Lynn shrugged, lowering her eyes to the carpet.
Fran looked back and forth between the two of them before sighing and saying, “I get that this is a very emotionally significant moment and all, and I hate to interrupt, but I’m about to pee all over this really nice floor. Please can you take me to your bathroom?”
Lynn chuckled, raising her eyes. “Right this way. Johnny, I’ll see you in the kitchen?”
“All right,” he said, and turned to head off into the hall while the finfolk girl he hadn’t seen in almost twelve years led his wife away.
The hall off the foyer was slightly less decorative, with simpler paper on the walls and no bookshelves or ornamentation of any kind. The air smelled of saltwater, even more than was normal in a seaside town. Jonathan knew that if he opened the first door, he would find a wooden tub full of water, and possibly one or more of the house’s residents. He left the door alone and walked onward until he came to the end of the hall, and the only door that had been left slightly ajar. Pushing it open, he stepped into the guest room that the Gentlings reserved for their human guests, rare as they were.
The bed was large enough for three, piled high with pillows, blankets, and something that looked like a lace doily. Jonathan set their suitcases on the bed, unfastening Fran’s first, and said, “You can come out now.”
The mice swarmed from the bag with a flurry of cheers, gathering on the doily like it had been intended for that very purpose. “Hail!” cried the novice in charge. “Hail the release from the bag!”
“HAIL!” squeaked the rest of the mice.
“Yes, hail,” said Jonathan, with a faint smile. “We have arrived in Gentling. Do you know the protocols?”
“Do not trouble those who dwell here,” said the novice. “Do not enter sealed rooms. Do not drink any water which is not given to us directly. Do not show ourselves unless we must. Do not startle people.”
“Good,” said Jonathan. “I’ll get you something to eat in a little bit. For now, why don’t you find a place in the closet to serve as a temporary home? Fran and I will want some privacy when we sleep.”
“May we take the snowflake that does not melt?” asked the novice.
Jonathan blinked before realizing that the mouse meant the doily. “Yes, you may,” he said. “But don’t chew it up, I may have to give it back.”
The novice gave him a chastising look. “We would not,” she said. With that, the mice scampered for the headboard, vanishing down beneath the mattress. They took the doily with them.
“Mice,” muttered Jonathan fondly. He removed his hat, setting it atop his suitcase, and walked back out of the room to the hall.
The sound of voices coming from the kitchen told him that Lynn and Fran had taken care of whatever business needed handling. He stepped through the door to find Fran seated at the kitchen table, nibbling the last of her biscuits from the hotel, while Lynn bustled around the stove, setting up the kettle for tea. She looked around at the sound of his footsteps, and smiled.
“You know, there was a time when I was going to marry you,” she said, with no preamble or preparation. “You were going to take me away from Gentling, and we were going to live somewhere dry, where no one ever went back to the waves.”
“I know,” he said, moving to take the seat next to his wife. Fran reached under the table and took his hand, squeezing gently. “But you were seven at the time, so I didn’t think you meant it.”
“I did and I didn’t.” Lynn turned away from the stove. “It was Angus who sent the postcard. Half the town council didn’t want him to, and the other half pretty much followed him to the post office to be sure that he would.”
“What about Angus?” asked Fran.
“He didn’t want to,” said Lynn. “But the council talked him around, and him being mayor, it was part of his job. As for the rest, well...they’re scared. Scared people lash out. You may want to mind your step around some of the elders.”
Jonathan nodded. “I appreciate the warning. I’d appreciate it even more if you could tell us why we were summoned here.”
Lynn’s eyes widened incrementally. “You mean you don’t know? I thought—Angus said he was calling you to fix the problem. I thought that meant you had to know what the problem was.”
“No, just that there was a problem in need of fixing,” said Jonathan. “What is it? What’s happening here?”
