Lies Beneath

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  “So, you said that was one way to make a mermaid. What’s the other?” She was still talking, and I smiled at the forced casualness of her voice.

  “The other way is lot more dangerous … and a lot less fun.”

  She blushed. “Which is …”

  “A person would have to die. Their heart would have to stop. Then a mermaid would have to be there to reinvigorate.”

  “Reinvigorate?” She leaned forward on the seat of the kayak, her hands between her knees.

  “That’s what we call it when we bring someone back to life. That’s the kind of merman I am. The reinvigorated type.”

  “You died?”

  “I was three. I don’t remember much. I was with my parents on our sailboat. My birth mom gave me a box of raisins. It’s weird. I have a much clearer picture of that little red box than her face. I can just see her hands giving me a snack. The next thing I remember, there was a scream, and I was falling overboard. I don’t even know who was screaming.… And then my new mother was there.

  “I remember watching the shadow of my parents’ boat. And then the Coast Guard came, but by that time we were swimming away.”

  I glanced up at her and wondered at the shiny wetness of her eyes.

  “Did they look for you?” Lily asked.

  Shrugging, I said, “S’pose. For a while.”

  “Did you look for them?”

  “Once I was reinvigorated, I didn’t give them much thought.”

  “I don’t understand that,” she said, her eyes full of concern.

  “Once someone is reinvigorated, they’re connected to the family that changed them; it’s more than just taking on a new name. There’s a mental thread.”

  I pointed at her wrist. “It’s like the charms on that bracelet of yours. They can slide away from each other, but they’re still linked by the chain.” I slid one of the charms to the opposite end. “During the winter I can get away from my sisters. They choose to stick together, but I opt for a reprieve. Once spring comes, though …” I slid the charm back to join the others. “We have to migrate back to this lake. This is where we reconvene.

  “That’s why we can hear each other. We’re tied together as a family. Like a school of fish. There are a few merpeople in Lake Michigan. If one of them came here, I wouldn’t be able to hear their thoughts. Different family. See?”

  “So you’re saying if you could break the bracelet, your mind would be your own.”

  “Exactly.”

  Lily nodded slightly. “And is that possible?

  I lifted my arms over my head and dropped under the water, clearing my thoughts. This conversation was going in a dangerous direction. When I came up, Lily’s forehead was furrowed in thought.

  “You said it was dangerous,” she said. “Reinvigorating.”

  “Miss two heartbeats and it’s too late. And we do it by shocking the heart. Sometimes there’s too much electricity. Usually that part doesn’t work out so well.”

  “Have you ever done it?” Her voice was sharp now, but I couldn’t place the emotion.

  “Never. Reinvigorating is a girl thing. The whole life-giving miracle and all.” I chuckled. “I’ve never heard of a merman doing it. Not once in all the stories.”

  “You saved me that day I fell off the rock. I could be a mermaid right now. I just never tested things out.”

  I shook my head. “First, you weren’t dead. Second, I didn’t shock your heart.”

  Blood pooled in her cheeks. I could feel the energy radiating off her. I could see its color, a pink glow with a yellow rim. It was a happy, intoxicating excitement. I diverted my eyes. Keep talking, I told myself. Don’t look. “Third, what I did was nothing more than basic CPR. Anyone could have done it.”

  “Maybe. But anyone didn’t. You did.”

  The warmth of her voice flooded my heart and flipped it over. Maybe it was selfishness that turned the tide for me. My eyes focused on her neck. I wanted to run my fingers down its length, down her collarbone, over her shoulders. I wanted to raise the hair on her arms. I couldn’t kill Lily. I would just have to make this work without killing her. I could hide her away and leave Jason Hancock to my sisters.

  “So, do mermaids sit around waiting for someone to fall out of a boat and drown?”

  I puzzled at her question.

  “Y’know … to make more mermaids? Are they waiting for someone’s heart to stop so they can be there to catch that window of opportunity?”

