Take me to the Deepest Blue
CHAPTER EIGHT

Right there in front of him was a creature with Narya’s face, her features obscured by her long hair, flowing in all directions in the water. Her previously flaxen color took on a different shade—golden like the sunset, lit by a force unknown. Every part of her glowed—from the colorful scales that covered her chest area, to the long, spellbinding fish tail that covered where her legs should have been. A tail.

As a school of four-eye butterflyfish swarmed by him, flashing their bright yellow fins, the glaring brightness triggered a memory he had tried so hard to shut away for years. The image of Narya overlapped with another apparition he’d seen for countless nights in his troubling dreams. The memory of this very scene emerged from where it had been buried. That long-forgotten vision he thought had been part of his hallucination after passing out underwater during the diving incident with Katie.

The shipwreck. Katie. He blinked and was momentarily transported back to that fateful day.

They had been down there for almost four hours. He looked at his watch again, trying not to turn back and face Katie. He couldn’t let her down—not now. He was her only hope. She had to survive this. Damn it, they both had to.

He first realized they were in trouble when Katie froze while they explored one of the cabins of the ship. She had been lagging behind, but he figured she was busy taking her time fiddling with every piece of debris she came across. When he swam up close enough to see her eyes, he saw they were drooping, as though she were falling asleep. He fumbled through her equipment, checking on her oxygen level but couldn’t see any obvious equipment malfunction. They had get out of here. He wasn’t going to take any chances with his little sister’s safety. He took her hand in his and signaled for her to move quickly. He swam speedily through the passage, past all the other cabins they already explored. He had carefully lain out a trail line in case they got stuck. This was nothing new—he’d done dives in shipwrecks before. He had taken every precaution possible. Every so often, he turned back to check on her, just to make sure she was still conscious.

Then the unimaginable happened. He felt a sudden tug and had turned to see why she had stopped. He still remembered to this day, the fear in his sister’s eyes. She hadn’t stopped voluntarily—she was stuck, tangled in rags of a fishing net. At first glance, it wasn’t worrisome. Harmless nets were known to have slowed down divers but they were seldom treated as a serious impediment. He tried pulling at the net with his hands. It looked like it was made out of nylon, and he had even chuckled at first, shaking his head as he tried to free his sister from this harmless obstacle. After ten minutes of pulling in vain, he looked up and watched hope drain from Katie’s eyes. Her eyes lost their luster, and she was slowly dozing into a deep, dangerous sleep.

He had scrambled around, desperately trying to replace anything remotely sharp enough to cut her loose. He swam back to all the different cabins they had been in but had become disoriented. He lost the track of time and started to feel trapped and alarmingly distressed, imprisoned in a world he loved, one that had soothed him from all outside harm. He himself was running out of oxygen, sensing it before he even had checked his meter. By the time he got back to Katie, her head was low and her body solemnly still. He had stayed beside her, without really looking at her, holding onto the hope that she, of all people, had to survive. Eventually, the darkness came to him, too. He had felt the tightness around his throat, and he reached out to hold her hand. As lifeless as it was, it was still Katie’s. He waited to be engulfed. He had been ready for it, and he waited.

He felt a small tug on his arm. At first, he figured it must be some curious fish—or worse, a shark. When he came to, a pair of curious eyes stared attentively into his. It was the face of a young woman. She didn’t seem completely human. Perhaps it was because she was down here, almost five hundred meters underwater, without any diving equipment. Or the fact that everything about her seemed too unearthly beautiful to be real. Her long hair floated gracefully around her, as she circled him and Katie like a curious fish. He held out his hand to try and direct her attention to Katie, but she had already noticed her. She leaned in and he could feel her pulling him up and away from Katie. No! He wanted to shout and stop her, but he was too weak to even raise his arm in protest. As she led him away from the shipwreck, his anger and frustration exhausted him, and he found himself devoid of any strength to fight off this mystical creature forever separating him from his sister.

