Chapter 53 Complicated
660words
We were sitting on my roughly made bed across from each other. Every single window inside the caravan was open, allowing a gentle breeze through.
I had snatched a bag of chips and two sodas for us from the kitchen, managing to avoid crossing paths with Mom. The chips weren't enough to tame the growling beast inside my stomach, but food had to wait. I wanted to know everything Kayn didn't tell me.
"One group—ours—are known as the land walkers. We got exiled from the kingdom because our group sided with the humans. That was our punishment. Though divided, we have no choice but to live by the same rules as the water folk, the other group who still reside inside the kingdom."
"Is this the group you fear might find out I know about your kind?" I asked.
"Yes, that would be them," she nodded. "They are the ones you should worry about."
"Will they really kill us all if they find out?"
"Yup." Ember twisted a finger in her hair. "Brutal, but it wasn't always like this. Many, many years ago, our kind made the mistake of mingling with the wrong humans. They turned on us, and they hunted our kind. It was then our rulers decided to put up a new law that involved humans. Anyone who gets too close to them, or associated with them in any personal way, will get executed."
"Okay, I don't get it," I sat up. "How do they expect your group, the land walkers, not to associate with humans when they exiled you to live alongside them?"
"At least half our population got exiled," Ember revealed. "There are plenty of us on land, hiding. They expect us to stick together, which didn't work out so well. We can be around humans, go to school, work with them, but not form relationships or get too close to them. And above all, we must never reveal what we are."
"How many are there of your kind, exactly?" I prodded. "On land?"
"The last time they did a census, there were around seven thousand."
"In Scotland?"
She shook her head. "Across the world. Here, fifteen that I know of. That includes me, Kayn, my mom, and grandpa."
"Okay."
"Oh yeah, and there's Belinda, Wycker, and Wade. The two boys that are always hanging out at our table."
"Belinda is a mermaid?"
"Yeah. That's also why they tried to do this arranged marriage between her and Kayn. She stems from royalty. Our bloodline had been, well, muddied, and they believed it would raise our standing in the land walker community. Currently, we're kind of lower than dirt."
It took me a moment to process that chunk of info. "How's that?"
"Well, my grandpa…" Ember took a deep breath. "He married a human woman, you know, in the traditional human way. She fell pregnant and had my dad."
"You're part human?"
"We have human blood in us, but Aria, it affected her physically. She didn't have a fin. She couldn't change in the water like the rest of us."
"What happened to her?" I asked. "The real story."
"We were told they executed her. The water folk, I mean," Ember frowned, glancing away. "We weren't there, but we accepted that as truth since it isn't beneath them to do that."
"I'm so sorry…"
Ember swallowed. "That's why Kayn and the old man tried so hard to get you all to leave. It's because Kayn—" she stopped dead. "I mean, it is one of the reasons they tried to get you to leave."
"I see," I shifted. "But you're allowed to live among us—work alongside us, and so on. I still don't understand how this made them so set on getting us to leave. What is it you are not telling me?"
"It's complicated."
