by D. M. George
“Oh, there’s someone I’d like you to meet. Perla, come here.”
Perla stepped out of the shadows as if in a trance. Matteo screamed.
“You’re dead! How can…?” His voice garbled—a squeal followed by a snort.
Circe stepped back. “Watch… You’re going to love this!”
Matteo’s wincing face sprouted black bristles and shot forward into a long snout; his clothes exploded as his body tripled in size and he dropped to his hands and knees, which had truncated into cloven hooves. He had morphed into a giant Cinta Senese hog with a wide white stripe behind his shoulders, just like the others.
“You asked me earlier how my pigs get so fat. I castrate them a year before they’re butchered.” She grinned wickedly.
The hog, formerly known as Matteo, shrieked in horror and ran away, crashing through the hedges and knocking over planters.
Perla also shrieked and ran in the opposite direction.
“You’re welcome!” Circe shouted after her, followed by peals of laughter.
Perla tore through the house and across the lawn to rescue Luca. The wandering musicians continued to play through the eerie quiet. Except for amorous sounds coming from under one of the tables, all conversation had ceased. Sleeping guests draped themselves over the chairs and love seats, some sprawled out on the lawn, but most remained at their tables, slumped over and snoring.
Luca’s chair was empty. Perla spun around—where was he? She recognized the flyaway hair of a man standing at the buffet table. A waiter piled food onto his plate with a long spoon. Perla ran to Luca and swatted the plate out of his hand. “Don’t eat that! It might be someone you know.” She gripped his elbow. “Luca, we have to get out of here, now! Circe is a witch. She turned a man into a pig!”
“Perla, did you drink any wine?” Luca chided.
“Only two sips, but I’m not drunk. You have to believe me.”
“I warned you… You’re just having a bad reaction.”
“We’re going—now!” Perla fetched Luca’s lyre and cane and dragged him back to the circular driveway in front of the mansion, just in time for the ten p.m. departure.
The bus idled in a cloud of diesel exhaust with its lights on. Perla rapped on the doors and they opened. Two nearby pigs tried desperately to board after them, but their bodies were too stout and their legs too short to make it up the stairs. The bus driver pushed them back with his foot and cranked the doors shut.
Half the seats inside the bus were filled with sleeping guests; others sat with glazed expressions, humming contentedly to themselves. Perla took a seat and pulled Luca in beside her. She peered down from the open window into the beseeching faces of the two pigs who had attempted to come inside. They grunted the same two-syllable sound the other pigs had made earlier in the evening.
But this time she understood their words: “Help me! Help me!”
Parthenope’s Cave
“Last night was horrible… fascinatingly horrible. One moment Matteo was a man and the next he was a snorting, squealing pig. I won’t forget his face for as long as I live. Another Campari spritz?” Perla asked Parthenope, who swirled ice in her paper cup, fascinated by it.
Perla scooted to the edge of Parthenope’s rock to pull her kayak closer; her kayak-turned-minibar. A bottle of Campari, a bottle of prosecco, a can of club soda, some lemon-rind twists, and ice were packed inside the cooler—all the ingredients to mix Parthenope a proper cocktail, one she didn’t have to drink out of a bottle.
“The thought of little strips of his flesh sizzling in a frying pan or wrapped around a piece of mozzarella is very satisfying—although I’ll never eat prosciutto again.” She had no remorse for Matteo whatsoever; the man had tried to kill her.
“Men… are… pigs.” They chanted Parthenope’s mantra and burst into laughter.
Perla noticed Parthenope wasn’t her usual perfect self. She appeared gaunt rather than slim. Fine lines creased her brow, and several small patches of scales were missing from her tail. Instead of her elaborate coif, Parthenope wore her hair unadorned in a simple braid that would have touched her knees if she had any. She needs to cut back on her drinking, Perla thought. She emptied her cup and mixed herself another cocktail.
“Were all the pigs on Circe’s farm once criminals?”
“Wife beaters, child molesters, former customers, ex-lovers, obnoxious tourists… basically any man who crosses her.”
