An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (33 page)

“Where
should I take you?”

She
closed her eyes as if thinking about where they should go exhausted her.

“You’ve
got to return to town, John, before the hurricane hits. It isn’t safe to be out
any longer.”

“I won’t
return until I know you’ll be all right.”

She
opened her eyes. The pupils had returned to their normal size, but they still
looked as cold and hopeless as the arctic sea.

“Take me
to the nearest water and leave me.”

***

Before
they left the wildlife refuge office, John shoved Jesus’ limp form under the
steel office desk. As he did so, he spied the Goddess figure lying on the
carpet under the desk’s dark bulk and he pulled it out and put it into his
pocket. He’d found an old woven Mexican blanket in the Jeep’s back seat and he
brought it to wrap around the nearly naked Tamarind. Then he lifted her in his
arms as if he were lifting a hatchling that had fallen from its nest. The knife
wound in his stomach protested, but he ignored it. While he carried her to the
backseat of the Jeep, the wind and rain avoided their path as if an invisible
shield hung over them. John eased Tamarind down into a lying position and then
returned to get the last of the bottled water and to shut the door.

When he
got into the Jeep, he turned to look at Tamarind, who lay with her eyes closed.
Her face had filled out again, but she was still pale; dark shadows smudged the
skin under her eyes. The bright red and green of the blanket accentuated her
pallor, nearly swallowing her in its cocoon. Too much space existed between
them, a dark chasm of the unknown and the unknowable. He stretched out a hand
and touched her on the hip. Her eyes fluttered open.

“We’ll
be there soon, I promise.”

“I
know.”

He
turned back around and his hand slipped away from her. The air remained eerily
still around the Jeep and he found himself expecting the wind and rain to
return and break upon them as waves break upon a rocky shore. It did not. So he
started the Jeep and backed away from the office, heading west toward Dewey and
shelter. As he drove, the stillness around the Jeep moved with them so that the
rain and wind always remained thirty feet beyond them.

Earlier,
he’d refused to listen to the radio. Now he turned it on: he needed to know how
much time he had before hurricane winds reached Culebra and anyone left outside
became chaff before Marilyn’s obdurate scythe. Marilyn’s eye currently passed
over the east end of St. Croix and the airport on the southwest of that island
reported winds ranging up to 97 miles an hour. The Miami Hurricane Center had
upgraded her to category two and strengthening toward a category three. As she
moved through the Caribbean, she dropped torrents of rain along her outer
edges.

Even at
her current speed, Marilyn wouldn’t pass over Culebra for four or five more
hours. John squinted out the window as the Jeep reached the intersection with
251. He would make it to Posada La Diosa provided that whatever kept the wind
and rain at bay continued to do so for the next half an hour. He turned off the
radio and turned north.

“Is
there any music?” Tamarind’s voice startled him in the quiet.

John
looked at her in the review mirror. Her face held a little more color and the
dark smudges had lightened. In the dim light of the Jeep’s interior and with
the blanket obscuring her head, she looked almost normal.

“I don’t
know. I’ll see if I can find any.”

He
switched the radio back on and twisted the dial, looking for something other
than weather, news, or pop music from the States. At last he found a Cuban
station playing Lito Peña’s
Yo Vivo Enamorado
. As its smooth saxophone
and cheerful rhythms incongruously filled the Jeep, John found himself humming
along and remembering the warm summer evening when he’d first heard the song
with Tamarind. The memory of her singing and swinging a dripping Popsicle, her
wild hair dancing around her face, brought tears to his eyes.

“I wish
it was turtle-watching season right now.” Tamarind hummed a little with the
song, but her hum didn’t reach her chest and none of her joyful clicking joined
in as a counterpoint.

“Me
too.”

On the
east side of the road, wild horses stood huddled under a tree. Several eyed the
Jeep as it passed and John wondered what would happen to them when Marilyn’s
full force bore down on Culebra. He realized that no one had mentioned any of
the wildlife, outside of the departure of the nesting seabirds, during the
frantic preparations of the last twenty-four hours. What would happen to
Valerie’s beloved hummingbirds and bananaquits? Where would they go? Or what
about the rooster and hens that walked so freely around town as if parading
through their demesne? Would Marilyn devastate the wild things that galloped
and strolled, hovered and glided, slithered and hopped around Culebra’s
preserves? He came to the fork in the road where the left branch headed toward
Playa Flamenco and the right toward Punta Flamenco and Playa Resaca. Between
the two branches lay Laguna Flamenco, protected from the Atlantic by the
pristine sands of Playa Flamenco. He knew at once where to bring Tamarind.

He took
the left toward Playa Flamenco and parked in the empty sandlot. When he slid
Tamarind into his arms, she sighed and leaned into his chest. He lifted her
from the seat and brought her closer, trying to block the wind and rain with
his back even though neither wind nor rain touched them. A thickness sealed off
his throat as he clutched her to him, but his breathing remained even and
steady. In his pocket, he felt the Goddess burn and a dark, steady power buoyed
him. When his wound began to bleed again, he scarcely felt it.

He
trudged over the sandy path to the beach and then through the thorn thickets
and between palm and mangrove trees to reach the lagoon. As he walked by the
trees, an odd vibrating filled his chest and the rustling of their leaves
almost made sense to him, as if their whisperings called to mind something
long-forgotten that was on the tip of his tongue.

He
reached the lagoon, winded and exhausted. Tamarind had lain still and quiet in
his arms and he’d lost himself to the effort of getting to his destination,
forgetting for the few minutes that it took him to get there why he’d come. He
stood in front of the water in the gloom of the storm-darkened evening, his
arms aching and his mind blank.

“John.”

