Chapter 7
Adam dove into the waters and the waters welcomed him in a cool soft embrace that carried him to the place of the Bearded Stones.
She was here, as he knew she would be. But she did not go to him like the previous times. No, this time it was special. Something was going to happen. Something important.
She put her hands on his shoulders and stared at him. He understood. She loved him. She wished him to be with her forever. But it could not be possible because he was an air breather and she was not.
He showed her his incipient gills, trying to reassure her that way.
It was not enough. He had to earn his gills, and she dared not ask him to risk it.
"What risk?"
It was dangerous. He had to slay a dragon first.
Slay a dragon...He should be afraid, but was not.. It was... fitting. Slay a dragon and marry the beautiful princess, wasn't that how fairy tales worked?
Only this was no fairy tale. This was reality. He was not a child.
Yet he was in Collinsport, the place were fairy tales came true.
And if he found the right equipment, he could slay the dragon. There were plenty of harpoon and diving erumpent to be found in Collinsport...
He kissed her. Yes, she should not be afraid. He would what was needed to earn his gills. She should not be afraid for him.
Quentin sat by the sea. He could not get those paintings of Adam's out of his mind. Even when he looked at the waves he could not help thinking of what lay beneath. Could it be that down there swam Adam's Playboy Centerfold?... A beautiful woman with peach-rose skin, green hair, slightly pointed teeth, curving inwards, and a silvery tail, with scales that broke the light into a thousand colors.
Did she come solely from Adam's imagination? Or did she really exist, under the waves, in that circle of upright rocks that Adam had begun to paint?
He had to see the paintings once more. Even if it changed nothing, he still had to see them.
Adam was not in his studio, so he could look at each painting at his leisure, and even touch them.
All mermaids, all beautiful, either as women or as paintings. The blue and green symphonies with a few rosy notes to set them off.
That was what Adam said.
Only, it was wrong.
He stared at the huge mermaid that Adam had painted fully upright, as if she stood on two feet instead of swimming as she should be ding. Did that mean that he saw her more as a woman than as a mythologi8cal creature?
There was something about the painting, but what could it be?
He turned and saw Phillip standing by the door... And the look in Phillip's eyes...
"I was looking for Mr. Atwater," Quentin said." And I stopped to look at the paintings.
Phillip did not seem to hear him. He just stared at the mermaid.
"Quite a looker, isn't she?" Quentin commented.
"It is not true." Phillip said." "It is not that way."
"I know." Quentin sighed "too pretty to be real."
"The sea is not pretty at all!" Phillip said vehemently. "It is not pretty mermaids. It is sharks, and others like them! I know! I was there!"
"I know. But Adam is an Artist, and he likes to think that there are such things as mermaids. And they are nice paintings!"
"They are not just paintings! They are lies! They do nothing but deceive and trap us!"
Quentin laughed "You sound like a certain Reverend Trask."
"I don't care what I sound like! It is true! There is no truth in them. And... and..." he could say no more, but looked at the mermaid with hatred.
Quentin looked at the mermaid again. And then it hit him. That minuscule slit where the tail met the human torso.
He had opened plenty of fish in his time, and while it was difficult to tell the sex of a fish with naked eyes, their genital openings were a bit different, specially at spawning time.
The slit was a genital opening. A male genital opening.
A male with human female breasts?... But then what need had fish for milk?
Maybe it was different for mermaids.
No, he had been right. There was something wrong. And Phillip was right, too. It was a lie.
And the circle of stones...
He grabbed the painting. "Tell me, have you seen this place? Underwater?
Phillip paled and shook his head.
"I know you have. You were a fish once. You swam all over the place. And this spot exists. You must have seen it."
Phillip turned his face away. "I don't remember anything of that time."
"I think that you have remembered enough. I think that you can tell me about this place."
"No!" Phillip shook "And even if I did, how could I give you directions? My mind was not working properly then! Please, I had only a fish brain! What could I understand of what I saw?:
"I think that you understood more than you knew. And you can help me and Adam."
"I can't! And there is nothing wrong with Adam! If he wants to paint those pictures for money, what do I care?"
"But you don't like the pictures."
"Still, he's got a right to paint them I only work here. What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to remember."
"You don't have the right to ask me anything."
"I don't" Quentin was suddenly humble. "You are right. But I do need your help. There is something wrong. Something evil. And I need to know what it is and what do about it. I don't even know what the threat is, nor against whom it goes, but if I don't do something about it, we will find out in a most unpleasant way."
That seemed to convince Phillip. Or it was maybe that someone took him seriously about the paintings. "I want to help. But how?"
"Have you ever been hypnotized?"
"Once, by Dr. Hoffman."
Quentin was a bit afraid to try it. What if Phillip reverted because of it? How could he fix that? But something had to be done, and Phillip was the only one who could tell him how.
He put Phillip under, and slowly, carefully, he made him describe the path a fish would take to go from the covers under Widow's Hill to the stone circle.
Finally, he had enough, and let Phillip wake up.
"Thanks, Phillip. I now know how to get there."