“You have made the entire kingdom dark and unhappy,” her eldest sister said.
“Why did you leave us?” asked the next sister. “You didn’t even say good-bye.”
“How could you disobey father?” asked the third sister. “How could you act so selfishly?” Everyone paused to hear her answers, but Arielle could only look at them with sad eyes and right away, they knew what she had given up in order to be standing before them right there.
“The sea-witch took your voice for those legs, didn’t she?” asked the eldest. The littlest mermaid, who had once sung more beautifully than any creature on land or sea, nodded in silent remorse. All the years she had her pretty voice to enjoy and to enchant, it had never dawned on her that one day it might be taken from her and she would have to learn to live without it.
“Well?” asked the fourth. “Is your prince falling in love with you?” Arielle stared back at her sister with eyes that told of love and hope, but also of uncertainty. All of the sisters joined hands, closed their eyes, and wished love on their youngest sister, while a passing pod of whales swam in close behind them, wanting to get a better look at the sea princess who was dressed like a human girl.
All of a sudden, Gabriel’s voice could be heard from the beach, and her sisters witnessed the way her face lit up at the sound. “ARIELLE!” he called with a tone of warning in his voice as he spotted her on the rocks. “Be careful on that slippery-sharp rock heap! You’ll cut your feet!” Arielle turned around and waved to him sweetly, then crouched back down to kiss her sisters goodbye. “Seriously, those barnacles are heinous!” he yelled. “One time I lost a Frisbee on there and in its heroic retrieval, mangled my feet so bad, I was a cripple for days!”
Her sisters lowered themselves into the water and disappeared into the deep blue, while Gabriel continued to implore her to be careful.
“First came the blood, then came the INFECTED GREEN PUS!” he shouted, shuddering at the memory. She jumped to her feet and, light as air, skipped across the jagged rocks and ran to him until she leapt up into his arms.
“Aww shucks,” he said as he twirled her around then set her back down on her feet. “I had you at ‘green pus’ didn’t I?” He chuckled but she, for obvious reasons, didn’t catch the Jerry Maguire reference. “Didn’t that hurt? Let me see your feet,” he said, reaching for her ankle to see her soles. There was a bit of blood, but the cuts it had sprung from were already healed up and her feet looked good as new. Gabriel was amazed; he’d seen what those rocks could do. But he just assumed her delicate balance, light body weight and thin limbs were to thank for her unmarred feet. That, or she had the regenerative healing powers of Wolverine.
“I have an idea!” he said to her enthusiastically. “Go put on a bathing suit and grab a wetsuit from the mud room - we’re surfing today!” Expecting her to be thrilled, he was surprised when his idea was met with apprehension. “Come with me,” he said, and then led her to the toy shed where all the surfboards were kept.
As soon as she saw what he meant, she backed away, shaking her head. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Surfing is the ultimate; it’ll change your life!” He pulled out a smooth yellow board for her to use but still she shook her head and backed even further away, refusing to even take it in her hands. “What’s the matter?” he asked her again.
She looked him in the eyes. His dark grown-out hair sat messily on his forehead, and she felt a wave of lust come over her, or maybe it was just a heat spell. It was such a warm morning, and she knew how nice it would be to feel the cool water on her skin. She appreciated very much how her love wanted to share his favorite pastimes with her and desperately she wanted to partake in them, but, alas, this was the very paradox of her new dry existence, and she could not risk revealing herself to him. So she took another step back.
“So you’re out, then?” he asked with disappointment in his voice. “You just outright refuse to try surfing?” He couldn’t understand why a girl as adventurous and seemingly fearless as she would opt out of the chance to surf. She smiled apologetically and nodded. He set the yellow board back down and reached for his own. “’Your loss, babe,” he said as he shrugged and darted down to the waves.
Once he began paddling out, she took a seat in the sand where she could watch from a safe distance. How he danced and glided upon the surface, one with the water but also riding high upon it. She wished she could have joined him. After a few hours went by feeling like mere minutes, he came back out of the water, undid his velcro ankle strap and ran toward her with a big smile on his face.
