Across Carina (21 page)

“Where will we land?” I asked.

The driver laughed. “Land? There’s no landing on Lendon. No land, no sky.”

“No sky? How is that possible?”

“Do I look like a scientist? I hear that there are fish on Earth that survive on close to no oxygen. Why don’t you explain that?”

I frowned in surprise that he even knew what a scientist was.

“It’s true,” Sal said. “I learned that in school once.”

“So we’re just getting dumped in an ocean?” I cried.

I clapped my hands nervously, pacing the little chariot.

Sal reached for me. “Eris said—”

I shooed him away. I didn’t care what Eris had said. We weren’t made to live under water. Nobody ever seemed to grasp the severity of my circumstances.

“Just get ready!” the driver cackled, his hunched back in a sway.

There wasn’t time to get ready. Lendon waited yards beneath us, and we weren’t slowing down.

Water rippled on the planet’s surface. Our blurry reflections veiled whatever existed below.

“This is not happening,” I muttered.

“You believe in the destination, Jade. You taught me that,” Sal quipped. “You just don’t always believe in the journey.”

I clenched my jaw. I was sick of his greeting card lines. But before I could retort, the driver flipped the chariot upside down and threw us out.

We fell through Carina. I couldn’t breathe. My air supply was void, as if the wind had been knocked out of me. I clutched my chest, and we plunged into Lendon.

Falling into water only worsened my pain. I had a hammer on my chest and a spoon in my head. I was dizzy, and I was losing vision.

Thirty seconds in, I almost blacked out completely. But something didn’t let me. Something, in the corner of my fading eye, had caught my attention. A sort of movement on Sal.

I turned my weak head to look, and I saw. Sal’s clothes were dematerializing. And in their place a tail was growing, right over Sal’s legs.

I looked down and saw that I had also morphed and was now half naked—my belly button vulnerable and my breasts exposed. The water was cold against my sheltered skin.

I tried to cover myself with my arms as we sank. I didn’t know who or what was at the bottom of Lendon, and the bottom of Lendon was close. The water was only a few hundred feet deep. It was a little fish tank in the middle of Carina.

Sal gasped at his tail and sucked in more water.
I
gasped when I realized that I could hear him plainly. With yet another inhalation, I had reached my limit. My vision narrowed until all that I could see were our tails.

Mine started just below my belly button and extended several feet, thinning into a split fin. It was lightweight, with a cobblestone texture that shimmered like sapphires and emeralds. Sal’s tail was smoother and a yellowish-red.

We stared at each other, partly in awe, but mostly dazed from suffocation. My pain was increasing, and I could feel something cutting into my neck. It was pulling the skin apart.

I touched my neck and felt three fresh grooves. Strips of my skin were flapping over them. When I brought my hand back down, blood floated off my fingertips. I looked at Sal and saw that gills had been cut into him too. His blood was swirling from his neck through the water like colored smoke in slow motion.

I wanted to be traumatized by the scene, but I found myself smiling. It occurred to me that my chest was no longer tight. I could breathe again, thanks to my raw gills. Eris had been right—our bodies were adapting.

I could also see. The water was clear and didn’t sting my eyes as the ocean on Getheos had. Light was pervading the water, and I thought of the four beams that I had seen from space. I would have to ask about them later.

We descended upon a village made of limestone. It was no larger than a shopping center on Earth. Aside from varying in size, the buildings were identical—smooth, grayish-white, round, and topped with flat roofs. Crude cutouts served as windows and doors, though water flowed through them. There were no roads; only shifting paths of the ocean floor.

Mermaids and mermen were swimming in and out of the buildings. Having just come from a planet of gods, this didn’t surprise me. But then I saw that there were men and women, too, walking alongside the creatures. They looked like ordinary humans. I was shocked. Not only were the two species coexisting, but I was left to wonder why I had been changed from my human form.

Why were my legs taken if there are others like me?

As I sank further, I noticed that, despite the differences in Lendon’s inhabitants, they all shared one trait. They each moved alone, quiet and focused. I didn’t perceive any groups, but only individuals, as if no one knew each other in their small population.

