Mermaid Spring (Mermaid Series Book 2)

by Dan Glover

  Meandering among her flowers Lauren heard a querulous noise from her garden. At first, she wondered if some animal was chattering in the trees... a cantankerous squirrel, perhaps, or maybe a wayward raccoon caught out in the light of day. Soon though, she heard it again and there was no mistaking the sound this time. Hurrying into the outer office she pressed the button on the microphone.

  "Hello, is there anyone there?"

  Maon had managed to procure a short wave radio for the Liberty which, like the one on the Nautilus, carried a capability of communicating across continents. The Nautilus had been silent now for weeks, however. She did speak regularly with Sileas on the Liberty, though, until that vessel went silent as well.

  "Hello, is there anyone there? Anyone at all?"

  She was barely able to hear weak words scattered amid the static. It was Maon's voice, not Sileas. He sounded panicked.

  "Mayday... mayday... we are going down in high winds. To anyone listening: we are going down. Our position is 24degrees 41mininutes 28.36seconds North and 77degrees 11minutes 58.66seconds West. Mayday, mayday..."

  "Maon, can you hear me? This is Lauren. Are you there?"

  She jotted down the position while continuing to listen for another response but the radio had gone silent once again. She jumped up to rush out of the room but then she realized she didn’t know who to tell.

  Since Kāne and Ginger moved to the castle in Edinburgh, Lauren saw no one. Her gardens were sequestered between high stone walls on two sides and impenetrably thick hedges on the other sides, only reached by a hidden hallway the entry of which was secreted behind a panel of antique cherry oak in the library.

  The Liberty sailed a month ago. The Nautilus had been gone nearly four months now. No word had come from either ship for what seemed to her an eternity. Lauren dined alone each night longing to feel the touch of Lily and Natalia once again. She woke each morning to sorrow knowing another day would be spent in a purgatory of pain.

  The gardens reflected her intense melancholia. Birds roosted without sound as if in mourning with their Lady. Squirrels no longer came to play. The pussy willows wept; her daffodils drooped; the bells of Ireland no longer rang, the coxcombs were crying, and the hyacinths were hollering for water. Tree branches laden with apples, pears, and plums obscured the ground with their rotting fallen bounty.

  The short wave was hushed like the gardens. She sat for an hour looking at it as if it was something alive, ready to grant her the boon of good news. As the afternoon wore into evening Lauren quitted the office, went to the kitchen, and poached an egg and buttered some toast for dinner. Night pressed in through the open window shades adding fuel to her sorrow.

  As some of the People began to arrive, she left the kitchen to make her way back to her suite. She had no mood for company tonight though for just a second she thought about seeking out Alpin. Knowing how he had deserted his family in need stayed her, however.

  A soft knock sounded on her door. It was rare for anyone to come to her rooms these days, what with everyone she loved gone. Normally she might not have answered the summons but tonight she sensed a need brewing in the air, one that could not be forestalled or ignored.

  "Oh my sweet Ginger... and darling Kāne... I am delighted to see you both!"

  The couple kept to themselves most of the time and if they visited her at all it was at her invitation. She appreciated young love and though of course she would never tell them but it turned old quickly enough, especially with those of the Lake.

  "I think I started labor, Lady Lauren. My water broke."

  Ginger stood in the doorway with her feet apart, her hands upon her stomach and a frightened look in her eyes. Kāne had a hand around her shoulder as if supporting her. It broke Lauren's hearts to see such distress in their eyes so she did her best to lend them the comfort she herself did not possess.

  "Come inside, pretty girl. I'll make all the arrangements. Please take her to the bedroom, my precious Kāne. Help her into her nightie. I'll be along directly."

  Lauren went to the linen closet where she took out a birthing kit: a sealed bag with everything she needed. She had back sheets, gauze pads, a cord clamp, ointment for cord care, menstrual pads, perineal cold compresses, a thermometer, sitz bath herbs, gloves, homeopathic Arnica, flex straws to make it easier for Kāne to assist Ginger in drinking Labor Aid Tea, a jar of lubricating jelly, a bottle of iodine, and a peri-bottle.

