I crack open the book once again to page 43, lean into the story, and whisper, “Hello?”
When Oliver smiles, I catch my breath. “You came back. You said you would… and you did.”
Get a grip, Delilah, I tell myself. “What was that all about?”
“What was what all about?”
“Why didn’t you talk when I asked you to?”
“I thought you didn’t want me talking when strangers were around!”
“I don’t!” I argue.
“I’m having a little trouble keeping up, here…. You’re angry because I did what you asked me to do?”
“I’m angry because Jules isn’t a stranger.”
“She might as well be, to me,” Oliver says. “She wouldn’t have heard me even if I were yelling at the top of my lungs.”
“How do you know that? You didn’t even try.”
“I’ve been trying for years—you’re the first person who has ever noticed me.”
I sigh. “But if you’d talked to Jules—if she could hear you…” My voice trails off.
“Then you wouldn’t feel quite so crazy?” Oliver asks gently. “Can’t you believe in me, if I believe in you?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” I say, completely honest. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me.”
Oliver sits down on the ground. “And nothing at all has ever happened to me.”
I look at him, resigning himself to an endless life trapped inside someone else’s plot. I know what that feels like. If I’d written my own story, my father would never have left us, and my mother wouldn’t have to work till she was so tired she fell into bed each night before dinner. If I’d written my own story, I wouldn’t have broken a cheerleader’s kneecap and single-handedly turned the entire school against me. If I’d written my own story, I’d have someone like Oliver here who loved me.
Then again, maybe I can change my own story. Or at least try. “I think we need to do a test,” I say.
“I don’t understand.”
“What if I cut you out of the book and you stop breathing? What if the only oxygen that works for you is in the pages?”
“Cutting? Who said anything about cutting—”
“And what if you do make it into this world but you’re small enough to fit in my pocket?” My voice rises as I think of everything that could possibly go wrong.
“So by test,” Oliver says slowly—hopefully, “you mean you’re going to help me get out of here?”
“Yes. And we’re going to start with a trial run. I’ll meet you on page twenty-one.” I hesitate. “You can see the numbers on the pages too, right?”
“If I squint,” Oliver says. “They’re so far up in the corners.”
“It’s the part where you and Frump are walking through the forest…. Yes! We’ll try the dog first!” I say.
Oliver shakes his head. “Frump? You can’t do that!”
“He’s just a dog, Oliver. He’ll probably never even know.”
“Just a dog!” Oliver stands, angry. “That ‘dog’ speaks three languages and is brilliant at chess and happens to be my best friend. Or did you forget that he used to be a human too?”
“I guess I maybe skimmed that part,” I confess, although I’d rather die than admit that I often skipped over the pages without Oliver in them. “If we can’t experiment on Frump, then what do you recommend? Or does even the bacteria in your book do rocket science on the side?”
“I could give you my tunic,” Oliver suggests.
“Keep your clothes on, buster. I think we’d be better off seeing what happens with something that’s alive and breathing, don’t you?”
“Give me a moment.” He paces from one end of the page to the other, briefly disappearing into the spine for a moment before reappearing with a smile on his face. “I could get you a fish from page forty-two.”
“I don’t know…. Shouldn’t you try something that doesn’t belong in the ocean? That way, if it doesn’t survive intact… we can’t blame the problem on a lack of lungs.”
“You’re quite right.” Oliver sighs. He swats at the back of his neck, then waves his hand in front of his face. “Blasted spider.”
I start to ask him where it came from, fascinated by the mechanics of what appears and disappears in his world—but then I realize there might be any number of microscopic things that readers overlook—chessboards in the sand, spiders, even princes. “Wait!” I lean closer. “Oliver, did you kill that spider?”
“It bit me!”
“It’s the perfect sample for a trial run,” I tell him.
He brightens. “Of course. And if it doesn’t live, I’ll actually have something to celebrate.” He falls to his hands and knees and begins to search for the bug. “Got it,” Oliver says, and he extends his palm. In its center is a writhing, fat spider.
