The Little Mermaid of the Gulf (#OnceUponNow)

Part 3: Mami Wata

Still no sign of Calden, even after a second day of searching. Only the moon shone through the water now, and Miranda lied on her back, watch its faint glow oscillate with the waves. What would it be like to be closer to the moon? To breathe the air? Humans had always fascinated her. They had pufferfish in their chest to help them breathe. They had sturdy vines of flesh and veins for legs instead of fins. They moved with steps, not with strokes. She wondered what it would feel like to step and feel the weight of the earth pressing back at her from beneath her feet.

She rolled over, too distracted by the moon to watch it any longer, and was met by a stabbing pain in her side. A plume of red swirls rose in the water beside her. She reached back to her satiny skin just above her tail, and with a faint squeal, dug a piece of glass from her back. A piece of glass from the strangeling, she realized. It was the piece that had chipped off from the watch the day before, and just beside her in the sand, was the rest of the partially covered strangeling.

A spark began to burn inside her. Not of anger like Dover's, or fear like Maro's, but of curiosity. Yes, she had been hurt by this small speck of strangeling, but not enough to warrant keeping herself from the shore. And who knows? Maybe the rumors of sea serpents in Grand Isle had originated from Calden and his friends swimming there after dark? Miranda pressed her webbed fingers to the small wound on her back, and certain she would not leave a trail of red swirls in the water, snuck away from the alcove. Due North to the shore.

Past the stream current, through the sleeping dolphin pod, to the now dark waters of the golden area until the shore was in sight. Reeds from the bluff poked out of the water and just beyond them stood the stiff-legged houses of the humans. In the night, their white, yellow, and blue paint looked gray and unwelcoming. Not one light shone on the entire isle, but Miranda slipped between reeds of soggy grass by the light of the full moon. She moved like a serpent in case anyone should spy her, drawing S's on the sea bed with the tips of her fingers. Closer and closer until the water was too shallow enough for her to lie comfortably with her muddy eyes and holed ears just above the surface.

She wasn't entirely sure what force pulled her to Grand Isle until that moment. An inkling that had been buzzing just beneath her consciousness now broke through: Miranda suspected that Calden, somehow, was here.

"Calden?" she whispered so only the ocean could hear her.

Hollow gourd windchimes clunked together. The soft sound of waves slushed from back where she came. But Miranda's couldn't hear anything that even remotely sounded like Calden. Not that she would recognize his voice well--she barely knew him--but a mermaid can always recognize the calls of her own species, and there was nothing.

"Calden?" she whispered again.

"Girl, stop your calling," someone--a human woman with a raspy creole sound--said just above her. Startled, Miranda barrel-rolled to the side, beneath the cover of what must have been this human woman's house. "Mama Perrine hears your Mama Wata call, and I tell ya' girl, you don't keep as quiet as you think."

Miranda clutched the slimy wood stilt leg of this woman's house--Mama Perrine she called herself--her heart racing too fast for Miranda to do anything but hide.

"Aw, now little Mama Wata, why you hiding?"

Miranda heard a click and then saw a flash of orange light burn above her. In a moment, puffs of silver smoke began filling the air, each one accompanied by a long wheeze from the woman above.

"You want your Calden boy, but you don't think to ask Mama Perrine? Tsk, tsk, tsk. You oughta know your Mama Perrine knows how to find your boy."

At this, Miranda found her voice again. "Where is he?"

A wheeze and a puff of silver air. "Come out from under my house Mama Wata, and I'll tell you all you need to know."