Girls Day Out: A Syrena Legacy Story (3 page)

Rayna scowls. “Humans are rude to me.”

“Don’t call them humans,” I whisper. “And stop touching them.”

“This is stupid. We’re wasting our time.” Then she beats on the wall beside her with her open hand, startling a few people close by. “Attention,” she yells. “I said attention! You, with the ugly hat. Stop talking over me. We’re looking for Caroline. Anyone know her?” When we’re met with blank stares and indignant glares, she rolls her eyes. “Useless,” she mutters. “Let’s go.” Then she pivots on her heel and heads back toward the door.

Royals
.

“That’s it?” I say, trying to keep up. “That’s what we came aboard for?”

“They have pools of water here for little humans to use. At least, on other ships they do. Big tubes that swirl you down into them.”

“Slides?”

She nods. “I saw some at the front.”

And she’s right. There are two twisting, scream-tastic slides at the front of
The Enchantment
. “Here, hold this,” she says, handing me the doll. “I’m going to see if Caroline is up top.” She takes the steps two at a time and when she reaches the top, gets in line for the green slide.

Unfreakingbelievable.

With my eyes, I trace the path of swirling green to one of the pools below and go there to wait for her at the edge of it. She actually has the gall to wave at me before she climbs into the tube feet-first. Screaming all the way to the bottom, she tucks her knees to her chest and canon-balls into the pool in front of me.

I fantasize about ways to murder her.

She emerges, her face beaming—not the cautious expression you’d expect to see on a stowaway without a passport or human DNA. “Did you find Caroline?” I ask, watching her pull herself out of the pool and stand next to me, making a drip circle at her feet.

“Nope. I’ll go look for her at the yellow tube.” And then that fish princess runs away from me again.

I squeeze the neck of Caroline’s doll and pretend it’s Rayna’s. Then I march to the other pool and wait at the edge. The yellow slide has a steep drop at the end and I know the exact moment Rayna hits it because her scream intensifies times infinity. This time when she surfaces, I’m ready to tackle her before she escapes again.

“Caroline wasn’t up there either,” she says cheerfully. Climbing the ladder, she nods to the myriad of deck chairs behind us. “Can you get me that towel?”

And turn my back on her so she can disappear again? Nuh-uh. I swallow a growl. “That towel doesn’t belong to us.”

“It’s the ship’s. They give out free towels. Anyone can have one.”

“Paying passengers can have one.”

“Which is us.” She glances around us meaningfully.

“You’re a fish. You don’t need a towel.”

“I like how they feel. Kind of like Rachel’s pink robe.”

This conversation could go on forever if I let it. “We should keep looking for Caroline. Maybe we can turn it in to Lost and Found.” But then I think better of it. The doll was dropped into the ocean. Her parents probably wouldn’t even think to look in Lost and Found.

“The young ones like ice cream,” Rayna says, wrapping the enormous towel around herself twice. “We should go to the ice cream room and get some. Anyways, it’s free.”

A loud horn blows then, startling almost everyone on deck. A baby starts to cry. “We don’t have time to look anymore,” I tell Rayna. “They’re leaving the port now.”

She shakes her head. “We have plenty of time. That’s just the first warning for the people who are onshore to start making their way back to the ship.”

“Does Toraf know you do this?”

“Do what?” She pushes past me and to the elevator room, pressing a button before I even reach her.

“Does Galen know?”

She pinches her lips together. “It’s really hard to have a good time around you.”

“We’re supposed to be looking for Caroline.”

“We’ll find her eventually.”

“Eventually? We have to get off this ship before it leaves port.”

She turns to me when the elevator door closes. “Actually, we should wait until we’re in deeper water before we jump. Now, ice cream.” The door opens again and more people join us as our conversation is cut short.

We make our way across
The Enchantment
in search of ice cream and Caroline. To her credit, Rayna does stop every little girl on the way. None of them turn out to be Caroline. Some of the parents seem creeped out by Rayna’s gruff forwardness. In my mind, I’m coming up with all sorts of things I could tell Galen to explain what we’re doing here. You know, when I call him from prison.

When we order our cones and take a seat by the railing, Rayna stretches out. “You should really go on the slides. They’re fun. That is why we came today, remember? To have fun? We just got sidetracked by that doll.”

