Today my sister decided to take me landlubbing, which the mermaid equivalent of the human sport of snorkeling- a low tech way to see all the pretty sights of a world that isn't your own. Except that instead of gliding almost effortlessly along through the water, our version has the tortoise-like pace of crawling + squirming over the ground + through the brush, and in some places you're basically rock climbing without feet. It isn't easy. But the little island Anemone had brought me to was so breathtakingly gorgeous it made it all worth it. It had everything you'd hope to find on a tropical isle- from coconut palms to waterfalls. And being uninhabited we could explore it all without running into any humans...

Or so we thought. Until that big white boat pulled into our perfect island's perfect bay, and things got super intense as our pleasant outing turned into a desperate game of hide and seek.

OFF THE DEEP END
CHAPTER 6 ~ THE WHITE SHIP
Laika Pupkino ~ 2016

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WEDNESDAY AUGUST 27, 2014:
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“Are you awake?”

“I think so. Thanks for not turning the lights on full blast. What time is it?”

“When I stuck my head into the dry room a minute ago the grandfather clock in there said four-fifteen.”

“Really? And we're going now?”

“It should be daylight by the time we get there. If the clock was right.”

“Okay, just let me take a shower and- ”

“A what?!”

“Never mind. I had a brain fart.”

"A WHAT?!! EWWWWW! Is that something that happens to land people?!”

“Only to Superman. It's how he decelerates when he's flying. So what do I need to bring?”

“I've got it all in this bag. You ready for a serious workout?”

“I guess we'll find out...”
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)))========> CONEY ISLAND BASSBY
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All the chandeliers were turned down low and there wasn't a sound to be heard as we swam down through our maze of a house, until we got to the brightly lit foyer. Where Sargent Bassby jerked awake as we opened the huge front door and leveled his speargun crossbow at us, “WHO GOES THERE?!”

“It's okay, Bassby. It's only me,” said Anemone.

“Oh, good afternoon Princess. Must've dozed off,” he said. Then he noticed me, rubbed his eyes like he was trying to make me go away, and said, “Cor! I'm seein' double! There's two of yuzz!”

“Yes, I've been turned into twins. I'll explain later, but it's four in the morning and we have somewhere we need to be.”

I couldn't tell you why so many merpeople from this part of the Atlantic (and one octopus maid) should sound like they were from England, but Bassby had a Cockney accent as thick as the one my Tennessean paw-paw puts on when he's in the shower singing that dumb 'I got a Bunch of Bloody Coconuts' song.

The palace guard looked around, “You sure 'bout the time, yer 'ighness? Hard t' tell with these barmy lights they put in here.”

“We couldn't see at all without them,” Anee noted, which didn't satisfy the Sargent...

“Eeee-lectricity n' water is a bad mix! Gonna 'lectricute us all some day, sure as eggs is baby mermaids! Like that poor elly-phant what Mr. Edison murdered. Seen it with me own eyes!”

“Yes, poor Topsy. That was horrible!” said my sister, like she'd heard this story.

“And it's four A-M, not P.M.??? You're sure now?”

“Yes I'm sure. Go back to sleep.”

“Good idea then. I am a bit James Ward Packard. G'nite, Princess Atlantea... both ah yezz,” he said, and dropped instantly back into a deep sleep.

We left him there, blowing bubbles as he snored. As we headed across the castle's gardens Anemone said, “So anyway, that was Bassby.”

“He seemed kind of... uh, confused. Who's James Ward Packard?”

“I think he was saying he was tired. I can't understand half of what he's saying most of the time. He spent some time among humans.”

“The London dockyards?”

“No, but it was on a pier. He was in DOCTOR LOVEHEART'S HALL OF NATURALOGICAL ODDITIES, in this weird place called Luna Park."

“Really?! Luna Park's right next to where I saw that Mermaid Parade I was telling you about," I told her. "Or not the same exact amusement park---it burnt down---but they rebuilt it.”

And if he had been at Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century it would explain how he'd witnessed the "execution" of that badly abused elephant who finally snapped and squashed someone (They have a statue of her there now with a little plaque telling her story...). I said, “But you know, we should probably explain to him that the castle's genie-lights aren't electric.”

“I have. He keeps forgetting.”

“And he thought we were Princess Atlantea? That's not good!”

“No it's not. That would have been around 1940-something, when she was our age.”

“Shouldn't he be in a home or something?”

“Like the Old Soldier's Home in Trenchtown? They wouldn't be able to do anything for him that we can't. There's really no cure for being two-hundred and fifty years old. The castle is where Bassby's comfortable, and as far we're concerned he is home. He thinks he's looking after us---guarding us from the Kaiser's Huns and the Zapatistas---but it's really the other way around.”

“That's decent. So he's family... But isn't it kind of dangerous letting him have that gun?”

“Not anymore. After he shot Mom that time we took the bowstring out.”
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With just a sliver of a moon shining its feeble light down into the ocean it was pitch black out, with only about thirty feet of visibility in any direction. After we swam up out of the valley I couldn't even tell what direction we were heading, and without being able to see the Church of Atlantis's steeple sticking up in the distance I would've had a hard time finding my way to Shellcastle. But my twin led us over the top of the kelp patch without a second's hesitation.

“So did you get enough sleep?”

I nodded, yawning. “Give or take an hour...”

“How long did you stay up reading?”

“Not long at all. I was trying to read the first three scrolls of The Wisdom of Atlantis...”

“Those'll sure put you to sleep. But if you're trying to get on Mom's good side you have to make sure she sees you reading them,” grinned Anee (Or I assume she was grinning; even swimming along right next to me I couldn't see her face clearly.)

“I was just curious, mostly; since this is the church I supposedly belong to now. And I wouldn't want Mom to see what I was reading after I skimmed through those. I started reading the blue book from that Temple of the Healer religion she doesn't like.”

