My sister and I had about as much fun as two mermaids can have that week.
.
On Monday she took me on a tour of the village up the hill from our castle, where everyone was curious to get a look at me. The whole ocean knew about Queen Atlantea's magically created second daughter by now; who as rumor had it was: “Beautiful, but dumb as a sea cow!“ But nobody was mean to their idiot princess. They all tried to look out for me, to make sure I wouldn't go kissing an electric eel or something.
.
As we sat at a table in Shellcastle's town square an adorable little girl came swimming up to us with a sea lily in her hand. The fry was confused that there seemed to be two Princess Anemones until I pointed; and she handed my twin the flower-animal before grabbing her in a hug.
.
And now the tiny mermaid wanted to hug me too. If this was celebrity I could get used to it...

OFF THE DEEP END ~ CHAPTER 4
ANEMONE & ENOMENA PART TWO
A Song For Future Generations
Laika Pupkino 2016

.

MONDAY AFTERNOON AUG 25 2014 (Five seconds later...):
.

Blinded by pain I shot upward off the square's paving shells, screaming about feces and fornication and: “OWWW! SONOFABITCH! MY NOSE!!!”

The little crab was holding on tight through all of this, and seemed to be having a great time, going “WHEEEEEEEE!” as he swung there on the end of my nose. When I reached up to pull him off he grabbed my finger with his other claw.

How could such a little thing have such strong pinchers?!! As I let loose another stream of cusswords a merman appeared in front of me. He helped pry the crab's claws off of my tender flesh and before it could do anything else I threw it a far as I could.

Which underwater isn't all that far. It fluttered unharmed to the sea floor and scuttled away, giggling evilly and going: “Nyahhh! Nyahhh! Nyaaaaahhh!!”

I'm usually kind to animals, even if they bite me I figure it's just self defense, instinct; but this little bastard was just lucky I didn't have feet to run him down and stomp on him with! And by the time I remembered my club he was long gone; but by then I probably wouldn't have anyway. As much as this hurt, smooshing him dead would have been way disproportionate...

I gingerly assessed my injuries. I found a pretty good crease where he'd got me, but it didn't seem like this pert little nose of mine---such an improvement over that funny-shaped one I'd had as Stewart---had been permanently damaged or disfigured.

“Thank you,” I said to my rescuer, “And sorry about all the swearing.”

“Didn't bother me, I'm just glad you're okay. And I think I learned a few new ones,” he chuckled. He had kindly jade green eyes and a chin beard like steel wool, and was wearing a bow tie without a shirt.

I was hoping that he'd been the only person to witness me flailing around shrieking with that thing on my nose, but now I notice that the services had ended at that Parthenon-ish temple across the square, and there were at least forty mermen and mermaids gathered in little groups, either floating in front of the entryway or sitting on the thirteen steps leading up to it. Whatever they had been chatting about before, I don't think it was paranoid of me to assume it was now mostly about me. I guess my reputation as the North Atlantic's biggest blonde wouldn't be fading out any time soon...

He asked me, “What did you think you were doing letting it get that close to your face? Haven't you ever dealt with crabs before?”

“Sure I have. But I was never able to talk to one before this. He tricked me!”

“Well just... be careful,” he said vaguely; like he wasn't sure what kind of advice he could give a girl who had just been outsmarted by a creature with a brain half the size of a lentil.

“I will,” I said, rubbing the tender sides of my nose. I told him, “This is a whole new life for me, and there's a lot of things I have to learn. You know the saying 'That which does not kill me makes me stronger'?”

“That sounds kind of familiar... Oh. that's right! I read it on a hat over in the human-artifacts shop. Those baseball caps usually go quickly, but that one's been there a while and no one's bought it...”

“Well I don't buy that one either. Where I come from it's mostly something that guys who think they're all bad-ass say to show how tough they are,” I said, then remembered my story and added, “Uh, you know... all those tough-guy sea cows.”

“There's tough-guy sea cows?”

“Oh definitely. And it's like they're seriously overcompensating over being called sea cows. Trying to be all gangsta, going: 'I ain't no cow, Yo. I'm the MAN-atee, Bitch!!' But I always thought a better expression would be: 'That which does not kill me makes me smarter.' Like you've learned not do it again. To avoid whatever it was that almost killed you. Or in this case almost took my nose off. Because in spite of what you might have heard about me I really am capable of learning. I just wish I wasn't doing it so publicly,” I said, gesturing at the gaggle of worshipers outside the temple.

“Don't worry about them. The Temple of the Healer is the nicest bunch of mers you'd ever want to meet,” he said, and stuck out his hand, “My name's Ray. Ray Starr.”

I liked that he wanted to shake hands instead of bowing at me and calling me by my title like most people here did. I grabbed his hand, “I'm Enomena.”

“Yes I know. It's a pleasure to meet you. And we'd honored if you'd come over and join us, Your Highness,” he said, finally your-highnessing me, but in a casual, non-unnerving way.

