The Merman's Mark

by Tara Omar

  “Will you do it without a rope?” asked Winston. David shot him a cold stare.

  “The flyers are on my desk. You may take them as you leave,” said David. He sat back down at his desk and pulled out a stack of sketchbooks that needed grading. His class stared at him.

  “What we drawing today, Mr M?” asked a student.

  David picked up the crumpled ransom note and set it on a stool.

  “Go,” he said.

  The class pulled out their sketchbooks and began copying the crumpled paper, while David went back to his grading. The room filled with awkward silence and the gentle scratching of pencils until the bell sounded through the halls. David continued his marking, trying not to look at the stack of flyers slowly disappearing as the students filed out. When the last student had left, David put on a pair of medical gloves and unlocked a drawer on the side of his desk, pulling out a balloon, tape and handful of bendy straws. Fran stood in the doorway.

  “Twice in one day, Fran? I must be in serious trouble,” said David.

  “It’s not even 8:30 and the school’s already abuzz about you jumping off Skeleton Bridge for an essay contest. Is it true?” asked Fran.

  “Yes,” said David as he trimmed the straws.

  “Isn’t that a bit drastic?”

  “Not actually. I said one of them must win,” said David. He attached the bendy straws to the mannequin’s broken finger with tape. Then he blew up the balloon and taped it to the neck, stepping back to look at his work. He put a fedora atop the balloon.

  “And if one of them wins?” asked Fran.

  David glared at her.

  “The despondency is setting in early, I see,” said Fran.

  “At least they’ll have tried for something,” said David, grimacing as he pulled the sock off the mannequin.

  “Well, good luck with your wager. I never thought I’d say this, but for once I hope our students don’t do well. It’ll set a bad precedent, having my teachers jumping off bridges.”

  “Not to worry, Fran,” said David. “Not to worry.”

  Fran went back to her office while David continued cleaning. When the last of the toilet paper had been removed, David took off his gloves and sat down at his desk, resting his chin on his folded hands. His surroundings faded to darkness; David’s eyes lost the frustrated confidence of the classroom, replaced instead by pure stress and poorly repressed fear. Skeleton Bridge stretched out between the walls of a wooded gorge like a hardened corpse, carrying the weight of a four-lane highway on its spine. David found himself on a platform under the centre arch of the sprawling, stone bridge under the highway. He could hear the steady zoom of bulky sixteen-wheelers racing above him, the smell of their sooty exhausts mixed with the fresh smell of the forest below. David turned toward the trees and inhaled deeply, sending the smell of water and wood to the very back of his lungs as he tried to keep at bay the strong urge to start trembling. He leaned toward an authoritative-looking man who seemed to be checking something on a metal clipboard.

  “Hello, Vah?” asked David, reading his name tag. “Really, your name is Vah? Anyway, I’m just wondering what the chances are of me surviving this. The disclaimer forms I signed were rather discouraging.”

  Vah chuckled, exposing two shiny, gold and silver teeth among a mouthful of chipped and missing ones. David frowned.

  “Don’t worry. That’s only a formality. This rope can withstand 400 tons, and we’ve never had an accident.”

  David nodded.

  “Though don’t let that comfort you. That’s a mysterious and strange river below; never can know what it might do. Could just swallow you up, it could.”

  David leaned sideways, taking a tiny peek over the platform’s stone edge a few metres away. He could see the river below, a fine line of brown and white cutting through a carpet of green. David’s heart dropped to his stomach.

  “Just joking, just joking,” said Vah.

  A wrinkly man in a black polo shirt called his name. He was one of Vah’s assistants.

  “David Michelson?”

  “Here,” said David, straightening up. “That’s me.”

  “Come sit here, boss,” said the man, pointing to a bench nearer the bridge’s edge. “You’re up next.”

  David took his place on the bench while the man sat at his feet with some rope and a sturdy, metal clasp. He positioned David’s feet together, but David moved them apart. He tried again; David again separated his feet.

  “You okay, boss?” asked the man.

  “Fine, fine,” said David. “Everything is fine. Every single, little thing is fair and fine. Just fine.”

  “I don’t mean to ruffle any feathers, but you don’t seem like you have the wings for bungee jumping.”

  “Not actually, no,” said David.

  “Why you here, then?”

  “Wendy Solomon,” said David. “Quiet, unassuming Wendy Solomon. Wendy, the witchy wench, Solomon.”

  “Did your girlfriend leave you?”

  “What? No, I don’t have a girlfriend,” said David. “She’s one of my students. I’m a teacher. I made a bet with my class and lost, because of her, Wendy—”

  “Solomon, yes,” said the man, grasping David’s legs together and throwing the rope around. “That must have been some wager, boss. How long you been teaching?”

  “A year.”

  “One year and they already have you jumping off bridges? That’s bad, eh?”

  David nodded. The man had managed to get David’s feet strapped together and was now double checking the knots. Another worker handed him the end of the thick bungee cord; he attached it to the metal clasp.

  “Well, it’s almost your turn now,” said the man, patting David’s calf. “I hope you find your wings.”

  Two husky guys stood on either side of David, nodding at him to get up.

