Table of Contents
Front Matter/Contact Author
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
ALABASTER ISLAND:
The Mermaid Curse Prequel
Copyright © 2017 by M.S. Kaminsky
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system - except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a blog, magazine or newspaper - without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Published by Boerum Hill, New York, NY
Visit http://www.mskaminsky.com to learn more.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to my husband Gerry Beekman for his love and unwavering support. And to my parents for instilling a love of reading. Big gratitude and appreciation for Joyce Thom and her excellent and most appreciated feedback. Finally, to all the mermaids and those who write about them.
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CHAPTER ONE
Can you hear me? It’s odd to whisper into a seashell, even a magic one. But I dare not speak louder. If I’m caught, none of this will matter. I have one brief moment to tell a long, strange tale.
Though I wasn’t young in years when I left you girls, I was young in experience. I’d just turned seventeen and lived what seemed an idyllic life on Alabaster Island.
I was born on the island. Its rocky shores, towering date palms and warm, aquamarine waters were all I knew. For a long time, I thought I’d never want to live anywhere else. Not once did I doubt that we were the luckiest people on the planet. But I was wrong.
Twenty-two teens lived on the island aged fifteen to seventeen. If Daniel had lived, he would have been eighteen and the only child born off the island. All of our parents came from the mainland, the Outlands they called it before spitting on the ground.
My life unraveled the night of my seventeenth birthday. I’d been helping Mom translate the ancient scroll she’d found. She had made huge progress. I felt proud when she told me it was due to my help.
I ran eighty-nine spiral steps up to the lighthouse. Eight plus nine equaled seventeen and seven plus one equaled eight. This number was lucky. In the lantern room sat a long telescope. Mom took measurements and rotated the telescope along a precise axis, scrawling readings from her sextant. With a dented brass surface, greenish with age the telescope was one item she forbade me to use.
“The twins,” she said gazing at the night sky through the window. “Orion rises toward Gemini. I’ve never seen them so bright.” She handed me the slip of paper where she’d scrawled her readings. “An omen.”
“A good omen?” I asked.
Mom sighed and shook her head. “I don’t know.”
My stomach clenched. On Binding Day the teen boys and girls on the island would be paired together. Tomorrow I had to put in a name; the boy of my choice. I felt terrified. I’d much prefer to lose myself among the sky and watch for wishing stars. Perhaps the right wish could remove the worry.
We turned back to the scroll, hunched together over a small desk. Night after night Mom and I struggled with the ancient, magical text. And sometimes even early in the morning before the sun rose.
My mind responded well to the arcane math and elaborate symbols that comprised the scroll. To understand the scroll’s intricate geometric texts, we used the stars as a guide. Some nights, I unsnarled the connections between the stars, texts and arcane symbols as if they were simple tangles of yarn. Tonight the symbols fought me with a mathematical or magical code I could not break no matter how hard I tried.
“I’m sorry, I can’t get it.”
Mom laughed and hugged me to her soft breast. She smelled of mango and sun dried linen.
“Don’t worry, you’re helping tremendously. And on your birthday too. Let’s call it a night.”
It was a cloudless evening. Satisfied and full after double portions of mango vanilla cake, I didn’t want to go back downstairs. It would make tomorrow seem that much closer. Tomorrow. A day I’d just as soon forget lay mere hours away.
Mom yawned, eyes bloodshot from her work but I could tell she felt happy with our progress. The scroll held secrets to our past and how we lost our powers. But we would learn, at least everyone hoped, how to regain Lemuria, our ancient homeland.
“Can I stay up here awhile longer?”
“It’s late. Best you go to bed. You have a big day.”
“But it’s my birthday,” I reminded her. “I won’t stay long.”
Mom sighed. “Okay fine, but don’t stay up too late. And don’t touch the telescope.”
When she left, I resisted the temptation the telescope presented, but failed. One day Mom caught me watching the island activities through the lens. “Just an excuse to be nosy! Let my telescope alone,” she reprimanded. I tried to obey, but couldn’t resist when I got the chance. Because it was my birthday, I hoped to spot a wishing star.
I pointed the telescope toward the sky. Thousands of stars fought their way through the glass lens. Just as I took my eye away, I saw one. A shooting star. It raced across the inky sky and I made a wish. I’d tell you, but even as I whisper this story, I refuse. A wish spoken out loud will never, ever come true.
When I put my eye back, I saw something incredible. Different from anything I’d ever seen. An enormous, white ship loomed bright against the horizon. Writing along her side spelled The Song of the Seas. I’d seen big ships pass from shore, but never a craft this large. And I’d never watched one through the telescope.
“Goddess, pray for them,” Mrs. Caroline, our teacher said once when Ethan had noticed a ship passing far in the distance during Assembly. I’d felt sad for the passengers and grateful for what we had.
