by A. L. Knorr
He froze. The dark desire drained from his iris'. He searched my face, hazel eyes imploring mine. He didn't look angry. He just looked sad. But I still couldn't tell if he believed me or not.
"Have it your way, Targa," he said softly, and then turned and pushed out through the swinging door, leaving me alone.
I had been holding my breath and I let it out in a rush. I kicked a nearby office chair and it rolled across the carpet on squeaky wheels and then tipped over. This sucked. I could have any guy I wanted, but how would I ever know if he genuinely wanted me too?
Twenty-Four
After the day in the office with Antoni I got into a steady routine which centred around avoidance. During the day while my mother was diving with the team, I would leave the manor early and go down to the ocean. I would stash my clothes among the rocks at the secluded beach and then I'd shed my human life just like I shed my legs and spend the morning exploring the Baltic. I knew where The Sybellen was and was always sure to stay far away from her and the dive team, my mother's cautions still ringing in my ear.
Mom and I discussed the masthead at length, wondering whether Sybellen might still be alive, and where she might have gone after she had disappeared. For the first several days after we discovered the masthead, I thought about the sculpture a lot, but as the summer days fell into routine, I slowly began to forget.
There was a marvellous world under the water just waiting to be discovered, at the speeds and depths that I could swim and the visibility that I had, nothing was hidden to me. I always stayed far from the shipping lanes, which were easy to detect by the scent of diesel in the water, and I never stayed where there was a vessel in sight.
I played with schools of dolphins and orcas. I made friends with a humpback cow and calf who frolicked with me like they were puppies. I joined a school of hundreds of thousands of flying fish and spent an entire morning leaping out of the water with them, seeing how high I could fly.
Whenever I found a sea creature in distress I would help them as best I could. I was shocked at how much garbage there was in the water. How could people use this beautiful place as a their own personal dump? I borrowed a huge fishing net from the Novak boathouse and spent an entire week dragging for garbage.
One day, while I was examining a strange graveyard of whale skeletons laying scattered across the ocean floor, the light suddenly dimmed. I thought maybe I'd lost track of time, as that could easily happen while underwater, so I decided to surface and see if it was evening. As I ascended, I noticed that the light was greener than usual. Nearing the surface, I realized I was under a thick layer of slimy green mush that was floating on the water.
My gills were suddenly having a harder time pulling oxygen out of the water. I felt as though I might suffocate. I descended again to where the water was clear and then swam along the ocean floor until the green light turned yellow, and then I surfaced again.
I was far from shore, but as far as my eye could see in the direction of the whale graveyard, there was nothing but floating green mush. This must be the algae bloom that Antoni had been talking about. I was distressed to see how large the bloom was, and steered clear of the area from then on.
Even though some of what I discovered about the ocean was concerning, I felt carefree whenever I was in the water. It became a meditation for me. My worries melted away; thoughts of Antoni dissolved like powder. I was never once concerned for my safety. I had a communion with the creatures of the sea, even the predatory ones. I felt protective of them, like it was my job to be a guardian.
"Mom," I'd asked her one evening after a particularly satisfying day in the ocean. "What's salt-flush? You know, what you told Martinius about? You made it sound like something more than just the normal siren-cycle of salt and fresh water flushes."
"It is, it's very different. Salt-flush is not a state that any mermaid would ever pursue on purpose. I can only tell you the theory of it," she explained, as we were enjoying a cup of tea before bed. "Sometimes, if a mermaid becomes over-saturated with salt, her system goes through another change. Usually, it'll happen to a siren who has experienced the urge to come to land and find a mate, but she's so far out in the ocean when the urge hits that she doesn't make it to fresh water in time. The salt takes her over and she becomes very much like any other creature in the ocean. She operates purely on instinct, she loses all of her human-like intelligence. If she's gone that far..." She shook her head. "There is usually no coming back."
I had some small idea of what salt-flush might feel like. What little salt there was in the Baltic seemed to wash away the concerns of my human life, but all the problems and stresses came rushing back to me as soon as I stepped back on land. My siren consciousness would fade away and the human one would take centre stage. Sometimes, it would hit me with such force that it took my breath away.
In the mornings, I never went too far out because I wanted the staff to see my face over lunch so that people knew I was around. But I dodged Antoni with the craftiness of an undercover agent. I knew he was wondering where I was because everyday someone on staff would tell me he was looking for me. I'd say thank you and then ignore the message. I knew I couldn't avoid him forever, especially when it was his job to make sure I was looked after, but I would push it for as long as I could.
In the afternoons, I would explore further out. I found dozens of shipwrecks. Most of them were vessels that weren't that old, really just junk. I explored them anyway. I came to know the designs of different kinds of boats. Fishing vessels, schooners, and ferries, viking ships, even aircraft. I was amazed at how many wrecks there were on the ocean floor. I even saw a wreck that had settled on top of an older wreck.
I found myself researching at night, looking for the stories behind these disasters. Estimates put the number as high as three million wrecks on the ocean floor, and there were all kinds of reasons - fires, collisions, negligent seamanship, engine failure, storms, ice, insurance fraud, instrument failure, hydrogen sulphide bubbles, underwater volcanoes, running aground, naval battles. The list went on and on.
