To Catch a Mermaid (17 page)
Peering out the window, Boom found a ladder propped against the outer wall. Hurley Mump was at the bottom of the very same ladder. Boom’s eyes focused like individual magnifying glasses on Hurley’s feet, drawn there by a pair of brand-new fire-red Galactic Kickers. Boom’s heart skipped a beat as he felt, like so many times before, a wave of despair and outrage. He slammed his fist on the windowsill, spraying green slime onto his face. Life was completely unfair. The universe didn’t give a hoot about Boom Broom.
Only after Hurley had jumped over the broken gate did Boom realize that his obnoxious neighbor was carrying something. A shimmer of blue-green tail poked out from beneath Hurley’s elbow.
Hurley Mump
B
oom flew out his front door like the wind — a crazed wind that kicked up dirt and terrified neighborhood cats and made a howling sound that sounded something like
I’m going to kiiiiiiiiiill you, Hurley Muuuuuump.
He leapt over the broken gate, snaked around Dr. Buncle, and narrowly avoided what would have been a painful slip on a banana peel. A family of squirrels chirped at him, their cheeks fat with banana meat. A dog, chewing on a salty corncob, growled as Boom jumped over its tail. He almost bumped into a delivery guy who was unloading boxes labeled
.
Another wish!
Hurley ran up the Mumps’ driveway. Those Galactic Kickers gave Hurley a major advantage, what with their arch support and spring-loaded soles. “Huuuuuurley!” Hurley moved, once again, to the number one position on Boom’s enemy list.
Hurley picked up speed, rounding the corner of his house into his backyard. Boom ran past the Mumps’ vanilla-white picket fence and across their artificial turf. He had never been in the Mumps’ yard before. All those years of living across the street and the Mumps had never said,
Hey, come on over for some popcorn
or
Hey, we just inflated the pool, so come on over for a dip.
Boom turned the corner and stood in the Mumps’ backyard. It was neat and tidy, with a stand of shiny yard tools and a row of perfectly coiled garden hoses. Two ceramic gnomes sat beneath a blue birdbath. But no thieving blond-haired boy could be seen.
Where had he gone? Darn it! Hurley Mump was going to ruin everything, as usual. Once Hurley realized that he had stolen the most amazing discovery of the twenty-first century, which would be any minute now, he’d tell the world. He’d sell the merbaby and make a fortune. He wouldn’t care that Mertyle loved the baby or that the baby loved her. He wouldn’t care that in a few days the bill collector would be back at the Brooms’ house. And once again, Hurley would get all the glory.
Boom was about to open the garage door when a shriek filled the air. At first he thought it was the merbaby’s shriek because it almost burst his eardrums. But this shriek didn’t have the same blood-chilling effect. It didn’t feel like a knife thrusting through Boom’s skull. Boom looked across the yard to the garden shed, from which another shriek issued forth. He opened the shed door to find Hurley Mump holding out a bleeding hand. “It bit me,” he cried, tears pooling along the ridges of his beady eyes.
The baby lay in a wheelbarrow, hissing and growling and spewing foam like a rabid dog. Hurley backed up against the potting bench, shaking. Boom knew just how he felt. When in viper mode, that baby could scare the fangs off a vampire.
“Th-th-that’s no doll,” Hurley stuttered. Brilliant observation. “Wh-wh-what is it?”
Boom slowly edged his way toward his archenemy, careful not to make any sudden movements. The baby continued to hiss. No way was he going to tell Hurley the truth. “It’s an alien from outer space. It’s evil, that’s what it is. And it eats human flesh.”
Hurley gasped. “Why are you keeping an alien in your bedroom?” The baby raised herself up on her tail, but Boom couldn’t tell which one of them she was going to spit at.
“It used mind control on me,” Boom said. “And if you tell anyone about the alien, then it will control your mind as well.” That didn’t sound threatening enough. “If you tell anyone, it will suck out your brain.” Hurley would understand brain-sucking because all the boys in their class had once sneaked into the Fairweather movie theater to watch an old black-and-white movie about some aliens that sucked out people’s brains.
“Get it out of here.” Hurley climbed over a pile of clay pots in an attempt to get away.
“Baby,” Boom cooed, holding out his arms. The merbaby eyed him suspiciously, her upper lip vibrating in a snarl. “I’m going to take you back to Mertyle. To
Mertyle.
” That seemed to do the trick. The baby lowered herself and closed her mouth. When Boom took a step forward, she growled a little. “To
Mertyle,
” he said again. “
Mertyle.
”
With all the courage he could muster in the world, more courage than facing Principal Prunewallop, more courage than his first loop-the-loop roller coaster, more courage than that first step taken beyond the dirt circle, he slid his hands under the baby’s tail and scooped her up in his arms. They looked at each other — the baby all squinty and rigid, Boom sweating like a nervous snake wrangler. “To
Mertyle,
” he said again.
“Hey,” Hurley said from the corner of the shed. “Now that I think about it, that thing looks kind of like a —”
“Do you have any idea how painful it is to have your brain sucked?” Boom asked. “Tell no one!” He thrust the baby toward Hurley. Right on cue she bared her razor-sharp teeth. Smart little thing.
Boom ran from the shed, but he had to hide behind the Mumps’ garbage cans because Daisy and her cohorts were crossing the street, stuffing their faces with cream-filled cupcakes and finger sandwiches. The wind rattled the cans so he couldn’t hear what they were saying until they passed by. “I couldn’t believe it when Mertyle the Turtle’s scarf fell off,” Daisy said. “Did you see how horrid her hair looked? They can’t afford good shampoo.” The girls giggled. “And why was her dad sitting in the closet? So weird.”
