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“No.” Connie raised a single finger and held it stiffly in the air. “ No. ”
“Look, I’m just trying to help.”
With a huff, the girl hefted the net back over her shoulder and continued to walk down the beach. The young merman sighed and dipped his head back underwater. As Connie stomped through the shallows along the beachside, she glanced to the side. He was still following her. Out of all the hallucinations to have, he was the most persistent. She could see his body under the surface, his tail waggling up and down, the tips occasionally poking out of the tide.
She had woken up at the tip of the inlet’s crescent. Inside the walls of the island, boulders jutted out from the center of the untouched pool. The Pacific beat against the white sand outside, but in the circle, the seawater was almost still. The inner bay was so large that Connie could only barely make out the sight of marooned crates on the other side. Oddly enough, the mouth of the crescent wasn’t even a hundred feet wide, and as the tide went out she could see the jagged rock barrier that she would have had to cross to get to the other side. It sunk so low that she couldn’t see the bottom, even though as she walked along the inner circle she could see how shallow the water was around it. Connie imagined a vengeful ocean goddess punching a hole like a donut through the middle of the once-circular island.
Aside from the flabberghasting topography, the island was horrifically stereotypical. Flowering trees and waving palms covered every surface, and whatever wasn’t dense jungle was white sand. Around them all was a vast, perfect ocean. Connie was almost positive that this was an island, but it was so large that she couldn’t even be sure of that. When she woke up, she had run down away from the mouth, and the beach had curved away from her, but only so gradually. Hours would have to be spent mapping where she was.
And so, Connie had started to forage. Pieces of the boat had washed up with her, and, like something straight out of a survival flick, emergency supplies had just happened to come with her and wash up with a notebook, a fishing net, a knife, a water purifier, and other various necessities. A lack of toiletries and clean clothes was frustrating, but not as frustrating as the hallucinations. The hallucination popped out of the water again.
“Hey, look, I know I kinda scared you. But I seriously just want to help.”
“For the love of — ”
Connie whirled to face the boy in the shallows. He sat on the sand and stared with genuine concern, and it only made the girl more irritated.
“You are not real. You are a product of my sun-addled, clearly traumatized mind, and I command you with all my mental force to go vanish into mental oblivion. Got it?!”
He blinked and scratched the side of his cheek. Connie could see the scales in the water glinting reddish-pink, bright and wonderful in the sun. He had wriggled up into water he clearly couldn’t swim in, but was doing his best to sit up and give Connie his full attention. Her hallucination was, naturally, near her same age, but with dark hair and light, sun-kissed skin. His eyes were black and stony, but full of warmth that made the girl sick to her stomach. He shook saltwater out of his dark curls and sniffed like a seal. There, that was probably the solution — it was a seal that Connie was imagining as a mer-boy. No other explanation could make its way into her head. He had a string of polished pink stones and what looked to be gold nuggets strung around his neck - a flesh wound?
“I don’t really think you’re like this,” he said. “Because, um, you seem kinda mean right now? But I think you’re just having a hard time. And I don’t blame you! Wrecks are rough.”
Connie paced forwards and bent down to pick up a piece of driftwood. It didn’t have any paint or markings from her boat. She put in in her net anyway, in case she could dry it later for firewood. She kept walking.
“Most humans don’t make it. I think a couple of them last time had a satellite phone, but they also came here on a rowboat? So they weren’t really like, totally wrecked. I’m sorry I keep bringing this up, it’s just — fascinating, you know?”
“In what way is this fascinating ?”
“I like the way you work! You’re just out here, walking, getting things done immediately! You’ve already launched the water purifier floats. Planning!”
Connie bent down again. This time, it was just the edge of a stick with a geometric corner, and once she pulled it out of the sand she saw how gnarled and useless it would be. The girl pressed her lips together to stop her inevitable and frustrated scream, and hurled the stick in the merboy’s direction. He gasped, diving to the side as the log splashed harmlessly in the water. Connie panted as she stared at the gentle ripples, broken by the top half of a worried, curious young monster’s face.
“Why — are you following me!” she grunted. “I told you — to go…”
She had to make a shelter for one. She had to find food, and gather fresh water every day, and find a way to make her clothes last and get a fire going. She had to be ready for everything and she was probably wasting time that she should have been spending on the outside looking for a ship. Immediately, Connie felt her knees turn to jelly. Her body wobbled for a moment before she fell into the sand. Seawater washed up around her rear and soaked into her jeans. The tide was warm, and the sun was terribly hot, and the breeze blew strands of crusty hair around her face. It took the girl a moment to realize she was crying. Even though she hated crying in front of people more than anything, Connie wished someone was here, anyone else, someone to wipe away her tears.
The merman’s face emerged solemnly. Connie watched motionless as he wriggled onto the sand at the edge of the tide. He huffed as he emerged fully from the water and gyrated his scales. Each push sent him an inch at a time over to Connie, until they were side by side.
“You’re real,” she sniffled.
“You are too!”
“...th-thank you?”
