My name is Susan Donnelly, and this is the story of what happened to me on my summer vacation in 2014. The doctors couldn't explain how I could disappear for a week and come back turned into a girl but I can, even if it sounds insane. “Trauma induced hallucination” is what Dr. Morris is calling my story.
Like I am so traumatized! This is what I'd always wanted, and I couldn't be happier! But people will only believe what they can believe and that isn't me, apparently. And while my parents do believe my whole odyssey actually happened (having read my classified case file), when it comes to other people they’re sticking to the story that I’d been intersex all along...
But I can’t blame them for not wanting folks to think our whole family is nutso enough to buy a story like mine. Because with the pirates, the mermaids, moonmaids, genies, fairies, tentacle aliens, time travelers, jackalopes and those sinister government Men Without Hats, it was like reality itself had gone...
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)))========> THE VACATION THAT ALMOST WASN'T...
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I didn't think we were going to ever get to go on our vacation. We had bought the RV---as sleek and modern as a spaceship and right off the assembly line---and we were going to spend most of the summer touring the east coast from where we live in Delaware down through Florida and then inward along the Gulf clear to Corpus Christi Texas..... but two things happened.
First Dad kept having to work a lot, which was no big surprise. He'd cleared the vacation time already but there kept on being all these crisises at Zevon Plastics, and the number of places we planned to visit on our road trip kept getting cut back as the date we were supposed to leave by kept getting pushed forward.
The second thing that happened was I decided I needed to come out to them. Which means saying: “Mom, Dad, you better sit down. I have something to say-” and then telling them all about me being transgender.
I knew it was going to be a big huge deal to them, and I'd worried about all the different ways things between us could go after I dropped such a massive surprise on them; but the one thing I didn't think of was how it would suddenly mean we couldn't go on vacation because they had to put everything else on hold while they tried to fix my broken gender.
It was the first time I ever said anything to them about the girl I am inside (Or at least the first time that they weren't able to blow off as the babbling of a child too young to know what male and female meant...) and I was scared as hell to finally be doing this, but I knew I had to. To not do it wasn't simply like living a lie, but it felt to me like BEING one, if you get what I mean.
But now instead of visiting old Civil War battlefields and a bunch of relatives I barely remembered all through June and July, I was getting all these off-the-wall lectures and interrogations, like how it must of been my “weird gay friend“ Chiro McMillan who had talked me into this---Wasn't it? WASN'T IT?!!---and then being dragged to all these doctors to help me get over this crazy idea that I must have caught from somewhere; and nevermind that “phase“ I'd gone through where I was the princess from every Disney cartoon I watched (I was especially obsessed with Ariel the Mermaid...) before I learned that these were not proper games and fantasies for little boys, or at least not to tell anyone about.
But Mom and Dad couldn't seem to find a bad enough doctor. After a lot of tests and counseling and them looking at my blood, the professionals I got taken to wound up telling THEM what they didn't want to hear instead of me. And then there were even more trips to the head shrinker, which my dad says was coming out to cost like five dollars a word, when all I needed was to cut my hair and start acting normal and find a girlfriend (a normal one, not that Pepper Davis who seemed to be encouraging this stuff!).
So it was getting down to a week or two before I went back to school; or not “back to” because I was headed for 10th grade at the brand new Gene Pittney High School; when finally Dad decided it was now or never for this trip of ours. We had just enough time to drive straight down to Florida and spend a week there; telling the people at his work that he needed this time to be with his wife and SON (making sure I heard that), and off we went.
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 24 2014:
And so yeah, our vacation started out pretty tense and weird. Dad's knuckles looked like they'd squeeze right through the steering wheel when Mom would forget to be all horrified about me, and her I got to chattering- “like hens”, he called us.
But what was scarier was when he hit the point where instead of acting irritable and sarcastic like he'd been doing he just sort of shut down. By the time we got to Florida and made our farthest stop south there at Bokonon Bay State Beach it seemed like he was just going through the motions. Taking the park ranger's tour and hearing about the Smythetown Colony that had been here briefly, and Bokonon Bay's history as a pirate hideout, which was exactly the kind of historical stuff he loved---(“…and over there, where the Beachcomber Drive-In Theater now stands, is where the notorious pirate Marion 'Three Fingers' Mutton met his end in 1717, when he was ambushed by a special squad hand-picked by Commodore Wilford Smudgington Nosethorpe-”)---but he wandered away right in the middle of it. And when Mom and I got back to the RV he was on the computer, looking at long lists of little numbers that had to be about his work...
I decided to get out of there---where the vibes were like radioactive or something---and go down to the beach. I put on my trunks, thinking some day it might be a bikini, and that if I did have one I could actually pass as a skinny flat chested girl, even now. Passing is what they call it when you put on girl's clothes and nobody sees a boy, but to me it's a stupid word. Like you're trying to pass yourself off as what you're not, when that wasn't what it seemed like to me at all. If I was ever “passing” in that way it was with what I was doing now, all this dressing and trying to act like a boy to keep everyone but me happy.
I grabbed my towel and Mp3 player and my bottle of Screen n' Tan. I didn’t take my phone or my wallet, wanting to bring the fewest number of things that I'd have to worry about walking off when I went in the water, which I intended to do if the waves were any good. But my mom did make me take along our cheap little wind-up travel alarm, so I'd remember to turn over and not get burned.
At the last second I grabbed the book I'd been reading, my father's copy of that recently published “lost” novel by the late Douglas Adams. A hundred and twenty pages into it, The Penultimate Clamboggle was totally silly, full of bizarre situations and deliberately bad jokes, the plot meandering from one crazy unbelievable scenario to the next- in other words perfect summer reading.
A person might think my mom owns a lot of books---marine biology, art history + detective fiction, mostly---until they noticed my dad's science fiction collection threatening to push her books out of our family's little study. Hardbacks when he could find them, and as complete as he could get for his favorite authors---from Asimov to Zelazny---from which he'd been suggesting and lending me different books ever since I'd learned to read.
I wanted him to notice me reading his latest find. Hopefully it would help him see that I'm not trying to turn into some whole different person here; that in every way that should matter to him I was still that same kid---his kid---who had devoured that first book of Jules Verne stories he gave me when I was six.
The campground's beach was crowded and not very nice, so I started walking south, around the bend in the shore, where there was a chain-link fence with a sign on it that was too old and weather-beaten to read a single word of. And if it was a KEEP OUT sign I could just point that fact out.
I waded out into the water and went around the end of the fence; and from there the beach was as perfect as a postcard with a bunch of palm trees and everything, and totally empty. There was a house sitting up past where the sand ended, a big old Spanish style mansion that must have been really beautiful back in its day, but the windows were all boarded up and it was so overgrown with vines and giant bushes that it was pretty clear nobody was going to come running down here to chase me away...
I unrolled my blanket and lay on it, thinking about my life. I wasn't going to go back to school as Suzie in September, I'd agreed to take it slow and just go see the shrink for another year (although maybe they'd let me dress as a girl when at home, they were debating it...) in which time I hoped my body wouldn't change too much in the ways I didn't want.
The Florida sun felt good. This might turn out to be a pretty nice vacation after all, even though we'd driven right past the off ramps for Orlando. Like my father had said, our schedule was tight, and we’d already gone to Disneyworld for my birthday when I turned eleven. I didn’t complain. I figured acting agreeable and mature about the smaller things might help them to digest this Great Big Thing I had told them.
I was actually more disappointed when Dad vetoed my suggestion that we visit the aquatic theme park in Weeki Wachee. He said we weren’t even going through that part of Florida, and “Why would you want to visit that run down old place? Especially since we're hitting Marine World on our way home.”
“Well if it’s out of the way then forget it,” I'd replied, because I didn’t have an honest answer to his question that didn’t have the word “mermaids” in it; the main attraction at Weeki Wachee Springs being these women with fake mermaid tails who swam around in big aquarium tanks under colored lights to hokey new age music while sneaking hits off hidden air hoses...
And I really had wanted to go there, but I didn’t want to remind them of my somewhat insane childhood obsession with mermaids; even though this fixation had drastically tapered off over the years. But since it had been closely linked to my earliest transgender feelings (and I guess it had been rather infantile of me to want to be something that didn't even exist), to bring all that back up might make my current talk about transitioning seem silly and unrealistic too.
So it wasn't too tough of a choice, to blow off a thing that might be sort of fun in the interest of something so hugely important in my life. And I really was looking forward to visiting the water park that actually was on our list.
While Marine World might not have any mermaids they do have a lot of dolphins; which have the benefit of being real---not people in costumes---and generally amazing creatures. A friend and former co-worker of my Mom's works there now. Judy the marine veterinarian told us to bring our swimsuits, promising us an early morning meet-and-greet with some dolphins that would be way better than anything the paying customers got...
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The sounds of the breeze rustling the palm trees and of the breakers rolling in were hypnotic. And those waves looked about perfect for body surfing, so I'd go out in a minute. Spend an hour or four out there, come back and read this fat hardback book (It was kind of funny that a man who spent half his free time reading stories about the future would be so dead set against using a kindle device, while my old-time detective fiction loving Mom didn't mind them so much);and then maybe I'd go explore that old mansion over there, see what I could see without actually trying to break in, because it was kind of spooky and neat, the kind of place gangsters might use as a hide out in one of my mom's mysteries. But for right now I'd just lay here enjoying the sun...
I fell asleep, forgetting all about the tanning lotion and Mom's little clock. I probably would have got seriously sunburned but after maybe twenty minutes I woke up when I heard people talking, and felt these shadows blocking out the sun. That's when I saw the pirates all gathered around me in a circle, grinning down at me real nasty.
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)))========> TIME BANDITS
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They looked sort of like the pirates you see in the movies, and for a second I thought maybe they were filming one around here, until I saw that their clothes were way too ratty for this, and their teeth were all fungus-y and they stunk like goats!
“Excuse me Miss,” said the big one, and then when I rolled over he said, “I mean Young Sir. Allow me t' introduce myself. I am Captain Marion Mutton of the Invinceable, and me and me men here seem ter be lost.”
I noticed the last two fingers of his left hand were completely missing. He was smiling and being all polite, taking off his big Cap'n Crunch hat to me, but he was still scary. You could see he was a killer, and some of these other pirates seemed even worse. He told me he was looking for the village of Smythetown, because him and his “confederates“ were “up for a bit of pillagin'...”
I told him what I remembered the park ranger saying about the colony, that it used to be up the beach a ways but they gave up on it about 250 years ago after a big malaria outbreak.
“Blast and damnation!” he screamed, “We're in the future again! I told that wooden-headed navigator to take us north o' Bermuda. But no, he had t' steer us straight into that queer golden fog and the year 2000! I'll keelhaul th' son of a whore!”
“Actually it's 2014,” I said.
“BLAST!! A full three hundred years this time!”
“But some o' that future booty is mighty fine,” said the fat one, “Them little doohinkels from our last comin' here brought us a pretty penny.”
“Until the accursed things stop working! The Governor of San Lorenzo wants my head for sellin' him that Sonicky Hedgehog toy that aren't but a brickbat now.”
“What we needs is t' commandeer one o’ them magic chariots. Imagine having somethin’ like that!” laughed the peg-legged one.
“And how in Hell's Furnace would we even get ‘er onto the ship? Damn it all, I want gold! Silver even. Something ye don't have to figure out or explain, or that'll get ye burnt fer witchcraft! And witchery all this may be. There's a wrongness to this place. It gives me the horripilations to be traipsin' where me own skeleton could be layin' right under me feet! Let's just take what we've found here and be gone.”
Which meant I was being robbed. This was fine with me if they would all just go away. I showed him how to work my Mp3 player. He listened to Pink's STUPID GIRL, grinning and snapping his fingers to the music like he'd just invented doing this, then put it into the bag on his belt. He loved my beach blanket with the tigers on it---their bright orange markings popping out from the background of bamboo plants like they were in 3-D---which he tied around his neck like a cape.
He picked my dad's book up out of the sand, looked at the cover, then none too gently wrenched it open. He read the first page, dragging his finger down it, then part of the second. Frowning, he flipped ahead a few pages and started reading again. His frown deepened. He opened the book somewhere toward the middle, smiling and nodding at something that he finally understood, until his frown came back deeper than ever. He tried a few more pages, muttering and cursing now (“Forty-two? Why the blazes forty-two?!!”), before he slammed it shut in frustration.
“AAAAAUUUUGGHHH! My brain hurts! Ships traversing the heavens?! Sunlight and matter are the same thing?! What sort of mooncalf wrote this gibberish?! This is RUBBISH!” he roared, and hurled The Penultimate Clamboggle into the sea.
Or toward it anyway. It landed about a third of the way there, not even at the high-water line.
“Huhhuhhuh!! You throw like a lih-ul girl, Cap'n!” laughed the fat one, until he was silenced by a look of pure hatred.
“The wind caught it!” snapped Three Fingers.
Yes, of course, the wind, they all quickly agreed, even though there was barely a breeze here.
The item the pirate captain seemed most taken with was my little travel alarm...
“Fancy that! Our very own ship's clock; just like th' King's navy!” he laughed, then frowned, “But will it continue to run, or does it depend on those damnable Aah-cylinders for its life's blood?!”
Which baffled me, until I realized he meant batteries. He was trying to pronounce double-A like it was a word. I showed him the little key on the back, “No, it runs off a spring. You wind it.”
“Perfect then! So countin' our young friend here, I'd esteem this a fine haul.”
“You takin' 'im?” asked the tall skinny one, who seemed to be his second in command, “Why a stiff breeze'd like to blow him down! A whelp like 'im ain't cut out for a life at sea.”
Captain Mutton smiled, “That he ain't, Long John O'Flannel. And thanks be t' the Heavens fer that! With his fair phiz and his willowy build he'll make a fine lass! Is one in his heart already, I surmise'.”
“I ken yer surmisin',” smiled O'Flannel after he thought about this a bit, “E's near pretty enough as it is.”
“You really think so?” I asked even as I kicked myself for it, pleased by the compliment in spite of how scared I was.
“Just look at 'im smilin' and blushin'," he said to his crew, "This fair creature has a maid's own heart, or I'm a flea ridden coney! The elixir should work like a charm on this one!”
“And if I don't want to go?” I asked.
Suddenly the sharp tip of the captain's sword was against my throat, spilling exactly one drop of my blood, and his eyes were fierce and full of rage.
I told him, “Okay, I was just wondering...”
“Curb your wonderin', hoyden, and we shall get along fine,” said Captain Mutton, smiling in a way that wasn't nice at all as he slid his sword back into its scabbard.
As they marched me to their boat I couldn't help noticing how short they all were. At maybe six foot one, the Captain seemed like a proper-sized pirate, but most of his buds here were nearly a foot shorter. It seemed odd that I'd be the second tallest person here, until I remembered they were from 300 years ago, and this was a normal height for European males back then.
We all climbed into their landing boat, and two of them rowed us out toward the bigger ship parked out in the bay. I knew this was probably the best time for me to try and get away. Close enough to swim to shore if I jumped overboard right now, and these home-made looking pistols they had were the type that had to be stuffed with powder and reloaded after each shot. But one could still put a hole through you if you got hit, so I stayed put.
The beach with that dilapidated Spanish mansion rising up behind it grew farther away. The two oarsmen sort of grunted as they rowed, singing something under their breath. When we were two thirds of the way to the pirate ship Captain Mutton nodded toward it, "She's the Invinceable. Ain't she a fulsome beauty?"
I nodded, not sure if he was talking about the ship itself or its carved wooden figurehead- a bare breasted woman with a wide-eyed, startled look on her face; like she couldn't figure out how she'd wound up hanging off the front of this boat.
I asked, “So what's this elixir stuff?”
“'Tis a compound from the mysterious East, what works on the flesh of them like you, whose body and soul ain't in accordance with each other and the cosmic-” he stopped, “Now how did that old Chinaman put it?”
“But Cap'n,” said Long John, “Kiki didn't turn out so good when he took the stuff!”
“Aye! But you remember what the yeller feller told us. The elixir will only work proper on a catamite with a heart that's true and a maiden's purity. Poor Kiki had the heart of a devil, and we all know'd he warn't no maiden,” said Captain Mutton and they all laughed. He turned to me, “Tell me, uh...”
He didn't know my name. I gave him my girl name, which made him smile real big.
“Tell me Susan, is yer maidenly honor intact?”
“I guess I'm pretty honorable,” I told him, “So I'm going to be like cooking and stuff for you guys?”
“A bit, when there's better fare than hardtack and devil's root t' be had. And mendin' of garments,” he said, poking his finger through a tear in his shirt to show me, “But yer main duties shall be providin' womanly companionship. A pirate's life is anears perfect fer rapscallions like us. But it's hard on a man spendin' months at sea without the comforts of the fair sex.”
“You're asking me to be your girlfriend? I think you're nice and everything but I don't even know you,” I said, hoping this wouldn't send him flying off into a rage.
“That will change lass, after the elixir's worked its magic and I've bedded ye tonight,” he smiled, letting me know what I already knew. He was talking about sex, and he wasn't asking.
"Would it matter if I told you I'm still a couple of months shy of my sixteenth birthday?"
"Of course it matters! I'm not some abominable Musselman who fancies children! But fifteen is a marriageable age fer a lass, and the age when many a buck ventures out into the world to seek his fortune; as I myself did. I signed on as a swab on the merchantman North Wind, not suspecting I would be throwin' in with a band of mutinous depredators on our first day out! This took my life in a direction I would ne'er have imagined, but which I've found myself well suited to, as you can see," he smiled, indicating the big fancy hat on his head. I imagined that he'd taken it from some British naval captain he had murdered.
"I was just planning on finishing school. You know, college and all that," I said. The fact that something this bizarre and unreal could actually be happening to me had me feeling strangely light-headed.
He chuckled cruelly. "Ye'd best forget ever having made such plans. Fortune is a capricious bitch of a goddess; ye never know what oddments she'll be sendin' yer way. And as she did with me, it seems she's fated you for a life at sea, although of a very different sort. You shall be my 'girlfriend'---as you put it---all day each Sunday and elsewise as th' need may arise. But as fer the rest of the time, well.... Part of th' code we pirates live by is that we share and share alike!”
My pulse was pounding in my head as I looked around the dinghy. The other men were smiling at me, like a bunch of cats at some mouse they'd cornered. And all along the railing of the sailing ship now looming over us were more men, and they were all grinning down at me the same nasty way, that filled me with dread and made my heartrate go nuts.
I probably should of jumped out and swam for it while I had the chance. But I'd begun to see spots, and as I got dizzier I kept seeing more and more of them until they were a foaming, swarming mass that was crowding out my view of the bottom of the boat, which seemed to be rushing up at me-
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)))========> ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO RUN
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When I woke up I was alone and it was night. I was below decks, but I could see the sky outside the little window was black and full of stars, and the small room I was in was dark too, with just this one little lamp in a brass cage making a puddle of yellowy light around itself. I was in a huge fancy bed, not some little bunk or a hammock like I expected from movies I'd seen. It nearly filled the little room, leaving just enough space for a couple of pirate chests that turned out to not have treasure in them but clothes and other regular stuff.
I was dressed in this beautiful pink and white dress that might have come right out of my mom's DVD of Dangerous Liaisons. I'd never worn anything that was silk before, and just about everything I had on now was silk. It felt nice!
The top part was like a vest that hugged me tight, with little half sleeves poking out that just covered the tops of my shoulders, and seemed made for someone who had more of a bust than I had, which was none. The dress's bottom was full of petticoat things that crinkled noisily when I moved it to see my legs, which were in silk stockings with velvet slippers on them.
When I went to the little round mirror on the wall I saw that my hair had been teased and swept up into a style that went with this outfit and made it look like I had a lot more hair than I had (which one of these mangy pirates knew how to do this?). But this dumb little flat brimmed hat they'd stuck on me with the bows and ratty feathers all over it had to go. I tossed it onto the bed.
My face was made up like a china doll, totally white with little red lips and pink cheeks. Very pretty in a totally fake looking kind of way. I'd never liked the shape of my nose but within the total picture here it no longer seemed all that funny looking. I went to touch my cheek, but didn't want to muss up whatever they'd used on me (which hopefully wasn't lead-based...).
'Wow,' I thought, 'That's me!'
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==========>
This was only the second time I was dressed so completely as a girl. The other was when my friend Pepper loaned me a pair of her jeans, a cute top and a bra that she stuck two little baggies of rice in, a trick she'd learned from watching RuPaul's Fabulous Hour.
She also styled my hair for me, a sort of unisex-but-definitely-not-manly bob cut. As she brushed it down in front and trimmed it into bangs I felt like I was really committing myself to this change. I mean I could have chickened out the next day and ran out and got it all hacked off but I knew I wouldn't. I just loved it too much. When I got home and showed them my mom called it 'adorable' and my dad just sighed...
Then she painted our nails this maroon color (she's a chewer, and hers were as short as mine) and did our faces up with black lipstick and a ton of mascara, which was kind of Pepper's thing lately, and we went to Dover Mall.
That was a real day of “firsts” for me. I was scared walking into that mall, but no one scowled at me or started pointing and laughing at the little cross-dressing weirdo. And even when I had to talk to that sales lady there was nothing about my voice that seemed to tip her off, or if there was she didn't care. I was starting to relax and really have fun.
And then those four older boys came up and started talking to us, saying how “fine” we were and trying to impress us with what important Men-of-the-World they were. And this was okay too, except that one of them wasn't an older boy but the brother of one of these twelfth graders; And when he recognized me from last year at school things got horribly unpleasant and insulting.
They thought Pepper was a “tranny fag” too; and she didn't help things by going “That's right I am!” and calling them idiots who would end up rotting unloved on the dinosaur garbage-heap of stupid thinking, while everyone else was free and being ourselves and having fun in ways their scared little reptilian pea-brains couldn't even imagine. But we were in such a public place that we managed to get away from them without it escalating into violence.
But that day I spent dressed as the real me happened only recently, just after I'd came out to my mom and dad. Before that my only attempts had been the few hurried experiments I'd done when my folks were gone for the day, borrowing my mom's stuff and carefully putting it all back just like the picture I took of each drawer with my phone. You might think I would have tried more of this sort of thing before telling my parents I was transgender, to maybe make sure; but I was already as sure as a person can be about something, and had been for years...
==========>
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The way these pirates had me dressed was like nothing I'd tried before or even thought about when I would look through the Hutchinson-Brownmiller or WiLD ThiNG! catalogs and fantasize, but I liked it. It was so totally girly! But what kept me from jumping up and twirling around in the little space next to the bed all happy was the knowledge of where I was.
This was his room. His bed. And what he'd said about his plans for me just scared the piss out of me! I might have turned out to like Captain Marion eventually if I'd had any say in all of this. He was halfway handsome, and only had that corny black villain's mustache instead of those big ugly mossy beards that---from the way these guys were scratching them---looked like they were carrying a whole ecosystem around in them. And he seemed like he might be halfway charming when he wasn't hacking people's heads off; although he sure needed a bath. But the way he was doing this, acting like he owned me and not giving me any choice was just so wrong and horrible it made me sick to my stomach.
And then---as if I wasn't already miserable enough---I thought about my parents. They must have been freaking out from the way I disappeared, imagining God knows what had happened, and I knew they would soon have every cop in the county out beating the bushes for me, maybe even dragging Bokonon Bay for my body.
I had to get out of here! The sooner the better, and definitely before we got to the Bermuda Triangle and went back in time. If I could steal that little landing boat of theirs, I would. Would take my chances out on the ocean in that. But I probably couldn't even get out of this room. The door here had to be locked-
It wasn't.
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)))========> INVINCEABLE
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I stepped through onto a small balcony looking out over a long dark room that was more like what I expected from the movies. I tiptoed quietly down the steps and past the rows of double-decker bunks full of zonked out pirates who were snoring and muttering “Arrrrrrr!” in their sleep. Creeping closer and closer to another steep stairway---practically a ladder---that led through a hole in the ceiling and to the deck above us.
But at the foot of the ladder thing they had what must have been a guard, sleeping in a chair with his boots up on the steps, blocking them. I could maybe climb up it around his big feet, but I didn't even get close before he snapped awake, smiling cheerfully at me and then calling up the stairs, “She's awake!”
He got up and motioned for me to climb up ahead of him, which I did. It was kind of awkward with all the petticoats, and these slippers that kept trying to fall off my feet. The next long dark room had five cannons on each side, each pointed toward its own little window, and another ladder that went up toward where a waning moon a little less than half full hung directly above the hatchway, and where the pirate captain took my arm and helped me up and out onto the main deck. Above us stood three tall masts, their puffed out canvas sails glowing dully in the moonlight.
“Ya slept longer than I expected, my dear,” said Three Fingers Mutton, “It's well after midnight. I trust yeh found our humble accommodations suitable?”
I said yes, and he asked me the same thing about my dress and stuff, apologizing if it wasn't the latest fashion from Paris.
“Oh no, I like it! It's pretty,” I nodded. Although this was the only thing I liked about being here.
“It suits you well. That gawkish short-hacked hair of yours certainly don't, but that shall be remedied soon enough.”
I didn't think my hair was that short, but I suppose by their standards it was. I asked, “So you have like a wig or something for me?”
“There's no need fer that. Accordin' to the old Celestial we got it from, the potion ye'll be quaffing will grace yer crown with tresses as long and fair as Aphrodite's.”
“I suppose if it can change someone's whole body it can grow hair. But how do you know it will do either? That he didn't just sell you a bottle of colored water?”
“Oh, I know! And the elixir can most decidedly grow hair...”
“Let's hope it does,” I told him, while I looked around to see how I was going to escape. “Wow, this is an awesome ship you got here!”
The landing boat was hanging above the deck at the ship's stern, hanging from ropes and pulleys between a pair of heavy beams over this big spool of thick rope- a windlass I think it's called. I saw that even if I could unhook those ratchet things and do it by myself it would take me a while to get the three hundred pound dinghy clear down into the water. No, I wouldn't be escaping any time soon.
“That she is Lass. And livin' aboard her ye'll be wantin' fer naught! On our raids I shall have me boys keep an eye out fer even more pretty clothes, precious ornaments and th' like to bring home fer yez. And I shall build you a tiny cabin to call yer own, which is somethin' only me n' our sawbones Jick has at present. Not that you'd be spendin' much time in there, mind yeh,” he chuckled throatily, “But I believe there's a small space next t' the powder room where one could be fashioned.”
I couldn't figure out why a pirate ship would have a powder room, until I realized he was talking about what that guide at the old fort we visited on Friday had called the magazine- the room where they keep the gunpowder. I attempted to smile, “Thank you, I'd appreciate that.”
Captain Mutton's pretending to be so concerned about my comfort made all this even worse. As if sugar coating it could make what he was planning for me anything but rape; not to mention what he said about “sharing” me with his homies; after which I could crawl back into my very own little cabinet, that would probably have a lock on it. All this made me feel like I wasn't even a person anymore, but just some thing they'd decided they could do anything they wanted with. I started to cry.
He grabbed me in a hug, telling me it would be all right and all that garbage, like he was the cure and not the cause of me crying, and could make it better; when my skin was crawling from having his arms around me and this sick feeling was at a point where I thought I might throw up all over him.
And if I did maybe he would go nutso and kill me right there, which seemed like it might be the best thing that could happen.
.
.
)))========> THE SCIENTIST PIRATE
.
Three Fingers let go of me as someone climbed up out of the hatch and came across the deck toward us. He joked, “Susan, this cross-eyed overglorified barber is our ship's surgeon, Jick. Did yeh bring the elixir, Jick?”
“Of course,” said Jick, patting the pocket of his coat. He looked like the rest of the crew except he was a lot cleaner, and clean shaven; and he was wearing a weird pair of glasses that looked like he might have made them himself, octagonal lenses hanging from a straight iron bar across his brow. And when he spoke he sounded more like a regular English guy than a pirate, “Perhaps we three should repair to my workshop where we're out of this wind. And where there'd be abundant light, and I would have surgical tools at hand, should any complications arise over the course of Susan's transformation.”
“And what could ye do if there were?” frowned Three Fingers as another pirate clambered out of the same hatch Jick and I had.
“A sight more than I could up here,” said Jick.
“Workshop?” I asked.
“He means his quarters, Lass. Though how he sleeps in there I'll nae figure, crammed as it is with books, strange rocks, jars full of dead crawlies and infernal devices such as ye've never seen. Our Jick is a bit of a sorcerer.”
“Not a sorcerer, old friend. Merely a humble student of Natural Philosophy,” shrugged Jick. I noticed that two more crewmen from below had joined us here on the deck.
Mutton shuddered, “Much of what yer doin' do down there don't seem very natural to me!”
I tried to recall where I'd heard the term 'Natural Philosophy' before. Oh that's right-
“You mean science. Physics and chemistry, geology and stuff.”
Jick looked at me in surprise, “And where did you learn such words?”
“I've always been interested in any kind of science,” I said.
He broke into a big smile, “Ahhhh! A maid---or soon to be one---after my own heart!”
He seemed more excited by the prospects of having finally found someone he could talk to than by what the rest of this crew was interested in me for. Not that he wouldn't probably take his own turn on top of me; but maybe in time I could convince him to help me escape. I smiled back at him, “I'd love to see your workshop.”
Captain mutton said, “When you do, steer clear of that sulph'rous whirligig of his. It gave me such a jolt when I touched it!”
“And didn't I warn you?” chuckled Jick, “That's my friction machine. This very morning I used it to make a dead fish jump. I believe I'm not far from unveiling the force of life itself!”
“So you're studying electricity,” I said.
“Eeee-lec-tric-city,” he rolled the word around in his mouth, “That's as good a name for it as any, I suppose. Is that with a 'c' or an 's' ?”
From the string purse at his side he'd pulled out a modern ballpoint pen and a little pocket notebook with a day-glow yellow cover that seemed jarringly bright in this murky brownish place, and wrote it down as I spelled it.
“I believe it to be connected in some fashion with that mysterious agency that permeates the aether and makes a compass always point north, and may well be the driving force behind these flameless lanterns and these marvelous engines the inhabitants of this century use for every task. But I'm keen for any knowledge that you---someone born in these times---might have about such matters.”
“I have some. Electricity and magnetism are pretty simple,” I said. Another pirate had crawled out of the hatch and was helping his peg-legged friend up onto the deck.
“I fear not simple enough for my simple mind. Our Captain was kind enough to give me several of his devices, which I disassembled in hopes of learning the modus of their workings-”
“Like 'reverse engineering'.”
“Exactly!” cried Jick. He seemed to like that word even better than electricity. “I must say, Susan, you're exceedingly well spoken for one so young.”
“And you're pretty smart for a pirate,” I said, not bothering to correct his assumption that I'd coined this term just now. If it helped to make him my ally here I'd let him believe that. “I guess I picked up the well-spoken thing from my parents. They're both kind of nerds...”
“Nerds?” asked Jick, ready to write it down.
“She's a bright penny alright,” the Captain beamed, addressing the glowing cluster of pirates around us, like someone proud of some trick their new dog can do, “Even knows how t' read! Had a book back there on that beach full of the most confoundin' jibble-jabble!”
“Of course she knows how to read. This is the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Fourteen. On my sole venture ashore here, after I was separated from the rest of you during that wild rumpus in that Burgher King-”
Captain Mutton exploded, “They wouldn't take my gold! What bemaddened sort of public house won't serve a man with a whole bag o' gold?! What else could I do but demand an audience with their king?”
“As I said at the time, it would have been more prudent to depart for some more affably disposed establishment. And after they summoned the sheriffs with that curious horn they talk into, well I saw no reason for all of us to end up in the gaol.”
“Which we didn't. Yeh should've stuck with us, Jick. The landlord at WILD HONEYS rec'gnized the value of our coin and was decidedly more reasonable. And they served ale there! Of a sort,” he said, making a sour face. “But by Thunder, what a spectacular they put on! Ye'll see nowt like that back on Drury Lane! I almost choked on that peppered squab's wing I was gnawin' on when that woman came prancin' out wearing little more than Eve back in the Garden!”
This brought laughter from the other pirates here. There were now a dozen of them standing around us, make that thirteen. It seemed word was spreading below decks that we were up here and my that transformation would soon take place.
“Yes, as you've retold many times. But such bawdy proceedings are hardly a fitting topic to discuss in present company,” said Jick, nodding toward me.
“They will be soon enough! Speculatin' about the whats and whyfors of things that are no mortal's business is all fine, but have no illusions about our young captive's true purpose here,” jeered the captain, to more laughter. “But I have been curious t'know where you disappeared to that day. Yeh never did tell us.”
“I was just about to, as it pertains to the matter of Susan's learning. Although I fear my meager adventures pale next to your own. I didn't hazard far from there, just over the concourse, which I made my way across to a chorus of rude halloos from the operants of those damnable steel carriages. Our attire marked us as foreigners to these times, and I was seeking a place where those thief-takers wouldn't take notice of me when they arrived.”
“T'was no great hurley-burley when they did. Those county sheriffs simply advised us to 'stop bothering people'; and after searchin' us and findin' no weapons on us, ordered us to move along. It seems we'd been wise to heed yer warning regardin' that NO FIREARMS sign they had on the door, and to stash all our guns n' swords in that barrel they'd put beside it. We were able t' go back and retrieve them later, but some hoople-head threw garbage in their gun barrel and got ketjap all over my Bessie here,” said Three Fingers, sliding his hand over the pistol stuck through his belt with an affection that bordered on perverted. He nodded, “But go on, Jick. Yeh crossed th' street, and...”
“And found myself at the steps of a grand structure. I hastened up them and into what turned out to be a library. A public library, of all things! Inside were tables, benches and divans where a great many townsfolk, and several tatterdemalion vagabonds---who seemed to take me for one of their own---were engrossed in books containing romances, histories and treatises of every sort. And not just menfolk, but ladies as well! In fact the intendant of this library was herself a woman, a handsome young blackamoor, who showed me how the volumes were arranged, and guided me to the sections I sought. I took all the books I could carry to one of the tables and began perusing them. After what had seemed mere minutes I glanced up at the clock on the wall and discovered that in excess of four hours had passed. And I thought it best to return to our ship. There were three volumes I'd taken a particular fancy to; Modern Physics For Dummies, On the Origin of Species, and a most gripping tale of thievery, subterfuge and detection entitled Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Missing Muffin, which I'd begun and just had to know how it ended. And I fear I never shall...”
“She probably gets her muffin back,” I guessed.
“So they caught yeh, did they?” grinned Captain Mutton.
“Red handed! And it was most curious. I had secretted the books under my garments in such wise as I was certain that none could see, but as I made for the door there came an infernal shrieking---like some great mechanical insect---and a brawny fellow named Security was on me in a flash. After I relinquished their tomes and answered their questions they concluded I was just some befuddled Tom O'Bedlam, and gave me exit without calling for those sheriffs; and I made with the utmost haste for the Invinceable, which I was relieved to find still at anchor. And had I known you wouldn't return until near daybreak I would have done more exploring,” said Jick. “Such wonders and prodigies had I witnessed! If it weren't for the superfluity of public overseers and the mayhem of steel carriages hurtling everywhere one is trying to walk, I should be tempted to stay in this world.”
“Yeh can have it! Aside from that one agreeable evening with Roxy and Tiffany, which cost all the gold we plundered from the brigantine Cordelia Chase, I've seen naught that I ken to here, and far too much that aggravates and disturbs me! But if this westerly wind stays this brisk and we keep true to this course we should be south of Bermuda and slipping back into that strange golden fog by-" he pulled my travel alarm out of his belt-bag and peered at it, "-by dawn tomorrow, dawn and sundown bein' when it always seems to appear."
Peering over the railing I could see the Invinceable's phosphorescent wake, great ridges of water churning violently. We were moving like a speedboat! I said, "I never realized these old sailing ships went so fast."
"They don't usually, but it's always like this on the trip back. As if old Father Time suddenly realized he made a mistake and is tryin' t' put us back where we belong. Although Jick here reckons it's caused by- Hullo?! Who's this?”
.
.
)))========> SIDE EFFECTS
.
There was somebody---something---coming toward us across the deck in the darkness. It was like a hunchback gorilla wearing a tattered dress that showed a lot of furry cleavage, only as it got closer I saw that it was built wrong for a gorilla, way too skinny, and its face was all wrong too. More like a forensic anthropologist’s picture of what some recently dug up species of Australopithecus might have looked like.
It stared at us, seeming to understanding what was going on, and fiercely resenting me and everyone here. And somehow I knew: It used to be human!
I screamed!
“Don't worry Susan, that's only Kiki,” said the captain, putting his arm around my shoulder and ordering sternly, “Kiki, you unholy wretch, go make yerself useful! Go swab the deck or somethin'...”
The Kiki-thing showed her long sharp teeth and lumbered off, filling a wooden bucket with water from a barrel. Then she grabbed a mop and started mopping the wooden deck, like some cleaning woman from Planet of the Apes, glancing over at us every so often, her eyes burning with hatred.
“Kiki has taken a singular fancy to you Jick, followin' yeh everywhere yeh go! Ye'd think he would blame you for what happened to him,” said the captain.
“Kiki doesn't look like a him,” I said pointedly. I hate when someone mis-genders a transperson, even if she's not quite a person.
Three-Fingers laughed roughly, “Under that dress 'es more of a man than I am!”
“Yes, I'm afraid poor Kiki's dreams were not realized even in that respect,” Jick sighed, and produced what looked like a small brandy bottle, “But it's not me she fancies Captain, it's this. She reasons that another go at this nostrum might bring her to rights. I hate to think what might happen for fact. This elixir represents something entirely outside of my intellective purview. It takes a mind into the jumbled realm of.... if I believed in such things I would call it magic.”
“Look what it did to Kiki, and right in front of our eyes! What could it be if not magic?”
“A transmutation of blood, flesh and bone, brought about by the interaction of the elements in her body with new elements introduced by the elixir.”
“New element?” snorted the captain, “There's only four elements, Jick!”
“I've determined that there are as many as twenty, and none of them are earth, water, air or fire. Well maybe water...”
“Shut up n' give her the stuff!” bellowed a pirate, pointing at me with his hook.
By now it looked like every man on the boat was up here was up here with us. Apparently I was tonight's entertainment. They formed a wide circle on the deck around us, with a big gap in it where Kiki stood. They were all keeping a careful distance from her.
“Yarrrr!” shouted another, “Quit yer yawpin' n' make 'er drink it!”
“We wants the redhead!” screamed a third, who was either color blind or hallucinating.
One of the pirates had an actual pirate-type parrot on his shoulder- a fat, greasy looking thing that was missing whole big patches of its feathers in several places. There is not one single thing that bird was shrieking that I can print here. A stream of violent misogynistic filth, and it really did sound like it was screaming this stuff at me! The bird made that villain from Aladdin's parrot seem positively lovable.
Ignoring it, Jick waggled the bottle, “But as I said earlier, Suzie should be imbibing this in down my workshop. She'll no doubt sleep through her metamorphosis and I need to observe the changes in good light, and to take notes. Also I shall want to examine her.”
“As will we all,” leered Mutton, “But we're givin' her the potion up here, says I. You can scribble all the notes yeh want, and 'examine' her to yer heart's content... when it comes yer turn! But I won't deprive the men of bein' able to witness this miracle? The crew needs this! We're outta rum, and yeh can only sing so many shanties when yer not drinkin'. And it's not like they has one o' them tele-whozits they can be watchin'...”
The scientist pirate shrugged. They were friends, but the friend who was wearing the Cap'n Crunch hat and who didn't care about the science behind my transformation had the final say. Jick shrugged, and pushed the bottle into my hand.
“You're- No, come on man, you're kidding!” I stammered, “You expect me to drink this after what it did to her?”
Three Fingers smiled, “If yeh have truly never lain with a man yeh should be quite happy with the changes it'll bring. T'will make yeh as comely and finely turned as that poor beast is hideous. Now drink it, I say! One way or another ye'll be learnin' the feminine virtues of silence and obedience---to trust in the decisions of yer God-adjudged betters---and ye'll look back in shame at this waywardness yeh be showin'...”
It seemed pathetically deluded for this crook and murderer to think he was better than me in God's eyes just because he was a boy. But as much as I wanted to I didn't say that.
Sneakily, Kiki was dragging the mop closer and closer to us, watching me even more intently than all these old sea dogs circled around us were. Wanting to see what would happen to me.
Fighting down my fear I uncorked the bottle and lifted it toward my mouth, telling myself that if this stuff worked right I'd have what I always dreamed of. And as far as becoming their sex toy, I'd put up with that---I would have to---but would get off this damn boat the first chance I got. And as Jick had pointed out, even with a ninth grade education I had an edge on these people when it came to science. Back at the turn of the 18th century I'd be like Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee. I pictured myself making my way to London and starting a life there. I would patent the steam engine, the electric generator, the Edison light bulb, anything else that was simple and I knew how it worked, and with the money I got I would hire a small navy to hunt down the Invinceable and kill every last one of these motherfu-
.
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)))========> KIKI GOES BANANAS
.
There was a blur and the bottle was gone from my hand. Kiki had lept at us, and in the next split second she had the bottle in one hand and the captain's saber in the other. She drank all the elixir in one gulp and spiked the bottle onto the deck, smashing it! Then she let out a horrible hateful scream that wasn't like anything I'd ever heard and came running at me with that big sword.
Someone had tossed the Captain a foil and he starting fighting with the creature, which was the only thing that gave me time to get away. I jumped and pulled myself up onto this net-thing that was hanging just overhead and led up into the rigging. I lost my velvet slippers pretty quick, but barefoot was better anyway. When I got to the big crosspiece that the lowest of the three sails hung from I stopped to glance down.
The Captain's sword had been smashed by the heavy saber and he was holding his bleeding shoulder and swearing, but Kiki hadn't taken the time to kill him. She was coming up the rigging after me!
The yardarm was just barely wide enough walk on, and more scared of what was coming after me than of losing my balance in this fierce wind I scrambled across it to the mast---which had two rows of evenly spaced dowels stuck into it to make it into a ladder---and started up it. I'd come up here because I didn't want to get cornered down inside the ship by this crazy ape-thing in a dress, but seeing the way she could climb I realized this was a huge mistake!
Also the men had all drawn their guns and were shooting at Kiki, who crossed the line when she attacked their Captain. But it was so dark up here they were more or less firing blindly and had as much chance of hitting me as her. There was nothing for me to get behind, I was wide open. All I could do was ignore the explosions and keep climbing, and hope I wouldn't feel a musket ball tearing through my spine in the next second. Thankfully they had to spend most of their time going through the elaborate reloading ritual, so their shots were few and far between.
I was already at a scary height above the deck, and the rest of this mast soared up above me like a redwood tree. Kiki had almost caught up with me but now she was starting to slow down, and I could hear her whimpering horribly as she began to swell up like some hairy water-balloon. But she still kept coming after me with that cutlass in her hand and murder in her eyes!
A meter or so above the yardarm of the third sail was a little platform with a rail around it. I climbed up through the hole into it. This was as high as I could go.
Up here the back and forth motion of the deck was like amplified, so that I was actually over the water part of the time. Holding onto the mast I climbed onto the railing around the crow's nest, which was scary enough just to stand on, let alone what I was planning to do.
It was that scene you've seen in a hundred movies, where it's too far for anyone to jump but it's the only choice they have. When Kiki's furry fingers (inflated by now to the size of bananas) came into view, grabbing the edge of the platform's floor I jumped, hoping the skirts of this outfit might act as kind of a parachute-
I dropped like a rock, my skirts all getting yanked up around me, turning me into something like a banana inside its peel. As I fell I heard an ungodly scream above me and then this loud horrible wet explosion, and then all the pirates on the deck going “EEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!” as I plummeted past them.
If what I thought just happened really had I was happy I didn't see it, and it was another reason to be glad I didn't try that potion. Falling blind, I pointed my toes down and waited to hit the water, which took so long I started to have the crazy notion that I might avoid it somehow---like maybe I wasn't falling but floating, up and up, toward some magical fairyland high in the clouds, where the tiny natives would revere me as some sort of god, and the Lollipop Guild would do a little dance for me---a notion that was knocked out of me with the force of getting hit by a truck.
It was probably only this petticoat cocoon around me that kept the impact from knocking me unconscious. I plunged down through the water like an arrow, and when I stopped I shoved my shroud of skirts down out of the way and started fighting my way toward the surface---at least I hoped I was headed the right way!---chucking off my clothes as I went.
'Poor Kiki!' I thought as I swam through the black water. 'What a horrible end to a horrible life!'
And okay, I know she tried to kill me but I just couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She had started out as a boy like me---feeling and wanting all the same things I felt and wanted---but there was no gender surgery back in the time she came from. Or if there was, and it was typical of the kind of surgery they were doing back then you wouldn't want to risk it...
And then they promised her they could fix her with that elixir, getting her hopes up and probably not warning her about the side effects, which had turned her into a freaky monster. I think if that happened to me I'd go a little crazy too!
I still had a couple of the long petticoats on when my head broke through and I breathed the wonderful, wonderful air. After pulling off the last of my clothes I waved and hollered for the ship to come back and get me.
Captain Mutton was at the railing along the Invinceable's stern. It was night but I could tell him by his big sideways hat, which he lifted off his head and sort of bowed: Sorry! Tough luck, kid!
They didn't turn around for me or even slow down. Without the elixir I was just a boy in a dress. Of all the pirates I could've hooked up with I had to find a bunch that had scruples about that sort of thing...
.
.
“Good. You're awake,” said a girl's voice.
“Huh? Whah?” I burbled groggily at the pretty fish-girl I saw hovering in front of me. She looked about sixteen and was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen. Definitely the cutest mermaid.
I was in a beach chair in the seashell castle's courtyard. My legs felt weird and fat and there was something sitting on my chest. She said, “Please don't panic, but in order to save your life we had to-”
Of course when she said don't panic like that it's exactly what I did do, but only for a second. I looked down and saw what was on my chest. It was my chest. Beneath these two rather impressive breasts my waist narrowed and then flared out into girlish hips that were covered in beautiful jade green scales, which continued down the long sleek shiny tail I now had for legs. I wagged it back + forth experimentally. And this stuff floating around my face wasn't some kind of seaweed but my hair, super long and shimmering like gold.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God,” was all I could say. “Oh my God! My God! My God!”
This summer vacation was turning out to be the strangest week of my life. Or maybe of anyone's...
.
LATE SUNDAY NIGHT OR EARLY IN THE MORNING OF MONDAY 8/25/2014:
Drowning isn't fun.
They say that you just go to sleep, and you do sort of, but it's heller scary and awful before then. You do a lot of treading water, and whimpering, and praying, and getting sick from swallowing seawater, and you think about everything you'll never get a chance to do when you're dead, which when you're fifteen is a whole lot of things. At least this was my experience, thrashing around in the middle of the Atlantic in the dead of night all by myself, paddling and paddling because the ocean's choppiness and these big rolling waves that were lifting me way up and then dropping me wouldn't let me just lay there and float.
I hadn't noticed it at the time, but at some point when that ape-thing was chasing me through the pirate ship's rigging I'd picked up a huge nasty splinter in the sole of my left foot. It was probably the absolute least of my problems right now, but it hurt like hell and it was driving me nuts that every time I stopped treading water long enough to bring my foot up and maybe yank it out I sank below the surface. It was aggravating that this was a thing I might have easily taken care of at home with a tweezers or an x-acto knife, but all I could do now was favor my right foot as I kicked to stay afloat.
And because the water was warm I didn't get all dopey from that hypothermia they talk about, but got to experience all of this with a clear and terrified mind.
This vacation wasn't turning out anything like I'd expected it would. I had figured the worst thing I'd have to deal with was how my dad was acting since I came out to him and my mom back in June. The way he kept looking at me like I gave him a bad case of heartburn, and how he would say things that really hurt.
Not being intentionally malicious, but totally failing to take anything I was saying seriously. Like there was NO WAY I could actually mean any of this, but must of been telling them I was a girl to get attention, or just to upset them for some messed up reason. And then he would burn rubber out of the driveway in his Beemer and go back to the plant to yell at the foremen about those damn #7's that got installed wrong or whatever...
Not like my mom, who seemed to believe me pretty quick. After getting over the shock of it, and after we talked about it for a long time with her looking me straight in the eye, she finally decided I wasn't mistaken about what my issue was; That it wasn't just that I was gay, or that I got all turned on by bras and panties and stuff (like Robert Downey Jr. wearing satin undies and a camisole under his boy clothes in that crazy spy comedy Debriefings...)
But after listening to me pouring my heart out, and seeing the tears that I'd held back for years come pouring out---and then hearing what Dr. Blokenfrock had to say about girls like me---that light bulb went off over her head: This was something real.
And by the second week after I came out she started calling me Suzie, and being very cool about this. And she was kind of digging the idea that now she had someone she could hang out and do girl stuff with---mom and daughter stuff---which I don't think she ever thought about or missed before, when she assumed she had a son for a child and felt like that was just as good in a different way. While my father wasn't having any of this weird nonsense, even after we started on our trip.
And it wasn't like he was deliberately trying to hurt my feelings. I knew he loved me even when he was being a jerk, but my saying I had to be the real me was totally hard on him. Like I was betraying all the things I was suppose to be, and he was less because of it.
But I knew for sure he was going through hell since I disappeared. Probably thinking I ran away, and blaming himself for it. And I was afraid that after my disgusting fish-eaten remains washed up on shore he would never be the same. I wished I could tell him that I wasn't drowning myself out here on purpose. Not for being transgender, or because of him. I wished I could tell him I loved him and that I knew he loved me.
I wished a lot of useless things that night, until I finally couldn't kick my feet anymore.
.
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)))========> THAT SINKING FEELING
.
And now I was spiraling down through the inky water, still thinking I better not breathe this stuff; But at some point I couldn't hold my breath any longer and the water poured into my lungs.
This is one of the most horribly wrong and terrifying sensations a human body can experience, but what was so weird about it was how oddly familiar being suffocated in this way felt...
I had almost drowned in the bathtub when I was six; an accident with an enormous stuffed animal---a black and white orca nearly as big as I was---that I'd decided needed to take a bath with me. I was so young when it happened that I'd never been able recall much about the incident, only the groggy aftermath. The totally drenched tile floor, the paramedics, and Mom yelling at me and hugging me and crying all at the same time.
But suddenly now the my memories of my near-drowning itself were clear and vivid in my mind; the helplessness and terror of being held under water by this creature I had thought was my friend, the confusion and weakness and then the calm and resignation as my consciousness faded. I had cheated death by drowning that time; but now it seemed as if it had always been intended for me to meet my end this way, like one of those Final Destiny movies...
My heart was still beating, kicking loudly in my chest while that toothpick-sized splinter in my foot throbbed in time to it, but I knew I was dying and my brain was crapping out on me when I saw the mermaid.
.
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)))=============> THE LITTLE HALLUCINATION
.
She didn't have any clothes on, except for that belt with a knife hanging from it and the fist-sized seashell bobbing along at the end of a twine around her neck. Her eyes didn't exactly glow but being somewhat bigger than a human's they stood out in the murky dimness; beautiful, soulful. The lush long straight hair that went clear down her back was golden- not blonde but actually looking like it was made out of polished gold.
'God! I wish I had tits like hers,' I thought, and then tried to laugh when I realized this was probably going to be my last thought. Transgender to the end...
I was amazed at how real this creature from out of my imagination looked; and that she also felt real, when she got behind me and worked her powerful tail, trying to pull me toward the surface with her hands hooked under my armpits. She might have done it too, but it would've taken her maybe ten minutes when I was pretty sure I had only seconds left.
“Oh, poor human!” she sang, her voice high and sweet but blurry, like somebody making bubbles in their soda with a straw. “Hang on, let's get you some help!”
She grabbed the sea shell hanging around her neck and blew on it, producing a very deep note that would probably carry for miles.
But whoever she was calling for didn't seem to be coming, so then she started pulling me downward, which was easier, and I assumed it was some kind of mercy killing...
.
.
)))========> MY DISNEY DELIRIUM
.
And now I could see the ocean floor below us, a dark plain where this incredible castle sat, its hundreds of round porthole windows shining bright. It stood seven stories tall, higher if you counted the domes and things on top, which like the rest of it were made from impossibly huge sea shells, the long spirally ones rising up like castle towers. It looked like someone had taken Australia's Sydney Opera House, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul and this weird melty-looking apartment house in Barcelona called Casa Mila and mooshed them all together into something even crazier looking.
Surrounding this outrageous thing of a castle was a vast garden, the kind you'd see around some old palace in Europe, except that half the plants here were actually the kind of stationary animals you get on the sea floor; with coral formation and hedges of neatly trimmed kelp shaped into geometric patterns, sea anemones the size of elephants in coral planter boxes; and a row of twenty foot tall statues of important looking mermen and merwomen leading up to the imposing parabolic archway of the castle's big front doors.
The mermaid parked me in an old beat up aluminum beach chair on the shale patio, blowing her shell horn and looking around for help one last time, then torpedoed off toward the castle, calling back, “Don't go anywhere!”
I gazed up at the strings of weird bubble lanterns that hung over this garden on lines slung between tall spiraling auger-shell posts, trying to figure out what the bubbles were made out of and what could make them glow like that, before I decided that what they were made out of was nothing. They weren't even there.
I was hallucinating all this as I drowned, probably nowhere near the sea floor and certainly in no place that looked like this. This was a scene that could've come from my favorite childhood movie: The Little Mermaid.
As I said in the first chapter I was totally nuts over that film when I was six and seven. Ariel the Mermaid was everything I wanted to be. So spunky, totally alive and adventurous; yet sweet and caring and loyal to her friends. And she was all girl- from her incredible red hair down to her shiny green fluke. She was my favorite Disney princess.
My parent had bought me a whole lot of Little Mermaid stuff---my room was starting to look like the Disney Store---before they got alarmed and tried to wean me off of this obsession, my Mom grabbing away the red towel I had hanging over my head as I was watching it for the third time that day, singing along with all the songs I knew by heart. Telling me: “Sweetheart, don't you think maybe you'd want to see something else? Oh look! There's a movie called Reservoir Dogs coming on in a few minutes. You like doggies, don't you? Let's watch that...”
So I guessed this was like what you always hear about, how your life flashes before your eyes when you die. Only I had spent so much of my life in fantasies and if-onlys that I was getting these instead of the real stuff...
.
.
)))========> 1000 KAZOOS
.
