Hopefully, Chrissy could hear me now. I called her name several times, waiting while choppy waves sloshed around me, lifting and lowering me. I called her name again. Nothing happened. No sparkles, no glitter. The clouds above let out a warning drizzle, a mist that dissolved into the water.
Chrissy had said the ocean was out of her realm. Maybe it was hard to get here. I might have better luck if I went in closer to shore. Besides, I had nothing else to do. I sunk back into the ocean and swam in that direction.
I wasn’t worried about the ship seeing me. I was far enough underwater that even if the men looked down at the waves, they wouldn’t spot me. I meant to swim by without pausing. As I neared the boat, though, I heard Jason’s voice.
Mermaids must have good hearing. His words were clear even under the water. “All of you, get away from me! I don’t know who you are, but you won’t get away with kidnapping me like this!”
Apparently his day hadn’t gotten any better.
“Sire,” one of the sailors called. “Come down from there. You’ll fall.”
I stopped swimming and listened.
“Police everywhere will be searching for me,” Jason insisted. “I’m platinum in every major country and some you’ve never even heard of—I’m a hit in Botswana.”
“No need to hit anyone’s Botswana,” a nervous sailor replied. “We’re only trying to serve you.”
“Serve me with what?” Jason demanded. “If you’ve got a subpoena, show it to me.”
I drifted upward, making sure to keep behind the boat. Thick raindrops pocked the surface of the water, churning what little they could of the ocean.
“Sire, we be decent men. We ain’t got no diseases, nor subpoenas neither.”
A general murmur of agreement went up from the rest of the men. “Mind your footing, Your Highness. The ship ain’t steady.”
“Don’t come any closer!” Jason shouted. “I know how to use this!”
What was Jason doing? I lifted my head out of the water to see. The wind shivered across the waves, prodding them higher. I spotted Jason easily enough. He stood on the ship’s railing, clutching the end of a rope in one hand and a sword in the other. Rain spattered into him, dampening his hair so it stuck, cap-like, to his head. The way he held the sword made me doubt he knew how to use it.
The sailors formed a distant semi-circle around him, out of the sword’s reach. A man holding a cup and saucer took a tentative step toward him. “Sire, come down from there and ‘ave a nice cup of tea.” Another step. “You can get out of the rain and sit in your cabin where it’s nice and cozy-like.”
I let out a sigh. Hopefully when Chrissy fixed this, she could make Jason think this had all been a dream.
I was about to sink back into the water and continue my swim to shore, when Jason slipped. The railing was drenched, and as he took a step, his boot went out from under him. He let out a yell, struggled to regain his balance, and dropped the sword. It clattered against the rail then fell, spinning on its way to the ocean. A moment later, Jason lost the fight for balance and tumbled backward, off the ship.
At first, I thought he would be okay. He had a hold of the rope and it was tethered on deck. Certainly part of his brain was screaming: Don’t let go of the rope!
He should have listened to that part. Instead he made a grab for the railing. The wet, slippery railing. As he fell, his pathway took him directly into a protruding cannon.
I suppose if Jason’s specialty was gymnastics instead of singing, he might have been able to right himself and stick an impressive landing on the cannon. Not only did he not right himself, he managed to hit his head on the cannon before plunging into the water.
If he lost consciousness, he’d drown.
I dove after him, worried about his injury and frustrated the fairy tale was playing out even though I didn’t want it to. The Little Mermaid saved the prince from drowning, and here I was speeding to save Jason from that fate.
He sunk downward through the water, unmoving. A twisting trail of blood ran ribbon-like from the gash in his head.
Above me, the sailors let out panicked cries. “Your Highness! Your Highness!”
“Do you see him?”
“Lower the longboat and we’ll go after him.”
“Nay, dive in and retrieve him or our necks will be in the noose.”
“Who can swim?”
No one answered.
Really? Sailors who couldn’t swim? And no one had seen a problem with that fact when they commissioned the crew?
I pushed through the water until I reached Jason. Wrapping my arms around his chest in a hug, I swam upward. The metal buttons on his coat dug into my skin. I hardly felt them.
We broke the surface, and I held his head out of the waves, ignoring the wind that pushed ocean spray into our faces. Jason’s eyes were closed. He made no attempt to open them, didn’t move at all. Blood trickled down his forehead, mixing with the water running from his hair. I put my cheek against his mouth to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t.
Fear made my chest feel tight. I wouldn’t let myself consider the possibility that he was dead—that my wish had killed him. In the fairy tale, the Little Mermaid saved the prince and brought him to the shore. That’s all this was. The next part in the story. Only why wasn’t he breathing?
“There he is!” one of the men on the ship shouted. “Look, a mermaid has him!”
In junior high I’d taken a CPR class for babysitting certification. I tried to remember everything I’d learned, to think logically. Jason had probably breathed in water. How could I get it out? Was it possible to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation while floating in the ocean? With the hope that the Heimlich maneuver might help clear his lungs, I unbuttoned his wool coat, and pushed the front open.
I moved behind him, wound my arms so my fists connected under his ribs, and made quick upward thrusts. The motion jerked us about, bobbing us up and down. Jason’s arms flailed and his head flopped from one side to the next.
Several sailors let out alarmed cries. They crowded together at the side of the boat, gawking at us. “What’s she doing?” one asked.
“You down there!” another shouted. “Leave him be! You’ve got no cause to beat on a defenseless man.”
The best dressed of the men—most likely the captain—simply shook his head. “Our prince is being roughed up by a mermaid. This is not our nation’s proudest moment.”
Someone else shouted, “You can take her, Sire! C’mon! Give her the old heave ho!”
I was too busy Heimliching Jason to respond to any of them. I thought he had expelled some water but I couldn’t be sure. I leaned backward, let him lie against me, and slid one hand over his chest to check for the rise and fall of breathing. I didn’t find it.
A voice in my mind kept repeating Chrissy’s warning. Wishes are permanent, and their consequences are real and lasting. Real and lasting. This was real and lasting. How long could Jason go without oxygen before he died?
To administer CPR I needed to do thirty chest compressions and then two rescue breaths. I’d only practiced with the dummy on the ground. I couldn’t use the floor’s resistance here. I would have to improvise. I moved my hands so they covered his heart and pressed thirty times, hard and fast at a speed of a hundred compressions a minute.
Next I twisted around so he faced upward. His face was smooth, expressionless, and achingly familiar. This was Jason Prescott. Famous. Beautiful. And dying.
In all the scenarios where I’d imagined pressing my lips to Jason’s, I’d never envisioned doing it in front of a ship full of sailors while I tried frantically to save his life.
I tilted his head back, plugged his nose so the air didn’t escape, then blew a breath into his mouth. His lips were cold and tasted like the sea.
Several men onboard let out shocked exclamations. “What in the—now she’s doing something unnatural to him!”
“She’s trying to suck his soul out through his mouth!”