To Catch a Mermaid

by Suzanne Selfors

  But Mertyle wanted to keep it a secret and hide it in their room like a stolen toy. What would happen when it grew up? Like when Winger had talked his mom into buying a baby boa constrictor and then the snake had tripled in size and swallowed their cat! Exactly how big do mer-teeth get?

  “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea,” Boom said. “We don’t know how to take care of a merbaby.”

  “Please, Boom. I’ll take care of it. I know you found it, but it doesn’t really like you. You don’t have to do anything. It can stay here with me and watch game shows.” She stroked its hair. “I think it’s an orphan. It needs me.”

  Boom looked over at the wall calendar, where the big red circle marked today as his day. This wasn’t at all what he had expected.

  Mertyle hugged the creature, and the gloom that she had worn for the past year fell away like a heavy cape.

  “Sure, Mertyle,” he said with a sigh. “You can keep it.”

  Chapter Eight:

  The Goldfish Acrifice

  With no fish for dinner, Halvor served toast and marmalade, which Boom and Mertyle ate as fast as they could. He left for his Sons of the Vikings meeting at seven. Once he had disappeared down the dark street, Mertyle grabbed a book from the living room coffee table and rushed back upstairs. “It’s one of Halvor’s Viking books,” she told Boom as he followed. Boom knew the book well — a poorly bound manuscript with shaggy edges and well-worn pages. “The facts might be questionable but it’s the only one that has a section on mermaids.” Mertyle began to read while the baby took another nap.

  “It says here that mermaids have no tongues,” she told Boom as her fingers flew across the page. “They can’t talk. They only sing. It says that mermen sometimes eat their young. Oh, that must be why the baby doesn’t like you.”

  “Eat their young? Let me see that.” Boom reached for the book, knocking a lamp over in the process.

  The baby woke up and began to cry, but it was no ordinary cry. The cry filled the room like a whistle, darting between the sheets, boomeranging off the corners, and shooting down the tunnels that led to Boom’s eardrums. When it had possessed every possible space in the bedroom, the cry overflowed into the rest of the house.

  “Hello?” Mr. Broom called from the attic.

  “Oh no,” Boom moaned. He ran up the narrow stairway that led to the third floor.

  “What’s that odd noise?” Mr. Broom asked. Boom could see only one side of his father’s face through the crack in the attic door. Mr. Broom had grown a long beard, and the eye that peered out was wild with panic. “Such a strange noise. It sounds like a dangerous sort of wind.”

  “It’s . . . it’s just a new teakettle,” Boom lied.

  “Not the wind?”

  “Not the wind.”

  “Not another twister?”

  “Not another twister.”

  Mr. Broom nodded, then shut the door. Boom ran back down the stairs.

  “I think it’s hungry,” Mertyle hollered above the earsplitting shriek. She shook the Ry-Krisp box, but only crumbs fell out.

  Boom stuck his fingers into his ears, but that didn’t help. The sound managed to seep through his cells. It was the most annoying sound in the world. Worse than a car alarm. Worse than Principal Prunewallop droning through her megaphone. Even worse than Mertyle’s know-it-all voice. If an earwig had crawled into Boom’s ear and sung “Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” it would have been less annoying than the merbaby’s cry.

  Mertyle hurriedly turned the page in Halvor’s book. Then she shrugged and shook her head. “Doesn’t say anything about what merbabies eat.”

  “Babies drink milk,” Boom yelled.

  The shrieking continued as they rushed downstairs. The sound oozed its way through the single-pane windows of the tiny house. While Mertyle held the baby, trying to calm it, Boom poured milk into a plastic water bottle. Then he squirted the milk into the creature’s tongueless mouth. The baby quieted, but only long enough to spit the milk onto Boom’s face.

  “Hey,” Boom complained, pointing his finger. “Bad baby.”

  “Did you warm it?” Mertyle asked. “Babies like warm milk.” She had wrapped the creature in one of her doll blankets. The seaweed ponytail stuck straight up. The merbaby looked like a troll. An angry troll.

  Boom put a saucepan on the stove and began to heat the milk. He knew how to do this because Mrs. Broom had taught him how to make hot chocolate. He wiped milk from his eyebrows and wondered if merparents spanked their children.

