Corrie grabbed a roll of tape from the bag and crafted a makeshift hinge for the device, thanking her overprepared self from earlier. She liked having everything neatly accounted for and taken care of, and while that trait sometimes got in the way of life, it came in handy at times like this.
She took a jug, unscrewed the lid, and kneeled over the edge of the jetty. The water had a thin sheen of oil on its surface, and Corrie sighed. So much for pristine sampling. What would she find in this water?
A plopping noise made her look up. A child’s wail crescendoed from above her on the pier.
“My ice cream! It fell!” the child wailed. Corrie sighed again. Great, now she’d probably get bovine DNA in her analysis from remnants in the milky ice cream. Was there a point to this sample?
It was all she had access to now, however. Until her supervisor secured more funding for the lab, they were on a budget. Most of the field funds had been spent on Mara’s trip, allocated before Corrie had joined the lab. Maybe one day she could go somewhere to collect samples that would be more likely to answer her scientific questions. Until that day, she would do her best at the pier.
She dipped each jug into the water and filled it up, careful to push the mouth of the jug as deep as she could reach. When she pulled them back onto the jetty, her arms and back protested with the strain. Twenty kilograms were twenty too many. Corrie excused herself from going to the gym today. Not that her plans were usually followed when it came to exercise, but it felt good to have a proper excuse.
A few sad-looking anemones clung to the floating dock below her, just within reach. Corrie donned latex gloves and grabbed a pair of scissors and a plastic sampling bag. She plunged her hands into the cold water and carefully snipped a frond off the closest anemone. At the motion, the anemone and its neighbors curled up, preventing Corrie from taking a second sample.
“I guess that will have to do for now,” she muttered. “So much for statistical significance.”
Now, how would she get back to the truck? One trip or two? Corrie tapped her foot in thought, then slung the equipment bag around her neck and heaved a jug in each hand. She groaned and took a few toddling steps forward.
“Way too much.” She noticed a group of tourists staring at her, and she attempted to turn her grimace into a smile. She could do this. She was a strong, capable woman who could handle anything. It wasn’t that far.
It was a long, long way. Her fingers were screaming at her by the time she staggered to the truck and placed the jugs on the ground. She dropped the bag by the driver’s side and maneuvered the jugs into the back with shaking arms.
“It’s fine,” she said to herself. “I’ll just make this water last for my entire degree. No problem. I’m sure the answer to all scientific questions resides in this forty liters of seawater.”
Corrie turned back to the cab. A large dog, its short black hair gleaming in the sun, sniffed her bag with a pointed snout.
“Scat,” she said. The dog looked up. Then it lifted its leg and a stream of urine splashed onto the equipment bag, before it turned and trotted away. Corrie cursed and threw the bag in the bed of the truck. This was just not her day.
Corrie stretched out on the couch at home with a sigh of contentment. She shared a house with three other people—Sophie Trip was a grad student in electrical engineering, Koni Kotaro was working on a graphic design diploma, and Adrianna Rhodes was at vet school—but they were out now buying supplies. She expected them back shortly to set up for the party that their household was throwing tonight.
But first, a blog post. It had been almost a week since her last post, and she had worked on some excellent new correlative data since then that cross-analyzed sightings of the Kraken over time. The data clearly showed a centuries-long migration pattern, which corresponded nicely with changes in ocean temperatures over the same period.
She needed to make a few blog-worthy graphs—more colors, add a legend—but it shouldn’t take long. It was exactly what she needed after the last two days of reading scientific papers and fieldwork. Ugh, and meeting Jonathan. She dreaded meeting days, when she felt simultaneously energized by new ideas and dispirited by what she didn’t already know. But her blog was pure joy.
It was a data-based examination of mythical sea creatures. She was proud of it. Most sites on the topic wallowed in descriptive accounts from folklore. Corrie had a different purpose: to figure out whether there was any truth to the legends. The best way she knew how to do that was scientifically, methodically. Hypothesize, look at the data, draw conclusions. Her unusual take on the subject had earned her a sizeable following of fervent fans, along with the occasional troll post, which she promptly deleted and expelled from her mind. They didn’t know. They hadn’t seen what she had seen.