“Well, she wouldn't forbid you to read the Book of the Healer, as long as after you finished it you agreed with her about how absurd it is. So what did you think?”

“Wild! And I thought The Pan-Galactic Clamboggle was some way out science fiction! The stories in there sounded like something those crazy Technotologists would have come up with-”

“Technologists?!"

“Techno-tol-ogists," I said, "It's this religion some guy made up back in the 1960's to try and make money off people, and it's totally insane! Which hasn't stopped more and more people from joining it over the years. They pay ridiculous amounts of money to supposedly reach these different levels of mental and emotional, uh... improvement or whatever; each level costing more than the last one. And you know you've reached this higher state when they wave their little Mojo-Meter over you and tell you it says so."

"And humans fall for that?"

"Some do. But as far as ridiculous religions go I think I like your Temple of the Healer a lot better. Their Healer sounds like a good guy, even if his sermons are kind of strange, with all those quirky little jokes. Or at least I think they were jokes...”

“I'm pretty sure they were. And that's what I like best about Ray and his temple, they don't take themselves too seriously. Which is exactly what Mom dislikes about them. That and the bow ties and their messiah having feet,” she said. The dark tops of the kelp plants rolling past beneath us looked the same as what we passed over three minutes ago. We could have been going in circles for all I knew...

When suddenly there were houses below us.

“South Lanyard Street?! What are we doing way the hell over here?” wondered Anemone. So I guess her night-time pathfinding wasn't totally perfect, but at least she got us to the right town...
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)))========> QUIET VILLAGE
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The desolate streets of Shellcastle were eerie in the darkness, looking more like meandering canyons between rows of big rocks than something made by any kind of people. Their glass rooftops glinted dully in the tiny bit of moonlight filtering down, like rows of pyramids and ziggurats that had been built along these rock ridges by some long vanished race of wee folk.

“It all looks so different in the dark,” I said, “This is cool! I'm glad this was on our way.”

““It's not, really, but after yesterday I'm a little worried about Fluke. And also I'm hoping that he'll be able to go to the island with us, after they get set up for the dawn rush. He's got the day off like that before, It all depends...”

Rounding the next corner, I saw something up ahead that looked like a string of balloons hanging in the water in front of the Daily Tail's office, which as we got closer I could see were four octopuses lined up at the front door. I could sense my sister frowning in the darkness, “I hope we're not too early for Fluke. Perri hasn't even started today's run yet. She usually- Oh wait, here we go!”

A lantern had come on, and now another, and now Ms. Winkle was opening the door to let the octopuses in. As we approached she spotted us, “Good morning your highnesses! Well you two are sure up early.”

“'Morning, Perri,” Anne replied, “And how early is it anyway?”

The journalist had a human's waterproof watch on her wrist, a highly coveted item in Hatteria. Mom didn't even own one. “It's four thirty. If you come back in about an hour you can read your interview.”

“We would, but we're heading out to Wedge Island,” my sister said, “We're going landlubbing today.”

“And you've got your gear,” she said, pointing at Anee's backpack. “I've really got to try that one of these days, so can I write an article about it. Have fun, girls!”

Glancing into the office as we passed I saw the octopuses were all putting on aprons and visors. “And what are they? Typesetters? Reporters?”

“Those are the inkers."

"Yabba dabba doo..."

"Huh?!!"

"Never mind. So did Perri say it was four-thirty?”

“She did,” said Anee, “And that would explain why we're not getting any daylight yet.”

“But I thought you said it was four-thirty when we left the house. Which was a while ago.”

“That's what the clock in the library said, but with all the excitement of you showing up I messed up and I let it run down. So I kind of had to guess when I reset it yesterday. Whenever it happened before I used to just ask Genie what time it was, but I can't do that now.”

“He had a clock in his bottle?”

“He had all kinds of crazy junk in there. Stuff I never saw. I'd hear some noise and ask him 'What the heck was that?!'; and he'd go 'Oh, just my espresso machine,' or 'That was my table saw, I'm building a birdhouse...' Or that 'go-kart' that he liked to go racing around in there on; That sounded dangerous! I really miss Genie, he was such a character!”
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)))========> THE TELLTALE TAIL
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We rounded a final corner and at last we could see the grocery store, facing the opening at the end of the next dark street, with that striped awning across the front that must have been made from a sailboat's nylon sail and was clearly more decorative than to keep the weather off of people...

And we could see a boy with a glow-lantern held high in one hand, and in the other he was holding a human artifact---one of those metal dustpan-on-a-stick things you see mall janitors using---as he swept ocean sediment out of the front door with his tail.

“Hold up,” she said, “Let's just watch him a while...”

We stopped.

“So Fluke isn't your imaginary boyfriend after all,” I kidded, “I was starting to wonder.”

“Nope, he's very real. And he's the only boy in the world for me,” she said, in an exaggerated dreamy way, kind of poking fun at how gaga she was over him, but also genuinely happy and contented.

“It would seem like he's the only boy in the world, period. Or at least around here...”

“I know. So it's a good thing he's such a great guy. I've never heard anyone say one bad word about him. Even Mum kind of likes him.”

In the light from his lantern I could see Fluke bore a strong resemblance to Brad Pitt. Or not the fifty year old Brad Pitt, but what the actor must have looked like when he was sixteen.

Seeing a twenty-something Brad Pitt in one of his early movies a couple of years ago had been my first crush on a male person. I don't recall the title or what it was about, so it must not have been a very memorable film, but I clearly remember that goofy sweet smile of his, his broad shoulders and the flat billboard expanse of his chest, and how these things had made me feel, adding one more level of confusion to an already confused early adolescence---(“Okay, maybe I'm really just a fag after all...”)---after I'd already decided I was some sort of boy lesbian when I found myself heavily smitten by Julie Newly who sat next to me in my eighth grade history class.

