by A. L. Knorr
After that, there was no more talk for me to eavesdrop on. My thoughts turned to Gdańsk and all the wonderful things I planned to see and do there. I forgot about their conversation and drifted off to sleep again, dreaming of cobblestone streets and picturesque canals.
Chapter 8
Martinius' young assistant met us at the Gdańsk Lech Walesa airport. It was 16:45, local time. We stepped off the plane and took deep breaths of the ocean air. I swear that I could watch the colour return to my mom's cheeks with every inhalation. "Feeling better?" I asked her as she stretched her legs.
"You have no idea," she said, smiling.
Our Novak escort introduced himself as Antoni Baranek and said that he'd been Martinius' personal assistant for nearly three years. He was tall and broad shouldered with shortly clipped dirty blonde hair and a toothy grin. He pumped the hands of everyone who stepped off the plane, including me. He had a deep voice and a strong Polish accent, which doubled his charm. His eyes were hazel with long dark eyelashes, and his lips were full and naturally carmine. His shoulders were so wide and his waist so narrow that he looked almost ridiculous. He was so full of colour and health that he reminded me of a cartoon character, as though he were some animated hero in a comic book. His cheeks were ruddy and he had a day's worth of beard growth. He was also so tall that I had to crane my neck to look up at him.
I was aware that I was looking at a man that my friends would consider extremely sexy. I was even more aware that neither my heart nor my stomach reacted in the ways that Georjayna and Saxony described in detail. To me, he was pretty to look at in the same way as a sunset or a work of art.
It crossed my mind to sneak a photo of him some time and text it to my friends. The comments that came back would be worth the risk. I immediately paired him up with Georjayna in my mind. I couldn't help but do that with tall guys. The two of them would make a bizarrely beautiful couple with their absurdly long limbs and larger-than-life appeal.
Antoni had a team of men who helped transfer all our gear into a caravan of black vehicles. I felt like I was in a spy movie when I got into our SUV and watched the world go by through tinted windows.
Antoni had made sure that Mom and I were riding in the same vehicle as he, along with Simon and Tyler. "I look forward to practicing my English with mother tongues," he said, as we settled into the vehicle. He also requested that we correct him whenever he made a mistake. "Please," he said, holding his hands together in a gesture of prayer. Then he moved a broad hand to cover his heart, "Do me the honour of correction and save me future humiliation." We all laughed. It wasn't what he said that was funny so much as how he sounded when he said it. I doubted he needed any corrections, so far his English was perfect.
Like all men, his gaze lingered on my mother. I could tell he was trying not to be rude because he'd blink and look away before he made her uncomfortable. I appreciated the effort. Most men didn't even try to hide their stares. The poor guys never knew they were in the presence of a siren, a being that was perfectly equipped with everything she needed to lure any man she wanted (and unfortunately, also those she didn't).
My mother isn't just beautiful, she's bewitching whether she tries to be or not. I wondered what she was like when she actually wanted to attract someone. I shuddered and thought for the thousandth time that my father never had a chance. I also wondered who was really the lucky one in that relationship. It couldn't be easy being married to a mermaid. I wondered if it would have been easier for him if he knew what she was, or if it would have broken him somehow.
The Novak estate was a 40-minute journey through and past Gdańsk. It was just as beautiful as the pictures online had shown. The city was filled with waterways and colourful buildings crammed side by side with not so much as an inch between them. There were churches, quaint parks, and canals everywhere. My face was glued to the window. I couldn't wait to go exploring.
As we left the city we passed charming seaside villages, one after the other. I caught glimpses of golden sand beaches and sparkling blue water with whitecaps. The trees were lush and green. I cracked my window just a little and smelled the air. It had the fresh salty tang of the ocean, which made me feel immediately at home.
Antoni threw an arm over the seat and looked back at us. "So, this is the famous master diver that makes the news all the time." He shot us a boyish grin and it struck me that he must have started working for Martinius right out of university.
