Asia blew out a sigh. “Well do I know it.”
Silence pulsed between them like a living thing.
Will tried to collect his thoughts. The persistent sense of unreality that had hung around him ever since Tim died seemed to press in further. If this is a nightmare, I wish I would just wake up, he thought. But he didn’t wake up. And so, with a deep breath, he pressed on. “You knew Calypso?”
“She was my sister,” Asia explained. “We all are sisters.”
“Then who are the Joyces?”
“Who?” Asia’s expression seemed genuinely blank.
“You live in their house?” Will prompted.
“Oh.” Asia bit her lip, looked away. “Will, this town is full of empty houses. Every year I find a seaside town, and then find a place to live. If the owners return, I simply move on to another house.”
“What will you do it they come back and find you?”
“I can usually tell when the owners are coming back.”
“So the Joyces aren’t your family?”
“I’ve never met them.”
“So, no family. And there aren’t any mer-guys?” Asia laughed. “No.”
“So how do you …” Will waved his hands, and Asia lifted her eyebrows.
“Reproduce?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t. That is, we can have children … with humans. In the usual way.” She smiled wryly. “But those children are human, not our kind. None of us remembers our births, obviously, as you don’t remember yours. We’ve simply always been. But there are no new mermaids. When the last of us die …” Asia shrugged.
“Maybe there used to be mermen,” Will said.
“That’s what I think. Perhaps something killed them off. But I don’t know.” She breathed a gentle sigh. “You have no idea how frustrating it is to have no idea where you came from.” She traced her fingers in loops over the top of the table. “And you have no idea how terrifying it is to consider a death that’s so final. There won’t be any family left.”
“You’re the last?”
“Not exactly.”
“You’re going to explain that?”
“I’ll try.”
Will decided to let that go for a moment. “All right, so—do you have any other special powers? Can you breathe underwater? Are you like Aquaman or something?” He tried to laugh, but it came out sounding strangled.
Asia turned her head and lifted her long black hair. There, behind her ear, were three black gash marks, like a dark tattoo. They quivered slightly.
“Gills,” Will whispered. He had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting.
Asia nodded. “I don’t choose to live in the water. But I could. Calypso has.”
Will shook his head, dumbfounded. It took him a moment to gather his thoughts enough to ask, “And what else?”
“We’re very strong,” Asia admitted.
“Should we arm-wrestle?” Will joked.
“Only if you want me to rip your arm off.” Her green eyes glittered, and Will went cold. “Not that I would, of course,” Asia added.
“Uh, thanks, I guess.”
The mermaid chuckled.
But a new thought had occurred to Will. “So, that night—the cliff—”
“Yes.”
“Can you fly?”
Asia shook her head. “No. We can climb. And jump.”
“Jump,” Will repeated. “So—wait—”
“I was near the water already that night. I’d heard something.…”
Will raised an eyebrow.
“You didn’t, by any chance, play that flute of yours?”
Will cast back in his memory. Guernsey, barking. Looking out the window. “Yeah, I did.”
Asia nodded. “That flute … it’s what we use to call each other.”
A chill swept through Will’s body. “Do you know why my brother would have had one?”
“Are you sure your brother did have one?”
“I just—” Will suddenly remembered that the flute had been found on Tim’s boat … but that didn’t mean it was actually Tim’s. “So why did you sell yours?”
“I had used it for the last time.”
Will could tell that he wasn’t going to get a more specific answer. At least, not yet. “Okay. So that night …”
“I was by the water, and I heard you calling for Gretchen. I saw you struggle at the edge. And I saw you fall, so I jumped toward you. Instead of falling straight down onto the rocks, you got knocked off course and fell onto the sand.”
“Some jump.”
Asia smiled slowly and reached a hand across the table in a feline stretch. “I’ll show you sometime.”
“Okay.” Will wasn’t really sure he wanted that. “So—wait. You’re immortal … but can you get hurt? You know, injured?”
