by Dan Glover
Mermaid
Autumn
Books by Dan Glover
Liza McNairy Mysteries
Peppermint Soul
Baja Blues
Deadhead
Philosophy
Lila’s Child: An Inquiry Into Quality
The Art of Caring: Zen Stories
The Mystery: Zen Stories
Apache Nation
The Lazy Way to 100,000 Twitter Followers
The Gathering of Lovers series
Billy Austin
Lisa
Allison Johns
Tom Three Deer
Justine
Yelena
The Mermaid series
Winter's Mermaid
Mermaid Spring
Summer's Mermaid
Mermaid Autumn
Short Stories
There Come a Bad Cloud: Tangled up Matter and Ghosts
Mi Vida Dinámica
Mermaid Autumn
Dan Glover
Published by Lost Doll Publishing
Copyright 2014
All Rights Reserved
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say,
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
Omar Rubàiyat
Chapter 1—Paradise
The plants both waxed and waned black.
Though she never measured time she reckoned weeks went by without ever seeing the enormously red day star hovering overhead... but Lily never liked sunshine anyway. She preferred the cloudy damp days at Orchardton Hall which she doubted she'd see again.
On the days when the night was full of stars she could see a bright orb bloated and misshapen hovering on the horizon in the middle of the constellation of Dracut. She wondered if it was the remains of her old sun for it seemed hauntingly familiar and yet alien too. If she didn’t look at the star directly she thought she could catch a glimpse of a pale brown dot orbiting in its atmosphere doubtlessly her beloved earth soon to be devoured.
Lily lived in a paradise and though she rarely admitted it there were times when an insane longing—a sickness—for her ancestral home beset her. She remembered being loved by others. She loved the melodic sound of their names ringing in her auditory organs and from time to time she still saw their faces in her dreams. She wondered if she had perchance loved them too.
She hadn’t meant to live so long. Though she had never counted the passing of time she reckoned billions of years must have passed as she gazed out into the ever-changing firmament forever whirling over her head. Still, it didn’t seem she'd been there more than a minute or two.
Nate had talked to her many times about leaving earth to journey to another planet. He had even picked out a place. She knew he was just daydreaming but she went along with it if only to placate him... the man had so many dreams and it seemed a pity to carelessly crush them as if they were only carelessly discarded flowers picked and then dropped upon the path.
"Come away with me, sweet Lily. I've found a new home where we can live happily for trillions of years."
Though she told him many times he had never seemed to understand that time meant nothing. She supposed it was his human side that kept him from appreciating the meaninglessness of the ever-present moment where past and future rolled into one and a million years flashed by like a single summer day.
There was little risk involved so far as Nate's plans went, or so Lily thought. He had so many ideas bursting forth from his mind that even forever could not contain them all. She supposed that she still thought of him as the unruly child he had once been as indeed to her he was.
Nate wasn’t her first love nor was he her last. He had always watched over her, however, protecting her when the fates dealt her a losing hand. She though she remembered him promising to return for her but that was so long ago that she knew it was a pledge he would not or could not keep, either that, or she simply dreamed the promise.
She often had difficulty separating her dreams from reality. Whether that had always been a problem did not occur to her to ask. Not that anyone would listen. She had but to catch a nuance of some long forgotten moment and she was there again corporeally or so it seemed.
"Where is this place, my darling Nate? Is it one of those new planets you talk so much about? Is it far from here?"
"It is reachable in but a few days, my lovely Lily. Rather than being a proper planet, this paradise is a moon circling a gas giant we've named Hercules. We call the moon Miranda. Its orbit is such that it receives heat and warmth from both Hercules and the small red star that the planet revolves around. It is called Bernard's Star.
"Bernard's star is a lot different than our yellow sun. It's what we call a red dwarf. They burn their energy much more slowly and so this star system will outlast the earth and its sun many times over. Miranda is situated directly within the habitable zone. It is nearly the same size as earth and has fresh water oceans.
"Best of all, the temperature rarely fluctuates more than a few degrees. Since the moon rotates at a perpendicular angle to both the gas giant and the red star there are no seasons. It enjoys a perpetual spring from pole to pole."
"What of the others, darling Nate? Will they be accompanying us to this paradise?"
"In time, sweet Lily... in time... I'll go back for them soon."
She knew her time at Orchardton Hall was coming to a close. The old castle had been crumbling into ruins for ages. It was a wonder the walls still stood. Being alone there wasn’t so bad since she had her memories of better days to console her when the nights seemed unbearably long.
She remembered first arriving and selfishly thinking how wonderful it might be to have Miranda to herself. Lily had grown accustomed to doing as she would and answering to no one. The thought of others crowding into her life did not engender any pleasant thoughts though if as Nate said Miranda was as large as earth then perhaps there would be room to spread out.
She didn’t like to think about what she had lost in old Scotland and there the memories were everywhere. To make a new start in unfamiliar surroundings had long been her desire but her lack of motivation had always kept her grounded at Orchardton Hall even as the castle rotted around her.
