The Vicious Deep Part 4

Dad has his drill out, undoing the doork.n.o.b. Two screws are out. He stops and jostles the k.n.o.b, but he has to take them all out.

Pain. Pain like I've never felt, and that's now all I can think about. The water overflows from the sink, soaking the bath mat and spreading over the entire bathroom floor.

My mother is shouting my name. She's not asking me what's wrong. She's just repeating my name. Tristan, like a mantra, a prayer, a wish that I'll stay with them, so I say it too. I am Tristan Hart. I am Tristan Hart. I am Tristan Hart.

"Mom." I can hear myself whimper. Dad pulls the door open, dropping the doork.n.o.b and drill on the floor. The tiles crack where they fall.

The pain is going away, the fire subsiding. I don't want to try to move.

They stare, but not at me.

At my legs.

I know what's happened before I look down. My ripped shorts are in my mother's hands. I cannot read her face, but it isn't surprise like it should be. It's worry. The scent of bad lemon pie lingers around the both of them.

"What's happening to me?" I don't know if I've actually managed to say it aloud. I sit up on my elbows and look down. Even though I know what I'm going to see, I still shut my eyes for a little while. And when I open them, it's still there- My great blue fishtail.

I have this memory of my first time in water.

It's insane, actually. There's no way I should be able to remember something like that, and I've convinced myself that it's a dream I made up.

Still, I remember. I remember my mom's face staring down at me in her arms. I remember being mesmerized, the way little kids are by such things, by the blue of her eyes. Her sitting me in the kiddie pool. I must have been a week old. And I remember swimming.

Sometimes during a meet, the memory would flash in my head. Then I'd push it away, because things like that just aren't real. But now I know they are, and some part of me has known it all along.

"Can you bring in the fan or something?" It might just be hotter than body building cla.s.s at the end of summer. I'm slippery. Wet. Sweating.

When I try to sit up, my tail comes up and knocks my mom off her feet. She lands on her b.u.t.t and grabs hold of my fins. I have fins.

"Let's put him in the tub." Dad's voice is calm. I know he's always Mr. Calm-and-Collected-and-Ready-to-a.n.a.lyze, but all I want is a little bit of panic. I want him to scream, to run away from me, because I'm a freak. I'm beyond a freak. I'm unnatural. I want to bang my head against the tiles. I want to find a shrink who'll medicate me until I'm no longer a hazard to myself and others.

Mom grabs a towel and wraps it around my tail.

I. Have. A. Freaking. Tail.

Dad pushes his gla.s.ses up the bridge of his nose and hooks his arms under mine. They count to three and heave me into the tub with a splash. I'm suddenly nauseated, because I think of the times we've been fis.h.i.+ng and we unhook the fish and throw them back in the water.

The water overflows with my weight. The tub is one of those grand claw-footed kind. It's big enough for two people, which by the way, since it's my parents' bathroom, is gross.

I let myself sink up to my shoulders and dangle my arms over the edge. My fins hang out over the brim, curling and uncurling. I wonder where my feet go? I wonder where my d.i.c.k does! Holy c.r.a.p. I'm about to start flailing around when my mother kneels at the side of the tub and dips her hand in. "Is the water okay?"

"Is the water okay? How about if I'm okay?"

"Don't you talk to your mother that way." Dad never uses that tone with me, because other than having shown up home at the a.s.s-crack of dawn a couple of times, I don't do anything to give them heart attacks like my friends do to their parents.

Mom leaves the bathroom, and I'm afraid I've hurt her feelings. The water helps the dryness that's making my skin feel like I've been lying out in the sun all day. I submerge myself completely. I hold my breath, but it doesn't matter, because I'm still breathing. The shock of it makes me miss a beat of air when I sit upright.

Dad notices my surprise and finds Mom's mirror that magnifies pores three times. He hands it to me. I used to sit in this tub for hours playing with that thing. On my pores, I mean.

I hold it up to my neck. It's a hard angle, but there they are. The slits are shut now, lined by cl.u.s.ters of translucent metallic-blue scales. I throw the mirror to the side. It hits the wall and shatters.

