Jake entered the pawnshop with the last few pieces of jewelry. He had to buy a few things and this was his last hope to raise the cash.
As he approached the counter, an older woman with short red hair approached him. “Hi, sweetie, what can we do for you today?” She had a measurable southern accent.
Jake placed the ring, bracelet, and necklace on the counter. “I want to sell these.”
The woman quickly looked over the things. “These aren’t stolen, are they?” She chuckled.
“No, they aren’t.”
“I’m just kidding, honey. I’ve seen you in here before.” She performed a few tests on the gold and diamonds. “These are nice things.”
“They probably weren’t cheap.”
“Buy ’em for a girl, did ya?”
“Actually, they were given to me by my grandparents. They got them in Europe. I was supposed to give them to someone.”
“Aha, wedding things for a wedding that didn’t happen. We see that a lot.”
“Yeah, I just…I have no reason to keep them now.”
“These are nice pieces. We’ll give you a great price.”
“I trust you.”
After doing some calculations, she wrote three numbers on a piece of yellow paper and showed them to Jake. He moved his head back. “Are you kidding?”
She made a face. “Well, I can up it a little bit, but I think that’s fair market price.”
“No, I mean, that seems very generous.”
“Well, they’re expensive pieces. I’ll go to the safe and get you a check. I can’t give you cash for this much.”
She gave Jake way more than he expected for the pieces. He had no idea this stuff was worth so much. He’d hoped to get a few thousand bucks or so…he didn’t expect to get ten times that much. She said the ring would probably resell all by itself for six or eight thousand dollars.
On his way back from the bank he stopped by his shop. He still had the keys even though he had not paid his rent in months. With this money, he could definitely get the shop up and running again if he wanted.
He pushed open the glass door and flipped on the lights. The place still looked clean and ready for business. After the accident, he’d tried to come into work but could not. He and Paul were the only two people who worked in the shop full time. He hadn’t known Paul very long, only about a year after he moved down from Michigan, but they became best buds. He was handy with a wrench and charismatic with the customers.
He also had a part-time kid who helped on weekends, but Jake let him go when he could not keep the shop running. Before the accident, profits were at an all-time high and climbing steadily. His projections were putting him so far into the black that he’d have enough business to hire at least one more full-time person and another two part-timers every summer. He’d just branched out into the bike rental aspect at the end of the summer and that promised to be very lucrative.
As he walked by rows of bikes and parts, he missed his everyday life for the first time since the accident. His visit was nostalgic in a way. It was like this place was frozen in time, stuck in the exact place he’d left his life.
He glanced up at his baseball trophies on the tall shelf above the register, and his mountain bike trophies below those. It had been a long time since he’d bothered to look at them. He was proud of them, but he was the only one. Neither of his parents were ever really present in his life, they were too busy messing up their own. As long as he stayed out of trouble so his mother’s reputation would not be tarnished, that’s all that mattered.
He gripped the bars on his favorite red bicycle. It sat untouched in the same place he’d left it. After a few more moments, he locked up and went back to his car, glancing once at the sign that had his name, ‘Wheeler’s Bikes,’ in red letters.
After heading back home to pick up his kayak, he drove out to the inlet at Fort Fisher. Whoever sent him that warning to stay away from Ariel obviously didn’t know him very well.
He dropped the boat in the shallows and quickly paddled out into the water, working hard to get away from the shore as fast as possible past the breakers. The waves were still small, but according to his surf report, they were going to pick up later. And this side of the island was not as choppy.
Once he settled into the calm, he took out his phone and started looking at the maps. There were numerous small islands and inlets around the area. One of them had to be the place where Ariel was retreating.
Cutting his oar into the water, he headed toward the closest series of islands. At first glance, none of them appeared to be large enough to house anything. But as he got deeper into the vegetation of the snaking inlet they got larger in size. On one of the farther ones was a house, brown, slat-board, dilapidated. It didn’t look like anyone could live there. Maybe someone had fifty years ago.
Grounding the kayak onto the rocky shore with a few hard shoves, he climbed out and walked up the wet sand to the house. The place was deserted, and had been for a long time. He pressed on, opening the front door with a shove of his shoulder. The door protested and fought but he managed to twist inside.
The place smelled like the sea. The wood had soaked up years of salt and seaweed, but surprisingly the interior looked to be mostly intact. It was dirty, and musty, but it looked better than he figured it would.
It appeared that there was once an upstairs. But only the bones of the staircase remained and reached to nowhere. He looked straight up to the beamed roof. The place was too big to call a shack, but fell short of being a house at this point.
Jake moved cautiously over the wooden floor as the creaks and groans of protesting panels threatened to crack and drop him into the basement. Although a look through some of the busted planks revealed no basement, only a dirt crawlspace of about two feet down.
He felt like this was a waste of time but explored the island extensively anyway. He wasn’t even sure why he was here…other than the peacefulness the place had nothing to offer. Nothing here was going to help him. The sun was dropping and he didn’t want to get caught out there in the dark, so he decided to head back.
With a shove and a hop, he was back into the water and paddling out. As he cut around the first path back toward open water, he saw her on the rocks. For the first time, he saw her entire form, tail and all just lying there. She was on her side with her head propped on her hand.
“Ariel, I didn’t expect to see you.”
“What’re you doing out here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“So you did expect to see me.”
Jake thought about her point. “I guess what I meant was I didn’t expect to see you just right out in the open, it’s still daylight. How’d you find me?”
