The Mermaid's Lament

by Alexes Razevich

  “I care,” Calypso said slowly, “because mortals trespassing into my domain, mortals stealing my treasures, must be punished. He’s fortunate I’m not asking for more. And worse.”

  Lady tsked loudly. “You always have to make a big show of things. Always want to be the center of attention. Give it a rest, Calypso. Say yes and let’s move on with this.”

  “I will not,” Calypso said. “Additionally, I want a personal apology from Michael Rawlings. He will face me and say he is sorry for what he’s done.”

  Lady sighed noisily. “If you won’t agree, that’s your choice, but understand that my obligation to you is fulfilled and you will not hold me to your threat if the necklace isn’t returned by tomorrow at dawn. If you won’t promise, then Michael Rawlings can sell the Mermaid’s Lament to the highest bidder for all I care—and you will not hold me to blame for anything that happens.”

  Calypso glowered at Lady. Lady glowered back. The air seemed to crackle with the electricity of their standoff. The sea roiled and waves crashed on the shore. I wouldn’t have been terribly surprised if the rocks we stood on suddenly burst into flames.

  “Fine,” Calypso spat. She turned to me. “You have my word. But if the Mermaid’s Lament is not in my hands by dawn, I am relieved of my promise.”

  20

  Calypso dove back into the sea. We land creatures went back to Lady’s where she called Nola, the curse-breaker. I could only hear one side of the conversation, but I suspected Nola was asking some questions that Lady didn’t feel like answering, judging from the dark cloud Lady’s expression was taking.

  “I would consider it a favor if you would meet with Shayna and help her any way you can,” Lady said in the persuasive tone I recognized from the day of my interview. “She and my personal representative will pick you up in under an hour.”

  So it was back into Edwin’s SUV for the forty-five minute ride down the hill and through town to pick up the 405 Freeway to Culver City.

  Lady had given me Nola’s address and I’d put it into my phone for directions. Once we’d left the freeway, it didn’t take more than ten minutes or so to find Nola’s house.

  The curse-breaker lived on a cul-de-sac in a cute, blue shiplap-sided bungalow. I’d guess the house had originally been built in the early 1900s but had been well restored. We found a place to park on the street and walked up a flat-stone path to reach the bright red front door. Evidently Nola didn’t feel a need to keep a low profile among her neighbors.

  She opened the door almost as soon as we knocked and invited Edwin and me in. She was as short and thin as I remembered her. She must be a ‘fun with hair’ person because what had been short, spiky brown hair when I’d met her was now a pink fauxhawk. She made me feel not so odd with my hair, but I was almost a decade older than her. Maybe too old to be running around with unnaturally colored hair, despite the varios colors my sixty-something landlady sported. Nola wore a simple black sheath dress, belted at her waist, over black leggings. Her feet were encased in serious looking Doc Martin ankle boots with floral canvas uppers.

  Nope. Nola felt no need at all to show a subdued façade to the world.

  “I remember you from the interview,” she said, gesturing toward a denim-colored couch in silent invitation for us to sit. “I wondered who had gotten the job—you or the other one who’d been selected along with me.”

  There was no animosity in her tone, no hint that she resented being asked to help the person who’d landed a job she’d wanted. I decided direct to the problem at hand was best.

  “It’s a bit of a story as to why we’re here,” I began.

  “You need to break a curse, according to Lady Califia,” Nola cut in. She still stood. She’d centered herself between Edwin and me as though she wasn’t sure which of us to give her attention to. “Person or thing?”

  “Person,” I said. “His name is—”

  Nola cut me off again with a wave of her hand. “Don’t tell me. It’s better if I don’t know the person’s name or how they came to be cursed. Information colors things for me. I’m better off reading the curse cold.”

  “Okay, I said slowly. “Do you want to know where we’re going to try to break the curse?”

  Nola smiled. “Surprise me.”

  There was no way to plug the exact location of the witches into the GPS, but Edwin had looked at the map Miranda had drawn and was fairly certain how to get there from where we were.