"Bad luck, Finn," he says, trying to joke.

"Everything about that statement is unfunny."

My fins uncurl and knock the tray of bubble soaps into the tub. Under the water pressure, the bubbles fill the bath in seconds. I can smell the minuscule specks of metal in the water from the pipes it's traveling through. I can smell the chemicals in the soap more than the rose scent it's trying to mimic. I can smell Dad's amazement mingling with something like regret, like fireworks after they've all exploded.

"Say something," he tells me.

"Something." I chuckle.

He's quiet for what are probably seconds but feel like forever.

"Do you remember when I was ten," I start, "and Vicky Millanelli had that birthday pool party?"

"You kept wanting to leave," he says, "because you were the only boy who showed up."

"She only invited people she liked, and she didn't invite Layla. So all the girls started chasing me around, trying to kiss me. They were all wearing these matching pink-and-purple arm floats. So I jumped into the deep end of the pool, where they couldn't follow me. I just sat there at the bottom with my legs crossed, watching them scream and freak out. I don't remember wanting to come up for air. Vicky never invited me to her birthday parties again."

Dad pulls off his gla.s.ses and rubs the bridge of his nose. "Her dad called me to get you. You didn't even notice what you were doing."

"I never liked her much anyway."

Mom comes back with a Mason jar of sea salt. She runs her hand on my forearm, which is scattered with slick scales a few shades of blue lighter than the ones on my tail. She empties the Mason jar in the tub. We listen to the salt hiss when it meets water, the bubble bath deflating, and the careful intake of our breaths. Dad takes the jar from my mother and fills it. He picks up the little rainbow fish that's flopping on the wet floor with not enough water and drops him into the jar.

"Is he for dinner too?" I go.

We chuckle briefly. I want to fix the dark cloud that's hanging over all of us. Fix this. I can't remember us ever being this quiet, this careful of what we say. I know everyone says their family is different, happy. When it comes to my family, I really mean it.

Mom and I look at each other. Her cheeks are flushed red, but the rest of her is still the same porcelain pale she's always been. Her eyes are impossibly turquoise. The corners of her mouth tilt downward, and she's all trembles. Her lips, her chin, her hands. She wipes at her forehead with the back of her hand and breathes through her mouth. I can smell her regret, anxiety, fright. It's bitter, like dried lemons.

I don't know how, but I do. Now, I may be the fastest swimmer in Brooklyn, but that's about where my talents stop. Unless dating is counted as a talent, and recent events are proving me wrong.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," she says. She absently dips her hand in the water, like we're at Aunt Sylvia's pool and she's lying on the ledge. I've never seen her so sad, and my body flushes because I know this is somehow my fault.

"What was supposed to happen?" I don't mean to sound so bitter. I can't help it. "Why is this happening to me? Why now?" And before I can think to stop myself, "Who are you?"

She's Maia Hart, married to David Hart. Who was she before that? We've never met anyone from her side of the family. I've never asked, because I'm so used to it just being the three of us. New Year's we spend with friends; Christmas is the three of us; Thanksgiving, it's with Layla's family; and Independence Day is with the rest of Coney Island. Even if my grandparents were dead, there would be someone, wouldn't there? There would be pictures, no matter how old. People keep pictures of those they love, right?

"From the beginning," Dad says. He sits on the toilet with one hand under his chin, staring at my fins, like that statue of the thinking guy. "I met your mother when I had just graduated from Hunter and had moved back to my parents' apartment. I spent that entire summer on a little boat off Brighton, hating the world and wondering if I should take the job with Techsoft. That kind of post-college thing."

Mom lets herself chuckle. "It was on one of our visits to Coney Island. Every fifty or so years, we come back here. That's what we do. We spend most of our time visiting beaches all over the world. That's why it takes so long between visits."

I sat it slowly. "We?"

"The Sea People. The Beautiful Deadly Ones. The Fey of the Sea. Children of Poseidon. Dwellers of the Vicious Deep..." She pauses as if I don't already know I'm a moron. I just want her to say it. "Merfolk."

