Tidal stars, p.1
Tidal Stars, page 1
TIDAL STARS
A SCI FI FANTASY RETELLING OF THE LITTLE MERMAID
E. M. RENSING
Copyright © 2025 by E.M. Rensing
Cover Design by JV Arts
Editing by Kenneth Zink and Lisa Henson
Manufacturer details:
Copytech (UK) Ltd, Trading as Printondemand-worldwide.com
9 Culley Court, Orton Southgate, Peterborough
Cambridgeshire, PE2 6WA
United Kingdom
gpsr@podww.com
01733 237867
EU GPSR Authorised Representative:
Easy Access System Europe Oü, 16879218
Mustamäe tee 50, 10621, Tallinn, Estonia
gpsr.requests@easproject.com
+358 40 500 3575
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Generative AI was not utilized for any component of this book; narrative development, drafting, editing, formatting and cover artwork were all accomplished by humans. With help from argumentative cats, Schmidt Ocean Institute video archives on YouTube, microwave popcorn and very early morning tea.
ALSO BY E. M. RENSING
The Heliosphere Trilogy
The Lighthouse of Kuiper
The Ariums of Earth
The Cathedrals of Mars
The Abiota Series
Source Code
Unity Code
Numina Code
Domain Code
Virch Code
Anyon Code
Historical Gaslamp Fantasy
The Scholar the Seer and the Outlaw Fae
Sci-Fi Fairytale Retellings
Engines of Winter
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Afterword
About the Author
CHAPTER ONE
Unara had no fear of the sea.
It was life itself on this blasted world. Jailer and guardian. Cradle and cage. Joy and sorrow. The beginning and end of all things.
It was early yet, only the brilliant white-blue face of Brynhildyr having risen over the eastern deserts. Her light filtered down through the water column, the harshness of her rays softened by the endless dance of the waves above. Playing through the rich upper waters, then falling down, down, down. Down into the blackwater. Into the endless night of Thalassa’s heart.
It was—
“Unara! Spear it!”
Her sister’s shout brought her back to the present. To the moment.
To the eye of the kraken, locked on to her with murderous intent.
Unara struck out with her trident, raking the tip across the thing’s vulnerable side. It thrashed, dark ink streaming out into the water, all attention on her now. Mission accomplished. Unara urged her akker backwards, the thing jetting away as fast as it could go, instinct as much as command driving it out of the killing black.
But even wounded, even half-blinded, the kraken was faster. Much faster. It came on hard, tentacles slapping the water in front of it, attempting to…
“Drown your foes!”
Glaeva. She’d gotten above it, broad-bladed fishing spear in hand, hanging for a moment, her brilliant purple hair streaming around her, backlit by the suns above.
Then she dived.
Straight through the kraken’s arms, too fast for the befuddled thing to grab. She drove her blade into the creature’s primary appendage and her akker arced up, gliding into a broad barrel roll that dragged both Glaeva and trident with it, all the way around the tentacle’s base.
It was an effective strike, but a dangerous one, bringing the rider far too close to the main beak. With an adult kraken, it wouldn’t have worked at all.
Unara zoomed back in under the monster, lying back in the saddle, trident braced against the akker’s back. Timing was everything with this. Her path would take her under the monster. Closer, closer…now.
She lifted her spear, dragging the blade the full length of the creature’s underside. One second, two, three, and then it was over. Her akker was propelling her past the flailing tentacles. Glowing blue blood spilled out into the water.
Blood and ink.
On her back, Unara had a good view of it. Ink, expanding like a summer storm cloud. The wounded kraken screeched in rage, even as other tentacles—far larger and plated with hard, knobby growths—flung up through the ink clouds to grab it.
Glaeva pulled up alongside Unara. Her own akker had circular wounds all over it from the kraken’s suction cups. She was whooping.
Unara just gritted her teeth and tried not to think about what was happening behind her.
The princesses swam hard, letting the water pull every trace of blood out of their armor. Finally the screeching stopped. The waters stilled. The morning’s calm resumed.
“A good fight, sister, a good fight.” Glaeva’s words were proud, but her face pale.
Unara glanced back over her shoulder at her sister. Glaeva was suffering, but Unara was too. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She felt like there was an iron band around her ribs. It was her lungs, she knew. Her lungs were all wrong. But she couldn’t show that. Couldn’t let any hint of it slip. At least she wasn’t as far along in the transformation as Glaeva was, only hanging on to her ocean-born body by the most meager of genetic threads. “The shoal took care of it, at least.”
“You need…to learn to…enjoy it more.”
