by D. S. Murphy
My friends had stopped asking when Sebastian was coming back. They tried to keep my mood up by inviting me out to coffee, organizing events and parties, or taking me out to movies. One day we even went to the old amusement park in Portrush. We ate popcorn and cotton candy and rode mechanical rides. Some days, the sun was shining and I felt fine. Other days, not so much. In May, they started talking about the debs ball.
“It’s kind of like Prom,” Jackie said. “Or at least our version of it.”
“The official debs is just for graduating seniors,” Jackie said. “This is an unofficial one that we can attend. It’s an excuse to wear a fancy dress and get your hair done.”
“Don’t forget rent a limo and get shit-faced,” Kyle said with a smirk. Patricia had been begging us to let him in on the mermaid secret, but I told her we should wait. After all, if the merrow weren’t coming back, why tell him anything?
“Debs is kind of a big deal here,” Patricia said. “So we were thinking, you could go with Derry.”
“On a date?” I asked.
“On an adventure,” Derry said. “Come’on, it’ll be fun. I promise I won’t dance circles around you. You might even learn something.”
“But—don’t you have anyone you’d rather take?” I asked.
Derry shrugged. “I think I’ve had enough romance for a while. It would be an honor and a privilege to escort the most beautiful girl in school to the ball.”
“Well when you put it that way…” I smiled. “But what about Jackie?”
“I asked Ethan,” she said, popping a grape into her mouth. “But don’t worry, we’ll go as a group, we’ll all be there together.”
“I see,” I said, picking at my food.
“It’s important to us, and we wouldn’t want to go without you. So you’ll come? We can go shopping for dresses this weekend.”
I nodded, but tuned out as Jackie and Patricia started discussing what kind of dress they wanted to wear, or what shoes would go with it. Going to a formal dance didn’t sound like fun to me. Seeing all the couples would just make me miss Sebastian more. I saw Ethan in the corner of the cafeteria. He jerked his head towards the door and went outside.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Got to get ready for class, I’ll talk to you after school.” I found Ethan outside, next to a tall oak tree in between the buildings.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. He looked so nervous I panicked.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Is it the merrow? Are they back?” I’d been waiting for weeks for any news.
“No, nothing like that. No merrow,” Ethan said. “It’s just… Marcus asked me to send you a message.”
No merrow, my mind repeated numbly. No Sebastian.
“A reminder,” Ethan continued. “One pint every three days. It’s been two and a half months. That’s ten pints of blood.”
“But the merrow didn’t come back,” I said.
“I know that, but Marcus isn’t going to let it go. Morgan vouched for you. You’re a Blake now. He agreed to your terms, but he’ll call in the debt, one way or another.”
Clara Blake. I’d promised something I didn’t have, and now Marcus was going to use my debt against the Blake family. There were 375ml in a pint, and 750ml in a bottle of wine. That meant Morgan had about four pints of merrow blood left in her basement. Even if Marcus took everything, it wouldn’t even be half of what I owed. And the debt would just keep stacking up. I’d sold the whole Blake family into bondage.
“There are eight pints of blood in the average human body,” I said.
“Firstly, I don’t want to know how you know that,” Ethan said. “Secondly, even if you drain yourself, which I’d never let you do, you’d still be two pints short.”
“But I could take out a pint at a time,” I said. “A pint every three days, then heal in the water.”
“For how long?” Ethan asked, crossing his arms.
“As long as it takes. It’s better than letting that bastard control your family.”
“Our family,” Ethan corrected. “And we don’t even know if your blood works the same way—my guess is not, since you’re only a quarter merrow.”
“So I’ll need to give four times as much.”
Ethan frowned at me and shook his head.
“We’ll figure something else out.”
“At least let’s take a little bit of my blood and test it,” I said. “We should know how strong it is, just in case we need it.”
Ethan agreed, reluctantly, and we made plans to meet after school. In my next class, I wondered whether this was Marcus’s plan all along. He’d basically turned me into his own personal bar. Merrow blood on tap. Plus he’d have me under his thumb. And if I refused to pay the debt, he’d go after the whole Blake family.
Thinking about Marcus stirred my anger. I was still furious about what happened to Jackie, and also frustrated that Sebastian hadn’t come back yet. No, frustrated wasn’t the right word. It felt like I’d lost a limb, a piece of myself. The fact that I didn’t know who to be angry at made it worse. For weeks I’d tried to keep my emotions in check, as Sebastian always told me I needed to. I understood what he meant now. When I got angry, my merrow blood stirred, like a puma stretching its muscles. I was rippling with power. I could hardly sit still in class. I felt everything around me—every mood swing my classmates experienced. Every piece of metal or trace minerals in the room. My skin was practically crawling, like my whole body was rubbing against a chalkboard.
And that’s when I saw Roisin, under the covered walkway between buildings during break. She’d been growing more confident since Sebastian left. Hinting that she still knew my secret, to remind me that she could hurt me if she wanted to.
