by Erin Hayes
Silence filled the space between us. Finally he said, “I have something to return to you.”
My eyes were still adjusting, but I could see for the first time that he had something small in his hands. I squinted at it, trying to discern what it was.
“My necklace,” I said, recognizing the stone carving. My hands flew to my neck in a reflex that I’d had for as long as I’ve had the necklace. In the midst of everything, I’d almost forgotten about it.
“I didn’t have a chance to return it to you,” he said sorrowfully. “I didn’t want to keep it any longer. Not when I wasn’t its rightful owner.”
I tried thinking back to the first time I had woken up and he had shoved it in my face, like it was evidence of foul play against Kai. He had seemed so intense in that moment. I realized that it would have been because Kai had commanded him to save me when he should have been trying to find a way to save the dolphin.
“I’m sorry for getting in the way of your rescue mission,” I said, closing my eyes.
“I’ll help you put it on,” he said.
Wordlessly, I swept my hair aside so that the back of my neck was exposed. I felt the weight of the necklace hit my collarbone as he swam to my backside to do the clasps.
I’m not going to cry. Or swoon.
An awkward pause passed between us, as if we both realized the intimacy of this gesture at the same time.
“I’m sorry too,” Finn murmured.
“For what?”
“I...I treated you like a criminal when we first met.”
“I can understand that,” I said honestly. “I mean, I was right by Kai’s pool when you saw me. I know how that looked.”
“Yeah, still doesn’t mean it was right.” He came around to face me, his expression taut and grim. “We’re not savages. I should have looked at all of the evidence.”
“No, I...” I searched his face. “I understand. I think.” My eyes fell on the scars marring his body. “You were right to be suspicious. My kind has really hurt you in the past.”
I reached out and touched one of the scars, entranced by them.
“It was a fishing net,” he said. “I got caught up in it trying to save a mermaid who’d been swimming with a school of fish.”
“Does that happen often?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve learned to avoid traps like that. Although it makes it hard to save the creatures that get caught up in it.”
“Thankfully, you escaped.”
His eyes softened momentarily. “Luckily she did too. It would have been bad for everyone if humans found a mermaid in their nets.”
I opened my mouth to ask who it was because I somehow knew that this was important, yet the words didn’t come out. My first reaction was that it was his girlfriend, so I didn’t want to linger on that image.
He picked up on my question for me. “It was my mother,” he said softly. “She was out swimming with her subjects, being the gracious queen she was.”
I could see why Oceanus treated me with such hatred. “Where is she now?”
“She passed on a long time ago,” he said without emotion, although I knew that feeling. It was how I told people where my dad was. It was how I could avoid reopening those wounds.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
He glanced at me. “Don’t be. She lived a long and good life. She was a kind ruler.”
“I’m mean, I’m sorry for everything.” Sorry for being human. Sorry for keeping him from saving Kai. Sorry for feelings I probably shouldn’t have.
While I was out parading around like how I thought mermaids were, Finn was constantly putting his own life at risk for other sea creatures. I thought that princes in the fairytales had an easy life. It seemed like the work would always be there for Finn, because there would always be sea creatures that needed a savior. I tried to imagine what would have happened had someone else walked in on him trying to save Kai.
I shivered at the thought. It was all so dangerous.
“I had no idea that being a mermaid was like this,” I said. “I never really knew how to be a mermaid, did I?”
He grinned at me. “You’ve been doing a good job of it so far, Mermaid Tara.”
I couldn’t tell you what came over me. I leaned forward and caught his lips with mine, surprising both of us, me most of all.
Our lips were wet from the salt water and slightly slippery. My eyes closed, and my heart fluttered. A warm feeling spread throughout my chest, down to my fingers and fins. If I had knees, they would have turned to jelly at the caress of his lips against mine.
It was the best kiss I’d ever had.
It should be said that I have little experience kissing. Other than kissing my date to my senior prom and kissing my neighbor Bradley Sanders when I was six, I had no idea what made a kiss good or bad.
This one was great. It felt like sunshine and beaches and everything marvelous all at once in one sublime kiss.
Our lips parted. His hair swirled around his eyes as he searched my face. He gently brushed his lips with his fingers.
Panic overtook me as I came to my senses. Oh no. He wasn’t really into the kiss. Or into me.
What the hell was I thinking, kissing a merman? A prince for God’s sake! Even if he was gorgeous and was looking after me. That was his job. I shouldn’t really get my hopes up for anything.
“Sorry,” I spluttered, trying to salvage the situation. “I shouldn’t have kissed you!”
He looked at me with wide eyes. “So that was a...kiss?”
If I imploded into sea foam in that instant, that still wouldn’t be fast enough for me to die of embarrassment. I had kissed him like a human when apparently that wasn’t what merfolk did.
“That was bad of me, and I didn’t know that you didn’t do that sort of thing—”
Then I saw the wry smile between his fingers as he shyly said, “I liked it.”
The world stood still for me as I floated there, dumbfounded.
His smile turned into a cheeky wide grin. “I want to do it again.”
