My hand involuntarily tightened around Nathan's at the word 'wreck'.
"That would be awesome, hey Mir?" Nathan whispered. "I've never been scuba diving. Have you?"
I shook my head.
"Would you want to try it?"
The idea of putting on scuba gear was completely ridiculous. But if it meant we could go underwater together, then... How bad could it be? The idea of exploring a wreck with Nathan was a thrill that had never occurred to me we could share. "Would you?" I asked.
"Absolutely, I've always wanted to try it. Just never had the opportunity."
Valdez was saying, "Those of you who wish to dive and have your Open Water already can see Frederik to register, make sure you have your papers. Those of you who have never dived before will have to see me for training before we arrive at the wreck site."
When the orientation was over, Nathan and I were the only two guests to register for the wreck dive and had instructions to meet Valdez at the foredeck swimming pool the next morning to learn how to use the equipment in a safe environment.
From the moment I pulled the scuba mask over my face for the first time and put the regulator in my mouth, the days leading up to the dive vacillated between heaven and hell. Heaven was all the time spent with Nathan on board the ship, enjoying delicious dinners, island hopping to lay on the beaches, and trying surfing for the first time off the coast of Nicaragua. Hell was every time we had a scuba lesson and I had to go underwater parading as a human with all the ridiculous gear and tanks strapped to me. I felt like a donkey laden with pots and pans. Breathing with tanks instead of gills was like wrapping layers of wet cloth over my mouth and nose. It baffled me that any human could tolerate this kind of torture, but to my utter shock, Nathan loved every minute of it.
"You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, Mir," he said one day after we'd wrapped up our third session of training. We'd finally taken the gear into open water for the first time, and Nathan had been giddy with excitement. This dive had been done from a motor-boat. "You know, we don't have to go if you don't like it."
"No, its fine," I lied. "It'll be fun." There was no way I was going to steal this joy from Nathan just because I found it uncomfortable. The dive would only last for twenty minutes. I could do that. Then I'd never put the cursed gear on ever again.
"Valdez says we'll arrive near the wreck site around two in the morning tomorrow. They'll stop the ship there for a two days before we move on."
"Really?" I perked up. So when the ship stopped moving tonight would be my best chance to dive on my own. "Is tonight a full moon?"
Nathan gave me a weird look. "That was random. Tomorrow night, I think. Why?"
"Just wondering." I didn't need the moon to see, my eyes could handle hundreds of meters in depth, and beyond that, I had bioluminescent cells in my skin. But a shallow wreck dive by the light of the moon was a pleasure no mermaid could pass up.
That night, after listening to Nathan's breathing deepen, all of my senses tuned in to the ship's movements. I lay there for an hour, eyes wide open and body tense. When I sensed the ship slow, I slid out of bed and wrapped a knee-length knit cardigan around my naked body. I checked the time on the bedside clock. Two fifteen. I dropped the cabin key into my pocket and slipped out onto the deck in flip flops.
Voices near the bridge carried over the wind and I headed toward the stern where the boat dock was. The ship was mostly silent. I passed by the lounge and saw the young couple Nathan and I had smiled at on the first day, talking quietly over a couple of martinis. The bartender had his nose in a book.
I took the stairs down toward the boat dock, but cursed when the access was locked. Of course they locked up the dock at night. They couldn't take the chance of guests using the dock by themselves. It was the only way to leave or board the ship while the ship was at sea. I chewed my lip. The only other point that might work was the bowsprit, where the ropes of the net were tethered to a hook just a few feet from the waves. Getting into the water was the easy part, getting out of the water and back to our cabin would require a bit of stealth.
I made my way back to the foredeck, keeping my pace slow as I passed the lounge. The young couple was still there and hadn't noticed me. The bartender peeked over the edge of his book and nodded at me. "Ma'am."
I nodded back.
The foredeck was abandoned. I peered over the railing at the anchor. The thick chain disappeared into the water. I smiled. Now was the perfect time. I stepped into the netting and walked along the bowsprit towards the end where the ropes attached. I slipped out of my cardigan, wrapped the arms around the bowsprit and tied it tight. The sea air caressed my skin and raised gooseflesh. My legs began to tingle at the thought of transformation and I couldn't help but grin.
