by Jane Keehn
A small tear tickled its way over her cheek.
- Stop it!
She reprimanded herself.
She sat up and took a deep breath.
- Stupid, stupid girl!
She felt as though she had been hooked through the heart and reeled in against her will.
Emily pounded her feet onto the floor.
Out the window the grey flecks of rain didn’t deter her. Emily threw on a tracksuit and laced on a pair of running shoes.
Leo trundled along behind wondering what was happening.
This was earlier than Emily’s usual morning jog.
She sprang down the stairs to the beach with Leo happily beside her.
Her face was covered by the pelting rain and she turned her face upwards to feel the drops of coolness on her morning skin.
The pounding of her feet onto the sand cleared her head, the blood running through to her lungs stopped her thinking of Kendra and her secret cabin in the bush.
- Thank goodness she wasn't home.
Emily thought, warm with a slight embarrassment.
She laughed gently at herself as she brushed a hand through her hair and wiped the rain from her face.
Her pace quickened, trying to outrun Leo, pounding the sand as Leo avoided the waves creeping up to his paws.
The foam sprayed lightly under the weight of the rain drops.
Emily’s vision clouded when she looked to the end of the shore.
There was no one else running, no neighbours or tourists jogging in this dank weather.
The sound of water lapping at the bows of small boats bobbing in the wind made a harmony with the water sucking through the sand.
Emily felt the therapeutic rush of blood as she approached the end of the beach where an unfamiliar mound raised in the sand just a metre into the water.
She wiped the rain from her eyes and ran towards the mound. Could she see a dog roaming the beach or a small, low figure in the shallows?
The shape stayed after the wave retreated into the ocean. It looked like a shoulder and a human neck - the shape grew clearer as Emily approached.
The foamy wave slipped over the torso like a net pulled back into sea.
Emily’s steps stumbled over the uneven sandbank and into the shallow tide.
She ran until her breath burned her lungs and she could see the full shape of the figure in the shallow water.
It was definitely a shoulder and a neck… was there a faint tattoo winding down the back?
- Kendra?
Emily’s legs almost buckled as she ploughed through the soft sand to get closer to the human form lying at the end of the beach.
- Kendra!
But the head came into Emily’s focus and flaming locks of hair curled over the stiff shoulders, not a tattoo.
Emily shook her head to clear her thoughts.
Was she going mad?
Surely she was seeing things.
Her vision was betraying her.
A figure was lying in the sand, face down, her hair jutting from the incoming tide.
Emily stopped a few metres from the rock - from the figure.
- Oh my god!
It looked human, but it was a wooden figure of a woman.
It was the Mandalay Mermaid figurehead’s wooden battered body dug into the sand face down.
Her arms pointed backwards awkwardly and her green, chipped and damaged tail sank into the shallow waves, bobbing minutely with each splash.
- I don’t believe this!
Emily bent down and ran her hand over the wooden hair.
Her hands curled around the face.
She crouched closer and her knees sank into the soft wet sand.
The three days of rain had provided a reward for Emily's solitude.
The treasure that was the Mandalay Mermaid was life size and hefty and Emily could not move her weight from the sinking sandbank.
She sat into the tide and ran her hands over the curve of the tail.
The waves covered her with salt spray as Emily gripped the arms of the figurehead, and threatened to drag them both back into the ocean.
Emily dug the weight of her body against the pull and managed to free the wooden tail from below the water.
Certain that the Mandalay Mermaid was safe from the waves, she sprang upright and leapt over the beach in the direction of her house.
Her legs moved faster than she could remember, jumping up her front steps two at a time.
Emily ran to grab her mobile phone lying near the base of the goldfish bowl.
The fish rocked slightly as she knocked the table reaching for the phone.
Emily pressed a speed dial, breathing heavily, catching her breath as she waited for Melanie to answer.
It was early, only around five o’clock, so the phone rang for a while until a sleepy voice answered.
The phone crunched against the sand on Emily’s face.
- I need your help.
Emily forced her voice to remain calm.
- Melanie, we’re working from home today!
Get over here now.
Emily - Chapter 26
Melanie screeched to a halt in front of Emily’s driveway.
She tapped on the front door but couldn’t hear or see Emily inside.
A noise behind the garage door made her turn and there was Emily raising the sliding garage door, wearing overalls and safety goggles tucked up on the top of her head.
Melanie held her hand over her eyes, guarding them from the glare of the overhead work light.
- What’s going on? Are you feeling alright?
Her eyes caught a glimpse of a green fleck of paint and some cracked wood.
- Em, you've already made one of these at work, why do another?
- It’s her.
Melanie let herself be led by Emily's hand to the work table where a cracked, ageing wooden mermaid figurehead was held by two wooden vices.
- Oh, my…good God…what…?
Emily grinned as she released her grip on Melanie’s hand.
- But…How? Where? How can you be sure?
It was as though Emily’s Grandmother had a hand in seeing the Mandalay Mermaid come home, to Meg’s Cove where her journey had ended and begun a hundred years ago.