I was constantly fascinated when I was in the ocean and I desperately wished that I could share the time with my mother. I lay in bed with my phone in my hand, fingers hovering over the digital keyboard. I wished that I could tell my friends what had happened, what I was going through. Underneath the excitement around my big change was a loneliness and a melancholy that I couldn't share it with anyone.
Texts from my friends were less frequent than I thought they'd be, but that suited me fine. I was totally out of reach most of the time anyway. I heard from Saxony that she loved Italy and that she'd bonded rather nicely with the younger boy, Isaia. She'd also met a couple of cute Italian men who were pretty much complete opposites of one another, and she wasn't sure which one she liked better.
Georjayna said that Ireland was turning out to be not what she expected, but that Jasher had finally shown his human side, so that was good. Akiko was noticeably absent from our group texts but she had warned us that might happen.
My phone chimed late one night, waking me just after I fell asleep. I rolled over and peered at the screen.
Saxony: Have you guys heard from Akiko lately?
Georjayna: Nope, not since she first arrived in Kyoto. You?
Me: No, me either. Should we be worried?
Saxony: Well, she did say that she was going to be remote so maybe she has no connection.
Me: I'm sure that's it. It's not like her not to touch base.
Saxony: Yes it is. It's totally like her.
Georjayna: Well, there you go then. She'll write when she wants to. Akiko, when you see this - we hope you're having fun, let us know that you're alive sometime, k?
I shut down my phone, rolled over and went back to sleep almost instantly. If there was one friend that I never worried about it was Akiko. She was teeny and quiet but she was the smartest, most resourceful person I knew. I trusted that she'd write when she could.
Some evenin
gs, if I wasn't tired and staying in our suite and doing research on what I'd discovered earlier that day, I would go out to sea again with my mother.
She showed me how she would set The Sybellen up so that the team would have a successful dive the next day. We did just enough to prep the site that the team wouldn't notice that anything had been disturbed, but enough to make artifacts visible to a human eye and place them out of danger. By the time we were through there were artifacts set out like cherries ripe for the picking.
We would move a piece of timber that looked like it was in a precarious position and might shift in a bad way. We untangled crates and barrels that were wrapped up in rope that might take a human diver hours to figure out. We gently uncovered artifacts on the ocean floor, blowing the sand back to reveal just enough that the men could easily spot them. With those that would be dangerous for a human diver to unearth, we would excavate and move them to a place that would give the divers easier access. Mom showed me how to use my tail and webbed hands to mimic the ocean currents and partially settle the sand over the item in a natural way. We were always careful to leave algae or barnacles on everything.
We'd be back at the manor in the wee hours of the morning and tucked into our beds like good little humans. Every two or three days, my mom would go out to the site without me because I'd finally crash with exhaustion from all the exercise. On these nights I would sleep from eight or nine in the evening until noon or one the next day. My sleep was dreamless and deep. I would wake with surprise at how long I had slept and bounce out of bed ready for more adventure.
I ate enough to fuel three men. I easily drank a dozen litres of water a day. I hid a lot of what I consumed, eating in private and at off-hours whenever I could, but the staff were still astonished at my appetite.
My body grew sleek, powerful and flexible. I learned how to use my assets. Through my gills, I could detect oxygen rich water, saltier water, and contaminated water. My tail wasn't just a powerful propulsion system, it could also detect currents and fine temperature changes as well as mineral content which would alert me to something metallic or artificial in the water, or a natural mineral deposit in the seabed. I sensed deposits in the ocean floor that mining, gas, and oil companies would have killed to discover.
With their protective cover, my eyes saw better underwater than they did above water. Even murky water, while a challenge, still proved relatively easy to navigate, although I didn't enjoy swimming in gloom very much. It was the vast expanses of clear, clean, life-filled water that thrilled me the most. My body quickly went from soft to strong and I felt indestructible.
I passed several weeks this way while skirting Antoni successfully. The men were bringing up items from the manifest and checking things off their list every day. Mom reported that the Novak team members who had free time had begun to come along on the dives just to watch the Bluejackets work, and they were amazed.
I ventured into the dining room one day at dinnertime to see that Simon, Martinius, my mom and a few other divers were having a meal together. My mom sat at the end of the group, always on the outskirts. She slid the empty chair next to her back from the table and patted it. I filled a plate from the buffet table and joined them. They were talking and laughing and seemed relaxed.
Simon held up a glass of beer and the rest lifted their glasses too, I lifted my glass of water as he toasted, "To the Bluejacket luck, long may it continue."
"Luck?" said Eric, a little more red-faced than usual. "Skill's more like it. There's no such thing as luck in salvage. To us, the best in the world, and to our bonuses!" They all drank. I glanced at Simon but he was too happy to care that Eric had hijacked his toast. Martinius raised an eyebrow at Eric's vulgar mention of money in the presence of their contractor, but didn't say anything.
"Truly, you have a remarkable team," said Martinius to Simon. "What do you credit for your success?" Martinius was a consummate actor; there was no hint of sarcasm in his question.