“Now what?” I ask.
Oliver blinks up at me. “Well. I guess you just take it.”
I gently reach down, trying to pinch the spider off the page, but nothing happens. There is a barrier between us, thinner than silk and incredibly solid. “It’s not working.”
“I forgot about the wall,” he says. He sits down, lost in thought.
“The wall?” I ask.
“It’s what keeps us safe, I suppose, if a Reader handles the pages without much care, or folds one down right in the center of an illustration. It’s like a bubble. Soft, but you can’t push through it no matter how hard you try.” He glances up. “Believe me, I have.”
“So you need something that can poke a hole in it….”
Oliver reaches for the dagger in his belt and takes a running leap directly toward me, so forceful that I find myself covering my face with my hands, as if he might burst through the pages and land right in front of me. But when I peek between my fingers, I find him flat on his back, staring up at the sky.
“Ouch,” he murmurs.
“Scientific discovery number one,” I say. “You can’t break the barrier between us.”
He sits up, rubbing his forehead. “No,” he replies, “but maybe you can.”
“You want me to poke the book with a knife?”
“No,” Oliver says. “You have to rip the book.”
I gasp. “No way! This is a library book!”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Oliver mutters. “Come on, Delilah. Just a little tear, so that I can sneak the spider out to you.”
When he offers up that smile again—the one that makes me feel like I’m the only person in his universe (although in this case that’s probably true)—I am utterly lost. “Okay,” I say with a sigh.
Gingerly, I take the page between my fingers and make the tiniest, most minute, infinitesimal tear.
“Delilah,” Oliver says, “I couldn’t squeeze protozoa through that, much less a spider. Could you try again? A little less imaginary this time?”
“Fine.” I pinch the top of the page between my fingers and give a good, solid tug. The paper tears.
“It had to be up at the top of the page, didn’t it….” Oliver rolls his eyes and wearily looks at the sheer cliff of rock before him.
“You do it for Seraphima,” I point out.
“Very funny.” Clenching the spider in his fist, he looks up. “How am I supposed to hold on to this thing and climb?” With a grimace, Oliver opens his mouth and pops the spider onto his tongue.
“That is so gross!” I cry out.
“Mmffphm,” Oliver says, but his eyes speak volumes. He starts to climb up the rock wall, getting quicker and quicker as he comes closer to the top. He inches to the right, to the part of the page that I’ve torn.
Holding his hand in front of his mouth, he spits. “That,” he says, “was revolting.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I say. Feeling foolish, I hold my finger up to the rip in the paper.
Oliver extends his hand. The spider begins to crawl across his knuckles, his ring finger, his pinkie. When
it reaches the edge of his skin, its legs grasp for purchase and find the seam of the paper.
And suddenly, there is the tiniest of black dots in my palm.
It’s nearly invisible, and it’s uncomfortably warm and wet. Before my eyes, it begins to grow, expanding into a familiar formation of eight creepy, crawly legs.
“Oliver!” I say, stunned. “I think it worked!”
“Really?” He has jumped down to the ground again and stares up at me eagerly. “You’ve got the spider, then?”
I glance down at the tiny arachnid. But now that I am looking more carefully, I see something’s not quite right. What I thought were legs are letters, raveling and unraveling. I think I can make out a d. And a p.
It’s not a spider, really. It’s the word “spider,” taking the shape of the bug and crawling across my hand.
Before I can tell Oliver, however, a knock at the bathroom door startles me. I shake the word-insect off my palm, beneath the inside cover of the book, and shut the book tightly. “I’ll just be another minute,” I call out.
Gingerly, I open the book again. There is no insect. Instead, written neatly on the inside cover, at a bizarre diagonal angle, I read: spider.
