“First you must take the Orb of Nerus from my arms and place it on the pedestal at the feet of my father. Then while I heal, you must cleanse and freshen up the palace. The princess Adara is coming home! We must welcome her with all the love, splendor, and joy the sea possesses.”
They scolded Helmi gently, telling her all would be taken care of. As they carried her into the water, they told her just to rest and heal. Periwinkle, her favorite handmaiden, along with Anemone and Guppy, swam her to the kelp forest and tethered her gently near the top. Nestled in its center, she would be able to feel the sunlight warm her through the dancing fronds. The kelp vibrated with joy at her presence. It swirled around her, stroking her body with tender caresses as she floated within its embrace. She felt the flow of power from the sea course through her body once more.
Her whales were singing to her, bringing her news of her granddaughter, and telling her they loved her. Delicate, white beluga whales swam around her with their cupid-like faces and nacre-white bodies, iridescent against the emerald-green kelp. Then narwhals swam past, one by one, touching their horns to Helmi’s stony hands and tail, breathing life back into her with each touch.
“Send word to the Turtle King,” she instructed the humpbacks, the greatest singers of the sea. “He must send messengers to guide the princess to him. He must teach her what she needs to know until I am well enough to travel. Adara must know who she is, who her people are, and that I love her. I will come to her as soon as I can. She must learn to use her mermaid powers to protect herself from mankind.”
“Your commands are already on their way, Your Majesty,” an old humpback assured her.
Helmi thanked them one and all for their tender administrations and floated in the sun-bathed sea, caressed by the kelp, kissed by narwhals, and rocked by the gentle currents of dancing white belugas. As she opened herself to their healing powers, the message was sung loud and strong to guide the princess home.
Revelations
The face of an overly coifed and overly Botoxed Polynesian beauty filled the TV screen as her melodious voice announced, “This is Leilani Komoto, of Channel 3 News, here in Waikoloa, Hawaii, at Dolphin Quest, where a moment ago, a real live mermaid appeared.”
The picture on the screen changed to the little dark-haired Arab girl in the lagoon waving at the camera. “As seen in this amateur footage, the event was captured by the father of Ismat Azzam, one of the children in the lagoon at the time of the mermaid’s appearance.” Leilani’s voice underscored the entire transformation as the footage aired.
“Is she the creation of some secret scientific experiment, or an alien being from some water planet, beamed down from a space ship in orbit?” The screen showed Pearl rising up on a column of water with her copper colored hair spun out on the air around her like fire, charged with electricity. “Or, did a magical, mythical creature of the sea really suddenly appear, signaling the start of Armageddon?” They continued to show the full transformation of Pearl, with a tail and gills slits appearing, as the column of water supporting her dispersed.
“Do mermaids walk among us? Have they been here all along? Do they want the planet back? Are they causing global warming in order to flood the surface of the planet? Are they humans who were transformed when they were left behind by Noah during the great flood? Or is this a publicity stunt created by Disney?” Leilani’s voice intoned. “We may never know the answers to these questions, but one thing we do know, is that mermaids are real!”
The footage ended with a close-up of Pearl looking back over her shoulder as the dolphins swept her over the seawall.
“This is Leilani Komoto, Channel 3 News, signing off from what will now and forever now be known as ‘Mermaid Cove’ at Dolphin Quest.”
The TV suddenly clicked off, and Holger tossed the remote down on the galley table.
“The whole world is searching for your daughter.” Holger turned to look at Ivan and Lina, who were still staring at the screen in shock. Their minds were numb, as the research boat from Dolphin Quest, with Hal at the wheel, sped out into the ocean. They were headed in the direction Pearl and her marine escort had taken when they had disappeared into the sea.
“The Navy of every major nation will launch search-and-capture missions within the hour to apprehend her … maybe even kill her,” warned Holger. “And they won’t stop with her; they’ll come looking for you!” He jabbed his finger at them accusingly, as his voice rose in anger.
