Disclaimer: H20: Just Add Water and all its characters belongs to Jonathan M. Schiff Productions. All other characters are of my own invention and therefore belong to me.
CHAPTER 11: THETIS
The figure that had been waiting for the boys out by Mako Island and had summoned them into the water groaned when she saw that they were headed towards the open water and had no interest in swimming towards the island and towards her. She had feared this outcome in the back of her mind, but had not actually expected it to happen.
Swimming out after them, this creature soon saw the scene we have just described being played out, and watched the blond girl slip under the water. Wasting no time, she dove underwater, swimming quickly to retrieve the girl before she could perish.
Her keen eyesight sought out something light on the sand at the bottom of the ocean, and she quickly spotted the girl lying amidst the sea stars and sea urchins. She swam towards her and hoisted her into her arms, then swam rapidly in the direction of the grotto concealed by the dormant volcano.
After just a few minutes, she had reached the spot and pulled the girl out of the water and onto one of the flat stones that jutted out into the pool of water illuminated by the moon. Then, she placed a hand on the girl's chest and seemed to throw a spark with her fingers as she flicked her index finger and thumb together. Quite suddenly, the girl jolted awake and began to cough up a lungful of saltwater.
As soon as she saw that the girl was going to be fine, she swam out quickly, in the direction of the little boat that still contained the other two girls she had seen. They would be worried about their friend, and she needed to let them know that the girl was fine. Even if that meant compromising herself…
"Ah, well," she reasoned to herself as she swam. "I've gotten them into this mess, haven't I?"
Within minutes she was back at the boat. As she raised her head from the water, she saw the two girls wrapped in an embrace, one of them weeping fiercely.
"Poor things," she muttered, swimming right up to the boat. Then, taking a deep breath, she called out to them as loudly as she dared.
"Hello!"
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As Emma and Cleo sat together, crying over Rikki, who was certainly lost, Emma tried to be the voice of reason in this stressful time.
"We have to get back, Cleo," she said softly, disentangling herself from Cleo's arms. "We have to let Rikki's dad know…"
Just as Cleo started to nod in agreement, they heard a single word ring out in the clear night air.
"Hello!"
Cleo and Emma exchanged a puzzled look and looked in the direction of the sound.
"Who's there?" Emma called back warily.
And suddenly, in a flash, they saw her, floating in the water right next to the boat. It was a young woman (although Emma realized quickly that she was definitely something more) with long hair and large eyes. Her mouth seemed to be fixed in a permanent pout. From what Emma could gather,
"She is well," the girl in the water told them. Or was she a girl? Emma felt that though she looked to be only eighteen or so, there was wisdom behind her eyes and a certain bearing that made her seem older.
Cleo could only blink away tears and wordlessly stare at the creature in the water.
"Who are you?" Emma asked, still unsure. What kind of trick was this? There were no other mermaids, right?
The mermaid sighed and motioned with her hand to Mako Island.
"Meet me in the grotto. She is there. I…" She paused, thinking over her decision and realizing that she owed them an explanation. "I will tell you everything."
Cleo and Emma looked at the mermaid with hope in their eyes.
"Rikki is fine?" Emma asked again.
The mermaid nodded.
"In the grotto," she reminded them, then dove under the waves and swam off quickly.
Cleo and Emma both exhaled, feeling the slight exultation that comes along with tremendous relief.
"Rikki's fine," Cleo repeated, barely daring to believe it.
"Come on, we've got to get to Mako," Emma said, shaking her head at the confusion of the night. Apparently, everything was going to be explained to them. She hoped that "everything" would include the reason behind the boys' transformation and most importantly, how to change them back.
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When Rikki had finished spitting out the last of the saltwater, she looked around. She was pretty sure that she had drowned and was dead. If that was the case, the afterlife looked rather like the moon pool. How anticlimactic.
"Hello?" she asked, feeling the awful taste of salt in her mouth and beginning to comprehend that she was not dead. The word echoed in the pool, but nobody answered.
