“I’d gotten maybe six or seven blocks away, far outside of my usual walkabout area, when I saw something glimmering in the air in a little wooded area off the side of the road. I went to investigate. When I walked into the shimmer, I found myself not in the little copse of trees I’d seen from the road, but in a strange, heavily forested land. There were ‘people’ there who didn’t look quite right. Some had blue, green, or bright yellow skins. Some had wings. Some had pointed ears. They seemed very tall to me, but all adults did then.”
Telling the story, I saw it again in my mind’s eye. Felt again the wonder I’d felt as a child when they’d gather around me, seeming to be as fascinated with me as I was with them. There had been a sound like a crack of thunder, though the day was clear and sunny, and a tall, beautiful woman with purple skin dressed in what I now know is chainmail strode through the throng to me. She didn’t say anything, only looked me over as if taking my measure and placed her palm on my forehead. It had felt like my whole body—every bone, muscle, cell, and drop of blood—had been fast asleep and had suddenly woken. I’d started singing, of all things. The people were all laughing and clapping their hands as they pushed me out of the sparkling place and back into the wood. The next moment, I’d found myself back in my bedroom at home.
“Touched by the spirits,” Lady said.
I shrugged. “When I told my mother, she looked stricken a moment and then said that couldn’t have happened because I’d been in my bedroom taking a nap for the last hour. She’d checked on me several times and knew I was there. Even after I’d looked in the mirror and seen that my hair had changed color, Mom acted as if nothing was different. When family friends or strangers would remark on the color, Mom ignored it off as if she hadn’t heard them.”
“Your parents pretended nothing had changed?”
“My mother did and my father mostly went along with her wishes. But he did let slip one time that it wasn’t just my hair color that had changed. I had changed. Come back too sure of myself.” I laughed without humor. “For a while, according to Dad, mother joked she was sure I was a changeling and not her daughter at all.”
Lady’s interest perked up. “Are you a changeling?”
Did a changeling know it wasn’t the original, I wondered. That it had been swapped?
“No. It was just her way of coping. I was too much like them to be anything other than their natural-born daughter.”
Lady steepled her fingers and rested her chin on their pinnacle. “What do you think happened that day in the woods?”
“I don’t know. But I was different after that. I could feel things. Random things like whether a rug is old or a modern reproduction. Yours is old. And I could control the elements—fire, water, air, and earth.”
Lady nodded. “Yes. I saw a small demonstration of that earlier.”
The first time I’d control an element, it had scared the living shit out of me. I was ten years old—long after the day the chainmail lady had touched me—and on a field trip to the tide pools with my school class. Someone, I didn’t remember exactly who anymore, said, “Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a cave in the cliff?” which was behind us. “We could hide in there,” my classmate had said, “and give old Mr. Clarkston a fright.”
At ten, that seemed a hilarious idea. I’d focused on a spot on the hillside that I thought was where the top of the cave opening should be and sort of mentally traced out the cave’s mouth in my mind. The earth began to crumble. It crumbled in exactly the shape I’d mapped out. I knew it was my doing without knowing how I knew or how I was doing it. I managed to make it stop, again without really understanding the how of things.
I tried to control different things after that, and when I discovered it was the four elements, I practiced controlling them until I was as good at it as I am now.
But Lady didn’t need to hear that bit of my history.
I fell silent a moment. “That’s my story.”
She tilted her head slightly. “Why you?”
That was the big question, the one that sometimes left me sleepless. Was I chosen or was it happenstance? Would anyone who’d wandered into the wood that day have had the same experience? The same change? Was there a reason to give me these powers or was it simply someone’s idea of a joke? Not a very funny one if it was. Not to me.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Lady tapped one manicured fingernail against her desk as if thinking, and then seemed to make up her mind about something.
“Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve won the position. You start tomorrow, nine o’clock sharp. I don’t tolerate lateness.”
I cleared my throat. “What, exactly, does the job entail?”
She smiled and leaned across the desk toward to me. “Hunting. You’re going to love it.”
Hunting was a broad mandate.
Before I could ask, Hunting what? Lady pulled a Montblanc pen—a much more expensive version of the ones we’d used to write our ‘eyewitness reports’—and a piece of what looked like thick, expensive writing paper from a desk drawer.
“What’s your name?” she asked as she wrote something on the paper.
“Shayna Greene,” I said. “Shay.”
“Well, Shayna,” she said, handing me the paper with an address now written on it, “I believe we will have a fruitful collaboration.”
4
Was it buyer’s remorse?
On the way home—and it took a while since the freeway was jammed as usual—I wondered about Lady. I knew there were a myriad of weird things in the world that most people were unaware of, but a goddess? The goddess of California? That was a bit farfetched even for me—and I was someone with silver-gray hair and superpowers granted by whatever it was I’d run into in the wood. I’d worked for wizards, witches, and once for a werewolf. I knew there was more to the world than what most people saw. But gods and goddesses? That was the stuff of old mythologies.
As soon as I’d reached the parking lot and climbed into my car, I’d googled Califia. Not Lady Califia, which would give me gazillions of articles about the woman I’d just left, but Califia alone—an unusual last name—to maybe learn something about her people and background.
