A Merman's Tale 29

Chapter 29: Phoning Home, and 'Mail Call'



  Most of us had finished breakfast Thursday morning when a ship appeared overhead and dropped anchor. Diane and I did not recognize this newest arrival, but many other Mers immediately did.

  [She is the Merry Maid! If you want call your friends and family on land, here is your chance!] a blonde mermaid said after grabbing my arm with one hand and pointing to the shadow overhead with the other, she then let go and headed up herself.

  Dozens of Mers were already there when Diane and me broke surface alongside the ship. Some were already climbing on board via a ladder, others chose to wait until the crew had deployed a stairway. Other sailors had a sling at the ready but most, if not all, Mers who came up opted for the ladder or stairs instead. Getting back into the water was of course much easier for us Mers - climb over the rail or 'crawl the plank,' then dive in.

  Since it would be some time before our turns came to use one of the phones on board the ship, Diane and I, along with Gizella, Sara, and Yuki, plus Bruce, spent the time chatting amongst ourselves and with other Mers. For many it was the first opportunity they had had to call their families since coming to the Sutherland; as much as they enjoyed the freedom of swimming in the sea instead of a small lake or a pool, they also missed their families.

  "That would be great if they could make a waterproof iphone or something like that" a mermaid who was in 'line' ahead of us said "and if they can put in some kind of antenna we would be able to call any time we want, even when this ship is not here."

  "And at night too, when our families and friends are more likely to be home" someone else added. "That would make it so much easier for all of us to keep in touch."

  "I agree" Gizella now spoke. "We're really not all that much different from how we were before we got changed."

  "Right!" Sara said. "I called my family as soon as we confirmed our flight to Bimini and told them about the Sutherland, they're waiting to hear from me what it's like to live here and what I have been doing."

  I was briefly distracted from the ongoing chatter when I noticed Janice climbing up the stairs. Debbie tried to use the ladder but had some difficulty, perhaps because of her vertical tailfin, and finally elected to use the sling to board the Merry Maid. I imagined Janice would call Marlon at least, and thought Debbie would certainly call at least one of her professors with a progress report on how she was doing.

  We decided that when our turns came to climb on board, Gizella and Bruce would go first, while Diane, me, Sara, and Yuki would follow. Gizella wanted to ask one or both of her brothers their thoughts on what we might do with our land home, and Bruce was looking forward to rejoining his family in time for Christmas, now only four days away. The rest of us were just as eager to call, but figured our own loved ones could wait a bit longer.

  Eventually our turn came, and as I swam toward the ladder I saw a crewman lower a touchpad wrapped in clear plastic into the water.

  [What are they going to do with that?] Diane wondered as we treaded water, holding hands, while Sara climbed up the ladder.

  [I don't know. Maybe someone is testing a design for a waterproof smartphone.]

  When Sara disappeared over the rail, Diane and I mounted the ladder and pulled ourselves up as well. As we crawled on all-threes toward the phones, I glanced around at the crewmen I could see. Earlier I had overheard somebody say the crew included Xanadu survivors, but I saw no one whom I remembered from the convention. At least one recognized me however; I all but jumped out of my tail when he called me by name - my pirate name! I quickly recovered from the shock, and turned to face my questioner. He looked like he could have just stepped off the deck of the Royal Fortune - or the HMS Swallow, which had captured Batholomew Roberts' flagship almost three centuries ago.

  "Aye, she was my ship back in the day" he said "and that other ship had some real characters on board too. You should meet some of them when you have the chance. Pirates weren't all such bad actors, some were just trying to survive and make a living."

  "I have read some of the stories myself, and if things had gone just a bit differently, I might have become a pirate too" I said.

  "Honored I am to have met you, Mr Starling. I do sense some feistiness in you."

  "I don't always suffer fools or jackasses gladly, and I have met some of both over the years" I said.

  "We have had some right good captains in the Navy, but some tyrannical ones too. That was enough to cause of us to desert and turn to piracy...perhaps you would have made a good commander...men will willingly serve under captains who are strict, but fair."

  I couldn't help but blush a bright green as I spoke "Thank you for speaking so favorably of me..." We then had a hearty handshake before parting.



  I didn't try to call my father; he bowls every Thursday afternoon, it is one of the highlights of his week. Instead I gave my brother Steve a call, during our family get-together early this month he told me Wednesday would be his last day of work prior to Christmas. Midway through the second ring the phone was picked up and his voice answered.

