“You can’t help me,human,” she said. “Leave me be.”
“She’s your only chance,” Silas spoke from behind me.
This wasn’t the first time Silas had uttered those words. I was sensing an unwelcome theme here: Silas was placing a lot of hope in me. I wasn’t sure it was a smart decision.
“Let her help you, or we’ll leave you to die in peace.” Silas’s voice remained wary and spiteful. “Choose now.”
“Try, then.” A smile curved the mermaid’s lips into a skeptical look, like she didn’t believe it possible. “You may try, human.”
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Melodia.”
“Melodia, what happened?” I moved closer. “It looks like you hurt your head.”
“The waters in The Forest are changing,” Melodia said. “It’s not like it used to be.”
I looked up at Silas. We didn’t need to say the words “the curse” for me to know that’s what he was thinking.
“The evil waters tried to take me, to drag me down.” Melodia laid her gorgeous head against the rocks. “I fought back.”
“Who’s they?”
“The curse,” she said. “Its fingernails scraped against me, tugged at my hair, but I escaped.”
“You need stitches,” I said. “You’re losing a lot of blood.”
“If you believe you can fix me,” she said, “you must do it quickly.”
“I’ve got a first aid kit.” Silas sounded resistant. “In the saddlebags. I won’t leave you to get it.”
I hauled myself to my feet and went to retrieve the satchel myself. I hurried back, feeling a breath of relief to find familiar tools. A needle and thread would have to do for now.
I knelt beside the mermaid who had gone all but comatose in my brief absence. Better for her. What was tocome would be painful, and she didn’t need to be awake for it.
“If she was touched by the curse...” Silas said above her silent body.
We both knew what he had implied. Stitches wouldn’t help anything.
I knelt, brought the mermaid’s head onto my lap. I instructed Silas to hold her steady, just in case. He seemed reluctant to touch her, but he did as I asked.
“How do you tell if a mermaid has turned into a siren?” I asked Silas as I began stitching her up.
“You don’t,” he said. “You can’t tell until it’s too late. The only giveaway is their teeth. They don’t show their teeth until their prey is a heartbeat away from death.”
“Okie dokie,” I said, because apparently I was now just accepting explanations like this as fact.
Then I bit my lower lip in concentration. I lapsed into silence as I focused on weaving a tight line of stitches over the massive gash in the otherwise pristine skin of the mermaid’s forehead. The creature was truly stunning, a daughter of sunlight and water, all shimmer and grace. Sorry to report back to Walt Disney, but cartoon Ariel couldn’t hold a candle to the real thing.
“There.” I gently laid the mermaid’s head onto a bunched up blanket Silas had pulled from the horse’s pack. “It’s done. We can only hope that’s enough—she’s lost a lot of blood.”
I splashed water gently onto the mermaid’s fin, not sure if these sorts of creatures needed water to survive or what. Silas looked at me curiously, like I was being ridiculous.
“I’m not a mermaid doctor,” I retorted. “I’m not even a vet. I’m barely a human doctor. Give me a break.”
Then I took Melodia’s hand in mine and splashed water on her wrists. The mermaid stirred, not opening her eyes, but giving us a sign of life.
“Paranormals heal quickly as a general rule,” Silas said. “If this is enough to save her, we’ll know sooner rather than later.”
