Princess Anemone took me all through the mermaid village surrounding the castle. It was weird being treated like royalty, with everyone blessing us in the name of the sea gods and all the shop owners trying to give us treats. An adorable little girl of around four came swimming up to us with a sea lily in her hand. The fry seemed confused that there were two of us until I pointed, then broke into a big grin + handed my twin the flower-animal before grabbing her in a hug...

The whole ocean knew about Princess Anemone's magically created sister by now. "Beautiful, but dumb as a sea cow!"; A reputation that was partly my fault, after some of the stupid things I'd done in my first few days here. But no one was mean to me, they all tried to look out for me and make sure I wouldn't go kissing an electric eel or something.

And now the tiny mermaid wanted to hug me too. I thought: If this is celebrity I could get used to it!

I was happy that day. Blissfully ignorant of just how shortlived my career as a mermaid princess would turn out to be...

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)))========> THE OTHER SISTER
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Way back in another life, before I was kidnapped by pirates and jumped overboard and got turned into a mermaid by a genie from a bottle, my friend Pepper Davis used to tell me I was lucky for not having any brothers or sisters. She'd tell me how her and her dopey sisters were always fighting, and would complain about how they would always borrow her stuff and not bring it back. But I could never quite believe that having two sisters wasn't good for her more often than it was bad. After being an only child for all my life, being twins with the mermaid princess Anemone was ...... WoNDeRfuL!!!!

Maybe if we had grew up together it wouldn't of seemed so special, but I was too new to all this to take anything about this life for granted. It was hard to feel like there was anything worth fighting about when just brushing my long soft golden hair put me on a total high, if I wasn't already on one from having woke up in my seashell bed that morning to discover: "Yep, still a princess!"

Anemone had been an only child until now too, and she was loving us being sisters as much as I was. We went everywhere and did everything together, and all of the ocean's seals and dolphins, the fish, the stars, the shrimps and lobsters (but not so much the crabs...) and even the unbelievably stupid sponges were our friends.

My sister took me all through the village around the castle, showing me the stores that sold everything from spearguns and anti-shark clubs (POSIDEARMS) to musical instruments (LYRE, LYRE) and those kelp-paper scrolls they used for books down there (DEEP SUBJECTS). Everywhere we went the merpeople your-highnessed us and blessed us in the name of the Sea Gods, and the ones who owned restaurants and snack shops were always trying to give us treats.

If the villagers all seemed to be crazy about Anemone it didn't have anything to do with that weird "celebrity worship" we have up on land for all those famous people we would never meet. They had an excellent reason for loving her besides her family and her fancy title. The Princess was about as big a hero as it was possible to be. One of those save-the-world type heroes, like Superman or those Star Trek guys, only not so dramatic...

If we had ate everything that somebody tried to feed us we would of wound up a couple of real whales, but we just couldn't turn down the roe-cones Mr. Krakenov brought out from his shop CAVIAR EMPTOR. We ate them sitting at the table out in front of his shop, a round steel thing with four round seats attached that was clearly built on land. The people here were clever about using human things that were dragged out here by hurricanes or that they took off a sunken boat.

Although they didn't always use them for what they started out being. When I first saw that toilet seat that had been made into a picture frame and hung on the wall of the castle I bust out laughing. But I didn't want to explain what was so funny about this, so it looked like I'd gone into hysterics over a portrait of this very ordinary looking merman, some duke or somebody wearing the top from a wetsuit and a sash full of medals. Which made the octapus maid mutter, "Such a strange girl..."

It felt kind of weird to be sitting naked right out in the village square like this like this, but all the other merpeople swimming around here were naked too; unless you counted bracelets and necklaces and some piercings- like the woman who had a whole row of gold hoops along the end of her tailfin. And a few wore human-made baseball caps that I figured had been lost by fishermen.

But what really seemed weird was how everyone we saw seemed to be either an adult or under the age of four. I asked my sister, "Why aren't there any teenagers here besides us?"