When she puts it like that, I have to agree. No, we never intended—or at least,
I
never intended—to board the ship, but it happened. We put
ourselves
on this mission to find Caroline. We don’t have to do it; it’s the nice thing to do. And in the meantime, I’ve forgotten to enjoy myself.

I take a bite of my mint chocolate chip. “I’ll go on the slides. What else do you want to do?”

“Hey!” The high-pitched scream comes from our left and we both turn our heads to see a young red-headed girl in a polka dot bikini a few feet away, giving us the evil eye. Her gaze shifts from Rayna to the doll in her hands. “You stole my Lily!”

Ah. Caroline.

Rayna stands, shooting her chair behind her. “We didn’t steal this, you rude little human. We were trying to return it to you.”

A woman who I assume is Caroline’s mother materializes behind her, placing protective hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “It doesn’t look like you were searching for her too far and wide.” She nods her head toward our empty ice creams cups sitting on the table.

“We were taking a break,” I say. Oh, geez. Here we go. I can tell Rayna is seconds from a temper tantrum. She’s got that look in her eyes, the feral one where sense and reason flee like the riptide. Thankfully this time, she doesn’t have a harpoon handy.

“That’s a fine thanks we get for bringing—what is her ridiculous name again,
Lily?
Ugh!—for bringing Lily back to you. You’re the one who let her fall overboard.”

Caroline’s mom sneers. “What? And you expect us to believe you jumped overboard to save a doll? Clearly, you took it.”

“Why would we take it?” I say diplomatically, steering the conversation away from anyone jumping overboard. “We’re a bit old to be playing with dolls.”

Mother-of-the-Year shrugs. “Who knows? With that kind of story, it looks like you’re wanting to come out as a couple of heroes.”

Rayna hugs Lily to her chest, shaking her head. “You’re not getting this doll back. You don’t deserve it.”

“Gimme gimme gimme!” Caroline’s red ringlets bounce with her fury. Even her freckles look angry.

“I wouldn’t give this back to you if Triton himself ordered me to.” There’s a finality to Rayna’s tone. Which is why I shouldn’t be surprised when that lunatic tosses the doll over the railing. But I am. In fact, I gasp with mother and daughter as we watch Lily’s arms and legs flail briefly before disappearing from sight.

Fan-flipping-tastic.

Mommy makes the first move. “Security!” Her voice is shrill, like someone’s limb has been chopped off or something. “Thief!” This gets lots of attention.

Several cruise ship employees, along with a few passengers, gather around us, making a tight circle. Out of nowhere, Rayna uses her elbow to jab a man’s nose behind her. Then she runs past him, hops up and straddles the railing, and gives me a pointed look. “You coming?” And then she jumps.

Holy. Crap.

For a split second, I size up the group moving in to surround me. I can’t believe I’m thinking about plowing down two old ladies to get to the side of the ship, but I don’t have any other options.

So I sprint forward and, in a Red Rover kind of way, push between the two proper elderly women who had come to ogle the situation. “Oh, my!” one of them says as her sun hat flings off. I have to jump over two sun chairs to get to the railing—which is no small feat for a klutz like me. My foot catches on the last one and I fall to the deck. Someone is close enough to grab my arm and all I can think is
prison prison prison
, but I shake free and pull myself up with the railing.

I don’t look back. I don’t look down, either. I just jump.

The water is shallow enough that my velocity takes me all the way to the bottom of the port. Even when my rear scrapes against the sand, I don’t feel safe enough to stop moving. Without surfacing, I swim toward the back of
The Enchantment
. My movements feel erratic, like an octopus trying to break-dance. Out of my peripheral vision, I notice that my performing fish are still performing. “Stop now, and scatter,” I call to them. All at once, they disperse, and I wonder what the audience on the ship is thinking.

But more than that, I wonder where the heck Rayna went. “Rayna!” I can sense her; she’s just ahead of me. Then I see her. She has Lily in her hands.

I’m so furious, I almost forget that I can’t breathe in the water like she can. Instead, I swallow half the ocean when I open my mouth to yell at her. Sputtering up the salt water, I make my way to Rayna. She doesn’t bother to help close the distance between us, but instead deigns to wait for me to reach her. What I can’t say in words at the moment, I try to express with an indignant glare.