My mother's mouth twitched, but I couldn't tell if she was annoyed or entertained. She'd not been asked a question, so she didn't respond. This was a siren trait; she didn't care to make polite conversation or build rapport with a colleague just to make a professional relationship more enjoyable.
After a moment of awkward silence, Antoni cleared his throat and moved on. "Martinius gave me instructions to arrange for a welcome dinner tonight. After you rest of course. He's looking forward to meeting the team, but you most of all, Mira.”
I caught Tyler rolling his eyes in my periphery. Tyler is a master diver too, and has been diving for longer than I've been alive. I'm sure that it galls him that my mom outshines him, even though she's been diving professionally for less than a decade.
I really wished Antoni would stop laying it on so thick. He couldn't know that Mom already had it tough with her colleagues.
Antoni pointed out some features while we travelled until we pulled up to two huge gates. The black iron had been wrought in twists and curls of intricate shapes suggestive of churning water and bubbles. Where the gates met in the middle were two mirror image mermaid figures covered with gold leaf. Their curling tails met in the centre and rolled away from each other in elegant curves. Mom and I shared a look and she winked. I smiled. My mother was a living legend in more ways than one.
We entered the estate and I abandoned politeness and gawked. Conversation in the car ceased as we entered the beautifully kept grounds. A red brick mansion loomed at the end of a long drive lined with trees and flowering shrubs. Stone walls lined either side of the massive yard, covered in wisteria not yet in bloom. The manor itself was a palace, its red stone crawling with ivy.
Our convoy pulled up into the semi-circular drive and doors opened, feet hit gravel and necks craned at the beauty around us. While the guys unloaded, I took photos of the grounds. My friends were going to flip when they saw this place. My eyes burned with exhaustion but inside a perpetual quiver of excitement clutched at my stomach.
Three men and two women dressed in navy uniforms came down the wide stone staircase. They began taking the luggage to an entrance along the side of the manor. "Take these ones up to the Muszla Suite," Antoni said to one of the staff, pointing to my mom's luggage and mine. We followed Antoni up the stairs and in through one of the many open double doors of the main entrance.
A massive marble foyer with a huge sweeping staircase was the first thing we saw. It ascended to a landing and then broke off in two, disappearing off to the right and left. An elaborate railing could be seen lining the hallways of the upper levels and I caught a glimpse of a profusion of artwork and tapestries on the walls – mostly seascapes.
I scanned the grand foyer, looking up at the massive chandelier over my head. A painting hanging over the main doors caught my eye. It was a huge panorama of the ocean with a tall ship in the distance. A rock jutted out of the sea in the foreground, water hitting it violently and sending spray in all directions. Sitting on the rock and looking out at the ship was a mermaid with yellow hair. Her shoulders sloped sadly downward. I elbowed my mom and pointed it out to her.
"Huh," was all she said.
More staff appeared and Antoni spoke to them in Polish. They greeted us foreigners and began to show us to our rooms. Most of the team were taken around the outside of the manor to another entrance.
"I'll show you to your suite," Antoni said to us. "It's on the third floor." As we approached the landing at the top of the staircase, there was an ornate red marble table on top of which perched a
mermaid sculpture. It had been carved out of wood and looked very old. Antoni stopped so we could admire it.
"Interesting taste in art," I commented. "I'm sensing a theme."
"Martinius comes from a long line of collectors," Antoni explained. "The syrena is on their family crest so the Novaks have always had a thing for mermaid artwork."
"Don't we all," replied Mom.
"There is a legend that stroking her breasts brings good luck," he explained as we examined her. The siren's bare breasts were worn smooth and shiny from hands running across them year in and year out. Antoni kept his eyes politely on the sculpture after this statement.
I grinned at Mom and she swatted my butt. "Grow up," she said with mock seriousness.
"Do you live here too?" I asked as we made our way up to the third floor.