  “Shhh,” Mertyle urged as Boom stirred. The baby cried even louder. One of the dandelion jars shattered from the sound wave’s impact. “The milk is almost ready.” But Boom had turned the burner on too high, and the scent of scorched milk rose from the stove. “Oh, that’s just great,” Mertyle complained.

  “If you’re so smart, then why don’t you do it?” he asked defensively. He turned off the burner, grabbed Halvor’s oven mitts, and dumped the pan into the sink. The last of the milk lay curdled on the bottom, charcoal black. The baby started to shriek again, and a full marmalade jar exploded on the pantry shelf.

  “Do we have any more rye bread?” Mertyle cried.

  There was no bread in the pantry, and Halvor had already fed the leftover heels to the squirrels. Boom scraped a spoonful of marmalade off the shelf, careful to make certain it contained no bits of glass. He poked the spoon into the baby’s open mouth. Like the milk, the marmalade shot out between the sharp teeth. This time Boom ducked. The orange blob landed with a splat on the wall. But the creature didn’t start shrieking again. Instead, it pointed at the kitchen window, where Hurley Mump was pressing his face.

  Mertyle gasped and turned her back to the window. Someone started pounding on the kitchen door. Mertyle pulled the edges of the doll blanket around the baby and ran upstairs. “Go away,” Boom yelled at Hurley, who scowled menacingly. Someone pounded at the kitchen door again.

  “What’s going on over here?” Mr. Mump asked when Boom opened the door. He kept his blond hair shaved close to his scalp, just like Hurley did. “What’s that terrible noise that’s been coming from your house?”

  Hurley appeared at his father’s side, his eyes narrowed. He smirked in the way he always smirked at Boom. An I’m so much richer than you are smirk. An I’m the KBAW champion smirk.

  But had he seen the baby?

  “Teakettle,” Boom said. “We got a new teakettle.”

  “Teakettle, you say?” Mr. Mump weighed about three hundred pounds. Barbecue sauce glistened around his lips. “That teakettle disturbed our dinner. I suggest you get rid of it or I shall call the police.”

  “Yes, sir,” Boom said, faking a smile as he shut the door. Mr. Mump always acted like he owned the neighborhood.

  From the bedroom window, Boom and Mertyle watched Mr. Mump and Hurley cross the street. “I think Hurley saw,” Boom said. The baby’s shriek had weakened to a low moan. Mertyle looked at it worriedly.

  “We’ve got to feed it something,” she fretted. “If it won’t eat marmalade, what can we give it?”

  “I don’t know.” Boom was still picturing Hurley’s smirk. “You told me that you’d take care of it.” Trying to hide a merbaby was possibly the worst decision he had ever made, worse even than trying to outrun Mr. Jorgenson. For a fat guy, that man could move surprisingly fast.

  “Please, Boom. It’s got to eat or it will die.”

  Suddenly, the baby stopped moaning and reached out both hands toward Mertyle’s desk, where, along with a can of pencils and a stapler, sat the goldfish bowl. “Oh, of course,” Boom realized. The creature came from the ocean so it would eat food from the ocean. “Why didn’t I think of that before? It wants fish food.” He picked up the cylinder of SuperGrow Fish Food from beside the goldfish bowl and sprinkled some into his hand, offering the flakes to the baby. But the baby ignored the flakes and continued to reach out. “Fish food,” Boom explained, offering the flakes again. The baby shook its head and started t
hat mind-numbing, bowel-loosening shriek. If the shriek disturbed Mr. Mump’s barbecue feast again, they’d be in big trouble. Mr. Mump would call the police, and the police would come and want to speak with Mr. Broom. They’d discover the merbaby for sure. They might also discover that Mr. Broom had been ignoring his children, and they’d take Mertyle and Boom away to a foster home, and they’d put Mr. Broom in a mental institution. And what if they discovered Halvor’s Viking weapons collection in the garage? Those things had to be illegal.

  Boom took a long look at the fishbowl. Ted the Goldfish swam around the pink castle the way he always did. Boom reached his hand into the bowl. He had to make the shrieking stop.

  “Not Ted!” Mertyle cried.

