by A. L. Knorr
She parked the Jeep along a dirt road that ran parallel to the water. We chugged some water and stashed our clothes and towels in a sheltered area between two rocks. Then we ran naked and giggling into the sea, diving in headfirst.
The sweeping change down my body was instant and there was no pain anywhere, not like the first time. The temperature went from frigid to perfectly comfortable in a moment.
The marine floor dropped away from us rapidly as we swam out into the vast, open sea. Mom slowed down and turned to look at me, taking in her daughter as a mermaid for the first time. Her eyes dropped down to my tail and widened. "You're silver!" she exclaimed with surprise. "Wow, you're incredible. I don't know if you seem so beautiful because you're my daughter and I never thought this day would come, or if you really are just that gorgeous."
"Thanks, Mom." I looked down at myself. "I didn't expect silver either, well I didn't expect to be a siren at all, so... everything is a surprise," I said, twisting my tail in the water to watch it move.
"It's not like I've met a ton of mermaids in my lifetime," Mom said as she watched my scales glimmering in the light, "but I've never seen a mercurial one before. They've always been coloured, even sometimes with pinks and oranges or with distinct markings, like tropical fish."
"Does that mean I'm boring? Like vanilla ice cream?" I asked, laughing. I didn't care if I was as dull as a tuna, I was just so thankful to be a siren.
She laughed with the orchestra in her throat. "Nah," she winked at me. "You're classic, rather than trendy. It suits you." She peered closer. "Look at this." She pointed to a barely visible marking that ran down along either side of my hips. The back of my tail was a pearly white colour, while on the front my scales were bright silver. The transition was subtle but now that she had pointed it out it was unmistakeable. "Stunning," she said, admiring my markings.
She looked at my hands and the webbings in between, and my skin, which looked just like hers did underwater. "You'll have to be careful though sweetie," she said as she took in my overall appearance.
"Why?" I asked.
"You're the most visible colour you could possibly be. Light colours show up better in the water than darker ones, and you're bright and reflective. Just be aware that when you're swimming you need to be extra cautious. Steer clear of boats and people."
I promised I would and we continued to swim on. I admired my mother through my new eyes, seeing her more clearly than I ever had. I had seen her in mermaid form many times before during our night swims, but it was always dark and we were always in the shallows so I never really got a good view of her in her full glory.
She was remarkable. I stayed a little behind so I could watch her. Her long black hair flowed freely. She kept her arms by her side, not bothering to use her webbed hands. Her skin was pale and iridescent in the light, and the skin at her waist transitioned smoothly into scales. Her tail went from an incredible teal colour at her waist to a dark emerald green at the tips of her long, elegant fins. Her tail was much longer and fuller than mine. I supposed that made sense, she swam a lot and I figured that size equalled strength.
She looked over at me and saw that I was watching her. "Everything ok?" she asked. Her voice was a hundred violins coming from everywhere at once.
"Never better," I replied with my own strings. Mine was a thinner orchestra, but music all the same. "I forgot to ask you," I said as we swam, "why did my eyes hurt so much after I changed?"
She laughed, the melody ascending and harmonizing. "I forget there is so much you don't know. You have two sets of eyelids."
I pulled up short. "Excuse me? I have what now?"
She had shot forward when I stopped. She zipped back to me so quickly it was startling. My goodness, she was fast.
"Come on," she said, taking my hand as we went to the surface.
We broke through the gentle waves and I took the opportunity to look around, marvelling at how far we'd already come. The shore was a distant line of brown and green.
"So, what is this about two sets of eyelids?"
She came closer. "Yes, look. You've got these," she blinked with her regular eyelids, "and then you've got these." Quick as a flash I saw a transparent lid blink across her eye from the inner corner to the outer and then back again, while her outer lid didn't move at all.
"Sweet mother of crap!" I jerked back, startled.
The underlid was completely transparent so that when it was closed, you wouldn't even know it was there.