“Oliver,” I murmur, although the pages are still closed, although he probably cannot hear me. “I think we need to go back to square one.”
page 27
The last thing Oliver remembered was the splash. Now he was tumbling head over heels as he sank to the depths of the ocean. Two eels twined and vined, the water sizzling with electric current every time they rubbed against each other. Oliver felt his lungs burning, at the point of bursting, and he wondered if this was how he’d die—not at the hands of the villain who’d kidnapped Seraphima but simply consumed by the ocean. Suddenly, he remembered the compass hanging around his neck. Home, his mother had promised. It was a foolproof escape. He let the chain slip through his fingers, and with the last of his energy, he reached to grab it, but before he could, it was snatched out of his grasp.
“Noooo!” he screamed, water filling his lungs. He closed his eyes, imagining the worst.
Fingers snaked beneath his collar. A soft mouth closed over his own, and he felt a shudder run through his chest. “Seraphima,” Oliver murmured, stunned to realize he could talk and breathe. He blinked to find a woman in his arms.
Her skin was blue, patterned with a web of scales. Her hair was a wild black cloud, seaweed twisted into its crown, flowing behind translucent, spiny ears. Two sets of gills undulated on her cheeks and beneath her emaciated rib cage, which tapered into a muscular, finned tail that reflected flashes of copper and gold. She had no bridge to her nose, just deep-set nostrils that flared above the cavern of her toothless smile. “Who’s Seraphima?” the girl asked, her clear blue eyes flashing a deep shade of red. “I’m Marina.”
Terrified, Oliver thrashed, trying to loosen himself from her embrace.
“Sister,” said another female voice. “Don’t keep him all to yourself.” Oliver looked up to see a second mermaid, who was wearing his father’s compass around her neck. And then he heard a third voice: “Oh yes, this is the one we’ve been waiting for.”
Oliver managed to land a swift kick against Marina’s tail, only to have the hair of the second mermaid twist itself into a spitting bronze eel, which wrapped its neck around his torso, immobilizing him and pulling him closer to her. “Tell my sisters that you’re here for me, Ondine,” she said. He tried to close his fingers around the compass that hung from her neck, but she kissed him so deeply that he started to lose consciousness again.
A webbed hand smacked Oliver across the face, scratching his cheek with long, pointed nails. He was snatched away by the third mermaid, who cradled him in her elongated arms. “Why bother with a trifle like that,” she sang into his ear, “when you could have someone like me, Kyrie?”
“Ladies,” Oliver said, his heart racing. “With three beautiful choices, you can hardly expect me to make a decision so quickly.” If he could only get out of their clutches long enough to think clearly, he could get his compass back. And once he did that, he knew he could escape and find Frump and Socks. He backed away so that he could see his rescuers, and gave them a dazzling smile. Marina’s black hair fanned through the water in slow motion as her eyes settled back to a deep, royal blue. Her slender neck was draped with beads and shells, and her shimmering tail swayed in the water behind her. Ondine and Kyrie swam behind her. When one of the mermaids reached out toward Oliver again, Marina slapped her hand away and hissed so loudly that the water pounded against Oliver’s eardrums.
“You must stay for dinner then,” Kyrie said.
What if I am dinner? Oliver wondered. “I can’t imagine a better way to pass the evening,” he said.
Ondine and Kyrie wrapped their hair around his wrists, pulling him into the current. Marina tilted his chin and kissed him once more. The kiss was foul and tasted of fish, but it filled his lungs with oxygen.
They arrived at a deep cave, with jaws of stalagmites and stalactites that nicked at Oliver’s legs when the mermaids drew him into its belly. He winced as blood welled from his calf. It curled in the water like crimson smoke, and before Oliver could even cry out from the pain, there was a sudden rush of movement as a broad silver shark sped toward him. Ondine let her hair fall away from his wrist and turned to the shark, her eyes flashing red as every scale on her body stood on edge. Gills fanned, she screamed, and every fish swimming nearby fled. As the shark dipped and swam away, Ondine’s scales smoothed and her eyes dimmed, now calm and purple. “Come,” she whispered, and for a moment, all Oliver could do was stare at this creature that dragged him along in her wake.
