Chapter 51: A Story

"Should we call you a mermaid?" Corrie asked Troy. "I mean, obviously we're going to actually call you Troy, but should we refer to you as a merman, or a Djanaea, or what?" She'd stumbled a little over the word Troy had given for them, but he didn't correct her, so she must have gotten it close to right.

"Um... I guess if you don't mind saying Djanaea, I would prefer that. And you're not going to be talking about me to too many people, are you?" he asked.

"No, of course not. Now." Corrie leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms. "You never answered my question."

"What question?" he asked with a frown.

"The question about what you're doing here at Chatoyant College."

"Oh. Well, that's easy enough. It's sort of a family tradition--for my family and Link's. His family has served mine for as long as we have records, and as I've told you, that's a really long time."

"Served yours?" Annie interrupted. "So he's, what, your slave?"

"Did he look like a slave?" Troy asked with a wry grin.

Annie was unpersuaded. "No, but how should I know what a slave looks like?"

His smile faded. "Oh. Well, no, he's not a slave. It's more like he's my advisor. His father is my father's advisor, and his grandfather was my grandfather's advisor. You get the picture. He's not forced to do anything... though," he added slowly, "I don't think my family or his would be very happy if he decided not to do it. Not much danger of that, though--we grew up together and he's been taking care of me as long as I remember, except for the last three years when he's been here at college. He's actually five years older than me, but put off college for as long as he could so we could be here at least one year together."

"So do all of the Djanaea go to college outside of the community?" asked Edie. She didn't seem to have any trouble with the word.

Troy shook his head. "Just my family and Link's."

"And what, exactly, is so special about your family?" asked Corrie, leaning forward again. She thought she had an idea, from what she'd overheard of his conversation with Link, but she wanted to hear it from him.

"Well, I'd say it sounds unbelievable, but you three seem pretty willing to believe things," he said.

"You haven't been lying to us, have you?" Edie asked.

"Oh, no, not at all!" he said quickly. "I mean, not today, anyway. But I think most people would be more suspicious."

"Well, we've seen a lot of things that we wouldn't have believed, but we can't deny," said Corrie. "And pretty much everything you've said has made sense with what we already knew."

"Okay." Troy looked around again, glancing out the window that showed the hallway outside the common room. "My father is the king of the Djanaea."

"I knew it!" Corrie cried for the second time that night.

Troy looked at her in startlement. "How could you know that?"

She probably shouldn't have said that. Well, no help for it now. "I overheard you and Link talking on Friday. He called you a spoiled prince. I didn't think that was something someone would say if they didn't actually mean it."

Troy wrinkled his nose. "I should talk to him about being more circumspect," he muttered. "I know he didn't want me to hide, but still... well, I deserved that, anyway, I guess. I wanted Link to take care of me instead of taking charge of my own life."

"Why did he want you to tell us who you are, anyway?" Annie asked curiously. "You're obviously not going to go around telling random strangers 'I'm a mermaid prince!' I know we figured out that you aren't a normal human, but I would think making up a story would be better than telling some people the truth..."

"How do you know I'm not making up a story?" he asked with a grin.

Corrie laughed. "You could make up a better story than that. Anyway, if you're a good enough actor to pretend to not want to tell us and let little things slip the way you have, we can never really believe you, so we may as well believe you on this."

Troy laughed too. "Fair enough."

"Of course, if you actually wanted to prove it to us, you could take your illusion off and show us what you really look like," said Edie.

Troy raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I wouldn't mind doing that, actually, if I knew of a place it could be done. As you already know, if the spell is disrupted I can't breathe."

"There's a swimming pool in the gym," offered Annie.

Troy shuddered. "I've been warned about swimming pools. I need fresh water, not chlorinated or salt. Of course, our water has been pretty polluted over the last hundred years or so, but so has your air."