The Girl Who Pulls the Tides - ONC 2021

chapter 5

"Why do you need to borrow our boat?"

It's Monday afternoon, a few hours after school let out, and we're in Mabel's kitchen, doing our homework and eating cinnamon cakes.

And Mabel's staring at me like I'm crazy.

"Um..." I clear my throat, hoping to make my lie sound convincing enough. "I'm doing my project on the life cycle of barnacles. And if I could use your boat, I could go out on the water and get... y'know, up-close-and-personal with the barnacles."

Her eyebrows shoot up, twin orange arches poised above her amber eyes. "Barnacles?"

"...Yup."

"God, Fionn. You're curious about the strangest things."

I grin at her. "So I've been told."

"Why'd you even choose barnacles?" She asks. "I thought you hated everything to do with the ocean."

I shake my head, taking a delicious bite of a cinnamon cake from Beck's Bakery. "I love everything to do with the ocean. It's just the ocean itself that I'm not particularly fond of."

"Rightfully so," she adds.

I nod, finishing off my cake and licking the glaze off my fingertips, trying to ignore the knots twisting in my stomach.

I hate lying. I always have. I'm not sure if I've ever lied to Mabel before. (Maybe only once, when she cut her own bangs and asked me if they looked good, and I had to say yes to spare her feelings since there wasn't much she could do to fix it.)

I wish I didn't have to lie to her again, but I can't tell her the truth about what I'm doing. With this project, I'm breaking just about every single centuries-old unspoken rule in Norholm about not interfering with the Nereids. And unfortunately, Mabel is a natural rule follower. And a good friend, who will definitely try to talk me out of doing this.

So I can't tell her. Not yet.

"Of course you can use it," Mabel says. "But do you even know how to operate a boat? When was the last time you were out on the water?"

I haven't set a foot off land since I was six, since the day my parents died. So...

"Ten years," I tell her.

"Maybe I should go with you," Mabel suggests. "Just until you get your sea legs back."

I scoff. "It's just a dinghy! Anyone can work a rowboat. I'll be fine."

Mabel gives me a skeptical look.

"Seriously," I say, smiling my most reassuring smile. "I'll be fine."

☀︎

I am not fine.

In fact, I think I'm having a panic attack.

The rest of the harbor is mercifully empty, so there's no one around to witness my break down; I'm sitting in Mabel's family dinghy, grasping onto the sides of the boat with a death-grip as it rolls over waves, slowly rocking back and forth. Only a few inches of wood and plexiglass separate me from the cold, dark blue ocean below. My palms are sweaty. My breathing is all shallow and labored. I'm shivering as if it's the middle of winter instead of halfway through spring. And I haven't even gone anywhere yet. The dinghy is still moored, firmly tied to the metal cleat nailed into the dock's edge.

I look down at the water once more. The word cobalt comes to mind; my mother's favorite color. Nearly everything she owned was some shade of blue, but her favorite shirt was cobalt. I remember because I was there when she bought it at the market, when Miss Ríona had asked her, which color? Sage green, sunset orange, or cobalt blue? And my mother had smiled and said, I'll take the cobalt, please, passing Miss Ríona a handful of folded-up bills and glancing towards the ocean.