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Chapter 36

The pain of the change was lost in her urgency to see. She had seen Ayako and Takigawa tied to the hall, and the rushing of the water blinded Mai to their position. When the deck tottered above her, she forced her eyes open to see them floating in the glow of the dying deck light, surrounded with sea foam and bubbles.

It was almost beautiful.

She darted forward, hitting against the deck as the current caught her, but struggled on. The legs of Ayako caught against her back in a wild kick and she cringed.

"Takigawa! Ayako!"

Ayako looked down at her in shock, but Takigawa didn't so much as twitch. Weaving between them, she found the nylon rope about their middles just as the lights died out and their world turned black.

The engine whined to a stop.

Frantic, she felt along the rope, desperate for the knot, praying that Takigawa hadn't passed out or hit his head to hard or—

A hand found her arm and pressed something into her hand. She couldn't hear anything above the roar of the sea about her, but thought she could feel the plastic grip of a pocket knife.

Praying she didn't accidentally stabbed them, she felt out the blade beneath the rope and tugged. As it snapped, her eyes adjusted, and she could see the faintest glow of the night sky through the mist and water.

Ayako's arms snapped about her desperately, and for a moment Mai was overwhelmed by her weight. Takigawa floated from her grasp. She couldn't leave him.

But she was smaller than Ayako, and the woman was making troubling noises behind her.

Kicking her tail hard, climbing up the water like a mountain, she pulled herself out from beneath the sinking ship and the faintest glow above.

Just as she broke water and Ayako took a desperate breath, a wall of water pounded them back down. Ayako was torn from her back and Mai was sent reeling into the darkness.

"No!"

But she could barely see the dark shape of the yacht and little more. Darkness surrounded her, currents tugged her back and forth, fighting to drag her away.

They were all going to drown. Kazuya, Yui, Ayako, Yasu, Takigawa…

Except her.

She had to do something. She was a freaking mermaid, for crying out loud! She could swim, she could breathe—

And desperately she started forward again, fighting against the rising waves, keeping her eyes wide to see the forms of the others. But even as she did so, a sob escaped her.

"No, no, this can't be happening, no!"

She had to hurry. They would drown—they were drowning, and she couldn't see them. The boat was sinking, beaten down by the out of the blue huge waves—the same that had stolen her before—

She stopped. The mist. The huge waves out of the blue.

The mermen.

Taking a great gulp of air, she remembered a bony, murky colored mermaid sitting before a wall of chains as she sang to the ocean beyond. What had Jamie taught her about singing again? How had it been so different from singing as a human?

And if they were already drowning…

Mai pushed out all of her need and desperation and urgency—and sang.

Her voice came out louder than she had expected it to. It spread out like an echo over the canyon, haunting and brassy. She thought she could hear its reflection off of the bulk of the dying yacht, maybe even hear it being swallowed up by the depths below. But she sang as she never had before, wordlessly, and with each inch of her soul.

Help.

Familiar blue-green lights budded out from the depths. They grew bigger and bigger, like comets rushing to earth from a night sky.

Her stomach started to hurt. Her head was beginning to spin, begging for her to take a breath, but she pushed out an even louder note, higher and more desperate than ever.

She only had to blink and they surrounded her, the embodiments of the currents in the way the whirled about her, brushed against her, filled the sea with the glow of tiny crystals hung about their necks.

Hundreds of mermen.

Their eerie light lit up the sinking yacht. She could see Ayako, still with her hand to the surface, Takigawa hanging up from the yacht, Yui holding tight to Kazuya near the surface, but no sign of Yasu.

The mermen turned to her, bringing their fins to their fronts in a mid-water bow. A dozen voices vibrated the mermish language to her, and she found herself eternally glad that she had learned at least enough to tell them what she needed them to do.

"Save!" she cried, pointing towards the yacht and floating bodies.

To her astonishment, they didn't question. They turned from her and flipped towards the boat, catching Kazuya and his floating crewmates out of the water like diving spears and shooting them to the surface. Even the currents about her seemed to have stilled, and the surface undulations and thickenings seemed to be calming as the waves died down. Mermen dipped in and out of the boat like tongues, and she let out a cry as one brought out the limp form of a boy from the bottom deck.

She moved to paddle to the top, but was stopped by a familiar, broad, boyish faced merman.

"Vovo," she breathed.

The great merman bowed his fins to his forehead and offered her his hand while gesturing her to the surface. He was asking for permission to accompany her. She accepted his hand, and together they pulled to the surface, where the mermen holding humans had begun to gather.

To her astounded relief, everyone was coughing for air when her head broke the surface. The mermen had done some sort of Heimlich maneuver to push the water from their stomachs and lungs, and their glowing crystal pendants lit up the waters like many swimming pool lights. More than a few of them looked rather confused as to why they held deflated humans in their arms. They seemed comforted by Mai's delighted face, however, and a few even smiled when she cried a delighted, 'Thank you!' They needn't understand English to hear her gratitude.

