Stolen Dream

Chapter Three

This chapter begins portraying some controversial and religious subject matter.
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Fitz came to slowly. She blinked her world back into focus, frowning at the unfamiliar environment she was in. She sat up abruptly, eyes wide as memory returned.

No, it wasn't possible. Merpeople did not exist. There was no such thing. There couldn't be. She couldn't have seen what she'd seen. Of course, she knew better, but that wasn't the point. The point was that she wanted to stay in denial. She didn't want to admit that she'd seen what she'd seen. That she'd then fainted in utter and complete shock.

"Ah, you're awake. I knew it would shock you, but I hadn't quite expected that reaction from you," Herbert greeted with a chuckle.

Fitz had never seen him so giddy. He was normally so intently focused on their work that working with him was practically a killjoy. She'd nearly quit or asked for a new partner a dozen times over the years. "Is this some kind of horrible dream?"

He shook his head, a fanatical light gleaming in his brilliant blue eyes. "It's real. She's real. I caught her just a few days ago."

"You caught her?" Fitz asked dubiously.

"I went back to the reef after our dive. Late that very night, in fact. I had barely hit the water when I saw them."

"Them?"

He frowned at her. "Them. There were two of them. One got away—they're incredibly fast—but the other tried to hide instead. Her mistake. I used a shark club to knock her out and brought her here."

It couldn't be real, but the story sounded disturbingly plausible. Definitely something she could see Herbert doing. "Can I see her?"

"Of course."

Herbert led Fitz back through the house to the lab where the giant aquarium took up most of the large room.

She stared long and hard at the mermaid, who stared right back at her. Fitz wasn't sure what she'd expected a mermaid to look like, but this creature was no Little Mermaid. She had hair, but it was more like seaweed than actual hair, thick and in constant motion with the flow of the water. Her skin was dark and looked quite similar in texture to that of a dolphin or whale. Almost rubbery. Her fins were covered in multi-hued scales, though the main colour appeared to be a pale blue.

"Fascinating," she murmured, and the mermaid bared her teeth at her. Teeth more like a piranha than a human. "What does she eat?"

"Small fish and several varieties of plants native to the part of the ocean where I found her."

"Does she speak or communicate at all?"

"She speaks English."

Fitz whirled around to gape at Herbert. "She speaks...? How?"

"Apparently their kind like to study our kind."

"So she's intelligent?"

"Incredibly so."

"Have you started running tests on her?"

"Just a few on the blood and tissue samples I initially took." He pinned her with a hard look. "I'll show you, share everything I know with you, but you can't say a word to anyone else."

"What?"

"Not a word, Fitz. Not one. Single. Word."

"Why not? Do you have any idea how incredible this discovery is? I mean, come on, Herbert! We have myths and legends about them, but we've never actually found any substantial evidence of their existence." She paused for a moment, shaking her head. "This is huge. Bigger than huge. We'll be famous, beyond famous. We'll go down in history as the people who discovered and were the first to study these beings! How can we not share this with the world?"