The Mermaid's Secret (31 page)

“I promise.” I hang up the phone and grab my surfboard.

 

T
WENTY-EIGHT

Crimson streaks are burning across the sky by the time I get to the gate at Wabanaki State Park. The first stars appear in the ink above. My mother loved this time of day. “This is when the Great Spirit tucks us into a blanket of stars, nomeha,” she'd say.

She could make something as big as the night sky feel small and safe. And I would look up in the sky and let all my worries melt into darkness.

I park at the overgrown utility road, grab my board, and start walking, barefoot, through the pine needles. I think about Ne'Hwas when she was a girl. I think about her wildness, her courageous soul. Did she hurt the people she loved when she chose the river over them?

Was she scared? Did she have regrets? Did she ever find love?

It's too dark to paddle through the boneyard; I have to find another path into that dark, magical world below. I walk up the rock outcropping at Tutatquin Point to the top of the cliff where we used to picnic, where Kay and I once tested the laws of gravity dropping pine cones to the sea.

There's a low ledge that juts into the savage Atlantic midway down the cliff. Board under one arm, I climb down to the ledge, as waves clap against rock below, shooting white foam into the air.

Down here, the ledge is only a sliver wide. My breathing is hot and fast, but I can't hear it through the crashing waves. I curl my toes around the lip of slippery rock.

Eyes closed, I feel my feet on the cold stone. I wiggle my toes and silently thank them for their years of service. Will I miss them?

A wave explodes against the rocks. I have to time it just right, so I land in water.

All-in.

I jump.

My body hits the ocean with alarming force. Water churns all around me. I scramble onto my board and paddle hard to get away from the rock cliff before the next wave comes in.

The ocean is as black as obsidian now, except for the trail of moonlight all the way to the horizon. In the darkness, there is no warning. A wave is upon me.

I take a breath and paddle after it.

Surfing in the dark is an intense feeling. Without being able to see, I have to rely on my other senses—the sound of waves, the feel of water rushing against my board, the sensation of speed. As soon as the moment is right, I pop to my feet.

I don't know if I'm inside or outside of the sandbar. In the dark, there's no way of knowing how big this wave is. It might be too small. It might not curl. I'm riding blind, blind, blind. If the barrel is gone, and the sandbar is behind me, then I will end up on the rocks.

Suddenly the thunder of crashing waves is gone. There is only deafening silence. I am inside the barrel.

Time slows down. I'm floating on air. I will miss this rush, I think briefly. The hollow wave carries me all the way to shore. When the wave finally peels back I jump off my board and dive under water. My lungs fill with seawater. Almost instantly, my legs transform into a tail.

This is it. My new life. I'm a chameleon no longer.

Now what?

I decide I should find my mom before I do anything else. She can teach me how to survive here. We can be a family again. But how do you find a mermaid in the wide, wide ocean? Same way as on land, I suspect: follow their heart. I swim close to the shore, around Tutatquin Point, toward the rocks where Trip Sinclair ran his boat aground and where Kay's spirit dissolved into the sea.

Under the water, the waves pull me with a magnificent force, crashing like thunder above. As I kick out of the ground swell into deeper water, I think about how the ocean has pulled at all of us—my sister, my mother, me. Could any of us have resisted its deadly power? Or was it destiny that the three of us ended up in the sea?

When I get to a calm cove, around the point, I peek above the surface and see her silhouette against the pale horizon.

My mother is sitting on rock, above water, but sheltered from land. She looks so beautiful with the moon casting a silver sheen over her. Black hair cascades over her shoulders, down her back. She is the image of peace and tranquility.

She almost looks too lovely to disturb. I lift my head completely above water. “Mom.”

She doesn't turn around.

“Mom. Over here.”

She turns, startled. Her eyes find me.

I swim over to her rock and reach a hand to her. Her eyes dart left then right. She tilts her head to the side.

“Jess.” Her voice is like a song. She smiles, and I feel a warm glow inside.

