“I’ve been on a cruise before. They put you in a single-file line and check everyone’s passport before you can come back on the ship.”
“We’ll walk backwards then. They’ll think we’re going instead of coming.”
“Ohmysweetgoodness.” Is she for freaking real?
She laughs at my exasperation. “I’m only kidding. We’ll just have to climb up the anchor.”
I’m sure my eyes are nearly popping out of their sockets. “Be serious.”
She grabs my elbow and turns me to face the ship. “Look,” she whispers. “The line to the anchor goes halfway up the ship. See that rope with the float thingies on it? We’ll use that to climb the rest of the way onboard.”
“You’ve done this before?”
Her brow knits. “We’ll have to go one at a time.”
“You think?”
“I’ll go first. Then you can follow my lead.” And with that, the lunatic starts heading back toward the beach. “We’ll need a distraction,” she calls over her shoulder.
Oh. My. God. Galen is going to strangle the life from my body. “Keep your voice down,” I hiss, catching up to her.
“You’ll need to use your Gift to create a distraction on the other side of the ship. That way, everyone will be focused away from the anchor side.”
My mouth drops open. This could actually work.
We ease into the tide, casually making our way to deeper water. We have to dive before we reach the anchor, because there are two security boats making their rounds in between and past the three big cruise ships docked here. If they spot us too close to the foreign vessel, they’ll definitely intervene.
Beneath the surface, about forty feet down, Rayna tugs on the anchor. When it doesn’t budge—did she really expect it to?—she reaches out for the rag doll in my hands. I give it to her. “Now, go to the other side and call all the fish you can find,” she says. “Tell them to start jumping out of the water or something.”
Or something. Maybe they could perform ballet. Or something. I swim to the other side, wary of the fact that I’m swimming under a hefty, five-ton ship in shallow-ish water. I start calling fish though, like I’m told. “Come here to me, fish,” I sing. Not that I have to sing. I could just talk, but that always makes me feel like a weirdo. So singing it is.
“Fish, all of you come here to me.” A small gathering of small fish builds into a large gathering of medium fish, and then a huge gathering of all sorts of fish. After about five minutes, I’ve got myself enough participants to put on a Broadway show. That’s when I take the time to appreciate that I’m in the Bahamas, and that I have a rainbow of fish swimming around me, waiting for my next instructions. They come in all colors, shapes, and sizes, though they seem to share the same mechanical expression: eyes open, pouty mouth. Set against the soothing blue of the water, it’s an amazing sight.
“All of you start jumping up out of the water,” I say. “Jump, jump, jump!” The way Dr. Milligan, Galen’s marine biologist friend, explained my Gift is like this: The communication is not in the actual words, but in the one-size-fits-all frequency of my voice underwater. I mean, it’s not like these fish speak English. But they understand my commands by the inflection in my voice. At least, that’s Dr. Milligan’s theory. And so far, he’s right. I’ve spoken to fish in French before, and they understood and obeyed. I’ve even spoken to them in gibberish, envisioning a command, and they listen. It’s all in the voice. Wild, but true.
So all the fish line up and start jumping. It raises such a ruckus that there is no smoothness left to the surface at all; it’s all rippled to pieces as one after another fish jump over each other. Striped fish, spotted fish, neon green and yellow fish, sailfish, swordfish, vividly colored eels. Fish that look like Vincent van Gogh decorated them himself. There are even a couple of reef sharks lurking and waiting their turn to jump—or waiting their turn to dine, once the mini festival is over here.
“Keep jumping. I’ll be right back,” I instruct. But chances are, I won’t be right back. This mission has catastrophe written all over it.
I leave the underwater circus and swim back to the anchor where Rayna waits for me. “I’m going to shimmy up, then you follow me,” she says. “Just do what I do.”
Rayna has the classic Syrena build, lean and muscular. The girl has a six-pack, for God’s sake. With a diet high in fish protein and little else, and the physical activity of just swimming around all day, I wouldn’t expect anything less. Me, though? I eat things like cheesecake and bacon. I drive my car to get where I’m going. I’m soft. Pliable. Galen calls it curvy. Either way, I’m pretty sure my soft, curvy arms are going to have a rough time scaling this soft, curvy body up a giant chain.
