How to be a Mermaid: A Falling in Deep Collection Novella (6 page)

“Really?”

“Don’t worry, he’ll find you.”

I heard commotion across the way to the entrance to the dolphin pools. Someone had either found me or they were going to stumble upon me. I grabbed my mermaid tail and clutched it to my chest. I crouched and ran over to the edge of the landing, heading towards the ocean.

“I will be back,” I whispered to Kai. “I will set you free, okay, buddy?”

“Tell Finn hi for me.”
It seemed like he, too, was skeptical about my odds of setting him free.

Perhaps he thought that I would somehow be persuaded to stay in the ocean. Even though the idea of it was impossible to me, I promised myself that if it ever happened and I did stay in the ocean, I’d still find a way to get the dolphin calf out of here.

I pulled myself over the fence, careful not to slip and fall. I hop-skipped down the rocks, being very careful not to misstep, trying to move quickly to stay out of sight from whoever was coming.

“Hey fellas,” a voice said from over the ledge, addressing the dolphins. “Hungry?”

The dolphins went crazy, excited for one last feeding for the night. Their voices jumbled together into an incoherent cacophony. If it wasn’t directly into my head, I would have covered my ears.

Despite their raucousness, I could hear Kai’s voice over it, calling to me.

“Good luck.”

The water below looked like it was lapping at the sharp rocks a bit too forcefully, reminding me of a meat grinder. No wonder I’d hit my head when I slipped off.

I hesitated, struggling to determine the best place to dive into the ocean. Finn had somehow found a place to come up onto the shore without being torn to shreds, I just couldn’t find it. It all looked treacherous and scary.

Then I spotted it, a space where I could leap and land into what I thought was calm water. I could be completely wrong, and have a riptide throw me out to sea. I really had no idea how deep it was. I guessed that was where Finn had come in for his rescue mission and that was going to have to be where I landed in the water.

I gripped the tail to my body, determined that I wouldn’t lose it. Once I got in the water, I would put on my tail and swim. After the spectacle I made earlier that day, I could handle these waves and rushing water.

I closed my eyes, willing myself to take the jump. Finally, I leaped out into empty air and plunged to the churning water below.

***

Instead of the rocks, I miraculously hit the water with a loud splash, and I scissored my legs open, attempting to stop my descent. Panic jammed my senses all at once when I opened my mouth and filled my lungs with water. At the same time, whatever part of me was turning into a fish knew exactly how to breathe and I began to inhale normally. Though my mind didn’t know how to handle the ocean, my body did.

That didn’t help the crashing of the waves or my tumbling head over heels. The mermaid tail was torn from my grasp, floating off into the water. Although everything was all discombobulated, I couldn’t let my lifeline get swept away. I blindly reached out, and despite the odds, my fingers found it. I gripped it with everything I had, like my life depended on it.

I kicked, willing myself to get out of the current and away from the churning water against the rocks. That underwater instinct that I’d felt during the performance took over, calming my nerves and I was able to dolphin kick away and shoot through the sea like some sort of missile.

By a stroke of luck, I hadn’t died or gotten severely injured. I’d had quite a few near deaths in the last twenty-four hours.

After several long, agonizing moments, the water got calmer as I moved further away from the rocks. I surfaced, surprised to find that I was a good two hundred yards from the shore. The aquarium glistened like a miniature city on the edge of land and beyond it, the suburbs of Houston.

“I’ll be back,” I promised Kai. I wasn’t going to fail. I was going to make this work.

After I shimmied into my tail, I started searching the water for Finn. Given that I was swimming like a fish without it, I probably didn’t need it, however, since the odds were so stacked against me, I would take every bit of help I could get.

Besides, it felt like my last touch with familiarity as I was headed into the unknown.

I floated on my back in the water and looked at the dark sky, thinking I’d gone crazy. One, for believing that I was turning into a mermaid; two, for thinking that I could talk to dolphins; and then believing that I could find a certain merman in all of the vast ocean.

“Finn?” I called to the night air. “I’m here.”

