Chapter Four
Merman
When Sariah came to her senses, she found that she was on a beach, which made perfect sense. Of course after eating so many sandwiches with Nanny Eleanor she would take a nap in the sun. She had been so exhausted from waking up early and sitting still in the stuffy train car—it was only natural to take a nap on the warm sand.
Sariah sat up and squinted in the evening sunlight, which seemed to be shining right on her face. She held up a hand over her eyes and—
“Oh, good! You’re up. I was afraid you were dead.”
Sariah blinked and whirled around. The naked boy—no, the merman—was behind her. His tail dangled in the ocean while his torso was up on the sand. He propped up his face on his fist and stared at her.
“You—”
“I hope you’re not going to faint again.” He looked a little concerned for her. “I’m a merman. Yes. Not a mermaid, either.” He sounded very offended by the suggestion.
“My—my apologies,” Sariah stuttered.
He seemed to ruminate on her apology before he finally nodded. “That’s okay. You did get me free from the cage, so we’re even.” He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you. My name’s Red.”
Sariah blinked as his crimson tail flicked back and forth. “You mean...just like the color of your tail?”
He nodded.
“Your parents were very unoriginal. That would be like calling me Chicken Legs or—or Brown Hair!”
“Oh, my parents didn’t name me.” The merman shook his head. “That’s just what everyone else called me when they wanted to be specific to who they were yelling at.”
Sariah’s mouth drop opened. She wasn’t sure who everyone else was, but they certainly hadn’t been nice. They sounded even worse than Nanny Eleanor. At least Nanny Eleanor bothered to use the proper names of people when she yelled at them.
“Well—well...well,” Sariah stammered for a moment. “That’s just not right! I refuse to call you Red. I’ll call you...um...I’ll call you George. That’s your name.”
Granted, she almost thought that Red was better than George, but it was all she could think of on short notice. Her cheeks flushed with heat, and she was sure they were the same color as George’s previous name.
But George stared at her. His dark eyelashes fluttered against his pale skin once before his equally dark eyes filled a bit with tears. “That’s—that’s like a real name?”
“Of course. Everyone needs a real name,” Sariah said firmly. “And don’t you ever answer to Red again. You tell them when you go back that your name is George now.”
“Oh, I’m not going back!” His voice grew very hot with passion. “I’m never going back. Especially not since you got me out of the cage!”
Sariah gave a little harrumph. The worst part of the whole situation was that she felt very much like Nanny Eleanor when she declared, “Well, that’s just silly. You have to go back. That’s what families are for. Frances and Lizzie and I get in fights all the time—Fitz gets in trouble something awful sometimes and always threatens to run away, but he always comes back. You just have to. No matter how bad the fight, your family still wants you.”
“But you don’t—” George began, but the sound of voices interrupted him.
They were still too far away for Sariah to make out what they were saying, but she could hear their raucous laughter. They sounded boisterous, but as far as she could tell, there was nothing sinful about being too loud. If there was, Fitz and Connor would be too far gone for any redemption whatsoever.
She startled at the new voices, but nothing else. Her reaction, though, paled in comparison to George’s.
“No!” he whispered in such a defeated voice that it made her heart break for reasons she couldn’t explain. “You can’t let them see me. Please—please.”
He struggled to pull himself up on the sand. His fingers dug into the hardened mush as he struggled. More tears pooled in his eyes and snaked down his face, leaving little smear marks of granules when he reached up and swiped them away with his dirty hands. He whimpered, his arms quivered, but he still struggled forward. The voices drifted closer, but, if Sariah had to guess, they were on the other side of the cave.
She opened her mouth to ask who they were, but Lizzie’s words came back to her. Was that really the most important question right now? No. George was clearly scared of them, whoever they were. And, once she mused over all the puzzle pieces she had, she realized that they were on the other side of the cave—possibly heading towards the cage…
Whether or not they were the people who had been responsible for the cage, and regardless of whether or not it had been intended for George himself, the poor merman certainly must have felt that those men were trappers coming for him.
Without a word, Sariah tucked her arms underneath his armpits and began to drag him up the coast and towards Nanny Eleanor’s house. It was certainly harder work than she’d expected. George looked quite scrawny, but his tail—his tail must have weighed a good thirty or forty pounds, it felt like. Sariah grunted and dug her heels in to help her, but—but—
With a tiny “oof” and an explosion of loose sand, Sariah’s bottom collided with the ground. She coughed on the bits that flew in her mouth and still kicked in a desperate attempt to cover some distance before she could regain her footing.
Above all, she must never let Nanny Eleanor know of George’s existence—
The door to the cottage swung open. Sariah squeaked and began to do little bottom-hops towards the large beach grass. If she could get there, hide George amongst the reeds, all before Nanny Eleanor saw them—
“Good heavens, child,” Nanny Eleanor murmured. “Here. Let me.”
Sariah balked as Nanny Eleanor shooed her away and hoisted poor George up. Though she couldn’t get his tail completely off the ground, somehow Nanny Eleanor had the strength to get him up to her chest until only his fluke was on the ground.
“Well? Don’t just stand there like an imbecile, Sariah. You’re a grandchild of mine, so I know you’ve got acumen. Go cover up the tracks and then meet me inside the house.”
Nanny Eleanor gestured her head to mean the little imprints, all the way from the shoreline, of Sariah and George’s struggle. Although a hundred—possibly even a thousand—questions buzzed about Sariah’s skull, this was no proper time for them. She instead took to kicking and dancing across the waves, to make it look like a little girl had just had the time of her life, instead of a strange rescue mission. With every hop and skip, she felt a pinch of pain in her foot, but she couldn’t focus on that in her haste. By the time she’d finished, she’d yet to see whoever was on the other side of the cliff, and they’d also stopped talking. Both of which were somehow not as comforting as they ought to have been.
Sariah finished her mission and darted back up to the house. “Nanny? Nanny Eleanor?”
“Shut the windows!” was the first reply, followed by: “And draw the curtains!”
Sariah did so dutifully. Across every one of those clear, stained glass windows was a little latch. Sariah fastened them all firmly—remembering the one in her own room at the very last moment—and then joined Nanny Eleanor and George in the bathroom.
Nanny Eleanor had a grand clawfoot tub in there. Water gushed into it, and, for some reason, she had decided to add in a few packets of bubble mix. George was in there as well, although in the time it had taken Sariah to make her preparations, the water had come up past his tail and was almost to his neck.
Sariah didn’t even use Lizzie’s rule before she blurted out her next question. “Why did you put in bubbles, Nanny Eleanor?”
Nanny Eleanor stood up and swiped at her forehead. “Tell me, Sariah, what seems less suspicious—having a merman with his tail sticking out of the bathtub, or having a grandson taking a relaxing bubble bath?”
Sariah could only squeak in return. There seemed to be so much to say, so much, indeed, that all her questions and comments were ramming against each other and keeping anything from coming out.
Luckily, George did not seem to be suffering from the same infliction. “You knew I was here?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, dear boy. Of course not.” Nanny Eleanor swept a grand strand of her hair off her shoulders. It was hard to tell whether she was being sarcastic or not from the dry tone in her voice. “It was just by luck that Sariah found you on the day we arrived.” She tapped her finger against her elbow as she crossed her arms. “Because you weren’t supposed to be here for two more days.”
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