The Little Mermaid of the Gulf (#OnceUponNow)

Part 4: The Price

Out of sheer curiosity, Miranda forced her fins to move, thrusting her into the open water below Mama Perrine's house, and Miranda finally saw the woman who she'd been speaking with for the first time.

Mama Perrine was a small woman, seemingly curled up in a crouched position on a stool, an animated gargoyle in clothes. The random fabrics she wore were sewn together in haphazard lines and draped over her thin body like a blanket. A lit cigarette rested between the top two digits of her fingers as she propped her left arm up on her knee. Silver air serpentined into the sky from the cigarette tip.

The woman took a drag of her cigarette as she examined Miranda with a surreptitious smile hidden from the mermaid by the darkness. "Yes, Mami Wata," Mama Perrine said. "I see you now."

Miranda gulped, feeling suddenly exposed and stupid and vulnerable. "Where is Calden?" she asked.

Mama Perrine took another puff from her cigarette.

"You said if I came out, you would tell me."

Mama Perrine looked off and pointed her chin toward the flooded town street. Miranda followed her gaze. There, standing knee deep in water at the center of town, was Calden. With legs. Human legs.

Miranda had always been curious about the humans. She had always collected strangelings from them, and she had always watched them from with appreciation, despite the black water. But now, seeing one of her own with strange human legs, terror replaced all her curiosity for their species, save for one question: "How?"

"He found me. Asked Mama Perrine to save him from the sea."

"He wouldn't. He was set to be our next council leader."

"That is why Mami Wata," she said through a puff of smoke. "These stilts hold up my house, but too much pressure, and it all collapses."

Miranda shook her head, though she couldn't help but smile on the inside. Even the golden ones can disappoint the pod, she thought.

"How did he find you?"

"The same way you did. Have you enjoyed my gifts, young Mami Wata?"

The pearls, the flowers, the watch... all tokens from Mama Perrine.

The woman licked her lips. "You're bleeding, Mami Wata."

Discomfort overcame Miranda. From Calden's fate, from the small cut from the broken-faced watch, from Mama Perrine's bait. She began to drift, but seeing Calden still wading through the town streets out of the corner of her eye, Miranda found herself drifting further inland.

"He will not respond to you, Mami Wata. He is no longer your kind."

Miranda ignored her and continued swimming toward Calden. A blank stare covered his face as he wielded a sharp stick to capture floating trash from the town. Miranda knew that she and Calden rarely spoke, even when they were both present at council functions, but she was sure if she began by asking Calden to recall her father, he might place her in his mind. He just might have enough trust to go with her, maybe in a boat, and stay with the pod until they could figure out a way to restore his fins.

Miranda slinked beneath the water, careful not to let another human see her, until she neared Calden. His blank stare was even more prominent on his dark face when she approached, though Miranda was sure the glow from years of appreciation and praise still lingered in his cheeks. She poked her head out of water.

"Calden," she said.

He looked down vacantly at the noise, and then, as if he had never seen anyone of their kind before in his life, the boy breathed in and let out the loudest, most terrified scream Miranda had ever heard. "Sea snake," he yelled in a hoarse voice as soon as his screams had stopped. "There is a sea snake here!"

He lifted his pointed stick and thrust it down at Miranda, striking just between her arm and her chest. In a panic, she darted back into the darkness beneath Mama Perrine's house, and watched Calden race deeper inland to the town center in clumsy stomps and splashes, all the while yelling about sea snakes.

"Why didn't he recognize me?" Miranda asked in exhaustion. She knew it wasn't an act. Not even his voice sounded like a merman anymore.

"I warned you he wouldn't respond, Mami Wata. He don't know you anymore."

"What? Why not? That's Calden, he knows me!"

"No," Mama Perrine began from above Miranda. The mermaid peeked upward through the cracks in the baseboards. Mama Perrine was not sitting on a stool at all, but a machine. The woman turned it on as she put out the fire of her cigarette on the siding of her house. The machine began to breathe and wheeze, and Mama Perrine grabbed a face mask from it to hold to her nose and mouth. She took a few deep breaths, then let the machine continue to breathe while she explained, "A lot of the stories of mermaids are different. Some say when you become human, you lose your voice. Others say, you keep your voice to lure sailors to their deaths."

"That's not true."

"Mami Wata," Mama Perrine scolded before promptly returning the face mask to her nose and mouth for a few more breaths. "No interrupting. The truth of it all is that when you become human, you don't lose something so easy as your voice. Voices are cheap. Souls are the price you pay."

"Souls? What does that mean?"

"The essence of you. You lose it. You become a new person, ready for new memories, ready for new family and friends. You forget all that you were and only know what you are now."

"Calden would never have agreed to that," Miranda said in disbelief.

"He would and he did," Mama Perrine replied. "What better way to relieve pressure than to forget it ever existed? Isn't that something you would want, Mami Wata? Just think... you could have strangelings from humans any time you want. They can be all yours."

Shouts began from the town center as lights began to come on. Calden in his new form had alerted the town of Miranda.

She knew she had to swim back home to safety before they came to capture her, but she had one more question for Mama Perrine. She swam out from beneath Mama Perrine's house and looked up at the woman, now seeming decades older with the mask over her nose and mouth.

"What's in it for you, Mama Perrine?"

The woman drew a few more breaths. "I am dying, Mami Wata. Legend has it that Mami Wata souls can save me... make me live longer. I never believed it until your boy came. I was stuck to this machine, but now I can use it when I need. Your souls can heal. I want to live, Mami Wata."

Miranda glared at the woman. "Me too, Mama Perrine," she said. As the outlines of townspeople coming to find the sea snake Human Calden warned them of began to clarify, Miranda began to swim back to her pod.