“Now, after that mad scientist crack, they’ll be looking for me too, wondering if it actually was some genetic experiment gone wrong. They might be able to accept that, because no one in their right mind is going to believe in mermaids, are they?” he hollered in frustration. “Are they?” he shouted again in fury, trembling.
“Dad! Calm down,” Hal called to him. “Can’t you see how terrified they are?”
Lina had just burst into a series of sobs as Ivan held his wife tightly, rocking her gently.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” Ivan shouted back. “You can’t treat us like criminals! You’re not the police! You’re not the army! You had no right to drag us on this boat and take us away!”
“If I hadn’t taken you away from that mob, you would have been taken into custody! Or worse, you would have been turned over to the naval police and incarcerated!” Holger snapped back at him.
“You still have no right to cross examine us!” Ivan bellowed.
“I may have all the right in the world!” Holger screamed back, his voice growing higher, louder, and more desperate. “That girl may be my own flesh and blood!”
“What?” Ivan, Lina, and Hal all gasped as one in amazement. Of all the things any of them thought he might say, that had not been one of them.
Suddenly the only sound was the roar of the engine as they sped out over the water. All eyes locked on Holger as he slowly sank onto the bench of the galley table, lowered his head into his hands, and silently shuddered with the grief he had held inside for so many years. No one spoke; they all waited silently … patiently … unaware whether minutes or hours passed by. Then he raised his head, looked quietly around at each one of them, and began to speak.
“Thirteen years ago today, my … ‘dead brother’ … called me. I thought he had died two years earlier in a bathysphere accident off the coast of the Faeroe Islands. But I heard his voice on the other end of the line, saying, ‘Holger, it’s me, Halder.’ It was his voice talking to me, but I was furious, thinking some twisted jerk was playing a trick on me, just to get his kicks. So I hung up on him. But, the phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing. Finally I snatched it up and screamed, ‘Leave me alone!’ The voice … his voice … told me he was really Halder. He was alive, but no one could know. He was in Seattle and had just become the father of a beautiful little girl named Adara. He told me that his wife Miranda was the mermaid who had saved him. I was furious! Not only was this guy a sicko, he was truly crazy! I yanked the phone out of the wall and smashed it into pieces on the floor.”
Holger pulled a worn snapshot out of his wallet and tossed it down on the galley table in front of the Sorensons. “Three days later, this photo arrived. This is a picture of my brother and his wife holding their newborn daughter.” Holger flipped it over. “That is the date of her birth, September 29th.” The name Adara was printed plainly in ink on the back by the date. “And that’s Halder’s handwriting,” he finished, and slumped back into his seat.
“No way!” Hal whispered to himself in disbelief.
Ivan reached out with a shaky hand and picked it up so he and Lina could see it more clearly.
“That’s Pearl!” Lina gasped in awe, touching the picture tenderly.
“Then somebody had better start talking,” Holger stated, coming back to life, “because I never heard from my brother again. How did you get my niece?”
“We rescued her from a car crash,” Ivan muttered. “We didn’t know anything about your brother or his wife. We were driving up the road on o
ur way home from a late night dinner at a local restaurant. We heard an explosion, and then saw a fireball go up, followed by heavy smoke. We drove to the spot as fast as we could and saw a car sitting in the middle of the road, totally engulfed in flames. We tried to help, but there was nothing we could do. The two people inside the car were already dead and burning in the blaze. So we called the police and waited for them to arrive. A few seconds after we made the call, we heard a baby crying. We split up to look for it and found Pearl in her car seat lodged in a rhododendron bush screaming in terror but unharmed.”
Lina squeezed Ivan’s hand and took over the story. “The car was a convertible, and the baby’s car seat must not have been belted in properly, so the explosion hurled it free and saved her from the fire. I took her back to our car to comfort her, gave her some water, and wiped the tears from her face. I sang to her and rocked her to sleep while we waited.”
