So, I go.
It’s been a few years since I’ve ridden one of these, and even then I never actually drove one. I piggybacked with Chloe and only after she swore on her little brother’s life that she wouldn’t do anything reckless. I marvel at how far I’ve come since then. From scared to get in the water to chitchatting with fish on the ocean floor.
Luckily, my first scream of terror doesn’t come until I’m way out of earshot of Rachel, when I think I’ve grown bored with a lower speed and decide to gun it. The sudden jolt forward almost pitches me off the back end. While my heart rate recovers—along with my pride—I squint into the distance, into the reflection of the setting sun floating like an oil slick on top of the water.
I stare a long time, as if somehow Rayna will give me a sign of where she is if I just keep looking long enough. I let my foot dangle in the water, even as I admit that if Rayna is swimming with any kind of purpose, she’s long gone. Behind me the shore is just a flat line with no sign of Galen’s house. Not even a speck.
I could turn around.
I should turn around.
I twist the handles to turn around.
And out comes my second scream of terror.
The violent thrust of water in my face isn’t half as surprising as how loud it is leaving the huge blowhole that has appeared beside me. I cough and sputter and scream again, but this time in frustration. Goliath—my blue whale friend who first convinced me of my Gift of Poseidon—sends another gush of water toward me. “Oh, knock it off!” I tell him.
He makes a high-pitched clicking sound then dives under the surface. Goliath doesn’t speak English (or Spanish or French) but his whole demeanor begs, “Play with Me.” “I can’t play. I have to find Rayna. Have you seen her?” Yes, I really just did ask a whale that. And, no, he doesn’t answer.
Instead, half his body launches from the water and lands in a sideways belly flop. The resulting tsunami topples the jet ski.
I am in the water. Fan-flipping-tastic.
Goliath pauses and swims, pauses and swims, waiting for me to regain control over my initial shock and, if he’s lucky, my temper. “I told you I couldn’t play!”
As I chastise a ginormous whale, I catch the sudden glint of something below us. And I realize too late that it’s my car keys shimmering in the last of the dying sunlight as they make their way to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I must have lost them out of my jeans pocket when I flipped over. The keys sink down, down, freaking down. And suddenly I know what it feels like to be a fish chasing a shiny lure.
I dive after them, and the deeper I go, the better my eyes adjust to the dark. Goliath thinks I’m playing with him after all, but he seems confused about the rules, so he keeps a distance and swims circles around me while I spiral down after the taunting set of keys. His growing wake disturbs the steady fall of them, and they swirl and cut through the water erratically.
I snag them right before they touch bottom, so I shouldn’t be as proud as I am when I say, “Ah ha!” It’s not like I saved them from any real danger, like a lava pit or something, but there’s still a tiny, pathetic sense of accomplishment that washes over me. I grin up at Goliath, triumphant.
That’s when the pulse hits me like a physical blow. It saturates the water around me, choking off my chance for escape. It’s so strong, so close. Too close. In fact, because of my Half-Breed status, if I can sense anyone, they’re too close. If a pulse is this strong, they’re way too close.
The scream, loud and terrified and desperate, comes from the direction of the pulse. I can tell it’s a female’s scream. A female Syrena.
I already know it’s something I can’t turn away from. I’m cursed with proximity. Close enough to help, too close to escape with a clean conscience. “Goliath. Take me toward that sound. Hurry.”
He swoops down. I grasp his fin. The fact that I’m being chauffeured by a whale is not entirely lost on me, but whoever has been screaming does it again and I decide to be impressed by this phenomenon later. Goliath seems to sense the urgency; we glide through the water faster than I realized he could travel. It helps that each swipe of his fin pushes us about three school buses ahead at a time.
But even at this speed, we’re too late. The pulse disappears as quickly as it came. Is she dead? Please no, please no, please no. I don’t even know this person, but I do recognize the sick feeling swirling in my stomach. It’s the same feeling I got when I realized that Chloe had been attacked by a shark. It’s the feeling I got when I knew she was dead.