Eventually I sorted out who and what I was; That yes the word 'lesbian' applied, even if 'boy' didn't; but I also was realizing I liked certain guys, even very masculine ones, if they seemed goodhearted and didn't act in that idiot-macho way that repulsed me.

From my first impression here Fluke didn't have any repulsive qualities, but seemed to radiate everything a guy should be about. And the words just kind of fell out of my mouth- “He's beautiful!”

“I know,” she agreed, amiably enough, but as she glanced over at me something upset her---made her tense up---and she snapped, “Would you straighten out your tail? That's disgusting!”

I looked down. My tail had coiled itself into a tight spiral under me. I didn't understand why this had happened or why it upset her; but from her tone and from the tingling in my tail (very reminiscent of when I met Sandee yesterday...) I sensed that this was something that proper mermaids didn't do. At least not in public, and not over their sister's boyfriend, and ESPECIALLY not when she's floating right there next to them...

I uncoiled my tail. “I'm sorry, I didn't even realize I was doing that...”

“It's okay,” said Anemone. But she didn't exactly sound okay.

I felt like I was back in eighth grade again, trying to navigate the social rules of our junior high school while also sorting out that whole maelstrom of new feelings within me they call early puberty. I wasn't 100% sure what was going on here, but I had a good inkling of what might be worrying my twin. I told her: “No Anee, please! Listen... Whatever that was there, my tail, feelings, and maybe ones I shouldn't have; which... I mean I don't even KNOW, okay?! Because right now I feel like there's a lot more I don't know about being this 'me' I am now---a girl, a mermaid---than I do know. Okay?!"

"Okay..."

"But there's one thing I know about how I feel. You're my sister and that comes before ANYTHING. I mean maybe my tail did that, and maybe that means something---feelings, desires, that I'm a big dirty slut or whatever---but that doesn't mean I'd ever try to-”

“I know,” she said reassuringly.

“Not with Fluke. Because I love you; and I would NEVER try to stab you in the back like that!”

“You're not a slut, Sis! You're okay. It's normal. It's natural. And I never thought you would. I just... Maybe I overreacted.”

“Not really, you just reacted. You have something wonderful and you want to protect it. If what I did was natural then that is too...”

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==========>
About a month ago my human mom sat me down for a serious discussion. It wasn't that “birds & the bees” speech, they assumed I knew all that by now. And it wasn't about me being transgender, although I think the fact that she was coming to see me as Susan had made it easier for her to talk about this with me, mother to daughter. Not that being the same gender is any guarantee that there will be any rapport or understanding, but I'd spoke enough about my own feelings during our “and what makes you believe you're a girl?” sessions with my shrink that she was starting to see a lot of herself-at-my-age in me. (Meanwhile, the more I shared who I was with my dad, the more alien I seemed to him. No less lovable, but different from just about everything he'd been assuming about me...).

"You can't just follow your heart at the expense of doing what's right," Mom had told me. She said that something can feel like the most wonderful, perfect thing you ever felt, and it can still be wrong if it hurts someone else. And it can “wind up costing you the things you really value.”

She said she had “learned that lesson the hard way”, and didn't go into details; but I knew it had to do with that huge screaming fight in their room that had woke me up when I was six or seven; when Dad was yelling at her like I'd never heard him do before, or since, and then stormed out, disappearing for a whole month (during which she cried and called herself “Stupid!” a lot); And when he came back they were awkward with each other for a few more months before they went back to being the Mom and Dad I knew again, and that sick frightened lump in my stomach went away...

Stealing your sister's man is a different sort of betrayal than a marital infidelity, but it seems to be of roughly the same magnitude.
==========>
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Fluke was still sweeping, and apparently didn't see or hear us out here in the dark. He seemed like a bit of a perfectionist.

Anee put her arm around me and squeezed, "Don't worry, Sis. You're gonna find love. You'll be meeting that tall dark stranger I saw you with in the crystal ball. The orb hasn't been wrong yet. Remember how I found that lost little kid with it? Well I saw your stranger as clear as I did that. He's not from our village, but I know he's coming for you. It's destined...”

“Destined? Coming for me?! He's not wearing a big old robe with a hood hiding his face, and carrying a scythe in his bony hand, is he?”

“No. He's wearing one of those things around his neck,” she let go of me and gestured with both hands, “Like a big square piece of cloth, but they roll them up.”

“A scarf? A bandanna? An ascot?”

“I guess. It's a pretty yellow color.”

“Well he should be easy to spot if I see him around town. Do you don't have any idea of when this will happen?”

“Afraid not. But not years and years, because you looked the same age as now. Only---I just remembered!---only your face was all banged up.”

“Not from him, I hope!”

“No, not the way you were laughing. I felt you were comfortable. But that's all I know. Anyway lets go meet Fluke...”

“I'm ready.”

“FLUKE!” Anemone shouted and we swam down Green Dolphin Street toward him. The boy turned and peered in our direction.
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)))========> FLUKE, FINALLY...
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It didn't seem like could even see us yet, but Fluke knew my sister's voice and smiled, calling out, “Princess Alimony!”

“You wish, Sunfish!” chanted my sister.

“Just a sec-” yelled Fluke as he curled his tailfin to push it all into a neat pile, and nudged it into the dustpan. Then he swam up about thirty feet---his lantern like a dim little star up there---and emptied it; letting the current take the silty gunk off to somewhere where people weren't trying to do business.

He sped back down, headfirst and flipped himself upright next to us, saying, “I've missed you! You haven't been around.”

“We tried,” said Anee, “Came by two days in a row.”

