The rest of the ride back to the MRC was subdued. The three students didn't know how to react to their usually jovial leader. He always made jokes after their "secret agent missions," as he dubbed them. He would nominate someone to be 007, usually himself, and then inflict a melodramatically horrible British accent on them as he spoke of what they had done right, what needed improvement, and took input on treatment plans for a dolphin. He could be a convincing actor, but that didn't have the same comedic effect as his wonderfully horrible acts.
Danielle focused on her driving. Ricard also watched the road, in an attempt to not stare at the new passenger. In the few months he had been in the MRC dorms, he never had heard of one of the volunteer squads rescuing a person. Sophia quickly grew bored, as no one needed a map. Mako and Candy were discussing something using many allusions no one else but Jesse understood, and he wasn't paying attention.
"She's the reason you never married," Sophia announced after a few minutes, more to break the quiet than anything else. She had asked him, once, and he had only said that he wasn't quite ready to settle down. That was a silly thought, as he had a very nice suite of rooms on the top floor of the MRC, and already was settled down. He hadn't even had a date that they knew of, in the history of the program. Even his college roommates had noticed his odd lack of a date, through no shortage of offers.
"Sophia," Candy warned, beating Mako in admonishing her. "Leave him be. Hearing's the last thing that an unconscious person loses, you know, and she could be listening to all of us. Knowing Lille, she probably is."
"Aquiline would do that," Mako agreed. "She'd laugh at us all later, too. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she was memorizing every word."
"Is it Aquiline, or Lille?" Ricard asked.
"Aquiline. Lille's an old nickname," Jesse answered, much more curt than usual. He couldn't think of anything to do to help Aquiline. She was breathing, her heart was fine, she was warming up, but she was still unconscious with no sign of waking up soon. He was a doctor of marine biology, not a medical doctor.
"That's it," Danielle said. "She needs get some rest in a stable bed, and this van won't do a thing for her. I'm making this baby go as fast as fast can be. If we get a ticket, they'll have to catch to me first." Danielle never before had found the supervisor of the expeditions so willing to blatantly disregard traffic safety laws. Getting home sounded like a very good idea . He didn't even give a cursory protest.
Before the van even had pulled up to a squealing stop after a few donuts that normally would never be allowed, Mike raced out to meet them with a gurney. Ricard had called him, but hadn't been able to give any real details. Mike glanced at the patient, curious. She was nothing like their usual dolphins, or the occasional whale. She looked decidedly unhealthy. Were veins supposed to look green? He had never heard of such a thing, but he was sure that Mako or Jesse would know.
"Your room's set up, Jesse," he said as the professor put Aquiline on a stretcher with the careful attention usually reserved for a newborn. "From what Ricard said, you'd want to be close by. There's a bed ready." Mike was studying to be a veterinarian, one of the many pre-med students in the MRC. Caring for animals was similar to caring for people. Animals just relied solely on tone and body language, things that humans rarely cared for.
"I'll be up in a minute," Candy called after him. She had never seen Jesse so nervous. No matter what he decided, he could not keep her away. She and Mako had a right to wait for Aquiline, even if he would be the one in charge. He had found her, after all. "Mike, Sophia, Ricard, and Danielle, you all need to tell the others that absolutely no one is to go to the top floor, call him, or make a disturbance unless the building is on fire, a nuclear missile is heading this way, or a really pretty woman in a dark purple dress shows up. If she does, slam the door and get Mako." The last instruction was odd, but Candy felt it was necessary to cover all bases.
Candy was true to her word. She and Mako claimed a couch on the opposite side of the room, and took turns cat-napping. They had just flown from London, where they had attended a conference on marine biology and technology applications, and were very much suffering from jet lag. Neither said a word to Jesse. He wasn't listening.
Aquiline hadn't moved. She still was breathing unevenly, gulping air in some unconscious attempt to keep her lungs working. Her pulse was a little stronger. Jesse was relieved that her skin was almost the same temperature as his. He had been talking to her the entire night, quiet and insistent. None of the words carried across the room. Many of the words he found himself using were recalled from the time she had saved his life.
At some anonymous time in the midst of the night, Aquiline's hand clenched. Jesse, who had been holding onto that hand as if it was the last lifeline he had, slept. Her weak motion was not enough to wake him.
"Lille." He was speaking in his sleep, but didn't stir. His voice was hoarse from the long night of talking to her. Had he been awake, he would have ignored all clinical knowledge of muscle spasms. He still remembered holding his grandfather's hand in the hospital, when the old man was bedridden and dying from emphysema. The doctors had sworn there was no brain activity. Jesse had felt the man squeeze his hand. No one believed him, thinking he only wanted attention, but it was a true story. He liked to think that he hadn't made up that memory. He hadn't been much of a liar when he was nine.
