Chapter 4

THE PLOT THICKENS like errrmmm......stuff

Chapter 4

Laughter suddenly rang out through the trees as Zoe and Josiah jerked awake, Josiah rubbing his hair sleepily. Up until now they had been alone on the island but as she spotted two figures pushing their way through the undergrowth towards them she realized that this was no longer the case.

The two females stood at roughly the same height, with the same pale skin and jet black hair that shone like a crow’s wing as it swept past their waists. Both had lean figures, though the one that looked older had more curves but still paired with a slim body. They didn’t looked anything like Josiah but then Zoe noted their eyes glowed the same grey-blue, the same snubbed nose and face shape as Josiah. 

It only took Zoe a matter of seconds to make the leap that they must be his sisters that he had told her about even though they didn’t look all that similar to Josiah. Moments after that she made the next leap that therefore they must also be mermaids. This fact seemed to be backed up by the fact that their hair hung dripping wet and tousled and also Zoe had heard no boats so the only way they could had arrived was from the ocean. Oh and the fact they were completely butt naked, bar the hedges which gave scant coverage.

“Eww my eyes! I‘m blind!” the younger one laughed. 

“I’m guessing you know these two?” she asked him.

He nodded sheepishly. “They’re my sisters.”

“Son! There you are! We swam the seven seas trying to find you,” a shorter, older woman rushed in. She had tufty, blonde hair about three shades darker than Josiah’s that fell to the middle of her back and plenty of beads as well. 

“Hey! He’s over here we found him!” yelled a male barrelling through the hedges. He had dark hair, dark eyes and stood taller and broader than Josiah with a dark shadow along his jawline. He didn’t appear to be related by blood to Josiah but she could tell by the way he roughed Josiah up that he was somehow related.

“He is! Holy smokes!” the last to barrel in was clearly the patriarch of the bunch. He entered from the opposite direction to everyone else as Zoe turned and eyed him. He had grey hair that slicked back over his head, sagging skin and grey eyes that eyed Zoe with suspicion. He stalked up to her, looked her in the eye and then at Josiah who suddenly looked sheepish. The others had fallen quiet. “Who is that?” he directed at Josiah. 

“That’s Zoe,” he chuckled nervously. Zoe crinkled the fingers on her left hand in a comical wave.  

“I didn’t ask you what her name was,” he said sharply after a pause where Zoe felt sure he did a double take on her. Zoe backed away a step, this dude did not seem happy. 

Josiah winced and came over. “I….well she was dead… in that crash so I bit her.”

There was an outbreak of contempt as the younger sister rolled her eyes, the older called him an idiot, the other male groaned and his mother she supposed he was merely gave him a look. The older male who she guessed by now must be his father no longer looked angry but instead thoughtful. 

“You didn’t,” the other dude said flatly. Josiah managed a grin and nodded with a humorous shrug. 

“I don’t get it? He saved my life,” Zoe broke in. 

“The only way for Mer-folk to attain immortality is to bite a human,” the older sister muttered darkly. “He probably only did it because you was an easy target.”

“That’s not true!” Josiah broke in angrily. 

“Oh right like you love her or something,” the older sister retorted. 

“I do!” Josiah bit at the same precise moment Zoe said “He does.”

“Stay out of this land dweller,” his father said not even looking at her. “She is a person. She may have a tail and she may breath underwater but she is not one of us. You will take her to the fifth reef, the people are there looking at the crash. They will take her back to her people.”

His mother nodded. “She probably has family who are worried sick.”

Zoe blinked in horror and Josiah gasped. “No! She is one of us now-”

“Son. I am aware of that. I don’t want to banish you because your young and your stupid, most of the time. She can survive out of water but you cant. But that doesn’t mean I wont banish you to the land if you push me there,” he said, his eyes dark and his voice deadly calm. 

“You cant make me take her-,” Josiah raged, his blue eyes flashing. 

Zoe grabbed his arm. “No. He’s right.”