“Did you see that, Arielle? I finally mastered my three-sixty; the waves were perfect for it!” Exhaustedly, he dropped his board in the sand and fell down onto his knees next to it, smacking his palms together as if in prayer, and sent a kiss up to the heavens in gratitude. Arielle clapped her hands enthusiastically and dropped to her knees in front of him, also kissing the sky, happy that he was so happy. They stayed on their knees for a few moments, sharing in a mutual gratefulness for the beautiful day they were enjoying. Gabriel took a deep breath followed by a satisfyingly large exhale, then grabbed her hand and said “Come with me, I have a wicked idea you won’t be able to pass up!”
Gabriel threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and, at his insistence, she also went inside and put on pants and they both jumped into the Jeep and went for a drive. The road was winding and it took them up the side of a big, steep hill. The higher they got, the better their view of the ocean from the road. Cliffs dropped off not three feet from the outer stripes of road paint but still they ascended past curves and bends, some boasting guardrails, some only having the odd tree at its edge to separate their car from the vast sky that stretched out to their right. They weren’t quite in the heavens but they were higher than some low-sitting clouds. She closed her eyes and let the breeze kiss her face, and let her fluttering eyelashes kiss it right back.
They reached a small parking lot and pulled over. Behind them, a small, carpeted runway stretched all the way to the edge of the cliff. “Have you ever been hang gliding?” he asked her. Her eyes widened as she looked over the edge at the wide-open sky in front of them. “For some reason, I hadn’t thought so,” he said, while behind him, a man in a reflective vest laid out their wings and harnesses.
She gasped in disbelief. While she had never seen a contraption quite like this, she did recognize how it seemed to mimic the wingspan of a bird, proportionate to the size of their bodies. It was marvelous. This was the day she would spread her wings and fly.
Before long, they were both strapped into their harnesses, helmets and goggles. As she discovered, Gabriel was in fact a seasoned hang-gliding pro who had many successful glides under his belt already. The breeze was stiff at the top of the cliff, and it gave her chills of excitement because it was so unreal. How she had dreamt of this day.
With a One - Two - Three, he aimed their wings and they launched off the cliff tandem and into the air. It was frightening at first, thrilling but scary as they rode upon the winds with the land so far below. From way up where they were, the earth actually looked round, like they were up on the highest point of the arch that was the skull-cap of the spherical Earth. “Isn’t this the best?” he asked her over his shoulder while she clung to his back, looking down at the world from behind him. She had come up from the ocean to be with him, never imagining he would take her to the skies.
The early days of summer went by in a blink and the family became more and more fond of their little foundling, and the longer she stayed with them, the harder it was for them to remember a time before she came. They received no word from the police, and never heard anything about any missing girls matching her description. And Arielle appeared to be quite happy with them, and showed no signs of wanting to leave or having anywhere else to be, so they kept her. She and Gabriel became inseparable, and he took her with him everywhere he went as his constant companion and favourite friend. There was something so refreshing to him about being ar
ound someone who always seemed to be seeing and experiencing things for the first time. Her wonderment was infectious and Gabriel very much enjoyed having her as his quiet, talented and beautiful sidekick.
One morning, the sky was a thick, foggy gray. The atmosphere was so dark and heavy, the sun could find no holes to peek through from behind such thick clouds. Arielle sat on the living room sofa with her knees up and staring out to sea, watching steam rise from the water as little raindrops began to speckle it. She began to wonder about the world above the world above; that is, the next tier up from the world of the people, even higher than the skies she danced upon with Gabriel and his hang-glider. She wondered if there had been other mer-people before herself who had won their place with the humans by capturing the heart of one. As raindrops trickled down the windowpane, she wondered if maybe the rain itself was just the ocean returning to the earth as it fell from the hearts of water-bound souls that had crossed over into the heavens. She snapped out of her daydream when she heard Gabriel calling her. She stood up and spotted him down on the beach, his hair all wet and matted and his unbuttoned shirt soaked and clinging to his arms and chest. “Arielle come out here, it’s gorgeous!”
