The Mermaid's Secret (27 page)

I sheathe my knife and let go of her tail. Still, she doesn't move.

Slowly, I pull myself along the great expanse of her back to her dorsal fin, and I hold on.

Slowly we begin to ascend.

As I ride the great white shark into shallower water, the ocean brightens, everything taking on a pink hue, my eyes adjusting to the spectrum of light. Soon, dappled rays of sun shine through waves.

Her dorsal fin breaks the surface and I ride along, half in air, half in water. There are no vibrations. No electrical current warning me of an attack. Is she done with the chase?

I let go and the shark keeps swimming.

When she realizes I'm not riding her back, she makes a wide, slow circle and swings back to face me.

I am a hunter.

She is a hunter.

One apex predator to another, we shall do no harm. At least, that's what I try to communicate.

She doesn't understand.

She moves toward me.

I swim as fast as I can. The island must be close. In a burst of power I leap out of the water, looking for landmarks. We are right near the rock jetty of White's Wharf. I race toward it, the shark close behind me.

 

T
WENTY-THREE

It's low tide and Lobster Cove is too shallow for a three-thousand-pound great white shark to safely swim. It's almost too shallow for me. But I stay submerged and wedge myself between two boats, listening for people, waiting for the coast to clear.

And hoping. Hoping my mom will have followed me here so I can ask her all the questions that are burning inside of me. Why didn't the shark attack
her
? How extraordinary is life as a mermaid, and should I join her? How can she just leave us like that, without saying good-bye?

I wait and wait and she doesn't come. The sky darkens and the water darkens around me. Something tickles my tail. I look, hoping it's her. An eel. I shoo it away and watch it slither over the bottom, leaving an S trail in the mud.

It's just after sunset when I thrust myself onto the transom of the
Jennie B
. Unlike the last time, the end of my tail dangles in the water. My dimensions are changing. My fish parts are getting bigger, stronger, more powerful.

I'm evolving.

I'm becoming the apex predator of the ocean. I've faced off with the fiercest animal on earth. And I've won.

I am invincible.

I am also flopping around naked on the back of a crappy old fishing boat like a total klutz.

My tail is too unwieldy to maneuver. I have to grab the back gunwale and pull myself over the rail. I land on the deck with a terrific thump.

I'm about halfway across the boat, at the fish hold, when footsteps rattle the dock. Boards creak. I freeze, scared to breathe. A man's voice yells something in the distance. My heart beats so hard I feel it in my ears. Footsteps are getting closer and closer. I'm a sitting duck.

I pull my knife.

Adrenaline surging, I drag myself toward the wheelhouse. I get to the threshold, only to see a wide-eyed little girl in pigtails staring at me from the dock. I blink, my eyes still adjusting to air. Her dress is the color of carnations and she wears a tutu that sticks out on the sides. She holds a glittery wand over her head and a pair of wings on her back. Our eyes meet.

I sit up and put a hand over my tail, as if that's going to hide my massive appendage. This is it. This is where I'm caught, my fate sealed by a four-year-old. I'm as much prey here as I am at the mouth of the great white.

I try to stay calm as the girl and I face off, but the panic rises to my chest. I wait for her to scream.

But instead, she waves.

I wave back.

She swings her tutu from side to side.

“Whatcha doin'?”

“Uh…” I put the knife down. “Going for a swim.”

“I'm a fairy,” she says. “Like Tinker Bell.”

“I see.” Here we are. Two magical creatures just shooting the shit.

“You a mermaid?”

“Yup.”

“I like mermaids.”

“I like fairies.”

“Your tail's pretty.”

“Thank you.” I strain to look down the dock, to see if her parents are near. “Your wings are pretty, too.”

She smiles wide and twirls around, letting her wings flutter behind.

“Tallulah! Tallulah! Come here.” A man's voice. Footsteps beating down the dock. My heart is racing.

“Well … bye-bye,” she says, then little Tallulah waves again, turns, and runs away.

