All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

  By the time the force of her dive carried her across the pool, her legs were transforming into her tail. She gasped as she broke through the surface a couple feet away from Mark. He turned to give her his hand to pull her up on the edge next to him, when he saw her gill slits open and flare out, and her tail flash up from the water behind her. The pool was shallow, and Pearl’s tail was much longer than her legs, so it had flipped back up in a natural reflex when it hit the bottom. Unfortunately, as it did, it sent a spray of water in every direction, drenching dozens of people, who turned in anger to see who had splashed them.

  Suddenly, everyone turned away from the amazing engineering wonder of the final giant sea lock opening wide to let the ocean rush in. Instead they all looked at Pearl, a real mermaid, sitting in the saltwater pool like a fish in a barrel.

  “Miranda!” Mark gasped.

  “I’m sorry, Mark!” was all she could think of to say.

  With a burst of thought, Pearl pulled all the saltwater from the pool to create a wave. It carried her up over the railing of the ship’s prow and down toward the ocean below, leaving Mark sitting on the edge of an empty pool, staring after her in shock.

  Baptized by Fire

  Miranda and Halder originally thought about doing the ritual the mermaid way—au naturel, growing fins and swimming together. But that would leave them both vulnerable for a few minutes when they came back on land, and they thought if Holger came, it might be too much for him to handle.

  Since they now just wanted to introduce their baby to the sea, get back to the yacht, and start their new life together, they’d decided just to wade into the water, dip Adara, and head back to the car.

  When Miranda and Halder were halfway to the water’s edge, a shadow detached itself from the dark side of a large cedar tree and slunk across the parking lot to squat down behind the Mercedes and wedge something under it. After stopping to listen for a moment, he ran back to the tree he had come from to pause and see if he’d been noticed.

  Satisfied that he’d been undetected, he began to dodge and weave his way between other trees and shadows for the quarter of a mile trip back up the winding road. Then he silently slipped into the driver’s seat of a black limo that was parked in the darkness just outside the park gates.

  “Did you do it?” a deep, accented man’s voice hissed from the back seat.

  “Yah, it’s done. They were walking toward the water, and I’m sure they had no clue I was there.”

  “Good,” the voice grunted. “What is the range of the transmitter?”

  “About a mile,” the driver answered.

  “I don’t need to be that far away. We will wait for them here.”

  “You’re the boss.” The driver shrugged.

  All this happened without disturbing Halder and Miranda or attracting their attention. Halder had given up on Holger joining them and just focused his mind on their daughter. When they reached the water’s edge, he put the car seat down on the rocky beach and unstrapped Adara. He slipped off the little cotton onesie they’d put her in before they left the hospital.

  As he held his daughter in the crook of his arm, bathed in moonlight and calmed by the sound of the water lapping at his feet, his heart swelled as full as the moon. “What a miracle this whole thing is,” he whispered.

  Miranda felt her heart would burst with love too as she slipped her lavender pearl on its slender golden chain of orichalcum off and placed it around Adara’s tiny neck. “She must be wearing a Pearl of Amphitrite when she’s bound to Gaia. Mother will bring one just for her when she joins us in the Bahamas, but for now she must wear mine.”

  Adara looked so small and fragile, Halder almost balked at the idea of plunging her into the cold saltwater, but Miranda reached over and took her from his hands.

  “Bring the blanket,” she directed and started walking into the water. Halder snatched the baby blanket from the car seat and followed quietly behind her.

  They walked out until Miranda was waist deep and then stopped. She nodded for him to stand beside her and then held their daughter up in front of her.

  “Oh mighty Gaia, mother to us all, I bring you Adara, a new daughter of the sea to be anointed in your waters of life,” then she dipped their baby beneath the water and held her there.

  The water all around the tiny being instantly began to glow, and Adara shimmered as her little legs became a tail, her gill slits opened, and she took her first breath as a merbaby. Light waves rippled outward from her like a halo, dusting the water with gold, as she lay there gurgling looking at her parents with a happy smile.

  After a few moments, Miranda lifted Adara out of the Sound and laid her gently, in all her mermaid glory, in the blanket Halder held out. She started to pat her dry as the water at their feet reluctantly dimmed.

  “Is that all?” he asked.

  “If I held her down any longer, the water on my hands would have triggered my transformation. But just look at her, she’s every inch a mermaid.” Miranda smiled.

  “She’s so beautiful!” Halder beamed at Miranda. Then he noticed that it appeared Adara had grown in size and weight. “Did she somehow get bigger?”

  “Yes, she’s now been given her powers, and the sea knows who she is.”

  Suddenly, a rush of dolphins and Orcas swam into the waters around them, crying out to them, and singing their songs. Miranda called out to them. “Yes, it’s true my friends, there is a new Princess of the Sea, and you are the first to see her.”

  She took Adara from Halder’s arms and held her up for the dolphins and whales to see. Little Adara was still waving her little mermaid tail! Like a giant wave, the admirers rose up in unison, heralding the birth of their new princess with their squeaks, clicks, and songs.