I bent over the edge of the rope as thick as my biceps, hooked my fingers in the netting and flipped my body over the edge like a monkey. Legs dangling towards the gentle waves, I swung hand over hand along the underside of the netting toward the sturdy rope leading from the bowsprit to the bow of the ship. I heard a voice on the wind and held my breath, wrapping my legs around the taut rope. I was out of view of the deck, but if anyone peered over the railing at that moment in time, they'd get an eyeful. Nathan and I would get kicked off the ship if any of the crew knew what I was up to.
When the voice passed, I loosened my grip and slid down the rope toward the bow, planting my feet against the cold metal. I barely noticed the rope burn on my fingers. I was too full of adrenalin. The waves were now only two feet below me. With an involuntary yip of happiness, I let go and splashed into the balmy waters of the Pacific.
39
Salt water pulled through my gills for the first time in months and immediately the cares of my human life, few though they were at this time, melted away into the water like icing sugar. My legs bonded and my powerful tail drove me down away from the ships hull. The sound of water slapping against metal faded behind me. The squeaks and chirps of sea life filled my ears and I sang out three long notes of my own. My violins filled the water and in response the sea went still for a fraction of a moment before a fresh surge of underwater music answered.
Moonlight illuminated the rocky seabed a hundred feet below and I spiraled down to the marine floor through a school of sardines, their metallic scales flashing in the cool light like nautical fireflies.
The rocky terrain sped by as I flew over starfish covered coral, waving anemones, and clouds of tropical fish. A large gap in the rock opened up and white sand spread before me, ripples in the sand were spotted with crabs and shells. A ghostly devil ray glided low against the sea floor, particles of seaweed hooked over the fronts of its fins, rolled off its back and drifted behind it.
This was my first foray into Pacific waters. In the eight years I'd passed at sea as a teenage siren, I had spent all of it in Atlantic and Sargasso waters. There was so much to explore in one small fraction of the ocean that it was no wonder a mermaid could live for centuries. Even with hundreds of years to live, there was no way a siren could ever discover all of the ocean's hidden depths.
Even though my body was reveling in the exposure to the briny deep, there was a thread of consciousness that kept me tied to the sleeping man in the cabin aboard The Red Star. I had a moment of fear when the thought of him waking to find me gone crept through my mind like a shadow, but with my next intake of seawater and oxygen, the worry dissolved. I had some time.
Huge rock formations jutted up from the ocean floor, looking like links of some massive rock chains of a prehistoric fallen giant. Just for fun, I looped my way through holes in the rock, winding my way along the crustacean covered maze. As I squeezed through one small hole, a valley opened before me, a crevasse snaking its way into the underwater horizon. And there, cradled in the bottom of the hollow and tilted on its side was the Spanish wreck.
The moonlit water turned the ships' watery grave into a nest of indigo shadows. The silhouettes of sharks and smaller fish whispered around the hull, app
earing and disappearing like magicians. The broken end of her bowsprit jutted up from the front half of the wreck. Some fifty metres away, the faint curve of a stern where the captain's quarters would once have been, lay perched on a rock. The scattered halves gave evidence to the violent end that had broken this ship's back. While every shipwreck I explored felt new and exciting to me, most of them were also tombs. This consciousness was part of what separated me from the other creatures of the deep. Humans had died here, and that meant something to me. I was half-human after all.
I approached the wreck with caution, eyeing up possible entrance points. The wreck had long been marked by tour companies like the one that operated The Red Star, as a good place to bring divers. And long before that it would have been salvaged by whoever had claimed the rights to her. That didn't mean there was nothing left to salvage, that meant that one had to look harder, and I was perfectly equipped to do just that.