"It protects your eyes while you're swimming, especially at high speed. Also during storms, if you have to deal with intense waves and rain."
I put my fingertips into the corners of my own eyes. I held my eyelid still and felt the blinking of my transparent underlid on its own. That explained why the rain hadn't bothered me yesterday. "Amazing!" I sang with my harmonic voice.
She laughed. "Yes, you have siren eyes now and everything that goes along with them. In the same way the salt and water made your gills burn, your eyes are taking in light and dealing with water in a way they've never had to before. Just the fact that your underlid had to separate itself from your overlid for the first time would account for the pain. I don't know if you've had the underlid all along, or if it grew in when the rest of you changed."
"Incredible," I said, getting used to the feeling of the transparent underlid as I blinked. It was hard to blink it separately from my regular eyelid at first, but it got easier. My vision changed a lot when the underlid was across my eye, everything was sharp and clear, sort of like a human wearing a diving mask only a thousand times better.
Mom dove down and took off again. I chased her and tried to keep up. The bubbles from her tail tickled my face and down my body. We played like a couple of dolphins. I hadn't felt such a sense of freedom or joy before, or such a unity with the world around me. I belonged here.
The world under the water was vast and beautiful and went off in every direction as far as my mermaid eyes could see. There was life everywhere. Schools of fish could be seen at every distance. I could also see garbage scattered along the floor. Every once in a while I'd see something that shouldn't be there – part of an antique truck, an anchor, an old tire, a rubber boot. It was amazing the amount of crap that had been dumped into the sea.
We swam for what must have been quite a while but I had no sense of time. We went through occasional clouds of plain-looking fish, and then passed a school of porpoises, and then a mother humpback whale with a calf. I was distracted by all of them and fought the urge to go and see if I could interact with these creatures.
All thoughts of playing with the ocean's residents vanished when we started to go deeper. Soon we were descending very quickly. I felt the pressure change around me, and my body adjusting in various ways. My ears made a succession of tiny squeaks as they worked to relieve the compression.
The landscape below us changed dramatically and became almost like a mountainscape that we were flying over like birds. There were ravines and huge crevices, boulders and spindle shaped rocks reaching up from the ocean floor. I realized that the marine floor was really just like land, with its varied terrain and distinct landmarks. A mermaid could actually get to know the sea in this way; the territory below her would become familiar in the same way the landscape around Saltford had become well known to me.
"I understand better now how you can always find a wreck once you've been there," I said to my mom as I watched the terrain going by underneath us.
"Yeah?" she said. "It seemed like magic to you before, did it?"
"Exactly. I didn't understand that it's not magic, its just knowing your environment."
"That's right." I could hear the smile in her voice as she swam ahead of me. "It's as easy to navigate the ocean as it is to navigate the land once you get to know it. There's just a lot more of it."
Then I saw a shape ahead of us in the gloom.
"And, there she is," Mom said. She turned her face back towards mine and I had another shock as I saw that her pu
pils had dilated noticeably. The bright blue of her iris was gone and her pupil had enlarged beyond the size of her iris. The whites of her eyes were visible but the effect was still startling. I wondered just how big our pupils could get. I guessed my eyes looked like that too.
We were a long way down. I recalled something that Micah had said about The Sybellen being at 90 feet and I guessed we must be close to that. There was still sunlight down here, and plenty of life.
We slowed as we approached The Sybellen. We stopped a short distance away, taking her in. I don't know why I was startled at her size; in my imagination she hadn't been so big, but she dwarfed us. The images that Micah had shown me had not done her justice. Gooseflesh prickled across my arms as she loomed out of the darkness and up from her bed of sand like a ghost from the distant past.
"Wow," I said involuntarily. Mom smiled over at me. "I have never seen anything like it," I said. And truly, nothing I had ever experienced could rival this moment.
"Sometimes, I forget," Mom said. "I have seen so many wrecks that I forget that they really are a link to the past and always have a story to tell. Human divers never get to experience a wreck the way we can, let alone the worlds under the sea," she said. I followed her as we drew closer.
