer. He’d made a life for himself with their natural enemy. With humans. And since they were the only ones who would have him, the only ones who would accept him as one of their own — Atreus would gladly align himself with them.

“They only accept you because

they don’t know what you are.”

The whisper in his head might as well have been a shout for how long it rang in his ears.

Doing his best to ignore it, Atreus untied the final lobster trap, glad to see the large pincers of a king male snacking on the bait inside. At least he’d eat well while the storm ravaged the sky.

But the voice wasn’t done with him. It pressed against his mind, slithering inside like a sea snake ready to inject its venom. Atreus snapped and acknowledged the insistent whispers—anything to stop the internal assault.

They’ll never know what I am. As far as they’re concerned, I’m just like any other human. I’ll be fine as long as I stay away from the water.

“And how long until that happens?

How long until you slip, and

they see you for what you are? ”

Atreus blinked rapidly, his mind fuzzing as it always did when the voice grew so excited.

I’ve hidden my entire life. I know what I’m doing. They’ll never find out. Now shut up.

And with that, he silenced the back-and-forth in his head, at least for now.

As he ascended the beach, rain dotted the sand, and the trees whipped with wind. Atreus tied his traps to a log and carefully removed the lobster, using the tips of his talons to avoid its clubbed pincers. The rain drenched every inch of his body, keeping him in Mer form. Marvassa didn’t discriminate; any and all forms of water would transform him. Whether it be the sea or sky or the splash of a human fountain— the water would change him, returning him to his natural form, even against his will.

He climbed the winding staircase and was greeted by the sound of pelting rain on glass. The entire circular room was made of glass, intended for a beam of light to shine through. But that hadn’t happened in decades. Still, even in disuse, the tower stood resolute, unyielding to the raging sea that beat upon its walls.

Placing the king lobster in a pail of seawater, Atreus began closing the black curtains hanging on one side of the room. He’d found the cloth years ago, dotted with holes, washed ashore on the beach. With a needle of bone and an endless supply of fishing line, he’d painstakingly mended every tear. Using a haphazard mix of metal pipes and sticks, he built a makeshift privacy wall, shielding the open glass that faced the town. Now, he could light a fire without fear of a human seeing the glow.

He set to work using his collection of dry tinder and a metal bowl he used as a firepit. He had to cut a hole in the lighthouse roof to let the smoke escape—a lesson learned the hard way after his first attempt at indoor cooking. An angled piece of glass shielded the room from the rain while letting the smoke ventilate. Each drop tapped against the thin pane with a soft, rhythmic ‘pitter-patter,’ like tiny fingers on a drum.

In minutes, a healthy fire roared, eating up the dry wood. Atreus let it burn, getting lost in the flames’ glow while the wood transformed into hot white coals. The hypnotic flames danced in the bowl, jumping from coal to coal like seabirds along the rocky shore.

“It’ll stop before tomorrow. It will,” Atreus told himself as the rain attacked the glass with renewed ferocity.

His mind was so lost in thoughts of tomorrow that he didn’t hear the distant cry from the floor below. The fire popped, regular and even, like footsteps.

No.

Those were footsteps. Steady and certain with a rhythmic ‘clank’ on the rusted metal steps.

Someone was coming.