Star

Chapter 21- Mami Wata

Bar Beach is home to a lot of things.

Every year it brings people from all over Lagos and there's dancing, singing and all the usual merriment.

What most people don't know, however, is that just off the shores, in the water that is dark and blue, wide and salty, there are Mami Watas there—mermaids who have been there since before Lagos was even inhabited and wished that they had at least been given a memo:

Hi there,

In a few years your area is going to be overrun by these little human thingies. They walk on two legs and all, you may have seen them. Just between us, they're not the best conservationists so you may want to move, just ask the mermaids in the pacific.

Terrible phenomenon, those humans.

Signed, Management.

But there was no notice, no memo, and so they were very surprised when they all woke up one morning to find plastic cans of Fayrouz and Malt being dropped into their space along with a lot of other obscenities. But they shrugged at this. They just took one of the humans every once in a while and called it even.

It was a good arrangement.

Coal and Star got out of the car as they reached the beach and left their shoes in the back.

"Have you ever seen one before?" Star asked Coal as they walked down the sand.

"Yes," Coal said, "but it was a long time ago."

"Was she nice?"

Coal thought on this. "Yes, she was. Until she tried to eat me."

"Oh."

"And then she wasn't really as nice."

Star nodded. "Understandably."

"But it was good, before the whole eating me part sha," Coal said. "It was fun."

"Wow," Star breathed. "Mermaids." She looked at the dark water as the moon reflected its light on it and the water rippled, waves rolling weakly to the shore. "Wow."

They left footprints in their wake as they approached the water. The water wet the sand they were standing on and Coal stopped, then so did Star.

"Here is fine," he said as he looked at the waves lap on the shores.

He dug into his pockets and came out with a pearl that glowed faintly in the dark. He held it in front of him as he looked at it for a while then he threw it into the water as far as he could.

Star watched him do all this and then she looked at him, "So, what now?"

"Now," Coal said, putting his hands in his pockets, "we wait."

***

Per Star's request, they were now building sandcastles in the dark with Coal's phone as a light. She had found bottles of soft drinks in the sand which Coal helped to cut and they were building what she had dubbed, "The Greatest Seaside Attraction Evertm". Coal was about to tell her why and how their sandcastle was just not structurally sound when Star pointed to the ocean. "Look," she said.

Coal looked and saw the water bubbling on the surface and he stood up and sighed, "Finally." He dusted the sand off his clothes as he stood up and strode to the shoreline, while Star followed, waving goodbye to "The Greatest Seaside Attraction Evertm".

A head came through the bubbles, then a pair of shoulders, then a chest with a seaweed bra, then a scaled abdomen, a tail poking far behind her, until a mermaid with dark hair and angry yellow eyes was staring back at them.