Diary of a Radical Mermaid

by Deborah Smith

  “Yes,” I said, upside down.

  He dumped us both in the pool, scattering ducks everywhere. We wrapped ourselves up in each other and stayed under so long that the mallards stuck their heads underwater to stare.

  I’ve got Jordan just where I want him, I told them. Inside me.

  Not So Fast . . .

  Chapter 25

  Dear Diary:

  Just when I thought I was free, I’m being thrown back in the clink. I got this note from Lilith today. She’s back at Sainte’s Point. Just read this, and you’ll feel sorry for me:

  My dear Juna Lee,

  No, you have not been cleared of all charges by the Council. You kidnapped Molly Revere. You shot Orion. Even though you had the best intentions at the time, your impulsiveness once again makes you less than a solid citizen, in the eyes of the Council. Thus, you’re still on probation, and I’m still your probation officer. So I have another job for you to do regarding your community service. Since you’ve demonstrated a certain, ahem, talent as a guidance counselor for your fellow Mers, I’m assigning you to do a makeover on a Peacekeeper who needs to fit discreetly into Southern society.

  She’ll arrive in Charleston from Brooklyn, New York, in late summer. She’s been assigned as an undercover bodyguard to one of the coast’s most important Mers, whose name you would recognize if I mentioned it, which I don’t intend to do outside the privacy of a face-to-face meeting with you. In today’s world, discretion cannot be overemphasized. Suffice to say, this man is no helpless choir boy, and he is not happy to be assigned a babysitter.

  Since you’ll be spending considerable time on this case in Charleston, you might want to take up residence in the old Poinfax mansion again. You should consider blocking off that storm drain in the backyard. Yes, I know you see it as a quick portal to the ocean, but it’s also a quick portal from the ocean to your back door. Trust me, given the nature of the Peacekeeper you’ll be meeting, and the enemies she’s dealing with, you may not want to encourage strangers to pop up among your azaleas.

  Call the island and schedule a meeting with me soon. We’ll go over the details. Oh, and bring back the sapphire necklace you borrowed from your Great-Aunt Mara’s collection while we were on the cruise. If you don’t, Mara has spoken to Aphrodite Araiza about having your fingers broken.

  Love, Lilith

  I sighed at my continuing servitude, then typed in return:

  All right. I’ll do my duty. Don’t worry about me. As long as I have credit cards and a makeup kit, I can handle anything.

  * * * *

  Dear Diary:

  I’m off to Charleston with Jordan by my side, to see what the ocean burps up. A tough New York Mer cop, trying to fit into Charleston society as a Southern belle while doing kick-ass undercover work as a bodyguard for a Mer VIP who qualifies as King of the Untamed Horndogs? Oh, please. Just wait until I get my French-tipped nails into that messy pile of pearls.

  It’ll be so much fun.

  An Appendum of Facts & Fables Regarding the Mer People

  Sanctioned for release by the World Council, this date.

  Visit the Council’s official website, courtesy of Webmistress Juna Lee Poinfax:

  www.deborahsmith-mermaids.com

  Beyond The Ordinary Shore, or Whatever

  Interesting facts and snarky pseudo-scientific gossip about Mers

  by Juna Lee Poinfax

  Okay, Mer afficianados, listen up:

  The three primary oceans — Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian, combined with their junior buds such as the Mediterranean, Arctic, Antartic oceans, and others, aka Oceanus to Mers, cover 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and fill the vast majority of the globe’s spherical surface volume. In other words, land-based critters are like the Hindu cashier in the corner convenience store outside Shreveport. Not exactly a majority, you dig? Over 90 percent of the planet’s recorded species live in Oceanus. Only about one percent of this vast World Ocean has been mapped and explored by human eyes.

  Well, by Lander eyes, at any rate. Mers can tell you things about the Deep that would curl your butt hairs. Just consider the possibilities that things you never suspected can exist out yonder in the briny deep. The average ocean depth worldwide is two miles. The deepest known ocean depth on Earth is a canyon in the Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean, near Guam, where the ocean floor is over seven miles below the surface. If you sank Mount Everest into the Mariana Trench, the Trench would pat it on the head and say, “What a cute little hill.”