The Sybellen was sitting upright on the ocean floor, as though she'd just drifted down slowly from the surface and had come to rest peacefully. The front two masts were still upright but the rear mast had snapped off and was nowhere to be seen. Ropes draped haphazardly across the ship, coated with algae. The wreck had portholes all along both sides and a bowsprit that shot out in front like the nose of a swordfish. A railing with shapely spindles lined the deck. The balustrade was broken in places and though algae grew on every surface the spindles could be easily made out.
"Mom," I said suddenly when I spotted something white and half-buried in the sand not far from the wreck. I pointed and she looked. It was a human skull.
"Yes," she said, not surprised at my discovery. "Wrecks are often tombs. You'll have to get used to seeing things like that I'm afraid, although less so in saltier water with fast moving currents."
A gaping hole where a hatch had once covered a ladder disappeared down into the hold. A doorway in the fore of the ship opened into the belly as well. The hollows yawned darkly, like some frightening giant's mouth. I had a lot more appreciation for the bravery my mother had to have in her job, mermaid or not.
"Listen." Mom's voice filled the water around me. She looked at me with her big black eyes. "I don't want you going inside with me. It's dangerous in there, even for a mermaid. I'll go in and take a look around. You can watch from the portholes, ok?"
"Dangerous how?" I asked, squelching my disappointment.
"Wrecks are fragile, things can shift and fall without warning, even here where there's very little salt. I've seen men become trapped in the blink of an eye."
"Have you ever been trapped or hurt?" I asked, now a little worried.
"Not seriously, no. But I don't want you to take the risk right now, ok?"
"Ok," I agreed. I was very curious about what it was like inside but I understood.
I watched as she approached the square hole in the deck, the one with the ladder. She didn't touch anything, she didn't use any of the ship around her for leverage and she just let herself drift slowly down into the hold with barely noticeable movements of her body. The last bit of her long tail finally disappeared into the hold.
I swam down to the side of the ship and peered in through a porthole. The inside of the ship was a mess of barrels and chests, cannons, stairways, and beams both upright and sideways. Whatever had happened to this ship, it looked like it had been shaken like a snow globe.
I could see my mother easily as she swam through the gloom. She still didn't touch anything. She scanned everything around her, probably taking inventory in her head.
"It's not often you get to see a ship as old as this one in such good shape. It's like it was frozen in time," she said.
I thought it looked like a bomb had gone off inside but this was the first wreck I'd ever seen up close and personal, so I took her word for it. "What is all that stuff?" I asked as she moved slowly through the cabin.
"According to the manifest, it's a lot of different things, much of which will be decayed beyond recognition, even in the Baltic. Spices, textiles, wine and spirits, ledgers and books," she paused and looked at me with effect. "Coinsssssssss and Goooooold," she said, hissing on 'coins' and drawing out 'gold' while waggling her eyebrows.
I got goosebumps at the spooky look on her face with its big black pupils and the resonance in her voice. She'd put the violins into a minor key, making her sound haunting. But I couldn't help but laugh at her clowning around. She didn't give a crap about gold. Everyone else did – that was what everyone was always after.
Suddenly, I remembered something. I couldn't believe we'd forgotten. "Mom!" I said with urgency.
She stopped floating to look at me, "What? What's wrong?"
"The masthead!"
"Oh yes, I'd completely forgotten. Let's go take a look." She swam towards a square side scuttle which a cannon would have poked out of at one time, and gingerly floated through it.
As we approached the masthead from the rear, I could see that it was a woman's figure after all. That made sense. The ship was named The Sybellen, after Mattis' beloved wife. It was probably a sculpture of her.
But as we approached, I realized I was mistaken. It was not a woman but a mermaid. Of course it was. The mermaid was the symbol of the Novak family. I should have known. It was probably still Sybellen; only she'd been gifted with a mermaid tail by the sculptor.