  She seriously did not get this at all. She obviously had some Disney version of mermaids in her head. I wondered how she’d respond when I told her the truth. That we were murderers, monsters, fiends. That I’d lured her out here to kill her. That I was doing everything within my power to fight against nature. I tried to come up with the words to answer.

  “No. We aren’t that patient. And underneath, we’re essentially predatory.”

  Her eyes widened. Her fear tempered the previously pink and yellow aura, and I was able to look at her more directly.

  “My story is the exception to the rule. It was pure chance that a mermaid was there when I fell into the water. Generally speaking, when a mermaid is there to reinvigorate, it’s not luck. They’re there because they’re the ones doing the killing. Mermaids kill just so they can reinvigorate. Sometimes they kill just to kill. It’s like a crocodile, waiting in the shallows.” I remembered the first night I saw her on the dock. “The zebra comes down for a drink and snap! The crocodile pulls it in, rolls it around and around, and then after a few moments, it’s over.”

  “If they’re not going to reinvigorate someone, why would they kill them?” She swallowed hard. “Do mermaids eat humans?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “So why kill just to kill? That’s so … so … wasteful.”

  “Envy. As a group, we’re pretty jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “Happiness, usually. Love. Joy. Any positive emotion. It radiates off people. We can see it, feel it, taste it.…”

  “What do I look like?”

  I smiled, remembering our day on Madeline Island. “It changes, of course, depending on your mood. Today you look like melting orange sherbet. Delicious.” A bitterness crossed my face, and I watched Lily’s eyes tighten. “It’s that positive emotion we crave. We don’t have our own and we want it, need it really, to survive. So we take it.”

  She looked at me with confusion. I searched the ceiling of the cave for an explanation she could understand. “It’s like any cold-blooded animal. Picture the lizard. He can’t regulate his own body temperature. He would die if he couldn’t find the necessary heat source, so he seeks it out, and then climbs up on a sun-baked rock and absorbs it until he’s warm. Same thing with me. With my sisters. With all of our kind. We’re attracted to the positive emotion. We seek it out and when we find it … we absorb it from its source.”

  “And by ‘absorb,’ you mean …”

  “You know what I mean.”

  That was what had drawn Pavati to the old man the other day, and all three of my sisters to the college kids. That was what had drawn my mother to Lily’s own grandfather. I almost wanted to tell her the story. How he’d been so happy he was a magnet to her. How she capsized his boat and brought him down, but he fought back. How he regained the surface and pleaded with her. How she offered him the life of a merman, but he rejected her, so she demanded an exchange, another life for his. How he offered his son—only one year old at the time. How she swam him back to shore and waited by the dock.

  How a second later the family was running for the car and racing out of town. How she followed the road along the shore. And then finally how she was strangled in a fisherman’s net.

  What would Lily have thought if I’d laid it all out there like that? Would she have run away screaming, knowing that we were here to collect on that promise?

  Lily wasn’t so obtuse that she couldn’t see something was bothering me. She leaned out of the kayak and draped her a
rm around my shoulder, laying her cheek against mine, comforting me without really knowing how wrong this was. I jerked away, not realizing I’d come close enough for her to touch me. A spark jumped through the air between her arm and my back.

  I could choose not to kill Lily Hancock. That choice was still mine to make. I could protect her from my sisters. But there was one thing beyond my control. In the end, I would still deceive her. Jason Hancock was still marked for death.

  27

  BREATHING LESSONS

  I was so caught up in my own selfish misery I didn’t notice Lily untying her kayak and paddling it closer to me. It wasn’t until its nose bumped against the rock that I looked up.

  “You can’t find happiness outside yourself, Calder.”

  I shook my head. “You sound like a fortune cookie.”

  “It’s still true. Everyone’s always trying to do it, y’know. They try to get with the right people, hook up with the right guy, join the right club—without ever asking what ‘right’ is.”