Losing her Ladies was both unexpected and devastating in equal measures. They had promised her forever. Sometimes as she was just drifting off to sleep she felt a soft touch upon her skin but looking there would be no one there. She wondered if Lauren and Natalia were spirits and if so she thought how they might have followed her here.
Sometimes she talked to them, words of nonsense interspersed with verses of love like the haunting lullaby Lauren used to sing. Though they never answered she told herself that they could hear her nevertheless, perhaps like a person fast asleep and yet still perceptive to the waking world. What bothered her most was never having the opportunity to say goodbye.
Miranda had turned out to be everything Nate said and more. The plant life was kind to her and there were no animals, not even insects. It seemed odd that visions of a plethora of mobile creatures sometimes graced her dreams yet upon waking she could make no sense of such imagery... here where plants were the only form of life other than the microbes she knew must be around too.
She lived inside a black concuba tree although it wasn’t precisely a tree as she remembered them being. It was a name she invented for the plant that grew in shapes to suit her needs. That the plant was probably as old as or older than her had at once enthralled her and excited little passion. Though the concuba exhibited little emotion and even less talk she felt they had become fast friends.
Though she waited for eons Nate never returned. The communication device he left for her didn’t seem to w
ork as no one ever answered her calls. In time she quit expecting him. As she had never counted the passage of time as being of importance she had no real idea how long she had been on Miranda.
Whatever sort of food she imagined grew in abundance and though the pears and apples were black like the plants they grew upon they tasted sweet and every bit as delicious as those on earth. When she woke and walked along the sandy beach the dew of the day had coagulated upon the rocks in blackish golden nuggets both eatable and nutritious.
Her memory of a life prior to the one she now enjoyed slowly faded along with the pale yellow star that once graced the horizon. That there had ever been living beings other than her and the graceful plants of Miranda became a scarcely dreamed dream.
She found it odd that she couldn’t remember the trip to Miranda. Rather, it was as if she woke up one day and she was there. Nate had come back to Orchardton Hall for her... that much she recalled... and she had been so delighted she ran to meet him.
The blinding flash had startled her and the last thing she saw—the look on Nate's face—was one of horror. She had involuntarily shut her eyes against the bright light that seemed to grow all around her. When she opened them, she was on Miranda.
There were other machines here too. They looked like something Nate might construct... something magical about the machines reminded her of him. Each day when she looked inside one particular compartment, something new had appeared from the day before. It was as if someone was sending her gifts though she could never understand who that benefactor was.
One day she found a journal. Though she never dared open it and indeed she didn’t understand how it came to be there, she thought perhaps it might contain a clue to her history and perhaps point to the person she once was as well as the others who must have inhabited her life.
It frightened her however that she may not remember how to read the words so painstakingly printed on the pages inside the weathered and age-beaten book. It seemed a shame that she'd be given such a treasure only to watch as the journal turned soft with the passing eons before eventually and doubtlessly turning back into the dust from which it was made.
Lily remembered living beneath the bluest of waters but she didn’t think such an occurrence had happened here for the oceans of this place were tinged a crimson color from what she thought might be an infusion of minerals that existed in abundance upon the land. Even the plants exhibited the same faint traces of ochre.
Picking up the old journal, she began to read.
Chapter 2—Deception
The vines were dying.
She'd noticed the brown edges on them last season but put it off to a particularly dry summer. The grape vines had always weathered the dry spells well, however, and a vague consternation began to lace the fringes of her mind, most usually upon waking or perhaps while she was just beginning to drift off to sleep.
After Luciana left to go home to the Isle of Skye, Amanda and Ginger had become the caretakers of the vineyard. They were aided by Joshua, Ena's oldest son. He had once made a home some fifty kilometers to the east of Toulon but he and his family visited so often it seemed a shame they didn’t live closer.
"Come and live at Toulon, darling Joshua. Nate is gone and Luciana is talking of moving back to the Isle of Skye. We need help. Please consider it."
Amanda knew they'd have to go with Luciana unless she could convince Joshua to move there. None of the Lake people lived nearby, and though she had seriously considered taking her own life, to succumb to Lake Syndrome was not high on her list of ways to die.
She had grown tired of living. Growing up at Orchardton Hall had been traumatic at best. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father non-existent. Her peers teased her constantly about her poor hygiene and ragged clothes yet no one ever offered to help her better herself. She had grown up believing in the worst of people.
She had to convince Karen to take her on as an assistant even though she had put herself through medical school completely on her own, reading the old Archives with a passion she had never known before or since.
When Alpin had showed a slight bit of interest in her, she had thrown herself at him. She thought the boy actually loved her yet all the while he had only been using her as a plaything. He had seemed so sincere yet his mood swings were a sure give-away to his unstable temperament.
Still, he had opened her eyes to the reality of love.
