East Five
Impossible… Possibilities
She is life. . . for me. . .
I held on to my beer bottle this time. Letting go of anything, including the grandpa I hated only hours ago, made my stomach turn violently. “This is how you are, Styx.”
He explained, “My mermaid, Lennox’s mother, her name was River.
Well, that is the English version and much easier to pronounce.
That’s what I learned that day on the boat.
Also explained was that my son was to take her place, guarding the boundary between two different worlds.
” He shook his head. “Lennox was just a child. What was I supposed to do? Let some sea creature take him from me? When all this was my fault?” He got up from the stool and began pacing.
“Me having sex with River was how this all started anyway. So, I offered myself. Promising to help guard their boundary from above.” Styx faced me.
“This was a first-of-its-kind offer. A human helping the underworld.”
“Why do I feel I’m missing the ‘catch’?” Waiting for a reply, I guzzled my beer. I needed that calmness again.
He watched me, agreeing, “Right,” then rushed to the fridge for two fresh bottles.
Handing me one, he continued, “Well, I had over a decade before the ‘catch’ was to be cashed in. Lennox was to impregnate another mermaid.” He held up a hand to stop me.
“Sounds creepy to guarantee your son’s future ‘prospects’, but it was that or he, a little boy, be dragged underwater to, well, I’m not sure, to be honest. I had to buy us time to figure a way out of this mess. ”
Styx promised nothing was impossible, but his circumstances back then sounded to be just that.
If I were ever to have a child, I hope he or she never has to…
Realizing I was the product of such a union, and have been aching to be inside Saleeni, I took a sip of beer because this was far from a white and black situation.
He continued, “I did my best to research what I was up against, but the closest I could find on a powerful Greek merman was that he could be a water nymph or a damn sea fairy—none of which was anything like what I made a deal with.” He shook his head.
“Not that any of that mattered. At a young age, Lennox fell in love with your mama. Absolutely refused when his time had come to ‘do the deed’.” Holding a beer, his arm hung at his side as if too heavy to lift.
“That love, so pure and true, cost us dearly. It would start an avalanche of consequences.” After a big swig of beer, he started pacing again.
“I had no idea of all that we would have to face.”
“Wait, what do you mean?”
“Myths are like the bible. The tales and scriptures are open to lots of interpretations.” He tapped his temple.
“Remember our talk about nothing being as it seems?” He carried on, “With my promise to the non-sea fairy, it was as if I verbally dipped my son in water—part of the myth—that carried a hefty price, except it wasn’t him with the weakness, per se.
My son falling in love with a human was my Achilles heel.
His happiness was all my heart wanted.” He stomped his boot.
“Regretting ever having sex with River was such a double-edged sword. Had I not been with her, none of this would have happened. Yet,” he grimaced, “nor would I have Lennox.” He eyed me. “Or…”
He wouldn’t have me.
It was shocking, but at that very second, on top of my sympathy for Styx, I was suddenly realizing that not having me meant I would never have had… “Saleeni.”
“Now you are getting a grasp of how layered this all is.” He exhaled.
“Another example? River Styx mythology says that if an Olympian god broke an oath, they would be forced to drink water that caused a coma, then they would be exiled for nine years. No, I wasn’t exiled, but your father was without his love for—” He waited for me to catch on.
Life Date. My jaw hung. “I turned ten the day he died.”
“Yup!” Styx yanked on his hair with one hand. “And, before that, her death sent him into a deep depression, a coma, in a sense. See what I’m saying?”
I covered my mouth. How can this be?
Styx grabbed his chest. “Then you ‘drank’—drowned—from the water after the bridge explosion, had a touch-and-go coma—being brought back to life. Then—” He waited.
Sitting forward, hoping it would help me breathe, I mumbled, “I was ‘exiled’ for eight years.”
“Kind of balanced out, right?” He started pacing again. “Also? It is written that the River Styx carries the power to grant properties. River died giving birth to Lennox, so in came a job for me.”
Styx faced me, again hoping I was following.
I jumped to my feet. “You’re giving me the properties that Noma—Holy shit, Styx!”
“I know! Is this all a coincidence?”
I downed my beer. Can’t be, right?
Marching to a fifty-gallon garbage can half-filled with construction debris, I threw away the empty bottle and tried to keep all this straight. “But do you even know why River died?”
