“Shoo!” Neela said.
But instead of scaring the ghosts off, they only made them angrier. So angry, in fact, that the ghosts started to attack them. They were everywhere at once. Their slaps and pinches hurt. The mermaids outnumbered them four to three, but they were still taking a beating.
One, a buxom blonde, ripped Neela’s messenger bag off her arm and rifled through it. When she found that there was food in it, she greedily ate it. It slowly fell all the way through her transparent body to the riverbed—which made her furious. Another ghost pulled the redhead’s combs from her hair and her pearls from her neck and tried to decorate herself with them. But they, too, fell to the riverbed. The third tried to pull Ling’s sword off her back.
“What do you want?” Neela shouted.
“I want my Gregory back!”
“My Fyodor!”
“My Aleksander!”
“Merls, I’m getting my tail kicked here!” Serafina shouted as one of the ghosts ripped the neck of her tunic.
“What are we going to do?” Neela yelled. “I can’t get them off me!”
“Meu Deus!” a new voice said. “I just saw him! He’s with her!”
All three ghosts stopped short.
“What?” the first said.
“You saw him?” the second said.
“With her?” the third said.
A new mermaid—wearing glasses with round silver lenses, a lot of fuchsia, and holding a piranha on a leash—nodded gravely. Her skin was a warm chocolate brown. She had dozens of glossy black braids.
“I did. Swear to gods. He was kissing her. And they were laughing so hard. At you, querida. What’s your name again?”
“Elisabeta!”
“Ileanna!”
“Caterina!”
“Oh, yeah. That’s the name I heard him say. It was you, mina, for sure.”
The three ghosts threw down the things they’d taken and screeched with rage. “Where is he?” they all shouted at once.
The mermaid pointed downriver. “That way. Just past the last village.”
The ghosts raced off.
“T?o louca!” the mermaid said with a chuckle, watching them go. Then she said, “I’m Ava. Tudo bem, gatinhas?”
“Um…still alive…I think,” Ling said. She turned to the others. “Ava just asked us how we are. In Portuguese.”
“I’m not sure,” Neela said, her hair hanging in her eyes. “What was that?”
“Rusalka, they’re called. Here, at least,” Ava said. “They’re the ghosts of human girls who’ve jumped into a river and drowned themselves because of a broken heart.”
“The Maiden’s Leap!” Serafina said excitedly. “It’s one of Vr?ja’s landmarks!”
“Maiden’s Leap,” Ava said, shaking her head. “Maluca! Must be something irresistible about rivers to sad girls. They just have to throw themselves into them. I’ve seen a lot of river ghosts. They’re like vitrina, only mean. We have them in my river, the Amazon, but they have a different name.”
“What do you call them?” Neela asked.
“Idiots!” Ava said, cracking up. “Can you imagine? Killing yourself over some guy?” She made a face. “Ekah! N?o faz sentido! And I don’t care how hot he is!”
The others laughed too. Serafina introduced herself, followed by Neela, then Ling.
“And you, mina?” Ava asked the red-haired mermaid.
“I’m Becca. From Atlantica,” she replied. “Thanks for the backup.”
Becca was kneeling on the riverbed, collecting her possessions and putting them neatly back in her traveling case.
“They gave you some nasty cuts. Your cheek’s bleeding,” Ling said. “I can’t believe you were fighting them off by yourself.”
Becca, smiling, shrugged off Ling’s concern. “It’s only a scratch,” she said. “I’ve had worse.”
“You’re brave. You’d have fought them all day long,” Ava said.
“If I had to,” Becca said. Her eyes narrowed. “And they’d have come out the worse for it…eventually.”
“One with spirit sure and strong,” Ava said. “Felt that the second I met you, mina.”
Becca stopped repacking her things and looked at Ava. “How do you know those words?” she asked.
Ava was about to answer her, when there was a loud snapping sound.
“He tried to bite me!” Neela screeched. “I was only trying to pet him!”
“Careful,” Ava said. “He has lots of teeth and no manners.”
“What, exactly, are you doing with a piranha on a leash?” Neela asked huffily.
“He’s my seeing-eye fish. I’d be lost without him. Wouldn’t I, Baby?” Ava said, smiling at the growling piranha.
Baby stopped growling and smiled back.
“Wait, you’re…you can’t…I mean you’re…” Neela stammered.
“Blind? Yeah. Totally. Can’t see a thing.” She lowered her glasses. Her eyes were pale and clouded.
“But you just saw us. You saw the ghosts,” Serafina said.
“I heard you. And the ghosts. Felt you, too. My eyes don’t work, but I still see. Just in a different way. I feel things. Sense them. Like a…tubar?o. How you call it, querida?”
“Shark,” Ling said.