by Jane Keehn
- Are you okay?
Emily stopped to face Kendra.
Kendra hurried over a loose rock and nearly tripped.
- Let’s get to the rocks, I think the rain’s getting heavier.
- Sure, we’re nearly there.
Emily smiled oddly at Kendra’s pale expression.
Without warning, a flash of lightning sparked far off on the horizon, lighting up the frame of the Mandalay.
The air grew thick with heavy, fat raindrops that began to fall at a regular rhythm.
Drumming into the sand they bounced back up to Kendra’s feet.
Emily laughed and let the sudden shower run over her face.
- Isn’t it wonderful?
Kendra looked ill with worry. She tried to make her feet move faster over the uneven pools but a stony crevice caught her foot and and she lost the grip of Emily’s hand.
Kendra tumbled onto the rocks, grazing her palm.
Emily jumped to help her stand.
- What’s wrong? Are you hurt?
Kendra lay on the ground, water soaking through her clothes from the rock pools under her chest and rain forcing its way through to her skin from above.
Her face contorted in an animal moan as her skin began to itch and break and change.
Leo ran up from exploring a patch of seaweed and barked at her.
Her bare feet scratched against the rocks.
The rain splashed down and soaked through her trousers, clinging to her knees, running down her shins to her ankles.
- No!
Kendra reached for Emily’s arm, trying to pull herself upright.
- What’s wrong? Is it your legs?
Kendra looked into Emily's face but couldn’t say a word.
How could she explain what was happening to her, when she didn’t even fully understand it herself?
She began to cry; she felt wounded.
She tried to regain her balance but the water was soaking into her flesh and changing its chemistry, pushing at her clothes and buckling her body.
Something darkened in Kendra’s moonstone eyes and Emily was suddenly terrified.
- What is it?
Kendra’s eyes searched Emily’s expression for a recognition of forgiveness.
- I’m sorry. I’m...
She fell onto her knees in heaving pulses of pain.
Emily watched the rain soaking into Kendra's clothes. The outline of her breasts and her shoulders pressing against the t-shirt.
Kendra’s trousers began tearing at their seams as her body convulsed.
- Kendra! What’s happening to you?
Emily’s thoughts scrambled through images of Kendra’s crutches and weak, scarred legs; her reluctance to go swimming and her panic.
She remembered the black fin; the plastic bag with the sea urchin jewellery; the way Leo snarled at her and the animal cry in the night.
"I'm not like you. But I want to be like you."
A truth started to become clear in Emily's mind that Kendra was being changed somehow by the water, by the rain battering her skin.
She grabbed Kendra around her waist just as Kendra's bruised legs split out of her trousers.
Blood-streaked mucous erupted through Kendra's jeans and soaked into Emily's shirt as she carried Kendra over the rock pools, into the ocean.
The waves broke over them as Emily carried Kendra deeper, until the ocean’s surface was lapping at Emily’s neck and she could see Kendra’s trousers ripped apart revealing a mutating, cracking grey cartilage.
She released her grip on Kendra's body, allowing her to float in the water. She began to understand - the aloneness - the difference.
The water churned around Kendra as though there was a feeding frenzy of salmon circling.
A slick of oily, pink water began gathering with the ocean's foam flicking onto Emily.
She shivered with panic.
She pushed herself back, losing her footing, and tripped into a hole of sunken sand, choking on the pink blood-stained water.
Salt stung her eyes.
Kendra was crying with pain, her mouth filled with salt water.
Something black and slick broke the surface of the water - a split and tapered fluke.
An animal part.
A marine creature circled in front of Emily. An underwater fin cut the wave breaking against Emily's neck.
She knew that this creature must be half-Kendra.
Emily watched the creature swim through the water and deep in her heart, if not in her mind yet, she knew this was wholly Kendra – a water baby, a creature of the sea.
- Oh my God!
Emily gasped as her muscles cramped from treading water.
A cry of pain came from Kendra’s lips - a sound Emily recognised. She had heard it on the wind. Through the air. On her balcony, in the rain.
- I’m sorry, Emily. I’m so sorry.
A shivered whisper came from Emily.
- What - are - you?
Her body reacted by backing away from Kendra’s form.
She hurried through the water making space between herself and the half-Kendra that floated through the waves.
Kendra swam to Emily.
- My tribe is Giluri. But I don’t want to be of the Sea.
Emily’s feet found the sand and she hurried towards the rocks and the shallow water where this half-animal couldn’t follow.
- Get away from me!
Kendra hovered in the water watching Emily retreat.
- You don’t know what I am, but I’ve known all my life. I belong to my Mothers and for the last couple of weeks, I thought I might belong with you. How could I have told you that I am half of the Sea?