“The flames died out before the police arrived,” Ivan explained as he took over the story once more. “I tried to see if there was any kind of ID, purse, or documentation with the couple to identify them, but everything had burned in the fire, even their clothes. The only thing left was a strange key on a chain around the neck of the driver. Part of the chain had melted and it had slipped down onto his leg.”
“What happened to the key?” Holger asked.
“I took it,” Ivan confessed. “I don’t know why. I’ve never tried to use it, and something about it made me keep it from the police,” he said quietly. “You see, the car hadn’t hit anything. It hadn’t swerved off the road, or gone over a divider, and there were no skid marks on the pavement. It simply appeared to have exploded while they were driving slowly up the road. It was all wrong, and I felt the baby needed to be protected somehow, so Lina stayed in the car with her when the police came. I decided I would tell the police the baby was our granddaughter, but no one even asked. We told them what we knew, which was only that we heard and saw the explosion and the car was in flames when we got there.”
“We just drove off with Pearl in my arms and went on with our lives,” Lina whispered.
“What about the key?” Holger asked, still focused on Halder.
Ivan unclipped a key chain from his belt loop and slipped off a small, odd-shaped key. “Here it is,” he said as he slapped the key onto the tabletop and slid it across to Holger. “It’s a safety deposit box key.”
“What’s in the box?” Holger asked as his angry eyes bored into Ivan.
“We don’t know!” sobbed Lina. “We didn’t want to know!” Ivan gripped her hand and stared back at Holger defiantly.
“We couldn’t have children, and we wanted one so badly,” continued Lina. “It just seemed like God had put us there to protect her.”
Ivan gripped Lina’s shoulder reassuringly and continued. “We were afraid for the baby because the police called later that day and told us the explosion had been no accident. The car had been rigged with a bomb. A couple of my old navy buddies joined the police force after they retired and we were able to get a little inside information. No one ever came looking for a baby. No one ever asked. We didn’t lie about her, we just kept her safe. We were afraid whoever had killed Pearl’s parents might come after her if they knew she was alive.”
Ivan paused to compose himself, then went on. “After some investigation, we discovered the safety deposit box was located in a bank in Bermuda. When we found out it had been paid for in advance for twenty years, we decided to wait until Pearl turned eighteen, and then we would all go down to Bermuda and open it up together. We never lied to Pearl about who she was,” he continued. “We told her when she was old enough to understand that she was adopted, and that her parents were killed in a car crash.” He began to shout. “We are honest people … and we love our daughter!”
“I’m sorry,” Holger said slowly. “I’m sorry for shouting and for bullying you both. I’m sorry I didn’t believe my brother when he called me! I’m sorry I wasn’t there for my niece, and I am grateful, very grateful, that you were.” Holger apologized as he swallowed back the sob that tried to rip through his chest. He finally had to accept that his brother was dead … really dead.
“If I had just gone to meet Halder …” Holger rubbed his eyes and swallowed hard again. “If I had just trusted my heart and not my mind, maybe none of this would have happened!”
Hal slipped the boat’s controls to autopilot and went down to join his father, gently placing his hand on his shoulder.
“Right now,” Holger began, asserting control over his sorrow and drawing strength from his son’s presence, “my niece … your daughter,” he nodded to them in gratitude, “is alone in the ocean, and we have to find her and help her. This key,” he held it up in the light, “might hold some answers. The problem is we don’t know where she went, so we’re not going to catch up with her now. Worse than that, we have only about an hour of freedom before the world closes in on us.”
“What can we do?” Ivan asked.
“Do you have any idea where she might go?” Holger questioned.
“I know exactly where she’ll go!” Lina said, laughing with relief.
“Where?” the rest of them shouted.
“Home—to the Faeroe Islands!”
“But she doesn’t know about Halder and her mother,” Holger said, frowning.
“No, but I’m from the Faeroe Islands and we have selkie blood in my family. I’ve told Pearl all about our local legends and that my grandmother was a selkie and a handmaiden to the Mermaid Queen.” Lina smiled. “She believed me before; she will certainly believe my stories now.”
