Jesse did not know how he made it back into the room. He had been outside for hours, it seemed. Only twenty minutes had passed, but it was enough. He knew that she would not be back. He could only just remember how to reach the house. He was not surprised to find Candy, Maddie, and Mako in Lille's empty room, gathered around a note as they had some discussion.
"This is insane," Candy announced, looking at the other three when she noticed Jesse enter. "If anyone else ever heard a hint of this, we'd be in the best psychiatric facility money could buy. I knew that there was something different about Lille, but this is nonsensical."
"No, it's just something that doesn't happen every day." Maddie knew, but couldn't explain why she had no doubts. "That's why it's amazing. Lille was a special girl, you know." She didn't seem to notice Jesse's wince as she spoke. "The major corps de ballet of almost every area is already calling, and I had to say that she left for personal reasons at least forty times this morning."
"It's simple," Mako said, less phased than Maddie. He had been no stranger to mermaids. "Aquiline, as she was named at birth, was and is a mermaid. She could not speak for the year she was on land, per an agreement with the sea-witch. As she received no declarations of love within her year, her power to gain legs was taken away and she gets to serve the sea-witch for eternity. The squid-woman, as Jesse may know her, decided that cutting out tongues was a bit too medieval, and that she could use a bit of help. Killing the mermaids is just a waste of rare resources. That's her usual take on the deal, as mermaids are much harder to come by. Unless I'm wrong, Aquiline was the last of the merfolk not old enough to be a crone."
"How did you know her name?" Jesse asked. How did he know? Aquiline had only said her name just before leaving. Mako hadn't been anywhere in the area.
"How did you know all the other details?" Candy had not told him that a squid had attacked Jesse. She didn't recall ever telling him about the attack. He simply had known before she had said a word.
Mako shrugged. "Candy, you're the one who knows about marine biology. Mako is not a traditional name for a Pacific Islander, as far as I can remember." It was harder to say than he had guessed.
"Mako. As in the shark. As in one of the fifteen species known to eat people, or is that just a myth, too?" Candy had known something was odd about her fiancée. She just hadn't guessed that he had some connection to sharks.
"I was a shark, but I was born a man. For a few hundred years, I was the classic henchman. Aquiline showed me how to get out of my old . . . obligations. She didn't say a word," he added quickly, seeing looks on the others' faces. "She just made a few very meaningful gestures. I couldn't help her with hers." It seemed that there was a final piece of explanation that was needed. "Sirene is the sea-witch. She came here to cause havoc and try to collect a new person to take home with her. She usually tries to find princes, but in this age, a celebrity would do."
"Sirene?" Candy and Jesse said at once. That couldn't be right. Maddie had suspected that she was something more than the usual unsavory character, but that was yet another extreme. He had guessed, but never assumed that he could be right.
"Yes. Sirene. She finds most people adrift in a fishing boat." He paused, remembering some long ago day. "But the sea-witch has always loved the usually unattainable, dropping any new playmate the instant she's bored. She's been around for longer than people realize."
"She can't be that old," Jesse scoffed, almost hesitantly. He wouldn't fall for anyone over forty at the most, would he?
"Have you ever heard of Aphrodite, the woman to wash onto a Grecian shore to be worshipped as a goddess? Did Nimue ever appear in a story you read, the woman who trapped Merlin in a cave of his own creation? That was when she gained real power. Greece gave her immortality and arrogance. Merlin gave her anger and power." Her story was old, and longer than any time would give for telling. He did not know even half of it, and likely had only an eighth after a few hundred years.
"That was her?" Candy had actually heard of the people he mentioned, both assumed fictional. But if mermaids were real, who else could be? For all she knew, dragons still lived in caves and breathed fire at knights.
"Yes. She was the one that Hans Christian Anderson wrote of, and Aquiline's many-times-great aunt was the mermaid. Aquiline never did mean to fulfill the usual destiny of her family, but certain events made that day happen. She had vowed to never seek out the sea-witch, but hadn't guessed that the witch would threaten any lives. No one in her family ever did succeed, and she is the last." He spared no words, and blunted no statements. He always favored the full truth, however hard to take.
"She is the last of her family? Why wouldn't she just marry a merman?" Candy was curious. Couldn't Aquiline have found someone? There was no need to be picky.
