‘Tis no hallucination, Moll. You sing out, I hear you. But any woman who calls out to me at this time of night had better be naked.
One if by land. Two if by sea.
Is that a yes as to nakedness?
One if by — sorry, it’s a slight obsessive compulsive twitch of mine. When I’m upset, I think of the famous Longfellow poem. Like a chant. It blocks out anxiety. Hello!
A famous poem?
I forget. You’re Scottish. The poem’s about a hero of the American Revolution. Paul Revere. Juna Lee says I’m actually related to him; I thought the surname was just something my father’s notoriously flamboyant grandmother adopted as a stage name, but apparently I was wrong. The poem is The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. The most famous line is ‘One if by land, two if by sea.’ It refers to a lantern signal warning the American colonists that the British troops are coming. Did I wake you up?
No. I don’t sleep much. I’m sitting on the bow of my boat, watching the ocean. My nieces are in the cabin. Jordan Brighton is bunked on the stern. Tomorrow we’ll move to Sainte’s Point. But tonight we’re on the boat, hidden in a cove. So, this poem about your famous ancestor helps you avoid thinking naughty thoughts?
Naughty? Am I that Victorian?
I ask if you sleep without clothes, and you start reciting poetry.
Okay, I’m a little unhinged by recent events.
Aye, that’s understandable. I have nothing against unhinged women. Be that as it may — I take it you want to talk to me?
I . . . yes. Yes. All right. Yes, I want to talk. I was just . . . testing the system. The Mer psychic call-in line. I’m sorry. I disturbed you. I didn’t really think this would work.
Where you’re concerned, I’m awake and at attention. And only disturbed by your effect on me.
One if by land, two if —
Easy, Moll. I apologize. Bit of a lout, that’s me. Sorry.
You’re not a lout. A man who rescues me and carries me — plus my cat — all the way to Bellemeade is no lout.
You throw me off guard with such flattery. I’m fair to middling blunt with people. Not good at the niceties. I can’t recite poetry to you in return, Moll. But I don’t mean to embarrass you.
Embarrass? No. Startle. Yes. Naked in bed. Me? Hah. I’m not a naked kind of woman.
It was a serious question, Moll.
One if by land — naked. Naked. I sleep naked. All right? Yes. I admit it.
I hear you breathing too hard. Relax. This conversation is just inside our heads. Remember that. Phone sex without the phone.
I’m psychically hyperventilating. And you?
I take it you’re in no trouble, not asking for assistance.
No, no. No trouble. Phone sex without the phone?
Tula Bonavendier is a fine hostess, and you like her?
Yes. She’s very pleasant and rational. Not like Juna Lee.
Juna Lee has a bit of a bad rep. Do no’ take her to heart. At least she got you here. You’re safe and sound, none the worse for wear. And you’re learning who you are. That’s good. The unhappiest Mers are the ones who don’t know what to believe of themselves.
Do you? You know what to believe of yourself?
A glorified guard dog, that’s what I am. I don’t mind. Suits my temperament. My ancestors died at Culloden. Always fighting for the losing side, we McEvers.
No. Not a guard dog. A . . . lion. A noble lion.
A sea lion, maybe.
But what does it feel like to be a Mer? To be a member of a . . . a sub-species of humankind that couldn’t possibly be real?
Not real? We are real, Moll. You and I and the others. Very real. And we’re not a sub-anything. We’re the dominant species. Homo Swimmians, if you like puns. Small in numbers but vast in influence.
You do realize that the existence of mer-people defies every known law of genetics and evolution? Not to mention the entire canon of human history?
Lander history, Moll. Not human history. You and me — we’re just as human as any Lander. Only different.
How can an entire minority society of, well, unusual human beings, exist for thousands of years without the majority discovering them?
Landers see what they’ve been taught to see. We just help the situation along with a few illusions. The poem you quoted ——one if by land or two if by sea? Landers look for the light on land, Moll. They never think to look for the light by sea.
You’re a philosopher. A poet in your own way.
I’ve never rhymed two words in my life. Despite my name.
