Tina breathed in the damp salt air and took a sip of coffee. Then the mermaid gracefully glided from the ocean onto the beach.
A mermaid? She must be imagining things. Too much stress at work.
She closed her eyes. Tina had walked out on the beach for an all-too-brief respite from her boss’s temper tantrums about environmental agencies. Marsden planned to improve this two-hundred-foot-wide spit of protected seashore. The millionaire had the money to cram thousands of cookie-cutter condominiums onto the quarter-mile-long sand peninsula.
When Tina looked again, the mermaid was gone, replaced by a thirty-ish woman-lounging between the crashing surf and the flapping red surveying tape. The stranger’s silky black hair cascaded over a light green frock. She seemed content to watch hungry sandpipers dart back and forth on the wet sand, one step ahead of the waves.
Tina slipped off her shoes and shuffled over. Her toes sank in the cool sand. She should run off this trespasser before Marsden arrived.
“Ma’am, this is private property.” It seemed like half her job was bullying people.Marsden rewarded her well, but she kept telling herself when she paid off the student loans she’d work for one of the environmental nonprofits—the good guys.
The woman just smiled.
“Alora,” a deep voice boomed. “We can put our palace right here.” Hands on hips, a red-haired bearded man stood. He cradled what looked like an elongated conch shell.
“I wish we didn’t have to wait so long to build on our property,” Alora cooed to the man.“Couldn’t we bring the sea in closer?”
The man sighed. “We already talked about this. The Council won’t allow it.”
Tina tried to make sense of the conversation. She’d seen some big beach cottages, but a palace? And, why would anyone—other than short-sighted developers like Marsden—want a sand peninsula that flooded whenever it stormed?
“If you really wanted the palace, you’d figure out a way,” the woman said.
“Let’s talk about this later,” the man said in a stage whisper. “When we’re alone.”
“It’s never a good time.”
Tina cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to interrupt y’all, but, I work for the man who owns this land. I’m Tina.”
The man bowed. “I am called Lord Karn. This is my wife, Alora. Land is of no concern to us. We build in the sea.”
“The sea?”
“We like land-front property.” Karn peered through the conch device like a telescope.“We will construct our home on that rise.”
Tina’s stomach lurched when she saw her boss waddling across the sand from their parked cars on the other side of the dunes. He held his usual cigar.
“What the hell’s taking you so long, Tina?” he barked.
She forced a smile “I’m just trying to clear up a misunderstanding, Mr. Marsden.”
“Like my misunderstanding that you’d put up No Trespassing signs?” Marsden snorted.
“I put up the signs.” She wanted to dump the cold remains of her morning coffee on his head. Instead, she took a sip.
“If you say so.” He brandished his cigar at Karn. “What the hell are you doing on my beach?”
Tina was sick of Marsden’s know-it-all approach to everything. She wondered sometimes why he had hired somebody with a masters in environmental science when he never listened. “Mr. Karn, and his wife, Alora, claim they own this property.”
Marsden squinted at Karn. “My name’s Marsden. I own all this beach up to the mainland.” He flicked cigar ashes on the beach.
The breeze carried embers to a couple of seagulls. The birds squawked and rose into the air.
Alora acted like Marsden wasn’t there. “I want sea horses, lobsters, crabs” she said to Karn. “That wreckage from the galleon as a focal point. Sea urchins of varying hues. The grounds will be for the creatures of the sea as much as us.”
“Look, lady, you’re not dragging a galleon on my beach,” Marsden snapped.
Karn bowed. “We do not build on land.” He tucked the conch device beneath his billowy turquoise shirt.
Marsden stretched out his arm and gestured up and down the beach. “This is land, pal.My land. All of it.”
Tina knew better than to interrupt her boss, but, as usual he was making her job more difficult than it needed to be. She wished he’d just walk away.
“Your land will return to the sea soon, Marsden,” Karn said. “Then it will be ours.”
“Yeah, right.”
Karn cocked an eyebrow. “The oceans are warming, my friend.”
Marsden let out a dry little laugh. “Global warming? Bunch of crap. You think I’d spend this much money if the ocean were rising? I’m not an idiot.”
Karn shrugged.
Marsden’s voice rose. “Listen, pal. We’re gonna start dredging today.”
This was news to Tina. “Dredging hasn’t been approved, boss,” she said. She had naively thought even Marsden would wait for the permits. She had even dared to hope that the permits might be denied. “It’s against the law. You—”
“Then you better figure out some way around that regulation, Tina,” Marsden interrupted. “What the hell am I paying you for?”
Tina was so angry at first she could think of no response other than profanity. She was weary of throwing her education away by helping a rich jackass strong-arm loopholes in environmental regulations. “I’ll do something,” she muttered.
Marsden tossed a smoldering cigar butt on a pile of seaweed and turned to Karn. “Okay, pal, you and your friend better get the hell off my beach or I’m calling the cops.”
¤
When her boss was almost back to his Lexis SUV, Tina heard a wheezing rumbling noise. She turned around and saw the rusty dredging barge huffing and puffing into view.In yellow rain slickers, the crew stood on the railing ready to drop the monstrous vacuum overboard. Any moment, the hose—wider than a car—would spew sand and water onto the beach. Marsden didn’t waste time.
Tina couldn’t be part of this any longer, no matter how much money Marsden threw at her. She needed to stop him.
While she tried to figure out what to do, she watched Karn and Alora step into the breakers. Their legs shimmered and became tails.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Tina said.