  It is estimated by Lander scientists that vast numbers of unknown marine species are yet to be discovered in the oceans. An understatement. Landers don’t even know they’re not the only kind of humans on the planet.

  The average Lander can only hold his/her breath underwater for a few minutes; Mers can remain submerged for a minimum of an hour. How do Mers do this? Various physiological processes are involved, but in lay terms, it boils down to this: just like whales and other marine mammals, Mers hoard oxygen. Mers are the Federal Reserve of oxygen bankers. We also conserve heat and take to cold temps like a, well, a fish to water. Cross-section our subcutaneous fat and you’ll find a layer of cellulite so dense not even a bulimic sorority girl could puke it out of her system. We are insulated, baby. As long as the water’s not frozen, we’re happy and chillin’.

  Mer people can’t really exist. It’s genetically impossible, you say? Oh right, Darwin breath. Considering the huge gaps in scientific documentation of humanoid stepping stones in the staircase of homo sapiens, and the sparse theories based on bits and pieces of primate and hominid fossils scattered over thousands of years, for all Landers know they could have ancient cousins who are bunny-eared mutant rabbit people. Alternative theories abound about the possibilities of semi-aquatic homo sapiens (casually described under the pseudo scientific name, home aquaticus.) So why haven’t archaeologists found evidence of a single web-toed aquatic humanoid? Because the evidence is all underwater. Like, duh.

  Using compressed air (scuba tanks) Landers can only descend at most 500 feet below the surface (and that’s stretching it). After about a hundred feet most Lander scuba divers go into a rapturous death trance because their blood gases are in deep sea-doo. Mers, on the other flipper, often comfortably explore the waters at depths of a half mile or more, with the record being set by British Mer Sir Phineas Argo Bonswith, who dived down at least 5,000 feet in the icy North Atlantic to retrieve a fumbled champagne bottle on a dare. When he surfaced, triumphant, his luxury ride, the R.M.S. Titantic, had sailed on without him. Sir Bonswith disgustedly swam back to England. In 2003 his daughter, Lady Penelope Bonswith Sirgade, sold the empty champagne bottle on eBay to a Mer collector for 30,000 dollars.

  Why can’t Mers fly in airplanes easily — i.e. what’s the deal with Mer altitude sickness? It’s all about handling the pressure, baby. Oh, not the pressure of picking out the perfect Jimmy Wongo slingbacks to match a new summer frock — that’s a given, natch, but air pressure, you know (yawn-from-lack-of-oxygen). Landers get the bends when they dive too deep below sea level. Mers, who could happily survive in a (well-decorated) cave at the ass-bottom of the briny deep, get their own version of the bends when forced into the skies. I mean, if God had meant for Mers to fly he’d have given us webbed armpits instead of toes, right? Anyway, put us in your average commercial jet and we’ll be lying in the aisle moaning. Not just because the airline’s showing yet another Jennifer Lopez movie, but because every joint in our body hurts and we want to upchuck our dinner lobster into the nearest carry-on tote.

  Mers who insist on flying do so in specially pressurized jets. Put a Lander on such an aeronautical high-pressure ride and he’d curl up in a gasping, fetal ball. Like my reaction to an Emenem CD. Excruciating.

  So what’s the deal with this “psychic illusion” card trick by which Landers only see whatever Mers tell them to see? Look, it’s simple: Landers are gullible. Evidence: they believe celebrities are innocent and politicians are honest. Let Simon Cowe
ll (a Mer on his father’s side), tell them a scrawny nobody who sings like one of the Bee Gees on helium deserves to be the next American Idol and they’ll believe it. Tell them the A tickets at Disney World are worth the price and they’ll believe it. Tell them electronic voting machines can’t possibly jerry-rig elections faster than a Haitian poll officer with a pack of number two pencils and they’ll believe it.

  Landers: Gullible with a capital Gull.