“Oh that's right. I was in Trenchtown Monday, and yesterday... that must have been that hour and a half when I had to take dad to Healer Acesco...”

“Gods! What happened?!”

He made a chopping motion- “His thumb. Clean off!”

Anee and I both winced: “OWWWW!!”

“It's all right, it's back on, and Aceso said it'll work and have feeling again; but he's gonna be out a few days. So what's new with you?”

Anemone gestured at me, grinning, “It seems I have this sister all of a sudden...”

“So I heard, so I see. A magical sister!” he said and turned to me, “Hi, I'm Fluke.”

“I'm Enomena,” I said, “And I was made by magic but I don't know how magical I am.”

“Maybe not by yourself. But the two of you together, and from the way people talk.... You've been the like Merlin Twins; the spell you've put this village under! You're all anyone's been talking about. How happy the Princess seems with her new sister, how nice you both are to everyone... even grumpy old Mrs. Grouper said it was 'sweet'. I think I'm the last person in town to actually meet you.”

“Things have been kind of crazy.”

“Here too. We've been really swamped. People are buying more since this happened, so our newest mermaid has a real fan in my father.”

Anemone went to kiss him, and he hesitated. Held his lantern up next to her face, then to mine. “You wouldn't be pulling a switch on me? I've heard twins like to play games like that.”

“You tell me,” she said as she moved in and kissed him. They hugged tight as their mouths played together for a minute.

I was happy for Anemone. Her and Fluke were obviously in love, and I had a sense that he was the sort of upright guy that my sister deserved.

But I have to admit I was also jealous. Despite being a 'magic sister' I still had problems with the whole notion of magic, and couldn't quite buy her crystal ball's predictions. Tall dark strangers don't just appear like that, do they? I was haunted by the sense that I would wind up an old mer-spinster, living in my little shack out past the edge of town with my twenty-seven catfish...

Their faces disengaged, and Fluke grinned, “That's my girl, all right! But just to make sure I better kiss her too.”

“Don't even!” cried Anemone, and started slapping and hitting him on the arm, while Fluke laughed, cowering and whimpering like she was doing it a lot harder that she was.

He rubbed his shoulder, “Well now I'm certain you're each who you say you are. I'd know those lethal punches anywhere!”

Anee grinned wickedly, "Maybe she should punch you, just to make sure..."

“We wouldn't pull a trick like that anyway,” I said. (At least I knew I wouldn't. Maybe if I wasn't attracted to him I could do that; but since I was kissing him would just be too weird...) “Although we did try pretending to be the other with Mom a couple of times.”

“Really?” he chuckled, “And?”

“And she could tell every time,” Anee said.

“I'll have to ask her how she does it. Because it's eerie how much you look, and even sound the same. Except for Enomena here having a slight accent.”

“I do? What kind?”

“I don't know. I can't place it. Maybe it's a sea cow accent.”

My sister and I bust up laughing. Mooed at each other.

"What?!" asked Fluke. "What am I not getting here?"

“The sea cow story was Jasper's idea,” I said, and gave Fluke the two minute version of where I really came from.

“I guess you'd have to tell your mum something," nodded Fluke, "What is it with her and humans, anyway?”

"It's... something," said Anemone. I could tell she was dying to blab the whole Jacques Cousteau story to him, but that had been a totally non-negotiable promise we'd made to Mom.

“And maybe that explains your accent,” Fluke said, “But you were really a human boy who wanted to be a mermaid?”

“I would have settled for becoming a human girl, but I always did love the idea of being a mermaid. What can I say? I was a weird human.”

“I don't think it's so weird,” he shrugged, “I'd like to be able to turn into a human. Maybe not forever, if they said that was the only way I could do it; but I'd sure like to live up there for a couple of years. Having legs, driving a car; I'd go to one of those amusement parks like the one Sargent Bassby's always talking about and ride on the rolly-coaster; travel clear across that big continent up there, in a train and then an airplane then a helicopter; see the mountains, deserts, forests, huge cities- I'd want to see it all, and meet all the humans I could, and be one myself. I don't know if I'd want to do it as a female human, that's not a part of it for me, but that's just me. If you weren't happy as a boy and you like being a girl better, how can that be bad?”

Anemone saw me smiling and sighed, “Isn't he great?!”

“What's so great about me? I'm just a commoner who bags kelp and sea cucumbers in his dad's store...”

“I meant about you not having a problem with her turning into a girl,” said Anemone, “That's a big thing with Enee. She was telling me how some of those humans she used to live with really dislike it when you do that; they can go pretty nutso about it!”

“Really?! About changing sex? Do they know how many fish from how many species in these reefs around here change sex? There's clownfish, seahorses, moray eels, wrasses, all sorts of gobies, and uh...”

“Not to mention the corals themselves,” said Anemone.

“Right, the mushroom corals do that. You got males changing to female, females becoming male..... Who are we to go against nature and say it's wrong?! But anyway, I've got to get this place set up for opening..."

“Do you need a hand stocking the bins,” my sister asked.

“No, I got it. But it's gonna be insanely busy today with just me here.”

Anemone sighed, “So that's that. Then I guess there's no way you'd be able to go landlubbing with us.”

“Today? Absolutely none. And not tomorrow either. And I would have loved to... I've got this really durable landlubbing vest I've been wanting to try out, use to belong to some human named Harley Davidson. But we'll be closed Saturday, and we can do something then, if you guys want.”

“That sounds great,” we answered.

“Go do your store,” Anee told him, “We need to get a move on anyway, the sun will be up soon.”

“It was real nice meeting you, Fluke. I'll be down the block there, you guys. There's this really neat looking store I want to check out,” I said, pointing off into the dark, and left...

