Between the lines

“Mmffphm,” Oliver says, but his eyes speak volumes. He starts to climb up the rock wall, getting quicker and quicker as he comes closer to the top. He inches to the right, to the part of the page that I’ve torn.

Holding his hand in front of his mouth, he spits. “That,” he says, “was revolting.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” I say. Feeling foolish, I hold my finger up to the rip in the paper.

Oliver extends his hand. The spider begins to crawl across his knuckles, his ring finger, his pinkie. When it reaches the edge of his skin, its legs grasp for purchase and find the seam of the paper.

And suddenly, there is the tiniest of black dots in my palm.

It’s nearly invisible, and it’s uncomfortably warm and wet. Before my eyes, it begins to grow, expanding into a familiar formation of eight creepy, crawly legs.

“Oliver!” I say, stunned. “I think it worked!”

“Really?” He has jumped down to the ground again and stares up at me eagerly. “You’ve got the spider, then?”

I glance down at the tiny arachnid. But now that I am looking more carefully, I see something’s not quite right. What I thought were legs are letters, raveling and unraveling. I think I can make out a d. And a p.

It’s not a spider, really. It’s the word “spider,” taking the shape of the bug and crawling across my hand.

Before I can tell Oliver, however, a knock at the bathroom door startles me. I shake the word-insect off my palm, beneath the inside cover of the book, and shut the book tightly. “I’ll just be another minute,” I call out.

Gingerly, I open the book again. There is no insect. Instead, written neatly on the inside cover, at a bizarre diagonal angle, I read: spider.

“Oliver,” I murmur, although the pages are still closed, although he probably cannot hear me. “I think we need to go back to square one.”

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page 27

The last thing Oliver remembered was the splash. Now he was tumbling head over heels as he sank to the depths of the ocean. Two eels twined and vined, the water sizzling with electric current every time they rubbed against each other. Oliver felt his lungs burning, at the point of bursting, and he wondered if this was how he’d die-not at the hands of the villain who’d kidnapped Seraphima but simply consumed by the ocean. Suddenly, he remembered the compass hanging around his neck. Home, his mother had promised. It was a foolproof escape. He let the chain slip through his fingers, and with the last of his energy, he reached to grab it, but before he could, it was snatched out of his grasp.

“Noooo!” he screamed, water filling his lungs. He closed his eyes, imagining the worst.

Fingers snaked beneath his collar. A soft mouth closed over his own, and he felt a shudder run through his chest. “Seraphima,” Oliver murmured, stunned to realize he could talk and breathe. He blinked to find a woman in his arms.

Her skin was blue, patterned with a web of scales. Her hair was a wild black cloud, seaweed twisted into its crown, flowing behind translucent, spiny ears. Two sets of gills undulated on her cheeks and beneath her emaciated rib cage, which tapered into a muscular, finned tail that reflected flashes of copper and gold. She had no bridge to her nose, just deep-set nostrils that flared above the cavern of her toothless smile. “Who’s Seraphima?” the girl asked, her clear blue eyes flashing a deep shade of red. “I’m Marina.”

Terrified, Oliver thrashed, trying to loosen himself from her embrace.

“Sister,” said another female voice. “Don’t keep him all to yourself.” Oliver looked up to see a second mermaid, who was wearing his father’s compass around her neck. And then he heard a third voice: “Oh yes, this is the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Oliver managed to land a swift kick against Marina’s tail, only to have the hair of the second mermaid twist itself into a spitting bronze eel, which wrapped its neck around his torso, immobilizing him and pulling him closer to her. “Tell my sisters that you’re here for me, Ondine,” she said. He tried to close his fingers around the compass that hung from her neck, but she kissed him so deeply that he started to lose consciousness again.

A webbed hand smacked Oliver across the face, scratching his cheek with long, pointed nails. He was snatched away by the third mermaid, who cradled him in her elongated arms. “Why bother with a trifle like that,” she sang into his ear, “when you could have someone like me, Kyrie?”

“Ladies,” Oliver said, his heart racing. “With three beautiful choices, you can hardly expect me to make a decision so quickly.” If he could only get out of their clutches long enough to think clearly, he could get his compass back. And once he did that, he knew he could escape and find Frump and Socks. He backed away so that he could see his rescuers, and gave them a dazzling smile. Marina’s black hair fanned through the water in slow motion as her eyes settled back to a deep, royal blue. Her slender neck was draped with beads and shells, and her shimmering tail swayed in the water behind her. Ondine and Kyrie swam behind her. When one of the mermaids reached out toward Oliver again, Marina slapped her hand away and hissed so loudly that the water pounded against Oliver’s eardrums.

“You must stay for dinner then,” Kyrie said.

What if I am dinner? Oliver wondered. “I can’t imagine a better way to pass the evening,” he said.

Ondine and Kyrie wrapped their hair around his wrists, pulling him into the current. Marina tilted his chin and kissed him once more. The kiss was foul and tasted of fish, but it filled his lungs with oxygen.

They arrived at a deep cave, with jaws of stalagmites and stalactites that nicked at Oliver’s legs when the mermaids drew him into its belly. He winced as blood welled from his calf. It curled in the water like crimson smoke, and before Oliver could even cry out from the pain, there was a sudden rush of movement as a broad silver shark sped toward him. Ondine let her hair fall away from his wrist and turned to the shark, her eyes flashing red as every scale on her body stood on edge. Gills fanned, she screamed, and every fish swimming nearby fled. As the shark dipped and swam away, Ondine’s scales smoothed and her eyes dimmed, now calm and purple. “Come,” she whispered, and for a moment, all Oliver could do was stare at this creature that dragged him along in her wake.

The cave’s centerpiece was a giant stone table, or maybe it was an altar upon which Oliver was destined to be sacrificed. At the rear of the cave a rounded driftwood door hid another room; on the other side, a golden chest with a huge padlock sat half-buried in the sand.

Oliver looked from one to the other. It was possible that the chest held riches he could use to bribe whoever had taken Seraphima. But it was equally possible that he’d never have the chance to leave this cave alive.

“A wedding feast,” Marina cried. “And I will be the bride!”

“No, Sister,” Ondine screamed. “You speak too soon.”

“You are both mistaken,” Kyrie said. “It’s my turn this time.”

This time? Oliver thought. How many other men in the kingdom had fallen to a watery death at the hands of these vile creatures? He had to find a way out, and it had to be fast, because he was starting to see stars at the edges of his vision again.

Kyrie wrapped her long fingers around his shoulders and kissed breath into his lungs. “You see, my love,” she whispered. “You need me just as much as I need you.”

If this was what love was, maybe it wasn’t worth the trouble. Oliver had grown up with a mother who’d lost half her heart and had never been able to replace it. These mermaids had been just as broken by love, albeit in a different way.