Chapter Thirty
M oonrise was less than two hours away. I had to hurry. Lilia came with me, and we made it back to the shipwreck in record time. I swam so hard every muscle in my tail screamed in pain. Lilia panted, out of breath, but didn’t complain as we tore through the ship. There had to be something. Anything.
“Merrow–”
“No, stop. We don’t have time–”
She grabbed my arms, forcing me to stop moving but my eyes kept scanning the wreckage. Nothing stuck out. Nothing seemed familiar. Nothing sparked with touches of gold.
“Merrow!”
“What!”
“Stop, please. Just listen.”
“Owen is going to die! And so is everyone else–”
“They won’t, and you know how to save them.” Lilia’s voice turned icy, and I didn’t recognize it. Her. This wasn’t like her. She looked away, eyes rimmed red. Something happened while I was on land–something they didn’t tell me about.
“What happened?” My voice was swallowed by the tides, and Lilia took so long to respond to me that I didn’t think that she heard me.
“Once you left, it was like… you took the magic with you, Merrow. Everyone started getting so sick. It’s like, like we can’t exist without all of us together. You saw them! The elders. And a few of the younger mermaids started acting weird. They stopped talking and would dart around, trying to hide from us. They were becoming ocean dwellers.”
“But my mother’s fins–”
“Some of us began the human shift. Mostly the elders.”
“We just have to find Anahita, or more scales!”
Lilia let go of me, the fight in her finally gone. She sighed so bone-deep that it rippled through me. When I started searching the wreckage again in earnest, Lilia half-heartedly dug too.
“Do you love him? Truly?” she finally asked. Lilia’s hair floated around us instead of staying contained in the braid we normally wore. She looked so much more formidable with her hair down.
“I do.” The confession came pouring out of me, and I wanted to tell her–my dearest friend, my sister–how much he meant to me, how beautiful his heart was, and how desperately I didn’t want anything to hurt him. How I didn’t want to hurt him.
“I don’t think there’s anything here to find,” she said. And I had to agree. The shipwreck was just a wreck now, barely even still ship-like. It seemed like it was in more chaos than just hours ago when Owen and I scavenged through it.
Being away from him left a hole in me; I was hollowed out and breaking apart.
“Please,” I pleaded to no one, “please help me. ”
“Merrow! Look at this!” Lilia called, and I swam over to her. She tugged on something, trying to move the rotted planks of wood.
“What is it?”
“I found more scales!” Lilia and I gathered them up, and she took an extra moment to just examine them. “They really are so beautiful. I can feel the magic in them.”
“I could too. I think Owen felt something, but he doesn’t know what magic feels like. The humans don’t have any magic.”
“Soon we won’t either,” she said. Lilia turned the scale over and over in her palm, taking in all of the colors. This one wasn’t just gold; it was iridescent like a rainbow. An idea took root in my mind, and I tried to hang on to it, let it fully form before it slipped away with the waves.
“Lilia, what if we summon her? Anahita?”
“Summon her? How?”
“A song, like how the elders call to us to come home. We can call her! She’s a White Tide, I found one of our symbols. It’ll work! We have to try. If she comes, then maybe she will help us–”
“I’ve never called someone before, have you?”
“No, but we can use the scales. We can use her own magic, and I’m sure she will come.” Lilia watched me with what looked like pity in her eyes. She’d do it, if only to pacify me. But I felt it, this was going to work. It just had to.
Lilia and I swam to open water, feeling for the current. I wanted the perfect spot, the perfect current for the song to carry through the seas. We both stopped at the same time, faces up as the current swept by us. The tug of it pulled at some deep, primal part of me. It was the call of the waves, a magic so pure that all merfolk and ocean dwellers obeyed it.
“Here,” I said, and she nodded. We only had a couple scales, one for each of us. Lilia popped one in her mouth and I did the same. We chewed and chewed, until the light shone against our skin. The magic coated us until I felt it lighting up my nerves, activating some ancient, forgotten power in me. My song nearly clawed its way out of my gullet, desperate for the waves to consume every note. We glittered in the darkness. Just like she had.
“We can do this,” I breathed, more to myself than Lilia.