He inhaled… Then exhaled heavily. “Over the years of seeing the Dude, who-refused-to-share-his-name, I learned bits and pieces, like them restoring deep in the water, but from what I understood, there was a decline in their population from failed procreating. He claimed the ‘act’ delivered certain abilities. What abilities? I have no clue. Also, from what I understood through his horrid English, the water’s pollution had possibly altered fertility, which he was pissed about.
‘My reach limited,’ he would incorrectly say.
About everything else, he wasn’t exactly forthcoming, understandably, I suppose.
Secrets are secrets for good reasons—” He gestured to me.
“As I’m sure you gathered.” He shook his head as if to clear it.
“Then Dude spoke about sirens in the females becoming more ‘powerful’. ‘Out of his reach’ again.” Styx blew at his bottom lip before adding, “His tone told me he wasn’t thrilled about the females taking matters into their own hands, paraphrasing, if you catch my drift.
” He paused. “Drift.” Then chuckled. “I could connect these sea jokes all day long.”
“Styx,” I grumbled, to keep him focused.
“Right. Okay. Apparently, the females succeeded in convincing us mere humans that we wanted to do the deed. Not that I ever heard beautiful singing or anything. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much success.
No pregnancies were happening,” Styx puffed his chest, “but Gramps got it done.” He thumbed his nose as if his ego was derailing him from the story.
After rolling my eyes at his boasting, I asked an important question. “So, if everything Sea-Dude said is correct—the truth, that the females needed humans to reproduce—then why—”
I drifted into my thoughts until Styx asked, “Why what?”
“Why did River give Dad, an infant needed in the underworld, to you?” I shrugged, not wanting to sound stupid or ask a question he already had an answer for, but… “Instead of her own kind? Had she not, you wouldn’t even know he was alive, right?”
Styx froze for some time before saying, “I’d been so relieved to keep my son, and worried about what was coming next, I never thought about that glaring part of the past. I was so scared, doing whatever was asked of me, I never stopped to think why some… ‘god’… even needed me.”
It was one thing to try and imagine this whole scenario, Styx procreating with a mermaid, but then to imagine why she changed her mind, surrendering the halfling to a mere human. Chills ran up my spine. “What killed her? River, I mean.”
Styx’s lips vibrated off each other like a motorboat as he blew out air, his eyes filling with doubt. “I assumed the birth.”
What if it wasn’t the birth? Still by the garbage can, I rubbed my thighs, getting itchy to have Saleeni in my sights. Is she in danger? “Where is the Sea-Dude now?”
Growling at a vibrating cell phone in his back pocket, Styx retrieved it. While reading the message, he absentmindedly answered me. “Haven’t seen him since the explosion.”
Now I was the one who froze. “How about any of the others?” I’d been wondering where Saleeni’s family was.
He typed on his phone, then answered me. “No. Besides River, he’s the only sea-dude or dudette I’d ever actually seen until Saleeni after the explosion—”
Electrical pulses took place inside me. “Please explain.”
Styx looked spooked, now staring at me. “When you were in the hospital, I talked to Noma on the phone. She was so agitated, understandably, but—’
The memory of one time waking in the hospital bed, hearing Noma on the phone, bolted through me. I didn’t know who she was speaking to, but now I did, and finished his sentence. “But she couldn’t understand how I made it to the clubhouse. Placed on top of a ten-foot wall.”
He swallowed, nodding. “Keeping my vow of secrecy, I tried to come up with reasons why your landing there was plausible.”
I repeated what Noma had said to him. “She told you not to treat her like she was stupid.”
His eyes drifted shut as if his mind was showing him something he had missed. “After making sure you weren’t followed when leaving the hospital…”
Now my eyes closed. I remembered that night, being rushed into a multi-level parking garage, and seeing a bike. Noma had promised he was a ‘friendly’. My grandpa was there the whole time, watching over us.
Styx continued, “… I had to know. Had we truly not wasted our time? Was it possible? Had a little female mermaid saved your life? I was told you had a destiny. We believed it. We prayed for you not to be heartbroken like Lennox.”
My eyes opened. “Who are we?”
“Well, besides my brothers …” His heart was raw and exposed as he softly told me, “Your dad.”
I thought of all my leathered uncles, how they all treated me as if I was the star in their eyes. Now I knew why. They knew what Dad and I were. And they all were trying to protect us both.
My hand lay on my chest as I silently thanked them for a loyalty I didn’t believe I had earned. I thanked them for a sacrifice beyond any other, by losing their lives.