"You noticed that, huh? There's a reason for that, and it's pretty scary. I was the last merchild to be hatched around here for a really long time. By the time I came along there were fewer and fewer babies hatching, and most of the ones that that did were so weird looking and sick they didn't last long after they were born," said Anemone. She'd been about to take a bite from her caviar cone when she stopped, and frowned at it, and tossed it to one of the half-wild nurse sharks that hung around town, eating whatever garbage they could find. The little shark caught it on the fly and was gone in a flash.

"That's horrible!" I said, "What was causing it?"

"It's technical, I don't want to bore you with it. But if I hadn't found that genie it probably would've meant the end of us. In a few years mermaids really would be a myth, just like the crawlers- excuse me, like the landpeople all think. And that was my first wish, that we could get our population back up to what it was during the Golden Age and stay there," she said, then smiled and pointed, "As you can see we're off to a good start. Hello Phoebe darling!"

This adorable little girl who had her two front teeth missing was swimming up to us with a sea lily in her hand. She looked back and forth between me and my twin, confused. I pointed at Anenome with both hands, jabbing them toward her over + over in a silly little dance, and Phoebe broke into a huge grin. She handed her the flowerlike animal, saying something to her in a faint lispy voice as they hugged. And then she wanted to hug me too.

The whole ocean knew about me already. Princess Anemone's magically created sister, beautiful like her twin but as dumb as the sea cow she was made from, or so the stories went. And I couldn't get too upset about this, my reputation as the North Atlantic's biggest blonde was kind of my fault. This life here was so new to me that I'd done some strange things in my short time as a mermaid. Some things that just weren't cool to do, like picking your scales in public, and others that were downright stupid. Like when that crab got me on the nose because I was dumb enough to bend down and try to pet a creature that even a kid Phoebe's age would know would be- well, crabby. But nobody was mean to me for this. They all tried to look out for me and make sure I wouldn't go kissing an electric eel or something.

"Thank you too, magic cow girl!" Phoebe whispered into my ear as she threw her arms around my neck. If this was celebrity I could handle it.

"Take care, sweetie," Anemone called after the tiny mermaid as she swam back to her smiling parents, who each took hold of one of her hands and swish-tailed off down the boulevard, their motions all synchronized like they were ice skating together. As we left the plaza she planted the sea lily in a flower box under the window of BATHY'S CAFÉ.

So anyway it was no wonder everyone here loved Anemone. She had singlehandedly kept mer-kind from going extinct. The genie might have made it possible, using powers that my sister didn't have and couldn't even say how they worked; but he wouldn't of lifted a finger to save them if she hadn't commanded him to.

"But what I can't figure out is how anyone even found out it was me who did it," she told me.

She'd made her wish way far from town, out in the Great Kelp Forest where she thought no one could see it. But when babies started being hatched again everyone seemed to know who to thank for this miracle.

She shrugged, "I guess it's true what Finius says in his Ode To The Unfathomable: 'The Sea alone decides which secrets she will keep...'"
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)))========> THE BIG HOUSE
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My sister and I had about as much fun as two mermaids can have. We went out on long swims together, exploring the colorful coral reefs, and she took me to a rock about the size of a grand piano poking up above the ocean's surface, where we could watch the Caribbean cruise ships go past in the distance. They sure were pretty at night with their lights all on. Although we could never tell Mom about it when we did this. She'd really get her tail in a knot if she found out we'd got that close to a bunch of humans...

I loved that there was always so much to do, it kept me from going off on a bummer about how much I missed my mom and dad like I did whenever things got a bit quiet. But still it seemed weird for us to just be playing all the time. It was about the middle of the week when I asked her, "Don't you have schools down here?"