  Boom pinched Ted’s tail between his thumb and middle finger and flung the surprised goldfish through the air, right into the baby’s eager, open mouth. The ferocious teeth snapped shut and the blue-green tail wiggled with delight. The shrieking stopped. Boom felt slightly nauseated by what he’d done.

  “Ted?” Mertyle whimpered.

  The baby burped and immediately fell asleep. Mertyle stared at the empty fishbowl, where Ted had been swimming circles for two years. Colored pebbles floated around, stirred-up from Boom’s hand. “Poor Ted.” She sighed and laid the baby on the comforter. Its little green chest rose and fell with every raspy breath.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Boom explained, feeling really bad, regardless of necessity.

  Mertyle nodded. “He gave his life for a good cause. I’m going to make a tombstone for him and write that on it.” She picked up her magnifying glass and began to inspect the merbaby’s tail again. “There are really strange markings on some of the scales. They kind of look like little drawings. What do you think?”

  Boom looked through the lens, but he didn’t see any drawings. Mertyle always saw strange things with that lens. “I don’t know what to think anymore.” He tried to shake the image of Ted being sliced by those teeth.

  Boom pulled back his covers and climbed into bed with his clothes on. He needed the extra layers since the room was so cold. When would they have enough money to turn on the heat? If March turned any colder, he might have to start sleeping in the kitchen.

  All of the day’s disappointments and all of the day’s excitements had exhausted him. Mertyle turned off the light and lay down next to what was supposed to have been their evening meal. “I’m so glad you found it,” she whispered. “I always thought they weren’t real.”

  Boom nodded, too tired to speak. Usually when he drifted off to sleep, he secretly listened for the sound of his mother’s heels coming up the walkway. But tonight, as he closed his eyes, he drifted along with the baby’s sea-soaked breaths.

  Chapter Nine:

  Erik the Red

  The odor of percolating coffee crept up the stairs and seeped under Mertyle and Boom’s bedroom door. Even though it was Saturday morning, Halvor still served breakfast at 7:10. Boom rolled out of bed, bleary-eyed. “So tired,” he mumbled. Something had kept him up half the night, but his blurry brain couldn’t remember what.

  “I don’t think I should go to breakfast,” Mertyle said as Boom pulled on a pair of socks that Fluffy the cat had slept on. “I can’t leave the baby.”

  “The baby?” Boom’s brain kicked into gear. Hadn’t all that simply been a dream? After all, the Cheshire Cat turned out to be a dream and the Cowardly Lion did too. Boom rubbed his eyes and stared at the green creature that was sleeping amidst waves of pink comforter. It hadn’t been a dream. Amazement flooded Boom once again, from the tips of his fingers to the tips of his toes.

  “Tell Halvor I’m sick. Tell him I’ve got ringworm,” Mertyle said.

  “You’re never sick on the weekend,” Boom pointed out. “Halvor will get suspicious if you don’t go downstairs. He might come up here.”

  “If I leave it alone, it might start shrieking again.”

  That would be a problem, to say the least. Boom couldn’t use the teakettle excuse because Halvor knew that there was no teakettle — coffee only in the Broom household. “As soon as it wakes up, it’s going to be hungry,” Mertyle warned. “Ted wasn’t very big. What are we going to feed it today?”

  “I don’t know,” Boom said. “I have three dollars but I don’t think that will buy much. Do you have any money?”

  “No.”

  “I guess I could go back down to the dock and see if there’s still some stuff in the reject seafood bucket. Maybe the baby would eat some of those crabs.”

  “Good idea. In the meantime, I’ll try to sneak some of my breakfast upstairs.”

  Mertyle wedged the sleeping baby between pillows so it wouldn’t fall off the bed. Boom figured there was no need to change out of the jeans and sweatshirt he had slept in. It wasn’t like any of his other clothes were cleaner, piled as they were in the corner of his room. The walk to the harbor would take him right past Winger’s house. Boom had agreed not to tell anyone about the merbaby, but Winger wasn’t just anyone. Boom couldn’t keep the discovery of the twenty-first century from his best friend.

  Halvor was at work in the balmy kitchen, humming happily. His armpits were damp with sweat. “I bought some cod fillets at the all-night Thrifty Mart, half-price, and some day-old bread,” he told the kids when they sat down in the painted chairs. He stood over the black frying pan, his Viking helmet askew. The cat wound between his thick legs, begging for bits of fish skin. “You are a very bad kitty,” Halvor scolded. “Bad kitty for stealing my big fish last night.”

