by A. L. Knorr
I got my first good look at the oldest mermaid I’d ever met, possibly the oldest one alive.
She didn’t look happy.
Two straight slashes of eyebrows pulled tight to the center of her brow as she peered at us. The eyes beneath them were as green as emeralds and just as hard. She unzipped her jacket and I caught a flash of metal under one arm. I glanced at Mom, but didn’t have time to ask if she’d seen what I had seen before Lusi reached us.
She was taller than either of us, slim-waisted, long-legged, broad-shouldered for a woman, and with powerful looking thighs straining at her leathers. Her face was beautiful, there was no denying that, but it had a quality that made me want to look away. I didn’t, but it took effort. Lusi’s skin had the look of polished marble, like her skin would be cold and hard if I had the courage to touch it. Except for a straight scar on her upper lip and another on her neck, her skin was smooth and flawless, opaque and unmarred. Yet I could see the age behind her eyes.
She stopped in front of us, looking from me to my mother and back again.
“I’ve had many unusual days in my time,” she said.
My lips parted in surprise at the sound. What little voice she had was a rasp of dry air passing through a tight throat. Startled, my eyes dropped to her neck and it was then that I noticed a third scar. A thin line of white ran across her windpipe. A small puckered circle at the centre of her throat became visible as the sun came out and it threw a small shadow.
“But this one is a standout,” she continued in that husk of a sound. Her eyes cut to Mom standing to my right. “The Sovereign.” Her gaze drifted back to me. “And an elemental.”
She took a step closer and looked down at me. Our eyes met and held, hers were flinty, yet curious. She bared her teeth when she spoke.
“You rang?”
I finally found my voice. “I apologize for interrupting…whatever it was you were doing when I called you, but when you learn why I asked you here, I hope you’ll understand.”
“Get on with it then,” she said.
I nodded and gestured to the door to welcome her in. “Thank you for coming.” I said, feeling like I sounded supremely lame.
She made a sound that I didn’t know how to interpret. Was it a grunt? A sound of agreement? She strode past us and made her way up the steps. I heard her mutter roughly as she reached the front door.
“Didn’t have much of a choice.”
Just as Lusi was reaching for the doorknob, it twisted and opened from the inside.
Antoni and Lusi stood face to face. I couldn’t see Lusi’s expression, but Antoni’s eyes looked glued open and unable to look away. They were a pair of frozen figures for a moment.
Emun’s head appeared over Antoni’s shoulder.
“Hello,” he said cheerily to Lusi. “Glad to see you’ve made it. Come on in.” Emun patted Antoni firmly on the shoulder as if to wake him up, and Antoni stepped aside.
I was close enough now to see the side of Lusi’s face as her eyes settled on Emun. They widened in surprise.
She turned her head and looked at me, then back at my mother before facing Emun again. “The Sovereign, an elemental, an ex-boyfriend, and a triton. I left Warsaw early this morning in a sour mood, but just seeing the four of you together has already made it worthwhile.”
Lusi stepped over the threshold and into the foyer, and Mom and I followed. When Antoni closed the door behind me, he gave me a weak smile.
“I thought your kind was extinct,” Lusi said to Emun.
“I get that a lot,” Emun replied.
The five of us stood in a misshapen circle facing one another.
Lusi was looking at Antoni and her expression was stony.
Antoni finally spoke. “I’m sorry, Lusi. I know I made you a promise, and I would have kept it and left you alone except for these two.” He gestured to me and Mom.
“So, you figured out what I am, then. Finally.” When Lusi spoke, the stony expression melted away and she appeared to relax. Her eyes, now appearing dark in the dim light of the foyer, glinted with what I thought was humor and she winked at Antoni.
The friendly gesture made me realize just how stiffly Antoni, Mom, and I were all standing––like soldiers at attention. Lusi’s arms dangled, relaxed at her sides as she leaned into one hip like a horse dozing under a tree. Emun had his hands on his hips and an earnest look on his face as he looked from one face to another, waiting for something interesting to happen. I got the feeling he found the whole thing amusing.
