All The Mermaids In The Sea

by Robert W Cabell

  They couldn’t risk staying in Seattle any longer, so he would have to deal with Holger later. Halder glanced down and saw the Polaroid picture the aide had taken for him and decided he could add one more letter to the batch of things he needed to send out before they left for the yacht. Besides, maybe Holger would get curious or think things through and still show up at the park tonight. He’d been living with miracles for the past year, and that seemed more than possible to him now. Halder took a deep breath, said a prayer of thanks and a prayer of hope, and walked back into Miranda’s hospital room.

  Saltwater State Park

  From the moment Miranda described the ritual baptism of a mermaid child, Halder knew it had to take place at Saltwater State Park. The eighty-eight-acre slice of Pacific Northwest paradise with 1400 feet of shoreline on Puget Sound was right between Seattle and Tacoma, just off Interstate 5, and an easy drive from the Elliot Bay Marina.

  The Thorson family might not be merfolk, but they had been sea folk for hundreds of years. Halder felt a desperate need to reconnect with his brother and his own childhood memories. They had grown up in the Seattle area, and he and Holger had taken little Hal to Saltwater State Park when he was just a few months old.

  The brothers had done the same thing there with Hal that he and Miranda would be doing tonight with Adara. They had baptized him in saltwater to bind his heart to the sea, which was also a Thorson family tradition. They had never told Holger’s wife, Lisa, who would have freaked out at the idea of her son following in the footsteps of his father, gallivanting around the ocean.

  Halder had been greatly honored to have his nephew named after him, and it had been an even greater honor to stand there in the Sound as his godfather and continue their family tradition. Halder wanted to share that tradition with his brother and his nephew, even if they wouldn’t be there. It would somehow be a physical connection between Holger, Halder, Hal, and Adara.

  “As long as the ritual takes place in open water connected to the sea, it will be fine. And it must be done on the day of her birth,” Miranda had explained as she agreed to the location.

  Before they left the hospital, they arranged for a few minutes of privacy and took a moment to create a memory crystal. Sailing back down through the Panama Canal was the fastest safe passage home to the Bahamas, but it would still be a few weeks before Helmi could swim through the Mirrors of Atargatis to join them at the palace.

  Miranda blessed the wonders of overnight delivery that would let her share this moment with her mother in a matter of days. Once they had finished, they popped the crystal into a FedEx package and gave it to the attorney Bruun & Gottorp had waiting.

  Then, as prearranged, though against the doctor’s advice, they bundled up Miranda and Adara and climbed into their Mercedes convertible. The car was small enough to store and easy to load on and off the yacht with a submarine crane.

  Not having to rent a car when they went on land increased their security, as it would be simple for someone to find them through a car rental agency. They drove west to I-5, then south to Exit 149.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to shake things up a bit and grab a plane back to your mother’s?” Halder asked as he watched a plane pass overhead for a landing at Boeing Field. “Look, that’s one of those private jets about to land. That’s classy. How about buying me one for my birthday?” He winked.

  “Maybe next Christmas, if you’re a very good boy.” She gave him a peck on the cheek. “Mother would have a fit if I flew home, anyway. You know she only trusts the sea. How much farther is the park?”

  “We’re pretty close. Here’s the Highway 99 exit. We just have to go to 240th street, turn right down the hill, go over a bridge to grandmother’s house, stop and pet the big bad wolf on 252nd, then wind down to the pearly gates, pick the lock, and we’re in.”

  “And in dolphin time that translates to …?” She raised her eyebrows in challenge.

  “Four tail lengths, a dorsal fin, and two flippers.” He smiled.

  “Your daddy is a very silly man.” Miranda turned to look down at Adara, bundled up in her car seat. “If you turn into a silly girl, I’ll know exactly who to blame.”

  When she looked up, she noticed a car’s headlights behind them. “Halder, that car has been behind us for quite a while, do you think it might be following us?”