But it really wasn’t a radical notion to him — the boy had seen plenty of humans, and Connie had never seen a mermaid. She assumed that nobody had. His tail was horizontally aligned, like a dolphin or a whale, so Connie assumed that he was at least somewhat mammalian. The scales grew like hair out of his hips — or where his hips would be? - and swirled in vibrant crimson all the way down to the end of his powerful fins. He was chubby like a seal all over. When he smiled, Connie wiped her eyes and adjusted her glasses and saw that yes, he did in fact have pointed teeth.
“I don’t really like that you’re real,” she admitted. “Not that — I mean, you seem...really nice, for some reason, but it’s just that you’re not really supposed to be — real . Mermaids aren’t supposed to exist.”
“I’m happy I exist anyway, so boo to you,” he chuckled.
“What’s your name?”
“Prince Steven. You can call me Steven. I don’t think humans recognize a mer-monarchy.”
“I’m Connie. Not a princess.”
“Why not? You can start your own island kingdom!” Steven said. “Mom just owns the water around here, not the land part. We’ll kinda die if we don’t live there.”
There was something off about Steven, but she couldn’t tell what it was at first glance. He still smiled at her, still dripped salt from his brow. There was an aura of inexplicable sameness. Connie reached her hand up and lifted Steven’s cheeks, rotating his face in her fingertips. His skin was beautifully soft, and Connie suppressed a shudder at the touch. It was a little too beautiful and she wasn’t sure what to do about him.
“You don’t have gills, so it is a pore thing?” Connie asked. “Respiration, aquatic affinity — it doesn’t make sense why you can’t live out of water and flop around.”
“It’s kinda magic. If I’m not there then I die.”
“I don’t believe in magic.”
“That’s very scientific of you but I’ll still die.”
Despite herself, Connie smiled. Out of all the things that didn’t make sense here, she knew she had to let Steven’s existence not cloud her judgement. He was a resource. If she found the right transactionary measures, he could perhaps be traded with for fish or scouting. The more the thought about it, the more she hoped that she wasn’t hallucinating after all. Her fingers trailed down and brushed against the stones around Steven’s neck.
Immediately, he jerked back and clutched them in his fist. Steven opened his mouth and began to stammer an excuse. His face burned as he looked out to the pool.
“Sorry. It’s a royalty thing.”
“Oh! I’m sorry. I suppose crowns wouldn’t stay on underwater.”
“We never really got the hang of it, yeah.”
Royalty. There was a whole society down there that humans had no idea existed. Separated from the rest of the world, they somehow had American-ish accents and knew about things like rowboats and water purifiers. So many questions ran through Connie’s head. Before she could open her mouth to ask, Steven unclenched his hand and put it on Connie’s shoulder. His touch was as comforting as he could make it even though the girl sensed caution under his skin. Maybe this was the only chance he had to help out survivors. Maybe she was the only person he had talked to in some time.
“Connie, what happened before the wreck?” Steven asked. “We can help find your parents and get rescue boats out here if you want. It’s not gonna be easy, but we — I’ll do my best if you want me to.”
She hadn’t thought about it in detail and she knew exactly why. With Steven here, it was easy to keep from sobbing and losing control. Connie sniffled and let the tears run gently. They had been waiting behind her smile, or maybe they had been there the whole time, and it was only now that she noticed the prickles on her cheeks.
“It wasn’t a wreck, not really. W-we were placing beacons, for my parents’ friend, he’s the one that took us out here in the first place. He’s a marine biologist, I think? I don’t know why he wanted to — but um, he needed them placed, and I was with my mom in the little boat, the one we have to send out before we let the beacons into the water.
“She had put a carabiner on her life jacket with some safety harness with the boat, a-and I didn’t because I thought she was just being paranoid, but the waves were rough and then the storm came over and — the whole boat capsized and I kept slipping in that dumb jacket and couldn’t swim. Mom was tied on and she probably got pulled back to the research boat, so they’re all out there looking for me — ”
A sob broke her speech. The girl pressed her face into her hands and let it come out. There was Steven’s magic, one of the things she couldn’t place or define. Connie couldn’t keep a stiff upper lip around this boy even though he was a stranger. Her façade was short-lived when she didn’t have to keep it up around other people. A bird called out in the trees behind her as Steven rubbed his hand in a gentle circle around her shoulderblade. Waves lapped at her feet, warm as skin. It could have been paradise.
They didn’t have to say anything. When Connie finally collected her breath and wiped off her face, Steven was there, looking at her with those huge dark eyes, a hint of a smile on his lips as if he was waiting to jump at an opportunity to make her feel better. Once in a while she had seen this same emotion in the faces of her parents, but their expressions had always been worried, fearful. Not Steven — what could he possibly be afraid of?
“I think your parents are going to be just fine. The storm wouldn’t have capsized it without causing a stir on the surface or the island. We check up, from underneath,” Steven said, pointing upwards at a theoretical surface. “And there were lots of rough waves but nothing like a real storm. I bet they’re sailing around looking for you right now.”