It was Emun who broke the tableau. He cleared his throat and a dimple appeared briefly in his cheek.
“Why don’t we have a seat in there.” He gestured to the parlor where my mother had told us her incredible story. “Would anyone like anything to drink? Adalbert and Sera are off today, so I’m happy to fetch anything your heart desires.”
“I’ll help,” I said, needing the relief of leaving the room even for a moment.
Emun and I shared a look as we headed to the kitchen.
“What do you think happened to her voice?” I asked, keeping my own voice at a whisper. “It’s not a cold. Did you see her scar?”
Emun nodded as he grabbed a tray and pulled some glasses and mugs from the cupboard and I put on the kettle. “I wonder if her siren voice still works.”
I blinked for a second. I hadn’t even thought about her siren voice.
“Why don’t you ask her?” I suggested.
“You ask her.” Emun elbowed me in the shoulder as I was putting teabags into the teapot. That same dimple appeared in his cheek. “She’s intimidating as hell.”
“I noticed.” I would have teased Emun about being intimidated, because up until I’d met Lusi, Emun had been the most intimidating Mer I’d ever met—well, until I realized he was a softie on the inside. There was no question that Lusi was not someone to make an enemy of. The fact that I’d called her here using my power already put me in an awkward position of being responsible for how this all went down.
“You know, I think there’s a gun under her jacket?” I whispered as we settled the water, coffee, and tea on two trays.
He didn’t even blink. “That doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
As Emun and I carried the trays of drinks into the parlor, I overheard Antoni commenting on Lusi’s haircut. I guess she’d had long hair when they’d known one another. I looked for my mom but she wasn’t in the room.
“Where’s Mira?” Emun asked as we set the trays down on the coffee table in front of the sofa.
“She went to get the tablet,” Antoni explained. “It was charging in Adalbert and Sera’s office.”
Lusi’s eyes were on me as I sat next to Antoni. I held her gaze without flinching. Her earrings caught my eye––small rough-cut aquamarines, both of them. She noticed that I’d noticed.
Her gaze flicked from my own ears to my neck to my hands.
“I can’t wear one,” I explained, picking up the teapot and beginning to pour.
For the first time since I’d met her, Lusi looked taken off-guard. “What do you mean you can’t wear one? You have to wear one.”
I shook my head. “They’re poisonous to me. It’s part of why we asked you to come.”
Lusi looked at me like my face had sprung an extra mouth.
Mom entered the room carrying the tablet and a folder full of the photographs we’d enlarged and printed. She sat next to Lusi, but not too close, and set the folder and tablet on the wide expanse of the table. Flipping open the folder, she pulled out six photographs and set them in a line in front of Lusi.
“Antoni tells us you know how to read Atlantean,” Mom said, sitting back and picking up one of the cups of tea.
Lusi gazed at the photographs, her eyes slowly scanning the images of the ruins in front of her. She shifted forward on the couch. “Where did you get these?”
Given how raspy Lusi’s voice was, it was difficult to make out tone, but there was a stunned look on her face as she picke
d up one of the photographs to examine it more closely.
“It’s a long story, which we’d be happy to tell if you’ll agree to help us,” Emun answered.
“Help you to do what?” She tore her eyes away from the photos to look up at Emun.
“We want to find the source of the siren’s curse.” I set down my tea and put my hands on my knees. “Understanding what these fragments say should help put us on the right track, but we can’t read them.”
“At least, not well,” Antoni added.
Lusi looked at Antoni, and a smile quirked at the corners of her lips but didn’t quite break all the way through. “You remembered some of what I taught you, did you?”
“A little.”
“And you thought it was all made up.”
“There was a lot you told me that I thought was made up,” Antoni replied. “But it was all true, wasn’t it? All that artwork, all those crests and statues. They really are of you.”