“And she always gets away with it?”
“Always. She’s very clever. Probably pushed the fool’s car off the cliff—she’s done it before. She brags about it when she brings me alcohol.”
“She brings you booze?”
“Only when I’m desperate. I can’t exactly go shopping like this,” Parthenope said, glancing down at her exposed breasts. “Or with these.” She rippled the water with the tips of her fins.
“Sometimes she does other favors too. I pay her in lobster.” Parthenope kept staring at the ice in her cup. “Your invitation cost me a boatload of lobsters. I guess she gets tired of eating pork.”
The cerulean-blue water lapped soothingly against the rocks.
“I almost forgot,” Perla said, digging through her satchel. She removed a paper bag and handed it to Parthenope.
“What is it?”
“Open it!”
Parthenope unfolded a pink tank top, held it up in front of her, and read the words DON’T MESS WITH PARTHENOPE written across the front. “Where did you get this?”
“In Sorrento this morning at a souvenir shop. They custom print while you wait.”
“What does it mean?”
“It means you won’t back down, that you can take care of yourself. I bought it so you can cover yourself when you want to. You’ll attract less of the wrong kind of attention.”
“How thoughtful,” Parthenope said and pulled the tank top on. It fit perfectly over her pert breasts and ended above her navel. “This looks ridiculous on me, but I’ll wear it for you.” She laughed.
“You’ll still drive men wild but might get hassled a little less,” Perla said. “Speaking of men, I have a date on Tuesday.”
Parthenope eyed her narrowly.
“I met a man on a snorkeling trip to Ischia. He’s a gentleman—not a pig at all—and very funny.”
“I doubt it,” Parthenope replied tartly.
“Gentlemen do exist… What about you? Have you ever loved a man?”
The question seemed to startle Parthenope. After a moment’s consideration, she said, “Besides my father, no. But I came close twice. Centuries ago, I became acquainted with a Saracen pirate who frequented the area. He had a handsomeness and brutality I admired, but it didn’t end well… I had to eat him. And back in 1901, I met an artist whom I adored. He was a decent man.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I came up from underwater right here, as I do every morning, and began combing my hair. He was sitting over there.” Parthenope pointed to a spot in the near distance. “I wasn’t paying attention and had been sunning myself awhile, my tail completely exposed, before the sound of charcoal scratching on paper gave him away. He seemed neither amazed nor alarmed to have discovered a mermaid. It didn’t make sense until I saw the bottle of absinthe at his side. I understood its mind-altering effects and surmised he considered me a hallucination.”
Parthenope took a sip of her cocktail. “I remember saying to him, ‘I’m not a hallucination,’ and he replied, ‘Ah, my green fairy speaks. Do you mind if I draw you?’ I agreed on the condition he share his absinthe with me.”
“Did you eat him too, when the absinthe was gone?”
“No. He brought a bottle every day for two weeks, but that wasn’t the reason I spared him. He appreciated my beauty artistically, not sexually—an entirely new experience for me. He called me his muse, and he never touched me or said anything lewd. We talked for hours. I pressed him for news about the world and grew very fond of him.”
“What finally
happened?”
“He finished his painting and went home to England.” The corners of Parthenope’s mouth drooped more than usual.
“Did you ever see him again?”
“No, but it’s just as well. My relationships with men are doomed. I can’t live on land and they can’t live in water.” She raised her paper cup high and blinked her oversized aqua eyes. “Alcohol is my lover.”
“Oh please…” Perla set down her drink, climbed to the highest point of the rock, and stood there teetering. “Don’t be so maudlin. You once told me to stop pitying myself, now you need to do the same. I challenge you to a duel—who can make the biggest splash?”
Perla raised her arms above her head, bowed, and in a sports announcer’s voice said, “…and now we have two-time national jackknife champion, Perla Palazzo, from the United States, going for the gold…” Perla vaulted off the rock into a thigh-slapping jackknife.
“Disgraceful,” Parthenope said when Perla resurfaced.