- She washed up on Meg’s beach. I was jogging. She was right here.
- But how?
- I don’t know.
Melanie looked towards the bedroom.
- Is your little hippy chick here?
Emily shot Melanie an angry look.
- No. What are you talking about? I haven’t seen her since the rain...
Melanie ran her hand over the mermaid’s hips.
The cracks were hairline and the paint looked authentic.
Weathered but well-looked after.
- Someone’s taken care of her for all these years. She obviously hasn't been floating around at Sea.
Melanie took an easy stroll around the mermaid.
- She’s been lost all these years and now all of a sudden with the exhibition coming up, the Mandalay Mermaid comes out?
You’ve been looking in caves for the last twenty years and nothing!
Emily grinned.
- It's as though Meg has made this happen from, you know, Beyond, or something?
- Well, I don't see how else... I don't suppose your new friend has any idea? After all, she collects found objects...
Melanie reached out and tapped the wooden figure on the head.
- What are we going to do with her?
Emily grabbed a tool from the work table.
- We’ll run some tests on the paint and wood to determine the age. Then we’ll decide if we want to repaint and restore her or just keep her the way she is.
She can replace my replica in the galleries.
Melanie found a pair of tweezers amongst the tools on the garage table, pinched off a small fleck of paint from near the waist of the mermaid and placed it in a zip lock plastic bag.
A limping figure in a long black coat cutting across the after-rain glare.
Emily spied it too.
Kendra pushed herself along with her sticks through the sandy grass and stopped in Emily’s front yard.
She could see Emily and Melanie standing behind the figurehead.
Emily removed the goggles from her head and gripped them in her hand.
Melanie swivelled around with the paint chips and froze as she recognised the girl on crutches wearing dark clothes.
- Kendra? When I found her lying on the beach, I thought it was you.
I thought you'd drowned.
Emily gestured to the Mandalay figurehead.
- Do you know anything about this? Did you find her when you were beach-combing?
Kendra’s concerned expression didn’t change.
She was seriously judging Emily’s mood and reaction.
- She was found in a cave near my home.
Emily shook her head in disbelief.
- So, you knew all along where she was?
Melanie decided to chime in.
- Were you planning on keeping her? You could be fined for that!
Kendra stood still and stared at the mermaid.
How could she explain that this was a replica of herself; a reminder of her lost family?
She touched her eyelids, feeling tears building up behind them.
Emily waited for a response, closed her eyes and stomped closer to Kendras.
- Why didn’t you tell me?
Melanie looked from Emily to Kendra.
She grabbed her work bag and headed for her car.
- I’ve got the samples, Emily, I can do the tests back at work.
She ducked under the low-hanging garage door, shoving the plastic bag into her handbag.
- You two must have a lot to talk about.
Melanie gestured to Kendra and looked into Emily’s confused eyes.
- Ms. Mandalay must have been too big for “Feral Beryl” here, to make a wind-chime out of. I’ll tell them that you’re working from home today.
Emily stood with her hands on the hips of her jeans.
She felt the sweat running down the insides of her arms.
Melanie revved her car and zoomed away.
Anger and confusion were fighting their way through Emily.
- Was she another of your found objects?
Kendra shuffled on her crutches, moved their centre of balance.
She searched Emily’s eyes.
- Yes, I did find her. My Mothers found her.
Kendra could say no more, waiting for Emily’s anger to blow away.
- You knew I’d been searching for her? That day when you said that Leo dragged me from the underwater cave, why? Why didn’t you just tell me?
When did they find her?
- She's always been in my home.
I couldn’t tell you. I didn’t know what you should think of me. I was scared.
Emily opened her hands to the sky, letting Kendra’s gaze take in the ridiculous, paint-flecked, wood-shavings covering her sweating body.
- Afraid of me? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!
Kendra shook her head and fought back a shy smile.
- No. Not as much now.
- If you are, you’re too easily scared; I’m not from the travelling Side Show.
They stood still, looking at one another. Emily made the first move.
- So? Is she real?
Then, Kendra stepped forward, hoping that Emily wouldn’t run away. It was like approaching a feeding bird that she wanted to observe but not frighten away.
Emily flung her safety goggles onto the ground.
- You’re not some kind of fake are you?
Kendra shook her head.
- She’s real. She’s been in my family for decades. But now I want you to have her.
Emily thought of the museum and the Meg’s cove collection from the Mandalay wreck.
- She’s part of this town’s history; that’s not really for you to say! There are rules about this sort of thing.
- Well, for your museum to have her.
Kendra nearly swallowed her words as she thought of her empty fishing hut without the wooden Giluri keeping her company.
Emily thought of all the rules listed in her museum’s protocol manual.
- What else have you got stashed away in that shack of yours?
But now she regretted the words she spoke as soon as they left her mouth.
Kendra could not hide the disappointment in her voice.