I focused Mom’s telescope, and the ship burst to life. There were ten levels, eleven if you counted the top with its massive pool of blue water lit up and glowing in the moonlight. A long, green slide led into the pool. Two girls and a boy slid laughing into the water one after the other. Their mother held up a camera and took pictures. The flash appeared insignificant and almost invisible compared to the intense lights of the ship.
An old woman lay by the pool. She frowned as she spoke to a man holding a silver tray with a drink. He hurried away, and she slumped back and picked up her book. I tried to read the cover, but the words were too small from this distance.
I panned along the deck and counted the people. This ship had more
people than our entire island. Further along I saw a celebration. Men wore dark, handsome clothes with colorful pieces of cloth strung around their necks.
And the women's clothes were much fancier than the practical, sturdy items we had here. There were stunning gowns, far nicer than the one dress I owned; a simple blue frock with a band of yellowing lace Mom sewed to the bottom. One girl wore a vibrant, short purple skirt with yellow flowers that appeared to shimmer and dance in the light. She might have been the same age as me, maybe younger. Others sported long, elegant ensembles that fluttered in the ship’s breeze. Pinks, greens and exquisite patterns that wound around their bodies. Had I been a bee, I might have hoped they were giant blossoms.
But one girl, older than me, who stood at the center wore the most wonderful dress of all. White and flowing, her dress flared out so wide, that two little girls helped her with it when she moved. A teen boy stood beside her, laughing and holding her hand while a man took photos with a large camera.
He reminded me of Daniel. Daniel had possessed a magnetic charisma that suffused every movement, even at fourteen. The boy on the ship looked older, and clearly was not Daniel. Daniel was dead. But I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.
A short, pudgy man brought out an enormous net full of colored, round balls. Everyone stood back, and the couple stepped up onto a raised platform. A woman came and cut the net. Lights flashed. The balls rose into the air and flew up into the night sky while people cheered and danced.
Mayor Marlow told us that only Lemurians once possessed incredible powers. He said that Outland dwellers were dumb, base. But this proved he was wrong. They knew magic also. Blue, green and silver balls glittered in the moonlight as they flew away like flying fish.
When I panned the telescope back, the girl and boy kissed. I leaned away from the eye piece for a moment, hand to my mouth. They were in love. I looked back through the scope and it took a second to find them again.
Even from up in the lighthouse it was obvious. This was true, passionate love. His hand lay on her hip. She leaned against him, comfortable, laughing, when they stopped kissing. Then she brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. For a moment I became that girl. I imagined his hands warm against my body, his lips against mine. A gray sack of longing expanded in my belly.
An enormous dolphin leapt up behind the ship and disappeared beneath the waves. Meanwhile, the colored balls swooped into the night sky. I tried to follow them with Mom’s telescope but soon lost sight of them in the darkness.
I miss you Daniel. I thought. Would I ever experience love that strong?
Lying on the wool carpet that covered the chilly concrete floor, I hugged my knees to my chest and scrunched my eyes against tears of grief. And that was well before I learned that Daniel hadn’t drowned by accident. In fact, he had been murdered.
CHAPTER TWO
The next day I woke up with a melody stuck in my head. A peculiar series of lilting notes that held a strange melancholy longing at their core. It wasn’t an unfamiliar melody, but it was one I’d chosen to forget. Whether right or wrong, I associated it with Daniel’s death.
My face lay pressed into the wool rug on the floor and my eyes were puffy from leftover tears. For a moment I felt disoriented. Then I remembered: today I had to put in a name. The boy I wanted to spend the rest of my days with.
Light streamed in through the five windows. Giant and wood framed, the windows looked out over our tiny island in every direction. To my left, past the runway, was the area where most of our community lived. Rows of twenty-eight gray, concrete buildings arranged around what used to be a military training complex in the 1980s. Now it was our town square. Tall palm trees shaded the area and provided us with as much coconut milk as we could drink. A gentle grade and a crumbling sidewalk led to our old dock.
I looked at the telescope and saw that I’d forgotten to move it back to its original position. Now I couldn’t help but peek at what was going on this morning.
Marlow, our mayor, stood on the dock waving his hands at Kassandra. It took little to guess what they spoke of with such intensity. Every two months an old seaplane arrived with a hired pilot and his son. The plane brought canned goods and other essential items we couldn’t make for ourselves. Batteries for our flashlights, sugar, salt and spices for flavor, other things too. But this month our supply plane hadn’t arrived, and no one knew why. We were running low on many necessary items.
La la dee dee dee la la. Shut up. I told the melody. But it didn’t stop.