  A jar of tartar sauce sat on the table, alongside a pile of buttered rye toast. Boom grabbed two pieces, then headed for the door. “Gotta run,” he said.

  “Hold on,” Halvor called, scooting the cat away with his boot. “Growing boys need breakfast. Erik the Red never skipped breakfast when he was a boy.”

  Darn it! Boom sat down at the edge of his chair, mentally willing Halvor to cook faster. He tapped his feet on the floor.

  “What’s that?” Mertyle asked, pointing to a small wooden box perched at the table’s edge.

  “Yah, I got that last night at my meeting. It’s an artifact from Erik the Red. He used to keep his false teeth in that box.”

  Oh no, not an Erik the Red story. That would certainly slow things down, and Boom really wanted to tell Winger his big secret. He increased his tapping and held his plate up, waiting for his greasy breakfast while Mertyle took out the magnifying glass and began an examination of the box.

  “Erik the Red received that box on his twenty-second birthday,” Halvor said. “It was carved by Thor the Thumbless, a distant cousin by marriage who never ate breakfast. Therefore, he was prone to work-related accidents.”

  Mertyle turned the box over. “It says ‘Made in China.’”

  Halvor poured more oil into the pan. “That’s a decoy sticker, to protect the box from getting into the hands of someone who wouldn’t appreciate it. Someone who’s not a direct descendant.” Mertyle pursed her lips, skepticism written all over her.

  Halvor flipped a fish fillet and it landed with a splat in the hot oil. “We inducted a new member last night. He’s a direct descendant of Thor the Thumbless. He’s carving a genuine Viking dragon ship.”

  “What happens when you induct someone?” Boom asked. A Velcro dart, an escapee from the dartboard above his bed, fell out of his hair and onto the table. He really needed to take a bath one of these days.

  “I can’t tell you exactly what happens. That’s a secret,” Halvor replied with a devilish look. “But I can tell you that it’s an ancient ceremony from Viking days past. Every member must swear an ancient oath of brotherhood and never break it.” He scratched his big belly, held captive beneath his gray sweatshirt. Erik’s Fan Club was written across the shirt in red letters. “I can’t say any more than that, for sure.”

  Boom stopped kicking the table legs and put down his plate. “What happens if you break an ancient oath?”

  “Bad things happen.” Halvor slid a
fillet onto Boom’s plate and leaned across the table. His belly knocked over the marmalade. “One time, Erik the Red’s brother, Erik the Black, got caught stealing from Erik the Red’s chest of gold. Fifth rule of the Viking oath is, Never steal from thy brother. Yah, never steal, for sure.”

  “But the Vikings were always stealing,” Mertyle said in her know-it-all voice. “They invaded villages and stole all sorts of stuff.”

  Halvor cleared his throat and gave Mertyle a So you think you know everything look. “I said, Never steal from thy brother. Anonymous villagers don’t count.”

  Boom remembered the three dollars, still tucked into his jacket pocket. Halvor hadn’t asked for any change when Boom returned last night with the fish. It wasn’t stealing if somebody didn’t ask for something back, was it?

  “Erik the Red was so angry when he caught his brother stealing, that he called upon the Viking gods to curse Erik the Black. The next day, when Erik the Black sat down to eat his fish fillet and marmalade toast, all his teeth fell out. He had to wear false teeth the rest of his life.”

  Boom felt his teeth. Not one of them wiggled.

  “You said this box was for Erik the Red’s false teeth,” Mertyle pointed out.

  “Yah, Erik the Red had false teeth too, from eating too much marmalade and not brushing.” Halvor scooted the cat away again as Boom chewed the bland half-price fillet as fast as he could.

  “That’s rubbish.” Mertyle sat up straight and folded her arms in preparation for a “fact” battle. Halvor prepared too. His arms folded as well, he faced her from across the room with an unblinking gaze. “Vikings didn’t eat marmalade toast,” Mertyle said. “Marmalade is made from orange peels and oranges do not grow in the cold north.” Boom was convinced that the title of Reference Librarian lay in his sister’s future.