Although I still didn't know if I wanted to go meet his pals.

“I'd love to, really; But some other time. I'm waiting for my sister, who's showing me around town and everything today,” I said, relieved when I saw her come swimming around the corner of the Bank of the Grand Banks and toward us. She didn't appear to have anyone with her.

“Of course, I understand,” he said, and called out to Anemone as she approached, “Hello Princess!”

“Hey Ray! Any sign of him?”

“No, but the portents are good. He's somewhere and somewhen very near to here,” said Ray. I'd thought Anemone was asking about Fluke, but you wouldn't need portents to find a teenage merman.

“Well I hope he shows up,” she said.

“That's nice of you to say. I know you don't believe in Him,” said the merman, “And I pray that the Healer might guide your father home.”

“Thank you,” we both said.

I asked Anee, “No Fluke?”

“Not today,” she said, “His dad sent him to Trenchtown to meet a new wholesaler and see what kind of a deal they could give them. It's like he's a real part of the business these days, not just the stock boy.”

“That doesn't surprise me. The kid has a good head on his shoulders, and Flavius Senior knows it. Well, I just came over to pay my respects to our new princess,” Ray said. He glanced back and forth between me and my sister and muttered, “Incredible... right down to the wardrobe.”

“I know! I asked the genie for a sister; and he made us twins. But we're not complaining,” she laughed, while I nodded my head in agreement.

“Well you deserve happiness, Anemone. You both do. Safe swimming,” said Ray, and swam off to rejoin the mermaids and mermen by the temple, who I noticed were also all wearing bow ties and not much else. I guessed that's how they dress up for church here.

“Safe swimming,” we shouted after him.
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.
)))========> FAITH AND REASON
.

“I'm glad to see you're meeting people,” Anemone told me, “Ray's a good guy.”

“He does seem nice. He wanted me to go over and meet his Temple-of-the-Healer friends.”

“Why didn't you?”

“I don't know,” I shrugged. “It's just that I've found that with religious people you never know what you're gonna be swimming into. They could be 'the nicest bunch of mers', just like Ray was saying; like the people at my mom's meeting house. But I've run into too many who just glom onto you like you're a piece of meat- all smiling and 'We're so glad you're here!'; but their only interest in you is as their next convert, and they aren't capable of just talking to you or hearing a single thing you have to say, because they figure you won't have anything to say until you're talking and thinking and doing exactly like them; And everything they do is trying to bring you closer to that. They're like these Borg creatures from an old television show my dad loves, but at least those Borgs are up front about wanting to 'assimilate' everybody...”

“We have some that are into the total control thing like that. Like the Sons of Abyssmo, who are just plain spooky. But Ray's temple isn't like that. They've never pressured me, and their being friendly is just them being friendly. But then they know I'm C-of-A and that Mom would never let me join their flaky cult,” she said.

“Cult?”

“That would be Mom's term for them. Because they wear those silly things around their necks and pray to a big blue cabinet they have in there. But then she isn't real tolerant about people with unusual beliefs.”

“So what do they keep in their big cabinet?”

“Nothing. It's supposed to have miracles and wonders and 'mansions within mansions' in there, but I peeked into it once and it was just an empty box. But they expect their messiah to step out of it some day and take them all to paradise,” she said, then pointed beneath us, “Hey let's sit.”

“Step out, or swim out?” I asked as we drifted slowly down toward the white metal table we were seated at earlier. (I'm not sure how our air bladder 'ballast systems' allowed us to rise or sink at will, but we could, which when combined with making small paddling motions with our hands made things like settling into your bed at night easier...)

“Step out,” she said. “Why?”

I steered my tail down into the gap and touched down on the round steel seat. “So their Healer is a human?”

“He's a god---a time god---but he has feet like a human. Which to Mom is another strike against them. But their Healer and the sacred cabinet and that Blue Book of theirs really aren't any weirder than some of the legends about the Land-that-Was that we have in the Church of Atlantis.”

“Ah! C-of-A.”

“Right. It's the main church here. Our Charter of Rights says you can be any religion, even some freaky human one, or none at all. But when you're a member the royal family there's all this... all this...” she waggled her hand around vaguely.

“Politics?”

“Exactly! Hatteria's wealthiest families and four out of our six parliamentarians are in our church. The 'right people', the ones Mom wants on her side. So she'll be dragging us there every month, making sure we sit right up front where everyone can see us.”

“Once a month? That's not bad.”

“It's about the minimum you can show up without folks talking. The night of the full moon. It's kind of nice to go out and do something at night, even if it is just church. And we go three nights in a row during the Solstice Festivals, but those are more like a party and actually kind of fun. So what was church like back on land?”

