by A. L. Knorr
She gave a small smile and shrugged. "I was going to get it for you, but when he asked me for an idea for a gift it seemed perfect to come from him. After all, it was made in Poland and it will remind you of him. He ordered it after you sent it back and it hadn't arrived by the time we left, so he had to have it shipped."
I held the dress close to my heart and the bitter reality that I probably would never see him again began to sink in. He'd move on with his life and I'd move on with mine. He'd meet a girl, fall in love, get married, have kids, and probably take over Novak Shipping. And me? What did my future hold? Whatever way I looked at it, it was a future without Antoni.
Chapter 32
"Have you had a chance to read the diary yet?" Mom asked as we cleaned up the kitchen together. Our kitchen was tight but over the years we'd figured out how to navigate around each other in our small home.
"No, I meant to read it on the plane but that went out the window when my body turned to lead. I'll read it this week for sure."
She laughed. "Are you going to go see your friends this week?"
"No, none of them are home yet. To be honest, I have missed them but I'm nervous about seeing them," I replied, rinsing the espresso maker.
"Because you're a creature of myth, now?"
"Yes. It was easy to keep it a secret that my mother is a siren, but somehow it seems a lot bigger now that I'm a siren, too. They know me, do you think they'll notice that I'm different?" Except for Antoni, people in Poland didn't really say anything about the changes to my hair, skin, and eyes. But my friends knew me far better. They were bound to ask me why I looked different. I wasn't sure what I was going to tell them, yet.
"Well I don't think you'll have to worry that they'll figure it out on their own. Mermaids are fairy-tale creatures; it won't even occur to them. But yes, I do think they'll notice that you're a bit different from how you were when you saw them last. Does it really matter though?" She went and sat down on one of the couches and picked a book up off the coffee table.
"What do you mean? Of course it matters," I said, unconsciously opening my hand outwards for emphasis and forgetting that it was covered in dish soap. Foam flew across the cupboards and floor. I sighed and bent to wipe the mess up.
"No, not really, they'll move on with their lives and soon you'll be just a fond memory for them. Speaking of which, when did you want to set out for the open ocean for good? We should probably talk about how best to make our exit without freaking people out."
I popped my head up from behind the kitchen cupboards I'd been cleaning and stared at her. She had the coffee table book about shipwrecks open on her lap and her half finished coffee in her hand while she was flipping through the pages with her other hand. When I didn't answer right away she looked over her shoulder at me.
"Honey? Why are you looking at me like I just grew another head?"
"You want to leave? Just like that?" I stood up.
"Well no, not just like that. I'd have to put some things in order first, sell the trailer, resign. Put up the front of moving house so we don't have a search party coming after us. Prepare an account for you so that down the road when you want to find a mate there'll be a bit money available to you." She chuckled, "It would be pretty awkward coming out of the water and not having any clothes or money."
I felt the blood drain from my face.
Her cavalier tone vanished. "Targa, you're scaring me. You look like a wax figure. What's wrong?"
I went to the living room and sat down on the chair across from her, my back erect. My hands were suddenly ice-cold. "Mom, I can't just leave. I don't want to leave everything, my friends, my school. It's my last year of high school this year."
She blinked at me for a moment. Then she closed the picture book on her lap, took her leg off the armrest and set the book on the coffee table with exaggerated care. She folded her hands in her lap and took in a deep breath. "What," she said slowly, with emphasis.
"I can't believe you want me to just up and leave everything. What about my future? What about university?" My face suddenly felt as hot as my hands felt cold. I went from thinking I might pass out to feeling like I had a fever.
"University? Your future?" Her voice was incredulous. "You're a mermaid. Your future is out there," she pointed in the direction of the ocean. "Not here in some falling down trailer, working nine to five or being a housewife. You think you're going to be happy with life on two legs? What did you think, that you could just go for a swim a few times a week and then come home to your house and your bank account and cocktail parties with your friends?"
