9. The Secret Life of Vangill

CHAPTER NINE

THE SECRET LIFE OF VANGILL

The Past: Sato in Kealakekua Bay without Patrick

Sato hung up the pay phone quickly but reluctantly.

He turned to glare at whoever was pressuring them to return to the cave. It was their one visit to the human town. It was his one opportunity to talk to Patrick. And he’d been cut short. It hadn’t been nearly enough time!

But the person yelling at them turned out to be the Navarch, so Sato really didn’t have a choice. And he wasn’t stupid enough to complain.

They left the town for the beach, walking double time on their human legs and assembled for a headcount.

Sato’s training pod had only twelve members, but still everything had to be done in an orderly military fashion all the time. Sato would’ve thought such formalities ill-suited to the people of the sea. But the vangill were all mermen with spurs, who would have spent a good portion of their youth on land among humans. Perhaps the disciplinary structure assumed a certain level of humanity. Whatever that level was, Sato didn’t have it.

He chafed at the rigid requirements and structured daily routine. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to play the game. In fact, he was determined to beat it. He needed to get this over with as quickly as possible. He needed to get out. But he also wasn’t averse to the skills they were learning. Patrick’s family were mostly criminals, after all. Last he heard one set of twins was dealing in black market antiquities, underwater excavations, of course. The other set had something to do with overseas fencing and money laundering. Get it? Launder. And that was just the twins.

All of which meant vangill training, which was essentially bodyguard training, was going to come in handy in his future with Patrick.

Back to the head count.

One of them happened to be missing, of course. So while the Navarch returned to town to hunt down their stray, the remaining trainees loitered on the beach. There were a few local surfers and a couple of adventurous tourists. It was one of those secret beaches that only the locals were supposed to know about, so everyone was giving the tourists attitude.

As a group of very fit mermen who looked like they were a professional sports team in training, they were given a respectfully wide berth by everyone. It was one of the reasons they’d been assigned athletic uniforms to wear when they were on land – if they looked paramilitary or like Olympic hopefuls, they were left alone.

“So who did you call?” One of his cohorts, Nix, was actually talking to Sato. How annoying.

Sato looked as casual as he could, not changing his body language or welcoming conversation. “Just a friend.”

“Oh yeah? And who uses their one phone call on just a friend ?” Nix was an easygoing guy, but he did like to gossip. Sato privately thought he might actually be evil. His gossiping had needles to it, like coral that sliced flesh open but only hurt hours later.

Sato didn’t feel compelled to answer.

“You seem very protective of this friend. You sure it’s not a girlfriend?” Nix pushed.

Sato considered what overhearing just his side of the conversation with Patrick would be like. He couldn’t help it, he probably sounded a lot like a boyfriend… because he was one. But he didn’t think anything he’d said revealed Patrick’s gender. Best to keep it that way. There were a lot of expectations and pressures on the vangill, especially considering they were highly regarded as breeding studs. As the only mermen with viable sperm, they were expected to spread it around. They had the reputation for being active and actively admired womanizers. Mermaid-izers? Whatever the correct term, there was a lot of talk in the cave about scoring with human females, mermaids, and shifters. The big cheerful fellow who answered to the name of Rus had a scorecard where he was trying to “bag one of each,” as he so charmingly put it. The others found this admirable. Apparently fucking as many women of as many different species as possible was considered a desirable personality characteristic amongst the vangill. Sato found pretty much all aspects of the concept gross.

“So what if it is?” he shot back.

Rus came ambling over. “I didn’t think you dipped your wick, Speedy.”

The Navarch kept insisting on mini competitions – swimming, fighting, racing. Sato kept winning them. It was making him increasingly unpopular and generating a vast number of new monikers, the nicest of which was Speedy.

“I don’t.”

“Oh, so it’s just the one, then?” Nix was relentless.

Rus was mocking. “No action at all? You let yourself get landbound by some human female you met in high school? Dude, you’re one of the best of us. Why anchor down so young? Take my advice, dump her now. Then you’ll get to swim in the sea of tail that being a full vangill affords you. Once we finish training, of course.”

