there are fewer merman sightings recorded. Because of that, there’s
the misconception that mermen are unattractive. As you can see in the
case of you and me, that is not so.”
I mean, not to sound like an ass, but I was thinking the same
thing.
My father snickers, and my mother purses her lips.
“But enough about us man-hungry mermaids ,” my mother says. “Are
you quite sure you know how to do that, Kurt?”
He holds up the vial to the light and shrugs. “I’ve read all the
texts, and I’ve seen it executed on a few lucky merfolk who’ve pleased
the king enough and were granted land legs. And the less lucky, who’ve
been banished to land for having displeased him as well.”
Read. Seen. There is no I’ve done anywhere in there.
“What exactly are you going to do? What do you mean you’ve only
seeing it done?” It’s all making me so warm that I let the cold water
run, adding another inch to the pool on the floor.
“Many pardons, Lord Sea-”
“Whoa.” I hold up my hand. “Don’t you ever call me that again.”
But he continues over me. “-I forget you’re half human and have a
shorter attention span. It is incredibly rare that a human and our
kind can actually conceive a fully human child that is also fully
mer-kin. There have been creatures with the heads of fish and the
bodies of humans. Sometimes they come out incredibly deformed and,
usually, don’t live past a few months.
“But I digress. This”-he holds the vial close to my face so that I
can see that the ink is swirling on its own like a tiny black hole
collapsing-“is an ink that allows us to shift whenever we want. It is
the blood of the abyss, primordial and, of course, painfully difficult
to extract. The king has one of the last known cephalopods that carry
it. Once that’s gone, we won’t be able to go on land anymore. Not that
it would be such a bad thing. Can’t really miss what you never had,
can you?”
“Cephalopod?” All those years of wandering through the Coney
Island Aquarium, and I can’t even remember that.
“Squid,” Dad answers. His voice pulls me out of Kurt’s explanation
and grounds me. I’m glad he’s here. Thalia is holding the rainbow fish
in a jar. They both press their noses on the glass, like a double
aquarium.
“Do I have to drink it?”
Kurt turns his back to me, and sure enough there’s a tattoo on the
center of his back level with his shoulder blades. It’s a trident, the
middle spear slightly longer than the outer two prongs. The stem of
the trident ends in a sharp triangular point.
“Do you have one?” I ask my mother. The question leaves my mouth
before I even know why it matters. It matters because she’s my mother,
and I would’ve noticed.
She pulls her hair over her shoulders, like opening a curtain. No,
I would not have noticed it. The mark where the ink used to be is the
color of pearl, maybe two shades lighter than the rest of her skin.
“My father extracted the ink himself. I can never change again.”
My fingers hover over the trident, stopping short of touching it.
“What does it mean?”
“It is the symbol of the Sea Court.” I’m glad she’s not facing me,
because now I can smell her sadness pouring over her, like pure sea.
“Okay, so a tattoo. I can deal with that. At least I don’t have to
get my lip pierced or have a stick driven though my nose.” Kurt stares
at me with confused violet eyes. I emphasize, “ Right? ”
“Oh, yes,” he says. “I mean, no . No piercings. Though the trend
has become popular among the younger ones.”
“Darn that MTV,” Dad says.
“I have your permission, right?” I ask him.
“If not, I think we’re going to need a pretty big fish tank.”
Dad’s smile betrays the smell of worry he’s giving off like burnt
rubber cement. “Or we could rent a room at the aquarium. Whatever is
cheaper.”
Kurt doesn’t try to understand the joke and shrugs off the
comment. He kneels beside me, and my mind races. What if he does it
wrong and I get stuck like this forever? Can I still have sex with
girls or only other mermaids? Where the hell does my dick go? What if
Layla sees me this way?
I don’t have much longer to think, because as soon as Kurt uncorks
the vial with a surprising champagne-bottle pop, he tells me, “This is
going to sting.”
And sure enough, it does.
The ink is a shiny, black blur spilling out of the slim glass, and
it knows just where to find me.
It coils in the air slowly, like a spinning Milky Way. I focus on
the things that make it sparkle and wonder why I have to be a creature
that’s half glitter. Why can’t my mom be half powerful genie or like a
werewolf, anything that doesn’t look like a ten-year-old girl
bedazzled the bottom half of her Ken doll.
Kurt is whispering something in what I recognize as Latin, thanks
to Mrs. Santos, who drags me and Layla to the Latin mass at the Greek
church, even though Layla says she’s an atheist and I’m not Greek.
The coil freezes, then blurs out of sight. I know where it’s gone
the instant I feel the burn in my skin. I let myself fall backward
into the tub with a splash. I can feel my fins parting, and the burn
is now everywhere. It’s like being ripped in half over a fire pit and
then being left there until the fire simmers and there’s nothing left
but ash.
The back of my head hits the bottom of the tub, and when I take a
deep breath, I forget I don’t have gills anymore. The rose-soap water
snakes down my throat. The strangest feeling is not having water go
down the wrong pipe but the fact that my leg muscles feel like they’re
reverberating right at the core. I push myself up and cough until my
throat feels raw.
Mom holds a towel in front of me and I take it, drying my face
first, then standing to wrap it around my waist. It hurts to stand,
like the day after doing squats in Mr. Loughlin’s fitness class.
“I’m sorry this is happening,” Mom says. “It wasn’t supposed to.”
I’m shivering. I’m shivering, I’m naked, I’m wet, and in a handful
of days I’ve nearly drowned, hallucinated, and turned into a mythical
creature. Yeah, none of this was supposed to happen.
“I’m going to clean up,” Dad says. He runs out and comes back with
a mop and every towel we own to carpet the tiles and soak up the
water.
“Get dressed, honey,” Mom says. She rubs my face with her hand,
and part of me wants to rest my head on her shoulder like when I was
little and didn’t want to start kindergarten without her. The other
part of me, the part that’s angry like I’ve never thought I could be,
flinches from her touch.
“Let’s get you kids some clothes,” she tells Kurt and Thalia.
“I’m going to bed,” I announce.
“But there’s so much we have to discuss,” Kurt protests. We stand
in the living room. I can hear Mom rummaging through her closet and
Dad wringing out the towels into the tub and then laying them out on
the floor again.
“Yeah, well, unless the information is going to change in the next
ten hours, I think it can wait.”
Kurt goes to speak, but Thalia says his name hard. “ Kurtomathetis
. Remember our place.”
Yeah, as in they’re know-it-all mermaids and I’m just a human guy.
Or I was.
Kurt’s face changes from a tight-lipped expression to just plain
pissed-off and then right back to full control in seconds. “Forgive
me. This is a lot to gather.”
“I’ll see you guys in the morning.”
The land-locked mer-siblings watch me sulk to my room and close