Chapter 7
Seven
“Y-you talk?” Angie sputtered, her aim unwavering. He spoke, and she understood him. Her mouth slackened.
His eyes caught hers, and he lowered one hand. Angie stepped back, muscles twitching.
If she had to shoot, she prayed her aim would be true.
Nodding, he lowered the other hand, his body still tensed. He hadn’t blinked once, long, thick eyelashes wide open and framing bright topaz-brown irises.
Angie hadn’t blinked either. Her eyes were starting to dry, but she couldn’t blink and have him flee, or strike at her.
“I understand you,” she whispered.
“Evidently I’ve learned to speak your language, landwalker.”
“B-but how?”
“On second thought, I could be making nonsensical noises you happen to understand.” The merman’s upper lip curled into a disdained sneer.
“Did you think I communicated with bioluminescence, like jellyfish? Or perhaps I use echolocation like a whale. We cannot possibly be intelligent enough to form words!”
Angie held her body taut, containing the fury threatening to burst forth. “I get the point. You don’t have to be an ass.”
His tail relaxed, resting beside him. Luminous maroon flickered beneath the sun, brightening each scale down to the silver tips of his dorsal fin. “Why haven’t you killed me yet? You’ve killed several of us already.” His silvery voice took on a hard, jagged edge.
“What?” Angie’s tone became as tight as her eyebrows she’d drawn together. Her legs ached from keeping them in a wide base with knees bent, and she straightened.
Her brain hadn’t processed the fact that she was staring a merman in the eye, and that they were communicating.
If this passed for communication.
The merfolk were stealing food, starving her fellow villagers. They weren’t the cutesy, pretty creatures she grew up thinking they were.
She had been so wrong about them.
“You just killed two of ours!” His fingers gripped hard at the sand.
“I didn’t kill any of your filthy kind.” Angie spat the words through gritted teeth.
Shoot him now and think later, Angie.
Her finger wouldn’t cooperate.
“Perhaps not you, but one of your two-legged kind.” He sneered at the last word, voice mocking.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t tried to assault her. Then again, he appeared unarmed, and she had a gun pointed at his face. Her thoughts were a dark cloud in her mind, jumbled like tangled knots in her brain.
Their standdown hadn’t ceased, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
Angie inched forward.
His shoulders tensed.
“Mocking me is a really good look for you.” Her finger grazed the trigger. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot.”
The merman stared her dead in the eye, challenging her. “I’m not stopping you.”
Angie’s grip faltered. “You know what? You all are hoarding fish, sea life, the food we need to survive. Why?” An explosion of fury rose from her chest and reached her mouth.
“We’re forced to eat fish that are unsustainable and unhealthy for us, and now we’re decimating the fish populations even more! ”
“You humans need to be taught a lesson about the damage you’ve done to the ocean.” The muscles in his neck became tightly coiled cords.
“Oh, give me a break. When people are hungry and about to lose their livelihoods, you really think they’re going to sit back and think, ‘Wow, it’s because the mer want to teach us a lesson?
’” Angie’s ears pounded. He opened his mouth to say something else, but she cut him off.
“No, they’re going to do whatever they need to survive. ”
“Extremes may be needed to force a change,” he deadpanned when she was done.
“I disagree. People need time to adjust to change.” The pounding in Angie’s ears subsided. “So, you’re going to starve us, then.” She stepped closer, gun still aimed to his forehead.
Half his lips curled into a taunting smile. “Maybe you greedy humans deserve it.”
Angie shook with rage. She was a breath away from pulling the trigger when he pushed off from his hands. His muscular tail curled and swept the sea’s surface, stirring up a roaring wave crowned with a thick film of seafoam before he disappeared beneath.
The wave rushed in her direction, a bat-of-the-eye away from crashing over her with glacial brine. Thinking fast, Angie scrambled out of its path. The wave’s edges gripped her legs, icy liquid seeping through her long cargo pants and clinging to her calves.
Her lower leg muscles clenched, each droplet a tiny knife driving into her skin.
The water calmed when the merman left. Angie flipped the safety switch on her Glock and shoved it back into her backpack, shivering.
Once she was far enough from the shoreline, she sucked in another shallow, trembling breath, her nerves firing haphazard jolts and making her skin tingle.
Angie flung the backpack over her shoulder and stormed toward the dock entrance, the merman’s words playing in her mind– “Maybe you humans deserve it.”
Her face tightened, and her nails bit into her palms.
Asshole.
Angie’s cheeks still burned hours later, fuming about her encounter with the rude merman.
Who did he think he was?
How the Hells did he know he was in danger when she pointed a gun at him?
And how the fuck could he speak and understand English?
She polished off her second glass of Pinot Noir of the night.
The rest of her family was gathered in the dining room of Mia and Nick’s single-family house in the more populated southeast Creston and were enjoying a small bowl of egg fried rice, two slices of reindeer sausage, half of a fry bread, and a cup of berry cobbler.
It was a far cry from the plentiful, elaborate meals Mia and Nick prepared when their families visited. In Chinese culture, food was love.
Some of her favorite foods were on the table, but she hadn’t left the comfort of the toasty electric fireplace, sitting on the gray couch closest to it. She couldn’t eat when she was so deep in thought.
“Angie āyí.” Rosie pulled at her sleeve. She peered at her with those gold-flecked, hazel eyes that Angie adored. “What are you doing?”
