The next phase involved computer specialists. It was widely believed that she was constructing an artificial mind to enslave the human race, but the closest to the project said it was just image analysis. But it was anybody’s guess what she was looking for. These were the darkest times, when she would be seen brooding in front of her mantle of dripping lava. In public, she swung between ecstasy and rages.
Her empire was crumbling, and she didn’t seem to give a damn. She became all consumed in her work, laying off the well oiled team of experts she’d gathered around her. Mob boss Kingsley took over most of her old territory and challenged her with a direct ultimatum. She blew him off.
Then one day, she disappeared completely. The dark granite halls of her volcano island stood empty, to be reclaimed someday by the encroaching magma. Former employees came to see if there was anything worth looting, but Coquette’s last days had been pretty spartan. She’d spent everything on her mad obsession.
But her private aquarium, a wall-spanning pane of glass, was full of mermaids.
* * *
Coquette piloted a small boat into open ocean, over the underwater cliff where the waves broke. Her hydroplane was parked in the lagoon of a tiny, ring-shaped island— one of those Cheerios in the Pacific that’s just big enough for a single-lane road between the ocean and the lagoon, all the way around. Crumbling shacks provided evidence that it had once been inhabited by a clan of surfer-hippies, but that was a long time ago. High tide submerged the island completely, joining the inner and outer seas.
She had the last of her equipment on board— it was a last-ditch effort to find Samantha. She had no idea what to say to her when she found her. “Ha, ha, I had the stone all this time. Here are your legs back.” But whatever Sam said or thought of her, it could hardly compete with Coquette’s own soul-wringing. Gouging her power and wealth from within had been cathartic.
Coquette’s job was made easier by the fact that Sam was traveling with a pod of dolphins these days. When the group was tight-packed, they made a clear ping on sonar, and that corroborated well with the satellite signal. It also helped that Coquette had experience: Sam wasn’t the first mermaid she’d hunted down.
Coquette’s heart caught in her throat when the sonar went blank— they just disappeared. “No,” she uttered, “no, no, no, no, no—” Sometimes they dove too deep. Sometimes they spread too thin. But sometimes— she laughed suddenly— they played on the surface! She could see them, just barely, in the haze of the horizon.
Coquette kicked the engine into high gear and then, thinking better of it, cut it off completely. A motorboat would probably scare them, and then she’d never be able to catch up. “I guess it’s time,” she said aloud. “It’s finally...”
The thought sunk into a stew of mixed feelings.
“Well!” she said, shaking herself out of a funk. “If I don’t hurry, they’ll be gone.” She got undressed in the rocking boat and stood high on its prow, daring the world to gaze upon her. She liked her human body. She thought she looked like an alabaster goddess, cruel and proud. “Well, so much for that,” she said, and rifled through her possessions to take out the only thing she would ever own again. She hitched it around her neck. The fastener had been reinforced.
Already, the pod of leaping dolphins was getting hard to see. She turned the gemstone in her fingers and stared into it. A hard, long look. She felt as though she was falling into it, into the haze of red crystal, into the little shuddering fish egg at its center. And then the familiar feeling: her legs getting wobbly, turning liquid. She leaned forward off the prow and dropped into the water as the transformation took place.
Far away, leaping among the dolphins, Sam must have been feeling the same thing, the same twinge and shimmer as her body came apart. God, I hope she reaches the surface in time, Coquette thought. Swirling water filled her mouth.
All these years, she’d been keeping the gemstone at a distance, careful to avoid its gaze whenever she handled it. She’d forgotten how good it feels to change. That’s what she said to the Coquette— French Coquette— back in that shack of a beach house where they met. “Crap feels like some hot-ass nookie if you ask me!” French Coquette laughed, not comprehending. She was gorgeous, but dumb, like an overgrown child. So happy to get her legs back that she danced around and giggled, fingering herself. Already, a real estate scheme was hatching in Susan’s mind. She decided that Coquette would not get the gemstone back. She’d even take the name.
All that planning, all those years of waiting, accruing capital and then building an empire— she gave it up for Samantha. “God, I must be crazy,” she said with the last of her air.
* * *
As chance would have it, Sam was ten feet above water when the changes hit her. At first, she thought it was the thrill of the leap, but the joy kept flowing— from her shoulders to her knees— long after she plunged back into the water. It had been a long time since she’d thought about her knees.
Her knees! She could feel them with her fingers, knobby in the soft clay of her limbs transforming themselves. In a gasp, she lost her air and fumbled with her arms to reach the surface. She burst through, took a deep breath, and was promptly splashed in the face by an oncoming wave. She dunked underwater— couldn’t see clearly— but the tail was definitely splitting, shrinking, and buckling into jointed legs.
At first she was elated. Someone must have found the gemstone! Someone sifting through old police records— maybe Andrew finally got his stuff back. But then she realized she was naked and alone in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
“Fuck.”
Of course someone would find it! How could she have been so stupid? She should have hugged the coast, never out of sight of land, always some distance that she could swim with human legs, if the unthinkable were to happen. All she could see here was sea and sky. She turned and tread water. Sea and sky. Turned again. Sea and sky. No land in sight anywhere. No ships, no travellers, not even any goddamn airplanes.
“Shit!”
One by one, the dolphins brushed past her and turned away. There were stories of dolphins saving humans, leading them to safety, and she was good friends with this pod. They knew her and bonded with her. But they knew her as a mermaid. As much as they were willing to take her in as a curious new type of creature, the transformation had been too much, too strange for them. They left.
Or perhaps it was because she could no longer answer them when they sang.
By the time they had all scattered, Sam was beginning to shiver. It was the south freaking Pacific. It should be warm, she insisted through her chattering teeth. Or maybe I’m in shock.
“Calm down,” she told herself. “Just... just float on your back.” She tried it and the sun got in her eyes. She felt so exposed, too. No more clothed than she had been as a mermaid, but much more vulnerable.
Something poked out of the water. A fin. “God, no. Sharks?” By this point, her misfortunes stacked so high as to be comical. She couldn’t outrun a shark anymore. She couldn’t do much of anything anymore. What are you supposed to do if a shark attacks? Poke it in the eyes?
Another fin sighting. She was done for. Sam closed her eyes and tried to remember a childhood prayer. She was certain she was going to die.
If Coquette had known Sam’s state of mind, she probably wouldn’t have run up and hugged her, or the mermaid equivalent, which was snatching you from underneath a rapidly following wave. Despite Sam’s calm in the moments leading up to her death, she freaked out and fought for blood when it came upon her. Coquette was confused among the splashes and flailing limbs and finally got enough distance to shout, “Sam!”
Sam stopped immediately. Sharks don’t talk. “Coq— ” A wave took her full in the face. She swam with all her might to get to Coquette and hug her tight.
Coquette’s guilt, long-brewed and wretched, drained away in that embrace. It was so good t
o be with her. Much to her own surprise, she cried hot tears into Sam’s shoulder.
“Where were you?” Sam blubbered. She was well above the uneven water now, hoisted up by slow strokes of Coquette’s long tail.
“Had to— make sure— you’re all— right—”
Sam felt the column of scales between her knees and clenched. “Are you— you found the gemstone?”
Coquette pulled herself away and nodded, blinking off tears. She held the necklace above water. It was beaded with seven stones, all different shades of red, all different roughnesses and textures, some worn to a smooth oval, others cut sharp like a diamond.
“You found them? You found them all?”
Coquette nodded.
Sam hugged her again, feeling the warmth of her body pressing against Coquette’s body. “Oh, you silly fish! We only needed two!”
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