  Halder immediately tensed up as he glanced in the rearview mirror, and answered, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.” He reached inside the glove compartment and pulled out a gun. “There’s a little spot just up ahead where you can pull off to take pictures. I’ll pull in there, and if he does too, we’ll know something’s rotten in Denmark. It’s probably nothing, but we’d better not take any chances.”

  Five minutes later, they pulled off for the scenic view, and the other car went roaring on past them.

  “Thank goodness!” Miranda breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry for being so paranoid. It might even have been your brother for all we know, heading there to meet us.”

  “From your mouth to God’s ears, babe. It would make tonight perfect if he just took a leap of faith and came.” The baby suddenly gurgled. “That’s my little princess,” he laughed. “Already agreeing with your old dad!”

  “More like a little gas attack.” Miranda laughed. “Speaking of being like her old dad!”

  “Don’t go there, my lovely. Because after a plateful of seaweed, your halitosis is legendary!” He made a gagging noise and a bug-eyed funny face at his daughter as he shifted the Mercedes into gear and swung back on the road.

  While they wound their way down to the entrance gates of the park, they didn’t see a soul. It took one snip with the bolt cutter to open the gate so they could drive through the deserted park down to the water’s edge. It was the end of September and a school night, so Halder didn’t anticipate any company, especially since it was a “day use only” park.

  They turned their headlights off once they got to the picnic area and drove the rest of the way down by moonlight. It just happened to be a full moon, which they both took as a good sign.

  “I’m so glad we could do this here,” Halder said as he reached his arm around his wife and kissed her. “Now I get to share one of my family’s sacred places with you. This park was always the place that Holger and I would escape to, as soon as we could drive.”

  “This whole Puget Sound area is really beautiful,” Miranda agreed as they got out of the car.

  Within no time, they were walking to the beach with their new baby.

  “And this park is special among the special—a tree hugger’s and a dolphin lover’s paradise, all rolled into one. We’re surrounded by eighty-eight acres of natural cedar, Douglas fir, hemlock, spruce, birch, oak, and the Pacific Northwest favorite, the rhododendron.” Halder inhaled the woodsy fragrance of the air and smiled down at Adara. What a perfect moment in time, he thought, almost giddy with happiness as he gazed at his baby daughter.

  “This place is a green cornucopia of critters for little girls!” Halder told his daughter as if she understood his every word. “Dorothy may have had her lions, tigers, and bears, but you are being baptized in a magical place where raccoons, rabbits, and squirrels frolic. They make much nicer playmates for a little princess like you!” Adara gurgled in response, which made Miranda and Halder laugh with joy.

  “I’ll take that as your royal stamp of approval, my dear.” Halder kissed his daughter and handed her car seat to Miranda, and she carried it the remainder of the way to the water.

  “Did I tell you there’s a flock of wild puffins here in the park?”

  “Puffins? You’ve got to be kidding me!” Miranda blinked in surprise.

  “Nope. Seattle has a little bit of the Faeroe Islands in it, and it’s right here in this park. I’ll even bet we’ll see an Orca or two once we get into the water.” Halder stopped to listen. “What’s that?”

  “What did you hear?” Miranda whispered, but he signaled her to be silent.

/>   After a few minutes, he relaxed. “I was hoping I’d hear Holger’s car drive up, but I guess we’re doing this without him.”

  Miranda set the car seat down in a nest of fragrant fir needles, put her arms around Halder and hugged him tightly, then suddenly realized he was crying. Her husband was quietly sobbing with grief. She knew the past year had been hard on him, but never having had a sibling, let alone a twin, she couldn’t really understand how deeply Halder missed his brother.

  “I just can’t believe all this amazing stuff that has happened to me this past year, and Holger doesn’t have a clue about any of it,” Halder said between sobs. “He thinks I died ranting and raving down in the bathysphere, and he didn’t believe that it was me when I called him. He couldn’t accept that I’m alive or that I have a wife and a daughter.”