I’m about to explain this to Rayna, but as soon as I open my mouth, she disappears up the chain like a fish-monkey, the doll tucked safely in her mouth. Ohmysweetgoodness.
Also, crap.
I scramble to follow. To my surprise—and relief—the chain is more firm than the rope we have to climb in gym class. It’s as thick as my leg and hardly moves with my weight. I can easily position my feet on each of the links and use my hands to pull myself up to the next one. Keeping my eyes trained on Rayna above me, I make progress upward, secretly impressed with myself.
That’s when I remember about the ropes we’ll have to inch across in order to reach an accessible deck of the ship and that somehow, when this insanity is over, we’ll have to get ourselves back into the safety of the ocean. And so, I look down. Like an idiot.
I stop climbing and latch onto the chain as if we’re dangling over hot lava. Above me, Rayna huffs. “Toraf said you jumped out of a helicraptor from way higher than this,” she says with disdain.
This is true. But that was when I didn’t feel I had a choice, and a lot more was at stake than just Caroline’s rag doll. And the goal now is not falling, which is, for some reason, a lot more difficult to manage than impulsively pitching yourself from a hovering helicopter over a giant school of sharks with your eyes closed and hoping for the best. This takes more thought, more concentration, more time to think about how it will hurt to give the water a high five with your face.
With a fragile resolve, I start climbing again. Slapping the water with my forehead should be the least of my worries, after all. Because if we get caught, we’re going to prison. And I’m pretty sure they don’t serve cheesecake or bacon in prison.
When I reach the top, I tighten my thighs on the chain and reach one hand, then both hands to grasp the rope. It’s sturdy too, pulled tight enough to feel like a steel cable in my hands. With a deep breath, I release my legs from the chain and swing away from it. I’ve really got to work on my upper-body strength. I glance at Rayna, who’s already straddling the deck railing. She shakes her head at me.
Still, she’s decent enough to wait for me as I inch across the rope, my hands cramping and my armpits stretched to their limits. Rayna reaches down and grabs one of my hands and, for one terrifying moment, I think of all the mean things I’ve ever said to Rayna—and that I shared a kiss with her mate—and that she just might have talked me up here in order to drop me.
But she doesn’t. “Hurry up,” she hisses. “You’re slower than an urchin.”
She hoists me over the rail without ceremony and, as soon as my feet are planted, starts walking down the deck. She has definitely done this before.
We make our way to the interior of The Enchantment, through the casino, past the elevators, and across one of the restaurants. Slipping out the door on the opposite side, we squeeze between the people leaning over the rails watching the water below them. It seems everyone is sufficiently enraptured by my handiwork; oohs and aahs resonate down the line of passengers, coinciding with the sound of heavy splashing below.
Rayna gets to work immediately, grabbing the shoulder of the first girl she sees and jerking her backward. “Hey, are you Caroline?” The little girl shakes her head, eyes wide, and her mother puts a protective arm aroun
d her.
“We found this doll,” I tell her quickly. “We’re just looking for who lost it.”
The mother breaks into a smile. “Oh. Well, sorry we couldn’t help.”
Rayna scowls. “Humans are rude to me.”
“Don’t call them humans,” I whisper. “And stop touching them.”
“This is stupid. We’re wasting our time.” Then she beats on the wall beside her with her open hand, startling a few people close by. “Attention,” she yells. “I said attention! You, with the ugly hat. Stop talking over me. We’re looking for Caroline. Anyone know her?” When we’re met with blank stares and indignant glares, she rolls her eyes. “Useless,” she mutters. “Let’s go.” Then she pivots on her heel and heads back toward the door.
Royals.
“That’s it?” I say, trying to keep up. “That’s what we came aboard for?”
“They have pools of water here for little humans to use. At least, on other ships they do. Big tubes that swirl you down into them.”
“Slides?”
She nods. “I saw some at the front.”