And now my beautiful imaginary friend was coming back, carrying something in a white polyethylene grocery bag. She blew the sea shell again, took my pulse and shook her head. Then she pulled a big fancy jeweled brass bottle out of the bag, making me think: 'Oh no! More elixir!'
But when she rubbed on the bottle with her hand there was a sound like a bubble popping and a large person in an old fashioned canvas diving suit appeared, his heavy brass helmet's air hose leading into the mouth of the bottle. From where I lay I couldn't see the face behind the helmet's little window, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it was blue with a humungous chin and a weird little curly beard. So now I guess we were doing another old favorite cartoon of mine...
The genie said, “So you've decided on your third wish, Mistress Anee?”
She pointed at me and shouted desperately, “Save him!”
“You really need to be more specific with your wishes," said the helmeted genie, "C'mon Girlfrien', we discussed this!”
I noticed his voice was a little different than the one from Aladdin.
[Which makes sense,' I thought, 'Because the comical genius Robin Williams who did that genie's voice had killed himself a few weeks ago, so they had to get someone else to do the voice here...']
“Put him back on land!” cried the mermaid.
['No wait- that DOESN'T make sense! Hallucinations don't need voice actors!']
The genie shrugged, “Sure, I can do that. But it wouldn't save him. He's pretty much finished. A goner. Kaput. Moribund. Down for the count. Deep sixed. In extremis...”
“Then... then...” the mermaid waved her arms in frustration,“Then put him back on land and make him better!”
“Sorry Princess, that's two wishes. One more than you have!” said the Genie [who I was starting to think might be Jim Carrey...]
“No it's NOT!” she burbled. Whatever they were going to do I hoped they'd do it quick. My sight and hearing were fading fast. Now I really was dying.
['And what is that gonna be like?' I wondered. 'Heaven? Hell? Reincarnation? Or none of the above?' I guessed I was about to find out...]
The genie spread his big gloved hands, “Listen, Bubeleh... if it was up to me you know I'd give you all the wishes in the world. But I didn't make up the rules of this genie business. You got one left, and you need to word it like one wish. It's just too bad he can't survive under water...”
[Unless this already was the Afterlife. Cartoons for the rest of eternity...]
And this show was also getting hard to follow. From far away I heard the mermaid say excitedly, “Then do that! Make him so he can.”
“Hmmmmm... I suppose I could turn him into a sponge.”
“No!” shouted the mermaid, “Like me! Make him like I am!”
“Your wish is my command,” said the genie. Then he cheered: “Oh, finally!! That's three---count 'em---THREE wishes! So long folks, you've been a truly fabulous audience; And I.... am...... OUTTAHERE!!!! Black Rock Desert, here I come!!!”
And to the sound of a thousand kazoos playing The Stars and Stripes Forever I lost consciousness.
.
.
)))========> JUST ADD WATER
.
“Oh good. You're awake!” said a girl's voice.
“Huh? Whah?” I burbled groggily, and spread my barely cracked eyelids all the way open.
The pretty fishgirl from my hallucination was hovering in front of me.
Somehow I could see a lot better underwater now, like she'd found a diving mask for me. She looked to be around my age, and was about the cutest girl I'd ever seen. Definitely the cutest mermaid, and that includes Aquamarine and Bella from H2O: Just Add Water...
I was still under water. Still in the beach chair. But for some reason no longer still drowning.
My legs felt real funny---super thick, and like I couldn't tell where the one ended and the other began---and there was something sitting on my chest.
Her voice no longer sounded so burbly to me. And I noticed she sounded kind of British, that posh sort of accent that makes you think of fancy schools and riding lessons. She said, “Now please don't panic; but when the genie changed you, he-”
Of course when she said “don't panic” like that it's exactly what I did do; But only for a second...
I looked down and saw what was on my chest. It was my chest. A nice pair of breasts that felt full and soft and like a real living part of me when my hands went up to them. Beneath them my midriff narrowed like the inhumanly narrow waist of a Barbie doll---it was rather alarming to look at but since the other mermaid had a stomach like this too I guessed it wouldn't kill me---then flared out into womanly hips that were covered in pretty jade green scales; scales that continued down a beautiful sleek shiny tail. And this stuff floating all around my face wasn't some kind of seaweed but my hair, super long and shimmering like polished gold, but soft and downy between my fingers.
My tail flipped itself up in front of me so I could take a better look at it when I thought about this happening. I wagged it forth experimentally; noticing that it didn't bend only at hips, knees and ankles the way my legs had, but rippled, with all the flexibility of a snake, thanks to a whole lot of strange new muscles.
When I'd first seen her swimming toward me I'd written the mermaid off as some ridiculous final dream of my oxygen starved brain. But she was still here, and even more amazingly I was too. I was breathing the thick salty seawater like this was a normal thing to do. Somehow I had joined this impossible being in being impossible.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!” was all I could say. “Oh my God! Oh my God... Oh my God!”
“Look,” she said, “it saved your life. There wasn't time, and that genie kept wanting to argue-”
“Oh my God! Oh my God- I'M A MERMAID!!”
“I know, I'm sorry! Okay? But it really won't be so bad, you'll see.”
“Bad?” I laughed, and like I'd been doing it all my life I swam up out of the chair and grabbed her in a hug, “I think it's wonderful! Oh thank you! Thank you!”
“Whoahhh, easy there!” she said as I danced her around in a circle, “It is? I thought you'd be mad at me. Or screaming in horror over being turned into a 'freak'.”
“No! I always dreamed about being a mermaid when I was a kid,“ I said, running my hands over the smooth green scales on my hips, “And now I mean... I mean... WOW!”
“Hmmmm, that seems kind of weird. But I guess if I was stuck being a human I might want to change too. But I think you mean a merman. That's a boy mermaid.”
“Oh hell no!” I laughed, in a voice that was musical and bubbly sounding like hers was; and female without having to try and raise the pitch or even think about it. I was smiling like an idiot at the sound of it, at everything I had gained (and the things I'd lost) with this new body; So grateful that I might have been crying, but being underwater it was hard to tell if I actually was.
She sounded very relieved. “If you're happy being a girl then I guess my crazy genie knew what he was doing after all. Which is good, because he's not here anymore.”
I looked around. Both the genie and the weird bottle were gone. “What happened to him?”
“Changing you was my last wish. Genie only belongs to someone between the time they find his bottle---for me that was five years ago---and the minute they make their third wish. We got along great, and he loved that we treated him like a person and not just some wish-granting machine. But in between owners he gets a two week vacation, so he was all crazy-happy about that; saying the timing was perfect for this event he wants to go to,” she grinned; but then shuddered in revulsion, “But it didn't sound like the sort thing he'd be interested in at all! A big human-sacrifice the Americans have every year out in their western drylands called The Man-Burning Festival!”
“Um... They don't actually burn anybody at Burning Man. It's mostly about bad art and running around for a few days under the hot sun in weird costumes banging tambourines and acting silly.”
She giggled, sounding relieved. “Well that makes a lot more sense. He'll love that!”
“And it's the one place where a big blue guy in a Hawaiian shirt won't stand out.”
“Blue? He's not blue, he's-” she stopped and peered off into the dark water. “Oh tail rot! Wouldn't you know it?!”
And now I saw it too. Something streamlined and a bit larger than us was swimming towards us fast. I really hope that isn't a shark!
.
.
)))=========> JASPER 5
.
But it wasn't. It was a dolphin. A common bottlenose, like Flipper. My mom's favorite animal.
He had an aluminum cask hanging around his neck (well he didn't have a neck, but somewhere behind his face...) like those St. Bernard rescue dogs in the cartoons wear. So maybe I was in some kind of Cartoon Afterlife after all...
The cask had a hose with a mouthpiece dangling from it. It was one of those diver's emergency reserve tanks that are good for maybe fifteen minutes, and just to make sure there wasn't any doubt about what was in it someone had scribbled AIR on it with a grease pencil or something.
The dolphin spoke in kind of a snooty voice: “Please state the nature of the marine emergency.”
She glared at him. “The emergency is over Jasper Five, it's fixed! And no thanks to you.”
He dipped his head in sort of a bow, “My apologies, your Royal Highness. I got here as quickly as I could, but I had to settle a war between the starfish clans.”
“Those stars are always fighting! They probably started again the minute you left. This human was drowning, she would have died if I had left it up to you! I used up my last wish because of you, you stupid fluking fish!”
“I won't take that sort of abuse even from you, Princess,” the dolphin warned her.
It seemed that calling a dolphin a fish was the worst insult you could give him. The mermaid hung her head and said, “I'm sorry Jasper, really! I didn't mean that.”
“Apology accepted,” said the dolphin. “And by 'this human', I'm assuming you mean your second self here?”
“Well she was human.”
“I see,” said Jasper Five. “And so your genie, he's no longer with us?”
“Nope. And he said to give you and mom his regards. Then he sang some 'Shuffle off to Buffalo' song and disappeared---POOF!---in an explosion of rainbow colored silt. A buffalo... that's like a cow, right?”
I said, “Sort of, but hairier.”
“She speaks!” cried Jasper in mock suprise. “And how are you this morning, Dear?”
This was a good question. I was a mermaid. I was breathing water and talking to a dolphin. And the way it looked like we were all hanging ten feet in the “air” above this vast French or Italian gridwork garden just added to the unrealness of it all...
“Well I'm kind of doubting my own sanity at the moment, but I'm alive. Which is more than I expected to be about now.”
“She was in really bad shape when I found her,” said the mermaid.
I looked down at my chest and grinned, “My shape has definitely improved.”
“Optimism, that's the ticket!” beamed the dolphin.
“She barely had a pulse,” said the mermaid gravely. Trying to rescue me had been a scary ordeal for her too, watching my chances for survival dwindle away in front of her while she tried one futile thing after another...
I angled my tail out in front of me to show Jasper the wide blade of a fin at the end, which was just like a fish's except that it ran horizontally like a marine mammal's fluke. “And I had a big nasty splinter in my foot that was driving me nuts. I'm sure glad that's gone!”
“There's a bright side to most of the things life throws at us,” Jasper philosophized. “Around here you'll find your glass is never half empty!”
The mermaid said, “And now that I have time to think about it, I doubt that we could have saved her even if you had got to us on time. She'd already been underwater a long time...”
The dolphin nodded his big head, “Then you did the right thing.”
“I know. But now I have no idea what I'm going to tell Mummy now! She made me promise I would save that last wish for when I got older.”
Jasper Five thought a bit, and said, “The Queen knows that you always wanted a sibling. Tell her you just couldn't stand being alone anymore. She knows it's been hard for you, with nearly everyone you know being either an adult or much younger than you. You really do need someone your own age for company.”
“But I'm not alone. I have Fluke.”
“But since he's been working at his father's shop you only get to see your boyfriend a few times a week, and you spend most of your time alone. Queen Atlantea will believe this as a reason, and I'm sure she'll come to love having a second child.”
“If she accepts her at all. Some stranger, whipped up by magic, who looks like me.”
“She will. Hadn't she and King Uyehtah always wanted to have another baby? Bringing in healers from all over the Nine Queendoms; Trying and hoping, right up until... well whatever has happened to him.”
“Some humans got Daddy, that's what happened! They've probably got him stuffed and in one of those horrible freakshow museums up there.”
The dolphin nuzzled her face with his snout, and said softly, “We don't know that for certain, do we? He could still be alive.”
“I don't even think Mom believes that any more...”
“Well I do. Call it a hunch, but I have a feeling he'll come swimming home some day, with a story that will rival The Odyssey.”
“You're sweet for lying to me Jasper.”
“I don't lie,” huffed the dolphin. “And Her Majesty might be angry at you for using up all your wishes at first, but she'll understand why you broke down and had the genie make you a twin.”
I startled,”A twin?”
“Oh yes,” said Jasper, “A perfect duplicate. If it weren't for her belt and calling conch I wouldn't be able to tell you apart.”
“When I told the genie to make you like me I was just talking about making you amphibious,” said the mermaid princess, “But he took it literally.”
“Genies do that, don't they? Seem to think it's funny,” said Jasper.
“Wow!” I said, “If I look like you that's great! You're really pretty, Princess.”
“You think so? Thank you Princess, so are you,” she said and we both laughed at how vain this sounded.
Jasper Five laughed along with us, a dolphin-y sound not at all like the voice he'd been talking to us in (or whatever he was doing, since he wasn't moving his mouth). He said, “It's good to hear you laugh again, Anee. I can tell already you two are going to be great friends. And as the human philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas wrote: 'There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship!'”
"That's pretty basic," I said. "I would've expected something more complicated from a famous philosopher, but I think you'd have to be a real scrooge to disagree with that.”
“But even Mr. Scrooge came around in the end,” Jasper reminded me.
“Do you mind if I ask how a dolphin knows about Dickens and Homer's Odyssey and Thomas Aquinas?”
“The castle does have a library,” he said, “It's one of the perks of being ambassador to your queendom. Although I wish had more twenty first or even twentieth century human novels. And more that aren't necessarily great literature but are just for fun. The castle's selection of human books tends to be fairly dry.”
“Because we keep them in the Dry Room!” joked the mermaid.
“Oh Anemone... That was terrible,” Jasper groaned.
“Your name's Anemone?” I asked, and when she nodded I told her, “That's a great name!”
“Thank you,” she said, “What's yours?”
“Susan,“ I told her, happy that I now had a right to this name that all the crazy uptight gender-nazis in the world couldn't say I didn't have.
She made a face.
“Or Suzie...”
“Oh, that's even worse!”
“What's wrong with it?”
“Nothing; and I kind of like Suzie. But I'm thinking about Mom. They're both such land dweller's names, and as bad as Mom hates humans we can't let her find out you used to be one. Would you mind something else?”
“I guess not...”
“How does Enomena sound to you? Princess Enomena. That's Anemone backward.”
I thought it sounded a bit too much like 'enema', but if no one down here knew what one of those was I figured it would be okay (In fact I wasn't sure if we even had an anus, since the back of my scale-covered pelvis was as smooth and featureless as the front, without even a dent to show where a butt crack would go...).
"E-noooo-me-na..." I pronounced faintly, trying it out. It was definitely exotic, and I thought it was neat how it was my twin's name in reverse. I nodded and grinned, “It's cute, I love it! And you say I'm a princess too?”
“Yep.... of the Queendom of Hatteria.”
“That's kind of cool,” I said. I was a few years past the age when I really wanted to be a princess, but if it came with the tail I wouldn't turn it down. Although the whole notion of hereditary rulers struck me as absurd somehow. I asked, “Are you sure though? I mean wouldn't I have to have royal blood, or at least have been born here?”
“Your blood is as much like me as all the rest of you. And you were born here. Just now, when the genie's magic created you. Or at least that's what we're gonna tell- Uh Oh!”
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Genie used to tell me there were certain wishes his magic wasn't powerful enough to grant; so don't even bother asking. Like 'World Peace'. So could a genie just make a person? I mean right out of thin water?”
“That does seem rather godlike," said Jasper, "And I really have no idea...”
“But Mom might know. Which could bring up the whole where-did-she-come-from?/used-to-be-human thing.”
“Perhaps there's something about genies in the Arcania Scrolls,” suggested Jasper.
“I'm sure there is. But even if I could find where she hid them, my tail's still sore from the last time she caught me reading them. I'm trying to stay out of trouble here, Jasper!”
“So then let's work with what we do know. Obviously the genie can create a mermaid from another life form, since he just did. So what if he created your sister from some local-”
“A dolphin!!!” cried Anemone.
Jasper didn't sound too keen on this notion. “Well I don't know...”
But Anemone loved the idea. “How about that, Sis? You were a dolphin!”
“EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!!”I chattered.
She burst out laughing and started dolphin-chattering with me. “EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE-”
“No. Don't do that,” said Jasper.
We turned toward him: “EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!! EeEeE!!”
“No really. Don't,” he sighed, like we were doing it so wrong he was embarrassed for us. “And I don't think claiming she was a dolphin is the answer. What if Her Majesty asks her something about her former pod? She knows nothing about being a dolphin.”
“I might be able to fake it. I do know a few things about dolphins, porpoises and whales. My mom is a marine biologist, you know,” I said, which was a bit of a stretch. She was a tour guide at a public aquarium and maritime museum about eight miles from our house.
“Maybe you do,” he said, “But you haven't lived with us. Any four year old mermaid knows things about dolphins that your human scientists have no clue about. No, I think you girls should go farther afield to explain Enomena's origins. Something not so common and well known here.”
“Then how about a Florida manatee?” asked Anemone, “They never come out this far.”
“That could work,” nodded Jasper, “Was Florida was within range of your genie's powers?”
“It sure was. He was always popping over there for his key lime pie. I used to joke that if he kept doing that he wouldn't be able to fit in his bottle...”
“I doubt if he could ever get that fat. That small bottle of his seems to have some curious dimensional properties to it. But if he could teleport to Florida then a manatee seems like an excellent choice for your deception.”
“And you'll go along with that story? I mean it's, you know...” I said to this dolphin who had just told us he never lied.
“I said your deception. If Queen Atlantea asks me anything about this I'll say I wasn't here when the genie granted your final wish. And I can tell her that I've known the Princess to be generally honest, which is also true, and hope she doesn't press it any further. But I would like to be able to say that about you in the future, so I suggest you come clean about this eventually.”
“And we will, as soon as Mom gets to know her a little. But until then it look like you're a sea cow, Enomena,” giggled my sister.
“Moooooooooooooo!”
“Sea cows don't moo!” harrumphed Jasper, which started us both mooing at him and giggling.
And our laughing together felt sooooo good! Because from the moment those pirates grabbed me---and especially after I jumped overboard and got left to drown---it was seeming more and more certain that I would never laugh like this again.
Plus the dolphin ambassador had a stiff, serious and rather preachy way about him (which I would learn is not typical of dolphins at all...) that made acting childish and silly around him even funnier.
But Jasper was also decent and kind, and not totally humorless. He said, “Sea Gods and little fishes! The Queen is going to have her hands full now that there's two of you. You'd better be careful or she'll wind up banishing you both.”
“She would not!” snapped Anemone, suddenly cross.
“No of course not; I was kidding. But she does seem a little banishment happy these days. Nearly half of her household staff!”
“Mr. and Mrs. Pescanova were spies, Jasper. Don't start on that again!”
“Alleged spies.”
“They could have had a trial. And they accepted Mom's summary banishment instead of going in front of the magistrates on charges of treason. What does that tell you?”
“That they were afraid they might be convicted simply for being from Amazonia.”
“What are you guys talking about?” I asked. “Banishment?”
“It's what we do with criminals,” said Princess Anemone. “Kick them out. It's better than being tossed into the dungeon like they used to do in the old days. A mer-person can survive okay outside the borders. There's plenty of fish out there.”
“There's also more predators,” said Jasper.
“Well that's what they get for breaking the law; let them go doss it out in the seaweed! And what choices do you think the Amazonians would give to anyone they suspected of being a spy?! You know what they'd do!”
“It's easy to look good when you compare yourself to a dictatorship. But it's not my place to tell you how to run your country.”
“Which never seems to stop you,” Anemone said. Then she asked, “What is it, Jasper?”
The dolphin hung there, perfectly still, and seemed to be listening to something far away. Then he said, “It seems I'm needed. There's some emergency out in Coral Park. A hero's life and all that!”
“Go be a hero!” Anemone urged him, “And thanks for coming anyway, Jass.”
“Sorry I wasn't more help. Say, before I go could you give me a shot?”
“Of course,” she said. She grabbed the hose of the air tank hanging from him and after he exhaled a great blast of bubbles, pressed the end of it to his blowhole.
”Easy,” he said as she turned the handle, “I don't want to blow up like a balloon!”
“I know how to do it...”
It wasn't like filling a tire, or like a camel storing up water. Cetaceans don't hold their breath or store oxygen in some special compartment; it gets diffused throughout their fatty tissue. He took five long deep breaths and after blowing the last one out, said, “Thank you! That hit the spot.”
“Any time,” said Anemone. She shut the air off and tucked the end of the hose through his collar.
“It was a pleasure meeting you Enomena,” Jasper Five said, nodding one last time, then took off like a shot into the black water, calling back, “Safe swimming, you two!“
“Safe swimming,” the mermaid princess shouted after him. Which I would learn is a common farewell among the creatures that live down here. A half superstitious polite-ism; which everyone knows means 'I hope you don't get eaten!', but nobody wants to come right out and say it like that.
.
.
)))====> WE SHALL FIGHT THEM UNDER THE SEAS & OCEANS...
.
“So that air tank is for him?” I asked.
“He found it last week and had me rig it up where he could wear it like that. He's been on this 'rescue dolphin' kick ever since, and is convinced he's supposed to save some human with it. But we're sort of out of the way from all the human places and don't get a lot of drowning victims. I think you're the first in my whole lifetime. So he blew his big chance when he stopped to settle that starfish feud...”
“Which is probably just as well. Even if you and him got me fixed up and pushed me up to the surface I'd still be stranded out in the middle of the ocean.”
“The castle does have a couple of dry rooms you'd be able to survive in, but I would've had to sneak you in. I doubt if mom would let a human in the front door.”
“Even if I was drowning?”
“She might give you some salvaged styrofoam to float on, and maybe a stick for a paddle. But after that you'd be on your own,” she said, and mimicked a rolling contalto voice: 'Let the hew-monns worry about the hew-monns...'”
“Well, that's better than just leaving me out there with nothing,” I said. (Stupid asshole pirates!)
“I don't think Mom could bring herself to do that, not even to a 'crawler'. Although once she did enough to be able to tell her conscience 'See? I gave him a chance!' she'd probably be wishing you would drown.”
“She must really hate us!”
“She does, but that's not why she'd wish that. Every time a land dweller even gets a glimpse of one of us she worries for months that they'll be coming back with boats packed full of sonar equipment and underwater cameras, and a whole army of divers out looking for mermaids.”
“Okay. I can see how that would be something to worry about. And what about you, do you hate humans?”
Anemone didn't say anything for a while. I'd already noticed how unusually big her eyes were, but here under the garden's strings of bubble lights I could see they were a dazzling shade of blue that I don't think any land person's eyes ever had. Looking into them was intense. Finally she said, “No, I don't hate humans. But they frighten me too, in a different way than Mom. I'm more worried about their pollution, and overfishing, and how they might blow up the planet some day!”
“They scare me with that stuff too,” I said.
“But from the human books I've read I know there's some wonderful things about your race. And Daddy, who broke our most important rule and got to know some humans said they're just like anybody. There's nice ones and not-so-nice ones. He was a submarine scout, helping protect the Atlantic convoys for the good guys in your second World War.”
“How old is he?” I asked. My own parents hadn't been born until about the Vietnam War.
“He's only ninety-two,” she said, “So he was still a teenager when he went to war. He did some spying with a waterproof camera in the enemy's naval harbors and shipyards, and this rocket-place called Peenemunde; and helped save the crew of the submarine Lady Guinevere when it got sunk in the North Sea.”
Which answered my question about which side she considered the good guys. With a name like Lady Guinevere it probably wasn't a German boat. I said, “That's awesome!”
“George Six thought so too.”
“George Six is a dolphin?”
“No he's a king. A human king. He sent his First Minister to give Daddy a cross on a pretty blue ribbon,” she said, beaming with pride. “It says 'FOR GALLANTRY' on it.”
“Oh that George Six! Was his First Minister a big fat guy named Churchill?”
“Yeah! How did you know?”
“He was kind of famous. And that cross he gave your daddy is a pretty big deal over there.”
“I know. But they had to give it to him in secret, which was fine with Daddy. The last thing he wanted was to get famous in the human world. But Mr. Churchill shook his hand and said he hoped this was the beginning of a great partnership. Because some day 'the children of this island Earth'---he meant humans and mermaids---might have to fight together against a threat even bigger than Crazy Moustache Guy.”
“You mean the Russians?”
“I don't think so. He called them 'creatures of infinite malice, who would exterrrrrrminate us all...'. Daddy thinks he was talking about people from Venus or someplace.”
“Venus?!!” I asked, and burst out laughing.
“Or some place...”
“What was in those cigars he was smoking?!!” I whooped. (It's embarrassing to remember how little I knew about the universe then...)
“And Daddy told Mr. Churchill we would be ready to help, but when he went to Grandma about it she was dead set against it, and almost banished him for helping the humans with their 'silly war'. So there never was a real partnership. But a few months later he did help them steal that Coke machine off an enemy submarine that was sinking.”
“A Coke machine?!!”
“I think that's what he said.”
“Why would they need to steal a Coke machine off a German sub?”
“I have no idea. It's an enigma to me...”
.
.
)))========> THE TWINS THING
.
It was only later that I figured out she meant a code machine. And so obviously Anemone's understanding of the human world was sketchy in places, but she knew way more about us than I ever would about mermaids. I said, “It sounds like your daddy has had some real adventures.”
“He has. And he's your daddy too, now. I hope you can meet him some day...”
“I hope so too. A World War Two hero! I'd like to shake his hand myself.”
“Oh you wouldn't get away with that. He's a real hugger!”
“But you say he's gone missing?” I asked.
She sighed. Sighs sound different underwater but they carry the same emotions. “Just disappeared one day when I was eight...”
“That's awful!”
“It is, but it happens like that a lot down here a lot. You get eaten, or hauled away in a fishing net, and all anyone knows is you're gone.”
“I'm so sorry,“ I told her, “I never lost anybody like that.”
“But in a way you have. When I changed you it changed your whole life. You've just lost everyone and everything you ever knew.”
“I did, didn't I?” I suddenly realized. With all the strangeness of these past few hours and having been just about resurrected from the dead it hadn't sunk in yet, how different things were going to be for me now. My whole future.
“And I'm sorry for that,” she burbled.
“Don't be. You could of used your last wish for anything, and you used it to save me. Someone you didn't even know.”
“I know you would've done the same for me.”
I thought about it, and she was right. You would pretty much have to after you tried every other way to rescue someone. I said, “Well thank you! And there was this other problem I had, that maybe wasn't as bad as drowning but it felt like it a lot of the time. And you and your genie totally fixed that. And I might be even more grateful for that part of it. Because I don't just have life now, I have my life. Finally, the way it always should have been!”
“Really?! You wanted to be a mermaid that bad?”
“It was more about wanting to be a girl. Or it was like I already was one inside, and the male body and life I had just felt all wrong on me. So whether it's mermaid, or a human girl, or a... Well no, I guess that's it. I wouldn't want to be turned into a female bug. Or a dog... or even an ape-girl,” I said, thinking of poor Kiki.
“No, that would just be replacing one kind of wrongness with another.”
“So you do understand!”
“Kind of, but not really. Because I never felt like that about who I am. But I don't have to break my arm to know it hurts. And I sure wouldn't want to be stuck inside a boy's body. So I'm just happy for you, that you got unstuck. And I'm happy for me too; because like Jasper said, I got a sister out of this!” she said, smiling like Christmas morning. But then her smile wavered, “Or at least I hope you'll want to stick around...”
It hadn't even occurred to me that I might do anything else. I said, “of course I will! I'm not going to leave my only sister.”
Her smile blossomed again, bigger than ever. “Oh! That is... that is just so...”
Not finding the word she was searching for she kicked her tail once to close the few feet between us and threw her arms around me. I hugged her back every bit as eagerly.
I don't know if it was everything she'd done for me, or some family-loyalty instinct lodged in the brain I had now, or that fabled near-telepathic bond that twins are supposed to possess; but I loved this mermaid with my whole heart already. And from her nothing-held-back loving embrace I could tell she felt the same way.
We had each been an only child, and now we weren't. And we both had lost family---and me very recently---but now I'd found someone who was instantly and mysteriously and hugely important to me. I can't say I loved her any more than I did my human parents, but the suddenness of this made it seem so intense, and it was different. It seemed to go back a lot farther than the hour or so I'd known her, and had me wondering how I could have lived my whole life without ever realizing I'd been missing her.
We separated, and Anee said, “Are you ready to go wake up Mom and see what she says.”
“I guess so,” I said. I was afraid that this could end us being sisters before we even really started, but I knew we had to. I sighed. “The moment of truth...”
“Gods, no! Not the truth... You were a sea cow, remember?”
“Moooooooo!”
“Mooooooooooooo!!!” she echoed as we swam toward the impossible towering glob of seashells that would be my home now, or not...
“Hey, are you hungry?” she asked.
“Famished!”
“Me too. I'm so hungry I could eat a seahorse!"
"They're not very big," I said.
"No, but they taste so nasty you'd have to be starving to eat one. After we get you introduced to Mom I'll ask the maid to make us some breakfast. Maybe some nice bluefin. Do you like sashimi?”
“I love it!” I said, “I could eat sushi every day.”
Which turned out to be a good thing. They didn't do a lot of cooking down here since it was hard to keep a stove lit underwater...
.
.
I didn't learn all of the following during our short trip to the house but in bits and pieces over the next week. Here in a clamshell is:
)))========> MERMAID HISTORY 101
My new mother was Queen Atlantea of Hatteria; Hatteria being one of the “Nine Queendoms” in the half of the Atlantic that lie north of the equator. The name didn't have anything to do with hats or hatters but where this castle and the village next to it were located- the Hatteras Rise, a shallow region of the ocean right at the edge of the drop off to the deep dark Hatteras Basin. It seemed to me like our little rise had once been trying to turn itself into an island of five thousand square miles but just didn't have enough tectonic ooomph! to make it all the way to the surface. But it did have one or two tiny islands that had managed to poke themselves up into the air.
Our queendom was a monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, with the Queen having more power than an American president, and a whole lot more than the Kings and Queens of modern day Europe have, but less than they did in centuries past. She could veto any law but usually didn't, knowing that a popular vote could repeal any of her edicts, or even theoretically depose her in favor of the next person in line for the throne.
All of the world's mermaid civilizations lie in shallow waters, mostly along the continental shelves of the different landmasses. By human standards our underwater countries were tiny. What we called a kingdom wouldn't be much more than a town up on land. Even before its population began to dwindle Hatteria had contained no more than 300,000 citizens. And Anemone said she doubted if there were currently even a million merpeople in the whole North Atlantic Ocean. And even the most populated place in Earth's hydrosphere---the Great Yangtze Bank between Shanghai and Okinawa---couldn't boast much more than that. (But luckily our populations worldwide were on the rebound and merkind was no longer dwindling away toward extinction...)
We called ourselves the Nine Queendoms, even though little Vinlandia up in the chilly waters off of Greenland was actually a kingdom. And some of the queendoms currently had kings ruling them. What made a mermaid nation a kingdom or a queendom was which of the two would be the big boss monarch if that country had both a living king and a queen. But other than that these countries all enjoyed equality between the sexes, my sister said, as guaranteed by the Charter of Universal Rights that the nine NAUTILUS nations (North Atlantic United by Treaty Into a League of Undersea States) had all agreed to.
But from what I would see during my week here, Hatteria seemed to have more women holding important jobs than men- like our First Minister Aballonia Neptunelli. And the way we tended to use the word “mermaids” to include mermen as well (the way English-speaking humans will say “man” to mean both men and women) seemed like a sign that our society might have been seriously sexist against males in the past...
A huge chunk of the Southern Atlantic was under the rule of the Amazonian Empire; Amazonia not being some tribe of groovy lesbian warrior-supermodels but the far more pedestrian and very totalitarian regime off the coast of Brazil that was doing all the invading and conquering down there. For the past forty years they've seemed content to just hold on to the places they already conquered, and the ambassadors they send up here talk real sweet about their deep desire for “friendship” and “peaceful co-existence” with the North Atlantic. But this is the same thing they told each of their South Atlantic neighbors just before they gobbled them up.
It was partly out of mistrust of this empire that the queendoms and kingdoms of the north had formed into our commonwealth in the 1970's- all of them adopting that Charter of Rights and a single currency; doing away with trade tariffs and making sure all nine armies were ready to fight together in an organized way if mean old nasty Empress Ramora launched an invasion.
And the woman I was swimming to meet was not just our local Queen but also President-Director of the NAUTILUS alliance. She had just been elected to her second ten-year term doing that, so “Mummy” was a pretty big wheel in this hemisphere...
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)))========> SHE FOLLOWED ME HOME, CAN I KEEP HER?
EARLY MONDAY (AUGUST 25):
.
As we swam through the Castle's big arched cathedral doors and into the ornate entry hall Anemone put her finger across her lips, signaling me to be quiet. Just inside the door an elderly merman lay sprawled in a heavy wooden Adirondack chair, sound asleep and hugging a crossbow spear gun. He was totally naked except for his big tall furry black grenadier's hat and an armband with sergeant's stripes on it.
“One of your palace guard?” I whispered.
“That is the palace guard. Bassby's been with us since Grandma's reign.”
I could believe that. The green of his tail had faded to an olive drab color, and with that pewter-grey beard almost down to his navel he looked to be about a hundred years old. Sergeant Bassby was snoring loudly and blowing out bubbles.
“He's not a very good guard, is he?”
“Shhhhhhhh! Just let him sleep,” she said as we continued on down this golden hallway you could pilot a good size submarine through. She yawned and said, “I wish I was conked out like that. I've been up all night.”
“You and me both,” I said. And now I had to yawn too. But being regular tired like this felt amazingly good compared to that terrifying life-draining can't-move-a-mucle fatigue of my first eight or ten minutes underwater, which it seems should of caused some serious brain damage, but if there was any it was fixed during my transformation.
At an intersection in the hallways there was a large aerator-fountain in the form of a five foot tall replica of the castle we were in, Anemone told me to wait here where she could be sure to find me, then went to go wake up her mom.
I floated there watching the air bubbles churning out of all the miniature castle's porthole windows and the tops of its domes and spires. I always figured there must have been a pump room of some sort down in the bowels of the castle, that ran the aerators on each floor and kept the water circulating, a current moving through the whole place, barely perceptible in most of the rooms but stronger in the hallways. And while it was no doubt the least glamorous part of the whole building I'd wanted to check it out. But with so many other things to see---gaudy new marvels around every corner---it kept slipping my mind, and I never saw it or found out what powered its pumps. It could have been Oompa-Loompas running on treadmills for all I know.
She got back five minutes later and led me to door of the Throne Room, where I had to wait again...
From out in the corridor I could hear Queen Atlantea and her daughter arguing about me. It reminded me of the day I had tried to bring that dog home---who I had already named River Tam---except this time I was the dog. I was worried about what the queen would decide, and really hoped she wouldn't turn out to be allergic to me like my mom was to poor River, but when I saw my reflection in one of the great gold framed mirrors that lined the big hallway I pretty much forgot about everything else...
From the waist up I was a beautiful teenage girl. My face---with dimpled cheeks and nice full lips---was just gorgeous.
And maybe it's terribly vain to say “my face” and “gorgeous” in the same sentence. But while I wouldn't have called myself ugly---I was glad that I hadn't been cursed with glaringly masculine features---“gorgeous” sure wasn't how I would have described myself 24 hours earlier. And I knew this face and body weren't anything I could take credit for, even on a genetic level. It was a gift; A total makeover brought about by someone else's genes, someone else's magic. So just let me be happy about this for now. 'Kay?
I smiled at the mermaid in the mirror and she smiled back, revealing a dazzling white set of teeth that could have been used in a toothpaste ad except for her somewhat longer than human upper canines. Since I didn't feel any desire to bite anyone's neck I figured this had to do with our mostly-fish diet.
My long lashed eyes were human looking, but their irises were the same dazzling technicolor blue as Anemone's, and like hers they were big- about a third of theway between normal-sized and the gigantic ones that an anime character has (which seem okay on them because that's the style, but if you saw someone with eyes like that in real life you'd scream!). This might explain why I could see farther through the water at night as a mermaid than when I was male and human and drowning. And I could see even better now in this well-lit corridor.
My arms and hands were graceful and slender with naturally coral-tinted nails that extended about a half an inch past the tips of my fingers, their tips an oval shape that human women needed to file theirs into (which I thought was pretty but later would realize had evolved for catching fish, and was why they were also far sturdier than human nails...).
My breasts were a whole lot fuller than I'd ever hoped to someday get from taking hormones, since neither my mom or my Dad's sisters were real busty, and transsexuals usually end up a cup size or so smaller there than the other women in their family. As I've mentioned, my abdominal region would be way too narrow on a human, but I was already starting to get use to it (I rather liked my navel and the way it sat in there); and as I would find out this was totally normal for us, since our intestines and several major organs were down in our tails. And speaking of tails...
Waking up to discover that you're half fish is something that would make most people totally freak out. But that scared confused little kid I used to be---who wondered what the heck was wrong with him and why he couldn't jump into the ocean, grow fins and be a pretty mermaid (but after that incident in the bathtub was smart enough not to try it)---was still inside me somewhere. And he/she was real happy, not just about being a girl finally but also with being a mermaid and able to live underwater. She seemed to be telling me: 'See?! I TOLD ya they was real!!
My new tail was longer than my legs had been by two feet well over a half a meter. I'm not sure what would make one fish tail more beautiful than another, but I loved how mine was so streamlined. I loved the slick feel of my scales under my hand, and their rich emerald green color. And this tail wasn't just pretty, it was functional.
I started swimming around in front of the mirror, astonished by what I could do. I had known how to swim before, but compared to this you could hardly that kicking-your-feet-and-flapping-your-arms business swimming. Just over half my body was about nothing but swimming now! (Well it was also about going to the bathroom and laying eggs, but I wouldn't find these holes until later, way farther down my body than where I expected them to be...).
I performed all kinds of crazy maneuvers, twisting and spinning and doing loop-de-loops that you would think might make me dizzy but didn't at all. Swimming like this felt so good I was laughing, my golden hair flashing in the light from those weird chandeliers made of glowing bubbles.
“A-hem!” went a woman's voice.
It was an octopus, in what had to be an octopus version of a maid's apron and cap, the closest thing to clothes I had seen anyone wearing down here. She waved toward the doorway with her tentacle and said coldly, “Excuse me, Miss. If you're finished with your cavorting Her Majesty will see you now.”
“Sorry,” I said, “It's just I've never been a mermaid before.”
“I gather not.”
Being a mermaid meant I could talk to all the animals in the sea, but I would learn that you didn't want to get trapped in a conversation with the dumber ones, which was most of them down here. Although Octavia the octopus was anything but dumb, and would turn out to be pretty nice, but was only acting like this until she knew for sure how to treat me---like I was one of the gentries, or just common mertrash---depending on what Queen Atlantea decided.
“All right, let's have a look at you. Let's see what my daughter spent her last wish on,” said the Queen as I swam into the Throne Room.
She was sitting in a big fancy throne that was very tall so her long tail could hang down the front. Her human half strongly resembled Judy Dench, a younger (maybe about 50) Judy Dench, with hair that shone like actual silver in a fairly short shag cut. And I won't say she was real fat, but most human women as stout and chubby as her don't go around naked. On her head was a crown made out of pearls the size of ping pong balls all stuck together somehow.
I didn't know how these people bowed to their queen so I went right down on the marble floor, as humble as I could, and though it was sort of awkward to kneel without knees I managed to (and found my egg-hole in the process, this tender hollow feeling place in me that I had pressed against the floor...); down on my elbows with my head hung way down.
“Now that isn't helping me look at you, is it? Up, dear! All this genuflection isn't necessary,” said the queen, sounding like she was trying not to laugh.
My sister had told me a few things about this woman, but not how to address her, “Sorry Your Highn- um, Madame Presi- er, Your Momness.”
As I looked up I saw her big silver-gray eyes go all soft and her jaw start to kind of tremble. She sighed as she held open her arms, “Oh! You look just like her. How could I not love that? Whatever you were before, you're my daughter now. Come here!”
I swam to her and she gave me a big old mom hug. After such a scary night---with that boatload of pirates threatening to make me their bitch, and crazy Kiki chasing me with that sword, and everything else---it was just what I needed. I hugged her back tight. Sometimes you just need a mom.
“You too,” she sang to Anemone, who was hovering meekly in the corner after being chewed out so intensely, and who swam over to be embraced by her mom too. She kissed us each on the forehead then said to Anemone, “I can't think of a finer use for your last wish, Sweetheart. You have a friend now, a sister. And I have another lovely daughter, to fill this big house with song and carry on the family name. I'm sure we shall all get along swimmingly! All we need now is to make this official, and as soon as Octavia gets here with the- Ah! Here she is!”
.
.
)))========> THE PRINCESS PROCESS
.
Octavia the maid had entered the room. She did an octopus version of a curtsy, and said. “Sorry it took me so long.... I couldn't remember the blessed combination!”
“No Octavia, your timing was perfect,” said Atlantea, releasing us from her grip. Anemone moved back away from her a few feet, so I did the same.
The maid was holding tiaras in two of her tentacles. They were nearly identical, delicate silver lacework with lots of pearls and gemstones in them. Except one had a large blue sapphire in the center of the big part in front and the other an almond-sized red ruby.
“This one's mine,” said Anemone, taking the sapphire one. Octavia handed Atlantea the other.
“Will that be all then, Mum?” asked Octavia.
“No we need you to serve as a witness for this. And I'll want your sucker print on the documents when I draw them up tomorrow,” the Queen told her. She looked at me, and with joy in her voice said, “I was afraid we would never be needing this little crown. Come forward, Daughter.”
Her throne was so tall that I didn't have to try the kneeling thing again but just hovered in front of it, a bit lower than her, as she held the tiara over my head with both hands and gave a speech making me promise to abide by and uphold the laws of the Queendom of Hatteria...
“I will,” I said.
And to defend our Queendom against all enemies---and against calamities both natural and human made---with my life if necessary...
“I will,” I promised, hoping I could be brave enough if it came to that but that I would never have to find out.
And to rule with wisdom, acting decisively when the course was clear, and seeking the counsel of wiser minds when it wasn't. To have the strength to make unpopular decisions for the long term good of the Queendom. And to remember that I was the people's servant as much as I was their ruler, and to always put their needs ahead of my own...
My rank as princess wouldn't be one that allowed me to do much ruling---I couldn't make up laws or have anyone's head cut off---which was fine by me. What she was talking about was the future; if something ever happened to both her and Anemone and I wound up sitting in the Big Chair. That day if it ever came it would be a grief-filled one for me, but I promised this too.
I promised to rule by example, and to comport myself in a manner befitting a Princess of the Realm, embodying the qualities of fairness, compassion, honesty, good hygiene-
Well you know, it was your standard you're-gonna-be-a-princess-now boilerplate. I said yes to all of it, knowing it would mean a lot of responsibility and doing stuff I didn't like. But this was the family I was adopted by, and I would try to pull my share of the load.
For me these promises were mostly about how I would get to be sisters with Anemone, which didn't seem like the most noble or selfless reason to pledge oneself to somebody's country. But I figured all the noble stuff---loving and being proud of and believing in my new homeland---would come after I'd actually seen the place...
“Then, in the presence of this court, in the name of the Queendom, and by all the gods past, present and yet to be born, I name you Enomena, Second Princess of Hatteria,” she said, and pushed the tiara down onto my head.
It was a profound moment. This was suddenly all real to me. Not a dream, a hallucination or a cartoon. Real.
I had long since decided this with my brain, as the evidence for this being real began to outweigh how impossible it all was; But everything had still felt very dreamlike---not quite solid somehow---right up until she'd put this thing on my head.
“Well that's done,” she smiled, and went to take the tiara back.
Maybe it wasn't the beautiful little crown itself that had made me feel suddenly grounded in this mermaid reality, but it somehow seemed like it, and as she reached out for it my hand went up to hold it right where it was. “Can't I wear it?”
“What do you mean, wear it?”
“I mean... you know, on my head. Just for a day or so...”
“Don't be silly!”
“Not even for an hour? Pleeeeease?!” I asked, in a whiny juvenile voice that surprised me.
Maybe it was that little wanna-be princess I had once been, who had never owned even a cheap plastic toy tiara (she had always been dragged past them in the toy store, toward more “gender appropriate” toys), and who really, really, really didn't want to let go of this one.
Atlantea took the crown off her own head and said. “All of these need to go back in the Treasure Room for safekeeping. These headpieces are for ceremonial purposes only. You don't think kings and queens go around wearing crowns all day, do you?”
“They do in the mo-” I was halfway through saying the word 'movies' when I realized that a sea cow wouldn't know what a movie was, and I covered for my blunder with the only thing I could think of; Bellowing: “MOOOOOOOOOO I'M A SEA COW!!!”
Queen Atlantea's mouth dropped open. This might have been the start of people thinking their new princess was simple-minded and weird.
And then I remembered that sea cows don't 'moo' either, so I said, “Sorry, force of habit! My herd lives down in Lake Okeedokee, which is right next to a big cow pasture. And we sort of picked up the mooing thing from the land cows.”
“I see...”
“Or maybe not, I'm still kind of confused,” I said when I saw the panic-stricken 'Shut the hell up!' look my sister was giving me.
“Yes, I imagine this is all very strange to you. But I'm sure you'll soon be fitting right in with our happy little herd,” Mom said. And this time when she tried to take my tiara I let her. “But for right now it's late, or rather it's early, and I know we could all use some sleep. We'll have to find a bed for you.”
“She can sleep in my bed,” said Anemone, “I've got my new hammock I still haven't hung up out in the garden.”
“Good, then we'll deal with beds and paperwork and such morning. I'll see you both then,” said the Queen, and kissed me on the cheek, “Welcome to your new home, Sweetheart.”
.
My home... My sister... My mom... A pretty wonderful ending to a very horrible night.
.
'Plus I'm a real genuine honest-to-God mermaid,' I thought, 'This is gonna be GREAT!'
.
.
And it was, while it lasted.
.
.
.
Way back in another life---before I was kidnapped by pirates and jumped overboard in the dead of night and almost drowned but got turned into a mermaid by a genie from a bottle---my friend Pepper used to say how I was lucky to not have any siblings. Every visit, texting or phone call had at least one epic tale about the latest fight with her sister or how the little brat would borrow Pepper's things without asking, and then lose them or just leave them laying somewhere half wrecked...
But I could never quite believe that having a sister like Ginger wasn't good at least as often as it was bad. After being an only child for all my life, being twins with a mermaid princess was.... WoNDeRfuL!!!!
Maybe if Anemone and I had grown up together it wouldn't seem so special, but I was too new to this life to take any part of it for granted. It was hard to feel like there was anything worth fighting about when just brushing my long soft golden hair put me on a total high, if I wasn't already on one from having woke up in my clam shell bed that morning to discover: “Yep, still a princess!”
Anemone had been an only child until now too, and she was loving us being sisters as much as I was. We went everywhere and did everything together, and all the ocean's dolphins and whales and sea turtles, the fish, the stars, the shrimps and lobsters (but not so much the crabs...) and even the unbelievably stupid sponges were our friends.
.
BEFORE DAWN, MONDAY AUGUST 25:
.
Things could have gone very different for me as a mermaid, and for a while it seemed like it was touch and go, as I waited outside the door while Anemone broke the news to Queen Atlantea that she'd used her last genie-wish to create me.
Her mom was furious, and loud enough to hear from out in the corridor: “Your third wish was supposed to be kept for emergencies! What if there's a war with the South Atlantic? Or our village is discovered by humans? Or there's an oil spill like the one that brought all those Greasebowl refugees out here from the Gulf four years ago? That last wish might have meant our survival someday!”
“I know, I know, and I'm sorry! It was just a crazy impulse; I.... I was just so lonely,” crowed Anemone, sticking to our cover story.
“'Sorry' doesn't change anything!” the Queen's voice boomed, “I only hope you won't come to regret this, when you and your so-called sister are fleeing for your lives from something your Genie could have neutralized.”
“I know it doesn't help but I am sorry; and if you don't like me being sorry then I'm sorry for being sorry! And punish me if you have to, but don't punish Enee for my mistake. She's already lost her whole life as a sea cow, she's got nowhere else to go now. And she's nice, Mom! You should at least meet her...”
Which Queen Atlantea finally did, calling me into the room, where she had an instant change of heart; Or more likely she'd already decided to welcome me into their family before even setting eyes on me, but had also decided to yell at her daughter until it felt like she'd put her through just the right amount of grief and worry before letting her off the hook. Even our mom's outburst were usually purposeful and deliberate...
.
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)))========> THE END OF A ROUGH NIGHT
.
We'd both had a long rough night, so after some mumbo-jumbo that officially made me a princess it was time for bed. My sister led me up through a confusion of halls and tube-things to her room. Bigger than my own bedroom but not by a whole lot, the room reminded me of a suite in some whimsical hotel.
There was a big circular picture window that took up most of one wall, with a nice view of the lit up gardens four stories below. This window didn't open, but one alongside of it that was barely big enough to stick your head out of did. Anemone saw me looking at it and said, “If you need to peepoo you stick the end of your tail out through that.”
Peepoo. So apparently pissing and pooping weren't separate functions for mermaids, but all our waste left us through a single process. Like fish. “So I just crap out the window? That seems kind of crude!”
“This high up the current dilutes it...”
For a moment I wondered why they hadn't just put a door there instead of making us swin all the way down to the first floor to enter or leave our home, until I remembered this was a castle. A single way in and a single way out was pretty much a defining feature of castles. I asked, “And if I'm outside, I just go... anywhere?”
“Sure, but use common sense. If you're around other people go off by yourself a ways. Preferably downcurrent.”
"Ah," I nodded, “like when you're camping.”
“I suppose,” shrugged Anemone. She took off her belt and calling conch, and opening the hatch of a gutted front-loading washing machine stuck them on one of the shelves inside. “You can use the bed tonight.”
“I'll just take the hammock,” I said because the clam-shell bed she was offering me looked kind of small. The hammock was human made, and it looked brand new. I asked, “Where did you get this?”
“Courtesy of Hurricane Bubba...”
“Bubba was a bad one,” I said. “Well not where we were, it skipped past us, but I remember how insane all the stores were, everyone trying to stock up on emergency supplies. We were lucky that time. So what's a hurricane like down here?”
“Not fun. It gets dark, the water gets cold and really salty and almost too dirty to breathe; and so rough it can kill fish and mess up the coral beds. We stay inside mostly. But afterwards you find all kinds of interesting land-people stuff.”
“Did it drag that washing machine all the way out here?”
“My dresser? I don't know where this came from, I've had it since I was little. Oh, and speaking of finding stuff, look at this!” she said, reaching into the washer and pulling out her conch-on-a-bootlace.
I nodded, smiled. It was a pretty shell. “I've seen it.”
“No you haven't. This is the one you saw,” she said, and pulled out another.
“My God, they're identical!”
“Almost. But when you look at them side by side you can see the bumps and stripes are a little different and this one's about a half a fingerwide longer,” she said, dangling the supposedly longer one in front of me on its leather loop, “Here!”
“For me?”
“I know it's only a seashell and not a tiara with jewels all over it, but it's something.”
“No, this is better than that old thing,” I said as I took it from her, ”Way better!”
That tiara had only been about being a 'princess'---like the play-acting of an odd little boy alone in his room with all his Disney crap. This was about being a sister, and it was REAL. (I guess my princess status was real too now, but compared to having Anee in my life it seemed about as big of a deal as having a job at McDonalds.) As I slipped it over my head and down around my neck I was just able to utter a garbled “Wow... thanks!” around the lump in my throat.
“When I found them lying right next to each other out in the kelp forest I thought it was just a weird coincidence, and pretty cool to have a new conch and a perfect spare one for it. But after the genie changed you last night, I'm thinking...”
“What? Like Fate or something?”
“Whatever you want to call it. Eris Hathor, our church's priestess says our Mother Ocean has a spirit and a purpose for everything within her. And with the way I found these, and then finding two big shoes with strings for both of them the very next day, just sitting side by side on the sea floor, I can believe that. You never find two shoes together like that!”
We tried to put up the hammock up but there wasn't really anything to hang it on in here so I just removed the two sticks that spread its ends out wide, folded it twice and laid it on the floor.
“Is that gonna be enough? You can have some of this bedding if you want,” she said, grabbing a handful of kelp from inside her clam bed.
“No, don't mess up your bed. This'll be fine for one night,” I said and stretched out on my hammock-mat, pretending to be more comfortable than I was.
“Then how about one of my pillows?” she asked, pulling out the dull yellow skeleton of a sponge the size of a soccer ball.
“Now that I can use, thanks,” I said and stuck the big soft ball of cellulose under my head. And clutching my conch shell to my chest with one hand I fell asleep before she'd even climbed into her bed and closed it up.
.
.
)))========> GIRL FUN
.
I assumed it was either my mom or my dad who was shaking my shoulder.
“Alright, alright, I'm up already!"
Opening my eyes I saw the rubbery translucent tail fin of some great big fish about an inch from my nose. I startled---WTF?!!!---and tried to push this weird thing that seriously did not belong here out of my bed.
Which I felt. Not just with my fingertips but with my tail. My tail?!!?
'Oh, that's right,' I remembered, 'I have one of these now...'
And along with it I had this new life, which even though it started out really scary and seemed to be right out of some loopy fantasy novel (Susan's Adventures Down the Crazy-Ass Whirlpool...) hadn't been entirely horrible.
“Good morning,” I said as I straightened out and rolled over, assuming it was my new sister who had shaken me awake.
The Queen was hovering in the water above me, peering down at me, “What are doing you sleeping on the floor?”
“We couldn't get this hammock hung up, and we didn't want to start knocking holes in the walls.”
“Well thank you for that,” she said, “But from now on you won't have to bed down in the dirt like some mangy wildmer.”
She told me there were two mermen out in the hall with a big clamshell bed, and I would need to pick out one of the castle's two hundred or so empty rooms for my bedroom, that these delivery guys would shlep my bed to, and which she'd let me decorate any way I wanted that wasn't insanely expensive to do.
“I kind of thought I'd be staying in here,” I said, but then realized how presumptuous this was. Of course Anemone would want her own space...
Except she didn't. She shoved the top of her bed open and sat up, saying, “Have them bring it in here. This is our room now.”
“Why don't we let Enomena make up her own mind? I know you had her created but she's not a play thing, some golem you can boss around. She's a person!”
I shook my head. “She's not being bossy. And I do want to stay here.”
“Why though?” asked the Queen, “We have so many unused rooms here.”
“I don't know, it just seems right. Because when me and her are together, it's like we have this...” I searched for a word that would describe the strong bond I'd felt with Anemone since the moment we became twins.
“It's like we have FUN!!!!” barked my sister, looking over at me with a goofy smile on her face.
“Yeah, fun,” I said.
