The Mermaid's Secret (11 page)

I put a hand on her shoulder. “I want someone to know where I'm going. Understand?”

“What do you have on draft?” a man at the table asks.

Sammy lifts the drink menu off the table and shoves it into the guy's hand. She turns her back to him.

“You're not seriously still thinking you were a … you-know-what? You got a concussion. Or maybe not a concussion, but, well, I don't know what happened. You fell asleep and had a trippy dream. Probably one of those flashbacks they talk about from the time we dropped acid and went to the Stones concert in Portland.”

“Excuse me, can I order?” the man says, glaring.

“Why did we go to the Rolling Stones anyway?” Sammy says. “They're, like, so lame. Couldn't we have found someone a little more current?”

“Sammy, focus. I need to go back there and figure out what happened to me. I need to see if I'm losing my mind.”

“Losing your mind, for sure.”

“Hello. Miss. I'm waiting,” the man says.

“What do you want?” she asks him curtly. Good thing they automatically add a gratuity for big parties.

“I'll be back later. We'll get drinks at Schooner Wharf,” I say. “I just wanted you to know where I'm going.”

“Okay, fine. I'll be sure to call in the unicorns and leprechauns to run a search party if you don't come home tonight.”

*   *   *

No one's around when I park my car on the old utility road overgrown with sumac and sea oats. No one sees me walk through the spruce trees to the rocky edge of shore, looking for my board. No one hears me yelp for joy when I find it, unbroken and not stolen, nestled between rocks on the edge where woods meet shore.

If anyone had noticed me, they would have called for help by now. They'd guess I'm on a suicide mission. That's how wild the surf is today.

The crash of waves drowns out all other noise. Gray clouds hang low to the east, turning the water opaque and black in the distance. I stand on the shore, watching for patterns in the waves, trying to work up my nerve. The waves are sloppy and disorganized, breaking here, breaking there, breaking everywhere.

I grab my board, climb over the rocks, and wait for a rush of water to carry me out to sea. The tide is coming in and the rocks of the boneyard are partially submerged, making it appear deceptively clear between shore and the wild blue yonder. I get knocked around a bit by the swirling water and underwater forces, but this time I make it through the boneyard easily. My arms feel strong. My breathing is calm.

After you do the impossible once, it suddenly seems easy.

When I get past the sandbar, rain is shattering the surface into a million little pieces. The waves are peaking all over the place, like a washing machine on the heavy soil cycle. I watch for a while, trying to read the waves, looking for the calm amid the chaos. I look for fins, too, wondering if that was my imagination as well.

Then it comes. Through the mess, a set appears on the horizon. Sharp, perfect lines cut across the sea. It never fails to amaze me how sets roll in out of nowhere, as if the ocean is running out to greet me, yelling a glorious hello.

Hi there, old friend.

My surfer brain screams to move, that I'm too far inside. I lie down and paddle toward the oncoming set, furious to get past those massive waves before they break. It's hard to see where to go, with the rain stinging my eyes, but I make it over the peak of the first wave just in time. The next wave is even bigger, so I keep paddling. I'll paddle to Portugal to keep from getting caught in the white fury of these monsters again.

I make it over two more waves. The next one is the biggest of the set, and I'm in perfect position.

This is my wave.

I go for it. I feel myself rise up the face. Three more strokes, both arms tearing through water, and my board catches the power behind it. I pop up to my feet, the nose hovering over air, rain hitting fiberglass. I crouch low and take the drop.

Down the line, the lip of the wave begins to curl. Instinctively, I know I need more speed to move into the pocket. I dig my heels into the board, swing my upper body to the left to move up the wave, then reverse the motion and zip down the face.

I grab the rail as the wave curls over me. The sky darkens, the rain stops, and I'm inside the barrel.

Like before, the barrel gets taller and wider as I ride it. I haven't hit my head and gotten a concussion. I'm not dreaming. I am shooting the barrel at Tutatquin Point. And like before, the ride lasts longer than it should. Twenty seconds. I count: twenty-one Mississippi, twenty-two Mississippi. Thirty seconds go by. Forty. A minute. I'm still surrounded by water. When it finally peters out, I'm far inside the sandbar, past the boneyard, skimming over rocky bottom.

