The Mermaid Game: A summer short story

out two fingers and stroked. She smiled.

  “It’s not slimy,” she said.

  “No, it’s smooth. Now try it the other way. Like sandpaper.”

  Pearl wrinkled her nose and looked at Coral. “Try it! It’s like a cat tongue.”

  Coral hadn’t forgiven Colum but she couldn’t resist. The shark’s skin was like velvet woven from diamonds. She felt sorry for the poor dead thing.

  “Wanna see what it ate?” Colum asked.

  “No!” said Coral, feeling queasy.

  “Yes!” said her little sister.

  “He’s going to cut it open, Pearl.”

  “It’s a fish, and it’s dead,” Colum said. “I can’t hurt it. How do you think fish gets on your plate? Got to cut it open.”

  “I like my fish breaded and fried and shaped like a stick, thanks,” said Coral.

  “Fish sticks are made from real fish?” asked Pearl. “Ew.” She seemed more delighted than disturbed.

  “Come on, Pearl,” said Colum, wading out of the water.

  Pearl tripped behind him, and Coral had no choice but to follow.

  Up on the packed damp sand, Colum retrieved a knife from his string bag. He flipped it open, positioned it on the shark’s sleek gray belly and pulled it towards him in one quick motion.

  Nothing happened for an instance except that a foul fishy smell hit her in the nose. Then the slit opened like a second mouth and the shark’s insides spilled out. Colum poked with the knife among the globules of pink and gray until he caught a glimmer of silver. For a second Coral hoped it was treasure, but Colum skewered the silver, holding up a limp minnow.

  “His last meal! Big fish eats the little fish,” he said.

  A shadow passed overhead. Seagulls had begun to circle, calling out hungrily.

  “And the big fish gets eaten too,” he said.

  “Are you just going to leave it here?” Coral asked. “Gross! We swim here.”

  “It’ll be gone by high tide,” Colum said. “And what do you think you swim in anyway? Ocean’s a giant bowl of fish pee.”

  “People’s pee too,” said Pearl, then turned red when she realized she had confessed something she shouldn’t.

  “Yep,” said Colum, not seeming bothered. “All kinds of human waste — sewage. Little bits of plastic garbage. Those mermaid diamonds of yours. Heck, whole houses during the hurricane. Ocean takes everything in. Sometimes it throws something back.”

  “I really don’t feel like swimming anymore.” Coral grabbed Pearl’s hand and dragged her off to the Ariel towels they'd laid out on the dry sand. She was suddenly embarrassed by the Disney cartoon on the towel. She ripped it off the sand, shook it out, and flipped it over before flopping down and shutting her eyes.

  Friday was the last day of vacation for Coral and Pearl. Their mother sent them to the beach alone so she could clean the little cottage. She gave them strict orders to stay by the lifeguard, wade no further than knee-deep, and for Pearl to listen to Coral.

  Coral didn’t want to see Colum at all. When he walked by with his bucket, he waved. Only Pearl waved back. He scowled at Coral and kept walking.

  Coral didn’t feel like playing mermaids.

  “Can we just jump waves for awhile?” she said.

  “Can’t we do it as Coral and Pearl?”

  “Can’t I just have a minute of peace?” she snapped.

  “Fine,” said Pearl. “I’ll go play with Colum.”

  "Fine," said Coral. "Just don't go in the water unless I can see you."

  Coral floated on her back in the little gully. She watched the terns swooping and diving for minnow, listening to their keening, yipping cries, sounding sharp above the surface of the water and distorted when the water filled her ears. She'd almost forgotten Pearl and Colum when the tone of the keening changed. The shrieking noise was Pearl.

  Coral stood up and spotted Colum and Pearl halfway to the jetty. Colum was standing calf deep in water. Pearl was on the sand, jumping away from the water's touch as if it burned her. The waves swirled around something half buried in the sand.

  Coral ran, then slowed when she got close.

  The dead thing in the sand didn't look like anything Coral had seen, but somehow, she knew exactly what it was.

  Pearl ran to her and hugged her, pressing her wet, sun-warm head against Coral’s stomach.

  Colum looked up, his eyes full of disbelief and pity.

  "It was just lying here," he said. "First I thought it was another shark."

  It was no shark, although it was the same size and color as the little one Colum had found the day before. This creature lay face down, rounded shoulders gleaming gray and naked above a tapering tail covered in sleek dark fur. Coral stared, trying to make sense of what she saw. The tail didn’t end in fins but two flippers, each tipped with five curving black nails.