"Well..." I began. "Yes, actually. Something like that."
She jerked back as though I'd slapped her. Then she got up and started pacing our small living room. "Oh, this is wrong. This is so wrong." She put her fingertips to her temples as though she was getting a headache. "Do other siren mothers have this much trouble?"
Then she began to talk like I wasn't in the room. "Year in and year out of praying and hoping, and then finally giving up hope that you'd ever change; the mourning, the tears, the disappointment. Then losing Nathan, more grief, more heartbreak. Then another decade of alarm clocks and bills and paying taxes and enduring the looks and remarks of those men." She let all the venom out on the word 'men' so there was no mistaking how she really felt about her colleagues. "Their derision and their jealousy and their back-stabbing."
As she spoke, I heard the sound of her voice but it might as well have been the sound of our home crumbling down around my ears. Shame oozed from every cell in my body the way it always did when I thought about her life. She had sacrificed everything for me. I knew that she hated it here, hated the mundane human life that she'd been forced to live. She'd done it all for me. Guilt filled every vein in my body but it fought with the righteous anger and surprise that she'd assumed I would just give up my whole human life because I was now a mermaid, too.
She wasn't finished. "Years of burning the candle at both ends, wearing that infernal diving equipment and picking their trash up off the ocean floor, having to endure their incompetence and greed. And now a miracle, and she doesn't want to leave." She turned to me and the despair on her face gutted me. "Why? How can you possibly want to stay here?" She gestured with her arms wide, "Where did I go wrong?"
"Mom..." I began, but then she sat down beside me and took my hands in earnest.
"Targa, honey, you don't belong here. I know that it's all you've ever known but there is such a better life waiting for you out there. You might be fine here at first but eventually you'll feel trapped, suffocated, and you'll hate all the stupid hoops you have to jump through to live a human life. All the useless, frustrating tasks you have to bear. You'll battle depression and the desire to run away will never leave you. You won't have peace. Your human relationships will suffer because you'll feel like no one understands you and never will. You'll get tired of having to fend off men and their attentions will be relentless. Your friends' problems will seem more and more mundane and you'll appear disinterested and bored to them when you finally get tired of pretending that you care about their relationship dramas, or which dress to wear to the next birthday party, or going to the next buy one get one sale."
As I listened to her plead with me I realized that I thought I'd fully understood what she suffered by her choice to stay and raise me but I really hadn't. Memories of friends that we used to have in our lives who had gradually stopped coming around surfaced in my mind. The face of a kind and funny woman with blond hair fuzzed in and then out of my memory. When my dad had been alive our lives had been filled with the caring faces of friends and neighbours. After he'd gone those people had gradually faded out of our lives and now I understood why.
"And through it all," she went on, "the call of the ocean will only grow louder until one day it will be completely irresistible and you'll walk into the salt water and leave everyone behind to panic about what's happened to you. You might even be so deprived of salt by that point that yo
u'll stay in too long and go salt-flush. And if that happens you'll be unreachable to me. Don't you understand the risk? For both of us?"
"Mom," I began, taking a deep breath. So much depended on what I said to her now. But I didn't know where we could go from here. "I understand better now what you've been through and I'll be forever grateful for what you've sacrificed," I opened my mouth to continue but I found that I just couldn't say what I had intended to say.
I wanted to tell her that I'd be ok, that she could go now. Her job was done and I didn't want her to suffer anymore. I wanted to tell her that I loved her too much to have her stay with me but nothing would come out of my mouth. I couldn't actually say it because the truth was that I didn't feel ready to let her go. I needed her. Who else in the whole world would understand who I was, how I thought and what I needed?
My mind jumped unbidden to Antoni and I scoffed internally at my own foolishness. Antoni was out of reach for me in so many ways. I could never tell him what I was, he'd never understand me, and he was half a world away.