  Amanda helped her assemble all the necessary items. Alpin informed Lauren how the girl went aboard the Liberty in his stead as if he felt guilty. Since Kāne was no longer around, Alpin's personality had returned to normal. She decided to tell him in the morning to take a short trip over the next few days so as to minimize his proximity with Kāne.

  "I didn’t think it would happen so soon, mother Lauren. I thought I'd have another month, at least."

  "These things happen in their own time, wonderful Ginger. Have no fear. I have assisted many girls in giving birth. Everything will be fine."

  Lauren was upbeat despite having intense feelings of inadequacy. Though she assured Ginger of her proficiency, in truth she had never acted as a midwife on her own. She assisted. Still, she remembered each birth as if it was yesterday.

  Ginger had been a breach baby. Lauren remembered how easily Karen handled the emergency, as if she did such things every day. But she also recalled how the doctor's hands trembled and tears flowed freely as soon as Ginger was safely delivered and her mother was looked after.

  "Please climb into bed, sweet Ginger. Make yourself comfortable. And my darling Kāne... can you please go to the kitchen and make up this recipe. I meant to have it ready but this happened too soon."

  Lauren handed her son a scrap of paper with instructions on how to mix what Karen calls Labor Aid Tea.

  "You've done this a lot of times, right mother Lauren?"

  "Yes, sweetie, I have helped at least a dozen girls give birth."

  "Will it hurt much?"

  "You'll experience some discomfort, lovely Ginger, but there are ways to minimize the pain. The tea I'm having Kāne brew up will aid in loosening your uterine muscles. We want to allow you to dilate fully before we proceed with the birthing process. I noticed when Lily and Sileas gave birth, they had very little discomfort. I am sure you will be the same. Our babies are smaller at birth and yet more fully mature than are human babies."

  "But I'm human, mother Lauren... so my baby will be half human too."

  "Hush, sweet darling. Rest while you may. You will need all your strength."

  From its perch in the outer office, Lauren heard the short-wave crackle to life once more.

  Chapter 52—Storms

  The hurricane was not unexpected—the sky sent portends of its arrival for days in advance—but its fury was more than Ena ever dreamed it would be.

  Her father—hoping to make port before the storm hit—ordered the sails furled and engaged both diesel engines. But three days out of the Bahamas the wind rose, the skies opened up, and lightning cracked the ominously black clouds.

  She was used to high seas. During their travels around the Isles and into old Europe they often encountered choppy waters. The Nautilus responded beautifully. The Liberty, on the other hand, seemed to flounder, the bow dipping deep into the trough allowing gigantic waves to wash over the gunwale before doing her best to gain the next wave. Even though she knew the schooner was double-hulled it seemed as if they were in real danger of being swamped.

  They tethered their bodies to anchor points along the bow using safety harnesses to keep from being washed overboard. Her father stayed in the wheelhouse steering the craft, refusing to allow the storm to take the ship where it would.

  "Are we going to sink?"

  Amanda screamed out the words as the full fury of the storm was upon them.

  "No, sweet Amanda... this ship is impossible to sink. We just need to ride out the storm. We'll be okay."

  Ena knew if the ship did go down that she, her father, an
d her mother could safely make it to shore even if they were hundreds of miles out. Amanda, on the other hand, could not breathe under water. Ena realized for the first time what a monumental risk the girl took by sailing on the Liberty.

  Amanda turned out to be an able sailor, taking instruction with aplomb. She asked all the right questions, was not afraid to work the riggings, and didn’t show the slightest signs of seasickness.

  Within days they had become inseparable. Ena had never cottoned to the notion of being close to anyone among the People but now she realized it was to her detriment, not theirs.

  "Can I touch it, Ena?"

  "Touch what, sweet Amanda?"

  They were a week out of the Bay of Firth. The ocean was a sheet of glass that night. Ena's father and mother were asleep in the fore cabin while Amanda shared a shift with her in the wheelhouse.