Lilia’s voice filled the silence, high and clear. The waves responded, wrapping her in a torrent of energy. She sang louder, letting the notes carry. I joined in, my voice a little lower than her cheery soprano, invoking the gods and goddesses. Color filled the water around us, a rainbow of light and music. The energy electrified me, like this was how we were meant to be, meant to live! This glorious, beautiful magic encased us as the song lifted us.
We sang to the waves. We sang to the ocean dwellers. We sang to the magic coursing through our veins, louder and louder until the song itself became a rainbow wave of magic. It twirled around our tails, up our bodies until the light poured from us.
It glittered, cutting through the darkness like our own ray of sunlight. I held my arms up in praise, ready to begin a dance, and Lilia joined me. Our dance flowed with the magic, weaving between us and coloring our skin and scales and tails. I’d never felt the rush of energy like this before, and we didn’t stop. I sang with all my heart until my eyes welled up with tears.
“Anahita, come home,” we sang together, letting the magic invoke her. Lilia’s voice seemed to fill every drop of water in the ocean. Her lyrical, sweet voice rang out and I did my best to keep up with her, harmonizing and adding whatever magic I could.
“Anahita, come home,” we sang again and again. The magic lifted and lifted, like a bubble forming in my chest, until our song crescendoed. It blasted through the ocean like a feral cry and we felt it. We felt the blast of the call reverberate through our bodies, Lilia’s shocked face all the evidence that I needed that she felt it too .
“Merrow, look,” she said, and the hope that it was Anahita nearly wiped me out. I scanned, looking for her, and saw nothing but darkness. Crushing, everlasting defeat wracked my body so hard, I felt my bones dying to break.
“I don’t see her,” I said, the defeat so heavy in me that I let myself sink deeper in the water.
“No, it’s moonrise,” she said. I whirled, looking up to try to see through the waves. I couldn’t. It was too dark.
Owen would be changing back at any moment–
My fins ached and I felt the first tear, splitting them apart. I screamed and Lilia grabbed me, instantly dragging me up and up and up.
I kicked as much as I could, my scales falling away rapidly. They fell and floated in the water like a trail of petals, just out of my reach. No, no, no, not yet! I sucked in as much water as my lungs would hold, breath to keep me alive and Lilia blazed a trail trying to bring me to the surface.
“Hang on, hang on, we’re almost there,” she gritted out, holding me under my arms. I watched the trail of scales float behind us, swirling and bobbing in the water.
If I was changing, then Owen was too. I’d have to find him on the land, and figure it out from there. Once we were on land everything would work out–Anahita had to have heard us calling. Lilia would tell her what was going on, and things would work out. They had to.
My fins were gone and I saw my now-familiar feet. They were so heavy and every nerve in my human body burned as I kicked my way up. This body wasn’t made for the water, and every blasted kick and swipe of my arms reminded me of that. The water in my lungs was no longer helping me, but drowning. I needed air so desperately that I thought that I would die here. The surface seemed so far away; it looked impossible to reach.
“Hang on!” Lilia screamed and she picked up the pace again, the strength of her body bouncing me around like I was weightless .
When my head finally burst through the surface and I took a gasping, shaking breath of air, I nearly cried. Lilia coughed and choked once she was out of the water too. She ducked her head back down, taking a breath before coming back up.
“I’ll help you to the shore,” she said. Her words sounded strange in my ears.
“We have to find Owen!”
“I’ll help you, but you can’t stay in open water like this, it’s not safe for a human.” I flipped around in her arms to hug her. Lilia held me steady before she started swimming toward the land.
“Do you think he’s okay?” I asked, and Lilia didn’t respond.
“We’ll know soon enough,” she said.
“Thank you, for everything.”
“Merrow, you are my sister. I’d do anything for you, you know that.”
“I don’t think you realize how much I love you.”
“Oh I know, that’s why I’m dragging a human mermaid through the water.” She ducked down again for another breath. “Once you have your fins again, permanently, we’re going to talk about this whole ordeal and how I can avoid making every one of these mistakes.”
“Owen isn’t a mistake,” I countered and she laughed.