“I didn't really go. My mom goes. My parents sort of 'agree to disagree' when it comes to religion, which works because neither is what you'd call fanatic. He doesn't think she's crazy for believing in something nobody can see and she doesn't think he's some horrible sinner because he doesn't. And what's weird is that my mom wasn't raised in any religion, and my dad's family is super religious; and so strict and judgmental and horrible I think they basically drove him to atheism. And they made such a stink about him marrying outside of their church that we try to have as little to do as possible with his family. I can just imagine what they'd say if they found out I was transgender.”

“They wouldn't like that?”

I laughed, “If they had any doubts that I was bound for Hell that would do it!”

“Wow, I can see why you guys avoid them. We have some relatives we like to avoid. My Great Aunt Nicaea for one, but luckily she's more than a day's swim from here, and real lazy,” she giggled, then pointed at my nose, "That looks painful! What did you do, swim full-speed into a wall or something?!”

“Oh that,” I said. “Remember how you told me not to do anything stupid?”
.

I told her about my battle with the killer crab. Acting it out, playing up the ridiculousness of it, flailing around going “Help! Awwwwk! Help!”; Getting rescued by Ray. And then looking over and seeing about half of Shellcastle all gawking and shaking their heads going “Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!”

“And I missed that?! Oh Mann-n-n!”

And I could kind of laugh about now too. It had been pretty dumb of me to put my face that close to a creature that any little kid around here would know was- well, crabby.
.

.
)))========> MR. MERGOLIS
.

I loved that there was so much to see and do and learn in this new life. It kept me from dwelling on how much I missed my human family, and what they must be going through, which I did whenever things got quiet. But still it seemed weird for us to just be goofing off all the time.

“So this is what we do all day?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Don't you have schools down here?”

“We do, but not during summer vacation. Don't worry, if you like school so much it starts next week, and you'd better be ready to hit the scrolls. Our tutor will probably be bringing a whole bunch of new kelpscrolls when he comes back from his vacation.”

I asked her, “So where do merpeople go on vacation?”

“All kinds of places. Some people even come here, to see our castle. But where Mr. Mergolis likes to go is Key West, meeting up with all his merman friends every August at this big evening club they have down there called COCKLESHELLS.”

“It sounds like a gay bar.”

“It sure is! All summer long it's just one big wild party there.”

“No I meant-”

“I know what you meant, and it's that too. It's a long way to the Florida Keys---unless you can sneak a tow off a ship it's a hard six day's swim each way---but he does it every year. He should be starting back about now.”

“Is he a good teacher?”

“I've never had any other teacher to compare him to, but Mom wouldn't have hired him if he wasn't the best. Me and Fluke were his only students until a year ago, and then it was just me. You're gonna love him. 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 Mom. He can makes her laugh like nobody else can. Like when he puts on her crown and imitates Empress Remora.”

“That dictator lady from the South Atlantic?”

“Yep. Old Blobfish-Face came up here once to sign some pact, and whenever she wasn’t complaining she was bragging about how much better everything is down there. But half of that goon squad she brought along was just here to keep the other half from defecting, so it can't be that great. She is such an egghole! And Lonnie imitates her perfect. All stuck up and bossy, and with the accent.”

“I look forward to meeting him,” I said. I was glad that we had some kind of school down here. A ninth grade education just doesn't seem like quite enough somehow.

“This will be the last year we have Mr. M. all to ourselves. Next year some of the local fries will be old enough to start Kindergarten, and Mom has agreed to let him teach it right in the castle library. We're going to have to build a real school here in town within the next few years.”

“There wasn't a school here already?”

“There was, and I hear it was beautiful. But after it was boarded up for so long they tore it down, salvaging the good parts for other buildings. That empty schoolhouse and the playground around it was too painful to look at.”

“Oh ghod,” I gurgled.

I'd known about the population decline, and that it must have been scary, but this hammered home what it must have felt like to the people down here. The despair. They had really thought they were facing the end of their world, one natural death at a time.

“Mom says the bond to build the new school should pass with flying colors. I hope to be a teacher myself there someday,” she grinned, and then said loudly for the benefit of whoever it was that was off over my shoulder: “And Phoebe's gonna be there! Aren't you, Baby?”
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.
)))========> LITTLE PHOEBE
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An adorable tiny mermaid with was swimming toward us with a sea-lily in her tiny hand; her parents hovering there watching just a short distance away. She had her Mom's shiny copper hair and freckles. Her big grin as she drew near showed her two missing front teeth, and she was just heart-melting cute as she looked back and forth between me and my twin, confused.

I pointed at Anemone with both hands, jabbing them toward her over and over in a comical little dance, which made Phoebe giggle. She handed Anee the flower-like animal, saying something to her in a faint lispy voice as they hugged. And then she wanted to hug me too.

She threw her arms around my neck and whispered into my ear: “I lubb you too, Magic Cow Girl!“

If this was celebrity I could handle it.

Then she had to tell us a story about her day---or maybe about a dream or a circus or some favorite bedtime story---that I only understood every third word of, and it didn't seem like Anee was doing much better. But whatever she was telling us was all very exciting and important, and our “Wow, that's great!” responses seemed to satisfy her.

