then and when I’d be coming back. Something inside me falters, but
when I let go and look at the ship, look out at the darkening skies, I
know there are more important things.
Mom holds my face in her hands, our eyes mirrors of each other.
“Don’t forget. At the offering you must only give the contents of the
front pocket. The side pocket is for my father-”
“Relax, I got it,” I assure her while trying to reassure myself. I
sling both my arms into the straps of the backpack she stuffed with
goodies for our trip.
She sighs, letting go of my face and taking Dad’s outstretched
hand. They walk back down the way we came and fold deeply into the
mist.
•••
I’ve already tripped on a barrel and stepped on a barnacled claw
foot. It isn’t exactly the perfect start to a voyage. We aren’t moving
yet. Kurt and Thalia lead me through clusters of creatures who stare
at the Coney Island boardwalk as though they’re afraid they’ll never
see it again. I force myself not to look at it, because part of me
feels the same way.
The passengers vary. There’s a family of unbelievably hot girls
with green faces and webbed hands. They wear little cut-off denim
shorts and bikini tops, their oversized sunglasses perched on top of
their heads like plastic crowns, as if they’re just going on a regular
family vacay to the Bahamas or Cancun, not a floating island off the
coast of New York City.
Then there’s a guy with the body of a man and the head of a gray
and blue fish. A tiny light hovers over his face, and I realize it’s
part of him-like a shiny flashlight dangling out of his forehead. He
wears a traveling salesman kind of suit, and the slits on his nose
wiggle against the salty wind. When his shiny black eyes catch me
staring, I’m afraid he’ll flip me off, or worse. Instead he bows.
Here we go again with the bowing.
A boy runs past me; a woman with curling brown hair chases after
him. She picks him up, and he struggles against her until she
reprimands him in his ear. He looks like he’s wearing a turtle
backpack, but as we pass them I can see the hard shell is part of him.
She picks a spot with an excellent view of the shore. Then I notice
her arms. They have no bone in them. Where there should be fingers are
tiny suction cups that shift back and forth from fingers to tentacles.
And then there’s a guy. Just an average guy, a little older than
me with dark jeans, black leather boots with archaic crosses on the
shins, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and disheveled brown hair. He
wears a baseball cap to the side and chews on a coffee straw. He’s
leaning against the side of the boat, watching and holding a small
cardboard box with MTA stickers on it. He winks at me as we walk past,
which is weird, but finally someone who doesn’t bow.
“Let’s go meet the captain,” Thalia says. In her ballerina skirt,
she looks more like a regular girl than a sea creature. She leads us
to the mast of the ship. Out here is just the horizon. Kurt knocks on
the mast. There’s a series of squeaks, like rope and metal being
pulled. A deep voice comes out of the darkness and says,
“Kurtomathetis, I was wondering when you would make it.”
Thalia puts her hands on her hips and looks up at him. “But we’re
ahead of schedule!”
I follow their stare up and over the front of the ship. Where
there would be some carving, like a dragon on the Viking ships they
had at the Met, is a merman. From the waist up he has the V shape of a
football player. His hair seems to be alive in full black curls. His
shoulders have splotches of golden freckles where the sun hits the
most. He bows his head with a kind smile.
Arion grabs the conch strung over his chest and blows it. The
sails expand, and even though there is no strong wind just now, we
start moving. The ship is alive with excited whispers. I hold on to
the front of the ship, my legs feeling wobbly as we start moving. I’m
really doing this. Oh, god, I’m really doing this.
“Lord Sea-” the captain says to me.
“You don’t have to call me that,” I shout over the small wave that
crashes against us.
Arion looks taken aback. His dark eyebrows knit together, and his
black eyes look over his shoulder at me. “What shall I call you?”
“Tristan is fine.”
“Tristan.” He tastes my name on his tongue, pronouncing it a few
times before he’s confident about addressing me so informally. “Son
of?”
“David Hart?”
“Tristan Hart, son of David Hart. Welcome aboard.”
I’m too stunned. “What are you?”
“A merman like yourself.”
“But you’re, like, attached to the ship.”
We make a sudden turn to the left. “Whoa,” he says. He raises his
hand and makes a pulling motion. A sail drops. He uses his left hand
to slap at the air, like he’s trying to parallel park. Behind me the
ship’s steering wheel mimics his hand movement.
“How are you part of this ship?” I ask.
“I have carried my father’s debt to the king,” he says. No big
deal.
“What do you mean? What did he do?”
“I was a boy. It is so long ago I cannot remember. My father had
the choice of being executed or indentured to the king. He was to
serve millennia guiding the ship between Toliss and whatever coasts
the Sea Court happens to visit. But my father grew old, and his
sentence was carried over to me.”
“That doesn’t seem fair.”
“That is the way it is, Tristan Hart.”
Arion’s baritone laugh sounds like the conch strapped to his
chest. He touches the tip of his bushy black beard. He finds something
in it, a tiny crab, and pops it into his mouth like a grape.
“Guess you never go hungry,” I go. “But how do you sleep?”
“The sails, they’re quite soft.”
“Way to look on the bright side.” I wonder what other kinds of
punishments my grandfather has given out, and if I were king, whether
I could ever do the same.
There’s another bang, and this time the rain breaks. It isn’t
cold, thunderstorm rain. It’s soft, like passing through a warm
curtain. “We’ve crossed the wall!” Arion calls out.
“Should we go below deck?” I instantly regret asking.
“We are of the sea, Tristan. No one objects to getting a little
wet.”
Thalia’s laughter is contagious. Here the clouds break up. This is
the first stretch of sky I’ve seen in weeks. Around me, the other
passengers lift their noses to the sky or reach their hands over the
side of the ship, where water will splash and lick their fingertips.
Or tentacles, whatever the case may be. The only one I don’t see in
the crowd is the human guy with the cardboard box. Surely he did
oppose getting a bit wet.
“Hang on tight, Lord Tristan!”
My stomach plummets with that tickling roller-coaster feel. I even
let myself scream. A small wave pushes us past the wall.
“There’s that,” Kurt says.
And yeah, there is that. Behind us, the wall of warm rain stands
still. It marks the last of the ugly rain clouds that have latched on
to the sky for the past few days. I can see the horizon ahead, and it
is grand. The sun has begun to rise on this side of the wall. It’s
been so long since I’ve seen the sky. I’m about to tell Thalia as
much, but then-
That’s when I hear her.
No. No, no, no, no.
“Let me go! Get your slimy hands off me.”
No.
The sound of feet hitting wood.
People shoving.