The Mermaid's Mirror

Chapter 28

She's alive, was Lena's first thought.

Not "She's a mermaid." But "She's alive." Her mother had not killed herself, whatever that death certificate said.

I'mha lf-mermaid, was Lena's second thought.

As if the gold key had unlocked not only a dusty trunk, but dozens of mysteries in Lena's life, everything began to make sense, like an unseen hand sliding puzzle pieces into place.

Blood work ... We're not leaving Diamond Bay ... How do you think Lena's going to feel when she finds out the truth?...You're a natural...

It all made sense. Maybe it even explained why she fainted that day on the twenty-ninth floor. Maybe her body went into some kind of shock when she was too far above sea level.

"Lena, didn't you hear me? I've been calling you..." Her dad stood in the doorway. "What are you—?"

Lena realized that far back in her consciousness, she must have heard the garage door opening, then the back door opening, then her father's voice calling her. But she was so absorbed in the undersea world opening up in front of her eyes that she had not registered his arrival.

Her dad's face darkened as he saw the trunk sitting open next to Lena. Then the look of anger on his face was replaced by an expression of primal fear.

"You found the mirror!" he cried, rushing forward. He wrenched it from her grasp.

Lena stood up, her voice breaking as she cried, "She's alive! You told me she was dead. But she's alive! I can see her!" She tried to snatch the mirror back.

Her father held it above his head and stepped away from her.

They faced each other, breathing heavily.

"Daddy," she sobbed. "Why did you do this?"

With shaking hands, her father lifted the mirror to his face, as if afraid to see what it would show. He watched for a long moment.

"It's the memory circle," he whispered. "She remembers. Oh, my God, Lena. She remembers." Tears filled his eyes. "After all this time ... I can't believe it." He grabbed Lena and hugged her to his chest, weeping with an anguish she had never seen before. "I waited for so many years. But she never came back, and I knew ... I knew her memories were gone."

Lena wept, too, not knowing what her father meant, only knowing that her mother was alive, and finally, she was going to find out the truth. She stayed in her father's embrace for a long time, while he rocked her back and forth.

After they stopped crying and looked into the mirror again, they found that it reflected only their faces. The magic had run out.

"It will only show you those you love for a few minutes," said her father. "Otherwise, you would never be able to put it down. You wouldn't be able to tear yourself away." He looked sadly at his own reflection in the mirror's surface. "I learned that soon enough."

"Daddy, please," said Lena. "Please tell me everything."

But her father seemed to be aging in front of Lena's eyes, his broad shoulders bent with loss. He sat down on the bed, as if unable to support his weight another minute. He looked at the open chest, its contents scattered. "How did you open this? I keep my key hidden away from home. Did you pick the lock?"

Lena sat down next to him. "She gave me the key." Seeing his confusion, she added, "The mermaid..." She hesitated, then spoke the words aloud: "My mother ...gave me the key."

Her dad turned to stare at her, his expression shifting from confused to stunned. "You broke the spell." He took her by the shoulders. "Sweetheart. She saw you. And she finally remembered." He closed his eyes, and another tear slid down his cheek.

"I ... what?"

He let go of her and stared down at the mirror again, as if it might reignite purely from desire, showing him the image of his lost love once more. Then his lips twisted and he shoved the mirror at Lena. "Here. Take it. I nearly lost my mind to this thing once before. I can't even touch it without feeling like insanity is just around the corner. It's yours now, anyway. The comb, too."

Lena pressed them to her heart. She took the key out of the lock and hung it around her neck again. Now she had all of her mother's gifts.

All except one. She walked across the room and picked up the crumpled letter on the floor.

Her dad looked at the envelope, and closed his eyes again for an instant. "Your letter," he said.

"When did she write it?" asked Lena.

He took a few breaths before he was able to answer. "Not long after you were born. She wanted—" He paused again to control his emotion. "She wanted to explain in her own words ... in case something happened to her. She wanted you to understand, when you were old enough."

"Understand what?"

Her dad closed the trunk. "Your mother left us because she found her cloak. That made her forget ... everything. But now, after all these years, she remembers." He touched Lena's cheek. "She saw you. And she remembered."

Lena stared, wanting to understand.

"Let's go downstairs," he said. "I ... I need a drink. I mean—" He tried to smile. "I could use a strong whiskey, but I'll settle for a glass of water."

Lena slid the letter in her back pocket. She didn't want to read it yet. She followed her dad down the stairs, still holding the mirror and comb.

Her dad went into the kitchen. Lena followed, watching him pour a glass of water and try to drink it with a hand that shook so hard he finally had to use both hands to lift the glass. She sat down at the kitchen table to wait. After a minute he sat down across from her. A decade of secrets trembled in the space between them.

"What cloak?" asked Lena. "You said she found her cloak."

Her dad looked at his hands. "I can't believe we're finally having this conversation. I wanted to tell you..." He looked pleadingly at her. "I did! But it was so ... damn ... hard."

Impatient, Lena said, "I don't care how hard it was. You should have told me! How did this happen? How could a ... a mermaid be my mother?"

Her dad folded his arms and leaned heavily on the table. "I need to start at the beginning. I don't know how else to tell you. I first saw her ... Melusina was ... is ... her real name ... when I was surfing at Magic's." He smiled to himself. "I thought I was losing my mind. At first I thought she was an otter, or a sea lion. It's pretty common for them to swim up next to you in the water."

I know, thought Lena.

"But I looked closer, and I could see her face. Her beautiful face." He fell quiet again.

Lena waited.

"I was surfing with my buddies, so I didn't want to say anything to them. They would have thought I was insane, anyway. But also ... I didn't want them to see her, if she was real."

