A Mischief of Mermaids (11 page)

“And you want them to be able to find us,” he added.

“In general, yes,” said Mrs. Malone. “But, you see—”

“It's not a good idea to ask aliens over for dinner, Rolly,” Will cut in. “They might think we're the main course.”

“Shh!” Mrs. Malone shot a warning glance at Will. “What Will means is that one must be a little cautious when one meets strangers.”

Rolly fixed his small, black eyes on her. “You mean because they might want to take over the world and make all the people do everything they say?”

He did not sound troubled by this. In fact, he sounded as if he approved and might even be willing to lend a hand.

“Er, I think we're getting off course,” Mrs. Malone said. “Any other ideas?” She glanced down at Will, who was lying on the floor with his eyes closed. “Will, surely you have a message you'd like to send to our friends from distant galaxies?”

“Sure,” he said grumpily. “This is my message: Go home now. Wherever you're from, it's got to be cooler than here.”

“Now, dear—”

He opened his eyes and sat up, pushing a damp strand of hair from his forehead. “Well, I'm
hot
,” he said peevishly. “Can't we go to a motel for the night? A motel with air-conditioning?”

“No, we can't,” said Mr. Malone. “That would cost money and it's unnecessary. The houseboat is going to be ready tomorrow. Before you know it, we'll be back on the lake, enjoying the cool breezes.”

“If we last until tomorrow,” muttered Will.

“Nonsense,” Mr. Malone said heartily. “Why, this heat is nothing compared to the month I spent camping near Ayers Rock in Australia. Did I ever tell you about the painting of Wandjina—”

“The Sky God?” said Will. “Only about a million times.”

“Ah, but Nerissa hasn't heard this yet, and I'm sure she will find this fascinating,” Mr. Malone pointed out, turning to her with the delighted expression of someone who has just realized he has a new audience. “You see, the painting is thousands of years old, yet the Sky God looks exactly like an alien wearing a helmet—”

“Yes, dear, we've seen the photos,” said Mrs. Malone.

“Perhaps you'd be interested in hearing about the time I spent exploring the Kailasa Temple in India,” Mr. Malone said to Nerissa. “Three days and nights on my hands and knees, measuring every inch in order to draw an accurate floor plan, sweat dripping into my eyes so that I could barely see, and how often do you think I complained of the heat?”

Nerissa looked baffled. “Um, well—”

“Let me guess,” said Will. “Never?”

“Never!” said Mr. Malone triumphantly.

Mrs. Malone cleared her throat in a pointed way. “We were discussing what message we wanted to send to an alien race,” she said. “Not the heat index. I only have two possibilities here. Surely one of you has a few more bright ideas to contribute. Poppy, what about you?”

“Well, I don't think it's very logical to send a message in English,” she said. “Why don't we just beam the value of pi? After all, that's a mathematical constant, which means it would be recognized throughout the universe.”

Will snorted. “Really? The aliens take the trouble to get in their spaceship and travel zillions of miles to get here, and what do we say? ‘Welcome to Earth. How about a math lesson?'” He shook his head. “Even if they do come in peace, that
alone
will make them attack us.”

“I don't see why,” said Poppy with some spirit. “The idea is that pi is the same everywhere, so it will be familiar to them. It will make them feel at home.”

“You are the only person in the world who thinks math is cozy,” said Will.

Poppy gave him a cool look. “I'm just analyzing all the possibilities and coming to a logical conclusion,” she said. “You should try it sometime—”

As the debate raged on, Nerissa listened, her eyes moving alertly back and forth like someone watching a tennis match. Finally Mrs. Malone stood up, cleared her throat, and said, “All right, I think we have exhausted our brains for this evening. Let's see, here are the messages we've come up with so far: First, an invitation to dinner at our house with our address helpfully included—”

Mrs. Malone frowned at her list and drew a firm line through that suggestion. “Second, ‘Go home now. Wherever you're from, it's got to be cooler than here.'” Her glance moved to Will. “That doesn't make our planet sound like a very attractive place to visit.”

“I'm having heatstroke,” Will murmured. “It was the best I could do.”