I pull myself onto the rock beside her, our tails dangling side by side in the water. “I'm coming with you, Mom. I'm choosing the life of Ne'Hwas. I talked to my grandmother. She told me all about it. She told me about you and the sea and rescuing that little boy. She told me how you gave it all up, but then, how your grief drove you back here. I'm going to be a mermaid, too. Just like you.”

She smiles again.

“I told Sheriff where you are. He misses you, Mom. I wish you hadn't left us without saying good-bye, but he understands. He's happy that we'll be together.”

She slaps the surface of the water with her tail, scattering all the small fish below.

She hugs me tightly, and I feel all the anger and resentment inside of me set free.

“It was you who saved me, wasn't it? That time I was caught in the rip current when I was five, and Sheriff found me doing the dead man's float. It was you all along. You jumped in after me, and no one saw. I thought the ocean was cradling me, but it was you. You held me afloat. And then you had to leave us after that, because the ocean was pulling you away and you weren't ready to leave yet. Kay and I were young and you wanted to stay with us.”

She laughs and holds me close.

“Life got so unfair up there, Mom. Trip Sinclair took everything from us. He stole our chance at happiness. Now he's trying to get me arrested for harassment. Can you believe that? I want to be down here.”

She smiles.

“Well, say something.” I laugh. “Are you happy?”

“Jess.”

“What do you think?”

She smiles. “Jess.”

The smile on my face disappears.

“Mom. Talk to me. What's it like out here? Are you happy? Where do you sleep? Should we explore the ocean? Should we swim down to the Caribbean? Seems like there's more to see down there. I mean, it'll be like a vacation. We have to stay around here, of course. I told Sheriff and Sammy I'd visit them. And I'm really hoping Matthew will join me. Do you think he'll be able to transform like us?”

She smiles. “Jess.”

I let go of her. A sick feeling comes over me. It starts in my gut and travels through me. “What is it? Why don't you talk to me?”

Her eyes are somewhere in the distance. She stares at the water. Then, with lightning speed, she reaches down and snatches a little fish out of the water. She holds it so expertly it doesn't even wriggle. Only its mouth moves, lips going up and down, gasping for water.

Then she bites the head off the fish. Blood drips down her chin. I stare in astonishment, the horror creeping in. “Mom. Why won't you talk to me? Can't you speak anymore?”

She smiles and rips off the fish's fins with her teeth, spitting them into the water. She devours the raw fish.

She's here. But she's long gone.

All the joy I felt a few minutes ago has vanished, replaced with a sick, scared sense that I've made the wrong choice. Has my mom lost her humanity? Does she have thoughts anymore? Is she able to think beyond her next meal?

Is she able to love? Or is survival the only thing driving her?

Am I looking at
my
future?

I watch her chew the fish. She smiles at me between bites. She smiles at the fish she ravages. She smiles at the moon. She smiles at the air. She smiles at everything and at nothing. And there is no one behind the smile.

“Are you the person you used to be? Are you still my mother?”

My words drift by her, and she doesn't catch them. She's more interested in eating than communicating. I look back at the island, wondering what I've done.

“I didn't know it would be like this,” I say. I push down the lump in my throat. “I thought part of me would still be human, but it doesn't work that way, does it? I thought being a mermaid meant I could run away from all the suffering and pain. I was wrong. To live without sorrow isn't human.” I understand it all now.

My mom picks fish bones out of her teeth.

“I love you, Mom. But I've made a mistake.” And I leave her.

*   *   *

I swim to the sandbar, then around the island toward Lobster Cove, listening for shark vibrations. I need to get home while there's still time.

As I let my senses guide me through the darkness, I run into a kelp bed that pops up before me. The ropelike strands wrap around my arms and I have to swim up to the surface to get untangled.

I'm about ten feet from the surface when something lashes across my neck. A sharp pain shoots through my neck and arms. It's hard to breathe. At first I think a shark has gotten me, but my eyes catch the flutter of a tentacle, lit up in bioluminescence like a blue flame. Bright neon illuminates the water. Pink, blue, green. Strings of Christmas lights pulsing brilliantly. A man-o'-war.