  “He will, darling,” Miranda assured him as she hugged him fiercely. “You mailed him the picture the aide took, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but it will take a couple of days to reach him, and we’ll be miles out to sea by then,” he grumbled, trying to gain his composure.

  “You don’t think your brother would accept a free trip to the Bahamas to see you and our daughter?”

  “It won’t be the same. We won’t be able to share this! I was there with him when Hal was born. Holger put Hal into my hands ten seconds after he’d held him for the first time, and said, ‘This is your nephew. Halder, meet Halder.’ It blew me away. I never expected him to name his son after me. I haven’t even seen little Hal since a month before the accident. He must be nearing the end of the ‘terrible twos’ by now,” he sighed and turned to look at Miranda again.

  “We have so many amazing things to share with him that will more than make up for it,” she whispered as she rocked him gently.

  “I just miss them both so much, and I hate the fact that they are missing all of this! It would blow them away. My family is small like yours. Little Hal needs a cousin to play with and grow up with, and so does Adara.”

  “Let’s get this done and get back to the ship. I’ll try to call and talk to Holger,” Miranda suggested by way of consoling him.

  “Yes, but he’s still gonna miss all this.” Halder reached out to embrace the air and then gazed down at his tiny little girl.

  “We can still do a Christian baptism and make Holger Adara’s godfather,” she suggested. “I think he’s going have more than enough surprises ahead of him, so we can keep this precious moment just between us, okay?” Miranda reached up and stroked his cheek gently.

  “Have I told you today how much I love you?” Halder whispered to her.

  “Yes, but you can tell me again.” She smiled up at him and squeezed his hand.

  Adara, who had been silently watching them from her car seat, which was lying at their feet, suddenly cooed and gurgled.

  “Well, it looks as if your daughter agrees,” Miranda said with a laugh.

  Halder sniffed, “That was probably just gas.” They laughed and waved down at her for a moment, and then without another word, they both slipped into a pair of canvas-lined, chest-high rubber waders that Halder had picked up from a local sporting goods store.

  Miranda picked up Adara, still in the car seat, and handed her to Halder. They walked out onto the beach and trudged hand in hand toward the water’s edge.

  The Unforgiven

  He clung to life in his hospital bed in Tórshavn in the Faeroe Islands. At 1:30 pm., the old sailor received a call from his cousin’s daughter, a flight attendant for KLM. Irene and little Christian were on the plane. A moment later, he made the call to Vasili.

  “They are at the Valley Medical Center in Renton, Washington, and their yacht is docked at the Elliot Bay Marina.. They are staying on for a couple of days to contact Halder’s brother, Holger, who still thinks Halder is dead. Holger teaches at the University of Washington.

  “Our business together is finished then,” Vasili’s voice snapped, and he hung up.

  The old sailor let the phone drop to the floor, in relief and disdain, as the last breath from his body expelled out with a sigh. He never got to see his grandson again or kiss his daughter good-bye. He died with relief, knowing they were safe, and in shame, knowing he’d betrayed his sacred vows to the mermaid queen and her daughter. Princess Miranda was already hundreds of years old, and his daughter was not yet thirty. His last breath was a prayer for Miranda’s safety.

  As he floated upward, he looked down upon his dead body, and hoped somehow his personal pain over dying without ever seeing his daughter again might lessen his sentence in purgatory. He doubted, however, that his attempted murder of Halder, and the trading of one innocent life for another, would ever make him acceptable in Heaven.

  Up, Up and Away!

  Pearl was getting tired, but she seemed to be the only one. Slammer and Jumper had towed her for quite some time. She was still in a considerably weakened state from healing Sandy, and she was exhausted. They had stopped for a moment for the dolphins to feed, and the manta rays were still reveling in their transformation. Even Echo had grown plump from Sandy’s healing, and the whales had moved far enough off now that she had none of their song to hum along to, so she was contentedly snoozing.