Corrie’s mind drifted back to that fateful day when she had seen the mermaid. She opened her blog’s archive to search for the post in which she described her encounter as a wide-eyed ten-year-old. That sighting was the impetus for her blog. It was even, if she were honest with herself, the driving force behind her studies in biology. She wanted to know more, find another mermaid, prove to herself that she hadn’t imagined it. She wanted to slot the mermaid into the genetic trees of life, figure out how they fit with the rest of the planet.
It was a secret beach. I was so certain I was the only one who had ever found it, with the conviction of a child. But perhaps I was right—the mermaid thought it was safe from prying eyes. I crawled through a tiny crevasse in the rock to find the little cove. One year older, and I wouldn’t have fit. I know, because I tried the next year.
She wasn’t any sort of human that I’ve seen before, that much I can safely say. Her fin was covered in shiny scales and looked more like fused human legs than a fish tail, although the feet were elongated, and the toes were webbed. The skin on her naked torso was an odd greenish-brown color, and her hair was long and precisely the color of bull kelp. She was lying on the sand, clearly enjoying the sun. I must have gasped, although I don’t remember it. When she heard me, she turned her face my way, and I got a good look at her flattened facial features. Her eyes were large, and her ears were only holes. She gazed right at me for one long moment. Then she gave a terrible screech and flopped back into the water. I might have laughed at the clumsiness if it hadn’t been a mermaid doing it.
That moment when our eyes met, that was when this blog was born.
Sorry for the soppy post. I thought you guys might be interested in how this got started. Share in the comments below if you have sighted anything yourself. Back to data tomorrow!
Corrie smiled as she read some of the comments on the post. “You’re so lucky,” gushed one commenter. “Great post, did you include your sighting in the mermaid data you showed last month?” asked another. “Who are you?” asked one. “We should be besties!”
Corrie snorted at that one. There was a very good reason why she was anonymous online. Aside from the social stigma associated with believing in mermaids and their ilk, she had her career to think of. If word got out that she was studying myths on the side, she would be a laughingstock. No one would take her other work seriously, no one would hire her… Her blog was far too detailed and in-depth for her to write it off as a joke.
Corrie sighed. Then she squared her shoulders, adjusted the computer on her lap, and got to work. Those legends weren’t going to find themselves.
An hour later, the front door burst open. Corrie slammed her laptop shut and pasted on a smile. Her roommates didn’t know about her secret blog project—no one knew—and she intended to keep it that way.
“Corrie! Good, you’re here.” Sophie—better known as Trip to her friends—sailed through the open door and up the stairs with a paper bag of groceries in each arm. “Have you set up your science jam stuff yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, come on! People will be here soon.” Trip tutted at her. Corrie grinned sheepishly and shoved her laptop under the coff
ee table. Trip glided to the kitchen, and Adrianna paused to speak to Corrie.
“Hi Corrie,” she said. “The store was out of red food coloring, so I only got blue and green. Is that okay?”
“That’s Koni’s call, not mine. As long as you have the cornstarch,” Corrie said.
“You bet.”
Koni entered quietly behind Adrianna with cans of beer in each hand. He smiled at Corrie.
“Hi, Corrie. I hope you are thirsty.”
“I hope you’re helping me,” she said with an answering smile and took a case from him. “Let’s go set up—Trip will be looking for someone to order around.”
“I heard that,” Trip yelled from the kitchen. “But since you’re offering, set up the speakers, will you?”
Corrie followed Koni to the corner of the room, where a large but beat-up speaker system leaned against a bookshelf. Adrianna had found it behind a nearby apartment building, and Trip had tinkered with it to make the speakers play again.
“Set the big one on its back on the coffee table,” Corrie directed. Koni complied, and Corrie placed a piece of foil on top of the speaker.
“I still don’t understand what this will do,” he said. Corrie grinned.