“Third: the number pi.” Mrs. Malone settled her glasses more firmly on her nose and ran a finger down the list. “Let's see what else we have here . . .” she muttered. “‘What took you so long?,' ‘Stand still while I get my camera,' ‘If you're able to read this, we have one question: Where did you learn English?,' and ‘If you'd like to take someone home with you, pick Rolly—he's really no trouble at all.'”

She gave Will a severe look over the top of her glasses. “I wrote that last one down in order to keep a complete record, but I don't think it was very kind, dear. And we certainly won't make any such suggestion to any member of an alien race. After all, there's no guarantee that they will share our sense of humor.”

“I wasn't being funny,” muttered Will, but Mrs. Malone had fortunately moved on.

“Well, we obviously still have work to do,” she said. “But for now, I think it's time we all went to bed. Poppy, why don't you get the inflatable mattress out of the hall closet and set it up for Nerissa. There are some sheets there, too. . . . Rolly, you need a bath—”

As Rolly staged his usual protest, Poppy caught Nerissa's eye. “Don't judge all mortals by my family,” she said. “You'll get a really weird idea of what humans are like. Come on, I'll show you my room.”

This took longer than Poppy thought it would, simply because Nerissa was mesmerized by everything in the human world. She walked up and down the stairs three times, stopped to peer closely at every picture on the walls, and, once they got to Poppy's room, stood in the hall for five minutes opening and closing the door.

Once she finally went inside, Nerissa dropped her backpack on the floor and wandered around the room, turning the light switch on and off, walking barefoot on the rug, trailing her fingertips across the top of the dresser, picking up a stapler and turning it over and over in her hands, reaching down to feel the quilt that covered the bed. Finally she made her way to the window, where she stood for fifteen minutes, gripping the windowsill tightly as she stared out at the treetops.

She reached into her backpack. “I have to hang this up,” she said, pulling out the blue-and-silver cloak Poppy had seen the night of the bonfire, draped over a tree branch and glittering in the moonlight.

Even in the ordinary glow of an overhead light, the cloak was spellbindingly beautiful.

After several seconds, Poppy realized that she was staring at it with her mouth hanging open. She shut her mouth with a snap and asked, “What is that?”

“It's my cloak,” Nerissa said. She held it out with both hands so that it hung like a curtain. “Every mermaid has one. It's the most precious thing we own. I need to hang it up so it doesn't get crumpled.”

“Yes,” Poppy said. The folds of the cloak swayed in front of her eyes, making her feel light-headed. As if in a dream, she reached out to touch it—

“Stop!”

Startled, Poppy stepped back, her hand dropping to her side.

“You can't touch this,” Nerisa said fiercely. “Not ever.”

“I'm sorry,” Poppy stammered. “It's just so . . . amazing. I didn't mean anything . . . here.” She opened the closet door. There was a hook on the inside where she could hang her bathrobe, except that she never bothered to do so. “You can put it there,” she said.

Nerissa smoothed it out with one hand, then hung it carefully on the hook. She stepped back and tilted her head, looking in the closet at Poppy's shirts, dresses, and skirts hung up in neat rows.

“How many clothes do you have?” asked Nerissa. She sounded curious and a little bewildered, like an explorer who is encountering the strange customs of a remote tribe for the first time.

“Just the normal amount,” Poppy said, a little defensively. “I wear T-shirts and shorts when I'm not in school. At my last school, we had to wear khaki pants and polo shirts all the time. And I have a few dresses for when we get to go out to eat or something.” She glanced at Nerissa.

“Where did you get those clothes you're wearing?” she asked.

“Oh, it's not hard to find things you need at the lake,” said Nerissa. She had moved to a lamp and was turning it on and off, her head tilted to one side as she watched the light with fascination. “People are always losing things or leaving them behind—shoes, sunglasses, swimming goggles.”

She turned to the mirror. “That's how I got these,” she added with some satisfaction, gesturing toward her shell necklace.

Poppy picked up her notebook and a pencil. “That's interesting,” she said in an encouraging tone, jotting down a note. “So how long have you lived in the lake—”

Before she could finish, there was a brisk knock and, without waiting for an invitation, Franny opened the door and stuck her head in.