There was no 'really neat store', I just wanted to give them some boyfriend/girlfriend time together. Before I was out of the circle of light from Fluke's lantern they had locked their arms around each other and were lost inside a kiss.
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)))========> LIKE CHOPSTICKS FOR ICE CREAM
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Out in the sheltering darkness I sat on a bench that had these comfy mermaid-butt shaped dents in it, wrestling with my emotions.

Right from the start I could tell I was out of my weight class, and my emotions were fighting dirty...

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==========>
I glanced over at Anee and Fluke embracing. They seemed so great together. Two normal kids, doing what people our age do. They seemed to know who they were and where they belong in this world. Or maybe not completely, since as my gender shrink reminded me adolescence is a time of questions and anxiety for everyone- regardless of their sexuality or gender identity.

But I seemed to have more than my share of questions and anxiety as I hit puberty. Like I said, there had been that question about if I liked boys or girls, to which I finally answered yes; But in either case the desires I had didn't seem to go with my body. I seemed to want someone to touch me places I didn't actually have, and the one thing I did have I couldn't see much use for.

All my fantasies about romance and/or sex had started wit me being a girl, and since I wasn't one I had never pursued any kind of dating or whatever, and no one seemed to be pursuing me. Well until Pepper, and that was very recently, digging me more now that I was “interesting”. We had kissed and done some intimate stuff, which was exciting- I sure do like Pepper. It was probably the fact that we'd been friends since we were kids that I hadn't considered her as someone to be girlfriends with, but when she considered me I thought: “this might work!”

And yet the only time our kissing sessions had seemed TOTALLY right was on the day of that fiasco with those hostile jerks in the mall---that day of so many firsts---and after we got back to her house, and her parents were still at work, and I was wearing the clothes she had loaned me, with my hair the way she'd styled it that morning, and I could feel like I was really and truly Suzie and not Stewart. I didn't technically lose my virginity, but it was about the closest I ever got to another person sexually, and it was beautiful...

There are some things that it feels just too strange to do when you feel like you've totally been given the wrong equipment. Like eating ice cream with chopsticks, which seems weird and wrong even if it's technically possible. Then when you hungry enough you break down and use your sticks, even when you wish God had given you a spoon.

But since that genie zapped me I didn't feel any of that chopstick awkwardness anymore. Only now that I had my spoon I was afraid that I would never find anyone to have ice cream with, because there was nobody else my age around here.

Tall dark stranger. Yeah, sure. And I've got a bridge I can sell you...

I mean there were guys here, but they were all older. And I didn't really want to be with an older guy, although someday I might have to if that was all there was. Beards have always been a major turn off for me, and the mermen here sure had some big bushy ones, but I supposed I could get over that if I liked the merman...

But then there was Sandee who worked at at SEAS CANDY. I had been thinking about her a lot since yesterday. She definitely didn't have a beard, and that smile of hers made something go wonderfully sideways inside of me. I wondered if there was even the slightest chance-
==========>
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A voice broke into my ruminations: “You ready to hit the open sea?”

My sister was hovering in front of me. I swam up off my bench, “Absolutely.”

We set out for our adventure, and were cruising through the endless kelp forest when the sun finally rose...
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)))========> WEDGE ISLAND
.

Landlubbing is a pretty amazing sport. Basically it's the mermaid equivalent of scuba diving or snorkeling, exploring a world that isn't your own.

And today that world was an island of maybe fifty acres, about six times as far away from the castle as that little rock Anemone liked to go sit on. On one side was this beautiful half moon bay that the whole island sort of curled around like a letter C, from which the terrain rose up, gradually at first but then steeply, until it abruptly ended in some tall cliffs that had the surf pounding violently against their base. Wedge Island had just about everything you'd want to see on a tropical island: a nice beach, palm trees, bushes, ferns + vines, colorful noisy birds, small mongoosey-looking mammals, strange bugs + lizards, even a little waterfall. And being uninhabited we could explore it all without running into any humans.

Lubbing is strenuous, and not every minute of it is fun. You're wriggling along, dragging a tail that's only slightly helpful for forward motion and weighs more than your entire human half; and wherever you can find a rock or a solid tree root to grab onto you use your arms to pull yourself past it. So it's sort of like rock climbing, only a lot more horizontal...

When you remember how easy it was to walk the same distance the going can seem ridiculously slow, but it gives you time to notice the little things you might not have seen otherwise.

Approaching on the bay side we waited and watched the rhythm of the waves a while. At this beach today it was every eighth wave that was the big one, so we counted and then body-surfed in on one of these. Not a huge wave but it took us a long way in before we had to start squirming across the wet sand.

Lolling around at the waterline was a mostly deflated Wilson volleyball with a smiley face painted on it in what looked like blood. Anemone pointed, “What's that thing?”

“Somebody's idea of a joke, I hope...”

After a few yards we reached the dry sand---clean and pretty and almost painfully white in the bright morning sun---where coming the other way we met a large sea turtle, who was making better time across it than we were.

Anemone said to her, “Don't worry, Mama Turtle, we won't mess with your eggs.”

“I would appreciate that,” she nodded, “And may your babies be safe as well. Safe swimming!”

“Safe swimming,” we both replied as we passed her.

She'd assumed we were up here for the same reason she was, figuring that no sea creature would be crazy enough to do this if she didn't have eggs to lay. It was a weird reminder that if it ever happened for me, motherhood would involve sitting on an egg in a nest like a chicken. Although at least us chickens-of-the-sea had the option of buying a pre-made nest at the recently opened Village Maternity Shoppe...

“Let's leave our sticks here, where they'll be easy to find on the way back,” Anemone said as she pulled her shark club from her belt and stuck it upright in the sand.

“There's no wild boars up there or anything?” I asked, pointing up at the island's central big hill.