This time, he made the first move. He pulled me to him by my shoulders, his lips crashing into mine like waves against the shore. My eyes fluttered wide at this sudden turn, then I closed my eyes and lost myself in it.
For not knowing what a kiss was, he was really good at it. His hands moved from my shoulders to my lower back, holding me against his body. Then his hands slipped over the curve of my hips, down to my tail...
The best thing I found about kissing underwater was that I never needed to stop the kiss for air: my gills took care of that. Still, I felt like it had stolen my breath away in the best possible way.
I could get used to this.
“Tara,” Finn whispered, caressing the side of my face. He opened his mouth to say more as the door opened and Ponce poked his head in. We reflexively moved further apart, although if Finn had no idea what a kiss was, I was one hundred percent sure that the snapper wouldn’t either.
“Prince Finn?” Ponce sounded meek and afraid. “The shark guards are starting to call me ‘Bait,’ and I would very much like not to be bait. Plus, it’s getting to be nighttime, and I’d like to hang out here with Tara.” If fish could grin, he was smiling at the thought of it. “She’s so weird. She peels away her skin.”
Finn let out a breath, heaving his chest once before he gave himself a slight shake. I wanted to reach out and caress his mass of hair when he did that.
“Of course,” he said, his voice slightly strangled. As if coming to a decision, he looked back at me. “Nereia should be back tomorrow morning. We’ll figure out how to turn you back to normal tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
No it didn’t sound good. Why the heck was I so torn? I wanted to say so much more to him. What good would it do? It would only hurt us.
Finn swam to the door and looked back at me, as if he wanted to say something else. Again, he seemed to talk himself out of it.
“Have a
good night,” he said.
Then he was gone, leaving me alone with Ponce.
“Tara? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. And for once, I was glad that the ocean covered up my tears.
As I learned that night, mermaids don’t really sleep. While Nereia gave me a potion to help me sleep the night before, which had knocked me out, I had actually never tried to sleep as a mermaid. I kept floating up to the ceiling and bumping up against the stone walls. It reminded me of astronauts floating in space.
I wasn’t tired at all, and I remembered reading that dolphins slept by turning off half of their brain at once. Maybe that’s what mermaids did too.
Ponce was only somewhat awake, meaning that he was still swimming silently as he paced about in a three-yard space. I got the feeling that I shouldn’t disturb him for a few hours. My bikini bottom and fake mermaid tail floated around the cell, up to the ceiling, and back down again in an endless whirlpool.
I thought about everything and nothing. I crouched in the corner, caught my fake mermaid tail as it floated by, and wrapped it around me like a blanket as I considered what to do next.
I really liked Finn, but what did I know? I never had a boyfriend before, so why was I swooning after this one? Just because he was the first guy to really sweep me off my feet didn’t mean that this could be a long-term solution. Sure, he’d been a jerk when we first met, but that changed quickly once he knew the circumstances. After that, he was really kind to me.
And I was a merwalker; I could live on both land and sea, right?
I sighed and leaned my head against the wall. It was too late for me to be thinking about this kind of stuff.
I still wasn’t used to seeing my new mermaid tail. It no longer freaked me out, yet every so often, I’d forget that it was even there, and I had to tell myself that it belonged to me. I’d heard about phantom limbs before, but this was ridiculous. It felt like my legs were there, still underneath the shiny scales.
I held up my necklace Finn had given back to me, inspecting it. The stone mermaid wrapped herself up in her tail, her hair swirling around her head. I’d always been amazed at how the artist got so much detail in such a small space. The mermaid looked like the current was actually moving through her hair and her tail was blowing the same way.
Wait a sec...
I froze, looking at the pendant I’d worn my entire life.
How could this be possible?
The mermaid had gills under her chin, in the exact same place were the other merfolk had their gills. Looking at it closely again, I could see that her tail started in the same place on her hips as a real mermaid’s, a little lower than where low rider jeans would fall. In the Disney movie and in my own silicon tail, it went up above my hipbones. The tail was done perfectly, delicately swirling and bending.
This stone mermaid was clearly based upon real-life mermaids. But this was given to me by my dad. How on Earth could he have known what real mermaids were like? Either that, or whoever carved the pendant had met mermaids before.
It was too accurate to be a coincidence. The chances of me having a mermaid necklace like this and then later being turned into a merawlker were too great.
I felt like my soul had been touched by the icy fingers of fate.
How did it all fit together?
Chapter Nine
Despite being under the sea, I could sense that it was morning when a heavy thud came to the door.
I hadn’t slept at all. Even if I could figure out how to sleep under the water, after realizing that my mermaid pendant was based upon real mermaids, I wasn’t been able to even doze. My mind worked through all the different scenarios and tried to make everything fit together.
It had to have been a coincidence. I kept telling myself that, but the doubt in my mind lingered. And after hours of pondering about the necklace, I had a horrible headache.
The knock on the door woke Ponce out of his trance, and he righted himself as he shook off the dregs of sleep.
“Whoozat?” he muttered dreamily.
“Yes?” I called out nervously. I could see Ponce take stock of his surroundings, frown, and then jump at the realization that he was still at the palace.