The next thing he knew he was coughing and gasping for air. When he made a fist and realized he was grasping sand, he found himself lying on the shore. The sun was rising and the skies turned a dramatic combination of purple and orange. As he watched the water glimmer from the reflection of the sun, he knew what he had lost. It didn’t take long for people to gather round him—those who had shops on the beach, early surfers, and rescue divers. He wanted to go back to look for Katie, but he was too weak and couldn’t speak coherently. As he lay listlessly on the stretcher, waiting to be taken away in an ambulance, he watched the dark silhouettes put on their masks and dive into the water like it was any other dives of the day. The water was still, and the sun made its glorious entrance over the cloudless, clear blue skies.

It was the perfect morning for a dive.

It didn’t take long for them to bring her up. He wasn’t there to see her for the last time before his decision to cremate her. He didn’t need to. For hours, as he laid awake on the hospital bed, he tried to remember Katie as a child—as an annoying four year-old who tagged along whenever he went to his friends’ birthday parties. Her short, blond curls dangled above her forehead, something he always found annoying and at the same time ridiculously adorable. He would flick at them for fun but also as a sign of affection. He remembered her as teenager who curiously eyed whatever he was reading on the sofa. And her bright, wide smile that would light up any room.

A few weeks ago they had celebrated her birthday with Louise. Knowing Katie, they didn’t do anything fancy. They set up a small picnic in the middle of Stanley Park at dawn. The hamper was simple, but filled with Katie’s favorite food: a box of salted caramel donuts, fish tacos, an overly generous amount of brie cheese and crackers, along with a few bottles of expensive wine at Louise’s insistence. When she opened his present, she broke into a smile. It was a necklace; a small, delicate seashell-shaped pendant with a pearl in the middle, hanging on a thin, rose-gold chain. Something that befitted a fellow diver, he had told her.

And to that, she responded, “This is going to be my lucky charm.” She put it around her neck.

“To protect me from all kinds of troubles, right?”

And he hadn’t seen her part with it since. He remembered when they were in the shipwreck, and Katie had panicked as she got tangled up in the fishing net, her hand clutching that same necklace. He wondered then if she still believed that it would protect her. When they asked him if he would like to see her one last time, he declined. The lifeless, cold Katie wasn’t the one he wanted to remember. He preferred to select fragments of memories—specific, vivid moments that highlighted her at her best.

It took him a while before he was able to talk about what happened. Even after Louise flew in the next day, he had chosen silence over everything. Over food, over sleep, over almost every waking minute of that first agonizing week. Some days, when he locked himself in his room, he would try to open his mouth to say something, but heard only a sound resembling a sob that escaped him.

When Louise couldn’t take it anymore, she forced it out of him. And he hated her for it. He eventually said that everything had been his fault. From getting Katie into diving, for not being protective enough, for being stupid enough to agree to a shipwreck dive when they were both still jetlagged. For rushing Katie through that passage when she got stuck. For losing yet another person he loved. He didn’t cry after that—no tears would come. But all the blame, the what-ifs, all the hatred for all things underwater came like an unstoppable rush of adrenaline. When Louise probed further, asking him how he had managed to get out, he was unable come up with an answer. He wasn’t sure if he even knew. The apparition of that young woman seemed too ridiculous a thing to recount. When he thought back to that moment, he had convinced himself that it must have been his mind playing tricks on him. The lack of oxygen, he concluded. Now, as he stared into that same apparition, he wondered where reality drew its line. Was he dreaming? Or was she—Narya—the one that rescued him from the shipwreck that day?

Narya could feel Nick’s intense gaze on her. A piercing, relentless kind of look that had so sharp an edge that she felt it cut through her. She wondered if he had remembered their first meeting.

She’d seen them before—divers. But never encountering them head-on like this. No, she, along with other curious mermaids, or mermen, would watch from a safe distance. On her more daring days, she would venture closer to get a clearer view of the humans—although she could never see what they actually looked like since they were always veiled under weird looking dark suits. They had been warned, of course, of the consequences, should they ever be discovered. So they were always prepared to escape, in case they were noticed. But that has never happened before.

