~
I prepared to die as they dragged me deeper and deeper under the water. My ears ached with the pressure and my lungs felt as though they would burst. The physical pain was nothing compared to the overwhelming sorrow. I sobbed silently as we descended. I cried for Ethan and my dad; I mourned for all the people I loved that I’d never see again. My vision darkened and I exhaled one last time, welcoming oblivion. I inhaled water, and the shock to my lungs doubled me over.
The two mermaids held me tightly by the wrists and smiled with merciless charm as I struggled. I coughed, and bubbles of air rose to the surface. Water flowed in and out of my lungs, icy cold and dense. My ears stopped hurting as the air drained out of me, replaced by freezing cold water. I looked back at them, incredulous. I was breathing underwater, just as they did. It felt almost familiar, like some vestigial memory of being in the womb. My body no longer registered the cold as the water flowed in and out, equalizing my temperature.
My eyesight, at first blurry, began to clear. The mermaids holding me came into sharp focus and the water no longer felt heavy flowing across my eyes. My hands and feet began to tingle.
We continued to descend until the sunlight could no longer penetrate the depths. Something strange began to happen to the mermaid’s skin. What had been pale and reflective in the light was now luminous and glowing. They were phosphorescent, casting their own light into the black abyss. The moving reflection of a sheer rock wall was the only clue that we continued to descend. We finally reached the bottom of a kind of cavern, a circular chamber with vertical rock walls.
Ethan had told me that just off of our coastline lie some of the deepest ocean waters on earth; an undersea canyon under extreme pressure, far too deep for divers to penetrate. He explained how robotic submersibles had recorded strange, undiscovered sea life that was as alien as if it had just arrived from outer space. I remembered the awe in his voice as he speculated on the mysteries hidden in the ocean’s unexplored trenches. And now I’d been taken to some kind of mermaid council in the deepest part of it.
I was brought to the center of the cavern, watching in a daze as a few dozen mermaids began to drift in, hovering in a circle around me. They truly were majestic creatures, all of them young and powerful with brilliantly glowing hair framing beautiful, delicate faces. They all had perfectly formed torsos that morphed into gloriously finned tails, sparkling with their own light.
They viewed me with childlike wonder, each one wanting to reach out and touch my hair, face and wet suit. They didn’t seem to know the wetsuit wasn’t my skin and pinched and pulled at it, confused.
They seemed most fascinated with my feet, and poked at them, examining my toes with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. I flinched away from their touches, still restrained by the pair that had dragged me down. I kicked their hands away, and as the shock started to wear off I became increasingly aggravated, offended by their rudeness.
My courage rose along with my temper, giving me renewed strength to defy them. I became furiously angry, and I drew power from it. I twisted and turned, trying to break their grip, screaming watery screams. I thought about Ethan urging me to fight and redoubled my efforts. One of them found the zipper pull and they peeled back the wetsuit, tearing away at my clothes until I was stripped bare.
I could see them fighting with each other over each garment, putting their arms in the sweater backwards and pulling the skirt on over their heads. Two of them fought over the wetsuit in a vicious tug of war; another was trying to pull my tights onto her fin. In the eerie glow of luminous mermaid light the scene was comically surrealistic.
“Stop it! Let go of me!” I yelled, and the swimming ones looked at me in wide-eyed amazement, backing off.
“She can talk! She can talk!” Their bell-like voices echoed off the rock walls. I looked around, wondering what they had in store for me. I had been willing to sacrifice my life, but now the will to live rose up in me like a phoenix springing from a bed of smoldering ashes. I saw Ethan’s devastated face in my mind, and I knew I had to get back to the surface. I had to get back to him. I tried to free my wrists from the vise-like grip of the mermaids, but they were far too strong.
“What are you holding me for? What do you think I’m going to do?” I asked the ones on each side of me. They were confused, as though they had difficulty thinking for themselves.
“Who’s in charge? Who’s your leader?”
I felt like I was in a bad science fiction movie.
