Chapter 2
Vomiting.
Saltwater burned in his sinuses, making him sneeze and choke and vomit again, coughing out mucky foam and gasping for air. Colors sparked behind Ben’s eyes, then lingered and blurred together as his eyes fluttered open. Gradually he understood he was out of the water, lying on his side, on solid ground. Ben dug his fingers in, clinging to the sand, until the coughing eased enough for him to pull air into his lungs.
His head ached horribly. Pushing himself upright made it worse, and Ben immediately gagged again, coughing strings of watery mucus onto the sand. Then he wiped his mouth with his hand and spat away the seawater taste.
The sun was very bright. Green and blue bands of ocean stretched out to the blue sky. The seagulls wheeled and cried, ignoring him. His folded clothes still lay on the sand nearby. He could see his note tucked into one shoe, like a limp white flag.
He wasn’t dead.
Ben’s body trembled with leftover terror. He had been seconds away from dying, out beneath the green-blue water. Unable to swim, unable to reach air. Had a lucky wave or some panicked reserve of strength carried him back to the beach? An obvious trench in the sand led up from the surf. Had he left those marks himself, or had some bystander lent a hand? If so, had they seen his note? He looked up and down the beach, but nobody seemed to be lingering nearby.
Ben climbed to his feet, unsteady. He hadn’t made any plans for an “afterwards.” Now he didn’t know what to do next. Going home would be a disaster, but he had nowhere else to go. With no other ideas, he followed the drag marks back down toward the ocean. In the back of his mind he could hear his mother’s whisper, unimpressed. But he didn’t think he could force himself to swim out again. He stopped where the marks in the sand washed away into the waves, just to look at the ocean that had almost killed him.
The ocean was looking back at him.
Ben stared, doubting, but a face seemed to stare back, a dark object many yards out, rising and falling with the waves. It didn’t look like floating junk, and it didn’t look like a swimming person. As he watched, the thing dipped beneath the water, then emerged again without a splash, closer to shore. It was absolutely a head now, amid a spill of floating hair. But the eyes looked too large, and the face wasn’t a human color.
As long as he’d lived by the beach, Ben had never seen a merperson, though he knew they lived in communities near the coast. They appeared in the regional news sometimes. He realized that this one had probably rescued him from drowning and dragged him back onto the beach. Nobody else had been near him, out in the ocean.
“Thank you!”
Ben’s clumsy wave got no reaction. He really didn’t want to go back into the water. But he thought he should at least speak to the person who had saved his life. Ben shuddered as cold seawater clutched at his ankles, but he forced himself to wade out into the shallows.
The head rose to meet him, dark hair clinging to pale shoulders, always watching. By the time he was waist-deep, so was the…mermaid. Her color was blue, many blues, flashing wet silver where the sunlight touched. Wide eyes were too dark to guess at a color. It took Ben a moment to realize that she was naked, blue swells barely hidden beneath strings of wet hair. He didn’t know where he ought to look, much less what to say. She didn’t seem to care, just stared at him unsmiling. She looked like something that had been in the water for a long time.
Ben swallowed, coughed, and tried: “Di…”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was surprisingly low.
“…what?”
“I read your letter. You came into the water to die.” The mermaid waved webbed fingers past Ben toward the beach, where his shoes still sat.
“You saved me?”
Her head twitched forward.
“Uh…it’s OK. I mean, thank you.”
She tilted her head and frowned, as if Ben was an unfamiliar puzzle she was trying to solve.
“What’s your name?”
“Huh? It’s Benjamin.”
“Ben-da-men…Ben-the-man?”
“No, it’s just Ben. I mean, Benjamin is what my mother calls me.”
“You’re not what your mother calls you?”
Ben didn’t have an answer for that question.
She didn’t seem to need one. “Ben…ben, ben…” She popped the syllable out of her lips like a bubble. “That’s a little name.”
“Um. So what’s yours?”
The mermaid made a noise like a dolphin’s sneeze, then frowned. “Air name,” she said, and seemingly forgot about Ben while she methodically mouthed the clicks and whistles into airborne sounds. “[click] eeyee [click] eee…te-re-kee…ti-le-kee…” “Wrong. But OK wrong. If you say that I’ll know it’s me.”
“Tilikee…?”
She nodded, didn’t smile. “That’s me. You’re Ben. Ben-the-man.”
“Yeah, alright.”
Ben waited while the silence grew loud. “So, uh, thanks.” She didn’t reply, and sudden embarrassment scattered his words. Defeated, he wanted to be out of the ocean.
As he started to turn away, she abruptly reached her arm out toward him. Ben looked from her unreadable face to her open hand. With a hint of relief he extended his own. If his rescuer wanted to shake his hand, that was more than fair.
Her grip was cold and shockingly strong.
Then, with a sudden pull, the mermaid dragged him forward, into and under the water.
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