- Nothing! Don’t worry, nothing at all. That’s what I was afraid of - that you would doubt me or blame me. That you’d – hate – that you’d think less of me.
She looked down and dug her crutches into the sand. Kendra stood in silence, she took a breath, but no words would come.
- I wanted to give you something, since...
- I know, since, you’re not like me.
You don’t have to be. I don’t want anything from you.
Kendra took control of the breath.
- She’s yours now. She belongs with Meg and the Mandalay.
Once her words started to ride the breath’s wave, she could not stop them from completing their way to Emily.
- I want you to like me again, I do want to be like you – somehow.
Emily took a step forward.
- Kendra, I do like you. You don’t have to be like me.
Kendra edged forward, dipping slightly in the sand.
She took Emily’s wrist into her palm, turned it over and slowly caressed the band of her diver’s watch.
- But, I want to. So, I was hoping you might want - to stop yelling at me.
- I’m not yelling!
- Then I wouldn’t mind - if you... kissed me again.
Kendra held her breath, waiting for Emily to escape and take flight.
Emily’s eyes opened slightly, sure she had misheard Kendra’s request.
- What?
- Emily, please. If we could stop fighting over the Gil…the wooden thing, you could kiss…
Kendra had rehearsed her words carefully but they ran away from her.
- I could kiss, you?
Emily felt as though all the rain that had poured down over the last three days had just been splashed over her.
Calmly now, she moved her body closer to Kendra.
Kendra took a step closer to Emily.
She took Emily’s wrist into her hands and lifted it, taking off the chunky diving watch, handing it to Emily and brushing her lips over her palm.
Emily watched Kendra's lips. She gently turned her arm around now taking Kendra’s wrist into her grasp and drew her funny, hunched body in close to her.
- I guess I could do that.
Emily quietly laughed as her hand tentatively touched Kendra’s shoulder where wisps of her spiky, ash hair lightly strayed.
Her lips found their way to Kendra’s.
Together, they slowly touched lips and tongues until Kendra’s self-consciousness exposed her inexperience and she grabbed Emily’s hand.
What she wanted her lips to do to Emily, she could not do in an open garage.
- Can we go inside?
Emily led Kendra inside the house to her bedroom.
Standing by the end of the bed, Emily’s head was foggy with her desire to kiss Kendra’s body but an old reluctance raised to the surface.
- Have you decided to be like me now?
Kendra had finally made up her mind to trust her instincts and trust Emily.
She now knew why songs were written - all for this - to be with another person – to have what her Mothers had.
- Like you? I’ve always been like you.
Her fire eyes glared deeply into Emily’s as she stretched her hand behind Emily’s neck and pressed herself against Emily’s body, forcefully kissing her in one fluid movement.
At the
same time Emily managed to remove Kendra’s shirt and in between kisses she finally saw the complete tattoo that adorned Kendra’s neck. She traced it lightly with her fingers, kissing the space as she moved her way around Kendra’s body.
It was a delicate, black filigree vine that wove its way between Kendra’s breasts, around her back, crossed over her lower spine, dived over her hip bone and thigh and finally plunged just below the waistline of her jeans between her legs.
Emily’s breath plunged as well with each kiss and she grabbed Kendra by her hips and gently positioned her onto the bed.
- I’ve been working; I should have a shower.
Emily breathed into Kendra’s neck.
- You could join me?
Kendra’s thoughts raced ahead to imagine her body reacting to the warm, spraying water.
- No. It doesn’t matter. I like how you taste - salty.
Emily removed her own clothes and then began to gently lower Kendra’s jeans, revealing the end of the fairy tale vine tattoo.
It curled around Kendra’s buttocks and re-joined itself at the base of her spine, leading back to clasp itself at her neck. It was like a strange tide line that outlined Kendra, linking the most desirable destinations of her anatomy.
Emily followed its meanderings and ran her tongue along Kendra’s cool body, her breath becoming warmer and wetter with each kiss.
- I like your tattoo.
She breathed into Kendra’s soft skin, kissing each leaf and thorn of the painted vine.
Kendra's skin seemed to shimmer as her breathing deepened at Emily's exploring touch.
Then, something more linear and geometric emerged at Kendra’s spine.
- Those markings...
Kendra didn’t know what she meant. Her mind was racing ahead to other, more important things.
Emily kissed the tattoo.
- Like the one on your scrimshaw pendant. The constellation.
Kendra felt the tickle of Emily’s nose against her skin.
- I've hardly seen it.
Kendra barely got the words out, as she closed her eyes against the pleasure.
- I can only see it if I look in a mirror.
Emily put her whole mouth over the symbol.
- You’d need to twist around.
She slowly turned Kendra onto her back while diving her fingers below the surface, beyond the drawing.
Kendra lay back onto a pillow, her whole body feeling like liquid.
A riptide powered through her body rushing inside her.
A tidal wave of pleasure crashed over her as Emily explored deep parts of Kendra’s body - parts Kendra had only heard about before.