“I’ve been waiting for you, young one. You agree to my condition?”
“Ye—” Her dry throat trapped her voice. She cleared her throat forcefully. “Yes.”
The old woman’s eye flashed; she bent and smashed the stub of her clove cigarette into the ground. Smoke continued to drift up around her head, twining like ghostly seaweed. She unfurled herself and disappeared into her dark house. Tamarind hesitated, unsure whether she should follow, but the old woman reappeared holding a clear container filled with a dark brown liquid, its surface faintly hissing.
“Here, drink this.”
Tamarind took the container from the old woman’s outstretched hand. As she did, she caught sight of a silvery sheen between the fingers and nearly dropped the smooth container. She steadied her hand and raised it to her lips. Its contents hissed, reminding her of John’s Coke. She sucked in some of the liquid, tiny bubbles rising from its surface and popping on her cheeks. The liquid’s heat slid furiously down her throat and consumed her. Her heart responded as wildly as a netted fish, flopping against her ribs. Just as she started to back away from the old woman, the heat subsided, leaving a strangely sweet taste.
“Drink all of it.”
The old woman watched as Tamarind lifted the container again, choking on the first drops of liquid. She wanted to spit it out, to throw the container down and run away, but its heat rooted her and the old woman’s eye compelled her to finish it. This time, the liquid lost some of its heat. Tamarind flushed, just as she did after an afternoon lying on a sheltered beach. Her thoughts loosened and swam away from her.
The old woman took the container before it could slip from her grasp. She was about to take a step on her borrowed legs when, to her surprise and horror, she found that her glamour had vanished and she lay on her side. She called for her father, but her mind’s voice refused to escape her head.
“Don’t bother. He can’t hear you this far inland and the beer has dulled your mental energies.” The old woman paused. “I didn’t poison you. The beer will fortify you for your coming ordeal—it’s all I have to help you, but it’ll wear off soon enough.”
Tamarind tried to latch onto the old woman’s words, but they darted about like tiny fish among coral.
“Gather yourself and follow me.” The old woman turned away from Tamarind and walked toward some low bushes.
Tamarind blinked. She hadn’t moved when the old woman stopped by some guinea grass, coarse and thick, and turned her glittering eye onto her. Tamarind leaned over and put her forearms onto the ground and felt the familiar surge of energy into her upper body. Mustering her focus, she pulled her limp tail into the air where it hung suspended over her head and lurched across the ground on her hands. Panting, she dropped down near the guinea grass. The old woman stooped and parted two clumps with her hands until Tamarind saw a long cleft in the ground. Smaller ridges and fissures surrounded this narrow opening, which was almost entirely obscured once the grasses sprang back to their normal places. Tamarind scooted closer on her belly.
“You must enter this cave, young one. Not head first but with your tail.”
Tamarind wasn’t sure how she could fit inside the cleft, but she nodded and pushed herself sideways until her tail neared it. It was just wide enough to accommodate the muscles of her tail once she’d tilted her flippers and eased them into the opening. She grunted as she backed herself into the earth, which widened out after the lower half of her tail had disappeared inside it. The soil was warm, clinging to her skin, yielding and conforming to her. And then her flippers pushed against unyielding earth and her torso hung over the lip of the fissure, half in and half out.
“I can’t go any further.”
“You will, you will.”
Before Tamarind could puzzle over her words, the old woman let go of the overhanging branches, concealing her with their leaves. She considered pushing her way out of this cave and through the branches, but her willpower drained away into the earth instead. The old woman returned and told her to drink something sweetish, slightly salty and viscous. She nearly retched, but the old woman held the cup to her lips and gripped her jaw until she’d swallowed it all. In moments, she felt dizzy and incoherent, alternately hot and cold.
