Samantha swam faster than she ever thought possible. It wasn't just the choppers and the government she was running from, it was the life she was leaving behind. It was Coquette, who might be dead or captured by now. It was everyone she ever knew, who would be horrified to learn that she had changed her body into something that can't survive in their world. She'd rather let them think she was dead.
But one thing's for sure: she wasn't ever gonna be caged again.
There were submarines out there— she heard them. Maybe not with her ears, but with a sensitive line of nerves that ran down the length of her body, even the human part. Those submarines might not have been looking for her— but she couldn't tell for certain. She kept her distance, just the same. In fact, she raced along the bottom of the ocean, mere inches from the rock bed, around formations and into trenches, just to be sure to stay under their radar.
She was aware of the monsters that coiled around her, but somehow that didn't bother her anymore. Coquette had lived out here for years and had never been eaten. Now that Sam was forced into it— pushed into the deep end, so to speak— it wasn't that bad. Before experiencing the ocean, she had imagined a cold, foggy gloom in which you couldn't see the horrors until they were right on top of you. That all was true, but she liked the cold, and although she couldn't see much directly, she felt everything.
It took a while for that to sink in. She had been darting out of the way of obstacles for so long that it was hard to believe that she couldn't see them. I'm not blind, she thought, how could I have— if I had— ohmigod, psychic powers!
She came upon a large column of rock and examined it. She felt the crunch of detail, the porous coral— or if not felt, tasted? heard? Yes, it was sound. In time with the stiff, rapid movements she was making with her tail, her mouth was chirp-chirp-chirping, sending musical notes into the water all around her. Holding her breath, it went dark. Singing again, it came back. Sonar!
The whole landscape seemed to be lit up in florescent colors— colors made of sound. What she heard, she also "saw," in a sense, as well as felt and tasted. The notes had a flavor as they slipped from her lips, and that flavor came back enriched by the texture of the world around her. She pressed her hands to her sides and hips, onto the lateral line that sensed these vibrations in the water, and saw that landscape trip out in funky colors.
This is what was wrong with the dolphin pen: it had flat walls. Everything just echoed back without color, and the flat echoes had trained her to keep her mouth shut as she swam. Out in her natural environment, a medley of haunting chimes, purrs, squeaks, and clicks spilled out of her lips.
There is a whole-body thrill that comes from enjoying the sound of your own voice. Singing is somehow more visceral than any art you produce with your hands— it comes from within you, exposes you— so much so that an off-key note doesn't sound like an honest mistake, it sounds like deceit. Some kind of failure as a person. Nobody winces at an awkward drawing as much as an awkward sound. But when the notes are right, the music trills within you and surprises you with its own richness. It is pure joy.
Not joy: bliss. Sam wondered why she had resisted for so long, how she could have caused so much trouble to avoid coming here, to the place where everything is beautiful. Poor Coquette!
In the distance, a new sound glowed. Someone had heard her song and was answering her, someone who was rising out of the deep like a golden sunrise. The voice was low, monstrously low. For a moment, Sam thought it might be one of the other mermaids, but no— it was much too low to be coming out of anyone her size.
It was a whale. Sam didn't believe it until it grew like an approaching planet and sounded its bass notes through her entire body. The universe shook with its majesty. By the time she could see it with her eyes, there was nothing to see: a wall of striated flesh, a living being that filled the horizon. But the song that was the greater part of it: all the glorious notes that are too low for human ears to hear— they coursed through her. She became those notes. She was in the presence of the footman of God.
Timidly, she returned the song to him in her own tweets and chimes. The whale stopped and listened— listening to her!— and at the appropriate time, responded with a counterpoint. From all corners of the ocean, the song resounded in intricate harmonies.
Maybe Coquette was right, Sam thought. I do have the soul of a mermaid.
* * *
Coquette had been dead, but was no longer dead. Nothing Dr. Tiwana did could have done brought this about, no medical expertise, no matter how skilled. She drowned. She died. Her lungs had been completely full of water, and now she didn't have so much as a rattling cough. Coquette touched her lips, still feeling the kiss that had saved her. It lingered there like a scar, as though she could feel it with her fingertips.
She sat on the gunwale of the speedboat, hunched over her bare feet, leather jacket shrinking and sticking to her skin. The tempest was still running its course. Though helicopters buzzed through the air, there was no way they could have approached or even cornered the small boat. The sea was far too rough. It was a wonder they didn't capsize. Wei-Ting was a phenomenal captain, the best money could buy.
"Nobody's going to know about this," she said to her crew. "As far as you're concerned, the mermaid is a myth." They all nodded. The matter was settled.