Calafia or Califia, it turned out, was the name of a fictional warrior queen who ruled over a kingdom of women living on the Island of California. A Spanish writer, Garcia Rodriguez de Montalvo, had invented her for a novel written around 1500. The state was named for the fictional queen.
I put my phone away and headed for home. In the stop and go traffic, I turned the new information over in my mind and wondered, What did that say about Lady?
That she’d developed her persona and taken that name for reasons known only to her?
That she was mad as a hatter?
Or, and this was the hardest to wrap my head around, she really was the goddess of California.
Why would a goddess need to hire someone like me? My specialty was rescue and retrieval, not hunting—whatever that meant to her. Though maybe it was just semantics. I hunted for the person or thing that had been taken, and then brought he, she, or it back. But the word hunting usually meant something else. Find and capture. Or find and kill.
Hunting what, I wondered again.
And I wondered if I truly wanted this job. Hunting of the capture or kill variety wasn’t my thing. Neither was working for someone who made up a name and history so farfetched as to be laughable. How could I trust anything she said to be true? And if she was crazy as well as magical—that opened up lots of unpleasant possible consequences for anyone in her employ.
My conclusion was I really didn’t want the job.
I pulled off the freeway on Rosecrans Avenue, heading for home, quite decided that I’d call Lady in the morning and tell her to find another companion.
For the last seven years I’ve rented the small back house of a two-on-a-lot in North Hermosa Beach. My landladies were great and I counted them among my friends, and not only because they’d rais
ed my rent only once in all that time.
When I pulled onto my block, I saw several big trucks parked in front of my address. I sped forward, worried about Darci and Bella, my landladies. I pulled into the long driveway that led to my house, but couldn’t get close to my front door. A big van sporting Water Damage Specialists written on its side blocked the long driveway. A big blue hose leading from the van ran across the drive and into my house through a window.
Darci stood in my doorway, wringing her hands. She turned and hurried toward me when she saw my car pull up.
I got out and walked toward her saying, “What happened?”
My landlady ran a hand through her short hair cut man-style and dyed a vibrant pink with blue tips.
“I don’t know. About an hour after you left this morning I started smelling something bad. I traced it to your house. I used my key and let myself in.” Her face crumpled. “It’s a world-class mess in there, Shay. The damage specialists guys say the street sewer backed up into your house at about the same time that the major water pipes to your house broke.”
Stunned, I stuttered, “How-how can that happen?”
Darci shook her head. “I don’t know. The damage guys say they’ve never seen it happen before. Not two things at once like that. One guy said maybe the sewer backing up put too much pressure on the pipes, the pipes going from the street to the house are old, and the pressure made them burst inside your house.”
“Oh, my God,” I muttered and stepped past her to look in the front door. A man wearing yellow rubber waders and a filter mask was on his pad-covered knees with the business end of the thick blue hose, siphoning water from the floor. All the windows had been opened and several big fans were blowing air around the room. I sniffed and wrinkled my nose. The room smelled faintly of shit and garbage. The water level had gotten at least a couple of feet high, I saw by the soaked remnant of my living room couch, and spray must have gone higher, since the walls were wet almost to the ceiling. Soggy books floated in the few inches of water still remaining. One of my dining chairs was turned over, its back submerged. My heart sank. Tears welled in my eyes for my ruined things. I wiped them away and turned to Darci.
“Your homeowners insurance covers this, right?”
She gave me a tightlipped nod. “The structural damage, but not for your stuff.” She paused and looked hopeful. “Do you have renter’s insurance?”
I didn’t.
I called out to Mr. Damage Specialist over the whir of the industrial strength fans and the gulp and gurgle of the sucking hose. “What do the bedroom, kitchen, and bath look like?”
The workman looked up at me and shook his head. “About like this,” he called back through his filter mask.
Tears threatened in my eyes again but I blinked them away. Much of what I owned was ruined, or nearly so. I had money in the bank, but not money enough to completely refurnish my house, not even at Goodwill. Much of my clothes and definitely my shoes on the floor of the closet would be ruined. I thanked my lucky stars that my photo albums were in a dresser drawer. But many of my books were probably wrecked. I had keepsakes on those bookshelves as well, things that couldn’t be replaced if they were waterlogged.
“Jesus,” I muttered, the implications pinging through my brain. “Where am I going to sleep tonight?”
Darci touched my arm. “You can stay with us until the house is dry and safe to move back into.”
It was a kind and generous offer, but I didn’t think I could stand company tonight. Besides, I’d sat on their lovely but somewhat lumpy couch hundreds of times and knew I wouldn’t like sleeping on it.
“A friend of mine manages a residence hotel in Torrance,” I said. “I think I’ll see if he has a room open.”
At least packing would be easy, as all the clothes I currently had access to were on my back. I didn’t much feel like trucking through the muck to rescue any clothes that might have been above the waterline or escaped the spray. There was time for that later.
“When can I get in to assess things?” I called again to the man.
“We’ll have the standing water out of here in a few hours,” he called back. “It’ll be days before everything is completely dry.”
