Fathomless

by Jackson Pearce

  “Maybe I’ll go today. I don’t know,” I answer. “I’ll need the car.” I’m hoping the last point will persuade them to drop it—when we were only eleven, Anne predicted that I would wreck our car. Ever since, she and Jane have been wary of letting me drive it, even though I’m the only one without a speeding ticket to my name. Anne’s power is almost a sure thing, though; even when she tries to intervene, the futures she reads almost always come to pass. She says that’s because the future is like tangled string—you might be able to see how it ends, but it’s almost impossible to work out the knots and figure out how it got there. And apparently there are an awful lot of knots between me and a wrecked car.

  They look at each other, weighing the worthiness of me behind the wheel with their desire for scandal. “Ugh, fine,” Jane says. “But can we come?” Damn. Not the response I was hoping for.

  “Probably not. I don’t even know if they’ll let me in to see him. Last night it was just a special circumstance, since I… I saved him.”

  “Well, if he turns out to be awesome, you have to take us eventually,” Jane says, as if I just ruined her plans for the day. I avoid them for the next few hours, Jane especially, because I have no intention to actually go see Jude. But there is something I plan to do—go back to the beach. Look for Naida.

  I don’t really want to. The more I think about her, the more afraid I am of her. And I wasn’t lying to Anne—I don’t enjoy seeing people I’ve read. But as much as I liked Jude’s memories, I know I can force myself to forget him. As much as Naida’s mind scared me, confused me, I know I won’t be able to forget her. I won’t be able to forget the way she disappeared into the water, and I won’t be able to forget the way she looked at me when I called her name—like she didn’t know it. Like she was a wild thing, and I was calling her as if she were tame. There must be an explanation, and maybe if I see her again, I’ll understand, and I can forget.

  I leave for the beach in the early evening, an hour or so before the sun will start setting. Jane, thinking I’m meeting Jude, hassles me for not wearing a dress, but I manage to stave her off with excuses about hurrying to arrive before visiting hours at the hospital are over. I jump in the car and leave before she can “accidentally” touch me and realize I’m lying.

  Our car is a hand-me-down, bought for dirt cheap off a boy Anne charmed. It rattles, and the sunshine-yellow paint job is splotchy, but it runs. Anne and Jane don’t like to be seen in it, and to be entirely honest, it’s not something I’d proudly identify as my own. But it does the job, so that’s enough, I suppose. I take the long way through town to avoid the inevitable traffic at the amusement center that’s always packed with waterslide-hungry kids, and to stall a little bit longer….

  Eventually I have to park. I do so at the Pavilion—it’s closed during the day, but I see a handful of employees setting up for the evening. Down the pier, I can see police tape sectioning off the back end, where the lifted board that caused Jude to trip is astonishingly visible in the daylight. I walk past the pier’s mouth and take the same road down to the beach that I took last night. It’s hardly a road at all, just rocks and sand and sea grass, and the ground shifts under your feet with every step. Farther down the beach, where the water and the sky blur together to form a misty violet-colored line, I can see shapes of people, hundreds of them playing in the water. Bright orange circles—umbrellas—dot the shore, and every now and then the wind stops and the tiniest sampling of laughter and conversation reaches me.

  I drop a towel in the sand and sit by the old church, leaning my back against its graffiti-laden wall. I try to figure out exactly where I was standing last night, exactly where the ambulance drove off, where Naida ran into the water leaving only a trail of bloody footprints. It’s impossible, though—the tide has eaten all evidence that anyone was ever here.

  The sun begins to set; every second the water reflects a new color. Peaches and yellows and purples and bright, almost neon pink. They make the ocean look like it’s being iced with the colors of the sky above, yet underneath those highlights, the water is blacker than ever. I stare into the water like it might toss Naida out at me, like it cares that I’m here against my better judgment, like it will reward me for coming back.

  It doesn’t.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lo

  I wake up with a jolt. Have I lost it?

  No. Naida. I exhale, turn over on my stomach. The sand grinds beneath me, cradling my body. It’s nearly dusk, based on the amount of light peering through the water. The other girls are talking, a few of the youngest halfheartedly playing with a crab that’s poking out from under the Glasgow’s hull. It bares its claws; they taunt it into snapping at them and laugh so quietly it’s almost not laughter at all but just another sound in the ocean. Pity we haven’t seen whales in ages. They’re so big, they make me feel small, remind me of how large the ocean is, that it holds creatures like them. And they’ll play games, sort of, if you can get them to stay under long enough. I wish we could talk to them, ask them how they manage to go from the depths to the surface so often….

  My eyes fall on Molly. She’s sitting on a jagged plank that juts out from the ship’s broken center and is staring at her feet. She looks different than yesterday. Her skin isn’t quite as pink, her hair not quite as red. She looks sad, beautifully sad, and I can’t help but realize that both of us, in one way or another, are alone right now. I rise and move toward her.

  Molly looks up, and any sadness is replaced by bitterness. She’s glaring, eyes bright and sharp. I look down, turn away from her. I understand why she’s angry, especially now that I remember my old name, but I can’t help her. I ignore the feeling of her eyes searing into my back and rise to join the old ones. They’re sitting on the Glasgow’s deck, staring into the distance, as per usual.