“And who says you’re actually good enough to finish training?” the Navarch barked out, reappearing on the beach, dragging their missing stray behind him.

Xanin, the stray, gave them all a cheeky smile and did not explain himself.

Sato was annoyed – now they were off routine and late. He could have had more time on the phone with Patrick.

The Navarch said, “Let’s make it a race back to the cave. First one back, if you can beat me, doesn’t have to hunt for dinner tonight.”

Sato won easily. Swimming was definitely his strongest ability. Having a best friend (and then boyfriend) who was a dobhar-chú had served him in good stead. He was not only fast, he was incredibly nimble, and he had good peripheral vision for smaller creatures and nearby attacks.

“You’re beyond annoying, you know that?” said Nix. “It would, hypothetically speaking, be even more frustrating if you also had a long-term girlfriend to whom you were utterly devoted and with whom you were completely in love.”

Sato, as usual, didn’t answer.

“I’ll take that as agreement, shall I?”

Sato said, since Nix had specified girlfriend , “You’re wrong, actually.’

“So it isn’t really love?”

Sato’s smile was all humorless sarcasm. “I didn’t specify which part you were wrong about.”

The Navarch was suddenly there. “And what exactly happened to make you two think it was time for a chitchat?” His eyes were particularly hard on Sato, like he expected better of him.

Sato merely arched an eyebrow.

“We are going to start spur work today. None of you can activate them at will yet, right? So let’s hear it, how did everybody manifest?”

They went around the group with each vangill trainee naming the first incident that caused their spurs. For some of them it had been sexual (or they wanted to claim that it was sexual), for others it had been fear, loss, or terror. Finally it was Sato’s turn.

“Shark attack,” he said simply. After all, the Navarch had said no chitchat .

The Navarch had questions, though. “Was anyone with you?”

“Just a friend.”

Nix whispered, “Another incident of Sato Daiki’s just a friend .”

Xanin said, “What shocks me is that he has friends.”

“A friend,” corrected Nix, accurately.

The Navarch ignored them and turned away from Sato to question the group. “Have you all noticed the common theme?”

“We were all in states of heightened emotional awareness and adrenaline,” answered Nix promptly.

“Of course, you all knew that’s what causes spurs before you came here. Have you noticed anything else similar between all of your manifestations?”

Everybody stayed silent.

Sato wasn’t going to be the one to say it. Not unless he was forced to.

The Navarch seemed to sense that about him. He made a come-hither gesture at him.

Sato didn’t want to be seen as perfect in mental acuity as well as physical strength. But he couldn’t help it if everyone else was stupid. “None of us were alone.”

“Exactly. You were each with somebody, or more than one other person, whom you needed to protect as well as yourself. Spurs are activated by defensive adrenaline, but more specifically, some kind of latent familial instinct, probably an ancient need to protect the pod.”

Everyone assembled there looked disbelieving.

Sato thought the idea was preposterous. Mermen were notoriously anti-family. Most mermen, who weren’t vangill, went on to live solitary lives on the shores of abandoned beaches in inhospitable parts of the world. They rarely swam with a pod, and if they did, it was only for short lengths of time. There was a reason they were sent away to be raised by their sires in the human world. Mostly sterile, they were considered useless to merfolk society. Having nothing to contribute beyond their adaptability to a land environment and mundane existence, they were used to bridge the gap between ocean and shore.

The Navarch continued explaining, probably because of the incredulous looks, “If you happen to have any kind of relationship or intimacy with your mother’s pod, you’ll find, when you are around them, you’re more likely to deploy spurs. This will happen in the company of a mother, sister, or even lover.”

“And what if we don’t have that intimacy?” asked Rus, looking not at all cheerful for the first time.

“Then your spurs will deploy whenever you are in water and under stress with anyone you care about.”

“Is it possible to deploy spurs when one is alone? Or to activate the adrenaline response on behalf of someone I don’t care about?” asked Nix.

