The Mermaid's Secret (12 page)

I refuse to believe that.

I keep moving, feeling in the sand for crabs, scallops, bottom-feeders, anything I can get my hands on, the hunger hanging over me like a grenade. Minutes pass. Hours? Light is fading. I can't keep track of time because the hunger has crept into my brain now. No energy to think.

Bottom slopes up. Shallow water. A rocky mass in front of me. My hand fumbles around a hard edge. More hard, bumpy objects. The surface just above. Darkening sea. And then I realize where I am—an oyster bed. Protein pods by the thousands, all within my reach.

I'm so happy I feel like screaming, but first I need to eat. I yank an oyster loose from the thick carpet of shells. Is it even possible to shuck an oyster with bare hands? I slam the shell against hard rock until my palm is sore. It doesn't even crack. I'd give anything for a knife. I pluck another oyster and slip the narrow end into the hinge of the first oyster. I wiggle and twist, working it like a drill with a dull bit. It's slow going, but eventually the oyster gives. It opens a crack. I jimmy the other oyster into it until the top shell lifts away. My stomach grumbles with anticipation.

As I pull the meat from the shell, a little fish darts out of nowhere and snatches it right out of my fingers. Bits of oyster mucous drift around, and suddenly I'm swarmed by fish of all sizes looking for a free meal.
Thieves.

I swat at them. Stupid fish. Stupid fish who are smarter than me.

I pry open another shell, twisting and pulling, until the top shell gives. This time I grab the meat in a fist to keep it safe, and pop it into my mouth. It slides down my throat. It's pure heaven, the finest thing I've ever tasted. Instantly my body responds. Energy comes back to me and I tear into the next oyster.

Now hundreds of fish school around me, pecking on the bits of membrane floating like snot in the water. They weave around me, jockeying for scraps, trying to steal my food.

As I crack apart another oyster, my friend the seal lunges toward me, teeth bared. Fish scatter.

I pull my hand away a split second before he can bite it.

He has no words for me now, only teeth and hunger. A fish-eat-fish world. He disappears into the dark distance, but the second I crack another shell apart, he comes flying back at me.

I hold up my fist.
Back off, seal.
But he doesn't know fists and he lurches at me, biting the oyster out of my hand.

I bonk him in the head. He backflips upside down and circles around. I try to communicate with him.
I will hurt you. I am deadlier than you.

He doesn't speak back. We are no longer friends. There is food in the water and we both need to eat. He swims away into the darkness and I devour a dozen more oysters, letting the fish battle it out for the scraps of sinew.

I eat until I'm full, the scuffle of fish lighting up the water in neon light. As they swim away, they take all the light with them, leaving the water empty and dark. In fact, it's almost black. Are my eyes are playing tricks on me?

How long have I been down here? Has the sun already set? I bolt through the darkness for the surface. My eyes take a few minutes to adjust. The sky is black and rain is pounding the ocean. I don't see Ne'Hwas. I spin around, looking for a bearing. Anything—land, a buoy, a lighthouse.

I search the horizon for Kotoki-Pun light, but the rain and darkness swallow everything. It dawns on me that oyster beds don't appear in the middle of the ocean. I must be at the tidal reefs near Wolf Rocks. We pass by here on the
Mack King
all the time. I try to envision the nautical chart of the gulf. If I'm right about being at Wolf Rocks, I'm probably fifteen miles from Ne'Hwas. How did I go that far?

My heart beats like a jackhammer. Rain stings my face. I dive down and swim faster and faster toward … what? I don't know if I'm heading toward the mainland or out to sea. I've completely lost my bearings.

Panic rises in my chest. It sounds like the clapping rain, like drums in my ears. Vibrations creep up my sides. Night. Feeding time. Predators closing in.

I reach the bottom and swim wildly through the darkness, bumping into sandy bottom, rocks, unseen things. The vibrations intensify.

I need to come to terms with my reality. I am a mermaid. I am lost. It's night and there's no way I can find my way home. Sharks will be coming out to feed soon; I can't stay on the surface. I have to spend the night under water.

I need to find shelter.

Staying close to the bottom to search for shallow caves, I swim with my hands ahead of me, feeling my way around the reefs of Wolf Rocks. But the reefs are low and jagged and don't have much in the way of hiding spots. Up ahead, I sense a change in the water. Not a predator or a prey, but a thing. Something dense. I swim toward it. Vibrations race up my spine.