“Lina, you’re wonderful!” Holger threw his arms around her and kissed her soundly on the cheek. “Now we can plot out a course for her destination and try to catch up to her!” He stood up and snatched a nautical map from a shelf and spread it out across the galley table.
“Well,” he said, shaking his head after one glance at the map. “No matter which way she goes, she’ll have to swim three quarters of the way around the world to get there. She could swim east through the China Sea,” he said tracing his finger across the map, “and down around the tip of Africa. Or, she could go west and swim around Cape Horn at the tip of South America.” He sighed.
“She won’t do either!” Ivan claimed confidently as he clapped his hands in glee.
“She doesn’t have any other choice,” Holger told him calmly.
“That’s what you would think, and so will everyone out there looking for her. But our little Pearl is as smart as they come.” Ivan winked at Lina. “She’ll go right here,” he stated as he stabbed his finger on the map. Holger blinked, and looked at Ivan in disbelief.
“The Panama Canal? Are you crazy?” Holger blurted.
“She’d never think of that.” Hal added his voice for the first time. “She’s just a kid.”
“A kid who got an A+ on a term paper about the history of the Panama Canal!” Ivan retorted.
Lina clapped her hands in excitement. “Pearl was fascinated by the idea of the canal joining two oceans together!”
“I spent two years stationed there with the Army Corp of Engineers,” Ivan added, “so I had lots of pictures and stories to tell her that weren’t in the books. She knows all about the locks, how they work, when they work, and the desalinization from salt water to brackish to fresh water. Pearl knows how many locks there are on each side, their names, the number of gallons of water each one uses, and how long it takes to traverse each one.” He beamed with pride and excitement.
“It would be very dangerous and very frightening. She might be too scared to try it,” Holger cautioned.
“The water conduits are big enough to drive a train through, and it all works by gravity. She could swim through most of it without ever being seen,” Ivan reassured him. “It’s just entering the canal and the first lock that would be tricky.”
“You don’t know our little Pearl,” Lina nodded. “She’s as bright as they come and not easil
y daunted! If anyone can find a way to do it, she can, and she won’t give up without trying. That I can promise you.”
“No one will expect it, that’s for sure,” Hal muttered.
“And,” Ivan said as he laughed again, “she’ll know we will figure this out!”
“Of course she will,” cried Lina, and they hugged each other with relief.
“Okay,” Holger said with a sigh. “You win. If anybody can anticipate her actions, it would be you two. Let’s just say a prayer and go with it. Hal!”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Turn the boat around and head home. You and the Sorensons are going to take the Moonraker and leave for Panama immediately. It’s already stocked up for a two-month stint, and with the extra fuel tanks we’ve added, you should have enough gas. Just toss the air compressor and diving equipment on board and sail off. I want you gone ten minutes after we land.”
“What are you gonna do, Dad?” Hal asked, before he went back to take the wheel and put the boat on the new heading.
“I’m going to Bermuda tonight. We have our Dolphin Quest office there so no one will be suspicious. I already have a ticket for next week. I can change it and go on standby for the first flight out. I need to find out what’s in that safety deposit box. Then I’ll meet you on the Atlantic side of the canal. Make sure you take the satellite radio and the world phone with you too.”
“All of our things are back at the hotel,” Lina started to explain, but Holger cut her off. “Speed is our only friend right now. If you try to go back to your hotel, they’ll grab you. I’m sure they’ve already searched your rooms,” Holger surmised. “We’ll be lucky if they aren’t waiting for us at my house, but I think we might just beat them to the punch if we hurry.”
Big Brother Is Watching
Admiral George Greystone had been in the US Navy forty years out of the fifty-eight years of his life. He was now used to command and proud of the sacrifices he had made in his life to rise to the position of commander of the fleet. He loved his country and was determined to keep it the most powerful one in the world.
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