Lena recognized the sentiment. It was the reason she had never even told her best friends about seeing a mermaid.

"I guess she saw me, too. She disappeared into the waves, then came up a little farther away. But she didn't swim away." He smiled again, and closed his eyes, the better to see into the past. "She looked right at me, and she didn't seem scared. We stared at each other for a long time, and we ... I think we were falling in love even then." He opened his eyes. "Then one of my buddies called out to me, and she ducked under the waves. I waited to see if she would come back, but she didn't."

"So when did you see her again?"

"Well, I became kind of obsessed. I was just sure I was going to see her again. I started going back to Magic's by myself."

Sounds familiar, thought Lena.

"And she came back?"

"She did. I really think it was love at first sight. For both of us. I wanted to see her again, but she wanted to see me, too. She was the one taking the risks—coming close to shore too many times, allowing a human to see her."

"Then what happened?"

"We started talking." He laughed. "Just your average boy-meets-mermaids tory."

Lena looked at the mirror in front of her, which reflected back a face composed of features from her father, the human surfer, and her mother, the rebel mermaid.

"We used to meet at Shipwreck Rocks and just talk. Well, first she had to learn English, but she learned so quickly! It was more like she could read my mind than I taught her the language. We asked each other questions, and we laughed. It was so wonderful. Every time I saw her, I fell deeper in love. And it was the same for her. After a few weeks, though, we realized that we didn't want to spend the rest of our lives apart." Her dad's words poured out, a dam of memories finally released. "I asked Lucy to marry me." He looked at the wedding ring on his left hand, a different one than he had worn all those years ago. "And she said yes."

"So she came on land?"

"Not at first. I wanted to ask her father for her hand in marriage." He shrugged. "Old school, I know. But it seemed like the right thing to do. So she took me beneath the surface with her."

"How did she do that?"

"She sheltered me under her cloak."

Lena stared in confusion. "But ... how did you breathe?"

Her dad gave her a wry smile. "Heck if I know. It was magic, Lena—I can't explain it. She put some kind of, I don't know, enchantment on the cloak."

"What was it like? How do they live?"

"I don't know. I never made it to the village. All I know about their world is what Lucy told me."

"But what happened? Did you get to ask her father for her hand?"

"No, I—" He shoved his hand through his hair. "I didn't get the chance."

Lena started to ask him another question, then saw the way his face had hardened. She waited.

After a moment, he began to talk. "That was the day I got a concussion. I always told people I got hit on my head by my board. But it was more complicated than that. It wasn't a surfing accident; it—" He scrubbed both hands through his hair, as if to scatter the memories. "I don't really want to talk about what happened. But I did end up unconscious, and when I came to, I was alone on the beach."

"Where was Lucy?"

"She ... she wasn't there."

Lena made herself pause and take a breath. She could see that her dad was getting agitated, and even though dozens of questions jumbled around in her mind, fighting to be first out of her mouth, she forced herself to wait.

After a long moment, her dad seemed to compose himself, and Lena ventured, "So you were alone when you woke up. And you said you don't want to talk about that part. But eventually Lucy joined you, right? Otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here now." She smiled. "I guess you were irresistible."

To her relief, her dad smiled, too.

"So what happened?" said Lena.

"I went back to Magic's," he said. "As soon as I could. But I didn't see her for a long time. Well ... it was really only about a week. It seemed like a long time to me. I started being afraid that I would never see her again." His gaze drifted away. After a moment, he said so quietly that Lena almost missed it, "That felt like dying." He closed his eyes, turning away from the memory. "She finally made it back, though."

"Thank goodness," breathed Lena.

He nodded. "Thank goodness. That was when she told me about the other uses of her sealskin cloak."

"Sealskin?" Lena was horrified. "They kill seals to make their cloaks?"

"No, no! Seals are their companions. Otters and dolphins, too. Mer-folk would never harm them. The pelts are collected after a seal dies."

"Oh."

"In order for them to come on land, mer-folk need to wear a sealskin cloak for protection." Her dad reached for a paper napkin and a pen. Lena knew he felt better when he could explain things by writing them down. "It has a kind of hood, which the mermaid—or merman—can pull over her head." He sketched a crude drawing of a cloak. "If a human sees them swimming, they think they're just seeing a seal." He added a seal's face under the hood of the cloak. "Once a mermaid comes ashore, she can take off her cloak, but she has to be very careful not to lose it, or she can't return to the sea." He drew waves, and a fairly good rendition of Shipwreck Rocks.

Lena stared down at his drawing. "You said she found the cloak. So ... that means you must have hidden it from her."

Her dad nodded. "She wanted me to. She wanted to live on land, as a human. With me." He smiled, shrugging a little, as if to say, Me ... can you believe it? "If I hid her cloak, she would have to stay, and the light of the full moon would split her tail into legs. She would still be able to go in the water, but she would have legs."

You must not have hidden it very well, thought Lena, but she managed to hold the words back. "What happened then?"

"Lucy told me to hide her cloak so that she could never find it. If she found it, we both knew that she would forget everything immediately, and return to the sea."

"Why didn't you just get rid of it?"

"We were afraid to. Sealskin cloaks are talismanic. They protect the wearer from harm when they travel between sea and land. What if your mother got sick living on land, among humans? What if she needed to return to the sea? We couldn't risk getting rid of the cloak."

Lena sighed. "And she found it."

"Yes."

"How?" Lena fought to keep her voice level.

"I'm not sure. I came home, and you were asleep in your bed, and she was gone. I looked for the cloak, and it wasn't there." Her dad stopped talking, and the silence that replaced his voice was terrible.