I watched my mom out of the corner of my eye as I shovelled mashed potatoes into my mouth. She was a blank canvas.
"Well, we hire only masters. Our divers are extremely experienced, they easily have thousands of dives between them, maybe even tens of thousands," answered Simon. I perked my ears over the other conversations happening about the table as I saw Simon lean in closer to Martinius. I heard him say, "She doesn't like it when I single her out, but Mira is by far the most gifted diver I have ever found. I know you've read an article or two but they cannot possibly do her justice. She pretends she hates it, but no one who is that good could ever hate diving. Watching her work is almost eerie," he said, barely over a whisper.
"Is that so?" Martinius answered as though this was truly a revelation. I watched as Martinius snuck a glance towards my mother. She caught his eye and hid a small smile behind her napkin. I stifled a laugh at their subtle exchange and then tucked in to my roast beef and gravy.
Sometimes, I would go down to the beach and meet the team as they came in with the day's salvage. I'd always have wet hair so, of course, I told them I had been out for a swim. They'd shake their heads at me and tell me I was just like my mother.
I would help them unload the haul and Micah showed me how to label and tag the artifacts. A lot of what they brought up had to stay submerged in seawater until it had gone through a process to prepare it for exposure to the air. The Novak team would take the items they'd recovered that day and ship them to their preservation lab to clean and catalogue.
I had been congratulating myself on a daily basis for the excellent job I had been doing of dodging emotional and confusion-riddled interactions with Antoni when, a little over three weeks after our last interaction, he finally cornered me alone.
Twenty-Five
I knew I couldn't dodge him forever but I wished it had been on a different day. It was a day that I'd gone trawling for garbage with the fishing net.
I was dragging the net, which was full of trash, towards the old 1960's dump truck, which I'd borrowed from the Novak's garage. I always had it back in less than an hour so people hardly even knew it had gone missing, not that I would have been in trouble for it, I was allowed to take it. I just wanted to draw as little attention to myself as possible. I had become very good at being a ghost.
As I hauled a huge net full of garbage across the sand, I recognized the Jeep that Antoni drove as it pulled up to park on my abandoned beach. I swallowed and took note of which way the wind was blowing, I needed to keep my thoughts and emotions as clear as possible. I braced myself for whatever it was that he'd come to say.
At least I was clothed and finishing up, I had been in mermaid form less than fifteen minutes before. Since my rebirth, I had undergone some physical changes that made even my human appearance a bit different than it had been before. My hair had darkened from dark brown to blue-black, just like my mother's, and had grown at an astonishing rate. My eyes had taken on a supernatural teal colour, not unlike my mother's. Hers were more blue than green, while mine were more green than blue. My skin had become even more pale and took on an opaque and slightly iridescent cast. It was subtle, but I knew that some people had noticed because I was getting a lot more stares than I used to. Freckles, veins, and scars had smoothed over and my skin became more reflective. I suddenly felt extremely conscious of all of these changes and tried to squash the panic fluttering in my breast as Antoni turned the engine off. Would he notice the differences?
I had a kerchief tucked into the back pocket of my shorts and I whipped it out. I raked my hair back into a low haphazard bun and tied the kerchief over my locks like a fifties housewife.
My clothes were damp from my wet body and I had large circles of moisture at my crotch and armpits. I was not a pretty sight and I told myself that, with Antoni, that was a good thing. I picked up the net of trash again, pulling it up out of the water and onto the sand.
Antoni got out of the truck, shut the door, and ambled across the sand towards me. He had a pair of aviator
sunglasses on which, along with his recently clipped hair, made him look like a fighter pilot. He was wearing a white Novak company polo that had the navy mermaid crest embroidered over his heart. He wore red shorts and navy deck shoes.
I'd come to learn that European guys liked to dress this way, unlike the boys back home who liked to wear ripped t-shirts and their pants half falling down. Why did Antoni always have to look so sharp, so together? He made me feel like even more of a beach bum. As he approached, my heart did a little flip and I realized just how much I had missed him.
"What on earth..." He took his sunglasses off as he approached, his eyes widening. "I thought I'd find you reading a book and lolling on a beach towel not dragging what looks like about four thousand kilos of trash across the sand in a fishing net. Seriously, what are you doing?" His eyes moved from my trash haul to me and they skimmed my body from kerchief to bare feet. "You look incredible by the way. What is this, your daily workout? You know we have a gym, right?"
I'd stopped pulling the garbage and tried to make like its weight was too much for me. "Are you going to stand there gawking or are you going to help me?" I asked.
He hooked his sunglasses into the top of his polo and grabbed a corner of the net. Together we dragged it up into the bed of the truck. It was nearly overflowing.
"Targa, have you lost your mind? How did you even do all this by yourself?" He gestured at the mess.
"There's a lot of crap in the ocean. Or hadn't you noticed?"
For the first time since I'd met him, he looked really stung. "Of course I've noticed. It offends me too. In fact, I organize a volunteer crew every summer to do a clean up. But what are you going to do? Clean the entire Polish shoreline all by yourself?" he asked, gesturing widely down the length of beach.