Lovely.
I stood a few more silent moments, but really, there was nothing I could do here. I made my farewells to Darci, got back in my car, and called my friend. He had a room I could have.
I’m not someone who much liked shopping to begin with, but shopping in the face of disaster was doubly daunting. On my way to the residence hotel, I stopped at J.C. Penny’s and picked up underwear and socks, a few shirts, and a pair of pajamas. I stopped at a CVS and bought a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a hairbrush.
Lying on my back in the hotel room, some movie I wasn’t paying attention to playing on the TV with the sound turned way down, I counted my blessings. I still had my car, my phone, and my credit cards. I had some money in the bank. And I had a job I didn’t really want with Lady Califia.
5
The address Lady had written down was on the hill in Palos Verdes. Way up high on the hill. High enough that when the fog rolled in, my bet was that it would completely surround the house, hiding it from view.
Not today, though. Today the morning sun shone like a beacon, its amber rays picking out the sprawling one-story house at the end of a private road in a bright light while the land around it lay in shadow. This wasn’t a normal weather phenomenon, but I was beginning to understand that normal wasn’t a word used in conjunction with Lady Califia.
The house itself was Craftsman style, with brown shake shingles covering the exterior walls and a wide, red brick porch leading to the front door. Some of the bricks had an image impressed into it. I spotted dragonfly, hummingbird, grasshopper, horned lizard, and snake. My bet was they were all native to the state.
The large house spread over the lot like a lazy cat stretching in the warmth. The front door, I saw as I walked up the brick steps, was a double. A rearing bear was carved on one door, and an eagle in flight, its talons outstretched, on the other. The skill of the carver and the beauty of the detail made the doors both intimidating and welcoming at the same time. I had the distinct feeling that no matter what happened in the outside world, anyone ensconced behind the bear and eagle would be safe.
I knocked on the door. A tall, nice-looking, and rather muscular man in his late thirties, I guessed, almost immediately answered my knock. He wore blue jeans and a blue and white checked button up shirt with short sleeves, and brown-leather work boots. His wavy brown hair was worn collar length. His eyes were a dark, velvety hazel.
“Come in, Ms. Greene,” he said, pulling the bear-side door open wide. “Lady is waiting for you on the back veranda.”
Veranda! Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day.
Mr. Beefy led me down a long, long hallway toward the back of the house. Closed doors broke up the expanse of hallway and I wondered what was behind them. More California landscapes hung on the walls.
At the end of the hall was another door, this one with glass in the top half. Etched into the glass was a drawing of the Pride of Zubris as she must have looked under sail. Through the glass I saw Lady Califia sitting on a white wicker patio chair with a green and yellow flora pattered cushion. An identical chair was near her, with a small, round wrought iron table in between. Past her, a garden of flowers, vegetables, and herbs took up what probably would be lawn in other homes around here—maybe with a croquet course set up on it. It was barely April, but every plant was in bloom or bearing fruit. Bees hummed happily and butterflies flittered around like we’d dropped into some Disney movie. The air was sweet with the scent of roses, orange blossoms and honeysuckle. A pond as large as an Olympic swimming pool lay off to the left. A pair of ducks with maybe half a dozen ducklings swam lazily on its surface.
Mr. Beefy opened the door and stepped aside for me to go onto the veranda. I smiled slightly, enjoying the sound of that word in my head. Veranda. I
t fit both the house and Lady Califia.
Lady gestured toward the empty chair for me to sit. I did, and took in the view to the north and west. We were too high up and far away to see the waves crashing against the rocky shore. From here the ocean seemed to be a wide stretch of green blue that bumped up against the brighter blue of the sky. I could get used to a view like this.
Mr. Beefy came out and laid a tray with a deco-style teapot—blue with gold embellishments—and two teacups on the little table between the chairs. There was also a matching sugar bowl, a tiny pitcher of cream, a dish of lemon wedges, and a large white plate piled high with strawberry scones that didn’t look store-bought.
“Tea?” Lady said.
“Thank you,” I said and watched as she poured tea into first my cup and then into hers. She managed to make the movements as graceful and stylish as ballet. Maybe when you were a goddess that sort of grace came naturally. I laughed inside myself at the thought.
“Sugar? Cream? Lemon?” she asked.
“Plain,” I said.
Lady smiled. “Help yourself to the scones. Have you eaten breakfast?”
‘Some,” I said. I’d stopped at a McDonald’s and had a not very tasty egg mcmuffin.
I picked up a scone and bit into it. It was heavenly. The tea was green. It smelled and tasted faintly of jasmine. I liked it a lot.
Lady took her tea with sugar and lemon. She stirred the tea idly, as if her mind were far away.
I ate my scone and wondered if it would be rude if I tucked the rest of them in my purse for later. Yeah. Probably.
“I like my employees to be happy,” she said, suddenly back from wherever her thoughts had wandered. “Are you happy, Shayna?”
It was an odd question, but I hid my surprise. “In general, yes.”
She raised her eyebrows slightly. “So you are not accepting this job out of desperation?”
The Mermaid's Lament Page 3