“Someone’s been harvesting the beaches,” said a male voice from the doorway. They all turned to see a tow-headed man perhaps five years Lynn’s senior, scaled patches on his bare arms and throat, standing there and looking forbiddingly at them. The family resemblance was undeniable. He even had Lynn’s dark, anxious eyes. “They’re taking our babies away.”
The tea was hot and bitter, no matter how much sugar Fran added to her cup. She took two sips and set it aside, murmuring about not wanting to excuse herself again. No one pressed the issue, and she was glad of that. If she’d tried to get the entire cup down, she would probably have vomited all over their nice, clean kitchen floor.
Angus was still standing, his own tea black and unadulterated as he sipped it from his steaming mug. “Our babies always look human. You know that.”
Jonathan nodded. “Camouflage, and protection from the elder finfolk. They can’t go out to sea to see Grandpa if they can’t swim yet.”
“Human babies get presents from their grandparents; our babies get eaten.” Angus shook his head. “We try to do our breeding while we’re on land, but we only manage about half the time. Once you go back to the waves, you’ve still got needs.”
“Angus!” said Lynn, looking scandalized.
Angus just looked tired. “You know it’s true, Lynnie, and this isn’t the time to play coy. The finfolk in the water, they play at mating, but they don’t have fidelity or morals or any of those silly things we burden ourselves with here. When the babies get born, they just leave them on the beach, figuring someone will come along and care for them.”
“That’s where we come in,” said Lynn. “We walk on the beach every morning at dawn, looking for babies who came in the night. Some of them drown before we can find them, but most are still alive. Our parents care. They’re just not very good at knowing what to do.”
“The children of Gentling are well cared for,” added Angus, focusing on Fran. “We’ve never needed an orphanage, and we’ve never sent a baby away to be raised by people who wouldn’t understand. Just because we’re different, that doesn’t mean our way of doing things is wrong.”
Fran blinked slowly. “I never said it was,” she said. “Sounds to me like y’all have a biological pickle, and you’ve been doing your best to choke it down without being untrue to your parents or forgetting how to be decent people. I don’t think anything you’re doing is wrong.”
“Well, someone does,” said Lynn. “It started about three months ago. We’d been walking the beach all month, and no babies. That’s not unusual, especially when there’s been a storm in the area—the tides get high and pull the babies back out to sea, where the grandparents will eat them before they can be saved and put higher up on the shore. We were sad. It’s always sad to wonder whether there was no baby because there were none born, or whether you were just too late. But we all said ‘things will be different next month,’ and went home.” She looked down into her mug of tea, like she was searching for a secret. “Some of us were even a little relieved. Not to think that some of the babies might have been eaten—no one wanted to think that, no one ever wants to think that—but just because it would be a nice break, you know? No looking for someone with room in their house, no arguments about who nursed the last one. It was almost like a holiday. Until it happened again for the whole next month, and then into this one.”
“We finally sent two of the younger council members into the water to look for our parents, to ask them if they had stopped breeding,” said Angus grimly. “There’s something deeply shameful about needing to ask your mother, who barely reme
mbers your name, whether she’s given birth recently.”
Jonathan nodded. “I don’t think I could do it, even if I needed to. You’ve shown great strength in protecting your town. What did they say?”
“They said the babies came as they always had, and asked if we had somehow misplaced them.” Angus’s frustration was plain. “One of my aunts was so pregnant that she made your lady wife look virginal. We watched the shores for weeks. Her baby never appeared.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate little digs at my virtue snuck into discussions of what is and isn’t on the beach, but don’t you think there might be a simpler answer?” asked Fran. “You’ve mentioned that your grandparents like the taste of baby. Who’s to say they haven’t just gotten better at following pregnant mer-ladies until they pop?”
Lynn shook her head. “The urge to give birth on land is instinctual, and so, so strong. I’ve seen mothers who were almost grandmothers drag themselves up the beach with arms that have transformed entirely into fins, just so they can have their babies where the air is. The grandparents can’t get to them there. They wouldn’t stop having their babies on the beach unless the beach was entirely walled off, which it’s not. It’s as open as it’s ever been.”