As she headed back to her parents my sister called out, “Take care, Sweetie. We'll see you tonight.”

The girl stopped. Turned. “Bo'ff a-you be dere?!”

“Probably,” said Anemone.

“YAAAAYYY!” cried Phoebe.

Her dad and mom each grabbed one of her hands and they swish-tailed off down the boulevard, their motions all synchronized like they were ice skating together.
.

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)))========> SITTERS INCORPORATED
.

“That was cute,” I said. “So what's tonight?”

“Babysitting,” she said, “her and the Delmar twins. I can handle them if you don't want to do it.”

“No, I want!” I said, “Whose house is this going to be at?”

“Our place. It's nice and big, and people don't have to feel funny or do any special cleaning up because royalty's visiting. Their folks will be dropping them off at six and picking them up at eight-thirty, like they do every Monday.”

“So it's like a day-care center.”

“If that's the word for it. But it's usually evenings; so we're an evening-care center. Parents make an appointment and bring them to me when they want to go to dinner, a party or something. And if you want to be my partner in this it's a way to make a little money.”

“Sure,” I said, “I guess with us being the only two teenage girls in this part of the ocean we have a real monopoly on this babysitting racket.”

“I suppose we do. But I hope you're not looking to get rich from babysitting. I've only been charging a simoleon and a half per kid, per hour. Compared to most people around here we already are rich, and they're the ones who are paying for it, so I don't want to gouge them. Like I was saying, with nobody being born in Hatteria for over ten years we have like this-” she did her hand-waving thing again---(Was she aware of how cute that little gesture was?! I was tempted to go practice doing it in front of a mirror...)---“Like this gap in our culture, when it comes to providing for children. And so I'm mostly doing it as a way to help out with getting all that going again. It was my wish that started this, I feel like I'm part of it. And I'm also doing it just because I like kids. But I guess we'll have to charge more now. Maybe raise the fee to two simoleans an hour and we can split that.”

“That will be fine,” I said.

“It'll be fine until you realize how little money that is compared to even minimum wage here. I'm embarrassed that it's all I'm offering you-”

“Oh STOP! It's fine. It's not like I'm gonna starve if I don't have cash on me. And don't worry about tonight, you already gave me some money,” I said, patting the place where my wide canvas belt overlapped, and the plastic money I'd stuffed into the gap. “If I need more money I'll get an after-school job... be a waitress at that restaurant we passed. They had a NOW HIRING sign in the window...”

“And you could, when we turn sixteen. If you were a commoner. Mom is pretty modern for a potentate but she's not that modern! We're HIGH-born Dahling, dewn't chew knewwww,” she said in a ridiculously effete voice, her pinky held up like some kind of salute. “So us princesses can do volunteer work, teach or start a foundation, but not just work in a shop or a restaurant. On Sunday Mom will give you the same twenty simoleons for that week that I'll be getting, and you'll be expected to budget those. She's big on teaching us about budgeting.”

“Which makes sense; she doesn't want us bankrupting the country someday.”

“Like my Aunt Nicaea over in her little fiefdom.”

“And that's the lazy one?”

“Yeah, that's her. Lady Muck-Muck. She doesn't want to just swim somewhere like a normal person, she's above that. So she has this little carriage-thing she gets dragged around in by four mermaids, like all the big shots used to ride in back in the olden days. But her carriers keep quitting when she can't pay them! It's like she'd rather look rich and important than actually have money in the bank!” she said, and we shared a head-shaking chuckle over how screwed up that was.

“So what do you want to do next?” I asked. “Do you suppose those Healer people would let me get a look inside their temple and see this mysterious cabinet of theirs?”

“I'm sure they would, but I think we're about done here in town for today. Dinner's at five, our gig is at six, and I want to think up some good games for those kids to do.”

“I guess you're right,” I said, noticing how the color of the water in the distance was edging from pea-soup green to forest green. “That day sure went quick...”

“We did get kind of a late start,” she said, “We can come back in the morning.”

“Great!” I said. Shellcastle was a small town but there was still had at least half of it left to explore.

“Or if you want there's plenty to see that isn't here in town. Coral Park, the Great Forest, Rasmussen Trench, there's even a sunken pirate ship out at Sandy Bottom. Although that's quite a long swim.”

I shrugged and said I was up for going wherever she thought was best. As we left the plaza she planted the sea lily Phoebe had given her in a flower box under the window of BATHY'S CAFE.
.

.
)))========> IT'S A BIRD... IT'S A PLANE...
.

We swam up to a height where we could make a bee-line for the edge of town instead of taking the meandering maze of streets. As the rooftops rolled past beneath us it suddenly seemed like I wasn't swimming but was flying under my own power over some city on land. It was a sensation that hit me whenever there was architecture beneath me---a sense of height and scale that reminded me of the human world---but not when all I saw was just the usual seaweed and such. It was an illusion, but a pretty fun one. It made me want to go barnstorming down and smack the current vane on the peak of that roof down there as I swooped past it, making it spin.