  We drove almost the same route back as we’d taken to pick up Nola. It was a long ride with people who didn’t have much to say to each other and none of whom seemed to be proficient in the art of small talk. The silence was only broken when Nola said, “So this job is a one-off?” She paused. “Could it lead to more work for Lady?”

  Edwin glanced at her sitting in the back seat. ”It’s a one-off for now, but Lady is known to be generous and she employs a lot of people.”

  How cagey, Edwin, I thought. Dangle the prize without ever actually offering it. I held my breath just a little, hoping Nola hadn’t picked up to how noncommittal he’d been. She fell back quiet, so either she hadn’t or she’d decided to ignore it.

  The second time the silence was broken was when we began climbing back up into Palos Verdes and Edwin started giving me directions based on the map. The map had only three roads named on it—Crest Road, Hawthorne Boulevard, and Palos Verdes Drive South. All the other streets were nameless wavy lines. Edwin knew the area though, and all those wiggly lines seemed to make sense to him, given the confidence with which he drove and the roads he chose to turn on.

  We parked on Pacifica Drive and took a small, nameless trail that met up with the larger McBride Trail. I knew this was McBride because I read the signs. In front of us lay green rolling hills dotted with small copses of trees and deep canyons that stretched a long, long ways.

  “Where are we?” I asked Edwin, and turned to Nola. “Is it a problem if you know the name of the place.”

  Nola, who was staring out over the open land stretching out before us, shook her head. “Are we going in there? Because I’m not much of a hiker.”

  Neither was I, for that matter.

  “What is this place?” I said again to Edwin.

  “Filiorum Reserve,” Edwin said, “And according to the map, it is exactly where we are going. The place Michael is being kept is somewhere in there.” He moved his hand to indicate the totality of the land. Acres and acres of scrub and tree dotted hills.

  My heart sank. It was a lot of land to cover.

  “How big is this reserve?” I said.

  “Not quite two hundred acres,” he said.

  Shit. “Do many people hike here?”

  Edwin nodded. “Some. There are probably people hiking here every day, though not hordes.”

  I bit my lip, thinking. We were going to have to find this hidden place—it would likely have to be hidden or nearly inaccessible for people not to have stumbled across the witches and Michael by now, if people hiked here every day—with nothing more than vaguely drawn lines on a map to guide us. A map that may or may not be accurate.

  I believed Miranda was sincere in wanting her brother rescued, but she only had Michael’s word he was being held captive and where. For all I knew, Michael and the witches could be in it together—get Miranda riled up enough that she’d bring them the pearls. If that were the case, they were going to be mighty unhappy when the three of us showed up instead. I hoped we weren’t going to have to kidnap Michael from his so-called abductors. Things would be complicated enough if Michael was only their prisoner and not a co-conspirator.

  I looked up at the sky. The sun was moving westward. I estimated we had about four hours of daylight left.

  “We’d best get started then,” I said and stepped forward, to get Edwin and Nola moving.

  Edwin still had the map and he hustled a little to get in front. I fell in behind him and Nola behind me. I was grateful it wasn’t a forest. Not that there were a lot of heavily forested ar
eas around here, but I just never liked to be anywhere that I could only see trees around me. Being among trees threw my mind right back to that day when the wood spirits changed my life.

  We followed a fairly wide, well-developed trail for a while. Edwin stopped suddenly and peered at the map. He huffed out a breath and turned to take what I guessed might be an animal trail through the brush. Nola and I glanced at each other. We shared a this had better be worth it look and followed him.

  Some sort of hawk soared overhead, riding the thermals and probably looking for something to eat. A moment later it swooped down and when next I caught sight of the raptor, a large lizard dangled from its beak.

  A lone coyote watched us from atop a nearby rise. I think we must have amused him or her, silly humans who didn’t seem to have the first idea about where they were going. The coyote wasn’t wrong.

  We followed animal trails through brush and tall grass, pushing through yellow Wild Mustard and red Indian Paintbrush, up and down a steep canyon. After an hour or so, I heard Nola panting behind me. My knees were starting to protest this unaccustomed terrain. Edwin strode on like he was strolling in the park.