Then I see it. The belly of a boat bobbing in the water ahead of us. A boat. Humans. The relief lasts for only a second. Sharks were not the worse-case scenario after all. Yes, sharks are an immediate threat and dangerous and deadly. But shark attacks only impact the person being attacked. They might maim, they might kill, and it would be sad and horrible. But when it’s over, it’s over. The shark leaves. Humans, if they capture a Syrena, will keep coming and coming until they harvest every inch of Syrena territory.
A human attack impacts all Syrena.
“Let’s go up, Goliath. But not all the way. You stay down here.” It’s silly for me to whisper, but it helps me feel stealthier.
Goliath eases me upward and I quietly break the surface, allowing only my eyes to peek over the waves. I hate what I see.
A young Syrena female, maybe nine or ten years old as far as I can tell, writhes in a net by the side of the boat. Two men. They could be twins with their matching camouflage overalls, sunburned faces, and curly hair escaping in all directions from under their sports caps. Except that one has gray hair and the other has black. Probably father and son.
Dad and Junior are frantically pulling the rope to bring her in, seemingly taken aback by her screams. I’m not sure they realize what they’ve caught—maybe they mistook her for a human and thought they were saving her. Which could work to her advantage, if she were to calm down and think about it. But she’s too panicked to change into human form. Even now, she uses what little water the net soaked up to try to Blend. Her body looks like a puzzle of net and skin and fin and long sopping black hair. It’s unsettling to watch.
Especially because it’s much too late to hide what she is. Even now, the older fisherman begins to realize their fantastic luck, though the disbelief is still fresh on his face. “A mermaid…” It sounds more like a question than a statement. “Look, Don, it’s a real live mermaid!”
The one called Don is so dumbfounded that he forgets to hold on to the rope. His new shiny mermaid splashes back into the water entangled in fear and net.
I decide that’s the best chance I’m going to get. I duck under and call for Goliath. “Take me to the boat!”
When the girl sees me—another human, in her eyes—she screams again and forgets how close she was to freeing herself from the suffocating grid that is the net. Goliath stops us a few feet under her and I hold up my hands.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I’ll help you. I’m … I’m Syrena, too.” Oh, Galen is going to kill me.
My confession is enough to halt her exertions. Her eyes just might pop out of her pretty little face. She readjusts quickly though, tearing her glare from me to concentrate on the task at hand. “No, you’re not!” she says, tugging at the rope too erratically to make progress. “You’re just tricking me. Tricky humans.” But she pauses again, studies the water between us. I’m about to ask if she can sense me like I can sense her.
All at once, the net is jerked back up. Her screams are enveloped by the air above.
I know what I have to do. And Galen won’t like it.
But I push that consideration from my mind. Galen isn’t here, but if he was, he would help her. I know he would. I don’t waste another thought on it. I push through to the surface. “Hey! Let my little sister go!”
This almost stupefies Don into releasing the rope a second time, but good ole Dad catches it and pulls. “Get it together, Don! Do you know how rich we are right now? Pull her in! I’l
l get the other one.”
Nice. The Syrena thinks I’m human and the humans think I’m Syrena. “Let her go or I’m calling the coast guard,” I say with more confidence than I feel. After all, this young girl and I look nothing alike. She has the beautiful Syrena coloring, while I probably look like a cadaver floating in the water. But it’s worth a shot, right? “And our parents prosecute.”
This is enough to season their enthusiasm with a pinch of doubt. It all unfolds in their expressions: Do mermaids talk? Do they know how to call the coast guard? Do they prosecute offenders? Did that really just happen?
Don shakes his head as if he’s come out of a trance. “Don’t listen to her, Paw. That’s what mermaids do, remember? They sing fishermen to their death! Haven’t you heard the stories? And don’t look her in the eye, neither, Paw. They hypnotize you with their eyes.”
Well, crap.