“Why are you holding your hands out like that?” Anee asked, and I suddenly realized I'd been doing the Supergirl thing with my arms.

“This? It's something comic book heroes do when they fly.”

“Heroes like Aqualad?”

“He can't fly. But there's a lot of other ones that can.”

“Wouldn't they have to flap their arms to fly?”

“No they just fly somehow.”

She frowned, “Well that isn't very realistic.”

“No it's not. My friend Chiro has a theory about how they fly, but... well it's kind of gross.”

“Tell me! You never talk about your human friends.”

“Okay. He thinks that since no good reason has ever been given for how they they can fly, characters like Superman must move themselves through the air by jet propulsion. They fart.”

“Ah, like an octopus shoots forward by squirting out water. That makes more sense than just flying somehow. Or using pixie dust and happy thoughts, like in this one human book I read. Except for the fact that landpeople don't fart.”

“They don't?”

“How could they? They don't have air bladders.”

“They manage to find a way. Only mammal farts aren't just letting out air like fish or fishpeople do. They're part of a whole different body function, and they stink! I'd hate to think what one would have to be like to make someone fly.”

“I guess I'll stick with pixie dust then, if I ever find some. I love sitting up topside watching the seagulls fly around. They make me wish I could fly too. It's amazing how they can glide around up there with no water to hold them up.”

“I guess it is,” I said.

The city limits were a wall of green where the kelp forest started, with just the occasional little shack house nestled down in it. After passing over a quarter mile of forest we crested the ridge and saw our house in the center of its thirty acre valley. A perfect circle with a rim all the way around it, our valley resembled a meteor crater with a level bottom. In the golden remains of the day's light the castle and grounds were an awesome sight, which I could appreciate a lot more than the first time I made this descent, when I hadn't been sure what I was seeing or even if I was really seeing it.

And again it felt like I was flying as we swooped down across the topiary groves and the mandala-pattern gardens toward the castle's big front doors like we were on a zipline, The Supergirl Twins returning home from a day of doing Supergirl stuff. (Or maybe Powergirl Twins would be more accurate, considering...)
.

.
)))========> THE OLD GUARD
.

As we swam in through the Castle's front door I paused and looked at our guard Bassby. I'd seen him at four in the morning, at noon and now around 4:45 PM, and he'd been sound asleep each time.

“Are you sure he's even alive?” I whispered.

“'Course he is. Did you think we had him stuffed and put him here for a prop?”

“Well no, I-” Although the thought had crossed my mind, “How old is he, anyway?”

“Two hundred and fifty-something.”

“Damn! Getting up toward retirement age, isn't he?”

“He's been retired. Since around the time I was born. Mom and Dad gave him a pension and a nice little apartment inside the royal mansion, and an even nicer one here in the new castle, but he keeps coming downstairs to guard the door against the Huns and the Frondeurs and the Syndicalists, whatever those are...”

“Maybe if you took away his-” I stopped and took a closer look at his tall black furry hat, “Is that his hair?!”

“Yeah. He got tired of losing his bearskin so he just grew it like that, and dyes it with octopus ink...”
.

.
)))========> MY DINNER WITH ATLANTEA
.

Unlike the cheerful free-for-alls that dinner with my land parents had been, Queen Atlantea had this whole list of things that a proper young Princess-of-the-Realm shouldn't do at the dinner table. Even scratching an itchy spot under your scales was something you excused yourself to go do; and you NEVER used your chopstick for this, even the non-in-your-mouth end. But at least there wasn't a big array of silverware where you had to keep track of which implement was used for which course.

Dinner went okay. Our small talk was mostly Mom asking me all about my first day as a mermaid. She seemed amused that I was so happy with my transformation and my new life. There was one rough spot toward the end, when she asked me what I thought of the village.

“I love it. It's so quaint!”

“Quaint?” she asked in a way that made me wonder what I'd said wrong.

“I don't mean it's like backwards or anything. Just, y'know, quaint. Picturesque. Charming.”

“I agree, it's a lovely little town. But I have to wonder... In your experience, it's quaint compared to what?”

[ All those big noisy crowded sea cow cities. Manatee-hattan. Mooooo I'm a human! ]

“Well, I, uh-”

Then I hit on something, which---if she bought it---could cover for not just this blunder but a lot of future ones: “I don't know 'compared to what'. It just seemed like the word for it. How it felt. I think maybe when the genie made me a duplicate of Anemone it downloaded a lot of what was in her brain into mine. Like her concept of quaintess. Not to mention her whole vocabulary, with like a thousand times more words than our sea-cow language had.”

Anee chimed in excitedly, “Y'know, I think you must be right! And that would explain how you can read now too.”

This surprised Mom. “She can?”

“Like a champ! You should have seen her in town, reading the signs on the shops and the menu in the cafe's window like she'd been doing it all her life.”