That day, she was aimlessly swimming around, half-heartily looking for Grey, who usually lurked around shipwrecks. She had almost swam past it without noticing the divers inside, but something that glimmered from a distance caught her attention. As she swam closer to investigate, she saw two figures floating listlessly in one of the cabins. Typically, they would be swimming around, or at least moving, using a camera or some kind of machine to record their time underwater. But this time, it was different. Something about them made her stop. It just didn’t look right. She swam as discreetly as she could to the window and peered inside. They were still not moving from where they were. Her curiosity got the better of her and she decided to brave the risks.

At first, she approached cautiously, moving her tail only when necessary. When only a few feet away from them, it surprised her that she could sense the energy they exuded. The one closer to her was taller, and she could tell it was a male by his physique, and that he was struggling to breathe. Perhaps not for much longer. It didn’t take her a full second to sense that life had already left the other one. She couldn’t see the face but could tell it was a young girl by the softness of her hands and the smoothness of her neck. It was her first time at such a thrilling proximity to a human. She wanted to spend more time observing them, even to just touch them for a bit longer. But when she saw the man’s head drooping, she knew that she had to move fast in order to save him.

She tugged gently at his arm, afraid to wake him as she wasn’t sure how he’d react. When she saw that he opened his eyes and didn’t panic at the sight of her, she figured it was time to move. She took his hand in hers and linked their fingers together and began to swim away from the shipwreck. She had to look back several times to make sure he was still conscious. They passed several schools of zebra fish and a few curious turtles that swam up and tried to nibble at the diver’s fins. Luckily, she didn’t see any merpeople. There wasn’t a rule against saving humans, but the fact that she had approached one was scandalous enough. She consciously took a different route to the surface, knowing which areas the others usually swam. When they surfaced, the land wasn’t too far out, but she still contemplated whether to bring him to shore herself. The sunrise lit up every corner of the beach, and she had to move inconspicuously toward the open shores.

As she laid him gently down on the sand, his eyes were closed and his breathing shallow. She wasn’t sure whether she should try to wake him or let others discover him. While these thoughts raced through her mind, she heard voices from a distance, and the decision was made for her on the spot. She took one last look at the diver before she dove back into the ocean.

She was still there. Narya. He blinked to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. Everything about her that had seemed overwhelmingly familiar now made sense. Had she known this all along? Did she come to him knowing she had saved him once before? Underwater, her tanned skin took on a more translucent glow, and her upper body looked as if it had been sprinkled with fallen stardust. A long, dark turquoise tail wrapped around her lower body, and it swayed with a life of its own as she floated before him. Her purple dress hung onto the bottom of her tail, an oddly beautiful accessory that appeared hauntingly out of place.

He watched her hold out her arm, and when he felt her touch, he recoiled, his dreamlike state shattered, and he knew he was running out of air. He swam upward as fast as he could and gasped for air, grabbing the emergency raft and resting his arms on the edge. Before he could go down again, Narya emerged from the water, and the sight of her made his heart race.

Her face glistened, and she couldn’t quite hide her guilt.

“I . . . ” She couldn’t continue. She let the silence linger and hoped for him to say something first.

Save for the glittering scales that traced her upper body, she appeared to be like an ordinary girl, and it made him question what was real.

“Look, I need to go check on Lou,” he said, not having anything better in mind to say to her.

“Right.” She floated effortlessly in the water.

His legs were already tired from the dive. It has been a long time since his last swim. His hands tightly clutched the raft, and he tried not to think of her fish tail, but then he heard a swooshing sound as it swayed in the water. He raised his eyes to meet her gaze, and they stayed motionless—a siren of the sea, and a man, each wondering what would happen next.

Nick was the first to break away, unable to process it all at once. He could still see her from the corner of his eye as he climbed onto the raft. She was waiting for him for some kind of affirmation. He searched his mind for something appropriate to say. How does one react to sea creatures that exist only in legends and mythical tales?

Reading his hesitance, she began to back away from the raft, and he knew that she might disappear into the deep blue if he let the silence drag on for too long. He had to say something—anything—rather than losing her to the ocean.