The whole group seemed to stare at her in surprise as Josiah looked down at her. Zoe nodded. “I will return to the land and I promise not to say anything about what I have seen.” She didn’t know where this small voice had come from, but she vaguely acknowledged that she said that.

His father looked surprised and somewhat smug. “A wise land dweller. There’s a change,” he mused. He then turned to his seemingly errant son. “You will take her back immediately.”

Josiah nodded in defeat and took Zoe’s hand. Zoe cast a glance over her shoulder at his family stood by the aqua coloured pool watching them leave before following Josiah through the dense foliage to the beach. The sun had risen into the clear blue sky as Josiah dived in. Zoe followed him and swam hurriedly after him as her back out to sea. They swam in silence, passing his hideout and beyond that reef. Instead of veering to the right where the crash site stood they followed the currents off to the left where one would naturally float to. 

After swimming for ages they came to the reef. It soared out of the ocean bed, the waves foaming and crashing above them. It protected no island but Zoe supposed that over the course of the future it would grow taller and eventually sand would settle on it, birds would rest and coconuts that had been drifting for ages would wash up and take root. The water was clear and blue, schools of silvery fish darting and wheeling through the water. Josiah stopped swimming and looked back at her. 

“Why? Why did you let them send you back? We could have done so much together,” his voice echoed in her head, the sadness profound in his eyes. 

Zoe shrugged, staring down at his hand. “Maybe they are right. We are two different species and I am from the land.”

“Yes but you could learn. I could teach you so much about the sea,” he said. “Or I could follow you to land and you-”

“Your Dad said you wouldn’t survive,” Zoe pointed out. 

“Ok  I should explain that. We can live out of water, we just have to soak our skin for at least an hour a day otherwise we do dry up and die. That’s why alcohol can be so dangerous for us. We have to keep really hydrated but we can and do live out of water,” Josiah explained. 

“So I could have a mermaid as a neighbour?” Zoe blinked. 

Josiah managed a vague chuckle but he still looked sad. “You wouldn’t know any different unless you saw their dorsal marking because merfolks keep their dorsal patterns even without the tail.” 

Zoe remembered his yellow spots and nodded. “Will I have to remain hydrated and soak my fins?” she asked. 

Josiah shrugged. “Not as much as a true mermaid. You could probably go a few days without having to soak and you would be fine.”

Zoe nodded softly, watching a clownfish behind Josiah dive in and out his purple anemone home. She wanted to stay and learn. But more than anything she wanted to be with him, to wake up on a deserted island in the arms of a merman. She didn’t want to leave but she realized that his family was right. They were two different species. She sighed. And her family, they probably thought she was dead. She could imagine the grief they must be going through.

“Once you get up on that rock, your fins will dry and people have been coming through here. They will see you and take you-,” he paused, trying to spit out the last word. “Home.”

“Yeah,” Zoe nodded dully. 

Zoe looked at him sadly and then threw her arms around him. He tightly wrapped his arms around her waist as she curled her tail around his. She could feel his heart hammering in his chest as the current rocked them gently. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay in his arms like this forever. Slowly he pulled away and stared down at her, unwinding one arm from around his neck. Gently he ran a thumb over her birth mark, the fishes tail on the inside of her wrist. 

“I will always remember you by this,” he said softly. 

Zoe leaned up and kissed him passionately. After a few moments she pulled away and despite himself he was smiling. “Forget the birthmark, I will remember you by that night on the beach.”

His silly, goosy laugh rang in her head as he grinned slyly. “Ok. Remember me by that then.”

Underwater, sound carries a long way so they both heard the boat long before it would appear on the horizon. “Theres my boat,” Zoe sighed. 

“I’ll give you a push,” he said. 