Because fun was definitely part of it. A kind of fun I hadn't really got to enjoy much before I met her...
.
==========>
Since about second grade I'd been compiling this mental list of all the “girl things” I was missing out on and would love to do someday. And having slumber parties with other girls my age was definitely up near the top of that list.
The closest I'd come to this had been a few nights one summer when I was invited over to Tommy Crenshaw's house to unroll sleeping bags in a pup tent in his back yard. And I can't say those were miserable times. We watched some good horror movies on his laptop in there, and we laughed a lot; but in the back of my mind as I told some gross out joke that I knew would crack Tommy up was the sense that I was halfway playing a role that was expected of me...
Just after sundown on our third camp-out together, I was looking out the open front flap of our tent and realized that from where we'd pitched it this time I could see into the window of the bedroom his kid sisters shared.
And even though they were dumb little five and six year olds and their play was kind of babyish for me, I wished I could be in there with the girls instead of bivouacking with Tommy and his collection of Sargent Rock comic books. You can only shine a flashlight on the tent's roof and bring your hand down over it so it looks like a giant hand descending on you and fake-scream “Aaaaaaaaah!” so many times before it loses its magic. Can only have so many discussions about whether Ant Man could beat up The Atom before your interest shrinks down to nothing...
Around 8:00 I'd gone into the house to use the bathroom (Tommy's parents had nixed his idea of digging a trench latrine) when Haley---the five year old---came out and held out her Barbie for me, and then her Barbie's head, which had come off, and wanted me to fix it for her. I was able to push the head back on hard enough that it slipped back over the rim of the neck. Then I had to rearrange Barbie's hair because it was all disheveled, and Barbie doesn't do disheveled well, and then kiss her to make it better, because it's a horrible thing to have your head come off. Then the girl grabbed onto my fingers and said we had to go meet Barbie's friends. And she was such an adorable little munchkin I had to say sure; and before I knew it I was sitting on the floor of their room with Haley and her sister, and they were piling their toys on me...
I think this was when being a babysitter went on my list of girl-things I'd like to do. Because although I wasn't playing their games with quite the same total lost-in-the-pretendingness that these kids were, it was still fun. It was a trip because they were such a trip!
We just had the tea set put out the way we wanted it and were eating the tiny rock-hard magic marshmallows out of a very stale box of Lucky Charms (“These are what the fairies eat!”) when that suspicious looking truck I'd been keeping my eye on turned into a Decepticon and tried to attack Cowgirl Jessie, but the Teddy Bear was fighting him off, and Haley and Annette were squealing and laughing and bouncing off the walls.... when Tommy came in to see what was keeping me so long.
And so what if I had a pair of bright pink Totally Barbie! sunglasses on and a few plastic hibiscus leis around my neck, and I'd been sprinkled with some magic glitter to keep the crocodiles away, because who wants those icky crocodiles crashing their tea party?
It would have done Tommy a world of good to play with his sisters like this once in a while. They adored him, and he was nothing but dismissive and insulting toward them. He gawked at me in utter horror, “Du-u-ude! What are you DOING?!!”
“We're Magic Sparkle Fairy Princesses!” squeaked Annette.
Tommy didn't come right out and call me a fag, even though it was becoming his favorite word in those days (and in junior high it would get much worse). And that moment didn't immediately kill our friendship, but we were both starting to realize that the last thing I wanted to become was the kind of teenager he would evolve into, with that Code of Dudeliness that forbid such things as straightforward expressions of affection, or even smiling if it came from any emotions outside of a ridiculously narrow “manly” range of them. It was an attitude and a posture that were as bizarre to me as my failing to embrace them was to him. Although to Tommy's credit he never did turn into a serious bully---even when he started posseying with a bunch that were---as we drifted apart, each seeking out friends we had more in common with.
So sharing a room with my mermaid sister was going be like making up for lost time when it came to slumber parties and girl-fun in general, and us being the same age and so weirdly on the same wavelength made it perfect...
==========>
.
The Queen looked around the room, “Well it seems silly to me, when you could each have your own. But if this is what you want-”
“It is!” we said together.
“Fine then... In here, gentlemen!”
The mermen brought the bathtub-sized shell in and set it down alongside Anee's. They seemed relieved that they wouldn't have to lug it all over the castle while I acted like a princess: I'll take this room... No wait, that one! Or no, maybe there's a nice one up on the sixth floor...
“There ya go, Little Lady,” said the one who looked like Willie Nelson with a big smile and a wink. His strong non-Hatterian accent surprised me. I looked inquiringly at my sister.
“Gulfies,” she whispered, meaning they were some of those refugees who had moved here from the queendom of Lonstar after that big oil spill in 2010.
I told Mom, “And don't worry about Anee treating me like some Gollum she created. I can be pretty assertive for an ex-sea cow. If she ever starts bossing me around like the cruel slave driver we all know she is, I'll let you know...”
“Stop that! That's just vulgar!” snapped Atlantea when she saw my sister sticking her tongue out at me.
She didn't quite catch me doing it back at Anemone when her back was turned, but from the way her eyes narrowed at me I knew she suspected. “I think I'm going to have to keep an eye on you two. And if it looks like you're not getting enough sleep because you're up all night prattling and playing silly buggers I'll not only separate you, I'll put your rooms in opposite wings of the building...”
.
.
)))========> CATS AND DOGS
.
As she ushered the workmen out and down the hall I checked out my new bed. I opened it, it had hinges where its former occupant's openy/closey muscles had been, and like Anee's bed it had a nest of angel-hair kelp filling its bowl shaped bottom half; which measured about six feet by four. I said, “I've never seen a clam this big before.”
“And you won't, not around here. I guess they grow 'em big wherever they're from.”
“Wherever that is. Because I've seen what are supposed to be the biggest clam species in the world; clamus gigantus or something like that. We have one of them at the place where my mom works. My other mom. And his name is Barney, I guess because he's big and purple. The clam I mean, not my mom. Her name's Shannon, and she's not purple...”
“She works at a restaurant?”
“No, and she'd never work at one that served giant clams, they're super-endangered. She works... Well it's sort of a fish museum; where land people can go and look at what it's like in different oceans. Barney is in the Great Barrier Reef tank, with all the kinds of fish and coral you'd find there, the sea turtles, a whole lot of sharks. And everyone oohs and ahhhs over Barney being so huge, but he's only half the size of these guys and he's a totally different species. These look like clams from the supermarket that got all... Fukushima'd.”
“I don't think they're so fukashumie. They make nice beds.”
“But aren't they a just bit short for us? I know I could sleep in one just fine if I was still human, but we have these tails,” I said, stretching mine out to its full length.
“There's plenty of room in there when you sleep in a circle.”
“But I don't sleep like that.”
“Sure you do. All merpeople do. I saw you go into a circle about thirty seconds after you fell asleep last night...”
“Okay, I guess I did,” I said, remembering how I'd woke up staring at my tail. “So we sleep curled up like a cat.”
“I've never seen a cat. I saw a dog going by on a boat once, but when he saw me he didn't act very friendly at all.”
“Dogs are real friendly when they know you.”
“I think I like cats better. Are cats a good pet?”
“They're great too. We had one when I was little, an orange tabby named Hobbes. He used to sleep on my bed. He was such a sweet cat, real affectionate. I cried and cried when he died.”
“Did he get eaten?”
“Sort of,” I sighed. That bastard who hit him hadn't even slowed down...
“I wish I could have a cat.”
“That might be a problem. Cats don't like water, and they like being underwater even less,” I said, waving my hand around.
“He could live in the library dry room. Of course I'd have to keep the air in there fresh. Or a seal or a sea otter, some kind of mammal. I've had fish but they don't really make good pets. They just follow you around all day going 'Feed me! Feed me!'”
“I know what you mean. After Hobbes died and my mom's allergist said we couldn't have any more pets with fur on them we got a couple of big salt water tanks. There's some beautiful fish in there; but they're not a part of the family like a dog or cat is," I said, and then had an idea: "Hey! What about a dolphin?”
She laughed. “Own a dolphin? I'd like to see you try!”
I nodded. If Jasper was any example I could see what she meant. “So what time is it anyway?”
She peered at the blank sheet of green water beyond our room's porthole window and said, “A little before noon. So what do you wanna do today?”
“I don't know, but right now I would really like to eat something, if that's possible.”
“That's right! We never got around to raiding the kitchen last night. I'm starved too. Float tight, I'll go get us something...”
.
.
)))========> PROPHECIES
.
She came back with a plate of what they called crab cakes here, raw crab and seaweed pressed into patties. She set it on the edge of her bed where I could reach it from mine, and we demolished the whole big stack of them in about a minute, too focused on feeding to even talk. As Anemone set the plate over by the door I flopped back on my bed's padding. “Ahhhh! That was incredible.”
“Octavia's a wizard in the kitchen. When she started filling in there after Mr. and Mrs. Pescanova got deported we were looking to hire a new cook. Now I think we found one and we need a maid. It's not fair for her and Giselle to have to do both jobs now.”
“What I don't understand is how we can even talk with her. How an octopus can sound just like we do, only with better grammar and diction.”
“Even though it seems like you're talking with them you're not really,” she said, “It's more like telepathy. Well actually, it is telepathy. It's something us merpeople can do with sea creatures.”
"Cool! Like Aqualad."
"Who?" she asked, so I explained a little about what comic books were, and about Aquaman and Aqualad. She shook her head, "Humans sure come up with some imaginative stories! I wish I could do half of what these Aqua-guys can. But they got the telepathy-with-fish part sort of right..."
“Are we using telepathy now?” I asked. It still seemed strange that everyone here spoke English.
“No silly, we're talking. Once in a while two merpeople can graze minds, if they're close family. But it's not a thing you could ever count on. A long time ago there used to be real mer-to-mer telepaths, who could read your thoughts as easy as reading a book. A lot of them had important positions in the church or the royal court. But somehow the regular mers got the idea that these 'gifted ones' couldn't just do telepathy, they could put ideas into your head. Control your mind. They began to blame the telepaths for any bad thing that happened, then started hunting and killing them. And they did such a good job of it over the course of about a hundred years that the ability was pretty much eliminated from our gene pool."
"All of them? All over the world?!"
"Three thousand years ago there was no 'all over the world'; all the mermaids were living in one place. It was a horrible messed up time in history, but it might be just as well that we can't. I sure wouldn't want Mom to be able to read my thoughts!”
“Or mine. She'd banish me right off the planet!”
“I don't know. She is really fond of you. You bring out her maternal side.”
“Until she finds out I was a hew-monnnn...”
“I think she'll be able to get over that.”
“You think...”
“Nothing's 100% certain. But I'm sure enough to risk it, that it'll be safe to tell her the truth about all this by a week from today. But by safe I don't mean easy-safe. She'll be furious at us for lying to her, and it will suck like a lamprey to be us for at least a month after that. But whatever her punishment will be we can take it, and we'll have our whole lives after that to recover from it.”
“Our whole lives... I guess for mermaids that's pretty long time.”
“Compared to humans it is, but when my grandma was still around she used to tell me 'Don't just drift through life, make the most of every day. Because your ten or twelve score years will go by faster than you can believe is possible.'”
“Old humans say that too,” I said, “It's weird... Two days ago I had some idea about what my life would be like in five years, ten years or twenty; or at least had ideas about what I wanted. Transitioning, going to college, a job that means something, and hopefully finding a person I could love and wake up next to every morning."
"A boy person or a girl person?"
"I don't know. I think I like both..."
"Oh," she said, as if I was lucky to be so flexible, and that's all there was to me coming out as probably bisexual to my sister. Not a big deal at all.
I said, "But now my whole future is like this big blank. As much as I used to fantasize about it I have no idea what being mermaid really means, or what this life will be like for me...”
“Why don't we find out?” she asked.
“Huh?”
Smiling mysteriously she got up and went over to to the wall, which was made from panels of some shiny mother-of-pearl stuff, and fiddled with one of the panels until it pried free in her hands. Set it down. On the floor behind it was a big wad of purple crushed velvet. “Now here's a secret we're never going to tell Mom about. I mean never! This is a serious crime we're doing here...”
“What is it?” I asked, wondering just what kind of criminal I had for a sister. Some kind of weird mermaid drugs?
“Come here Enee, we're going to tamper with forces not meant for mere mortals.”
She took the parcel to her bed, which she on the edge of with her tail angled out onto the floor. I swam over and sat next to her. She put the thing on a sponge pillow between us and started unwrapping it, slowly, like it was a bomb that might go off. Saying, “This orb is a powerful divination device that I took from our library's Forbidden Room back in spring. I was hoping I could find Daddy with it; And it hasn't told me anything about him yet, but other stuff...”
It was a crystal ball. A cheap-looking one that you could find at any New Age bookstore for about $40.
“What? You're gonna read my future?”
“Don't laugh, this thing works. Like last month, when I saw two of me swimming side by side in it I thought my orb was busted or out of tune or something, but now that vision makes perfect sense. And last week I found a missing kid who everyone thought a shark had got. A rock had rolled down a slope and pinned him, in a spot where the searchers were going right past. Broke his tail---poor little fry---but he'll be up and swimming in a couple of months. Now be quiet, I need to concentrate,” she said, pressing two fingers against her temples on either side of head. Her eyes went all googly as she peered into it.
She was being so melodramatic and spooky about all this I thought she was kidding, and I went: “Eenie Meenie... Chilee Beany... Thee speerits are about to speeeeak!”
“Fine, if you don't want to do this,” she said irritably, and started to wrap it up.
“You mean you were serious?”
“What have I been telling you here?”
“Then I'm sorry, go ahead. I'll be quiet, I swear...”
“Here, give me your hands. I think it will work better if we do it this way.”
She held my hands along either side of the glass ball and gazed into it for a long time. Her expression really did look like she was making contact with something. Finally she spoke, in a slow deep voice, “You will meet... a tall... dark stranger...”
“Oh Man!” I laughed, yanking my hands away. What a gullible twit I was! She'd been playing me this whole time!
“Dammit, you messed it up! The crystal's shut down from all your negativity.”
“Look... a gag's a gag; and you got me! Okay? There's no need to keep going with it.”
“You thought I was joking?”
“'You will meet a tall dark stranger'? That's like the oldest, lamest fortune teller cliché there is!”
“Maybe it is where you come from but I never heard it. And it's what I saw!”
“Wait... Really?!”
“I wouldn't risk having this orb in my room just to play a joke.”
Well I'm sorry then,” I said, still expecting her to bust out laughing at any second about how she'd got me; but she didn't. My sister wasn't like my best-friend-until-yesterday Pepper, building those elaborate layer cakes of kidding/not kidding and expecting you to do the same. Anee wasn't some wimp, but her idea of fun and kidding around wasn't as aggressive as Pepper's. She started wrapping her crystal ball back up, saying, “It's okay. But I can sense that's it for this attempt...”
“Okay. And you really saw me meeting a 'tall dark stranger'? I mean really? No kidding?!”
“When I use this thing it's like... flashes. And feelings. And if I look long enough they come together into kind of a story. But all I got from that couple of seconds was you with this mer-boy, sitting somewhere above the surface talking. I said tall because he was tall next to you.”
“And dark...”
“He could have been from Amazonia or Mediterraneo or someplace,” she said, dropping the bundle back into its hiding space, “And looked to be around eighteen. Maybe twenty.”
“Cute?”
“I would say so, and you thought so; I sensed your emotions. He was saying something, you were laughing, and you liked him!” she said, pounding the panel back into place with her fist.
“Did he like me?”
“He was sure smiling like he did; but that's all I got. I was tuned into your future, not his. We'll have to try again tomorrow. Now what do you say we get out of here for a while?”
“You said there was a village near here. Could we go see that?” I asked.
“That's just what I was gonna suggest.”
.
.
)))========> ACCESSORIES
.
I would feel like an idiot if I got lost in my own house, so I paid careful attention to the way as she led me through corridors and down several ramptubes (how we got from one floor to the next, since staircases would be kind of pointless...) to the first floor.
As we passed the kitchen we heard Atlantea in there, talking and laughing with Octavia. From just listening you might think they were housewives or college professors or female pro wrestlers, but you would never guess it was an octopus and a Mermaid Queen. I said, “They sound like they're having a good time...”
“They do,” she said, and hollered, “We're going in to town for a bit! Bye Mom, bye 'Tave!”
“Wait! I have something for you.” Mom shouted, and came swimming out with a belt in her hand. “I was just about to bring this up to your room.”
It was one of those canvas canteen belts, army green with pairs of grommet holes every six inches all the way around. And I wouldn't have particularly liked it, except it was the same kind my sister had on, so I loved it. I cinched it around my waist, low, so that it rode right at the human-fish divide like Anemone was wearing hers, and said, “It's perfect!”
“It is,” agreed Anemone, grinning from ear to ear.
I've heard that after a certain age most pairs of identical twins start to think being dressed the same is stupid, or even creepy, as they grow into wanting to be recognized for the individuals they are. But Anee and I had been twins for less than a day and I could tell she was as into this looking-identical thing as I was. And Mom must have been getting a kick out of it too, because:
“I knew we had another one like hers somewhere, it took me half the morning to find it. And oh look... your conches match too!”
I slid my knife out of the sheath on my hip. It was a very fancy weapon, with a steel blade eight inches long and a handle that might have been solid gold from how heavy it was, shaped like a seahorse with real rubies for eyes. It looked ancient, like it could have been King Arthur's scuba diving knife. “It's beautiful...”
“It's one of my husband's. It's been in our family for five hundred years. But you can use it for now.”
“But I don't really need anything so fancy. If this is like an heirloom you should let Anee have it and just give me an old steak knife or something.”
“No Honey. A knife isn't just some ornament, or a toy. Since you've only been a mermaid a few hours and haven't had your sister's training I'd feel better knowing you were carrying the best one I could find when you're roaming around out there,” she said, pointing toward the Castle's big front door and the still-sleeping palace guard. “If you get caught in a net it'll slice through that nylon mesh like going through a jellyfish. And for sharks, well it's a good last resort if your club doesn't dissuade them.”
“Well thank you. I'll take good care of it. But I hope some day soon here I can give it back to King, uh...”
Crap! I'd completely spaced on the name of the man who was my father now.
“Uyehtah,” said Atlantea gently. “And we all hope that day comes.”
“Okay Mom, we'll be back in a few hours,” said Anemone, giving her mom a quick peck on the cheek.
I did the same and followed her toward the door, calling back, “And thank you! Thank you for everything!”
“Be careful out there, and take your clubs, both of you!”
“But we're just going to Shellcastle,” Anemone whined.
“I don't care. Take them.”
“Okay! Okay! Okay!”
Right next to the big double doors and the ever-vigilant Bassby was a barrel shaped oak umbrella stand with a half dozen different clubs poking up out of it.
“Which one is mine?” I asked.
“None of them, all of them,” she said as she grabbed one, “Just take one that you think you could hit a shark with."
I grabbed one that had been made from a baseball bat. Right where it was cut off it said:
Anemone nodded approvingly. “That's a good one, and with that knob thing it won't fall out on you.”
She showed me how to twist the loop on my belt to hold it so that it was secure but could be pulled free quickly.
As we swam out through the door I pointed at the rubber grip of the obviously man-made hunting knife on her belt, “Our knives don't match.”
“I know,” she said, and grinned mischeviously, “We'll have to trade off. Keep 'em guessing...”
As we headed across the geometric gardens toward a wide green kelp covered hillside I hadn't noticed last night she asked me, “Do you know what they say the best way to defend yourself against a shark using a knife is?”
“I have no idea...”
“You stab the person next to you and swim away fast as you can! In other words always go for the club first.”
“Got it. Do you think we'll run into any sharks?”
“Nawwww... we're just going into town. They stay out of the populated areas. Well except for little trash eating sharks, and those are almost like pets. People give them names. If you started beating on one of those you'd have more to fear from the townies.”
“So do the townies like us okay? Or do they resent us for living for free in this big castle, sitting around eating crab cakes while they have to work in the fish mines or whatever they do...”
“I know what you're talking about; there was a revolution in a country way over on the Asia side of the Pacific. Very bloody, and they made sure that emperor they'd had was the last emperor. But all that class-warfare stuff never really caught on in the Atlantic, and here in Hatteria the people just love their Royal Family. We're almost like pets...”
.
.
)))========> SHELLCASTLE, HATTERIA
.
My sister led me to the village that lie a short ways past the top of the little bowl valley our castle sat in. A bustling little town full of merpeople that once again made me feel like I'd been dropped into the middle of a cartoon...
Shellcastle's shopping district that had stores selling everything from spear guns, knives and shark clubs (POSIDEARMS) to musical instruments (LYRE, LYRE) and junk food (SEAS CANDY), and the kelp-paper scrolls they use for books down here (DEEP SUBJECTS). None of the walls of these quaint shops seemed to meet at ninety degrees, and they took a lot of unnecessary zigs + zags on their way to meet up with each other.
The narrow streets between them were paved with all different color sea shells set in the ground like cobblestones. Like the limestone paths that crisscrossed our castle's garden they were pretty to look at, but since no one actually walked on these streets I decided they were more of a decorative thing than anything practical. That is until I saw a mermaid swimming down an alley pulling a cart full of big rocks by a pair of rickshaw handles.
To let in as much of the daylight filtering down from above as possible the buildings here had pyramid and trapezoid-shaped roofs made from thick panes of this glass-like stuff that was blurry like the door of a shower. It seemed to be made of sand and some gluelike substance pressed together, and I don’t think it was blurry to protect people’s privacy- it just didn’t come in an unblurry kind. This was probably why the shopfront windows just had shutters that they closed at night, and netting across them to keep the fish out and to prevent thieves from just reaching in and grabbing something.
Our town had no night life to speak of, since everyone went to bed at sundown or not long after. Even the chew houses (where adult merpeople chewed on fermented sea-weed to get the alcohol out then spit the pulp into spittoons) didn't stay open past eight or nine, but they were supposed to be dark inside anyway. They did use a type of bio-luminous lantern here, but once activated they just ran until they ran down, sort of like a cold indoor highway flare, and these were kept around mostly for emergencies. And even at our castle---with its mysterious lighting system as good as anything humans had---we tended to turn in early because everyone else did.
Anemone gave me half of the bills she had in her belt, and said I could pay her back later when I got my own allowance. I looked at the little rectangles of flimsy plastic. They appeared to have been cut from grocery bags and had pictures of Mom on them. “Is this a lot of money?”
“Not really,” she said, “You could buy a hat or something. A cheap romance scroll, or whatever you're into reading.”
Unlike the simplicity of our measuring system (5 fingerwides made a handwide, 5 of those made a cubit; then a quintacubit, which was the length of the average mermaid...) the money here was ridiculously complicated. I did what most dumb tourists do in a foreign land, gave the clerk a big one and hoped they were giving me back the right change.
But luckily we never had to buy much. Everywhere we went the merfolk your-highnessed us and blessed us in the name of the Sea Gods, and kept trying to give us treats. It kind of spooked me when people would bow to me and act all humble---If you were floating side by side with them they always made sure they were floating a bit lower than you, looking up---but I guess all this went with being a royal. (Those childhood princess fantasies I've mention had never contained a lot of kowtowing from other people. In fact they never had many other people in them, usually just a talking wolf sidekick or something, so I'm not sure what I was imagining myself being the princess of...)
If we ate everything that somebody tried to feed us we would of wound up a couple of real whales, but we just couldn't turn down the roe-cones Mr. Krakenov brought out from his store CAVIAR EMPTOR. We ate them sitting at a table that was sitting out in the Town Square, a round steel thing that was obviously built on land, with four oval seats attached and a hole in the middle where you would stick a shade umbrella.
As much as the merpeople disliked and mistrusted humans none of them had any qualms about using human stuff that had been dragged out here by storms or found on a sunken boat. Although they didn't always use things for what they'd started out being. When I first saw that toilet seat that had been made into a picture frame and hung on the wall in the castle's foyer I bust out laughing. But I didn't want to explain what was so funny about this, so it looked like I'd gone into hysterics over a portrait of this very ordinary looking merman, some duke or somebody wearing the top from a wetsuit with a bunch of medals pinned to it. Which made Octavia mutter, “Such a strange girl...”
Strange Girl. Maybe that should have been my name...
.
.
)))========> THE VILLAGE IDIOT
.
One thing I was noticing was that once the folks we met figured out which sister was which they would talk to Anemone normally, but with me they spoke slowly and very loud, like they wanted to make sure I understood them.
I asked her, “Why is everyone treating me like I'm brain damaged?”.
“Oh you noticed that, huh?”
“It would be kind of hard to miss.”
“From what I'm seeing here today I think word has got around that you used to be a sea cow; and the stories about that sort of took on a life of their own, with everyone embellishing them a little more each time they get retold. It seems you have a reputation, Sis!” she said, clearly amused by this.
“So the whole queendom thinks I'm an idiot? But how?! I've been here like half a day and have met maybe a whole dozen people. And they're just gonna decide what I'm like without even seeing me? And how did they even hear about the sea cow story anyway?”
“I have no idea.”
“Jasper?”
“I really doubt that. But you know what they say: The only thing that can spread through the ocean faster than a tsunami is a rumor. Don't worry about it. Just be yourself and don't act dumb and they'll figure out it's not true.”
“I hope so...”
.
.
)))========> ANEMONE THE HERO
.
It felt weird to be right out in this village square with no clothes on. As quaint and old-timey as the place was it felt like we were sitting in the middle of some theme park stark naked- something that would probably get you in a whole lot of trouble real quick if you did it. But in every direction I looked the other merpeople were all naked too; if you didn't count bracelets and scarves and some piercings (like the woman who had a whole row of gold hoops along the end of her tailfin, which I thought was pretty cool...); and quite a few human-made baseball caps that must have been lost by fishermen.
But what really seemed weird was how everyone we saw was either an adult or under the age of four. I asked my sister, “Why aren't there any teenagers here besides us? Or are they in school?”
“I'm afraid not. There's exactly three teenagers in this whole town, and we're two of them. Fluke---who's a year older than us---is the third. There's a reason for this, and it's damned scary! I was the last merchild to be hatched around here for a really long time. By the time I came along fewer and fewer babies had been hatching, and the ones that did were so sick and weird looking they didn't last long after they were born...”
“That's horrible!” I said, “What was causing it?”
She frowned at the caviar cone in her hand like she'd lost her appetite, and tossed it to one of the stray nurse sharks that hung around town, eating whatever garbage they could find. The little shark caught it on the fly and was gone in a flash.
“It's technical, I don't want to bore you with it. But if I hadn't found that genie bottle on my eleventh birthday it would have meant the end of us. In a few decades mermaids really would be a myth, just like the crawlers- excuse me, like the landpeople all think. But that was my first wish; That we could get our population back up to what it was during the Golden Age and stay there. And as you can see we're off to a good start,” she said, pointing toward the corner of the plaza and the mermaid that was swimming across it.
The woman had a spherical bulge larger than a bowling ball halfway down her tail, which made her swimming slow and awkward. And this wasn't the most brilliant thing I've ever said, but it wasn't the her belly that was swollen, so at first glance it looked like an injury. I winced: “Ow! What happened? Did she sprain her knee or something?”
When my sister finally stopped laughing she was able to say, “First of all, we don't have 'knees'. And second-” she collapsed into into helpless giggling again, waving her hand around limply.
“Okay, she's pregnant,” I said, “But hey, I have a reputation to live up to. And I'm sure you'd say some ignorant stuff if we were on land together.”
“I know! And I'm not laughing at you-” she managed to say before she started laughing at me again. By way of apology she leaned over and hugged me. Anee loves her idiot sister.
During my time in this Queendom I would notice quite a few other mermaids with Swollen Knee Syndrome, or carrying just-hatched babies on their backs in little papoose sacks. It was a wonderful thing to see. We had a future...
And everyone here had somehow known who to thank for that. So it was no wonder they all loved Anemone. She had singlehandedly kept merkind from going extinct; And not just here but eventually all over the world, this magic cure spreading like some benevolent virus. The genie might have made it possible, but he wouldn't have been able to lift a finger to save them without a specific command to do so.
She said, “But what I can't figure out is how they even found out it was me who did it...”
She had made her wish way far from town, out in the Great Kelp Forest where she thought no one could see it. But when babies started being hatched again everyone seemed to know who to thank for this miracle.
Anemone shrugged, “I guess it's true what Finius says in his Ode To The Unfathomable: 'The Sea alone decides which secrets she will keep...'”
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)))========> THE LITTLE LOST CRAB
.
“I'm gonna go see if Fluke can take a break and join us out here.” Anemone said, swimming up out of her seat, “His shop's just around the corner there.”
“That would be great, I want to meet him. I'll be sitting right here.” I said as she swam off.
I sat there watching this bustling little village bustle, thinking about what an amazing place I had wound up living in, and trying not to think about the places that my new body had forced me to leave behind, and the people who probably right at this very moment were freaking out over my disappearance.
In a large imposing Greek-temple-looking structure across the square I could hear a bunch of merpeople singing a hymn of some kind. The soaring voices of the mermaids---which are so dangerously mesmerizing to male humans---were pretty mind-blowing even to me. You could get lost in voices like that.
Looking down I noticed a small crab crawling across the paving shells. He was a cute little thing; well, cute for a crustacean, and he seemed disoriented, going a few steps this way and then that way like he wasn't sure where he was.
I leaned down and asked, “What's the matter little bug? You lost?”
I've always talked to animals like that, but had never heard one say anything back until I came to Hatteria. And I was still new enough here that it sort of surprised me when in a tiny little pathetic voice he answered, “Yeah... lost...”
“Well where is it you were trying to go?”
“Lost... lost...” he murmured, waving his little claws around, and then said something I didn't catch.
I swam out of my seat and let myself settle right on the ground, up on my elbows over him, which in this eat-or-be-eaten world made him cower in fear, so I said as gently as I could, “Awwwwww, don't be scared. Maybe I can help?”
“I scared... help?” he mewled, and then said something else too faint to hear.
I leaned in even closer, “What is it? What do you want?”
“I want... I want... THAT!” he shouted, thrusting his open claw up at my face.
“GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!! MY NOSE!!!!!!!!!!”
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.
.
Author's note: I bought this today, yay! (hurry UPS):
http://oldtimesigns.net/beach-surf/dancing-mermaid/
My sister and I had about as much fun as two mermaids can have that week.
.
On Monday she took me on a tour of the village up the hill from our castle, where everyone was curious to get a look at me. The whole ocean knew about Queen Atlantea's magically created second daughter by now; who as rumor had it was: “Beautiful, but dumb as a sea cow!“ But nobody was mean to their idiot princess. They all tried to look out for me, to make sure I wouldn't go kissing an electric eel or something.
.
As we sat at a table in Shellcastle's town square an adorable little girl came swimming up to us with a sea lily in her hand. The fry was confused that there seemed to be two Princess Anemones until I pointed; and she handed my twin the flower-animal before grabbing her in a hug.
.
And now the tiny mermaid wanted to hug me too. If this was celebrity I could get used to it...
.
MONDAY AFTERNOON AUG 25 2014 (Five seconds later...):
.
Blinded by pain I shot upward off the square's paving shells, screaming about feces and fornication and: “OWWW! SONOFABITCH! MY NOSE!!!”
The little crab was holding on tight through all of this, and seemed to be having a great time, going “WHEEEEEEEE!” as he swung there on the end of my nose. When I reached up to pull him off he grabbed my finger with his other claw.
How could such a little thing have such strong pinchers?!! As I let loose another stream of cusswords a merman appeared in front of me. He helped pry the crab's claws off of my tender flesh and before it could do anything else I threw it a far as I could.
Which underwater isn't all that far. It fluttered unharmed to the sea floor and scuttled away, giggling evilly and going: “Nyahhh! Nyahhh! Nyaaaaahhh!!”
I'm usually kind to animals, even if they bite me I figure it's just self defense, instinct; but this little bastard was just lucky I didn't have feet to run him down and stomp on him with! And by the time I remembered my club he was long gone; but by then I probably wouldn't have anyway. As much as this hurt, smooshing him dead would have been way disproportionate...
I gingerly assessed my injuries. I found a pretty good crease where he'd got me, but it didn't seem like this pert little nose of mine---such an improvement over that funny-shaped one I'd had as Stewart---had been permanently damaged or disfigured.
“Thank you,” I said to my rescuer, “And sorry about all the swearing.”
“Didn't bother me, I'm just glad you're okay. And I think I learned a few new ones,” he chuckled. He had kindly jade green eyes and a chin beard like steel wool, and was wearing a bow tie without a shirt.
I was hoping that he'd been the only person to witness me flailing around shrieking with that thing on my nose, but now I notice that the services had ended at that Parthenon-ish temple across the square, and there were at least forty mermen and mermaids gathered in little groups, either floating in front of the entryway or sitting on the thirteen steps leading up to it. Whatever they had been chatting about before, I don't think it was paranoid of me to assume it was now mostly about me. I guess my reputation as the North Atlantic's biggest blonde wouldn't be fading out any time soon...
He asked me, “What did you think you were doing letting it get that close to your face? Haven't you ever dealt with crabs before?”
“Sure I have. But I was never able to talk to one before this. He tricked me!”
“Well just... be careful,” he said vaguely; like he wasn't sure what kind of advice he could give a girl who had just been outsmarted by a creature with a brain half the size of a lentil.
“I will,” I said, rubbing the tender sides of my nose. I told him, “This is a whole new life for me, and there's a lot of things I have to learn. You know the saying 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger'?”
“That sounds kind of familiar... Oh. that's right! I read it on a hat over in the human-artifacts shop. Those baseball caps usually go quickly, but that one's been there a while and no one's bought it...”
“Well I don't buy that one either. Where I come from it's mostly something that guys who think they're all bad-ass say to show how tough they are,” I said, then remembered my story and added, “Uh, you know... all those tough-guy sea cows.”
“There's tough-guy sea cows?”
“Oh definitely. And it's like they're seriously overcompensating over being called sea cows. Trying to be all gangsta, going: 'I ain't no cow, Yo. I'm the MAN-atee, Bitch!!' But I always thought a better expression would be: 'That which does not kill me makes me smarter.' Like you've learned not do it again. To avoid whatever it was that almost killed you. Or in this case almost took my nose off. Because in spite of what you might have heard about me I really am capable of learning. I just wish I wasn't doing it so publicly,” I said, gesturing at the gaggle of worshipers outside the temple.
“Don't worry about them. The Temple of the Healer is the nicest bunch of mers you'd ever want to meet,” he said, and stuck out his hand, “My name's Ray. Ray Starr.”
I liked that he wanted to shake hands instead of bowing at me and calling me by my title like most people here did. I grabbed his hand, “I'm Enomena.”
“Yes I know. It's a pleasure to meet you. And we'd honored if you'd come over and join us, Your Highness,” he said, finally your-highnessing me, but in a casual, non-unnerving way.
Although I still didn't know if I wanted to go meet his pals.
“I'd love to, really; But some other time. I'm waiting for my sister, who's showing me around town and everything today,” I said, relieved when I saw her come swimming around the corner of the Bank of the Grand Banks and toward us. She didn't appear to have anyone with her.
“Of course, I understand,” he said, and called out to Anemone as she approached, “Hello Princess!”
“Hey Ray! Any sign of him?”
“No, but the portents are good. He's somewhere and somewhen very near to here,” said Ray. I'd thought Anemone was asking about Fluke, but you wouldn't need portents to find a teenage merman.
“Well I hope he shows up,” she said.
“That's nice of you to say. I know you don't believe in Him,” said the merman, “And I pray that the Healer might guide your father home.”
“Thank you,” we both said.
I asked Anee, “No Fluke?”
“Not today,” she said, “His dad sent him to Trenchtown to meet a new wholesaler and see what kind of a deal they could give them. It's like he's a real part of the business these days, not just the stock boy.”
“That doesn't surprise me. The kid has a good head on his shoulders, and Flavius Senior knows it. Well, I just came over to pay my respects to our new princess,” Ray said. He glanced back and forth between me and my sister and muttered, “Incredible... right down to the wardrobe.”
“I know! I asked the genie for a sister; and he made us twins. But we're not complaining,” she laughed, while I nodded my head in agreement.
“Well you deserve happiness, Anemone. You both do. Safe swimming,” said Ray, and swam off to rejoin the mermaids and mermen by the temple, who I noticed were also all wearing bow ties and not much else. I guessed that's how they dress up for church here.
“Safe swimming,” we shouted after him.
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)))========> FAITH AND REASON
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“I'm glad to see you're meeting people,” Anemone told me, “Ray's a good guy.”
“He does seem nice. He wanted me to go over and meet his Temple-of-the-Healer friends.”
“Why didn't you?”
“I don't know,” I shrugged. “It's just that I've found that with religious people you never know what you're gonna be swimming into. They could be 'the nicest bunch of mers', just like Ray was saying; like the people at my mom's meeting house. But I've run into too many who just glom onto you like you're a piece of meat- all smiling and 'We're so glad you're here!'; but their only interest in you is as their next convert, and they aren't capable of just talking to you or hearing a single thing you have to say, because they figure you won't have anything to say until you're talking and thinking and doing exactly like them; And everything they do is trying to bring you closer to that. They're like these Borg creatures from an old television show my dad loves, but at least those Borgs are up front about wanting to 'assimilate' everybody...”
“We have some that are into the total control thing like that. Like the Sons of Abyssmo, who are just plain spooky. But Ray's temple isn't like that. They've never pressured me, and their being friendly is just them being friendly. But then they know I'm C-of-A and that Mom would never let me join their flaky cult,” she said.
“Cult?”
“That would be Mom's term for them. Because they wear those silly things around their necks and pray to a big blue cabinet they have in there. But then she isn't real tolerant about people with unusual beliefs.”
“So what do they keep in their big cabinet?”
“Nothing. It's supposed to have miracles and wonders and 'mansions within mansions' in there, but I peeked into it once and it was just an empty box. But they expect their messiah to step out of it some day and take them all to paradise,” she said, then pointed beneath us, “Hey let's sit.”
“Step out, or swim out?” I asked as we drifted slowly down toward the white metal table we were seated at earlier. (I'm not sure how our air bladder 'ballast systems' allowed us to rise or sink at will, but we could, which when combined with making small paddling motions with our hands made things like settling into your bed at night easier...)
“Step out,” she said. “Why?”
I steered my tail down into the gap and touched down on the round steel seat. “So their Healer is a human?”
“He's a god---a time god---but he has feet like a human. Which to Mom is another strike against them. But their Healer and the sacred cabinet and that Blue Book of theirs really aren't any weirder than some of the legends about the Land-that-Was that we have in the Church of Atlantis.”
“Ah! C-of-A.”
“Right. It's the main church here. Our Charter of Rights says you can be any religion, even some freaky human one, or none at all. But when you're a member the royal family there's all this... all this...” she waggled her hand around vaguely.
“Politics?”
“Exactly! Hatteria's wealthiest families and four out of our six parliamentarians are in our church. The 'right people', the ones Mom wants on her side. So she'll be dragging us there every month, making sure we sit right up front where everyone can see us.”
“Once a month? That's not bad.”
“It's about the minimum you can show up without folks talking. The night of the full moon. It's kind of nice to go out and do something at night, even if it is just church. And we go three nights in a row during the Solstice Festivals, but those are more like a party and actually kind of fun. So what was church like back on land?”
“I didn't really go. My mom goes. My parents sort of 'agree to disagree' when it comes to religion, which works because neither is what you'd call fanatic. He doesn't think she's crazy for believing in something nobody can see and she doesn't think he's some horrible sinner because he doesn't. And what's weird is that my mom wasn't raised in any religion, and my dad's family is super religious; and so strict and judgmental and horrible I think they basically drove him to atheism. And they made such a stink about him marrying outside of their church that we try to have as little to do as possible with his family. I can just imagine what they'd say if they found out I was transgender.”
“They wouldn't like that?”
I laughed, “If they had any doubts that I was bound for Hell that would do it!”
“Wow, I can see why you guys avoid them. We have some relatives we like to avoid. My Great Aunt Nicaea for one, but luckily she's more than a day's swim from here, and real lazy,” she giggled, then pointed at my nose, "That looks painful! What did you do, swim full-speed into a wall or something?!”
“Oh that,” I said. “Remember how you told me not to do anything stupid?”
.
I told her about my battle with the killer crab. Acting it out, playing up the ridiculousness of it, flailing around going “Help! Awwwwk! Help!”; Getting rescued by Ray. And then looking over and seeing about half of Shellcastle all gawking and shaking their heads going “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!”
“And I missed that?! Oh Mann-n-n!”
And I could kind of laugh about now too. It had been pretty dumb of me to put my face that close to a creature that any little kid around here would know was- well, crabby.
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)))========> MR. MERGOLIS
.
I loved that there was so much to see and do and learn in this new life. It kept me from dwelling on how much I missed my human family, and what they must be going through, which I did whenever things got quiet. But still it seemed weird for us to just be goofing off all the time.
“So this is what we do all day?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Don't you have schools down here?”
“We do, but not during summer vacation. Don't worry, if you like school so much it starts next week, and you'd better be ready to hit the scrolls. Our tutor will probably be bringing a whole bunch of new kelpscrolls when he comes back from his vacation.”
I asked her, “So where do merpeople go on vacation?”
“All kinds of places. Some people even come here, to see our castle. But where Mr. Mergolis likes to go is Key West, meeting up with all his merman friends every August at this big evening club they have down there called COCKLESHELLS.”
“It sounds like a gay bar.”
“It sure is! All summer long it's just one big wild party there.”
“No I meant-”
“I know what you meant, and it's that too. It's a long way to the Florida Keys---unless you can sneak a tow off a ship it's a hard six day's swim each way---but he does it every year. He should be starting back about now.”
“Is he a good teacher?”
“I've never had any other teacher to compare him to, but Mom wouldn't have hired him if he wasn't the best. Me and Fluke were his only students until a year ago, and then it was just me. You're gonna love him. He can be pretty sarcastic if you give him a dumb answer, and he really pushes you to learn and to think about stuff, but he's also a lot of fun. And I love that he's such great friends with Mom. He can makes her laugh like nobody else can. Like when he puts on her crown and imitates Empress Remora.”
“That dictator lady from the South Atlantic?”
“Yep. Old Blobfish-Face came up here once to sign some pact, and whenever she wasn’t complaining she was bragging about how much better everything is down there. But half of that goon squad she brought along was just here to keep the other half from defecting, so it can't be that great. She is such an egghole! And Lonnie imitates her perfect. All stuck up and bossy, and with the accent.”
“I look forward to meeting him,” I said. I was glad that we had some kind of school down here. A ninth grade education just doesn't seem like quite enough somehow.
“This will be the last year we have Mr. M. all to ourselves. Next year some of the local fries will be old enough to start Kindergarten, and Mom has agreed to let him teach it right in the castle library. We're going to have to build a real school here in town within the next few years.”
“There wasn't a school here already?”
“There was, and I hear it was beautiful. But after it was boarded up for so long they tore it down, salvaging the good parts for other buildings. That empty schoolhouse and the playground around it was too painful to look at.”
“Oh ghod,” I gurgled.
I'd known about the population decline, and that it must have been scary, but this hammered home what it must have felt like to the people down here. The despair. They had really thought they were facing the end of their world, one natural death at a time.
“Mom says the bond to build the new school should pass with flying colors. I hope to be a teacher myself there someday,” she grinned, and then said loudly for the benefit of whoever it was that was off over my shoulder: “And Phoebe's gonna be there! Aren't you, Baby?”
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)))========> LITTLE PHOEBE
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An adorable tiny mermaid with was swimming toward us with a sea-lily in her tiny hand; her parents hovering there watching just a short distance away. She had her Mom's shiny copper hair and freckles. Her big grin as she drew near showed her two missing front teeth, and she was just heart-melting cute as she looked back and forth between me and my twin, confused.
I pointed at Anemone with both hands, jabbing them toward her over and over in a comical little dance, which made Phoebe giggle. She handed Anee the flower-like animal, saying something to her in a faint lispy voice as they hugged. And then she wanted to hug me too.
She threw her arms around my neck and whispered into my ear: “I lubb you too, Magic Cow Girl!“
If this was celebrity I could handle it.
Then she had to tell us a story about her day---or maybe about a dream or a circus or some favorite bedtime story---that I only understood every third word of, and it didn't seem like Anee was doing much better. But whatever she was telling us was all very exciting and important, and our “Wow, that's great!” responses seemed to satisfy her.
As she headed back to her parents my sister called out, “Take care, Sweetie. We'll see you tonight.”
The girl stopped. Turned. “Bo'ff a-you be dere?!”
“Probably,” said Anemone.
“YAAAAYYY!” cried Phoebe.
Her dad and mom each grabbed one of her hands and they swish-tailed off down the boulevard, their motions all synchronized like they were ice skating together.
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)))========> SITTERS INCORPORATED
.
“That was cute,” I said. “So what's tonight?”
“Babysitting,” she said, “her and the Delmar twins. I can handle them if you don't want to do it.”
“No, I want!” I said, “Whose house is this going to be at?”
“Our place. It's nice and big, and people don't have to feel funny or do any special cleaning up because royalty's visiting. Their folks will be dropping them off at six and picking them up at eight-thirty, like they do every Monday.”
“So it's like a day-care center.”
“If that's the word for it. But it's usually evenings; so we're an evening-care center. Parents make an appointment and bring them to me when they want to go to dinner, a party or something. And if you want to be my partner in this it's a way to make a little money.”
“Sure,” I said, “I guess with us being the only two teenage girls in this part of the ocean we have a real monopoly on this babysitting racket.”
“I suppose we do. But I hope you're not looking to get rich from babysitting. I've only been charging a simoleon and a half per kid, per hour. Compared to most people around here we already are rich, and they're the ones who are paying for it, so I don't want to gouge them. Like I was saying, with nobody being born in Hatteria for over ten years we have like this-” she did her hand-waving thing again---(Was she aware of how cute that little gesture was?! I was tempted to go practice doing it in front of a mirror...)---“Like this gap in our culture, when it comes to providing for children. And so I'm mostly doing it as a way to help out with getting all that going again. It was my wish that started this, I feel like I'm part of it. And I'm also doing it just because I like kids. But I guess we'll have to charge more now. Maybe raise the fee to two simoleans an hour and we can split that.”
“That will be fine,” I said.
“It'll be fine until you realize how little money that is compared to even minimum wage here. I'm embarrassed that it's all I'm offering you-”
“Oh STOP! It's fine. It's not like I'm gonna starve if I don't have cash on me. And don't worry about tonight, you already gave me some money,” I said, patting the place where my wide canvas belt overlapped, and the plastic money I'd stuffed into the gap. “If I need more money I'll get an after-school job... be a waitress at that restaurant we passed. They had a NOW HIRING sign in the window...”
“And you could, when we turn sixteen. If you were a commoner. Mom is pretty modern for a potentate but she's not that modern! We're HIGH-born Dahling, dewn't chew knewwww,” she said in a ridiculously effete voice, her pinky held up like some kind of salute. “So us princesses can do volunteer work, teach or start a foundation, but not just work in a shop or a restaurant. On Sunday Mom will give you the same twenty simoleons for that week that I'll be getting, and you'll be expected to budget those. She's big on teaching us about budgeting.”
“Which makes sense; she doesn't want us bankrupting the country someday.”
“Like my Aunt Nicaea over in her little fiefdom.”
“And that's the lazy one?”
“Yeah, that's her. Lady Muck-Muck. She doesn't want to just swim somewhere like a normal person, she's above that. So she has this little carriage-thing she gets dragged around in by four mermaids, like all the big shots used to ride in back in the olden days. But her carriers keep quitting when she can't pay them! It's like she'd rather look rich and important than actually have money in the bank!” she said, and we shared a head-shaking chuckle over how screwed up that was.
“So what do you want to do next?” I asked. “Do you suppose those Healer people would let me get a look inside their temple and see this mysterious cabinet of theirs?”
“I'm sure they would, but I think we're about done here in town for today. Dinner's at five, our gig is at six, and I want to think up some good games for those kids to do.”
“I guess you're right,” I said, noticing how the color of the water in the distance was edging from pea-soup green to forest green. “That day sure went quick...”
“We did get kind of a late start,” she said, “We can come back in the morning.”
“Great!” I said. Shellcastle was a small town but there was still had at least half of it left to explore.
“Or if you want there's plenty to see that isn't here in town. Coral Park, the Great Forest, Rasmussen Trench, there's even a sunken pirate ship out at Sandy Bottom. Although that's quite a long swim.”
I shrugged and said I was up for going wherever she thought was best. As we left the plaza she planted the sea lily Phoebe had given her in a flower box under the window of BATHY'S CAFE.
.
.
)))========> IT'S A BIRD... IT'S A PLANE...
.
We swam up to a height where we could make a bee-line for the edge of town instead of taking the meandering maze of streets. As the rooftops rolled past beneath us it suddenly seemed like I wasn't swimming but was flying under my own power over some city on land. It was a sensation that hit me whenever there was architecture beneath me---a sense of height and scale that reminded me of the human world---but not when all I saw was just the usual seaweed and such. It was an illusion, but a pretty fun one. It made me want to go barnstorming down and smack the current vane on the peak of that roof down there as I swooped past it, making it spin.
“Why are you holding your hands out like that?” Anee asked, and I suddenly realized I'd been doing the Supergirl thing with my arms.
“This? It's something comic book heroes do when they fly.”
“Heroes like Aqualad?”
“He can't fly. But there's a lot of other ones that can.”
“Wouldn't they have to flap their arms to fly?”
“No they just fly somehow.”
She frowned, “Well that isn't very realistic.”
“No it's not. My friend Chiro has a theory about how they fly, but... well it's kind of gross.”
“Tell me! You never talk about your human friends.”
“Okay. He thinks that since no good reason has ever been given for how they they can fly, characters like Superman must move themselves through the air by jet propulsion. They fart.”
“Ah, like an octopus shoots forward by squirting out water. That makes more sense than just flying somehow. Or using pixie dust and happy thoughts, like in this one human book I read. Except for the fact that landpeople don't fart.”
“They don't?”
“How could they? They don't have air bladders.”
“They manage to find a way. Only mammal farts aren't just letting out air like fish or fishpeople do. They're part of a whole different body function, and they stink! I'd hate to think what one would have to be like to make someone fly.”
“I guess I'll stick with pixie dust then, if I ever find some. I love sitting up topside watching the seagulls fly around. They make me wish I could fly too. It's amazing how they can glide around up there with no water to hold them up.”
“I guess it is,” I said.
The city limits were a wall of green where the kelp forest started, with just the occasional little shack house nestled down in it. After passing over a quarter mile of forest we crested the ridge and saw our house in the center of its thirty acre valley. A perfect circle with a rim all the way around it, our valley resembled a meteor crater with a level bottom. In the golden remains of the day's light the castle and grounds were an awesome sight, which I could appreciate a lot more than the first time I made this descent, when I hadn't been sure what I was seeing or even if I was really seeing it.
And again it felt like I was flying as we swooped down across the topiary groves and the mandala-pattern gardens toward the castle's big front doors like we were on a zipline, The Supergirl Twins returning home from a day of doing Supergirl stuff. (Or maybe Powergirl Twins would be more accurate, considering...)
.
.
)))========> THE OLD GUARD
.
As we swam in through the Castle's front door I paused and looked at our guard Bassby. I'd seen him at four in the morning, at noon and now around 4:45 PM, and he'd been sound asleep each time.
“Are you sure he's even alive?” I whispered.
“'Course he is. Did you think we had him stuffed and put him here for a prop?”
“Well no, I-” Although the thought had crossed my mind, “How old is he, anyway?”
“Two hundred and fifty-something.”
“Damn! Getting up toward retirement age, isn't he?”
“He's been retired. Since around the time I was born. Mom and Dad gave him a pension and a nice little apartment inside the royal mansion, and an even nicer one here in the new castle, but he keeps coming downstairs to guard the door against the Huns and the Frondeurs and the Syndicalists, whatever those are...”
“Maybe if you took away his-” I stopped and took a closer look at his tall black furry hat, “Is that his hair?!”
“Yeah. He got tired of losing his bearskin so he just grew it like that, and dyes it with octopus ink...”
.
.
)))========> MY DINNER WITH ATLANTEA
.
Unlike the cheerful free-for-alls that dinner with my land parents had been, Queen Atlantea had this whole list of things that a proper young Princess-of-the-Realm shouldn't do at the dinner table. Even scratching an itchy spot under your scales was something you excused yourself to go do; and you NEVER used your chopstick for this, even the non-in-your-mouth end. But at least there wasn't a big array of silverware where you had to keep track of which implement was used for which course.
Dinner went okay. Our small talk was mostly Mom asking me all about my first day as a mermaid. She seemed amused that I was so happy with my transformation and my new life. There was one rough spot toward the end, when she asked me what I thought of the village.
“I love it. It's so quaint!”
“Quaint?” she asked in a way that made me wonder what I'd said wrong.
“I don't mean it's like backwards or anything. Just, y'know, quaint. Picturesque. Charming.”
“I agree, it's a lovely little town. But I have to wonder... In your experience, it's quaint compared to what?”
[ All those big noisy crowded sea cow cities. Manatee-hattan. Mooooo I'm a human! ]
“Well, I, uh-”
Then I hit on something, which---if she bought it---could cover for not just this blunder but a lot of future ones: “I don't know 'compared to what'. It just seemed like the word for it. How it felt. I think maybe when the genie made me a duplicate of Anemone it downloaded a lot of what was in her brain into mine. Like her concept of quaintess. Not to mention her whole vocabulary, with like a thousand times more words than our sea-cow language had.”
Anee chimed in excitedly, “Y'know, I think you must be right! And that would explain how you can read now too.”
This surprised Mom. “She can?”
“Like a champ! You should have seen her in town, reading the signs on the shops and the menu in the cafe's window like she'd been doing it all her life.”
Nice one, Sis! This explained another big part of their one-day old princess's mysterious language skills.
“Interesting. Then I guess we won't be needing those old 'see Spot swim' primers of Anemone's that I was looking for,” said the Queen.
“And that was weird, too!” I said, “Because back when I was a sea cow I always thought the words on the sides of trucks and buses going by up on the Interstate were just some kind of decoration. And one time I found a newspaper someone had tossed in the swamp. I didn't know what the heck to make of that thing, so I ate it. But now all of a sudden these funny squiggles make sense. And I like it! It's like somebody talking but you can go back and hear it any time you want.”