“Are you coming?” He was taken aback by how calm he sounded.

The silence made his chest tighten, and for a second he thought she had gone. He heard a splash and saw her swim past him, pulling the raft as she went and bringing him to shore at such an alarming speed that he almost tumbled back into the water.

“Okay, so what happens now?”

They reached the shore in less than five minutes. For a journey that typically took half an hour on a boat, this was frighteningly impressive. They wound up in the reef area, with rocks that shielded them from the beach. He watched her fiddle with her hair, hesitant to leave the water.

“Do you need . . . time to change?” He felt his cheeks redden at the preposterousness of his question.

“Yes.” Her voice was timid. “I think you should turn around.”

He obeyed and walked away, giving her the privacy that she needed. Facing a large rock formation, he tried to focus on the different sizes and shapes of its uneven holes. From where he sat, he could hear the ocean waves rolling onto the shore, an evocative sound that he never tired of. He felt like he was one with the ocean—he couldn’t imagine his life without being close to it. He supposed that he and Narya resembled each other this way. He heard another splash, and then a few small gasps before silence took over. Only the calming sound of waves being washed ashore remained. He shut his eyes, remembering the times he craved nothing more than jumping in and exploring the world that fascinated him.

A gentle tap on his shoulder roused him from his reminiscences. He opened his eyes to replace Narya wearing that same lilac colored dress, her wet hair tousled in a carefree way that reminded him of the first day they met.

He wanted to say something, but words couldn’t get through the convoluted web that cluttered his mind. What should he say in a situation as strange as this? Perhaps it was best to say nothing at all for now. Narya stood erect before him, consciously hugging herself. She was not only a dream come true, but a fragile one that he needed to hover over protectively. Something could set her off, and he could lose her forever. He nodded to himself and made up his mind to postpone his questions until later. There was a more pressing matter at hand.

“All right, let’s go check on Lou.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see anything?”

“No! God, for the twentieth time, can you leave me in peace for now? I almost died.”

Pete swaggered around the room, his hair in disarray and he was talking through his cigarette.

A true mad scientist, Louise thought. If anyone wanted to see what a genius looked like, they’d be horribly disappointed meeting Pete, legend of a marine biologist that he was.

“But I swear I saw a glimmer of something when she brought you up. It was like . . .”

“Like what, Pete?” Her patience was waning.

She stared longingly at the hospital jello and wished he’d leave her alone so she might indulge without an audience. He had been by her bedside ever since she woke up. At first, she found it kind of endearing. Maybe he cared for her enough to be there. But after he opened his mouth and began his ludicrous speculation about Narya, she was transported back to the reality where Pete was still playing the part of a genuine asshole.

“. . . like scales.” He stopped, contemplating what he had just said. “Fish scales.” He moved to the window that overlooked the ocean.

“What do you mean?” She would devour the jello regardless and opened it swiftly, searching for a spoon on the bedside table.

“Like as if she were . . . a fish.” He faced her now, his eyes intense, and it sent chills down her spine.

“Okay. First—what the fuck? And second, you are out of your mind, Pete. Are you sure you were sober on that boat? How many beers did you have? Four? Five?” She took the lid off the jello cup and started licking it. She had forgotten how much she enjoyed chocolate. She would add this to the list of things not to take for granted while she was alive. Not everyone gets a second chance at life.

“Listen—just listen to me, Louise. Put all of your fucking logical thinking aside for now, and let’s explore the impossible. Science has no limit, right? I swear. I saw scales on her before. On that first shark tag I took her and Nick on. This isn’t just my imagination. And this could be big.” He took his phone out of his pocket and searched as he scrolled the screen.

“Are you saying she’s . . . not human?” Louise tried not to smirk. “You’re saying she might be a . . . ”

“—a mermaid.” Pete finished her sentence with the word she least expected him to say. He was a marine biologist, not a five-year-old. This was beyond absurd, and she vehemently shook her head at him. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from snickering. God, she loved it when he got crazy. Good entertainment, if nothing else.