I lie breathless in the doorway, waiting for the father to show up, find me, report me. Or murder me right on the spot. Any second he will peek inside the
Jennie B
and get the shock of his life when he finds that his daughter isn't the only mythical being on Ne'Hwas today. But he doesn't come. A few minutes go by, then a car starts up and drives away, down the crushed stone lot of Lobster Cove.

Tallulah, of the pigtails and fairy wings, has kept my secret safe.

Inside the wheelhouse, I begin drying off with the towel I stashed earlier. My tail itches like mad, worse than before, probably because there's so much more of it. I rub the towel into my scales, but my legs don't appear. I keep rubbing and rubbing. Scales fly off, cascading to the floor in prisms of color. Soon there's a pile of incandescent scales shimmering in the drab wheelhouse.

I wrap the towel around my tail. Hours go by, but the transition to human doesn't come. Finally I fall asleep on the gritty floor of the
Jennie B,
dreaming about the white shark and vanishing into the abyss.

*   *   *

When I wake up, my legs are back. I throw on some shorts and a flannel from my reentry bag, then head out. On the dock, I stand and stretch. I let the air fill my lungs.

I wiggle my toes and rub the toughened skin of my soles against the splintered wood. My legs feel small, and walking is painfully slow compared to my underwater speed.

Gravity weighs on me. My body feels heavy and awkward in its humanness. This must be how astronauts feel when they return to Earth, when the atmosphere takes away their ability to float, free and weightless.

I gaze at the moon. Orion stands guard beside the waxing crescent. Five more days and it will be the full moon.

Five more days.

I know what I am. And now I know I won't be alone.

I am a mermaid.

My mind is set, but my heart is another matter.

I don't know what time it is when I turn right, down the dark road out of the cove. Instead of heading home, I walk all the way to Kotoki-Pun Point, knowing that each step will be among my last on land.

As I get close to the lighthouse, I smell wildflowers. Salt drifts on wind currents up the cliffs. I smell everything. The invisible microcosms in these meadows. I smell voles scampering in scrub grass. Foxes hunting. Bats circling the air above. I smell the difference between hiding and hunting, predator and prey.

By the time I get to the lighthouse keeper's cottage, I'm overcome by a devouring, ecstatic hunger. But not for food. I need Matthew.

The front door is locked. I walk around back to the wall of windows, open to the cool night breeze. I slide in through the lowest window.

Matthew is asleep as I climb into his bed. I smell vanilla, almond, and honey, as my animal brain processes notes of pleasure, love, lust, passion. I pull back the light blanket covering him and let my hands move across his chest, feeling the solid lines of his body. His skin is hot against mine.

I feel the deep need to possess him. I don't think I could pull myself away if the house were on fire. I kiss his neck, tasting the salt of his skin.

He responds slowly at first, lost in a dream. Then he bolts into consciousness. I can smell the sudden explosion of adrenaline in his veins.

“Creary.” His voice is groggy.

I kiss his neck and the tender spot above his collarbone.

“How did you get in?”

I move to his lips and he gives over to my kisses. His hands run down my back.

“Through the window.”

“What are you doing?”

I don't answer.

“Where were you today?” he whispers.

“In the sea,” I whisper back. My hands continue moving down his stomach, to his thighs, feeling the muscles along his body. I close my eyes and imagine the sheer power hidden beneath the swift lines of the white shark.

“It's thrilling there,” I say. I think about how, every time I'm in the sea, I walk the line between life and death. Life is bigger down there. And it makes me feel completely alive. Completely in the moment.

“Still with the mermaid fantasy?”

“It's real,” I whisper. “It's more real than anything here.”

I touch his lips and he moans.

“I don't want to lose you,” I say.

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“That's the problem.” I straddle him, and he wraps his hands around my waist. I want to touch every inch of his body. I want to feel my skin on his, his lips on mine.

I look into his eyes, willing him to understand, but he is only a man. He only knows one kind of reality.

He kisses me again, and touches me gently, as if I'm a porcelain doll that might break.