“It’s possible for very few of you. And it can take a long time to develop that skill, but it’s one of the reasons you’re training with me.” The Navarch turned and dove swiftly into the water. He bobbed to the surface a little way out, raised up his forearms, took a breath, and focused hard on Sato. Then his spurs appeared up and down each forearm.

He was showing off.

Sato wondered why his teacher felt the need to stare at him.

“Do spurs happen only in our merform?” asked Sato, to make absolutely certain.

The others scoffed at him. Because of course that was the case – like having a tail or gills, the spurs were obviously for underwater use. Except that they weren’t a tail or gills, they weren’t something needed to swim, they were a weapon. They weren’t required to function in the water, therefore logically they should also be available on land. A tail or gills were a hindrance outside the ocean, spurs were not .

The Navarch flipped himself high out of the water and back onto the shore. His tail shifted to legs mid-air in a spectacular move that Sato instantly wanted to learn how to do more than he had ever wanted to control his spurs.

By the time he was fully ashore, the Navarch’s arms were back to human.

The others all hissed appreciatively.

Sato said, “Screw the spurs, how do I learn how to do that ?”

The Navarch smiled briefly, sharp and tight. “At last, he shows interest in something.”

“Sato has a human girlfriend, so he wants to prove himself on land more than the sea,” explained Nix confidently.

The Navarch turned and stared at Sato in surprise. “You revealed your identity to her?”

Sato considered. “No part of Nix’s statement was accurate in any way.”

The Navarch blinked slowly, considering. “Well, if you show spur acumen, I’ll teach you how to do an airborne shift. But you need to understand that as rare as having spurs is at all , the ability to deploy them at will is even rarer. Even the five vangill who protect the Soteria of the Deep are encouraged to form emotional attachments with their sacred mermaids because we need all the help we can get. Instinct will always play a key role in spur deployment.”

He continued. “But even if you only ever activate around your home pod, you’ll still be incredibly valuable to that pod. The vangill are the only mermen allowed to permanently reenter society. But that, of course, also has to do with your ability in certain other arenas.”

Many of the trainees smiled smugly. As if this was some kind of prize they had won, when instead it was a freak of genetics that they could sire children.

“First things first, get into the water, shift, and let’s start with mental discipline and preparation to intentionally activate the protective instinct.”

It turned out that this was by far the hardest part of training. All of the physical testing, all of the racing and weight lifting, all of the running and diving, everything that was actually part of the military aspect of their training was krill compared to simply learning how to activate an instinct.

Sato who, along with everybody else, couldn’t seem to master even the beginnings of spurs, became increasingly frustrated as the weeks wore on. He’d been quickly and immediately good at everything else they did. Why, in this one matter, was his own brain fighting him? He’d thought he had good mental discipline. His father, who had declined to give him human affection, had given him that. Plus he always had to be calm and controlled around Patrick, who needed him to be a stable baseline.

But in the matter of spurs, Sato was just as bad as everyone else. And Sato really hated that. To be mediocre was failure. Better not to try at all. But here, he had to try.

They did all sorts of thought experiments and tests. Anything that the Navarch could do to get them to mentally put themselves in a state where they had to protect somebody else, as well as defend themselves. They even went out into shark-infested waters. In a few cases, when a shark was spotted, spurs did appear, but that was it. Sato’s always remained entirely sheathed. Frankly, he wasn’t particularly surprised by this. He was rarely concerned for his own safety, let alone anyone else’s – it had only ever been Patrick.

They were given thought experiments where they had to imagine somebody they loved.

Sato tried hard. He imagined Patrick swimming next to him, the shark coming out of nowhere as it had way back when his spurs first appeared.

The idea hurt but it didn’t work. Because he knew Patrick wasn’t there. He felt Patrick’s absence as this terrible cold void next to him. Any icy shadow born of absence. He couldn’t imagine Patrick there, because all Sato ever felt was the numbness of his not being nearby. Patrick was leagues away across a whole ocean, across a whole continent, probably not even in the water anymore, probably at some party, probably surrounded by human friends, maybe even flirting with other boys and certainly getting into trouble without Sato to look out for him. Sato hated not being there to stand between Patrick and his family, to protect Patrick from the world. Or was it the world from Patrick? And he hated the sea and the other vangill and the Navarch and their merfolk for separating them. Hated them with all the cold strength of a Patrick-shaped void.