She smiled, ran for the door and fumbled with it giddily. But then, just as soon as she got it open and was about to step outside, she remembered. No getting wet, lest her tail should grow back. Disappointed, she pulled the door closed in front of herself and stared out at him longingly.
“Come on, I’ve got the monkey pod!” he yelled happily as all five of the family’s pugs circled his feet and rolled around in the wet sand. Safely but lamentably inside while he was out, she glanced down at her little feet and dried off on the welcome mat a raindrop that had landed on her big toe. Gabriel called to her again, watching curiously as she stood still in the doorway. “Arielle, what’s the hold up? Come dance with us!” he said as he spun in a circle with his arms wide out, letting the cool rain soak him more. “There’s really nothing like it!” he called across the yard.
But she stood there frozen, her heart pulling her outside but her head soberly aware of the consequence that would ruin her. Her heart sank as she resisted the tempting siren’s song of one more thing she couldn’t enjoy with him. More rain splashed on the deck and the doorframe, and she took another step further back into the house.
“Aww come on, really? No rain dancing for you either?” he was even more disappointed than when she refused to surf with him. Sadly, she shook her head ‘no.’ His smile faded to a frown and for a moment she thought seriously about what would happen if she just ran out into the wetness and presented him with her truth. For a second, it seemed like a better option than allowing him to think for one second that she was willingly refusing him, when there was nothing she would rather do than dance out in the rain with him.
Gabriel, giving up, shrugged his shoulders and waved her off as he turned towards the beaches to the south and dashed through the sand with the soaking wet dogs. Arielle returned to the sofa and sat with her knees up again, somberly staring out the window, watching all the fun she was missing. Of all the things she knew she’d miss, she hadn’t counted on missing the feeling of cool water so incredibly.
When the sun came back out that afternoon and drank up most of the puddles, she emerged from the dry safety of the home. When she found Gabriel, he taught her how to ride a bicycle. When he thought she had advanced her bike skills enough, he took her for a spin on his motorcycle, and even let her steer for a few blocks.
When they returned home and went to park the bike in the garage, they noticed a group of about twelve snails moving across the garage floor and towards the door to the house. Since Arielle had arrived, more and more sea wildlife had been coming in close to the house. It didn’t make any sense to him, given her apparent aversion to the ocean itself but like everything else, he just shrugged it off as odd and unexplainable. Together, they both gently picked up the snails by their shells and carried them to a dark, moist spot under a spruce tree, lest they be stepped on or driven over.
That night, as Arielle climbed into bed after another fun, fulfilling day, she heard a tapping at her door and saw it was Lucia peeking in. The woman who had come to be her friend and also something of a mother figure came in and sat at the foot of her bed with a mug of tea in her hands. “I just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable here,” she said, taking a sip. The mermaid sat up and nodded gratefully, for she had been very happy and very comfortable in their home. “Cliff and I love having you here, the whole family does! Well, except for maybe Ava, but she’s a hard sell.” Lucia winked, and Arielle winked back knowingly. “The point I’m trying to make is, we don’t know where you came from or really, anything about you. We don’t know if you have a family somewhere, or what you were running away from that landed you on our beach but perhaps most troubling of all is the fact that we don’t care about any of that. We already feel like you’re part of this family, and nothing else matters to us at all.” Arielle smiled at her warmly. “Do you feel like part of this family?” Lucia asked her.
Arielle smiled and nodded happily as if to say Oh, yes! She knew in her heart that ultimately, she had to become a part of this family for real, because doing so meant her very survival. Lucia watched Arielle’s eyes gaze around the room appreciatively.
