The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [48]
Then he swam back and came really close to me; he held his hand up to my face, and I forced myself not to move.
He cradled the side of my face in his palm, stroking my dimple with his thumb, and wiped the tears away as they mingled with the seawater.
“Emily,” he whispered at last. It was him. My dad!
A second later, I clutched him as tightly as I could, and he was holding me in his strong arms. “A mermaid as well,” he murmured into my hair.
“Only some of the time,” I said.
“Figures.”
He loosened his arms and held me away from him. “Where’s your mother?” he asked suddenly. “Is she here? Is she all right?” He dropped his arms to his sides. “Has she met someone else?”
I inched closer to him. “Of course she hasn’t met anyone else!”
“My Penny.” He smiled.
“Penny?”
“My lucky penny. That’s what I always called her. Guess it wasn’t too accurate in the end.” Then he smiled. “But she hasn’t forgotten me?”
“Um . . .” How was I supposed to answer that! “She still loves you.” Well, she did, didn’t she? She must, or she wouldn’t have been so upset when she remembered everything. “And she hasn’t really forgotten you — at least, not anymore.”
“Not anymore?”
“Listen, I’ll tell you everything.” And I did. I told him about the memory drugs and Mr. Beeston and about what had happened when I took Mom to Rainbow Rocks. And about our journey to the Great Mermer Reef.
“So she’s here?” he broke in. “She’s that close, right now?”
I nodded. He flattened his hair down, spun around in circles, and swam away from me.
“Dad.” Dad! I still couldn’t get used to that. “She’s waiting for me. She can’t get into the prison.” I followed him over to his table. “She can’t swim,” I added softly.
He burst out laughing as he turned to face me. “Can’t swim? What are you talking about? She’s the smoothest, sleekest swimmer you could find — excluding mermaids, of course.”
My mom? A smooth, sleek swimmer? I laughed.
“I guess that disappeared along with the memory,” he said sadly. “We swam all over. She even took scuba lessons so she could join me underwater. We went to that old shipwreck. That’s where I proposed, you know.”
“She definitely still loves you,” I said again, thinking of the poem and even more sure now.
“Yeah.” He swam over to the table by his bed. I followed him.
“What’s that?” I asked. There was something pinned onto the wall with a fish hook. A poem.
“That’s mine,” he said miserably.
“‘The Forsaken Merman’?” I read. I scanned the lines, not really taking any of it in — until I came to one stanza that made me gasp out loud. A ceiling of amber, a pavement of pearl.
“But that’s, but that’s —”
“Yeah, I know. Soppy old stuff, isn’t it?”
“No! I know those lines.”
Jake looked up at me. “Have you been to that shipwreck yourself, little ’un?”
I nodded. “Shona took me. My friend. She’s a mermaid.”
“And your mother?”
“No — she doesn’t even know I’ve been there.”
Jake dropped his head.
“But she knows those lines!” I said.
I pulled the poem off the wall, reading on. “She left lonely forever the kings of the sea,” I said out loud.
“That’s how it ends,” he said.
“But it’s not!”
“Not what?”
“That’s not how it ends!”
“It does; look here.” Jake swam over, took the poem from me. “Those are the last lines.”
I snatched it back. “But that’s not how your story ends! She never left the king of the sea!”
Jake scratched his head. “You’ve lost me now.”
“The King of the Sea. That’s our boat! That’s what it’s called.”
His eyes went all misty like Mom’s had earlier. “So it is, love. I remember when we renamed it. I forget what her father had called it before that. But you see —”
“And she could never leave it! She told me that. And now I know why. Because it’s you! She could never leave you! You’re not the forsaken merman at all!”
Jake laughed. “You really think so?” Then he pulled me close again. He smelled of salt. His chin was bristly