“What?” Unara retorted, more heat in her words than she intended.
“The battle-joy, sister.”
Here was a lecture Unara had gotten her entire life. She had always hated it. “What’s to enjoy about being eaten by a kraken?”
“It was a juvenile. And besides, you’re the one who wanted to go out to the seamount,” her older sister replied, and pulled up her akker, body shifting uncomfortably in the shell-saddle. “Let’s stop for a moment. I need to catch my breath.”
“Do we need to surface?” Unara asked, concerned.
Glaeva waved her away. “Stop fretting. I’m not that far gone yet.”
A conch blast sounded in the distance, strong and pure in the midmorning waters. Unara’s heart sank, even as Glaeva smiled.
“Looks like Father sent a search party for us.” Glaeva patted her braid. She had plaited it back against her skull in one big pile for this, and the fight had pulled some of it loose. “He shouldn’t worry so. These seas aren’t going to claim my life. Not today.”
Unara sighed and swam back to her own mount. “I know that conch, sister. Father didn’t need to send anybody.”
“Hush,” Glaeva said, but her smile grew wistful.
“Why don’t you tell Father about him?” Unara asked quietly.
“You know why,” Glaeva said sharply. “I can’t show favoritism during the kaupang. If we were to announce anything now, it would be seen as nothing more than the delegate from the Drift Clans attempting to secure his people a better position.”
“Everyone knows you and he—”
“Everyone? No, you, you know, Unara, and it’s none of your business, either. Besides,” Glaeva told her, voice lowering, “we don’t know if I’ll make it back to the sea after this.”
Unara shook her head. “Of course you will.”
“A man such as Jarl Dryagr deserves a woman who can swim the currents with him, not some broken thing left on land like coral washed ashore after a storm.”
“You know he wouldn’t care,” Unara said. “He would probably pull on legs to join you under the sky.”
“What an insane thing to do. Give up the ocean? I wouldn’t marry a man who would do that for me.”
“There are more powerful forces than the ocean.”
“Not on this world, little sister.” Glaeva gathered herself, straightening in the saddle. “He and I have waited this long. We can wait another week.”
And on they swam.
They met the man near a grand arch, the rock covered with wild titanocoral. The polyps, which could grow as big as a man’s fist, were all asleep right now, only the ends of their colorful tentacles waving gently in the soft current. It was indeed the Drift Clan, streamlined and silver, the forms of ones who lived far from shore where speed was favored over all other factors.
“Princesses,” Jarl Dryagr said, a lithe man whose tail and hair were both the color of sunlit water. “I smelled kraken blood. Feared the worst.”
“Hardly, Jarl Dry
“Kraken are dangerous, regardless of the size,” the Drift Clan lord replied. “I am grateful to see both of you safe and sound.”
Glaeva nodded, as if his concern was beneath her consideration, and patted her akker. The cephalopod flopped one tentacle back to return the gesture, catching her on the shoulder. She laughed and patted it again. “You always like a good fight too, don’t you?”
Dryagr smiled himself. “What are you doing this far from the palace reefs anyway?”
“Out for a swim,” Glaeva replied. “Before tonight. And you?”
“The same,” he said easily. “It is different for your clan, I think. You live in these waters. I was eight before I first saw land. It is hard enough being enclosed in the bay. But the thought of walking out under the sky…” He trailed off.
Glaeva smiled at him, one of her warm, generous smiles. “Strange, I agree.”
“It is how humans were meant to live,” Unara offered quietly.
He snorted. “It is not how Hildra wishes us to live, not on this world. Now, Princesses, may I extend my protection for the swim back to the palace?”
Glaeva laughed. “You’re as winded as me, Jarl Dryagr. What good would you be in a fight right now?”
Dryagr grinned. “Never underestimate the power of a beautiful woman on a man’s resolve, my princess.”
“I would never underestimate you, Jarl Dryagr,” Glaeva replied, voice growing soft.
Unara resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her sister’s flirting, but an opportunity was an opportunity. She seized it. “Why don’t you go back with him, Glaeva?”
“And miss my last day with my sister? Hardly.”
“I have a few more crevasses down here I want to check for pearls,” Unara said, “and I wouldn’t want either of you to be late for your appointments with the gene-priests.”
“Pearls?” Dryagr had an amused expression on his face. “Surely your father has enough pearls stockpiled in the palace to satisfy half the galaxy.”
“These are for me,” Unara replied quickly. “I’d like to barter for a few incidental things. Trinkets, jewelry, nothing of consequence.”
“And how are you planning on doing that? It’s not as if we can invite the off-worlders down to the boundary pools.”