And she’s right. There are two twisting, scream-tastic slides at the front of The Enchantment. “Here, hold this,” she says, handing me the doll. “I’m going to see if Caroline is up top.” She takes the steps two at a time and when she reaches the top, gets in line for the green slide.
Unfreakingbelievable.
With my eyes, I trace the path of swirling green to one of the pools below and go there to wait for her at the edge of it. She actually has the gall to wave at me before she climbs into the tube feet-first. Screaming all the way to the bottom, she tucks her knees to her chest and canon-balls into the pool in front of me.
I fantasize about ways to murder her.
She emerges, her face beaming—not the cautious expression you’d expect to see on a stowaway without a passport or human DNA. “Did you find Caroline?” I ask, watching her pull herself out of the pool and stand next to me, making a drip circle at her feet.
“Nope. I’ll go look for her at the yellow tube.” And then that fish princess runs away from me again.
I squeeze the neck of Caroline’s doll and pretend it’s Rayna’s. Then I march to the other pool and wait at the edge. The yellow slide has a steep drop at the end and I know the exact moment Rayna hits it because her scream intensifies times infinity. This time when she surfaces, I’m ready to tackle her before she escapes again.
“Caroline wasn’t up there either,” she says cheerfully. Climbing the ladder, she nods to the myriad of deck chairs behind us. “Can you get me that towel?”
And turn my back on her so she can disappear again? Nuh-uh. I swallow a growl. “That towel doesn’t belong to us.”
“It’s the ship’s. They give out free towels. Anyone can have one.”
“Paying passengers can have one.”
“Which is us.” She glances around us meaningfully.
“You’re a fish. You don’t need a towel.”
“I like how they feel. Kind of like Rachel’s pink robe.”
This conversation could go on forever if I let it. “We should keep looking for Caroline. Maybe we can turn it in to Lost and Found.” But then I think better of it. The doll was dropped into the ocean. Her parents probably wouldn’t even think to look in Lost and Found.
“The young ones like ice cream,” Rayna says, wrapping the enormous towel around herself twice. “We should go to the ice cream room and get some. Anyways, it’s free.”
A loud horn blows then, startling almost everyone on deck. A baby starts to cry. “We don’t have time to look anymore,” I tell Rayna. “They’re leaving the port now.”
She shakes her head. “We have plenty of time. That’s just the first warning for the people who are onshore to start making their way back to the ship.”
“Does Toraf know you do this?”
“Do what?” She pushes past me and to the elevator room, pressing a button before I even reach her.
“Does Galen know?”
She pinches her lips together. “It’s really hard to have a good time around you.”
“We’re supposed to be looking for Caroline.”
“We’ll find her eventually.”
“Eventually? We have to get off this ship before it leaves port.”
She turns to me when the elevator door closes. “Actually, we should wait until we’re in deeper water before we jump. Now, ice cream.” The door opens again and more people join us as our conversation is cut short.
We make our way across The Enchantment in search of ice cream and Caroline. To her credit, Rayna does stop every little girl on the way. None of them turn out to be Caroline. Some of the parents seem creeped out by Rayna’s gruff forwardness. In my mind, I’m coming up with all sorts of things I could tell Galen to explain what we’re doing here. You know, when I call him from prison.
When we order our cones and take a seat by the railing, Rayna stretches out. “You should really go on the slides. They’re fun. That is why we came today, remember? To have fun? We just got sidetracked by that doll.”
When she puts it like that, I have to agree. No, we never intended—or at least, I never intended—to board the ship, but it happened. We put ourselves on this mission to find Caroline. We don’t have to do it; it’s the nice thing to do. And in the meantime, I’ve forgotten to enjoy myself.
I take a bite of my mint chocolate chip. “I’ll go on the slides. What else do you want to do?”
“Hey!” The high-pitched scream comes from our left and we both turn our heads to see a young red-headed girl in a polka dot bikini a few feet away, giving us the evil eye. Her gaze shifts from Rayna to the doll in her hands. “You stole my Lily!”
Ah. Caroline.
