Maris stared me down, her bony brow shadowing her eyes. Something told me what words to use, and they were the right ones. Maris looked at Pavati and jerked her head in the direction of the island. Pavati gave one more forlorn look at their would-be targets, then followed behind Maris as she swam toward shore.
27
DEAD END
Calder and I sat on the Oak Island beach, around the point from where my friends still swam. We waited for Maris and Pavati to transform, find their clothes, and come talk.
“What’s taking them so long?” I asked. “Jules is going to notice we’re missing.”
“Here comes Maris,” Calder said, pointing north up the beach. She was stumbling toward us like a crazed bull.
“What’s this about?” Maris’s voice was as shrill in the air as it had been in my ears underwater. On land, I could see that it wasn’t only her face that had changed. Her body was thin and angular. She leaned to the left. The ring around her throat was thick and black—more like a collar than its prior ornamentation. “What’s going on with this girl? Why can we hear her?”
“You know who her father is,” Calder said. “She’s inherited certain traits. But that’s not what we’re here about.”
Maris got within ten feet of us, then jerked to a stop. She crept closer as if it were me—and not her—who was to be feared. Her eyes rested warily on the pendant lying warm against my chest. Instinctively, I placed my palm over it.
Maris raised her arm and pointed at me with one scathing finger. “H-how … wh-why is she wearing Mother’s pendant? She has no right to it. Give it back. Give it back!”
Their mother’s? Calder squared his shoulders but didn’t answer. Had he known all along? I looked sideways at him, but he didn’t look at me. Why hadn’t he told me? I hoped he wouldn’t make me give it back. I squeezed the beach glass in my fist, and it gave me courage.
“We have more important things to discuss,” Calder said.
Maris did not force the issue but kept her eyes riveted on me, watching warily, as if she expected me to make a sudden move. “I suppose you’re here to say you’ve changed your mind and you’re coming back?” Maris asked Calder.
Calder was losing patience. “Don’t toy with me. You know what this is about. You and Pavati are getting out of hand. You’ve been hunting recklessly. You need an intervention.”
“It’s not me!” Maris screamed, dispatching a flock of grackles from the pine trees. They scattered in a cacophony of squawks and chortles.
Calder threw his hands into the air, his eyes flashing in a way I’d never seen. “So that’s it? You deny it? You realize you’re going to get caught, don’t you? You’re going to end up betraying the whole community of merpeople.”
Maris snapped her head to glare at him. “I betray nothing,” she said.
“At the rate you’re going, how long do you think it’ll be before rip currents and hypothermia aren’t good enough explanations for people? There can only be so many accidents. You’ve let four get away. They’ve talked to the police. News reporters. Now there are two bodies in the morgue. That’s six in the last two weeks.”
“So you’ve proven you can count.”
“That’s it?” Calder stormed at her. “That’s all you can say? Jack Pettit is telling everyone and anyone who will listen that there are mermaids in the lake, mermaids attacking kayakers, mermaids killing swimmers. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes him seriously—one more kill for the pendulum to swing from mocking the lunatic to searching for monsters. If you keep this up, people will come looking.”
She rolled her eyes toward the sky and held them there. “And if they come? What will they find?”
“You tell me? Are you planning to let them find you?”
“We won’t be found,” she said, her voice flat. “Soon there won’t be anything left of us. We’ll be nothing more than wasted shells. And we’re well aware of Jack Pettit’s antics. That’s why we’ve been keeping a low profile. If you can’t tell, I haven’t made a kill in over a month.”
“Pavati, then.”
Maris shook her head.
“I don’t understand,” Calder said, his shoulders falling heavily.
“Get this through your thick skull,” Maris said. “It’s not us. Something else has turned the lake into a killing ground, and its appetite has forced us to suppress our own.”
“It’s really rip currents?” Calder asked, almost too quiet to hear.
