Mermaids of Glendale - a novel

Chapter 21

The chartered yacht Courageous Otter cut a furrow of whitewater across the Pacific Ocean, following a north-easterly course that would take it into American waters and to its final destination of Point Loma, San Diego. Standing at the prow, the sea spray dancing across their bodies like liquid sunshine, Lorna and Kitt held onto the chrome-plated railing and to each other.

“Whatever this is, Lorna,” said Kitt, his arm around her waist. “I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”

“I know that, Kitt,” said Lorna. She leaned into his embrace and yet somehow felt detached from him.

            “Believe me, I do. I feel like things are racing, moving too fast for me to catch up to or make sense of.”

Earlier that day, Lorna had woken in the upper bunk of the dormitory at the Mexican research station on Guadalupe Island, and accompanied Dr. Rita MacAvoy and Professor Villalobos to watch the sunrise over the caldera on the northeast coast. She wondered if maybe Kitt would like to see the spectacle, too, however she didn’t go to wake him in the morning darkness, didn’t go to where he was sleeping, didn’t knock on his door, sneak into the room, lie down in the bed and in his embrace for a few minutes before rising together to travel toward the sun. Lorna knew she was being petty, and that this was a half-formed concept of payback for Kitt leaving her sleep on board the yacht while he and Rita came to the Island at the beck and call of the Mexican scientists. In any case, she had left the compound with Rita and Professor Villalobos in the Jeep, driving north along the access road toward the airstrip and, beyond that, up to the extinct volcano. Eventually the going became too narrow, a hard-scrabble path of loose stone and barren rock they had to travel on foot, Lorna again wearing the borrowed hiking boots to protect her injured foot. As they climbed the path to the caldera, a pair of goats – a species introduced to the Island decades ago when there was a semi-permanent community of seal-hunters and fishermen here – were startled by the presence of humans and scampered away across the sheer sides of the rise, sure-footed and vanishing from sight within moments.

During the drive and then the walk, Lorna’s mind was racing with questions she wasn’t sure how or whom to ask. Who left the note on board the yacht that said, I know what you are? Why was her mother’s name written on the dormitory wall?

Who, thought Lorna, or what am I?

Lorna thought back to discussing the matter with Kitt, and the idea that despite her tail she wasn’t a…mermaid, but something else entirely.

I don’t know what that is but I wonder if Dad really has told me everything.

Before finding that note left on her pillow yesterday, Lorna thought she knew everything or at least had come to the conclusion that maybe none of it mattered; that, yes, she sometimes had a tail and she was with Kitt and she had the love of her father and her sister and that that was all she needed and all she needed to know.

Now, she thought, I feel like I don’t know anything.

At the top of the path, they crested the rise and looked over and across the caldera to the coast, the sun now rising incandescent on sky and sea and stone, daubing everything in hot orange shades of tangerine and safety. For a few moments Lorna was able to still her thoughts, close her eyes and could still see the sun through the lids, as though it were inking her skin and painting her blood. She wondered what her scales would look like in this light and for a moment felt like just letting go, felt like willing her legs to become her tail in the company of Rita and Professor Villalobos, come what may.

Lorna opened her eyes.

“Is it not beautiful, Lorna? Rita?” said Professor Villalobos, turning to them, a handsome smile on his face and with the sunlight in his thick, dark hair shining like flecks of precious metal revealed in the dark stone of mines.

“Lorna!”

Kitt.

Kitt’s voice.

Kitt, shouting to be heard over the engine of the dirt bike he was riding up the side of the extinct volcano.

“Dr. Dawson, I’m so glad you could join --” said Professor Villalobos, then saw the expression of Kitt’s face as Kitt pulled up, dropping the bike’s engine into idle. “What is it? What is wrong?”

“Lorna,” said Kitt. “It's your sister, she’s been trying to contact you. She called the Aquarium and they put her in touch with Dr. Milagros. He called me on the radio.”

Lorna put everything on hold. Every thought of herself, every question.

“What is it?” she asked, grabbing Kitt’s hands, covering them with her own over the handlebars of the dirt bike and feeling the steady throb of the idling engine transmitted through his skin and into her pulse, her quickening heart. “What’s wrong with Marina?”

“Not Marina,” said Kitt. “It’s your father.”

“We have to go back to the yacht,” said Lorna.

“I know,” said Kitt.

“We have to go back to Glendale,” said Lorna.

“We will,” said Kitt.

They turned their backs on the sun.

Professor Villalobos offered to take the dirt bike back to the research station, and Lorna went with Kitt and Rita in the Jeep – first to the research station to collect their belongings and equipment, and then to the lagoon beneath the old sealing station where Dr. Milagros met them in the Zodiac. They motored back to the Courageous Otter and set sail within the hour, setting course for the California coast.