  She was having feelings for Amanda that erupted out of the depths of the quiet nights they spent sequestered together in the cabin they shared. Ena told herself that Amanda was more like her enemy than any real friend—after all, she had taken up with Alpin at a moment's notice without thinking what pain it might cause—yet she couldn’t help but feel a growth of love beginning between them.

  "My three grandmothers sleep together."

  As a child she had noticed how close Lily, Natalia, and Lauren were and one day she commented upon that relationship to her mother. It was an innocent observation filled with a potential she didn’t fully appreciate until years later.

  "Yes they do, sweet Ena."

  "But why do they do that, mother?"

  "They love one another, my darling Ena."

  It seemed quite natural at the time to think of love as something that blossomed between anyone no matter the gender but as she came of age she realized that among the People same sex love was not practiced. The girls were friends but rarely lovers... in fact, Ena couldn’t think of a single instance where that had happened.

  It puzzled her, especially with the dearth of males among the People. She began to wonder if human beings were more isolated than they let on... that for them, love was an unknown fragrance blowing in the wind and nothing more.

  Confronted with her emerging feelings for Amanda, Ena began to doubt the veracity of everything she had assumed so nonchalantly about the People. Perhaps they did have feelings that they wished to share and yet were unable or unwilling to unveil those deep and private emotions.

  "The people of the Lake enjoy sharing love with each other no matter their sex, precious Ena."

  Though her mother sought to explain the mystery that Ena felt, it had fallen upon deaf sensory organs. Ena had no understanding of the vast evolutionary history separating human beings and the people from beneath the Lake. The relative youth of the People as both a species and as individuals stamped them with prejudices that were unknown to those of the Ladies.

  Now, it was becoming clearer to her by the day. Being as close to Amanda as they were aboard the Liberty meant sharing far more than she had ever done with a human being in the past and she sensed the girl felt much the same about her.

  At the same time, Ena wondered if she should fight the feeling rather than succumbing to it. Such liaisons would lead nowhere, or so she suspected. Still, seeing Lady Natalia with Lily and Lauren and the way the three of them interacted caused her to consider the possibility that she too could fall in love with a human being, no matter how repulsive it seemed at first.

  They all had an odd odor about them, the humans, distinct an yet similar... one that Ena could sense even when they were not in direct contact and that she had been taught early on not to complain about. It was not an unpleasant scent yet it seemed to linger like a taste in her mouth might do long after she had eaten certain foods like hot peppers.

  It was one of the things she cherished most about Amanda... her own private pleasure to revel in both when they were together and even apart.

  "Your stomach... can you feel your baby moving yet?"

  "Oh yes! He gets restless about the time I'm ready to go to sleep."

  She unbuttoned her blouse allowing Amanda to place a warm hand over her belly button. Her touch was electric and warm and she nearly wriggled in ecstasy beneath it.

  "I felt it!"

  "Yes that was a good healthy kick."

  "How do you know it's going to be a boy?"

  "He tells me, sweet Amanda."

  "How does he do that, darling Ena? Does he actually talk to you?"

  "I hear him in my head. It isn’t like words though. It's more of a feeling."

  "What do you do to make your skin so soft, precious Ena?"

  "I don't do anything, silly girl. That's just how my skin is, I guess."

  The autopilot was set but her father insisted someone was always at the wheel in case it should fail. Ena didn’t mind the overnight shift. She never slept at night away. Having Amanda along on this trip proved much more interesting than she first thought.

  Though she doesn’t consider herself a snob, Ena had always held herself above the People. Growing up she rarely associated with anyone other than the Ladies and her own family. The girls of the People seemed rough and ungainly, somehow, and their wits dull. Some of them called her names making fun of her gills and of her webbed fingers and toes as if she was some kind of freak.

  She rarely remembered seeing Amanda at all other than at the Dances. She knew the girl's name just as she knew everyone's name. The Ladies of the Lake held dances on each quarter moon which all the People attended. Ena grew up reveling in the dance. Amanda on the other hands always seemed awkward and out of place, as if she was trying too hard to fit in where she did not belong.