“Which is essentially what it is,” Mom said, “It's one of the things that separates us civilized mers from our bottom dwelling cousins. And can you write as well?”
I nodded, “That came with the reading. I might not spell everything exactly right---I mean why is WHENS-day spelled WED-NESS-day?---but I'm sure I can get more words right than not.”
“Yes, your sister has a bit a trouble with spelling too. But this imparted knowledge should save a lot of time,” Mom said, then fired off the question: “What's four times twenty seven?”
“A hundred and four? No, a hundred and eight!”
"And what's the square root of one hundred and twenty one?"
I worked it out. "Eleven."
“Excellent! Mr. Mergolis will have to test you, of course, but I'm guessing he'll be able to start you both out on the same lessons when school starts next week,” she said, and rang the little bell sitting next to her plate.
Giselle---the shy octopus maid who never said much---came in and started clearing the plates. As Anemone and I left the dining hall she grinned, “That went well.”
“It did,” I agreed, “But meals with our mother shouldn't be some minefields we have to navigate.”
“They're always going to be that to some extent. Mom is Mom, and there's some topics---like politics or Amazonia or humans---that you bring up at your own risk. Although I know this is risking more than just winding up in a shouting match with her. But don't worry. I said seven days before we come clean to her about everything, and we're almost down to six days now. We will get through this week.”
Suddenly there was tremendous metallic hammering sound. Three bangs, then another three.
It was the front door knocker. The kids were here.
.
.
)))========> FINDING PHOEBE
.
Anemone had been watching Phoebe and the Delmar twins on Monday nights for nearly a year. The first time had been an accident, one party's misunderstanding about what day their appointment was on, but the three kids had so much fun playing together that their folks and my sister made it a weekly thing. The parents traded off the task of shepherding the tots over the kelp patch and down to the castle.
The kids loved our house. They'd never heard of a theme park but they instinctively responded to our home's fantasy vibe; the way every floor of the castle had a different theme and seemed to come from a different building (and a couple of them a different planet!); the sense that any sort of magical, wonderful thing might happen in a place like this. And they enjoyed being able to stay up way past their bedtime one night a week---in Hatteria eight p.m. was like midnight in the human world---but most Mondays they all tuckered out by around seven, which let her spend the last half of her gig just sitting next to where they slept reading something.
It didn't seem like these kids would be conking out early tonight though. They were too excited over their pal 'Amma-nee' suddenly having a twin. Somehow the I'm-a-sea-cow thing came up, which they thought was pure hilarity, and they wanted me to moo and do my lumbering sea cow routine and speak in that goofy dim-witted voice I'd come up with for it over and over.
My sister and I hadn't had time to figure out what games we were going to play so Anemone assembled them all at an intersection in the hallways and said, “This is a game my sister taught me, that she and her manatee cousins used to play back in the Everglades. It's call Hide and Seek. How we play it is you kids all run and hide-”
“YAAAAAAAYYY!!!” they all screamed and went swimming off in different directions like roaches scattering when the lights come on.
“No! You were supposed to wait until-” Anee tried explain, but it was already too late, so she hollered after them: “AND STAY ON THE FIRST FLOOR!”
Which they didn't. Those little fries were real geniuses at squishing themselves into tiny places you'd never think they could hide in. We managed to find Rudee and Trudee Delmar, but Phoebe was nowhere to be found, and even with the twins helping us search we were starting to worry that she'd still be missing when her parents came to get her at eight.
I almost got lost myself as I searched for her. I was in that part of the second floor that looked like it came right out the Chrysler Building (we took the tour of it two summers back) when I blundered into an expensively furnished 1930's-looking office where Queen Atlantea was hunched over a giant desk frowning down at a ledger book- “Oops, sorry!”
“Looking for something?”
“I... No I just like opening doors. We don't have these back home, or hands to open them with. So it's like: 'Doors! Wheeeeee! Fun!'” I said and ducked back out, hoping we could locate Phoebe before we had to bring Mom into the search.
We finally found her down in the dark spooky dungeon, no longer playing the swim-away-and-hide game but screaming her head off at the pure menace the place radiated, even though she probably didn't know what all these chains and cudgels and pokey things or that sinister mermaid shaped iron maiden were for.
I whispered to Anemone, “You guys don't use this stuff do you?”
“No, never. Nobody even comes down here.”
"So then Mom won't chain us up down here if we're bad."
"No, about the worst she's ever done for punishment is send me to my room, or give me some really bad chore to do. And once I was seabedded for a week- what you'd call 'grounded'..."
.
Even after we got her out of there it took a lot of hugs and reassuring and a ride on the magic sea cow's back to get Phoebe back to her silly sweet cheerful self.
Then we took the kids to the kitchen for a snack of fish fingers and caviar, which further helped cheer her up; So by the time Mr. Delmar came for them her trauma had faded into the background of all the fun we were having.
Rudee and Trudee Delmar agreed with us that having a twin was a fine thing, although they were brother and sister and not very similar looking. I don't have a clue how a pair of non-identical twins could hatch out of the same egg---(unless this had been the genie's way of trying to diversify the gene pool)---but what I do know is I sure did feel for their mom. I know children are a blessing, especially nowadays, but it made my egghole hurt just to think about delivering a twin-size egg!
.
.
)))========> KING UYEHTAH VANISHES
.
Delbert Delmar showed up to pick them up at eight-thirty on the dot. Anemone told me that whichever parent came for them they were always punctual, which was another reason she liked sitting these particular children (unlike her Saturday night gig, which was pure hell in every way!). She yawned, asking me if I was ready to hit the kelp.
“I don't think I could sleep,” I said, “I'm just not used to going to bed at half past eight.”
“When I can't sleep I like to read something until I'm sleepy. Come on, I'll show you the library.”
She led me off down the hallway, and then another hallway, and then another...
“Holy Crap!” I laughed, “It just goes on and on! How long did it take to build this place?”
“I don't know. A minute maybe,” she said as we arrived at a ramptube and swam up it.
“Huh?!” I asked, thinking she was kidding. “Oh, you mean the genie made it.”
And suddenly many things about our castle---like the grain-silo sized seashells it had for towers---made sense. Or these crazy bubble-chandeliers hanging overhead, and how they could work without anything that looked like a source of power.
“This castle was my second wish,” she said, “The old mansion that was sitting here was pretty nice but it wasn't even a tenth the size of this place. But I knew your human presidents all live in big fancy castles and I thought mom would like it. She needed cheering up after Daddy disappeared. She got mad and said this place was preposterous and garish and way more house than anyone could possibly need---which was when she made me promise to hold on to my last wish---but I can tell she really likes living here now. And it did put Hatteria on the map, we can now boast about having one of the Seven Wonder of the Undersea World; and it was why they changed our town's name to Shellcastle, although the locals still call it Hatteria Village, or mostly just 'town'...”
“It really is impressive. It's like no other building on the planet! But speaking of Father disappearing.... If you had three wishes, couldn't you have used one to bring him back?”
“That was my actual first choice for my second wish. But when I made that wish the genie said nope, he couldn't do it! And wouldn't tell me why unless I commanded him to, which would have used up a wish. And everyone knows one of the few things genies can't do is bring back the dead. He could be in one of those other universes, but I don't think so.”
“You were saying the other day that you think the humans got him,” I said as we hit the end of a hall and ascended another ramptube. I was totally lost now, and not even sure what floor we were on.
“I don't know what I think. I mean one day I'm sure he's off on a secret mission, and the next- I really don't know. He was in his study---which was like the library this place has but smaller---looking over some old scrolls. He told me not to bother him but promised me he'd be done in an hour or two and then would play bobsticks with me out in the garden. But two hours went by, then a couple more, and when I went in to tell him dinner was ready he wasn't there. No one had noticed him leave the mansion or even come out of his study. We thought maybe he'd gone into town to buy something, but by nine o'clock, after all the stores and even the chewhouses had closed we knew something was wrong. The next day we couldn't find anyone who'd even seen him, and the search parties that went on for weeks and the big reward we offered for information about him turned up nothing. And that was that...”
“Jasper Five still thinks he'll show up,” I said.
“I suppose it's possible. I really miss Daddy. Everybody does. He left this huge hole, not just in Mom's and my life but in the whole kingdom. As Mediator to the Parliament he had such a knack he had for bringing the different sides together and getting them to work things out. And he was better than Mom at dealing with foreign dignitaries, who can be touchy and weird, but he got them to trust him. They all knew when he said something he meant it, and he never made promises he couldn't keep. Everyone says he was a great king...”
.
.
)))========> LIBRARY
.
We swam through a big impressive doorway with SCIENTIA IPSA POTENTIA EST engraved over it and into a big cube shaped room, each wall of which was a grid of cubbyholes, thousands of slots holding one or more scrolls apiece. It sure looked like a library, like one of those old fashioned ones with ladders on tracks you used to reach the high shelves, only without the ladders since you could swim to any cubbyhole you wanted to reach. Too bad, I really like those ladders...
There was a large square hole that took up most of the ceiling, where the water that filled this room stopped. Light and fragmented images of the room above played across the surface.
“What's that?”
“That's the dry room, but don't go up there.”
“Why not?”
“The air's bad,” said Anemone and pointed at a round gauge high on the wall of the room we were in, with the three pie-slice segments behind its glass face painted red, yellow, green. The black indicator needle was pointed at the center of the red part. Next to this gauge were some buttons and a bicycle pedal assembly sticking out on a wooden frame, with a chain disappearing into a slot in the wall. She said, “If you want to use iit we'll have to send the snorkle up to the ocean's surface and turn those peddles there for about a half hour until the needle hits the green. It really tires out your arms but we could take turns.”
“Never mind, I'm sure there's plenty to read down in this part. But could I at least take a look?”
“Sure. Just don't breathe.”
I swam up to the ceiling, poked my head through the surface and looked around for as long as I could hold my breath.
From up here it looked like some eccentric human had built a library with a swimming pool in it. The air pressure in here kept the water from rushing in, like the moon pool in the bay of a research vessel. Instead of scrolls sitting in cubbyholes there were shelves with human books on them, maybe five hundred titles (plus a whole shelf full of National Geographics), with room for a lot more. The shelves went up six feet, which seemed higher than a mermaid waddling around on the floor could reach, until I saw a pair of contraptions on shopping cart wheels that looked like those slides they send trained seals down (so here's my library ladders...) only with a rail on each side to pull yourself up by.
There was an antique grandfather clock, a huge relief globe of the Earth (with the seafloors all painted blue) sitting in a nice stand, a ricketty little antique table with a bust of Shakespeare on it, and a mural on the wall that seemed like a pretty good copy of that Italian painter's Venus on her seashell. There was also a trio of old claw-footed bathtubs- which seemed eccentric even for the Genie, until I realized these were mermaid reading chairs, so you could soak your tail while you read...
On the tile deck nearby was a kelp paper notebook and a couple of chewed up pencils next to a King James Bible and a paperback copy of CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet . I grabbed a pencil and the notebook quick and ducked back down into the water where I could finally take a breath.
I started flipping through it. It looked like a preschooler had been trying to write something. I said, “Somebody sure has bad handwriting!”
“Let's see how well you can write with your mouth,” Anemone said. “That's Jasper's. Put it back.”
She explained how our dolphin friend spent hours lying at the edge of the pool, reading human books and turning the pages with the same pencil he used to take notes. I apologized and put them back, saying I'd wanted to make some maps of all the castle's floors. Anee promised to draw some up for me.
“So is that the dry room you would have hid me in if I was human?” I asked.
“Afraid not. Mom goes in that one a lot. It would have to be one of the storage ones, and they're not that nice. Although they're all hooked up to the same bunch of air ducts. I'm just glad you're a mermaid now and we don't have to go through all that.”
“Yeah, me too...”
I browsed the main room's cubbyholes for fifteen minutes, collecting two grocery sacks worth of scrolls and we returned to our room. My twin was tired and we didn't chat much before she pulled the lid on her bed shut and was soon fast asleep.
I flipped the hourglass sitting on the washing machine dresser, curled up in my nest of soft fine kelp, picked one of the scrolls at random and started to read. The printing on the greenish kelp paper was really tiny, but with these golf ball-sized eyeballs I had now I could read it just fine.
I'm not sure what time it was when I got up, dimmed the lights and joined my sister in the sea of dreams, but the sand in the hourglass had run out twice. The shell bed that I'd been afraid might be too small for me turned out plenty big. But what I wasn't going to do was close the lid tight over myself like my sister had done. She must have been used to this, maybe it was the custom here, but I sure didn't want to sleep sealed up in a damn coffin. As Doctor McCoy might say in some extremely strange Star Trek fanfic: “I'm a mermaid, not a vampire!”
Falling asleep, my thoughts returned to my parents, their worries and grief. And my folks weren't the only ones who were going through this right now. I hoped that my little circle of misfit friends wouldn't take my disappearing off the face of the Earth too hard, but I knew they would.
I imagined them throwing together one of those little makeshift memorials for me like they have for victims of school shootings and people who get run over on their bicycles; piled with stuffed animals, plastic flowers, balloons, photographs, candles and handmade cards. It would probably be on the beach right there at Dover, because I couldn't see them making a pilgrimage all the way to Bokonon Bay this close to the start of the school year. I knew Pepper's and Chiro's cards would say FOR SUZIE... on them instead of Stewart, and Vanessa's probably would, but I wasn't sure about the others (Captain Random and Chaos Boy still didn't seem convinced that I wasn't setting them up for some 'gotcha!' of a practical joke when I came out to them; mostly because it was the sort of thing they'd do...)
And like my parents, I wished there was a way I could let my friends I was doing okay, in fact better than okay---having transitioned already, even if it was a bit more of a physical change than the one I was starting to plan for---and that I'd already found a new family and a great new friend and sister. After about a half hour of these dismal ruminations over the people I left behind I fell asleep.
.
And that was my first day as a mermaid.
.
.
Our pleasant dinner had degenerated into a loud fight between my mermaid sister & our mom; Anee yelling, “How can you keep harping about how awful land people are if you never even met one?!”
Mom stated flatly: “I know all I need to about them.”
“You think you do, but Daddy liked humans. And he had experiences with them, not just a bunch of ignorant bigotry!”
“I've had dealings with humans before.”
“When? When was this?! I've heard all your stories and you never mentioned-”
“I prefer not to discuss it.”
"Now there's a surprise! 'Ewww, it's unpleasant! Let's not discuss it!'" mocked Anemone. She kept goading Mom, relentlessly, stopping just short of calling her a goddamn liar: “No Mom, I wanna hear this! Tell us! Tell us about your encounter with the horrible evil hewwww-mons-”
“I FELL IN LOVE WITH ONE!” roared the Queen, slamming her fists down on the table.
She froze there, stunned; like she'd just blurted out a secret she'd intended to take to the grave with her. Then she sighed, composed herself + told us her story...
.
TUESDAY AUGUST 26, 2014:
.
Anemone and I woke up within a minute of each other, at right around sunrise. We decided to skip going into town today and take a tour in the countryside instead. But as we made our way to the door Queen Atlantea came swimming toward us with a large sheet of kelp paper in her hand.
“Is this today's paper?” asked Anemone. She took it from her, and began scanning the sheet's columns of print.
“It is. Perri brought us three copies today. One for each of us. She didn't just leave them under the rock like usual, she stopped in, and was hoping to talk to Enomena. She wants to meet her as soon as possible.”
“Do we have to do it today?” asked Anemone, “We weren't even planning on heading that way.”
“I want you to go down there right now, while Perri's still in her office, so the interview will be printed in tomorrow's edition. We need to dispel these dreadful rumors that have been going around about your sister's intelligence. To nip them in the bud before they becomes 'what everyone knows'...”
That sounded good to me. “We really should, Anee.”
“Oh, all right,” sighed my twin, and handed me the paper to look at. It was exactly two pages; a front page and a back page...
“You're kidding. This is a newspaper?”
“I know it's not one of those big human newspapers you're used to eating, but we're a small queendom and it serves our purposes.”
Anemone added, “And sometimes she can't find enough news for even that and has to fill in spots here and there with poems or funny anecdotes people submit. Once she printed one of my school papers, about protecting our coral reefs.”
“That was a good essay,” smiled Mom. "And the environment is another reason the Tail is only two pages. In any given month we can only harvest as much kelp as grows around here in a month, and we don't want to allot too much of that harvest to disposable items like newspapers."
"That's smart," I said, “So this Perri person... She's a writer there and she also delivers these?”
“She's editor and owner too,” said Anemone.
“Sounds like it keeps her busy.”
"Plus she owns that Mediterranean restaurant across the street, which I think she only opened so she'd have a decent place to eat after she puts the paper to bed. So yeah, Perri keeps pretty busy for a retired woman..."
.
Across the top of the page was the paper's name, THE DAILY TAIL, with their slogan “All The News That Fits Two Pages”, and then the headline:
And then:
Everyone knows about Anemone's genie, that gregarious and quite-literally colorful wag who has been a beloved citizen of our fair city for the past four years. It is with some sadness that we announce that Mr. Genie is no longer among us, having emigrated to drier climes, although the reason for his departure is far from sad- PRINCESS ANEMONE HAS MADE HER THIRD WISH!!!!!
All speculation about what our beloved princess's final wish would be can now be laid to rest, for in the early hours of Monday morning she requested that Mr. Genie make her a sister, who our sources say was manufactured from a Florida manatee. The newly minted teen mermaid was dubbed Princess Enomena in a private coronation ceremony shortly after her rebirth, and is from head to tail an exact copy of her beloved sister. Regarding her transformation she was reported as saying, “One minute I was a sea cow, foraging for foliage down in the Everglades, and the next minute--ZAP!--I'm a mermaid princess, sitting in a castle with a tiara on my head. Life sure is strange sometimes!”
This quote was pure fiction, but it was a pretty good guess about what that might have felt like, and it did support my own fictional origin story...
When interviewed Monday afternoon (see full interview page 2), our beloved Queen Atlantea opined, “I was a bit miffed at Anemone at first, since she'd had promised to consult with me before making her third wish. But she did use her first two wishes for the benefit of others, so I suppose she deserves one all for herself.”
I thought that was pretty cool of Mom. It was almost an apology for all that yelling she had done at Anee when she brought me home. I asked her, “Did you say this?”
“I think I might have,” she shrugged.
The twin princesses caused quite a few heads to turn as they 'painted the town' Monday, treating themselves to a daylong shopping binge. Their nonstop gigglefest whilst flitting from shop to shop made them seem like lifelong pals to the denizens of Shellcastle. Enomena, who prior to her transformation had known nothing of life outside a small patch of Florida swampland, seemed delighted by her new mermaid's life, and as enchanted by the sights and cosmopolitan bustle of our beloved metropolis as its inhabitants are by her. Many of Shellcastle's retailers are offering two-for-one sales all this week in honor of Hatteria now boasting a lovely pair of royal offspring. We hope to have more news on our beloved new princess tomorrow. Until then, have a nice day and safe swimming!
.
I glanced up to see my sister making a face at me, like she didn't think much of the article.
“It's not so bad,” I shrugged, “Except for all those 'beloveds'..."
“Yeah, but nonstop gigglefest? Daylong shopping binge?! Where do these journos come up with stuff like this?”
“At least there wasn't anything in here about me being a drooling idiot. Or about that... you know,” I said, rubbing my nose where that little crab had got me. To my surprise it seemed mostly healed already.
I'd really feared the worst from a newspaper with a name that was so close to THE DAILY MAIL, a trashy newspaper for stupid people over in the UK; that I'd never heard of until last year, when I started browsing LGBT news sites like HumanRightsCampaign.Org and Transphobia Watch. The British tabloid earned the hatred of transgender people all over the world after they wrote such a hostile piece of character assassination about a transsexual school teacher---throwing her into the national spotlight and implying she was a danger to the kids---that she killed herself. And then they printed an equally insulting obituary of “him”. The MAIL is constantly being sued for their sleazy fake stories, like when the author JK Rowling won an undisclosed boatload of money from them after they claimed she was a satanist and a necrophile, or something like that...
In contrast, this morning's DAILY TAIL might have improvised some of their facts but the article was friendly enough. One of those bland puff pieces full of civic boosterism and plugs for local businesses that small-town newspapers specialize in.
“This first paragraph makes it sound like your genie was out running around all over town all day,” I said.
“He could only leave his bottle for a few hours every day, but when he did he really made the most of it.”
“But I thought he had to wear that diving suit to live outside of his bottle,” I said, remembering my single hazy encounter with the entity.
“Nawww, he just thought it was cute to come popping out wearing that thing. Genies seem to have a thing for silly costumes.”
“You run into a lot of genies?”
“No, I-” her eyes told me this was something she couldn't talk about in front of Mom.
“She read about them in the Arcania Scrolls. Before I hid them where she'll never find them,” announced Mom in triumphant tone, “It's a big castle, Dear. Don't bother looking. Magic is a dangerous business, even for those who have made it their life's calling.”
“But I wasn't interested in performing magic. I just wanted to learn what I could about Genie-”
“Oh, but once you start looking through those scrolls it's so tempting. Just one little spell, to see what might happen. And once you've performed one, one is never enough! And ordinarily I'd say it would be an opportunity for you to learn by experience, that magic isn't something you want to fool around with, but the consequences of a miscast spell can be cataclysmic; putting our whole nation or even the whole world in peril.”
“YEEESH!” said Anemone. “Then it's a good thing I wasn't trying to do magic.”
“I know, you were just curious. And a thirst for knowledge is a good thing, generally. But cases like this we need to show self restraint,” said Mom. “There's a reason why magic has been banned in this queendom for a thousand years.”
“But wasn't Anee's asking her genie for stuff magic?" I asked, "You seem okay with all that.”
“It's not the same. She wasn't mixing potions or performing the incantations herself. Genie was a magical being. It was his nature, and he could handle it. But for us mortals, any seemingly innocent little spell can have grave consequences. Even essentially passive magic, like oh, say... trying to see into the future can draw the attention of malignant forces that we really don't want coming through into our realm.”
“No, we don't want that,” muttered Anemone, her face all serious.
“But there's no danger in praying to the gods for a miracle, and hope they're inclined to grant it. I did, and I was blessed by them with a beautiful daughter. Twice now, it seems,” she said, throwing an arm around each of us and mashing our heads against her bosom, “And I'd hate it if anything happened to you.”
“Okay Mom, no magic,” I said, and Anemone made some similar muffled promise.
She released us, then took the newspaper from me, saying, “This interview shouldn't take you long. Have fun today, girls.”
“Oh we will,” said my sister, “I'm showing her the forest, and the corals, and we might go up to the surface to watch the sundown.”
“Okay. But you know what to do if you see a ship.”
“Of course,” smiled Anemone as we headed for the door. She put her hands together and pantomimed diving off of something.
.
.
)))========> COMMUTE
.
When I thought we'd swam far enough from the castle's front door I turned to my sister and said, “Mom knows about the crystal ball!”
...at the exact same time she said these same words to me. We gawked at each other.
“That was weird...”
“It was,” said Anemone, “But obviously we both picked up on that. I guess I'd better put the orb back when we get home. Damn! I wanted to find out about Daddy. And about your tall dark stranger.”
“Don't worry about him,” I said. If even a fraction of Mom's warnings were true I didn't want to mess with that thing. “I'm thinking if I'm supposed to meet this boy I'll meet him.”
“You're supposed to,” she said with absolutely certainty, “I've seen it.”
Across the garden and up the side of our bowl-like valley and over its rim. This could become a tedious little half hour swim if you had to do it every day for years, but it was still totally new and fun to me.
Ahead of us Shellcastle's skyline---if you could even call it that---had exactly two buildings tall enough to be seen above the fronds of the kelp forest; The A-shaped spire of the Church of Atlantis and the building where they held the parliament sessions and had all the departments for our whole government---the jail, the mint, the Third Floor Science Institute---called The Government Building.
I wasn't sure if this eggs-in-one-basket arrangement was such a smart idea. If Amazonia ever got ahold of a torpedo they could take our whole government (well except for me, Mom and Anee) with one shot. But luckily---along with a lot of other technical innovations that these merpeople clearly had the know-how for but didn't seem to want---mermaid warfare was stuck back in the age of crossbows and broadswords.
.
.
)))========> CANDY GIRL
.
The Daily Tail's office was on a block where each business shared a wall with its neighbor on either side. It sat wedged between the human artifacts store (LAND, HO!) and SEA'S CANDY.
“What's candy like down here?” I asked.
Anemone pointed through the newspaper's big screened front window at someone who was hunched over a workbench, “It looks like Perri is gonna be busy for a while, let's get some. There won't be any shops out where we're going.”
A little bell hanging over the door rang as we entered Seas Candy and swam up to the counter, where a double row of bins with trays in them were piled with different little shapes and colors of fudgy looking treats. Tidy and clean, with a quaint checkerboard sandstone-tile floor, the shop closely resembled those similarly-named candy stores we had on land. The two main differences were that there was no glass countertop, just a plank above the bins that confections could be put on and bagged; and that the mermaid behind the counter wasn't some little old white haired granny-lady, but a stunningly beautiful twenty-four year old.
Or possibly twice that age, it was hard to guess with mermaids, but there was no question about the beautiful part. Lithe, small breasted, with a peaches and cream complexion and long graceful arms and hands; her human half reminded me of a college basketball player. Her hair---a shade browner than ours, more like polished brass than gold---was in a cute pixie cut that went perfect with her delicate, elvin face. She was busy using a pair of tongs to rearrange goodies in the trays.
“Can I help you?” She asked as she straightened up. Then she saw who we were, and with a big smile that was sweeter than any candy she said, “Oh! Your Highness! I mean Highnesses! This is a real pleasure!”
If I'd been attracted to her a second ago I was in love now. The warmth and openness of that smile left me speechless.
I responded with some weird little noise while my sister grinned, “Hi Sandee, glad you're back. It's nice that Mrs. Seas kept your job open for you.”
“Well she has to, by law. Tho' she says she would anyway.”
“So when'd you get back?”
“Late yesterday. Got in about sundown, figuring the whole shopping district would be closed up by then and I'd have to go catch my dinner, but it wasn't. Downtown was buzzing, everyone talking about our new princess. Funny, because all the way home I was thinking how nothing much ever changes in this queendom. Surprise! Surprise!”
“I know, nobody was expecting this. Not even her,” said Anee, gesturing at me. “But anyway... Enomena, meet Private First Order Sandee Sirenis.”
She did a mermaid curtsey, graceful as a ballerina,“It's nice to finally meet you, Your Highness!”
This intense attraction I felt was making me weirdly nervous and shy, but I managed to half-raise my hand and say, “Ulllkk.... hi.”
“So was Camp Neptune as rough they say?” Anemone asked her.
“Rougher! They really made us swim through hoops---that obstacle course was murder!---and I barely got any sleep all month. But it sure got me in shape. I finally worked off all that candy I was nibbling,” said Sandee, slapping her shapely green-scaled hip.
Oh my!!
I'd said earlier that I wasn't sure what would make one mermaid tail more beautiful than another, but as my eyes traveled down the length of hers I knew...
.
==========>
It was confusing to have such strong feelings for a mermaid I didn't even know. This wonderful weakening sensation that was familiar to me even if the parts of where I was feeling it in sure weren't- like the sweet squirmy aching I felt all up and down my tail. And on top of all this there came a stab of guilt, the sense that I was betraying Pepper Davis back on land for even feeling like this; That we had something amazing and I should be so bereaved over never being able to see her again that I wouldn't even notice how wonderful and beautiful and perfect Sandee was...
But I knew Pepper wouldn't want me to observe some asexual period of mourning for her sake. She'd tell me human feelings (or mermaid ones) were natural and good and even if you didn't want to act on them you should own and accept what you really felt instead of repressing it, pretending you didn't.
Although Pepper would never say it in such pop-psychological terms. It would be more like: “Stop your wiggin', Bitch!”
Which isn't the insult it might sound like (after overhearing us one day my mom took me aside to say “You shouldn't let her call you that!”). But Pepper's calling me bitch had more warmth and acceptance behind it than most people put into nice words. It was her general term for females, which went with her whole semi-fraudulent streetwise act; and was her way of saying I was no different than any other girl to her.
Although since that day at the mall and the wonderful stuff afterward I was her girl, and Pepper was mine...
==========>
.
Anemone looked over the trays of sweets, “What's good today, Sandee? Any amazing new creations?”
“Sorry, no. My brain's not quite back in the civilian world yet. But I did just make a batch of your favorites.”
“Great!” grinned Anemone, “We'll take six of those. And... What do you want, Sis?'
“I... I have absolutely no idea.”
“She's never had our candy,” explained my twin.
“No, I guess you wouldn't have,” said Sandee, beaming that amazing smile of hers at me, and vaulting up onto the counter plank she leaned forward and popped an orangish-pink cube into into my mouth, “Here! Try this.”
It had a nougat-y texture, but in keeping with merpeople's tastes it wasn't super sweet, and to a human it probably would have tasted more like seafood than candy. Like salmon infused with sweet vanilla or something. I gave Sandee a big thumbs-up as I chewed, which pleased the soldier/confectioner.
“Those are my favorite,” said Anemone, “They're called Salmon-nilla Chews.”
“Ish delishish!” I said, swallowing the gooey lump, but was thinking they might want to reconsider the name.
My sister said, “Okay then, we'll take a half dozen of those, a full scoop of Jellyfish Stingers, and... we'd better only get four of the Crunchy Frog. Those are kind of an acquired taste.”
Our order didn't even fill the whole bottom of a Kroger grocery bag. Sandee grabbed and tossed in what looked like a pair of big white marbles, “And here, a couple of Gummy Pearls. On the house...”
The chime over the door tinkled again as we left. Before I could ask anything Anemone said, “Army.”
“That's what it sounded like. So now she's back from this Camp Neptune; living off base and working here too?”
“Our whole army pretty much lives off base. Well, except for a few high ranking officers. About half the people you see around town are in the service. They do their civilian jobs but they're ready to go at a minute's notice.”
I nodded. That would explain that big wicked spear gun hanging on the wall of a candy store.
.
.
)))========> INTERVIEW
.
We went next door, where my newspaper interview took about forty minutes.
The Daily Tail's office was one big room with workbenches, baled stacks of kelp paper and a cylinder the size of a kitchen garbage can set in a stand. Perri's printing press looked like you had to stick the pages in one at a time then turn the crank to pull them through it. A second mesh cylinder lie on a table that was scattered with little squares of metal with letters on them that plugged into the holes in the mesh to make columns of words. Perri was the only one in her office, and was breaking down the cylinder for today's page two when we walked in, popping the inky letters out and wiping them clean with a rag and dropping them into the alphabetized compartments of a large wooden bin-thing.
The newspaperwoman was a dark skinned mermaid whose bottom-half scales and tailfin were a pretty lavender color. Her hair was in a mammoth spherical bubble of frizzy hair that shone like stainless steel (I was surprised to see that there were different races of mermaids for about a second. Although technically there weren't- since mermaids didn't have a concept of race like our European scientist invented in the 19th century, dividing their species into three or four major subgroups based on physical characteristics. To them it was all about what Queendom you were from---those flighty hot-tempered Amazonians, those brooding and melancholy Vinlandians---and a single big division between the civilized mermaids of the higher elevations and the “wildmers” who dwelled in the deeper parts of the world's oceans...)
Perri stopped what she was doing and took me over to her desk for my interview, and after a bit of chitchat to put me at ease she started asking me questions and writing down what I said in some sort of shorthand. She wanted to know all about me, but there wasn't much to tell. Or rather there wasn't much I could tell. I pretended that the changes in my body and brain made my former life as a sea cow all kind of fuzzy, like a half remembered dream, so her questions turned more toward my thoughts and feelings about being a mermaid, about my new family and my impressions of life here in Hatteria; all of which I could give her with hardly any filtering or cautious half-truths.
This interview was about me, but I would have loved to know a whole lot more about Perri. She had a lot of mementos on her office wall that I couldn't help asking about, and they pointed to an incredible life. Perri had lived the sort of reporter's life they make movies about. She'd lived all over the world, had traveling with some famous mermaid expedition up the Nile to Lake Victoria, had hitched a ride with Admiral Perry (no relation) when he sailed under the North Pole; although the crew inside never knew there was a mermaid hanging on to the outside of their sub. She'd been in Amazonia during the bloody coup and civil war that brought Empress Remora to power, and had been a witness to several other key events in this mermaid history I still knew so little about.
After her retirement from reporting for the Atlantic Times (she was 170 years old---well into middle age--- and not the least bit embarrassed about it) she'd toured the world for her own enjoyment, and maybe to write a book about it, visiting all Seven of the Undersea Wonders of the World. My house---which hadn't even existed when she first set out on her retirement travels, but when it suddenly did it bumped some deep trench that nobody could really visit or even seen down into off the 'Seven Wonders' list---was the last place she visited, and she fell in love with Hatteria. She settled here and bought our little local paper the TAIL (and then opened her fancy restaurant, where she schmoozes with Shellcastle's movers + shakers to get tidbits for her column...) because it seemed she wasn't ready to retire just yet.
But anyway Perri and I really hit it off, and I the next day I was glad to discover that her interview piece didn't misquote me or try make me look like a blithering nincompoop, but called me "charming" and "bright", with "an unusual perspective" that she attributed to my having been a manatee. Despite their very similar names the Daily Tail was not the Daily Mail; so I didn't pick up Wednesday's paper to find a headline screaming: PALACE INFILTRATED BY HUMANS or ROYAL SEX-CHANGE SHOCKER!!!
.
.
)))==> YABBA DABBA DO
.
So now we just had to go pay Fluke a visit before we could get out of Shellcastle and go on our nature-swim, which we were both anxious to do. As we left Perri's office I noticed the sign on the door:
A couple of storefronts down the block it hit me. I groaned.
“What?”
“Perri.... Winkle?!”
“What's wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I guess,” I said, and laughed. This place was absurd.
“Do you think there's something funny about Perri Winkle?”
“Well kind of. I mean it's a joke name. Like Moby Dickus, or Hallie Butts.”
“Hallie Butts isn't a joke,” said Anemone, sounding miffed, “She's is a nice lady! I don't think it's nice to call somebody you don't even know a joke.”
“I wasn't saying she was a joke. It's just.... why does everything have to be about fish?”
“A periwinkle isn't a fish.”
“Fish... mollusk... under-the-water stuff. I swear, it's like the freaking FLINTSTONES around here- 'Oh look! It's SHARON STONE and FLINT EASTWOOD, eating ROCKY ROAD ice cream with EMILY BRONTE-SAURUS and TERRY DACTYL!'”
“Do you even know what you're complaining about anymore?”
“Complaining? I wasn't complaining, it was just an observation.”
“Well some of your 'observations' about our life here get pretty condescending.”
“They do?”
“Sometimes,” she said in a lilting tone that told me this was rare enough to be mostly forgivable. She asked, “And anyway, what would you have things be named? I mean don't people and places tend to be named for what's important in their world? Weren't some of your presidents named after cars?”
“Oh. Good point,” I said.
“And I guess Perri Winkle is kind of a pun,” she conceded, “but Winkle was her late husband's name. She broke with tradition and took his name because she didn't like her own last name, Scopes.”
“Mmmm,” I nodded. “And speaking of last names, do we have a last name?”
“No. Royalty doesn't use them here.”
“So I'm just Enomena?”
“Well, plus your title.”
“That's kind of weird.”
“Why's that?”
“I don't know, but where I come from it's usually just pretentious celebrities who decide they only need one name. Like Bono, or Adele...”
“So now you're gonna start complaining about a name you don't have?!”
“I'm not complaining! It just seems odd to not have one.”
“Well when you get older you can tack something onto your name, like 'The Wise', or 'The Bloody', or 'The-Complains-About-Stupid-Stuff-All-the-Time-and-then-Says-She-Isn't-Complaining'...”
“You know, I think I'll do that. I could be 'Enomena the Has-An-Annoying-Sister...'”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
I stuck mine out an tried to blow her a raspberry, which doesn't really work underwater.
She called me Fishface.
I called her a Flounderhead.
.
How did I get along all those years without a sibling?!
.
.
)))========> STILL NO FLUKE
.
The grocer's front door was closed and locked and the windows were all shuttered. This alarmed Anemone.
“They should have been open for hours by now? Why aren't they open?” she asked, and started pounding on the door.
"I don't know. Maybe they're both sick or something."
“Maybe. “There has been that nasty strain of the Amazon Delta flu going around.”
“Is that a bad disease?”
“It's not much fun, but it's only dangerous if you're a baby or like Bassby's age,” she said, and pounded on the door a bit more before giving up. “Oh well... Maybe we can swing by here again on our way back.”
We swam up to a spot above the rooftops and headed out for the Territories.
.
.
)))========> THE FOREST, THE REEFS
.
Our swim around the countryside was just incredible. The sights of this wonderland right here in our own backyard were too amazing for me to even try to put the experience into words, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it. It was BeAUtIfuL!!!!
We explored a bit of the Great Kelp Forest---which was very green and serene and pretty, but pretty much all the same---and then the local coral reefs, which were a lot more interesting. I'd always wanted to go diving, but the closest I'd ever come was snorkeling at beaches where the water was clouded up by surf action and there wouldn't have been much to see even if it was clearer. But this was the kind of place I'd always dreamed about diving in- a breathtaking kaleidoscope of colors teeming with all sorts of fish, jellyfish, anemones, stars, worms and crustaceans. And I was doing it all without having to take lessons or rent a tank.
I kind of surprised Anemone by already knowing some of the stuff she was explaining about the reefs and their inhabitants, from hearing my land-mom talk about her favorite science and from looking through her books about it. Mom would have absolutely loved it here!
.
==========>
I'd been exaggerating when I told Jasper that she was a marine biologist, but my mother Shannon had minored in it (with a dozen more credits than her minor required), which was qualifications enough for her 30-hours-a-week job as a guide at the Delaware Bay Maritime Museum and Aquaritorium. She conducted scheduled lecture tours every two hours, and the rest of the time wandered around answering random questions and stopping people from banging on the glass.
Shortly after she started working there my dad and I dropped in and took the noon tour with her. She was embarrassed for us to see her in that silly sailor outfit they made her wear (“I look like a Japanese school girl!") but she was happy to see us. And though she said she'd probably screw up her spiel now because we were there she did just fine; sounding like she’d been employed there for years and with a real knack for making science interesting to people who usually weren’t all that into it.
I wondered what she would make of an ocean specimen like me. She would no doubt say that I was impossible. Physically, I mean, not the way she usually said it. Because there obviously shouldn’t be such a thing as a warm blooded, egg-laying half-mammal/half-fish creature with a three chambered heart and lungs that also functioned as gills...
It was because of Mom’s passion for the subject that I’d signed up to take it as my science course this coming school year. It was a class I figured I would both ace and have fun in, but it looked like I would be missing it now.
But lucky for me my new sister and Jasper were the best teachers about marine life I could have found. They didn't just know marine biology, they were marine biology J
==========>
.
Anemone and I had been yacking at each other with barely a pause since I'd woken up with a tail early yesterday, but we weren't saying much as we swam around observing life in the coral bed. Our talking wouldn't have scared most of these creatures away but realizing they were being observed did tend to change their behavior in subtle ways. Or not so subtly; like when they would stop whatever they were doing and want to join in on our conversation, which is something that human naturalists rarely have to deal with.
I whispered to my sister, “It's just as beautiful here as you said. I'm surprised there's not a bunch of scuba divers swimming around these reefs.”
“Once in a while we get some, but we're a bit too far from the continent for a one day boat trip. And the islands all have a lot of pretty diving spots around them that are a lot closer,” she said.
.
.
)))========> PRINCESS SHIPS
.
On this swim Anemone had had brought along a cheap collapsible telescope---an “Official Pirate Spyglass” that looked like something a kid might have dropped overboard---which she'd stuck through her belt alongside her shark club. I wasn't sure what use it could be, since telescopes and binoculars don't really work underwater but only magnify whatever silt and stuff is floating within a foot or two in front of you.
But towards evening she took me to a flat rock about the size of two grand pianos poking up just above the ocean's surface. She showed me how to swim upward real fast and go flying out of the water to land on top of it, which I got on the first try. It was a pretty fun thing to do.
I had been breathing water now for a couple of days and had gotten used to the feel of it. To suddenly start breathing air again wasn't difficult, but it sure felt strange. Almost like I had to convince my lungs that they would be able to draw the oxygen they needed out of this thin stuff. But it seemed we were almost perfectly amphibious. Those couple of breaks we took over the three hours we spent up there, slipping off the rock and submerging ourselves for a minute or two were more like something we wanted to do than absolutely needed...
And it was up here that Anemone's little telescope came in handy. It surprised me when I looked through it and saw how much magnification this toy had. Maybe not 40X, but way more than you would expect from a plastic tube embossed with little skulls & crossbones, treasure chests and parrots.
We saw four cruise ships going past in the distance that evening (five if you counted the one that was just a bump out on the horizon, although it might have been a container ship), and took turns watching them through it.
“Hey, there's our boat!” Anee said, handing me the spyglass, “Check it out, she's called the ROYAL PRINCESS.”
“I think they're all called the Princess something or other,” I said, but the next one was the CARNIVAL CAVALCADE.
The last one we saw that night sure was pretty as the sun went down and all its lights came on. To my sister these ships were so exotic and alien they might as well have been spaceships. To me they were a glimpse of that world I used to belong to, which I could never rejoin but at least I could see the tiny people at the railings and the stateroom's little balconies and try to imagine where they came from and what their regular lives back on land were like...
Anemone told me about something she'd seen in the sky one evening above one of these big floating hotels- a series of mammoth colorful explosions. It had freaked her out at first, thinking it must be some rare and dangerous kind of weather that no one had warned her about.
Like a lot of merpeople, she'd had a childhood fear of the sky and anything to do with it. It was a phobia that kept many away from the surface even after they grew up and knew better, but Anee had mostly gotten over hers as she became fascinated with humans and that whole world upstairs. Or at least until the night the sky started exploding.
When she described it to Jasper 5 later he explained what a fireworks display was, and that unless one of the skyrockets was coming straight at her it couldn't hurt her. Which confirmed what she had figured out on her own, as she noticed how the people gathered out on the ship's decks weren't all running for cover but were Oooooh-ing and Aahhhhh-ing over it like it was something fun, and she began to see beauty of these blazing flowers of light that bloomed and died so quick...
Our day in town yesterday had gone quickly, today seemed to go even quicker. We stayed to watch the entire sunset, which tonight provided a light show as spectacular as any man-made fireworks (if not as noisy); until there was just a purple glow in the western sky. Living on the East Coast I had seen the sun rising over the ocean more times than I could count. But I'd never seen an ocean sunset before. I guessed now I would be able to see either, just about any day I wanted to.
As we swam home Anemone warned me not to tell Mom that we didn't dive below the surface at the first sight of a ship. The queen would really get her tail in a knot if she found out we had been that close to a bunch of humans.
.
.
)))========> DON'T DRINK THE WATER
.
We assumed that we'd missed dinner, but we got home to find Mom arriving at the front door at the same time we did, so we all went in to eat together.
At the dinner table---a big long thing with seats enough for thirty stretching out away from the end we always sat at---Mom explained that a hearing she'd had to attend had run late. It was a case that had been a big scandal locally, a mermaid named Sedna Waverly who had swindled a whole lot of people out of a whole lot of money over the course of several years.
The magistrates had sentenced her to banishment, but she'd been expecting at the time so her exile was postponed until her egg hatched. Now that the child was born our mom had gone to the Government Building's Courtroom C to listen to the convicted woman's appeal for mercy; which was something she was pretty much required to do. Ms. Waverly swore she had learned her lesson and begged to be allowed to live here under house arrest, not for her own sake, mind you, your most wise and merciful highness... but because a child shouldn't have to grow up without its mother. The queen told her she sympathized, being a mom herself, but this hadn't been the mermaid's first phony investment scheme---she was a thief and a charlatan who had lost no sleep over all those folks she had ruined financially---and Mom let the sentence stand. Arrangements had already been made for the baby to be put into the care of a couple “of high moral character” who had just had a child of their own, so feeding the baby was no problem, and the convicted felon was given three days to get her affairs in order, say her goodbyes and get out of Hatteria.
Anemone had a lot of questions---“So what about the father?”---which Mom kept answering right up until Octavia brought our meal out, at which point she insisted we not discuss a topic as unsalutary as liars and thieves during dinner...
“Wow, this looks great!” I said, looking at the big serving plate between us, holding what on land would have been about a hundred dollars worth of sushi.
Mom pointed. “Elbows off the table, Dear.”
“Oh... right.”
Tonight we were having Godzilla rolls, my all time favorite, although they went by a different name here. I loved the chewy texture of the greenish-black nori wrapper, even if it wasn't as crunchy as it is on land. And using big gobs of white roe instead of rice probably would of made these little seaweed rolls unbearably rich if I was still human, but the kind of tastes I craved had changed a lot since my transformation. Merchildren are weaned at around six months old and from then on our diet is all about fish and other sea creatures (if you're a kelpatarian there are these evil tasting protein bars made out of pressed-plankton, but those are still animals even though they're bordering on microscopic...).
So a really rare steak would probably taste good to me, but I wouldn't eat a slice of peach pie now if you paid me. But what I was really wanting was a diet Dr. Pepper or some milk or something to go with dinner, even if this was just out of habit. I hadn't drank anything since I became a mermaid and I the only time I'd felt thirsty was an hour ago, sitting up on that rock, and that had gone away about two minutes into the swim home.
“What a peculiar notion,” said my new mom when I mentioned drinking liquids. This was what she said about a lot of the things that came out of my mouth. Like when I asked her why we sat in chairs, and slept in beds, when our swim bladders would let us just hang in mid-water like astronauts in a space station.
“Ah yes, the space station,” said the Queen in a tone of disgust. “The crawlers aren't content to just pollute the land and the sky and the ocean, now they're setting out to contaminate the moon, the planets, the stars!”
“Mummy, don't start!” said Anemone through clenched teeth.
“I'm sorry, Sweetheart, if I don't share your love of humankind. We're just lucky you found that genie's bottle, or they would have destroyed us all with their di-bozo-whatever-it-is.”
“Dibenzylpolyolyoxyphrene,” burbled my sister, a word that almost made me drop my chopsticks.
I'd been hearing about it at a different dinner table for at least the past year. The U.S. Government was maintaining that more studies needed to be done before they would ban such an important ingredient for fabric softeners, but my land-mom was certain enough that the stuff was harming marine life (larger species more than smaller ones, since it got more concentrated as you went up the food chain...) that she had been e-mailing the Ocean Conservancy's petition to ban Dibenzylpolyolyoxyphrene to everyone she knew.
But there was one marine species that had never made it into the environmentalist literature...
'Oh God!' I thought, 'No wonder Queen Atlantea hates us! We nearly wiped out this whole beautiful civilization and we didn't even know!'
Suddenly I wasn't very hungry...
“It's partly our own fault though, isn't it?” Anemone stated. “The way we hide down here like we do. I'm sure if we contacted the humans, sent an ambassador to tell them what was happening they would have done something about it.”
Our mother looked at her like she'd sprouted a second head on her shoulder- “Are you completely without reason, Child? The Yeti, the unicorns, the Fae; even the weres and vampires who walk among them... all magical beings know enough to hide from them. And the Silurian Reptile Folks from the dawn of time, asleep in their stasis pods deep underground, they've chosen to simply await the day when homo so-called-sapiens is no more; and they can reclaim the land above. They know that Man would never be able to live peaceably alongside them; it's just not in his nature. Not to mention all the horrid things the humans do to each other. If they treat their own kind so barbarically, what do you suppose they would do to us?”
“But humans love mermaids!” said Anemone.
Mom goggled at her like she now had three heads: “They what?!!!”
My sister had told me about these dinnertime fights she got into with Mom. This one was more or less civil so far, but who knew what might be revealed if this spun out of control. And it was nice that Anee was on my side, but it should be obvious that she was never going to convince Mom about this “humans are nice” stuff, so I was wishing she would just drop it. Or would at least stop using things I had been telling her to make her point...
“Well they do!” she insisted, “The mermaids they put in their advertisements and things are always really pretty. It's clearly meant as a compliment. And did you know there's a fad among human little girls, where they put on fake tails and swim around like Mermaids, pretending they're us?”
And besides, I wasn't sure humans were worth defending. I was still thinking about dibenzylpolyolyoxyphrene. Still haunted by the mental image of all those stillborn merbabies, and that school in Shellcastle they'd torn down in their surrender to what they'd assumed was merkind's slow but inevitable extinction...
“And where did you hear this?” Mom asked.
“Well, uh, you know... in one of those human magazines I found.”
Mom frowned, “I should probably take those magazines away from you. Well those human girls are young. They haven't yet learned to hate anything that's different. But the adults-”
“Human adults? Did you know that in Brooklyn, New York they hold a parade every summer that's one big tribute to mermaids? That doesn't sound like hate to me!” Anee said, which was something else I'd told her about...
Two years ago on our trip to New York City I'd read in the Sunday Times that they were holding this parade, and it hadn't been too hard to talk my parents into going. In an expensive city like New York where even visiting the Guggenheim museum had cost us $25 a head it sounded like a cheap way to have fun. But the CONEY ISLAND MERMAID PARADE wasn't like any parades we had back at home. My father didn't seem to know what to think of it and my mother though it was just trashy, the floats being thrown together out of junk, or some beat up old car with seashells glued all over it and waves drawn on with a blue magic marker. Plus the fact that it was more risque than any of us were expecting (“This looks more like the NEW YORK SEX WORKERS PARADE!” complained Mom). But everyone there was having so much fun that even Mom did, sort of, eventually (“Oh well... When in Rome I guess you have to expect a little decadence.”); and she eventually decided that half of the parade's “mermaids” being topless wasn't going to permanently scar me. Which it didn't, although I sure was jealous of some of them...
“You mean the same Brooklyn where they held poor Bassby a prisoner for over a decade,” Mom countered, and waved the whole human question away with her hand, “But as I said, we really shouldn't even be discussing such unpleasant matters at dinnertime. We seem to have upset poor Enomena. Are you all right, dear? You seem a bit green around the gills.”
“No, I'm... I'm fine.”
“Then to leave all this nonsense aside and answer your question, the reason we use chairs and such is a matter of civility. We don't need to swim outside or stick our tail out through a potty-port to peepoo, but we do. Some things are just done, and somethings just aren't. It's tradition,” she said.
I asked Mom, “But how did these traditions even start? Tables, chairs, the steps going up to that temple we saw yesterday… It all seems so, well... human.”
“We didn't always live under the water, you know. As distasteful as it is to consider, we once had legs and dwelled on land,” she said, and grimaced as she admitted- “And were in fact human ourselves. There was a war, some wizards, I'm not sure what all entirely, except that through the misuse of dark magic or some terrible weapon, the land our human foremothers were living on sank without a trace.”
“Atlantis, you mean...”
“That would be the European name for it,” nodded Mom, “Although now they're saying a lot of the ancient history I was taught when I was your age is completely wrong. That the great continent the legends speak of was only a small island, and that many of the things in our sacred book never actually happened. Your father was quite an expert on The Land That Was, but since he's not here you can ask Mr. Mergolis about it when he returns. I would tell you to ask your sister, but her version of events would undoubtedly be more informed by fashionable radicalism and wishful thinking about humans than facts or common sense.”
I could feel Anemone quietly seething at this “fashionable radicalism” dig, and could hear the smoldering anger in her voice when she asked with a crafty sort of sweetness, “Mom... have you ever heard the expression 'contempt prior to investigation'?
“Of course. It's one of the trademarks of humankind. How their tiny minds regard the world.”
“Yes, humans might be like that. Or they might not. But how would you?”
“I know them, Dear.”
“That's curious, considering how you've never met one. But I guess you feel like you don't need to, since you've decided you already know everything about them. And there's a word for that... What is it?” she asked jeeringly, “Oh yeah: CONTEMPT PRIOR TO INVESTIGATION!!”
Mom smirked, “Well that was a very passionate outburst, but it was also a very foolish one. I have been studying humans for a half a century, reading everything I could about them, and by them.”
“They've written some beautiful things.”
“I'll concede that some of their literature is quite entertaining. Humans should stick to fiction, it's what they're good at. It's when they try to delve into great truths that they reveal themselves to be so sadly flawed. Take their great prophet of democracy, Jefferson. Writing so eloquently about equality and the rights of man, but unwilling to abide by these teachings in his own life and owning other humans. Or all the religious texts they've written. That book about that lovely messiah, the one Jasper's so fond of, who they murdered for preaching love and forgiveness and mercy; A book they carry with them onto their battlefields where they disembowel each other. Or-”
“And I could find a hundred examples of mermaid writers guilty of hypocrisy as bad as George Jefferson! And if you want to talk about someone failing to live by a book they're preaching from, just open one of our history books to any page and you'll see how far short we fall of what's in The Wisdom of Atlantis! I mean what about the Red Tide?!" shouted Anee, meaning the brutal and systematic slaughter of all of merkind's true telepaths, or even anyone accused of being one. A little over one-fifth of our population had been killed.
"That was eons ago! Ancient history."
"You want something more recent? How about the Falkland Shallows Massacre?!"
"They started that war!"
"Really? All those Amazonian kids and babies started it?! The eggs in the hatchery?! A thing like that would be enough to prove that Merkind is evil---Horrible! Violent! Corrupt! Hopeless!---if that's what you're looking to prove. Not like sitting down with one of them and talking to them; and then realizing, 'Gee, they're just like me!' Maybe not perfect but having all the same feelings, the same hopes, the same-”
“The same old egalitarian claptrap! And how do you suggest I go meet a human?” sneered the Queen, “Oh! I know! I'll throw myself up on the shore and say: 'Hello! I haven't got the brains the gods gave a sponge! Please kill me!'”
This was so over-the-top snotty and sarcastic---more like one of her daughter's taunts---that I had to laugh, but it just made Anee madder: “What I'm suggesting, Mother Dear, is you might admit that maybe you don't know as much about humans as you think you do. Not when you haven't met any. Daddy did, and he liked them!”
“ Your father always tried to see the good in people, it was his greatest virtue, and his greatest flaw. Those humans were using him. He just couldn't see that.”
