PART ONE
August 29, 2017
World Harvest Outreach Seventh-Day Adventist Church
Houston, TX
The mermaid led Charlie Hunt straight to her truck, which was parked on a slant at the far corner of the back lot. Well. A truck, surely it wasn’t hers? Did mermaids even drive? Were there mermaids? His family—every family he knew, actually—was sharply divided since CNN broke the story a few months back, and the division was mostly along age lines. The youngsters were sure those Undersea Fellas were real; people his age were betting it was the hoax of all hoaxes.
And was any of this really happening? It had to be a nightmare: it would never stop raining, the city he loved was drowning, he was smack in the middle of the deluge, he was powerless to do anything besides literal damage control, and now he’d let a young woman who may or may not have gills drag him away from important work. He should’ve stayed put and continued coordination efforts. He could see more volunteers coming around the front, and even from twenty feet he recognized their dazed exhaustion: the same thing he saw in the mirror when he took an infrequent bathroom break.
“Listen, miss, I’ve gotta—“ She’d slid the truck bed cover aside and was tugging at a heavy tarp someone had used to keep down whatever-it-was. He could hear muted clinking and automatically moved to help. “—got to get back to figuring out where we—whoa.”
No.
Couldn’t be.
“Is that—uh—“ He pulled harder, revealing more of the (there was only one word for it) treasure. He stared at her, then back at the gold. He reached out and, when she made no move to stop him, picked up one of the coins.
“Our research indicated hard currency is best.” He jumped a little—she’d gone from a few feet away to standing at his elbow without making any noise. Or she’d made a ton of noise and he was too dazed by the treasure-filled Ford to notice.
“Yeah, well. Your research was dead on.”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “You are kind to say so.”
“Holy God, this is real.” He ran his thumb over the dull gold coin, which was about an inch across and had raised bumps all along the edge. There was a cross on the obverse, flanked by castles and what might be lions. On the reverse, the date was faded but still perfectly legible: 1715.
And there were so many.
Charlie resisted the urge to bite into it, like they did in old movies. It had held up beautifully despite tumbling along the ocean floor for centuries. The gold alone was worth—God, he had no idea, hundreds of thousands? Maybe millions? He was an orthodontist, not a coin collector. But when you factored the age of the treasure and its value to historians—were those doubloons?—the price rocketed right out of sight. It wasn’t just coins, either, and it wasn’t just gold; he spotted several silver—or platinum?—chains, rings, some small cups, and heavy bracelets bright with jewels.
He’d been so numb when she’d marched up to him five minutes ago, he hadn’t given her more than a passing glance. Now he looked again. She was tall, almost exactly his height, and her skin was deep black with reddish undertones, like mahogany. Eyes—also dark, large and round, her corneas bluish with good health. Hair—midway down her back, dark with red tinges. And young—he’d never see forty again, but she hadn’t seen twenty, he’d have bet a Ford full of gold treasure on it. And her gorgeous coloring aside, she didn’t dress like a mermaid. Or like he would have imagined a mermaid would dress—in the movies, they always wore those shell bras and not much else. This one was sporting a pair of faded denim shorts and a black short-sleeved shirt. She was barefoot; her toes, like her feet, were long and narrow.
“You—this is yours.” He indicated the treasure. “You brought this here. For us? I mean—“ He waved vaguely, encompassing the parking lot, the block, the neighborhood, the city, the county, the state. “For all of us? How? Is this your truck?”
She blinked at him slowly, like an owl. “My lander friends are helping. We are all helping.”
“Lander friends?”
“You—“ She indicated the truck and for the first time, she sounded anxious. “You can make use of it, yes? To buy things and rebuild? To adequately compensate your Cajun Navy?”
“How do you even know about the C—“
“It is acceptable to you?”
“We can—uh—yeah. Very, very acceptable. But how? How’d you—and where? And—“
“Anything lost to the sea belongs to the Undersea Folk.” She said it straight-out, and didn’t elaborate. That’s that. And maybe for her, that was that.
Uh, the state of Texas might have something to say about it. And maybe the U.S. government—or would it be Spain? But maritime law wasn’t his strong suit any more than ancient treasure was. And he couldn’t think of a better use for old gold than to help people who had lost everything—everything—and still turned up to help and rebuild.
“So you’re saying you don’t have a receipt for any of this.”
Nope. Nothing. She just looked at him. Tough room. Well. Parking lot.
“I do not know what that is,” she admitted after a long silence.
“Good, that’s good—that’s definitely the story you should go with.”
She just blinked.
“Ooooookay,” he said when he realized she was waiting for him to speak again. Or for him to give her some direction? He wasn’t sure he should boss around a random rich mermaid. “Well. We have to—“ He looked at the truck again. He was pretty sure Food Town didn’t take doubloons. In fact, everything that had happened in the last ten minutes was way way past his paygrade.
“Miss, we’ll have to—“
“And the people.”
“Sorry?”
“The. People.” She’d stepped closer, which was alarming, because even dressed like a high schooler on her way to gym, she was intimidating. Because it wasn’t the clothes, or even the careful, almost formal way she spoke, or the treasure, or even that she’d raised her voice. The lady had—he groped for the word, found it—presence. “Where. Do you need. Your best. Swimmers?”
He stepped away, rubbed his ear. “All right, miss, no need to yell.”
“Forgive. You seem distracted.”
“Yeah, well, three days without sleep will distract the hell out of anyone,” he replied, and the lack of sleep was the least of it. He had decided this was definitely a dream, but figured it was best to proceed as if it was real. All that money—they could help so many people with all. That. Money. He felt for his phone, got it, pulled it out. Still working, thank God. He held up a finger and she tracked it like he was the eye doctor or something. “One sec, miss.”
She nodded slowly, which was oddly compelling—he found himself nodding with her. “As you wish.”
“Yeah, Jim? Yeah, it’s me—you gotta get over here. Right now. I don’t suppose you’ve got any of your coin books in your truck, huh? Never mind, we’ll do without. And—d’you still play Magic with Bill? Guy from Bank of Texas...? Yeah? You got his number? I got something you gotta see. And someone you gotta meet.” He looked at her, still standing patiently beside a borrowed truck filled with treasure. “I’m sorry, miss, I never caught your name.”
She blinked at ‘caught’, then said, “I am Valeria.”
He held out his hand and after a few seconds, she took it. “Charlie Hunt. Very very nice to meet you—aagh!”
“Apologies!” She took her hand back.
“No harm, no foul. You gotta helluva grip, Valeria.” Gah. He wiggled his fingers, relieved to find the feeling returning. It had been like shaking hands with an impact crusher. “But I sure am glad to meet you.”
She smiled, and he noticed again how she was careful to keep her teeth covered. Right. They—the mermaid people—were supposed to have long sharp teeth, perfect for chomping sharks or squid or whatever the hell they got up to under the sea. But if she was willing to bring in a few million by the truckload, he didn’t care if she had teeth like a rabid piranha.
“It will be all right, Charlie,” she said out of nowhere, and dammit. He must be more tired than he thought, because just like that, his eyes filled and for just a second, he was glad it was raining. Way too embarrassing to bawl like a kid in front of a stranger.
He cleared his throat. “It’s hard to see that right now,” he said with bald honesty, but she was already shaking her head at him in polite disagreement.
“It will,” she reiterated. “Your people are destructive—“
“Hey!”
“—but your resilience is terrifying.”
“Okay,” he said, mollified.
“And you are great rebuilders.”
“Damn right,” he said, and this time, when she smiled, he smiled back.