“I painted that for my daughter;” said Lucia, gesturing proudly towards the piece hanging above the bed. “Dagmara was obsessed with all things to do with mermaids.” The painting was pretty and colorful, and depicted a young mermaid with the tail of a goldfish sitting on a giant lily pad in a pond. There was a ceramic mermaid with golden fins sitting on the dresser, and an Inuit soapstone carving of Sedna on the night table. Lucia’s eyes glanced over to a framed snapshot of her daughter wearing the mermaid costume she had sewn for her fifth-grade Halloween dance.
“I wish you could have met her; you two would have really liked each other. This summer home was her favorite place on earth. Dags was a natural at pretty much everything, but she lived for surfing. Always first in the water and always last out, I can hardly remember a time I saw her without her hair all salty and sopping wet, just like a daughter of the sea.” When Lucia spoke of her lost daughter, there was a sparkle in her eyes but a heaviness in her heart. “Then, one summer evening,” she continued, “she went out surfing by herself at sunset, and we never saw her again.” Lucia had a faraway look on her face, as if she was partly blaming herself. “Normally our house rule is that we employ the buddy system when playing in or around the ocean but everyone was busy that night, and it was one of those perfect, pink apple blossom sunsets where the waves were nice and clean. She didn’t want to wait for Gabriel to come home, so I let her go while I fixed dinner.”
Lucia looked out over the beach fondly but with pain in her eyes. “We found her surf board sitting upside down, its leash strap neatly coiled around the tail fins, the way she always left them. We searched all around these waters for her, but never found anything. And no one has seen her since.
“Police wrote it off as the story of another runaway, because there was never any evidence to suggest foul play. As her family, we were given the option of either believing she drowned, or ran away.” Lucia choked back a tear, and gazed at Dagmara’s picture lovingly. “I like to think she swam off to join the mermaids.”
Lucia sat there for a second and let her emotional heart release a few quiet sobs, then sat up and dried her eyes on a corner of Dagmara’s bed sheet. “Look at me, tearing up when all I wanted to do was come in here to let you know how happy you make us! It is so very nice to have someone breathe a bit of life into this room again.” Arielle smiled, wishing there was more she could say and do to express her gratitude and gladness. But like every day since she got there, all she could do was smile, and so she did. “Sleep well, Arielle,” said Lucia, getting up and kissing her on the cheek. “Please stay with us just as long as you’d like.”
The next morning, Arielle woke up and selected an emeral
d terrycloth dress from Dagmara’s wardrobe. She slipped it over her head and tied the strings up on her shoulders, then admired herself in the mirror. Her hair was so long and smooth now; she was beginning to forget what it felt like with pearls and ornaments all tied up in it. Its color seemed to be changing too; she had never noticed so many streaks and variations through it before. Her skin was changing as well! Little brown flecks now dotted her nose and cheeks in tiny constellations.
As Lucia flipped omelets downstairs, Cliff sorted through a large stack of mail. “Oh good morning, Arielle!” he greeted her as she came into the kitchen. “Can you believe how much snail mail stacks up in just one week? I think I’m personally responsible for the slaughter of about ten trees right here.” Arielle nodded and went to the fridge to pour herself a glass of orange juice. Lucia and Cliff always insisted she help herself to anything she wanted to eat or drink, and she was getting quite comfortable doing so.
Cliff picked up a small red envelope and read the return address. “We got a letter from Erica!” he exclaimed excitedly.
“Wonderful! Read it aloud, honey!” said Lucia. “How long do you think it’s been since we last heard from her?”
“Who is Erica?” asked Demetra as she bounced cheerfully into the kitchen and poured herself some coffee.
“Erica is the daughter of my very best friend. Besides your mom, of course,” said Cliff lovingly, winking at his wife. “Ben and I were buddies since kindergarten, cohorts in Cub Scouts, roommates in college and the best man at each other’s weddings.”
Lucia swiped the coffee mug from Demetra’s hands and replaced it with a glass of milk. She rolled her eyes, then sipped her milk. “How come this Ben never comes around then?” she asked curiously.
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