"Yeah, but not during summer vacation. Don't worry, if you like school so much it starts next week. Our tutor Mr. Mergolis will be coming back from his vacation and you'd better be ready to hit the scrolls. He's off in the Florida Keys, where he meets up with all his gay merman friends every year, some big nightclub down there called Diver Dan's. He can be pretty sarcastic if you give him a dumb answer, and he really pushes you to learn and to think about stuff, but he's also a lot of fun. And I love that he's such great friends with my mom. He can makes her laugh like nobody else can, like when he puts on her crown and imitates Queen Remora of the South Atlantic. He does her perfect, with the accent and all stuck up and bossy. Even her own subjects hate her, she's such an egg hole!"

I told her I was looking forward to meeting him. I wasn't the best student but I liked more subjects than I didn't, and I was glad there was some kind of school down here. It felt like you were doing something with your life; putting facts and skills and things into your head that you could take out and use later.

We played hide and seek all over the castle, the hundreds of guest rooms, banquet rooms, storage rooms and rooms that I didn't know what they were supposed to be. It was even more fun playing it with Chloe and the other young kids who we sometimes watched for their parents (Being the only two teenage girls in this part of the North Atlantic we had sort of a monopoly on the babysitting business...) Those little fries were real geniuses at squishing themself into tiny places you'd never think they could hide in. But sometimes they actually got lost in that weird maze of a house; and we only found them after they'd been crying a while. The place was huge. I never did see all of it...

Anemone was taking me to see the castle's main library, down a bunch of corridors and up a half dozen ramptubes (what their buildings had instead of staircases...) when I just started laughing, "Holy Mackerel! It just goes on and on! How long did it take to build all this?"

"I don't know. A minute, maybe."

"What?!" I said, thinking she was kidding me. "Oh, you mean the genie made it. Well that makes sense."

"Yeah," she said, "This was my second wish. Our original house really wasn't much. But I knew your human presidents live in big fancy castles and I thought mom would like it. She needed cheering up after Daddy disappeared. She told me it was way more house than we needed, and made me promise to hold on to my last wish, but she likes living here now."

"Um, speaking of your father. If you had three wishes, couldn't you have brought him back?"

"That was going to be my second wish. But the genie said he couldn't do it, and wouldn't tell me why unless I commanded him to, which would've used up a wish. And everyone knows one of the few things genies can't do is bring back the dead. He could be in one of the other universes, but I don't think so .......... I sure miss him. Everyone says he was a great King, and really helped Mommy rule this place."
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)))========> DON'T DRINK THE WATER
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Like we did for every meal we sat with our mother down at one end of the long, long table for dinner. We were having Godzilla rolls, my favorite. I loved the chewy texture of the nori, even if it wasn't as crunchy as it was on land. And using big gobs of white roe instead of rice probably would of made these little seaweed rolls unbearably rich if I was still human, but the kind of tastes I craved had changed a lot since I was turned into a mermaid. Merchildren are weaned at around six months old and from then our diet is mostly about fish (Even the so-called kelpatarians get their protein from animal plankton, which is pressed into these fugly tasting bars that you can buy at the health food store...). So a really rare steak would probably taste good to me, but I wouldn't eat a slice of peach pie now if you paid me.

What I was really wanting was a diet coke or a some milk or something to go with dinner, but this was just out of habit. I hadn't drank anything all week and I never got thirsty...

"What a peculiar notion," said my new mom when I talked about drinking liquids, which was what she said about a lot of the things I said. Like when I asked her why we sat in chairs, and slept in beds, when we could just float around like astronauts in a space station.

"Ah yes, the space station," said the Queen, all digusted like. "The crawlers aren't content to just pollute the land and the sky and the ocean, now they're setting out to contaminate the moon, the planets, the stars..."

"Mommy, don't start!"

"I'm sorry Sweetheart if I don't share your love of humankind. We're just lucky you found that genie bottle, or they would have destroyed us all with their benzo-bonzo-whatever-it-is..."

"Dibenzylpolyolyoxyphrene," burbled my sister under her breath.

I had heard about that stuff in school last fall. How all these environment groups were trying to get rid of it for hurting sea life, but the government was saying they needed more proof before they would ban such an important ingredient for fabric softeners.