Even in his old sneakers that had neither arch support nor space-age traction, Boom managed to get back to his walkway before anyone noticed the creature tucked in his arms. Mr. Mump backed his truck next to the delivery van, almost running a few neighbors over in his attempt to claim all the delicious loot. Winger ran down the sidewalk in his Sunday suit. “What are you doing with that thing out here?” he asked. “Are you psychotic?”
“I’ll explain later,” Boom said. “Just help me sneak it back upstairs so Halvor doesn’t see it.” Winger held the ladder as Boom struggled up, one-handed. The baby growled a few more times but clung tightly to Boom’s shirt. “I don’t suppose you care that I saved your life,
again,
” Boom grumbled as he climbed. “I don’t suppose saving your life,
for a second time,
means anything to you.” Just a few more rungs and they’d be at the bedroom window. “Why do you grant all her stupid wishes when you could grant the one wish that matters the most? Why don’t you make the fungus go away?” The baby looked over Boom’s shoulder and whimpered as they climbed higher.
As soon as they reached the windowsill, the baby leapt from Boom’s arms and landed on the pink comforter. Boom tumbled over the windowsill and fell onto the carpet, with Winger close behind.
“Hello, boys,” Halvor said.
Boom and Winger looked up from the carpet to find Halvor holding Mertyle’s turban. Mertyle sat in all her fuzzy glory, on the edge of her bed, crying.
“Somebody had better tell me what’s going on around here, for sure!”
The Merfolk’s Curse
A
nyone who has kept a secret for a very long time knows how exhausting a task it can be. Sometimes the secret percolates like Halvor’s coffee, trying to bubble its way out. Sometimes the secret is heavy like a box of raw cod fillets, weighing down the limbs of its carrier. Sometimes it curdles in the stomach like bad fish stew. Even though Boom had held his secret for only two days, he felt immense relief when he told it to Halvor — like going to the bathroom after a really long movie.
Halvor listened, eyeing the merbaby now and then. Since he was wearing an apron and no Viking helmet, and carrying a wooden spoon rather than an axe, the baby paid him no mind. She lay curled in Mertyle’s lap, chewing on the hem of the striped turtleneck.
Boom told it all, from the red circle on his calendar, to kicking an apple through Mr. Jorgenson’s window. From giving seven dollars to Winger, to fetching the fish from the reject seafood bucket. From the cornfield, to the pet store, to Hurley’s theft, he spoke as fast as he could, barely breathing between words as fuzz sprouted from the tip of Mertyle’s nose.
Halvor took the story in, with no signs of disbelief. After all, he already believed in the existence of merfolk because if Vikings had said they were real, it had to be true.
“Then we climbed back up the ladder and here we are,” Boom explained, almost passing out from lack of oxygen. What would Halvor say? He didn’t seem concerned about the fact that a sworn Viking enemy lay just a few feet away. Instead, he directed his worried glances at Mertyle, who scratched and moaned like a flea-bitten dog.
Halvor put down the wooden spoon and drummed his fingers on his belly. “It’s a dire situation, for sure,” he told the three children. “You’ve been messing with a merbaby and the curse is upon you.”
“Curse?” Mertyle asked through fuzzy lips.
“Haven’t I ever told you the story of Erik the Red’s firstborn daughter?” The kids shook their heads. Halvor sat down in the desk chair and rested his hands on his knees — his storytelling posture. “The firstborn daughter of Erik the Red was also named Mertyle, for sure,” he said. “It was her mother who had been taken by the merfolk on that dark night when she strolled the deck of Erik’s boat. Taken and drowned in the sea and never seen again. Yah, that was the day that Erik the Red cursed all the merfolk.” The baby had fallen asleep in Mertyle’s lap and was snoring like a motorboat.
“Firstborn daughter Mertyle was just a babe at the time of her mother’s murder, and was raised to hate the merfolk. Every night before going to bed, she asked the gods to turn the seas boiling hot and cook all the merfolk to death. She did this faithfully because she was a good daughter, for sure.”
“Boil them?” Winger asked.
“That’s horrid,” said Mertyle.
Boom remembered the times when Halvor had cooked crabs in boiling water, dropping them in as they wiggled and snapped their claws. They stopped moving as soon as the heat overtook them and their shells turned bright red. Halvor always said the crabs couldn’t feel anything, but Boom wasn’t so sure. Boiling water had to feel terrible.
“Yah, well it’s also horrid to take someone’s wife from the bow of a ship and drown her,” Halvor pointed out, defending his ancestor. Boom had to agree.
“On her ninth birthday,” Halvor continued, “Mertyle was playing at the edge of the sea when she heard a strange noise, a sad sound she had never heard before. She followed the sound and found, wedged between two rocks, a small creature with a human body and a fish tail. It was a merbaby, just like the one here in this room, for sure. It struggled to free itself but it had injured its tail. Mertyle knew she was forbidden to help the creature. She knew that she should have gone straight home and told her father and uncles, who would have killed the merbaby on the spot. But she didn’t. She took the baby to a cave not far from Erik the Red’s house. She tended to the tail and fed the baby small herring that she caught herself with a net. She’d run home to do her chores and help with her little sisters, and then run back to the cave to check on the forbidden guest.
“But as the merbaby’s tail began to heal, Mertyle fell gravely ill. Erik the Red called the healer to the village, but he could find no cure for the strange white plant that grew all over Mertyle’s body.”
Boom stared at his sister. Her eyes drooped strangely. He had never put any faith in the old Viking stories. He thought they were crazy myths told by a crazy old man. But there sat Mertyle, just like firstborn Mertyle, with a strange white plant growing on her.