"I have a suite here," he said. "My home is in Gdańsk but I often stay here depending on work. I'll be staying here for the duration of the salvage project."
As we passed under the copper label over our door engraved with the words Muszla Suite, he explained that muszla translated as seashell. The furnishings, like most things we'd seen so far, had a nautical theme. The decorations were dated but rich looking. Our suite had five rooms including two bedrooms, each with a king-sized bed. Each bedroom had its own ensuite bathroom and we also had a parlour with a view of the front grounds. If it hadn't been for all of the trees we would have had a view of the ocean in the distance.
"I've been in a fight with Martinius about cutting a few trees down to allow for a better view," Antoni explained. "But I suppose, seeing as those oaks have been there since his great grandfather's time, it's understandable he’d be sad to see them go."
There was a knock on the door and Antoni went to answer it. A fellow in uniform delivered our luggage and Antoni spoke with him in Polish and helped him bring the bags into the suite. They laughed at something and I suspected they were probably friends on their own time.
"I'll leave you to rest," Antoni said, once our luggage was inside. "Meet me in the foyer at half seven and I'll show you to the dining room." He dismissed himself and closed the door.
As soon as he left we sprawled on one of the beds. I looked over at my mom and frowned when I noticed the dark smudges under her eyes. "Tired?"
"Very. Being high up in the air for hours on end is a special kind of hell. It always takes a little while to recover."
We got up and moved my luggage to one bedroom and took hers to the other. I changed into pyjamas and drew the curtains. Mom closed herself into the other bedroom.
I tried to sleep, but I was overtired. My eyes wouldn't relax no matter how much I tried. I tossed and turned. And then I noticed that the lamp on the bedside table had a mermaid base and there were sirens among the sea creatures that were swimming along the wallpaper border.
I wondered for probably the millionth time in my life how things would be if I had been born with the mermaid gene. I wondered how long it would be before my mother left me for good, and felt the familiar hollow feeling seep into my belly like a mist drifting in from the sea.
Mermaid genes are passed down from mother to daughter only. When a siren gives birth to a female child it is the epitome of happiness for her. It means she can take her daughter back to the ocean with her when the girl is ready. If she gives birth to a male child, it means the child will only ever be human. The birth of a son is a bittersweet event for a mermaid. No matter how much she may love her child, the call of the ocean will eventually become too powerful to deny and will cause her to abandon him and his father. It's pretty much a hero or zero situation for the kid. Except for me. For me, it was zeroes all around. My mother had never heard of a siren's daughter not making the change, the genes were supposed to be 100% in a female child. So I was some kind of unfortunate anomaly.
We had done everything we could think of to try to get the gene to express itself, but it wasn't like we'd had people to ask or scientific books to read on the biology of the mermaid. I'd even tried filling the bathtub with sea salt once and sitting in it until my skin puckered and stung, thinking I just needed more salt than the ocean could provide. That failed too, just like everything else.
"Did you never think to try for another child?" I'd asked my mom years after my father had passed away, and we'd long since given up hope for me.
"We couldn't," she'd answered. "A siren has a cycle. She leaves the sea to have a child, but in order to have another baby she has to go back to the ocean and spend some time in salt water to trigger the cycle again." There was no set amount of time needed, every siren has her own cycle and only she would know when she was ready to come out of the sea to try again. The only way a mermaid could have two children in one phase on land was if she had twins. My mom had never gone back to the ocean after me, so her natural cycle had stalled.
Mom spent hours patiently answering my questions over the years, so even though I don't have the gene, I have a pretty good understanding of the way things are for mermaids. And let me tell you, the myths have it mostly wrong.
The siren cycle plays out something like this: When the time is right, usually shortly after puberty, a mermaid will leave the ocean in search of a mate. The urge to procreate becomes more powerful than the desire to stay in the ocean, so she leaves her watery home until she falls in love, and eventually produces a child. She adopts the human form and lifestyle in order to do so. Like many sea-dwelling creatures, sirens have long lifespans. They are picky about their mates so even if it takes years to find one, they'll stay on land until it happens.