The old woman left her alone for some time—Tamarind had no idea how long—only to return with a pot filled with a pungent salve. The old woman dipped a finger into the pot and traced it along Tamarind’s forehead and cheekbones, all the while muttering. She set the pot onto the ground, grasped Tamarind’s shoulders and, simultaneously lifting and pushing, slid her further back into the cave. Tamarind cried out as her tail bent against the rear wall and doubled underneath her. Her whole torso now fit inside, but her shoulders wedged at the entrance until the old woman twisted them into alignment; then the old woman leaned her whole weight into Tamarind until her head disappeared inside the lip of the cave.
Tamarind heard a sound and she realized that she was sobbing. The cave, which had initially conformed to her in a comforting way, now painfully immobilized her. She couldn’t have escaped if she’d wanted to and, now sober, she knew that even the old woman could not pry her out. Blood pounded in her ears and she nearly lost consciousness, but she fought it and her tears. After a few moments, she mastered her breath and as it slowed she grew calm.
The cave was darker than the deepest cave she’d ever swum within, moist and almost airless. The pain in her tail was terrible, but now that she’d regained control of her thoughts, she believed that she could survive this ordeal. She had to stay focused. Neither it, nor the old woman, would get the best of her. A paroxysm of pain gripped her. It was in her midsection and it was everywhere, all at once. Her head arched away from her flippers, bringing her mouth toward the cave’s opening. A scream ripped the air and she scarcely knew that it came from her. She had no idea how long the pain seized her, but at last it subsided and she panted in her airless space. From outside the cave came faint noises. In the suffocating stillness, the smell of the old woman’s clove cigarette reached her.
Tamarind clung to the scent while the next pain squeezed her. She had no idea when it would quit wracking her body, but every time it ceased, she prayed that it was over. Still pain rose to overtake her and soon there were hardly two breaths between waves, hardly enough time for her to gasp out a plea.
“Please.” And the next time the pain hit her, “I can’t!” And then, “Oh, Mother,” and she vomited into what little space she had.
After that, she said no more because she no longer had any thoughts. Each new round of pain rode upon the heels of the last so that she could no longer distinguish them as separate assaults even if she’d been capable of doing so. Time had no meaning for her and she couldn’t have said if moments or days passed. Groans rolled over her lips with the immutability of waves. Yet long before her voice failed, the pain began to lessen.
She grew aware of her hands digging into the soft soil around her torso: they’d gouged deep holes in her agony. Pain still shuddered through her lower body, but she knew herself again. Before she could do more than note this return of awareness, she felt an indomitable urge to unfold herself.
“Wait, wait, young one!”
Tamarind had no idea what was happening to her, but she fought the urge to push against the constricting earth. She felt the old woman’s fingers dig into the cleft and clamp onto her shoulders.
“Now.”
A new insistence filled Tamarind and she gave into it; deep inside her she knew that this was the struggle that would free her. As she pushed, the old woman pulled her head clear of the cave wall and the pain in her lower body eased. The old woman let go of one shoulder and then quickly brushed loose soil and vomit from her eyes and out of her clogged nostrils. Tamarind sucked in air and laughed.
Another need to push gripped her. The old woman barely grasped her shoulders in time to twist them through the narrow cleft. With an odd shlucking sound Tamarind slid out onto the cool ground and lay not far from
the cave’s entrance. She closed her eyes, but not before she saw that it was night. She heard the old woman bustling around her, but she wanted only to sprawl on the ground. She lay there without moving until the old woman rolled her over onto her back, startling her with the light in her hand. Pushing up onto her elbows, she held one hand out; the other shielded her eyes.
“Leave me alone.”
“Look at yourself.”
Tamarind peered down her torso toward her tail. She was covered in mud and something else: in the light’s glow, she caught sight of blood. Her blood. She was so shocked that at first she didn’t register the oddness of her tail under all the obscuring muck. When she did, she saw that it was no longer gray but fish-belly white. It was no longer strong and muscular but atrophied and knobby. Where her strong flippers had been, she saw two stubs.
“Don’t understand, do you?”
“Understand?”
“Perhaps this will help.”
The old woman turned back toward the bushes, dark and indistinct against the lighter sky. Overhead, tiny pricks of white, scattered where Father Sky had thrown them, glittered. She knelt, setting her lamp on the ground and then leaned into what must be the cave’s entrance. For a long moment all was silent and Tamarind began to shiver. The old woman sat back, something sagging and dark in her hands.
