“Not me,”
Lorrel mindspeaks.
“I am not permitted yet. Only the old ones can.”
Something that looks like a translucent, deflated balloon is tied to the thick end of the sword with monofilament fishing line. I touch it with a finger.
“And this is?”
I mindspeak.
Lorrel looks at it and sighs.
“Please let us eat first and then I will tell you what I can.”
In the great room, I put the sword down on the kitchen counter and take three steaks from the freezer. Lorrel stays close, stares as I put each in the microwave, one by one, to cook the chill from the meat. She crinkles her forehead when I leave all three in plates on the counter while I get silverware and napkins and set the table.
But the girl sits where I indicate and waits for me to bring her food to her. I put her plate in front of her and place another on the floor for Max. As he attacks and devours his meat, I go back to the kitchen for mine. By the time I return with it and sit down across from the girl, he’s already licking his now empty plate.
Picking up my knife and fork I begin to cut a piece of near-raw meat. Lorrel stares at the blood on her plate and makes no move toward her meat. Spearing my piece with the fork, I mindspeak,
“Go ahead. Eat.”
The girl ignores her silverware and picks up her steak. Blood drips from it, splattering on her plate as she takes a huge bite from the meat. Barely chewing, she gulps it down, takes a second bite and gulps it too. I chew mine more slowly, savoring the richness of the meat, breathing in the blood smell that blossoms around us.
Lorrel stops eating, holds the meat up in one hand and mindspeaks,
“What is this?”
I take another piece.
“It’s beef.”
She makes no expression, so I mindspeak,
“You know, cow?”
She shakes her head.
“I know seacow. This does not taste like seacow.”
“Not manatee,” I mindspeak.
“Cow, like in bulls and cows.”
I put one finger up on each side of my head, like horns, and moo.
Lorrel looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
“Show me where you find them. I have never seen a beef,”
she mindspeaks.
“Never mind that for now,”
I mindspeak.
“Is it good?”
She nods.
“Then just eat.”
After dinner, after I’ve cleaned up, I go to one of the two leather reclining chairs that Chloe’s bought and placed near the fireplace facing the television. Leaning back, my feet swinging up as the bottom of the chair raises into a footstool, I motion for Lorrel to do the same.
Lorrel approaches her chair slowly, as if it were a living thing. Finally she sits, shimmying back, looking almost as small and lost in the chair as Henri does when he sits in it. She looks at me and smiles.
“My people live very differently than you.”
I grin, look from her face, to her small hands, her equally small bare feet and her tiny webbed toes, and mindspeak,
“We’ve eaten. It’s time now for you to tell me what’s going on.”
“My father, Mowdar, sent me to find you. . . .”
Lorrel stops, grimaces, hacks out a cough and then another.
“Sorry,”
she mindspeaks, wiping her mouth with her sweatshirt sleeve, leaving a red smear of fresh blood on it.
Sitting up, I point to her sleeve.
“Is that from dinner?”
She looks at me.
“No. This is not from beef. Eating opened one of the wounds you gave me. It is nothing. . . .”
“Can’t you heal?”
“Of course I can!”
Lorrel mindspeaks, daubing her mouth with her sleeve again, showing me a new, smaller smear.
“But I, we, are not Undrae. We heal differently than you. And I have been gone from my srrynn for too long.”
“Srrynn?”
I mindspeak.
“Yes,”
she mindspeaks.
“We are all together, many of us—like a family. Everyone in a srrynn protects each other, like the dolphins do, the way they gather in pods. If we were there now I would already be healed.”
“How?”
I mindspeak.
Lorrel shrugs.
“We draw strength from each other.”
“Are there many srrynns?”
“Not since Atalan.”
Lorrel gazes across the room toward the windows and the dark night outside.
“Another day is gone,”
she mindspeaks almost to herself. She turns to me.
“I am to find you and bring you back. Mowdar will explain everything when you meet him. We must go very soon.”
I glare at her.
“What makes you think I’d just leave with you? First you attack me, and then you barely explain anything other than claiming to be my cousin. And then you tell me we have to leave, soon. To where? How?”
The girl looks down, the way that Henri does when I scold him. In Chloe’s far too large clothes, she looks a bit like a child caught playing grown-up. I find it hard to keep a frown on my face. Leaning back in my chair again, I mindspeak,
“No one’s leaving for anywhere. Not until I know what’s going on.”
“Everyone in our srrynn must do as Mowdar instructs. You can ask me what you want, but I may not tell you certain things.”
“Didn’t you say Mowdar is your father?”
I mindspeak.
She nods.
“Many of us are his children.”
“Where is your srrynn?”
“In the islands across the Gulf Stream. I can take you there, but I am not allowed to disclose any more.”
“Can you say why you aren’t allowed?”
Lorrel shakes her head.
I sigh.
“What can you tell me?”
“I left my srrynn months ago. It took me days to reach here.”
“Days?”
I mindspeak. Assuming Lorrel meant her srrynn lived in the Bahamas, I can’t imagine why it took her so long to travel. I’ve often ranged over the islands during my hunts. Not even flying to and from the furthest has ever taken me a full evening.
“Unlike you Undrae, we can only fly short distances,”
she mindspeaks.
“I swam. And then I looked for you on this island. But you and your family only showed yourselves in human form. I watched you and followed you for months. I could not be sure what we had been told was true. . . . Not until a few weeks ago when I saw two adult Undrae flying from the island in the night.”