"Ugh," moaned Ayako, before snapping up her head and getting a good look at the merman that held her, who gave her an uncertain smile. "Oh!"

"Yeah. This is demeaning," grumbled Takigawa. "Ugh, my head."

"Couldn't you have summoned up a few babes?" asked Yasu in between coughs that still spluttered water from his lungs.

Yui looked more than a little strange floating in the arms of merman smaller than him. Vovo left Mai's side to replace him.

And Kazuya, teeth chattering, just looked at her, as though he had thought to never see her again—which he probably had thought.

Blue-green glows floated up to the surface. Dark shapes of mermen still rising from the deep, their light joining the others as their heads broke above the surface. Only when one of them came towards Mai and spoke in concerned, heavy mermish did the freshly rescued humans start to look concern.

Mai curled her hands to her chest, her faulty mermish finally getting the best of her. "Uh, I…I…"

"He ask what you want with them."

Mai turned her head towards the sound. The lone merman without a light about his neck swam towards her, his scales black obsidian mirrors to the glow of the more colored mermen about him.

"Zen."

He came to her with his face bowed. She couldn't see his eyes past the wet fringe of his bangs, and his mouth was thin and expressionless.

"What will you have with them, princess? Land is far. They may die of cold before arrive. Their ship has sunk with the rest of the intruders and not be retrieved, and as soon as Maitre find them, they will die. Your word not stronger."

Mai bit her lip, but it was Kazuya who spoke up.

"There's a boat near the front of the ship, behind some big doors. If they could swim down and bring it up, we could ride in there."

Zen did not acknowledge that Kazuya had spoken. He didn't even raise his head. For all Mai knew, he had grown deaf.

The mermen waited for her words. All the while, the last of them rose up, till Mai floated in a small pool of green light and mermen, all watching her, waiting.

She swallowed and looked to Kazuya. "Describe where the boat is to me. I'll go down with them."

"That not necessary," said the flat voice of Zen. "I understand English better than speak. I know boats well enough."

So Kazuya told him, and Mai was suddenly glad Zen had offered, as she still couldn't tell the difference between portside and starside or poop deck or which sail was what. Zen nodded and dived down, and Mai's paltry mermish was enough to tell the other mermen to help him. Dozens followed after him, more than needed, but the rest kept close to her, almost apprehensively so, and for the first time Mai wondered if her song had frightened them.

Beneath the hush of the calming ocean waves, she could hear Kazuya's and his crew's teeth chattering.

Sooner than she expected, the white bulk of small row boat rose up into the green light, lifted up by almost all the mermen that had gone down with Zen. They pushed the boat up above the surface, then, remarkably, managed to lift it high enough to drain it of all its water and set it back on the surface, right side up and afloat.

One by one, the mermen lifted up their humans and deposited them into the boat. It was no luxury liner, but they all fit in well enough.

Mai frowned at noticing Kazuya only wore his underwear, and instead of blushing, she swam about to touch his arm. Ice cold.

"He will freeze," said Zen, still in that flat voice as he rose up besides her.

Yui seemed to take personal offense to this and peeled off his own shirt and light jacket, which he draped about her Naru, though Naru hardly noticed as he had pinched his arms and legs to him so tightly she could see the bones and tendons in his knuckles.

"How can we warm them up?" she asked Zen. "There's got to be some way we can keep them warm on the trip back."

Zen said nothing. The mermen shifted, glancing below them at the deep and around them in the darkness as the mist had started to clear. Starlight could just be seen beyond the bright glow of their pendants.

"Zen?"

"What would you have me do, princess?" he said, clearly enunciated, but softer than he had before. "I know nothing of human keep. My life is yours, as I can never repent for what I did, so you may use me any way you can think of."

It was her Naru who spoke up again, and she hardly understood him through the chattering of his teeth.

"Seaweed," he pushed out. "Flat, thick seaweed. We can—wrap around like…like a wet suit."

She looked to Zen. "That's the best idea we're going to get so far. Try to not get too much water in the boat as you bring it up."

He brought up his fin in a brief bow, then dove back down. At a look from her, the same men that had followed her before dove back down with him.

She looked out over the waters with the others, picturing a much vaster vessel sinking beneath the surface like Naru's yacht. An ugly, cramping feeling twisted her gut and she hugged her arms around herself.

She hoped Masako was okay.

And she wished her people hadn't of done what they did.

Another reminder! Today is the last day to leave a review on Erase Me. The one who wins the publishing contract is the book that gets the best response from its readers, aka, how many reviews and how good they are. Please be sure to do that before midnight tonight! .