"Of course," I say. It's not enough that I'm in my parents' bathtub up to my gills in rose-scented bubble bath, that my entire world has quite literally slipped right out from under my feet, that I don't know anything about the changes in my body-if they're permanent, can I eat fish? Is that like semi-cannibalism? That my parents have been keeping this from me since I was little, which means they've been lying to me my entire life. I can forget all that. But of all the creatures in my mom's fairy-tale books, she had to go and be the girliest? Come on!

Dad's voice snaps me out of my thoughts. "I'd always wake up with a bottle of funny-shaped gla.s.s seash.e.l.ls or broken pieces of jewelry on my deck-"

Doesn't sound much different from the stuff she still collects in those trunks in their bedroom. "Let me guess. Mom would have her trusty but endearingly clumsy seagull friend deliver them to you? Am I right?"

Dad snorts, but Mom doesn't appreciate my humor. She folds her arms and sniffs. "Absolutely not. Seagulls are vile, nasty things. And back then I could control the water."

"You can't anymore?"

She shakes her head. "I showed myself to David. I didn't usually do that sort of thing-"

"-that's what all the mermaids say," he winks.

"-I didn't! My sisters were the ones always revealing themselves to humans. It was fine if they wanted to take humans as mates-for a short while-but they were careless. They always let them drown, and then Father would be furious at me because he always put me in charge to watch over them.

"On this last trip, when it was time to leave, I didn't want to go. I begged my father. He granted our wish to be together. He stripped my tail. Then I had you."

"That's the SparkNotes version, right?"

"Yes," she says, "it's a long story."

"What're you, like, a hundred? You've got plenty of time to tell it. Plus, it's not like I'm going anywhere, unless we toss me back into the Atlantic."

They're both about to protest, their fingers pointing up at my face, all don't-you-talk-to-us-like-that. But the faucet comes on by itself again. Water sloshes everywhere. There's a soft light coming from the faucet in the bathtub. Dad keeps twisting the handles to turn it off, but that doesn't work. There's a loud popping sound, followed by a tiny fish that flows right into the tub. "I hope this isn't a regular thing, because the downstairs neighbors are going to complain."

The water trembles. Something b.u.mps and pushes against my tail. The water glows so brightly that I have to look away. There's a second splash, and the wind gets knocked out of me by a knee. My tail, with a mind of its own, knocks everything in its reach onto the floor. I try to pull myself as upright as I can. When I look again, he's taken full form. He's landed completely on top of me. He pushes himself up by holding the sides of the tub, as though he's afraid his legs will give out.

He takes in my mom, standing with the bottom of her dress soaking up the water, and Dad, looking more amused than should be allowed for someone sitting on the toilet. Naked guy notices he's naked and uses his hand to cover his junk. He tosses his hair back. The dark, wet curls stick to his neck and around a face that is familiar, but I just can't place it. Not that I want to. I want him to get out of my bathtub and put some clothes on. Instead the guy turns to me and bows-stands with his back straight in the world's best attempt to look poised, stoic even.

"Well," he says, clearing his throat, "this is awkward."

Sorry," the naked guy standing in the bathtub says, "so sorry."

There's a trace of not so much an accent but an over-enunciating of words. He looks down at the deflating bubble bath and thankfully sits immediately. He turns around and turns the faucet off. It stays off.

His hair is the same length as mine, right to the base of our ears and messy in curls like we spend too much time at the beach. There's this sculpture in the Greek section at the Met that Layla dragged me to a few weeks ago that looks just like him. He doesn't look fazed, but his violet eyes gape at me. He sort of bows.

"I have a fishtail, and that's not half as weird as this right here." I point at him and look to my mother for some sort of explanation. "Mom?"

"Priscilla-?" is what she says instead.

Naked guy bows at my mom too, then shakes his head. "She's dead. For quite a while, actually."

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" I say finally. "Am I going to be a mermaid magnet now or something?"

"Tristan!"

"My name is Kurtomathetis," he says with his head held high, "and I am not a mermaid, as I am clearly not a woman. I am a merman, as are you, but of course you've already figured that out."

"Fine-Kurtom-can I just call you Kurt?-we're mermen. Most importantly, how come you don't have a tail, and how do I get rid of mine?"