  "Hello?"

  "Hi Steve, how are you doing?"

  "Pretty good, our tree is up and all our shopping is done. What have you been doing? I tried to call you last week but your friends said you had gone to the Bahamas to see some sunken ship that was to be a new home for you Xanadu Mers, is that right?"

  "That's right. Diane and I both went first to check it out and call back to tell the others what we thought about perhaps living there ourselves."

  "What did they think then?"

  I couldn't help but chuckle a bit before answering "We never got the chance to tell them! They didn't wait to hear back from us, they were able to hitch a ride on somebody's private jet to get down here, it was quite a surprise for us two when we met!"

  "What is the name of that ship you went to see?"

  "The Sutherland Express. She's an old Liberty Ship built during the war and similar to the Victory Ship that Dad sailed home on when he came back from Europe."

  "Are you going to live there now?"

  "Yes, we have all decided this will be our main home." I then paused, not sure for a moment how to explain why, before continuing. "In a way, we are as free in the sea as a normal person is on land, we don't need wheelchairs or have to crawl...I guess with our tails and gills we are as free in the water as a bird is in the air. We can swim and jump on the surface like you have seen us do, and we can also swim over three hundred feet down with no problem."

  "How deep is the...Sutherland?"

  "She is in about two hundred fifty feet of water."

  "How many mermaids and mermen are living there now?" Steve asked, recalling the Mers he had seen at Lake Xanadu during his visit to Orlando.

  "A lot! Somewhere around one hundred fifty, I think, and most of us are female, like you saw at the lake."

  Steve turned away from the phone for a few moments, when he again spoke to me I could now hear Linda as well; she had just gotten home and picked up a phone in another room.

  "So, Harry, have a lot of mermaids been chasing you around?" she jested.

  "Not really, believe it or not" I told them. "Diane - you remember her - and I seem to have become boyfriend and girlfriend" I said with a bit of understatement. "We didn't plan for it to happen, but we are very happy it did turn out that way!" Diane was on another phone a couple places away, so we couldn't communicate with each other just then, I guessed she was probably talking with her sister.

  "Didn't I tell you you would eventually find someone who was just right for you?" Linda said.

  "You certainly did!"

  "So how did your friends and all the other mermaids take it when they found out you were no longer 'available'?"

  "Pretty good, actually. Giz and Yuki were especially happy for us, they and the others wish there were more mermen to go around!"

  After a couple more minutes Steve asked how we communicated.

  "Do you surface whenever you need to talk?"

  "No, we're too deep to do that all the time. My telepathy has come in very handy, and there are a couple other Mers who are telepathic too, but we will all be learning sign language."

  "You have somebody there who knows the language?"

  "Yes, we do. One of the other mermen is a certified instructor. I have been pretty busy helping him when he holds classes underwater, and whenever someone needs help communicating below the surface."

  "Have you learned a lot of sign yet?" Linda now asked.

  "I'm surprised how much I have learned so far, then again, I've certainly had plenty of practice already."

  Practice, practice, practice I thought to myself.

  "How do you call when you are living in the sea? You don't have waterproof cell phones, do you?" Steve asked.

  "No, I don't think anyone does, I guess there is no such thing. We have a supply ship that comes here every so often. When she is here we can come aboard and use phones that are set up for us to use. They are low to the deck and easy for us to reach. We can't exactly stand up like you can unless we are holding on to something!"

  "If there is such a thing as a waterproof smartphone or something like that, you would be able to send and receive anytime you want, wouldn't you?"

  "We would need some kind of antenna, I'm sure, and I think somebody is testing a waterproof phone" I said, thinking of the touchpad I saw being lowered into the water just before I climbed on board.

  Following a couple more questions and answers on that subject, I was asked if any of us Mers had jobs.

  "One of the mermaids is an oceanographer, and some of us have been helping her do research. Currents, water temperature, marine life, that sort of stuff. We are also doing kelp farming and maybe we will do fish farming too. Some of us are interested in doing the kind of work we did up in North Carolina."

  "Could you do rescue work also?" Linda asked.

  "We already have. Gizella and Yuki last week helped rescue the crew of a fishing boat that was sinking off Cape Hatteras, and...have you heard about the Bahama Nova down here?"

  "We have" Steve said. "It's been all over the news. We even heard that they flew a team of mermaids to rescue the survivors who were trapped inside the ship when it capsized."