Nice one, Sis! This explained another big part of their one-day old princess's mysterious language skills.

“Interesting. Then I guess we won't be needing those old 'see Spot swim' primers of Anemone's that I was looking for,” said the Queen.

“And that was weird, too!” I said, “Because back when I was a sea cow I always thought the words on the sides of trucks and buses going by up on the Interstate were just some kind of decoration. And one time I found a newspaper someone had tossed in the swamp. I didn't know what the heck to make of that thing, so I ate it. But now all of a sudden these funny squiggles make sense. And I like it! It's like somebody talking but you can go back and hear it any time you want.”

“Which is essentially what it is,” Mom said, “It's one of the things that separates us civilized mers from our bottom dwelling cousins. And can you write as well?”

I nodded, “That came with the reading. I might not spell everything exactly right---I mean why is WHENS-day spelled WED-NESS-day?---but I'm sure I can get more words right than not.”

“Yes, your sister has a bit a trouble with spelling too. But this imparted knowledge should save a lot of time,” Mom said, then fired off the question: “What's four times twenty seven?”

“A hundred and four? No, a hundred and eight!”

"And what's the square root of one hundred and twenty one?"

I worked it out. "Eleven."

“Excellent! Mr. Mergolis will have to test you, of course, but I'm guessing he'll be able to start you both out on the same lessons when school starts next week,” she said, and rang the little bell sitting next to her plate.

Giselle---the shy octopus maid who never said much---came in and started clearing the plates. As Anemone and I left the dining hall she grinned, “That went well.”

“It did,” I agreed, “But meals with our mother shouldn't be some minefields we have to navigate.”

“They're always going to be that to some extent. Mom is Mom, and there's some topics---like politics or Amazonia or humans---that you bring up at your own risk. Although I know this is risking more than just winding up in a shouting match with her. But don't worry. I said seven days before we come clean to her about everything, and we're almost down to six days now. We will get through this week.”

Suddenly there was tremendous metallic hammering sound. Three bangs, then another three.

It was the front door knocker. The kids were here.
.

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)))========> FINDING PHOEBE
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Anemone had been watching Phoebe and the Delmar twins on Monday nights for nearly a year. The first time had been an accident, one party's misunderstanding about what day their appointment was on, but the three kids had so much fun playing together that their folks and my sister made it a weekly thing. The parents traded off the task of shepherding the tots over the kelp patch and down to the castle.

The kids loved our house. They'd never heard of a theme park but they instinctively responded to our home's fantasy vibe; the way every floor of the castle had a different theme and seemed to come from a different building (and a couple of them a different planet!); the sense that any sort of magical, wonderful thing might happen in a place like this. And they enjoyed being able to stay up way past their bedtime one night a week---in Hatteria eight p.m. was like midnight in the human world---but most Mondays they all tuckered out by around seven, which let her spend the last half of her gig just sitting next to where they slept reading something.

It didn't seem like these kids would be conking out early tonight though. They were too excited over their pal 'Amma-nee' suddenly having a twin. Somehow the I'm-a-sea-cow thing came up, which they thought was pure hilarity, and they wanted me to moo and do my lumbering sea cow routine and speak in that goofy dim-witted voice I'd come up with for it over and over.

My sister and I hadn't had time to figure out what games we were going to play so Anemone assembled them all at an intersection in the hallways and said, “This is a game my sister taught me, that she and her manatee cousins used to play back in the Everglades. It's call Hide and Seek. How we play it is you kids all run and hide-”

“YAAAAAAAYYY!!!” they all screamed and went swimming off in different directions like roaches scattering when the lights come on.

“No! You were supposed to wait until-” Anee tried explain, but it was already too late, so she hollered after them: “AND STAY ON THE FIRST FLOOR!”

Which they didn't. Those little fries were real geniuses at squishing themselves into tiny places you'd never think they could hide in. We managed to find Rudee and Trudee Delmar, but Phoebe was nowhere to be found, and even with the twins helping us search we were starting to worry that she'd still be missing when her parents came to get her at eight.

I almost got lost myself as I searched for her. I was in that part of the second floor that looked like it came right out the Chrysler Building (we took the tour of it two summers back) when I blundered into an expensively furnished 1930's-looking office where Queen Atlantea was hunched over a giant desk frowning down at a ledger book- “Oops, sorry!”

“Looking for something?”

“I... No I just like opening doors. We don't have these back home, or hands to open them with. So it's like: 'Doors! Wheeeeee! Fun!'” I said and ducked back out, hoping we could locate Phoebe before we had to bring Mom into the search.

We finally found her down in the dark spooky dungeon, no longer playing the swim-away-and-hide game but screaming her head off at the pure menace the place radiated, even though she probably didn't know what all these chains and cudgels and pokey things or that sinister mermaid shaped iron maiden were for.

I whispered to Anemone, “You guys don't use this stuff do you?”