An old cargo ship lies on the bottom, tipped on its side. It's in one piece, for the most part. There are lots of shipwrecks at Wolf Rocks. I've seen them at low tide. I've pointed them out to passengers as I served them cold beers and warm fish chowder from the security of my galley, never in a million years thinking that they might save my life.

Feeling my way, I find a hole in the ship's deck. I climb in, the darkness opaque and terrifying. How often is a person really in complete darkness? There's always a pinprick of a star in the sky, a crack of light beneath a door, the electric glow of a distant city on the horizon. Here, I curl up in a ball in pitch blackness, the world's deadliest hunters outside, metal below me, metal above me, an underwater coffin, and I try to sleep.

 

T
EN

There are a dozen suns dangling on the horizon when I surface, their rays streaking the sky in orange and pink. I blink hard against the dry, harsh air. Slowly, the world comes into focus and the many suns converge into one.

It's a different ocean than it was yesterday. Today, it's a mirror. Not even a longboarder could scratch out a ride in this sort of calm. I've caught the ocean in her waking hour. A minute later the wind picks up and the mirror is broken into a million dark ripples. Somewhere, a foghorn blows.

Off in the distance, Kotoki-Pun light is a speck on shore. If I estimate in the way Matthew taught me—that at sea level, in open ocean, the horizon is thirteen miles away—I'm about ten miles off shore. Totally swimmable. But last night, in the dark, ten miles might as well have been to China.

I roll my neck and stretch my arms, unkinking the cramps. I'm sore from staying curled up all night. Tired, too. I was too scared to sleep. Afraid the sharks would get me. Afraid that I would stop breathing if I stopping moving water through my gills.

But I survived. What does that say about me? Humans adapt to the most rugged terrain on earth—the arctic circle, the Sahara, Mount Everest—but I've done what no one has. I overcame that human limitation, that breathless, desperate feeling of drowning, that hysterical fear that comes with being trapped in pitch blackness in an eternal ocean. I survived. Relief washes over me.

Maybe I'm not such a complete screwup after all.

Next time I'll be even more prepared. I'll bring a compass. An underwater light. A knife. Maybe a waterproof GPS.

Next time.
Will there will be a next time? And a time after that, and a time after that? How does this work? Do I get to choose when to be human and when to be fish? Am I the only one? Are there other mermaids and mermen, having mer-parties and mer-jobs and mer-families? If there are, did we all get here the same way—surfing the barrel at Tutatquin—or are there other entries into this world? Can I bring someone else with me? Would anyone want to come?

My gut tells me that, whatever is happening to me, it has to be my secret. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I need to figure out the rules before I share this. I don't want the Jay Delgados of the world out here with me.

As I swim home, I stay under water, out of sight.

By the time I make it back to Ne'Hwas, boats are buzzing around the harbor like flies. Under water, the roar of engines is magnified. At a lobster buoy, I peek my head above the surface. The passenger ferry is already motoring out for the morning trip, and the whale watch boat is close behind. I see the
Dauntless
cruise by. Matthew will be at the helm, wondering where I am. Jacqueline will be on board, filling in for me in the galley. Probably counting her lucky stars, along with her hefty tips, that I didn't show up for work. One of the guys will have to cover the galley aboard the
Mack King
. Cursing my name. Can't worry about that now.

I dive down and swim parallel to shore, following the slope of sand to North Beach. In the shallows, a tiny pair of legs is kicking on the surface, held close by a larger pair of legs that walks weightlessly in circles. Mothers and children are already out at this hour. This is not a place for reentry.

I keep swimming around the western edge of the island. Wabanaki State Park doesn't have any safe spots to land. Too many tree-hugging, bird-watching nature lovers rising out of their tents and lean-tos there. Once I make it around Tutatquin Point, I see the silhouettes of a dozen surfers and paddleboarders in the lineup at Nipon. Part of me wants to reach out and tickle some feet.

How am I going to make it ashore in broad daylight with eyes everywhere? If it weren't for the sharks, and the starvation, could I stay out here forever? Write Sheriff a note to explain everything? Send him a message in a bottle?