“Look,” he said, “I have this old colleague down in East Africa. He runs a small research facility on Pemba island, and he’s made some pretty interesting discoveries.” He lowered his voice despite there being no one else in the room.

“Pemba? That tiny island off Zanzibar?”

“Yeah. In Tanzania.” He nodded then he showed her a picture on his phone.

At first, she couldn’t tell what it was. The picture was dark and blurry, obviously taken underwater, and too hazy to make out any distinctive colors and shapes. But as she struggled for a better look, she saw what she thought could be a long tail, on top of which appeared to be a human torso. A small dot in the middle suggested a bellybutton. If Pete hadn’t mentioned the word mermaid, she would never have thought this was a picture of one. She took the phone from his hand and zoomed in closer. It could be anything, really, including a large fish. She looked again and tried hard not to blink. A large fish . . . with a waist and bellybutton. Holy shit. She was turning crazy, too.

“Okay . . . fine.” She cleared her throat and tried not to sound too agreeable, in case he got too eager to get her on board with this ridiculous mermaid theory. “So even if you and your friend aren’t completely crazy, what do you plan to do about it? You can’t just do research on Narya. She’s . . .”

She was going to say friend, but she seldom considered anyone a friend after less than a month. Even acquaintances she’d known for years didn’t make it to her friends’ list that easily. She was cautious when it came to people, knowing that she didn’t possess great people skills, but she was good at reading them. And there were only a handful of people she would consider her friends. She didn’t exactly dislike Narya, but she didn’t fully trust her. There was something so intangibly different about that girl. She took another glance at Pete’s picture, rapidly growing less skeptical of his theory.

“Well, technically, I can’t. It’d be against the law here.” Pete’s voice had an edge to it, and Louise could almost guess what he would say next.

“Oh, no. What are you proposing?”

“We can fly her to Pemba. You know, there are a lot of legal loopholes in African countries that we can take advantage of when we’re there.”

Louise could detect the excitement in the tone of his voice and rolled her eyes at his scandalous scheme.She didn’t answer right away. It was difficult to know whether or not he was joking. He seemed to have thought this through. And he had that crazy, determined look in his eyes that appeared only once in a blue moon when he would come across something research worthy.

“Look. Why don’t you do this . . .” He opened his bag and pulled out a bottle of murky water. “Spill some of this seawater on her leg, and see for yourself.”

Convinced that he already had proven himself right, he nodded to her and left the room.

They were quiet from the time they got to shore until they reached the hospital. Nick tried to think of what he would say to her, but he couldn’t manage to utter anything that wouldn’t be considered intrusive. As they approached the hospital, he walked behind her, and from time to time, he would stare at her legs, wondering about the biology of it all. He couldn’t help but try to make sense of this craziness. Was it a gene mutation? A possible defect? Are there more of them down there? A whole legion of them?

“I think that maybe you shouldn’t tell Louise about me.” Surprisingly, she was the one to break the silence first as they reached the sliding entrance doors. She stared down at her feet. He followed her gaze but could only picture her mermaid tail.

“Right.” He had to agree, it was not like he had other options. Knowing Louise and her ambitions, he wasn’t sure whether she wouldn’t expose Narya to the world for an easy shortcut to fame. And he felt his own curiosity bursting at the seams. It was a marine biologist’s dream come true. A new species of fish. Or at least some kind of a hybrid.

“How . . . I mean, what kind of . . . how does this work?” He gestured at her legs that had taken the form of a fishtail underwater only moments before. He regretted the question as soon as it had left his lips. He eyed her questioningly as he began to sweat uncontrollably, fearing that this would set her off. But she made no move to run back to the ocean, and his shoulders relaxed.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it.” Her gaze was direct and sharp, as though he had stepped over an invisible boundary.

“You mean you’re forbidden to talk about it? By the others?” He could feel her stiffen and knew he was pushing his luck. They stared at each other, and he hoped she would crack under pressure and spill everything. At the same time, he felt something tugging at his conscience.

“I really can’t.” Her face changed from a serious look to a kind of pleading that weakened his will and logic. He let infatuation get the better of him. And he willingly surrendered—for now, at least.