“Nothing big enough to worry about. That club will only get in your way, or it'll work its way out of the holster and you'll wind up losing it.”

At the edge of the jungle stood a grove of coconut palms, and the crumbling stone foundation of a large house, against which Anemone rested while she dug into her pack. She pulled out a pair of wet bras and handed me one, “Here, you can have the one that fits better.”

She'd evidently tried them both on, and however they fit her they would fit me the same. After checking the little tag to see what my cup size was (cool!) I put mine on and hooked it up in back; thinking about the couple of times I had done this in secret when I was raiding my mom's clothes, and how I had needed to stuff socks or something inside her bras, then put on a blouse to hide the obvious fakeness of those dead unfeeling sock-breasts...

I looked down at my cleavage, grinning like an idiot. “Where did you get these bras?”

“You'd be surprised at the stuff you can find on the ocean floor,” she said. I imagined some wild drunken party on a boat, with clothes going overboard.

It made sense to wear these now that we weren't floating in the ocean. A few hours under normal gravity wouldn't begin to make our tits sag, but it wouldn't do them any good either. Plus I'd read where having breasts could literally be a pain, to where some women even had them surgically reduced because their backs always hurt. This wasn't something I could ever imagine myself doing, but I knew that a woman's life experience and some transgender kid's dreams of such experiences might be two very different things. I said, “Well it's good that you found these. We don't want to get a back ache...”

“You start dragging those pontoons across branches and sharp rocks and it won't be your back that's hurting. We don't have scales on our upper bodies, we need some kind of protection,” Anemone said as she tossed a t-shirt at me and slipped into the other one.

Her shirt was green with a shamrock and the words: "KISS ME I'M IRISH" on it. Which considering my family name of Donnelly probably should of been my shirt. Unless my heritage had got changed when my whole body did and I was a Daughter-of-Atlantis now. But I liked this "HUSSONG'S CANTINA ~ Ensenada, BC" shirt a lot better anyway---it just seemed so summer vacation-y, like it went with this island, and red is my favorite color---so who cares who's Irish or Atlantean or Mexican or what?

“Don't get too attached to that shirt,” she said, “Where we're going it's gonna get pretty trashed. There's been some I've had to get rid of after one trip.”

As we started out again I noticed that the house's foundation had a full sized palm tree growing right in the middle of it. I said, “This place looks old...”

“It is. Back when my grandma was a little kid some humans from Africa came here and tried to start a sugar plantation.”

Knowing the average lifespan of a mermaid I did the math, and said, “I think those Africans only worked here.”

Anemone had come here a lot and had a “beginner's path” picked out for us, with a mostly shallow ascent with the maximum number of good handholds. Although if this was the beginner's path I'd hate to see the hard one. I will never complain about the uphill parts in cross country skiing again!

But it was worth it to share “the world I grew up in” with my twin. This was how she thought of it anyway, not realizing that to a suburban American kid like me this island was as strange as the kelp forest we'd come through on the way here. Maybe more so, since there were beds of several types of algae and all kinds of fish at the Aquaritorium where my mom worked, but they had nothing like this there. I wasn't much help in answering all the questions she was asking me, like: “What kind of flower is that?” Or: “Do you think these berries are edible?”

During a long rough haul Anemone pulled her shirt collar up and wiped her face with it. She told me, “Don't worry if water starts to come out of the skin of your human half, that's normal up here.”

“I know. I used to be human, remember?”

“Oh, that's right...”

Perspiring is something that many mermaids go their whole lives without doing, and the story about the patient who came to them in a panic thinking it was a sign of some strange and horrible illness is a favorite comical anecdote of our healers. And even those who know what sweating is find it an utterly repulsive experience, and further proof that we weren't meant to go crawling around on land like crazymers.

The calling conches we usually wore around our necks would have really gotten in the way doing this so we'd left them at home. What Anemone did bring along was her cheapo pirate telescope, in the same clear green vinyl school pack that she'd found it in, which she'd reach back and pull out whenever her hands weren't occupied with crawling.

During our third or fourth little rest break she saw something that made her gasp, and passed it to me, whispering, “Wow, look at the big beautiful mouth on this bird!”

Again, I was amazed at how powerful this little toy scope was. I pointed it where she'd been looking, glad that I finally knew one, “Ah, that's a toucan. And a bird's mouth is called a beak.”

Anemone loved any kind of birds. The idea that an animal could fly seemed like something magical to her. I told her there were groups of humans called Birdwatchers that she'd fit right in with.

“See? We're not so different,” she said, a statement that seemed to be addressed more to our mom back at the castle than to me. “It's too bad we can't be here at sundown. That's when the bats come out.”

“There's bats here?”

“About a billion of 'em! The way they go swirling around against the sunset, from a distance you'd almost think it was a cloud, but it's going up and down and around like it had a brain.”

“I'd love to see that,” I said.

“But not today though. In fact we're gonna need to turn back at midday. But please let me know if you start to get tired before then, because it's not really any easier going downhill.”

“What will make me have to quit, and I think way before noon, is needing to get back into the water!”

“There's a stream just up ahead. That'll help a lot. It's another the reason I picked this course.”

When we got to the stream we stuck our heads in it and breathed the warm clear water to for a while, and then drank a bunch to hydrate ourselves. Fresh water tasted weird to me now; but she assured me it wouldn't make us sick. She said the famous river explorer Huxtable Fynn and his party had lived in the stuff for a couple of years as they searched for the headwaters of the Mississippi; although they did have to take salt supplements.

I said, “Speaking of headwaters, this is a pretty big stream for such a small island. Where's all this coming from?”

“A spring up near the top of the hill. It's really nice, warm. I like to lay on the bottom and look up through the surface at the trees bobbing around in the breeze. So pretty. It's about another hour's squirm from here. Although there's one stretch that's definitely not a beginner's climb. Do you want to see it?”