“Him and them were fighting together for what they both believed in! To try and stop a bunch of violent crazies from taking over the world, from killing a lot of innocent humans who were just trying to live their lives. Which sound exactly like what you claim to believe, in your speeches about defending the Northern Nations against Amazonia. And now you're saying that's a stupid thing to do? That Daddy was stupid for that?!”
“I SAID NO SUCH THING!”
“Well you sure implied it. Just admit that he might know something about humans that you don't, since he's actually met them!”
The Queen said quietly, “I've had dealings with humans.”
“You might think you have, but that's just in books!”
“This wasn't just from books, ”said Atlantea. Almost muttering it, looking down at her lap.
“Riiiiiiiiight! Sure you have. And when was this?”
“I would prefer not to discuss it.”
“Yeah, because it never happened!”
“It happened. Now let's drop this.”
“Now there's a big surprise. We talk about what you want to talk about until somebody points out where you're wrong, and then it's 'Ooooh it's unpleasant, let's not discuss it!' I knew you were getting desperate when you tried to tell me you've met humans. I've heard all your stories, and if you had one about meeting the horrible evil humans you'd be telling it every chance you got!”
“I might not know everything there is to know about humans, but you don't know everything about me... Now please, can we put this to rest?”
Queen Atlantea saying PLEASE? Something wasn't right here. There was a pain in her eyes that made me think Anemone could be pushing too hard. I started to say, “Anee, maybe-”
“NO! I want to hear this,” snapped Anemone, “Tell us, Mom! Tell us! Tell us about your encounter with the big bad horrible hewwwww-mons that never even hap-"
Mom slammed both her fists down on the table, and roared, “I FELL IN LOVE WITH ONE!”
Time itself seemed to stop. Anemone's arms hanging frozen in mid-gesture, our mother sitting there with an open-mouthed look of shock on her face, like she had just blurted out a secret that she'd intended to take to the grave with her. Which I believe she had...
.
.
)))=======> LIKE DOLPHINS CAN SWIM
.
Finally the water in the room unsolidified, allowing Anemone to to gasp- “Mom!!!”
“Oh dear,” murmured the Queen.
Anemone sputtered, “Mom, that's just... I mean how... Who... You did WHAT?!”
Atlantea---momentarily discombobulated by her unplanned confession---had already regained her composure. She said, “I fell in love with one. Yes, that's right, with a human man. And since I've started I shall tell you about it. But you girls had better pay attention; because this will be the last time we ever speak of this. Agreed?”
We nodded.
“The year was nineteen fifty-four. Shellcastle was still Hatteria Village, your grandmother was on the throne, and I was twenty-five year old princess living in the old palace that sat here...”
She was twenty-five in 1954?? Damn! She looked great for eighty-five years old.
“In those days childhood lasted longer than it does today, especially within the upper class. I had led a very sheltered life, and in a lot of ways I was less mature at twenty-five than you are at fifteen. Maybe even less mature than Enee here, who deserves a bit of latitude for being brand new to this life. But don't push it, Dear,” she warned me when she caught me making a face like 'Duhhhhh I'm just a liddle baby...' at Anee.
“Back then I had very little motivation or discipline. I spent a good deal of time lost in silly dreams, and writing awful poetry that was long on sentimentality but short on anything like wisdom. A stint in the Army might have done me a world of good, but we really had no standing army in those days. I knew your father then; he was a politician's son, five years older than myself, and he didn't impress me. He seemed so serious, so traditional, so ordinary; like everyone else in this second-rate little country. I just knew I was destined for something extraordinary; and it sure wasn't becoming Queen of this place. I wanted to be free. I wanted to swim away, to some big city in one of the larger queendoms, and become a Dolphin.”
Anemone and I looked at each other. I came dangerously close to bursting into giggles when she started bobbing her head and silently mouthing, “EeEeE! EeEeE! EeEeE! EeEeE!”
“STOP THAT! Do you want to hear this or do you want to fool around?”
“Sorry,” we droned. And if Mom was being this open and honest about herself she really did deserve our proper non-giggly attention.
“The Dolphins, as they called themselves, were a bunch of foolish young mers who wanted to live like dolphins. Free love, living without possessions, migrating aimlessly from town to town, adventure to adventure- trying to emulate the book that had become the 'bible' of the Dolphinite movement: On the Sea. I had gotten ahold of a copy of it, which I kept hidden behind a wall panel in my room.”
Anee sounded baffled: “You had to hide On the Sea? But it's just an ordinary novel. I mean it's kind of weird how the whole thing was one long sentence, and there's some sex and a whole lot of getting drunk on stewed seaweed in it, but it's not like it's pornography or anything.”
“It might not seem like it today, but those were more innocent times; and back then that book was considered very daring---even dangerous---for the way it thumbed its nose at all the values of Hatterian society. It was certainly nothing that a young princess should be reading! And I was such a wooly-headed naif in those days that it did have an unwholesome effect on me. Fueling my fantasies, my dreams of escaping from the ordinary---from the 'oppression' of all this comfort and security and belonging---into something that never actually existed. There were a lot of young mers flocking to the big cities over in Midlantica in a quest for some sort of perfect freedom; Where all they found was squalor, hunger, crime, exploitation and moral dissolution. A life of playing all day, which seems to work for real dolphins, just doesn't for us...
"And I might have actually joined them; throwing away everything I had; this life, my title, my duties to go try and live out some bohemian pipe-dream. But instead I wound up taking my own 'swim on the wild side' right here at home. Something more forbidden than anything all those would-be Dolphins---who imagined themselves such rebels against convention---were getting up to in their little Deeper East Side garrets. A transgression that I imagine would even have shocked even the author of On the Sea, Jack Kippersnack himself...”
.
.
)))=====> THE UNDERSEA ROMANCE OF...
.
“I don't recall where I was swimming to, or from, but I was out in the coral beds, it was a lovely spring day when I saw something curious. I had never seen a human before, and I didn't even realize that's what he was. I knew that humans died underwater, or if they did venture into our world they wore big heavy suits with helmets on them with a hose stretching up to the surface. But here was this creature who looked like a human, but he seemed as at ease swimming around the corals as I was. He had legs, but his legs ended in fins that he propelled himself through the water with. It was only later that I discovered these fins weren't part of his body were removable things he was wearing, and I thought maybe he was some poor disfigured merman. He had something on his back, like a strange elongated metal egg, which I thought he was carrying someplace, not realizing it was what was allowing him to breathe.
"He noticed me watching him and he smiled. Even around that object plugged into his mouth it was a charming smile. And then he did something that I assumed no land dweller would ever do. He didn't rush to attack me or swim away in fear, but waved 'Hello!'
"He seemed surprised to see me, but delighted. I waved back, and we swam toward each other. He couldn't speak, but we communicated crudely through hand gestures. It was then that I began to realize he was in fact a human, but even then I wasn't afraid, and was as curious about him as he was about me...
“We swam all around the corals, pointing out different beautiful things to each other. I called an octopus over and he handled it, gently, letting it clamber all over him. He may have been born on land, but I could tell this human understood and truly loved the sea...
“And later, on his ship, when we were able to converse, he spoke so knowledgeably and so passionately about the world's oceans, especially his home in the Mediterranean. He had such grand dreams, of making films that would bringing the undersea world to his fellow humans, so they would appreciate it and want to protect it. I could listen to this man talk for hours. And I did...
“After we'd been swimming together for about an hour he showed me the mouthpiece of his aqualung, and the air bubbling out of it, and I realized that the steel thing on his back was his air supply. And in our pidgin sign language he explained that his tank was running low. The things are everywhere nowadays, and humans in scuba gear are merkind's nightmare, but at the time I was seeing something that probably no mermaid had ever seen before; and I didn't realize how devices like this one he'd invented would proliferate...
“We went to his ship, where they used a little seat on a hoist to pull me aboard. Everyone was astonished to meet an actual mermaid, but very friendly. The ship's crew was mostly French, but he and some of the others spoke English. When I told him he should have been a merman because he was so much like one, he said, “Pair'aps in anothair life, I was. In my 'eart I am a child of zee sea, like you...”
““I would come to learn this was the oldest trick in the book. When a human claims to understand us, and tell you they've always felt like they were a merperson in their heart it's a lie, or at best a delusion of theirs. Their hearts don't beat like ours do. What might seems like a range of emotions similar to ours is something we imagine, project on to them, because we want so much for it to be true. I know I sure did, as full of youthful naivety and optimism as I was at twenty-four. I had some hard lessons ahead of me but I've come to understand how the world is... especially when it comes to humans!
“I visited with the human oceanographers for a week, swimming with them when they dove, trying human foods on their boat, singing with them while they played guitars---but carefully, so as not to hypnotize anyone---then swimming home and lying to Mother about where I'd been all day. Although she did find out later. When I was moping around for months, heartbroken, barely able to eat. Jacques and I had grown very close.”
“How close?” asked Anemone.
Mom shot her a peevish look. “Closer than I'm going to tell you about! I fell in love with my funny Frenchman, and he swore that he loved me. He promised he would return. But when the Calypso sailed away that was the last I ever-"
“Calypso?! That was Jacques Cousteau's boat!”
“Yes it was,” said Mom, scrutinizing me...
So now I guess it was my turn to blurt out something I hadn't intended to. As a human kid I had been watching dvd's of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau since before I could talk (my mom Shannon always telling the story about how I would seem to fall into a trance watching all the pretty fishies). But as a sea cow I had some serious explaining to do.
“Jacques Cousteau was totally a legend in our manatee herd! The Elders still talk about when he came and filmed a documentary about us...”
Which was pretty lame save, but luckily Mom still seemed more focused on her own betrayal. She said bitterly, “No doubt he promised them he would come right back and they're still waiting. Jacques was such a charmer, and such a damned liar! Of all the promises he made, the only one he kept was when he said he would never reveal the existence of mermaids to the human world, or release the photographs he took of me, and of us together; some of which were... compromising. For that I do thank him. It must have been a hard promise for Jacques to keep. He was quite the self-promoter even then. But I do believe his love for the sea was genuine. Unfortunately his love for me... (*sigh!*) I was nothing more than a curiosity to him. A way to combine his amorous ways with his fascination with sea life...
“He could at least have been up front about this. It would have been awkward for him and painful for me, but at least it would have allowed me to get on with my life. Instead I hung on to his promises, of that life we were going to have together, exploring and photographing the world's seas, me behind the camera and him swimming on ahead, bringing our discoveries to that other world up there. Your grandmother tried to tell me I was being foolish, that my human was never coming back, but I refused to listen. To me, she was just an ignorant ogre,” she said, giving Anemone a look that said: 'And someday you'll see things my way.'
“I'm sorry it didn't work out,” I said.
“It never could have worked out. But foolish thing that I was I waited and waited---Ten years!---turning away several worthy suitors, just to prove mean old Queen Meredith wrong. But eventually I came to see the truth. We have no place in the human world and they're not welcome in ours. They bring nothing but heartache...”
Anemone looked like she was going to say something, probably about 'You shouldn't judge all humans by one example,' but then she didn't. Letting her mom have her feelings about this, right or wrong...
“Luckily I found a good man. He was here all along and had been more patient with me than I probably deserved. And I came to love him as much as he'd always loved me,” sighed Queen Atlantea, “Anyway, that's my story. And girls, you are never to repeat it to anyone, not even after I'm long gone. I want your word on that.”
We gave it.
Leaving the dining hall, my twin looked lost in thought. I asked, “What are you thinking?”
“I don't know, I'm still in shock. And I don't know why, but I kind of admire Mom more for doing that. But it's just too bad...”
“Yeah it is,” I nodded.
.
.
)))=====> G'NITE
.
That night, falling asleep I thought about my life on land on the people in it again, but I also thought about that beautiful woman who ran the candy story. I think I dreamed about her too...
And curled up in my bed I did browse a couple of book from the library briefly, but turned the lights down and conked out not long after Anee did, because she'd warned me we had an early and very big day ahead of us tomorrow; with both a long swim and a long hike on the schedule.
“A hike? What are we going to do? Stand on our tails and hop around like a potato sack race?”
“Stand on our tails! What a weird idea. And that'd be great if we could do that,” she said. “But no, I'm afraid this trip is gonna be something quite a bit more.... horizontal.”
“What do you mean?”
Her grin was positively devilish. “You'll see.”
.
Today my sister decided to take me landlubbing, which the mermaid equivalent of the human sport of snorkeling- a low tech way to see all the pretty sights of a world that isn't your own. Except that instead of gliding almost effortlessly along through the water, our version has the tortoise-like pace of crawling + squirming over the ground + through the brush, and in some places you're basically rock climbing without feet. It isn't easy. But the little island Anemone had brought me to was so breathtakingly gorgeous it made it all worth it. It had everything you'd hope to find on a tropical isle- from coconut palms to waterfalls. And being uninhabited we could explore it all without running into any humans...
Or so we thought. Until that big white boat pulled into our perfect island's perfect bay, and things got super intense as our pleasant outing turned into a desperate game of hide and seek.
.
.
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 27, 2014:
.
“Are you awake?”
“I think so. Thanks for not turning the lights on full blast. What time is it?”
“When I stuck my head into the dry room a minute ago the grandfather clock in there said four-fifteen.”
“Really? And we're going now?”
“It should be daylight by the time we get there. If the clock was right.”
“Okay, just let me take a shower and- ”
“A what?!”
“Never mind. I had a brain fart.”
"A WHAT?!! EWWWWW! Is that something that happens to land people?!”
“Only to Superman. It's how he decelerates when he's flying. So what do I need to bring?”
“I've got it all in this bag. You ready for a serious workout?”
“I guess we'll find out...”
.
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)))========> CONEY ISLAND BASSBY
.
All the chandeliers were turned down low and there wasn't a sound to be heard as we swam down through our maze of a house, until we got to the brightly lit foyer. Where Sargent Bassby jerked awake as we opened the huge front door and leveled his speargun crossbow at us, “WHO GOES THERE?!”
“It's okay, Bassby. It's only me,” said Anemone.
“Oh, good afternoon Princess. Must've dozed off,” he said. Then he noticed me, rubbed his eyes like he was trying to make me go away, and said, “Cor! I'm seein' double! There's two of yuzz!”
“Yes, I've been turned into twins. I'll explain later, but it's four in the morning and we have somewhere we need to be.”
I couldn't tell you why so many merpeople from this part of the Atlantic (and one octopus maid) should sound like they were from England, but Bassby had a Cockney accent as thick as the one my Tennessean paw-paw puts on when he's in the shower singing that dumb 'I got a Bunch of Bloody Coconuts' song.
The palace guard looked around, “You sure 'bout the time, yer 'ighness? Hard t' tell with these barmy lights they put in here.”
“We couldn't see at all without them,” Anee noted, which didn't satisfy the Sargent...
“Eeee-lectricity n' water is a bad mix! Gonna 'lectricute us all some day, sure as eggs is baby mermaids! Like that poor elly-phant what Mr. Edison murdered. Seen it with me own eyes!”
“Yes, poor Topsy. That was horrible!” said my sister, like she'd heard this story.
“And it's four A-M, not P.M.??? You're sure now?”
“Yes I'm sure. Go back to sleep.”
“Good idea then. I am a bit James Ward Packard. G'nite, Princess Atlantea... both ah yezz,” he said, and dropped instantly back into a deep sleep.
We left him there, blowing bubbles as he snored. As we headed across the castle's gardens Anemone said, “So anyway, that was Bassby.”
“He seemed kind of... uh, confused. Who's James Ward Packard?”
“I think he was saying he was tired. I can't understand half of what he's saying most of the time. He spent some time among humans.”
“The London dockyards?”
“No, but it was on a pier. He was in DOCTOR LOVEHEART'S HALL OF NATURALOGICAL ODDITIES, in this weird place called Luna Park."
“Really?! Luna Park's right next to where I saw that Mermaid Parade I was telling you about," I told her. "Or not the same exact amusement park---it burnt down---but they rebuilt it.”
And if he had been at Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century it would explain how he'd witnessed the "execution" of that badly abused elephant who finally snapped and squashed someone (They have a statue of her there now with a little plaque telling her story...). I said, “But you know, we should probably explain to him that the castle's genie-lights aren't electric.”
“I have. He keeps forgetting.”
“And he thought we were Princess Atlantea? That's not good!”
“No it's not. That would have been around 1940-something, when she was our age.”
“Shouldn't he be in a home or something?”
“Like the Old Soldier's Home in Trenchtown? They wouldn't be able to do anything for him that we can't. There's really no cure for being two-hundred and fifty years old. The castle is where Bassby's comfortable, and as far we're concerned he is home. He thinks he's looking after us---guarding us from the Kaiser's Huns and the Zapatistas---but it's really the other way around.”
“That's decent. So he's family... But isn't it kind of dangerous letting him have that gun?”
“Not anymore. After he shot Mom that time we took the bowstring out.”
.
With just a sliver of a moon shining its feeble light down into the ocean it was pitch black out, with only about thirty feet of visibility in any direction. After we swam up out of the valley I couldn't even tell what direction we were heading, and without being able to see the Church of Atlantis's steeple sticking up in the distance I would've had a hard time finding my way to Shellcastle. But my twin led us over the top of the kelp patch without a second's hesitation.
“So did you get enough sleep?”
I nodded, yawning. “Give or take an hour...”
“How long did you stay up reading?”
“Not long at all. I was trying to read the first three scrolls of The Wisdom of Atlantis...”
“Those'll sure put you to sleep. But if you're trying to get on Mom's good side you have to make sure she sees you reading them,” grinned Anee (Or I assume she was grinning; even swimming along right next to me I couldn't see her face clearly.)
“I was just curious, mostly; since this is the church I supposedly belong to now. And I wouldn't want Mom to see what I was reading after I skimmed through those. I started reading the blue book from that Temple of the Healer religion she doesn't like.”
“Well, she wouldn't forbid you to read the Book of the Healer, as long as after you finished it you agreed with her about how absurd it is. So what did you think?”
“Wild! And I thought The Pan-Galactic Clamboggle was some way out science fiction! The stories in there sounded like something those crazy Technotologists would have come up with-”
“Technologists?!"
“Techno-tol-ogists," I said, "It's this religion some guy made up back in the 1960's to try and make money off people, and it's totally insane! Which hasn't stopped more and more people from joining it over the years. They pay ridiculous amounts of money to supposedly reach these different levels of mental and emotional, uh... improvement or whatever; each level costing more than the last one. And you know you've reached this higher state when they wave their little Mojo-Meter over you and tell you it says so."
"And humans fall for that?"
"Some do. But as far as ridiculous religions go I think I like your Temple of the Healer a lot better. Their Healer sounds like a good guy, even if his sermons are kind of strange, with all those quirky little jokes. Or at least I think they were jokes...”
“I'm pretty sure they were. And that's what I like best about Ray and his temple, they don't take themselves too seriously. Which is exactly what Mom dislikes about them. That and the bow ties and their messiah having feet,” she said. The dark tops of the kelp plants rolling past beneath us looked the same as what we passed over three minutes ago. We could have been going in circles for all I knew...
When suddenly there were houses below us.
“South Lanyard Street?! What are we doing way the hell over here?” wondered Anemone. So I guess her night-time pathfinding wasn't totally perfect, but at least she got us to the right town...
.
.
)))========> QUIET VILLAGE
.
The desolate streets of Shellcastle were eerie in the darkness, looking more like meandering canyons between rows of big rocks than something made by any kind of people. Their glass rooftops glinted dully in the tiny bit of moonlight filtering down, like rows of pyramids and ziggurats that had been built along these rock ridges by some long vanished race of wee folk.
“It all looks so different in the dark,” I said, “This is cool! I'm glad this was on our way.”
““It's not, really, but after yesterday I'm a little worried about Fluke. And also I'm hoping that he'll be able to go to the island with us, after they get set up for the dawn rush. He's got the day off like that before, It all depends...”
Rounding the next corner, I saw something up ahead that looked like a string of balloons hanging in the water in front of the Daily Tail's office, which as we got closer I could see were four octopuses lined up at the front door. I could sense my sister frowning in the darkness, “I hope we're not too early for Fluke. Perri hasn't even started today's run yet. She usually- Oh wait, here we go!”
A lantern had come on, and now another, and now Ms. Winkle was opening the door to let the octopuses in. As we approached she spotted us, “Good morning your highnesses! Well you two are sure up early.”
“'Morning, Perri,” Anne replied, “And how early is it anyway?”
The journalist had a human's waterproof watch on her wrist, a highly coveted item in Hatteria. Mom didn't even own one. “It's four thirty. If you come back in about an hour you can read your interview.”
“We would, but we're heading out to Wedge Island,” my sister said, “We're going landlubbing today.”
“And you've got your gear,” she said, pointing at Anee's backpack. “I've really got to try that one of these days, so can I write an article about it. Have fun, girls!”
Glancing into the office as we passed I saw the octopuses were all putting on aprons and visors. “And what are they? Typesetters? Reporters?”
“Those are the inkers."
"Yabba dabba doo..."
"Huh?!!"
"Never mind. So did Perri say it was four-thirty?”
“She did,” said Anee, “And that would explain why we're not getting any daylight yet.”
“But I thought you said it was four-thirty when we left the house. Which was a while ago.”
“That's what the clock in the library said, but with all the excitement of you showing up I messed up and I let it run down. So I kind of had to guess when I reset it yesterday. Whenever it happened before I used to just ask Genie what time it was, but I can't do that now.”
“He had a clock in his bottle?”
“He had all kinds of crazy junk in there. Stuff I never saw. I'd hear some noise and ask him 'What the heck was that?!'; and he'd go 'Oh, just my espresso machine,' or 'That was my table saw, I'm building a birdhouse...' Or that 'go-kart' that he liked to go racing around in there on; That sounded dangerous! I really miss Genie, he was such a character!”
.
.
)))========> THE TELLTALE TAIL
.
We rounded a final corner and at last we could see the grocery store, facing the opening at the end of the next dark street, with that striped awning across the front that must have been made from a sailboat's nylon sail and was clearly more decorative than to keep the weather off of people...
And we could see a boy with a glow-lantern held high in one hand, and in the other he was holding a human artifact---one of those metal dustpan-on-a-stick things you see mall janitors using---as he swept ocean sediment out of the front door with his tail.
“Hold up,” she said, “Let's just watch him a while...”
We stopped.
“So Fluke isn't your imaginary boyfriend after all,” I kidded, “I was starting to wonder.”
“Nope, he's very real. And he's the only boy in the world for me,” she said, in an exaggerated dreamy way, kind of poking fun at how gaga she was over him, but also genuinely happy and contented.
“It would seem like he's the only boy in the world, period. Or at least around here...”
“I know. So it's a good thing he's such a great guy. I've never heard anyone say one bad word about him. Even Mum kind of likes him.”
In the light from his lantern I could see Fluke bore a strong resemblance to Brad Pitt. Or not the fifty year old Brad Pitt, but what the actor must have looked like when he was sixteen.
Seeing a twenty-something Brad Pitt in one of his early movies a couple of years ago had been my first crush on a male person. I don't recall the title or what it was about, so it must not have been a very memorable film, but I clearly remember that goofy sweet smile of his, his broad shoulders and the flat billboard expanse of his chest, and how these things had made me feel, adding one more level of confusion to an already confused early adolescence---(“Okay, maybe I'm really just a fag after all...”)---after I'd already decided I was some sort of boy lesbian when I found myself heavily smitten by Julie Newly who sat next to me in my eighth grade history class.
Eventually I sorted out who and what I was; That yes the word 'lesbian' applied, even if 'boy' didn't; but I also was realizing I liked certain guys, even very masculine ones, if they seemed goodhearted and didn't act in that idiot-macho way that repulsed me.
From my first impression here Fluke didn't have any repulsive qualities, but seemed to radiate everything a guy should be about. And the words just kind of fell out of my mouth- “He's beautiful!”
“I know,” she agreed, amiably enough, but as she glanced over at me something upset her---made her tense up---and she snapped, “Would you straighten out your tail? That's disgusting!”
I looked down. My tail had coiled itself into a tight spiral under me. I didn't understand why this had happened or why it upset her; but from her tone and from the tingling in my tail (very reminiscent of when I met Sandee yesterday...) I sensed that this was something that proper mermaids didn't do. At least not in public, and not over their sister's boyfriend, and ESPECIALLY not when she's floating right there next to them...
I uncoiled my tail. “I'm sorry, I didn't even realize I was doing that...”
“It's okay,” said Anemone. But she didn't exactly sound okay.
I felt like I was back in eighth grade again, trying to navigate the social rules of our junior high school while also sorting out that whole maelstrom of new feelings within me they call early puberty. I wasn't 100% sure what was going on here, but I had a good inkling of what might be worrying my twin. I told her: “No Anee, please! Listen... Whatever that was there, my tail, feelings, and maybe ones I shouldn't have; which... I mean I don't even KNOW, okay?! Because right now I feel like there's a lot more I don't know about being this 'me' I am now---a girl, a mermaid---than I do know. Okay?!"
"Okay..."
"But there's one thing I know about how I feel. You're my sister and that comes before ANYTHING. I mean maybe my tail did that, and maybe that means something---feelings, desires, that I'm a big dirty slut or whatever---but that doesn't mean I'd ever try to-”
“I know,” she said reassuringly.
“Not with Fluke. Because I love you; and I would NEVER try to stab you in the back like that!”
“You're not a slut, Sis! You're okay. It's normal. It's natural. And I never thought you would. I just... Maybe I overreacted.”
“Not really, you just reacted. You have something wonderful and you want to protect it. If what I did was natural then that is too...”
.
==========>
About a month ago my human mom sat me down for a serious discussion. It wasn't that “birds & the bees” speech, they assumed I knew all that by now. And it wasn't about me being transgender, although I think the fact that she was coming to see me as Susan had made it easier for her to talk about this with me, mother to daughter. Not that being the same gender is any guarantee that there will be any rapport or understanding, but I'd spoke enough about my own feelings during our “and what makes you believe you're a girl?” sessions with my shrink that she was starting to see a lot of herself-at-my-age in me. (Meanwhile, the more I shared who I was with my dad, the more alien I seemed to him. No less lovable, but different from just about everything he'd been assuming about me...).
"You can't just follow your heart at the expense of doing what's right," Mom had told me. She said that something can feel like the most wonderful, perfect thing you ever felt, and it can still be wrong if it hurts someone else. And it can “wind up costing you the things you really value.”
She said she had “learned that lesson the hard way”, and didn't go into details; but I knew it had to do with that huge screaming fight in their room that had woke me up when I was six or seven; when Dad was yelling at her like I'd never heard him do before, or since, and then stormed out, disappearing for a whole month (during which she cried and called herself “Stupid!” a lot); And when he came back they were awkward with each other for a few more months before they went back to being the Mom and Dad I knew again, and that sick frightened lump in my stomach went away...
Stealing your sister's man is a different sort of betrayal than a marital infidelity, but it seems to be of roughly the same magnitude.
==========>
.
Fluke was still sweeping, and apparently didn't see or hear us out here in the dark. He seemed like a bit of a perfectionist.
Anee put her arm around me and squeezed, "Don't worry, Sis. You're gonna find love. You'll be meeting that tall dark stranger I saw you with in the crystal ball. The orb hasn't been wrong yet. Remember how I found that lost little kid with it? Well I saw your stranger as clear as I did that. He's not from our village, but I know he's coming for you. It's destined...”
“Destined? Coming for me?! He's not wearing a big old robe with a hood hiding his face, and carrying a scythe in his bony hand, is he?”
“No. He's wearing one of those things around his neck,” she let go of me and gestured with both hands, “Like a big square piece of cloth, but they roll them up.”
“A scarf? A bandanna? An ascot?”
“I guess. It's a pretty yellow color.”
“Well he should be easy to spot if I see him around town. Do you don't have any idea of when this will happen?”
“Afraid not. But not years and years, because you looked the same age as now. Only---I just remembered!---only your face was all banged up.”
“Not from him, I hope!”
“No, not the way you were laughing. I felt you were comfortable. But that's all I know. Anyway lets go meet Fluke...”
“I'm ready.”
“FLUKE!” Anemone shouted and we swam down Green Dolphin Street toward him. The boy turned and peered in our direction.
.
.
)))========> FLUKE, FINALLY...
.
It didn't seem like could even see us yet, but Fluke knew my sister's voice and smiled, calling out, “Princess Alimony!”
“You wish, Sunfish!” chanted my sister.
“Just a sec-” yelled Fluke as he curled his tailfin to push it all into a neat pile, and nudged it into the dustpan. Then he swam up about thirty feet---his lantern like a dim little star up there---and emptied it; letting the current take the silty gunk off to somewhere where people weren't trying to do business.
He sped back down, headfirst and flipped himself upright next to us, saying, “I've missed you! You haven't been around.”
“We tried,” said Anee, “Came by two days in a row.”
“Oh that's right. I was in Trenchtown Monday, and yesterday... that must have been that hour and a half when I had to take dad to Healer Acesco...”
“Gods! What happened?!”
He made a chopping motion- “His thumb. Clean off!”
Anee and I both winced: “OWWWW!!”
“It's all right, it's back on, and Aceso said it'll work and have feeling again; but he's gonna be out a few days. So what's new with you?”
Anemone gestured at me, grinning, “It seems I have this sister all of a sudden...”
“So I heard, so I see. A magical sister!” he said and turned to me, “Hi, I'm Fluke.”
“I'm Enomena,” I said, “And I was made by magic but I don't know how magical I am.”
“Maybe not by yourself. But the two of you together, and from the way people talk.... You've been the like Merlin Twins; the spell you've put this village under! You're all anyone's been talking about. How happy the Princess seems with her new sister, how nice you both are to everyone... even grumpy old Mrs. Grouper said it was 'sweet'. I think I'm the last person in town to actually meet you.”
“Things have been kind of crazy.”
“Here too. We've been really swamped. People are buying more since this happened, so our newest mermaid has a real fan in my father.”
Anemone went to kiss him, and he hesitated. Held his lantern up next to her face, then to mine. “You wouldn't be pulling a switch on me? I've heard twins like to play games like that.”
“You tell me,” she said as she moved in and kissed him. They hugged tight as their mouths played together for a minute.
I was happy for Anemone. Her and Fluke were obviously in love, and I had a sense that he was the sort of upright guy that my sister deserved.
But I have to admit I was also jealous. Despite being a 'magic sister' I still had problems with the whole notion of magic, and couldn't quite buy her crystal ball's predictions. Tall dark strangers don't just appear like that, do they? I was haunted by the sense that I would wind up an old mer-spinster, living in my little shack out past the edge of town with my twenty-seven catfish...
Their faces disengaged, and Fluke grinned, “That's my girl, all right! But just to make sure I better kiss her too.”
“Don't even!” cried Anemone, and started slapping and hitting him on the arm, while Fluke laughed, cowering and whimpering like she was doing it a lot harder that she was.
He rubbed his shoulder, “Well now I'm certain you're each who you say you are. I'd know those lethal punches anywhere!”
Anee grinned wickedly, "Maybe she should punch you, just to make sure..."
“We wouldn't pull a trick like that anyway,” I said. (At least I knew I wouldn't. Maybe if I wasn't attracted to him I could do that; but since I was kissing him would just be too weird...) “Although we did try pretending to be the other with Mom a couple of times.”
“Really?” he chuckled, “And?”
“And she could tell every time,” Anee said.
“I'll have to ask her how she does it. Because it's eerie how much you look, and even sound the same. Except for Enomena here having a slight accent.”
“I do? What kind?”
“I don't know. I can't place it. Maybe it's a sea cow accent.”
My sister and I bust up laughing. Mooed at each other.
"What?!" asked Fluke. "What am I not getting here?"
“The sea cow story was Jasper's idea,” I said, and gave Fluke the two minute version of where I really came from.
“I guess you'd have to tell your mum something," nodded Fluke, "What is it with her and humans, anyway?”
"It's... something," said Anemone. I could tell she was dying to blab the whole Jacques Cousteau story to him, but that had been a totally non-negotiable promise we'd made to Mom.
“And maybe that explains your accent,” Fluke said, “But you were really a human boy who wanted to be a mermaid?”
“I would have settled for becoming a human girl, but I always did love the idea of being a mermaid. What can I say? I was a weird human.”
“I don't think it's so weird,” he shrugged, “I'd like to be able to turn into a human. Maybe not forever, if they said that was the only way I could do it; but I'd sure like to live up there for a couple of years. Having legs, driving a car; I'd go to one of those amusement parks like the one Sargent Bassby's always talking about and ride on the rolly-coaster; travel clear across that big continent up there, in a train and then an airplane then a helicopter; see the mountains, deserts, forests, huge cities- I'd want to see it all, and meet all the humans I could, and be one myself. I don't know if I'd want to do it as a female human, that's not a part of it for me, but that's just me. If you weren't happy as a boy and you like being a girl better, how can that be bad?”
Anemone saw me smiling and sighed, “Isn't he great?!”
“What's so great about me? I'm just a commoner who bags kelp and sea cucumbers in his dad's store...”
“I meant about you not having a problem with her turning into a girl,” said Anemone, “That's a big thing with Enee. She was telling me how some of those humans she used to live with really dislike it when you do that; they can go pretty nutso about it!”
“Really?! About changing sex? Do they know how many fish from how many species in these reefs around here change sex? There's clownfish, seahorses, moray eels, wrasses, all sorts of gobies, and uh...”
“Not to mention the corals themselves,” said Anemone.
“Right, the mushroom corals do that. You got males changing to female, females becoming male..... Who are we to go against nature and say it's wrong?! But anyway, I've got to get this place set up for opening..."
“Do you need a hand stocking the bins,” my sister asked.
“No, I got it. But it's gonna be insanely busy today with just me here.”
Anemone sighed, “So that's that. Then I guess there's no way you'd be able to go landlubbing with us.”
“Today? Absolutely none. And not tomorrow either. And I would have loved to... I've got this really durable landlubbing vest I've been wanting to try out, use to belong to some human named Harley Davidson. But we'll be closed Saturday, and we can do something then, if you guys want.”
“That sounds great,” we answered.
“Go do your store,” Anee told him, “We need to get a move on anyway, the sun will be up soon.”
“It was real nice meeting you, Fluke. I'll be down the block there, you guys. There's this really neat looking store I want to check out,” I said, pointing off into the dark, and left...
There was no 'really neat store', I just wanted to give them some boyfriend/girlfriend time together. Before I was out of the circle of light from Fluke's lantern they had locked their arms around each other and were lost inside a kiss.
.
.
)))========> LIKE CHOPSTICKS FOR ICE CREAM
.
Out in the sheltering darkness I sat on a bench that had these comfy mermaid-butt shaped dents in it, wrestling with my emotions.
Right from the start I could tell I was out of my weight class, and my emotions were fighting dirty...
.
==========>
I glanced over at Anee and Fluke embracing. They seemed so great together. Two normal kids, doing what people our age do. They seemed to know who they were and where they belong in this world. Or maybe not completely, since as my gender shrink reminded me adolescence is a time of questions and anxiety for everyone- regardless of their sexuality or gender identity.
But I seemed to have more than my share of questions and anxiety as I hit puberty. Like I said, there had been that question about if I liked boys or girls, to which I finally answered yes; But in either case the desires I had didn't seem to go with my body. I seemed to want someone to touch me places I didn't actually have, and the one thing I did have I couldn't see much use for.
All my fantasies about romance and/or sex had started wit me being a girl, and since I wasn't one I had never pursued any kind of dating or whatever, and no one seemed to be pursuing me. Well until Pepper, and that was very recently, digging me more now that I was “interesting”. We had kissed and done some intimate stuff, which was exciting- I sure do like Pepper. It was probably the fact that we'd been friends since we were kids that I hadn't considered her as someone to be girlfriends with, but when she considered me I thought: “this might work!”
And yet the only time our kissing sessions had seemed TOTALLY right was on the day of that fiasco with those hostile jerks in the mall---that day of so many firsts---and after we got back to her house, and her parents were still at work, and I was wearing the clothes she had loaned me, with my hair the way she'd styled it that morning, and I could feel like I was really and truly Suzie and not Stewart. I didn't technically lose my virginity, but it was about the closest I ever got to another person sexually, and it was beautiful...
There are some things that it feels just too strange to do when you feel like you've totally been given the wrong equipment. Like eating ice cream with chopsticks, which seems weird and wrong even if it's technically possible. Then when you hungry enough you break down and use your sticks, even when you wish God had given you a spoon.
But since that genie zapped me I didn't feel any of that chopstick awkwardness anymore. Only now that I had my spoon I was afraid that I would never find anyone to have ice cream with, because there was nobody else my age around here.
Tall dark stranger. Yeah, sure. And I've got a bridge I can sell you...
I mean there were guys here, but they were all older. And I didn't really want to be with an older guy, although someday I might have to if that was all there was. Beards have always been a major turn off for me, and the mermen here sure had some big bushy ones, but I supposed I could get over that if I liked the merman...
But then there was Sandee who worked at at SEAS CANDY. I had been thinking about her a lot since yesterday. She definitely didn't have a beard, and that smile of hers made something go wonderfully sideways inside of me. I wondered if there was even the slightest chance-
==========>
.
A voice broke into my ruminations: “You ready to hit the open sea?”
My sister was hovering in front of me. I swam up off my bench, “Absolutely.”
We set out for our adventure, and were cruising through the endless kelp forest when the sun finally rose...
.
.
)))========> WEDGE ISLAND
.
Landlubbing is a pretty amazing sport. Basically it's the mermaid equivalent of scuba diving or snorkeling, exploring a world that isn't your own.
And today that world was an island of maybe fifty acres, about six times as far away from the castle as that little rock Anemone liked to go sit on. On one side was this beautiful half moon bay that the whole island sort of curled around like a letter C, from which the terrain rose up, gradually at first but then steeply, until it abruptly ended in some tall cliffs that had the surf pounding violently against their base. Wedge Island had just about everything you'd want to see on a tropical island: a nice beach, palm trees, bushes, ferns + vines, colorful noisy birds, small mongoosey-looking mammals, strange bugs + lizards, even a little waterfall. And being uninhabited we could explore it all without running into any humans.
Lubbing is strenuous, and not every minute of it is fun. You're wriggling along, dragging a tail that's only slightly helpful for forward motion and weighs more than your entire human half; and wherever you can find a rock or a solid tree root to grab onto you use your arms to pull yourself past it. So it's sort of like rock climbing, only a lot more horizontal...
When you remember how easy it was to walk the same distance the going can seem ridiculously slow, but it gives you time to notice the little things you might not have seen otherwise.
Approaching on the bay side we waited and watched the rhythm of the waves a while. At this beach today it was every eighth wave that was the big one, so we counted and then body-surfed in on one of these. Not a huge wave but it took us a long way in before we had to start squirming across the wet sand.
Lolling around at the waterline was a mostly deflated Wilson volleyball with a smiley face painted on it in what looked like blood. Anemone pointed, “What's that thing?”
“Somebody's idea of a joke, I hope...”
After a few yards we reached the dry sand---clean and pretty and almost painfully white in the bright morning sun---where coming the other way we met a large sea turtle, who was making better time across it than we were.
Anemone said to her, “Don't worry, Mama Turtle, we won't mess with your eggs.”
“I would appreciate that,” she nodded, “And may your babies be safe as well. Safe swimming!”
“Safe swimming,” we both replied as we passed her.
She'd assumed we were up here for the same reason she was, figuring that no sea creature would be crazy enough to do this if she didn't have eggs to lay. It was a weird reminder that if it ever happened for me, motherhood would involve sitting on an egg in a nest like a chicken. Although at least us chickens-of-the-sea had the option of buying a pre-made nest at the recently opened Village Maternity Shoppe...
“Let's leave our sticks here, where they'll be easy to find on the way back,” Anemone said as she pulled her shark club from her belt and stuck it upright in the sand.
“There's no wild boars up there or anything?” I asked, pointing up at the island's central big hill.
“Nothing big enough to worry about. That club will only get in your way, or it'll work its way out of the holster and you'll wind up losing it.”
At the edge of the jungle stood a grove of coconut palms, and the crumbling stone foundation of a large house, against which Anemone rested while she dug into her pack. She pulled out a pair of wet bras and handed me one, “Here, you can have the one that fits better.”
She'd evidently tried them both on, and however they fit her they would fit me the same. After checking the little tag to see what my cup size was (cool!) I put mine on and hooked it up in back; thinking about the couple of times I had done this in secret when I was raiding my mom's clothes, and how I had needed to stuff socks or something inside her bras, then put on a blouse to hide the obvious fakeness of those dead unfeeling sock-breasts...
I looked down at my cleavage, grinning like an idiot. “Where did you get these bras?”
“You'd be surprised at the stuff you can find on the ocean floor,” she said. I imagined some wild drunken party on a boat, with clothes going overboard.
It made sense to wear these now that we weren't floating in the ocean. A few hours under normal gravity wouldn't begin to make our tits sag, but it wouldn't do them any good either. Plus I'd read where having breasts could literally be a pain, to where some women even had them surgically reduced because their backs always hurt. This wasn't something I could ever imagine myself doing, but I knew that a woman's life experience and some transgender kid's dreams of such experiences might be two very different things. I said, “Well it's good that you found these. We don't want to get a back ache...”
“You start dragging those pontoons across branches and sharp rocks and it won't be your back that's hurting. We don't have scales on our upper bodies, we need some kind of protection,” Anemone said as she tossed a t-shirt at me and slipped into the other one.
Her shirt was green with a shamrock and the words: "KISS ME I'M IRISH" on it. Which considering my family name of Donnelly probably should of been my shirt. Unless my heritage had got changed when my whole body did and I was a Daughter-of-Atlantis now. But I liked this "HUSSONG'S CANTINA ~ Ensenada, BC" shirt a lot better anyway---it just seemed so summer vacation-y, like it went with this island, and red is my favorite color---so who cares who's Irish or Atlantean or Mexican or what?
“Don't get too attached to that shirt,” she said, “Where we're going it's gonna get pretty trashed. There's been some I've had to get rid of after one trip.”
As we started out again I noticed that the house's foundation had a full sized palm tree growing right in the middle of it. I said, “This place looks old...”
“It is. Back when my grandma was a little kid some humans from Africa came here and tried to start a sugar plantation.”
Knowing the average lifespan of a mermaid I did the math, and said, “I think those Africans only worked here.”
Anemone had come here a lot and had a “beginner's path” picked out for us, with a mostly shallow ascent with the maximum number of good handholds. Although if this was the beginner's path I'd hate to see the hard one. I will never complain about the uphill parts in cross country skiing again!
But it was worth it to share “the world I grew up in” with my twin. This was how she thought of it anyway, not realizing that to a suburban American kid like me this island was as strange as the kelp forest we'd come through on the way here. Maybe more so, since there were beds of several types of algae and all kinds of fish at the Aquaritorium where my mom worked, but they had nothing like this there. I wasn't much help in answering all the questions she was asking me, like: “What kind of flower is that?” Or: “Do you think these berries are edible?”
During a long rough haul Anemone pulled her shirt collar up and wiped her face with it. She told me, “Don't worry if water starts to come out of the skin of your human half, that's normal up here.”
“I know. I used to be human, remember?”
“Oh, that's right...”
Perspiring is something that many mermaids go their whole lives without doing, and the story about the patient who came to them in a panic thinking it was a sign of some strange and horrible illness is a favorite comical anecdote of our healers. And even those who know what sweating is find it an utterly repulsive experience, and further proof that we weren't meant to go crawling around on land like crazymers.
The calling conches we usually wore around our necks would have really gotten in the way doing this so we'd left them at home. What Anemone did bring along was her cheapo pirate telescope, in the same clear green vinyl school pack that she'd found it in, which she'd reach back and pull out whenever her hands weren't occupied with crawling.
During our third or fourth little rest break she saw something that made her gasp, and passed it to me, whispering, “Wow, look at the big beautiful mouth on this bird!”
Again, I was amazed at how powerful this little toy scope was. I pointed it where she'd been looking, glad that I finally knew one, “Ah, that's a toucan. And a bird's mouth is called a beak.”
Anemone loved any kind of birds. The idea that an animal could fly seemed like something magical to her. I told her there were groups of humans called Birdwatchers that she'd fit right in with.
“See? We're not so different,” she said, a statement that seemed to be addressed more to our mom back at the castle than to me. “It's too bad we can't be here at sundown. That's when the bats come out.”
“There's bats here?”
“About a billion of 'em! The way they go swirling around against the sunset, from a distance you'd almost think it was a cloud, but it's going up and down and around like it had a brain.”
“I'd love to see that,” I said.
“But not today though. In fact we're gonna need to turn back at midday. But please let me know if you start to get tired before then, because it's not really any easier going downhill.”
“What will make me have to quit, and I think way before noon, is needing to get back into the water!”
“There's a stream just up ahead. That'll help a lot. It's another the reason I picked this course.”
When we got to the stream we stuck our heads in it and breathed the warm clear water to for a while, and then drank a bunch to hydrate ourselves. Fresh water tasted weird to me now; but she assured me it wouldn't make us sick. She said the famous river explorer Huxtable Fynn and his party had lived in the stuff for a couple of years as they searched for the headwaters of the Mississippi; although they did have to take salt supplements.
I said, “Speaking of headwaters, this is a pretty big stream for such a small island. Where's all this coming from?”
“A spring up near the top of the hill. It's really nice, warm. I like to lay on the bottom and look up through the surface at the trees bobbing around in the breeze. So pretty. It's about another hour's squirm from here. Although there's one stretch that's definitely not a beginner's climb. Do you want to see it?”
I was dirty, scraped up, had lost a couple of scales on my butt and water was coming out of my skin, but I grinned, “I think we're gonna have to.”
We followed the creek. The terrain got steeper, and the rest stops came more often. We passed the mouth of a cave, which I would of loved to explore if I'd had legs and a flashlight.
Anemone said, “That's where the bats live. It's pretty amazing when they all come exploding out of there at twilight. Bats are so beautiful!”
Somebody had carved MM in the rock next to the cave. It couldn't have been the year, because the letters looked way too old and worn to have been done in 2000, so maybe it was their initials. Marion Mutton? These islands had been the old psychopath's stomping grounds. But I knew if we went poking around in there we'd be more likely to fall down a hole and die neck-deep in bat poop than find any pirate treasure.
We moved on.
On our next rest stop Anemone pointed at a spider web, and asked me if I'd ever seen one of these “amazing nets” that these “little crab things” build to catch bugs in. My knowledge of biology is pretty hit-or-miss (I'm either gung-ho on a subject or skip right over it), but I'd been fascinated by spiders ever since falling in love with Charlotte's Web half a lifetime ago, so that was another one I was glad to be able to explain to her.
The non-beginners part that she'd warned me about was a waterfall, about as tall as our house back in Dover. You had to climb up a steep slope alongside it by some vines hanging down. Hand over hand. At 65 degrees it was too steep to keep us from sliding backwards but created plenty of drag to hinder your upward progress. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this without feet to plant against it; but I guess when that genie made me into a copy of Anemone that included her arm muscles, which weren't all bulgy like some weightlifter's but were strong enough that she could go climbing up these vines like a monkey, and then reach out and help pull me up that last little part.
I flopped onto the mossy grass alongside the waterfall's edge, grunting, “What do you say we rest a bit?”
“But the spring's right there,” she said, meaning a wall of rocks almost like a jetty at the top of a grassy little slope, with a dent in it from which the stream started.
“Okay. I can do that,” I said, and we wriggled toward it.
.
.
)))========> BITCH BASSIDY & THE SUNFISH KID
.
The spring was as perfect as Anemone said. It was wonderful to totally submerge ourselves in it. We rinsed our shirts clean and hung them on a branch, and after waiting a minute for the water to clear we jumped in and lie on the bottom, watching the clouds drift past.
I mentioned that this pond looked oddly fake, like something you'd see at a home and garden show.
She said it was; that somebody decades or centuries ago had built a little dam around what had just been a hole in the ground with water gurgling out of it. Whoever they were, they had my thanks.
One great thing about this spring that my sister hadn't mentioned was what a spectacular view we had from here. After our soak we clambered up onto a fallen tree that crossed the edge of the pond and sat there with just our flukes dangling in the water, taking it all in. We sure had crawled a long way...
Just beyond where our stream dropped away down the little waterfall were the tree tops of the jungle we'd just inchwormed our way through, which was the size of maybe three shopping malls. The jungle sloped down away from us until it stopped at the grove of palm trees; and beyond them lie the white crescent beach, descending gently into to that blue, blue bay with that big white futuristic boat parked in it.
Boat?!!
“Hey! Where did that come from?”
Anemone slapped the water with her tail. “Must've pulled in when we were under here...”
“Should we be worried?”
“I don't know.”
It was a sixty foot yacht, pudgy and expensive looking; and very customized. Right at the bow I could see the tops of what I guessed was a pair of big picture-window sized portholes they could sit behind and see whatever was going on underwater. And then about a third of the way back from the front it had a thing like an oversized canoe on each side, which I figured could be pushed down into the water on booms to lift the big boat's whole front end up and turn it into a hydrofoil. There were so many telemetry and communications doo-dads + dealie-bobs up on top of its bridge that it could probably call up the Mars Rover for a chat or tell you the wind speed on Jupiter. It was the kind of yacht that would have several bathrooms (not “heads”) and a home theater; and might or might not have a bowling alley.
But what it definitely did have was a Zodiac, which we should have been able to hear from here, but the inflatable dinghy's oddly-shaped little outboard motor was strangely silent as it hauled-ass across the water toward the beach with three people in it. Anemone handed me her spyglass, saying, “You know more about humans.”
I studied them through it. “Well they don't look like drug runners or anyone else who might be heavily armed. Their clothes are too colorful, touristy, and kind of weird. The big one's wearing a silly hat like a red plastic flower pot. Actually I think they're a family on vacation. Yeah, okay.... It's a dad and a mom, the dad's around fifty and the mom's maybe thirty five; and a daughter who might be nine or ten, and really has the whole pink thing going on.”
“I can see the pink one! Let me have that,” she said. And after looking for a while went, “They don't seem too bad. And I really doubt if they'll come up this far.”
As the rubber boat hit the sand they all shrugged out of their life preservers. The dad flipped the motor up and the three of them jumped out and dragged it up onto the sand, well past the high-water mark, like they had done this often.
The father found the squished volleyball, held it up like he was singing something to it. From his goofy pose I would guess it was that “Alas poor Yorick he bathed in sulfuric” song from Mel Brooks's Hamlet.
The mom grabbed the ball from him and chucked it into the Zodiac, probably to take it back to land and recycle it, or at least get it off of that otherwise pristine beach. Then the girl saw something on the sand and they all all gathered around it excitedly, squatting down to peer at it and then standing back up.
“What is it, Anee?”
“They're talking about our tail tracks in the sand,” she said.
Uh oh! “Well maybe they'll think it's sea turtles...”
She frowned, “Would you?”
“I guess not,” I said. If I wasn't thinking 'mermaid' I wouldn't know what had made our tracks, except maybe a pair of mutant seals. But the last Caribbean monk seal had been slaughtered about a hundred years ago and harbor seals didn't live this far south...
And from the way they were acting we seemed to have left them a huge mystery. They stopped and pointed at our shark clubs sticking up out of the sand---What could have done this?---then followed our tracks through the palm trees to where the grass started. I got the scope back just in time to catch the father as he squatted down, and made a patting motion with his hand. See how the grass has been flattened here? Then they started following the squashed grass. More slowly, because it was less obvious than those wavy dents through the sand.
Every minute or so in some spot where the foliage was thin we'd see the dad's florescent lime green vest-shirt or weird red hat, the mom's mish-mosh of animal prints or the daughter's sneakers-to-beret shiny pink ensemble. They were definitely following the same path we had taken. Of all the boats that could have stopped here we had to get Jungle Jim the Animal Tracker.
Anemone watched their progress through the spyglass- “Oh good, they're gonna turn left- No, you stupids! Go left! Go- Awwww dammit, they found our trail again! Who are these guys?!”
“I have no idea.”
“You realize we absolutely cannot let them see us, don't you?”
“I realize that.”
She was definitely worried now. She looked around, “I think we have to get out of here.”
“Maybe we could go back to that cave we passed. Hide in that.”
“They'll get to it before we will. We have to go up.”
“Up?”
She pointed up the hill, “That rocky area up there. We won't leave any broken branches or twigs to follow.”
It seemed like quite a gamble. Because if they did follow us we'd be cornered against the cliffs. But I didn't have any better ideas.
“Let's put these on later, we need to get out of here!” she said, stuffing our lubbing outfits into the backpack, and we headed up, across a jumble of volcanic looking rocks with some lichens on them but very little vegetation.
We made good headway because there were so many handholds, but the sharp igneous rocks were murder on my tail, my boobs and my hands. This was the kind of masochistic idiocy that most merpeople imagined when they thought of landlubbing...
Luckily after a couple hundred feet we came to the end, and headed around this one egg shaped boulder the size of a barn that looked to be the highest point on the whole island, and onto a ledge about ten feet wide between it and the cliff's edge.
We sat leaning against the big egg. It was very windy up here.
I looked at my poor battered tail. I'd only felt a tug and a brief stinging there when it happened but there was a chunk the size of a Sharpie marker missing from it in a place about six inches above my tailfin, showing the inner me, which looked like a raw red snapper steak.
Jesus, I thought, I really am half fish!! But at least the blood dribbling out of me was normal looking.
My sister saw where I was staring. “That's not too bad, in a month or so you'll just have a dent there, and the new scales will come in smaller. We'll slap an antibiotic poultice on it and wrap it when we get home...”
I couldn't believe how high we had climbed. I peered down at the angry dancing surf below us. It was quite a bit farther than when I'd jumped from the crow's nest of The Invinceable. I whistled softly.
“I know. But I think we might have to,” murmured Anemone as she took off her backpack.
Oh, perfect! I started laughing. It wasn't a very happy laugh.
“What's so funny?”
“There's this old movie..... Do you know what a cowboy is?”
“It's an American man from a place with no water who rides cows.”
“Close enough. There's these two cowboys named Butch and Sundance,” I simplified, not wanting to have to explain what a train robber was, or an 'anti-hero'. “Some bad men are trying to catch them, and these guys are really good at tracking people. So the two cowboys try to escape up into the rocky hills, just like we did. And they come to a cliff, like this one, with a river below. And if they don't jump they'll get caught, taken back to town and hung- uh, strangled to death with a rope...”
