21
I was drifting, but the sensation of being suspended in water was not relaxing in its usual way. I was very, very uncomfortable. Particles drifted past my body, tickling and rousing me. I opened my eyes and snapped them shut when they began to sting. I tried to move, my tail thumped against something. I opened my eyes again only this time I kept my transparent underlids closed. The underlids protected my eyes in bad weather, high winds and rain, and when I swam at high speed. They also sharpened my vision. I thought for a moment they weren't working when the blurry shapes in front of my eyes wouldn't focus, until I put out a hand and realized there was glass there. There was a metal bracelet around one of my wrists with a small iron loop attached to it. I looked at this, completely confused about its function and how it got there. I tried to swim again and I thumped against something hard.
I was encased in a glass tank, a very small one.
At the shock of realizing I was enclosed, I took a deep breath through my gills. Immediately, logic dulled and panic roiled. There was too much salt in this water. Way too much. If I stayed in here for long enough my thinking would transition completely from human to animal.
A figure passed the tank and stopped. I blinked at it, trying to focus, but I couldn't see well through the salt clouding the water and the thick glass. My powers of reason were leaching away with every breath. Once you've receded to the state of an animal, there is no coming back. I began to thrash, instinct told me to struggle but couldn't direct that struggle with any strategy. I bumped against the glass, hitting my head, my elbows, my knees. Fear curdled my blood. I felt my eyes roll with panic and lost focus even more.
"Ynnngh awwkkke," a deep voice said. I struggled to derive meaning from the sounds being made. "Imshhr rorrth tnnnkghh issshhoshmall, inndll Ihad onssshrrt nngghotsse."
My fists clenched as I tried to make sense of his vocal emissions. I stilled, drifting in the salt water, staring at the human shape on the other side of the glass. I struggled to arrange the features into something I recognized. Beyond the glass was dim evening sky, clouds. The ocean appeared and disappeared below the edge of something straight. I looked past the human figure, my palm on the glass. Ocean. I had to get to the ocean. I began to struggle again. The voice reacted with a stream of soothing words, which did nothing to calm me. Have to get out, have to get out. There was a snapping noise and hands plunged into the water. I thrashed away from them, twisting and bruising myself against the hard planes of my tank. Something caught my hand and pulled at it, I pulled back, it held me fast then another snapping sound and my hand was released. I pulled my hand back, feeling like it was moving slower, heavier than usual. A metallic cracking noise startled me. Where had that come from?
The ocean appeared again, I stared at the blurry waves through the glass. A distinct dark smudge jutted up from the water. A rock formation. I knew those rocks. I had been here before. There was something else moving out there, and then the straight edge cut off my view again. When it reappeared the something else was closer. It had lights. It had noise. I knew that noise. Engine. Propellers.
The human form ran by the glass and I heard voices. One was heavy and deep, the other was higher pitched and soft, but the two were clashing. I couldn't make sense of the sounds. I fixated on the water that would appear and disappear. I heard thumping noises. Another sound I recognized, the whirring sound of an anchor.
Another form appeared on the other side of the glass, this one came close. More angry words were spoken. This smaller human with the higher voice fought with the deeper voice.
"Not like this..." the words sliced into my brain with meaning like lightning, but the rest was all confusion.
The two humans struggled with each other, they disappeared out of view and then one of them reappeared again. The small one. She came close to the box and I heard a clicking noise again and soothing sounds.
"Ghyrn fwliun bmmm nsugr sorry, ynnng ok," said the soft voice. A hand entered the water and I began to thrash mindlessly. Out, get out, get out! Something cracked. My tail bumped and slammed against my prison, the sound of metal cracking against the glass and pain in my wrist. Suddenly my world exploded and I fell, thrashing wildly onto wood, into the open air. Oxygen flooded my human lungs and cleared my thinking a little. Change, Mira. Change. I couldn't change. Too much salt. Get into the ocean.