  "Then I thought it was a seal," said Colum, more to himself than to Coral.

  It was no seal. Instead of front flippers, the creature had arms, long sinewy ones with the wingspan equal to the length of its chubby little body. One arm was pulled in tight to the sleek fat torso, tucked nearly flat, while the other splayed out, revealing five long, webbed fingers half buried in sand. The back of the round head was covered with short, dense hair, interrupted by protruding ears on either side of a monkey-like head. It was not like a human, not like the fairy-tale beings Coral had imagined.

  “A mermaid,” said Pearl. “It’s just like you said it would be, Coral.”

  "Granddad wasn’t lying," Colum said. "He said it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen."

  "It's not ugly!" said Pearl. And it wasn't. Coral had never seen anything like it, but it wasn't ugly. It didn't look like magical either. It looked real, as solid as the dead shark had been.

  A strong wave roared up, flipping the little body onto its back.

  Wide-set, black-lashed eyes were cloudy in death, shining like dull pearls in a face that was part monkey, part seal. Its nose turned up a bit with slit-like nostrils closed against the water. Its lips were slightly parted, soft and near black. Its belly shone pale in the sun, round, soft, and vulnerable above the furry tail and flippers.

  The mermaid was dead. But it had been alive not long ago, and Coral felt weary with a flood of wonder and sorrow. The creature was smaller than Pearl. It was smaller than her little nephew back home.

  "What should we do?" said Coral. She looked up at the lifeguard halfway down the beach. They weren't swimming so he paid them no mind, watching the surfers beyond the breaks as if he wished he were with them.

  "We could call the marine mammal stranding center," said Colum. "Do you have a phone?"

  Coral nodded. Her mom's phone was stashed in her beach bag.

  "But they can't save it," she said. "It's dead."

  "It was just a baby," Pearl said, her voice breaking. Coral knew she was right. It was a pup, a baby. What did you call a young mermaid anyway? What did you call a mermaid that looked like the monkey-seal creature they had found?

  "We should bury it," she said. "It's not an animal. It's a person. Or almost a person. It deserves to be buried, not dissected."

  "Not buried," Colum said.

  Coral got ready to argue with him, then he continued. "I mean it doesn't belong in the land. It belongs in the sea. We have to put it back."

  "Her," said Pearl. "We have to put her back."

  Coral nodded.

  Pearl ran back to get her towel, lying crumpled in the dry sand. Coral and Colum spread it next to the creature when the wave retreated.

  “Count of three," Colum said.

  Coral took a breath, place her hands on the side of the creature, and pushed against the cool, furry flesh. It was firm to her touch, oily but somehow not wet. The little body rolled on the towel, obscuring the smiling Ariel cartoon. Colum dragged the towel to the dry sand and began to wrap the body.

  "Wait," said Pearl. She clutched her bucket of treasures. "Mermaid diamonds."

  "Not the s
ea glass," Coral said. "That's from humans. Give her your shells.”

  They circled the baby mermaid with lady slippers, sand-scoured scallops, and tiny spiral shells that Coral didn’t know the name of. The body smelled like wet dog and dead fish. It was grotesque, and it was beautiful.

  "Should we take a picture?" Coral said.

  "What? And put it on the Internet?" Colum said. "Nobody would believe it was real anyway."

  "I mean just for us," Coral said. "So we won't forget."

  "I won't forget," said Pearl.

  So Colum wrapped the body, covering the sad baby-monkey face for the last time. "To the jetty," he said.

  He heaved the package over his shoulder.

  "Stay here, Pearl," Coral said when they got to the row of jagged black rocks. Pearl laid her hand on the round bulge of the towel where the creature's head was, then turned her back, shoulders shaking as she sat in the sand.

  Coral and Colum picked along the rocks, stepping in the warm slimy puddles trapped on the rough surface. Before they got to the end of the jetty projecting out into pounding surf, the lifeguard whistled.

  "We better hurry," Colum said. The lifeguard waved frantically for them to get off the rocks.

  "We should say something first," Coral said. "Or a moment of silence."

  The whistle trilled louder and more urgently. The lifeguard grabbed a red rescue can, jumped off the stand, and ran toward them.

  "Count of three," she said.

  She and Colum each swung one end of the towel, then released it. The body fell with a splash, barely clearing the rocks that split the ocean in two before it sank beneath the waves. The towel unfurled in a white billow beneath the water.

  "We've got to get back," Colum said. "We don't want the lifeguard to