"Hello-o-o?" she tried again, looking around for a sign of Emma or Cleo. Emma had probably saved her, but then why bring her here and then leave? Weird.
"Emma? Cleo?"
Rikki got up on legs still shaky from the traumatic experience. But at least she was alive! Whatever happened didn't matter, as long as she was fine now. But she wasn't fine. Just at that moment, the memory of Zane looking backward at her disdainfully, then swimming away faster, all while she lost her strength and stopped treading water, sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean.
The shock of the memory made her knees buckle and she found herself sitting on the sand once more. She sat in that position for a few minutes, trying and failing to console herself with something else. She would have died, and he was willing to let her.
The impenetrable, haughty Rikki felt a tear sting her cheek and heard a small hiccoughing sob break the silence in the moon pool. Had she been left alone for another minute, she probably would have broken down completely and cried until she had no more tears in her. Instead, just at that moment, Emma and Cleo walked into the small enclosure.
"You're ok!" they chorused, running over to embrace Rikki, who hastily wiped at her cheek to clear all traces of the tear that had marked its course there. Seeing them had brought her back to herself, and the mask of sarcasm and indifference returned.
"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine, but how did I—?"
A splash answered that question, and all three girls looked into the moon pool, where the mermaid that Emma and Cleo had seen was floating.
"Wha-!" Rikki exclaimed, backing up away from the water, all the same entranced by the sight of this mermaid.
"I saved you," the mermaid answered, drawing herself closer to the girls and raising herself up to sit on the ledge. She had the same golden tail that they had had until recently, and was actually quite remarkable to look at from the side. Unlike the girls, who had only been mermaids for a year and a few months, this mermaid had been like this her entire life and was more familiar and graceful with her body than the girls had been.
"Thanks?" Rikki said softly, still marveling at the mermaid.
The mermaid only shrugged in response. "I had to. It was my fault that you almost drowned."
"It was?" Emma asked suspiciously, walking towards the ledge where the mermaid sat.
When she saw Emma's expression, and Rikki and Cleo's faces as well, the mermaid sighed and crossed her arms over her chest.
"Yes," she said. "Let me explain."
"Please!" Emma requested. Cleo and Rikki nodded their agreement.
"My name is Thetis," the mermaid began, deciding to start from the very beginning of this story. "I was born a mermaid, and lived among the merpeople. I never sought anything from humans." Thetis took in the astonished expressions that gazed at her and she continued. They had clearly thought that she was partially human like they were.
"But a few years ago, the merpeople began to disappear. One by one, the merpeople I had been among for all of my life were going missing, mermen and mermaids alike. Until finally…" Here, Thetis looked very sorrowful.
"Until finally, none were left but my brother and myself."
Emma, Cleo, and Rikki didn't really know how to respond to this story.
"Where did they go?" Cleo ventured to ask.
"They went to the human world," Thetis replied. "Somehow, they figured out a way to mutilate their tails and aquire those," she pointed at Emma's legs, wrinkling her nose with distaste.
"All of them?" Emma asked quickly, at the same time as Rikki demanded, "What does this have to do with us?"
"Yes, all," Thetis answered Emma. Then, she looked at Rikki and told her to be patient.
"Why?" Cleo asked Thetis, still confused by the mass migration.
"I guess they thought it would be better to live as humans, instead of hiding from them for the rest of their lives," Thetis said with a shrug. "Either way, they got tired of having to hide from humans who went under the water or set up nets around our homes."
"But why didn't you and your brother go?" Emma inquired.
Thetis made a face. "Join the humans? Never!" she spat. "Our parents had died at the hands of your kind when we were small, and we swore never to go near them."
"So you were the only merpeople left in the ocean?" Cleo wondered, sad to think that this could be true.
"The ocean is huge," Thetis countered. "I'm certain there are many merpeople still in the ocean, but scattered all over. It would be hard to find any."
Rikki huffed. "I still don't see what this had to do with us," she complained.
Thetis shot her a look. "I just thought I'd clarify from the beginning," she remarked, then went back to her story.