“Hey Clara,” she called, “I hear they’re serving fish in the cafeteria today. I know how you love to fill up on fish.” I couldn’t believe she was teasing me about Sebastian like this in public, dangerously close to spilling the secret she’d blackmailed us for. I hated that she had a secret she could taunt me with. Hated her. I thought I’d covered up the pain of Sebastian’s disappearance. I thought I’d been doing well— I was more experienced now. More in control. But at that moment, all the weeks of loneliness came bubbling up to the surface.
“SHUT. UP.” I said, my eyes flashing. My voice was laced with rage, and it felt like I was breathing fire. Roisin’s jaw clenched so quickly I heard her teeth snap together. Her eyes widened as I took control of her body. 70% salt water, Sebastian had told me. I could feel it now. It was just like moving the bucket of water on the shore. Roisin looked cute in her uniform. Too cute. A spring rain had made the soil damp. A thought flew through my mind, and before I could catch it, Brianna was already moving. She bent down and grabbed two fistfuls of mud from the wet ground, and then wiped her palms all over her white uniform. Then she smeared mud across her face and neck. She even licked one of her fingers, her eyes wide and blank. Students gathered around us to watch. A few laughed nervously, while others pulled out their phones.
I released my hold on her, and watched panic and humiliation appear in her eyes as he looked down at her dirty hands and ruined uniform. I was suddenly horrified by what I’d done. I turned quickly and fled the scene, but not before making eye contact with Ethan, who was standing on the outside of the circle of onlookers. He looked as shocked as I felt.
I headed through the school quickly and pushed out through the back doors. I didn’t want to be around anyone so I ducked into the chapel. It was almost always empty. After a few minutes I felt somebody join me.
“Come to tell me what a monster I am?” I asked, thinking it was Ethan.
“Not my place, miss,” said a soft voice behind me. I turned to see Galen, holding his hat in his hands.
“You saw what happened, I suppose?” I asked quietly.
He nodded. “Not the first time I’ve seen something like that, neither.”
Not the first ti
me?
“You asked me about your mother before. Branna Daly. Won’t likely forget that girl, not that name. I’d only been working here a few years. I always thought I was pretty good with the kids. Then one day I heard shouting. Turned the corner to find Branna and Olivia—Miss Lynch now— yelling at each other. Was about to interrupt and send them back to class, when Olivia froze up. Looked like she was having a seizure. Thought she might need the paramedics. But then she started dancing, like a ballerina. Then she bent down and kneeled before Branna, tears in her eyes, and bowing until her forehead touched the ground. I’ve never seen anything like it, not in all my years. Until today.
“I… I didn’t do it on purpose,” I said. “Not really. I didn’t even know I could do that.”
“I’m grateful to you though,” Galen said. I noticed how pale his blue eyes were. “Most days I thought I’d imagined it, thought I was a little addled upstairs. Never was very sure of myself, after that day. I heard the rumors, about Phyllis. Never put much stock in them. Until you got here, and asked me about the Fomori. Started researching them. Learned what they could do. Then, just now, what you did to that other girl. Let’s just say, it’s nice to know I’m not just a weak-minded old man.”
“But don’t you think I’m terrible?” I asked. “Making her do that—embarrassing her like that. Don’t you think I’m monstrous?”
Galen shrugged and got up to leave. “Not my place to say so. If there’s one thing I’ve learned working her, it’s that teenage girls can be right mean to each other. And some days they do things they regret. Don’t let it define who you are. It’s your choices, not your actions, that matter most.”
I didn’t agree with Galen’s last bit of advice. Wasn’t our actions the same as our choices? Did he mean, what we did deliberately mattered, and what we did unintentionally did not? I didn’t buy that.
I understood know why Ethan didn’t want me using my powers, and why the Tuatha Dé hated the merrow so much. There was no good way to use this kind of power. It was pure evil, being able to force someone like that, to take control of their body. It was the most violent invasion imagineable. There is no justification for that kind of violence. I wanted to tell Roisin I was sorry, but I didn’t know how. If she thought I was a freak before, now she had proof. What would she do when her friends asked her what happened? Say I did it to her? That I made her cover herself in mud? Who would believe her?
I skipped school the next day and went straight to Sebastian’s. Part of me had been enjoying my tough girl reputation, but only because I didn’t think it was real. But now I could feel it, the merrow in me. I felt what I could become, my darkest self. When I lost control like that, I didn’t even recognize myself.
I pushed my fingertips against the windowpane. It was gray out and a light shower left rain drops on the glass. Damn it Sebastian, where are you? I grabbed the conch shell he’d left and held it up to my ear. It was a large, pink shell with perfect spirals, and sounded like the wind and the sea. I was pretty sure it was just a shell, and Sebastian had been teasing me about using it to call him. But I took it outside anyway. It took me a few tries before I could make any noise with it, but I finally made a trumpet-like sound that carried out over the water.
I was just turning back into the house when I heard a response. I thought I’d imagined it at first, it was so far away. The second time I heard it, I ran towards the water, pulling off my shoes and diving in head first. I didn’t know exactly what I was swimming towards. I was so surprised that anything had happened after blowing on the shell, I wasn’t thinking straight. My arms cut cleanly through the waves as I swam farther and farther away from land. I heard it again, closer this time, and my heart sank as I realized it was just a seal. But the cry was so forlorn, so empty, I kept following it. It sounded like a cry for help.
