Once Upon a Time in Fantasyland

Chapter 2: Phanny Saves the Cat!

By this point, you must be thinking, what a weak little fool, this Phanny. Trust me, as her assigned narrator, there's no one more frustrated at this thin slip of a girl who never fights or even speaks up. And neverendingly boring, to boot! 

There never was a duller creature. Can you imagine? Someone who has had the fortune to be born in a fantasy world, and all she does is read about fantastical adventures instead of living them herself. Even her stepsisters are more interesting.

I often think to myself, especially when I must tell the beginning, is this even a story worth telling?

But just as I am ready to give up on Poor Phanny, she surprises me. Sometimes, she shows little signs of potential to become a good heroine.

That dive in the lake, for example.

Now, you should know, Phanny has had a lifelong fear of large bodies of water. Her oldest memory is of a trip her family took to Merine, the seaside town where her mother was born. She was three years old, making sandcastles at the beach. Somewhere close by, she heard the voices of her parents speaking softly to each other, laughing.

She remembers another voice, a strange one, coming from the water. Sometimes, she thinks, it was the sea itself, calling out to her to surrender herself to its cool embrace and drown. She walked slowly towards the sea, as if in a trance. She was already chin deep in the water before Papa noticed and pulled her out. She could have died!

Ever since then, for as long as she could remember, she's been avoiding going into large bodies of water. Every time she was near one, she never failed to hear that voice. It sounded stronger by the sea, but she could hear it even from rivers, or the Wilder Lake behind the house. She had always suspected that her Mama could hear it, too.

Her Mama loved swimming in the lake, did it almost every day in the summer, even when it rained. Phanny often watched Mama swim as she sat on the little wooden dock, legs hanging over the edge, a book open over her lap. But she would never go in herself, even when Mama tempted her.

The sight of dark hair disappearing under the depths made her nervous, but Mama always resurfaced, cheeks pink, and smile wide, as if there were treasures under there that were a pleasure to see. It became easy to believe that she'd always come back up, until the day she didn't.

Now, as she dove into the lake to save Medusa, Phanny tried her best to shut her mind from the memory of that sunny day. But just as her body hit the water, engulfing her in coolness, the memory came back in painful flashes. 

Her throat scraped raw from screaming over the Lake, calling after Mama. The long night that followed, when the townspeople helped drag most of Wilder Lake, which stretched down the whole little town of Wilderwhile, and in the end, not finding anything but Mama's locket. Papa saying sorry over and over, to Mama's empty coffin at the funeral, to Phanny, over and over without stopping.

After everything, Phanny was going to die just like her Mama did.

The water sounded strange, Phanny thought. Her first time in the water, and the thing that stood out to her the most was the sound. The dull splash of her impact, the gurgling of a thousand bubbles rising up around her, then absolute, heavy, quiet. No sounds coming from the surface, where, she vaguely remembered, she left Mother and Sissy and Prissy and Mr. Boone.

She was no longer breathing. But it wasn't painful, it was comfortable. Curiosity made her open her eyes. Finally, she would be able to see what her mother found so beautiful down here.

She had to blink tears away. So, this was what her mother saw. Gentle sunlight dancing in the water, over smooth pale stones and soft green moss. Small, silver fish glittering as they swam past her. And over there, something white... Medusa!

Barely thinking, she moved towards the cat on the mossy stones far below. She moved her hands, as if pushing imaginary branches away from her face, and kicked her legs behind her, and much quicker than she would have thought possible (if she was thinking at all), she reached Medusa. She scooped her up, weightless and unmoving in her arms. Before she could burst into huge sobs and completely drown herself, she moved back up, in the direction of the tea party.

Breaking the surface of the water near the grassy shore, she saw them standing frozen just a few feet away, but she couldn't focus on their shocked faces yet. Reaching the shore, she laid Medusa down softly on the grass.

"Medusa?" She tried to shake the cat to wake her, "Please wake up, please," she cried, but the cat remained motionless.

For the first time in a good long while, she allowed herself to break into sobs. She pressed her face close to Medusa's wet fur and cried and cried whispering apologies like her Papa once did. And, with all her fairytales still deeply ingrained in her bones, she planted a soft, parting kiss on the tip of that dear creature's muzzle.

She was still crying, her face pressed to Medusa's, when she felt the unmistakable twitching of whiskers beneath her cheeks. She pulled back, and saw the little cat's eyes blinking open, revealing baby blue.

Phanny did not understand. Did she just... bring Medusa back to life through the power of true love's kiss?

But that hasn't happened in Fantasyland for centuries!

"I... saved her." Phanny looked up to see her family's reactions, and they were still deathly pale. Mother had her hands pressed against her mouth, blue eyes wide. Mr. Boone looked near fainting.

"Phanny dear," said Prissy faintly, "We didn't know you were a, were a..."

"A mermaid," Sissy finished.

A mermaid?

Phanny looked behind her, at her bottom half still submerged in the shallow part of the lake. Peeking out under her tattered dress, where her legs used to be, there was instead, a mermaid tail. Gold-orange scales glittered in the sun.