We could hear the dad say excitedly, “Blood! And it's recent.... it's them all right.”
They must have been halfway across the rocks if we could hear them so clearly over the waves and wind. A female voice said, “Poor things! They must be scared of us, whatever they are. I think we should just leave them be and head back.”
“Yeah Dad,” said a girl's voice, “This is FEEK! You don't have to be the big game hunter everywhere we go.”
“Watch your lang-” he started to scold her, then must've decided that 'feek' wasn't that bad a word. “Do I even own a gun, Valerie? Except for those three times---which I swore off when I married your mom---I only go hunting the V Room. But I have to know what these things are. Get a picture. I mean something that leaves a track like that- it's like nothing I've seen or heard of! Do you compy what I'm saying here? Back there in that muddy spot, those looked like hand prints!”
They conferred more quietly after that, a lot of mumble-bumble that I couldn't make out.
“Anyway,” I whispered to Anemone, “One of the cowboys, Sundance, just refuses to jump. He'd rather try and fight all those men.”
“He's scared of heights,” she nodded. She could sure sympathize with that.
“Not exactly. He won't say what he's scared of, he's embarrassed about it. But finally after some more arguing he admits, 'I CAN'T SWIM!' And Butch Cassidy starts laughing really hard. And he says, 'Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!'”
She looked down the cliff face. “I guess that's funny. So what do they do?”
“Maybe they're around this rock,” came the man's voice. He sounded super close.
“They go: 'Oooooooooh SHI-'”
As I started wriggling as fast as I could toward the cliff edge Anemone joined me, but didn't scream the cuss word that I did on the way down. She just screamed.
Maybe it was our aerodynamic mermaid shape, or maybe we have thicker skulls than I did as Stewart, but hitting the water head first wasn't as jarring and didn't nearly knock me out like my toes-first dive off the pirate ship did. It was like slipping into some welcoming space, that knew you the way you knew it, and where you knew you'd be okay now.
.
We swam home real slow. This was something else we weren't going to tell Mom about...
.
And again, any comments will be hugely appreciated.
The first thing every mermaid learns is that if you see a human you're supposed to swim away as fast as you can. But the girl in the pink wetsuit was right here in front of me, and there was no way she would think she'd been mistaken about seeing me. My best recourse seemed to be to convince her not to tell anyone about meeting me, and as we talked (or rather I talked, while she typed her words on her neat little electronic message pad) this seemed to be working. But there were things Valerie was telling me here that made absolutely no sense. Either this girl was crazy or the whole universe was. Given the kind of week I'd had, my money was on it being the universe that had gone...
.
.
THURSDAY AUGUST 28, 2014:
.
My sister was still asleep when I woke up so I decided to head down to the kitchen and grab us both some breakfast. I quietly slipped on my calling conch and belt, and was heading for the door when I heard a groan. Her clamshell bed popped open just enough to reveal a the face of a very miserable looking mermaid princess.
Anemone was obviously in pain she but managed to smile feebly and croak, “Hi.”
“Oh my God, what's wrong?!”
“I think I hit the water wrong when we jumped off that island. It's my back, mostly.”
“Do you want me to go get Mom?”
“Please don't! I just want to sleep another couple of hours. But I had to tell you I don't think we'll be swimming out to Sandy Bottom to see that sunken pirate ship today.”
“That can wait until you're feeling better. If that ship's been there a couple hundred years I don't think it's going anywhere,” I said, “But how did this happen? You seemed fine on the swim home.”
“I felt okay then, maybe it was the adrenalin or something. But when I woke up it's like I can barely move...”
“Then we don't have to do anything today. We can hang out here. I still have to beat you at Battleship,” I said. (Anee's dad had built her a simple wooden version of the game, having played it with his Royal Navy buddies back in WWII...)
She shook her head, “There's no reason for both of us to be bored and miserable. You've been enjoying our expeditions so much I think you can try a solo one today.”
“You think so?”
“You handled yourself really well with those two sharks yesterday, even when that big one was sniffing you. You didn't panic and start thrashing around.”
Actually I'd been too scared to move, but only until the beast moved on. It hadn't been so traumatizing that I would want to hide inside the castle for the rest of my life. If you lived in the ocean sharks were going to be a part of it.
And the idea of heading back to the corals or someplace really did appeal to me. As a human I'd found a solitary walk in the woods could be an amazing experience. It was great being twins with Anee but it wasn't like we were Siamese twins and had to spend every second together...
“But what if I get lost? It's a big ocean; You can go a thousand miles without seeing any sign of a merperson.”
“Ask a fish which way to the mermaid town. They all know where it is. You can find your way back from Shellcastle, can't you?”
“Sure. At least when there's daylight.”
“Then go, explore, have fun! And tell me about it when you get back.”
“Okay, but I'll make it a short one, in case you're feeling better later. Love you!” I said, and left. Now all I had to do was find my way out of this house.
.
.
)))========> DOCTOR MOM
.
Exiting the ramptube onto the second floor I ran into Queen Atlantea.
“Dear Poseidon! What happened to you?” she asked, seeing the big red gaping wound in my tail before I could turn it away from her.
“I uh... I was trying to ride a marlin.”
She made a mom face. “Then you're lucky that's all he did to you. That's a nasty cut! Let's get a proper dressing on that, shall we?”
She took me to a smallish room I'd never been in before, with a rack of scary looking surgical tools on the wall, shelves crammed with mason jars full of various medicines and a human-made chaise lounge like you'd see on someone's patio, that she had me lay down on.
She pulled an apothecary jar from the shelf and shook three pills into my hand. “Here, take these. They're an analgesic called aspirin.”
They were ordinary generic aspirins, but had been coated in wax or something to keep them from dissolving in all this seawater. I gulped them down. “Thanks.”
She started picking away at the broken scales around my wound with a pair of Revlon tweezers. This stung more than plucking out hairs, but not as much as pulling off fingernails. She lectured me nonstop while she fixed me up, but did seem to enjoy taking care of me.
“Just be glad this wound happened where it did. Farther up the tail it would have bled a lot more, and anywhere above the waist we would've had to send you to the clinic in town to get stitches. Which is something I could do, but you'd look like that poor patchwork creature from that human novel Frankenstein.”
“I read that last year in- I mean last night, in bed,” I said.
She nodded approvingly, “Every merperson should read it. It's a perfect illustration of the horrible things that happen when humans play god, something they seem to be doing with increasing regularity these days. I hear they've even got Frankenfoods now, and something called Bridezillas- Oh those poor women!"
“The fiends!” I burbled. On all the walls were medical charts showing different aspects of mermaid physiology. The mermaid skeleton, cardiovascular system, and one that showed an egg growing and making its way from the infundibulum to the uterus (where it was given its shell by some gland), and finally being pushed out through the vagina- which since this didn't take place in the pelvic area might or might not hurt less than when a human woman gives birth. I was in no hurry to find out. I looked around, “Wow, this castle really has everything. Even your own little doctor's office.”
“This surgery, and the living quarters next to it were intended to be used by a Royal Healer. Which was a nice idea, but our physicians can better serve more mers at the clinic in town than they could from here. So this room just serves as a sort of help-yourself first aid station now. I'm afraid that when Genie created this castle he didn't consider the kind of budget it would take to staff it with all the specialized employees he designed it to house. It's ridiculous! Although I'll admit the sight of all these impossible seashell domes and towers does serve to intimidate our visitors from the other kingdoms.”
“They're beautiful too. Majestic. And you have to admit he did a really nice job on the grounds.”
“Yes he did. They're starting to get a bit ragged now that Mr. Pescanova has left us, but the gardens are my favorite part of this whole estate. We go through a lot of mackerel keeping those giant sea anemones fed, but that's one extravagance I decided to keep. I couldn't just let the poor things starve. But as for the rest of this big ridiculous pile. It's just... just...” she waved her hand around in the same gesture I'd seen her daughter use.
“Ridiculous?”
“To say the least! Anemone, bless her heart, she meant well. But she shouldn't have left the designing of our home to a being who was so.... whimsical. I'm just glad the populace didn't have to pay for all this pomp and splendor. Gods of the Deep! A hundred and eighty bedrooms, a dining hall on every floor, a billiards hall, a squash court, offices and oratories. Living rooms, dying rooms, lebensraums; dry rooms and larders. Armories, legories, elbow rooms and several pillow-fluffing chambers. Dark rooms, bright rooms, changing rooms, staying-the-same rooms; an Ame's room, a porter's lodge, a Polo Lounge and a puppet theater. Not to mention three grand ballrooms; that immense attic- all done up like some gothic cathedral; And something called an 'arbitrarium', which he never did explain. And OH! All those dungeons! I have no idea what kind of kingdom he thought we were running here! Was he expecting us to reinstate the Spanish Inquisition?”
“Well you know what they say: No one expects the Spa-”
“'They' are always saying something,” she huffed, cutting off my quip, which I guess she wouldn't have gotten anyway. "All those armchair heads-of-state should try spending a week in my chair!”
I couldn't remember which play it was from, but I quoted,“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown...”
“Ah! My favorite human author! And the finest chronicler of human flaws and human follies.”
“Only humans flaws and follies?”
“Well of course. Shakespeare was a human.”
“But I thought the appeal of Shakespeare---and how he's been popular all over the world for all these centuries, and under the water and with the Klingons too, although they're not technically real---was that his stories and themes and ideas were like... universal. I mean, take what Perri was telling me about how Empress Ramora seized power down there in Amazonia. That sounded like something right out of Richard III!”
She grinned sardonically, “I guess it was. With a little Othello and some Julius Caesar thrown in...”
“And you talk about his plays being about folly and flaws, but aren't there virtues in some of them? Like how brave his Henry the Fifth was, or Shakespeare's Fool, who wasn't really a fool at all. And this was a human author.”
“I suppose,” she grudgingly conceded. “I must say, you're very well read for being only two days old.”
“Well I... I've been trying to make up for lost time.”
“That's my girl! Too bad you weren't here for our little production of King Lear in Coral Park. We really needed someone younger than me playing Goneril, but when Adriana had to drop out, well I knew her lines. That lovely young woman who runs the confectioner's shop was excellent as Regan, and your sister handled her part as Cordelia fairly well. But it was Jasper's Lear that stole the show! After five minutes you completely forgot that he's a dolphin,” she said, and pointed toward the ceiling, "Although he did have to disappear a few times between acts so he could go breathe."
“I wish I could've seen that,” I said, picturing Jasper cussing out his 'daughters' in a silly fake beard.
She grabbed my arm, “Now let me see that elbow. Ow, That looks painful! Well there's nothing we can do about a bruise. I hope this serves as a reminder to not go risking your neck trying to ride marlins or some other foolish game!”
She smeared some cold greasy goo onto my tail wound and stuck a wad of gauze onto it.
“We mers are hearty organisms and we can usually shake off the sorts of bacteria that might land on a wound like this; but seeing as you're practically newborn let's bandage it,” she said as she snipped a length of three inch wide red-and-black cloth tartan ribbon off of a big roll of it she had; then wrapped the ribbon around that part of my tail where the gauze was. She tied it into a big floppy bow, like she was gift wrapping my tail, and smiled, “There, that should do it!”
As bandages went, this one on my tail was kind of pretty. “That you Your Maj- I mean Mom.”
“I do wish you'd learn to call me Mummy,” sighed Atlantea.
“Thank you, Mommy,” I said, and she sent me off with a kiss on my forehead.
.
I was trying. I really was. I knew this merwoman had a big heart, and had found a place for me in it the minute she met me, but I still had a hard time calling her my mother. I already had parents, who I missed something awful. I would even go back to being a human boy if I could be with them again. It wasn't like I'd have to stay one forever...
.
==========>
I remembered the night my mom joined the local chapter of Parents Of Transgender and Transsexual Youth; and how she came back from her first meeting talking a mile a minute about the other parents she met and the way she related to just about everything they said; and the hope she got from their stories.
And weirdly, Dad didn't make fun of her but seemed sort of interested. That it might be good if I could be happy and not all depressed and losing interest in all the things I used to want to do, like I had done for a while there; even if I wound up being just some girl instead of my new school's star quarterback or whatever it was he'd been hoping I would turn out to be. It was one of those hints I got that he really was trying, or trying to try anyway...
Because me and him had actually gotten along pretty good before I came out to them with this thing that seemed so weird to him; that made him think some little circuit in my brain had gotten damaged and caused me to start mislabeling myself. And I saw that if he was being super-negative about this, it was mostly because he wanted to discourage me from doing a thing that he thought would make life really hard for me; since he couldn't understand how much harder it would be if I didn't.
My father had been through some tough times in his life, but never anything that would help him relate to how I felt; the way things that every other boy in town seemed okay with could bum me out as bad as they did. Things like to go on using the name you'd been given at birth and dressing like you were expected to, which made me feel like everything about my life was this huge gigantic lie. And if that stuff had felt like a lie, my being a girl now felt like the truth, the real me, and like finally being at peace with myself!
But I'd had to lose everything I knew and everyone I loved to get this, so it was weird.
Bittersweet I guess you'd call it.
========>
.
It was getting to be second nature to grab a club on my way out the door. We'd had a couple of sharks checking us out on our way to the island yesterday---one was a big bruiser the size of both of us put together, who seemed to think my butt was really interesting---but we hadn't even needed to pull our clubs from our belts. Anemone had just ordered them to “move along” in a regal, commanding voice, and damn if they both didn't comply. Hopefully any that I ran into today would listen to me like that too. And if not...
I'd really liked my baseball bat, but it was stuck in the sand back on that island. But digging around in the umbrella stand I found its cousin, a more paddle-like sawed off bat that had St. George's Cricket Club ~ CAVALIERS written on it. It had a nice heft to it.
A baseball or cricket bat wasn't the greatest weapon to go up against a toothsome predator that conceivably might be as big as the one in JAWS (that would be a shark-seeking torpedo, launched from a mile away...) but it was better than using your bare fist, which against a shark's rough hide would do more damage to your hand.
I stuck it through my belt and was off on my adventure.
.
.
)))========> OFFENDING NEMO
.
I swam in the same direction Anee and I had gone on Tuesday, except that I veered around town entirely, and wound up at the coral beds like I'd hoped.
It was a beautiful bright morning on the sea floor, and the joint was jumping- all kinds of colorful fish and crawly things going about their business. I wasn't sure about coral reef etiquette, whether it would be rude to swim right past something without acknowledging it; but after I noticed how all these creatures were mostly limiting their conversation to among their own kind I decided not to speak unless spoken to. But I did get a number of “Good morning, your highness”-es, that I responded to with a warm hello, a compliment when I could think of one, and “safe swimming”...
From a cautious few feet away I observed a scarlet hermit crab trying on different shells until it found one it liked, then watched a pretty little Caribbean clownfish wriggling around in the tentacles of a big sea anemone with obvious pleasure, like a dog rolling on grass.
“Having fun?” I asked.
“Yep!” squeaked the fish.
“Aren't you afraid that anemone might eat you? They eat fish, you know.”
The clownfish giggled, “Nawwww, we're buddies. We gots a simbee-osis!”
“Yeah.... Buddies!” agreed the anemone.
I remembered what Fluke had said about some of the species around here spontaneously changing sex, so I asked, “Are you a boy fish or a girl fish?”
“A girl fishie!” said the clownfish, bouncing on her friend's tentacles, “Can't ya tell?”
“Well of course,” I fibbed, “But I was wondering... Were you always a girl fishie?”
She stopped her bouncing and swam up, parking herself about an inch in front of my face, and said indignantly, “That's a purty darn personal question to ask a fishie before ya even knows her name!”
“Sorry, I was just curious.”
“Yah, well everyfishie's curious! Ever since my transition every fish and his brother thinks he can just swim up to me and start askin' me fer the most intimate details about my pro-ceedure: Did it hurt? Can you has orgasms? Are you done changin' or do ya still have some of yer boy parts?” It's quite pre-zum-shis, if ya ask me!”
“I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-”
“It always seems ta get down to 'parts' with you fishies! Well lemme tell ya, I is more that just the sum of my parts. And way more than the sum of just some of my parts- Them parts you is all so innarested in!”
“But I'm not! I just-”
“What is it with you cis-fishes and parts? It's just weird, is what it is! I don't go around askin' you about your parts, do I?! Don't ya got lives of yer own, that you gotta all the time be gettin' so nosy about a trans-fishie and her parts?!!”
“But-”
And suddenly a big black shadow was blocking out the coral bed's sunlight.
YIKES!!” she shrieked, thinking it was some immense predator, and vanished.
She had swum off in an orange and white streak, leaving me talking to nobody, “But I'm...... I'm like you...”
.
.
)))========> THE WHITE BEAST
.
The shadow that had fallen across this patch of reef was too big to be some marine predator, unless it was one that had escaped from Jurassic Park. I looked up and saw the white fiberglass keel of a sixty foot boat. A keel that narrowed, and then narrowed again- like upside-down steps. It was pointed the wrong way for me to see the porthole windows in the bow, but I would have bet anything that this was the same white vessel Anemone and I had had our run-in with yesterday.
“Can you tell her that I'm sorry?” I asked the anemone, but it was closed up tight.
“Ya better scram before that thing eats you,” he mumbled through his clenched tentacles, sounding like a bad ventriloquist.
“Good idea,” I replied, but not because I was afraid the boat was going to eat me.
As I looked around for a hiding place I heard something hit the water's surface and saw a strangely shaped anchor that seemed too lightweight for a boat this size, descending on a line that was almost too thin to see. I knew I should have been hiding but I just had to stop and watch when a pair of winglike vanes sticking out from the anchor twisted, changing its angle of descent.
It seemed to know right where it wanted to go, heading for a big rock that it latched onto like the claw that you try to grab a teddy bear with in one of those mechanical crane games. Except that this grabber thing seemed to actually grab. And then from the center of it a doo-hickey like a drill bit drove itself into the rock with a slow high torque whirring sound. Nice anchor!
I had just enough time to duck behind a ridge of coral before I heard a KER-SPLOOSH! sound and saw a scuba diver in an electric blue wetsuit plowing down into the water in a cloud of bubbles. As he turned himself right-side up he was joined by a smaller adult in a lipstick-red wet suit. I'm not sure why they even needed suits in this warm water, maybe it was to help them see each other. Three seconds later a child in a bright pink suit with pink flippers joined them. Yep, it was definitely our friends from the island...
.
.
)))========> WAITING FOR THE ALL CLEAR
.
If I tried to make a break for it now they would see me, so as they hovered there making hand signals at each other I settled down on the sea bottom behind the coral ridge and pressed myself into a hollow in it, hoping that when I poked my head back up in a few minutes they would be far enough away that I could make my exit. From the small size of those tanks on their backs it didn't seem like they planned to be down here very long.
I sat in the sand looking at my tail stretched out in front of me. I liked my red tartan bow, maybe I would continue to wear them after my wound had healed...
My mind drifted into thoughts of Anemone and Fluke again. How amazing it was that in spite of the decline in births that had made each of them a statistical rarity, they had been born within a year and a mile of each other, as if the Sea Gods had willed that they be together. And maybe They had. But from there my thoughts smacked up against how dismal my own chances of ever finding romance seemed...
The only merperson I had the slightest interest in---since I refused to think about Fluke that way---was Sandee at the candy shop. I pictured her: that radiant smile, of course, which made her seem like such a positive and friendly person; but also the earlobes poking out of her pixie haircut with those adorable shiny starfish earrings on them; and her cute nose, her pert little breasts, her belly button, and even the spread of her caudal fin; which I'd caught a glimpse of when it flipped up as she hopped across the counter to feed me that salmon candy. Its rich, translucent almost peacock blue color, and the filigree pattern of its spines- as graceful and delicate as a Japanese fan. To be turned on by a fish tail would be extremely kinky if I was a human, but I supposed it was normal now.
But Sandee could well have been married, or otherwise committed to someone; and even if she wasn't... what were the odds that she was gay? Or for that matter did bi or lesbian mermaids even exist (besides apparently me)?
Well of course they must, from the casual way Anemone had asked me if I liked boys or girls. This wouldn't have been something she would think of if they didn't exist. And if our teacher Mr. Mergolis was a gay merman then there must be gay mermaids too.
This close to the end of summer vacation Mr. M. was probably on his way back here by now. I wondered what he would be like. As our teacher, I mean, not sexually; which would be fairly futile. Like trying to be romantic with my friend Chiro, who out of the blue one day had said that he'd never suspected I was trans, but that even as a boy I had seemed too feminine for him to get interested in. Then he backpeddled, saying it wasn't that I'm not nice-looking “in a weak-chinned kind of way”, like he was afraid I would be hurt by his rejection; when actually his saying that had made my whole day, and maybe my whole week, and...
And there's somebody staring at me, isn't there?
.
.
)))========> THE KID
.
The girl hovered there, working her pink flippers and gawking at me, sending up bubbles every time she exhaled. She wasn't wearing a diver's mask but had a little rubber goggle-thing with a glass lens stuck over each eye with some kind of adhesive.
I knew that when you saw a human---or especially if they saw you---you were supposed to swim away into the murkiness as fast as you could. Or jump off a cliff if you have to. But she was right in front of me and there was no way she might have thought she was mistaken about seeing a mermaid. And this kid might convince her parents (“Well I know for sure I saw something strange. Maybe it's whatever made those weird tracks on that island!”) to come searching for me and possibly find our whole village. Especially after seeing how relentless her dad was about us yesterday. So the wisest course of action seemed be to try and befriend this girl and convince her not to tell anyone about me.
Or this is what I was telling myself, because hadn't it worked out that way for Princess Atlantea with a whole boatload of Frenchmen?
But later I realized that the real reason I kept on sitting in the sand in front of her might have been that I just didn't want to swim away. Here was someone from that world I'd left behind, who I maybe could hang out with and reconnect with the human race, if even for just a short while.
I heard a Velcro-ish ripping sound as she pried a flat yellow plastic case that was about six by nine inches off of her hip. I figured it had one of those underwater writing pads and a pencil in it. But when she flipped open the top what I saw was a little LCD screen, with some buttons and a miniature keyboard below it. She wrote something, and then while shyly staring down at her slowly wigwagging flippers she showed me the screen: HI Im Valerie. Valerie Rosado. U?
She was offering me the device to type on but I waved it away, saying, “Pleased to meet you Valerie, I'm Enomena. I don't have a last name.”
She cupped her ear in a what-did-you-say gesture, and typed: EMOMOMO?
She wrote my name as I spelled it for her and showed it to me, adding: Great MM name! Its ANEMONE bt backwrds!
“Right! I'm surprised you caught that.”
Most humans would be freaking out if they met one of us, but Valerie seemed to be taking this pretty well. Although she had this tendency to avert her eyes, even when she wasn't typing on her pad. She wrote: How do u do tht?
“Do what?”
TALK
“Can't you talk?” I asked.
Not undrwatr, she wrote, then pulled out her mouthpiece and said something on the exhale that sounded like it had been run through a scrambler. Typed: See? I just sound Lk bubbles. But not U …. So ???
I shrugged, “I guess it comes with the tail.”
GREAT tail btw! +++HOLY great wig!, she typed, then patted the hair on the side of her head, which was chestnut brown and pulled back into a ponytail.
Her non-metallic hair made me homesick. I told her, “You have pretty hair.”
TY, she wrote. Then: HAY where u get ur AIR?!!?
“I get it out of the water.”
So do I BUT WHERS UR AIRVERTER?
“My what?”
Half-turning, she slapped the device on her back, which gave off a dull metallic clang. If it was a scuba tank it was a strange looking one. I swam up from my seat and motioned for her to turn around, which she did for me. On her back was streamlined silver thing no bigger than a gallon milk jug, with two rows of skinny oval vents down its sloping back. Below the vents, on a wide hatch that might have been where its battery went, were the words:
WOW! So this was the next generation of diving gear. No heavy tanks but---like she'd said---just pull the air right out of the water. I swear, the rich sure have some cool toys!
.
.
)))========> OMG MERMAID ARE REAL?!?!!
.
Then it dawned on me that Valerie was under the impression I was some kind of pretend mermaid, like those Weeki Wachee girls. And why wouldn't she think this? Any sane person---when they see a mermaid at a water park or someone in a superhero suit or a zombie on Halloween---they just assume it's a normal person in a costume. But Valerie was getting more and more baffled about what I was doing for an air supply here eighty feet below the surface.
A really good professional mermaid-impersonator has a whole slew of stage-magician-type tricks to make it seem like she's existing effortlessly in an environment that should kill her. But sooner or later you will catch her doing something that explains it. As I swam around to get in front of her, Valerie hit a couple of buttons, then showed me a question mark that filled the texter pad's whole screen and changed colors at a frantic pace.
And if I wasn't being such a chowderhead I might of been able to come up with something to convince her that a costumed fake was what I was (“Air tank?!! Damn, I knew I forgot something! I'd better surface before I drown, huh?”).
But instead I told her, “An air extractor? That is so cool! I didn't even know they made those. But you know what's even cooler?”
She shook her head no.
“It's when you can do this,” I said, and sucked in then let out four or five deep exaggerated gasping breaths of seawater. The way her jaw fell open it looked like she was gonna start breathing water herself before she clamped it shut around her mouthpiece.
Valerie goggled at me. She had dropped her message pad, which was swinging across the sea bed at the end of its tether. She hauled it up and typed: NO WAY!! UR REAL????
“SURPRI-I-I-I-I-SE!!” I sang out, “Mermaids are real!”
She typed frantically, then held up the pad for me, not realizing she had it upside down. I grabbed it, turned it over and read: NO!!! OMFG REALLY?! LIKE UR REALLY REAL U LIVE DOWN HERE + CN BREATH WATR +CN TALK + THATIS REALLY ALL U iN THERE + UR LIKE NO JOKE NO HOKUS A MERMAiD 4 REAL?!??!!!?
“Really and truly,” I said. I flipped my tail up, holding it for her to inspect, bending it in a couple of places where nobody just wearing a fake one could bend theirs.
I have to admit I was enjoying her amazement. But her face had such a stunned expression on it I was afraid she might faint, which is a bad thing to have happen underwater. I asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded, wrote: JUST HOLY IN REALITYSHOCK! FEEL LIKE M DREAMING OR IDK
“I know the feeling,” I said, remembering how I'd thought my first sight of a mermaid swimming toward me out of the black water was some kiss-your-brain-goodbye hallucination. I told her, “But actually, aside from being a mermaid I'm just a kid like you. Like you I love swimming around the corals checking out all the neat fish and things. I play bobsticks out in our yard with my sister and then get called in for dinner, I get in fights with my mom; I'm bummed out when summer vacation ends. I wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, go to school...” I paused for a beat, “Only it's a school of fish.”
That's the kind of joke nobody over the age of ten would think was funny. Valerie must have been nine and a half because she started laughing, really hard, and only stopped when she began taking on water. She pulled out her mouthpiece, expelled the water with an out-breath of air, popped the thing back in and breathed deep for a few seconds.
“And see?” I said, “I can even make dumb jokes. So really, I'm just a person. Only I'm a kind of person you never believed was real until now...”
I alwys believd. Like w/ those faries. I just didn't BELIEVE-believe. U compy?
Comprehend, I figured; and I seemed to remember her dad using the word yesterday. I nodded.
OMG THIS IS HOLY BONE!
“'Holy bone' means good?”
means VERY good!
“I'm glad you're liking this, because I'm breaking about fifteen mermaid laws by even talking to you. We're not even supposed to let humans see us.”
She nodded emphatically and wrote: I holy compy NEED 2B SECRET
“Good. Then I'm sure you understand why I need to ask you---beg you if I have to!---to never tell anyone about meeting me.”
i SWEAR i wont tell! she typed, then gravely stuck out her pinkie finger and curled it. I hooked my pinkie around it and tugged.
“A pinky swear! That's legally binding in some cultures, and good enough for me! And you crossed your heart too, even better!” I grinned when she solemnly traced an X on her chest, “Because it could be unbelievably bad for us mermaids if the land people found out about us. ”
i KNOW! she wrote, Like STRATOSFARIES!
“I don't know what that is.”
its BAD!! she wrote, FAYS GETTNG HUNTD. LOCKD UP. EXPERIMENTD ON!!! HUMAN-ONLY LAWS/ WHICH HUNTS +TEACHRS GETTNG FIRED 4 FAIRY BLOOD! So STUPID FLOOPY FEEK + WRONG!!!!
I got the gist of what she was describing: a nightmare worst-case scenario of humans discovering another race in their midst and getting medieval on them. But I had to ask, “What would teachers be doing with fairy blood?”
HAVING it!!! she wrote, and tapped the underside of her pink-sheathed forearm.
“Teachers being persecuted for being part fairy?”
She nodded.
So obviously she was talking about some TV show she watched called Stratosfaries. Probably a cartoon series. And from her quick synopsis it sounded interesting, but dark. But then a lot of the best ones are pretty dark, like Gargoyles or Robot Robot 777. Shows where the fairies, space aliens or whoever are the good guys and the humans---especially the cops or military types---all act like frightened ignorant cave men with big guns! If Mom ever loses her job as the Mermaid Queen she can probably find work writing for one of these shows...
These cartoons writers use made-up situations like this as an allegory or whatever, to show how ignorant and wrong human-against-human prejudice is. But what they're also doing and don't even know it is creating a generation of kids who will know what they can or can't do if they ever meet a mermaid or a centaur or something. Kids who will see themselves as that one plucky human character these shows always have, who has been let inside the title-characters's secret world; a smarter and clearly more decent person than all those paranoid jerko-piggo characters screaming about The Mermaid Menace.
.
.
)))========> MY STARS
.
Valerie looked at my tail closely. She inspected the pattern of my scales, how they were obviously made of something alive and growing; and she peered at the veins and ribs in my caudal fin. She reached out, hesitated, and when I nodded for her to go ahead she ran her hand up and down my smooth scales, grinning around the plug of her mouthpiece.
Assuming it was just a decoration she tapped on the tartan bandage wrapped around my tail where my wound was, and typed on her device: Thats so cute!
“Thanks,” I said, and I noticed she was looking away again. This tendency to not want to look directly at me was something she'd been doing since we'd first met, but it was only now that I figured out what it was about.
It wasn't some personality quirk; shyness, insecurity, a lack of confidence around other people like I'd been assuming, or even anything to do with me not being human. She was simply doing her damnedest to look anywhere but at my tits. Whenever she'd catch sight of them she would sort of blush and glance away; except for during those moments when I was doing something so impossible (like breathing water) that she would forget to be embarrassed. I should have figured that out a long time ago, but evidently I'd gone so totally native in this mermaid world over the past few days that I wasn't even thinking of myself as being naked now, any more than an unclothed dog or cat does.
But at her age Valerie hadn't even taken a gym class yet, which is something that sort of gets you used to the idea of people getting naked around each other. Although as Stewart, the boy's locker room was probably still my least favorite place at school, even after a couple of years of suiting up for PE. And although the vague edge of discomfort I experienced in there---(down from the dread I'd felt during my first week of 7th grade...)---had been rooted in a different set of issues, I could sympathize with this Valerie's feeling awkward around me...
I motioned at my chest and asked, “Is this a problem for you?”
NO, she typed, not wanting to seem prudish, but her cheeks turned an even deeper red.
I wished I had my HUSSONG'S t-shirt to slip into, but who knew where that was now? In our haste to jump off that island we'd sort of lost track of Anee's backpack. So there didn't seem to be much I could do about this except float here with my hands pressed against my boobs and hope this didn't make it worse for her.
But then looking across the sea bed I saw a clan of those common whitish yellow starfish (the kind you're most likely to see used as nick-nacks on land), and I got an idea...
“I'll be right back,” I told her, and swam over to them. Yep, the old starfish bra trick!
Being a ruler over a queendom full merpeople was something I was still trying to get my head around. But at least kings, queens, princesses and various types of lesser nobles were things we'd had on land, even if not where I lived. But the notion that my family's rule extended to all the sea life around here just seemed too silly to be any kind of real thing at all. So I was surprised when these stars started arguing over which two should have the honor of serving as “their princess's” bra for the next hour. I finally wound up picking two at random- “You... and you.”
But since a starfish is an animal that can bust open a mussel as easy as shucking a peanut then dissolve the poor critter inside with their powerful digestive juices, I was a bit hesitant about putting them on my nipples. Also I wasn't too sure they'd stay on without straps, until---using nothing but muscle tension---they clamped themselves onto me and stayed put. This felt a little strange but wasn't painful and only slightly uncomfortable. And it was such a cute look! Like being a mermaid in some old cartoon...
As I swam back to my human friend one of the stars asked me if there was something to eat inside the conch shell that was hanging between her and her clanmate.
“Sorry. But I'll get you both some nice treat when all this is over,” I promised. Hopefully some little beastie that I could smash with my shark club before it knew what hit it.
Valerie had been watching my conversation with the sea star clan with fascination. At the sight of my starfish bra thingies the edges of her mouth went up into an amused grin and she gave me a thumbs up.
.
.
)))========> THE GIRL WITH THE GIZMOS
.
I glanced around to make sure that Valerie's parents weren't coming our way. If they did I would have to split in a hurry. I told her, “I'm surprised your folks are letting you solo dive like this. I thought wandering off by yourself was one of the big no-nos in diving.”
M NOT BY MYSLF. THEY HAV ME ON R BOATS LOCATR, she answered, and before I could ask what that meant she punched a button on her pad and showed me.
On the screen was a topographic map of the substrate around here, a black background covered in looping green lines, with the depth alongside them in little white numbers. There were three red dots, one of which had a blue triangle beside it that must have been me. The other two dots were side by side and moving away from us, which was good, and also away from where Shellcastle sat, which was better. It must have been the lack of right angles in our architecture but the village looked like a strange maze-like pattern of big rocks; maybe natural or maybe not. I would have been curious to know what our castle showed up as, but it was just beyond the edge of the screen. What a neat little gizmo this was!
+++ also I hav PANIC BUTTON, she typed, and showed me a thing like a built-in wristwatch on the left sleeve of her wetsuit, a fat red button behind a glass face, which I guessed would send her parents rushing this way if she opened the top and pressed it.
“And what does this one do?” I asked, pointing at the plastic disk with a dial on it on her other wrist.
Boyancy Regulater, she typed. She turned the dial counterclockwise and a second later started drifting down, picking up speed until she was standing on the sea bed. She twisted it the other way and came back up until she was level with me again.
“That's pretty neat! I have one of those inside my body. Only mine will explode and all my guts will come out of my mouth if I go too deep.”
EEEEEEWWW!! she wrote. I like my kind better
“Me too. But they didn't give me the option of some other kind when they installed mine,” I said. “So what do your parents do?”
Dad is inventer + Mom designs sw, mostly 4 accting . . . BORING sw!
Accounting software, I deduced. “What did your dad invent?”
A thing . . . . I cnt Xplain it but it made us prtty rich
“I guess there's good money in things.”
She frowned. Was I making fun of her? But then she got excited about something and wrote: Oh! &Mom+Dad both workd on BBP awile- Tht was BONE!
“BBP?”
BIG BRAIN PROJECT! is wher they met, she wrote.
“Which is what? Some big computer?”
BIGGEST EVR
“What? They were trying to create artificial intelligence?”
She nodded. Exactly!
“And this was at some university?”
U never heard of BBP?!!!!!!
“Afraid not.”
govermnt thing. HOLY huge + $$$$$$$$$$$$ like that Man Hatin Project 100 yrs ago . . . only BBP not a BIG SECRET like Abomb
“Well too bad it got shut down,” I said.
'Further proof that YAHOO NEWS really blows when it comes to covering any kind of science,' I thought. 'I've really got to find a better news site!'
Then I remembered that down here there was no Yahoo News. That the only options I had for news these days were our town crier and the DAILY TAIL. These last few days had been so busy and fun that I hadn't missed my computer or the internet, but now suddenly I missed it like crazy. I could try to tell myself that I was a mermaid now, that I'd willingly left all that human junk behind for the simple life under the sea; but there was no way this particular bit of Amish-ness wasn't going to be the utter pits.
Valerie was intently typing something. She finished, and showed me: +its so STUPID they did 2!!! Cuz whn CHINA built there AI we lost AI RACE &Daisy turnd out NICE + non of that MACHINES TAKNG OVER b.s. like SENATER GREENSPOONER ws yellng about even HAPPEND!!! Was all floopy parnoid baloney +DAISY has her own TV show now!
“Wait, slow down! Could you try and write in real words? What the hell is DAISY?”
Shes chinese COMPUTER. Mom+Dad both sooooo mad that $$$ 4 our's got cut!
“Are you telling me that China has AI? And their AI has it's own TV show?!”
Dont u watch DAISY”S VARIETY HOUR or evn any NEWS??
“We don't exactly have televisions down here. Hell, we didn't even have telegraphs down here!” I said, and laughed bitterly, “Welcome to the freakin' 18th century!”
I had to expect that I would be falling out of touch with what was going on up on land now, but I'd only been a mermaid for a few days. How could I not have heard of this AI Race?!! It didn't sound like something that had just happened over this last weekend.
Was I so wrapped up in my own gender problems that I completely tuned out all the news about some big Artificial Intelligence project and how it got shut down by the legislature because they feared a Terminator-type end of the world scenario?! Well I must have been...
But even if I'd been oblivious to all this myself I'm sure my dad would of mentioned it at the dinner table---he would be making jokes about that computer that went psycho in that 2001 movie (oh I get it... DAISY!)---or if he didn't start talking about it my mom would. As geeky as my land family was there is just NO WAY that a thing like this would never have been discussed. In fact AI had been discussed at least once that I can recall, but only as something theoretical.
So this whole situation was extremely weird. An alarms-going-off-in-my-head level of weirdness, like when I first realized that those 'movie actor' pirates were the real thing. Something was seriously out of whack here! And what was with all this strange hardware- from their boat's self-guiding anchor to Valerie's 'air-extractor' unit and 'buoyancy regulator'??!
Well there was one explanation. It was a ridiculous one, but this had been a really ridiculous week. I began retracing everything I had done today, trying to figure out the exact moment when I'd slipped through into this alternate universe.
Valerie was looking at me curiously. She wrote: Whats wrong?
“Nothing really, I'm just trying to figure out how all of a sudden there's all this stuff in the world that I never knew existed! I guess this is just one more freaky impossible thing that I'm just gonna have to roll with if I don't want to go insane. It's been such a strange week! But at least I don't think I'll have to jump off any cliffs today!”
She startled, and typed: CLIFFS?
“Yeah. Yesterday my sister took me crawling around on this island. Which was a lot of fun until these three really weird looking humans showed up and we had to hide-”
OMFG that was U!!!!
"Yep," I grinned.
+++That was US too!!!
“I kind of figured...”
SO GLAD UR OK + MONSTER SORRY WE MADE U JUMP THT WAS A LONG WAY DWN!!
“It wasn't your fault. We heard you guys talking. None of you knew what we were and your dad sounded like he just had to know what the heck could make tracks like that. Which is totally understandable, especially if he's an inventor. He'd have that kind of mind.”
She wrote: LOLOLOL! I knew what u were. I TOLD them it was MM but their all like- ITS ALWAYS MERMAIDS WITH U VALLI!!! MERMAIDS!MERMAIDS!MERMAIDS! THERS NO MERMAIDS SHUTUP ABOUT YR DAM MERMAiDS ALLREADY!!!
I giggled, remembering my own parents and their frustration with their mermaid-obsessed kid. “So you're into mermaids?”
Valerie smiled and was hurrying to write something when her pad's whole screen began flashing bright red. Whatever it was it looked pretty urgent.
“What's that?”
Impishly, she reached out with the plastic gizmo and pressed it against my arm. It startled me---like she'd hoped it would---but not like it would have alarmed my sister, who wouldn't know what to make of the way it was vibrating. I said, “You better answer that.”
.
.
)))====> MISS SIRENA'S SCHOOL FOR YOUNG MERMAIDS
.
She pushed a button, and showed me what was on the screen: Are U OK Valli? U havent moved in 15 minutes!
She let me watch as she typed: FINE!!!! AM WATCHNG VERY INTRESTING C-CREATUR!
I gave her a thumbs up and she pressed “Send”. Discretion is the better part of Valerie.
OK just checking, the distant parent wrote. Must be a big one to be here on my screen. You'll have 2 tell us about it. If u see any mermaids say hi 4 us. LUV U!
Sure will! LUV U2 MOMS. Bye! she wrote, and pushed the hang-up button.
“Mermaids?!” I asked. “Oh, she's teasing you...”
She nodded yes. Typed: B-cuz of my class.
“Class?”
Miss Sirena”s mermaid class. @ pool in Bentonhurst Park
I'd never heard of a mermaid class, but I knew what it must be. Swimming in fake mermaid tails was becoming such a craze with young girls that it was just a matter of time before someone would capitalize on it by having classes in it. It sounded like a good job for a retired professional mermaid, who could teach not just the odd style of swimming it took to use one of those tails, but could also choreograph little underwater ballet routines for the girls, and maybe throw in a bit of mermaid mythology and folklore from around the world.
.
==========>
It would be like how Pepper Davis's dance instructor had been with the Moscow Ballet Company for twenty years, and as far as I could tell she still had the moves, she just didn't have that youthful beauty that people expect from a ballerina. The teacher had said my friend showed incredible promise; until at the age of twelve Pepper just up and quit, deciding that she despised this “elitist” and “bourgeois” artform, and that her true calling was to be an important underground graffiti artist like her new hero Banksy.
Pepper's career as a political graffiti artist was a short one, that ended with us both being grounded for a month after those cops caught us up on that billboard at 2 a.m. defacing an ad for the Dover County Fair, which Pepper believed was a hotbed of animal cruelty. Modifying it so that the fair's little dancing pig mascot now looked like she was writhing all bloody on a cross, with the words: PEGGY THE PIG DIED FOR YOUR SINS!
But that year's fair had actually ended about five hours earlier. This was bad planning on our part but we were lucky, since this sign was coming down as soon as they got around to it anyway; and being first time offenders we got off with just a warning (a break that they assured us we would not get the next time!); and “FASCISTS!!” became Pepper's new favorite word.
=========>
.
I asked Valerie, “So these Mermaid classes, you go to them about once a week?”
Evry thurs nite @ 7, she wrote, and held the pad up for me sort of hesitantly. I noticed she was doing the not-looking-at-me thing again.
I looked down to make sure my starfish were still in place, but they were fine. “What's the matter?”
U must thnk were holy STUPID, she typed, looking all sheepish and dejected. She sure was a moody little thing.
“Stupid? Why would I think you're stupid?”
prtnding 2B mermaid whn were NOT!!!
Did she really think I would be offended by this? Someone like Pepper might come up with some gripe over 'appropriation of Mer-culture by the legged hemegony' or some such overly-politicalized bullcrap; but these were just little kids! What could be more innocent than little girls playing mermaid?
“What's wrong with pretending?” I asked, “Mermaid class sounds like a lot of fun. I wish they'd had something like this six or seven years ago. It's not like you're doing it to make fun of us, is it?”
NO!!!!!
“Then what's the big deal?! My mom is a pretty important merperson now, but when she was a little mermaid she totally wanted to be a dolphin. She wore a dolphin suit and went around all day going ' EeEeEeEeEeE I'M A DOLPHIN!!!' And do you think the real dolphins were offended? No, they were flattered!”
Really?
“Absolutely. Us mermaids have a saying: 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, when it's sincere.' And you know what? I would love to see you swimming in your mermaid tail!”
This perked Valerie was right up.
Bone!, she wrote to me, and then sent a message to her parents: Hay cn I go 2 my cabin + get 1 of my tails?
Of course, they answered. Go have fun! But BE CAREFUL! We just saw a hammerhead the size of a brood bus.
She signed off with: ALWAYS safe. LUV U!
“What's a brood bus?” I asked.
Big family bus . . . . like 4 Pollies
“Pollies?”
U know! Like w/ 3 wivs or 2 hsbnds, she wrote.
“Oh, those Pollies. That's not really legal though.”
Coarse it is! They wouldnt let thm get married if it wasnt
“Oh...”
So now I had big families of polygamists roaming around in buses (probably with clever stickers in the back window displaying slogans like “The More the Married-er”, or some polygamist version of the gay rainbow flag or the trans pink + blue one...) to add to my list of things that just sprang into existence today. Just what the hell was going on here?
She screened me one last message---GOING 2 EUREKA BRB!!!---then cranked her buoyancy regulator all the way to the right, and took off like a shot toward the surface and that boat up there, which I supposed was named the EUREKA. If it wasn't I was going to have a long wait...
.
...
=======================================0
ThaNKS FoR ReaDiNG, PleaSe CoMMeNT!!!
(And if anyone can explain to me why this chapter
has got so many more kudos than any of them since
the first one I'd love to hear it so I could do it again!)
=======================================0
...
My week as a mermaid continues: My young human friend and I surfaced and sat on a rock, where we could talk without having to use her underwater message pad. I was hoping she might start making sense now, but Valerie's strange stories were growing progressively stranger: Reagan and Kennedy on Mount Rushmore... A transsexual woman giving birth... Peace in Iraq but a war in Antarctica...
I might have decided that she just had a wild imagination, except she also had all this impossible hardware---like the artificial gill she'd been breathing underwater with---which had me wondering if I'd somehow wandered into an alternate universe. Given the kind of week I'd been having this didn't seem like such a crazy notion, but these mysteries had a different explanation that I would eventually discover. It was just a matter of time...
.
.
THURSDAY AUGUST 28, 2014- 15 Minutes Later...
.
It was a judgment call, one that flew in the face of everything you're supposed to do when there were land people around, but I was convinced I had done the right thing making friends with the little human Valerie.
I sat on a large sponge, who was quite happy about being used for a chair. He was yacking away, telling me stories about his spongy life, which consists of sitting there waiting for food to drift into his big uncloseable mouth-hole thing. Prior to getting sat on by a real-live mermaid princess the highlight of his life had been when a delicious triangular object had fallen into him, which from his description sounded like a very soggy Cool Ranch Dorito. He couldn't tell me how long ago this happened, having no concept of time, but the sponge seem perfectly content with his immobile and monotonous existence. Maybe you need a nervous system to worry about stuff or wish there was more to life.
I half-listened as I waited for my friend to return from her parents' boat, thinking about the bizarre conversation I'd been having with her; Valerie typing on her little texter machine and telling me about the craziest, most impossible things as if they were normal everyday stuff. And the weirdest part of it was that she didn't seem crazy, but like just a normal ten year old girl. Something seriously did not compute here...
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.
)))========> THE HARLEQUIN MERMAID
.
When Valerie came back she was a mermaid. She still had the compact 'air extractor' machine on her back with its tube leading to her mouth, and her little stick-on goggles, but she was out of her wetsuit and was wearing a mermaid tail that seemed a bit large for a kid her size, a little longer and slightly fatter than my own tail. And it would seem that whoever designed her prosthesis wasn't going for any kind of realism...
Most humans have never actually met a mermaid, and I've seen pictures of us that gave us everything from webbed fingers to neck gills to cute little pectoral fins for ears. So a 100% realistic artificial mermaid tail might be a bit much to expect. But the myths about us generally agree that our top half looks pretty much like a human and our bottom half looks more or less like a fish. Valerie's tail had the right shape, but beyond that it didn't even try to look fish-like. It was a rubber thing, as pink as wet bubble gum, with crisscrossing lines of shiny gold giving it a pattern that sort of gave you the idea of scales all over it, but not really. And in the center of each of these business card-sized diamond shapes were fake gemstones as big as pennies---red for rubies, clear for diamonds, blue for sapphires---which weren't trying very hard to look like the real thing either. The wide fin at the tail's bottom was some plastic-y soft turquoise substance; pretty with how the light shone through it and caught the flecks of gold glitter embedded in it, but this too looked more like part of some toy than a living organism.
She had on a pink bikini top, which on her scrawny kid's body wasn't really something functional. She was carrying Anemone's lime green plastic backpack. After our scary dive off that island we'd both forgotten all about it, and must have left it up at the top of that cliff. Valerie gestured with it- Is this is yours?!?
“Thank you! My sister is probably looking all over for this right now,” I said as I took it from her. The only things in it were Anemone's toy telescope and the can of anchovies she'd been saving for just before we started our long wriggle back down the jungle trail to the island's cove, to replenish our much-needed salt. The spyglass was good to get back, and the anchovies, because any kind of human-made food is ridiculously expensive down in our world; but I'd been hoping to find my red shirt so I could put it on and send these starfish that had volunteered to be my temporary brassier on their way. I asked, “I don't suppose there was a couple of shirts and bras in here?”
Valerie mimed slapping herself on the forehead, and typed on the yellow plastic message device: Sorry!!! Their in our washrdryer
“You washed them?”
MOM did. 'In case we meet thos GIRLS' . . .
“She thinks we were human girls?”
said u MUST be, she wrote, But Daddy still thinx U R CREATURS
“Creatures who wear bras?”
Creaturs who collct human stuff/dont know wht it is. B-cuz of yr TRACKS, she wrote, meaning the wavy dents my sister and I had left on the island's beach, which had been what first got them interested in us. Then she typed: +++B-cuz of how u HID from us ///// Hay cn we put ths textr in UR pack til I hav2goback? This tail dosnt hav a hipclip 4 it
“Sure. Anything you want to keep in here.”
She asked me: U feel like swimming?
“I sure do. That's kind of why I came out here this morning.”
BONE! How bout a race?
I didn't see how she would be any match for me but I nodded, “All right Chica, let's see what you got!”
She handed me the texter and I slipped it into the backpack. I pointed at some vague shapes towering up to the surface way off in the water, which I could just barely see and hopefully her human eyes could too, “So let's say we race around that stand of red kelp way out there and then back to here, to this backpack here?”
She gave me a thumbs-up.
I found a good spot in the sand and set the pack down there. Nothing was going to swim off with it, and the electric green bag would make a highly visible marker. When I looked up Valerie was streaking toward the kelp-trees.
“You little brat!” I laughed, and took off after her.
I caught up with her before she was a fraction of the way there, but I was surprised that I actually had to exert myself to do it. She was faster than it seemed any human swimmer could be, especially one who swam by wagging a rubber tail up and down.
And she kept up this pace all the way around the kelp and back as I swam alongside her, grinning at me through the cloud of bubbles her heavy breathing generated. She was incredible!
But as fast as she was this race had never actually been a contest. I didn't insult her by letting her win but shot ahead in the last little stretch to show her what my own top speed was like. She came in 45 seconds later, shaking her head.
She slapped one palm down on the other and shot the top hand forward to say: 'Wow you took off like a shot!'
“I know,” I said, “But I'm half fish. The speeds you kept up were a lot more amazing. I'll bet you just smashed a world record or two! You'll definitely be able to make the Olympics team when you're old enough.”
She shook her head no, and seemed to be laughing.
“No, I mean it. That was incredible!”
Valerie dropped down and fished her pad out of Anemone's backpack. Wrote: Fraid not! I HOLY cheated . . . LOLOLOL!!!
“But I didn't see you take any shortcuts or- OH!”
She had pushed one of the jewels on her tail and pulled a big section of its rubbery skin open on hinges, like some android in a movie opening his chest to show the circuitry and clockwork inside. Only inside of my merm-oid friend there were gears, cams, rocker arms, rods and motors around a padded harness thing that held a tanned pair of kid-size legs. She snapped it shut, laughing with her eyes.
“That's quite a contraption! Where do you buy something like that?”
@SEASPORTS.ult she wrote, and was starting to write something else when she glanced up and saw something behind me that made her grin with delight around her mouthpiece.
As I turned to look I heard a scornful voice: “Well isn't this the convivial little tete-a-tete?”
.
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)))========> DOLPHIN'S RULE!!!
.
I turned, “Oh. Hi Jasper.”
“I suppose you realize that's not a real mermaid you're talking to,” said the dolphin.
I considered arguing 'Who's to say who's a real mermaid?!', but knew I wouldn't get very far in a philosophical debate with Jasper. I held up my palms. “I know, I know... And I really was trying to hide from her. I got down behind something and waited but- Well this just sort of happened.”
“Mmmmm,” he hummed flatly, “Things do have a way of 'just happening' to you.”
“But they do,” I protested. “Or at least recently. So what's up?”
“What's 'up' is I came to warn you there were human divers in the area. But I see you've discovered that. I won't lecture you about whatever this is you think you're doing here; I wouldn't even know where to start. This.... this is unprecedented,” he said with that robot calmness that meant he was totally upset.
“She was right there in front of me! What was I supposed to do?”
“Not this.”
“But running away just would've made it worse! Her dad would be searching the whole Hatteras Rise to find 'that mermaid she saw'. But now that Valerie's met me she promised me that she won't tell her parents about mermaids. She pinkie swore!”
“Now why don't I find that very reassuring?”
“Because you haven't met her, Jasper. She understood the need for secrecy even before I told her. She has some very strong opinions about the dangers humans can pose to beings like us.”
“She does?” he asked, turning his head away from her to get a good look at her with his right eye.
Valerie looked like a bobblehead the way she was nodding her head yes. She made the sign of the closing zipper in front of her mouthpiece and then crossed her heart.
“You see?” I asked.
“Mmmmmm,” Jasper went again, but it sounded like he was considering it.
“You're not gonna tell Mom about this, are you?”
“If you mean am I going to rush off to her Majesty this instant, shouting 'Mama! Mama! Guess what? Enee's talkin' to a huuuuu-man!!!'?; the answer is no,” Jasper stated. His imitation of some snotty kid brother would have been funny at any other time. “I'm not a member of your family, and I'm not an employee of the Queen. I'm a diplomat. But if you mean would I lie about this if she asks me directly, and possibly damage the relationship between the Nine Queendoms and the Sodality of Cetaceans... then I'm afraid not. I would have to abandon you to your mother's mercies, and say a prayer to Saint Jude for you, that she's not in a banishing mood.”
“I wouldn't expect you to lie for me,” I said, “You've covered for me and Anee plenty already.”
“Yes, well I do what I can to-”
He paused, angling his head away and peering at me for several seconds before saying, “Question: Why do you have star fish on your breasts?”
I looked down. My little bra cup guys were snoring faintly. “I did this for Valerie. It's a human modesty thing.”
“Oh yes, that. They don't seem very comfortable in their bodies, do they?”
Valerie held out her pad toward him. In big block letters were the words: HI JASPERE! DOLPHIN'S RULE!!!!!!
“What does that mean?" he asked me, “What dolphin's rule? Except for the few I've given myself dolphins don't have rules.”
