Free Diary of a Radical Mermaid by Deborah Smith Page A

another word, to set the course toward Sainte’s Point again.
     
     

Juna Lee’s Prisoner Chapter 9
    Trapped. Trapped upstairs, in the dark, in a big, vintage cottage somewhere on the Georgia coast. Imprisoned like a noble heroine in the 1900s dime novels I collected as a hobby. No, no, she cried, you villain! You’ll never keep me here against my will! Tom the Ranger will save me! I loved the simplicity of good versus bad in those books; the unerring sense of fragile virtue and courageous sacrifice. Oh, all right. I mainly loved the idea of good girls getting tied up, leered at, and rescued. Maybe I had a secret S & M fetish. At any rate, no Tom the Ranger had ever shown up in my life.
    “Molly,” Juna Lee Poinfax hissed outside the door to my room. “Stop moping around in there. All you have to do is agree to stay in Bellemeade a few weeks and get to know your own kind. Swear you’ll stay, and then I’ll let you out.”
    “My own kind?” I said loudly, through solid oak. “My kind don’t tell elaborate lies about being descended from mermaids. They don’t kidnap famous authors, haul them more than one thousand miles in a bus, then lock them in a strange house in the dark.”
    “Well, turn on a light, you idiot.”
    I steamed. I’d like to put Juna Lee in a dime novel. I’d play the part of the villain. I’d tie her to the proverbial railroad tracks. And I’d make sure Tom the Ranger got there too late to do more than scrape some of her DNA off a rail for the coroner’s office.
    She did have one good point: My noble virtue wouldn’t be compromised if I turned on a lamp. I made my way to a table, fumbled with a cord beneath a glass shade, and pulled it. Soft light lifted the shadows. I looked around, stunned.
    My prison was lovely.
    The room made me think of a romantic cabin on an eighteenth century pirate ship. Heavy, curving beams formed the ribs of the ceiling. All the furniture was ornate, handsome, and antique. In an alcove, a pretty four-postered bedstead was plumped up with lacy white pillows and a marshmallow-like comforter. Beneath my sandaled feet, fishtailed mermaids, mermen , and other mythological beings cavorted in the design of a beautiful rug. I turned slowly, pirouetting around my cane, studying that woven world.
    The lamp I’d turned on? Tiffany. And I’d bet it wasn’t a reproduction. Jasmine and vanilla scented the air, along with the aroma of maritime oak, fine brocades, and silk.
    An unhappy meow came from the carrier by the door. Big, apologetic Charley had deposited my cat and my luggage inside the room right after he deposited me there.
    “Heathcliff,” I moaned. “I didn’t mean to ignore you. I know you’ve been traumatized.” I rushed to the carrier, opened the door, and gently lifted Heathcliff into my arms. The old tabby purred. His fur felt even drier and more scruffy than usual. “I’ll give you your medicine in just a minute,” I whispered, stroking his head. “And then I’ll unpack your tuna and we’ll have dinner. I hope you don’t mind sharing.”
    I set Heathcliff on the plush bed. He lay down gratefully, easing his bony bottom into the luxurious comforter. I reached for another Tiffany lamp on a bedside table. I listened to a low purr of sound outside. The tide. The ocean.
    I hurried to a huge bay window. I loved being near the ocean, any ocean. My skin tingled. I’d grown up on Cape Cod, right on the beach. How many times my father had scooped me up in his arms and plunged into the tide with me, laughing as I laughed, burrowing into the ocean as if tunneling into a beloved nest.
    I felt the magnetic pull. I believed I could see underwater; maybe I had a compass in my head, like the fish and the whales. As I grew older, alone, after my parents died in a land-bound car crash, I started to worry that I was deranged, that losing them, particularly losing my father, who lived in the water as if he preferred it to land, had damaged some rational part of