I waited, drifting on the waves for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only for a few minutes. Nothing and no indication that anything had changed when I had called for Finn’s help.

Of course.

Okay, so it was going to be a bit harder than a simple request for help. I flipped onto my stomach and submerged, heading out to sea. I had no direction in mind, except away from the shore. I went deeper and deeper, further and further at an impossible depth, distance, and time for an ordinary human.

My mind wasn’t on the impossibility of the situation. I was too busy reveling in how beautiful everything was under the water. The water was a deep blue, stretching out from me in all directions. Schools of fish swam in perfect formation, and based on the murmur in the water, the fish were talking amongst themselves. I could see the kelp sway with the current, and I even spotted a few jellyfish lazing around, speaking in low, unfazed conversations. I heard whales in the distance, singing to each other in heart-wrenching songs that I now understood. I saw a crab swimming by me, musing out loud who I was. Some fish were curious, swimming right up next to me to investigate.

It was magical. I could see why Kai was so adamant that I wouldn’t want to go back to land. Every time I’d been in the ocean before, it was on the shore or in a boat on top of it. I never witnessed how
alive
everything was around me.

Perhaps my transformation had something to with it as well. I didn’t think normal humans saw this way, and they certainly couldn’t breathe underwater like I was.

I felt sad that once I went back to my old self, I wasn’t going to have this. I brushed the thought from my mind, scared by how accurate Kai’s predication was.

A snapper wiggled his way next to me, moving his head so he could keep an eye on me at all times. He’d been following me for a while, so I got the sense that he wasn’t just a random fish following a random mermaid.

“Hey?” I asked timidly, strangely remembering my mother’s warning to never speak to strangers. Did that include talking to curious fish?

I stopped swimming so I could face the fish. The snapper’s eyes widened and he stopped as well.

“I-I’m looking for someone... uh...”

“Who are you looking for?”
the snapper asked.

I sighed in relief. “Uhm, Finn,” I said. Do mermen have last names? “Finn, the Merman.”

The snapper swam right up to me and turned to the side so he could get a good look at me.
“You’re looking for Finn? I know Finn! What do you want with him?”

“I need to ask him a favor.” I wasn’t sure how far in depth I should go. I remembered Finn’s and Nereia’s reaction when I told them that I was a fake mermaid. I didn’t want to spook the snapper by telling him that I was a human in a mermaid tail. “Do you know where I can find him?”

“You simply ask for him,”
the snapper said, confusion coloring his voice.

“I tried that already.” I waited a beat, letting the wave of irritation ebb. “It didn’t work.”

The fish chuckled at me in a fit of glistening scales and bubbly water. I didn’t know that fish could laugh, so I gawped at him, dumbfounded.

“You must not have done it underwater. He couldn’t hear you, silly.”

“What?” Come to think of it, I guess even though I’d been in the water, I
had
said it outside of the water. “I guess I could try it.”

“How else would he hear you?”

Okay, so the fish was making fun of me. “Hey buddy, this is all new to me.”

“I couldn’t tell.”

His sarcasm made my eye twitch. Who knew that fish could be sarcastic?

I closed my eyes and focused on the problem at hand. “Finn?” My voice trembled, even though I was trying to speak loudly and with authority. “Finn, I’m here. I need you,” I added that last part quietly.

“See? That’s better.”

“Yeah, like he could hear me.” Yes, I had spoken loudly, but even screaming wouldn’t carry that far over the ocean.

“He can hear you.”

I put my hands on my hips and waited in the water, the snapper hanging out next to me. A minute passed by, two minutes. Nothing happened. How long should I wait for a response?

“He didn’t hear me,” I grumbled.

“You really need to learn patience,”
the fish chided.
“You know how vast the ocean is, right?”

“Yes, which is exactly why I should get going,” I told him desperately. “I really need to find him tonight.”

I flicked my tail to zoom off, and something caught my wrist, holding me back. At first, ridiculously, I thought it was the snapper somehow holding onto my wrist. When I turned back, I saw sea green eyes studying me with the same incredulous look I was probably giving him.

“What are you doing here?” Finn asked me.