  Famous Mers. Now, look, if I out every major Mer singer, actor, aristocrat, politician, and business tycoon in the world, the Council will fine me for blabbing and, worse, Elton John will never invite me to another of his Tinseltown Oscar bashes again. But I can name-drop a few names. I’m not saying the following were or currently are hiding a set of webbed toes, I’m just, hmmm, saying that they, hmmm, could be. That is, they fit the typical Mer profile: gorgeous, rich, talented, charismatic, etc. If you believe some celebrities are born able to tread water even in a hurricane, doesn’t it explain a lot?

  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Barbara Streisand, Grace Kelly, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Clark Gable, Gwynneth Paltrow, Paris Hilton, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, Tyra Banks, Diana Ross, Beyonce, Puff Daddy, Keanu Reeves, Princess Diana, Amelia Earhart, Tiger Woods, Merlin (of King Arthur fame), Cleopatra, Shakespeare, and the entire cast of that 1960s fave TV show of Mer kids everywhere: Flipper.

  I could name dozens more. But not without a Mer lawyer to fend off the complaints.

  Science versus Mythology; Facts of Ancient Mer History

  by Acarathena Bonavendier, PhD

  Founder, Archaeological Research Consortium (ARC)

  Mobile, Alabama

  Like my elder cousin (and, in the spirit of disclosure, ARC’s largest financial donor) Lilith Bonavendier, I fully support the idea that Mers and Landers share extensive genetic, sociological, cultural, and historical roots, in essence, being separate branches off the same family tree. However, unlike (but with all due respect to) Lilith, I prefer hard science to fanciful mythology when it comes to the ancient origins of Mer culture. Fables of Atlantis-like kingdoms, of half-human, fish-tailed beings, et cetera, are simply that: fables. Without going into volumes of detail about the artifacts and fossils gathered by Mer scientists for hundreds of years, I will sum up the indisputable conclusions briefly:

  Mers and Landers diverged from a common ancestor at least six million years ago. Mer scientists excavating submerged sites off the coast of Africa in the late 1970s recovered the bones of numerous aquatic hominids, known in the research vernacular as “aquatic apes” (i.e. chimp-like head and torso, broadly splayed feet with fossil imprints of webbed toes).

  According to Lander archaeologists and ancient Lander historians, Sumeria was the site of the first advanced human civilization, existing 6,000 years ago on the coast of modern-day Iraq. Yet Sumerian mythology speaks of earlier civilizations that predate that time by thousands of years and insists that half-man, half-fish “gods” came out of the ocean after a catastrophic worldwide flood that wiped out most of mankind (i.e. Landers). According to Sumerian texts, these gods were mentors and teachers from the lost cities. They restored civilization.

  Yet Landers insist that no evidence of pre-Sumerian civilization exists. Why haven’t Lander researchers found such evidence? Because it is now hidden on the ocean floor.

  Without dispute, all scientists, both Mer and Landers, agree that the last ice age ended approximately 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. At that time, the melting of the glaciers raised ocean levels worldwide. It is accepted fact that the modern day Persian Gulf was once a vast, fertile plain fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. According to Sumerian legend, this veritable real-life paradise was home to an advanced civilization with numerous great cities along the ancient Mesopotamian coast.

  Until the waters rose.

  Geological evidence indicates that while this gradual flooding of each section of the continental coastlines worldwide, occurred over thousands of years, research also indicates that turbulent climatic changes also may have caused sudden, catastrophic increases in ocean level. In league with evidence of massive volcano eruptions, such as those suspected in the ancient Greek islands, one can easily picture shocking floods and enormous, deadly tsunamis. Indeed, since virtually every ancient culture on Earth — on every continent — includes legends of a “great flood” that destroyed most of mankind, it is accurate to believe that such legends date to specific, real, cataclysmic events associated with glacier melting.

  How does this prove that Mer civilizations pre-date all known Lander civilizations, or at the very least, openly co-existed alongside Lander civilizations at one time?

  The lost cities have been found.

  While a few Lander scientists and curious sport divers have long reported finding mysterious, megalithic ruins in waters off the coasts of the world, their contention that those ruins represent human civilizations lost to glacier flooding, therefore pre-dating the earliest known civilizations by 10,000 years or more, have been laughed off by mainstream Lander archaeologists as bizarre conjecture.