When she turned around, Tamarind’s breath caught at the base of her throat. My tail.
Where it had been hard and convex, filled with muscle, bone and sinew, her tail was now hardly more than a shell. As she watched, the old woman spread it out for her so that she could see the inside lining. It was veined and knotted, quilted with blood-purple fat and long strips of shredded muscle and torn ligaments. At its center, strung like beads on a necklace, she could see oblong vertebrae spanning the length of the tail, disappearing at last among the cartilage of her flippers.
Tamarind tore her gaze from the remnants of her tail and looked again at herself. Now what she saw were unmistakably legs, thin and wobbly looking but legs nevertheless. She pushed herself up into a sitting position.
“I did it! I put off my tail!”
“That you did.” The old woman had lit another clove cigarette and now took a long drag on it. “Help me bury it.”
Tamarind blinked. She rolled onto her side, pausing to look at the night sky. After several moments, the old woman cleared her throat. It was a harsh, rattling noise like the sound of pebbles inside a desiccated crab shell. Gripping her lower lip with her teeth, Tamarind pulled herself along the ground to the spot where the old woman waited. Once she was there, the old woman knelt down and together they dug a shallow trench with their hands and lay her tail in it.
When Tamarind awoke later, the sun sailed overhead and hunger hollowed her to her new toes. She lay on a thick, rough cloth on the floor inside the old woman’s house, which was filled with the scent of fish, among other odors that she didn’t recognize. Blood and soil caked her skin and her lower body burned near where her new legs extended from her torso. She was about to call out for help when the old woman appeared in the doorway to her house.
“Awake are you? Lots of new sensations? Bet most of them aren’t pleasant.”
Tamarind nodded and licked her lips. She couldn’t speak.
“First things first. Let’s get you outside so you can empty your bladder. After, food, drink and a bath.”
She came over and helped Tamarind sit upright; Tamarind’s head spun and she clutched the old woman’s arm.
“That’s it, take it slowly.”
Tamarind gathered her concentration from where it had scattered and pushed herself up onto her feet. If the old woman hadn’t pulled at the same time and steadied her, she might not have made it. Twice she stumbled and once she actually fell, pulling the old woman down beside her. It took five minutes before they were both standing outside the house in the sunshine.
“Don’t go far. Squat down here. I’ll clean it up later.”
The old woman never let go of her arm as she slunk down onto her new haunches. She sat there until the old woman told her to urinate.
“I don’t know how.”
“Yes you do. Focus on your functions. Remember what it felt like to empty your bladder in the sea.”
Tamarind nodded and withdrew her thoughts into herself. At last, she could remember the feeling that came whenever she released her bladder. She triggered that release now. Hot urine shot out between her shins, splattering her. As it hit the ground, she saw a trickle of blood from between her legs. After the ache and burning from her over-full bladder had drained away, she felt her soreness as well.
“You’ll bleed for awhile, maybe a whole moon. Then you’ll bleed again, once each moon. All human women do.”
As she stood up, Tamarind clutched the old woman’s arm. “Will I always feel so tender in the place between my legs?”
The old woman removed the stub of her cigarette and tossed it onto the damp ground where it hissed and stopped burning.
“No, you’ll heal. The only time you’ll feel sore is if you copulate with a man.”
The old woman steadied Tamarind against her side and led her back to the shade inside her dwelling.
“Do humans also have difficulty mating their minds?”
The old woman ignored the question and shuffled Tamarind to a far corner where she made her sit on something hard and round that was raised from the ground by several long sticks of wood.
“Don’t mind how hard it is. I didn’t want to get your blanket wet.”
She turned to a flat surface that was raised higher than the one Tamarind sat on and pulled a shallow container of water towards her. In it was a small cloth, which she rung out before carefully wiping Tamarind’s face. She hadn’t forgotten Tamarind’s question, however.