She looks at the doll, then at me. Waving in dismissal, she says, “Might as well get something out of this trip.” Then she grabs my hand and pulls me out to sea.

*   *   *

It’s been about two hours since we left
The Enchantment
behind, and also since we’ve spoken to each other. Still, Rayna is my only way back to shore. In a timely manner, that is. I’m sure Galen and Toraf would come looking for me eventually, but after today’s ordeal, I’m exhausted and just want to take a shower and go to bed.

We approach the belly of a fishing vessel, which means we’re getting closer to shore. Rayna stops and turns to face me. “We could still salvage the day with that boat over there.”

“What do you mean?” I’m wary that our definition of “salvage” is vastly different. Along with our views on life in general.

“I’ll show you.” Coming from Rayna, those words scare me. “But first, you might want to help your friends over there.”

A large school of sizeable amberjack under the boat circles, obviously flirting with the idea of going after the big chunk of meat dangling from a not-so-invisible fishing line. “Swim away,” I call to them. “Danger! Swim away.” They scatter in all directions, and a few of them come to inspect me and Rayna. One of the trio bumps into my shoulder.

“I’m not food,” I tell it. “Go away.”

But it’s Rayna who swims away first, toward the vessel. She skims the ocean floor on the way, dredging her hand through the sand, stirring up all kinds of muck.

“What are you doing?” I say when I catch up to her.

“Help me find a stick or something.” Then her eyes rest on a sunken bed of seaweed a few feet away from us. “That will do, actually.” She digs up an armful of it and swims over to the vessel. Meticulously, she wraps the seaweed around and around the fishing line, covering the hook completely. “You’ve got to be careful not to tug on the line,” she explains. “They’ll pull it up early and then there’ll be no fun.”

I nod because what else am I supposed do?

When she’s used all the seaweed, she inspects the end of the line where the hook used to be visible. Softly, she presses into the seaweed blob and finds the point of it. “The seaweed is to help you grip,” she says. “You don’t want the hook slipping around in your hands. There’s a second point here on the inside of it that you’ve got to watch out for.” With her thumb, she delicately rubs where she thinks the second point is. “If you pull too hard, you’ll hook yourself. I’ve done it before. I thought Toraf would pass out.”

And I’ve got nothing.

Wrapping one hand around the hook like a handle, she gives it a sharp tug. The line gives, allowing her several feet of slack. Almost instantly though, a tug responds in kind, and the line starts pulling her closer to the boat. She giggles. “Watch,” she says, delighted.

Then she starts swimming in the opposite direction, pulling the hook behind her as if to drag the vessel along with her. She actually makes some headway before a tug-of-war ensues. “Can you imagine what they’re thinking?” she snickers. “Whoa.”

Suddenly, she’s jerked back and pulled toward the boat. “Let go!” I scream.

“Why? You want a turn?”

The word “exasperation” was invented for just this situation. “Rayna, stop messing around. What if they catch you?”

Even in the distance, I see her roll her eyes. “What do you and Galen do for fun? No, don’t tell me. I’ll fall asleep.” Still holding the line, she puts a halt to the fisherman’s progress and starts swimming under the boat. “Let’s see what they think about this.”

After a few minutes of this, the fishermen obviously make their way to the other side of the vessel where Rayna is swimming madly toward Europe. I can’t help but grin at the sight of her. She looks so young and innocent thrashing around in the water, wrenching the hook this way and that. I wonder if this is a game often played by Syrena; I doubt it. They have strict rules about interacting with humans.

Rules that Rayna might as well use as toilet paper.

I swim closer to the boat and listen. There’s a huge commotion going on up top. Manly shouts and frantic conversation. The belly of the vessel rocks with the intensity of the upheaval Rayna has caused onboard. I suspect this might be the most action they’ve gotten all day. “You’re freaking them out,” I tell her.

She laughs. “Wait until they see this.” Then she takes poor Lily and impales her on the hook, giving the line a final, violent jerk. Without delay, Lily is pulled in. I try to envision their faces as they pull up a doll belonging to a little girl named Caroline. It’s probably the most morbid thing they’ve ever seen.