womb. My body no longer registered the cold as the water flowed in and out, equalizing my temperature.
At first blurry, my eyesight began to clear. The mermaids holding me came into sharp focus and the water no longer felt heavy flowing across my eyes. My hands and feet began to tingle.
We continued to descend until the sunlight could no longer penetrate the depths. Something strange began to happen to the mermaid’s skin. What had been pale and reflective in the light was now luminous and glowing. They were phosphorescent, casting their own light into the black abyss. The moving reflection of the sheer rock wall was the only clue that we continued to descend. We finally hit the bottom at a kind of cavern, a circular chamber with vertical rock walls.
Ethan had told me that just off of our coastline lie some of the deepest ocean waters on earth; a submarine canyon under extreme pressure– far too deep for divers to penetrate. He explained how robotic submersibles had recorded strange undiscovered sea life that was as alien as if it had just arrived from outer space. I remembered the awe in his voice as he speculated on the mysteries hidden in the ocean’s unexplored trenches. And now I’d been taken to some kind of mermaid council in the deepest part of it.
I was brought to the center of the cavern, watching in a daze as a few dozen mermaids began to drift in, hovering in a circle around me. They truly were majestic creatures, all of them young and powerful with brilliantly colored hair framing beautiful, delicate faces. They all had perfectly formed torsos that morphed into gloriously finned tails, sparkling with their own light.
They viewed me with childlike wonder, each one wanting to reach out and touch my hair, face and wet suit. They didn’t seem to know the wetsuit wasn’t my skin and pinched and pulled at it, confused.
They seemed most fascinated with my feet, and poked at them, examining my toes with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion. I flinched away from their touches, still restrained by the pair that had dragged me down. I kicked their hands away, and as the shock started to wear off I became increasingly aggravated, offended by their rudeness.
My courage rose along with my temper, giving me renewed strength to defy them. I became furiously angry, and I drew power from it. I twisted and turned, trying to break their grip, screaming watery screams. I thought about Ethan urging me to fight and redoubled my efforts.
One of them found the zipper pull and they peeled back the wetsuit, tearing away at my clothes until I was stripped bare.
I could see them fighting with each other over each garment, putting their arms in the sweater backwards and pulling the skirt on over their heads. Two of them fought over the wetsuit in a vicious tug of war; another was trying to pull my tights onto her fin. In the eerie glow of luminous mermaid light the scene was comically surrealistic.
“Stop it! Let go of me!” I yelled, and the swimming ones looked at me in wide eyed amazement, backing off.
“She can talk! She can talk! ” Their bell-like voices echoed off the rock walls. I looked around, wondering what they had in store for me. I had been willing to sacrifice my life, but now the will to live rose up in me like a phoenix springing from a bed of smoldering ashes. I saw Ethan’s devastated face in my mind, and I knew I had to get back to the surface. I had to get back to him. I tried to free my wrists from the vise-like grip of the mermaids, but they were too strong.
“What are you holding me for? What do you think I’m going to do? ” I asked the ones on each side of me. They were confused, as though they had difficulty thinking for themselves.
“Who’s in charge? Who’s your leader? ” I felt like I was in a bad science fiction movie.
All the ringing voices seemed to stop at once as the mermaids lined up against the cavern walls. There was a palpable change in the atmosphere; my scalp tingled and my hair stood on end. They all looked in one direction expectantly and I followed suit, craning my neck to see what was coming our way.
A solo mermaid came floating in, smiling tranquilly. She seemed to make little effort to move, swanning into the room