“Don’t be a fool,” Maris said, and she returned her gaze toward me. Her eyes narrowed again, studying the pendant and then searching my face. For what, I didn’t know, but I didn’t like the way she was looking at me.
I tugged at Calder’s elbow. We’d found Maris and Pavati. We’d delivered our message. We’d warned them about Jack and the risk of hunting recklessly. “Let’s go,” I whispered.
“One second, Lil,” he said, waving me off. “You weren’t trying to spite me—leaving the bodies to rot so conspicuously?”
“We’re not above spite,” Maris said.
“But it’s not you,” he said, confirming something he could not quite rectify with his assumptions.
“No.”
None of this made sense. If it wasn’t them … I heard myself blurt out, “Then what?”
Maris whipped her head to glare at me again, her eyes blazing. “Maybe it’s your father. Ever consider that?”
“That’s impossible,” I said, my voice more air than sound.
Calder looked at me nervously. “I’ve been with him. I’ve stayed close.”
“Clearly, you aren’t with him all the time,” snarled Maris.
“Jason doesn’t need to kill. His family keeps him happy,” Calder said. “He can avoid the curse.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Pavati, finally walking up the beach on too-thin legs, scarlet and glistening in the sun. Her skin was more sallow than I’d seen it before, and her collarbones stuck out in dangerous points.
Dressed in tattered rags that barely covered her, she walked immodestly on the sand right toward us, without apology. I had to turn away, and I heard her chuckle under her breath. Calder seemed nonplussed. He barely acknowledged her presence.
“It’s possible. I’ve done it,” Calder said. “Jason can make his own happiness with his family.”
“So he’s spending his evenings with the family, playing Monopoly around the fire?” Pavati asked, stepping over a sun-bleached driftwood log.
“No,” I said, and Maris flinched at the sound of my voice. Pavati, on the other hand, showed no discomfort.
“Give me another theory,” Calder said. “One that makes sense.”
“There’s only one other option worth considering,” Maris said.
Calder waited impatiently while Maris feigned a sympathetic look. “Aw, see? Isn’t this so much harder, little brother? If you hadn’t left us, all this information would be at your disposal. You really didn’t think things through, did you?”
“I think you made it clear all the time I was growing up. Good instincts were never my strong suit.”
Maris almost cracked a smile, but then a cloud descended over her face. “Maighdean Mara,” she said as a sharp wind lashed around the point and sent sand stinging against my legs.
“What?” Calder asked, and his tone of incredulity dragged my focus from the possibility of my dad as hunter back to the conversation.
“Maighdean Mara,” Maris said again.
My hands shook by my sides, attracting Maris’s gaze. I couldn’t understand how guarded she was—so leery that my smallest movements did not escape her. She looked terrifyingly weak; if it came to a fight, I was pretty sure I’d be able to take her. At least on land.
“Maighdean Mara is a myth,” Calder said. “And it isn’t funny.”
“Therein lies the problem,” Maris said.
“Which is?” Calder asked.
“That you think I’m kidding. That we’ve always thought her to be a myth.
That may be our problem.”
“What is she talking about?” I asked, interrupting their tête-à-tête.
Calder answered me without taking his eyes off Maris. “She’s blaming the attacks on the origin of our species, an ancient water spirit named Maighdean Mara.”
I looked back and forth between their faces; their glares only intensified with the passing seconds. “Oh, come on,” I cried. “You’re not serious.”
“You prefer the first option?” sneered Maris. “That your father is hunting this lake? Taking the most succulent morsels …?”
“If you want to learn the truth,” Pavati said, making us all turn in her direction, “go to Cornucopia. Someone there can tell you. I’ve tried to warn the boys myself, but …”
“But what?” asked Calder.
“Let’s just say I’m not welcome in that town anymore.” She twisted her long dark hair around one finger, the memory of earlier flirtations lingering on her face.
“Who’s this ‘someone’ we’re supposed to talk to?” I asked, clenching my toes in the sand.