"Since the first days that a daughter of the sea died loving a man of land, no sons have been born. Only when the sea's girl-child finds her prince's love will the mermaids become a true race again." He decided that the rather depressing topic had been covered. No one needed to hear of the sadness as the last of the males died away, leaving mer-wives with long periods of pregnancy to sing and cry. Their songs had not enticed sailors, but distracted them to be so lonely and heartsick that their very boats sang with the grief.
Candy agreed. "Maddie, you've been holding that note since before sunup. Can someone else see it now?" She wanted to see the last words of her friend, and had to pretend that Lille was only out to town. She couldn't let herself remember that the girl who had encouraged Mako was gone. Lil-Aquiline, she reminded herself, had been the one to tell Mako to pop the question. She knew him as well as Candy did through past experience, sometimes better. Aquiline had known of his nature.
"It's all nonsense. She wrote it with that pen of hers, more than likely. Nothing in this house has green ink. The way she guarded that pen, it was some dangerous thing that would run away, given the chance." Maddie still relinquished the note, wondering about Lille's odd behavior. All she had been holding was that emerald pen, dressed for an evening about the town as she stood on the front porch of a manor, barefoot and with bleeding feet.
"It turned into that," Jesse said, pointing at the dagger that he had lain across the desk for lack of a better place to put it. "She threw it to the side, and when it hit the sand, it turned into the dagger." He repeated himself, still trying to process the idea.
"She could have freed herself entirely from the promise by killing you," Mako said, turning his always unreadable gaze to the knife. "That's always the deal. Not a single mermaid has ever accepted the proposition, and not one has been loved."
"There's writing on this," Candy interrupted. She had borrowed it from a reluctant Maddie. Seeing the imminent protest, she continued quickly. "In English, too. The first line makes no sense, though." She frowned. "Lille Havfrue, Copenhagen." That sounded familiar, though she couldn't place it. Lille decided to just read the note, as six eyes watched her raptly.
"Lille Havfrue- Copenhagen
A year on land to gain his love
A year given legs, but no voice
No words to give minds a desired shove
And then, after year passes, a choice.
Take the dagger in a hand
And then choose if you shall kill
Kill him and leave, debt free, from land
If he lives without love, an eternity of witch's will.
Mako, she will not trouble you. I am the replacement- she said as much to me, one night when all others were sleeping. Maddie, star in that show. I heard that telephone call, and you can do it. My year of wages is yours to get your feet off the ground, and your name into the spotlights. Candy- you'll have a byline of your own. Don't let your parents dictate your life. Congratulations to you and Mako, by the way. This entire note may sound overly sentimental, but this is only what I've felt like saying all year.
Only one who knows my secret before pen turns to dagger, or one in love, can comprehend the script from a cursed pen. Tell him what you will.
-Aquiline"
Candy stopped before reading the last lines of the first page. Jesse had glanced over her shoulder, and had been following along as she read. He could see the script. She folded the note, not letting him reach the last two sentences. She had a few questions to ask.
"When did you know she was a mermaid?" Candy demanded. "It's important. I'll explain later. When?"
"I only figured it out when she sprouted a tail." He was impatient. Why was she playing Trivial Pursuit now, of all times?
"After she threw the dagger?" Candy prompted.
"Yes, but-" He tried to finish his statement. Candy wouldn't let him.
"No buts. You read what she wrote." She snapped the note open, reading the last two lines. "You're in love with her, and have been since before just this morning." The words were an accusation.
Jesse considered the revelation. Was that love? He remembered their first meeting, when she had been in his room. No, that didn't really count. The first dinner they had shared had not been at all a pleasant affair. The first words he planned to say to her were horribly rude, and he hated to even think of what he had said, and who he had been.
That's a lie. He had not really changed. He had been a jerk even until last night. He still was a jerk. Lille was gone because he had not been the charming, suave, and all-around nice guy he had always presumed himself to be. Her name may be Aquiline, but he still couldn't help but think of her as Lille.
"I'd have to say that's true," he admitted, almost sheepishly. You shouldn't be ashamed, he told himself mentally. You're Jesse Dalton- she should be pleased to have known you for a year. For the first time in his life, he knew how ridiculous that thought was. She hadn't chosen to spend time on land. She had agreed to save his life.