  An outcropping of trees appeared a hundred yards or so in front of us. A thrill of nerves shot through me. This was the place. I felt it as strongly as if a sign with a big red X were stuck to a tree.

  Edwin turned to Nola and me, put his finger to his lips and motioned us to come stand with him. He pointed on the map to a small square with a triangle on top drawn on the map—a house. A grove that surrounded the house was indicated by the kind of little bumpy circles people often used to mean trees. He looked from the map to the grove in front of us.

  “Michael’s there,” I said, and didn’t doubt it.

  Edwin seemed equally sure. I suspected that a gift for healing and the ability to make harpoons appear in his hands weren’t the only special abilities he possessed. He’d been too confident in all the paths he’d chosen to be relying only on a sketchy map to get us to our destination.

  We set off again, moving more cautiously than we had been. Even so, we startled a group of small, brown house sparrows rooting in the chaparral for bugs. We all froze. I figured Edwin and Nola were thinking the same thing I was—if the sudden flight of sparrows alerted the witches to our approach, we were cooked.

  But anything could have startled the birds—a fox, a coyote, hikers with nothing on their minds but enjoying a bit of nature. Unless Miranda had told the witches we were coming. That was a thought I didn’t want to pursue. I had to believe she’d been truthful with us. If not, we were probably heading into a trap.

  We set off again and crossed the distance to the outer trees in the grove. My heartbeat sped. When Edwin stepped past the first tree, I was right behind him, jumping into a Eucalyptus trees fun house of thick trunks, piles of fallen leaves, and large chunks of bark that made my mouth go dry. I bounced my gaze back and forth between Edwin’s back and the ground, to keep from tripping over fallen branches or twisting my ankle in a gopher hole.

  We hadn’t been among the trees more than fifteen minutes or so when I spotted a small, ramshackle cabin that couldn’t have imprisoned a rabbit if it wasn’t cursed. The shack was wood sided with a tin roof that seemed likely to fly off with the first stiff breeze. The wood-plank door was centered to the front and had a window on either side. The windows had red floral curtains that were drawn tight together.

  Nola rushed up beside Edwin who was still in the lead and held her hand up in a wait sign.

  “The perimeter is enchanted,” she said keeping her voice low. “I’ll have to dissolve it for us to get inside the cabin.”

  I stared at her. I heard her words and understood them, but my brain felt muzzy and the words didn’t seem to make sense. Edwin nodded though, so maybe it made sense to him. He didn’t seem concerned about whatever it was Nola was blabbering on about.

  The cabin didn’t look so rundown when I glanced at it again. There was a chimney I hadn’t noticed before with a pleasant gray smoke wafting skyward. Someone inside was cooking something that smelled really good. I was suddenly ravenous. I took a few quick steps toward the cabin hoping whoever was in there would share their food.

  “Edwin. Grab her,” Nola said suddenly, her words soft but commanding. “Don’t move and don’t let her go.”

  “What about you?” he said.

  “Curse-breaker, remember? Enchantment immune or I’d be pretty crappy at my job.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about. What enchantment? Edwin wrapped a strong hand around my left upper arm. I tried to shake it off so I could go in the cabin. I was so very hungry. Whatever was cooking smelled delicious. I struggled but couldn’t pull my arm free.

  “Turn me loose,” I hissed at him.

  He wouldn’t let go.

  Nola was kneeling on the ground, digging into the backpack she’d brought. “I know I packed rue.”

  Edwin stood beside me, his grip tightening on my arm. This was all his fault. He’d insisted we leave early, no time to eat, and he’d brought us here. Now, with the promise of food so near, he held me back. I swung around to face him and kneed him hard in the balls. He grunted but didn’t let go of my arm.

  Nola let out a breath and pulled to her feet. She held a bag of some dried leaves in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. She poured the leaves into the water and swirled the bottle to mix them. Her mixture didn’t smell nearly as good as what was coming from the cabin.