I drifted around the front half of the ship, barely recognizable as a ship anymore. Barnacles and crustaceans covered every surface. The shape of a cannon was jammed between two rock formations not far from the ship. Everywhere scattered about the wreck site were strange and mysterious shapes clearly not part of the natural marine landscape. The tween deck and the hold opened up as I circled, and I drifted at the yawning jagged mouth. I entered the wreck slowly, drifting more than swimming. A fat purple eel snaked through a gun port to escape my probing eyes.
There were very few organic material artifacts anymore. The ropes and sails had long since rotted away. Part of a wooden trunk, half dissolved by the salt and barely recognizable sat jammed in a corner under a coating of algae. A starfish clung to the side of it. Not expecting to find anything, I approached the trunk and lifted away the top half. It almost dissolved in my fingers as chunks broke off and silt wafted up in a cloud. A tangle of long tubular shapes lay inside, covered in algae. They almost looked like pencils only they were too thick and long. I picked one up, sucked water through my gills and blew away the algae with a jet stream from my mouth. I took the item into the moonlight to better see its distinct yellow hue. I held it to my nose. Honey? I brushed away more of the algae. It was a beeswax candle. I was surprised these hadn't been taken from the ship. They weren't hard to find, but they were almost worthless. Maybe that was why. Human divers could only dive for so long and retrieve so much. I guess they'd decided these weren't worth taking.
I put the candle back and kept exploring. After going through the fore of the ship and finding nothing worth salvaging, I headed across the crevasse to the aft. As I passed over a tall rock formation, a moonbeam fell on something white mostly hidden under a jutting edge of rock. I redirected and dove to the bottom towards the sand. Only inches above the floor, a dark line in the rock suggested a deep crack. A crab darted under the rock as my shadow passed over him.
My face nearly touched the sand on the ocean floor as I peered into the crack. Sand particles drifted, obscuring my view. I pulled water into my gills and expelled it through my mouth into the crack. The little crab flew out the side of the crack like he'd been was fired from a slingshot, his legs and claws splayed comically in surprise. I squinted into the darkness, reached inside the crack and dug my fingers into the sand.
My hand closed on something thin and hard. I pulled the item out. It wasn't white, it was silver. But what was it? The bell shape on one end reminded me of a cupboard door handle, but the long silver rod going through the center of the bell was too long. The other end of the rod had broken off so the rest of it was missing. I reached my hand into the crevasse again and felt around. Other than stones, I found no other silver pieces. I didn't know if what I'd found was any more valuable than the silver it was made from, but I gripped it in my hand as I continued on to the other half of the wreck.
The back half of the ship was disappointingly ruined, and I was running out of time for sniffing through the rubble. When the moonlight began to fade, and thoughts of Nathan couldn't be ignored, I turned and headed back to The Red Star, clutching the strange silver artifact.
I propelled myself rapidly up towards the bow of the ship, leapt from the water and grabbed the rope. My tail split in the space of half a breath and I planted my feet against the metal hull of The Red Star and began to climb, hand over hand. Water sluiced from my hair and body as I monkeyed my way up and pulled myself over top of the net. I didn't know how much time had passed, but I paused to listen, and all was silent.
I untied my cardigan, put it on over my wet skin, and scampered along the bowsprit to the hull with my silver treasure in hand. I leapt over the railing and skittered to a halt.
The red-headed woman with the dark lips sat in a deck chair. She'd lowered it flat to make a bed but she was up on her elbows, staring at me. Her eyes were wide as saucers and her mouth made a perfect 'O'.
At least ten different swearwords ploughed through my mind, elbowing each other. None of them accurately communicated how I felt at that moment. I had been beyond sloppy.
"What the..." She sat all the way up to her palms. "Were you swimming!?"
My eyes roamed the deck for any other humans, but she and I were alone. I opened my mouth to answer, but didn't know what to say. My siren voice began to swell, like a bubble in my throat.
The woman scrambled to her feet and strode past me to the bow. She peered over the railing. "We're thirty feet up! How on earth did you..." Her jaw dropped. She stared down at the waves and then back at me, eyes wide as saucers. Her gaze dropped to the silver artifact in my hand. She gasped. "What is that? Where did that come from?" Her voice had gone breathy.