But at least she heard the exchange, and she suddenly seems to realize I’m not with them after all. “Help me!” she screams, reaching her hands to me through the net as they pull her in. Don pokes her with his finger, the same way one might touch paint to see if it’s dry. Paw laughs when she slaps his overgrown son.
But Paw doesn’t think it’s quite so funny when she bites the meaty part of his own hand, that juicy part where thumb and index connect in a tender knot. “She bit me! The little witch bit me. What’s going to happen to me, Don? Will I turn into a mermaid?”
Don sneers. “I swear you old folks are gullible. Everyone knows you don’t turn into a mermaid—”
And it’s all I can stomach. I dive below, drowning out the sounds of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass with a hard underwater doggie paddle to get to my pet whale. “Please, Goliath. You have to flip the boat over. Hurry!”
My heart drops as Goliath swims away from me. Did he not understand what I said? Is he afraid? Could I blame him if he was? Still, with his rapidly vanishing fin goes my only chance for helping this young Syrena—and possibly my only chance for making it back to Galen’s house anytime soon.
Just when I feel a sob creeping into my throat, threatening to escape the hopeless depths of me, I see Goliath. And he’s heading straight toward me. I shriek and move out of the way. Surely he doesn’t mean to head butt me, right? He swooshes past me and up up up. His passing momentum spins me around in a little Emma whirlpool. A loud thud resounds through the water. He’s ramming the boat. It topples, but doesn’t tip all the way over. I hear the muffled screams of Daddy and Don above. We’re definitely on the right track.
“Again, Goliath!”
Again he disappears, this time for a few seconds longer. By now I’ve wised up enough to give him a wide berth. He zips past me, and I think for sure this time he’ll tip it.
He doesn’t disappoint. The belly of the boat disappears, flipped on its back like a submissive dog. Fishing poles and cans and boots taper to the bottom of the ocean, followed by one, two, three big splashes. It doesn’t take a PhD to know which belong to the humans. Turns out, Paw and Don don’t blend in very well in their camouflage overalls.
Still, they swim well enough. I make my way toward the wildly thrashing net. “Calm down,” I tell her. “Let me help you.” To my relief, she stops fighting.
I take a minute to examine the net that hangs suspended around her like a holey parachute as she descends in slow motion. I pull and twist and tug. All the while, she watches me. Above us, two headless bodies weighed down with droopy overalls tread water and talk between themselves at the surface. They’re way too calm.
Don swims under and pokes his head up into the air bubble created by the toppled boat. I don’t know what he’s looking for but it can’t be good. As I disentangle the net piece by piece, I try to pull her deeper and deeper. “I think they’re up to something,” I tell her. “We need to go deeper, where they can’t get us. Humans can’t hold their breath very long.”
Don emerges from the upturned boat. With a harpoon. He surfaces briefly for air, then he dives toward us. All at once, the young Syrena grabs my wrist through the net and wrenches me down with her, faster than I could have pulled us alone.
Don takes aim. And it’s not at us.
“No!” But it’s all I can get out before the spear embeds into Goliath’s side. He makes a horrible sound, a sound that turns my heart into shrapnel. I tug to get free from the little Syrena pulling me away from the men, away from the surface. Away from Goliath.
“I have to go back,” I tell her. “The whale. He’s my friend. And he’s hurt.”
She nods and releases me.
“But you keep going,” I say. “If you can swim with the net, find others who can help you get loose. Don’t come back to the surface. Go!”
I turn from her in time to see Goliath plummet—instincts must be kicking in that deeper is safer. A thin, broken trail of blood chases after him, seeping from where the spear still pierces his flesh. Still, judging by how much of the harpoon still protrudes from his body, I think it’s only a shallow wound. I’m instantly relieved, and then instantly disgusted that I’m relieved. Who cares how shallow the wound is, idiot? He’s hurt.
I open my mouth to call for him, but close it again. It would be stupid—and selfish—for me to distract him from leaving, even if I just wanted to make sure he’ll be okay. After all, it’s my fault this happened to him in the first place. I want to tell him how sorry I am that this happened. That I got him into this when all he wanted to do was play. And how thankful I am that he helped. I decide that no matter what, I’ll find a way to make him understand how horrible I feel. How grateful I am.