“So, are we . . . good?”

“Yep.” He stared straight ahead at the busy hallway of the hospital. She surprised him on a daily basis. And this, by far, was the biggest surprise. He doubted there could be anything more bizarre to trump this.

“Let’s go.” He let her walk ahead of him, and they scurried through the crowd of people. As he watched her from behind, he realized how easy it was for him to pick her out of all these ordinary people. The more he observed her, the more she sank under his skin and deep into his veins. She was something essential to his very survival. He made a silent vow to himself to protect her from harm—even from himself.

At first, Louise didn’t say much. It was difficult to tell if she was upset with them or if she was in a foul mood because of her injuries. She did thank her, ever so briefly, for saving her life. But a thick cloud of suspicion still lingered above them, stubbornly refusing to clear.

“I didn’t know you could swim.” Louise said with her arms crossed.

“It’s . . . been a while,” Narya said. She was palpably nervous and Nick didn’t blame her.

“Mm-hmm.” Louise’s passive aggressiveness was unforgiving.

“Well, you’re okay now.” Nick tried to divert the attention from Narya. She didn’t need to be under Louise’s harsh interrogation limelight after what she had been through today.

“Yes. Well, thank you for that.” Louise tried to sit up straight on the bed, but the action made her wince.

“Are you all right?” Nick moved to help her up.

“Yeah, I think I just need another dose of painkiller for my headache.”

“I’ll get the nurse,” Nick said, hurrying out of the room.

It was suddenly quiet, and the sound of Louise shuffling in her bed made the silence more unbearable.

Narya wanted to help, but she also wanted to leave before Louise could shoot off any more of her daunting questions. “Do you need anything else?”

“Sure. Can you grab me that bottle of water?”

Narya nodded and casually reached for the bottle. As she handed it to her, the cap came loose, and Louise accidently tilted the bottle, spilling water all over her legs and feet.

The feeling initially was very mild, the prickliness subtle, but then she began to feel it crawling over her feet. She looked down and a few scales had already appeared. A mixture of dark purple and bright lilac glimmered from the sunlight that seeped through the curtains. She tried to dry the water off with her hands, but the scales weren’t disappearing quickly enough, and she could only hope that Louise wasn’t watching her.

“Sorry, I’m just going to . . . go to the washroom. Here—here’s your water.” Narya placed the water bottle on the bedside table.

“Sure thing.” Louise didn’t look up, appearing busy with something on her phone.

Narya slowed her pace as she neared a cart filled with bed linens. Seeing no one around, she snatched a sheet and hastily dried off her legs. The colors were slowly fading now, and most of the scales were no longer visible, except for their subtle contour. She watched her human legs return to their normal state. Unsure whether or not Louise had seen anything, she could only hope that she had run away fast enough for her to miss the glimmer that shone from her legs.

She tried to remain calm when she re-entered the room. Louise was still occupied with her phone. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. Are you okay?” Louise didn’t even glance up from her phone. Narya relaxed her shoulders and sat in the chair beside her bed.

“Well, I should be asking you that question. Are you feeling better?”

“Yeah. I think so.” A faint sneer on Louise’s face made her slightly uncomfortable, and she shifted in her seat.

“I—um, I don’t think you’re supposed to drink that,” Narya said, eyeing the half-empty water bottle on the table—the one that had spilled on her legs.

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s seawater.” Narya cursed herself as soon as she said it. She could only pray that Louise wouldn’t read into this too much.

“And how’d you know it’s seawater?” Louise tilted her head and casted a wry glance in her direction.

“Well—I mean, you can smell it, right?” She tried to sound as casual as possible. Now really wasn’t the time to get on Louise’s bad side. She didn’t need any more suspicions after what happened today.

After what seemed like the longest few seconds, Louise shrugged. “Oh, yeah, I don’t know how that got in here.”

Nick walked in just in time with a nurse who wore her impatience bluntly on her face. They had definitely overstayed their visitor’s hours.

“Someone called for some painkiller?”