Chapter 12
Listening to Xander talk about his homeland was a lot like attending story hour at the local library.
What he described sounded like Narnia, Wonderland, and Oz all rolled into one.
He painted the picture of an inky-dark undersea world where schools of bioluminescent fish traveled through the water like strings of moving party lights and multicolored coral reefs dotted the landscape like beautiful midnight gardens.
“What’s it called?” I asked. “Does where you come from have a name?”
Xander had to think about that. “Not one that I can express through words,” he said. His mouth curved into a warm, contemplative smile. “It’s more of a feeling in the heart.”
I didn’t exactly understand that, but I believed him all the same.
Xander chattered on. Apparently, like those fictional realms that could only be reached by crawling through a wardrobe or falling down a rabbit hole or following a yellow brick road, his realm also had a weirdly specific point of access: an underwater portal located a couple of miles off the Jersey coast.
“What do you mean, a ‘portal’?” I asked, interrupting him.
“Like a doorway,” he said. “But there’s no actual door. There’s just…”
“Magic?” I asked, not hiding my skepticism.
He nodded in earnest. “Magic.”
On reflex, I opened my mouth to say that magic wasn’t real—only, how could I? He was here, wasn’t he? He was real.
“Go on,” I said instead.
Xander told me that, unlike the other merpeople, he’d always been curious about the human world.
The “dry world” was how he put it. Ever since he was a boy, he’d been swimming out beyond the portal to learn about us “dry-landers.” He had a collection of objects from our world that he’d scavenged from the ocean bottom—car bumpers, plates and cups and eating utensils, a saxophone that no longer worked.
And at high tide, he even used to swim up under the piers and the docks and the boardwalks, eavesdropping on random folks.
“Is that how you learned to speak English?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “I was mostly able to understand what everyone was saying because of this.” He held out his necklace and, pulling it taut, he showed me one seashell in particular.
“Magic interpreter shell?” I asked. Did Google Translate have some otherworldly competition?
That made him chuckle. “Magic interpreter shell,” he confirmed with a nod. “Or, as we call it, a translation charm. It’s not always perfectly accurate, but it does an adequate job. And it’s getting better. It’s been learning from you. From our conversations.”
I considered that. Actually, Xander’s language skills did seem to be improving. We were having fewer and fewer miscommunications. But the implication of that…
“So,” I said slowly, “there’s magic happening between us right now?”
Too late, I realized what I’d just said, and—gah!—I felt my cheeks flush as I wondered what the translation charm was going to do with that.
“Yes,” Xander said, his gaze fixed on me. “There’s magic happening between us right now.”
I swallowed. His eyes really were so incredibly green. Was it possible they’d gotten greener in just the time we’d been sitting here?
Squirming in my seat, I looked away before the heat in my face started to spread lower. My gaze landed on the necklace, on the shell he’d just identified. I searched my brain for something coherent to say. “And did you, uh—did you make the magic necklace yourself?” I stammered.
“Oh, no,” he said. “It was made for me. By the Sea Wizard.”
“The Sea Wizard?”
“The Sea Wizard has the ability to wrangle the free-flowing magic in our kingdom and harness it to specific objects, for specific purposes,” Xander explained. “Everyone gets a necklace of basic charms at birth. Then, throughout our lives, we may receive other charms. For other purposes.”
Still staring at the necklace, I took a moment to digest that.
“So,” I said, “all the shells and beads and whatever have a different…magic?”
“Yes.”
Something occurred to me. Unable to stop myself, I leaned forward. Peered closer.
“Then which one—” My voice broke off. With all the emotions suddenly welling up inside me, I couldn’t finish my question.
But Xander didn’t need me to. First, he indicated a small pink seashell. “This one relieved your pain,” he said softly. “It’s a healing charm.” Then, he pointed to a bead like a pearl—well, it probably was a pearl. “And this is an underwater breathing charm.”
I stared at the shell and the lustrous orb.
I’d always known I’d been fortunate that day as a teenager.
But until right this minute, I didn’t appreciate how fortunate.
If Xander hadn’t chosen that specific day at that specific time to cross the portal—and if he hadn’t had these charms at his disposal to use on me—the outcome would have been very different. Tragically different.
“I—I’m so glad,” was all I could manage to say.
“Me too,” said Xander quietly.
Neither of us said anything else for a little while.