“No, never. Nobody even comes down here.”

"So then Mom won't chain us up down here if we're bad."

"No, about the worst she's ever done for punishment is send me to my room, or give me some really bad chore to do. And once I was seabedded for a week- what you'd call 'grounded'..."

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Even after we got her out of there it took a lot of hugs and reassuring and a ride on the magic sea cow's back to get Phoebe back to her silly sweet cheerful self.

Then we took the kids to the kitchen for a snack of fish fingers and caviar, which further helped cheer her up; So by the time Mr. Delmar came for them her trauma had faded into the background of all the fun we were having.

Rudee and Trudee Delmar agreed with us that having a twin was a fine thing, although they were brother and sister and not very similar looking. I don't have a clue how a pair of non-identical twins could hatch out of the same egg---(unless this had been the genie's way of trying to diversify the gene pool)---but what I do know is I sure did feel for their mom. I know children are a blessing, especially nowadays, but it made my egghole hurt just to think about delivering a twin-size egg!
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)))========> KING UYEHTAH VANISHES
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Delbert Delmar showed up to pick them up at eight-thirty on the dot. Anemone told me that whichever parent came for them they were always punctual, which was another reason she liked sitting these particular children (unlike her Saturday night gig, which was pure hell in every way!). She yawned, asking me if I was ready to hit the kelp.

“I don't think I could sleep,” I said, “I'm just not used to going to bed at half past eight.”

“When I can't sleep I like to read something until I'm sleepy. Come on, I'll show you the library.”

She led me off down the hallway, and then another hallway, and then another...

“Holy Crap!” I laughed, “It just goes on and on! How long did it take to build this place?”

“I don't know. A minute maybe,” she said as we arrived at a ramptube and swam up it.

“Huh?!” I asked, thinking she was kidding. “Oh, you mean the genie made it.”

And suddenly many things about our castle---like the grain-silo sized seashells it had for towers---made sense. Or these crazy bubble-chandeliers hanging overhead, and how they could work without anything that looked like a source of power.

“This castle was my second wish,” she said, “The old mansion that was sitting here was pretty nice but it wasn't even a tenth the size of this place. But I knew your human presidents all live in big fancy castles and I thought mom would like it. She needed cheering up after Daddy disappeared. She got mad and said this place was preposterous and garish and way more house than anyone could possibly need---which was when she made me promise to hold on to my last wish---but I can tell she really likes living here now. And it did put Hatteria on the map, we can now boast about having one of the Seven Wonder of the Undersea World; and it was why they changed our town's name to Shellcastle, although the locals still call it Hatteria Village, or mostly just 'town'...”

“It really is impressive. It's like no other building on the planet! But speaking of Father disappearing.... If you had three wishes, couldn't you have used one to bring him back?”

“That was my actual first choice for my second wish. But when I made that wish the genie said nope, he couldn't do it! And wouldn't tell me why unless I commanded him to, which would have 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 those other universes, but I don't think so.”

“You were saying the other day that you think the humans got him,” I said as we hit the end of a hall and ascended another ramptube. I was totally lost now, and not even sure what floor we were on.

“I don't know what I think. I mean one day I'm sure he's off on a secret mission, and the next- I really don't know. He was in his study---which was like the library this place has but smaller---looking over some old scrolls. He told me not to bother him but promised me he'd be done in an hour or two and then would play bobsticks with me out in the garden. But two hours went by, then a couple more, and when I went in to tell him dinner was ready he wasn't there. No one had noticed him leave the mansion or even come out of his study. We thought maybe he'd gone into town to buy something, but by nine o'clock, after all the stores and even the chewhouses had closed we knew something was wrong. The next day we couldn't find anyone who'd even seen him, and the search parties that went on for weeks and the big reward we offered for information about him turned up nothing. And that was that...”

“Jasper Five still thinks he'll show up,” I said.

“I suppose it's possible. I really miss Daddy. Everybody does. He left this huge hole, not just in Mom's and my life but in the whole kingdom. As Mediator to the Parliament he had such a knack he had for bringing the different sides together and getting them to work things out. And he was better than Mom at dealing with foreign dignitaries, who can be touchy and weird, but he got them to trust him. They all knew when he said something he meant it, and he never made promises he couldn't keep. Everyone says he was a great king...”
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)))========> LIBRARY
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We swam through a big impressive doorway with SCIENTIA IPSA POTENTIA EST engraved over it and into a big cube shaped room, each wall of which was a grid of cubbyholes, thousands of slots holding one or more scrolls apiece. It sure looked like a library, like one of those old fashioned ones with ladders on tracks you used to reach the high shelves, only without the ladders since you could swim to any cubbyhole you wanted to reach. Too bad, I really like those ladders...

There was a large square hole that took up most of the ceiling, where the water that filled this room stopped. Light and fragmented images of the room above played across the surface.

“What's that?”

“That's the dry room, but don't go up there.”

“Why not?”