'Oh God!' I thought, 'No wonder Queen Atlantea hates us! We nearly wiped out this whole beautiful civilization and we didn't even know!'. Suddenly I wasn't very hungry.

"It's partly our own fault though, isn't it?" asked Anemone. "The way we hide down here like we do. I'm sure if we contacted the humans, sent an ambassador and let them know what was happening, they would have done something about it."

"Are you completely without reason, Child? All the magical beings know enough to hide from them. The yetti, the unicorns, even the werewolves and vampires who walk among them. If they treat their own kind so barbarically, what do you suppose they'd do to us? But we really shouldn't even be discussing such unpleasant matters at dinnertime. We seem to have upset poor Enomena. Are you all right, dear? You seem a bit green around the gills."

"No, I'm fine," I lied.

"Then to answer your question, the reason we do these things is a matter of civility. We don't need to swim outside to poo but we do. Somethings are just done, and somethings just aren't. It's tradition. We're not bottom dwellers after all," she said.

"They're called Wildmers, Mom!" snapped Anemone.

They were talking about the merpeople who didn't live on the continental shelf like we did but way deep down in the ocean. They were supposed to be these horrible savages, but the stories about them almost sounded like those 'urban legends' that get wilder and crazier each time someone retells them (Down there where no sunlight ever reached, the bottom dwellers glowed in the dark. They had big steel lobster claws for hands, they were these bloodthirsty cannibals, etc. etc. etc...). I asked the Queen, "But how did the tradition even start? Tables, chairs, it all seems ........ well, so human."

"We didn't always live under the water, you know. As distasteful as it is to consider, we once had legs and dwelled on land," she said, "There was a war, some wizards, I'm not sure what all entirely, except that the whole continent we were living on sank without a trace. Although a lot of the ancient history I was taught at your age, they're saying it's wrong now. Mr. Mergolis can explain it when he returns. I would tell you to ask your sister, but her version of events would undoubtedly be more informed by fashionable radicalism and wishful thinking about humans than facts or common sense."

Anemone quitely seethed. I could tell that after dinner I'd be hearing another long pissed-off rant from her about what a bigot our mother was, which I knew she did partly to make it clear that she herself wasn't some narrow-minded human hater. I thanked her Majesty for the information.

"I do wish you'd learn to call me Mommy," sighed Atlantea.

"Thank you, Mommy."

I was trying. I really was. I knew this merwoman had a big heart, and had found a place for me in it the minute she met me, but I still had a hard time calling her my mother. I already had parents, who I missed something awful. I would even go back to being a boy if I could be with them again. It wasn't like I would have to stay one forever...

I remembed the night my mom joined the local P-TRANS group. How she came back from her first meeting talking a mile a minute about the other parents she met and the way she related to just about everything they said, and the hope she got from their stories. And weirdly, Dad didn't make fun of her, but seemed sort of interested. That it might be good if I could be happy and not all depressed and hopeless like I was there for a while, even if I wound up just some girl instead of that quarterback they all talked about down at the barbershop, or whatever he'd been picturing for me in his head. It was one of those hints I got that he really was trying, or trying to try anyway.

Because me and him had gotten along pretty good before I came out to them with this thing he thought was so weird; like some little part had broken in my head and caused me to start mislabeling myself. And I saw that if he was being super-negative about this, it could be mostly because he wanted to discourage me from doing something that he thought would make life really hard for me; since he couldn't understand how much harder it would be if I didn't.

My dad had been through some tough times in his life, but never anything that would help him relate to how I felt; the way things that every other boy in town seemed okay with (like to go on using the name they had gave me and dressing like I was taught to) could bum me out as bad as they did, making me feel like everything about my life was this huge gigantic lie.

And if that had felt like a lie, my being a girl now felt like the truth, and the real me, and I loved it! Sure turning into a mythical creature, being able to breathe underwater and talk to fish was pretty amazing---things that only comic book heroes usually got to do---but it was really the maid part of my mermaidness I was so stoked about!