Rayna stands, shooting her chair behind her. “We didn’t steal this, you rude little human. We were trying to return it to you.”
A woman who I assume is Caroline’s mother materializes behind her, placing protective hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “It doesn’t look like you were searching for her too far and wide.” She nods her head toward our empty ice creams cups sitting on the table.
“We were taking a break,” I say. Oh, geez. Here we go. I can tell Rayna is seconds from a temper tantrum. She’s got that look in her eyes, the feral one where sense and reason flee like the riptide. Thankfully this time, she doesn’t have a harpoon handy.
“That’s a fine thanks we get for bringing—what is her ridiculous name again, Lily? Ugh!—for bringing Lily back to you. You’re the one who let her fall overboard.”
Caroline’s mom sneers. “What? And you expect us to believe you jumped overboard to save a doll? Clearly, you took it.”
“Why would we take it?” I say diplomatically, steering the conversation away from anyone jumping overboard. “We’re a bit old to be playing with dolls.”
Mother-of-the-Year shrugs. “Who knows? With that kind of story, it looks like you’re wanting to come out as a couple of heroes.”
Rayna hugs Lily to her chest, shaking her head. “You’re not getting this doll back. You don’t deserve it.”
“Gimme gimme gimme!” Caroline’s red ringlets bounce with her fury. Even her freckles look angry.
“I wouldn’t give this back to you if Triton himself ordered me to.” There’s a finality to Rayna’s tone. Which is why I shouldn’t be surprised when that lunatic tosses the doll over the railing. But I am. In fact, I gasp with mother and daughter as we watch Lily’s arms and legs flail briefly before disappearing from sight.
Fan-flipping-tastic.
Mommy makes the first move. “Security!” Her voice is shrill, like someone’s limb has been chopped off or something. “Thief!” This gets lots of attention.
Several cruise ship employees, along with a few passengers, gather around us, making a tight circle. Out of nowhere, Rayna uses her elbow to jab a man’s nose behind her. Then she runs past him, hops up and straddles the railing, and gives me a pointed look. “Yo
u coming?” And then she jumps.
Holy. Crap.
For a split second, I size up the group moving in to surround me. I can’t believe I’m thinking about plowing down two old ladies to get to the side of the ship, but I don’t have any other options.
So I sprint forward and, in a Red Rover kind of way, push between the two proper elderly women who had come to ogle the situation. “Oh, my!” one of them says as her sun hat flings off. I have to jump over two sun chairs to get to the railing—which is no small feat for a klutz like me. My foot catches on the last one and I fall to the deck. Someone is close enough to grab my arm and all I can think is prison prison prison, but I shake free and pull myself up with the railing.
I don’t look back. I don’t look down, either. I just jump.
The water is shallow enough that my velocity takes me all the way to the bottom of the port. Even when my rear scrapes against the sand, I don’t feel safe enough to stop moving. Without surfacing, I swim toward the back of The Enchantment. My movements feel erratic, like an octopus trying to break-dance. Out of my peripheral vision, I notice that my performing fish are still performing. “Stop now, and scatter,” I call to them. All at once, they disperse, and I wonder what the audience on the ship is thinking.
But more than that, I wonder where the heck Rayna went. “Rayna!” I can sense her; she’s just ahead of me. Then I see her. She has Lily in her hands.
I’m so furious, I almost forget that I can’t breathe in the water like she can. Instead, I swallow half the ocean when I open my mouth to yell at her. Sputtering up the salt water, I make my way to Rayna. She doesn’t bother to help close the distance between us, but instead deigns to wait for me to reach her. What I can’t say in words at the moment, I try to express with an indignant glare.
She looks at the doll, then at me. Waving in dismissal, she says, “Might as well get something out of this trip.” Then she grabs my hand and pulls me out to sea.
* * *
It’s been about two hours since we left The Enchantment behind, and also since we’ve spoken to each other. Still, Rayna is my only way back to shore. In a timely manner, that is. I’m sure Galen and Toraf would come looking for me eventually, but after today’s ordeal, I’m exhausted and just want to take a shower and go to bed.