“Mom told me to remind you that there are extra pillows in the closet for your friend, if you need them.” She glanced at Nerissa. “Hi, it's nice to meet—oh!”

Her eyes widened as she spotted the cloak hanging on the door. “Is that yours? It's gorgeous!”

Before Nerissa could answer, Franny walked across the room with a dazed look on her face.

That must have been what I looked like, Poppy thought uneasily. Like I was hypnotized or something . . .

“That's so beautiful,” Franny sighed, reaching out to stroke it.

“Don't!” Nerissa shouted.

But Franny, unlike Poppy, didn't stop. She didn't even seem to hear Nerissa. She was just about to touch the cloak when Nerissa grabbed her arm and pulled her away.

Franny jerked out of Nerissa's grasp and glared at her. “What are you doing?” she snapped. “I wasn't going to hurt anything.”

Poppy held her breath. She knew what Franny was like when she was annoyed and she had a feeling, from the little she knew of Nerissa, that she might have a temper as well. Still, at least Franny's face had lost that awful zombie expression.

“You can't touch it,” Nerissa said. “It's mine.”

“I got that, thanks,” Franny said coldly. She flipped her hair back and said pointedly to Poppy, “I'm glad that
my
new friend is someone like Ashley, who doesn't mind sharing things.”

Then she turned on her heel and left in a huff.

“Don't mind her,” Poppy said. “She's thirteen. It's turned her brain.”

Nerissa shrugged. “That's okay. She reminds me a little bit of Kali and Ariadne.”

Poppy grinned. “You're right,” she said. “In fact, the three of them would probably get along really well.”

And for the first time, Poppy heard Nerissa giggle.

Poppy couldn't wait to ask Nerissa questions about being a mermaid, but it was hard to get her to focus—there were so many things that Nerissa found odd, strange, or interesting about the way people lived. She spent fifteen minutes pulling curtains open and closed and another half hour turning the bathroom faucet on and off. She walked back and forth on Poppy's rug a dozen times, wiggling her toes on the rug and murmuring under her breath in wonderment.

“And I haven't even turned on the TV or stereo yet,” said Poppy.

“What?” Nerissa looked up, her eyes glazed over.

“Nothing. We need to save some excitement for tomorrow,” Poppy said.

Finally Poppy got her to agree to sit down long enough to trade answers. For every question Poppy answered, Nerissa had to answer one of hers in return.

They both took careful notes. Poppy found out that some mermaids swim around the world, following ocean currents from the icy waters of the Arctic to the tropical warmth of the South Sea, but that most find a watery home where they feel comfortable and stay there for centuries.

She learned that mermaids who settled in lakes often had ongoing feuds with the water nymphs who lived in rivers or ponds (mermaids thought the nymphs were silly and nymphs claimed the mermaids were stuck-up).

“And we eat algae,” Nerissa said in a challenging voice. “I suppose you think that's disgusting.”

“Not at all,” said Poppy unconvincingly. “I've read that spirulina actually has lots of vitamins. And I've eaten seaweed at a sushi restaurant before.”

They were still talking at ten o'clock, when Mrs. Malone knocked on the door and poked her head in. “Lights out, girls,” she said. “We're getting up early tomorrow to go to the lake. The mechanic called and said that the boat's been fixed.”

“Really?” Poppy sat up straighter. “Hey, Mom, can Nerissa come with us?”

“Well, I don't know . . . I'd have to ask her mother. . . .” Mrs. Malone said.

“She'll say yes,” said Nerissa quickly. “I know she will.”

“Please, Mom?” Poppy rarely resorted to pleading with her parents, but this was a special case. “It's not fair that Will's hanging out with Henry and Franny's spending so much time with Ashley, and I'm stuck by myself.”

“You could always spend time with Rolly,” said Mrs. Malone. “You would be a good influence on him. Maybe you could encourage him to stop storing his bait in the fridge—”

Poppy groaned. “Mom!”

Mrs. Malone's gaze moved to Nerissa. “Well, it's fine with me,” she said, “if it's all right with Nerissa's mom.” As she drifted out of the room, she added vaguely, “Oh dear, I have so much to do, my list is huge! . . . remind me to call her tomorrow . . . good night . . .”