“The air's bad,” said Anemone and pointed at a round gauge high on the wall of the room we were in, with the three pie-slice segments behind its glass face painted red, yellow, green. The black indicator needle was pointed at the center of the red part. Next to this gauge were some buttons and a bicycle pedal assembly sticking out on a wooden frame, with a chain disappearing into a slot in the wall. She said, “If you want to use iit we'll have to send the snorkle up to the ocean's surface and turn those peddles there for about a half hour until the needle hits the green. It really tires out your arms but we could take turns.”

“Never mind, I'm sure there's plenty to read down in this part. But could I at least take a look?”

“Sure. Just don't breathe.”

I swam up to the ceiling, poked my head through the surface and looked around for as long as I could hold my breath.

From up here it looked like some eccentric human had built a library with a swimming pool in it. The air pressure in here kept the water from rushing in, like the moon pool in the bay of a research vessel. Instead of scrolls sitting in cubbyholes there were shelves with human books on them, maybe five hundred titles (plus a whole shelf full of National Geographics), with room for a lot more. The shelves went up six feet, which seemed higher than a mermaid waddling around on the floor could reach, until I saw a pair of contraptions on shopping cart wheels that looked like those slides they send trained seals down (so here's my library ladders...) only with a rail on each side to pull yourself up by.

There was an antique grandfather clock, a huge relief globe of the Earth (with the seafloors all painted blue) sitting in a nice stand, a ricketty little antique table with a bust of Shakespeare on it, and a mural on the wall that seemed like a pretty good copy of that Italian painter's Venus on her seashell. There was also a trio of old claw-footed bathtubs- which seemed eccentric even for the Genie, until I realized these were mermaid reading chairs, so you could soak your tail while you read...

On the tile deck nearby was a kelp paper notebook and a couple of chewed up pencils next to a King James Bible and a paperback copy of CS Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet . I grabbed a pencil and the notebook quick and ducked back down into the water where I could finally take a breath.

I started flipping through it. It looked like a preschooler had been trying to write something. I said, “Somebody sure has bad handwriting!”

“Let's see how well you can write with your mouth,” Anemone said. “That's Jasper's. Put it back.”

She explained how our dolphin friend spent hours lying at the edge of the pool, reading human books and turning the pages with the same pencil he used to take notes. I apologized and put them back, saying I'd wanted to make some maps of all the castle's floors. Anee promised to draw some up for me.

“So is that the dry room you would have hid me in if I was human?” I asked.

“Afraid not. Mom goes in that one a lot. It would have to be one of the storage ones, and they're not that nice. Although they're all hooked up to the same bunch of air ducts. I'm just glad you're a mermaid now and we don't have to go through all that.”

“Yeah, me too...”

I browsed the main room's cubbyholes for fifteen minutes, collecting two grocery sacks worth of scrolls and we returned to our room. My twin was tired and we didn't chat much before she pulled the lid on her bed shut and was soon fast asleep.

I flipped the hourglass sitting on the washing machine dresser, curled up in my nest of soft fine kelp, picked one of the scrolls at random and started to read. The printing on the greenish kelp paper was really tiny, but with these golf ball-sized eyeballs I had now I could read it just fine.

I'm not sure what time it was when I got up, dimmed the lights and joined my sister in the sea of dreams, but the sand in the hourglass had run out twice. The shell bed that I'd been afraid might be too small for me turned out plenty big. But what I wasn't going to do was close the lid tight over myself like my sister had done. She must have been used to this, maybe it was the custom here, but I sure didn't want to sleep sealed up in a damn coffin. As Doctor McCoy might say in some extremely strange Star Trek fanfic: “I'm a mermaid, not a vampire!”

Falling asleep, my thoughts returned to my parents, their worries and grief. And my folks weren't the only ones who were going through this right now. I hoped that my little circle of misfit friends wouldn't take my disappearing off the face of the Earth too hard, but I knew they would.

I imagined them throwing together one of those little makeshift memorials for me like they have for victims of school shootings and people who get run over on their bicycles; piled with stuffed animals, plastic flowers, balloons, photographs, candles and handmade cards. It would probably be on the beach right there at Dover, because I couldn't see them making a pilgrimage all the way to Bokonon Bay this close to the start of the school year. I knew Pepper's and Chiro's cards would say FOR SUZIE... on them instead of Stewart, and Vanessa's probably would, but I wasn't sure about the others (Captain Random and Chaos Boy still didn't seem convinced that I wasn't setting them up for some 'gotcha!' of a practical joke when I came out to them; mostly because it was the sort of thing they'd do...)

And like my parents, I wished there was a way I could let my friends I was doing okay, in fact better than okay---having transitioned already, even if it was a bit more of a physical change than the one I was starting to plan for---and that I'd already found a new family and a great new friend and sister. After about a half hour of these dismal ruminations over the people I left behind I fell asleep.
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And that was my first day as a mermaid.
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NEXT: CORAL COUNTRY
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