“I—I—” I stammered, tongue-tied for the moment. He was still bare-chested, still sporting those rock-hard abs, still gorgeous, and, most importantly, he was here. He had heard me, and he came for me.

Finn’s face twisted into a disapproving frown. “And what are you doing wearing that?”

It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. I looked down and saw the fake mermaid tail. Despite it all, I burst out laughing, which was more from relief than anything else.

“That?” I rubbed a hand over my tail. “That’s kinda why I’m here...”

Now that someone who could take control of the situation and help me out was here, everything came tumbling down at once, my own emotions coming in like a tide. My fears about what was happening crashed into me, threatening to overwhelm me. Someone else could take care of it, and I wouldn’t be stuck with gills or a real tail.

I could be normal again. And then I could help out Kai, following through on my promise. I’ve been let down in the past by life. I wasn’t going to let him down. With Finn’s help, we could figure out a way. I was sure of it.

I collapsed into his chest, deep sobs wracking me. Awkwardly, he put a hand around my shoulders, not knowing what else to do.

“I’m so glad you’re here.”

As I learned a few minutes later, throwing
yourself at a boy, especially if he was a half-naked merman, makes for an awkward conversation afterward. It took a few minutes for the tears to stop, and I was so embarrassed by my crying afterward, I couldn’t look him in the eye.

“What are you doing here?” Finn asked me again. He steadied me at arm’s length, probably trying to keep me from grabbing at him again. To my relief, his expression was warm and concerned, so that in of itself was comforting.

I took a steadying breath, and I felt the gills under my jaw flare as a painful reminder of what was happening to my body. The words threatened to deluge all at once, so I closed my eyes, fighting to hold them back.

“Thank you for saving me yesterday.”

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

“But whatever Nereia did to me, it’s turning me into a—a mermaid, I think.” The words tumbled out and I ended my sentence on a sob. “She called me a merwalker.”

Finn gave me a hard look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m turning into something like you. Surely you noticed that I’m freaking
breathing underwater
?” I said, exasperation eclipsing any other emotion. I cocked my head back and pointed to the gills. “Those weren’t there yesterday!”

Finn reached out as if to touch the gills, his face unreadable at the too-intimate gesture. He shook his head and cursed under his breath. I didn’t know what the words were exactly. Whatever translated sea-speak into English for me only identified them as vulgar words.

“It was meant to be temporary,” he said, his voice a little strangled. “Only until you returned to the surface.”

“Yeah, well I did, and Nereia did something permanent.”

“I can see that.” He combed his fingers through his hair. “Dammit. I’d hoped that she wouldn’t do that.”

“What, you knew she could turn me into a mermaid?” I shrieked.

“Merwalker,” he corrected. “And it was always a possibility.” He groaned. “Nobody really knows what goes on in that head of hers. She must have thought there was a purpose in turning you into a merwalker.”

I remembered her words.
You should come back and visit...

“So you’re saying she’s—”

“Crazy,” he said simply. “She was the only one who could save you though. I had no choice.”

“Excuse me, I’m still here.”

We both looked up to see the snapper eyeing us warily, his mouth open in a big ‘o’.
“Did I just hear you say that you are turning into a mermaid? But your tail...”

“It’s a fake tail, Ponce,” Finn said, his entire demeanor changing when he addressed the fish. He crossed his arms, increasing the distance between us. “She’s a human.”

That stung, like it was some sort of insult. “For now,” I added coldly.

Ponce, the nosy snapper, gaped at me.
“A human? A real human? I mean, you were acting funny trying to call Finn here. I just figured that was for a date.”

“No!” I said quickly, my cheeks turning bright red. While Finn looked as embarrassed as I, it looked endearing on him. “I need help. I need to stop this. Can you take me to Nereia’s cave or whatever it was?”

To my dismay, Finn shook his head. “I can’t. She’s not there. She’s...she’s out collecting fire flowers.”

“What?” I asked, feeling the pit of dread clench my stomach.

“Well, you see, I dropped the potion, so she has to go find ingredients for it. My father ordered her to hurry, so she left immediately. We don’t expect to see her until tomorrow.”

