pressed onto my board, rocking in the soothing cradle of the sea.
“Marina!” Lorelei popped up inches from my face. Puzzled, she turned her head sideways to mirror mine, “Can we go see Nerissa now?”
I sat up, relieved to have something else to think about, “Yeah, I’d really like that.”
Lorelei grabbed hold of my board with enthusiasm, swiftly towing me north, further than we’d ever gone before. I lifted my head to see us sail past Golden Gate Bridge through a blur of white water.
After traversing a windy stretch of open ocean we approached the jagged silhouettes of a knot of small islands. Rocky and barren, they rose abruptly from the sea like an apparition, engulfed in fog, lonely and forbidding. I shivered, goosebumps rising inside of my wetsuit.
Lorelei called out for Nerissa, and I wasn’t surprised at all to realize that she hadn’t made a sound. Her thoughts were as clear to me as if she’d spoken them aloud. Another voice echoed in my ears and I sat up on my surfboard, looking around for Nerissa. When a third, tiny squeaky voice joined in the mix I began to think I was hallucinating. Then a head broke the surface of the dark blue waters.
“Nerissa!” I gasped. She looked happy, beautiful and wild, a far cry from the pale weak creature I’d first seen imprisoned by Peter.
“Marina, have you come to swim with us?” her voice rang out, clear and sweet. She swam up close, reaching out to inspect my surfboard. Her green eyes sparkled with curiosity, and her jet black hair was as shiny as polished onyx. It was a relief to find her as unaffected by her ordeal as Lorelei, for she had been held hostage far longer, and suffered a great deal more at Peter’s hands.
I looked down to her flat abdomen, wondering what had become of the baby she’d been carrying when she returned to the sea. Evie had ventured a guess that the baby might have simply disappeared as a result of her transformation back into a mermaid. It would be for the best, because as far as I knew, pregnancy was a terminal condition for mermaids. Then I heard the little voice again.
“Who else is here?” I asked them, but before they could answer a third head broke the surface.
“Sisters!” she squeaked, and I nearly fell off my surfboard.
She was small, about the size of a human toddler, but she swam around my board gracefully, agile as a sea lion. Her brick red hair fanned out in the water behind her. She dove under the surfboard, and as I scrambled frantically to see her, she surfaced behind me, shyly peeping up from the edge of the board with huge green eyes.
“Nixie!” Lorelei squealed, taking the baby mermaid in her arms and kissing her plump cheeks.
She giggled and ducked underwater, surfacing to peek around Lorelei. Her eyes grew round, and she stared me again. “What is it?” she asked Lorelei, dipping down to hide behind her shoulder.
Lorelei and Nerissa burst into peals of laughter, and the sound they made together was almost unbearably sweet. For a second I thought I might be dreaming the whole thing.
“Do not be afraid, she is a sister too… just like us.” Lorelei explained to the little mermaid.
“Only she lives on land,” added Nerissa.
“But you weren’t… I mean, it can’t possibly…” I sputtered, completely flabbergasted. It had only been a few weeks since Ethan and I had returned a pregnant Nerissa to the sea, and then she was nowhere near ready to deliver. This child looked to be at least a full year old.
“What?” Lorelei looked at me oddly, no doubt confused by the time calculations she could hear me rapidly doing in my mind.
“Where did she come from?” I asked.
Lorelei sighed dreamily, “Nerissa brought her forth… she’s so lucky…”
“Lucky?” I was aghast.
“Of course! None have been blessed with a little one for many, many moons.” I could see images in her mind of mermaid babies she’d seen in the past, realizing with a start that these memories could go back hundreds or even thousands of years.
“Blessed?” I repeated, “How’s that?”
She looked at me like I was hopelessly ignorant, “The moon sent us a new sister… and Nerissa was the chosen one.”
My God, I thought, they had no idea where babies came from. I sure hoped they couldn’t read my thoughts about that. I looked at the little mermaid with her chubby arms wrapped around Lorelei’s neck, “She sure is cute…