“You’ll see. When we play music through the speaker, the foil will vibrate. When we put the cornstarch mixture on it, well, a mixture of cornstarch and water has strange properties, where it can be classified as a solid or a liquid depending on the force exerted on it.” She caught Koni’s confused expression. “It’s going to jump around and look really cool. I’ll leave you in charge of the color scheme, okay?”
“I can do that,” he said.
Corrie moved to the kitchen, where Trip and Adrianna were arguing about what drinks to put where. They were friends from their undergraduate degrees in university and were tight despite their differences. Trip had grown up on the coast and was brash and brutally honest. Adrianna was from New Brunswick, on the other side of the country. She was quietly strong-willed where Trip was loud, but it was paired with compassion that helped her excel at treating animals. They disagreed often and loudly, but it never appeared to strain their relationship. Corrie and Koni, a Japanese student who had come for his undergraduate degree and had never left, had answered an advertisement for roommates last September. Now, in February, they were all fast friends.
“I hope we have enough vodka.” Adrianna looked critically at the bottle in her hand. “If you’re going to be lighting half of it up, what will be left to drink?”
“The other half,” Corrie said. “And people can blow out the fire whenever they want.”
“It’s time you had a date, Corrie,” Trip said. She took out a mixing bowl and upended a bag of chips into it. “There will be plenty of people here tonight. I want to see mingling and flirting, you hear?”
“All right, all right,” Corrie said in defeat. “I’ll do my best. But the drinks and science come first. Let me help with the drinks.”
“I don’t know about you, but I need this party,” Adrianna said. “I just got the news that I didn’t receive an award I was hoping for, so I have to take more shifts at the vet clinic to pay for tuition.” She took out a stack of glasses from the cupboard. “That prissy Laurie probably got it. She’s such a suck-up. And annoyingly good at everything.”
“Too bad she’s so nice, too,” Corrie said with a wink at Trip, who laughed. “Makes it hard to outright hate her.”
“So annoying,” Adrianna agreed.
“Money’s tight in my lab, too,” Corrie said. “My lab mate Mara used most of it to go on her field season, and now the rest of us are dipping buckets at the beach. My samples are probably total crap. My supervisor is great, but he just doesn’t have the money.”
“Aren’t we all searching for that unicorn,” said Trip with a sage nod. “A well-funded, attentive supervisor.”
Corrie grabbed a bottle of tequila and clinked it against Adrianna’s vodka bottle.
“Hear, hear.”
“What do you have planned for the signature drink tonight?” Trip asked. Corrie’s mouth curved in a grin.
“I call it the ‘fire-breathing narwhal.’ Milk on the bottom, blue curacao in the middle, and seventy proof vodka on top. Stick a metal straw in and light the whole thing on fire.”
“Sounds insane,” said Trip. “And perfect. Are you going to have some yourself, actually live it up for once?”
“Three max,” said Corrie lightly, although her stomach knotted at the question. She’d been down the overindulgence road before, and it hadn’t ended well. “As always. But you can’t say I’m not the life of the party anyway.”
“She has a point.” Adrianna came to her rescue. “Corrie knows how to party.”
“Humph,” said Trip. “I guess that’s true. I, for one, am going to have one of your ridiculous narwhal drinks, watch whatever crazy show you and Koni came up with, and become better friends with the tequila. And watch you to make sure you flirt, Corrie. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Corrie grabbed the cornstarch, food coloring, and a few bowls of water and wandered to the living room. Koni was setting up banks of lights in odd places around the room.
“Do you have a plan, or are you winging it?” Corrie asked. Koni looked over from his perch on a chair, where he had hung three different colored bulbs above the door.
“I designed the light effects, and Trip helped me wire it up and program it. You’ll see. It will be like magic.”
“I believe it,” Corrie assured him. He went back to adjusting the lights with a smile. The last party they threw, Trip and Koni had set up jets of glowing water in the backyard, using aquarium pumps and a couple of old barrels, that had pulsed to the beat of the music. It had been a hit.