"My brother, like all mermen, was devoted only to the sea. Only now, there were no mermaids to tame his spirit and no mermen to join in his revelry. There was only me, and I could not serve him as a mate, nor was I a fitting companion."
"What do you mean?" Rikki demanded suddenly. "What do you mean, 'Devoted only to the sea'?"
"Well, all mermen are inherently wild. They are one with the sea in a way mermaids are not. A merman surrenders himself completely to the water, until a mermaid tames his heart," Thetis explained.
The explanation did not serve its purpose, and the girls still looked confused. Thetis decided to press on with her story, since there was still much to tell. She could explain the details later.
"So, to help my brother and to ease my own loneliness, I enchanted this place," Thetis told her audience, looking around at the moon pool. "It used to be a gathering place for many of our kind, and I hoped that some might want to return here. I used the moon's power to enhance my own, making it so that any former merperson who came back to this pool would be restored to their former selves. I hoped to bring back those who had left. It wasn't supposed to affect humans."
The girls were uncertain whether this made things clearer or more confusing. At least it explained where their powers had come from. Or did it?
"Unfortunately, the moon sometimes has its own designs, so my spell worked, but not completely. The first time it worked was with three human girls, who became mermaids, but only when water touched them. It was a cruel trick that the moon had played—"
"You talk about the moon as though it were a sentient being," Rikki interrupted her.
"But it is," Thetis answered her. "How else could it have its own magic? It is a powerful force that acts of its own will and affects us all. The point is, these three girls were still human, for the most part, and still my own kind did not return. I revealed myself to only one of those girls, hoping that she would understand my predicament and stay a mermaid permanently, returning with me to my brother and convincing her friends to do the same."
Thetis paused again, remembering something very painful, apparently.
"I think that I frightened her," she sighed. "At any rate, she figured out a way to become human again, permanently. I would have given up, then, and taken the spell off of this place, but the moon had its own designs. I could no longer control the magic I had started. The other two girls were subjected each month to stranger and stranger occurrences."
"Hold on a second," Rikki said, her brows furrowed. "The last time, that we know about, that the moon pool turned three girls into mermaids was more than fifty years ago."
"Yes, those were the first girls," Thetis agreed.
"But you're the one who cast the spell?" Rikki asked, looking at Thetis's youthful face.
"Of course. Who else?" Thetis replied, not completely understanding why it mattered.
"But you look so young!" Cleo exclaimed.
Understanding dawned in Thetis's eyes.
"Ah, I see. Merpeople do not grow old, and we do not die," she explained to them, seeing the astonishment in their eyes. "Until they become human, which was what I had forgotten," she finished. "The reason none of the merpeople returned to the pool was because they had all grown old and died while living on land. They would never return."
"What happened to the other two girls?" Emma asked. Technically, she knew. The girl that Thetis had spoken to had been Gracie, Charlotte's grandmother, who had lifted the spell and become completely human. Julia had died recently; the locket that Rikki wore had been part of a deceased estate. As for the third, Louise Chatham, they had become very well acquainted with her over the past year.
Thetis smiled at Emma's question. "One of the girls returned to land and, like her friend, figured out a way to become human once more. The other…"
"Died," Rikki finished for her.
"Not at all!" Thetis retorted. "Why, she is very much alive, and she is my brother's wife, now."
The three girls were absolutely agog, staring at Thetis as if she had sprouted another tail.
"Come again?" Rikki asked incredulously.
Thetis smiled. "That was Julia's trick. She was forsaken by a human boy, but she did not wish to go back to being a human. So she found me, one day, and I introduced her to my brother. They fell in love and she tamed his heart."
"But that doesn't explain—" Rikki interjected, but Thetis would not let her finish.
"Julia left the human world for good years ago," she finished.
Rikki tried again. "What about this necklace?" she asked, pointing to her locket. "It belonged to a woman who died, and Miss Chatham, Julia's friend Louise," she clarified, "Told us that it was Julia's."
"I suppose it was, once," Thetis shrugged. "But she left everything behind when she came to live in the sea permanently. Her friends had not spoken to her for two years before she left, so they would not have known what had become of her. Perhaps her friend recognized the necklace only."