Her eyes opened slowly, so gradually that no motion could really be seen. She didn't want to wake up. This was the best dream she could remember having for years. She was warm, and not freezing from the closeness of the sea-witch. She was lying on a warm bed, not resting in some small crevice of rock. She was in a beautiful room. She heard a familiar voice. Lille. Sirene never would say that name, but instead used any other derisive nick-name that she could think of.
I don't want to wake up. The one day she had a good dream, she could not sleep any longer. He had said something, and had the dry sound in his voice that meant he had been talking for a long while. She moved her hand again, this time paying attention to the motion. She was not touching anything wet, hard, sharp, or slimy. It was something warm, shaped very much like her own hand. That couldn't be right. Why wasn't she in the ocean? This did not make sense.
She ignored a sleeping Jesse, trying to fit the pieces back together. Sirene had been horrible, as usual. Aquiline knew that she had beaten the old record of not killing herself by a few years. That didn't matter. All that mattered was that she could barely let herself breathe. Each breath just meant that she would live to serve a sea-witch, her bargain for a chance that would not have worked. If only she could have taken her year now, when he was kinder. But that was impossible. From what she could guess about him, losing her had made him mature. Good. Then there was still hope for him.
She had thrown herself into the freak wave, one that would carry her straight at the rocks. There was no record of how the various mermaids died, but being dashed against the rather impressive rocks of the coastline sounded deadly and not likely to leave any clues to betray that she was a mermaid. Instead, they would find a woman's mangled body, and the fish part would rot away within minutes, leaving odd traces no scientist would dare explain. But fate had stopped her.
She had been carried into a small tidal pool. The chances of the event were astronomically low. That had been good enough, she had decided. She would just stop breathing. Giving up had been easier than she had guessed. After eleven years of painful hope, she could finally rest. Then, before she fully could lose herself to sleep, she had felt someone take her out of the water. Her gills fought to breathe, and a gentle touch coaxed them into working. That had been when she lost the battle to stay at least partly awake.
She was staring into space, with a vacant look that would have scared him. He would even have admitted it. That blank look would scare him more than the squid ever had. When he was attacked, he hadn't known what had hit him, and knew that it was very likely that he would die. He couldn't lose her. It wouldn't be right, not after all the years.
Her eyes were not a brilliant blue. They were not even the pale blue-grey they had been once while she was in his house. They were a shadowed shade that that could not be named, and looked like the eyes of a dead person. The pupils were somewhat clouded, and blended into the irises. That blending had looked normal, in Mako's bright sharks' eyes. On her, the shading looked dangerous and threatening.
"Jesse," she said finally, his name coming out soft and whispered, like a hesitant touch. What did this mean? Was she dead? That couldn't be right. From all she had ever known, mermaids had no souls. If they died, they dissolved into sea foam. The luckiest were given the chance to go through a Purgatory of sorts, as direct consultation with St. Peter was not allowed for the sin of being born a mermaid. To gain a soul, a mermaid had to be loved. In the sea without mermen, that was nearly impossible.
He didn't wake, but only kept sleeping, bent uncomfortably on a chair beside the bed. He had fallen asleep hours ago, his body trying to make up for the strain of the recent events. He looked worried even in his sleep, by the small frown.
"I have to go." She spoke to a sleeping person. The cold, short words were different from her gentle first word. Sirene would come for her. She hadn't disturbed him. That was good. It would leave only fewer explanations. She was not about to say why she had ended up in that tidal pool. That was something he didn't need to know. She would just disappear, and leave behind the thought that it had all been a dream.
She moved her tail deftly from beneath damp covers. The instant it hit the ground, the process began for the second time. Her tail split in two, leaving trickles of blood on his clean floor. She winced as legs formed from beneath coatings of scales, but managed not to cry out. That would wake Jesse. Glancing at a couch, she noticed that Candy and Mako were also there, asleep from the monotony of the night. That was just her luck, but at least they looked as tired as Jesse did. Something about the changing of her legs reminded her of an old saying, but she didn't remember if he had said anything to her.
Aquiline walked around the room, her dead-fish eyes taking in everything without trouble. She saw a fairly simple room. The bookshelves held books with worn spines, one of which that looked suspiciously like a certain book of tales from Hans Christian Anderson. The desk was fairly cluttered with documents, but seemed to be somewhat organized. She glanced at a few titles, Icthial Tails and Dolphin Psychology, before turning away. One paper had no title, but was a sketch of a mermaid with a fan tail that was very close to exact. That simple drawing did not need a title.