Pavati’s eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down. The wind blew the tatters of her yellowed dress like feathers on a storm-mangled bird. “I don’t remember his name. He’s the woodcarver’s youngest son.”
“That’s all you have to go on?” Calder asked.
“Blue eyes,” said Pavati.
Maris said, “Calder, you do know what else you have to look for, don’t you?” There was something soft now around her eyes, something I hadn’t seen before. For a second, I thought she was worried about him.
“Seriously?” he asked. “Not all the legends can be true.”
“If one is true, the other is, too, and you have to make sure she recognizes you as one of her own. There’s no telling how she’d react if she sniffs out your human birthright. Don’t look at me like that. I’m too weak to do it myself. You must find the dagger. You can’t get to Maighdean Mara without it. Three green stones, Calder.” Then she sighed deeply, adding, “I do hope you discover the truth. I don’t think we’ll last much longer.”
Calder and I walked silently around the point and south toward the spot where Phillip’s boat was anchored. Neither of us wanted to admit the impossibility of Maris’s suggestions, but we didn’t have much time to discuss it. As we approached the boat, Jules stood on the bow, yelling and pointing at me.
“Are you okay?” I called, cupping my hands on the sides of my mouth.
“You! Where were you?”
“We swam to shore and took a walk,” I yelled back.
“A little private time,” Calder added, but Jules’s hysteria had her immune to whatever projections he was trying to make. Or maybe we were still too far away. Calder grabbed my hand and we jogged the rest of the way down the shore.
“Enough with this wandering off without saying where you’re going!” screamed Jules. “We got cold and realized you weren’t here. We thought you both drowned! None of us know how to start the boat.” Then she paused. “What the—? Oh, for crying out loud, now where did Scotty go?”
Zach stood up and dropped the towel he’d wrapped around his shoulders. “Wasn’t he over there?” he asked, pointing a short distance toward shore. “He was a minute ago.”
“Damn it, all of you quit fooling around,” Colleen said. “It isn’t funny. I want to go” Phillip and Rob jumped back in the water. Rob yelled for Scott. Phillip turned in the water and yelled toward shore. I felt all the blood drop out of my head as if I were a human thermometer plunging toward zero.
“You’re serious?” cried Colleen, now panicked. She held Scott’s glasses tightly in her fist. “Scotty!”
There was a boat anchored nearby, but I couldn’t see that anyone was on board.
Colleen yelled, “Somebody do something!”
Phillip and Rob got back into the boat. Calder ran into the water and made a shallow dive, swimming under the boat and popping up on the other side. He shook his head at me.
“Scott!” I cried from shore. My worst nightmare. Coming true. How had they done it? We’d been with them the whole time. Except for Pavati … she’d come later.… Could she have acted so quickly? Water spirit, my ass. This was Pavati’s doing.
A hundred feet down shore, an oblong shape on the sand caught our collective attention.
“Scotty!”
My friends all jumped in the water and raced for it. Calder got there first. He lifted Scott’s limp body off the sand, cradling him in his arms.
“Is he alive? Is he okay?” Colleen asked.
“I can feel him breathing,” Calder said.
“Scotty, c’mon, man. It’s me, Rob. Wake up. Should we slap him?”
Calder’s eyes met mine as Scott coughed up water and rolled toward Colleen’s voice. “Big,” he said. “Big fish.”
28
CONVINCED
My friends didn’t stay the week. Instead, they packed quickly and headed home the next morning. Jules looked at me expectantly, as if she wanted me to come home with them, too. I didn’t make eye contact with her as Calder and I waved from the ferry office, watching the van turn left at the stop sign and head out of town, back to their lives where the worst they had to worry about were dead cell phone batteries.
When they were out of sight, Calder said, “I know what you’re thinking, so stop it.”
“You said I could trust you. You said my friends wouldn’t get hurt.”
“I said Maris and Pavati wouldn’t get to them. And I don’t think your friend is that hurt.”
I shot him a scathing look. “Pavati attacked him.”