“What’s more, we’ve found signs that the mothers have been there,” said Angus. “Scrapes in the sand. Scales. Even the occasional faint bloodstain. They’re coming up the beach to have their babies, the same as they’ve always done. Something is taking those babies away before we can get to them. That’s why I sent the postcard when Lynn asked me to. Our entire future is at risk. What can you do to help us?”
Jonathan stared at him, and didn’t say anything. In that moment, he had no idea what to say. Fran nudged him with her elbow. He turned to look at her, his eyes resting longest on the swell of her belly, before turning back to Angus.
“Everything,” he said.
The afternoon sun shone brightly down on Gentling’s rocky beaches, illuminating a scene out of a children’s book. Fran, who held tight to Jonathan’s arm to avoid a fall, couldn’t keep herself from goggling openly as they followed Angus and Lynn down the hard packed dirt trail that ran between the cliff side and the shore.
There were beachcombers about, naturally, and fishermen in rubber waders, standing up to their knees in the surf as they waited for something to bite. Children ran back and forth, shrieking—although Jonathan noted that most of them were avoiding the water with an almost pathological degree of care, especially considering that they were growing up by the seashore. At their age, he would have already been up to his neck on a muggy summer day like this one, and the undertow and threat of prowling kraken be damned.
And then there were the finfolk who had already begun returning to the sea.
They draped across rocks and sat at the foaming edge of the sea like sea lions, clumsy on land but enjoying the chance to sun themselves safely. They were all of them naked as the day that they’d been born. The ones whose legs had already fused to the waist weren’t indecent, quite, hiding their genitalia under bands of thick blue and silver scales. Others had human thighs and groins rising above their conjoined knees, and Fran flushed red, averting their eyes.
“I wouldn’t have expected this to be the point at which you turned modest,” murmured Jonathan, sounding amused.
“I didn’t expect this to be the day you took me to look at a merman’s prick, so I guess we’re even,” countered Fran.
Jonathan chuckled but smothered the sound quickly, before it could offend their hosts. This was a serious matter, after all, and deserved to be treated as such.
Lynn and Angus stuck to the trail until they reached the place where the smooth beach dropped away, replaced by a series of large tide pools. There were more finfolk here, mostly women. Some had no real breasts left, just faintly mounded scales. Others had lost their hair, leaving the faintly alien domes of their skulls naked to the air. Even the ones who still looked mostly human were faintly wrong; something about the shape of the bones beneath their skin whispered of inhuman origins, of danger, and the sea.
Lynn stopped at the edge of the trail, pointing to the tide pools. “That’s where they usually leave their babies. We find a few on the beach, normally—not everyone makes it to the pools, or makes it to morning—but most of them come from right over there.” A wave crashed against the shore. She paled and took a step backward.
“My sister is at a dangerous stage,” said Angus. “Saltwater speeds the return.”
“I see no reason why she should need to accompany us to the water, although it would be better if you were able to do so,” said Jonathan. “I’m concerned that they may not understand that I’m trying to help.”
The sound Angus made was somewhere between a snort and a sigh. “You’re talking to the returned. You could tell them that you’re their son and they’d believe you. But I’ll come down to the water with you. Lynn, you wait here.”
“Gladly,” said Lynn. She glanced to Fran. “Will you wait with me?”
“It’s a tempting offer, given all those slippery rocks down there, but I think I’m going to have to pass,” said Fran amiably. “I want to talk to a real life mermaid. Never done that before.”
Angus looked amused. He kissed his sister on the cheek, and then beckoned for Fran and Jonathan to follow as he started down the beach.
The finfolk lounging around the tide pools barely stirred as the trio approached them. Angus stopped a few feet away, putting out a hand to signal the others to do the same, and called, “Honored mothers, may we approach?”
“Who are you?” asked one of the finfolk, rolling over so that her long blonde hair obscured half her face. There were bits of seaweed tangled in it, forming mats. She squinted at Angus. “You look familiar.”