“Sure, that’s why we’re in this mess.” Her laugh was cut off from the lack of water, but the sound warmed my heart. After I coughed out the rest of the water and let it drain off of my face, I watched the moon. It was nearly a half moon, and it hung low and bright in the sky, so close it looked like I could touch it.
“The land walkers aren’t so bad,” I said absently as I stared at the moon.
“No one said they were terrible, Merrow. We just need more magic.”
“Once I’m back on land, will you look for Anahita? Before we return tomorrow?”
“I promise, I’ll look for her. ”
“I hope Owen made it back to the shore,” I said, the words trailing off as we approached the shoreline. Lilia knew where to go even without me explaining. The land looked so different at night; empty and lifeless. Owen’s apartment building was in the distance. I remembered all of the plants hanging from the balconies and windows. Owen explained what each one was along with what a balcony was. Humans so badly wanted to escape the ground, I realized. I wondered if Owen felt that pull too, if that was why he was so willing to come to the seas with me.
No, it’s because he loves me.
Shore was so close that I could feel it. The water was warmer and the buildings of Owen’s town were practically on top of us now.
“It’s so large,” Lilia whispered, looking at the buildings.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
She ducked down again, needing air. “I like the water more.” Her words finally sounded too unlike the human tongue for me to really understand her. Lilia pressed a kiss to my brow and went back under water, back to our home. As I dragged myself up on the shore, getting the feel for my legs again, I wondered if the ocean was still my home. The sparkling lights and murmur of the town coming alive made me pause the water’s edge.
I was going to miss this world.
But for now, I snuck up the beach, trying to avoid as many humans as possible. The clothes that Owen and I left were nowhere to be found; I wasn’t even sure if we were near the same stretch of beach, but I knew my way back to the Saltwater sisters.
I crept along, staying in the shadows of the boardwalk. The stores were still open, humans freely enjoying themselves without a care in the world. I was so horribly jealous that they knew nothing of our fate that my heart was filled with disdain for them. How easy life would be without this ritual threatening to kill us both. I kept moving, slow and out of sight, until I finally saw the sister’s cafe sign lit up. They were waiting for us .
My feet were too tender and soft for the rocky, sharp ground so I moved slowly, padding my way through the streets until I reached the shop.
Serita, Tia, and Adara waited at the backdoor, ready for me. The door swung open and they pulled me inside, hugging me tight. Serita wrapped a robe around me that made me think of Owen’s soft blue one.
“Where’s Owen? Why aren’t you together?” Adara asked. Tia held my face, checking me over for any wounds, as I explained what happened.
“You have to go back,” Serita finally said. “We felt the call of your magic even on the land. I’m sure Anahita felt it too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, now we just have to find Owen,” Tia said. They ushered me up the stairs, instantly finding clothes for me to wear. Adara slipped a dress over my head, and the brush of cloth against my skin was comforting and familiar. It felt like I was back in Owen’s home, in his clothes, in his bed.
“Should we go to the beach?” Adara asked her sisters, and they nodded.
“Let’s bring towels and clothes. We can’t have him running through town naked either,” Serita said. Tia immediately started, shuffling around until she returned with small packs for us. Clothes, small towels, drinkable water. She handed one to me and I took a long drink. Even the water on land was different. I drank until the water ran down my chin, and Tia wiped it away with her sleeve.
“It’s an hour past moonrise. We don’t have a lot of time,” Serita said. What she didn't say was before he died , but I felt it. We all hurried out the door. I wanted to talk to Anne Marie, but what would I even say? I came back without him? I couldn’t face her.
“What if we can’t find him?” I asked.
“We don’t think like that yet, child. Right now we have to find him. You only have a few more hours before the ritual will call you back to the ocean forever,” Serita said .
“Will I ever get to come back to the land?” I asked. There was so much hope in my heart that I refused to look at them as the words came out. I already knew the answer.
“No, child, you won’t come back,” Serita said, She cupped my cheek, her thumb tracing small circles. “And we will miss you, more than you will ever know.”
I stared into the eyes of this human woman–hard as stone but just as reliable. Serita would weather any storm, hold her sisters together no matter the cost. Just like Lilia was doing for me.
“Let’s hurry,” Adara said, and we walked back to the beach in silence.