To Rory’s left was a gigantic standing stone embedded in the sand. Several yards to his right was another. And then Roryrealised there was an enormous ring of these stones surrounding the shimmering space in the middle.
Fionn reached beyond Rory. His hand parted the mirage like a curtain. ‘Come. You can pass through with me.’
‘Is this… also magic?’ Rory couldn’t believe he was uttering the suggestion. Despite having accepted that colour-changing mermen and who-knows-what other monsters were real, the prospect of actual magic had never crossed his mind until today.
But there was surely no other explanation for what he was witnessing. As Fionn guided him between the stones, the shimmering water turned still and revealed the true image of what lay beyond.
It was a tower of some sort. But it looked organic, more like a termite mound or a deep-sea vent rising from the seabed. It sprawled wide at the base, pockmarked with many holes which might function like tunnels, gradually narrowing as it rose into a cylindrical spire reaching for the surface world that glimmered overhead.
‘The palace,’ Fionn announced grandly, and it was clear he felt Rory should be impressed.
Rory was too preoccupied taking it all in to offer any validation. It wasbusydown there.
Blue mermen popped in and out of the tunnels around the tower’s base. Some carried nets and baskets; others went empty-handed but with no less sense of purpose. They all had long hair like Fionn, worn loose or tied up in braids, except theirs was dark blue instead of silver. Some were covered head-to-toe in tattoos, while others were nearly bare. All wore kilts and the occasional bit of extra strapping like Fionn’s to hold tools and pouches.
There was an odd omission in the scene that caught Rory’s attention. ‘Where are the women?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘There are mermaids as well as mermen, right?’
‘No?’
For a split-second Rory thought Fionn was taking the piss, but the merman sounded so genuinely puzzled that he had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
‘Who gives birth to new mer-people then?’ Rory asked as patiently as he could. ‘If the men lay the eggs then who… ?’
‘We all have eggs and bowers. I knew you weren’t listening when I explained this before. We all have the same equipment.’
Without meaning to, Rory let his gaze drop to Fionn’s crotch. ‘You mean you could… You could give birth with an egg if… Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Yes.’ A trace of irritation entered Fionn’s song. ‘So could you, for that matter. You don’t need to sound so shocked.’
Christ. The egg thing again. It had been tough enough trying to understand why the mer-king ought to have some arrangement that was different to everyone else. Was there no end to the weirdness of merman reproduction?
But Rory’s mind had already shot past all this, galloping at a hundred miles an hour over the implications of a single-gender society. It occurred to him immediately that men-attracted-to-men was the norm here. Not something to hide, or even downplay with complicit banter and off-colour jokes, like Graham often did. They all had the same parts, so anyone could love anyone here, free of judgement.
Fionn waved a hand in front of his face. ‘You have gone strange again.’
Rory licked his lips. ‘Unbelievable,’ he sang hoarsely.
By now, a couple of the mermen below had spotted them. Rory and Fionn were still drifting by the stones, a good distance away from the tower and probably not easy to spot, but Rory guessed his pale skin stood out against the dark ocean. A smallknot of the blue men gathered, heads bowed in conversation, sending occasional glances their way.
‘Am I allowed to be here?’ Rory asked nervously.
Fionn followed the direction of his worried stare. ‘Ah. I, um… I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s not wise for us to be seen together just yet.’
He carefully tugged Rory backward through the stones. Rory was happy to follow, and even happier to withdraw from a space of attention.
So, there really was a whole underwater castle lying at the bottom of the Minch. Practically a city too, it turned out.
Swimming high off the seabed so they’d be harder to spot, Fionn gave Rory a tour around a group landmasses that he quickly realised were the Shiant Islands. They were a useful landmark in the Minch, close to the Isle of Harris where Rory and Fionn had rescued the turtle. Aside from puffins and gulls, the craggy mounds were uninhabited. On land, at least.
Underwater, it seemed this was where most of the blue mermen made their homes. They utilised the natural sea caves at the feet of the islands or dug burrow-like homes into the seabed itself. In this way the Minchmen lived spread out from one another, yet bound close by the central point of the islands.
Rory swung between fear and awe as he took all of this in. There was a whole-ass country down here on the seabed, thriving right under the nose of humans sailing above. And that was before he even accounted for the wildlife.
He stopped frequently. Fionn waited with admirable patience while Rory crept closer to watch a spotted dogfish skim over the seabed, or a lobster poking out of its hidey-hole, or the migration of a spiky herd of sea urchins.