  “Your glasses,” one said.

  “Oh, right,” said David, handing them over. The two men grabbed David by the arms and hopped him toward the edge of the bridge, his toes lined with the very edge. David looked straight ahead at the clear, blue sky, trying to ignore the gaping chasm at the end of his toes. He could hear the thumping of his heart in his ears; his legs threatened to collapse from under him.

  “Keep it together, David,” he whispered to himself. “You have to keep it together.”

  “Any last words?”

  “What?”

  “Before you jump.” The man next to him nodded toward a camera on his right. David turned to the camera, beginning what he hoped would not be his last lecture.

  “For my freshman students at Stoneview Institute, in honour of Miss Wendy Solomon’s brilliant, award-winning essay and her class’s equally brilliant effort, this is for you, so you will always remember that you can do anything you set your mind to, and to affirm I would jump off a bridge for you any day, because you’re worth being believed in.”

  “Ready?”

  David inhaled deeply, his insides squirming like a bowl of jelly.

  “Yeah,” said David. The two men looked to Vah who stood at the back of the platform. He smiled broadly with his gleaming, craggy mouth. They nodded.

  “Three, two, one… BUNGEE!”

  David let out a scream and dropped off Skeleton Bridge. The air surged upward against his body like a high-powered fan as the ground hurtled toward his face. Ears ringing, completely upside down, he plummeted toward the ground as it prepared to swallow him up, his body pushing to the very brink of manageable stress.

  David knew it would take four seconds to reach the end of the bungee cord; the overwhelming feeling of falling through space seemed to stretch time in weird ways, as though each second was an hour at the end of eternity. David counted them.

  “Three… two… one… one… one…”

  David’s feet fell below his head, th
en his head below his feet. As he turned he noticed something curious—the metal clasp connecting him to the bungee cord was missing. His heart rate tripled in sheer panic. He wasn’t attached to a rope. He was somersaulting. And the river…

  David slammed into the frigid, muddy waters much like a bird slams into a glass window. Every molecule in his body hurt with the impact, but the relentless river gave him no relief as the current hurled him in every direction, propelling him forward. He reached for the knots that bound his feet, somersaulting through the waves as the water poured over his head. David sank to the river’s bottom, his feet still tied together from the bungee jump. A small, silver seal swam up to him, but a booming screech echoed through the whole of the water, rattling the very core of David’s body. David opened his eyes to find his feet were bound, not by rope but by a monstrous snakelike arm that was trying to drag him, and what was left of Jia Li’s inflatable squid, up Squeaky’s throat.

  C H A P T E R 4 4

  David crashed against the side of the contracting stomach wall as Squeaky let out another bellowing screech. The gigantic, snakelike arm down Squeaky’s throat continued thrashing about, hurtling David and the inflatable squid against its back. David bent forward. The light from his merish body brought into focus clusters of small teeth inside a row of doughnut-like suckers.

  “Squid,” thought David. “Squeaky’s being attacked by a giant squid.”

  He looked to his wrist and concentrated. A thin, blue wisp floated out just as Squeaky pitched and turned; David lost his concentration and the filament snapped, bursting into powder as it fell against the squid’s toothy arm. David tried again as the squid shook him back and forth; he flipped around but did not lose his grip. The filament broke from his wrist and hardened into a twisted, blunt-ended pole. David caught it and shrugged; he poked the pole through his plastic covering and began beating the arm by his legs. The squid dropped him but caught David with another arm, which had just thrust through Squeaky’s throat. It pulled David near the opening of Squeaky’s mouth, where a lidless eye the size of a watermelon stared at him from just beyond the whale’s teeth, wide with fear.

  David remembered Jia Li’s calamari rings.

  “Squeaky’s attacking you,” said David, lowering his pole. Squeaky pitched again, and David fell through the hole in the plastic, turning back into his merish form as he fell into the stomach. His skin tingled as though someone were dragging him across a scratchy rug. David looked around.

  Giant squid or burning stomach acids… which one, which one?

  He grabbed his pole and swam to the stomach wall.

  “I’m really sorry, boy,” he said.

  David thrust the pole into Squeaky’s stomach several times. For a second, the fight stopped. Squeaky lowered his jaw and shook his head up and down. Then he vomited up his stomach contents, forcing David up the throat and expelling him into the inky, black Abyss. David surged through the water as though he had been shot from a cannon. The squid seized the opportunity and bolted, but Squeaky was too quick; he nipped it by the tentacle and reeled it back. David watched from a distance as Squeaky bit through the exhausted squid’s long, ovular head between the eyes. The squid stopped moving and Squeaky gulped it up. The light from David’s merish body began to flicker like a short circuit, and David started to tremble as the weight of everything he had seen and had begun to remember fell upon him, heavy as the corpse of the giant squid with fearful eyes. He thought he would be sick.

  Just then a coral-coloured light shone in the distance; it was coming nearer, until it eventually showed itself as a beautiful mera. The light emanated from the tips of her hair and the swirled markings on her body. She signed to him.

  What are you doing here?