  “Thank you, my friends,” Halder spoke to them as he had learned to do from Miranda. “But we must be off. We will be back in the sea tomorrow, and you may see the new princess again then.”

  As if a signal to them all, Adara shimmered, and her tail dissolved and became two little legs again, but larger and stronger than they had been only minutes before.

  They waded back to shore, grabbed the car seat, and walked back to the parking lot. After they stripped off their waders, Halder shoved them into a large garbage can. He quickly dressed Adara, slipped her back into her car seat, placed it in the small backseat area of the convertible, and climbed into the driver’s seat next to Miranda.

  “As soon as we get to the yacht, we can call your mother and let her know Adara’s been baptized in the sea.” Halder grinned.

  “Oh, she already knows.” Miranda squeezed his arm.

  “How could she?”

  “The instant Adara was placed into the ocean and the waters glowed, one of the Mirrors of Atargatis came to life again.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. By the time we get back to the yacht, Mother and her selkie handmaidens will be out dancing beneath the moon, celebrating.”

  Halder pictured his mother-in-law leaping and twirling in the moonlight and chuckled as he slipped the car into gear and drove back up to the park entrance. Miranda sensed his thoughts and punched him in the shoulder, which only made him laugh

  louder as they pulled out of the park and headed back toward the highway.

  “Follow them,” the man in the back of the limo grunted. “This area is too residential.”

  A few seconds after Halder and Miranda’s car turned out of the park, the limo pulled out of the shadows and sped after them. By the time the limo caught up to them, they had just turned out on to Highway 99.

  “Wait a second, Halder. Did you strap Adara’s car seat in?” Miranda asked as they finally stopped laughing about her mother.

  “Darn! No, I didn’t,” he admitted. “Can you reach it from there?”

  “Yes, but it’s awkward, and it’s getting a little cold. Why don’t you pull off to the side of the road and put the top up while I strap her in?”

  “Sounds like a plan, gorgeous,” h
e agreed as he eased the car to a stop on the shoulder of the highway.

  Miranda looked back at their baby girl and then looked at her husband as he turned off the engine. “It just hit me,” she said.

  “What?” he reached out and stroked her cheek.

  “After nearly eight hundred years of waiting, my life has finally begun.”

  Then, as she leaned over to kiss him, the car exploded into a ball of flames.

  “Drive on,” was all the man in the back seat of the limo said, his thumb still on the red button of the detonator.

  “Where to, sir?” the driver asked as calmly as if they had just gone to tea.

  “Back to the airport,” the man ordered. “It’s finally over and done,” he whispered as the limo drove past the flaming wreck.

  Swept Overboard

  Pearl was airborne. She was flying, only it was in a long, deep arch toward the water of the ocean. She was caught in mental slow motion as the air rushed by and the water rushed toward her. She was afraid the impact of such a high dive might knock her unconscious, so she aimed for the side of the ship to avoid the forward motion of the hull. She was poised in her best swan dive, but she didn’t know if that would work well with a six-foot tail trailing after her.

  She couldn’t think of that right now. All she could think of was, “He’ll never go swimming with me again!”

  As she fell toward the safe cover of the waves, she felt as if she was hanging in the air for an eternity, exposed for all onboard the ship to see. Then, a nanosecond later, her body pierced the churning water.

  It wasn’t a belly flop, but it was a small bit of a thud. She might have gone unconscious as the air whooshed out of her lungs, except the water pulsing through her gills fed her brain with a rich surge of oxygen.

  Then she was swimming … swimming for her life. It would only take a moment before people realized what had happened. Word would spread quickly, and within minutes the water would be flooded with divers and nets as ships arrived, full of people anxious to capture her.

  Pearl surged out into to the open water as fast as she could. Only it wasn’t so open.

  There were hundreds of ships lined up for miles to enter the canal. Navigating all around the buoys and anchor chains alone was a nightmare. She couldn’t focus on two challenges at the same time—staying invisible and swimming as fast as she could through such an obstacle course. What if some local fisherman tried to shoot her with a spear gun? She was really starting to panic.

  Then, suddenly, he was there, waiting in the deep water, glowing, with no tank, no snorkel, no equipment of any kind. He looked totally human except for the glow around him and the fact that he was breathing underwater.

  There was also a strange, slightly brighter glow around a finger on his left hand. He looked like a guardian of the deep. She was swimming toward him without realizing it, and then she recognized him. It was Professor Thorson from Dolphin Quest, and he was waving at her!

  He swam forward, reached out his hand, and took hers firmly in his. A moment later, they were kicking upward toward the hull of a large ship. As Pearl looked up, she could see a circular opening at the base of the hull. It looked to her like the moon pools she had seen in documentaries about oceanographic research ships.

  As they rose up toward the wavering circle of light, Pearl saw a woman’s face looking down on them. As she and the professor rose to the light, the woman reached into the water for Pearl like an angel reaching down from a cloud.

  Angel of the Deep

  “Adara!” The voice of the “angel” called out to Pearl through the water. But all Pearl could see clearly was a bright circle of light that seemed to float above the angel as her hand reached down into the water.

  Pearl instinctively stretched her hand out toward the woman. As their hands met, she felt a strange surge of power.