All the ringing voices seemed to stop at once as the mermaids lined up against the cavern walls. There was a palpable change in the atmosphere; my scalp tingled and my hair stood on end. They all looked expectantly in one direction, and I followed suit, craning my neck to see what was coming our way.
A solo mermaid came floating in, smiling tranquilly. She seemed to make little effort to move, swanning into the room with an air of authority. Her glowing yellow hair fanned out, giving her an angelic glow. She was as young and beautiful as all the rest, but the way they deferred to her told me this one was different.
“Hey you!” I yelled to her, “tell them to let go of me!” She laughed with delight and circled around, studying me. Nodding to the others, she turned and floated to a perch high up on the wall. The two that held me released my arms and drifted away into the crowd.
I was fuming as I floated there, neither rising nor sinking, suspended in the still black water. I glared at the ring of glowing mermaids and addressed the lead one.
“What do you want from me?” I demanded, my voice shaking. I was humiliated, naked and angry.
“You are Marina, born of Adria.”
“Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. “Who are you?”
“I am Naida.”
“What do you want with me, Naida?” I demanded to know.
“Adria is no more,” she said.
I nodded. “She died.”
“Her life force is now yours. You will become one of the sisterhood and her gift will become yours.”
“What gift?” I asked suspiciously, not sure I wanted it.
“You will be as the tides and the moon; you will live as one of us.”
I shuddered at the thought of living in this dark watery world. “No! I don’t want to stay. I want to go back.” I thought about the sacrifice I would need to make. “Please let me go home. What can I give you to let me go home?”
She leaned forward with a stern look on her stunning face. “You are one of us and now you must swim with us.”
My hands started to itch and I held them up to see webbing forming between my fingers. The itching spread to my feet.
“Nooo!” I screamed as loudly as I could. The briny water rushed out of my lungs and with each inhalation I began to feel less and less human.
A blinding pain started at the base of my neck and traveled through each vertebra down my back. I looked in absolute horror to see my legs were beginning to merge from the thighs down. I could feel the long bones of my legs melding into an extension of my spine, making a terrible grinding sound like the gnashing of a thousand teeth. I don’t know how long I floated there, writhing in complete agony.
The pain slowly subsided, and my head began to clear. My first thought was to run, to get away from this place and all the chattering mermaids. I looked down to see a magnificent fin where my feet should have been. I must have gone into shock as I smoothed my hands down my… scales!
I ran, or actually swam away, faster than I ever thought possible. The sensation was like nothing I could have imagined. Even in my most fanciful swimming dreams I could never have conjured up the feeling of the water, the speed, the agility. The absolute and total freedom and power was seductive. I was one with the ocean and I could feel its force and power flow through me. No human was meant to know such wonder.
I paused and held up my hand, examining my shimmering skin and the fine mesh of sparkling webbing that had formed between my fingers. It felt like a dream, but in the recesses of m
y mind I accepted the reality that my transformation was complete. I fled again, swimming blindly. Somehow, if I was fast enough, I thought I might run away from myself, from having to admit what I’d become.
My brain felt like it was in a fog, sedated by a pleasant dream of swimming as one with the flowing water. I started to feel comfortable in my new abilities and when I looked down, my tail didn’t seem odd at all. I was strong, and I felt invincible. I could imagine living in this watery realm forever, swimming freely without any human concerns. I was flying, soaring in a liquid sky, innocent as an animal.
A distant memory of the sun shining in the sky spurred me to start swimming upwards. When my head broke the surface, I looked up to see that the storm had passed and the sky was lit with a bright moon. Disoriented and dazed, I could feel the glowing orb’s irresistible pull tugging at every cell in my body.
Many heads popped up next to me and I realized that they had all been following me.
Naida’s face appeared alongside me. “Marina, now do you see? This is where you belong. This is your birthright.”
I looked up at the moon again, and then across the horizon where I saw other lights. I had surfaced near the harbor, and I could see a warm yellow glow coming from all the houses along the shoreline. I recognized Ethan’s apartment building with a shock. My human heart skipped a beat, and the ocean forces that were taking me over weakened a tiny bit. I thought about Ethan’s face and voice and started to reclaim my ability to think. I started to remember my human life, and I clung to the memory with all my might.