She pushed herself off the rock and darted beneath the water in a green streak. A few seconds later she erupted like a waterspout, flew over Perla’s head, and slapped her tail so hard upon landing that she drenched Perla in a mini-tsunami.
Parthenope emerged, laughing. “I win.”
They faced each other, treading water. Parthenope’s undulating fins felt like silk scarves when they brushed against Perla’s legs. She felt like a guppy in the presence of a fantail goldfish.
“Let’s go swimming,” Perla said. “I want to try out my new gills.”
“Just push the heels of your hands together like I told you and they’ll appear.”
“Like this?” Perla made a praying motion, and the skin in her armpits separated like a bandage being pulled off. Without further effort, the gills sucked in cold water.
“Wow, this feels so weird and so cool.” She inspected the layers of red membranes flaring under her arms.
“Want to see my home?” Parthenope asked.
“What home?”
“You don’t think I sit on this rock all night?”
Perla had never thought about it.
Parthenope handed her the end of her long braid. “Hold on!”
She dove deep, towing Perla behind. They shot through the water with each powerful sweep of her tail.
Wavering tentacles of sunlight lit up the water like a disco ball. Wonderstruck, Perla wished she could capture the moment in a worry-bead of joy to keep in her pocket and relive by simply touching it. She recalled the creek she’d played in as a child during the summer months. She had loved swimming underwater, pretending to be a fish in the mysterious moss-furred world around her. And now she was living the dream, in the company of a mermaid no less.
Five, maybe ten minutes later, Parthenope pulled Perla through a shadowy crevice between two boulders. They surfaced inside a living-room-size cavern illuminated by sunlight filtering through narrow fissures in the ceiling.
“Up this way.”
Parthenope inchwormed herself onto a submerged aluminum beach chaise in a partially reclined position. She sat chest-deep underwater and rested her forearms on the chipped plastic armrests.
“Make yourself comfortable.” She pointed to a heap of dried fishnets to the side of the chaise.
Perla rotated in place, inspecting Parthenope’s refuge. “What the heck, Parthenope?”
The room didn’t resemble a fish tank decoration at all. There was no shell throne and no treasure chest overflowing with gold coins, jewels, and strands of pearls. Instead, the room resembled a homeless encampment, strewn with flotsam scavenged from the water’s edge: an empty cooler tipped on its side; a tangled pile of sunglasses, some with missing lenses; a clutter of moldy hats; several rusted cameras and cell phones; wrinkled paperbacks and magazines spread out on the floor to dry; and a midden of broken bottles in the corner.
“You should fire your interior decorator,” Perla said, lowering herself gingerly onto the moldy nets. Thoughts of small, sharp pinchers pricked her skin.
Parthenope shrugged. “I didn’t expect visitors today, or ever. You’re the first one.”
“Is that my air mattress over there?” Perla said, pointing to the deflated pile of plastic that had ferried her into Parthenope’s life.
“Yes.” Parthenope shrugged again.
“Why did you keep it?”
“I don’t know.” Parthenope picked at her nails.
A long, awkward silence followed.
“You scared the hell out of me at first,” Perla said. “But I’m glad we’re friends.”
“Me too. You accept me as I am.”
“Don’t you have other mermaid friends?”
“I did in the past, but over the centuries they killed themselves, one by one.”
“Why?”
“Loneliness… What do you want to do now?” Parthenope asked.
Perla paused, then replied, “Hear the rest of your story. You ditched me right at the part where you were thrown off Tiberius’s Leap. How did you survive? How did you become a mermaid?”
“I didn’t survive, not entirely, and I became a mermaid against my will.” Parthenope rolled her shoulders, lowered the back of the chaise to a more comfortable angle, closed her eyes, and resumed the story of her stolen childhood.
Sabina’s Story, Part Two
Tiberius’s Leap, Capri AD 32
When consciousness returned, Sabina sat next to her mangled body—an untethered soul. She felt the rocks beneath her but couldn’t see her hands and feet. Invisible tears ran down her invisible face. Blood trickled from her corpse’s dented head. Above her loomed the cliff wall she’d bounced down before landing on the narrow, boulder-strewn beach. Her broken limbs twisted at grotesque angles. Her mother’s white dress lay in shreds, stained with blood and dirt.