I glance back to the surface where the two stupid fishermen struggle with the clasps of their newly donned life jackets. Life jackets that look much too small to keep those woolly mammoths afloat.
Deciding that I’ve done all the damage and good I can do, I swim deeper and away from the men. Hopefully someone knows where they are, or at least where to look, and will send the coast guard to help them after a while. Hopefully, after an extended while.
In the meantime, I’m hoping I come across a pod of dolphins to hitch a ride with. Otherwise, it’s a long swim home.
16
GALEN WATCHES hunters outside the Arena corral fish into a frenzy. Expertly, they throw traditional seaweed nets into the maelstrom of tuna. The nets, which have large rocks tied at each corner, drag the fish to the bottom, keeping them alive until they’re ready to be eaten. The waters around the Boundary are ideal for many types of fish to flourish. The reefs and atolls make for a variety of plant life and fish. Even giant clams can be found here—one tasty clam can feed at least twenty Syrena for the day.
But Galen didn’t come to the Arena to watch the hunters wrangle up the morning meal for the attendants of the tribunal. He came to find Toraf before today’s session starts. He’s had little time with his friend amid the recent turn of events, so Galen can only watch his reactions from afar, which doesn’t offer much hint.
Galen finds him where he’d expected to, poised just above the sand at the end of the Arena. Others may not notice it, because an angry Toraf is truly a rare thing to behold, but Galen can practically feel the animosity emanating from his friend. Which is why he casually bumps into him, taking care to be overly apologetic.
“Oh, sorry about that, minnow. I didn’t even see you there.” Galen mimics Toraf’s demeanor, crossing his arms and staring ahead of them. What they’re supposed to be staring at, he’s not sure.
His effort is rewarded with a slight upward curve of his friend’s mouth. “Oh, don’t think twice about it, tadpole. I know it must be difficult to swim straight with a whale’s tail.”
Galen scowls, taking care not to glance down at his fin. Ever since they went to retrieve Grom, he’s been sore all below the waist, but he’d just attributed it to tension from finding Nalia, and then the whole tribunal mess—not to mention, hovering in place for hours at a time. Still, he did examine his fin the evening before, hoping to massage out any knots he
found, but was a bit shocked to see that his fin span seemed to have widened. He decided that he was letting his imagination get the better of him. Now he’s not so sure. “What do you mean?” he says lightly.
Toraf nods down toward the sand. “You know what I mean. Looks like you have the red fever.”
“The red fever bloats you all over, idiot. Right before it kills you. It doesn’t make your fin grow wider. Besides, the red tide hasn’t been bad for years now.” But Toraf already knows what the red fever looks like. Not long after he first became a Tracker, Toraf was commissioned to find an older Syrena who had gone off on his own to die after he’d been caught in what the humans call the red tide. Toraf was forced to tie seaweed around the old one’s fin and pull his body to the Cave of Memories.
No, he doesn’t think I have the red fever.
Toraf allows himself a long look at Galen’s fin. If it were anyone else, Galen would consider it rude. “Does it hurt?”
“It’s sore.”
“Have you asked anyone about it?”
“I’ve had other things on my mind.” Which is the truth. Galen really hadn’t given it much thought until right now. Now that it has been noticed by someone else.
Toraf pulls his own fin around and after a few seconds of twisting and bending, he’s able to measure it against his torso. It spans from his neck to where his waist turns into velvety tail. He nods to Galen to do the same. Galen is horrified to find that his fin now spans from the top of his head to well below his waist. It really does look like a whale tail.
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” Toraf says, thoughtful. “I’ve gotten used to having the most impressive fin out of the two us.”
Galen grins, letting his tail fall. “For a minute there I thought you really cared.”
Toraf shrugs. “Being self-conscious doesn’t suit you.”
Galen follows his gaze back out into the sea ahead of them. “So what do you think about yesterday’s tribunal?”