Coquette peeled open her wet pocket and pulled out a large, red gemstone on a chain. She closed it in her fist without taking a good look at it. The rough edges cut into her palm. Somewhere out there, Samantha had been forced into a life of solitude— swimming and exploring, all alone. Coquette had done her time— it was only fair that someone else took up the slack. But without the stone, Sam had no hope of return. Just endless seas, forever.
Coquette had half a mind to strip off her clothes, stare into the stone, and jump into the sea. Sam couldn't have gone far— a hundred miles at the most— and Coquette could use her mermaid powers to track her down.
But what if the change happens while Sam is deep underwater? Becoming human at fifty fathoms would be fatal. And even at the surface where the storm raged, it can be hard to keep your head above water. Forty foot waves have a tendency of shoving you back under. Imagine the terror of having your mermaid senses suddenly switch off, to become a naked human being tossed by the pitiless sea. It might take hours, finding her. Hypothermia could settle in.
Coquette put the stone back in her pocket.
* * *
Coquette's staff noticed the change, too. They saw that something was eating away at her. Ever since the great SeaWorld robbery, in which she was rumored to have captured a mermaid for her private aquarium, she'd been moody, lacking the zeal for organized crime that had drawn many of them to her side. Now she just paced the halls of her lair, carved into the walls of an active volcano.
Their suspicions were confirmed when she scaled back her staff and concentrated her resources on a secret project. No one had a full picture of what it was— each team was kept in isolation of the others— but it involved a satellite, launched right under NASA's noses on an abandoned Apollo launch site. After that, she fired just about everybody in the organization.
The next phase involved computer specialists. It was widely believed that she was constructing an artificial mind to enslave the human race, but the closest to the project said it was just image analysis. But it was anybody's guess what she was looking for. These were the darkest times, when she would be seen brooding in front of her mantle of dripping lava. In public, she swung between ecstasy and rages.
Her empire was crumbling, and she didn't seem to give a damn. She became all consumed in her work, laying off the well oiled team of experts she'd gathered around her. Mob boss Kingsley took over most of her old territory and challenged her with a direct ultimatum. She blew him off.
Then one day, she disappeared completely. The dark granite halls of her volcano island stood empty, to be reclaimed someday by the encroaching magma. Former employees came to see if there was anything worth looting, but Coquette's last days had been pretty spartan. She'd spent everything on her mad obsession.
But her private aquarium, a wall-spanning pane of glass, was full of mermaids.
* * *
Coquette piloted a small boat into open ocean, over the underwater cliff where the waves broke. Her hydroplane was parked in the lagoon of a tiny, ring-shaped island— one of those Cheerios in the Pacific that's just big enough for a single-lane road between the ocean and the lagoon, all the way around. Crumbling shacks provided evidence that it had once been inhabited by a clan of surfer-hippies, but that was a long time ago. High tide submerged the island completely, joining the inner and outer seas.
She had the last of her equipment on board— it was a last-ditch effort to find Samantha. She had no idea what to say to her when she found her. "Ha, ha, I had the stone all this time. Here are your legs back." But whatever Sam said or thought of her, it could hardly compete with Coquette's own soul-wringing. Gouging her power and wealth from within had been cathartic.
Coquette's job was made easier by the fact that Sam was traveling with a pod of dolphins these days. When the group was tight-packed, they made a clear ping on sonar, and that corroborated well with the satellite signal. It also helped that Coquette had experience: Sam wasn't the first mermaid she'd hunted down.
Coquette's heart caught in her throat when the sonar went blank— they just disappeared. "No," she uttered, "no, no, no, no, no—" Sometimes they dove too deep. Sometimes they spread too thin. But sometimes— she laughed suddenly— they played on the surface! She could see them, just barely, in the haze of the horizon.
Coquette kicked the engine into high gear and then, thinking better of it, cut it off completely. A motorboat would probably scare them, and then she'd never be able to catch up. "I guess it's time," she said aloud. "It's finally..."
The thought sunk into a stew of mixed feelings.
"Well!" she said, shaking herself out of a funk. "If I don't hurry, they'll be gone." She got undressed in the rocking boat and stood high on its prow, daring the world to gaze upon her. She liked her human body. She thought she looked like an alabaster goddess, cruel and proud. "Well, so much for that," she said, and rifled through her possessions to take out the only thing she would ever own again. She hitched it around her neck. The fastener had been reinforced.