They both popped out of the water just as the boat appeared on the horizon. It was a search boat Zoe noted as Josiah pushed her onto the single rock that jutted out of the water. She could feel the sun hit her maroon fin as the pins and needles spread through her fin. Within a couple of minutes she had her legs back as Josiah stared at her from the water. Zoe rubbed the last vestiges of scales from her calves just as she heard a splash. She didn’t know if it was the wind but she heard a voice whisper ‘I love you’ just as she spotted his peacock green tail vanish through the water. 

Zoe looked up, the boat drawing ever closer. Pulling herself up she waved her arms frantically as the boat slowed. As they drew closer she could see the disbelief on their faces, maybe because they thought there was no survivors or because she was naked. On a rock. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She didn’t know. 

She was hurriedly pulled on board, wrapped in towels and given a corn beef sandwich, the only food they had on board. One of the men on board who had a first aid course checked her over and then an hour later checked her over again. They were all in awe as she told them that she had survived only because she was inside the toilets. But instead of telling them she was rescued by a merman because she couldn’t’t get the door undone she simply told them the door had ripped off with the impact and she swam out, clinging to a piece of wreckage until she came to this rock. They couldn’t’t believe at how well she was. No dehydration, no injuries and not even starved. 

Very soon her miraculous story reached land. The only survivor of the doomed flight who had survived inside the dunny. The flight back to Australia tested her nerves but her parents were at the airport waiting for her, tears streaming down their faces. They embraced her wildly. They thought she was dead. They had been planning her funeral when suddenly they received word that she had been found. Alive. The only survivor. Her parents were so overwhelmed that simply they just held her as the camera’s flashed all around them.

The news crews went wild. So far it seemed that it wasn’t terrorism, which always seemed to be the first conclusion that the media drew when crashes occurred, but a mechanical failure. Either way heads were gonna roll and Zoe would prove to be vital in solving the crash. But that would be later. For now they wanted Zoe to rest, recover, talk to the shrink her parents had hired and return to her life. Zoe fell asleep on the drive from the airport to their home in Ipswich and had to be carried inside by her Dad. When she looked on the porch there were balloons, cards, teddies and flowers, some still reading with sympathy but most reading ‘Welcome Home’.

Two of her friends had left messages, mostly saying how lucky she had been with as many expletives as possible. Most of the messages came from work, her old school and relatives. Her mum ordered pizza as Zoe numbly read through the cards and letters. They ate pizza with the telly off, Zoe didn’t want to see herself of the news. It would just be weird. After two pieces of pizza, some ice-cream and fizzy drinks Zoe bid her parents goodnight and wandered into her room.

She stood for along time just staring at her room. Her black and red bed spread, her throw cushions, her teddies, her white antique stained furniture feeling like she had stumbled into someone else’s life. Had this been her? Had she hung those Evanesece posters? Were those her leather Goth boots? 

Zoe suddenly realized that for so long she had been living under the shadow of someone who people wanted her to be. And yet a brush with death had changed her mind. No longer would she be Zoe the Goth. She would be Zoe Lawinsky. Herself. No one else. Those people she called friends didn’t care about her so why should she care about them? 

Flicking the light off, she crawled into her bed and had nearly closed her eyes when she spotted a mermaid snow globe that had been given to her one Christmas. At the time it had been a stocking filler from a distant Aunt, her mother’s sister, she barely knew who had visited years ago. It had been a flippant gift she had simply placed on her dresser after Christmas and forgotten all about until now. With a sudden rush it all came back. Picking it up, she shook the snow inside and felt tears sting the back of her eyes. Josiah. Was he thinking of her? She didn’t know. All she knew was that she missed him. Terribly. 

Reviews

[RM Americano]

This just gets crazier and crazier.

I noticed a few times you said your where you meant you're.

It's interesting how you are twisting the supernatural into a coming of age tale, and I think it works well, and I like the irony that when she was a normal person, she was an outcast, but now that she has mutated, she is confidant she can be normal.

[Kiki Newton]

Hahahaha LOL thanks
I never thought of it as a coming of age tail but I guess it is.
And the your're buisness.....whoops LOL xD