I was dirty, scraped up, had lost a couple of scales on my butt and water was coming out of my skin, but I grinned, “I think we're gonna have to.”

We followed the creek. The terrain got steeper, and the rest stops came more often. We passed the mouth of a cave, which I would of loved to explore if I'd had legs and a flashlight.

Anemone said, “That's where the bats live. It's pretty amazing when they all come exploding out of there at twilight. Bats are so beautiful!”

Somebody had carved MM in the rock next to the cave. It couldn't have been the year, because the letters looked way too old and worn to have been done in 2000, so maybe it was their initials. Marion Mutton? These islands had been the old psychopath's stomping grounds. But I knew if we went poking around in there we'd be more likely to fall down a hole and die neck-deep in bat poop than find any pirate treasure.

We moved on.

On our next rest stop Anemone pointed at a spider web, and asked me if I'd ever seen one of these “amazing nets” that these “little crab things” build to catch bugs in. My knowledge of biology is pretty hit-or-miss (I'm either gung-ho on a subject or skip right over it), but I'd been fascinated by spiders ever since falling in love with Charlotte's Web half a lifetime ago, so that was another one I was glad to be able to explain to her.

The non-beginners part that she'd warned me about was a waterfall, about as tall as our house back in Dover. You had to climb up a steep slope alongside it by some vines hanging down. Hand over hand. At 65 degrees it was too steep to keep us from sliding backwards but created plenty of drag to hinder your upward progress. I wasn't sure I'd be able to do this without feet to plant against it; but I guess when that genie made me into a copy of Anemone that included her arm muscles, which weren't all bulgy like some weightlifter's but were strong enough that she could go climbing up these vines like a monkey, and then reach out and help pull me up that last little part.

I flopped onto the mossy grass alongside the waterfall's edge, grunting, “What do you say we rest a bit?”

“But the spring's right there,” she said, meaning a wall of rocks almost like a jetty at the top of a grassy little slope, with a dent in it from which the stream started.

“Okay. I can do that,” I said, and we wriggled toward it.
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)))========> BITCH BASSIDY & THE SUNFISH KID
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The spring was as perfect as Anemone said. It was wonderful to totally submerge ourselves in it. We rinsed our shirts clean and hung them on a branch, and after waiting a minute for the water to clear we jumped in and lie on the bottom, watching the clouds drift past.

I mentioned that this pond looked oddly fake, like something you'd see at a home and garden show.

She said it was; that somebody decades or centuries ago had built a little dam around what had just been a hole in the ground with water gurgling out of it. Whoever they were, they had my thanks.

One great thing about this spring that my sister hadn't mentioned was what a spectacular view we had from here. After our soak we clambered up onto a fallen tree that crossed the edge of the pond and sat there with just our flukes dangling in the water, taking it all in. We sure had crawled a long way...

Just beyond where our stream dropped away down the little waterfall were the tree tops of the jungle we'd just inchwormed our way through, which was the size of maybe three shopping malls. The jungle sloped down away from us until it stopped at the grove of palm trees; and beyond them lie the white crescent beach, descending gently into to that blue, blue bay with that big white futuristic boat parked in it.

Boat?!!

“Hey! Where did that come from?”

Anemone slapped the water with her tail. “Must've pulled in when we were under here...”

“Should we be worried?”

“I don't know.”

It was a sixty foot yacht, pudgy and expensive looking; and very customized. Right at the bow I could see the tops of what I guessed was a pair of big picture-window sized portholes they could sit behind and see whatever was going on underwater. And then about a third of the way back from the front it had a thing like an oversized canoe on each side, which I figured could be pushed down into the water on booms to lift the big boat's whole front end up and turn it into a hydrofoil. There were so many telemetry and communications doo-dads + dealie-bobs up on top of its bridge that it could probably call up the Mars Rover for a chat or tell you the wind speed on Jupiter. It was the kind of yacht that would have several bathrooms (not “heads”) and a home theater; and might or might not have a bowling alley.

But what it definitely did have was a Zodiac, which we should have been able to hear from here, but the inflatable dinghy's oddly-shaped little outboard motor was strangely silent as it hauled-ass across the water toward the beach with three people in it. Anemone handed me her spyglass, saying, “You know more about humans.”

I studied them through it. “Well they don't look like drug runners or anyone else who might be heavily armed. Their clothes are too colorful, touristy, and kind of weird. The big one's wearing a silly hat like a red plastic flower pot. Actually I think they're a family on vacation. Yeah, okay.... It's a dad and a mom, the dad's around fifty and the mom's maybe thirty five; and a daughter who might be nine or ten, and really has the whole pink thing going on.”

“I can see the pink one! Let me have that,” she said. And after looking for a while went, “They don't seem too bad. And I really doubt if they'll come up this far.”

As the rubber boat hit the sand they all shrugged out of their life preservers. The dad flipped the motor up and the three of them jumped out and dragged it up onto the sand, well past the high-water mark, like they had done this often.

The father found the squished volleyball, held it up like he was singing something to it. From his goofy pose I would guess it was that “Alas poor Yorick he bathed in sulfuric” song from Mel Brooks's Hamlet.

The mom grabbed the ball from him and chucked it into the Zodiac, probably to take it back to land and recycle it, or at least get it off of that otherwise pristine beach. Then the girl saw something on the sand and they all all gathered around it excitedly, squatting down to peer at it and then standing back up.

“What is it, Anee?”

“They're talking about our tail tracks in the sand,” she said.

Uh oh! “Well maybe they'll think it's sea turtles...”

She frowned, “Would you?”