Emily stood shaking in the shallows, cold with anger and unknowing. She shook her head as she watched Kendra gliding through the water.
- I can show you, Emily. Will you trust me?
Emily had nothing to judge this against - nothing to compare this to. She looked at Kendra - at the animal, Kendra and could feel no fear.
The shape, form, and physiology of the animal seemed to be a thing she recognised.
It was familiar to her like recognising the face of a friend or family member in a photograph. It was almost like watching for Leo on the shoreline, recognising his outline.
Emily nodded silently, wordless. She folded her arms across her chest and began crying.
Leo sat on the sand far away, whimpering in empathy.
She slowly waded forward to the deeper water - to Kendra.
- Yes. I trust you. I don’t know why, but I do.
And yet, her body shivered with an inherent apprehension of the unknown.
Kendra moved her arm around Emily’s waist and edged her into the water.
As the waves moved over their necks, she placed her lips over Emily’s mouth and breathed into her, filling her with enough air to last during their plunge under the surface.
They swam out with Kendra’s marine form leading them through the falling rain and deep into the Bay.
Kendra pushed through the crashing waves carefully navigating the rocky reef, by-passing the Mandalay wreck.
She grabbed Emily’s neck and put her mouth over Emily’s lips to breath more air into her lungs.
Together, like kissing sea-dragons, they twisted toward the cove of the Catacomb Caves.
They swayed in the smooth current as they came to a stop, still clutching each other.
Emily felt the brush of Kendra’s unknown lower-half against her legs. They burst through the surface, facing the limestone honeycomb shapes.
The water was clear as the rain drifted off. The grey, black fin-like extension of Kendra’s legs cut the water. The shirt she’d been wearing was ripped along the shoulder and restricted her movement, so she undid the buttons, hitching the sleeves over her arms and shoulders, letting her naked torso free in the churning surf.
Her arms outstretched, lapping at the water’s surface as her tail ululated, keeping her balance in the shallows
of the Cove.
Emily shivered, not against the cold, but her body’s core reaction to a sight unknown.
She felt like she was looking inside a human’s body to see the organs, parts that Emily had only ever seen before in illustrations.
- Kendra. You’re...beautiful.
Emily - Kendra - Chapter 29
The water parted as Kendra and Emily clung to one another.
Emily’s eyes stung as she tried to witness their passage through the deep but speed forced them closed and she had to put her trust in Kendra’s new form - a new being - an animal of the ocean.
Their passage curled around Morditj Island to its Southern tip where Kendra dove down underneath the land formation.
She gripped onto Emily’s waist, her new-born tail waving them through the current, deeper and deeper below the island’s surface.
As Kendra slowed, Emily dared open her eyes to the deep blue water; they were far below Morditj Island and her orientation was displaced.
She shook her head through the brine to look for a familiar landmark.
Thin rays of light bounced off the limestone formations as Kendra lead her slowly through their spikes, silent towers of a landscape formed centuries ago.
Diving lower, Emily took in a landscape that she never could have imagined.
Green hollows of sea water hid behind tree-shaped rocks, shrubs of limestone that glowed in a blue light.
They swam past underwater stalagmites of ancient sediment and hanging stalactites appeared to float, forming a watery corridor for Kendra and Emily to wade through.
Kendra propelled Emily through the underwater cave that had trapped her just before they first met. They swam further into the deep of the cavern until the water drained away from the higher level.
With the tide low, they could wade to the furthest side, venturing inland.
Emily pushed herself up from the rocky pool, edging her knees onto the sand bank.
She stumbled to a mound of limestone to sit away from Kendra, breathing out her anger and confusion.
Kendra levelled herself onto a ledge and swung her shark-grey flukes out of the water.
Emily couldn't stop staring as the water dripped from Kendra’s new skin as she stretched her body over the stone landing.
Emily called to her.
- Kendra!
A splash of water cut across Emily’s face.
Kendra flipped over on the sand and whipped her tail onto the slope and waited for the pain to begin.
As the water dripped off the leathery, grey tail the dryness slowly began to split it into two parts.
The spiky end divided and shrunk into fleshy stumps that rapidly grew toes as Kendra writhed in spasms of pain.
Emily crouched, helpless as the transmutation violently ripped Kendra’s human form, as though she was a rapidly growing foetus developing in fast motion.
The drying pocks of fish-skin left scars along Kendra’s limbs.
The sound of her legs unfolding from their reclining position made Emily cringe in horror, powerless to help Kendra, as she propped herself up on her elbows and crept along the sand like a lizard until strength entered her human limbs.
She lay on her back, newly born.
Emily scurried over the sand to reach out to Kendra.
Kendra looked into Emily’s disbelieving eyes.
- How could I tell you?
- Come here.