Thinking about Patrick didn’t force Sato into protective anger launching his spurs. Thinking about Patrick just made Sato feel hard and numb.

Then, almost half a year into vangill training, with everybody getting more muscles and much stronger in terms of physical abilities but only a few of them able to deploy their spurs at all, let alone at will, they had family visitor day .

The pods started to arrive first thing in the morning. And they came as full pods, or at least large enough groups to have swum there in a protective manner. Some of them had harnessed dolphins, others must’ve set out weeks before in order to arrive on that particular day.

Only when the first of the siren calls resonated under the waves, and the first heads began to appear above the surface at the far edge of the bay, did the Navarch bother to explain.

“The womenfolk have been requested to attend our measly efforts and hopefully assist in your training. They do so reluctantly, so be on your very best behavior. The pods will hang around in the bay until it’s clear which one of them most easily activates your spurs. Then that mermaid will be left behind for a month of focused training. Mermaids are busy with important work – you should be honored they’re willing to leave even one pod member behind. Don’t waste their time.”

To Sato, the visiting ladies seemed the very definition of not at all reluctant. In fact, family visiting day was clearly an excuse to engage in mass flirtation with the new crop of eligible vangill males. Sato felt like a delicious and attractive tuna, to be taken down en masse in a coordinated attack.

Mermaid lineage could be told by tail color and either patina or luster. Sato’s tail was a distinctive solid dark blue, Patrick called it royal blue. Sato’s tendril pattern, his luster, extended up along his spine, bifurcated at the nape to curl over each shoulder along his collarbone and then up each side of his neck around his gills. It was dark blue too and starkly contrasted to his merskin. Patrick always said, with great admiration, that from a distance it looked like Sato had “a really awesome tattoo.”

Rus sidled up to him. “What looks dumb on you looks stunning on the females of your line.”

Sato followed his gaze. Two dark-headed, blue-tailed, and blue-patterned figures were entering the training cave. In human form, shifted state, a sire’s genes dominated – so Sato, his sister, and his mother looked very little like each other on land. But in the water their relationship was undeniable. True form, royal blue, shoulder and collar spirals, there was no denying the family connection.

The beach became crowded with merfolk reunions. Most were formal and stilted.

“Daiki.” Sato’s mother greeted him, rising out of the ocean and gaining legs in an elegant transition that spoke to her longevity and vitality. Her hair was black like his but it curled and her human skin was the color of dried sugar kelp.

“Mother.” Sato inclined his head.

“Daidai!” Then he was slammed into and wrapped up in thin graceful limbs. His arms were suddenly full of a sister he’d barely let himself miss until that moment.

The last time he’d seen her, she was seven. Now, over a decade later, she looked and felt like an entirely different creature. He’d never seen her human form, since he’d only known her as a child before puberty and legs. But there was some memory inside him, and in her, nested in the way she buried her nose into his shoulder and leaned against him – complete faith in his affection.

As kids, his sister had always trailed after him, constantly on his tail, little hands gripping a fin. She’d followed him everywhere. Of course, he’d found it annoying but also endearing. She’d been his pet and his companion. She’d slept curled next to him in the canopies of kelp forests. She’d crooned at him in the language of the ocean currents, hands fluttering with the chatter of the deep, cheerful and curious and endlessly asking questions. She was the one who had trained him for Patrick.

“Meymey,” he said, lifting and spinning her gently and then setting her down. A move Patrick had taught him – to make fun of gravity. He bracketed her face with his webbed hands. “Look how much you’ve grown. Look how pretty you are.”

There was something of his baby sister still in those chubby cheeks and huge eyes. Like Sato, she clearly had a father with genes sourced in that surface continent the humans called Asia, but her face was rounder and her mouth fuller. Her sire was unknown and always would be.

“I’ve grown? Look at you! You’re huge!”

Sato wasn’t actually all that big (for a human), only Rus was bigger.