What came out instead was, "I'm not you, Mom. Maybe it has to do with having my first change in brackish water but I like my human life, I love my friends and I want the chance to go to university and see what I can make of myself."
She put her hands over her face and her elbows on her knees. "This can't be happening. I can't be hearing this."
"Mom." I put a hand on her shoulder but she didn't respond to my touch. I didn't know what else to say. Stalemate.
Then I realized that what she feared for me was even more likely to happen to her. I had always seen her as infinitely powerful but I couldn't lie to myself about that anymore either, she wasn't infallible. One day, I was going to wake up and she'd be gone, finally unable to deny the call. And what would happen if she went salt-flush? At least if she left now of her own volition then maybe we had a chance of finding each other again.
"Mom..." my hands were trembling, my heart hollow. "You should go." I forced myself to say the words but my mouth was full of ashes, my stomach bitter. I was filled with dread that she'd actually leave me. I manufactured the biggest lie I had ever told. "I'll be ok."
She didn't lift her head, she just raised one hand with her index finger extended, telling me to stop talking. She sat like that for a moment and I couldn't bring myself to say anything else. I held my breath.
Then without a word, she got up and left the house, the screen door slammed behind her.
Chapter 33
I got up and went after her. I wrenched the door open. "Mom, where are you going?" Even though she was already down the street I didn't have to yell, I knew she'd hear me.
"Where do you think? To the ocean," she said, without looking back and without yelling. I heard her loud and clear.
"For good?" I asked next, but I'd grown hoarse and it came out as a whisper. She disappeared around the corner. I stood there on our porch for a long time, not sure what to do. I clenched and unclenched my hands, feeling my heart pound. Should I go after her? What else could I say? I paced on our driveway, watching the road and thinking that maybe she'd come back. When she didn't, I grew so agitated that I knew that the ocean was where I needed to go, too. I needed to forget, if only for a little while. I went into the house and chugged as much freshwater as I could hold. It sloshed in my belly and threatened to come up. I gave it a bit of time to absorb before I left the house.
Before my re-birth, I would never have run down to the ocean from our trailer. We lived close, Mom had made sure of that but it wasn't a short walk. As a siren I didn't even think twice about it. I sprinted nearly full out for half an hour, watching the sparkling blue expand in front of me, calling as clearly as church bells on Sunday.
I half hoped I would catch up to my mom but another part of me thought it would be best to let her have some time alone. I didn't allow myself to believe that she'd gone for good. She wouldn't go and not even say goodbye.
I knew exactly where to go. Mom had shown me many years ago her favourite stretch of private beach. 'Private' was accurate, but 'beach' was more than generous. It was private exactly because it wasn't really a beach. It was a mess of toothed rocks and slimy, moss covered boulders. No human would want to spend a day there let alone swim there, not with the sandy beaches that were just a few miles up the shoreline.
I stashed my clothes in the jagged rocks, keeping my eyes open for a pile of clothing left behind by my mother but not seeing anything. I picked my way to the edge and slipped into the water. In a blink I was decked out in my mermaid regalia and heading out into the wild blue ocean. My anger evaporated and my cares dissolved away like cotton candy. This is what I needed. I couldn't bear up under all the guilt and confusion, the look of disappointment on my mother's face and the ache in my heart for Antoni, all at the same time. The salt water was where I could find solace.
This was my first foray into saltier water. I wasn't afraid of going out into the North Atlantic on my own, not exactly. But it was fair to admit that I was nervous and curious. Would I lose myself even more than I did when I was in the Baltic? Would I feel the pull of the salt so strongly that I wouldn't want to go back to shore? What if I really was a weaker sort of mermaid and unable to fight off the effects the salt would have on me?
The thoughts that peppered my brain began to fall away one by one as I swam deeper into the briny deep. I imagined them floating to the bottom of the ocean and dissolving into the sand. The water cradled me, its salty fingers soothing my skin and scales. It tugged gently at my hair and swirled in tiny eddies between the webs of my fingers. I let out a relieved laugh and exploded out of the water into a forward flip.
