Between the Land and the Sea - By Derrolyn Anderson Page 0,62

I waited a few minutes for a strolling couple to clear the ship before I called out for her.

She appeared right away, her hair shining like a new penny in the sunlight.

“You came! ” she cried joyously.

“I’m going to get on my board and meet you out there, ” I said, pointing to a spot in the water clear of the ship and pier.

She nodded, and I turned and ran off the pier, bounding down the stairs and racing back across the sand to where Cruz was waiting on the beach. I know he was hoping that Lorelei wouldn’t be there, and his face fell when he saw the look in my eyes. I stripped off my clothes and hurriedly donned my wetsuit, this time adding booties and tucking the cap in the back. Cruz zipped me up.

“I don’t think I’ll be more than an hour, okay?” He nodded apprehensively, looking scared.

I grabbed my board and ran into the surf with it, duck diving under the waves the way Ethan had shown me. I paddled out to the area I had indicated and sat up on the board. She rose from the water immediately and we exchanged smiles. She held her head and shoulders out of the water, and I could see her powerful tail swish to and fro beneath her.

“What happened to your face? ” she asked me.

“It’s nothing, an accident, ” I said, reflexively touching my lip. “Lorelei, I need to know about my mother. ”

“Yes, ” she said, “Our sister. ”

“You mean that my mother is your sister? ”

“We are all sisters, ” she said.

“That makes you my aunt...”

“Aunt? ” she sounded puzzled.

“Yes, aunt– my mother’s sister is my aunt. ”

Her beautiful face registered no understanding. Maybe she was wrong about my mother.

Maybe I just happened to look like her. Maybe...

“Adria is my sister, ” she said. I nearly fell off of my surfboard when she spoke her name.

“Adria...” I was stunned, my head spinning.

“Where is Adria? ” she asked, “We miss her.” My god, I thought, she doesn’t know...what do I say?

“Lorelei,” I said gently, “She died just after I was born.”

“Died, ” she said with a little shake in her musical voice, “She is no more? ” Her face fell, and I knew she understood.

“No, ” I said somberly.

Her singsong voice took on a mournful timbre, “She left us for a human man. She saw him and said goodbye to us. After a while… she didn’t come back. ”

“I never even knew her, ” I paused for a moment, hot tears stinging my eyes. “What was she like? ”

“She was one of us, but she was different.”

“How? ” I asked, my head still reeling from the shock.

She smiled her wild gleeful smile, recovering from her moment of sorrow, “She liked to watch the people.” She looked over at the cement ship, “Pretty ladies used to dance and the sounds used to come from there. Adria watched them all the time. She was very sad when they stopped coming. ”

I thought about Stella dancing to the big bands. How could my mother have seen her, and then my father so many years later? That would make her over a hundred years old. It simply wasn’t possible; Lorelei must be confused.

I thought about my father, and wondered how he could have met my mother. I suppose he might have seen her the same way I saw Lorelei, but it was hard to imagine what would have brought him out to the boat– he never went to the beach if he could avoid it.

“What did she say about my father? ” I asked.

“She said she must leave us to be with him, ” she frowned, “She said she wanted some things she could only have if she left her sisters.”

“What things? ”

“Come with me to my hiding place! ”

She grabbed the edge of the board and began to propel it through the water. I laid down flat and held on for dear life. Turning back to look at the coastline, I saw Cruz’s tiny figure recede. I had taken this trip before, but mostly underwater and in a state of shock. We finally arrived at the remote spot.

We had learned about sea mounted weather stations in science class, so now I knew what it was. The buoy was anchored to the ocean floor and transmitting information about temperature, wind speed and wave action. It looked like a flying saucer, a floating disk with a small tower attached and