  "They did, the five of us you met up in Beaufort were the ones. Bahamian Rescue even asked for us by name. Now they, the Coast Guard, and the NTSB would like us to recruit and help train 'go' teams of Mers who would respond when called upon. By next summer we could each be leading our own teams. There is so much more, I had no idea there were so many jobs to do underwater!"

  Linda now changed the subject somewhat. "Andrea especially got interested when she heard about Mers being rescue swimmers. She even said she wishes she could be a mermaid when she grows up - a real mermaid!"

  "Is it really possible for her to be changed safely?" Steve added. He and Linda, like us, now knew of some of the old legends.

  "It's possible" I allowed myself to say. "She would need to think about it very seriously. There is a lot we can do now we couldn't do before, but there are also things we can't do anymore, such as bicycling" one of my favorite activities before my change.

  "Oh yes, bicycling. Every summer, it seems if she is not swimming, Andrea is riding her bike somewhere!"

  After a few more minutes Steve, Linda, and I finally managed to say our goodbyes and hang up. I had plenty of happy thoughts in my brain, and some more serious thoughts too. Was Andrea really serious about wanting to become a mermaid? What would she think if she did get a swim tail for Christmas? Her parents didn't say if it had arrived yet, but UPS or Fedex could still deliver it later today or tomorrow. I was confident I would be able to change her if her desire was strong enough, but still...



  Diane got off the phone at about the same time I did, after a quick kiss we looked around for a place on deck where we could talk and not be in the way or too close to the phones. We soon spotted Janice and Sara sitting next to one of the hatch covers, when they saw us they waved at us to come join them. Once we had crawled over, both had news of their own for us: Sara's brother Mike was going to enlist in the Coast Guard after graduating junior college this coming spring, and Janice had decided she would sell her apartment in Orlando, buy a houseboat, and move to the coast. Two of her friends there lived on their own houseboat and would help her shop for a suitable craft after Christmas, so Janice decided she would sail back with the Merry Maid this evening.

  "We will miss you Jan...come visit us whenever you can."

  "I will, that is one of the reasons I am moving to Titusville..."

  Janice was about to say something further when the four of us saw Gizella and Bruce hop-crawling their way toward us, their faces told us they were very excited about something.

  "What's up?" Diane asked.

  Gizella gave us her news first "I spoke with Dan, and Brian too. They both like our ideas for the house, maybe we could work out the details when we next go up to Beaufort."

  It was not long before Bruce was also able to tell the rest of us his story, if anything he was even more excited than Gizella was.

  "Mom and Dad say I can stay here till after Christmas!" he exclaimed.

  "Weren't you planning to leave here so you could spend Christmas at home?" Sara asked.

  "Yes I was, but I got so excited telling Mom and Dad about this place and what I have been doing, they told me I could stay here longer and go back for New Years' Eve instead. 'Think of it as a Christmas present' they said."

  "Cool, you will be glad you stayed with us a little longer!" Sara said. She and Bruce were becoming very good friends indeed.

  Yuki crawled up herself just then, triggering yet another round of story trading among the now seven of us. Her brother Takeo was as fascinated by his sister's story as anyone, that was probably no surprise given their family's long links to the sea and Japan being a nation of islands. I was sure it also has its share of legends about mermaids!

  Yuki did have one bit of disappointing news for us. Her brother's employer wanted him to attend a company meeting back in Japan earlier than first planned, which meant he would not be able to join our proposed New Years Eve gathering. It was a disappointment, but hardly the end of the world for us. Our other invitees were aware our own plans could change on short notice, so they were ready for the possibility themselves. We had all met pretty recently, and had also thought of possibly having a get-together sometime in May next year.

  "That would give us time to decide if we want to have it in Beaufort, or perhaps here in the Bahamas" I said.

  "And our families will be able to swim with us without freezing!" Sara quipped before continuing "Maybe Mike will be in uniform by then!"

  "If he goes into rescue work, perhaps we might even work with him on a mission someday" Diane added.

  At that time a mermaid who was crawling past told us "Stop by the mainmast over there (pointing) and let them know which photos are yours and where you want copies sent to. After you are done with that you can stop by the steps to the quarterdeck, there may be packages and mail waiting for you, some of the guys are taking care of that..."

  It didn't take any of us long to choose the pictures we wanted to send, the 'greeting' on the photo-cards, and whom to send them to. We were assured all the recipients would receive their cards by Saturday, the twenty third of December.