Speaking of Rus. Having reacquainted himself with his own female relations, and showing very little interest in them, Rus had ambled over to Sato and was staring a little too hard at his sister.

“Shoo, piranha,” said Sato, swatting at him.

Meymey gave Rus an evaluating look.

Sato suddenly felt a little sorry for the merman. Meymey checked Rus over as if she were calculating where best to slice for ideal dismemberment and consumption.

Rus, who was an idiot, preened under the examination. He opened his mouth to say something.

She got there first. “I don’t think you talking is going to make your case, muscles. Let me see your tail color, and your markings, and how you fight. I’ll go from there.”

Rus’s lips twitched. “Whatever you say, gorgeous.”

Then, ignoring Sato, he ambled away.

“I take it you and Mother didn’t swim all of this way just for me?”

“Well, it’s an honor to be asked, of course. When one of our lineage developed spurs, Mother had the local shells sounded in celebration, but really, in the end, that only increased her consequence and made you a desirable proposition for others. It didn’t do much for me. No offense, Daidai.”

Sato wasn’t surprised. She was a mermaid, after all. The female of the species only ever seemed to have thoughts on consolidation of power. That, more often than not, was measured in the preservation and continuation of the species. The two were inexorably linked, like moon and tide. He was certain his mother had achieved a much higher status the moment it was known he’d developed spurs. Still, his sister wasn’t allowed to be too blasé. She would reap some benefits.

“You’re all grown up and very pretty, Meymey, but I think we both know you’re that much prettier because I have spurs.”

“I forgot how cruel you could be, brother.” She was not teasing.

Sato would never understand why people conflated brutal honesty with cruelty. Patrick was the only person he’d ever met who consistently found it amusing rather than offensive. In the end, it meant Sato mostly kept quiet, except around Patrick. He preferred saying nothing over guarding his tongue. But this was his sister.

He tipped his head in Rus’s direction. “He’s a bit like a shell collector. Only his shells are women of variable species.”

“Players are fine. They don’t get attached.” She waggled her sparse eyebrows at him. Apparently Meymey had questionable standards.

“You’re only seventeen!” Sato pretended the expected shock of an older brother.

“Exactly! Time is running out.”

Sato almost smiled. He shook his head, amazed at how much she had grown without him around.

She took his wrist and turned those big eyes up at him, demonstrating her abilities to flirt firsthand. “I’ve been bleeding on legs and land since I was eleven, brother dear. I’ve voted in the kuriai as an adult since the winter of that year.” Mermaids had to take to dry land during their courses. Legs were the curse of puberty. After all, they couldn’t swim around bleeding in water – that was a surefire way to attract sharks. Fortunately, they only bled for a day or so each month.

Sato examined Meymey’s body thoughtfully. “Have you produced offspring already?” Was he an uncle? How odd would that be?

She blushed and dipped her head. “Not yet. Mother has urged me to be selective and wait for the most viable and valuable prospect.”

She left unsaid the fact that she had probably been waiting since they heard he got spurs. Because they knew this moment would come. When she got to swim across the ocean to be united with her brother, but also have her pick of the newest clutch of vangill. The best possible stud prospects.

Sato was strangely proud that he could be of some value to his sister. Since he hadn’t been around all these years to see her grow and to protect her from the viciousness of the sea, not to mention their mother’s indifference.

“Not Rus, Meymey. See Xanin, over there? He is a better choice. Just as powerful, much more biddable. Plus his home ocean is the Arctic. So he will be far away when the time comes.”

“A friend?” she pressed.

“I don’t have friends, sister.”

Sato had little to say to his mother, and no particular interest in her. Fortunately for both of them, she seemed to feel the same.

Greetings and salutations accomplished, the Navarch announced that if the ladies were willing, they would begin. Some of the mermaids had been flirting with him too, which reminded Sato that their instructor was, himself, an attractive breeding prospect. Older and more reserved, but handsome in a strict angular way.

First the Navarch asked the trainees and their mothers to pair up. He put them through a series of tests designed to endanger the moms. While several of Sato’s colleagues reacted gratifyingly quickly, Sato’s spurs never made even the slightest appearance.