  "Teach me to dance?"

  Amanda's request startled Ena. She wondered if the girl unconsciously picked up on her mannerisms or if Amanda was reading her mind. Ena noticed often times how others seemed to know what she was thinking.

  "Of course I'll teach you to dance, sweet Amanda. Hum some music and remove your shoes."

  Amanda hummed an old favorite of Ena's that she remembered the Ladies often playing on the compact disc player back in Orchardton Hall when she was just a girl.

  "What a beautiful tune, darling Amanda! Now... come to me. Put your right hand on my shoulder and take my hand in your left. We'll start with the Texas Two Step. When I step forward you step back, then we touch, and you step forward. Let's try it."

  It was immediately apparent to Ena that Amanda was a great dancer. She followed her lead perfectly and when they touched a spark seemed to leap between them.

  "Sing to me, sweet Amanda."

  "I've been so many places in my life and time. I've sung a lot of songs; I've made some bad rhymes. Now I'm so much better and if my words don't come together, listen to the melody cause my love is in there hiding I love you in a place where there's no space and time. I love you for my life you are a friend of mine."

  "You have such a lovely voice, my darling. I've never danced with someone who was singing to me like you are."

  "We are alone and I am singing this song for you. We are alone and I am singing my song... singing my song for you."

  Ena's lips found Amanda's for just a moment.

  Now in the midst of gargantuan waves pummeling the Liberty threatening to capsize her any moment and a cold driving rain washing over them in sheets, Ena drew Amanda close to her determined to save her life if the worst happened. Just as the storm seemed to have reached its zenith, an eerie calm descended. Her father appeared.

  "Is it over, father?"

  "No, sweet Ena... we are in the eye of the hurricane. We'll have a brief respite before the next storm wall hits. Come up to the wheelhouse with me. We have to watch for rogue waves."

  Ena tugged Amanda's hand bringing her along. The Liberty suddenly bucked beneath her feet nearly sending her overboard but Amanda held her tight.

  "Thank you, my sweet Amanda. I thought sure I was going into the ocean."

  "If you go over I'm going with you, da
rling Ena."

  Gaining the wheelhouse, Ena finally had a chance to look up at the storm wall surrounding the Liberty. Way at the top she saw blue sky. The gray wall seemed to fluctuate in ways that made it difficult to keep her eyes upon it. The sound of the storm lent her auditory organs a sense of violence and chaos such as she had never experienced.

  "We have about thirty kilometers before we hit the eastern wall. From everything I've read, that is the warm side and will be even more brutal. If we maintain steering-way and we can make it past the inner wall she may spit us out the other side."

  "And if it doesn’t spit us out?"

  There was a note of fear in her mother's voice that Ena couldn't ever remember hearing before that moment.

  "Hurricanes rise and fall, my darling Sileas, so if we do not make it out the first time, we'll try again until we do make it out. The storm is bound to weaken over colder and deeper water."

  "Even with the engines going we're sailing backwards."

  "Yes, lovely Ena... the storm is tracking out to sea and pulling us with it. Going into the storm I've been sailing at half-speed. When we near the inner wall we'll increase speed to full ahead. We have to steer away from the center and right front of the storm."

  "Why?"

  "That's what is known as Buys Ballot's law, Amanda. Hurricanes have dangerous quadrants and less dangerous quadrants. If we make for the left front, we will use the force of the winds and the movement of the storm to our advantage. Now... you all better fasten yourselves down again. This could get rough."

  Chapter 53—Host

  Emerging from the Cornell building reminded Karen of the day she walked out of the Centers for Disease Control headquarters after being trapped in the isolation cell by Marilyn.

  She was disorientated by the night. The path was all but invisible and the sounds abounding in the dark lent a sense of panic to her already overloaded psyche. Though every fiber of her being desired to run as fast as she might, she demanded her body to obey and walk slowly and quietly to the shoreline hoping against hope that the Nautilus was still anchored there.