"I'll do it," a voice promised. He was sinking into the ocean, constricted with tentacles. Now, he knew that the voice he had guessed to be angelic belonged to Aquiline. "Let him go."
"Will you indeed?" Sirene's voice was nothing like the manner of speech she had borrowed from Aquiline. It was cold and grating, a cruel hiss that still made him shudder. That was not the voice she had used on land. An unused voice could be borrowed easily, especially when the borrower had studied with Merlin.
"Yes. I swear on the spirits of my ancestors to follow the promise." He could hear in her voice that she had lifted her head, trying to be proud as she tried to avoid acknowledging that she had agreed to the deal that had left so many dead or worse.
"Then go. At sunup tomorrow, you will not use your voice for a full year. Your tail will split, and it will be as painful as always. The usual description is having the entire lower half twain with a sword. For each step you take, it will feel as if you dance on daggers. You have one year on land to win the heart of your noble little princeling." Here, the tentacles gripped tighter for a moment and retreated slightly from the area of his eyes. They swelled the instant the pressure was gone, and he could not see a thing. "You will only gain control of the changing from mermaid to land-maid if he proclaims his love."
"I know. That's enough formalities. I understand about the dagger, and killing him now is hardly sporting of you." She was not at all surprised with the'new' conditions. They had been the same for eighteen of her cousins, all now dead. Service to the sea witch was deadly, or at least indirectly deadly. All had killed themselves within six years.
"Fine." The tentacles fell away, releasing his limp body. "But just remember. Never forget. You have one year, and then you are mine for eternity. Kill him if you dare, but you're too like your family. Weak, simple, silly- all of you are the same."
"I would rather die a thousand deaths than become someone like you," she retorted defiantly. "Now leave me be. He's a sick prince." She knew he wasn't really a prince, but Sirene didn't. Yet. The deal usually didn't apply to any who wasn't royalty, but Sirene would make an exception for the last of Aquiline's dynasty. "Once I'm gone, she wins," she said, knowing that Jesse was in no condition to hear her. "But she won't. I know that there's some good in you."
Why was he remembering too late? He ignored all lectures he had ever heard about the mind's natural amnesia. Many scenes were deleted, to only come back later in less stressful time. He didn't notice that a few minutes had passed, or that three people were staring at him.
"Why didn't I know that she was the one?" He didn't seem to know that he was speaking out loud.
"Because she was right in front of you." Candy sounded sympathetic, for a change. He truly was grieving that Aquiline was gone. "And I found Lille Havfrue of Copenhagen in a search engine. That's the name given to the statue of the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen Bay, Denmark. That's what Lille Havfrue means, you know. It's Danish for 'Little Mermaid.'" It made sense, in an odd way that no one else could ever understand.
"I'll find her," Jesse said, looking around the bare room. He didn't seem to pay much attention to her findings, but he heard them. He picked up the discarded pair of emerald ballet slippers with a reverence he had never used with artifacts that history museums would do most anything to gain. This would be his imagined favor from the lady he sought. He would find her. Somewhere, someday, somehow, and in some way he couldn't begin to plan, he would find Aquiline.
"Let me help," Candy said, looking at the slippers with understanding. She knew what they would mean. She had admired the dance of the mermaid, and already had bribed a reporter she worked with occasionally to make her a copy of the feed he had recorded from last night. Was it last night? It seemed so much longer ago.
"I can tell you a few useful things." Mako was serious. His solid black eyes looked less out of place on his dark skin. He may not ever fully explain exactly what he had been called on to do as an assistant to Sirene, but this may help undo some of those many years. He was back into a human's time, but he didn't feel that any of those moments would be a waste.
"You aren't leaving me out. I am taking that position as the new host for a back-to-basics cooking show, but I'm only a few seconds away by phone. Derek said something of the sort last year, but this time I have nothing to hold me back. You," she said to Jesse, "have finally grown up. I can leave you alone without having to worry about what you'll do."
"I don't think I could do it without your help." He took the dagger after a second thought, and Candy offered the note. He had three remnants, and not one would give a clue as to where she was. Still, they reminded him of exactly who he had to find. He would find her. He had to.