Why hadn’t she obeyed her father? Who would take care of him now? Was she doomed for eternity, alone and invisible? A whiff of death brought her attention to the skeletons and desiccated bodies scattered nearby.
“Nooooo!” she screamed to herself and collapsed into great, heaving sobs.
The wind abruptly stopped blowing. Sabina sat up and looked around. An eerie calm settled around her. She’d seen all kinds of weather as a fisherman’s daughter, but nothing like this.
Several heads emerged from the water in front of her, crowned with branches of red coral, followed by the beautiful, smiling faces of pale young women. The Nereid sisters? The mythical sea nymphs her father had told her stories about? They wore sheer white gowns that clung to their nubile bodies and climbed onto the rocks around Sabina like invading sand crabs.
In no time, all fifty of them were singing, their voices joined in celestial harmony. The words made no sense to Sabina, but the song had a haunting beauty. Even without a body, she tingled inside. Abruptly the Nereids turned as one out to sea. Something broke through the surface thirty, maybe forty feet away, rising out of the water and moving toward her. Above the waist, the creature appeared a lanky youth with kelp-colored hair, but below the waist he was a fish with a long eel’s tail. He stopped in front of Sabina, treading water with snakelike motions, placed a huge conch shell to his lips, and blew a long, plaintive note. This must be Triton, she thought and trembled with the realization of whose approach he had just announced.
Triton and the Nereids focused their attention on a disturbance in the water. A hundred yards out, the flat surface swirled in a wide circle, faster and faster until the center fell away and formed a huge whirlpool. In a flash of white manes and golden hooves, four bridled horses rose from the center, pulling a silver chariot. They snorted and neighed as they galloped onto the surface, propelled forward by their mighty fishtails. The chariot’s driver came into view. He held the reins in one hand and a long-handled trident in the other. Pods of dolphins flanked him, spinning through the air in celebratory leaps. It was King Poseidon himself.
To Sabina, he looked about her father’s age, although much taller and more muscular.
A laurel of golden leaves tilted jauntily on his head, ropes of gold chains hung from his neck, and a red cloak, mysteriously dry, twisted over one shoulder and wrapped around his waist. A faint green glow emanated from the staff of his trident.
Poseidon’s horses stopped.
Triton blew his conch shell a second time and announced in a clarion voice, “Behold His Greatness, Poseidon, god of the sea, master of floods, droughts, and earthquakes, and creator of horses.”
“Thank you, son.” Poseidon stepped from his chariot onto the backs of two dolphins, who ferried him the remaining distance to shore. Once on dry land, he adjusted the folds of his red cloak, flipped back his long hair, and strode before Sabina. He stared directly into the eyes of her spirit.
“Hark, Sabina, daughter of Marcus, worthy steward of the sea. My Nereids announced your untimely death.” He scratched his beard and examined her. His stern expression melted like butter on a warm day. “Verily, they said you were Parthenope incarnate, and by the gods on Olympus, you are!”
“The mermaid?” Sabina asked in a shaky whisper, unnerved by his ability to see her.
“My greatest love—a sorrow never forgotten.”
Poseidon knelt before Sabina’s corpse, eyes watering. He gently touched her body with the center prong of his trident. Her corpse quivered as the wounds healed themselves: bones clicked back into place, limbs straightened, abrasions scabbed over and flaked off. In less than a minute, her flawless, petal-soft skin had completely regenerated. Sabina’s battered face shimmered momentarily, like a mirage, and her beautiful visage returned. Poseidon lifted the back of her head and stroked its long, shiny hair.
“I confess I was bound by the sweet influences of Parthenope’s sister, Ligeia. Under the dark counsel of excessive wine, Parthenope discovered us… in a passionate embrace. The double betrayal stole her will to live, and she drowned herself. I did not find her body in time to resurrect her.” Poseidon looked at Sabina’s spirit as he spoke, regret twisting his face.