I dive down into the kelp to get away from the tentacles.

The initial pain is nothing compared to the hot white pain that consumes my body in the minutes that follow. It's like a thousand fire ants searing into my flesh at once. I sink to the bottom, lasagna strands of kelp weaving around me. I hit the soft bottom.

Pain racks my chest. It buzzes in my ears. I wait for it to go away.

But it doesn't. My throat is swollen shut. My skin burns and freezes at the same time. The pain travels from my neck, down my body, right into my tail. I try to kick, but there's no feeling. Even my gills hurt.

I stop breathing. A dark, panicky feeling comes over me. I'm drowning. Instinctively, I reach up, breaststroking toward the surface, but my arms are no use against the weight of my tail.

Breathe.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

I drift down to the bottom again.

My hands are the only part of me that isn't searing with pain, so I flutter them in front of my gills to drive the water in. It seems to help, and it takes my mind off the pain. I curl into a ball on the seafloor and let my hands help me breathe. I flutter until my mind goes blank.

*   *   *

I'm dreaming about flying. My body soars through the air, wind in my hair. The sky is blue and I'm weightless and rising, up, up, up. Then I catapult back down. Like a slingshot, I hit the surface of the sea and dive into the frigid darkness. I can't stop falling. The bottomless ocean swallows me, my body sinking down.

I awake to a fresh new pain. The searing heat has moved into my muscles. They throb relentlessly.

I'm alive,
I tell myself.
I'm breathing.

My hands go to work fluttering water into my gills. I'm so tired that this tiny motion takes all my energy. I close my eyes, hoping that it will bring relief from pain. I try to hang on. My mind disappears.

All I can do is sleep. I go in and out of consciousness. For hours? Days? Have I slept past the full moon? Have I lost the window into the human world?

Pinprick dots of neon flash in the kelp, little creatures coming out to feed. The kelp sways in my vision, turning into eels and snakes. I try to get away from them, but I can't move. All I can do is sleep.

Finally, the lights come on. My eyes flicker open. Everything is dull gray. I am starving and spent and still in pain, but the initial shock of the sting has subsided. Welts circle around my neck, where the tentacles lashed me.

I look up. The surface is close. Maybe thirty feet. I can make it thirty feet. I try to swim, but my energy is gone.

The kelp sways in the current. I pull a leaf toward me and search it. Tiny worms cluster in the groove of a leaf. I pluck them off and into my mouth. They taste like pond scum. But I manage to swallow and eat some more. I find some translucent prawns and eat those—shells, eyeballs, and all.

It reminds me of fishing the mountain tarns for bullhead and trout with my mother in the spring. Kay came a few times, but she hated skipping school. She'd sit off to the side with a book. My mother and I would wade through the tarn, looking for creepers and scud to use as bait. The pond scum would get on our legs and hands and dry on our skin as we hiked home. That mother is gone now, I think, the sadness stabbing me fresh and new. She is devoid of emotion, suffering, love—and all those things that make us human.

I try to swim, but I can't.

I close my eyes again and drift into sleep. I dream I'm flying, but this time, when I open my eyes, I really am flying. My body is moving weightlessly through the water. Something is carrying me.

I'm so groggy I can't make sense of it. I look behind me and feel a wave of relief when I see my mother swimming above me, her arms wrapped under mine. My tail drags behind. We are moving very slowly and I can feel her heart beating against my back. I try to speak, but my voice is gone.

I hover in and out of consciousness as she carries me through the darkness along the coastline.

When I open my eyes this time, the sun has come up. The water has changed from clear, clean ocean blue to murky green. Engines roar around us. A prickly sensation pulses up and down my sides and I taste the sour bite of fear on my tongue. Slowly, I realize that the fear is coming from my mother.

It builds as we rise to the surface. She keeps hold of me as my head breaks through to a blinding rain. Wind whips at my face. I try to focus. There are boats, smells of fried food, the sound of cars nearby. We're in Ne'Hwas Harbor.

I try swimming on my own, but my limbs ache. I barely have enough energy to tread in place.