The girl shakes her head.
“Even then I worried whether I would ever find the opportunity to reveal myself to you. Mowdar insisted only you could be approached. He gave me the ring so I could prove our relationship.”
“You said you were told about me?”
Lorrel nods.
“We were told you lived on your father’s island.”
“Who told you?”
The girl shrugs.
“Only Mowdar can say. You will learn that when we are with the srrynn.”
“And if I refuse to go with you?”
I mindspeak.
“I am afraid you cannot.”
She smiles.
“You cannot even afford much delay. Believe me, I would not mind staying here a little longer. Ordinarily we eat mostly fish and dolphin. I have never had so much human meat as I’ve had in the last few months. I have come to like it very much.”
Sitting up, I turn toward her. Her foray into my territory has brought only tumult and trouble. Had she never come and never killed so many humans, my wife and children would be with me now. I ball my fists, growl my words.
“I could just kill you, you know.”
Lorrel shrugs.
“That would be unfortunate for you.”
She looks toward the kitchen counter, points at the swordfish sword.
“You asked me about that before. Why don’t you get it?”
Anger flushes through me.
“You’re hardly in the position to either threaten me or suggest what I should do,”
I mindspeak, stifling the impulse to jump from my chair and rip her to little pieces, but getting up nonetheless, standing over her, glowering at her.
The girl looks up, shows no sign of any distress.
“This brings me no pleasure,”
she mindspeaks.
“I am only a messenger. Save your anger for Mowdar—don’t waste it on me. If you want to confront him, come with me now.”
She stands, stares into my eyes.
“If you will not get the sword, let me. I want you to understand what you face before you decide to refuse my father.”
I nod and she walks to the counter. As she picks up the sword, she mindspeaks,
“Your women mix potions, do they not?”
“Yes.”
“We mix potions too, and other things,”
Lorrel mindspeaks. She points to the limp, translucent balloon at the sword’s thick end.
“This is the air bladder of a fish.”
Unwrapping the line that holds it to the sword, she smiles.
“And this is fishing line. Once we wove our own line from strands of seagrass, but fishermen lose so much of this. . . .”
The line finishes unraveling and Lorrel deposits it and the bladder on the counter, holds the sword point up to the light and stares with one eye through the thick end. She nods and brings it to me.
“Take it. Look through the thick end. Point it at the light,”
she mindspeaks.
Doing as she says, I see the thin pinprick of light that travels through a small shaft in the center of the sword and runs from its point to its thick end.
“It’s hollow,”
I mindspeak.
“Yes, it is,”
Lorrel mindspeaks, taking the sword back from me.
“There is a blowfish that our people know how to find. In its head it has a tiny sac of poison, dangerous for other fish but not too much so for beings like us. But if you grind up red coral and mix the two . . .”
She looks into my eyes.
“You end up with a slow-acting poison that can kill even the biggest Undrae. That is what I had in the fish bladder. That is what is now in you.”
I suck in a breath. Running my right hand over the now-healed spot on my midriff where her sword had pierced, I shake my head. How could this insignificant creature have the power to kill me? How could I die without seeing or talking to my wife and children again?
“Undrae, you are not dead yet,”
Lorrel mindspeaks.
“I told you it is slow-acting. You will not feel it until the third day. Then it will be as if a fire erupted where I stabbed you. The pain will grow outward from there until every part of your body is on fire. Without the antidote, no one lives to see the fourth day.”
Walking over to the windows facing the ocean, I sigh and stare at the few scattered boat lights traveling on the dark water.
“May I assume you have the antidote?”
I mindspeak.
“Yes, but not here.”
Lorrel walks over to me, stands next to me, staring out too. She points in the direction of Bimini.
“I left it near Bimini. But only one dose. It is temporary. It only lasts three days.”
Turning, I glare at her.
She shrugs.
“Mowdar wanted to make sure you would come with me. We have all the antidote you may ever need at my srrynn.”
Far out at sea, a cruise ship passes by heading south, its many rows of lights cheerfully glimmering in the dark. I watch it pass and envy its passengers and their carefree vacations.
The ship could easily be traveling to Jamaica. If so they’ll come closer to my family than I can. I wish I could talk to Chloe, discuss all this with her. But she’s unavailable by phone and more than a thousand miles out of mindthought range. Not that I see any options anyway. If all is as Lorrel says, I have no choice but to accompany her to her srrynn.
I turn, go to the phone and dial the number for my home in Jamaica, just in case Chloe hasn’t left yet. But the phone rings until the answering machine comes on. I listen to Chloe’s taped voice and then say, “It’s me. If you can’t get me when you return, call Claudia. Love you.”
Hanging up, turning toward Lorrel, I mindspeak,
“When did you want to leave?”
“Now. If we swim without resting we can be well past Bimini by morning.”
I look at her, shake my head.
“I’m the one with poison in my veins. I understand how little time I have. But it makes no sense to swim when we can travel so much quicker in my Grady White. I can repair the motor tomorrow morning, straighten out a few things and still get us to Bimini by mid-afternoon.”
“We do not need your boat. It cannot take us to my srrynn. We should leave now. You need to drink your antidote as soon as possible. . . .”
“Not really,”
I mindspeak.
“You said it would take three days until I felt it, didn’t you?”