  “Lo,” one says quietly to me as I approach. She hasn’t been old for very long, but she’s already so beautiful. Her skin is the color of the ocean at winter and looks smooth, like glass that’s been worn down by the water. I used to know her name. Ry, I think, but I can’t really remember.

  “Hello,” I answer. Before I can stop myself, I wonder what her human name was. If I could find out for her, would she want to know? No. Of course not. She’s happy here, growing old, growing beautiful. Each of us ages differently—plenty of girls who arrived after me have already grown old and joined those in the air. How much time does this girl have left among us?

  “What do you see?” I ask the old one, looking in the direction of her gaze. She’s sitting on a raised portion of the deck, an area I’ve always found eerie because of the faces that stare at me from the remaining railings—every arm’s length, a cherub’s face is carved into the wood. Most are only half faces or blank faces now, but a few full sets of eyes watch as I sit down beside her.

  She doesn’t answer at first, then turns to me. “Nothing,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

  The old ones often don’t make sense to the rest of us, but we know they do, in fact, make sense, if only to themselves. Key says they learn secrets from the water, secrets we can only learn with age—something we’re all envious of from time to time. I leave the old one, but I’m not sure she notices that I’ve left. I linger near the edge of the crowd of other girls, growing closer to the Glasgow. Surely they won’t notice I’m gone, if I go to the surface for a moment. It’ll be all right. I’ll take one breath of dry air—maybe that will help me remember more about Naida. Then I’ll come back, and Key and I will braid each other’s hair, and then we’ll race around and stop, fast, so that we keep drifting even though we aren’t moving. It’ll be just like normal.

  This will only take a moment. One moment.

  I jet off for the surface, swimming away from the rest of us and up at once. What will they do if they see me? They don’t follow the old ones. I can’t imagine them following me.

  I hesitate at the surface. If I break it, if I breathe in, I can’t pretend it never happened.

&nbs
p; If I don’t break it, I’ll always wonder about the name, the past, the girl on the shore.

  I slowly lift my eyes out of the water. I squint, blink as my eyelashes clump together. I feel wrong, I feel terrible, I feel traitorous, even, as I look at the horizon and see the slight blue shape of the shore. I’ve come this far….

  I swim forward just under the surface, emerging every so often to see the giant wooden pillars that support the pier becoming clearer. Before long, I’ve crossed over the sandbar and am exactly where I was last night—the ocean has changed, of course, and there are no markers, but I still know where I am. I suppose when you know a place as well as we know the ocean, you’re never lost, no matter how the water changes.

  I lift my head out of the water again; hair clings to my face, drips a curtain of water in front of my eyes. I rise a little higher—can anyone see me? No, there’s no one here. The shore is empty, as is the pier. Farther inland, I can see the sun setting. It’s beautiful, a bright red-orange that’s just starting to vanish into the tree line, like it’s falling into the land. It burns—we never surface during the day, and it’s so much brighter than I remember. Still, I can’t look away. I stare at the sun until my eyes fill with water and my cheeks feel burned, like they’re drying up.

  Remember, remember. I repeat Naida’s name to myself—no, my name to myself. It’s my name, and they’re my memories hidden deep below the surface. The same way my sisters are hidden beneath the waves right now. Hidden doesn’t mean gone.

  Nothing comes. I duck down into the water and swim closer to the pier, going from pillar to pillar until I’m almost by the shore. I close my eyes and plant one foot onto the sand.

  It doesn’t hurt, but then, I’m still in water up to my head. I take a step forward, another, another.

  The feeling of a knife slicing into the soft part of my foot starts when the water is waist-deep. I look down, see the tendrils of blood spiraling up. Another step, another. The salt water burns the wound. I don’t want to put my foot down, but… another. There’s a halo of red water around me now, and for a moment the ground seems to get softer. But no, it isn’t the ground, it’s the torn-up skin on my feet. I think it’s shredding away.

  I cry out when I take another step and can’t force myself to take any more. I tumble forward, pull myself the last little distance onto the shore with my hands. There’s a trail of blood behind me, a perfect line that the waves quickly destroy. I watch as my blood washes away, becomes just another part of the ocean.

  And I still don’t remember anything. I exhale, cough—my lungs feel strangely light, empty of the water, the warm weight I’ve grown used to. Inhale a few deep breaths; it’s not comfortable—I can tell I won’t be able to breathe air like this for long, but I can bear it for the time being. I sigh, fall back in the shadow of the pier—I remember watching the boy with the gray eyes fall from here just last night, when everything was perfect and I was just a girl waiting to become an angel. This is stupid—why am I here? I’m not made to be on the shore. I can’t get my soul back, I can’t make a boy love me, and I can’t remember my past. How could someone without a soul remember what it felt like to have one? That’s like asking each drop in the ocean to remember its time as rain. It was a lifetime ago. It was a soul ago, a soul I’m perfectly happy without, if it’s indeed already gone. I inhale deep again, grimace at the dryness of my lungs, the pain in my feet. I’m not meant for this world.