Remembering my nakedness, I tried to swim toward the outskirts of the village. However, as I was still adjusting to my tail, I ended up floating above several people.

One woman screamed at the sight of me. She yanked me to the ground, where my tail suddenly retracted and revealed my bare legs. I crumbled beneath the weight of them, landing on my hands and knees in the sand.

The people formed a circle around me. They were pointing and whispering. One man was chanting under his breath, and his eyes were so fixed on me that they appeared to be shaking. I could tell by his snarl that I had disgraced him. Most of the others were shielding their eyes. I felt like an animal.

Before I could react or look for Sal, the woman who had screamed at me grabbed me by the waist and started to drag me away. She moved us swiftly through the water, her feet light on the sand. My heels dragged behind us.

I had always felt weightless and leisurely under water, but here we were moving with as little resistance as if we were moving on land. It defied all my expectations. From a distance I had seen everyone’s flowing hair and assumed that their world moved slowly.

The woman pulled me into a building. We entered a small room that was furnished with a table and chairs made of stone. In the corner were a few spears and some plants stemming from the ground. The only floor was the ocean floor. Overall, the room was sparse, but it felt like a home. I guessed that it was the woman’s home.

She flung me on a stone slab, which I presumed to be a bed. Then she wagged her finger in my face.

“Who are you?” she demanded, towering over me.

For the first time, I noticed how tall she was. She stood at least eight feet. I wondered if she was an anomaly or if all the people of Lendon nearly touched their ceilings.

She resembled a fair-skinned human. Her hair swayed blonde and fine. Her eyes were pale blue, with silver lines that converged at her pupils like lightning. She had a milky film over her eyes, and though she was looking right at me, she seemed very far away. It was the first time I felt that someone other than me was floating.

“Please, do you have a blanket?” I asked.

I watched as bubbles trickled out of my mouth with each word.

“A blanket?” the woman asked. “Why are you naked?”

She planted her hands on the slab so that her face was across from mine. She was making a clicking sound with her tongue, but I didn’t know what it meant. I hugged my knees and leaned away from her. She smelled of fish and grass.

“A blanket!” I repeated, spewing more bubbles. “Please, I have no clothes!”

“I don’t know what a blanket is,” the woman said, clicking again.

She pointed at me as if her finger would lock me in place. Then she slowly started to back away.

“Stay,” she said, and she disappeared into another room.

As if I would try to escape without clothes.

When she returned, she was holding a bundle of shiny green material, which she threw at me. I shuddered at the feel of slime on my face and let the material fall.

I motioned for the woman to turn around. She obliged, but left her arms outstretched—in case I tried to make a run for it, I supposed. I slid off the slab and picked up the material. It was a spare outfit of the woman’s. A top and a skirt made of fish skin.

Both pieces were too big for me. As I dressed, I had to wrap the skirt around myself twice and tie the top in knots.

“Thank you,” I said when I was finished.

The woman turned back around, shaking her head.

“Who are you?” she asked. “I have not seen you before.”

I pointed up. “I came from Earth.”

“Earth? What is Earth?”

“It’s a different planet. Not in Carina.”

“Carina?”

“Your galaxy.”

“Galaxy?”

Kill me. I should have just said that I came from the next village over.

“Listen,” I said. “I don’t want to start anything. I’m just looking for my creator so that I can get home.”

“Creator?” the woman asked.

“El,” I said. “The one who made Earth.”

“No!” she screamed. “Cruz is our maker! Get out! Get out!”

She grabbed one of her spears and charged me. It gleamed as it homed in on my forehead.

I gasped at the ceiling, yelling, “Cruz!”

When the woman looked, I swam through the window behind me.

She didn’t follow.

Outside, the village was milling about. It seemed that my arrival had already been forgotten. I paused to catch my breath, and people swam and walked past. But no one made eye contact with me. In fact, one mermaid almost swam right through me, but she looked up at the last second and turned.