  “And this is somehow supposed to apply to me? I’m not some identity-confused sophomore, Lily. If you haven’t been listening, I turn into a thieving, murdering fish.”

  She smirked. “But you’re not a murderer. At least … you don’t want to be. I’m just saying, you wouldn’t be jealous of happiness if you had some for yourself. If you had your own, you wouldn’t want to rob others of theirs.”

  “You make that sound simple. Don’t you think in centuries of merpeople that someone might have figured that out?”

  “I’m thinking maybe no one’s tried. Or cared.”

  I couldn’t answer that. I was too distracted to reason it out, anyway. She was so close now.

  “And I’d like you to try,” she said. “That is, if you think I could make you happy.”

  A pink light shimmered around Lily’s edges, that fuzzy-sweater look that was all her own. “Come on,” I said, impulsively pulling the kayak into the dark arch of the sea cave. I lifted her out of the boat and set her on top of a sandstone shelf. “ ‘She has a lovely face,’ ” I recited. “ ‘God in his mercy lend her grace.’ ” I bowed my head and touched my hand to my heart. “ ‘The Lady of Shalott.’ ”

  “Am I that obvious?” She laughed, and my body naturally warmed. I soaked up the heat and marveled at how I was able to do it while she still sat, safe and dry, on her throne.

  “So if I’m the Lady, then you’re Lancelot.”

  “No, I’m better. I’m here to do your bidding. That’s more than Lancelot ever did for the Lady.”

  “Very true. Then your first duty is to take me swimming with you.”

  So much for warmth. My body ran as cold as the lake. “Get a grip, Lily. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never done it before.” The water agitated around me, and the cave amplified the sound of the water lapping against the rock.

  “You’ve been in the water with me before.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?” She leaned forward, her hands on her knees.

  “I don’t know. It was quick. I didn’t have time to think about you being with me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She reached forward for me. “You won’t hurt me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you’re not like your sisters, Calder.”

  “I’m exactly like them.”

  “You’ve got to stop thinking that you’re, like, some kind of monster.”

  “That’s great coming from someone who hasn’t once looked below the water. Not once since you got to the cave. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  Lily pursed her lips and purposefully looked beneath the surface. Despite the shadows, bits of sun cut through the green veil at the mouth of the cave. The silver scales on my tail sent shards of light through the water as my tailfin stirred the sand below me. I watched as her shoulders relaxed and she looked back to my face with a triumphant smile. I shook my head and looked up at the cave ceiling.

  “Fine. Let’s say I don’t hurt you. You’ll be too cold. You couldn’t survive more than a few minutes out there.”

  “Keep me warm, then.” She slipped off her throne into the water, so silently I wondered if she was now stalking me. Her thin white dress floated up around her waist as she propelled herself closer. The sleeves clung to her arms and shoulders.

  I stiff-armed her. “Okay, that’s good. You’re close enough.”

  “What? Am I too happy?” Her eyes were teasing, and the pink glow billowed out toward me like a parachute. I couldn’t understand her. Did she want to die?

  “Can you see it, Calder? Because you’re right. I am happy. But you don’t have to steal that from me. I can give it to you.” Her face brightened. “I have enough to share. Right now there’s no happier person on earth.”

  She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder. My tail undulated gently below me, keeping us both afloat. She was so close now her chest was pressed against mine. Her fingers traced the silver ring around my throat and trailed the muscles in my shoulder and arm, which were tense and starting to burn. She closed her eyes. A crystalline drop of water clung to her eyelashes.

  “Calder, do you like me?”

  And then I laughed, breaking the spell.

  Her eyes flashed open and blood flooded her cheeks. She pushed off, but I reached out and pulled her toward me again. That one second of physical separation was too painful a void.

  “Sometimes you ask the stupidest questions, Lily.”

  Relief passed across her eyes.