She hadn’t been crazy. She had seen a mermaid.
Tina ran into the water. Maybe these merpeople could help her. A wave crashed against her, soaking her up to her waist.
“Wait!” she screamed.
“Yes?” the merman asked.
“Lord Karn, can you make the sea rise on this property?”
“Yes, but it would not take much to wash the beach away and spread the sand out.”
Tina was well aware of the tenuous nature of the spit. It was only two feet above sea level at high tide. Marsden’s sleazy plan was to build it up ten feet, develop the glorified sandbar, and move onto his next project before the sea overtook the new land.
She pointed to the dredger. “That vessel’s scraping sand from the sea floor, Lord Karn.”
Karn was silent for a moment. “For what purpose?”
“It’ll spray it onto the beach in moments. My boss wants to build up this land.”
An ear-piercing siren drowned out Karn’s response.
“We could start building in weeks if the Council of Poseidon brought in the sea,” Alora said to Karn.
“I told you we can’t do that, Alora.”
“You never like my ideas.”
The siren wailed again. Sand, shells, and water rained on the beach.
Karn wiped gobs of sand off his face. “Great Poseidon!”
“I told you,” Tina yelled. “You’d be doing the world a favor if you stopped my employer’s construction.”
Karn looked deep in thought. “Tina, how extensive are his lands?”
“He owns this peninsula.”
Alora rolled her eyes. “Sure, Karn, you listen to her.”
“I am listening to you, Alora,” Karn said. “Let’s consult the Council.”
The two swam out and dove underwater.
Marsden, flanked by two cops, scurried over a dune.
Tina, soaked and coated with sand, slogged out of the sea.
“Where the hell are those trespassers?” Marsden asked.
“They’re gone,” Tina said. “And so am I.”
Marsden stared at her. “Did you go swimming?”
“I quit.” She took a strand of seaweed from her hair and flicked it on the ground.
“Don’t expect a reference,” Marsden snorted.
“I’m better off telling people I was unemployed for the last two years. I don’t want your damned reference.” She thought about warning Marsden, but decided against it. It wasn’t like he’d listen.
¤
A month after Tina started her new job with the North Carolina Coastal Advocacy Group, she returned to the spit to see the undeveloped beach one last time.
With her lower salary, she had to get a roommate to split the rent, but she was happy.She and her employer had managed to slow Marsden down for a little while. He’d been forced to stop dredging and was fined, but the permits had come through in the end.
An excavator and bulldozer sat just across the other side of the barricades and No Trespassing Signs. She hopped a sawhorse and climbed onto a dune.
A car horn blared. She had to jump off the path to avoid the S.U.V. barreling through the dunes.
Marsden.
The vehicle stopped about ten feet from the breaking surf. Marsden and a young bearded man, maybe thirty, climbed out.
Marsden waddled over to her. His flunky tagged along, like a dog.
“We’re finishing dredging tomorrow,” Marsden said. He turned to his flunky. “Unless you screwed up another permit.”
“No, sir,” the man stammered. “Everything’s approved.”
Marsden smirked. “Nice try, Tina.”
“Holy crap!” the flunky blurted out. “That wave’s huge!” He ran past Marsden and Tina towards the dunes.
A monster wave—thirty feet high or more—lumbered towards the beach. It was the sort of wave that only appeared on news reports about hurricanes.
The sky was clear.
And, there was only one wave.
Marsden just stared. He seemed in shock.
Tina grabbed him. “Let’s go!”
“What the hell?” Marsden whispered.
Tina pulled Marsden. His feet seemed rooted. Then his instincts must have taken over. He and Tina ran towards higher ground. The flunky was far in the distance.
Like Lot’s wife, Tina glanced back. She could swear the wave stopped and flicked Marsden’s SUV into the sea. But that was impossible.
Then the wave picked up speed again
At the top of the highest dune, Marsden collapsed. He coughed and wheezed. “I gotta catch my breath.”
The wave was gone. The beach was gone.
Tina and Marsden sat on a sandbar, surrounded by calm water. Not a ripple in sight.
A hundred yards away the flunky stood by Tina’s car on the closest land.
Tina laughed. “I guess you’re not building now.”
Marsden blinked. “Where’s the beach?”
“Gone, jackass.”
“Huh?”
Tina took off her shoes and waded into the water. “See you later.”
“I can’t swim,” Marsden whined.
She swam out a few feet. The water was warm and not uncomfortable. She dove below the surface.
It was hard to see and her eyes stung. But, she detected bright colors and movement.
A giant shape moved across the bottom. She strained to make it out. Somebody was dragging a boat?
Maybe a galleon.
It was a great location for a land-front palace.
__________________________
Pete Wood is an attorney from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he
lives with his kind and very patient wife. His first appearance in our
pages was “Mission Accomplished” in the now out-of-print August 2012
issue. After publishing a lot of stories with us he graduated to becoming a
regular contributor to
Asimov’s, but he’s still kind enough to send us
things we can publish from time to time, and we’re always happy to get
them.
For the past two years Pete has been in the process of evolving into a fiction editor, God help him, first with The Pete Wood Challenge, then with Dawn of Time, then with The Odin Chronicles,
and now with Tales from the Brahma, a shared world saga that features the
creative work of Roxana Arama, Gustavo Bondoni, Carol Scheina, Patricia Miller, Jason Burnham, and of course,
Pete Wood. We suspect that Pete’s real love is theater, though, as evidenced by his short movie, Quantum Doughnut — which you can stream, if you follow the foregoing link.
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