  David tried to sign back, but he was shaking so badly he couldn’t make the words. The mera swam up to him and grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him toward a crevice in the sea floor. She led him through a long tunnel of rock. The water glowed green with light as they neared the end, as though they were swimming, not downward through a crevice but upward toward the air. They burst through the surface of a pool, and the mera helped him to the edge, their fins splitting into feet as they pulled themselves from the water. David could see a sky above, and the water he came from looked like an ordinary pool in the midst of a rocky landscape. He had made it to the other side of the Abyss—to Larimar.

  The mera brushed his hair from David’s face; a worried look lined the corners of her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. David shook his head.

  “I—that squid—that whale—it just—”

  He swallowed and tried again.

  “I’m not from here,” said David. “I’m not supposed to be here. This—this—I can’t handle this.” David glanced at the blue folds of skin on his calves, the marks of his fins. He swallowed again. “I mean, none of this is supposed to be happening. None of it makes sense. None of it can possibly be real.”

  “Where are you from?” asked the mera. David looked at her and calmed.

  “I’m from Scuttlebrook, on the outskirts of the Lowveld,” said David.

  “Well, I can see how this seems like another world to you. If I’m not mistaken, that’s deep, rural country in those parts. Mostly kelp farms, correct?”

  David nodded.

  “Are you a hoochie-coochie?” she asked.

  “What?” asked David. He looked down at his skimpy brief and seashell purse. David winced. “No. I, uh, fell asleep at a friend’s house. I woke up here, wearing this. It’s all a bit of nonsense, I’m sure.”

  “Hmm, you should maybe rethink your friends,” said the mera. “Who are you?”

  “David Michelson.”

  “And you do not know who I am?” she asked.

  “Should I?”

  The mera didn’t answer.

  “What do you do?” she asked.

  “I’m a domestic—teacher.”

  “You’re a domestic teacher?”

  “No, just a teacher, I think.”

  “You are clearly confused,” said the mera, folding her arms.

  “You have no idea,” said David. The mera smiled.

  “What do you teach?” she asked.

  “Art and music.”

  “Interesting. I did not know they aspired to higher forms in places like Scuttlebrook,” said the mera. She fingered the pendant of blue amber around his neck.

  The mera shot coral strands of filament directly at him, binding his wrists and legs with strong rope.

  “What are you doing?” asked David.

  “I am arresting you,” said the mera.

  “Why?”

  “For plotting against the royal house.”

  “Who—”

  “Shh… you may speak later,” said the mera, tying a gag around his mouth. She covered his eyes with another piece of filament from her wrist. “For now you must come with me, David Michelson.”

  C H A P T E R 4 5

  The mera with coral-tipped hair burst through a pair of double doors, dragging a heavy burlap sack behind her. The crystal room surrounding her was shaped like an overturned diamond and had a floor like a shallow pool; she made her way down one of the many stone paths that led toward a curtained area at the centre. The room was completely bare except for the stone tables against each of the glassy walls, one of which held a bowl of smouldering sage. Rocks that looked like shaggy bread dough lay among a bed of crushed shells at the bottom of the pool. She barely gave it a glance as she walked the bridge toward the centre. She threw back the curtain.

  “Aye, Karina, my darling,” said a voice from behind the veil. The mera shook her head.

  A mer hung upside down in a twisted yoga position, attached to the ceiling by a strand of filament still connected to his wrist. Unlike other mers, his markings were completely symmetrical, running up the centre of his ch
est and extending almost to his face, which was deeply creased with concentration. In his free hand he held a small, golden funnel near to the ground. He moved it around, pouring purple sand into a geometric pattern on the floor. He wiped away a few rogue grains with his middle finger.

  “I see you’ve been wandering the Abyss again,” said the mer. “Your father will not be pleased.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know, Silver, and I may just free you.”

  “Oh, how very not tempting,” said Silver. He unhooked himself from the ceiling and set down his tools, glancing at the burlap sack near the mera’s feet.

  “Found something of value, did you?” he asked.

  The mera flicked her wrist, forming a small knife in her hand. She slit the bag, revealing a mer bound and gagged with thick, coral-coloured rope. Silver wiped his hands.

  “Dear me, valuable he may be, but of values he most certainly has none, wandering the Abyss in that skimpy thing,” said Silver.

  “He said he’s a teacher,” said the mera.

  “A teacher?”

  “Mhm. David Michelson of Scuttlebrook in the Lowveld. It seems his friends played a prank on him.”

  “Well I’m sure your arresting him made him feel so much better. You did not clothe him at least?” asked Silver.

  “Oh, um, I didn’t think of it, actually.”

  “Hmm. You are too preoccupied with matters, Kajal,” said Silver. “You forget mers are made of matter, and in turn matters are made of mers. You should eye the mers more carefully.”

  “Yes, well unlike mers, matters matter.”

  “That is very unfair, mera, and you know it.”

  “Of course I know it, or I would not be here to ask your advice,” said the mera.

  Silver rolled his eyes.

  “Advice? Please. You are only here so you have someone else to blame if this goes badly. Your mind is already made up.”

  “And that is why you are the wisest jinn in Larimar. You know how to pick your battles,” said the mera, grabbing Silver’s shoulders. “Will you come to dinner today?”