But I am not fragile. I faced off with the deadliest animal on earth, and I survived. I have the courage of Ne'Hwas. I have the strength of the Passamaquoddy. I am warm-blooded and cold-blooded. Just out those windows, beyond the wild meadow and the rugged cliffs, lies the cold, dark freedom of the sea. The weightless world. My world.

I want him to understand what I am. To believe.

I pull myself away from him and stand at the foot of his bed. He sits up and gazes at me.

Moonlight bathes the room in a pale glow.

I strip naked in front of him.

A small grunt escapes through his parted lips. His eyes take me in, missing nothing.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror over his bureau and gasp. Muscle ripples down my legs in smooth waves. My hips flare out from my narrow waist, my stomach is a topographic map of hills and valleys, exuding strength. My ripe breasts rise with every savage breath of my lungs. I am a vision of strength.

I can smell Matthew's arousal, the rumbling musk of desire. His brain shuts down. He, too, listens to his body.

He throws off the blanket and reaches for me, erupting with passion.

I take him as a predator takes her prey.

 

T
WENTY-FOUR

Leave it to me to hit my sexual stride days before I turn in my legs for a tail.

Matthew rolls over and pulls me close. He wears his happiness all over, grinning ear to ear. “Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“Last night was…” he whispers.

“What?”

“I think I'm the luckiest guy on earth.” His eyes reflect the glint of the rising sun.

I press my nose against his chest and breathe in his smell. Like honey and vanilla. I run a finger over his crescent scar. When he smiles, I watch how the scar disappears into the laugh lines below his eye. “Let's stay here all day,” I say.

A moan escapes from his lips. “I have a boat to drive.”

“Screw work.”

“I don't think Harold would appreciate that.”

“Screw Harold.”

He laughs. “I'm going to try to unhear that.”

“Well, I'm not going in today. Let them get their own Snickers bars,” I say.

“He'll fire you.”

“I'm okay with that.”

“I won't be able to save your job this time.”

I smile. “I don't need a job.”

He kisses my forehead. “Because you're a mermaid?”

“Yup.”

“And you're going to leave Ne'Hwas and live in ocean.”

“Yup.”

“So mermaids don't need jobs? They just float around the ocean, riding seahorses?” It's not quite acceptance I hear in his voice, but he's not running for the hills, either.

He kisses me again and doesn't make any movement away from the bed.

“Skip work,” I say. “Just today.”

Matthew looks at me silently, the SparkNotes of his personality contained in those steady eyes. Loyal. Responsible. Full of integrity. Captain Matthew. “I can't. We'll have tonight, though,” he says.

With a mighty effort he uproots himself from the bed. I watch him get dressed. It's almost as sexy as watching him undress. “Matthew?”

“Yeah?”

“If it turns out that you're wrong, and I actually am a mermaid, would you consider coming with me when I leave?”

He crawls across the bed and meets my lips with a kiss. “I'll go with you anywhere.”

*   *   *

Once Matthew leaves for work, I get dressed and call Sheriff. I need to tell him about Mom. He has a right to know. Losing someone you love is the worst thing in the world. But it can't be worse than losing someone and not knowing where or why they've gone. At least I can bring him some relief.

The part I'm seriously dreading is telling him that I'll be leaving, too. Mom and I will be together, but he'll be all alone. I don't even want to think about what this will do to him.

There's a hollow pit in my stomach as I dial his number.

Sheriff's phone goes straight to voice mail, so I call the station. His friend Sheila answers and tells me he's on patrol. Morning shift.

Sheila's the best dispatcher on the force, Sheriff always says. She's the one who broke the news that Kay's body had been found. She's the one who came around to the house when Sheriff was put on administrative leave during the investigation. Brought us casseroles nonstop. “Heart of gold, that Sheila,” Sheriff would always say after she left, and my mother and I would listen to him talk about the importance of a good dispatcher on the force who can anticipate trouble by the tone of an officer's voice. We would listen and listen, because it was a relief to hear about
anyone
in those dreadful weeks other than Trip Sinclair.