“We don’t die of natural causes, Will. But we can be injured, yes. We can even be killed.”
“How?”
“Fire.” A shudder ran through her body, and Will remembered that she had said her sister died in a fire.
“What happened?” Will asked.
Asia pressed her palm flat against the book, as if her body were absorbing its words. “After the Trojan War, Ulysses became lost on the sea. We had helped the Greeks in their fight, and many of my kind had fallen. We returned to our homes weary, and most of us foreswore violence. But there were a few for whom battle had kindled a bloodlust in their veins. Ulysses sailed to Calypso’s island. Calypso loved Ulysses, and she thought that he loved her. He lived with her many years, before he finally decided to return to his wife, his home. He left with promises to return, but these promises were broken. As you know, my kind cannot lie, and we do not understand when others lie to us. Calypso waited patiently for Ulysses to return. Ten long years she waited, until finally she realized that he did not plan to return at all.”
“And she was pissed.”
“Please don’t interrupt.”
“Sorry.” Will grimaced.
“But yes, she was pissed, as you put it. She sailed after him, and found him safely at home, with his wife and grown son, Telemachus. And there were two new children—a son and a daughter. Rage washed over Calypso, and she killed Ulysses. She killed the children. The grown son escaped, as did the wife, Penelope. But Calypso left their entire village in ruins before she left.
“But the story didn’t end there. Haunted by what had happened to his family, Telemachus swore vengeance on Calypso and all of our kind. Penelope was a wealthy woman, and very powerful. Her mother, Periboea, was one of us, and she knew our weakness. With her help and Ulysses’s name, Telemachus found many followers. They set sail to hunt us down. When they came to Calypso’s island, they took many of us, although they did not capture her. Those were very dark years.” Asia closed her eyes.
“They knew our islands, and sought us out. And so many of us took to the sea. The rage in Calypso’s heart had only grown more furious and treacherous. She swore vengeance on all men with dark hearts.”
“But how could she know who—?”
“I’m getting to that, if you would stop interrupting. We have a sixth sense.”
“You can read minds?”
“No. Not minds—hearts. Emotions. Not perfectly, but we sense anger, fear, pain, despair. We don’t necessarily know what is causing those emotions, and often they are blended with other emotions, which makes them difficult to understand. But the powerful emotions call to us.… Calypso began to defend herself against rogue sailors by sensing their intentions. And then she would attack.”
Will considered the journal. The sailors had been fearful, angry, wretched over the loss of Hawken. Then Akers had unnerved them. Had those dark fears, that fury, called the seekriegers to them?
“For many years, Calypso and her mermaids have lived near the bottom of the ocean. Over time, their eyes grew larger. Their skin grew luminous. They feed on fish and other things from the sea—but they hunt men.”
“Just men?”
“Humans,” Asia corrected herself. “But sailors are—were—usually men so most often those are their victims.”
“You keep saying ‘they.’ ”
“I’m not like them.” Asia grimaced slightly, like one in pain, and Will suspected that she might not be telling the whole truth. She wasn’t lying—not exactly. He believed her when she said she couldn’t. But she could leave things out. “Calypso and her band—those are your seekriegers,” Asia told him. “I’m not with them. We’re the same kind, but we don’t want the same things. I’ve always chosen to live on land, for example. And for a long time I tried to stay away from humans, whereas they seek them out.”
“But there’s more to the story,” Will prompted.
“Much more.” Asia looked wistful. “Telemachus came for me and my sister, Melia, but we escaped him and his band. We decided that we could not stay in that part of the world. We swam toward a land that we knew was more secluded—where the natives were friendlier to our kind. There we stayed—alone—for ages. Time passed; hundreds of years, then thousands. It was a peaceful life, but lonely. When we missed the company of humans, we visited the natives, who welcomed us. Still, a thousand years is not forever. New people began to arrive, and although they looked different from Telemachus and spoke differently, we felt the same anger in them. But we lived on an island far from the new settlements, and we did not swim near them. We watched the great boats with their many white sails float by like swans.