I had to get back, had to change back somehow before I was totally lost in the dream of the ocean. I felt like I was trying to shake off a powerful addiction. Voices in my head whispered that I should stay, that I was finally where I belonged. I had to make it back before my mind was completely befuddled by the power of the moon and the tide. I thought of my father, of Evie and Abby. I remembered Cruz and Megan, my home and my life on land.
“Naida,” I said with desperate intensity. “I must go back. It’s wonderful here, but I can never be happy without the people I love.”
“Marina, think carefully,” she said as she circled me. “If you go, you must give up your gift.”
I nodded. Ethan, I thought, Ethan. He was the only thing that kept me clinging to sanity.
“I want to go back. I have to go back,” I said with absolute conviction.
She looked at me with narrowed eyes and motioned for me to follow her back underwater. We swam towards the chamber where I had transformed. The thought occurred to me that this spot held some sort of power, some significance to them. I hurried after her. When we reached the chamber she reclaimed the high perch she had sat upon before.
The rest of the mermaids filed in, uncharacteristically quiet.
Naida scrutinized me. “Our kind has been hunted and abused by the humans. They show no gratitude for our many kindnesses to them. They slaughter our precious pets. They lure our sisters away from home, never to be seen again. Why must you return to them?”
I thought about how to explain it to her. “I’m as much human as I am mermaid. I need my human family, and I can’t live without them.”
“We must confer,” she said and closed her eyes in concentration. I looked around in amazement to see all the others had done the same. I thought about Megan’s insight about mermaid telepathy. She had been dead-on; the mermaids could obviously read each other’s minds.
Naida snapped her head up and opened her eyes. She was the messenger, the mouthpiece for their communal brain.
“We have decided to grant your request on one condition. Is this your final choice?” she asked.
“Yes!” I nodded frantically. “I want to go back home,” I said seriously. “On land,” I added, just in case.
“The decision that you make is what ended Adria,” she warned, her voice harsh.
I swallowed hard. “I know.”
“You have to forsake the gift that your mother has left behind for you. We cannot stop you, but we will grant you fifty moons to make a final choice,” she said.
“I don’t understand. What gift?”
“The gift of eternal life.”
I was shocked, trying to wrap my mind around the concept. My mother had given up immortality to be with my father and take a chance on motherhood. I wondered if she understood what that meant. As she lay dying, did she have any regrets about her choice? It was as sad as anything I could imagine.
So I could choose to live forever. Now I understood how my mother had known Stella, and what Lorelei meant about the moon and tides. They were things that went on and on, they were eternal, but what were they compared to love?
Naida swam around me as I made my choice. “If you give up the gift, you must suffer the change back right now.”
I could tell she thought I’d be afraid of the pain.
I steeled myself, and looked her squarely in the eyes. I was brought up as a human, knowing that someday I would die. I was raised with the sun and the wind, with the seasons changing. I expected to see birth and death. I would do anything to see Ethan again. There was no hesitation.
“I want to change back. I want to go home,” I said firmly.
She looked surprised and a little annoyed. “You will be allowed to return to the others,” she announced loudly. “But after fifty moons the change back will no longer be possible. You will be giving up a life of eternal peace and beauty.” She leaned in to stare at me intensely. “AND YOU WILL DIE.”
A familiar face came out of the crowd. It was Lorelei, and she looked sad.
“Marina, why don’t you want to be with your sisters?” she whimpered.
“Lorelei, I’ll always be your sister–only I’ll live on the land.”
She knit her glowing brows together in sorrow. “I wanted to show you my home.”
“Lorelei, please,” I said gently, afraid I might say the wrong thing. “I want to be with my family. My human family. I can’t live without them.” She frowned and I continued, “I have to go back now.”
Lorelei looked to Naida for instructions. I held my watery breath for a moment, praying she would allow me to leave. Some imperceptible signal passed between them and Lorelei came forward, taking my arm.