But you love books. You love to read. I can . . . feel it. What a strange thing. There’s this wonderful hum inside me, and it’s you, and I know things about you because of it. Am I prying?
No more than I’m prying into your mind. I feel you inside me, too. Like a flow of electricity.
This is how the ‘singing’ ability works? This tingle?
Aye.
There’s no medical or physiological explanation for this ability. None.
Do no’ be telling the great sea mammals that. They’ll laugh at you. When a dolphin laughs, it feels like bubbles in your brain. It tickles.
Well, of course, whales and dolphins and other marine animals have sonic abilities; to find fish, to use as a compass when they migrate, to communicate. That’s proven.
See? They communicate. Just like us. So hard to believe?
Then why can’t ordinary people communicate this way?
Because they’re ordinary.
Ah hah. Well, there’s the scientific explanation I was hoping for. Do you let just anyone blow bubbles inside you?
No.
I’m honored.
Now that you’ve got your foot inside my door, you’re welcome to a tour.
Bubbles. I feel bubbles. You’re teasing me.
I’m no’ teasing you, Moll. I’m sitting here in the dark on the boat. It’s so quiet all I can hear is the surf and the wind. There’s a million stars above me and a whole world of water before me. From here to forever. Hills and valleys and canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and plateaus broader than the prairies. All under the oceans. Most of the world. Hidden from Landers.
It’s the edge of forever. Oh, I’m sorry. That sounds like an old soap opera. ‘Tune in tomorrow, as we continue The Edge of Forever.’”
Do no’ be sorry. I like how you see things. How you see me. Kindly.
I see the truth.
Kindly.
I’m not kind. I’m vain and selfish and greedy. I love being a rich author. I love having people treat me like a celebrity. I had sterling silver faucets installed in my RV. But then I felt such shame I donated a huge amount to charity.
You give money to charity all the time. You’re generous beyond all expectations. I feel it.
But I give lots more money when I install silver faucets. Oh! Bubbles!
It’s been a long time since I smiled. Thank you.
About that tour. May I visit any part of you I wish to imagine?
Do no’ go playin’ with fire . . . ah.
You feel me thinking about you? Thinking about—
That’s the part, you bet.
I’m thinking about your chest. How strong it felt against my side when you carried me.
Close enough.
Now I’m thinking about, yes, all right, oh, my—
Me too.
What are you —
Just thinking about you and your parts, Moll.
Oh. Oh! Oh!
Jordan Takes Charge
Chapter 11
The round-the-world-in-eighty-days cruise, celebrating Ali and Griffin’s royal Mer wedding, sailed the next day. Dozens of elegant yachts, large and small, made a raucous flotilla off the Atlantic beaches of Sainte’s Point. Leading the way was their flagship, The Lady Lilith, Riyad’s floating villa, staffed by a crew of handsome Saudi Mers whose allegiance was not first to Allah or country, but to their own Water People. No religion or race or national alliance tur
ned a Mer away from his or her truest obligations; our kind maneuvered beneath the Lander world like a slow, deep current of primordial lava, slowly carving new waterways into the face of the planet.
“. . . carving new waterways into the face of the planet,” I finished typing into my laptop. I hit Send. A wireless widget flashed my new post to my on-line diary. I smiled fiendishly. “Done. Another fabulous entry.”
“Juna Lee, I hate it when you’re premenstrual and philosophical,” Tula sighed. We lounged on blankets, naked except for thongs, on an isolated beach at the island. We were backed by huge sand dunes, the dark oak forest, and the prying eyes of wild ponies who lived like fat little hobbits under Lilith’s care. I watched the wedding armada leisurely sail for the deep, summertime waters off the continental shelf.
“There they go. Leaving me to supervise the island and help Jordan fend off a murderous, mythological Mer. While at the same time trying to matchmake between the Clint Eastwood of Scotland and an obnoxious, wimpy writer who hangs around my neck like an albatross. I swear, I don’t know how I multi-task so brilliantly.”
Tula rolled her eyes. “Has Jordan actually asked for your help? Hasn’t he emphatically ordered you to stay away from this island after today?”