Emily wrapped herself around the naked Kendra, worried that her wet clothes and uncontrollable tears might damage her fragile skin.
- What am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do?
They sat on the ledge away from the water hole.
Kendra sat on Emily’s knee.
- You don’t have to do anything; please don’t run away from me.
- I don’t want to run away but I don’t know what to think.
How do I believe all of this?
How do I know you haven’t put some kind of Siren’s spell on me?
Kendra turned to face Emily.
She ran her fingers through Emily dripping hair and touched her cheek.
She bent to speak softly into her ear.
- Would it matter if I did?
As she kissed Emily’s earlobe then kissed lower to her neck.
Emily turned in her rocky seat to better enable Kendra’s tender lips to reach places they hadn’t been before.
- No...
She tilted her head back in a small spasm of breathless pleasure.
- It doesn’t matter.
Emily placed her hands on Kendra’s hips and marvelled that moments before the same hips had thrust Kendra through the water as fast as a dolphin.
She moved her hands around Kendra’s waist and felt the naked flesh, looking for signs of the grey outline of her marine being.
Small, red outlines of triangular bumps of flesh appeared on Kendra’s hip bone and spread out down her thighs and legs, past the back of her knees and around the shins to her ankles where they circled like star shaped shackles.
When Emily first touched Kendra’s skin, she thought the marks covering her legs were scars left by the boating accident, now she looked curiously at these strange genetic remnants, half way between human and amphibian, growing from inside the flesh.
Emily ran the back of her hands over the raw flesh and looked up to Kendra’s face.
- Kendra, you lied to me.
- What do you mean, lied?
- Kendra, I think you really can swim, after all...
Emily’s smile slowly broke over her mouth but Kendra couldn’t smile; not yet.
Emily - Chapter 30
The genuine Mandalay Mermaid sat under in a glass case directly in front of the replica Mandalay wreck.
Emily’s copy looked youthful and fresh alongside her ancient, cracked twin.
The Maritime Centre was lit up for the opening night of the shipwreck gallery’s Centenary celebration.
The low tide attracted tourists who wanted to explore the wreck of the Mandalay, while she lay half out of water but tonight they were enjoying Emily’s replica.
Her projected animation brought the scene to life for the invited guests.
Melanie walked past the gallery with a tray of canapes.
- Good work, Em.
- Thanks, Melanie. It’s been a team effort.
- Where’s your girl?
Emily gestured to the glass cabinet.
- Right where she belongs.
Melanie raised an eyebrow.
- Not her - the other one?
Emily searched the room for the shock of bluish, grey hair. Each time she saw a black t-shirt with a cartoon character or logo on it, she thought it might be Kendra.
- She’ll be here.
Emily moved off to welcome a staff member while Melanie walked through the crowd offering snacks before the official proceedings.
After checking on the computer’s controls, Emily clambered up to higher ground on the ship.
She climbed up the scaled-back Crow’s Nest to try to catch a glimpse of Kendra.
Above the humming of voices Emily heard a faint knocking on the parquetry floor.
It was Kendra’s crutches tentatively navigating the crowd.
She finally noticed Emily on the replica and their eyes found each other as the clicking of the walking sticks grew faster.
Emily leapt down the ladder and rushed to meet Kendra halfway; they kissed.
- Do you want to see the Mermaid in position?
Kendra raised her hand. She’d brought her tackle box.
- First, I need to show you something.
Emily led her to the Staff “cabin” on board where Kendra unlatched the tackle box to reveal a folded note inside a bottle.
- I found this floating near the Cove.
Emily took the slip of paper from Kendra’s hand; the edges were worn and the paper was water damaged.
Crooked letters were scratched onto the scrap -
“Come an
d find us.”
Seven Sisters
And a diagram that was the same as Kendra’s scrimshaw pendant.
Emily refolded the paper.
- It could be anything. It could be a hoax.
- It’s the constellation. You know it is. I need to know if my Mothers are there.
Emily shook her head.
- It might be anyone - from anywhere.
- But it’s the markings. My pendant. My tattoo. It’s where they’ll be.
Kendra grabbed the tooth swinging at her neck.
Emily held her head in her hands.
- I don’t want you to go!
Kendra closed the tackle box and locked the lid.
- I need to find out. I won’t be gone for long. If I go tonight, the low tide and full moon will guide me. I’ll follow the constellation and see where it leads. If there’s nothing there, I’ll come straight back to you.
- And what if you find something?
Already, Kendra was bracing herself to leave.
- I’ll stay for a while then come straight back to you and tell you all about it.
Their hands held tight but when Emily moved closer to kiss her, Kendra moved quickly away.
- No! Don’t kiss me. I’ll never go, if you kiss me.
Her crumpled trousers and heavy-metal t-shirt retreated into the crowd.