This news was quite shocking for Rikki, Cleo, and Emma, but not enough to drive the specter of never seeing their boyfriends again.
"And the boys?" Emma asked.
Thetis hung her head, looking very guilty.
"I only learned that the moon had worked its magic again recently," she said quietly. "I was delighted to learn that there were also young men who knew of your double nature and were not bothered by it."
"Well, 'not bothered' doesn't mean that they wanted to join us!" Rikki exclaimed.
Thetis looked miserable. "I know, and that was one of my mistakes," she admitted, ashamed. "I thought that if I could lure them into the pool, they would be changed into mermen and they could join you, and you would all stay with us in the sea, forever."
All three girls cried out, protesting this directing of their fate.
Thetis sighed again, and raised her shoulders. "The other mistake wasn't entirely mine. It didn't work the right way, because the moon took away your powers at the same time. And as for the boys… I had hoped that because they cared for you and you for them, their hearts would not be seduced by the sea and they would not need to be tamed as mermen usually do."
"But they left us!" Cleo said angrily. "You were wrong!"
"Yes, I was," Thetis said. "And I'm sorry. But now you have to help me."
"Help you?" Rikki snorted. "You've done nothing but cause trouble for us. Why should we help you?"
Thetis's lips became very thin, as though with anger. "Oh, yes. You can do nothing, of course, but then you'll never see your beaus again. And I might just introduce myself to one of them," she hinted menacingly.
All three jumped to their feet in protest, or anger, or some kind of combination of the two.
"We can't do anything," Rikki replied furiously. "We're not mermaids anymore and we can't exactly go swimming out to sea to chase after them. Thanks a lot."
"Oh, is that all?" Thetis said breezily, ignoring Rikki's anger. It was beginning to irritate her, how she wanted to help these girls and their only response was fury directed at her. "No, leave finding them to me. You have to do something else."
"Like what?" Emma scowled.
"You have to catch them," Thetis answered.
"What? Why?" Emma demanded, thinking that this sounded ridiculous. The very idea of having to catch Ash…
"Oh," Rikki and Cleo said simultaneously.
"What does she mean?" Emma turned to them, seeing that for some reason they understood what she was talking about.
Rikki ventured a guess. "If we catch one of them, we can make a wish?"
Thetis nodded.
"What wish would we make?" Cleo wondered. "To have the powers switched back to us?"
"Um…" Thetis looked hesitantly at them before telling them the truth, knowing that they would probably be quite angry. "Before you say anything else, just know that this is really the only thing that can be done to help all of you."
Rikki stared daggers at her. "What?"
"They can't be changed back," Thetis stated. "At least, not that I know of."
"But what about the wish?" Cleo asked, alarmed at the thought. "We can't wish for them to change back?"
"No," Thetis answered. "Because in order to grant it they would have to use magic on themselves, and that is impossible. No, you would wish to be mermaids again. Like you were before."
A long silence stretched as each girl thought about these scarce options.
"Two questions," Rikki finally said. "One, why can't you catch them and make a wish? And also, what do we do once we're mermaids again?"
Thetis replied quickly, as if she had rehearsed all possible answers. "I can't catch them because the wish only works if a human catches a merman, and I am not human at all. As for your second question, I only have a theory. Once you are mermaids again, their hearts will be tamed, since mermen usually have no interest in humans. Of course, that's just a theory, and I hope I'm right."
And while Thetis did hope that she was right, nobody could hope for it more than Cleo, Emma, and Rikki, who saw the difficult situation they were facing and realized that no matter what they did, there would still be some difficulties to deal with once the wish had been made. And what if they couldn't 'tame their hearts' after all?
Why couldn't everything be as simple as a few drops of water again?
Author's Note: Thanks for everybody's reviews. Glad you liked it. This was a longer chapter, first to make up for the shortness of the last chapter and also because it involved a LOT of exposition. Oh, well. Enjoy reading. Review if you feel like it.
-Tess