  I hear something above the sound of the waves, a scratching noise. I lean my head back and look toward a building on the shore, the one that looked like a ghost last night—

  A girl.

  There’s a girl—she’s looking at me. She sees me. She sees me, I have to go, I have to go back. Instinct overpowers everything else in me, and I rise and force myself to my feet, groan in pain as I run into the water. I collapse when it’s just deep enough for me to swim, grateful at the way it cradles me, at how comfortable it is compared with the land. I’m about to dive. The girl is running toward the water’s edge—

  She calls my name. My name. Naida.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Celia

  She’s here.

  I see her in the water, by the pier. If I wasn’t looking for her, I’m sure I would have missed her—her skin is grayish, her hair dark brown and heavy-looking. She moves with the waves, the way that seagulls do when they sit on the water. She dives, reemerges, drawing closer, closer to the shore. And then she starts to walk.

  Every step she takes looks deliberate, like she’s walking on a high wire instead of up to dry sand. As she gets closer I think I know why—the expression on her face is pure pain. Her mouth widens into a grimace. I rise, keeping my back against the church.

  I’m not sure what to do. I’m not even sure what she is. A mermaid? No. Mermaids have tails. And don’t exist.

  Just like triplets with powers don’t exist.

  She finally makes it onto the shore, collapses. Even from here, I can see the blood running from her feet, making tiny rivers that are destroyed with each new wave. She looks limp and broken, like the ocean stole her bones and threw her out. Each time a wave sweeps far enough onto the sand to touch her toes, I see her quiver, try to cling to the water that so quickly slides back where it came from.

  She is frightening, but she is also helpless. And staring at her lying there certainly won’t help me get her out of my head. I swallow and start toward her, kicking up dry sand and squinting against the reflection of the almost-set sun on the waves. She turns her head up toward me, and I see her eyes—dark, gray like stones—widen. She forces herself up shakily, moves toward the water. Her legs buckle under her with every step, like they’re broken, and there’s the blood again, though it’s now dark and thick. She makes it to where the water is shoulder-deep and falls in, and suddenly, it’s like she’s home. Her body slips under, every bit as graceful as a dolphin. She’s leaving, I have to—

  “Naida!” I call her name. Again and again, I yell as I watch her dark form start away from the shore.

  And then stop.

  I’ve reached the edge of the water. I drop my hands to my knees and pant while trying to keep my eyes on her. She’s still, she’s listening. “Naida,” I say. “I’m not… I…” What am I, exactly? I’m not going to hurt her? I’m more worried about her hurting me, to be honest. Say something, though, anything….

  “I met you last night,” I call. “I just want to talk.”

  About the scream in your head. About why your memories are different from everyone else’s. I want to talk to you so I can forget about you.

  I see her turn against the waves. She slowly lifts her head out of the water.

  She is beautiful—more so now that she’s in the water. Her skin is not quite as gray up close, but around her ears, her hairline, her shoulder bones is a light bluish color, like she’s very cold. Everything about her matches the sea, except her hair—it has the slightest hint of chocolate brown in it, like it would be better suited to a forest.

  “Please. Talk to me,” I say, finally standing up straight again. The lights on the pier flicker on automatically with the encroaching darkness. Her head snaps toward them, and for a minute, I think she’s going to vanish again.

  “It hurts.”

  I almost can’t hear her at first, over the sound of the waves, but I manage to understand what she said. I don’t respond, because I have no idea how to.

  “It hurts to walk on land. It cuts me. It’s like knives,” she says. There’s no inflection in her voice, no happiness or sorrow, only a single note that bounces through every word.

  “Can you come any closer? So I can hear you better, at least?” I call out. She considers this, then obliges, creeping closer before sitting down where the waves are knee-deep. I nod, then sit in the wet sand where the tiniest remains of waves lap up, soaking my shorts and covering my toes with sand.

  She stares at me. She doesn’t blink, and I know if I were to stand suddenly, run toward her, yell,
that she’d be into the deep water so quickly that I wouldn’t even make it a step before she was gone.

  She’s waiting for me to speak, I can tell. I’m unpracticed at starting conversations—that’s Anne’s job, and less often, Jane’s. But…

  “You left last night,” I say. The words sound stunted.

  “I didn’t want to be seen.”

  “I’d already seen you.”

  “That was necessary. The boy would have drowned,” she says, as if this is obvious.

  “That’s right. You saved him,” I say. “You pulled him out of the water.”

  “You breathed for him,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m glad he’s alive. He didn’t need to die.” She pauses for a long time, but doesn’t look away from me, like she’s waiting for something.

  “You… you live in the water?” I finally manage. The words sound stupid when they fall from my mouth, clunky.

  “Yes. Now,” she says dismissively, and then her tone grows more serious. “But not before. Before I was this, I was Naida. You knew the name Naida.”

  She might be able to maintain eye contact with me, but I’m not as strong—I look down. The fact that she came from the water, that she’s something different, someone different, that doesn’t seem to matter. Am I going to admit my power to a stranger? It seems wrong, wrong in every way, and yet…“Yes,” I answer.

  “Did you know her?” she asks, and for the first time there’s the tiniest bit of inflection, of curiosity in her voice.