My feelings were all over the place, disorganized and messy, and I really wanted to Marie Kondo the shit out of them.
But I doubted even the queen of tidying up could have made sense of the chaos.
So instead, I just sat with all the thoughts and feels and let them wash over me.
And I told myself to breathe through it.
Hell, if I could breathe underwater, then I could—
“Hang on,” I said, looking up at Xander. “You need a charm to breathe underwater?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not really.”
“Then why do you even have it?”
“I wondered that too,” he said. “I wondered why the Sea Wizard would have given me a charm that I didn’t need.” He smiled at me. “But then, I did need it.”
I took this in.
“So,” I said, “you’re saying that this Sea Wizard saw me coming?”
“He must have.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“No,” he said. “That’s magic.”
Again, I wanted to argue the point. But as I stared across the counter at him, I suddenly remembered the first time I’d met his gaze. Not as a woman, but as a drowning young girl. It had been heart-stopping. Like seeing my future. My…destiny.
Quickly, I looked away.
Oh, this was too much. Way too much. I was still trying to digest the whole magical merman thing, for fuck’s sake. But predestiny? That was a step too far.
I needed to steer this conversation back into safer territory.
“But, um, if you don’t need a charm to breathe underwater,” I said down into my coffee mug, “then how do you, um…?”
“I can hold my breath for a very long time,” he said. “Also, I have gills.”
“Gills?” Before I could stop myself, I peered up again and started scanning him, seeking out the telltale fish organs.
“They’re only visible when they’re in use,” he said.
“So, they’re part of you?” I asked.
“They’re part of me,” he confirmed.
“What about your legs?” I asked. “Are they part of you too?”
Xander thought about this. “Yes and no,” he said. “Like gills, legs are partly a physical adaptation to the environment. But they’re also partly magic.”
“So, there’s a charm for that?” I asked. “For turning your tail into legs? And vice versa?”
“No,” he said. “Legs are a different kind of magic.”
“Different how?” I asked.
And just like that, it seemed I wasn’t questioning the existence of magic anymore. I was inquiring about its various types and nuances.
* * *
Half an hour and a cup of coffee later, I’d learned that, while Xander’s home was indeed an undersea realm, there was also a chain of islands at its surface on the other side of the portal.
In contrast to the permanent darkness of the watery depths, these islands were bathed in perpetual sunlight.
The merpeople could naturally adapt from the sea to this land by swimming ashore and drying themselves in the constant sun.
So, Xander’s legs weren’t the product of external magic harnessed by the Sea Wizard’s charms, but rather the product of a kind of internal magic.
I felt like I should be taking notes.
“So, does that mean you had legs when I found you on the beach because you were…dry?” I asked, trying to keep it all straight.
“Yes,” he said. “But under your sun, it takes longer to dry. About five to ten minutes.”
“And once you’re dry, you can just walk around indefinitely?” I asked.
“At home, yes,” he said. “But, on this side of the portal, on your land, it takes a lot more energy to maintain my legs. So, to replenish my strength, I need to spend time in my merman form.”
“And that’s why you were in the hot tub?” I asked.
“That’s why I was in the hot tub.”
“And you’re feeling, uh…replenished?” I asked.
“I am,” he said with a small smile. “For now.”
“But back on the beach,” I said, thinking out loud, “you were unconscious.” I frowned. “Was that because your strength was depleted?”
“My strength was depleted,” he said. “But not because of my legs.”
“Then, why?” I asked. “Why were you unconscious? Were you injured?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. He toyed with the small pink shell again, the one that had taken away my swimmer’s cramp. “But I was healing.”
It dawned on me that, ten years ago, I’d also blacked out for a while. “So, to do its job, the healing charm knocks you out?” I asked. “Like…NyQuil?”
Xander furrowed his brow. “I don’t know what NyQuil is,” he said. “But yes, the healing charm puts you to sleep while it works its magic.”
Okay, it made sense—or as much sense as it could.
Xander was a merman, the merman who’d saved me from drowning when I was sixteen years old.
He’d had legs when I’d found him yesterday because he’d been dry.
And he’d been unconscious because he’d been injured, and the magic pink seashell was healing him.
But…how had he been injured? What exactly had happened to him?
It was the question he’d been dodging. And I’d been reluctant to press him for an answer. Now, I needed to know.