“Why? Where?” Then something struck me as odd about Finn’s statement and I narrowed my eyes. “Wait, who is your father?”

It was Finn’s turn to turn bright red, averting his eyes from mine.

“King Oceanus,”
Ponce answered for him in a smug voice.

I bit back a nervous giggle. “
King
Oceanus? Then that would make you...” I ended up dumbly gaping at Finn, who wouldn’t look at me.

“A prince,”
Ponce finished when it was evident that a catfish had got my tongue.
“Prince Finn. How did you not know that?”

“Ponce,” Finn warned, and at the same time I stammered, “H-hello, I’m a human!”

Holy crap, I’d been fawning over an undersea prince this entire time!

At my outburst, both merman and fish stopped to look at me. Even underwater, my chest was heaving as I breathed in and out, frustrated and shocked by the whole thing.

“You’re a prince?”

Finn flashed me his gorgeous smile, amused by my bewilderment. “Sometimes. I do prefer to just be Finn.”

My eyes were entirely too wide, and Finn’s expression of delight twisted my insides in a pleasant way. I had to slow my roll or else I was going to fall flat on my face.

“When will Nereia be back?” I asked, my voice mangled as I tried valiantly not to fawn over him.

“Tomorrow,” Finn—
Prince
Finn, holy crap—said. “It’s a long journey to get fire flowers.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have dropped the potion last night.”

“Could we get it?”

“No. It has to be fresh. It’s been way too long for it to work. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

Frustration threatened with angry tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. “I thought you said she’s hurrying?”

“She can’t take that long,” Finn muttered, combing a hand through his swirls of hair. I must have looked crestfallen, because his expression softened and he put a hand on my shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. “Listen, I’ll take you to my father. He’ll know where Nereia is and then we can find her. See if she can change you back from being a merwalker.”

His words didn’t promise anything. I realized that, yet he seemed so genuine that I managed a small smile. In fact, I might have been teary-eyed, but because we were in the water, I wasn’t sure.

“Now,” he said, frowning, his gaze drifting downward to my silicon mermaid tail. “Can you swim with that thing?”

***

It took Finn a bit of convincing that the flipper at the end of the fake mermaid tail would help me swim faster than my two feet by themselves. After I made a good case for it, he finally obliged, although he made his thoughts about the fake tail abundantly clear.

“Anything’s better than a fake fin,” he grumbled not unkindly.

I begged to differ, especially because it did help me blend in. Even though it was nowhere near an accurate imitation of the beauty of a real mermaid’s tail, I was thankful for the camouflage my tail offered. After all, Ponce had been fooled by it; he even said he thought I was an unfortunate mermaid with a bad tail.

That was better than a human with a fake tail in these parts.

“Ready?” Finn asked.

“I’m ready.”

I wanted to prove that I could make the journey, that I wasn’t a human making fun of mermaids. “Thanks for your help, Ponce,” I told the snapper. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably still be searching for Finn. “I guess I’ll see you around.”

“Are you kidding?”
the fish exclaimed.
“I’m coming with you guys. Oceanus is going to flip when Prince Finn brings a human to his palace. You know how much they both hate humans, right?”

I glanced back at Finn, both curious and a bit mortified. What had happened to make them hate humans? My eyes drifted down the scars and I knew. Maybe it wasn’t that particular event that had caused their hate, but I was sure that was a good indication why.

My stomach sank at the thought.

“I don’t hate all humans,” Finn said slowly. Concern flashed in his eyes as our gazes met. “Only the ones that kidnap my people.”

I nodded, although I still didn’t feel right. How many sea creatures were wrongly taken from this beautiful undersea world like Kai?

“You did not kidnap Kai,” he added with a wry smile.

“So you believe me,” I teased.

“I believed you last night. I just had a lot going on.” He looked remorseful for a moment, then he gave himself a little shake. “We should get going. It’s a bit of a long swim.”

“Are you sure you’re coming, Ponce?” I asked, hoping he would. I was starting to like him.

“
Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
” The snapper looked about to bubble over with excitement.