  Mer scientists, however, are under no such narrow presumptions. Working in deep waters, guided by ancient Mer texts, Mer researchers have gathered a treasure trove of extraordinary fossils, artifacts, and engraved writings from Mer and/or Lander civilizations at more than thirty major sites worldwide.

  How then, if Mers once ruled empires of both Mer and Lander, may we explain the current state of affairs — i.e. that the end of the last ice age began a swift period of decline in Mer influence and population, so that our entire branch of the human race dwindled to a tiny, elite minority lost to legend and cloaked in secrecy?

  Sadly, it has taken until recent decades for science to develop the tools that could answer that question definitively — i.e. the combination of forensics and genetic testing that have identified heretofore unsuspected clues.

  Unfortunately, at this point in time, due to investigations and allegations being pursued by the Council in regards to the UniWorld situation, I’m constrained from elaborating on the details of those clues.

  The Legend Of Water People

  Excerpted From Fables of the Water People

  Compiled and Edited by Lilith Bonavendier

  In some ancient time of great honor and noble deeds, some millenium thousands of years before our own — once upon a time, as they say in fairytales — Melasine and the other Old Ones, male and female, ruled a great empire of extraordinary beings such as themselves, wholly human but also wholly aquatic.

  Whether this mythical empire existed in the blue waters of the Aegean, as is usually coined by fervent fans of the Atlantis legends, or in some totally unconsidered ocean realm, is unknown. Certain scientists among our kind have quietly removed incredible statues of the Old Ones from sunken ports in every ancient coastal city of the world.

  Their findings suggest that an amazing civilization existed long before the first Greeks erected temples to sea gods and goddesses. It is quite likely the fabulous worlds of Melasine and her kind had been in ruins for millennia when Neptune began paddling around Grecian male fantasies with his nubile nymphs and phallic trident.

  Water is life, water is love, water is the womb. All the great religions believe so. Water People say the earth formed as an afterthought inside the glorious depths of great seas, hardening like the dull, dry pit of a luscious fruit. At the risk of insulting those Water People who believe Landers cannot possibly share our legacy, I must point out that if the sea is the mother of us all, then we must all be, at heart, both Water People and Land People. Do not all children float first in the womb as female beings? Thus all men begin in fluid, as women. Similarly, all Landers began as Water People. And all Water People began as the Old Ones.

  Mermaids.

  I rarely use that cartoonish term, but it does prove convenient for first impressions. Whether fact or fancy, the portrait of Melasine at Sainte’s Point indicates she is far more surreal a
nd complex than a simple, popular name can surmise. I have no doubt she exists — an ancient, ageless, female being, isolated and reclusive, lonely and yet seductive.

  * * * *

  When Melasine and the others like her — both male and female — were young, they called themselves Tamerians, after their greatest city. The Tamerians openly ruled the coasts of the ancient world, creating amazing palaces in the waters, traveling across land via rivers and inlets and fantastically engineered channels which connected the great seas and freshwater lakes. Landers — pathetic, two-legged, short-lived humans — were deemed inferior and treated as servants or were driven to the wild interiors of the continents, where their shuffling, land-trapped ways could be ignored by the elegant and handsomely finned Tamerians.

  Ta-Mera was built more in the water than on the land, with submerged temples and fluid passageways, fine promontories of marble for sunning in the warm air, and broad canals of the most beautiful stonework, allowing Melasine and her kind to travel throughout their empire without ever leaving the water. (Dear Readers: You might want to look for an article from the magazine Strange Science, circa May of 1997, titled “The Mysterious Lost Alleys of the Ancient Coasts.” It’s inaccurate but fascinating, especially to those of us who know why those “alleys” truly existed.) The Tamerians were a far older race than the plodding Landers. They considered themselves a far more brilliant kind, far more talented, far more evolved.

  There is always a “pride goeth before the fall” theme in mythology, and the Ta-Mera story may be just such an instructional tale. Perhaps the Tamerians abused their hold over the Landers, treating them as a lesser tributary of the familial sea, and the Landers finally rebelled. Or the Tamerians worshiped inconstant gods who smote them for frivolous injustices. Or they were doomed by the ordinary afflictions of both Land and Water Kind — greed, envy, lust, and jealousy.