But I'd had to give up everything I knew to get this, so it was weird. Bittersweet I guess you'd call it...
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)))========> THE WRECK OF THE INVINCEABLE
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The next morning me and Anemone ran into Cyrus 7 and Violet 13 out in the kelp forest and they took us for a ride. It was sort of like horseback riding except dolphins are a lot smarter and way more talkative than horses, and they never quite let you forget that you don't own them and they're letting you ride them, but they were fun to spend the day with and seemed up for about anything we wanted to do. Violet didn't even mind when I said I wanted to try actually riding on her (sitting sidesaddle, of course...) instead of just hanging onto the big fin on her back and getting towed. Although she did tell me it was a dumb idea, which it was. The wiggly up-and-down motion of her swimming made it a real bumpy ride, and I finally had to give it up when we got into a race.

We rode for what seemed like twenty miles, clear out to the wreck of an old sailing ship half buried in this big oval clearing, its three masts just stumps now and the tops of them laying scattered around it in pieces. The name wasn't visible on the rotting wood anymore, but what was left of it looked exactly like The Invinceable, except for the big hole in the side like from a cannonball.

It was strange to think that these men I was talking to only a week ago had all gone to their wet watery graves over two hundred years ago. Somehow it made what they'd wanted to do to me and then leaving me to die feel like ancient history and a little easier to forgive. They had paid for all that, drowning just like I did, only for real.

It was out here that I taught my sister and our two friends a dolphin riding game I came up with called aquiddich, after talking a quick little parrotfish into being the golden snitch. (Well okay I stole it, but I don't think the lady who wrote those Harry Potter books would mind if she knew dolphins and real live mermaids were playing her game...).. They all loved it, and agreed we should try to get aquiddich teams together at the Fall Festival...

It was a long way out to the wreck, through the forests and over a bunch of wrinkly hills on the sea floor and then another seaweed forest And it felt like even farther coming back. Riding dolphins might not sound too tiring, since Violet 13 was doing all the swimming, but on the way home my arms and shoulders really started to ache. I kept switching hands, but after a while this wasn't helping much, and by the time we got to the castle I was so stiff I could barely work my chopsticks at dinner.

I felt like just putting my face into my plate of marinated swordfish nuggets, but I knew Mom---with her "Sit up, young lady!" and all her harping about "dainty bites"---would have a tsunami-causing fit if I did this. This struck me as really funny, that someone might act so low-class in a place as fancy as the castle's royal banquet room; like something out of The Princess Diaries or maybe more like King Ralph. But I could tell I was in a goofy mood from being so tired and probably shouldn't trust what I thought was funny right now. I'd never seen the Queen really mad, and this was something that Anemone warned me I didn't ever want to see...
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)))========> BUSTED!
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After the table was cleared our mom asked me to stick around and chat for a while. Sis looked kind of worried for me, but when Mother shooed her out of the room she shrugged and left.

Even though I was an exact clone of her daughter Queen Atlantea was always able to tell us apart, which none of the villagers or even the castle's domestics could do. It seemed to just show how on top of things this woman was...

It wasn't until I sat down at my computer to start writing this story that I figured out how she did this. After leaving in such an unexpected way, my "calling conch" is the one souvenir I have of the week I spent underwater. I was so proud when my twin put it on a shoelace she'd found and hung it around my neck, welcoming me to being a mermaid. I keep the big shell here on my desk where I can look at it; right next to the rock I brought home from the Moon. And seeing it under the bright light of my desk lamp was when I first noticed that my conch has one big fat red spot hidden among the brown and white ones, and I think Anemone's had a yellow spot.

The Queen said slowly, "Tell me Daughter, are you happy with this life you've entered into?"

"Oh yes," I told her, "It's fantastic!"