“Just thinking about some stuff.” Stashing her phone in her pocket, Angie beckoned her to sit next to her, and Rosie climbed on the couch. “What’s up, love?”
“Are you sad?”
She reached over to ruffle her wavy brown hair, the alcohol shooting straight to her head when she moved her arm.
When had she become such a lightweight? She’d spent a good part of junior year in college partying with her dormmates and their sororities.
Then her world tilted on its axis after getting news of Māma’s passing, swept away in a freak scuba diving accident.
At the time, she had come home for the funeral and left the next day, unwilling to return to the hometown where she and Māma had shared so many happy memories.
When she returned to school, she drowned her grief in studying and alcohol.
She stopped when senior year started, attended therapy, and hadn’t touched more than a single glass of wine in one sitting since.
It was as if her body didn’t know how to handle the second glass, but Angie resolved to stop after this one.
“Why do you think I’m sad?” She flashed a smile at her, and Rosie returned it with a gap-toothed one of her own.
“Cause you’re not talking to anyone. You’re sitting here by yourself when everyone else is over there.
” She pointed to Mia, Nick, and Bàba, their necks bent forward in conversation, a second bottle of Malbec opened before them.
“They must be talking about something serious. None of them are smiling.”
Angie’s face fell, and she groaned while rising to her feet, her head swimming while she regained her balance. “You’re right, I should stop being antisocial.”
“Yeah, don’t be antisocial! And you’ll come play with me later?”
“Of course.”
Leave it to a kid to tell her to get off her ass and go spend time with family.
Rosie ran off, and Angie walked to the dining table, stopping for a glass of water. Mia brightened when she saw her.
“Look who decided to join us again. More wine?” Mia waved at the second, half-empty bottle, their three wine glasses half full.
“Ah, no thanks.” Angie plopped into an empty chair and sipped the water. Refreshing and cooling, it slid down her throat.
“Yeah, you have that Asian flush going.” Nick leaned back in his chair and grinned like a fool.
Angie faced him and didn’t say a word.
“Nick, stop.” Mia put her palms to her cheeks and squeezed them together, muffling an exasperated groan. “Angie, are you okay? You looked lost in your own world there. I wanted to go talk to you, but it didn’t look like you wanted to be bothered.”
Before Angie replied, Bàba spoke up. “I meant to tell you all. We killed another merman today.” Until now, he’d been quietly sipping his wine and staring at his phone like it held the secret of the missing fish.
“What? When?” Angie dug her short nails into the plastic navy-blue tablecloth. Could it have been the same merman who mocked her and lashed a stream of salt at her earlier?
“After you left. That’s why I didn’t get to tell you once it happened.” Bàba gave her a sympathetic nod, refilling his wine glass.
Angie set her lips in a grim line. She wavered between gladness that there would be one less fish-creature to take their food supply, and a sense of loss that maybe she could have found some use for him, the only mer who was known to have spoken to a human.
She had to know. “Wh-what color was the tail?”
“The tail?” Bàba furrowed his brow, thinking. “I believe it was green.”
“Turquoise, to be exact,” Nick added, sounding a tad too smug.
“Maybe now that a few of them are dead, they’ll start getting the hint and give us our fucking seafood back.
” Her face drained of blood, Mia put a warning hand on her husband’s forearm, but he continued.
Angie heard enough stories from Mia about his ramblings when he had too much to drink.
“Because if they don’t, we’ll hunt them down. Right, Dad?”
Angie hated it when he called Bàba Dad because it reminded her that she was related to him through marriage. Bàba nodded, silent.
“Oh.” Her chest deflated.
“Why did you ask about the tail color?” Bàba’s eyes narrowed, facing her.
She cleared her throat and her head. “Before I left today, I heard a loud splash. So, I went to investigate. And I saw one.”
“A merman?” Mia’s jaw dropped.
Even Nick listened during her confession. Bàba’s eyes burned a hole into her head. Nick put his wine glass down. “Why didn’t you kill it? Or did you?”
She shook her head, squeezing her hands together. It was a good question, why couldn’t she finish him? “He got away before I could pull the trigger,” she fibbed.
“Don’t hesitate next time. They’re just fish.
” Nick flashed her a sly, drunken smile.
“Or, if you’re too scared, you can call one of us men to do it for you.
” He sat back and draped a lazy arm around the back of Mia’s chair, using his free arm to sweep an arc over the table.
“You don’t see one chunk of fish, or crab or lobster meat, or even one single clam here, do you?
They’re killing us off slowly. I say we round them up and execute them. ”
Angie flinched, thinking back to Jenny and Dave. Yes, they had enough food for now, and their own stores could last them another month if they ate half of what they normally did. But many of her fellow villagers didn’t.
Nick continued. “The fishing nets are sitting empty right now. Why not use those to catch more mer, eh? Angela? Mia? What do you girls think?”
Angie flinched at Nick’s words and calling them girls.
Patience, Angie. Don’t snap at him in front of Mia.
She thought back to the way the merman spoke to her. Thought of Jenny and Dave and the others she grew up with, outside scouring for food. Seeing the fishermen and women come off their boats with their nets a quarter full at best.
Without regarding Nick, Angie looked at Mia and Bàba and squared her shoulders. “I’m happy to help.”