Connie nodded along and sniffled again. He was probably right. He didn’t seem nearly as analytical or sharp or scientific as she was, but Steven was optimistic. Most importantly, he knew the waters around here more than anyone. If things went right, she could even introduce her parents to the person who had helped her. Perhaps not if the captain was on board; that seemed like it could be too much for any scientist. She could already see his face frowning down at her as she explained her rescue. Even though he didn’t seem to care for the girl, he wasn’t so stupid as to get in the way of Dr. Maheswaran.
“H-heh. I hope you’re right, Steven. I’m sure Captain Marty would let them call the coast guard too.”
“Yeah! Yeah, there we go, that’s the spirit!”
Steven was practically beaming now. Connie felt her tears drying up as she wiped them again. It didn’t matter if it was because of her new friend or the sun. Her parents were out there. She had to keep that mantra in her head as a fact. The more that her mind relied on thoughts of rescue, the more motivated Connie could be to survive while she was here. The girl planted her hands in the sand and took a deep breath. Her net of various beachcombing finds sat next to her in the surf. Thinking about surviving on the island felt so much better now. All the pent-up emotions were washing away. Connie had heard about the therapeutic benefits of a good cry before, but the nights she had spent alone hadn’t shown her the true healing power.
The girl stood up and offered a hand to Steven. He blinked up at Connie for a moment.
“...oh. OH, right. Sorry.”
“I’ll flop back over herelike — ”
The two giggled as Steven turned himself around, pulling and hopping back towards the water. His body started to shine the moment it touched the surface, and Connie had to admit that the scales and skin looked different when he was in there. The waves pulled the young prince out to the shallows where he could push off without scraping the sand. Steven vanished for a moment underwater without even a splash. As he came up beaming, Connie picked up her net.
“We have a movie that I can tell you about sometime,” she said. “A mermaid falls in love with some guy and gets a sea-witch to give her legs. I, um… Do you guy know about movies down there?”
“Well, we can finagle it all together in theory, but electronics and water don’t go together too well.”
Connie took a couple steps into the warm water. Her pants were already rolled up, but she didn’t care about preserving the denim anymore. She nodded to the tip of the crescent, and began to walk with Steven swimming beside her a few feet away.
“How do you mer-people know about all these things, anyway? Not to be weird, but as far as I know we’re a ways away from civilization and I haven’t seen and mermaids in my history books.”
“I’m pretty sure we’ve been around as far as humans have been!” Steven said. “I mean, I wasn’t there, I’m not even twelve. But we’ve watched, and we’ve seen boats of people, and once you get older and you learn more magic, then sometimes you can become an ambassador. They can shapeshift and get legs and spend more time out of the water studying humans and their lives. I wanna, you know.”
“Be where the people are?”
“Heh, I guess.”
Connie stifled a giggle. So, there were spies everywhere, maybe even around the beach town where the Maheswaran family had just moved. But that was a cold Atlantic place, and these were tropical people. Connie hoped that they didn’t get all their ideas about humanity from Americans. At the very least, though, they had a connection across magical species lines, and that was a good enough explanation for her. Another time, though, she would ask the nagging question of why humans and mermaids were separated from each other at all. She watched Steven turn on his back and power through the shallows. Connie began to jog, splashing tropical water all over her legs. Steven pretended to race her — of course he was faster in the water — until they finally neared the tip of the island, the water purifiers bobbing merrily on their tethers.
“Let’s make an itinerary!” Connie said, slowing her pace for a moment. “I have water, but there’s still food. We can catch fish if you know any that don’t mind being eaten, and I can go look for fruit, and — ”
Steven had stopped in his tracks. Connie paused, then looked where his eyes were locked. The water was darker near the barrier of boulders keeping the inlet and ocean separated, and in the middle, a small patch of bubbles were rising. Was there some animal down there? She couldn’t see to the depth, and she had to squint even to see the bubbles Steven was so focused on.
“Hey, Steven? What’s going on?”
The surface of the water exploded. Something shot up out of the foam and into the air, and Connie had to cover her eyes to see it. The object was silhouetted against the sun just long enough to blind the girl before it came hurtling past her. Connie yelled in surprise as it hurtled towards her and slammed into the sand with a heavy whump, shaking the earth around them. Steven was already breathing heavily, backing out of the water towards the shore.
There were no barnacles or seaweed on this anchor. It was as tall as Connie and probably ten times as heavy, solid black metal with wicked hooks as long as Connie’s forearm on each end. They dug into the ground, and Connie followed the chain that was shackled to the ring. Her eyes glanced down the line and watched it disappear into the depths.
All of a sudden, the loose line tensed and the anchor snapped to attention. It felt like the whole island was groaning with the effort of whatever was tugging at the other end. Something was climbing out towards them, something that had almost crushed Connie with a giant hunk of metal, and even Steven seemed frightened. Connie tossed the net of belongings towards the shore and splashed over to where Steven was frozen in the sand. She grabbed his hand, as if she could stupidly drag him out of the water and into the jungle.
“Steven, what’s in there?” Connie snapped, trying to get his attention. “Is that some monster?”
The prince shook his head. He was paler, and still frightened, but in the last seconds Connie had to study him, she could see that Steven knew exactly what was coming. He swallowed.
“My dad.”