“One evening, there was a storm out at sea. The gray sky was lit with cracks of lightning. The waves raged against the rocks. Rain lashed at the ocean as if it were an enemy.
“Our kind are often drawn to the violent sea—sailors used to call a hurricane a ‘siren’s storm.’ I don’t know why we go to the water in a tempest. Perhaps we’re seeking the calm beneath the waves. I found Melia at the water’s edge, watching as a ship slowly climbed a steep wave. Our eyes are keen, and we saw it crest the top, then plunge. The next wave was larger. The wave curled over the ship, which listed to the side. The wave crashed with the force of a mountain, and I know we both felt it—the fear of the men, the panic as their ship splintered apart. We were far, but the terror carried out over the water.
“Melia bounded into the water. Her leap became a dive, and she disappeared beneath the waves. I dove in after her.
“We surfaced near the men. One old man was clinging to a large piece of driftwood. When he spotted Melia, the panic in his eyes turned to something animal. Melia tried to reach for him, but he kicked and flailed, and finally she had to let him go.
“A young boy with huge, frightened eyes looked up at me. He was paddling like a dog, and I could tell that he could not keep it up much longer. I grabbed him, while Melia reached for a man who was floating facedown nearby. At first, I thought he was dead, but she yanked back his fair hair. His eyes fluttered open, then closed again.
“The next wave was rising, so I placed the boy on my back and started toward our island. But the old man was swimming toward Melia, shouting. He reached for her arm, but grabbed instead a fistful of her hair.
“I cried out to her, but a wave dashed down, driving the old man and the mast forward. As the wave crashed, the mast knocked Melia on the head, and I saw her go down. The old man was thrown wide. A moment later, the wave came for us. I dove and swam until the rocks of the beach scraped my fingers.
“Our kind swims fast as dolphins. Still, the boy tumbled from my back as I stepped onto the beach. His face was pale, almost blue. He was still for a moment, and then he choked, writhing, and vomited seawater—much more than I’d thought a small boy like that could hold. I stood over him as he shivered and cried and vomited more, but I was facing the sea. The wave had erased the ship. And it had erased all signs of Melia.
“I cared for the boy, and he adored me. I caught fish for him, and fed him such fruits as grew on the island. I sheltered him and treated him with the medicine I knew. He was weak for a long time. He carried a small knife in his pocket. He had not lost it in the storm, and with it, he carved small animals for me from pieces of driftwood. He carved a cat, and a mouse. A fish. A snake. My favorite, though, was a small bird. These he presented to me in silence, while his large dark eyes looked up at me in eagerness. He tried to communicate with me, which is how I first learned English.”
“Sorry to interrupt, but—what year was this?”
“Years had no meaning to me then,” Asia answered. “It was over three hundred years ago.”
Air escaped from Will’s lungs in a whoosh. For some reason, that number—three hundred—made Asia seem more ancient than the stories of the Odyssey had. It was more tangible. Three hundred years ago. He felt sick.
Asia cocked her head, and he knew that she felt the change in his emotions.
“Is it hard, to have such a long life?”
Asia closed her eyes, then opened them slowly. “I don’t know. I’ve never known anything different.”
“Right.”
“Shall I go on?”
“Just give me a minute.”
“We can stop,” Asia offered.
Across the library, the mother argued with her child, warning him that it was time to leave. The world spun on, full of the mundane, full of mystery. It was hard to fit together. Will couldn’t sort it out.
“No,” Will said finally. “We can’t stop.”
“All right.” Her hands were folded, and she looked down at them. “Where was I? Oh, yes. The boy. I cared for him for several weeks. Then the weeks became months. He taught me English, and I began to teach him my language. He seemed enchanted with me, and wanted to spend all his time with me. He was becoming more and more like me every day. When I heard him singing one of our songs in his sleep, I knew that it was time to return him to his people. But I had grown fond of him, and I did not want to merely abandon him at the port. I needed to observe things, find where he might live.
