“Alright, everyone.” Joanna clapped her hands, bring attention to herself. We were all buzzing about, talking excitedly about our first field trip which had taken us back to the small island we'd camped on just five days ago. Slowly, everyone quieted down, preparing to listen to instructions as the rain fell around us.
I was wearing my blue rain jacket and jeans that were already soaked. Unlike working my magic on a big body of water, I found it impossible to warm up the rain, which meant that not only was I wet—I was freezing. Caesar wrapped a warm hand in mine and I almost melted into his heat.
“Today I'm going to break you up in groups of two since I've noticed some of you have a tendency to always partner with the same person, and I believe it’s a good experience to work with many different people.”
Caesar squeezed my hand. I looked up at him with a frown; no way would Joanna put us together.
“Your task today is to compose a field journal of all the different animal and plant life you find on this island. I need sketches—including colour and scale—and when we get back to the classroom you'll be required to do research on each of the animals—including insects—and different types of plant life that you find. Sketches need to be detailed and have astute observations. Each group must have at least twenty different entries just from today, and you must work with your partner to make sure you don't do sketches of the same life forms. You won't get the marks if you have repeat entries. This is a year-long project. Today we will start with life that lives on the land. Later in the year we will move to life that lives in the ocean. Also, to ensure that no groups are doubling up or swapping partners, we're going to use this time to work on our orienteering skills, which means that each team will work only within a designated area.” Joanna reached down into her bag, pulling out a handful of old-fashioned compasses.
Everyone groaned; orienteering was tough work.
“Alright, partners are as follows: Zeke will go with Rainbow.” I watched as Joanna broke everyone into groups, splitting up the cliques of mermaids and sea nymphs, and assigning everyone an area to survey. I hoped she wouldn’t put me with Colleen; that would be torture. I'd rather be put with Telmath or Paket, one of the grumpy, temperamental vodiani—they'd be easier to deal with.
“Colleen and...”
Not me. Not me. “Caesar.”
I breathed a sigh of relief for myself but felt a twinge of sympathy for him—Colleen was not going to enjoy working with a pirate. But at least Caesar hadn't been paired with Shia—that would have made me feel worse.
“Nessa and Shia.” Wait, I thought she'd said Nessa and Shia? I looked over at the mermaid; she was already heading my way with a bounce in her step, grabbing the compass from Joanna on the way over.
“Hi Caesar,” she smiled brightly at him, barely acknowledging me. “I'm with Nessa. Who are you with?”
“Me,” Colleen said, coming up on our right with a dark look on her face.
Caesar shrugged. “I guess I'll see you later.” I reluctantly let go of Caesar's hand as he waved goodbye and took off into the woods, working the compass like a pro. Colleen lagged behind him, keeping a clear ten-foot distance between them. Hopefully, they’d both come out of the woods alive.
I straightened my backpack and took the compass and small map from Shia's hand when she held them out to me. I'd used a compass a couple of times at my old school. It didn't take me long to figure out that we’d been assigned the area closest to the shoreline. I smiled a little, glad that I would be able to hear the sound of the waves all day, and possibly even find my lost toque and flashlight, which I’d forgotten on Sunday morning.
"Nessa! Nessa, wait."
I ignored Shia, making my way across the mossy ground and over the tangles of tree roots and into the forest. I stepped over a wet log, splashing into a small puddle on the other side. The forest was like a giant fishbowl it was so wet.
Charging ahead, I gave Shia no time to catch up to me. Why did I have to get paired with her: the one girl that had everything? She got to be friends with both Colleen and Caesar.
"Nessa, I think we should stop and pick some plants to sketch."
“Oh, right.” I’d been so distracted by my thoughts, I’d forgot. I stopped abruptly and unslung my backpack, dropping it onto the ground with a thud. I squatted down and opened it up, pulling out a purple spiral notebook.
"I thought you'd never quit walking," Shia said, panting slightly as she came up right behind me.
"I needed to make sure we were within our assigned area. I also wanted to make sure we were in a good spot, one with a lot of diverse life around. This looks good." I busied myself with finding a pen.
Shia nodded sharply. "Good idea." She pulled out a pink water bottle from her backpack and took a sip. "I call that one." She pointed to a banana slug making its way across the mossy, carpeted forest floor.
"Sure, I'll do that mushroom." I pointed at a tree a little further away, where a fat, white piece of fungus grew at the base. I grabbed my backpack by the top handle and moved over to it. The area I'd stopped in was a small clearing, where the moss and bushes seemed to be more trampled down, giving me plenty of room to work. I knelt down on the ground, and was hoping to have a few quiet moments to work, when Shia began talking again.
"So you and Caesar are a couple now?"
What kind of question was that? Everyone knew Caesar was my boyfriend; we’d made it pretty obvious. "Yes. I'm his girlfriend," I answered, peeking over my shoulder at Shia. She was tucking her water bottle away and pulling out her own notebook. She looked like a normal girl in a pair of blue jeans and a long yellow jacket that looked great in contrast with her dark hair.
