*
A year passed. A year that was a fog of changing, waiting to change, and trying to
block out the knowledge I would change with alcohol and parties.
“You’ve become someone else,” Hannah said to me.
“Give the girl a round of applause. Course I’m not myself. I’m a fucking mermaid a
quarter of the time.”
“It doesn’t mean you can’t act like a lady.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
Hannah had stopped flinching at my language. At most she’d give me a withering
glance. It was worse when the change was due. Along with the aches came an
uncontrollable rage. She’d learnt to keep away from me then, after the time I threw
her copy of Anderson’s Fairy Tales at her head because I’d caught her reading ‘The
Sodding Little Mermaid’ for the fifteenth time.
At least the rage gave me a clue the change was coming. It was worse when it arrived
unexpectedly, as it did one summer evening.
I was partying by the river with a group of boys. So wasted I didn’t notice the jerks
starting in my body. It was only when I began to convulse that I knew I had to get
away. Somehow I made it under the shadow of some trees. They must have heard my
screams, but by that time I was too lost in the change to care.
It was morning when I came around. I must have got inside the river before I
blacked out, because its water surrounded my body. A flurry of fish charged towards
me, some slapping my arms as they hurried off into the murk. Something was
happening. Vibrations pulsed through the ground. But I was still drunk and the
change had exhausted me. I couldn’t find the energy to move.
A boat passed overhead, blocking out the sun. Waves followed it, rocking me so
my arms scraped grit. Then there was another boat. And another. I remembered: the
regatta. I had to get away.
But something was tugging my head. I reached to prise it away, but it wouldn’t
budge. It got harder, firmer. I looked up at my long, billowing hair, and realised what
had happened. It was caught in a propeller.
Everything became panic. Bubbles billowed
around me as I tried to yank myself free. My
hair was winding tighter, tighter, and I was
dragged closer and closer to those blades. The
boat gave a stutter. The propeller stopped.
Then, with a kick, it started again, harder than before, and I closed my eyes knowing
what would happen to me.
Then my hair was loose. Something – someone – was in the water with me. The
boat moved away, pieces of my hair trailing behind. I reached up and felt where it had
been cut from my skull. Then I looked at the woman beside me. And her tail.
We swam to a quiet part of the river.
“You look different,” I said, when we broke the surface.
She laughed. Then said something in a language I didn’t understand. The words
tangled one on top of the other.
“Sorry,” she said. “I haven’t been in England for a long time. I was saying that you
look different, too.”
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