Hours later, I knew Finn wasn’t kidding when he said it was a “bit” of a long swim. If it hadn’t been for that burst of extra swimming skills that I’d picked up, I would have been left in his wake. As it was, I only barely managed to keep up with him, and I could tell that he was still slowing down for me. We kept going deeper and deeper, yet the pressure didn’t squeeze me like a bug between a shoe and the ground like I had expected.

Ponce swam in wide zigzags in the space between Finn and me, singing songs that were perfect for an underwater road trip. Road swim. Whatever. He was obviously having more fun than either Finn or me.

I took the opportunity to talk with Ponce, who was all too happy to chat back.

“So you knew Finn before this?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,”
Ponce said with the flippancy of a gossiper.
“Everyone knows Finn. You see him around all the time.”

“‘Cause he’s a prince?”

Now in front of us, Finn looked back at us and actually rolled his eyes. “I hate being called ‘Prince’.”

“I suppose,”
Ponce mused, unfazed by Finn’s comment.
“It’s because he’s the protector of the sea, more or less.”

“What do you mean, ‘protector’?”

“As in protector,”
Ponce insisted.
“As in, he saves us sea creatures from danger. He’s like a superhero!”

“I’m no superhero,” Finn muttered. I looked at him, and his cheeks were so red with embarrassment, I could see them from about fifteen feet behind.

I thought back to that first instance when I met Finn when he’d climbed up the rocks to save Kai.

“How are you a superhero?”

“It’s not what it sounds like,” Finn said quickly. “I just...look after the ocean.”

“Saved all of us a few times,”
Ponce cut in.
“Explosions, earthquakes, pollution...”

“It’s my job,” Finn shrugged, swimming further ahead at a faster speed, obviously hoping to outswim the conversation. I pushed myself to keep up with him at a speed where I couldn’t catch my breath enough to keep talking. That didn’t stop Ponce, who was happy to keep singing as we went along.

Finn took us deeper and deeper into his world. I know scientists say light doesn’t penetrate the ocean past one thousand meters, and I instinctively felt that we were way beyond that because we kept descending. Rather than get darker, the sea glowed with ethereal beauty. I saw as well as if I was standing on land at high noon on a cloudless day, although that might have been my enhanced eyesight.

At first, there wasn’t much different in the way of underwater life. We passed by fish and kelp and marine mammals that were spread pretty far out. The deeper we went though, the more exotic and crazy the world around us got. Colors started appearing around us, in the water itself. The fish got more colorful. I saw whales. I saw more creatures than I could recognize. Here, I found that the deep ocean wasn’t different shades of blue going into the darkest black: it was all the colors of the rainbow and more.

“Wow,” I murmured appreciatively, the first I’d spoken in a while.

Finn glanced behind and offered a smug smile. So he was proud of the ocean, his magical world. I would be, too.

I wasn’t prepared for what lay ahead of me when we crossed the edge of a chasm into an ever deeper realm.

“Oh my god,” I breathed when I looked at what lay below.

There was a city.

An actual, functioning city lay below us, sparkling in its impossibility. It wasn’t the kind of city that you’d think of when you think of underwater kingdoms. No ancient ruins or Greek columns or Disney-esque castles dominated the landscape. This was a modern underworld city, complete with tall, twenty-story buildings made from sandstone, kelp, and shells. They were beautiful.

It was busy too. Things didn’t move in two dimensions here like they did on land. Rather than restrict traffic to the streets, merfolk and animals simply swam in whatever direction they wanted. And I saw tons of merfolk and other fish, living harmoniously in an underwater utopia.

“This is Thalassa,” Finn explained, slowing down long enough to divulge that bit of information. “This is the capital of the Atlantic Ocean.”

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed. “And so...different than I thought it would be.”

“What did you picture?”

I couldn’t answer, unable find the right words. The simple truth was, I didn’t know
what
an underwater city should look like.

“Smaller,” was all that came to mind.

Finn chuckled with a shrug. “The palace is that way,” he said, pointing off in the direction. “Ponce, are you sure you want to come along?”