Since mermaids are always born on land, they are able to get a birth certificate, social insurance number, bank account, and any other official documents they need to function as a human. It's the years spent in the ocean that can throw a siren's records into a mess if she isn't careful. Leaving land needs to be planned for, not done on a whim; otherwise, she'll come back to the identity of a missing person, or worse, a dead woman. Usually, she explains to people she knows that she's moving somewhere far away. She can submit to the government that she has emigrated and give a foreign address so that she doesn't have a tax nightmare to come back to. More often than not, she'll never see the people that were in her life ever again. For a mermaid, relationships with humans are always finite.
Mom says she's one of the lucky ones. She'd left the ocean and used her stash of money and identification, which her own mother showed her how to prepare, to get herself a job at a pub down at the Saltford harbour called The Sea Dog. The Sea Dog is still there today. Within a couple of weeks, Nathan (my dad) went to the pub with his hockey buddies for a drink after a game. She says that the moment she heard his voice she knew he was the one. And once she'd decided she wanted him she could not be denied. It was a little hairy for a while because Nathan was dating a girl who had befriended Mom and gotten her the serving job. I even had a few vague memories of Crystal, the blonde lady who used to babysit me sometimes. When Crystal moved away from Saltford, she and Mom lost touch and Mom never made another friend like her.
Once on land, sirens are able to flush themselves with fresh water to suppress the instinct that is enhanced by salt in order to stay on land as long as is needed. They can swim in salt water during this phase as long as they keep themselves hydrated with fresh water. In a way, the fresh water makes them forget their siren selves. In the moment, some of them feel almost fully human and barely feel the need to swim at all.
When a mermaid falls in love, she fully intends to stay with her mate forever and live the rest of her life on land. If the man is old fashioned, as my father was, they marry. To a mermaid, the idea of marriage is foreign. After all, she's a sea creature and not attached to human customs, but she usually goes along with the ceremony to make her lover happy. Soon, she becomes pregnant and goes through all of the same nesting phases that a human woman would.
But after the birth of a child, things slowly begin to change. If the child is a daughter, her mother will take her to the oc
ean under cover of darkness. The exposure to sea water triggers the mermaid gene and the girl's legs morph into their true form, a powerful tail. In a sense, it is a second birth. When mermaids talk about their birth, they always mean their salt-birth – the moment they first took their siren shape.
Mother and daughter might live on land with this secret for a while to allow the child to grow sufficiently strong to survive in the ocean. Even then, the mermaid will have lapses where she desires to stay on land with her family. This transition phase is very difficult emotionally. The siren bond to her mate is strong, but the call of the ocean will always win in the end.
If the child is a boy it is much more painful. She'll generally last long enough to wean her son, but it's guaranteed she'll eventually disappear. Mom says it's a mathematical certainty.
The father would never know what really happened, and if she's done a good job keeping her identity secret, he would never know that he had married a siren.
In cases where the mermaid leaves without preparing for it, there is a missing person's report and a protracted search, which always fails. She’ll have vanished without a trace.
I went through a phase when I was twelve or thirteen where I researched missing women reports, reading the details and looking for clues that she might have been a siren. The cases where a mother and female child disappeared were the ones I obsessed over, printing off and collecting any articles I could find. I never did anything with them, but I guess I wanted to get a sense of how many sirens were really out there. Based on what I found, there aren't many.
Mom explained that mermaid memory and consciousness is highly affected by their exposure to salt or fresh water. Fresh water makes them function more like a human while salt enhances the siren instinct. It was entirely possible for a siren to have a son, leave him on land to go back to the ocean, and then spend so many years in salt water that she eventually forgets her former family, all trace of her memory erased by the salt. She might come back to land to find another mate years later, without recalling that she'd already done so in previous years.