It wasn’t that I was being ignored. It was that nobody acknowledged
anyone
. I was shocked that babies managed to be born, managed to perpetuate a group of people disinterested in looking at each other, let alone conceiving.

Actually . . . now that I think about it . . . I haven’t seen any babies.

So maybe the people were asexual. I could see it. Lendon would house them for one generation, and then they would expire.

What a small, brief world.

I looked up just as another mermaid was heading toward me. This one didn’t swerve in time, and she hit me head on.

I tried to step back, but we collided again. I glanced down and saw that my legs had been replaced by my tail. Like they had been triggered somehow.

I assumed that the mermaid and I would exchange apologies, but instead she took me by the shoulders, scowled, and spun me around. All I saw was blue. By the time I stopped spinning, she was gone.

Suddenly, I heard my name. I thought that I was hallucinating, but then I saw an arm waving through a tall, stringy plant.

No . . . wait . . . that’s two arms. I think.

I blinked several times trying to sharpen my focus. The plant was swaying and the arm(s) kept waving. Eventually, I recognized the color of the arms. They were bronze.

It took me two minutes to reach Sal. Every time I stopped to orient myself, I was in a different spot than where I’d perceived. I was breathless and annoyed that Sal wasn’t helping me.

Finally, when I was within reach, he pulled me through the plant.

“Why didn’t you help—?” I started, but he set me down and I saw the answer in plain sight.

“Oh!” I said, covering my eyes. “I’m sorry! That happened to me t—”

“Where did you get those clothes?” he interrupted.

I began to relay the story of the woman I’d encountered. I got to the part about her throwing me onto the slab, but I became distracted as a strong wave pushed against me.

I uncovered my eyes and saw a merman with short white hair passing by. He was swimming away from the plant and thus hadn’t seen us. He looked about thirty years old and had the palest, most flawless skin that I’d ever seen. He was carrying a spear, but he had such an unassuming smile that I reached out and touched him.

He curved around and looked at me with cerulean eyes.

“Yes?” he said.

“Can you help me?” I asked.

I had positioned myself between him and Sal.

“Who are you?” he inquired.

“My name is Jade,” I said. “My friend Sal is behind me.”

“I see that,” the merman said.

He smirked, twisting his spear into the sand.

I blushed. He was floating above us—of course he could see.

A moment later, he sank to the ground. On contact, his legs emerged. They were clothed in ragged fish-skin shorts.

“Now how did you do that?” I asked.

“Do what?” he countered.

“Not be naked.”

“
You’re
not naked.”

That was true. My legs had reappeared when Sal had set me down, and somehow I was back in the skirt that the woman had given me. I felt like I was on the verge of figuring it all out.

“Where are you from?” the merman pried.

“Another village,” I said. “Far from here.”

“And why did you come here?”

“Guys?” Sal interrupted.

I was glad to skirt the merman’s question.

“Your friend needs clothes,” he said.

I nodded.

His gaze lingered, unbelieving, on my face. I swallowed, but looked straight into his eyes. They were an ocean of their own.

He promised Sal a pair of shorts. He said that his house was close and then pointed right at it. The village was so small that I was fairly certain I had already seen everyone inside.

I remained Sal’s cover while we waited. I tried to ask him what he thought of Lendon, but since we were facing away from each other, he couldn’t hear me well and kept asking me to repeat myself. It only worsened the embarrassment that I felt standing so close to him while he was naked. I didn’t even know if he shared my feelings.

On Getheos he had hinted at a second kiss, but I wondered if Lendon would cloud his memory. If we had changed physically, it was possible that we would change emotionally, too.

When the merman returned with shorts, Sal dressed and then joined us in front of the plant.

The merman introduced himself as Aswin and told Sal and me to follow him. I asked where we would go, but he didn’t answer. He simply dislodged his spear from the sand and began to swim away.

“Should we follow him?” I mouthed to Sal.

The bubbles from my lips betrayed me, and Aswin turned around.

“Are you coming?” he asked with a smile.