In the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a small fishing vessel while I was above the waves. My stomach turned inside out and when I splashed back into the water I giggled at the rush of adrenalin that made my limbs and my tail feel weak. It was not a good idea to go jumping out of the water when I hadn't checked to see whether I was alone or not.
I sped up and went deeper. The world down here was vastly different from the dimmer waters of the Baltic. It was clear and bright and brimming with life. If I had thought the Baltic was a busy place it was nothing compared to the North Atlantic.
I slowed as a new sensation came over me. The salt seeping into my system was making my skin and scales tingle as it saturated me. I let myself drift, paying attention to this new feeling. I pulled water into my gills, and pushed it out again. It seemed that with every inhale, the tingling inched deeper until finally, my entire body was thrumming. I thought back to how my mom had described the difference between the Baltic and the Atlantic. The image of a racing stallion, its pounding hoofs driving it forward flashed through my mind. Thanks for the terrifying comparison, I had said to my mom. But it wasn't terrifying, it was beautiful and powerful. I could really feel that now. I swam on, remaining aware of how different my body felt.
Schools of fish were everywhere as far as my eyes could see, which seemed like miles. The sun sent shafts of light down into the water and swirling clouds of krill danced under the surface. Towards the bottom, northern seahorses courted one another in an elegant dance. Their mottled yellow and brown bodies spinning and tail-curling. I was enchanted, becoming lost in the colourful seascape around me and how alive I felt. I found a pod of porpoises and joined their energetic play. I spotted a humpback whale far below me and I dove deep to catch up to her. I swam by her intelligent eye and looked back at her as her gaze followed me. She sang out, filling the ocean with her whistling song. I sang back at her with my own violins and swam below her, facing up and stroking her soft white underside.
My limbs and torso began to feel harder, stronger, more primed with power. Yet my tail felt softer, fuller and more robust. I let the whale swim on as I slowed, tuning in to my body as it seemed to be changing again. I looked down at myself, but I didn't see any differences. Was it just me or was my heart slowing down even more? Thud. Several seconds passed. Thud. Gooseflesh raised on my skin
. I was changing and it was happening fast. I spread my hands before me, feeling a new relationship to the water through the webbing between my fingers, and in my palms. The water pushed at me from all sides, like it was asking me to interact with it. I reached my palms out and pushed back.
I shot backwards, my hair sweeping around my face. I gasped, looking at my hands. What on earth had just happened? The whale called in the distance, its song curled around me. It was joined by a succession of chirping and squeaking sounds echoing all around. The sounds had urgency, no not urgency... excitement. I picked up the presence of a powerful current far to my left as it whooshed through the ocean, moving fast. Targa. Startled I looked around. Had I really just heard my name? Targa, said the whooshing whisper. Its frothy voice was louder this time, seemingly right beside my ear.
Atargatis.
I couldn't have heard that right. "Hello?" My siren voice leapt to life, filling the water around me in a way it never had before. With my 'hello', my heart gave a single quake unlike any it had given since my birth. The water rippled outward from me in a mighty pulse, it bounced off fish swimming in my vicinity and the marine floor below me. It fed itself back to me, telling me exactly what was around me. I could have counted the fish, and described the shape of each species in detail based on the information that came back in the echo. There was a wreck not far away, judging from its shape it was a modern fishing vessel. I knew how far away I was from everything for miles around me - further than I could even see. The visual I had with this pulse made my eyes seem blind by comparison.
I put both my hands to my mouth, my eyes stretching open with amazement. I gave another pulse, but this time my voice stayed silent and it came from my heart alone. The echo that came back told me how far each animal I had detected earlier had moved since the last pulse, and how my position to the marine terrain had changed in the elapsed time. "I have sonar?!" I said out loud to no one. I drifted in awe, unable to move in my utter astonishment. I lost track of time as I stayed like that, processing.