“I guess not,” I said. If I wasn't thinking 'mermaid' I wouldn't know what had made our tracks, except maybe a pair of mutant seals. But the last Caribbean monk seal had been slaughtered about a hundred years ago and harbor seals didn't live this far south...

And from the way they were acting we seemed to have left them a huge mystery. They stopped and pointed at our shark clubs sticking up out of the sand---What could have done this?---then followed our tracks through the palm trees to where the grass started. I got the scope back just in time to catch the father as he squatted down, and made a patting motion with his hand. See how the grass has been flattened here? Then they started following the squashed grass. More slowly, because it was less obvious than those wavy dents through the sand.

Every minute or so in some spot where the foliage was thin we'd see the dad's florescent lime green vest-shirt or weird red hat, the mom's mish-mosh of animal prints or the daughter's sneakers-to-beret shiny pink ensemble. They were definitely following the same path we had taken. Of all the boats that could have stopped here we had to get Jungle Jim the Animal Tracker.

Anemone watched their progress through the spyglass- “Oh good, they're gonna turn left- No, you stupids! Go left! Go- Awwww dammit, they found our trail again! Who are these guys?!”

“I have no idea.”

“You realize we absolutely cannot let them see us, don't you?”

“I realize that.”

She was definitely worried now. She looked around, “I think we have to get out of here.”

“Maybe we could go back to that cave we passed. Hide in that.”

“They'll get to it before we will. We have to go up.”

“Up?”

She pointed up the hill, “That rocky area up there. We won't leave any broken branches or twigs to follow.”

It seemed like quite a gamble. Because if they did follow us we'd be cornered against the cliffs. But I didn't have any better ideas.

“Let's put these on later, we need to get out of here!” she said, stuffing our lubbing outfits into the backpack, and we headed up, across a jumble of volcanic looking rocks with some lichens on them but very little vegetation.

We made good headway because there were so many handholds, but the sharp igneous rocks were murder on my tail, my boobs and my hands. This was the kind of masochistic idiocy that most merpeople imagined when they thought of landlubbing...

Luckily after a couple hundred feet we came to the end, and headed around this one egg shaped boulder the size of a barn that looked to be the highest point on the whole island, and onto a ledge about ten feet wide between it and the cliff's edge.

We sat leaning against the big egg. It was very windy up here.

I looked at my poor battered tail. I'd only felt a tug and a brief stinging there when it happened but there was a chunk the size of a Sharpie marker missing from it in a place about six inches above my tailfin, showing the inner me, which looked like a raw red snapper steak.

Jesus, I thought, I really am half fish!! But at least the blood dribbling out of me was normal looking.

My sister saw where I was staring. “That's not too bad, in a month or so you'll just have a dent there, and the new scales will come in smaller. We'll slap an antibiotic poultice on it and wrap it when we get home...”

I couldn't believe how high we had climbed. I peered down at the angry dancing surf below us. It was quite a bit farther than when I'd jumped from the crow's nest of The Invinceable. I whistled softly.

“I know. But I think we might have to,” murmured Anemone as she took off her backpack.

Oh, perfect! I started laughing. It wasn't a very happy laugh.

“What's so funny?”

“There's this old movie..... Do you know what a cowboy is?”

“It's an American man from a place with no water who rides cows.”

“Close enough. There's these two cowboys named Butch and Sundance,” I simplified, not wanting to have to explain what a train robber was, or an 'anti-hero'. “Some bad men are trying to catch them, and these guys are really good at tracking people. So the two cowboys try to escape up into the rocky hills, just like we did. And they come to a cliff, like this one, with a river below. And if they don't jump they'll get caught, taken back to town and hung- uh, strangled to death with a rope...”

We could hear the dad say excitedly, “Blood! And it's recent.... it's them all right.”

They must have been halfway across the rocks if we could hear them so clearly over the waves and wind. A female voice said, “Poor things! They must be scared of us, whatever they are. I think we should just leave them be and head back.”

“Yeah Dad,” said a girl's voice, “This is FEEK! You don't have to be the big game hunter everywhere we go.”

“Watch your lang-” he started to scold her, then must've decided that 'feek' wasn't that bad a word. “Do I even own a gun, Valerie? Except for those three times---which I swore off when I married your mom---I only go hunting the V Room. But I have to know what these things are. Get a picture. I mean something that leaves a track like that- it's like nothing I've seen or heard of! Do you compy what I'm saying here? Back there in that muddy spot, those looked like hand prints!”

They conferred more quietly after that, a lot of mumble-bumble that I couldn't make out.

“Anyway,” I whispered to Anemone, “One of the cowboys, Sundance, just refuses to jump. He'd rather try and fight all those men.”

“He's scared of heights,” she nodded. She could sure sympathize with that.

“Not exactly. He won't say what he's scared of, he's embarrassed about it. But finally after some more arguing he admits, 'I CAN'T SWIM!' And Butch Cassidy starts laughing really hard. And he says, 'Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!'”

She looked down the cliff face. “I guess that's funny. So what do they do?”

“Maybe they're around this rock,” came the man's voice. He sounded super close.

“They go: 'Oooooooooh SHI-'”

As I started wriggling as fast as I could toward the cliff edge Anemone joined me, but didn't scream the cuss word that I did on the way down. She just screamed.

Maybe it was our aerodynamic mermaid shape, or maybe we have thicker skulls than I did as Stewart, but hitting the water head first wasn't as jarring and didn't nearly knock me out like my toes-first dive off the pirate ship did. It was like slipping into some welcoming space, that knew you the way you knew it, and where you knew you'd be okay now.
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We swam home real slow. This was something else we weren't going to tell Mom about...

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NEXT: RETURN OF THE WHITE BEAST
(Part One of Enomena's 3-chapter adventure The Little Human)
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And again, any comments will be hugely appreciated.