He sighs, and I can feel the exasperation in his voice as thick as wading in mud. "I am part of the Sea Court. I am to be your guide-your guardian, if you will. My purpose is to make sure you're safe at all times. It is the highest honor of the sea folk."

"Sea Court?" It's foreign in my mouth.

Kurt turns his attention to my mother. "He really knows nothing?"

"I know stuff!" I yell. "Not mermaid stuff but-"

Kurt and my mother move to talk over each other, but the sink faucet bursts on again. Dad stands back as a lime-green fish pops out. Like when Kurt appeared, the sink is flooded with a bright light. Dad has a bewildered smile on his face. "I hope the neighbors don't come up and complain," he says.

I sure hope it's not another naked mer-guarding guy. And it isn't. There's a girl no older than fourteen sitting in the sink. Her skin is pale, but it has a slight greenish tinge; her hair is long and wet and a shade of black with green. Her hair covers her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and pools in her lap. She reminds me of a green Rapunzel. Dad grabs Mom's bathrobe off the hook behind the door and wraps her in it. She hops off the sink with the tiniest splash, ties the robe around her waist, and gathers her hair to one side.

"Thalia!" Kurt's proper nose is wrinkled with the kind of annoyance that I've only seen siblings have toward each other. He chokes on the beginning of every sentence he tries to speak and slaps his hands in the water, adding to the pool on the bathroom floor. "What-I can't believe-may I too have a cloth?-why-what are you doing here?"

Thalia's slender frame looks even more so in the big robe. Her lips are full and pink, and her eyes a cattish green-yellow, twinkling with mischief. She turns to me, gathers the hem of the bathrobe, tucks one foot behind the other, and curtseys. She turns to my mother and does the same. "Lady Sea."

She looks in the sink as Dad comes back with a red-and-black flannel robe for Kurt. She sticks her hand in the water and pulls out a long, skinny bottle full of iridescent black liquid that seems to be moving in a continuous swirl inside. "You forgot the ink," she says.

Kurt ties Dad's bathrobe around the middle and stumbles out of the tub like he's not used to his legs yet. He makes to grab for the vial between Thalia's fingers, but she takes one step back, smirking. "Only if I can stay."

"Very well." He makes fists at his sides.

She doesn't hesitate and hands it over.

He s.n.a.t.c.hes it and puts it in the robe pocket. "Good. Great. Now leave!"

"But-you said I could stay! Your word is binding!"

"Right. Binding to the king, not my sister."

Mom brings her hand to her mouth, covering the chuckle that's escaping her lips. I laugh too, but only because I like seeing this guy get so huffy and puffy.

Thalia looks indignant but not defeated. She stomps one foot on the floor, and water splashes. "That's thanks for you. I'm not going anywhere."

"This is my duty, not yours. Now go before I tell the king."

Her yellow-green eyes are wide with a new realization. "You can't. We've no contact with Toliss until Arion's s.h.i.+p gets here." The silence that follows should be accompanied by a So there. Na-na, na-na-na.

"h.e.l.lo? Remember me? One of you. Kurt, Kurt's little sister, Mom. Tell me how to turn back!" I say loudly.

Kurt pulls the vial out of his pocket. I don't have a good feeling about it.

"You were never given the rites of the newborn. Only court merfolk can s.h.i.+ft. You are not an average merman, as you are, quite literally, half human. When you were born-"

"Kurt, one thing at a time, please," Mom says. And I thank her, because my headache is back and all I want is a warm, dry bed.

I dip myself into the bathwater, this time preparing for the gills to open and shut again when I surface.

"As part of the Sea Court, we get our legs whenever we visit sh.o.r.e. There was a time when all creatures coexisted on this plane. Humans, fey, s.h.i.+fters, and what humans started calling monsters. Then suddenly it changed. Humans outnumbered all of us. They wanted us gone. Those who didn't want to start wars chose to move their courts to hidden islands. Ours is the only isle that is still in this realm, with the exception of two fairy islands. We cover them with mists so humans cannot detect them, and from a distance it looks like a storm at sea.