I looked at her over my retro Ray Bans. “Do I look like I take orders from men?”
“Juna Lee, this is one time you shouldn’t be capri-cious—”
“Eeeeee.” Which is approximately the sound I made, accompanied by various obscenities, as a nylon lasso snared my bare left foot.
Jordan rose from the surf. He wore baggy silk swim trunks but might as well have been naked, considering how the silk was plastered to his erection. But even aroused, he looked serious. “Here, Juna, Juna,” he called dryly, as if I were a cat. Then he dragged me into the water.
I barely finished squealing, kicking, and yelling, before the tide rushed over my head. I continued my protest in sonic trills that sent all the neighboring dolphins skimming away with their flippers covering their ears. I swallowed a gallon of saltwater, regurgitated it with a fierce spit (it’s nearly impossible to drown a Mer) then finally managed to grab the tow line. I was in twenty feet of water by then, with jellyfish and crabs slithering by, giggling at me, and Jordan was towing me at a speed just short of a warp-speed skier.
Don’t even try it, he growled inside my head, as I latched one hand around the rope at my ankle. He curled around me, rolling me inside the rope and three feet of my own auburn hair. Fly, meet Spider. I tried to pop his eardrums with my sonic shriek, but it didn’t do a damn bit of good. He wrapped me like a seafood burrito, arms pinned to sides, thigh clamped to thigh. Only my boobs were free — or, at least, bulging out between two rounds of rope.
Maybe they’d signal for help.
Jordan, I’ll never forgive you, you scum of the ocean, you amoeba-balled sneak, you—
I warned you I’d have you shanghaied if you didn’t leave the island.
I popped to the surface alongside him, bobbing like a cork. “Lilith told me I could stay—”
“I didn’t get that message.” He stuck a finger in one ear. “La la la la la,” he deadpanned. “I can’t hear a thing.”
“Liar! Cheater!”
“So sue me.”
He levered himself up the ladder of a small sailboat, grabbed me by my rope corset, and lugged me aboard. I might as well have been a netted tuna. I lay there on the deck, fuming. This mermaid was steamed.
Jordan knelt beside me. My heart caught. Damned heart. His eyes were hard but also dark and sweet. Sure, he had regrets. Sort of. “If only you were always this easy to control,” he grunted. He pushed my streaming hair away from my face, gently plucked a wet wad of it from my mouth, then gallantly arranged thick strands over my breasts. His knuckles brushed my skin, rousing a nipple or two.
Damn nipples, as well as hearts.
“I’ll drop you off near Cuba,” he said. “The Araizas will meet us there. They’ll take you to one of their hotels. Maybe in Cozumel, maybe Cancun, maybe the Caribbean. At any rate, they’ll make sure you stay put.”
The Araizas. A Mer clan who owned resorts, cruise ships, and casinos. They ran their empire with an old-world mafia attitude. Picture the Godfather with webbed feet. “You’re letting the Corleones of the Caribbean hold me hostage?”
“Hmmm. Holding you hostage? How melodramatic. What goes around comes around, right? Now you know how Molly Revere feels.”
“Jordan, please. Don’t make me leave. I know I look like a fluffy angel fish, but I’m a piranha when it comes to you.”
“You’ve chewed my ass off a few times, that’s for sure.”
“Please.”
His face softened. He leaned down, feathering my lips with his. “I love how you love me.”
I never said I love —
He planted a long, slow, wet kiss on me, and I let him.
Damn heart, nipples, and lips.
Traitors.
* * * *
My name, I typed, is Moll Revere. No longer Molly. Not Molly Martha. Moll. Moll the Mer.
Maniac.
I deleted all of that then dutifully typed on my laptop, Water Hyacinth, Book 5, Hyacinth and the Cave of the Argonauts. Chapter Seven.