Her ballet slippers were lying on a desk. They weren't dusty, as the pair was carefully cleaned weekly. The dagger was beside them, gleaming maliciously in reminder of its intent. There was another option, the third door that always exists. Leave the best thing that ever happened to you, put all here in danger from Sirene, or do the deed she could not do so many years ago.
She picked up the dagger. It fit perfectly into her grasp, and she twirled it easily. She bet that she could not perform the feat with any other knife. So, this was her choice. She knew that it was the only way. The knife would set her free, even if it did leave some sadness behind. She hoped that people would mourn a little, but not waste their lives. After all, it wasn't like death was that much of a tragedy. After so many years, she had lost the hesitancy against the act she now considered.
She read the note a final time, looking at the deep creases. Someone had read this often, or carried it around. It had a few traces of salt too small to come from immersion in seawater. Those eight lines had ruined her life, and the lives of so many of her kin. Mermaids had no real choice. Mermen were a lost generation, until the power of the witch was broken. Aquiline truly was the last of the young mermaids, in all senses of the term, though the older crones still waited for the day that their husbands would return, ignoring reason and time. A mermaid's fidelity is something that will not be compromised, no matter what. Adultery is unheard of, as no mermaid would even consider such an act. Mermaid law is brutal, but rarely used. All mermaids have its principles engraved into them, so the penalties have never had a recorded use.
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.
There was no other way. She left the note where it rested, not marring it with prints of fingers. She touched the satin ribbon of the shoes she had once danced in, but she would not need them. The instant the dagger's need was satiated, she would no longer be troubled by the need for dancing shoes. The knife knew her purpose, and called to her, an almost audible whisper of what she had to do.
Mako turned in his sleep. Aquiline froze, not moving as much as a single muscle. Her heart paused for a moment, and her diaphragm was stationary. He didn't wake, and Candy remained still. She looked at the two of them for a moment before moving again, as gracefully as she could. They had something she envied, the quiet kind of love that had nothing to do with spells and impossible dreams and old legends that never come true.
She should leave some signal, to explain the why of her actions. They would not believe her presence to be a dream, when there were dampened sheets, many witnesses, and a missing dagger. The blood-outlined footprints across the floor of the room were also a dead giveaway. She owed them this much, at least. She expected no real understanding. They had not lived in her tail for the last decade-and-one years. All she could hope was that they could attempt to fathom why she had to do this.
She took out the volume of fairy tales. There still was a bookmark, just in front of the tale marked The Little Mermaid. The spine held a picture of the statue that still had its place of honor in the bay outside Copenhagen. She glanced at the illustrations of the story, blushing to see what the artist had shown. Mermaids nursed young differently, so the entire torso was covered in strong scales to protect vital organs.
She recognized the dancer in one picture. That was her many-greats aunt, the first to fall under the curse of the sea-witch. Her sisters had lost their hair to provide the choice of the dagger, but had gained something else. There had been a prophecy, that one of the mermaids would find a way to break the curse upon generations and restore the lost mermen. She was the last mermaid, as only mercrones were left to recall the prophecy of a mermaid who would beat the spell of the witch, and dream of the day husbands and sons would return to them, and a new generation could be born. Even the oldest of mermaids could give birth to a child, so hope lasted a long time.
The prophecy from older times still held true. It described how the last of the Seawitch's curse would be removed. One mermaid would be lost to the sea, but the mermen would return. That was all that mattered. Merfolk followed philosophy similar to that of the Asians, where the good of the society triumphed over the good of the individual. She could recite the prophecy- all mermaids could.
Muted tongues at last shall sing
A final chorus from 'neath the wave
Sea loses a queen to gain a king
And triumphs when Seawitch is in her grave.
There was no more time for dawdling. She turned to the page where the choice of the dagger was explained. She was sure that Jesse would understand. He probably would not approve of the option, but he would know that it was necessary. He had to. The dagger seemed to have its own semblance of life, whirling around her fingers and plotting where it would strike. There was no other way. The dagger would be used, for the first and last time, to stop the curse. It was for all the generations, past and future.
She touched her right foot, bleeding from her walk around the room. A drop of blood glistened on her finger, red and dark. She touched the tip of her finger to the picture, adding the small detail to the dagger the pictured mermaid held. The crimson spread like some kind of dye, running down the blade and making a swirl in the picture. She would finish this story, in the only way she knew how, and this dagger would end it once and for all. No more mermaids would suffer this choice that she had to make. Not even that thought made her decision easier. She raised the dagger, watching the red LCD lights of the alarm clock lent it a blood-like glow. It was time.