  We also noticed the crew had set up their own Christmas tree on deck. More than a few 'pirate and mermaid' photos were taken during the day. Diane and I joined in on the fun, although we chose one of our underwater photos for our 'official' Christmas card.

  Once that bit of happy business was done and Diane and Sara had called out again with the news of our latest change of plans (all concerned liked the idea of a late May gathering), we made our way further aft and soon learned we all had packages waiting for us. Diane and I opened ours and pulled out the necklaces and pendants we had ordered online early in the month. At the same time Gizella, Sara, and Yuki were squealing loudly with delight and holding up their new shells for us to see. The rest of us couldn't help but giggle with them.

  Diane and I had a little difficulty at first securing our necklaces around our necks, she finally did mine and I in turn did hers. After we spent a few moments running our fingers over our new adornments she thought [They feel like they are not coming off for anything if we don't want them to. Whoever made them made them good...very good!]

  [They sure did! Even up close you can hardly tell where the latches are.]

  [It's a good thing these are salt-water-proof...they certainly are not meant to be taken off every fifteen minutes or so.]

  We now noticed that Gizella, Sara, and Yuki had stopped giggling and were whispering amongst themselves, heads very close together. We wondered what they were talking about but didn't try to intrude before they ended their private conversation.

  "What's up?" Diane asked.

  "You'll find out soon enough!" Sara giggled. With little further ado the three of them splashed over the side and disappeared beneath the surface.

  Diane and I weren't yet ready to join them, we had noticed Janice coming our way. Bruce and Debbie were not in sight, we guessed they had also gone back into the water.

  We chatted with Janice for a few minutes, she told us she was not the only Mer planning to sail on the Merry Maid when she weighed anchor that evening.

  "Some of us want to spend the holidays with our families. One or two are like me, we can't run a business without a working computer and being able to talk on the phone. I think there are a couple more who are not yet ready to live here full time" she told us before adding "Marlon, Sally, and I will have dinner Christmas Eve with George, Lisa, and Justin. We six haven't been together since the night before the convention, they will want to hear how you and Debbie are doing."

  "You will have plenty to tell them." I said.

  "George called me when I was in the hospital the morning before you two came and asked how you were doing, but I really couldn't tell him much because I hadn't spoken with you since you and the others left Orlando."

  "Now you can tell them, because you you have!"



  When Diane and I decided it was time for us to return to our natural habitat, we crawled to the plank to plunge in (earlier, two crewmen had humored us by 'walking the plank' blindfolded and off the end into the sea). Diane crawled out first, when she reached the end she stopped and sat back on her tail, then slowly raised herself until she was standing upright on little but her tailfin. After a couple bounces she let herself fall into the water. Not to be outdone I then crawled out and stood up as she had done. Perhaps because of how my tail and fin blend together, I had less difficulty standing up than some other Mers. I then bounced off the board twice before diving in. When the two of us surfaced several crewmen clapped and cheered us.

  "That was great! Can you teach us how to do that?"

  "Not unless you get your own tails!" we called back.

  "We shall remember you said that!" one of the men answered as he waved.

  Diane and I dove down toward the Sutherland, curious to find out what Gizella, Sara, and Yuki were up to. We linked up and I found myself wondering [What would E.T. have made of this?]

  Diane giggled, then said [I knew I should have saved some of my Reeses Pieces! If I had had any after the change, maybe we would have found out if there really was an E.T.  I loved that movie when it came out.] She paused, then went on [A couple hours before we got changed I saw this couple pushing a baby in a stroller. He was a Playboy bunny, she was Hugh Hefner, their baby was E.T!] By now she was laughing so hard she had to stop talking until she could regain her composure. [They were leaving when I saw them, they said they had been there for two hours. Everyone thought their baby was so cute, and their costumes so hilarious! They said they had done it once before and emailed a photo to the real Hugh Hefner, just to see what might happen.]

  [Did he answer?] I wondered.

  [He actually did, they said.]

  [Did they say what his answer was?]

  ['Rofl'!]

  If we had still been on the ship, or dry ground, I think we would have been 'rofl' too!



  Diane and I got our first hint of what our friends were up to just above the funnel opening. Some mermaids swam out, when one of them saw us her face lit up and she split away from the others, then signed <I love this!>

  We had no trouble guessing why she was so excited.