The cave’s centerpiece was a giant stone table, or maybe it was an altar upon which Oliver was destined to be sacrificed. At the rear of the cave a rounded driftwood door hid another room; on the other side, a golden chest with a huge padlock sat half-buried in the sand.
Oliver looked from one to the other. It was possible that the chest held riches he could use to bribe whoever had taken Seraphima. But it was equally possible that he’d never have the chance to leave this cave alive.
“A wedding feast,” Marina cried. “And I will be the bride!”
“No, Sister,” Ondine screamed. “You speak too soon.”
“You are both mistaken,” Kyrie said. “It’s my turn this time.”
This time? Oliver thought. How many other men in the kingdom had fallen to a watery death at the hands of these vile creatures? He had to find a way out, and it had to be fast, because he was starting to see stars at the edges of his vision again.
Kyrie wrapped her long fingers around his shoulders and kissed breath into his lungs. “You see, my love,” she whispered. “You need me just as much as I need you.”
If this was what love was, maybe it wasn’t worth the trouble. Oliver had grown up with a mother who’d lost half her heart and had never been able to replace it. These mermaids had been just as broken by love, albeit in a different way.
“I’m hardly dressed for a wedding,” Oliver demurred.
“We have just the thing,” Ondine said. She swam toward the driftwood door and slid open the latch. As the door swung on its hinges, a tumble of skeletons—hundreds stacked and thrown askew, some still rotting with flesh peeling back from the bone—drifted into the cave. Oliver screamed, backing up against Kyrie, who stroked his hair and kissed his neck. “Don’t be shy,” she said, pushing him forward.
The mermaids swam around one of the corpses, which was decked in the finest of white royal robes, sewn with golden thread. Oliver hardly even saw the finery, however. His gaze was glued to the face of the dead man, still frozen in horror.
“I think,” Marina said, “it will be a perfect fit.”
Behind him, Kyrie shrieked. “Take that off!” she cried. “It’s mine.” Oliver spun to find her fighting Ondine for a tattered snatch of veil. The mermaids’ fingernails clawed the fine fabric to shreds as they argued.
/> “Ladies,” Oliver said. “I don’t love any of you.”
The mermaids turned, eyes flashing red in unison. “How dare you?” Ondine spit.
Marina crossed her arms. “You think you’re too good for us?”
“No,” Oliver said simply. “I just don’t think you love me either. Isn’t that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who’s your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night. Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the morning.”
Seraphima, Oliver thought.
“I’m not your destiny. I’m just someone who happened to fall into the ocean.”
Marina shrugged. “Grooms are few and far between,” she said. “We can’t afford to be picky.”
“What if I could promise you each a faithful groom? One so delighted to be in your presence that he’d never leave?”
Kyrie’s eyes flashed green with curiosity. “How would you find such men?”
“Well,” Oliver said. “I’d need my compass back, for starters.”
The mermaids circled, creating a small whirlpool as they whispered, heads bent together. “We need to be sure you’re telling the truth,” Marina said.
“You have my word,” Oliver vowed. He was starting to run out of oxygen. Whatever happened was going to have to happen soon.
“We need something a bit more concrete.” Kyrie’s hair swirled around his chest, pulling him toward a giant pink clamshell that was filled with thousands of keys. Some were rusted, some were covered with seaweed. Some were still shiny, as if they’d just dropped into the ocean this morning.
“Honesty is as rare as a man who can breathe underwater,” Ondine said. “Pick a key.”
Oliver reached into the half shell and waited, letting the keys sift through his fingers, hoping one might burn its silhouette onto the palm of his hand.
He fought to stay conscious. “What happens if it’s the right key?” he gasped.
“Then you’re truthful. You get all the riches inside, and we give you back your compass so you can find us mates.”