I found the baby seal near a floating buoy. Its mother had a plastic packing band wrapped so tightly around her body it was practically embedded in her skin. It looked like it had been that way for a long time, and the skin around it was infected. The band was stuck on some scrap wire from the buoy. She was so still, I thought she was dead at first. She’d probably been stuck here for days, starving.
My eyes filled with tears as I tripped through the plastic to set her free. I thought back to all the trash I’d seen at the beach bonfire—cans and bottles, plastic bags. I wondered if some of this trash was our fault. I’m so sorry, I said, freeing the seal. The baby seal nuzzled up to me, and I wished I could take it home. I hoped the mother would be strong enough to protect it until it got bigger.
I swam back to the house, angry at human waste and stupidity. For the first time I understood how conflicted Sebastian must have felt. He ran away because he refused to lead the merrow armies against the humans. But what if the merrow were right—what if humanity was a plague, endangering the whole world? If they couldn’t stop polluting by choice, maybe they needed to be stopped by force. Even if the merrow don’t attack, how long would it be before humanity destroyed itself?
***
I went shopping with Jackie and Patricia a few days later, not fully knowing what I was getting into. We got coffee and hit the shops in Coleraine.
“I’ve been to a couple high school formals,” I said. “It’ll be like that, right? Slow dancing and spinning lights?”
“Sure, something like that. I’m just looking for something that’s going to burn up my Instagram,” Patricia said, flipping through dresses on the rack and pulling out something red. Most of the dresses were puffy and glittery. Flashy, attention-seeking. I didn’t want attention. I watched them awkwardly until Jackie rolled her eyes at me. She grabbed my hand and dragged me to the end of the aisle.
“Stand here,” she said. “Hold out your arms. Now don’t move.”
I held still as Jackie picked out dresses and draped them over my arms. Once there was a pile, she nodded toward the dressing room.
“Don’t forget to show us each one,” she said.
We tried on dresses for about an hour. Patricia found a strapless, purple dress covered in sequins that looked like something an actress might wear to an awards ceremony. Jackie found a vintage-looking ball gown with a glittery silver top and a long turquoise satin dress.
“Can’t I just wear jeans?” I asked. I wasn’t excited about any of the choices I’d tried on, though that may have said more about my state of mind than the dresses in question.
“Hold on,” Jackie said. “I saw something else that might work.” She hunted through the racks and pulled out a light blue dress. It was understated rather than flashy, but gorgeous… the artic blue chiffon had a subtle sparkle that reminded me of Sebastian’s tail, and the top was white lace with sequins that clasped around my neck. I tried it on and twirled in the mirror. The lightweight fabric hovered above the ground before settling. My dark hair spilled over my shoulders, and I noticed how well the dress brought out my eyes.
“It’s a little on the nose, isn’t it?” I asked.
“If you mean, it makes you look like a mermaid princess, then yes.”
Then I checked the price tag.
“This costs a fortune,” I said. “Are yours this expensive?”
“The debs is kind of a coming out party,” Patricia shrugged. “Announcing yourself to the world as a woman. Most girls save up and go big.”
“I can lend you some money if you can’t afford it,” Jackie said.
I hadn’t told Jackie or the others about my treasure-hunting adventures yet, so they didn’t know I still had a pile of gold coins at my house and some jewelry that was probably worth a hundred dresses like this. I was sure they’d heard about what happened with Roisin, but they weren’t bringing it up, and I want to broach the subject by admitting we’d paid Roisin off to keep our secret.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I have enough, it just seems like kind of a waste.”
Especially since Sebastian isn’t here to see me in it.
I didn’t want to be a downe
r though and ruin the experience for my friends, so I paid for my dress and we made plans for the big night. Apparently dinner was included at the venue. Jackie wasn’t thrilled about the idea of getting picked up on Ethan’s motorcycle, so I offered to drive.
When I got home, however, I noticed Helena’s white van parked outside and asked her if I could borrow it. She’d been spending more time at our place recently. Mostly just afternoon visits, but I wondered if anything more happened when I was at school.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’ll drive you. You don’t want to be driving in your dress anyway.”
“Okay, sure,” I said. I felt a little bad about asking, but it would be a lot easier if I didn’t have to worry about driving and not tripping over my dress at the same time.
The night of debs, I was actually excited for the dance. The dress fit me beautifully, and I loved the way the fabric swished around my heels. Almost like the tail I’d probably never have. Patricia said debs was about announcing yourself to society as a woman. I wasn’t sure about all that, but it was amazing how much I’d changed in just the past year. I wasn’t the same person I’d been when I left America, and I was starting to think that wasn’t such a bad thing. As an afterthought, I grabbed my mother’s necklace and fastened it around my neck. The blue stone matched my dress and filled me with confidence. Helena grabbed her keys and followed me out the door. We were going to pick up the others at Jackie’s place.
“Wait a minute, dear, you have a tag on your dress. Let me just help you take that off.” I felt a sharp prick, and at first I thought Helena had accidentally poked me with the scissors. Until I saw the needle. Then, everything went black.