To Catch a Mermaid (24 page)
“They?”
“The merfolk. I saw them. Everyone else was asleep.” She giggled with excitement. “Oh, Boom, they were fabulous. One of them touched me and I felt better.” She held up her arms. “I’m all better.” She did appear to be all better, back to her skinny, skin-covered, knobby-kneed self. Not a single tuft of fuzz to be seen.
“You . . . you saw them?”
“Yes.” She got real close. “There were three. Two of them sat right by your feet.” Boom felt an eerie sensation and shivered. “It was so dark I couldn’t see their faces, but their scales glowed and the air shimmered all around them.” She took a deep breath, like she was about to tell the best part. “I’m fairly certain that the third one was the mother, because the baby stayed next to her. I was burning up under all the fuzz, and when the mother touched me I suddenly felt cool. Minty cool.”
Boom was overwhelming happy and overwhelmingly disappointed at the same time. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” he asked.
“She didn’t want me to.”
“She spoke to you? I thought they didn’t have tongues?”
“She didn’t speak but somehow I just knew that I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I can’t explain it any better than that. I just knew that no one else was supposed to see her.” Boom struggled to understand. He tried to put the fact that Mertyle was cured above the fact that he hadn’t gotten to meet the baby’s family or to say good-bye. But he couldn’t help feeling left out. Mertyle smiled. “Boom, don’t feel bad. She sang a song just for you, while you were sleeping. Didn’t you hear it?”
A song, just for Boom. Yes, he remembered it. He could feel the aftereffects, even as he stood there, soothing every inch of his body like vapor rub. Minty cool.
“And the baby put this in your hair.” She reached forward and plucked out a green crystal, the baby’s tear. Mertyle suddenly frowned. “The baby followed her mother to the water and swam away. She looked so happy. She’s better off with them, don’t you think?”
Boom looked around. No baby flopped at the water’s edge, no baby growled or spat. The most amazing discovery of the twenty-first century had gone. “Yes, she’s better off.”
“She’s lucky to have her mother back.” Mertyle sighed, then wrapped her arms around her brother. “But I’m lucky too. I have you and I have Dad. Thank you, Boom. Thank you for saving me.”
Boom wasn’t much of a hugger, but he squeezed back because he was so happy to have a fuzz-free sister who wasn’t going to die. And he squeezed back because it helped him hide how sad he felt that it . . . that
she
was gone.
“Boom, glad to see you’re finally awake,” Captain Igor hollered from the deck of the ship. “There be a good wind a-coming. We’d better get a move on. Go and fetch your father.” Halvor and Mr. Jorgenson waved from the rail.
“Where’s Dad?” Boom asked. Mertyle pointed to the top of Whale Fin Hill, where Mr. Broom stood, staring out at the sea.
“He was the first one to wake up and see me all better,” she explained. “He told me he wasn’t going to hide anymore. Isn’t that great?”
“Yah. Really great.” Boom reached down to grab his slime-covered coat, and when he lifted it, a conch shell fell to the sand.
“The mark of the merfolk,” Mertyle whispered. She picked up the shell, but neither of them needed the magnifying glass to see the etching on the shell’s pink lip. It wasn’t a map of Whale Fin Island — it was a map, though. Mertyle smiled. “I think it’s a gift. They’ve left you a gift.”
They had indeed.
“I bet this will take us someplace great,” Boom said. For where else would a merfolk’s map take a person, but someplace beyond one’s wildest dreams? He tucked the shell under his arm.
Boom and Mertyle joined their father at the top of Whale Fin Hill. “We should come back here as soon as we can,” he told his children. “I’d like to bring my paints and canvas. I’ve never seen a sea quite like this one. It will be a magnificent painting.”
“That’s great, Dad,” Boom said as the salty wind blew by, fanning Mertyle’s and Mr. Broom’s long hair.
“Halvor is right. I need to get back to work.” Mr. Broom took Mertyle’s and Boom’s hands. “I need to get back to this family.”
They could have said a lot of mushy things at that moment, but that was not the Broom way. Sometimes it is best not to dwell on the past, lingering over mistakes and tragedies. Sometimes it is best to simply move forward, one big foot at a time, with paintbrush and magnifying glass in hand.
I just wish I had my family back.
That’s the last thing Boom had said to the baby.
Sometimes it’s our wildest dreams that come true, and sometimes wishes are granted. A feeling that Boom had long forgotten cascaded from the tip of his head to the tip of his kicking foot — pure, undiluted joy.
The morning sun warmed the Broom family as they made their way down Whale Fin Hill. Mertyle paused to examine some rock fungus while Boom stopped to pick a rock out of his shoe. “Why, Boom, that shoe has a hole,” Mr. Broom noted. “We need to get you a new pair of shoes.”
“A new pair of shoes?” Boom asked.
“Certainly. That’s the first thing we’ll buy when I sell my next painting. Do you have any idea what kind of shoes you’d like?”
Boom’s face almost split, he grinned so hard. “Oh, I have an idea.”
Out on the horizon, four blue-green tails smacked the water and a song filled the air. The song danced its way to the island, wrapped itself around the ship, curled up and down the mast, and caressed every breathing soul. This time, not a touch of sadness could be heard in the song.
Not a single drop.
Tuesday, March 17
LOCAL FAMILY ARRESTED FOR COUNTERFEITING
Police arrested the Mump family of 1 Prosperity Street when boxes of counterfeit twenty-dollar bills were discovered in the Mumps’ garage. Police began to investigate when the fake bills appeared at local Fairweather businesses on Monday.
Witnesses say that a van delivered the bills to Prosperity Street early Monday morning and that Mr. Mump claimed they belonged to him.
A SWAT team arrived at the scene when Mr. Mump barricaded himself in the garage and started throwing cream-filled cupcakes at anyone who tried to enter. The entire gang, including Mr. and Mrs. Mump, their son, Hurley, and their daughter, Daisy, were taken to Fairweather police station to be questioned.
Hurley Mump, no stranger to this newspaper, had accused his neighbor of stealing an alleged merbaby. According to his sister, Daisy, it was only a Molly Mermaid Faraway Girl Doll.
“This is all Boom Broom’s fault,” Hurley Mump screamed as police escorted him to the squad car.
“Boom Broom had nothing to do with this,” said Victor Emmanuel Wingingham, a local boy known as “Winger,” who, his mother pointed out, has perfect school attendance.
The Brooms could not be reached for comment. A sign on their door read:
GONE FISHING.