I keep swimming around the island, looking for a safe landing. I finally find it in the riprap seawall into Lobster Cove. Here, the docks are empty, the lobstermen long at work for the day. Only one boat's still docked—the
Jennie B
. It's been lobstering on Ne'Hwas for as long as I can remember. And it doesn't look like the owner is in any great hurry to make his numbers.

I swim to the stern, staying submerged from the nose down. No one's here besides an old fisherman with a white beard, sitting in the harbor house reading a newspaper. As silently as possible, I pull myself onto the transom of the
Jennie B
. My tail makes a loud thump against the hull. Nervously I look around, but the old fisherman doesn't flinch. With all my upper body strength, I heave myself over the stern.

The rig is rusty, the engine well coated in grease. A few lobster traps are tossed in a heap, along with the ship's ropes. Matthew would have a heart attack if he saw lines like that. He demands coiled lines, everything shipshape.

There are chains on deck, blackened with mildew and algae. Ladders, plastic buckets, and worn-down brushes are tossed around. The only clean part of the boat is the fish hold in the center. And here I am: a fish throwing herself into a fishing boat.

With a bit of trouble, I pull myself across the deck on my hands, my tail dragging behind me.

I half expect to find the captain of the
Jennie B
curled up drunk somewhere, but no one's on board. Inside, the cabin is caked in years of dirt and dust and cigarette ash. Empty beer bottles are strewn around, along with whiskey bottles, rusty tools, chewing tobacco canisters.

Once again, I'm starving. I'm so hungry, in fact, I lift the lid on an ancient, water-stained box of Wheat Thins crammed next to a cushion. It's empty, which is probably for the best. The lack of fuel sends a headache cracking through my skull. Food will come later, I tell myself.

First priority is to get my legs back. I look around for a towel and find, instead, an old canvas tucked into a forward compartment. I wrap myself in the moldy thing, suddenly aware of the temperature on my skin. The canvas is rough and scratchy, and a very poor replacement for a towel. I lie back, waiting to become human. Through the murky windows speckled with salt spray, I watch the sun rise higher and higher, and listen for intruders.

I fall asleep. When I wake up, my tail is gone, my legs are back, and I'm bare-ass naked. Where
do
my bikinis go?

The sun is high in the sky and the old fisherman is still asleep in his chair. In the forward cabin, underneath a pair of circa-1940 orange life vests, I find a work shirt and put it on. It's like a dress on me. A fish-and-diesel-stinking vagabond dress. But it beats walking home naked.

*   *   *

Lobster Cove is only a couple miles from town. I walk, barefoot and stinking like rotten fish, without drawing too much attention—except from Lady Victoria, who's out on her balcony, in drag.

“Walk of shame, hey girl?” Lady Victoria tosses her feather boa across her neck and regards me through eyelash extensions.

“No,” I snap. “It's not like that.”

“Ah, come on. I'm only playing with you.”

Given my present situation, the catcalls of my drag queen neighbor should be the least of my worries, but her insinuation rubs me the wrong way. “It's not a walk of shame. I'm just going through some weird stuff.”

“Kitty cat, whatever it is you're going through, take my advice—that which does not kill us, makes us utterly fabulous.” She runs a hand down her sequined gown. “My word, what on earth are you wearing? You look like you've been run around wet and hung out to dry.”

“Just an old shirt.”

“Spin around for me, Minnie Mouse.”

I don't have the energy that's required to argue with a diva, so I twirl.

“My, my, my,” she says, pressing her hands onto her hips. “The ensemble is positively dreadful, but the girl beneath it has some potential. I never noticed those curves on you before. You take any supplements? I pop estrogen, but it only gets me so far.”

“What do you mean?”

She snaps her finger. “Look in a mirror sometime, Betty Boop. And do yourself a favor. Buy something a little more formfitting.”

Lady Victoria is obsessed with her wardrobe and is constantly giving style tips to me and Sammy, which I never take. “Have a good show tonight,” I say. She blows me a kiss and I climb the stairs to the apartment. Luckily, the door's unlocked, since my keys are back at the beach, stuffed into my shoe—security system surfer-style. I head straight for the kitchen and find half a pepperoni pizza in the fridge. I don't even bother with a plate. I'm thrusting a piece into my mouth when the front door swings open.