*
Anna’s Chamber in Cardonea Tower
Anna’s eyes shimmered in the reflective shell of her mirror as she looked upon herself glistening from head to toe in sparkling jewels and the highest quality kelp fabric.
“I’ll go,” she spoke to herself. “If this is what Papa wants then I’ll go to the festival hall tonight, and meet the newcomers after they’ve finished with all the formalities. But I’ll keep a watchful eye on them, too.”
She clipped her hair together in the back with her yellow hair clip and went to dab on eye colorings while looking close into her reflection.
Thud!
A noise sounded against her door.
Thud!
“I’ll be out soon, Papa,” Anna responded, thinking Nicholea had come to collect her for the festivities.
Silence. Anna slipped gem-covered rings upon her toes.
Thud! Thud! The noise came again.
“Coming, Papa!” As she spun toward the stone door Anna peered out at the night waters. Light beams from far above skipped across the ocean floor. Her memories took her to when she was younger and would play tag with her father, pretending that if you swam into the light then you would be ‘it.’ She always knew though that if she swam into the light, all she’d have to do was give her father a certain smile that she had perfected, making him agree to be ‘it’ once more as his heart melted.
Anna opened the door, and immediately her hand gripped firmly onto its stone handle as her skin chilled and a shudder rippled through her.
Nicholea’s red bearded head, wrinkled, bloodily mutilated and bodiless, thumped against the door. Minute globules spewed from it into the currents.
Murky crimson washed through the door’s opening as Anna felt her heart stop and then beat rapidly.
Somewhere in the distance she heard someone calling for her, some noise attempting to get her attention. Her knowledge of this noise swept away as quickly as it had come.
“No!” she screamed, tearing gems from her shimmering garments in horrified anger. “Nooo!” She swept into the hall to search out the rest of her family, and if not for them then for revenge.
The person who called for her before made himself known again but was ignored. Anna’s fins whipped faster than she’d ever moved them before as her pastel blue body draped in jewels cut forward through red murk toward her mother’s quarters.
Darkness swelled in from the walls as she swept the corridors. The stench of death lingered in her nostrils as bodies of others she had once shared the tower with hovered around her.
Anna’s torso and legs pumped up and down for speed. Faster and faster the darkness swept past, a turn, a twist, more darkness. Pearls, inlayed within the shale walls, watched her like eyes glimmering through the pitch.
Something beckoned softly from the darkness for her, a beast she thought, come to bring death. It bit at her heels causing her to convulse and loose herself of its grasp.
A pearl white hand grasped her shoulder as she moved in the currents. The pale opaque ghost was somehow comforting. Why was she not afraid of it she wondered? Where had she seen it before?
“They’re dead. Your family is dead.” Its slim, pale webbed fingers loosed her arm as it spoke.