Already, the pod of leaping dolphins was getting hard to see. She turned the gemstone in her fingers and stared into it. A hard, long look. She felt as though she was falling into it, into the haze of red crystal, into the little shuddering fish egg at its center. And then the familiar feeling: her legs getting wobbly, turning liquid. She leaned forward off the prow and dropped into the water as the transformation took place.
Far away, leaping among the dolphins, Sam must have been feeling the same thing, the same twinge and shimmer as her body came apart. God, I hope she reaches the surface in time, Coquette thought. Swirling water filled her mouth.
All these years, she'd been keeping the gemstone at a distance, careful to avoid its gaze whenever she handled it. She'd forgotten how good it feels to change. That's what she said to the Coquette— French Coquette— back in that shack of a beach house where they met. "Crap feels like some hot-ass nookie if you ask me!" French Coquette laughed, not comprehending. She was gorgeous, but dumb, like an overgrown child. So happy to get her legs back that she danced around and giggled, fingering herself. Already, a real estate scheme was hatching in Susan's mind. She decided that Coquette would not get the gemstone back. She'd even take the name.
All that planning, all those years of waiting, accruing capital and then building an empire— she gave it up for Samantha. "God, I must be crazy," she said with the last of her air.
* * *
As chance would have it, Sam was ten feet above water when the changes hit her. At first, she thought it was the thrill of the leap, but the joy kept flowing— from her shoulders to her knees— long after she plunged back into the water. It had been a long time since she'd thought about her knees.
Her knees! She could feel them with her fingers, knobby in the soft clay of her limbs transforming themselves. In a gasp, she lost her air and fumbled with her arms to reach the surface. She burst through, took a deep breath, and was promptly splashed in the face by an oncoming wave. She dunked underwater— couldn't see clearly— but the tail was definitely splitting, shrinking, and buckling into jointed legs.
At first she was elated. Someone must have found the gemstone! Someone sifting through old police records— maybe Andrew finally got his stuff back. But then she realized she was naked and alone in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
"Fuck."
Of course someone would find it! How could she have been so stupid? She should have hugged the coast, never out of sight of land, always some distance that she could swim with human legs, if the unthinkable were to happen. All she could see here was sea and sky. She turned and tread water. Sea and sky. Turned again. Sea and sky. No land in sight anywhere. No ships, no travellers, not even any goddamn airplanes.
"Shit!"
One by one, the dolphins brushed past her and turned away. There were stories of dolphins saving humans, leading them to safety, and she was good friends with this pod. They knew her and bonded with her. But they knew her as a mermaid. As much as they were willing to take her in as a curious new type of creature, the transformation had been too much, too strange for them. They left.
Or perhaps it was because she could no longer answer them when they sang.
By the time they had all scattered, Sam was beginning to shiver. It was the south freaking Pacific. It should be warm, she insisted through her chattering teeth. Or maybe I'm in shock.
"Calm down," she told herself. "Just... just float on your back." She tried it and the sun got in her eyes. She felt so exposed, too. No more clothed than she had been as a mermaid, but much more vulnerable.
Something poked out of the water. A fin. "God, no. Sharks?" By this point, her misfortunes stacked so high as to be comical. She couldn't outrun a shark anymore. She couldn't do much of anything anymore. What are you supposed to do if a shark attacks? Poke it in the eyes?
Another fin sighting. She was done for. Sam closed her eyes and tried to remember a childhood prayer. She was certain she was going to die.
If Coquette had known Sam's state of mind, she probably wouldn't have run up and hugged her, or the mermaid equivalent, which was snatching you from underneath a rapidly following wave. Despite Sam's calm in the moments leading up to her death, she freaked out and fought for blood when it came upon her. Coquette was confused among the splashes and flailing limbs and finally got enough distance to shout, "Sam!"
Sam stopped immediately. Sharks don't talk. "Coq— <cough!>" A wave took her full in the face. She swam with all her might to get to Coquette and hug her tight.
Coquette's guilt, long-brewed and wretched, drained away in that embrace. It was so good to be with her. Much to her own surprise, she cried hot tears into Sam's shoulder.
"Where were you?" Sam blubbered. She was well above the uneven water now, hoisted up by slow strokes of Coquette's long tail.
"Had to— make sure— you're all— right—"
Sam felt the column of scales between her knees and clenched. "Are you— you found the gemstone?"
Coquette pulled herself away and nodded, blinking off tears. She held the necklace above water. It was beaded with seven stones, all different shades of red, all different roughnesses and textures, some worn to a smooth oval, others cut sharp like a diamond.
"You found them? You found them all?"
Coquette nodded.
Sam hugged her again, feeling the warmth of her body pressing against Coquette's body. "Oh, you silly fish! We only needed two!"