Nate had not deceived her. Having dealt with Alpin, she knew all along what her husband was doing. For a moment, perhaps, she had believed that the three of them, her, Ginger, and Nate, could actually form a family but in her heart she knew the truth. The man would leave them the second Lady Lily looked his way again and waggled one of her webbed fingers.
She was glad she had tested the poison before ingesting it herself. Thinking it would be a quick and painless death had turned out to be a mistake. She felt nearly as guilty for killing the rabbit as she did for shooting Marilyn... the poor little creature had suffered seizures and lived for nearly six hours after Amanda had administered what she had judged to be a fatal dose to it.
She thought a helping of sodium cyanide would be better than other methods she considered such as drowning, suffocation, a fall from on high, or a gunshot to the head. She found a canister of the white toxic powder marked with a skull and cross bones on the back of a shelf in Nate's old workshop. She had no idea how long it sat there but it was probably there before the Great Dying. Her husband had simply never noticed it or if he did his mind didn’t register it for what it was.
She had done enough research to know that given time cyanide broke down into its constituent parts: carbon dioxide, nitrates, and ammonia. Still, she thought there was a good chance the deadly dust had retained enough of its potency to render death unto the user. She had been as wrong about that as the rest of the decisions in her life.
After the poorly thought out attempt at suicide, she had decided she wasn’t afraid of death but neither should she welcome it with open arms. It would find her soon enough. The world had become a mean and a dangerous place, especially after Chester disappeared. She had grown used to the big cat guarding Toulon estate from the top of a nearby hill. One day she looked up and he was gone.
"Did you see where Chester has gotten off to, sweet Ginger?"
"He was on the hillside yesterday, darling Amanda. I'm sure he is off hunting. He'll be back soon."
He didn’t show up again, however. Amanda took to wandering the countryside like she remembered Kirk doing whenever the big cat disappeared in those long ago days. She had heard the story of how Chester had climbed aboard the Nautilus when they were anchored in the harbor of old New York City and how Kirk had stood his ground rather than fleeing in terror.
It had to be the light in Chester's eyes. When she was marooned on the island with Ena and her parents, the big cat appeared out of nowhere. She had seen tigers during their outings on the old British Isles but never one so immense. Standing there looking at him, however, she could see a light burning in its eyes, or perhaps the luminescence silhouetted its head... she thought of William Blake and his tiger, tiger, burning bright.
One moment she was petrified with fear. The next, she found herself approaching the cat, singing a nonsensical song to him as she reached out to stroke his fur. Later, she discovered that Kirk had stood his ground in front of Chester too. She wondered if he had seen that same light.
She had hated that man for so long that the feeling had grown into a hard little knot she could feel locked in the pit of her stomach. The tales of his courage in the face of death hadn’t changed those feelings of revulsion she carried for him but the stories did suggest to her that she might well have been wrong about him for all those years.
Kirk had loved Chester as much as anyone did. When he didn’t return from that ill-fated trip to old America, she noticed how Chester had become more downcast with each passing day until finally he vanished.
"It's been over a month and I've not
seen any sign of him. If he was about there would be footprints. There are none. Either he has left Toulon or else something bad happened to him. I think Chester has gone off to die, my precious Ginger."
"I noticed he disappeared about the same time as Niall. Is it possible they're together, sweet Amanda?"
"If Niall took Grandfather Nate's flying machine, darling Ginger, there would be no room for Chester. Is it possible the big cat knew where Niall was off to and followed on foot? Remember how much he adored Kirk?
"I never understood that. I was ready to shoot that man after he pushed you down those stairs into the dungeon under Orchardton Hall. The only reason I didn’t was because I thought he was going to die anyway... I believed all of us were done for, at least until you and Natalia showed up with Lady Lauren."
"Do you regret not shooting him, darling Amanda?"
"Not any longer, precious Ginger... I did though. I thought how much easier life might have been without Kirk around. From what Nate says, however, Kirk saved his life. If not for him, we could be like Luciana, mourning the loss of our husband and our children's father."
"Aren't we?"
Chapter 3—Trains
She was on the train to France.
She'd been there before. The pain crept in, crawling from her spine like a spider weaving its web, attaching her stomach to her backbone over and again leaving lucid tremors in its wake as it danced along the slender threads. The morphine pills only made her nauseous causing her to vomit them up before they took effect, before they even dissolved.
She kept looking for someone but she didn’t know who they would be or where they'd sit... a woman, perhaps, certainly not a man... she'd be tall, with great green eyes that glowed with a fire all their own and long blonde hair that gleamed like silk. She'd be wearing gloves to hide the latticed network of webbing between her fingers.
The rocking of the train had lulled her into a shallow sleep... nascent dreams on the verge of bursting into reality alternately haunted and taunted her. She remembered reading a story of a man who had been sentenced to death for some trivial slight to a high politician in her home country. The newspaper article showed a picture of him just after his condemnation was handed down. The prescient gaze in his vacant unseeing eyes was the same look that stared back at her whenever she happened to glance into a mirror.