  A full moon hung in a clear, starry sky that surrounded the opal-colored orb like a net of diamonds. They were nearing their destination—the Panama Canal. Sandy and the kits were playing leapfrog, soaring out of the water, whizzing over each other’s backs. Then Sandy sailed up and arched across the sea so far that she looked like a flying saucer skimming above the surface.

  Pearl pulled out her 1st Scuba CA-2 camera. She definitely wanted to capture this moment for her scrapbook. Then, she started to wonder, do mermaids have scrapbooks, or even real homes? Is everything I’ve ever known and loved gone now?

  She’d always dreamed of being a mermaid, but she’d never, ever thought it would really happen. She never wanted to lose her parents, her home, or her friends. Pearl still wanted her stuffed animals and figurines, chocolate chip cookies, pizza, and fresh berries. And, of course, she still wanted to celebrate the holidays, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. If she never got to have turkey with gravy and cranberry sauce, stuffing, green bean casserole, and her mother’s special Jell-O salad again, she would just die.

  She also missed her gymnastics and ballet classes. Pearl was supposed to be a sugar plum fairy this year in “The Nutcracker.” But now, she was all alone. Who would her friends be? She was certainly never going to go to her high school prom. Who would she spend the holidays with? Was she ever going to meet her grandmother? And if she did, what was she like? She was three thousand years old. What kind of shape might she be in? She might not even be able to read to her, let alone play with her. Do they make wheelchairs for mermaids? How fast can a geriatric mermaid swim, anyway?

  Pearl was being careful not to ruin things for Sandy and the kits by trying to keep happy thoughts running across the front of her mind. This little anxiety session was going on under the surface.

  She turned to watch the three of them playing happily in the moonlight and realized how close they had come to losing each other. Now they were bigger and stronger than ever, and though Pearl was unaware of the fact, they would create a new species of manta rays—the Royal Angel Rays—which would be the symbol of her own house someday.

  As she watched them, she realized how much she had grown to love them. They were her friends, and she should be grateful for the miracle of that. Her mother had always told her she was special, had always called her a princess and said she was going to live a long and glorious life. She still had no idea of all the wonders she would encounter in her new life. There might

  be things ten times better in the ocean than TV and ice cream. Her grandmother would show her all the things she wanted to see.

  Then Pearl saw the lights. A great big cruise ship that looked like a giant constellation of stars was sailing straight toward her.

  “A ship! Sandy! Coral! Prickle!
It’s a ship!” Suddenly feeling much stronger, she dove under the water and surged toward it at top mermaid speed, a speed that made tuna look like land turtles!

  The ship was the Panama Princess, a large, luxury cruise ship that routinely took passengers back and forth through the canal and up and down the Pacific coast. It was just what she needed. There were several lifeboats mounted on the outside of the ship, just below the handrails, at deck level. It would be easy for her to rise up on a water pillar and slip into one of them without being seen. She was just waiting for Sandy, the kits, and the dolphins to catch up, so she could say good-bye. Before she could really digest what that would mean to her, they were there rising up out of the water to join her.

  “Princess!” Sandy blurted out as she broke water. “We tried to keep up with you, but we couldn’t.”

  “I’m sorry, Sandy,” Pearl explained. “I was just so excited to find the right ship to take me through the canal.”

  “The great water link?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes, the great water link.” Pearl nodded.

  “Don’t leave us, Princess!” Prickle squealed.

  “We love you, Princess! Stay with us,” Coral pleaded.

  “Oh, you know I would never leave you if I had a choice.” Pearl kissed them both. “But the queen—my grandmother—has commanded that I meet her as soon as possible in Bermuda. So I have to go.”

  “Yes,” said Coral reverently.

  “You must obey the Queen of the Oceans,” said Prickle.

  That was the moment that Slammer and Jumper rose up out of the waves, scolding her for running off without them. “Where is Princess going? Why did you not tell Slammer and Jumper? Princess needs us to protect her. She shouldn’t go anywhere without Slammer and Jumper!”