“Not without Father ordering them executed after,” Glaeva said with a slight smile, “and then what good would the pearls do?”
Dryagr laughed at this. Unara tried not to react.
It was maddening, this many people on the reef, in the palace. No privacy, no freedom of movement. The princess had tried to slip away this morning, but her sister had caught her and asked her where she was off to. Unara hadn’t exactly lied when she told her sister she was off to harvest pearls: she did have a few more seeded mollusks that she needed to inspect.
But she had other things, more important things, that she needed to accomplish. While her sister’s presence already made that difficult, Dryagr’s would make it impossible.
“One of my friends in the Stone Clan offered to make the barters for me,” Unara said, taking a risk, dangerously close to the truth. “After we review the initial offers together, of course. I am told that the lesser tradesmen often attempt to undercut the value of our goods. And even cultured pearls command a high price off-world. The highest margin commodity for them, kilo for kilo.”
Dryagr shook his head. “I am glad I have only our regeneratives to worry about. How do the shore clans keep track of so many trade goods? Fish and nacre plating and pearls and all the rest.”
“It is a great burden, but Unara has helped me organize the accounts,” Glaeva replied. “She has a good head for these things.”
“Is that so?” Dryagr said, considering Unara for a moment. “Well, perhaps I shall consult with you as well before finalizing any transfers.”
“I would be happy to help, Jarl,” she replied. “But perhaps after I…” And she pointed down, hoping he would take the hint.
He laughed. “Of course, of course. Princess Glaeva?”
Glaeva laughed. “Don’t miss the ceremony, Unara! I wish to see you before I depart.”
“Of course, sister,” Unara said.
Glaeva smiled at her one more time, then urged her akker forward, next to Dryagr’s. Their mounts jetted out quickly. Soon they were nothing more than streaks, fading out into the distance.
Unara waited until she could no longer see them, then sagged.
Turning her akker around, she headed back to the north.
She was late for her own appointment, and being late for that would mean being late for the ceremony later, and being late for that would almost certainly mean censure. Discovery, even.
She’d risked too much. She couldn’t afford exposure now. Not now, when everything was almost done.
The swim was painful today. Even mounted, tucked into the living shell-saddle of her akker, Unara could feel the strain. The fight had only exacerbated it.
The changes Unara sought were slow but ongoing. Progressive. Her tail, her lungs, everything she had been born with, had to change. She wasn’t deep here, only twenty meters, but she could still feel the weight of the water column pressing down on her. It was daylight above, and yet there were still shadows in the reef that her eyes wouldn’t now pierce.
There was a creeping unease beginning to grip her, a foreign fear, some deep instinct being stirred awake in the back of her brain.
Unara tried to ignore it.
This was still her world.
Everything was fine.
The waters were slightly cooler right now, a sure sign that the planet was very nearly at apogee. The Thalassan System was a complex one, a trinary star system whose central bodies were so tightly packed it was a wonder that anything could survive at all. But survive the Thalassans did. Thrive.
Even if being bound to the water was the price.
Unara didn’t know what the first colonists on Thalassa Prime must have thought of it all. Any records had long since been corrupted, and her people’s current stories gave it no thought. They were the people of the seas now; they were the ocean and the ocean was them. What did it matter how the first humans on the planet had felt?
They had adapted.
What would it be like? she wondered. All her life, she had been one way. Hair the same shade as the titanocorals at night under the great moon Hildra’s light. Skin burned bronze by the sunlight of the continental shelf. A tail longer than normal human legs, scales the color of a tide pool at midday.
But that would not be for much longer.
What would it be like to see the off-worlders when they came? To walk among them? Be—
A noise.
They banked as one, the akker moving the position of its jet, Unara swinging her tail out to arrest their momentum, knife out. If this was an eel or a placoderm or, seas forbid, another kraken…
Unara was breathing hard, half-altered lungs desperately trying to still pull oxygen from the water. Breathing hard, staring out at the blackwater. They were close to it now, five meters above a narrow shelf where the cliffs fell away into the darkness.
Unara had never been much of one for the stories of the skalds, sung to the sounds of drum and harp during great clan gatherings. But still, the blackwater was a place avoided by her people, the source of horrors both imagined and all too real, a place Thalassans only ever went in force, and even then, only at great need. Only the vents were safe havens out there in the darkness, and even those, even those…
The akker underneath her was changing color rapidly. No longer a mirror of the reef around them, it was taking on a deep and dangerous red. It uncoiled its two longest tentacles from their own protective sheaths, edged with titanium blades.