I could finally see clearly, and a touch of logic returned but my thinking was dull. My human reasoning evaded me. The two humans were bent over me but they argued and talked so fast and so loud that it was all a garbled stream of sound. I registered the broken tank, glass crunched under me. My tail stung. I caught a glimpse of a second tank right before I thrashed again.
I knocked both humans off their feet with my tail, thumped against things, broke things, knocked things over. Chaos ensued, voices yelled, and still I thrashed towards the water. I reached the railing, grabbed it and heaved myself and my heavy tail over the edge and into the ocean with an enormous splash.
I swam like a torpedo straight down from the boat as I hyperventilated through my gills to expel the salt overdose. My heart pounded painfully. With every breath my gills took, my thinking grew clearer.
Chad. Hate burned in my heart. Chad had poisoned me. Trapped me in a tank of salt-saturated water. I've studied all the supernaturals... He knew how to control me. Force me into a salt-flush state so I'd have no more human logic. I'd be the same as any other sea-creature, or close anyway. His plan snapped into place in my mind. By dunking me alternately into fresh-water, and then salt-saturated water, he could control my state of mind. For a mermaid it was the worst kind of torture imaginable.
I sped to the bottom and headed for a rock formation to hide. Instinct was screaming at me to get out of view, while logic argued that hiding wasn't necessary anymore. I knew where I was. We weren't in Devil's Eye Cove, but we weren't very far away. They would know better than to take a boat directly into The Boneyard.
Something snapped my arm back painfully and I was halted. Stunned, I drifted for a moment, the pain a dull throb in my shoulder. I looked at my wrist. It was manacled and connected to a chain, which ran up to the boat above my head. I saw the bottoms of two boats, the anchor of the other one lodged in the rocks not far away. That must have been the boat that Angelica had arrived on. So Chad had done this without her knowledge, and yet somehow, she'd found out and gone after him?
My teeth ground in my skull and I seethed with the righteous fury of the enslaved. My eyes followed the chain up. Could I break it? I took the chain between my hands and pulled, my back muscles screamed. The chain didn't give.
A whirring sound came from up above. My chin jerked up, my ears perked. The chain began to tighten, dragging me towards the boat.
22
"Nope," I said, my mermaid voice emitting sound without the burble and gurgle of a human trying to talk underwater. I was grimly satisfied that my powers of speech had returned. Must have been the salt overdose. I wrapped my arm around one of the rock formations and held on. The chain tightened and I pulled back. I clenched my teeth as I yanked on the chain, let go and then snatched at it to get a firmer grip. The chain pulled. I pulled back. My arms were being stretched in opposite directions.
I screamed as I pulled on the chain for all I was worth, and used the rock for leverage. The engine above began to grind. I pulled and strained, one link at a time, I only needed a little more slack. The motor screamed with a dirty grinding sound.
I yanked hard and looped the chain I had gained around the rock, pulling as hard as I could. I would not be dragged up out of the ocean against my will. I yanked again, let go of the chain and latched onto a section higher up. I strained and pulled the boat above me down. I watched the hull sink low into the water. Just a little further and the boat would flood and become one of the millions that rested on the ocean's floor.
Suddenly, the chain snapped. My gaze jerked up to see the red glowing end of broken chain hiss into the water, the metal cooling r
apidly back to grey. It drifted down from the surface.
I still had most of the chain fastened to my wrist. I pulled at the cuff. It was a thick and heavy metal. I rattled off a long hiss. I needed the key.
I swam towards the surface, the chain trailing after me. My head broke the surface and I looked at the yacht that I had been on only a few minutes before. The jagged shell of a broken fish tank sat on a crate on the rear deck. Another, slightly larger tank full of clear water sat next to the broken one. Several sacks of pure salt sat piled up on the floor; the instruments of my doom. My eyes narrowed.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Angelica was saying to Chad, the two of them peered into the water below the boat. The tops of their heads pointed my way.
"I was going to surprise you, you weren't supposed to find my note until morning anyway. By which time I'd be back with a bunch of coins," said Chad. I had never heard anyone sound so sheepish before. His voice was full of shame.