Lusi let out a long breath. “I shouldn’t have told you. I really should give up drinking,” she added. “It makes me sloppy. Maybe I thought you’d forget, maybe I thought it didn’t matter because you were leaving Warsaw anyway. It was irresponsible and stupid of me.”
“We’re glad you did tell him, because what he knew probably saved his life,” I told her.
Lusi listened quietly as Antoni, Emun, and I relayed the story about the Group of Winterthür and the retrieval of all the gems we’d found. We told her that the gems allowed humans to breathe underwater and that the men from Winterthür had planned to sell them to the highest bidder. We told her that we’d brought the gems back here and had originally thought to return them to as many sirens as we could, until Emun had posed the question about the curse.
Lusi’s eyes glittered dangerously as Mira then told her a short version of what happened to Okeanos and the Mer who lived there.
“Okeanos was my home,” Lusi told us, then looked at my mother. “It was a very long time before you were born. Until Warsaw became my home.”
“How is it that a mermaid makes her home in a land-locked city?” I asked.
Lusi had lost a little of her intimidation factor as the day wore on and we’d given her our secrets. She hadn’t called us crazy and gotten back on her motorcycle. She even seemed interested. Now that the ice had been broken, I felt comfortable enough to probe a little.
“The Vistula river flows through Warsaw and then north to the Baltic,” she explained. “I have access to it through an underground passage leading from my home. It is easy to get to water whenever I wish, freshwater immediately, or salt if I take the time to go all the way to the Baltic.” She made a little jab at the air with her chin. “If you want to call the Baltic salty.” She looked at me. “It’s how I was able to hear your call. I was swimming at the time, in the Vistula.”
I found it enlightening that she’d been able to hear my voice while swimming in freshwater, but didn’t bring it up.
“You never wanted to return to Okeanos?” Mom asked.
“Like I said, Warsaw is my home now. It will be my home until I die; I’ll never leave it again. I made that mistake before, and I’ll not repeat it.” She shot me a look. “Unless, of course, I get a call I cannot ignore.”
“I won’t do that to you again,” I replied, putting my palms up in a defensive gesture before I could stop myself. “But we would appreciate your help.”
“I think you’ve given yourself an impossible task, but good luck to you,” Lusi said, looking down at the images before her again. “I’ll do what I can to help. If by some miracle you can actually change things for sirens, then I’ll be grateful.” She jerked her chin toward Emun in that way I was coming to know as a quirk of hers. “And if breaking the curse means there’s a few more of him around, I’ll thank you for that, too.”
I shared looks of relief with Antoni and my mother, but when I glanced at Emun, he was gazing at Lusi with both dimples in full view.
Three
“She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” Emun’s knees cracked as he took two steps down and sat next to me.
I’d parked myself on the steps of the front porch again. It was the best place to enjoy the spring sunshine since the house buffered the wind coming off the Baltic. With a fresh coffee and one of Sera’s biscuits—pulled from the freezer and microwaved—it was a corner of paradise. The biscuits, shot through with cinnamon and raisins, often filled the house with a mouthwatering scent as they were baking and were best fresh from the oven, but warm from the microwave was a close second.
“Who?” I responded as the warm buttered biscuit melted in my mouth, rendering my mind nearly vacant with pleasure. A second later, it clicked. “Lusi?”
Emun nodded and gave a crooked smile at the crumbs at the corner of my mouth.
I wiped my mouth on my napkin and took a swig of coffee.
“Sure.” I shrugged and made my tone disinterested. “You know, if you think a hundreds of years old mermaid protector is a piece of work. That’s so dark ages if you ask me.”
Emun knocked my shoulder with his and gave an indignant snort which turned into a laugh. “For a second there, I thought you were serious.”
I went back to eating my biscuit.
“How long do you think its going to take her to…” he swirled his fingers in the air mystically.
“Translate?”
He blew out a breath with puffed cheeks. “If you want to call it that. It’s a confusing jumble of primitive images and glyphs. If you ask me, no one could make sense of it.”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“Antoni is helping her,” Emun added with a sideways glance.