“She's saying dolphins 'rule'. It means she admires you.”
“Oh!” he said, and I think he grew a little bigger. “Well maybe you got lucky with this one. But you never know what a 'harmless' encounter with some human will turn into, so don't go making a habit of this!”
“Believe me, I won't! Thanks Jasper.”
“Hi yourself,” he said to the human girl with nod of his head before swimming off.
Wht did he say 2 me??, Valerie wanted to know.
“What could you hear?” I asked. I still didn't understand all this telepathy or whatever it was.
I heared U talkng. Jasper just made noises . . . RU in troubl?
“No. I think you won him over. And he said: 'Hi yourself'.”
This sent her over the moon:
SQUEEEEEEE!!!! I TALKD 2 A DOLPHIN! BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!
.
)))========> MERMAID'S ROCK!!!
.
Since my little pal had got such a kick out of meeting Jasper I took her all around the coral beds, introducing her to all the different animals that lived here. I invoked my royal authority, telling them she was my “official guest”, and that it would mean a lot to her if they would greet her, using whatever claws or tentacles or starfish arms they possessed to shake hands with her. A crab told me to go screw myself but all the others were happy to do this even if they didn't understand the custom. She was even able to talk to them, asking questions on her texter with me translating both ways, which absolutely delighted Valerie!
But most of these animals weren't terribly interesting to talk to---with their tiny brains they tend to state the obvious like it's something profound---and after meeting about ten of them I could tell that the novelty of this was wearing thin for her.
“So what do you want to do now?” I asked.
I got my tail on . . . Lts SWIM!!
.
And so we did. Not racing, and with no destination in mind, just swimming for the sheer joy of zipping and zooming through the water in tandem, spiraling around each other and doing different sorts of aquabatics that either I made up on the spot or that Valerie had learned in her mermaid class. I couldn't take her over the rooftops of our town to show her the 'Supergirl effect' but we did buzz the seabed, swimming as low as we could as fast as we could---which makes you feel like you're an F-16 or something---making the crabs scatter and the slow-witted sea hares look up and drawl, “What th' heck wuzzat?!!?”
Up near the surface I attempted to teach her how to leap out of the water like a porpoise. She tried and tried, but never managed it.
As we treaded water side by side under the warm August sun she pulled out her mouthpiece and said, “I didn't think I would be able to jump like you.”
“And I don't get that. You seemed to be doing everything right...”
Valerie's voice kind of surprised me. It wasn't the really high one I'd been imagining whenever she texted me---the sort of voice I'd just associated with little girls who love pink---but was actually kind of low, hoarse and froggy. She would never be a famous singer---unless screaming 1960's blues-rock makes a comeback someday---but her voice was adorable in its own way.
She shook her head, “It's this little motor in this tail. It's good enough for swimming but you need a professional model to catch air like those mermaids at Neptune's Kingdom. Yow, can they jump!”
“Neptune's Kingdom?”
“In Las Vegas.”
“I've never been to Vegas,” I said, “And I guess I never will now. Not that it was ever super high on my list.”
“That's too bad, 'cause Neptune's Kingdom is sooooo bone! We stayed there last Christmas. They got six big water slides, and Captain Nemo's Lagoon, and when you're in the casino there's all these fish and mermaids and big old orcas swimming around, but those are just holograms. Daddy hated the DEEPTOWN FISHEROO REVUE! He said 'I'll never get that dumb song out of my head now!'; but it was just gi-larious, because-” she stopped. “Hey, what's that seagull sitting on?”
I looked where she was pointing, the gull perched there about the length of a high school swimming pool away.
Had we really swam this far? Obviously, because there it was. But I was surprised we hadn't noticed the base of it when we were underwater. It's a pretty unmistakable formation.
“That's our ship-watching rock. My sister and I sit up there sometimes. Do you want to see it?”
“I have to see it!” she insisted.
“It's just a rock.”
“But it's a mermaid rock!” she said, and after engaging her mechanical tail started dogpaddling toward it.
“Slow down! It's not going anywhere,” I said, and then realized this wasn't true. The tide was coming in. But we still we had enough time to hang out and talk for a while without having to do it through a keypad and screen. I swam on ahead of her and dolphin-leaped up onto the rock's flat surface, sending the seagull flapping off indignantly muttering something that sounded like "Tinsel-head bimbo mermaid thinks she owns th' whole damn ocean!"
As Valerie paddled up I told her this would be easier if she took her tail off and handed it to me. I thought she might object to having to go back to being a mere human, but she seemed glad to get out of that confining tail. She pushed in a couple of the jewels on it, slid out of it and tried to lift it up to me. I lay flat on the edge of the rock and reached down, “Just push it over here.”
She did. "I'm surprised your rock isn't all covered in barnacles."
"That is kind of weird," I said, noticing the total absence of the nasty sharp little creatures for the first time.
I pulled the tail and then her little air machine up onto the rock. Then she grabbed my hand and I helped her climb up. The girl weighed about as much as her tail did. She said, “You're strong!”
“Your arms get stronger when you have to use them to do everything,” I said, “Anyway, welcome to our little perch. My sister and I love coming here.”
“I wish I could meet her,” Valerie said. She sat hugging her knees, just a barefoot kid in a 2-piece swimsuit now.
“You'd like Anemone,” I said, and wished she were here too. Anee had a great rapport with kids; and if she was this would be sort of like one of our baby sitting jobs, although those village kids were a lot younger and needed constant supervision.
“So where is your sister?” she asked.
“Probably back at the castle. She said she was just going to hang around and take it easy today.”
“You live in a castle?”
“A great big one.”
“Do all mermaids live in castles?”
“No just us. Our mom's the Queen.”
“So you're a princess?!”
“Yep.”
“You're princesses and you live in a castle.... Bone!” she rasped. She seemed as impressed with this as with me being a mermaid. "We just live in a condo. Although it's a pretty huge condo, one of the biggest ones in the Arcosphere."
"Arcosphere?"
"The Boston Arcosphere. Biggest one in America, or since we lost the Dallas one when Texit happened."
"Oh right," I said---like I knew what all that meant---as I watched her put her finger against the lens of one of her little stick-on goggles. It fell off into her hand. Then she did the other one.
“How the heck do those stay on your face?”
“It's that thing my dad invented. A way of getting things that don't normally stick to stick to each other. Something about fooling the atoms so they think they're part of the other thing. So what's it like being a princess?”
I would rather have been talking about how her goggle things worked---her 'fooling the atoms' explanation hadn't really made sense---but I said,“It's a lot more laid back than I would have thought. If we were human we'd probably need bodyguards and have paparazzi following us around everywhere trying to take our picture. But for us it's more like if you were the richest kid in town and your Mom was also the mayor. Except I'm getting all this respect and humbleness from people for nothing I actually did, so it's weird. I kind of wish Mom really was just the mayor.”
“I wouldn't wish that,” she said, “'Cause then I wouldn't be a princess!”
At ten years old I probably would have said the same thing. And at six I was was fairly convinced I was a princess; But that was just jumbled fantasies about wearing pretty clothes, having magical powers and being allowed to eat pizza and ice cream for breakfast if I wanted. Or pizza-flavored ice cream, which I was convinced was a fine idea...
.
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)))=========> THE MERMAID PLEDGE
.
The two of us and her equipment took up maybe a third of the rock's flat surface. “So where do you guys usually sit on here?” she asked, like she would sit right there if there was such a spot.
“Nowhere in particular. It's all pretty much the same. I guess wherever there isn't bird poop. But luckily it gets washed off twice a day. Which reminds me, we only have about an hour or so before the tide rises and covers this rock.”
She shrugged resignedly, “My peepers will probably call me back to the Eureka by then anyway.”
The white yacht was a tiny thing way off toward the horizon. A good safe distance from us. “That sure is a nice boat you have. So you and your folks are vacationing on it?”
“Just until March; Then it's back to Boston and school and everything.”
I counted forward from late August. “That's a pretty long time.”
“Not long enough. We're just wintering down here.”
“Wintering? You do realize it's summer here, don't you?”
“I know,” she smiled, “It's always like summer down here!”
All these clues and I still wasn't getting it...
Neither of us said anything for a while. With her fingernail she was scraping a last fleck of pink nail polish---from last week or whenever---off the nail of her big toe, and singing something under her breath: “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue... I'm a fish, you're a fish, they're a fish too... So let's all go to Deeptown for the Fisheroo Review... With a hey nonny nonny and a boop boop be do... Oh yes we're fish fish fish fish fish fish fish! Don't you wish wish wish wish wish wish wish-”
If this was the song that her father had got stuck in his head I really felt sorry for the man. I was getting kind of hungry, and thought about catching a couple of fish for us, biting their heads off and gutting them with my thumbnail; but I didn't suppose this would be Valerie's idea of lunch.
She had stopped singing and was looking around at the sea and sky, just grinning at everything. She inhaled the fresh sea air through her nostrils, breathing deep, then let out a wild joyous scream.
“Happy?”
“Monsterly! Today is like the perfect day! Wait 'til Wendy hears about this!”
“You're not supposed to tell anyone about me. Remember?”
“Oh that's right! And I won't,” she assured me, “Sorry!!”
But I wondered. If she'd forgotten about her promise already, what were the odds that she could keep a secret this huge for long? Kids her age didn't have the greatest impulse control, and she didn't really know me. Didn't have any personal stake in not bragging about meeting a real mermaid. And Jasper sure hadn't been optimistic about the matter...
Then I thought of something that might help her stick to her promise. I told her, “Raise your right hand.”
“Why? What are you doing?” she asked, but put her hand up.
“I'm making you an honorary mermaid princess and a citizen of the Queendom of Hatteria.”
“Really?”
“This is something we've only done for a dozen or so humans in the last thousand years, and it's serious business,” I said in my most serious voice, “So don't take this pledge unless you're serious about it.”
“I'll be serious,” she promised.
“Because once you take it you'll be bound by a sacred oath to never tell anyone about us. As far as keeping us mermaids safe goes this isn't a sure thing, like the alternative would be; but doing that never sits well with me...”
“And what's that?”
“To erase your memories.”
I'd been afraid that this bit of malarky might be way over-the-top, and I was surprised by how completely she fell for it-
“No! Don't do that!!” she cried, in a panicked tone that I wasn't expecting at all. She hadn't asked how I'd go about doing such a thing, didn't doubt for a second that it was something I could do.
“Not all your memories, just everything about meeting me. It's how we've stayed secret all these centuries. And I really hate it when I have to do it, but it is what's required when some human poses a threat to us,” I said. I felt like a real turd seeing the fear in her eyes, but it seemed to impress her with what a serious matter this was.
“But I'm not a threat! And I swear; I SWEAR I'll never tell anyone!!””
“I know you're not, Sweetie. You're a good kid and I'm sure that taking the Mermaid Pledge will be enough in your case. You already pinkie swore, this just makes it official. ”
“Thank you!” she moaned in relief. “'Cause those memory flashers cause brain damage and stuff!”
I nodded noncommittally at this latest baffling statement from her, then raised my own right hand. “Now, repeat after me: 'I, Valerie Rosado...'”
“I, Valerie Rosado...”
“Swear by Mighty Neptune and all the gods past, present and yet to be born...”
She solemnly repeated each little part I came up with:
“To uphold the laws of the Queendom of Hatteras, and to defend its shores- er, shoals always; as I accept the office of Hatterian Mermaid Princess, and all duties, rights and good-for-one-free-small-frozen-yogurt coupons that come with this rank. And I promise to stand fast to the eternal mermaid principles of kindness, honesty, fairness to all; truth, justice and the American way; henceforth and forthwith into perpetuity and futurity and perspicacity! And I promise that---unless someone threatens kill me or something if I don't, in which case it's okay to tell---I shall protect my Mermaid Queendom by never divulging the existence of real actual mermaids to any who live on land. And furthermore I swear...”
.
.
)))======>“Greetings from The Weird Highway...”
.
It went on like this, and when we finished I gave her a hug, welcoming her to mermaidness, “Congratulations! You are now a Deputy Mermaid Princess First Class, and a citizen of Hatteria.”
“BONE!" she exclaimed, “And about that 'not telling any humans' part... I kinda learned my lesson about trying to say anything about strange things I see, or that happen, after those jackalopes...”
“You mean those animals like rabbits with deer antlers?”
“Yeah! On our trip to Arches National Park in Utah summer before last. There was whole herd of 'em!”
As far as I knew these creatures only existed in photo-shopped postcards from small towns out west, or as the work of deranged taxidermists. “Oh really...”
I had tried to keep the skepticism out of my voice, but she'd picked up on it. “You see? Even you don't believe me!”
“I don't know if I do or not. Tell me.”
“Okay... Well first I met the one, he couldn't hop away very good 'cause he had that thorn in his paw, but after I talked to him a while he started trusting me, and after I pulled it out he squeaked something and the whole family came running- about thirty of them! And him and them were jumping all over me, all happy. They were sooooo cute! But Mom, Dad, my friends... they holy didn't believe me about that! So I'm sure they wouldn't about you either.”
“No, probably not. But I guess if I can be real, then maybe-”
“O-or like the time we went to Mount Rushmore, and Reagan winked at me.”
“Regan who?”
“President Reagan! You know, under Jefferson and right next to Kennedy. Or when we saw Stonehenge, that's this rock thing in England. We were standing in line with all the other tourists, and I remember I was eating a Druid Dog---those are good!---and I look over and I see this tall goofy-looking guy in a long stripy scarf and his little toy robot dog go into this little dinky blue house with a light on top, and then the house goes like 'Whoooosh! Whoooooooosh!'” she made an asthmatic wheezing sound, “-and it fades out and just disappears, right there in front of me! I went: 'Wow! Didja see that?!!', and Mom and Dad go: ”Huh? See what?!' And I told them, and they were all like 'Oh, it did NOT Why you all the time makin' stuff up, Valli?'!; But Jimmy said he thought he saw something... Or like yesterday on our boat when the clocks all went backwards, and now today, meeting a mermaid. But I can't help it if all this floopy stuff keeps happening to me when I travel! Uh, I mean, not that I think you're floopy or anything.”
None of Valerie's stories were any more unbelievable than me getting turned into a mermaid by some genie in a deep-sea diver's outfit. So maybe everything she'd been talking about was real---in whatever version of reality she inhabited---and we were just a couple of fellow travelers on the Weird Highway...
She sighed, “So you holy don't need to worry about me talkin'. Because even if I did no one would believe me anyway... well except Wendy. And I won't, 'cause I swore that oath, but I really do wish I could tell her.”
“Wendy's a friend of yours?”
“My best friend ever! She's in my mermaid class with me, and the only person who ever believes me about stuff like this.”
There was something heartrendingly sad and sweet about this, her stories being met with disbelief and mockery except for by one loyal friend. And if her credibility was as bad as she claimed I figured aawww what the hell, and told her, “I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell Wendy. But only her!”
“Really?! Thank you!”
“Hey, us mermaid girls have to stick together. So how many kids are in your mermaid class?”
“Twenty-five. Well twenty-four now 'cause of Luanne leaving.”
“Are there boys in your class? Little Mermen?”
“Just Wendy; But she's a mermaid like us, and you're not s'pose to call her a boy, 'cause that's mean!”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes, that would be very mean. I think Wendy's pretty lucky to have a best friend like you. So do the other girls like her okay?”
“They sure do. All except for Luanne---who was just nasty---but then her mom came in and pulled her out of there, screaming about how normal people don't got rights no more, and we were all helping the world go to hell in on a hoverdisk for lettin' Wendy be there. Mom says her and her elk are still mad from getting knocked off their high horse when they rappelled the Normalness Amendment. I almost feel sorry for Luanne, havin' a weirdo mom like that, but she doesn't have to act like her!”
Now this was a story I could believe. I liked the one about the jackalopes better. Still, Luanne's mom was only one parent out of twenty-four. Slowly the world gets better for people like me and Wendy...
She said, “And anyway, Wendy's not a boy! She's totally a girl, and real fun, and nice, but she got born with a penis-mistake that she needs to get cut off when she grows up so she can be a lady for real and have babies and everything.”
“I don't think Wendy will ever be able to have babies. Not every woman can. That's just how it is sometimes.”
“She will too!” said Valerie heatedly, “Just like that 'Miracle Mom' DAISY did a story about on DAISY'S AMAZING PEOPLE, who was born a boy but they fixed her hip bones and gave her transplants for a eucharist and bovaries and everything and she had a baby!”
“Really? That's-”
BZZZZZTTT!!!! BZZZZZTTT!!!! BZZZZZTTT!!!!
“Hang on a second,” I said.
.
.
)))========> OFF THE GRID
.
I still had my sister's pack on my back, and I could feel Valli's message device rattling like mad inside of it. I pulled it out and looked at the screen. WHERE ARE YOU??? it asked in an alarmed-looking font.
I passed it to Valerie, “You'd better answer this before they call Search & Rescue!”
Am on surface. Sitting on a rock. she wrote, and showed it to me.
Well TELL US next time you go off the locator grid!
KK, sorry!
Who's yr friend? We saw you 2 swimming. Very graceful!
Her name is Enomena
Unusual name. Where's she from? they asked.
Valerie made a tongue-hang-out 'I'm gagging here!' face at me. Her hand hesitated over the keypad, unsure of what to tell them.
“Say Greece,” I said, thinking it was a country where Enomena might seem like a normal name.
She wrote: GREASE
And how old is she?
Fifteen, I said, and she wrote that. She grinned at me as she typed, Enomena is mermaid 2! She has BEST MM TAIL U EVR SAW!!
Well then you 2 have something in common J But where did she come from? We can't see any boat.
Valerie thought a second and wrote: Her peepers's RS . . . Sittng just off grid
“RS?” I asked.
“Recreational Sub,” she whispered, like she was on a phone with them.
Well ask her to ask them if they want to surface and meet us. We could all have a barbecue on the back deck. Theyre probably tired of being cooped up in there
kk Ill ask, she responded, and chatted with them a bit more before hanging up.
“That was a nice offer,” I said, “But obviously I'll need some excuse to get out of that.”
“I know. I'll tell them something... Jeez, all those questions! They can just be so.... RRRRRRRRRRR!!!” she growled.
“Well you did disappear on them.”
“Yeah, but all that stuff about you: How old is she? Where's her boat? What kind of name is that?”
“I think it's good that they want to know things like that. To them I was just a little dot swimming along with you on their map screen. I could be anybody.”
“I guess... but I swear, they treat me like I'm a little kid! They think the clearheads are gonna grab me and wash my brain or something!”
“I don't know what a 'clearhead' is but let me tell you, kids do get grabbed. Sometimes right off the beach,” I said, thinking for the millionth time about my own anguish stricken parents. “So it's not unreasonable for them to worry. And I hate to break it to you, but you are a little kid!”
“Okay! Okay!” she whinged, like I'd suddenly gone from being a fun older kid to some paranoid old fogey.
“And they can't be that overprotective if they let you take off by yourself and go exploring in the middle of the ocean. They just want you to check in every once in a while. Is that so bad?”
“I guess not,” she admitted. “I coulda had a mom like Luanne's, and be getting dragged to those nasty Victory For Values rallies and things all the time. You heard of Victory For Values?”
“No, but I have a pretty good idea what they are,” I said. Just what the world needs, another group like that...
.
.
)))======> COLD WAR
.
We were quiet for a while, just listening to the ocean's sloshing. A big freighter or something tooted its horn, too far away to see. I wondered if my starfish were going to be okay being out of the water this long but they seemed as contented as kittens who had found a soft place on somebody. (Luckily they didn't have those sharp little claws that kittens can't seem to help digging into you. Echinoderm means 'spiny skin', but only their top surfaces are spiny. Their undersides are covered in soft little tickly feelers...)
Valerie was looking up at a distant bank of big puffy white clouds and smiling, and then suddenly she wasn't. She said, “I wish my brother could be here with us.”
“He couldn't come?”
“No, Jimmy's off in the war... Stupid war!”
“He's in Afghanistan?”
She shook her head.
“Iraq?”
“I heard of those places but they're like for tourists. I'm talking about the War- You know, Antarctica!”
“Who are they fighting, the penguins?”
Valerie looked at me like my joke was in really bad taste, “No! The Technotologists!”
“WHAT?!!”
The Church of Technotology was that cult-like pay-your-way-to-enlightenment church---based on the teachings of E. Gadd Hubbriss in his book PSYCHO-DIURETICS: The One True Science Of MIND---that a lot of flaky movie stars seemed to belong to, and which I think I may have mentioned a chapter or two back...
“You're kidding right?! No I guess not,” I said, seeing the grimness on her face, “So he's not fighting the Al-Qaeda or the Taliban but... the Technotologists... and... Antarctica?!!”
She nodded and said gloomily, “And I'm worried about him... I don't want him to get turned into goo!”
I fought down the urge to say 'you're kidding' again, and asked, “How many Technotologists are there in Antarctica?”
“Prolly a couple million by now. There's another four or five boatloads of Clearheads going down there every day. They get through the blockade somehow...”
“And what are they doing in Antarctica?”
“Fighting us. And they're holy not even fighting fair! Using battle drones and nanoweapons, like they never heard of GENEVA SIX! But then they're not even supposed to be down there. Not like that!”
“Like what?”
“When the first ones moved down there they said it was to build a retreat camp, where they could escape from all the negative ions or whatever it is that all us non-Technological people give off, and pollute their brains and keep 'em from getting... whatever they're trying to get. But my dad says they really did it because they lost their tax thing.”
“Tax thing?”
“Yeah, when the government said Technotolology isn't a real church but it's a business and has to pay taxes. That's when they all started going down there. And it was okay at first, but they just took over. The other settlement cities weren't ready to get ambushed like that. They totally wrecked Antarctica. It used to be nice when it was just the New Eden people with their dome farms and those Thirty-Niners down there looking for gold. We spent a week there when I was little. I liked the dog sledding the best.”
“Thirty-Niners? You mean the Forty-Niners, don't you? Like the California gold rush...”
“No, I meant Thirty-Niners. Forty-nine was last year... DUH!”
Forty-Nine...
Something clicked, and suddenly a whole lot of things made sense.
.
.
)))======> GIRL OUT OF TIME
.
There had been dozens of clues, but I just kept attributing them to something else. Like her unfamiliar slang, which I just figured was a regional thing. All her gadgets and gizmos? These were just brand-new technology that was out of the price range of ordinary people, and that I would be hearing about within a few months...
Or when she mentioned “that atom bomb thing” that the U.S. Government did “a hundred years ago”. This wasn't because she was a nine-and-a-half year old with a poor grasp on the time frame of history. From her perspective the Manhattan Project happening a century ago was more or less accurate.
And as with a lot of her seemingly nonsensical statements, I'd kind of skipped over that comment about “memory flashers”. But if the ability to tamper with people's memories has become an actual thing in her time, then no wonder she believed me when I layed this story on her. And if using these things “causes brain damage and stuff” then no wonder she'd been terrified!
A sentient computer named DAISY? A transwoman having a baby? A second row of heads on Mt. Rushmore? People being turned into goo by nano-weapons?! These were all things that us people here in the “past” still had to look forward to...
.
“Um, Valerie...” I said, “This might sound like a weird question, but... what year is this?”
“It's 2050! Don't you mermaids have calendars? So anyway, when the Psycho-Diuretics Liberation Armada tried to invade Christchurch, that's when New Zealand, Australia, Japan and a bunch of other countries all signed the Honda Accord and-”
“Okay- Stop! Wait! Back up! Let's talk about you and your boat for a minute...”
“What do you wanna know?” she asked, wondering what the hell I was getting all weird about.
“Well first of all where do you live?"
"Top floor of the Boston Arcosphere. A condomansion right next to the sixth green."
"Your building has its own golf course?"
"And its own schools, its own galleria, its own zip code. Pretty much its own everything..."
"Sounds like a big place. And where do you keep your boat?”
“At the Harbor. The Eureka's a little too large to keep in the Sphere's indoor slips.”
“Okay. So you left Boston Harbor, and-”
“And it was snowing. Dad had the heaters blasting.”
“Wintertime, right?”
“Well duhhh, it's January!”
“Okay, January 2050. And you went to where?”
“To Bermuda. We went to Disney Island there. It was so much fun! They had these-”
“You can tell me about that later. But after going there, you sailed out of Bermuda when?”
“The day before yesterday.”
“Okay, good. And did anything weird happen when you were leaving there?”
“Yeah, how did you know? There was that fog.”
“A shimmering, gold kind of fog?” I asked, thinking about what Captain Mutton and that scientist-pirate Jick had told me.
“Yeah, and it was strange! Because when we started out early that morning it looked like it was gonna be a bright sunny day, but all of the sudden we were in it. And my mom was joking: 'Oh no! We fell into in the Bermuda Triangle and nobody's ever gonna hear from us again!'”
“Actually you did fall into it. Or through it.”
She nodded slowly, “Okay... I can believe that. With how floopy that fog was, and how the clocks went all wonky-zonky, and the compass was spinning around like it was gonna bust! But then we came out of it okay.”
“Not exactly. Did you notice any more weird stuff after you came out of the fog?”
“Well the ultranet on our computers went down. We haven't been able to get hold of anybody!”
“You mean the internet.”
She giggled. “Internet? My grandma uses that, and it drives my dad nuts. Grandma calls us up all worried and goes: 'Didn't you get my e-mails? I sent a bunch of them!' and Dad says, 'Mama! I keep tellin; you! Nobody e-mails anymore. You gotta use u-mail if you want to reach us.' And she goes: 'I don't like the ultranet. It's a bunch of crap!' And he gets so frustrated, he's almost yelling: 'Then you might as well be sending me smoke signals if you keep trying to e-mail us. I bought you ultranet service, why the hell can't you use it? It's not like it's hard- it's EASIER! It's got the little picture things and will talk you through whatever you want to know...' But she's all: 'If the internet was good enough for George Washington it's good enough for me!' Or she doesn't really say that but that's what he says she says!”
I had to laugh, it sounded like how my own grandparents are about certain things. I asked, “But your computer on your ship? It's working okay? And it is possible to go on the internet?”
“Yeah, but why? If the ultranet is down than the internet is too, 'cause the ultranet carries it.”
“Not if there is no ultranet,” I told her.
“That's what I've been saying!”
“I meant what if there never was one. Did anything else weird happen since you came out of that fog?”
“Not really, except those funny animal tracks on that island yesterday; but that was you," she said and then went, "Oh, there was one thing that was a little bit unusual but not weird like can't-happen weird... We saw this real old helicopter like from when my dad was a kid. He called it a Bill Hooey.”
“A Bell Huey?”
“Yeah! He said he was surprised there were any of them still flying.”
“I think your father's in for a few more surprises. There's something you need to tell him when you're all back on the ship. Tell him this might sound crazy, but it's important.”
She nodded, looking apprehensive.
“Tell your dad to go on the internet. Not the ultranet, the internet; like in the old days. Have him find out what day it is. Make him look at all the news, see what the latest movies are, stuff like that. And I think he'll know what to do then, but if he doesn't, you tell him. That you need to head back for Bermuda on the exact same course you took coming here, and try to find that golden fog again. Can you tell him all that?”
“Sure. But why?”
“Because you're not in January, 2050 anymore. This is the last week of August, 2014.”
“Are you sure?” she asked skeptically.
“There's been a lot of things I'm not sure about in these past couple of days, but I do know what year and month this is.”
A big wave hit the rock and rolled over it. It wouldn't be long now.
Valerie stood up and sat on her mechanical tail, using it for a bench, “So I'm like.... a time traveler?”
“Yep.”
She broke into a big smile, “That's pretty bone!”
.
.
)))========> LAST WORDS
.
Another wave rolled over the rock, a little higher. I said, “We're going to start getting wet here.”
“I should probably be getting home anyway. I need to tell my peepers about all this. I don't think I would do it very good trying to say it on my texter.”
“No, just tell them yourself. Do you remember everything I said? To go on the internet and all that?”
“I'll make sure they do. I don't want to be stuck in the Oldie Days, and I want to see my friends again.”
“You should be okay. Those pirates seemed like they were able to slip in and out of 1714 all the time.”
“Pirates?!”
“Never mind.”
“So then... Goodbye?” she asked wistfully.
I felt the same way. I liked her, and we were just getting to know each other, and now it was over. But I supposed it didn't have to be right this minute...
“I'll swim back with you. But when we get close I'm going to have to take off. Tell your parents I had to get back to my-” \\\\ (RV Submarine? Mermaid castle? Spaceship?) //// “Oh hell... Tell them anything you want about me, but keep telling them it's the year 2014- which is why there's no ultranet here, only internet.”
I helped her get back into her tail and lower herself down into the water. Held her there by her wrist. “This is one thing about being a mermaid that should probably be part of your class. We don't get around too well on land.”
“You did pretty good climbing that mountain,” she said, and put her mouthpiece in.
“A hill. And I wouldn't call a little over a mile in four hours doing good,” I said. I let go of her hand and she dropped the rest of the way in. I got a visual fix on where her parents' yacht was and dove in after her.
.
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)))========> DEEP BLUE ANGELS
.
We made our last swim together count. Doing backflips and barrel rolls, zipping around each other like a pair of Blue Angels fighter jets- just having a blast!
My twin sister would usually indulge me when I wanted to do stuff like this, but she had been born in this weightless world, and for Anemone swimming was like walking is to us. Fun to do sometimes, especially if you're doing it in a nice place; but only silly people start walking in circles just because they can. Or decide to spice up their daily jog with the kind of cartwheels and cavorting Valerie and I were doing here.
But I was a newbie mermaid less than a week old, and the kid here was a part-timer. Swimming with tails was special to us because we weren't born doing it; but it was something girls like us might have been born dreaming about...
.
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)))========> JUMPING THE SHARK
.
Looking over to my left I saw a hammerhead shark. It was swimming alongside of us like a third member of our squadron, and was probably that “big as a brood bus” one that her parents had warned her about. The thing was HUGE! It couldn't have fit inside my bedroom back in Dover, not even catty-corner. And at its thickest part it really was almost bus-sized.
I said, more nonchalantly than I felt, “Don't worry, he's just checking us out. He'll swim off in a minute.”
Valerie gave me a thumbs up, trying to be brave. What a little trooper!
“Move along,” I told it, “Do you know who I am?”
The shark didn't answer me. Instead it started chanting something, muttering at first, then loud enough that I could hear it: “NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY!”
Whatever that meant. What a time for my Universal Fish Translator to start malfunctioning!
I gave the creature my best imitation of Queen Atlantea: “Did you hear your Princess?! Be gone! Depart from our Regal Presence!”
“NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY-” went the hammerhead, with a strange ratcheting rhythm. It seemed completely mesmerized by the sight of Valerie.
“Go on- SCRAM! GET OUTTA HERE!!” I shouted, but the shark was ignoring me.
And when its big ugly head moved in and started sniffing at her tail instinct took over; and made her do the worst thing she possibly could- she cranked her tail up to full power and bolted!
I could have told her she wouldn't be able to outrun it. I might not be able to myself. I hoped against hope that it wouldn't pursue her, but after a few more Neeshaiys it shook its head and took off after her.
I took off after it.
“NO! You can't do that! Find some other fish to eat!” I was yelling as I swam alongside of it, beating on it with my club.
“NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY-”
Anyone who knows the first thing about sharks knows that the movie JAWS is a crock. It might work as some kind of allegory or something, but as a nature film it's about as accurate as The DEEPTOWN FISHEROO REVIEW. Sharks are the deadliest thing out here for creatures as big as us, but they're not “ferocious” in their emotions. They're not driven, and they would never get into a contest of wills with some guy in a boat.
The smell of blood, frantic motion or something fleeing from them will set off their attack instincts (coming up on your prey from behind is always easier, I've used that one myself...), but when someone starts fighting back they don't get angry and go: “Oh yeah? We'll see who's the big fish around here!” They say “The heck with this!” and swim off to find an easier lunch; one that isn't beating them on the nose with a stick.
This casual approach to being a predator has worked well for sharks for four hundred million years. If one fish proves problematic there's always another one...
But this crazy shark seemed to be auditioning for JAWS 5! It was so focused on trying to take a bite out of Valerie that it barely registered my clubbing it and was totally deaf to my commands.
If the shark didn't believe I was a princess---or believed it but just wasn't impressed with my family's authority---it should at least have told me to piss off or something. But all that came out of this one was that weird gutteral “NEESHAIY!” chant. There was something wrong with its brain.
The head start Valerie had on it was gone now. It chomped off a chunk from the rubber end of her tail fin, then shot forward and sunk its big teeth into her tail right about where her knees were-
OH GOD, NO!!
But instead of the horrible bloody dismemberment I expected to see its teeth hit metal, tearing off fabric but only crimping the framework of her tail. I couldn't tell how much damage this had done to her legs inside there, but the tail's motor began to scream like a mosquito having a seizure- faster and faster and louder and higher until it just went KLUNK! and gave out.
Valerie was at a dead stop. She twisted around helplessly, flapping her arms in panic, and began descending. But luckily after I struck him as hard as I could on his tender gill flaps---the only vulnerable spot besides the eyeballs---the hammerhead turned toward me.
He lunged at me, knocking me backwards hard with the top of his head as that mouth under there bit the whole front end of my cricket bat off, about an inch from my fingers.
I dropped the wooden stub and clapped my hands at him, “Hey Neeshaiy-Neeshaiy! Over here! That's right, look at me you wall-eyed mook!”
I taunted him---“Your mama was a coat rack!”---trying to keep his attention on me as I slowly reached for my knife, but I didn't interest him at all.
“NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY! NEESHAIY!” he chanted as he swung his big head back in Valerie's direction. My friend was spiraling down toward the seabed, trying to wriggle out of her useless tail. He sped down after her.
I went into a power-dive, not sure what I was gonna do until I landed on the back of his head and locked my arms around his eye stalks in what I think they call a “Full Nelson” wrestling hold, and squeezed them inside my elbows as I pressed down on the back of his head with my hands. I couldn't hurt him doing this, but he didn't like me riding on him one bit! He tried to shake me off---bucking and twisting with so much force I was afraid it would break my back---keeping up his crazy obsessed NEESHAIY-chant while he did.
Doing this had kept Valerie from being eaten already, but I knew I was just postponing the inevitable. I couldn't let go, I couldn't access my knife and I wouldn't be able to hold on like this much longer. This shark was bigger than any bull that any rodeo cowboy ever tried to hang on to, and it was quickly becoming clear to me why those bull riding competitions are measured in seconds and not in minutes. I felt like a cat being shaken to death by a bull mastiff!
.
.
)))========> CAVALRY CHARGE
.
Suddenly a man in a bright blue wetsuit came zooming in, moving faster than any mermaid or marine animal had ever swam. It was Valerie's dad! He wasn't kicking his feet, but seemed to have impellers built into his swim fins. In his hand was a goofy looking plastic ray gun, which I hoped wasn't just a toy.
I expected to see a beam lancing out of it, blasting a hole in this beast, but when he pulled the trigger there was just a faint spitting sound, and a dart---no bigger than the kind you toss at a dartboard---came streaking toward the shark.
I thought: 'Well that little thing isn't gonna do much damage...'
Then I saw the thin wire the dart was trailing, which led back to the gun in Mr. Rosado's hand.
I thought: 'So it's a taser..... That's better than just a dart, but those are something we have in 2014. I was hoping to see an Honest-to-God RAY GUN being fired.'
You can have all kinds of dumb random thoughts in just a second or two when your adrenal gland is gushing. My next thought was a more useful one: 'Gee.... Maybe I shouldn't be hugging this fish when it gets electrocuted...'
I let go just in time.
The shark was still chanting his chant, but suddenly I was hearing it correctly. It wasn't the nonsense word “NEESHAIY” he had been repeating over and over. The pronunciation was odd---which must have been what had thrown me---but what he had been saying all this time was: “SHINY! SHINY! SHINY! SHINY! SHINY-”
The hammerhead had been hypnotized by the glittering stripes and gleaming jewels all over Valerie's glossy pink tail; And by the rhythmic way the device had been wriggling. That stupid tail had turned her into one big giant fishing lure! (Now that should sure call for a scathing customer review on Amazon!)
The dart hit home and the hammerhead went into convulsions. The last thing I saw was its massive tail as it came swinging toward my face like a giant's fist.
.
.
NOTE: This chapter contained elements of SATIRE. The bit about Technotology was not intended to suggest that the Technotologists are any crazier or any more likely to start a war than the Girl Scouts of America or the Birthday Clowns Union Local 108. The point of that was that tomorrows enemies are often some group that nobody could have seen coming 36 years in the past (the flip side, which I only touched on obliquely, being that today's feared enemy can change be tomorrow's good neighbor...). I simply picked the Technotologists because with all the other future history I was throwing at the reader I didn't want to have to make up and have to explain some whole new fictional religion, and “Appliantology” was already taken. Also, I admit it, they're fun to make fun of. They wear those silly hats.... or is it bow ties?
.
...
=======================================0
ThaNKS FoR ReaDiNG, PLeaSe CoMMeNT!!!
=======================================0
...
When I came to I was on the patio deck of the Eureka, with Valerie and her parent gathered around me. Thinking they were rescuing me from drowning they had dragged me on board their yacht, where they tried to remove my “fake” tail and discovered the truth about me. So much for my people's Prime Directive of never letting yourself be seen by humans. I was a bad, bad mermaid!
But this wasn't quite the disaster it could of been. Although they'd found out about me, any trouble this family might bring down on my adopted species was a long ways off. They weren't exactly from around here. It seems that pirates aren't the only ones who can make a wrong turn in the Bermuda Triangle...
.
I drifted through interstellar space, a region of total blackness that no star's light had ever touched. From far away I could hear urgent voices:
"Hold her; hold her... Now lift.
Let's bring her over here. Valli, go get the first aid kit!
Should we be moving her? Her back could be hurt. Her neck.
After what it took to just get her on board it's a bit late to worry about that.
Here it is Daddy. She gonna be okay?
I don't know, she took quite a hit.
Where's her air tank?
On the seafloor someplace, I guess. Must've come off during the fight...
She doesn't need one, Daddy! She's-
Valerie! Stop it!
But-
She must've broken her legs. They shouldn't bend like that.
No they sure shouldn't. We'd better get this tail off her.
But Daddy-
Dammit, Valli! This is no time for your foolishness! I don't understand this thing, where's the release button?
Maybe it's under this ribbon...
But I told you! Her tail doesn't come off! She's REAL!
What is this... gauze?
And I told you, there's no such thing as mermai- WHOAH!!!
OH MY GAAAAAWWD!!!" .I heard a woman scream before the perfect darkness carried the voices out of range...
.
.
THURSDAY AUGUST 28, 2014... Noon-ish
.
I'd seen it done in comedies, but I'd never been woken up by someone tossing water at my face before. Even though I could breathe either air or water the combination made me cough and sputter...
"Splupp!! Hack!! Koff!! What are you doing?!?”
“Making sure you don't dry out,” said the woman with the now-empty plastic bucket.
“Thank you, but I'm not a dolphin. I can survive on land, or...” I looked around and took in my surroundings, “...or on a boat.”
I was on the deck of the white yacht that had been following me around since yesterday, in a sort of patio area near the boat's back end that was more spacious than some backyards I've been in. As I lifted myself up onto my elbows I noticed that I had on my red Hussong's Cantina shirt.
This wasn't what I'd been wearing, was it?!
No, that was yesterday. Today I had those starfish...
“Well I didn't know. I've never met a-” she hesitated, “-anyone like you before.”
“Well you've met one now. I'm Enomena, I'm a mermaid!” I said and stuck out my hand, letting her know that 'mermaid' wasn't one of those presumably innocent words that you find out are horribly offensive to the race, ethnicity or species that you just accidentally insulted.
.
.
)))========> EUREKA
.
Scattered around me on the deck were my sister's neon green backpack, my olive-drab canvas belt, a chewed-up pink motorized mermaid tail and a white enameled steel box with a red cross on it- their first aid kit.
Valerie's parents were standing over me, looking concerned---her father waving a device over my head that looked like a cell-phone with a funnel jutting from the end of it---while Valerie sat in one of the two turquoise chaise lounges that they'd lain me alongside of. She was holding my tartan bandage, which she'd been running through her hands like a string of prayer beads.
“I'm Phyllis,” said the woman, looking a bit dazed as she reached out and shook my hand. She was out of her bright red wet suit and was wearing rattan sandals, a colorful Hawaiian print sundress with spaghetti straps, and red-with-white-polka-dot plastic sunglasses that had a tiny Minnie Mouse etched into the corner of one of the big round lenses. Probably a souvenir from that Disney park they'd visited just before they got thrown back in time.
“Hi! And I'm Tom. We're the Rosados,” said the man. He was barefoot, in just a pair of corduroy shorts, and looked reasonably fit. The hair on his head was jet black but the hair on his chest had quite a bit of grey in it.
“Glad to meet you,” I said as he shook my hand, then I pointed at the gizmo in his other hand, “What is that? Like a tricorder?”
“No, it's a medical scanner. I thought it would at least work on your top half, but it keeps telling me 'UNKNOWN ANIMAL, UNABLE TO SCAN...' Cheap piece of crap!”
“Well you can't really expect it to have mermaids in its data base,” I said.
“I suppose not,” he said, a puzzled expression crossing his face for a second, like I was a monkey that had started quoting... well, anybody. He made one last attempt to scan me with his tricorder thing before opening the first aid kit and dropping it inside, then nodded toward his daughter, “And I guess you've met Valerie.”
“Hey Mermaid! I'm glad you didn't get ate up.”
She grinned at that, then her face darkened, “We were holy worried about you!”
Tom said, “Worried that you'd drowned. You were out cold when we pulled you on board. Then we realized that you couldn't drown.”
“I told you she was real,” Valerie scolded them.
“Yes you did, Pumpkin,” said her dad with an apologetic smile. “And it was quite a shock when we found out!”
“Surprise! Mermaids are real!!” sang Valerie, quoting her new hero.
I got a laugh from Mr. and Mrs. Rosado when I said, “I hope you guys realize you're never gonna hear the end of this.”
“That's all right. She can tell us I-told-you-so as much as she wants,” smiled Tom, his eyes glistening. He was happy to hear anything from his daughter after almost losing her.
Of the three of them, Phyllis was the only one I would've instantly guessed was from Boston by her accent. She said, “Drowning might not be a problem for you but we were still afraid you could have been hurt. And without being able to get a scanner reading all we could do was wait. You really had us worried, the way you were drifting in and out, calling out 'Mom! Dad! I'm sorry!' But don't worry, you'll be back swimming around with your family soon enough.”
'Not with that family,' I thought glumly. And suddenly I remembered part of one of those anxious disjointed dreams I'd had when I was unconscious:
I had somehow gotten home to our house in Dover. It was a pitch black night, and I was in the front yard. I was human again---except I was female this time---and I was running desperately, trying to get up to my front porch where my mom and dad stood, calling out to me from under the dull yellow glow of the porch light. But our whole front lawn was rolling in the opposite direction like a treadmill, slowly at first but then picking up speed, until it was going faster than I could run and started carrying me backwards, my parents' cries of “Suuuuuuuuzie!” growing fainter as my house got farther and farther away across that endless plain of darkness...
My t-shirt was soaked. I pried it away from my chest, where it was leaving little to the imagination, and let it settle back down a bit less snugly. They must have gotten it out of their laundry room and put it on me while I was knocked out. My little starfish friends had abandoned me when I decided to take on that hammerhead, which was fine by me. They hadn't signed up to die with me, and as brave as they might be facing creatures their own size there's not much they could have done to help me fight that shark.
I said, “Thank you for dressing me.”
“Yes, Valerie and I did that,” said Phyllis, her emphasis meaning that Tom had been elsewhere or had turned his back while they did it.
Valerie's mom seemed like a very nice woman, but I could sense that my being this not-quite-a-person, from a world she knew nothing about was something that never left her mind for a second. There was no malice in it, no suspiciousness about me or my intentions; just the awkwardness of being unsure how to “be” around a mermaid. And then feeling awkward about feeling awkward; and then being afraid that all this awkwardness would be picked up on, and interpreted as a sign of some ugly species-ist sentiment that wasn't how she really felt at all...
“So how's your legs?” I asked Valerie.
“Sore! But my tail protected them. How's your head?”
“Feels like it got run over by a truck,” I said. I moved my arms around, turned my head left and right, arched my back, lifted my tail and let it flop down, announcing: “But nothing got broken, so I'm good.”
“That eye sure looks like it could use an ice pack, though,” said Phyllis.
I explored my face with my fingers. The flesh around my right eye felt puffy and tender, but it was my left one that was really puffed up, on its way to becoming one hellacious black eye.
“Yes please,” I said, “I think I'd like that.”
“I got it,” said Valerie, jumping up out of her seat.
“Use one of the medium freezer bags. About half full,” said her mom. The Eureka's multi-story superstructure had a big porch-like opening. She ran into it and down a hallway that sloped down into the lower decks.
“Her legs seem fine,” Tom noted, which got a nod and a smile from Phyllis. They were lucky they hadn't witnessed what I had. When that hammerhead chomped down on her tail I was sure her legs were being bitten clean off. A moment of helpless nausea and horror that I don't think I'll ever forget.
Sitting up like I was, the tiny Lego-block bumps of the deck's white non-skid surface were digging into my elbows. I wriggled over to the chaise lounge next to Valerie's and tried to climb into it. With its heavy turquoise rubber webbing and frame of dense clear lucite it was a lot more substantial than the cheap aluminum one in our castle's infirmary, but it was still light enough that the other end rose up when I put my weight on the foot of it.
“Here,” said Tom, holding the back end of it for me.
“Thanks,” I grunted as I hauled myself up into it.
He grabbed a pair of deck chairs that matched the two loungers and put them into a circle with them. He and Phyllis sat down just as Valerie came running back. She handed me the bag of ice and dropped back into her seat.
I unzipped the top of the baggie and popped one of the little crescents of ice into my mouth.
“No,” said Phyllis, “You're suppose to press the whole bag against your eye.”
“I know. I just really miss this stuff. We don't see much ice around here.”
“I guess you wouldn't,” she said. “Now it looks like you're going to have two black eyes, but I'm glad this was all that happened to you. I don't know what we would do if you had a concussion or something.”
“Well I'm lucky I have such a thick skull,” I said, and mimed knocking on my head before pressing the bag to the sorer of my two messed up eyes.
Valerie giggled. “Her head's thick all right!”
“That's not nice,” frowned Phyllis.
“But she said it first!”
“It's still not nice.”
“It's okay,” I told Phyllis, “I did say that.”
“Yeah she did!” snickered Valerie, and began chanting, "Thick! Thick! Thick! Thick-”
“Enough, Valli! That's just rude.”
But the kid was on a roll: “Her head is soooooo THICK!! She's Miss Thick, Thick, Thickety-Thickhead from Thicksburg, Thicksylvania.... And so's her dad!”
“VALERIE!!”
“I was just joking,” she whined.
“It's all right. Valli and I can joke around. We went through the Shark Wars together.”
“Shar-r-r-r-r-kkkk WARS!!” growled Valerie dramatically, and started making machine gun and explosion noises.
“Yes, we get the idea,” scowled Tom, which made her stop. And to me he said, “I wish we had a Shark Wars medal we could give you. That was a very brave thing you did coming to her rescue like that.”
“You're really the one that saved her though,” I said. “You had that taser gun. Saved both of us, probably.”
“But if you hadn't done that I wouldn't have got there in time, even with my fin-props going full out. It was quite a sight seeing you wrestling that big ugly thing bare handed!”
“I did have a cricket bat to hit him with. Or I did until he chewed it up. And a pretty big knife-” I said, and glanced over at my belt that was lying on the deck. Its scabbard was empty. “I don't suppose you've seen a knife, have you? Real fancy and old looking, gold; with a hilt shaped like seahorse?”
Nope, sorry, both parents said, making my heart sink. I'd been hoping they'd simply relieved me of it while I was out, not knowing what kind of crazed barbarian warrior mermaid would be waking up on the deck of their boat.
“But a club, a knife... Those aren't much when you're going up against a big predator like that,” said Tom.
“No, they sure aren't. That's why I usually try a more diplomatic approach with them, using my supposed authority as a Ruler of the Seas.”
“As a what?”
“She's a princess, Daddy! Her family runs the whole ocean and they can give orders to all the fish and the whales and even the seagulls!”
“Really?!” asked Tom. He wasn't too sure he believed this.
“We met the Duchess of York when we were in England,” said Phyllis, like this was supposed to mean something to me.
“Well tell her I said Hi!” I said.
“Fergie's tea tasted weird,” complained Valerie, “And she smelled funny!”
“You'll probably smell funny too when you're ninety years old,” her Mom admonished her.
“I liked when we went to Stonehenge better. They had hot dogs there. And that ghost train where all the skeletons and things jumped out, and those dodgem bumper cars!”
“So how should we address you?” asked Phyllis in that weird reverent tone that I'd been hoping I could get away from up here. “Your Grace? Your Majesty?”
“Anything is fine. 'Your Highness'... 'Hey Boogerhead'... Anything but 'Dude'.”
Valerie giggled. “Hey Boogerhead!”
“Yeah, Boogerhead?”
“Don't encourage her,” sighed Tom.
“So you can actually talk to fish?” asked Phyllis.
“Honey, that's not even remotely possible,” said Tom, a bit embarrassed that his wife would ask such a dumb question.
“But she can!” shouted Valerie, “She holy can! She took me around the corals to meet all the different little fishes and things, and I talked to a dolphin who could read the words on my texter!”
Tom turned to me, “Is that true?”
“As absurd as it sounds,” I said, shrugging in apology for my illogical world.
He laughed---a sharp, stressed-out bark---and said, “Sure! Why not?! Mermaids! Talking dolphins! Bermuda Triangle Time Portals! And I suppose that one's real too?”
“I'm afraid so...”
Phyllis said, “But I thought they'd decided time travel wasn't possible.”
“Who decided this?” frowned Tom.
“Well DAISY for one. She said so on DAISY'S WORLD OF SCIENCE last week.”
“DAISY's also always pointing out that she's not infallible; and says: 'Mistakes are the Universe's way of keeping us humble...' And us being in 2014 sure would explain a lot. We'll know for sure when I get on the internet. Which I'm going to do here in a minute, we just had to make sure you girls were alright first. How's the head, Enomena?”
“I'll survive. I'll just pop a couple of aspirin when I get home,” I said, gesturing with my bag of ice. As I settled it back on my eye it bumped my nose, setting off a flare of pain. My pretty new nose sure was taking its lumps this week.
“Can you take acetoprofenex?” asked Phyllis, reaching over and snagging the first aid kit.
“Unless the label says those are okay to give to a fish I'd better not risk it. My physiology's kind of a strange mixed bag.”
“She has a air bubble in her tummy that can EXPLODE!!!” announced Valerie gleefully.
“Oh dear!” said Phyllis, and set the box back down.
“Hey, can I get myself a coke?” asked Valerie.
“Sure,” said Phyllis, “If you'll bring me a glass of my tea. And a Henry Chinaski's Private Reserve for your father. And what would you like, Enomena? Tea? Water? Milk?”
“Actually a coke sounds pretty good.”
“Back in a blinky,” said Valerie, jumping up and running off through the boat's porch thing again.
Phyllis smiled in the direction of her departing daughter, “She sure has taken a shine to you. Meeting a real mermaid, it's a dream come true for her.”
“I like her too. She's a great kid!”
“We're pretty happy with her,” said Tom, “And again, I can't thank you enough for coming to her rescue like that. You didn't have to do that.”
“I really did, though.”
“But I mean, she's not even your own kind.”
“Maybe not,” I said, “But she's my friend. I'm going through a strange transition phase in my life right now, and I need every friend I've got. I can't afford to have them getting eaten.”
“I see,” Tom grinned sardonically, “Strictly self-serving then.”
“We're your friends!” said Phyllis, leaning forward and hesitantly patting my tail. It was a gesture I really appreciated, since fish-people seemed like something from way outside her comfort zone...
.
.
)))========> THE MERMAID'S PRIME DIRECTIVE
.
So here we were, me and the Rosados, just chilling on the deck of their boat...
“You never know what a 'harmless' encounter with a human will turn into,” Jasper had warned me. My anonymity was compromised in just about the worst possible way here. If my mermaid mom ever found out about this she might find a use for those dungeons she never used. I was such a damned screw up!
“What's wrong? Are you feeling okay?!” asked Phyllis, who must have seen me make a face.
“I'm fine. Just kind of mad at myself.”
“For what?”
“Well you see, we have this rule---and for us mermaids it's like the biggest rule there is---that we're never supposed to have any contact with humans, or even let them see us. I sure blew that one!”
Valerie was back, carrying a tray with all our drinks on it. Legs telescoped out of the tray's bottom, turning it into a low table that she set down in the middle of the circle of chairs, “But it's okay that I saw you, right? Because I took the Mermaid Pledge.”
“It wasn't okay for me to let you see me, but that wasn't your fault,” I said as I took the can of soda she handed me. The familiar Coke logo had been redone in an odd angular connect-the-dots style, reminiscent of a circuit board. I didn't see any pull tab on the top but there was a clear plastic spot, which I put my sturdy, sharp talon of a thumbnail against and pushed. And then pushed really hard. It just wouldn't break!
“So what's the Mermaid Pledge?” Phyllis asked her daughter.
Valerie tapped the clear spot on hers three times, two times and then once and took a drink. I tapped mine the same way and watched a circular hole spread itself open for me; like some weird living orifice opening. It was kind of creepy. The cola was shockingly sweet to my mermaid taste buds but I did enjoy the fizziness of it.
“It was this thing Princess Enomena made me say, all important and official and everything---a sacred oaf---that made me an ornerary mermaid, and a princess, and a citizen of Hysteria! I just had to promise to eat my vegetables and do my homework and always cross at the light, and never tell anyone there's real mermaids. Only I guess I can tell you now, and she said I could tell Wendy too, because she's my best friend and she believes me about stuff,” said Valerie. She turned to me, concerned, “I still can, can't I?”
“You can. But you'll have to make Wendy take the Mermaid Pledge. As a Deputy Mermaid Princess First Class you're authorized to make up your own version.”
“I suppose you'll need Phyllis and me to take this pledge too,” said Tom, sounding amused; like he got that I'd found myself in a jam with Valerie and had made the whole 'mermaid pledge' thing up on the spot.