I hop off my board and run to shore. This time, I'm ready. I stash my board in the pine trees and wait. Within a minute, my breath gets shallow, my lungs feel heavy. Rain pelts my skin, the sand, the rocks, the trees. I am not unconscious or asleep. I am wide awake.

I take a breath, but the air won't come. The sea calls to me.

This time, I don't wait. I run into the waves and dive under.

My lungs fill with water. It's a shock, but I manage to stay calm. I reach behind me and there it is, my tail, beautiful scales and all.

This is not a concussion or a delayed acid trip or a dream.

I am a mermaid.
Like, for real.

I peek above the surface, looking for anyone who can witness this. I want proof. I want witnesses. But the rain has driven everyone inside. I'm completely alone.

Or am I? Vibrations pulse down my sides. They are different than last time. Instead of a sharp prickle, it's more of a dull throb. Still, I don't take any chances.

I go under, kick my tail, and fly. Water rushes over my skin, my hair flutters behind me. It takes some practice to synchronize the mechanics of my tail and torso, but when I do, I cut through water like a dolphin. I am the fastest person alive. I am superhuman. I am a goddess of the sea.

I am shark bait.

Thoughts pass through me like electricity. I try to listen to what my new senses are telling me. A faint vibration runs down my side. It translates instantly into words:
small fish nearby
.

A knocking sound in the distance means
turtle
.

A steady electrical field up ahead tells me
something small and fast
. Immediately I know it's prey, not predator.

My vision is total crap. Dark, shapeless blobs loom in and out of my sight. Rocks. Slopes in the ocean floor. Inanimate objects. Everything is a blur. But living, moving creatures light up in pixels of bright light.

As I adapt to the language of my new body, with its inflections of scent, sound, taste, and touch, I realize I don't have to rely on my eyesight. My brain keeps telling me I should swim away and find shelter. There are sharks in this ocean, and they hunt mermaids. But my body isn't in any rush. I decide to listen to the wisdom of my body. Let go and give my body what it wants. And right now it just wants to swim, to explore.

I swim south into deeper water. Colors fade. Red becomes blue. Pink becomes blue. The blood in my veins becomes black in this light-starved world. I don't know where I'll end up or which route I'll take, but I don't care. When's the last time I went anywhere without knowing the destination? When's the last time I just explored? I must have been a kid, me and Kay roaming the foothills around Mount Wabanaki.

I test out my speed, kicking with my arms straight overhead, then by my sides, figuring out which is more efficient. On the sandy bottom I stop, then bolt straight up toward the surface and breach like a whale into the rainy sky. I feel the change in gravity between water and air and jump out of the water again, feeling the squeeze in pressure like a giant hug against my body.

I stop on the surface and look back toward Ne'Hwas. I am really a mermaid. I'm not dreaming this. This time I'm sure of it.

I tilt my head back and let the rain fall into my mouth, across my nose and forehead. I have to show Matthew what I can do. He has to know I'm not some silly girl with wild fantasies. I'll show Sheriff, too, and Sammy, and anyone who doubts me.

Suddenly something bumps me in the back. I jerk around to see what it is, but nothing is above the surface. I dive under. Through the haze, my eyes make out movement as thousands of neon dots. Whatever it was, it's swimming away. I should be afraid, but under water my senses are calm, the electroreceptors in my sides telling me to chill out.

The dots of lights come racing back toward me with alarming speed.

I freeze.

The thing rushes toward me. Then stops. A harbor seal is inches from my face. He cocks his head, twitches his whiskers. He tucks into a ball and somersaults backwards, his spine like rubber. He swims away and swims back. He makes another pass at me, blowing bubbles in my face, which tickle my nose. The bubbles make him look like he's laughing. I laugh, too.

I reach out a hand and brush his smooth coat.

His thoughts are like blips of Morse code. He wants to communicate. I let my body translate.

What are you?
he asks.