I sat at a wicker table at the end of the dock at Randolph Cottage, beneath a pastel beach umbrella. Enya sang her ethereal Celtic love songs on a CD player. My laptop was neatly arranged on the table, along with a notepad, a crystal pitcher of water, and a cell phone. Heathcliff lay beneath the table on a sun-shaded pillow of silk and lamb’s wool. He calmly watched the ocean through cataract-clouded green eyes. I was dressed in an ivory cotton jumper over an ivory cotton tank top, with ivory cotton mules on my feet and a whitewashed straw sunhat on my head. Yes, I looked prim, like a vanilla ice cream cone, as the loathsome Juna Lee would have noted, but I felt very wild and provocative in that tank top. If you pulled the bib of my jumper out and stared straight down at the tank, you’d have seen that I’d impulsively cast off my bra. Gasp. You’d see the bumps of my nipples.
Secretly rebellious bumps. If that isn’t wicked, I don’t know what is.
I stared at the blank computer screen, and I sighed. Moll, the Mer, muses. And mopes. Mostly over a man.
“Molly?”
A polite female voice made me jump. I looked around wildly. A wet, gorgeous woman poked her head over the edge of the dock. She held onto the wooden ladder and gazed up at me as if she were selling Mary Kay and just happened to swim by with my order.
Tula Bonavendier. I liked Tula. She was an oasis of friendship in the delusion that had swallowed me.
“Tula, hello!”
She climbed out, naked except for a thong. I looked away, peeked, looked away, drank some water, peeked. She calmly pulled a silk shirt from a waterproof fanny pack, languidly covered herself, then sat down cross-legged on the dock. “Juna Lee has left for the Caribbean on a . . . business trip. She asked me to check on you.”
I stared at the transparent silk shirt over her breasts. I sighed. Just when I thought I’d liberated my own repressed bumps, she showed me how carefree bumps could be. Note to self, I thought. Get one of those see-through shirts.
“Are you writing another Water Hyacinth book?” Tula asked, watching me pleasantly. “I’m such a fan.”
“Oh. Yes.” I nodded. “I always carry my laptop in the bus. I write every day, even when I’m on a booksigning tour. Stories have to be told.”
“This is the perfect setting. You’ll be inspired. Your best book, yet. I bet.”
“You’re such a gracious person. Why do you put up with Juna Lee? Does she blackmail you with secrets? Were you and she separated surgically, at birth?”
Tula laughed. “No, but we’re like sisters. I’ve known her for. oh, forty years. Since we were teenagers in Charleston. The South Carolina Mers are very tight. A society thing. Very Charleston. I grew up near Juna Lee in a pre-Civil War mansion with a view of the water and Fort Sumter. We were debu
tantes in, oh, the 1950s.”
I stared at this youthful creature. “You’re—”
“Older than you think.”
“Oh. Tell me, how do Mer people get away with looking so young? Don’t people notice you’ve been around for a long time? Don’t they check your Social Security card?”
She laughed. “Not if we tell them not to notice. People believe what they want to believe, Molly. That’s why Mers with webbed feet can go barefoot among Landers. The Landers don’t see what we don’t want them to see.” She slid a bare foot forward. “What do you see?”
I leaned forward and peered at the sinewy, beautiful sculpted foot. “Not webbing, but, something glimmery between your toes, something—”
“Now look. Because I let you.” She pushed her foot a little closer. Suddenly, as if my vision had cleared, I saw a human foot that was not quite human, extra wide across the toes, and the toes were longer than normal, and between those toes — between them, was the most beautiful, iridescent webbing.
I put a hand to my heart. “Butterfly toes.”
She laughed.
I kicked off a white mule and looked down at my ordinary right foot, on the damaged leg, somberly. “I wish—”
“You’re a Mer, regardless. Having webbed toes is just the icing on the fish cake.”
I sighed. Change the subject. I always changed the subject when the scarred leg was involved. Under my concealing jumper, the leg was an ugly landscape of surgical scars, divets, and puckered skin. When I undressed at night I never looked at it. I pretended I couldn’t see it. Maybe, like a true Mer, I would teach myself to see an illusion instead, some day. Maybe some day Rhymer McEvers would look at me, naked, and only see what I wanted him to see. My heart sank. Daydreams. “So. Juna Lee has gone to the Caribbean. Perfect. The jerk chicken of the sea.”