The Navarch then had those who could, swap for a different female relation – grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin, niece.

Sato looked down at Meymey.

She smiled back.

Oddly, although in their human form they didn’t look alike, Sato thought that they probably had the same tight, wicked, smile.

“Think it will work this time?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“Who were you with when they first appeared?”

“My cuter half.”

“You have a human girlfriend?”

“Did I say that?”

Instead of getting annoyed, Meymey tilted her head and looked at him, big eyes dancing. Hers were the color of sea lettuce and silt. “You like to be mysterious? How very typical of a merman.”

The Navarch called for them to start the second round of tests.

Later when they were analyzing what had happened, the Navarch pointed out that it probably required more stress to activate Sato because he had such an even-keel personality.

Sato thought even-keel was a nice way to say taciturn and antisocial .

They did manage to get his spurs to deploy in defense of his sister eventually, but it took a lot more stressors than it did any of the other trainees. Took them going out into the open ocean alone, and her being in real danger from shark attack. It was like his spur instincts needed to genuinely believe both of them were at risk. Sato couldn’t help but believe, had it been Patrick, it would have happened right away.

The Navarch said, “It probably has something to do with the fact that you see very little as an actual threat.”

“Does that mean Sato here really thinks he’s better than the rest of us? Does he actually think he can take us on? Me, for example?” questioned Rus.

The Navarch looked at Sato expectantly.

Sato looked away from the small beach fire they had going in honor of their female visitors. He stared out the opening of the cave, toward the open ocean.

“It’s not that I think I’m better or more physically fit,” he said slowly.

“Oh no?” snapped Nix.

“Let him explain,” insisted the Navarch.

Sato shrugged. “I think I’m willing to let things go to an extreme more than anyone else.”

“Are you saying that we wouldn’t like you when you’re angry?”

Sato wondered if he had ever actually gotten angry. Occasionally, Patrick had pushed him into aggravation. Patrick’s family, once or twice, had certainly frustrated him. But Sato didn’t go into a place of raging heat and boiling anger like the stories described. He went to a cold, dark, still place, like the depths of the ocean, where no light could reach him. He thought if he dwelt too long in that place, that’s where the real danger lay – to him and everyone else. That he was obsessed with having Patrick in his life because the little otter shifter was the only speck of warmth he’d ever really felt. Only Patrick could swim down to him there, gleaming with air bubbles trapped in brown fur, find him where no one else could. Pull him back up to the surface and the light.

That right now, having been without Patrick for so long, that place looked good to him. Easy. Comfortable. Full of numbness.

The Navarch looked interested and a little worried. “Have you killed a sentient creature, Sato?”

“Not yet. But I think I would find it terribly easy.”

“Your walls are built to guard yourself against others? All the more reason to learn to control your spurs and not let fear of them control you.”

Sato looked at the Navarch, “Why else do you think I came here?” But also, why would he be afraid of his own spurs? Why be afraid of others, except where Patrick was concerned?

“Because you were ordered to, just like everybody else here,” said one of the mermaids, from the ladies’ side of the fire. She was sitting next to his sister, and they seemed friendly enough. An allied pod?

Sato looked at her. Like with most mermaids, it was impossible to know her age. She could be twenty or she could be a hundred.

“You don’t actually think I care about the people of the sea or any pod in it, do you?”

“Clearly you care a little about your sister or she wouldn’t have to stay behind to help you control your spurs.”

“I suspect I care about her for nostalgia’s sake.”

Meymey looked a little hurt.

“You need to be pushed harder, and stressed more, because you’re scared of what you might do with your spurs once they’re out?” suggested the Navarch.

Sato turned back to him. Was that it? Was that why he had to put his own sister into so much danger just to get a part of his anatomy to work the way it was supposed to? That didn’t seem right.

“I suppose I’ll have to get over that, won’t I? Difficult to do, as it seems to be an integral part of my personality.”

“We all have shortcomings. Nice to know you have them just like everybody else,” said Nix.