Angelica sighed. "You're an idiot. Now what are we going to do? She's probably terrified, and she's got a metal chain locked to her wrist."
"She's terrified?!" Chad said, incredulous. "She almost swamped us!"
"Yeah, and we deserve it, too."
"Yes, you do," I said.
Both heads snapped up. They scanned the darkening ocean. Their eyes found my little head bobbing forty yards from their boat.
"Mira," said Angelica, relieved. "I'm so sorry. This dummy did all of this without my knowledge or consent. I did not want things to go this way." She glared at Chad.
"Do you remember me?" I asked her, curious about how naturally she'd addressed me by name.
"No," she said. "Chad told me what happened. Although until I actually saw you there in the tank, I wasn't sure I believed him. I guess when you know one supernatural, learning there are more isn't such a stretch."
I swam closer. "Throw me the key."
Angelica whacked Chad on the shoulder and he disappeared then returned to the railing. He threw a small item at my head. The key whickered through the air. I caught it and unlocked the manacle from my wrist in one swift motion. I pulled up the chain, and looped it round and round.
"I believe this is yours." I threw the coils of heavy chain in an arc across the water. Angelica shrieked and both of them ducked as the chain landed on the deck of their boat with a crash. I swam a little closer. "You know what has to happen next," I said, and pulled my siren voice forward.
"No!" Chad yelled. "Angelica plug your ears!"
"What the..." Angelica started.
A fireball flew at my face and I ducked under the water, watching with wonder as it hit the waves and sizzled out. More fireballs landed on the water above my head, all of them fizzed out in a half second.
I swam away from the fireballs, under the yacht and to the other side. I resurfaced to hear the sound of Chad's yells as he hucked fireballs at where I used to be. The fireballs seemed to appear in his palms from nowhere. I watched this, bemused, wondering how he was managing such a trick.
He stopped, his chest heaving as he scanned the water with wild eyes.
"Chad, stop!" Angelica was cowering behind the railing.
"I won't let her brainwash us," he ground out.
"Chad." My siren voice filled the air.
He screamed, spun around and pitched more fireballs, throwing while hardly aiming. I sank below the surface. I couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculous situation. Sooner or later he'd exhaust himself and I'd win.
Suddenly a fishing spear whizzed by me in the water and I stopped laughing and darted sideways. The man had a speargun? I half-circled the boat again, stopped near the outboard motor and watched another spear slice through the water where I'd been swimming. I frowned. I surfaced behind the outboard motor and intending to use my siren voice to tell him to relax.
Chad spotted me the second I surfaced. He had a speargun in one hand and the other was lit on fire. Angelica was on the other side of the small cockpit yelling at him to stop. Chad screamed and threw three more fireballs.
I ducked under the water and––
BOOOOOOOOM!
A huge flash of light filled the sky and broken bits of boat and glass flew in every direction, streaks of burning gas laced across the surface of the water. I darted deeper, away from the fire and burning wreckage, stunned at the sudden explosion. My ears rang.
I looked up from underneath the burning boat, watching as a second explosion sprayed out and burning wreckage plopped onto the waves above me. Movement under the surface caught my eye. A human form was backlit against the flames, it thrashed as it tried to swim to clear water. Angelica. She had a long way to go to get past the flames. Burning fuel stretched in every direction. Amazed that she had survived the explosion in one piece, I swam towards her.
She saw me coming, just a big blurry shape beneath her. Her eyes widened with fear. Blood floated up from a cut on her forehead, and there was a gash across her forearm. She screamed and thrashed away from me, mindlessly going towards the surface. She was going to burn if she surfaced here.
I raced to her, grabbed her ankle, and pulled her back from the burning surface. She thrashed and screamed, air bubbles escaped her lips.
"Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you," I said. My siren voice filled the water around us.
She relaxed, but she was about to pass out. I planted my mouth over hers, pulled oxygen in through my gills and gave her a fresh lungful of air. Then I took her by the waist and propelled her away from the burning wreckage and towards a large rock jutting up from the ocean.