It's as clear as if someone is whispering in my ear. I feel the words in a latent part of my brain. I pulse a message back to him:
Mermaid.

He wants to know about me, his huge black eyes search me for clues.
Where is your kind?

On land.

Air breathers?

Yes.

He swims away and then charges back toward me.
Me too. Let's play.

Okay.

I pull my knees (or what used to be my knees) into my stomach, and roll. He mimics me. He blows more bubbles. I try to blow bubbles back, but I don't have air in my lungs and only water comes out.

He takes off like lightning and I take off after him.

To my amazement, I catch him easily. I must be swimming at least thirty knots, the top speed of the
Dauntless
, with its two-thousand-horsepower engine.

The seal stops. I stop. I put a hand out and he pushes his nose into the palm of it.

Concentrating on my words, I send him my message, through the nerve endings in my body:
I like you.

I like you, too.

We are the same.
Mammals. We breathe air. Our blood is warm. I can feel this deep inside of me. And I think he can, too.

Come with me
, the seal says.

I swim like the seal, accelerating with my tail, steering with my hands. He jumps into the air and I follow. I explode out of the water into air, breaching like a giant tuna.

We're like little kids on the first day of school. I follow him for miles and miles out into the sea. I have no idea where we're going, but I'm all-in.

Thousands of new sensations come at me at once. My fish brain interprets them—lobsters caught in a trap, a pod of whales miles away, a kelp bed, a skate in the sand below, a fish pursuing another fish, the tide coming in, the currents sweeping south.

We pass schools of fish and solitary pelagics. Each species has its own language that I do not understand, like tribesmen from different clans.

As foreign and otherworldly as it is, it feels like I belong here.

When I was little, my mother would let me ditch school and we'd go on adventures in the wilderness, hiking Mount Wabanaki or wandering the vast dunes on the north shore. Nature's classroom, she called it. I remember those hikes, my legs trembling with fatigue, my lungs burning, making exquisite discoveries around every rock and every tree—bear scat or a fox's den or a thick slab of hardened pine sap for starting a fire. We'd pick berries, fiddleheads, and black trumpets, and catch fish in the little freshwater ponds to eat. My mother would teach me the Passamaquoddy words.
Kiyahq
is “bird.”
Ktoton
is “mountain.”
Nomeha,
“little fish,” her nickname for me. And
koselomol,
“I love you.” How my tongue would trip over the sounds. We would reach the top of the mountain, after those rigorous climbs, breathing in the cold air and feeling like being there was the greatest treasure on earth.

It's like that now. It feels like an exquisite treasure lies around every corner. It feels like I belong. And I feel completely free.

Cold and hot are no longer sensations for me. There is no comfort or discomfort. There is only a change against my skin, my scales.

Nomeha koselomol.
I love you, little fish. My mother's voice sings every syllable.

I want to go everywhere and see everything, but suddenly my tail slows down and my muscles freeze. It's like my veins are filled with lead. I try to move forward, but I can't get my tail to cooperate. A dull, aching pain spreads across my stomach. Hunger, I realize. It's so much more intense than any sort of human hunger I've ever felt.

My body needs food. Energy. And it needs it now. For a moment, I think like a human—I can swim to shore, get my legs back, and walk down to the Lobster Corral. The thought of fried clams, onion rings drenched in ketchup, and coleslaw fills me with a kind of misery only someone who is hungry can understand. I know I won't make it to shore. Food is energy, and without it, my muscles stiffen, my movements slow to almost nothing.

Think.
I'm in the ocean. I've worked on a fishing boat for many years. I should be able to catch a fish to feed myself. But the fish that light up in my line of sight are so fast, and I've become an underwater sloth. Can I eat kelp? There's plenty of that. Slowly I make my way to a strand of kelp and bite into it. I wait. It does nothing. I need protein.

With my tail lagging behind, weighing me down, I breaststroke forward. When that becomes too difficult, I crawl hand over hand on the sandy floor. Will I be able to make it back to the island like this? I don't even know how far away I am. I was so focused on the seal, I've completely lost track of where I am. What if I can't make it home? Have I come through all this only to die of starvation?