“Humans don’t mate their minds. Sometimes two humans grow close. They appear to share a mind, but they can’t mate the way mer do.” The old woman bathed the rest of her with gentle hands. “For humans, mating is temporary and absurd. They try to make up for it by committing their will to each other. They call this ‘marriage.’ It’s as flawed as humans are.”
“Marriage.” Tamarind tried the word out.
“I was married once. Didn’t last more than ten rainy seasons. Couldn’t have lasted much longer.”
“What happened to your husband?”
“Don’t know and don’t care.” The old woman’s pincer-like fingers gripped Tamarind’s thighs as she scrubbed the dirt away. “When it’s dark, go to the resort not far from here and use the beach showers.”
“Why do I have to go when it’s dark?”
“They don’t want you to use the showers, young one. Don’t worry about why. Just don’t let anyone see you.” She dropped the filthy cloth behind her and stood up. “Time to get you some food.”
The old woman walked over to the shiny vessel, which emitted a fish-scented cloud. Picking up a flat stick with an appendage that looked like a curled hand, she scooped up some of the liquid and poured it into a shallow container near her. This she set on the flat surface, simultaneously handing Tamarind a shiny object.
“What is it?” Tamarind held the object in her hand before waving it in front of her.
The old woman laughed. “Got a lot to learn, don’t you? This,” she said, touching the object in Tamarind’s hand, “is a spoon. This is a bowl filled with fish broth.” She mimed using the spoon to dip up the broth and bring it to her lips.
Tamarind wasted no time in tasting the broth. As she ate, the old woman pulled something out of an opening in the front of her clothes and tossed it next to the bowl.
“Crackers to eat with the broth. Dip them in.” She paused. “Since we’re naming things, I’m Ana.”
Tamarind hardly paused in spooning in the broth; she grabbed crackers and dipped them into the bowl. Ana chortled so loudly that Tamarind looked up at her, the crackers halfway to her mouth.
“No, no, young one! Tear the plastic bag open to get
the crackers!”
As Tamarind watched, Ana took the bag from her and pulled at one end of it until it split open like a skate’s membrane. Out tumbled several white crackers. Ana laid the bag next to Tamarind’s bowl and pursed her lips, her hands on her hips.
“What are we going to call you?”
“Tamarind,” Tamarind told her between gulps of broth.
Ana looked surprised. Then she smiled, the first smile to curl the corner of her single eye and lift her whole face upward.
“Yes, Tamarind. That’s what we’ll call you.”
Ten
John waited for Tamarind in the gathering dark at the bottom of the hill next to the service road that led to Tamarindo Estates. Since returning to Culebra two weeks ago, he’d driven nightly to the same spot and waited for her silhouette to descend toward him, the last of the day’s sunlight her aura. Tonight, he’d waited for twenty minutes and still she hadn’t appeared. To the northwest, sooty terns streamed toward their nesting grounds on the tip of the Flamenco Peninsula, their black oblongs parting and merging in a fast flow against the lemon-orange layer of sky above the treetops.
He drummed his fingers along the steering wheel and then picked up his flashlight and checked it again to make sure the batteries still had enough juice. He popped the glove compartment and verified again that there were spare batteries. On the floorboard of the Samurai rested his backpack with water and soda bottles, chips, sandwiches, mosquito repellent and a copy of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. He switched on the radio, leaned against the driver’s side door, and closed his eyes. A new guest had arrived mid-morning at Posada La Diosa where he’d rented a room since his return from the Trench mission and he’d been unable to sleep until nearly noon. If Tamarind didn’t arrive soon, he might fall asleep.
Humming reached his ears before the sound of her feet on the pavement. Stirring, he sat and looked up the hill. As usual, she skipped barefoot toward him, her corkscrew hair jouncing with each little leap. She wore the mermaid t-shirt that he’d bought her from The Mermaid’s Purse and a pair of shorts that were too big for her. Every fifth skip she stopped and hitched them up. When she reached him, he saw that she sucked on a Popsicle. Orange stained her upper lip and tongue.
An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Page 12