He
looked down at Tamarind, who looked up at him with eyes as dark as a mountain
river in winter.

“John,
please put me in the water. I’ll be fine.”

He
nodded once sharply and stepped forward. The surface of the lagoon frothed
under the continuous caress of the passionate wind. He expected to struggle to
the water’s edge, but instead he felt again the dark energy that had aided him.
Now it flowed from the ground and up through his legs, passing through the
Goddess with an electric burst and up to his head where it settled into a
thousand bees buzzing in his thoughts.

He
dropped first to one knee and then the other, holding Tamarind against the rise
and fall of his chest. She looked at him again, eyes wide and unblinking, and
he slowly lowered her into the lagoon. The blanket opened a little and she
struggled against its clinging folds. John freed one hand from under her knees
and pulled the blanket away. Her lower half slipped under water and she sighed.
John felt a faint vibration in her torso and he knew that she hummed, even if
the sound couldn’t make it out of her chest.

“You
must let me go so you can go.”

“I
know.” Still he didn’t lower her completely into the water.

“You’re
bleeding again.” She touched his shirt with a fingertip. “You need someone to
take care of you.”

“I told
you it’s nothing.”

She
flinched at his tone and he felt his heart twist in his chest.

“Don’t
worry about me. I’ll find someone at the clinic to take a look at me. I’ve got
a few hours to kill before Marilyn gets here anyway.” His words didn’t come out
flippantly as he intended. They sounded grim instead. “How will I find you
after the hurricane?

“You
won’t.” A voice growled at him from a few feet across the lagoon.

When he
looked up, John saw a man in the water up to his chest. His long hair flowed in
tangled rivers down his massive shoulders, one of which had an angry braided
scar bisecting it diagonally. The blue of his eyes left no doubt who, or what,
he was.

“Father!”
Tamarind lifted her head and upper body away from John.

The
hollow where she had lain only moments before ached with its cold emptiness.

Tamarind pulled herself
away from
John
at her father’s voice, a sound of
sand washing over broken rocks. She was a bare promontory, exposed and cold
after the shelter of John’s arms. Above them, the anxious wind, which had
abated during their trip from the refuge office, keened through the treetops
and whirled around her bare head. Fine icy raindrops prickled on her face and
upper chest; she shivered even though the water in the lagoon was warm as
blood.

“Release
her, human.” Her father spoke in a low, flat voice. His mind resembled the
ocean at midday under a blazing sun; its impenetrable surface reflected
Tamarind’s silent entreaties, dazzling her inner eye.

John did
as her father bid and she slid completely under the water, her face submerging.
Her diving membranes, unused for months, slid noticeably into place. For a
moment she lay there, soaking the water into her pores and extracting oxygen.
Here, in the dense atmosphere so like her mother’s womb, the raw world outside
no longer threatened. Only distorted sounds reached her ears and for an instant
even these soothed her. But the fluorescent light of the refuge office flashed
across the murk in front of her, and again a dark figure bent over her.

She sat
up. An awful sound met her ears and she flinched. Then she realized the sound
emanated from her throat.

 Before
she could say anything, her father erupted across the lagoon, launching himself
at John. He swept past her in the water, his powerful tail churning it until it
foamed. His wake washed over her; when the water had streamed out of her eyes
and nose, she blinked and saw her father gripping John’s neck. She stared at
his rigid, alien tail.

“What
have you done to her, you vile squid? What happened to her hair?”

John
clawed at her father’s hands and arms, gurgling and choking over the implacable
fingers.

Let
him go, Father!

Her
father ignored her. Instead, he shook John as easily as a shark brandishes a
mouthful of whale flesh. John’s head snapped back and fresh blood soaked his
torn shirt.

No,
Father, don’t!
Standing, she pushed her feet down into the mud of the lagoon and its ooze
calmed her. The lovely dark energy she’d felt earlier at Playa Tamarindo surged
through her and she stood. Water dripped off of her bare skin; she’d lost her
ravaged t-shirt in the lagoon.

Father
. The dark energy smoothed and
deepened her voice, carrying it easily through the shrillness of the wind.

Her
father looked at her, his eyes steely-blue and turbulent. John hung limp from
his hands, rasping a few breaths around his grip. He’d lost his ponytail holder
somewhere during the afternoon and his tangled hair hung around his face. In
the storm’s twilight his skin had the bleached look of old driftwood or dead
coral.

What
is it, daughter?

Tamarind
switched to speaking aloud. “Let him go. He’s not responsible for my hair.”

Her
father kept his hands on John’s throat, but he didn’t shake him again.

Does
it really matter? He’s responsible for you putting off your tail, isn’t he?

“No. I
am.”

I’ll
deal with you later. You’re coming home. Back to the sea where we belong. Where
you belong, with your sisters and your community.

“Not if
you don’t let him go.”

You
think you love this human, don’t you? Don’t you realize how vile, how
abominable, they are?

“I know
about Mother.”

Her
father’s eyes dilated until she couldn’t see any trace of the blue and his
hands tightened around John’s throat. John tugged weakly at them and then
slumped into her father’s grip.

How
could you lie to me? How could you put off your tail and walk among these foul
creatures knowing what they did to her? To me?
He turned so that his scar
gleamed in the dim light.

“They
aren’t like grains of sand, one as alike as another, Father. I have spent
enough time with them to see them as they are. Many of them are worth knowing.
Some worth loving.” She kept her gaze on his face, but her heart beat against
the cave of her ribs.

Bah!
This jellyfish? He’s only good for feeding bottom dwellers.

“If you
kill him now, when he’s done nothing wrong to you, then you’re no better than
the men who killed Mother.” Her voice remained steady, but she heard her
breath, ragged and shallow.