She said slowly, "I know you love your sister, and that she loves you ........ I always thought Anemone was happy enough with her life, she hardly ever complained. But since you came along the Princess has just blossomed! It's wonderful seeing you two playing together, hearing you sing those crazy songs you've taught her, about rock lobsters and octapus's gardens ......... And I know you're quite pleased with the body the genie has given you. Perhaps a little too pleased. Your constant preening in front of the mirror would seem rather narcissistic if you weren't also so grateful for it. But I can't help noticing that there's a sadness to you at times. You make an admirable effort to hide it, but you aren't always successful. And it pains me to see this, because I've come to care for you so much!"

"And I'm really starting to love you too," I said, "But there's nothing you can do about this. Not even being Queen of the whole ocean."

"Maybe not. But I have quite an extensive circle of important friends, who are good at all sorts of clever things. Perhaps one of them would be able to help, if I knew what it was."

"I don't think so. It's just ......... well I miss my family. A lot!"

"I can see how you would," she nodded, "All this must be quite strange to you. One minute you were swimming in the bosom of your family, your loving mother and father, your days spent frolicking with all your brothers and sisters; or just lazing on the surface in the Florida sun, getting nice and fat on all those yummy little fish and crayfish those bays are teeming with..."

"Yeah, that's it exactly! I do love it here, and being a mermaid, but it's all so different. I miss doing all that sea-cow stuff. I could really go for some of those crawdads about now."

"It does appear to be a problem without a solution. Because short of finding another bottle with a genie in it---or using the forbidden scrolls to perform some illegal act of sorcery---there's really no way to send you back. Your own family wouldn't even recognize you now, and I don't think they'd believe or even understand your story. They're far less mentally gifted than seals or cetaceans. But it's curious..."

"What's that?"

When her tone suddenly turned all accusing I knew I was in trouble. "You wouldn't have brothers and sisters if you were a manatee, or even a father that was engaged in caring for you. The mothers only bear and raise one calf at a time. Not to mention that they don't eat crayfish. They're strictly herbivores."

"Oh that's right," I stammered, "I knew that. but you see the transformation it ......... my memory, I mean ........ Hey I'm just a sea cow, what do I know?"

"From one conversation with your sister that I overheard, you know far more about nuclear submarines than any manatee would. Turbines, boilers, reactor piles, control rods; it was quite fascinating," she said, her big shiny gray eyes boring into mine. "You were human, weren't you?"

I sighed. I wasn't going to B.S. my way out of this. "Yes I was. I'm sorry. Your daughter used her last wish saving me from drowning. Don't blame her, she just can't stand to see anything suffer or die. And really, if you think about it, it's something you should be proud of her for!"

"I don't need you to tell me that," she said coldly. "I knew what you were from the start. My little spies told me all about your first encounter with Anemone. With the genie, and then Jasper 5. I wanted to give you a week to come forward about this, but I should have known you wouldn't. You're human, a liar by nature. I expect a crawler to be dishonest, and I suppose I should thank you for not insulting my intelligence by continuing to lie after I confronted you. But now you've brought the Princess and Jasper into your net of deceit. I'll be having a word with both of them."

Hey it was their idea! They didn't need any human help coming up with that sea cow story! I thought. But I couldn't go ratting out my sister and my friend.

I just said, "I'm really sorry I lied to you, you were real good to me. And I-"

She stared at me.

"I guess I'll go now."

"I think you'd better," she hissed, in a calm controlled way that was worse than if she shouted it, "You came into my house where I accepted you like a daughter, under utterly false pretenses. I despise liars! I think there's only one place for you at this point. Now get out of my sight, and I don't want to see you back down here-"

I'd already turned and was swimming toward the banquet hall's tall double doors as quick as I could, "And I'm real sorry we almost killed you with our pollution because I love mermaids, I really do! Ever since I was a little boy I wanted- Oh nevermind."

I swam out of the castle, and over the mermaid village---high enough above it that I wouldn't have to talk to anybody---and out into the Great Kelp Forest. Into my banishment.
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