We surfaced and she took a deep breath. She gasped and coughed. "Thank you," she choked out.
Then we heard Chad yelling. "Angelica?! Angelica!" He began to wail, his voice breaking. "Angelicaaaaaa," he cried, his cry was that of hopeless loss. "Nooooooooo...."
"Can you go get him?" she asked, as I deposited her on the rocks.
I submerged and spotted his form treading water on the other side of the flaming wreckage. I surfaced near him and he screamed in fury at me. He began to hurl fireballs. I ducked under and waited. He went under the surface and struggled to keep himself afloat. I could hear him cough and gasp. I surfaced again.
"Are you finished?"
He coughed and spat out a mouthful of seawater. He gulped in air greedily. He looked at me, only his face showing above the waves. His fury melted and exhaustion took its place. "Do whatever you want," he choked out. "Make me forget the coins, you, and make me forget her too."
"She's alive, Chad. I put her on the rocks on the other side of this mess.
"She's alive?!" His face completely changed. He coughed again, but it was with a grin this time.
"Yes, she was on the other side of the cockpit. That's probably what saved her. But how did you survive? You were right next to the gas tank."
"I'm a fire magus," he said, and for a moment I saw what he might have looked like as a child. "Fire is to me what water is to you."
"I should let you drown for what you did, and for what you were going to do," I said.
“Yeah, but you won't. Because you're better than me."
I rolled my eyes. I took him to Angelica and he scrambled up onto the rocks, crying her name, falling on her neck and weeping. "I thought you were dead."
Angelica hugged him back. "You're a menace."
I shook my head. Some badass fire wizard he turned out to be. I went and got the other boat that Angelica had arrived on, a small motorboat built for fishing. I pulled it to them by the anchor, depositing it among the rocks near them. Then I held the boat still while they boarded.
They sat, looking at me for a moment. Chad looked sheepish and relieved. Angelica looked disgusted.
"I can't even look at you," she said to him, crossing her arms.
"I think he loves you," I said. He had a bad dog expression on his face.
She sighed. “If this is love then I think I'll give it up for a safer pastime. And what the hell did you do with her clothes
?" she yelled suddenly, smacking him upside the head.
"Ok you two," I said, my siren voice filling the air. "It's time."
Both of their faces went slack, listening.
23
Exhaustion hit me as I climbed the front steps to my porch. I had nothing but a bedsheet wrapped around me, which was all I could find hanging on a clothesline this time around. It was the middle of the night by the time I arrived home. I checked the clock on the stove. 3:32.
First thing I did was chug a lot of water, clearing the salt from my system. Then I took a shower, washing the salt off my skin. I scrubbed my hair with a towel, pulled on my simple cotton pajama bottoms and tank top and brushed my teeth. These human rituals had more purpose than just to prepare me for bed, they were the seemingly insignificant gestures that made me remember that I was actually half human.
I left the bathroom and padded soundlessly across the living room floor when Crystal's door opened. I turned, expecting Crystal. But it was Nathan backing out of her room quietly, clicking the door shut behind him. He turned around and gasped when he saw me standing there in the middle the floor.
"Nathan?" I whispered, as a nasty realization dawned on me. Why would he be coming from Crystal's room at this time if he hadn't slept with her? My blood felt like it had just frozen over, my face felt stiff.
"Mira," he whispered. "I'm so sorry, did I wake you?" He looked embarrassed. He jammed his hands in his jean pockets. His shirt was on inside out.
"No," I said, my voice felt heavy and thick with sadness.
"I just, uh," he started. "Couldn't sleep."
The tension between us was palpable. Both of us just stood there looking at each other in the dark.
Then he crossed by me, his scent thrilling my blood as he passed. "I'll just go, sorry to disturb you." He pulled his boots and coat out of our entryway closet.
"Did you drive here? I didn't see your truck on the street."
Sirens and Scales Page 94