Something shimmered in the corner of my vision and I looked up, hoping that the sun was making an appearance but all I saw were grey clouds and green treetops.
"He's a very nice person."
"I know." I looked at her quizzically. I hadn’t spoken to Shia much in the almost two full weeks of school. She tended to stick around the other mermaids and Caesar. Now that I was out here, talking to her, I wondered if it was because she was shy or self-conscious. "That's why I'm dating him."
"I think Caesar would be a great boyfriend."
"Look, do you like him or something?" I spun around, popping up onto my feet and staring at Shia, hands planted on my waist, my notebook forgotten and abandoned on the forest floor. I was beginning to wonder if it was okay to flirt with someone’s boyfriend in the merfolk culture.
Her pupils dilated with surprise. "What? Like Caesar? He's a good friend, of course I like him."
“I knew it.” I could barely get the words out, as my heart thumped in fear. What was I going to do if Shia constantly threw herself at Caesar? Forbid him from hanging out with her? I had a friend that did that to her boyfriend and it just ended up pushing him and the other girl together.
“Why do you look so angry Nessa? Caesar and I are friends. I said he was nice.”
"I'm not angry; I'm jealous."
"Jealous? About what?"
"About you and Caesar. You get along so well. Before I became his girlfriend I thought that maybe he was interested in you; that's what made me realize that I actually liked him in the first place. I can tell that you like him."
Shia tossed her hair back and looked at me with wide black eyes. "Why didn't you just say that? It's so much easier living with mermaids, there's never any hidden meaning behind people's actions." She looked back at me, an amused smile playing over her lips. "Caesar's a friend. He's great at teaching me human things. He never makes me feel stupid for not knowing something, like other students do. But I don't like him like you do. I don't want to be his girlfriend. My life is complicated—but there's kind of someone else...back home."
“Oh.” I lowered my head, too embarrassed to look at Shia. As my eyesight focused on the ground, I noticed something strange, out of place. “My toque.” The small, knitted hat lay in the moss beside a tree. I took a step toward it a
nd then sucked in my breath sharply. In the moss beside my toque it looked like there were the indentations of bare human feet. The longer I stared at them the easier it was to make out five toes. I looked up again, but this time I looked into the space between Shia and I, the space above the impressions of feet in the moss where I'd thought I'd seen a shimmer a few minutes before.
“I hope you'll let me hang out with both you and Caesar. We can all be great friends,” Shia said, almost a bit timidly.
Barely registering what Shia had said, I answered, “Of course. ” I kept my eyes fixed on the spot only ten feet away from me. I glanced downward to the imprints of toes; they hadn’t moved. Then I followed the line up from the feet. There was a thickness to the air, as if the two sides of the clearing were separated by a thin piece of glass. Slowly, I began to see the shape of the glass: an outline of a leg, then a torso, and then a neck. My body was tingling; the hair on the back of my neck was standing up like I was watching a horror movie. The hunter. It had to be. But how was this possible? How could he be here? And how could he be invisible?
“Nessa?” Her voice made me jump. I looked at Shia who tilted her head and blinked her wide mermaid eyes at me. “Is something wrong?”
My stomach was churning. My head felt light. “Just a sec, I want to try something.” I turned quickly back to my backpack and crouched down. As quickly as possible, I ripped the mushroom I'd been sketching out of the ground, turned on my heel, and threw it. Shia’s eyes widened in surprise as it flew through the air. They widened even more when the mushroom suddenly stopped its journey mid-flight, falling straight to the ground, as if it had been thrown against a wall.
“What’s going on?” Shia’s eyes moved frantically, as did mine.
The moment he sprung into action, I saw him more clearly. I could now see not only the legs, torso, and head, but also long tentacles hanging where arms should have been. I recognized the face of the hunter, but at the same time I remembered something else: the tale Telmath had told at the fire, the tale about the kurage—the invisible jellyfish.
“Run, Shia!” I yelled, cutting through the trees as the creature reached for me. I jumped over a fallen trunk. Shia was right behind me.
“What is it?”
“It’s the hunter—he’s a kurage,” I glanced backward, searching desperately for the outline of the thing. “I can’t see him, he’s almost invisible.”
“Agh,” Shia let out a small cry as she tripped and fell to the ground. I stopped, turning back to help her up. “A boat!” Shia pointed through the trees.
I could barely make it out: a small, black inflatable craft that was mostly covered with tree branches.
“We have to hurry.” I clasped my arm with hers and pulled. But it was too late.
I saw the tentacle-like arms flying toward me. They were almost pink now. I reached out a hand to slap them away, but I was too slow. The tentacles wrapped around me. A stinging pain shot through my forearm and up to my elbow, culminating at the base of my skull. I screamed in pain as I looked up into the face of the kurage, and then collapsed in darkness.