“That’s nice of him,” I replied airily, and took another bite.
My phone vibrated from the pocket of my hoodie. I set down my coffee and fished it out. I swallowed as I read the number on the screen.
“Three-fifty? What country is that?”
“Can’t help you there.” Emun snagged the rest of the biscuit from my fingers as I gaped at the screen.
“Hey!”
“Aren’t you going to answer it?” Emun’s cheeks bulged as he said this around what was left of my biscuit.
“You’re such a…a brother!” Pushing the talk button, I brought the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Targa?”
The voice was masculine, accented, and not one I recognized.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Jozef.”
I snapped upright and my eyes widened.
“What? Who is it?” Emun asked. I practically heard Emun swallowing the big chunk of biscuit before it was ready to go down his pipe.
“I know you don’t know me that well,” Jozef was saying, “and we were never formally introduced, but maybe you heard your mother mention me once or twice?”
“She did,” I replied. “Where are you?”
“Well, that’s the thing.” He sounded a little apologetic, even sheepish. “I’m here, and I’d really like to see you.”
“Here as in Poland? Here as in Gdansk?” I got to my feet, feeling my limbs pulsing with adrenaline. My stomach was doing enthusiastic backflips.
“Uh…” He cleared his throat, sounding nervous. “I’m pretty nearby.”
I spluttered. “We’ve been looking for you! You’ve been impossible to find. You resigned, left no reason, no forwarding address.”
“Wow, I—I…”
He took in a big breath but I couldn’t tell if it was relief or mounting anxiety.
“I had no idea,” he said. “I’m sorry to have made it so hard for you. So, it would be all right if I popped by for a visit, then?”
“All right?” I began to laugh at the absurdity of the phone call, and how he’d just plopped himself into my lap after all the effort we’d expended looking for him. “Get here as soon as you can, for Pete’s sake! Don’t waste a moment.”
Jozef gave a chuckle and this time I could hear the relief in it.
M
y eyes were drawn to movement by the front gate. Jozef appeared on foot, and stepped into the driveway. He was holding a cell phone to his ear. He saw Emun and me standing on the front steps and I could see his surprise even at a distance.
“Oh!” Jozef’s face split in a grin. He lifted a hand and waved at us. “Hello, there.”
I ended the call and went down the steps. Emun followed me.
“That’s Jozef,” I said over my shoulder, my own face splitting in a grin.
“So I see.”
Jozef crossed the grounds and we met in the middle on the patch of grass in the center of the roundabout.
Jozef looked as I remembered him—ruggedly handsome, with a trim beard and curly brown hair. His eyes were shining.
He held out his hand to shake mine but I went right past it and gave him a hug. I felt him give a startled laugh, and then his arms went around me and squeezed.
“You look so much like your mother,” he said. “I’m sure you hear that all the time.”
He released me and I introduced Emun and Jozef to one another.
“He’s my brother,” I said, enjoying the way it felt to call Emun my family, even if he was more than a century older than me.
Jozef looked so startled that for a moment he looked like a figurine from a funhouse––eyes stretched wide, mouth gaping. “Brother?”
“It’s a long story,” Emun said as he shook Jozef’s hand. “I hope you can tell how happy we are to see you.”
My heart was jumping. “I can’t wait to tell Mom,” I said. “I’ll go get her.”
Jozef’s hand reached out and snagged my wrist. He pulled me back around to face him, his face now both shocked and pale.
“She’s here!?”
“Yeah, of course. Where else would she be?” I blinked at Jozef’s surprise. He really hadn’t expected her to be home. “She lives here.”
“I thought…I thought she—” Jozef seemed unable to finish what it was that he thought.
Emun and I shared a confused glance and then stared at Jozef, still waiting for him to finish. Then it clicked into place like a puzzle piece. Jozef was aware of the Dyás. He thought she was gone.