“I had a feeling. I’m not exactly sure.” She smiled coyly. “I’m drawn to you, I guess. This place is very secluded. No one comes back here.”
“But I just did.”
Ariel smiled. “But no one else would be so nosy.”
“I wanted to see you.”
“Now you see me.” She smiled. “And now you don’t.” With a splash she jumped into the water and took off down the stream toward the ocean.
Jake slapped his paddle into the water, ripping off a few quick strokes on one side before switching to the more traditional left-right swipes that propelled him forward. Ariel popped up in front of him and looked back, to see if he was chasing.
Out into the flat deeper water, away from the inlets, she disappeared again and didn’t come back up. Jake stopped and looked around. After what seemed like a long wait, she popped up at the bow of his kayak, and held on.
“Now you see me again.”
He looked around. It wasn’t nearly dark enough. “Isn’t it kind of light out?”
“So?”
“So someone down the shore over there could see you.”
“Not unless they have a telescope. Besides, I’m on the other side of your boat. They can’t see me.”
“I guess not.” He glanced around. “Ariel, you should know that someone doesn’t want me to see you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Last night, there was this strange guy by my car. He said some strange stuff. Then this morning, well, someone threw like a hundred little plastic mermaids at my house.”
She looked at him and for the first time her pretty smile seemed to sour. He’d never seen her look so serious. Yet she still looked so beautiful. She glowed even when she wasn’t trying to glow. “What could it mean?”
“I don’t know, Ariel. But obviously someone is trying to scare me away from you.”
“You don’t know that. And anyway, that’s impossible. No one has seen us together.”
He shrugged. “Someone has. I met someone today who said he saw someone like you, only a long time ago.”
Ariel let her chin drop to her arms. She looked so sad.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Don’t be sad. I’m not afraid.”
“There is no one like me anymore.”
“But there was.”
Ariel nodded. “Father told me she died.”
“Your mother?”
She nodded as tears welled up in her eyes. “She died on the day I was born.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, it’s the circle of life. My kind must die in order to be born.”
“What? Who told you that?”
“Father told me.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s the way it goes. Soon I will become pregnant and then I too will have to die.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t believe that.”
“It’s all true.”
“How can that be?”
“It has always been that way.”
“That’s morbid. That’s sad.”
“It’s only sad to you. I’ve been ready for it my entire life.”
Jake knew something was askew. If the woman that washed up on the beach twenty some years ago was Ariel’s mother, she didn’t die of natural causes. She died from a gunshot wound to the head.
“Ariel, what’s your father’s name?”
She looked at him as if no one had ever asked her and she didn’t know the answer. She eventually replied. “His name is Bruce Shepard. Why do you ask?”
He was a little surprised he had a name. “I was just curious.”
“You can’t tell that to anyone, Jake, not a soul. I’m not even supposed to know that.”
“Huh? Why aren’t you supposed to know your own father’s name?”
“That’s just the way it is. We mermaids aren’t supposed to know about our human guardians.”
“Well, isn’t he your father?”
“He’s my guardian, he’s not my father. I don’t have a father.”
“Well, forgive me for asking, but how did your mother get pregnant?”
“Mermaids just become pregnant when they hit a certain age. There is no partner needed for procreation.”
“What?” Jake laughed a little. “This is so bizarre.”
“There are many creatures of the sea who are born with seed. And that seed takes many years to bloom. I will become pregnant when the time is right.”
“So you never got to meet your mother, and you have no father.”
“We lead lonely lives. The sea is our only friend.”
“How do you get your human guardians?”
“They are chosen for us. We do not question these things.”
“Ariel, I gotta say, I thought being a mermaid was the weirdest thing about you, but your whole deal is far more bizarre than I would’ve imagined.”
“It is a unique life, but we cannot choose it. What we are born into are just the circumstances of our existence. We enjoy them to the best of our abilities.”
“Every creature on earth should have free will. It should be a God given right.”
“I have free will. I can freely enjoy my life for as long as it lasts, as limited as it is. I don’t dwell on what might be or what could be, I only live in what is.”
Jake didn’t know what else to say. He could learn a lot from her. “I guess that’s admirable.”
“We grow where we are planted, Jake.”
“Well, where you’re planted sucks.”
“Only to you. I do not wish to aspire to be more than I am.”
He nodded, but her face hid another truth. It was getting dark and he didn’t want to have to navigate back to the shore blind. “I have to start heading back.”
“I will swim with you.”
They coasted through the sea in silence for several minutes. Then Ariel said, “You’re sad. I can sense it.”
“I’m sad for you.”
“Don’t be.”
“I’m trying not to be. But I’m also sad for me, selfishly.”
“That’s natural.”
“I just met you, and now I feel like you’re going to be taken away from me too. Just like everyone else.”
“Not for a time still.”
“So you say. But apparently you don’t even know when you’re going to have to die. This is a horrible uncertainty.”
“I will have nine months to prepare myself for it.”
“Birth is supposed to be beautiful, but for you it’s a death sentence.”
“Life is a death sentence, Jake. We are all born to die.”
“That’s just too depressing.”
“It can be, but it can also be freeing. I live like my life is going to be short because it is. I enjoy every moment. I see the wonder everywhere. You should too.” She popped up on the kayak with him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Then she kissed him long and soft, yet firm.
She let go and slid back into the sea. “Goodnight, sweet Jake. Sleep well and dream of the sea—dream of me—and in another universe—what we could be.” And she slipped away.