We drew in close and examined the beautiful masthead. It was covered in algae, so even though it was obvious what she was, her details were obscured.
For the first time, I watched my mother do something to disturb the wreck. She didn't touch it; she just took water in through her gills and expelled it through her mouth in a steady jet stream strong enough to remove the algae, but without damaging the sculpture.
For the first time since we'd entered the sea, I felt the cold seeping into my bones. I watched with a growing horror as the face of the masthead was revealed.
I was looking into the face of my own mother.
Twenty-One
We floated there in stunned silence – both of us in shock. I looked from my mother to the masthead and there was no mistaking it, they were identical, even down to the tiny cowlick at her left temple where the hair flowed back from her forehead. The face of the sculpture was a mask of serenity, the lips closed and turned up slightly. I'd seen my mother with the same smile many times. My stomach filled with dread. How could this be explained?
"But, this ship is 150 years old!" I cried, finally.
My mother didn't say anything. She drifted there, taking in her own wooden reflection.
"How is this possible?" I asked. And then, "Mom!" when she didn't answer.
"I don't know, Targa," she answered, slowly and quietly. She looked thoughtful, but I could see anger growing in her eyes. With her pupils dilated the way they were, it was an expression that struck fear into my heart.
When my mother finally moved again it was to put her hands on either side of the masthead, feeling around for the crack that would show where it had been fastened to the ship.
"What are you doing?" I said, alarmed.
"I'm going to destroy it, of course," she said, surprised that I should ask.
"No! Mom, you can't do that! You don't know how many people know about it. Maybe there are images of it floating around that you haven't seen yet for some reason. If it's all of a sudden missing, then they'll start investigating." I put my hands on her arms, knowing that I would not be able to stop her if she was determined to rip the masthead away from the ship. "Let's think for a moment, please," I begged. "If you destroy it now, then you could be putting us in a worse predicament."
She hesitated, pulling her hands away. Then s
he seemed to get an idea. "Ok, lets go," she said, and took off at a speed I could barely keep up with.
The swim back from the wreck was tense. We were both disturbed by what we had discovered, and even more troubled that Martinius had directed my mom to it.
"Martinus asked you specifically to look at the masthead. Why?" I asked as we swam, trying to keep the fear in my voice to a minimum. Our musical voices were far more expressive than a normal human voice.
"I don't know, Targa," she answered, without turning back. "But we're going to find out."
"How are you going to do that without giving us away?" I asked, straining to keep up to her. My tail had begun to ache with the effort.
"I suspect he already knows our secret, don't you?" she threw over her shoulder, and the stress in her voice was palpable. She was pissed. "I think this was his way of telling us that he knows. Otherwise, why would the masthead not be on the manifest? No one else on the team even knows it exists. Why would he call me into his personal library, all alone without Simon, the project lead, and then tell me specifically to check it out?"
I didn't know what to say or think. She was right. It didn't look good. A horrible thought occurred to me, "Do you think he lured you here? Using the job as bait? Maybe we shouldn't go back?" I gasped, both in fear and exhaustion because I was working so damn hard to keep up with her. "Can you slow down, please?" I panted. It was a strange feeling to have my gills struggling for oxygen instead of my lungs.
She slowed just a little. I eyed her gills and realized that she wasn't panting at all. I had a sudden suspicion that she was traveling at less than half her top speed. It made me realize that I had a lot of growing up to do, as a siren.
"I don't know what to think, but we are going back. I'm not afraid of him," she said with a hard sound in her voice that gave me chills, which remained as we pulled on our clothing at the beach and jumped into the Jeep. We peeled away, sending a spray of gravel shooting out behind us.
My mother brought the truck to a halt in front of the manor, shutting off the engine and getting out in nearly the same motion. She left the door open behind her. I scrambled to undo my seatbelt and follow her. She sprinted up the front steps and through the huge front doors; one of them opened with a bang.