  I leaned over and bit Edwin’s hand that was wrapped around my arm. “Jesus!” he said, gritting his teeth and keeping his voice low.

  Nola unscrewed the cap on the bottle and splashed the water on me, soaking my face and shirt.

  I blinked, shocked by the water. The cabin was once again a shack. The chimney with its friendly smoke was gone. I couldn’t smell anything being cooked.

  “The enchantment got you,” Nola said quietly to me. “You’re okay now.”

  Edwin was cradling his bitten right hand in his left and grimacing.

  Heat rose in my cheeks. I touched his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”

  “Forget it,” he said. “Not your fault.”

  I rolled my shoulders, trying to shake off the last of what had enticed me. “I didn’t feel it coming. I always feel magic long before it gets to me.”

  “Let it go, Shay,” Edwin said, brushing away my confusion and concerns. “We have work to do.”

  I couldn’t though. “Why weren’t you affected?”

  “Demigod,” he said in much the same tone Nola had used to say curse-breaker.

  That made me the weak link. The one whose head could be clouded by the witches magic. I wouldn’t get caught again though. I’d be on high alert for magic coming at us from here on out.

  Nola was busy pouring the rest of the leafy water in a circle around the three of us.

  “I don’t have enough supplies to break this wide an enchantment, but the circle will purify and protect us. When we move forward, it will move with us.”

  “Good trick,” Edwin muttered and slowly started toward the cabin again.

  “I don’t think the witches are in the cabin,” Nola said. “They would have felt their enchantment being breached. It’s not like witches to stand by when that happens.”

  As if that was their cue, half a dozen witches suddenly flew at us, dive-bombing from the trees. Seeing bodies flying toward you is guaranteed to make your heart thump. It’s worse when you know they’re witches wishing you ill but they look just like your neighbors or people you see every day on the street.

  One witch in a long skirt and gauzy blouse, her long wheat-colored hair streaming behind her screeched as she angled to take out Nola. I summoned wind to hold her away. The witch hovered in the air, fury reddening her face.

  One with brown hair and wearing an Einstein on a bicycle t-shirt screeched as she fell toward me, a thick branch in her hand held ready to strike. I summoned a second b
last of air to blow her back into the trees.

  Two witches dove toward Edwin. I unleashed a whirlwind on them and watched them spin and tumble head over heels as the wind blew them away until they were lost to our view.

  “Can you get into the cabin?” I said to Nola. “Quickly?”

  She nodded.

  “Okay. I’ll keep the witches busy. You and Edwin get Michael.”

  “I’ll stay with you,” Edwin said. “Nola doesn’t need my help.”

  “She might if Michael is bound by more than magic,” I said. “Nola can break the curse, but can she break chains if the witches are hedging their bets? What if Michael is behind a locked door? I don’t think Nola has the strength to break one down.”

  Edwin reluctantly nodded. “I’ll check with Nola, but if only magic binds Michael Rawlings, I’ll be right back out to help you.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The two sprinted toward the cabin. Too late I realized she’d taken the protective circle with her. If the witches threw spells my way, I had nothing but my elements to protect me. And the sun was setting. The witches would be harder to see in the coming dusk. I needed a distraction.

  I considered setting fire to some of the eucalyptus trees to drive off the witches but a fire could too easily spread. Flammable gas from the trees’ oils could ignite into fireballs. Fire wasn’t the answer.

  Wind and water though, I could use those.

  The witches had disappeared into the trees. In the corner of my eye I caught a shimmer among the leaves of a eucalyptus. Someone readying a spell. I summoned up water to make clouds and poured rain from them. Water broke magic. I sent the rain wiping through the trees on a fierce wind blowing outward from where I stood. The shimmer in the trees faded as the witch was blown from her perch before she could finish her spell.

  Edwin sprang from the cabin’s door toward me, ducking and holding a hand over his head in a vain attempt to keep the pounding rain off him. “Nola says the curse is strong and complicated. She’ll need time to break it. You need to come inside. She can’t protect you out here.”