  “Adara, hold tightly to my hand,” the angel called to her.

  Why is she calling me Adara, Pearl thought. That’s a strange name!

  Then the angel pulled Pearl up into the light. She felt herself lifted into the air and onto the floor as easily as a minnow. Pearl’s tail followed after her, sprawling out and twitching nervously on the floor beside her. The angel pulled Pearl to her and threw her arms around her, hugging her fiercely.

  “You’re safe now, Adara! I can’t believe you are finally safe within my arms. I have waited so long to hold you, my dear child,” she said with a little sob.

  Pearl leaned back for a moment to look at the angel. To her surprise, she was actually another mermaid, a beautiful, young mermaid, not much older than Pearl.

  “Who are you?” Pearl managed to say as she coughed and tried to get some air back into her lungs so she could speak properly. Going so quickly in and out of water was not that easy for her yet.

  “I am your grandmother, dear. Who else could I be?” Helmi laughed and indicated her mermaid tail.

  “But you can’t be my grandmother. She’s three thousand years old!” Pearl exclaimed. “You can’t be much older than I am!”

  “My mother was over twenty thousand years old before she stepped through the veil, and she never looked any older than I do.”

  Pearl’s head was still spinning when she asked, “Why do you call me Adara? My name is Pearl.”

  “Adara means Pearl, as does my name, Helmi. You were named after me.”

  Pearl was in momentary shock, but she was soon startled out of her revelation when Dr. Thorson broke through the surface of the water and pulled himself up onto the edge of the moon pool. Before he said a word, he spun his legs up onto the floor and immediately turned and slapped a button on the wall near him that caused the bottom of the moon pool to dilate and seal off from the sea.

  “Now we’re just one big happy family, all safe and sound.” Holger laughed and reached over to hug them both.

  The Passing of Evil

  Vasili brought the boy to the Hag as she had commanded. He had chosen him from all his grandchildren because he was fearless, smart, and irreverent. All his daughter-in-law’s attempts to pamper and refine him had failed.

  He was about the same age Vasili had been when he’d first allied himself with the Hag. The boy was also an independent soul, and a resourceful one. He could think outside the box, as they said in the business world today, and dealing with the Hag necessitated thinking outside the box.

  For a man in his seventies, Vasili looked remarkably young and very fit. He still swam every day, and no one thought anything of him taking his favorite grandson, Hermes, off for a private day of sailing and swimming. For years he’d told Hermes there was a great family secret that he would someday share with him and only him. Today was that day.

  They dropped anchor in a remote spot almost a mile off the coast of Mykonos, and Vasili dove over the rail of the boat into the water and signaled Hermes to follow. Hermes dove in after him without question, and they swam toward an outcrop of coral.

  His grandfather dove deeper into the water and swam under a coral ledge. Hermes hesitated for a moment, and then followed, wondering how soon they would surface, for he could not hold his breath as long as his grandfather. Still he followed down after him.

  Vasili was waiting for him under the ledge, and he held out a small air canister, the kind you just clench in your teeth and use for a few moments of air. Hermes was surprised, but his grandfather had shown him how to use one a year ago, so he didn’t falter.

  He took the canister, inserted it in his mouth, and took a deep breath of air. Today was to be the day he learned a family secret, so he was prepared for anything—or so he thought.

  They kept swimming another fifty feet, and then Vasili disappeared up into a small opening through the coral. Hermes surged ahead to follow, not wanting to lose sight of his grandfather for too long.

  As soon as he found the opening and swam inside, he could see the outline of his grandfather rising up toward the surface. This must be a secret cave! Hermes thought. A treasure cave? But why wou
ld Grandfather not have removed anything he found here years ago? Or, maybe it’s a secret hiding place!

  These thoughts swam through his mind as he rose up to meet his grandfather. Finally, his head broke through the surface of the water, and he found himself in a magnificent coral cave.

  “Good,” was all Vasili said, and then he swam to the edge of the pool and pulled himself out of the water. There was a natural, phosphorescent glow from the anemones and algae around the edge of the pool that dimly lit the cavern. Hermes swam over to join Vasili and hauled himself up on the edge.

  “So, why are we here, Grandfather? Is this some kind of treasure cave or secret hiding place of yours?” he asked.

  “Both of those, Hermes, but it is not mine. I made an alliance with a power as a small boy, when I was an orphan roaming the streets after World War II, struggling to survive. I met that power right here in this cavern. It is the source of our family’s wealth, and I return here each and every year to keep that alliance. Now it is time for you to meet that power, to continue our alliance, and to protect our family wealth. Are you ready to accept this responsibility?”

  “Yes, Grandfather,” he answered without pause. His grandfather was a very powerful, very strong man who feared nothing and no one, but to Hermes he had always been very loving and kind. He knew he could trust his grandfather to do anything necessary to take care of him and his family, and he was full of pride that he, out of the dozen grandchildren, had been selected for this honor.

  “Then you must meet her now,” Vasili said. He took his grandson by the hand and walked toward the back of the cavern. “Do not be afraid,” he whispered to Hermes.