“I know, Aunt Marie. I’m your sister’s youngest son.”
The finfolk woman considered this for a moment before rolling the rest of the way over and lying flat atop her rock, curling her fins toward the sun. “Oh. Hello. What do you want?”
“Someone’s been taking the babies from the beach, Aunt Marie. Do you know who it is?”
“It’s the girls.” Aunt Marie flapped her webbed hands unconcernedly. “It’s always the girls. When I was a girl, I did it for the sake of the town. Got so wet, so many times, it sent me to the sea years before my husband. Should’ve made him do it. Should’ve stayed.”
Angus looked guilty, but pressed, “Do you know which girls?”
Aunt Marie turned her head back toward him, a flicker of irritation breaking through her self-absorbed serenity. “They’re all the same girl, nephew. We were all her once, and she’ll always turn into us. Don’t let yourself forget that.”
“Has there been anything strange about the girls who’ve come recently?” Jonathan took a half-step forward, pulling her attention onto him. “I know it’s difficult, with the sea so near and so enthralling, but can you remember anything at all about them? Anything that might help us find the babies?”
Aunt Marie blinked at him before smiling crookedly. “Alexander Healy, as I live and breathe. Always knew you’d come back to Gentling one day. Men like you, they always do. Nothing catches a man’s attention like a sweet piece of tail.” She began to laugh uproariously at her own joke. The other finfolk women joined in, and the ruckus they raised was like seagulls screaming, loud and cacophonous. Fran winced, turning her head away from the sound. Then she paused, squinting down the beach.
The children were still playing, still avoiding the water as best they could. The fishermen were still fishing. Lynn was still standing on the path, well out of reach of the water, and two more women had joined her, both wearing long skirts and blouses similar to hers, splitting their attention between talking to her and casting nervous glances at the sea. Their group had apparently contained a fourth woman until the finfolk started laughing; she was walking quickly away now, her hands over her ears.
“Huh,” said Fran. “I reckon that means something.”
The baby was kicking her again, fiercely, like it was afraid of being forgotten. She folded her hands over her stomach, and turned back to watch the men questioning the mermaids.
The finfolk women either knew nothing or were too far gone to explain what they had seen: their thoughts were like schools of small fish, moving too fast and too unpredictably to catch. Jonathan and Angus finished asking their questions, and Jonathan offered his arm to Fran again, helping her back up the beach to where Lynn and her friends were waiting.
Fran was all smiles as they approached, and even raised her free hand in a cheery wave. “Howdy,” she said, playing up her native drawl as much as she could. She might be a decade removed from Arizona, but she still knew how to play the country bumpkin when she had to. “I’m Frances Healy. I’ve met Lynn, but who are y’all?”
“Chastity Gentling,” said one woman. “I’m Lynn’s cousin.”
“I’m Jane,” said the other woman. She didn’t give a last name.
Fran didn’t ask for it. She had more important questions to pursue. “Who was your other friend?” she asked. “I saw her heading out of here pretty quick, which was too bad. I was hoping I could say hello. I always like meeting new people, when there’s the opportunity.”
“That was Elaine,” said Lynn. She shook her head. “She doesn’t like it when the returned laugh. It hurts her ears.”
“Huh,” said Fran. “That’s funny. It didn’t seem to bother you none. Bothered me plenty, though. I know they’re your family, but I’ve never heard anybody laugh like that.”
“Elaine’s human,” said Jane. “She has more sensitive ears than we do.”
“Oh,” said Fran, casting a sidelong look at Jonathan. To her relief, there was a dawning comprehension in his expression. He knew what she was getting at. “Well, isn’t that interesting. I didn’t think y’all had any humans living here in Gentling.”
“There’s always been a small human population here,” said Angus. “We don’t discriminate. Anyone is welcome to live in Gentling, as long as they come in peace and don’t take offense at the ways of their neighbors.”
We Both Go Down Together Page 3
