Becoming Mermaids

Chapter 17: The Endless River

Samantha swam faster than she ever thought possible. It wasn't just the choppers and the government she was running from, it was the life she was leaving behind. It was Coquette, who might be dead or captured by now. It was everyone she ever knew, who would be horrified to learn that she had changed her body into something that can't survive in their world. She'd rather let them think she was dead.

But one thing's for sure: she wasn't ever gonna be caged again.

There were submarines out there— she heard them. Maybe not with her ears, but with a sensitive line of nerves that ran down the length of her body, even the human part. Those submarines might not have been looking for her— but she couldn't tell for certain. She kept her distance, just the same. In fact, she raced along the bottom of the ocean, mere inches from the rock bed, around formations and into trenches, just to be sure to stay under their radar.

She was aware of the monsters that coiled around her, but somehow that didn't bother her anymore. Coquette had lived out here for years and had never been eaten. Now that Sam was forced into it— pushed into the deep end, so to speak— it wasn't that bad. Before experiencing the ocean, she had imagined a cold, foggy gloom in which you couldn't see the horrors until they were right on top of you. That all was true, but she liked the cold, and although she couldn't see much directly, she felt everything.

It took a while for that to sink in. She had been darting out of the way of obstacles for so long that it was hard to believe that she couldn't see them. I'm not blind, she thought, how could I have— if I had— ohmigod, psychic powers!

She came upon a large column of rock and examined it. She felt the crunch of detail, the porous coral— or if not felt, tasted? heard? Yes, it was sound. In time with the stiff, rapid movements she was making with her tail, her mouth was chirp-chirp-chirping, sending musical notes into the water all around her. Holding her breath, it went dark. Singing again, it came back. Sonar!

The whole landscape seemed to be lit up in florescent colors— colors made of sound. What she heard, she also "saw," in a sense, as well as felt and tasted. The notes had a flavor as they slipped from her lips, and that flavor came back enriched by the texture of the world around her. She pressed her hands to her sides and hips, onto the lateral line that sensed these vibrations in the water, and saw that landscape trip out in funky colors.

This is what was wrong with the dolphin pen: it had flat walls. Everything just echoed back without color, and the flat echoes had trained her to keep her mouth shut as she swam. Out in her natural environment, a medley of haunting chimes, purrs, squeaks, and clicks spilled out of her lips.

There is a whole-body thrill that comes from enjoying the sound of your own voice. Singing is somehow more visceral than any art you produce with your hands— it comes from within you, exposes you— so much so that an off-key note doesn't sound like an honest mistake, it sounds like deceit. Some kind of failure as a person. Nobody winces at an awkward drawing as much as an awkward sound. But when the notes are right, the music trills within you and surprises you with its own richness. It is pure joy.

Not joy: bliss. Sam wondered why she had resisted for so long, how she could have caused so much trouble to avoid coming here, to the place where everything is beautiful. Poor Coquette!

In the distance, a new sound glowed. Someone had heard her song and was answering her, someone who was rising out of the deep like a golden sunrise. The voice was low, monstrously low. For a moment, Sam thought it might be one of the other mermaids, but no— it was much too low to be coming out of anyone her size.

It was a whale. Sam didn't believe it until it grew like an approaching planet and sounded its bass notes through her entire body. The universe shook with its majesty. By the time she could see it with her eyes, there was nothing to see: a wall of striated flesh, a living being that filled the horizon. But the song that was the greater part of it: all the glorious notes that are too low for human ears to hear— they coursed through her. She became those notes. She was in the presence of the footman of God.