Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [13]
“How strange,” Vela said, wonderingly. “To be alive one minute, and then—”
“Yes,” Lenia said. “And they were fighting and trying so hard to live. It was beautiful. I mean it was horrifying, at the time, but then I saw that they just wanted so much to stay there, in the upper world.”
“That sounds terrifying,” Regitta said. Instinctively she rocked her tiny son, asleep in her arms, as if he could understand. “I think I would have turned around and come home rather than see that.”
Bolette leaned into her twin and reached out to stroke the baby’s shock of red hair. “I can’t believe you saw humans up close at all, let alone dying ones. Weren’t you nervous?”
“No,” Lenia said. “Of course not. They were busy dying, they were not trying to hurt me. Plus, they are so soft. You would not believe how soft they are.”
“Wait. You touched them?” Thilla said. She froze, a small crab dangling in her hand, next to her mouth.
“One of them,” Lenia said. “Only one. I saved him.”
She watched as her sisters reacted with horror. “I wish you all could understand,” she said, “how lovely it was.”
“But why would you do that?” Bolette asked, genuinely perplexed.
As Lenia was about to answer, a flurry of minuscule neon fish hailed down, attracted to her lilting voice. She swatted them away.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There was something about him. At one point I just focused on him, clinging for life, and I thought, I can save him. I pulled him from the wood he was holding and carried him all the way to land. I could tell he was strong, for a human, but, Sisters, he was so soft, and warm.”
“Where did you take him?” Vela asked, mesmerized now.
“I took him to land. I held him for hours, against me, until we arrived. There was a human girl there, watching me, and I called for her to come down to him. She had to come, or else he would die. It was strange. I could feel her. Just like I could feel him. Every beat of his heart, every breath.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Thilla said. “That we might be able to read their thoughts. That we used to be able to do that.”
“I would hate to read a human’s thoughts,” Bolette said.
Lenia thought back to the girl, the cliff. “It was less her thoughts, more just … as if I were inside her, a little. But I was more focused on him. I wanted her to save him. All I could do was bring him to land. He needed a human to help bring him back to life.”
“You are too kindhearted, Sister,” Bolette said. “If he could have, that human would have ripped you apart with his hands.”
At that, Regitta gasped, holding her son to her chest.
“You two are awfully melodramatic,” Lenia said. “I don’t think he would have done that at all. In fact, he seemed rather enchanted by me.”
“Well, at least you are home safe,” Nadine said, digging back in the chest, bored.
Vela swept forward, the distress apparent on her face. “I can’t stop thinking about dying, the way humans do it. Imagine! If at any moment, you could just stop existing. How different everything would be. Wouldn’t it? If the world were that dangerous?”
“They don’t stop existing,” Lenia said. “Remember what Grandmother said? That they have souls that live forever. Even knowing that, they fought so hard to stay alive. I think it’s so beautiful. Imagine: being that fragile, that permanent.”
It was beautiful, she thought. She hadn’t seen it, right then. The men’s deaths had been so horrible. No souls rising to heaven, no eternal life. Just destruction and that heartbreaking will to stay alive. But when she’d moved through the water and the air with the man in her arms, feeling his fragile heart underneath her, she’d felt it. His soul moving into her.
Her grandmother had told her about souls: webs of light inside of every human, light that escaped the body and rose to something called heaven when a human body died. “And when two humans