  “Do you see anyone else out here? Do you think I routinely reveal myself like this to people? Do you think you would have lasted this long in the water with me if I didn’t … like you?” I didn’t need to tell her the rest—that I was obsessing about her, that I was risking my own sanity (maybe my own neck, if Maris found out about this), that my stomach was thinking about joining the circus and starting its own extreme acrobatic show. That, just as Pavati predicted, I might even love her.

  “I still didn’t hear you say it.” She combed her fingers through my hair, and I closed my eyes, letting her drive me crazy.

  “Yes, Lily Hancock, I like you.”

  “So you will take me swimming.”

  “Come on. It’s too cold.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, the cold doesn’t bother me. You must be doing something to keep me warm.”

  I didn’t know anything about that. If I was, it was unintentional. “Well then, forget the cold. You can’t hold your breath that long.”

  “Then breathe for me.”

  A fluttery feeling ran through my heart before beating a path to my gut. I grabbed her before I could think about the danger. I wanted to take her. I wanted to show her things. It was that desire to show her my world that made me move too fast. I dove before she’d had time to fill her lungs, and the shock of it made her gasp. She convulsed, and I shot her toward the surface. She came up coughing.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I … didn’t do that very well.”

  “No, that was all on me. I’ll go slower.”

  She inhaled and exhaled two times before filling her lungs with air. We sank down into the water, face to face. I smiled at her puffed-out cheeks and squinty eyes. I put my palms out like I would with Tallulah and laced my fingers through hers. I controlled both our bodies as we hovered in the depths of the lake, almost like being in outer space, while constellations of bubbles rose from her nose to the surface. She pointed up. She needed air.

  I pulled her closer, and she struggled against me in panic. It pained me that she would think I would hurt her now. I smiled, though I doubted she noticed, and tipped my head to the side. My mouth covered hers, and her lips parted. I sealed my lips tightly to hers and blew, filling her lungs. Her eyes popped open in surprise. I had no idea how long that breath would last. I hoped not long. I wanted another excuse to tie myself to her.

  I watched her face. Her e
yes were barely slits, but I looked for the smallest sign of panic. I glanced at my watch, counting the seconds. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty … Oh, man, how long could this girl go? Then her fingers dug into my biceps, and I brought her to the surface.

  My mind raced forward, wondering what to show her first. I couldn’t give her the whole National Geographic tour. The great lake was ten thousand years old, and there were more than thirty thousand square miles of ancient artifacts, shipwrecks, and geological wonders.

  But then the Pettits’ Sun Sport passed by. I pulled Lily back into the ivy, and we watched Jack troll the shoreline, binoculars held to his eyes.

  “He’s looking for his mermaid,” she whispered.

  I didn’t acknowledge her assumption. Instead, I took her to the bottom. The water was only eight feet deep, and Jack’s boat caused the fingerlike grasses to pulse gently around us, caressing our bodies like a thousand peacock plumes. I repeated the line she’d written for me: “ ‘Where I’ll find myself entangled in a merman’s silken hair.’ ” She couldn’t understand me, or hear me. Not really. But she pulled me closer, and I pressed my lips to hers again.

  28

  SWIMMING LESSONS

  Lily should have been freezing. I couldn’t understand what was keeping her warm. She said it was from being close to me, but being cold-blooded I wasn’t in any position to warm her. I wondered if breathing for her stemmed the cold, but these thoughts were only in the background. The rest of my brain was preoccupied with the thrill of swimming with Lily, my arm wrapped around her soft waist, keeping her face even with mine for easy breathing.

  I took her over the 1881 wreck of the fire-ravaged Ottawa and then swam her north to Stockton Island. The century-old remains of Noquebay lay just ten feet below the surface. We swam along the donkey boiler and rudder. Lily trailed her hand around the gears lying on the ruined deck. Bits of vegetation floated down around her like confetti. I marveled at her beauty. It rivaled any of my sisters’, including Pavati’s. With the exception of Lily’s pale lower limbs, she looked every bit the mermaid.