Corrie kneeled at the coffee table and dripped food coloring into her bowls of water. Trip came bustling into the room with chips. She looked out the window and gasped.
“People are here already!” She checked her watch. “Wow, it’s seven. Are you two ready?”
“Close enough,” said Koni.
Before Corrie could reply, Trip rounded on her.
“You’re not wearing that, I hope.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Corrie looked down at her outfit. She was wearing jeans—her nicer ones—and a cotton top that was both comfortable and fit well. She preferred comfort to style. Trip rolled her eyes.
“Come on. You look like you’re going sampling, not to a party. You have a mission tonight, remember?”
Trip put down her chips and dragged a protesting Corrie toward her bedroom while Koni snickered.
By the time Trip allowed Corrie to emerge from her room, the living room had a dozen guests already clutching drinks and lounging on armrests. Corrie smoothed the front of her skirt in a futile attempt to reduce the fabric’s glimmer. Trip had crowed when she had found the skirt stashed behind her lower-key skirts and dresses, left over from her ill-fated undergraduate degree in Vancouver. Corrie had kept it because it was too pretty to give up, made of a shimmery turquoise slinky fabric. She didn’t mind showing a bit of skin, but the outlandish material reminded her of wilder times that had led her into trouble.
“Stop fidgeting,” said Trip. “You look great.” She slapped Corrie on the bottom then pushed her into the living room.
Koni and Trip had worked wonders with the lights. They pulsed with shades of green and blue, shimmering and waving around the room until Corrie felt like she was swimming in the bright Caribbean Sea. She gave a thumbs up to Koni and waded over to him.
“It’s amazing,” she said. Koni grinned.
“Let’s set up the speaker.”
Corrie kneeled to finish her task that Trip had interrupted. Green and blue coloring, water, and enough cornstarch mixed together to make a viscous goo. She adjusted the foil on top of the speaker and handed Koni the two bowls.
“Drop cornstarch by the spoonful, in whatever propor
tion you like. Play with it.”
Koni took the bowls from her with a solemn nod, and Corrie wandered to the kitchen. Adrianna and her boyfriend Patrick were mixing drinks, along with a man Corrie had never met. He was about her age, maybe a little younger, with sandy blond hair long enough to show its wavy thickness but short enough to be professional. In a room full of jeans and graphic T-shirts, he stood out in slacks and a buttoned shirt, open at the collar. His face was wide and pleasant, and he turned it to Corrie as she entered.
“Corrie,” Adrianna said. “This is David, a friend of Pat’s. Get him to help you with your special drinks, will you?”
Corrie gave her a dirty look, and Adrianna unsuccessfully hid her smile. She was on Trip’s side, of course, in making sure Corrie mingled successfully. Corrie would be more annoyed if their meddling wasn’t coming from a good place. Corrie turned to David and waved him over to the vodka.
“Hi, David. We’re going to make a fire-breathing narwhal.”
His brow wrinkled in polite confusion.
“I haven’t heard of that drink before.”
“Because I just invented it.” She smiled at him with mischief. If Trip and Adrianna wanted her to flirt, well, never let it be said that she had failed a mission. “It’s going to light up your night.”
A chorus of cheers broke out when Corrie and David brought out two trays of blue and white drinks, burning brightly with their ephemeral flames. Corrie passed them around, then nabbed two drinks and made a beeline for David.
“Here,” she said, passing him a drink. “Try it and tell me how bad it tastes.”
David took a sip and grimaced.
“Umm, it’s great?”
Corrie let out a peal of laughter.
“I made it for the effect first and foremost. I won’t be offended if you don’t like it.” She took a sip and swished it around in her mouth. “Not bad. But then, I like blue curacao.” A fuzzy memory of a violently blue drink backlit by a strobe light flashed through her mind, and she took a tiny sip of her drink to make it last. Three drinks were enough to loosen up, but not enough to reach a level of intoxication that she’d regret. She eyed David up and down and was pleased to see him look agreeably uncomfortable at her once-over. “So, David, what do you do when you’re not making flaming drinks?”
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