An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (37 page)

“True,
young one. But I still want you to have this. It’s a box fashioned from
mangrove wood and this symbol on the top is a sacred
mer
symbol for the
ocean. It’s inside this circle, which represents the earth. The mangrove has
its roots in the ocean but isn’t of the ocean. You are like the mangrove in
reverse. You may try to put your roots in the earth, young one, but you will
always belong to the sea. Like the mangrove, you will always live in the border
between the sea and earth.”

Ana’s
clove-rough voice abraded Tamarind’s heart and she shivered even though the
night was warm around her.

“I have
imbued it with powerful spells for your marriage. Take it and remember me
whenever you look at it.”

“Thank
you.” Tamarind whispered as John stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around
her waist.

Ana
handed her the box without taking her eye from Tamarind’s face; the hasty dark
shadowed the normally bright eye and blurred the edges of her features. Ana
glanced at John and nodded slightly before turning away from them and heading
toward the dunes edging the beach. In a few minutes, she’d disappeared over the
slight rise to the path that led to the sand lot and then to Route 251 South.

“It’s
time to go. The others want us to go with them to the Dockside for dinner.
Chris stopped by there and asked them to keep some tables open. Since they’re
the only ones with a generator, I’m sure they’ve got more business than they
can handle right now. If we don’t go, they may just give our tables away.”

Tamarind
still stared at the spot where Ana had disappeared. She cradled the box in her
palms.

“Can I
have a moment alone on the beach?” She didn’t turn to look at him.

She felt
him stiffen and draw in a breath. She hummed, a faint throbbing that didn’t
reach his hands on her waist. After a moment, he expelled the breath softly.

“Sure.
I’ll be in the Jeep waiting.”

Tamarind
waited for him to get to the other side of the beach before moving. Although
the sensory pores on her sides had shrunk to almost non-existence with her
final transformation, she still knew when he’d crossed over the dunes and gone
out of sight. Setting the box down and dropping the scarf next to it, she
tiptoed to the ragged edge where the waves lapped the soft white sand. Hitching
her dress up to her waist and clutching it in her left hand, she knelt down.

Humming
again, she traced her fingertips across the damp sand and sang low a
mer
parting song, the song sung when a loved one died or faced mortal dangers, such
as from sharks or encounters with rogue
mer
. Or humans. The water rolled
over itself in increasing intensity, foaming and washing toward her knees,
adding its voice to hers in a rising crescendo until she’d finished and then it
seemed to fade away, taking the sweet sadness of her words with it.

“My God,
that was haunting.” It was Valerie. “Saying good-bye to your home, to the world
that gave birth to you?”

“Yes.”
Tamarind realized that her cheeks had grown wet with more than spray. “Mother
Sea has blessed me and blessed my union with John. I can leave in peace now.”

Valerie
came and laid her hand on Tamarind’s shoulder. “Always remember, Tamarind, that
you carry the Goddess’s strength inside you. And that is no small gift.”

Tamarind
said nothing, simply stared at the phosphorescent white cresting along the edge
of the waves in front of her.

After a
time, Valerie spoke again and her cheerful voice rang across the susurrus of
the ocean. “Come! It’s time to eat your wedding feast where your friends will
toast your happiness and fertility. And I must go transform John’s pathetic
room into a bridal suite.”

***

As they
flew northwest over Culebra toward San Juan two days later, Tamarind looked
down at the island, which reminded her of a spiny lobster. Below them, on Playa
Tamarindo, Ana’s knotty form squatted on the shore’s stony mosaic, but she
didn’t lift her face towards their small plane. Instead, she stooped and
reached, moving articles too small for Tamarind to distinguish, her arms
spidery in their movements. Seaweed wove a loose web around her, forming an
intricate bed for the unseen objects that she dropped. Tamarind sensed, rather
than saw, a pattern to these tiny offerings, the way that memories sometimes
hover at the edge of conscious thought, but the brilliant sky filled her mind
instead. If she ignored the frame of the plane’s window at the edges of her
vision and looked straight ahead, she forgot everything and flew with the sooty
terns and brown boobies above the immense blue ocean.

Beneath
them, Ana patiently worked. As the plane approached the far horizon, she sat
back on her haunches and aimed her single eye on it.

“You’ll
be back, young one. Mark my words—you’ll be back.”

Book Two

of

THE MERMAID’S PENDANT

Available February 14, 2013

on Kindle

Read whether Ana’s prediction that Tamarind will
return to Culebra comes true—and whether Ana gets what she wants in a protégé
in this darker, more complex tale where the young couple learns that true love
requires more than magic for their marriage to succeed.