Valerie snapped at them: “You better! 'Cause if you don't it could be all horrible for mermaids, like the way General Stoneheart and his Ultramega Squad are always after the Stratosfairies!”
“That's a cartoon series Valli watches. Fairies aren't some real thing in 2050,” explained Tom.
“Oh, there's real ones!" said Valerie, "They have the same little antenna dealies on their heads and pokitty ears like the Stratosfairies have, only they're way smaller. At least the ones I saw were. And zingy zowie, can they fly fast!"
I smiled at her, like I wasn't ruling the existence of fairies out at this point (plus I think Mom had mentioned the fae folk avoiding contact with humans in one of her rants...), but neither of Valli's parents chose to hear her claim.
Phyllis frowned, “I don't know that it's good to let kids to watch that show. It's probably fine now that she's almost ten, but I know when she was younger it used to give her nightmares.”
“I watched most of the second season with her and I'll admit I enjoyed it,” said Tom, “Except for those fairy cities up in the clouds it seemed quite realistic. A good reminder of what America might be like if idiots like Senator Greenspooner and that Victory For Values mob were running everything. And boy do they want to!”
“I realize that,” Phyllis told him, “I do remember the Twenties- all that awfulness with the 28th Amendment and all those crazy 'normalcy laws'. But to me a show that's about fairies should be cute, magical; a sense of wonder... Like those Tinkerbell ones I use to watch when I was little. Not all pessimistic and dark like that!”
“I can't say what it 'should' be. I was just agreeing with Valli, that it's a good illustration of why mermaids like Enomena would want to keep themselves hidden.”
I sighed. “Keeping hidden doesn't seem to be something I'm very good at. Hell, I might as well start charging admission: 'COME SEE THE AMAZING MERMAID- FIVE DOLLARS!'”
“I don't suppose you have change for a twenty, do you?” asked Tom, pretending to reach for his wallet.
“Sorry, not on me.”
“And you wouldn't be able to use our money anyway. They weren't putting advertisements on U.S. currency yet in this decade. But in all seriousness, I really would like to give you something for taking that shark on like that. Some kind of reward...”
“I don't know... Getting a 'reward' for doing that just doesn't seem right somehow. All I really want from you is that promise that you'll never tell-”
“You've got it!” said Tom.
“Absolutely,” said Phyllis, “Not a word about any of this to anyone, ever!”
Somehow I believed them. I smiled, “Well that was easy!”
“And they wouldn't have given us both XYZ clearance ratings if we weren't able to keep secrets,” she said.
For a second I wondered if they were CIA agents or something, until: “Oh! For that Big Brain Project.”
“That's the one,” said Tom.
“But you still haven't took the Pledge!” insisted Valerie.
“All right, let's make this legal,” said Tom, and he and his wife raised their right hands.
.
.
)))========> A STEPFATHER'S LOVE
.
The version of my pledge that I ran her parents through didn't much resemble the one I'd made Valerie say, but it seemed to satisfy her. When we finished she cried, “YAAAAAYYYY!!! Now we're all mermaids!”
“Oh Joy!" said Mr. Rosado, rolling his eyes. “Now If you ladies will excuse me, I think I've figured out how I can link up with one of those old broadband satellites and find out about this 2014 business.”
“It's true, Daddy!”
“I'm pretty sure you're right, Mija,” he said, “And that's what I'm afraid of. Because if we really have gone back thirty-six years that means we don't have any valid ID's, any money, any contacts.”
“We still have our 'Ultimate Emergency Fund',” Phyllis reminded him.
“That's right! But what's gold even going for in 2014?”
“Around twelve hundred dollars for a troy ounce. American dollars, that is. I don't know about Canadian or Australian.”
Tom looked at me appraisingly. “You seem to know a lot about the human world for not having any contact with it.”
“I know more about it than most mermaids,” I said, “It's this whole wild crazy story that-”
“I don't think I can handle any more crazy stories right now! I'll take your word for it,” said Tom as he stood up, “So right around fifty thousand dollars. And that'll buy us a lot more in these pre-inflation days. We've been in worse financial shape. But let's try to get home before we go breaking into that. I'll be back in twenty minutes, a half hour... It was very nice meeting you Enomena. Interesting.”
“You too!”
“And I know your feelings about the whole 'reward' business, but at least let me give you a dive knife to replace the one you lost. Not to put some cash value on what you did, but as a gift. From the heart...” he said. He glanced over at his daughter and his voice went husky, “Because... because I don't... don't know what I would have done, if-”
He stopped, his face contorting, like he was afraid that any further words might bring tears with them.
I can understand why someone who is invested in “being a man” might not want anyone to see them crying because they were afraid, or they got yelled at, or over something dumb like losing a golf match. But crying from the pure relief of having escaped a tragedy like losing your child? Tears like those seem appropriate for anybody, at any time. I decided to push him over the edge.
Valerie was watching him, her expression one of pure love and devotion. I whispered, “Don't just sit there, go hug him!”
She jumped up, grabbed him, and pressed her cheek against his ribs. He hugged her back, buried his face in her hair. Crying freely now, murmuring stuff like “my baby” and “precious angel”.
“You saved me Daddy! I was so scared!” hiccuped Valerie, crying tears of her own, which made him cry even harder.
Step-parents seem to be portrayed as the bad guys in a lot of stories and films, but Tom here was like a poster boy for just how loving a father a step-dad can be. Phyllis gave me a big nod---You did good!---and a second later had her arms around the both of them.
When their family hug finally broke up Tom's face was wet, but he was past caring who saw it. He had a great big quivering smile on his face as he went inside.
.
The computer must not have been too far below decks, because about two minutes later we heard his voice ringing out through the porchway opening: “AY CHINGADO!!!”
.
.
)))=====> STORY TIME
.
The shirt I was wearing was almost dry, and my soda was empty. Valerie ran inside to grab us each another one. She must have ran the whole way back too because when I tapped mine in the 3-2-1 sequence about half its contents shot all over me. Valli thought this was absolutely hilarious.
“You boogerhead!” wasn't my first choice of things to call her but Mom was sitting right here. “You don't run with soda!”
“I was just helping keep you wet,” she giggled, then opened hers at arm's length, letting it geyser harmlessly all over the deck.
Phyllis watched me take a big drink of my coke and said, “I hope we're not corrupting you, giving you a taste for caffeine and sugar.”
“You're not. I was already hopelessly addicted. I've been jonesing for a diet Dr. Pepper all week!”
“But where would a mermaid get soda pop?”
“That's the thing,” I said, “Until a few days ago I was as human as you are.”
“What?!?” she gasped, like she couldn't possibly have heard that right.
“It's true. I was born a human, from human parent. I lived in the suburbs, had an X-Box and a mountain bike and a little over four hundred bucks in the bank; and was supposed to be starting tenth grade at our new high school next week.”
She looked me up and down, searching for signs of whatever mad-scientist surgery had turned me into a mermaid. “But what happened?!!”
“It was magic!” exclaimed Valerie.
“I'm not too sure how the transformation worked,” I hedged, “Just that it did. And it saved my life. I was out in the middle of the ocean---and drowning---probably not too far from here, when this mermaid came and tried to rescue me.”
“Did you fall off a boat?” asked Phyllis.
“Actually I jumped. But I pretty much had to,” I told her. And after a bit of disclaimer-stuff about how crazy this was all going to sound I started: “Back on Sunday I was on vacation with my mom and dad, at a campground on the coast of Florida. I was laying out on my towel on kind of an isolated part of the beach when these pirates, who I didn't even think were real pirates at first-”
I gave them the story of my week pretty much as it happened, except for avoiding the word “genie” and instead calling the blue guy an “entity”; implying that he might have been some alien who possessed some of that indistinguishable-from-magic-type advanced technology; which to me just seemed more believable.
I yacked for maybe a half hour, stopping for the occasional question---“So you were a girlboy like Wendy and now you're a mermaid? Oh man, she is gonna be sooooo jealous!”---or a comment---“I'm sorry we put you through that, and am so glad neither of you were hurt jumping off that cliff!”---or a cry of astonishment from the web-browsing father---“JESUS H. CHRIST IN A JETPACK!!!”---who sounded like he was somewhere up near the front of the boat.
The stuff about my having been a boy didn't phase Phyllis. Transgender seemed like a notion she had been comfortable with even before she met Wendy. But what I could tell she hadn't been 100% comfortable with was the fact of me being a mermaid. Even though she'd been doing her best to treat me like a regular teenage girl from down the block, there was always that slight edge of hesitancy and seeming ill-at-ease...
Because now that she knew I actually was a teenager more or less from down the block (who through a bizarre mishap had lost her legs and grown a tail...) all that carefulness about what she said to me just fell away, and we both relaxed a lot more.
Since I was wearing half of my second soda I had run out of beverage before I ran out of story. Phyllis saw me tilting my head back to get the last drop and asked, “Do you need another Coke, Enomena?”
“Maybe just some water. But I can wait a bit.”
“And oh! Where are my manners?! Would you care for something to eat? We're not eating lunch, but I could sure make you something,” she smiled. Yes, she was definitely relaxing around me. Doing the good-hostess thing that my land mom always does when my friends came over.
“Thank you! I am sort of hungry.”
“I could heat up some of that cioppino we had last night. Or how about some nice mahi-mahi?”
“Actually just a peanut butter sandwich would be great.”
“Are you sure that's all you want?”
“Or anything that's not fish. That a mermaid wouldn't normally get a chance to eat.”
“Well that makes sense. We'll find you something good. But please, go on...”
I ran them through the last bit of my story, finishing with: “So I saw the taser dart and I let go of the shark just in time, but I guess I didn't move far enough away. The next thing I knew I was waking up here.”
Valerie applauded. To her my story was just a great adventure tale; and she seemed most impressed by things like me and Anee being mermaid princesses, the seashell castle and our talking octopus servants.
But Phyllis had been more affected by some of the the less happy aspects of my story. How I'd been uprooted from my life and tossed into a whole new one, and what this must have meant for my parents: “Those poor people! They must be at wit's end.”
“I know,” I sighed, “If only there was a way to let them know I'm okay.”
“Well there is, isn't there?” asked Valerie.
We both looked at her.
“If Daddy got onto that intranet then why can't you? Even if this is the Oldie Days, the human people here have computers, don't they?”
“Of course!” I practically shouted. “Valli, you're a genius! A boogerghead, but a genius...”
.
.
)))========> THE NEWS FROM 2014
.
We'd been sitting in the shade of the Eureka's bridge, but now the sun was right over us. My ice-pack had somehow migrated to my lap, where it wasn't really doing me any good. I drank all the water out of it and pressed the remaining ice back against my eye.
Valerie was the first to spot her father emerging from the little porchway, “Hi Daddy!”
Tom trudged slowly toward us, looking dazed.
“What's wrong?” asked Phyllis.
“It's true... We're in 2014... August Twenty-eighth to be exact... There's rioting in the town of Ferguson---right near St. Louis---after some leadfinger cop shot a black kid... ISIS is just starting to get a foothold in the Mideast... Vladimir Putin is President of Russia, sending troops into the Ukraine... In North Korea Kim Jong Un is playing with nukes and hasn't started cloning himself yet... Tiger Woods is still a big name in golf---I can't believe how young he looks!---and just won the Pandorica Open... And Orange is apparently the New Black.”
“Oh dear,” said Phyllis. “Well we were sort of expecting this. So what do we do now?”
Valerie recited: “We take the same exact heading you took coming here from Bahama, but backwards.”
“And that weird fog will just be waiting there for us?” asked Phyllis.
“It might just be,” said Tom. “When I was in there I had a crazy idea. I entered 'Bermuda Triangle golden fog time travel' on the old Google search engine, and I actually found something. Exactly one reference. It's from 2011; a site called THE FORTEAN INTELLIGENCER, which was mostly crazy stories about underground cities on the moon and how the big oil companies are suppressing the truth about perpetual motion machines. But there it was: An article called 'The Fog of Time', where they compared all the legends about it over the years and gave their best guess for the coordinates of the 'Bermuda Cross-Temporal Anomaly'. According to them the fog seems to usually show up a little after sunrise or a little after sundown.”
“And that's what those pirates said too!”
Tom stared at me. “So you were kidnapped by pirates? Time traveling pirates?”
“That's when all the weird stuff started, yeah,” I said, figuring he'd overheard that part from downstairs.
His eyes narrowed. “So it is you then...”
“You gotta hear her story, Daddy. It's cra-a-a-a-a-a-azy! It could be a movie!”
“Or a novel,” he muttered cryptically, and then: “That article I printed tells some crazy stories too. But it's the only thing I've found about this... this anomaly; so I guess we'll take its advice. It's a bit late to try to get there by sundown but we can anchor somewhere overnight near where we entered the fog and hope it appears in the morning.”
“So we don't have to leave right now?” asked Phyllis.
“Not for a few hours.”
“Then I can make lunch for Enomena. She wants a peanut butter sandwich. And she needs to use the computer to get a message to her real parents in Dover Delaware.”
“Human parents? And that fits too... Uh, sure. She can use it.”
“Great!” I said, “Just point the way. After yesterday on that island I won't have any problem crawling up and down a flight of steps or two.”
“You don't have to crawl, I'll take you,” said Tom. There was a stack of deck chairs like the two he had set out for him and Phyllis. The bottom chair had little plastic wheels on it so the whole stack could be moved around. He yanked the other chairs off of it and rolled it up next to my lounger.
“Thanks,” I said, and slid over onto the seat. This chair wasn't designed to be used as a mermaid wheelchair, and I had to hold my tail up in front of me as he wheeled me toward the superstructure.
“I assume you know how to use a computer,” he asked.
“Sure, if your computers are anything like the ones we have in 2014.”
“This one is. You'll like it,” he said, “And incidentally, I make a monster peanut butter sandwich!”
.
.
)))========> I NEVER META-FICTION I DIDN'T LIKE
.
We passed through the entryway and into the carpeted hallway that ran down the middle of the boat. It angled steeply downward for a bit before leveling off.
“How old are you, Enomena?”
“Fifteen,” I told him, “I was born in 1999.”
“The same year I was. But here we are, fifteen and fifty years old.”
“I know, it's weird! It's like that special relativity 'twins-paradox', where you stayed here on Earth while I went off on a rocket and did the near-speed-of-light thing.”
“That wouldn't be so weird,” he said, “Or maybe it would, but the physics of that are pretty cut and dry. What's weird is that right now there are two of me! The other me is your age, living back in Franklin County, probably playing HALO or shooting hoops in front of our garage; wondering how my summer vacation went by so quick...”
“You should go look him up and give him an almanac of sports statistics from 2050.”
“That would be a really bad idea,” said Tom gravely, not getting my joke. I guess if he'd ever seen those Back To The Future films it was so long ago that he didn't remember that part.
“And speaking of weird,” I said, “What's the deal with this war against the Technotologists down in Antarctica? That just sounds so.... improbable!”
“I guess it would, if you didn't know the history behind it. But I really don't think I should be talking to you about all this.”
“Valerie already told me a bit about it. Said her brother is down there fighting them. You must be worried about him.”
“Well of course I am. They're saying it will be over in a month, but that's what they said three months ago. The Clearheads have turned ordinary cancer fighting nanobots into this weapon, so our ground forces all have to wear repulsion suits. But that's the future, and... Hey, did you want jelly on that sandwich or just peanut butter?”
We had stopped in a spot where part of the hallway's wall was open, leading into a big kitchen. Most of what I could see in there looked familiar; except for one great big gleaming cylindrical appliance in the center of everything that was either a commercial donut maker or a cyclotron.
“Right now I just want to get that e-mail sent. The sandwich can wait.”
“Okay, but I'm going to grab a beer,” he said, and went into the galley. “Did you want another coke?””
As he opened the refrigerator I saw the tea-colored pitcher sitting on a shelf, “Could I have a glass of that iced tea instead?”
Tom nodded, and set the pitcher on the counter.
“So what's a repulsion suit?” I asked.
“Just a second,” he said. He tapped the cap on his beer bottle three times, twice, and once, and it lifted right off like it had loosened itself. He took a long drink, then looked me right in the face and said, “I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to ask you not to ask me anything about the future. I'm afraid of the consequences if I tell you too much.”
“You mean you're worried that if I knew certain things about the future I might change history, so nothing will be the same when you get back home?”
He made an odd, frustrated little noise and said, “I don't know! And that's what's so damn scary about all this. If that should be a real concern or if it only happens in movies. I'm information blind here! All I've got to go on is a bunch of science fiction stories, some half-baked hypotheses I've been toying with, and one thirty-six year old blog by some crackpot who calls himself Moby Dick-something that's probably nothing but lies! And so it might be nothing, but-"
“Moby Phillip K. Dick?” I asked. Of course he would be part of all this!
“Yes, that was it. You've heard of him?”
I'd not only heard of him, I knew the man. He was a friend of my father and about the strangest person my family knew (Sorry, Chiro...). But I was afraid anything I might say about that crazy old hippie Gordy Sanders might discourage Mr. Rosado from seeking out what seemed like was their best chance for getting back to their own time, so I lied and said, "Uh, I might have, but I can't remember where."
““Oh,“ he said, “So I don't know whether 'disrupting the timeline' is a real concern or just a movie gimmick, but I don't want to risk it by telling you any more.”
“That's cool. I wouldn't want to make you never be born or something,” I said, imagining one wrong word from him causing this whole boat to suddenly disappear from around me and me falling ker-plunk into the ocean.
Tom filled a glass with ice and poured tea into it, “It's not sweetened. Did you want sugar?”
“I'm kind of sugared out. And it occurs to me that mermaids might not even have a human-type pancreas, so I better cool it until I can go look that up. I don't suppose you have any of that fake stuff, do you?”
“We might,” he said and started rummaging through drawers and cabinets.
“But you know, when it comes to anything you tell me affecting the future you do have one thing in your favor. Me being a mermaid makes the chances of my having any effect on human history pretty slim. We exist in two separate worlds.”
“That's what I was thinking, at first. But if you're who I think you are you won't always be a mermaid. And your getting turned back into a human would mean there will more of a chance of you having an impact on the future than if you kept on living out there.”
“So who is it that you think I am?”
“I saw your book,” he said, “Or I'm pretty sure it was yours. A little over two years from now. I was in high school---my senior year, Class of 2016---and there was this novel some of the kids were raving about. It started out with this boy being abducted by pirates, and then he fell off the boat and turned into a mermaid when he hit the water, or something like that, which she didn't seem to mind at all, and she had all these weird adventures. Just pure fantasy stuff... Or that's what I thought until we met you.”
“Wow!” I said. If this book wasn't my story it was a pretty big coincidence. “What was it called?”
“Around The Bend, Over The Top, something like that. I'd been wondering why this all seemed familiar, and then I remembered,” he said as he continued searching. There were a lot of cabinets and drawers in here. “Damn, I hope she didn't throw it all out!”
“And this book was by Susan Donnelly?”
“I don't remember, it was so long ago. Some girl. Young enough that people were surprised she got published. It wasn't a giant bestseller but it had a certain following at Rydell High. Girls mostly, a few boys. But this wasn't exactly the most progressive part of the country, and none of the guys I hung around with wanted to be seen reading that book. It had all this weird transgender stuff in it. No offense.”
“None taken.”
“But my kid sister had a copy. Said I just had to read it! So I started it one weekend at home and- Ah! Here it is,” he said. Came back out and handed me my tea, his beer to hold for him, and a pastel green packet that said SYNTHA-SWEET on it in whimsical lettering. “They're saying this stuff is bad for you, just like they did about glycodulcinate before they banned that, but I'm sure one of these won't kill you.”
“You started reading it. Did you finish it?”
“Afraid not. It seemed to just ramble all over the place. And about three chapters into the mermaid part I just said screw it. It was too much of the same thing. And WAY too much of that 'Wheeeeee I'm a mermaid! Wheeeeeee I'm a girl! Wheeeeeeeee I have big-' Er, I mean... Not that I thought all the transgender stuff was wrong or anything, I just couldn't relate to it.”
Great... I haven't even written the damn thing and I'm already getting bad reviews!
“Well we don't like to read what we don't like to read,” I shrugged, “I don't have anything against English drawing rooms, personally, but I don't want them in my detective fiction; like all those Mrs. Ambrose mysteries my mom likes. So then you didn't get to the part where she met the human girl and fought the shark and wound up on that parents' ship, talking to Valli's dad about a book he'd read when he was fifteen?”
“If I did, I don't remember,” he said. He got behind my chair. I hefted up my tail and he started pushing me on down the hall, “But I'm pretty sure I'd skipped ahead by then. My sister told me there was outer space stuff later on in the book and that sounded like maybe it would be better; but that part didn't grab me either. I gave it back to Christina. But I do know the main character wasn't a mermaid anymore by the end of it, because she says so at the beginning. So if that really was you, and it wasn't all just some cockamamie fantasy...”
I poured a quarter of the packet of sweetener into my tea. Sipped it. It tasted just about right. “So what do you mean 'space stuff'?”
“Sorry, this was a book I just skimmed through thirty-six years ago. I just seem to recall it had this space ship full dumb aliens that acted like clowns, or maybe they were clowns, and they took pills to make themselves stupid. Or something. But it wasn't nearly as funny as the author seemed to think it was; and the whole thing, all they did was talk, and I just gave up on it," he said. And then tried to take some of the sting out of his criticism: “But then I was a real philistine back then. Even though I was a good student my tastes were pretty simple, crude even. There was lots of dialogue and hardly any danger or excitement in it, and that bored me; but if it was your real story that's probably good. And I know there were a lot of kids who did love it.”
The hallway dipped down again, and ended at a doorway that was open but had a serious steel hatch for a door, with a little porthole window and wheel for a handle, like on a real ship. He tilted my chair back and then forward to get it over the hatchway's bottom lip, and we entered a small, oddly shaped space in the yacht's bow that was fixed up like an Edwardian man-cave: all mahogany and brass, with breakfront bookcases, high back leather chairs, paintings of hunting dogs loping across fields, crystal decanters holding different types of booze, and an antique roll-top desk.
On either side of where the bow came to a point there was a circular window six feet in diameter, showing a view of the ocean just below the surface and flooding the room with greenish light. Now and then the water across their tops would dip down, showing a sliver of blue sky. I'd noticed these yesterday when I was checking out this boat with Anee's spyglass. They explained that heavy steel hatch that his study had for an entrance. Whatever kind of super-tough futuristic material they were made from, if one of them ever did break this room would have to be sealed off in a hurry...
“Wow! Great view,” I said.
“This is everybody's favorite place in the Eureka. Which is funny, because the view-walls in the cabins actually give a much better view of what's happening on the other side of the hull. They're bigger than these, and you can zoom in on something, or go to infrared viewing at night. But there's something about a real glass window-” he pointed, “Hey! Look at that dolphin checking us out. They always look so happy! And what's that hanging around his neck?”
I looked. It was Jasper Five, staring right at me. And no, he did not look happy at all.
.
.
)))========> IDIOT IN A BOX
.
Tom pushed my chair up to his desk and rolled up the top, revealing his computer. It looked surprisingly like my mom's four year old Dell desktop model at home. I hit what was obviously the ON button. The screen came to life, showing the image of Tom, Phyllis, an even younger looking Valerie, and a boy that must have been his son Jimmy all crowded into the oval carriage on the arm of of a carnival octopus ride, which must have been running at full speed, from the expressions on their faces and from the crazy angle that the horizon and all the background stuff were tilted at. Rides and crowds and colorful tents, and beyond these a wet looking grassy field with an arrangement of huge rectangular stones that could only be Stonehenge rising up from it.
I centered the keyboard, moved the mouse to the left side, and said, “Computers sure don't seem to have evolved much in thirty-five years. I thought it would be real tiny, or plug into your brain or something. ”
“They have those. But those are expensive and most folks still don't want to go around with circuitry in their bodies, except maybe a GPS or a medic-alert beacon. This is a retro model, made to look like that one I had as a teenager. I'll leave you to it. If you get in trouble, just holler,” he said, and left.
Just to be sitting in front of a normal piece of human technology again felt so good. I said, “Wow! A computer!”
“Yeah? Whadda ya want, Fishbutt?” asked a voice.
I jumped. “What?!!”
“Sorry, we're all out of 'what',” the thing snickered, “Come back tomorrah.”
Tom hadn't told me it was voice-interactive. I leaned forward, unsure where the microphone was. “What did you call me?”
“You hoid me.... Fishbutt!”
“You are a very rude computer!”
“Hey, dat ain't my fault, I wuz programmed dis way.”
“You sound kind of familiar,” I told it.
“Ya ever watch th' T'ree Stooges?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Oh a wise guy, huh?! My voice was modeled on one o' dem guys. Da handsome one, Coily!”
“And do you have a name?”
“Sure do,” it answered, then was silent.
“What is your name?”
“Now yer catchin' on, Kiddo! I am a WEISENHEIMER 1948 INTERACTIVE VOICE RECOGNITION PROGRAM,” it announced, and then said miserably, “My mudder musta really hated me ta gimme a name like dat!”
“So how is it that you can talk to me?”
“What can I say? I got low standards.”
“No. I mean, I thought only the Chinese had AI.”
“Who, DAISY? Puh-shaaaawww! Maybe she got a thinkerbox that'd makes Einstein look like Mortimer Snerd, but I swear! Dat broad is a real dumb-dora when it comes to deliverin' a joke. She's too intelligent, and way too artificial. To really be funny ya gotta skip the Artificial Intelligence an' go right for the Artificial Stupidity. And I got dat by the boatload!” it boasted. “But I guess dem Chinamen will laugh at anyt'ing. And speakin' of jokes, I got a real knee slapper for you: Ya see, dere was dese three brudders---Ching, Chong and Chang---woikin' in a Chinee laundry. And one day the got this big load o' doity diapers ta wash, see? And-”
“Look, would you just get me on to the internet?”
“Why soitinly- Nyuck! Nyuck!” and the MSN news page came up.
I browsed the MSN page a bit, just reassuring myself that the world up there was going on pretty much like it was when I'd left it. The headlines seemed dominated by news of a mass shooting someplace, but it was too nice of a day out here on the ocean for me to want to click the thumbnail and read about that...
Then I went to Mr. Rosado's MAIL, where there was nothing. No correspondence had ever been received or sent from this machine, at least not via the internet. I clicked COMPOSE, filled in my parent's email address, and wrote, 'Dear Mom and Dad…'
So much for the easy part. I stared at the blank space where my word were supposed to go, trying to think of what I could possibly say to my parents in a farewell e-mail. I gazed out the windows. That out there was my home now. Where I belonged. I could feel it calling to me...
But I think I'd always felt a profound connection to the sea---if nowhere near this strong---and that most humans feel it too. At the Delaware Bay Aquaritorium a spell would fall over the visitors as they rounded the hallway and saw that first big marine exhibit, an enthrallment that didn't depend on whatever kinds of creatures they could see or couldn't see beyond the glass. It was something about the place itself---that cool serene lighting---that soothed them and made them speak in hushed tones, like they were in church. If you trace our ancestry back far enough it's where we all came from, a world that is literally in our blood. The only real difference between mers and land people is that we went back...
But I wasn't here to window gaze. I had this thing to write. A farewell message that no matter what I said was not going to help them accept that they'd lost me forever.
I was glad the computer hadn't spoken in a while. The little cursor arrow blinking impatiently on and off was intimidating enough.
“What the heck can I tell them?” I wondered, and suddenly my first sentence started to form itself in my head.
“Hello Muddah... Hello Faddah... Here I am at... Camp Granada,” sang the computer in an annoying flat voice.
And there went my first sentence.
I was furious- “You stupid piece of crap! You're not funny! You're not entertaining! And I wasn't talking to you!!!”
“Ohhhh, talkin' to yourself, are ya? You know what dey say about dat,” the machine smirked, and let out an irritating singsong: “KOO-koo!! KOO-koo!!”
“Would you shut up?!!”
“Shut down? Sure thing, Toots!”
“No- STOP!” I shouted as PREPARING TO SHUT DOWN appeared on the screen.
“Had ya goin' there, didn't I?! Boyoboy, da look on yer kisser! Aaaarrr-har-har I got a million of 'em!!”
.
.
)))========> D.A.I.SY.
.
I managed to plow through all the interruptions, the terrible old songs and lame racist jokes, and eventually got the thing written and sent to my parent's e-mail addy. I'd been vague about the turning-into-a-mermaid part but at least they would know I was alive. The one piece of information that might make them feel a bit better. And I'd stuck in enough personal stuff (like "Give my love to Roofus", the neighbor's dog...) that even coming from this strange IP address they'd know it was really me and not somebody's sick prank.
I was about to check out what kind of video games they have in 2050 when Tom came in, “How are you doing?”
“I got it sent, but I'm not sure if I said what I really wanted to. I was kind of distracted.”
“Hey don't blame me, Sister! You was da one blabberin' at me and keepin' me from my beauty sleep-”
“Computer: Disengage voice-mode!” commanded Tom.
“Awwww, yer mudder wears army boots! Woob-oob-oob-oob-oob-oob-” shrieked the computer, falling silent in mid-woob.
“Why on Earth did you engage that thing?” puffed Tom.
“I didn't! Or I don't think I did.”
“I should have warned you, but I didn't think it would go on. So are you done here?”
“I guess so,” I said. I wished I'd fired off quick notes to my friends Pepper and Chiro too, but I was pretty sure my parents would pass along the news that they'd heard from me. I asked him, “So that computer voice, that wasn't an AI?”
“Not even close. It recognizes key words, and sentence structure, and has a couple million responses that it selects from. It's the personality gimmick that makes you think it's sentient. But who could have left it set to that one? I swear, WEISENHEIMER is the most annoying voice program there is; Even worse than that WASTED WALLY 420!”
“Wasted Wally?!"
“Fer sure, Braaaah!" he slurred in a moronic voice. "There's hundreds of them. Everything from VIRTUAL VOLTAIRE to SPORTSDUDE to that PENNY THE PINK PENGUIN Valerie loves; although I think she's getting a bit old for that one. And then there's a bunch strictly for men that are... that are...”
“Oooooh Baby!” I purred huskily, “Run your big strong fingers all over my hot trembling keyboard!”
Tom was staring into space. From the vacant look in his eyes I realized I'd just used my siren-voice, a mermaid skill I still knew nothing about except it was only to be used in life-or-death situations. Luckily he snapped out of it a second later, unaware that he'd been briefly turned into a compliant zombie.
"That's-" he laughed uncomfortably, “That's pretty much what they're like. They have that kind for all different, y'know, tastes. And there's a lot of programs marketed as 'AI', but so far the only real artificial intelligence is DAISY. Our team was well on our way to creating ZIPPY when those bastards shut us down!”
I asked, “So what kind of voice and personality did the Chinese give DAISY?”
“She chose her own. Not real flashy but friendly, cheerful, helpful. DAISY stands for DATA ACQUIRING INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM, which means her cognitive matrix doesn't wait for you to put things into it. She learns, acting all on her own, asking questions, reading and watching everything from the latest papers on mathematics to the cheesiest sitcoms. You ready for that sandwich now?”
“Starved,” I said as he grabbed my chair and started wheeling me out. “And with all that intelligence all she wants to do is be a television star?”
“She can do that and a million other things at the same time. Literally! She's come up with some pretty astonishing scientific breakthroughs in the three years she's been operating.”
“You're an inventor. Aren't you afraid she'll put you out of a job?”
He rocked my chair back and then forward, over the lip of the hatchway. “No. DAISY says human society can't handle more than one giant techological advancement per year, so she rations them out. But the three she's given us have been beauts. Although there's no pleasing some people. Like this Senator Greenspooner... I swear to Christ the man has to be dumber than bathtub scum! Because until now he'd always come down against just about any funding for scientific research, or teaching certain types of science in public schools...”
“Evolution?”
“Surprisingly not so much. Mostly different sciences that he accuses of 'denying the orderliness of Creation and promoting a nihilistic worldview'.... quantum physics, chaos theory, negative numbers; and for some reason he really doesn't like seahorses. I mean where the hell does he gets this stuff from?! But now he's yelling that DAISY is being high-handed and paternalistic for holding out on us with things she knows. It doesn't matter what she does or doesn't do, says or doesn't say. He'll find a way to make it part of her evil scheme. I mean here she revolutionizes agriculture with her 'air farming' system---which'll basically end famine within ten years---gives it to the whole world for free; and his reaction is that she's 'fattening us up for the slaughter'! What's she planning to do, eat us?!”
“IT'S A COOKBOOK!” I giggled, a reference to an old Twilight Zone episode that I didn't expect him to get.
"Exactly," he chuckled. “People still say that one in 2050. But DAISY really does have our best interest at heart. Like with how she- Oh Crap! I'm talking about the future again, aren't I? I get to talking AI and I forget everything else.”
“I forgot too, sorry! Remind me to remind you next time.”
The galley was alongside us again. Tom wheeled me into it, saying,“Did you really just want a peanut butter sandwich?”
“I guess not. It just seemed like something that would be easy to make.”
“Everything in here is easy to make,” he said, and with a conspiratorial grin, asked, “How about you and me split a big t-bone steak?”
“Oh hell yeah!”
“Great. And if we get caught I can blame it on you. We've just started on this Paleovegan diet. A big early breakfast, and then probably some kind of tofu crap just before dark,” he said, with a grimace that told me this diet was someone else's idea.
He pulled a plate with a snug fitting lid on it from the freezer, pried the lid off and slid it into the SmartRange, which looked more or less like a microwave oven. It was done in fifteen seconds, just enough time for him to push my chair up to the table and put down two cloth napkins and sets of silverware. I hadn't been reassured by the plate's resemblance to the ones hospital meals come on, but what was in it looked delicious.
“Wow. This is like a real home cooked meal.”
“It is. Phyllis and our cook Pierre made up a whole freezer's worth of different meals before we left,” Tom said. He bisected the baked potato and lifted half of it on a regular plate, then did this with the steak, leaving me the asparagus, the salad, some flan and the bigger piece of steak with the bone. When I popped a forkful of salad into my mouth I discovered it was nicely chilled while the steak in the adjoining dent still sizzled. Smart range!
We both fell into a frenzy of consumption. I kept looking over at that big cyclotron-looking appliance, trying to figure out what it was without having to ask about this piece of future technology. It had a digital timer display on it, the glowing red numerals clicking over from 2:32 to 2:31. Whatever it was doing it was doing it silently, and had two and a half hours to go.
"You must've really liked that!" said Tom, smiling in amusement. Which was when I realized I'd finished my whole plate and was chewing on the steak bone. There was a loud crack--which luckily wasn't one of the eye teeth I was bearing down on it with, and which gave me access to the delicious marrow inside---but I suddenly felt funny to be doing something so animal with him staring at me and regretfully set the bone down.
"Sorry," I grinned, “And I'm sorry about the way they shut your Big Brain Project down. I mean, I'm not asking anything about it, just saying I can imagine how that felt.”
“Thanks. And what I can say about the project is I really loved working there, and was furious about the way it ended. The pure stupidity of it! But that's when I decided to start working in the private sector, for myself, as far away from fools and bureaucrats as I could get, and I can tell you it's worked pretty well for me.”
“Got you rich?” I asked.
“Richer than I ever dreamed I'd be. And the money and toys are nice, but what's best is never have to worry about how I'm going to take care of my family, Jimmy and Valli's education. And I can't be too bitter about those two years at the Project; that's where I met the wonderful woman I share my life with, this family this I wouldn't even have if I hadn't worked there.”
I had to smile at that. “That's sweet.”
“And it was so unexpected. My wife Jeannie died when Jimmy was young, I'd been a single dad for almost ten years. Sort of muddling through, with no hopes that it might ever better than just okay. There was that big empty space in me, but I figured that's what being a widower was supposed to feel like. And Phyllis and Valerie; they were just starting to get their life together after her awful divorce from Psycho Tantrum Guy. So I was in physics, working on the quantum hardware for the memory core, and Phyllis was with the team developing ZIPPY's self-learning programs, and- But anyway, without getting technical, we were different departments. Different building even. But we kept running across each other; and-” his face lit up, “And speak of the Devil!”
Phyllis walked in and plucked the chunk of steak off his fork. Popped it into her mouth and rolled her eyes in pleasure.
“You're eating meat,” marveled Tom.
“You know what? The heck with it! I decided if I have to live through the Twenties again---and as an adult this time---I'm not only going to start eating meat, I might just become an alcoholic! At least until they snap out of that whole ugly paranoid rat-out-your-neighbors mentality, repeal the Gender Conformity Amendment and abolish the National Dress Code.”
“You'd better not,” Tom said, “I've seen you drunk. You'll wind up getting yourself arrested for wearing slacks in public, or punching the first bathroom cop who demands to see your Genetic ID to make sure you're carrying a pink card and not a blue card.”
“Bathroom cops?” I asked.
“TSA agents,” said Phyllis. “From the Toilet Safety Administration.”
Whatever they're talking about, it doesn't sound like the 2020's are going to be much fun, especially for transgender people. Maybe it's a good thing I'm a mermaid and will be missing all that. And if Tom is right, and I'll be a human and publishing a book about all this two years from now---he did say the author was a girl--- then hopefully I'll be transitioned and have my birth certificate changed by the time the ugly stuff starts. Unless they involuntarily de-transition everybody trying to live outside of their fascistic ideal of normalcy and their weirdness about bathrooms. And if I can't, at least I know it won't be forever, if by mid-century they're letting little Wendy grow up as the girl she is...
Tom said, “But it's probably better if you don't turn into a drunk. Become a shopping addict instead.”
“That does sound a lot more fun,” she said, snagging the last little chunk of steak off his plate. “But if I do I plan to go totally nuts with it. Can we afford that?”
“I have a few lucrative patents up my sleeve. But don't worry, you won't have to throw yourself into some addiction. We're getting back to 2050 if I have to invent a time machine.”
“My hero!” she said, and gave him a big steaky-mouthed kiss, then turned to me, “So did you get that e-mail sent to your parents?”
“I did! And it's a real load off my mind!”
What I didn't know then was my e-mail had gone right to my parents' spam folder, where they didn't recognize it as a message from me, and didn't even read it until I got home, retrieved it from the Recycle Bin and showed it to them...
.
.
)))========> DYSMORPHIA MY ASS!
.
I felt like some kind of weird mermaid parade float as both of them got behind me and pushed me up the inclined hallway and onto the deck.
Valerie was standing at the railing, snapping pictures with a camera that looked like a Frisbee with a pair of crescent shaped handle-things cut from it on either side of the dark glossy disk of its lens.
“What are you doing, Honey?” asked Phyllis.
“This thing doesn't fly anymore since I crashed it, but the camera part still works. I'm getting pictures of our trip to 2014.”
“That's the ocean. It looks the same as it does in our time,” said Tom.
“Not really, not if you really look at it. And I want to get some of us in the Oldie Days too,” she said, and snapped his picture.
He said, “We might as well. We have time.”
There was a half a mermaid lying on Valli's chaise lounge. I pointed at it, “What happened to your friend here?”
“That's my other tail. The non-mech one. I want Mom or Dad to take some pictures of us being mermaids together.”
“What a cute idea!” exclaimed Phyllis.
I said, “I'm sorry Valerie, but no! It's out of the question. I'll take pictures of you guys all together but I can't be in any of them. I've broke too many rules, crossed too many lines today already!”
“Oh that's right,” said Phyllis, “Sorry Sweetheart, that would be too big of a risk for her people.”
“You mean like if we had a picture of a real mermaid someone bad might see it and go out looking for them?”
“That's the idea.” I said.
A crafty smile spread across her face. She went over to the mangled mechanical tail that was lying on the deck and squatted down next to it. Pulled several plastic gemstones from it and began peeling its rubber skin off of the frame. “But could you be in my pictures if you were a fake mermaid?”
“You want me to wear that over my real tail? But then you wouldn't have a photo of a real mermaid.”
She carried it over and handed it to me, “Sure I would, but only me, Mom and Dad would know you weren't fake. And Wendy. I don't need it to be all real looking, I just want a picture of my friend.”
How could I say no to that?
“Fine. Let's see if it fits,” I said as held it by the waist-hole and unfurled it. “Oh God! It look like a- uh, never mind.”
Tom and Phyllis started laughing. I guess it looked like a giant's condom to them too, that shredded caudal fin sticking out from its end like a fishy French tickler (which conjured up a mental image of my mermaid mom and Jacques Cousteau doing stuff that I really would've preferred not to imagine).
From tip to tip, the end of my tailfin was the widest part of me. I had to sort of bend it and stuff it into the fake tail's opening like a foot going into a snug boot, then pull the rubber sheath up over me like a pair of pants.
Very tight pants...
I shimmied and squirmed and was able to get it pulled most of the way up my fish half. And it did seem like it would be long enough, but when it got to my hips I had to pull and pull.
I really didn't appreciate having an audience for this, the Rosados watching my progress with interest as I grunted and writhed, the rubbery material squeaking loudly in protest. I had got the thing pulled almost up to my waist when the tear that Nee-shay the Shark had made in it began to spread and grow, ripping clear up to the top of it!
“MOTHERF-” I caught myself, “GAAAAHHHH!!!!!”
“Don't worry, that tail was gonno anyway. And it fits you now,” said Valerie.
“Maybe you can turn sideways so the ripped part doesn't show,” said Phyllis. She was trying to be helpful, but I almost snapped her head off.
I couldn't believe this tail didn't fit me! I looked over at its cage-like frame. The top end of the thing was HUGE! Like the steel framework for a zeppelin. And yet the fabric skin had fit over that just fine. But not over me...
It was a horrible discovery, but the facts were undeniable: I had a big butt!
Where had this big jiggling scaly green lard ass come from all of a sudden? I wasn't any fatter than my sister, was I? I conjured up a mental image of her, because surely she didn't have a- Oh wait, yes she did.
Why hadn't I noticed it before? Anemone and Enomena, the Bubble Butt Twins...
And come to think of it, our mom had an even bigger butt. Oh boy, that was sure something to look forward to. No wonder the doorways in the castle were so big!
And that portrait of Grandma Meredith in the Castle's grand hall? Large as a barge...
The statue of the Mermaid First Mother out in the courtyard? If it wasn't underwater that ass could have served as a perch for a whole flock of pigeons!
It was obvious to me now, that this was our family curse, as across my mind's eye there paraded a succession of thunderously big butts; a whole long line of them, stretching all the way back to Atlantis...
Which would still be a continent today if it hadn't been sunk by the weight of all those blubbery big fat booties!
“Oh God,” I groaned, “My ass is HUGE!”
Phyllis laughed.
“Oh that's it, laugh at the freak with the plus-size whale butt!”
She laughed again. “Plus size?! I only wish I had a figure like yours. I mean with legs and minus the scales...”
I pointed at the big rip in the rubbery stuff covering me, “But this tail, it-”
She gave me a reassuring smile. “-is made for a little girl without any hips. Compared to her you're a grown woman. And you're not fat. Not by any stretch of the imagination.”
“You think so?” I asked. Suddenly the metal frame of Valerie's tail sitting over there didn't seem nearly so Hindenburg-like now.
“What I think is you're fifteen years old, and you're looking at yourself hypercritically. Teenage girls can psych themselves into all kinds of destructive body image disorders. Anorexia, body dysmorphia...”
“My shrink gave me a bunch of tests that came out saying I don't have anything like that. Well except for thinking my nose looked weird when nobody else thought so, and for hating my... Well you know, how I felt about being a boy. That was a huge thing for me. But I don't even have those anymore.”
“Exactly. You're a girl now, and now comes all the fun stuff. Instead of that one big problem you get all the usual worries us women have about how we look, about being fat, looking old; constantly comparing ourselves to other women around us and those underfed little things in the fashion magazines.”
“Maybe you're right,” I said. I didn't want to become one of these eating-disorder girls who have an insane funhouse-mirror image of their body and thinks about it constantly. There's no real happiness in that. I supposed I could live with my somewhat rotund fishbutt.
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)))================> CHEESE
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I watched as Valerie jumped into her chaise lounge and slid her legs into her other mermaid tail. Covered in blue green scales with deep indigo edges it was really pretty, and surprisingly realistic. At snapshot distance no one would really be able to tell a flesh-and-blood tail from a clever fake.
And hadn't Valerie assumed I was some kind of pretend mermaid when we first met, right up until I proved to her that I wasn't? I began peeling off the pink harlequin tail.
“What are you doing?” asked Valli.
“Throwing caution to the wind,” I said, and tossed the thing out of camera range. I reached down between our loungers, grabbed my tartan bandage and tied it back around my tail wound with a nice big bow. I flopped my fin over onto her chair, alongside of hers, “See? Now we match a lot better.”
“Holy!”
“And anyone who looks at your pictures of us will think we're just a couple of human girls in costumes.”
“Wait,” said Phyllis. She took off her big polka dot sunglasses and slid them onto my face, whispering, “For your eyes.”
“Thanks,” I said; at first thinking it was because they probably weren't very pretty looking right now, but then remembering that my larger-than-human eyeballs would have outed me as either a mermaid or some kind of weird space-alien chick.
At Valerie's request Tom pushed our loungers together so we could pose with our arms around each other, making silly faces and sneaking a hand up behind the other one's head to do the peace-sign devil horns thing.
Then Phyllis crouched behind us and Tom got a few of her with the two mer-girls, and she snapped a couple of Tom crouching behind us. Then Valerie insisted that her dad go get his sturdy saltwater rod and his boonie hat so she could take one of him with me in his arms, looking like the fisherman who had just caught a mermaid.
I can understand how merpeople would consider this gag to be in really bad taste. The idea that humans murder and exploit our kind is deeply ingrained in our culture and folklore (even though proven accounts of bad encounters with land dwellers only seem to occur about twice in a century...) and a picture like this could be seen as making light of these tragedies. But Valli really wanted this, because they already had a picture hanging back there in the hallway where he'd posed with her like this, and she wanted this one to go up in a frame next to it.
And since I'd already broken about every rule in the kelpbook I figured I might as well make my sinning complete...
“Sorry I'm kind of heavy, I've got this butt,” I apologized as he picked me up, the fishing pole standing upright and held in the crook of his elbow.
“Nawww! You're light a minnow,” he assured me, bouncing me a bit in his arms.
I wanted to avoid any sexual overtones in a picture of me and Mr. Rosado in such a close embrace, so as we said “Cheese!” I cocked my head sideways and made my smile as big and goofy as I could. And when I saw the picture on the camera's screen a few minutes later Tom was doing the same. With these big silly glasses and my shiny gold “wig” I looked like some last-minute-Halloween-costume Lady Gaga, and we both looked like a couple of real dorks. I wish I had a copy of that picture, and a couple of the cuter ones of me and Valli.
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)))==> NEVER BUY YOUR DEATH STARS FROM A COMPANY NAMED ACME
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“How are we doing on time?” asked Phyllis.
“We should leave in about two hours.”
“That's enough time for a movie...”
“Sure,” grinned Tom, “But something historical. Nothing set in a time after two-thousand fourteen.”
"Or anything made in the next few years shouldn't be too bad," suggested Phyllis, until her husband whispered something in her ear and she made a lemon-sucking face. "Oh! Right... Nothing after 2016..."
"Why? What's gonna happen?" I asked, my big all-day smile wavering suddenly.
"Let's just say it's nobody you'll ever see carved into Mount Rushmore," quipped Phyllis, then she pointedly changed the subject with a hearty: "So... What sort of movie are you kids in the mood for?"
“The Deeptown Fisheroo Review Movie!”
“NOOOOOOOO!!!” screamed Tom and Phyllis together.
I asked, “Do you have anything set 'A long time ago in a galaxy far away'?”
“I have all six trilogies. Although the three most recent films aren't movies as you know them. And the format itself would be a future-spoiler.”
“Anything's fine. Just pick a good one.”
And that's how I saw Episode VII of the Star Wars movies---sprawled on a couch in their home theater with my own bowl of popcorn---before the filming itself was even completed. I think my friend Chiro was more impressed by that when I told him about it than by my actual travels in space. And as I watched I thought: "Considering this is probably the last movie I'll ever get to see, this isn't too bad..." It was fun, way better than any of the films from the Darth-Vader-grows-up trilogy, and I loved that little soccer-ball-in-a-hat robot (though not as much as Little Miss Squirrelly did!).
About halfway through the movie there was a loud beeping from down in the kitchen and Phyllis ("But Mommmm! You're gonna miss the best part!") excused herself, and ten minutes later came back with a big steaming plate of something that smelled like pure heaven, and a smaller plate just for me. Little toothpick-speared cubes of smoked albacore, piping hot, right from the cyclotron- which it turns out was nothing more futuristic than a high-tech odorless smoker. I had to fight to keep from groaning, that fish was so good!
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)))========> THE QUANTUM PAPERWEIGHT
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And then it was time for them to leave. It had been wonderful reconnecting for a few hours with the human world I'd left behind, and I was sad to see my new friends go. I really liked these Rosados. Valerie was just a total sweetheart, and more than any of my friend's parents did Phyllis and Tom reminded me of my own science-geek mom and dad.
I put on my belt, and Anemone's backpack with all our clothes and stuff in it, plus a big ziplock bag holding about a kilo of their smoked albacore, which Phyllis had decided to give me after hearing me rave about it. She was totally over her mer-phobia or whatever and didn't flinch at all as I hugged and thanked her, but hugged me right back.
Then Tom picked me up and carried me over to the side of the boat, “How do you want to do this? Do I throw you in?”
“Just set me down on the railing,” I said, and he did. The rail was flat, and wide enough to balance on.
“Thanks for the blade,” I told him, patting the scabbard on my hip with the dive knife they'd given me in it. Although I still hoped I'd be able to find the one I lost down there on the seafloor. I was really dreading having to tell Mom that I'd lost King Uyehtah's gold knife.
“It was the least I could do,” he shrugged, then unfastened the strap his big fancy waterproof wristwatch and tried to hand it to me, "And here, take this too. I could see the way you kept looking at it."
"Was I? I guess I was, they're kind of a high prestige item down below, but I don't want to take your watch. It won't be good for much after the batteries run down."
He chuckled. "It's got a thirty-year power cell. The battery will probably last longer than the watch will. And this is my cheapie, I have a much nicer one, that's good for down to a thousand meters, which is deeper than I'll ever go."
"Me too, I hope! Are you sure about this?" I asked as he pushed it at me again, and I probably wouldn't have taken it for myself, but then I thought of something. "Would you mind if I gave this to my mother? Or would re-gifting this be a classless thing to do?"
"No, that'd be great! It's not every day I can give a gift to the Queen of the Mermaids!"
"Except I'm going to have to lie to her, tell her I found it on the sea floor. She's exiled citizens for less than what I've done here today!"
Phyllis exclaimed in horror- "But she wouldn't! She's your MOTHER!"
"My mother... who told me and my sister not to expect leniency from the Magistrate or a pardon from her if we ever commit a crime; And that our sentences might actually be stiffer, to show the people no one is exempt from the law..."
"Then tell her whatever you have to. The only thing I'm gonna ask is that you don't patent any of the components," Tom said, and placed the watch in my hand. It was a man's watch, kind of big and clunky, but Mom wouldn't know the difference.
"I sure won't. Thank you so much," I said as I secured it around my own wrist, then leaned out to hug him again.
“Thank you for the ribbon!” said Valerie, waving my tartan bandage like it was a real prize. She'd said she wanted it to remember me by, and since we had a whole big roll of it back in the infirmary I said sure.
“You'll probably want to wash that though; or you might catch my mermaid germs and turn into a mermaid.”
“Don't tell her that,” laughed Phyllis, “She'll put it in her mouth!”
“Well, goodbye,” I said, and gave them each a hug. Valerie hugged me last, and had to be removed from me by her parents. For her sake I decided not to drag this out. I waved bye-bye and backflipped into the water.
I surfaced to see them all crowded at the rail. I called up to Tom, “There's one's thing I have to ask. What did you invent, anyway? I mean in vague general terms, if you can...”
“The quantum paperweight. I was just looking for a way to hold down papers on my patio table... Who would have thought it had so many other applications?"
"I guess it would," I laughed, "And any other genius ideas in the works?"
He grinned with pride. "There's one: The hyperdimensional wastebasket. A way to put five hundred gallons of trash in a five gallon bucket. I got tired of taking out the trash all the time."
"You really think you could build something like that?"
"I already have. I just need to work on a more efficient pocket universe generator. As it is the thing eats up a few hundred dollars worth of electricity a month. And if it shuts down- hoo-boy what a mess!"
"I'm sure you'll figure it out," I said, and raised my hand, "Well, goodbye!"
“Bye Enomena!”
“Watch out for sharks!”
Valerie just gave a sad little wave. She was crying.
“I love you, Sweetie,” I called out to her, and raised a clenched fist, “Mermaids Forever!”
Tom shouted down, “I have one last gift for you, the time-line be damned. If you do manage to get back to your human life, save up your money and buy shares of Nanodyne stocks when they hit the exchange in 2024. In ten years a 2 dollar share will be worth hundreds, and they'll keep rising slowly but surely after that.”
“Thank you! I'll remember that."
Phyllis whispered something to him that sounded like 'the kaiju...' and he said, “Oh yeah! And whatever you do, stay out of Toyko in the spring of 2030, unless you want to get stomped on!”
“I'll try to. If you can't find your way back to your year come back and see me, we'll figure out something,” I said.
"Will do," said Tom, and he and Phyllis disappeared from the gunwhale railing.
The anchor went up, the engines roared to life and and the Eureka took off, rising up on its hydrofoils when it got going fast enough. Valerie kept waving from the stern. In a few minutes they were just a dot on the horizon.
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I don't know if the Rosados got back to 2050 or not. But even if they didn't, I had a feeling they would do just fine.
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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
AUTHOR'S NOTE Friday May 13, 2016:
I'm afraid that's going to be it for a while. There's a chapter, possibly two that only exist in the form of six pages of handwritten notes, before we get back to a bunch of chapters that are all finished and which I'll be able to posted on a weekly basis.
But rest assured that my team of 1000 amphetamine-fueled monkeys pounding typewriter keys at random will be working around the clock to produce this chapter or two about Enomena's whirlwind romance with her “tall dark stranger” (a merman prince from a kingdom the Indian Ocean)- which will hopefully be posted by the end of June.
Love you madly, Laika
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THaNK You FoR ReaDiNG! PLeaSe CoMMeNT...
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