Motion along the narrow path that led up to the lighthouse caught my attention. My friend, Ethan trudged up the rocky trail, an air of grim determination in his long, athletic stride. Yesterday he’d left me a note and asked to meet before Assembly but I didn’t have a clue why.
Alabaster Island ran on predictable daily patterns and habits. Anything out of the ordinary made me edgy. Slowly, I walked around the circular room and touched the frames of the windows, once each, for luck in every direction. Downstairs I heard the sound of breakfast preparations and Ethan’s knock at the door. I ran down the spiral stairs.
“None for me,” I heard Ethan say. “I already ate.”
Something must have been extremely wrong for Ethan to turn down my Dad’s mango pancakes. Ethan could eat an entire chicken dinner, plus dessert and still have room for his favorite meal, breakfast.
“You have another tooth ache?” Mom asked Ethan as I entered. Mom laid out plates, including one for him, just in case.
“Tooth’s better,” Ethan said.
“That’s because it’s gone,” Dad said as he walked in with a steaming plate. “But maybe you have a new culprit.” Dad was our resident dentist and had yanked one of Ethan’s molars two days prior.
Ethan shook his head. “I’d rather not lose another one.”
We sat down at the table and had an awkward breakfast. Ethan pushed a pancake around his plate while making polite small-talk that sounded nothing like him. I didn’t have much of an appetite either. When Mom and Dad stepped away, I asked Ethan if he was okay.
“No,” he said, square jaw clenched, blue eyes conflicted with an emotion I couldn’t read. “I’m not okay. We need to talk. Privately. Can we go now?”
I made an excuse about needing to get to Assembly early and we said our goodbyes.
CHAPTER THREE
As we left the lighthouse, I kissed my fingers and touched the doorjamb three times for luck when Ethan wasn’t looking. Scraps, our border collie, tried to follow. Years back, I used to have to tie her or she’d run out the fence gate ahead of me. Then I’d catch her and drag her back inside while she licked me non-stop. But she was getting old. She lumbered after me, but for the first time, stopped before she reached the gate. Half way, she sat, and watched me leave, her moist, pink tongue hanging from her mouth.
“I knew it was gonna be an odd day,” I told Ethan as we headed along the path together. Ethan was one of my two best friends on the island. More than a friend, he was like a brother. He even knew about my peculiar luck rituals though I still tried to keep them hidden. Part of me knew they were childish. Another part feared what catastrophe might occur if I stopped.
One thing was certain; it was another gorgeous, tropical day. If not for the fact that our crops were wilting from lack of water and supplies were late, it might have been perfect.
“The long way,” Ethan said, not waiting for a reply. I smiled. It was not the easiest or quickest way to Assembly, but it was my way; my morning routine. We walked in what became an uncomfortable silence. Soon we’d pass smooth luck rock. My step quickened.
“So what’s up?” I asked, curious what was wrong.
“Chloe was worried yesterday that her and I might not be bound.”
“Of course you’ll be bound.”
“I dunno. What we want is only a small part. I heard there’s a bunch of factors the Council considers. The way our energies match and other stuff.”
“I heard the same,” I admitted. �
�And how fast we’ll head over to Honey Moon Island to pump out babies. Don’t tell Chloe I said that,” I added.
After our Binding, we’d be paired off and sent to a small island off-shore for two nights. While there, Mayor Marlow hoped we’d conceive children that would further the Lemurian lineage.
Ethan laughed. “You should hear what Edward says about Honey Moon Island. I’m embarrassed to repeat it. Anyway, now Chloe’s angry at me, and I’m—”
“We only have a couple of days and this is all over,” I interrupted Ethan. I said it to comfort him, but the thought made me feel worse. After the third switchback, the trail evened out and our strides widened. Further along the ridge, smooth luck rock lay below. But something looked odd. I forced my attention back to Ethan.
“Why was Chloe mad?”
“She asked me if I was gonna write down her name as my choice…but I didn’t want to say partly because, it’s you know, bad luck to talk about it.”
“You believe that?” I asked.
“Sure, why, you don’t?”
“I believe it, too,” I said. He didn’t look surprised.
“Well, she doesn’t. Told me it’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb.”
“Well, now she thinks I might put in someone else’s name and I just don’t wanna admit it.”
“But who else does she think—”
“Katrina.”
I burst out laughing. “She’s not that pretty.”
“Yeah, well I heard a rumor that no less than six of the other boys plan to write in her name.”
My face got hot. There were ten other boys on the island. If that were true it was possible no one would select me. After weeks of deliberating I still hadn’t decided. There was no boy I felt passionate about.
“But the thing I wanted to—” he started, when my gasp interrupted him. Down below us, Maxie lay dead on smooth luck rock. White feathers speckled with blood. Bones broken and snapped. We scrambled down the rocks.
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