“It wasn’t them. We were with them the whole time.”
“Not Pavati. She came late.”
“It wasn’t them. It hasn’t been them. Not once this whole time. I made the wrong assumptions. Maris told us the truth. They haven’t hunted in a while. They’re so past gone they can’t even bring themselves to eat. You saw what a mess they are.”
“A less experienced hunter then,” I said, my voice falling low.
Calder grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around to face him. “It wasn’t your dad, Lily. He isn’t hunting, and even if he was, he wouldn’t take one of your friends.”
“How can you be sure? Maris was right. You can’t monitor him twenty-four/seven. And how is he supposed to live off the happiness of his family”—I choked on the sarcastic sound of my words—“when he’s never home?”
“There is another explanation.”
“Don’t make me laugh.” I couldn’t believe Calder was buying into this. “Don’t go grasping at fantasy. You can’t go blaming five attacks and two murders on a mythical being.”
“It wasn’t so long ago you would have said I was mythical,” he said.
I turned and walked away, marching up the hill. Calder didn’t let me go that easily. He was right at my side before I’d taken four steps. I fought back tears and refused to look at him.
“You,” I said. “You’re buying into Maris’s lie because you can’t face the truth. We’ve lost Dad forever.”
“I’m not ready to believe it, Lily. It took me forty years to find a father, and I won’t give up on him now.”
I stopped and turned around to face him. “You think that’s what I’m doing? Giving up?”
“Well, aren’t you?” He cocked his head to the side.
“I’m trying to be realistic.”
“Since when?” he asked, without a hint of sarcasm.
“Since now.”
He smiled and drew one finger through my hair. “I like the girl who welcomes fantasy better. Where is she?”
“To believe in a water spirit goes against everything I believe in.”
“What did you tell me once? That ‘God created the great sea monsters.… And God saw that it was good’?”
I wasn’t in the mood to be agreeable. “God made this Maighdean Mara to hunt people?”
“All creatures need to be tended and cared for. If Maighdean
Mara has been neglected, wouldn’t it make sense that she would set off to fend for herself?”
I sat down hard on a park bench, facing the lake. “You better start at the beginning for me. Is this thing one of those manitou stories Jack was telling us around the campfire in April?”
“You should know by now that Jack never gets more than half of anything right. The native people have their own legends, and maybe over the centuries there has been some overlap, but Maighdean Mara is from the North Sea.
“Supposedly, she migrated here during the Great Flood.”
I crossed my arms and turned away. So far, his explanation wasn’t helping.
“She mated with the native men and had three daughters: Odahingum, Namid, and Sheshebens. Maris and Pavati’s ancestors, I guess.”
“They’re the half Jack got right,” I said. “The mermaids who walk around like regular people.”
“Right.”
“So what did Maris mean when she said people were neglecting it … her?”
“The story goes that when Maighdean Mara died, she didn’t leave. Her spirit increased in size and she became a guardian of the lake. Her descendants, and the descendants of the human men who loved her, paid her homage for centuries. They’d make offerings of tobacco or wild rice or copper.…” His voice trailed off, and I watched as his thoughts went far away.
“I remember Mother had a trove of Indian Head pennies. Old ones, from back when pennies were actually made of copper. She used to make an offering every year. But ever since she died, none of us ever did.
“That’s what Maris meant when she said we’d neglected her. I always thought it was just a story. I mean, it was easy enough to think so. I’ve been swimming this lake for decades, and I’ve never seen any evidence of her.”
I sank lower on the bench and groaned. “That’s my point, Calder. You know why you haven’t seen her? She’s. Not. Real.”
“C’mon, Lily. We came from somewhere. Let’s keep the possibility open that she’s the root of the problem. It beats the alternative. Have some faith in your dad. I do.”
With those words, I felt as if I saw Calder for the first time. How he cared for Sophie and doted on Mom. How he trusted Dad, even now, when I couldn’t.