"Listen to me now," I said, my siren voice filling the air around us. Her face relaxed and she stared at my mouth. "You never saw me."
"I never saw you," she whispered.
"Go back to your deck chair and enjoy the stars."
She moved as though in a dream, repeating the words after me. She lay back on the deck chair and looked up at the stars, crooking an arm under her head. Her body and face relaxed. She crossed one leg over the other and gave a contented sigh.
I hoped that would be enough. With the things my father seemed to be remembering, I didn't fully trust my voice anymore. But it was all I could do.
I let myself into the cabin silently. Glancing at the clock while I braided my wet hair into a rope so it didn't entirely soak the bed, I'd been gone for nearly three hours. I tucked the silver piece into the side of my luggage and shook my head as I slipped into bed beside Nathan's sleeping form. It was too easy to lose track of time under the water.
Nathan rolled over and threw a heavy arm over me. He let out a sigh and lay still.
40
The wreck looked completely different in the daylight. Bright shafts of sunlight shot down through the water like spotlights, illuminating the galleon like a set piece from a movie. Brightly colored coral spread out in painted splotches around the wreck and beyond. Tropical fish darted through sunbeams and weaved around the jutting barnacle-covered wreckage. It was almost enchanting enough to make me forget that I had a big plastic mouthpiece jammed between my teeth, a plastic window suctioned to my face, tanks on my back, weights strapped to my waist, and ridiculous plastic flippers on my feet. Almost, but not quite. The desire to rip off all this gear and transform rippled beneath the surface of my skin like an itch. Focus, Mira. This is for Nathan.
Nathan drifted ahead of me, looking back with an expression of pure rapture from time to time and overusing the hand signal for 'everything is a-ok'. He winked at me through his mask before facing front and kicking his way down toward the wreck. Beyond Nathan was Valdez, his wiry frame looking like a teenager next to Nathan's barrel-chested bulk.
Valdez had walked us through a map of the wreck before we'd ever gotten into the water. We had a dozen points to stop at in the tour, 'points of interest' he called them. They included the prow, the crows nest, which had torn off and landed several hundred meters away, three different cannons, and several other pieces of th
e galleon which were barely recognizable anymore. We passed over the rock formation where I'd found the strange silver artifact and I scanned the sandy floor and crevices between the rocks for any other glints of metal.
As we explored the rear half of the wreck, gooseflesh raised on my skin and a cold shiver went up my spine - the sensation of being watched. I could feel it so distinctly that I made a sudden rotation in the water to get a 360-degree snapshot of everything around us. Nathan and Valdez were nearer the bottom, looking at two large lobster claws poking out of a crack. I lifted the mask away from my face and closed my transparent under-lids. My vision snapped into focus like a telephoto lens. The horizon, which had been a blur through the plastic only a moment ago, extended out all around me in crystal-clear focus. I saw plenty of ocean life in every direction, but nothing that would have triggered the feeling of being watched.
I looked down at Nathan and Valdez, both of them were half turned away from me. I wasn't out of their line of sight, but they weren't looking directly at me. I might just get away with ... I took the respirator out of my mouth and inhaled through the gills that opened on my neck. With the intake of salt, my instincts sharpened and the feeling of being watched clarified.
Siren.
There was another mermaid in these waters. She was close. My heart began to pound. Who was she? What did she want? Was she friendly? Why couldn't I see her? I scanned the rock formations again, but saw nothing other than regular ocean creatures.
As the men turned away from the marine floor to look up at me, I jammed the respirator back in my mouth. I pulled the mask down over my face but it was full of water. Looking through seawater trapped next to my face was intolerable. I put the mask up again and left it.
The tour was coming to an end and Nathan and Valdez swam slowly up to me, taking their time to avoid nitrogen poisoning. They both gave me looks of concern when they saw my mask was off my face. I gave them the 'a-ok' hand signal. We headed back towards the ship, and I trailed behind, but whenever I slowed, Valdez slowed, always keeping me in his sight.
Sirens and Scales Page 100