It couldn’t have been the shark guards at the door—they didn’t have fists to knock with, and I couldn’t imagine them being interested in coming in—except maybe to eat Ponce, which I wasn’t going to let happen. My guess was Finn, and my heart swam laps in my chest at the thought. I still felt off-kilter about my revelation last night, so a little reprieve with his mouth and his arms around me would do a lot of good.
The door opened, revealing the one other person I’d been looking for.
I sprang to an upright position, using my tail to steady myself as I swam over towards her, immensely relieved at her appearance.
“Nereia!”
The old sea witch grinned down at me, her white hair floating like a little cloud around her face.
“Little Merwalker,” she exclaimed, putting her hands on her hips. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon. And with your mermaid tail no less.” She smiled widely at me. “It seems like your transformation is complete.”
I was at a loss for words. So much had happened in twenty-four hours.
So all that popped out was, “You’re back.”
Nereia turned her gaze onto my companion. “Ah, Ponce,” she cooed, reaching out to him. “Glad to see that you haven’t been hooked yet. I like you too much for that.”
Once again, Ponce was shy. “Lovely to meet you again, your majesty,” he said.
She waved her hand in a gesture of modesty. “The feeling is mutual. Now, I heard from my nephew that you were back in the sea looking for me. What did you need?”
What I had once planned on telling her yesterday came out all at once, like a tidal wave.
“You made me a merwalker!” I gestured in wide, frantic motions, unable to properly convey how freaked out I felt. “When I woke up on land yesterday, I had the best performance of my life, and then I realized that I had gills and that I didn’t have enough time to really wait to see what happened—I had to find you as soon as possible. So I went out into the ocean, where I met Ponce—” I indicated the snapper “—and I found Finn. He took me to Thalassa to find you, and Oceanus wanted me to stay here so that I didn’t create a panic among the merfolk. And Kai’s parents came—and they want to start a war! So I’ve been here, waiting for you to make everything better.”
Apparently, I could get in a lot of speaking without taking a breath due to my new gills.
She quirked an eyebrow and put a hand on her hips. “Why were you waiting for me?”
“Because I don’t want to be a merwalker! I want you to change me back to being a human.” Although as I said that, I wasn’t so sure. Still, I wanted to be human, but there were other reasons to stay, I realized.
Nereia simply blinked at me. “Back to human? But sweetie, you were never really fully a human to begin with. That’s why I turned you into a full merwalker, so that you can fully embrace your heritage.”
“Wait,” I said, trying to get on the same page as her. I couldn’t reconcile what she had just said with what I knew. “What do you mean?”
“You’re half merwalker,” she said gently. “I thought you knew.”
There was no way that what she was saying was true. Absolutely no way.
“You’re saying,” I said slowly, my heart pounding in my ears, “that I’m half merwalker. So you mean to tell me that one of my parents was a human and the other...?”
“A merwalker,” she said.
No, that wasn’t—couldn’t—be true. I’d spent my entire life on land. My mother certainly wasn’t a merwalker. She had hated my obsession with the sea my entire life. She wanted me to be a doctor and had pushed me against this life from the beginning.
But my father...
I looked down at the mermaid necklace and realized the truth. My dad had given it to me. It had been no f
luke that the mermaid pendant was accurate, because my dad knew exactly what mermaids were like. Because he was one. Or a merwalker rather.
I wondered if my mother knew that she had been married to a merwalker—it would certainly be a big clue as to why she had vehemently opposed me becoming a professional mermaid.
I wished he was still alive so I could talk to him. Maybe this wouldn’t have been such a shock. Maybe he could have prepared me better.
“Dad,” I whispered, trying to feel some sort of connection with my parent who had passed away. I looked up at her. “My dad was a merwalker?”
Everything had been a lie up to this point. Tears welled up in my tear ducts, and this time, Nereia could tell that I was crying. My shoulders shook with the sobs, and I felt like I was hyperventilating.
Ponce took this an entirely different way. “See, Tara? You’re not in a strange place. You’re home.”
Does this really make it my home? Maybe one of them. Maybe I was a child of both worlds.
“Did you know him?” I asked, sounding like I was strangled
“Not personally,” Nereia told me gently. “The ocean is far too wide of a place to know everyone, even if they are as rare as a merwalker. My guess is that he lived in the Pacific Ocean. And that he decided to live on land because he met your mother. And wanted to be there for you.”
“How did you know? How did you know that I was half-merwalker?”
Nereia offered me a comforting smile. “You might not be able to see it in yourself, but you have the eyes.”
“The eyes?”
“All merwalkers have the eyes. Turquoise eyes. And you, my dear, you have them. Just slightly though.”
Self-consciously, I rubbed at them. Strange how I had always noticed the turquoise flecks in my eyes, but I never knew that it was indicative of my heritage. They just always looked exotic to me.
I had no idea.
“And you confirmed it,” Nereia continued. “When you said that you could hear Kai calling out to you for help. Even though you’re half human, you still have enough merfolk in you to understand some sea creatures. I imagine it was because Kai’s emotions were so heightened, you could understand him without much help.”