“I came ashore at night and stole from a drying line the sort of clothes I would need to fit in. It was early November, but the air had turned bearably warm. Still, the clothes were stiff with frost as I beat them out and put them on. Then I waited. The next morning, I prowled about the market stalls, overhearing bits of conversations. There was a strange energy in the air—everyone was talking about an upcoming trial. The town was awash in dark feeling—there was fear, and excitement, and righteousness, and anger.
“I was pretending to pick over a pile of potatoes when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. Something about the gesture seemed familiar to me. And when I turned, I saw Melia at the next stall. She was dressed in a gray gown, with her red hair tied up beneath a simple gray cap. Still, there was no way to hide the beauty of her face.
“She must have felt my gaze, for she turned. When she saw me … well, I can’t describe what came over her face at that moment. It was shock, really. Her eyes stayed on mine, but they were far away, as if she had entered a dream. I felt her confusion, and then, slowly, the confusion slipped away, like steam disappearing on the air. Her eyes returned to me then, and I saw that she knew who I was—and that she hadn’t known a moment earlier.
“A pretty young woman was at Melia’s side. She was dressed as Melia was—in simple gray, with a full skirt and a clean white apron. She was slight and fair-haired, with large blue eyes and a sweet, heart-shaped face. The girl looked at me inquiringly, and placed a hand on Melia’s arm, and this seemed to recall Melia to herself. Melia spoke a word to the girl, and she nodded. She smiled at me, then made her way through the market as Melia came toward me.
“I told her that we should leave that very night. She could return to the island with me. We both knew that it wasn’t safe for her here. Our kind has never been safe among yours, not for long. I wanted to simply grab Melia and flee—take her far away from those people. I could smell the rage in the air, like drifting smoke. All I knew of them was that they would have killed me if they had known what I was.
“But Meli
a refused to leave. She had fallen in love with the sailor she had rescued, James Newkirk, and he loved her. She said that she would rather live a short while with him and lose him than live forever without him. She had to take whatever time was granted to her. It didn’t matter if it was only thirty years, or fifty, or five. It didn’t matter if it was a moment. She loved him. It was the beginning and the end, for her.
“I asked her to remember the times we were hunted. She said that she did remember. And so I left. It was the last time I ever saw her.
“When I returned to my island, my boy was shivering in his sleep on the floor of my shallow cave. He heard me stir, and the look of relief on his face when he saw me sent a strange feeling through me. What was it? Gratitude? Happiness? Perhaps it was a form of love.
“The fire had gone out, so—very, very cautiously—I lit it, and he warmed himself. I despised the fire, but the boy needed it. He had caught a slight cold, and I busied myself with caring for him. I doted on him for several weeks, long after he was well. I suppose I told myself that he was too weak to go back to his kind. But I think I really didn’t want to let him go.
“I decided to keep him with me through the winter. In the spring it would be easier for him to find work, or even a family to take him in. And so I kept him safe, and fed him, and sang him to sleep at night.
“In the spring, I helped him build a boat. We loaded it with food and waited until the waters were calm. Then I hauled it out over the breakers and into the wild sea. I had braided a rope, and I fastened that between my waist and the boat. Then I hauled the boat to the port. The boy had outgrown his clothes by then—they were nothing more than rags, anyway—so I stole clothing for both myself and him.
“I had in my mind a vague thought that perhaps Melia could find a home for my boy, but I knew not where to find her. I searched all day, and combed the market, but she was nowhere to be found. Finally, I asked an old sailor if he knew James Newkirk, and he said aye. He directed me to a handsome house on a tree-lined street. All of the homes were large and square—this was the row where the sea captains lived. I asked the boy to wait at the foot of the stairs while I lifted the large brass knocker.
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