“Will you still come to see me?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said. “We can go wave riding together.” Lorelei laughed with delight at the prospect, a chorus of tinkling bells. “Please take me home now,” I pleaded. She nodded and pulled me alongside her, slowly swimming upwards.
As we started our ascent, I went limp with relief. I hadn’t realized how hard I was fighting to keep a hold on my human side, and I could barely think to move my fin. I looked back down on the glowing chamber as we slowly ascended; it looked like a constellation in the sky.
So I had fifty moons to choose whether or not to return to this watery world. There was no denying the powerful pull of the ultimate return to nature. There was also no denying the power of my love for Ethan. I closed my eyes and saw his face, holding onto the image with all my might.
Our heads burst into the fresh air of a new morning. Had I really been under the sea all night? All sense of time had vanished in the black underwater world, and I remembered that day and night meant nothing to mermaids. Their world existed without the warm rays of the sun moving across the beautiful blue sky, clouds, wind and air. They had only the pull of the moon and the tides to regulate their world.
The whole thing seemed like a dream. I looked down at the delicate webbing linking my fingers and knew that it was real. We swam to the end of the pier and it was odd to see the cement boat from a mermaid’s perspective. I grabbed onto a broken chunk of concrete and started to cough up water. My hands and tail began the now familiar tingling. With each ragged intake of air I started to become more and more human.
I gathered my courage for the unbelievable pain of transformation. Lorelei kept hold of my arm as I suffered the torture of the change back. Every
fiber of my body screamed in pain as I looked into Lorelei’s worried eyes through a haze of enormous suffering. I knew that with every fresh wave of agony I was closer to being with Ethan and I bore it with barely a whimper. I felt my legs slice through the water and looked down, relieved to see my human form restored.
Lorelei started to swim me ashore, a melancholy look on her face. The storm had passed, and the pink light of dawn was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I could see the beach now, decorated with a fresh layer of kelp and driftwood from the storm.
We continued on until I felt the sand beneath my newly formed feet. Lorelei let go of my arm and I turned to thank her. It was a fresh new day, and I felt like I was being reborn. I waded out of the surf and fell to my knees on the sand, coughing until I ejected the last few droplets from my lungs. I felt like the luckiest girl in the world, and I was so happy I laughed out loud.
I shivered in the clear morning air. I was cold and I was naked, but I was alive. A few short hours ago I had faced down death, and given up an immortal life under the sea to come back home. I didn’t care who saw me; I had to get to Ethan.
An elderly gentleman walking a waddling little pug along the shoreline looked up as I approached him with a wry smile. His eyes flew open wide with surprise when he took me in.
“Excuse me sir,” I asked, “but may I borrow your sweater?” He took it off slowly and handed it to me in stunned silence.
“Keep it,” was all he said.
I wrapped myself up, pulling it down as best I could, and headed home as fast as my tender feet could take me.
The Jaguar was in the driveway when I reached Abby’s charming little house. I burst in the door, surprising a tired, drawn-looking Cruz.
“Marina!” he cried, rushing to look at me, eyes as big as saucers. “Oh my God! Where did you come from?” We embraced and he drew back, looking me over. “That sweater’s hella ugly!”
I laughed with the sheer joy of being alive and gave him another big hug. “I love you!” I cried.
“What happened?” he asked, clearly in shock. “Ethan said they drowned you!”
“I’m back–I got away. Where is he?” I asked. “I have to go find him.” I ran down the hall to put some clothes on and raced back out to find Cruz trying to call Abby. He was having trouble with the hospital switchboard and hung up in exasperation.
“Ethan was at the hospital when I left. He’s been blaming himself all night. Abby stayed behind with Dutch. My God Marina! She’s a wreck–she was about to call your dad …”
“Is Dutch OK?” I asked.
“He’s fine–it’s Ethan I’d be worried about,” said Cruz.
“I have to find him right now!” I felt like my heart would burst with joy. “I’m finally free! I’ll tell you what happened later.” I left Cruz with a hug and a flurry of kisses before I raced out the door.
“Drive careful!” he called after me. He needn’t have worried.
I wasn’t about to take any chances with my newborn life.
~
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
REUNION