Free 03 The Fate Of The Muse - Marina's Tales by Derrolyn Anderson Page B

under the surfboard, and as I scrambled frantically to see
her, she surfaced behind me, shyly peeping up from the edge of the
board with huge green eyes.
    “ Nixie! ” Lorelei squealed, taking the
baby mermaid in her arms and kissing her plump cheeks.
    She giggled and ducked underwater, surfacing
to peek around Lorelei. Her eyes grew round, and she stared me
again. “ What is it? ” she asked Lorelei, dipping down to hide
behind her shoulder.
    Lorelei and Nerissa burst into peals of
laughter, and the sound they made together was almost unbearably
sweet. For a second I thought I might be dreaming the whole
thing.
    “ Do not be afraid, she is a sister too…
just like us. ” Lorelei explained to the little
mermaid .
    “ Only she lives on land, ” added
Nerissa.
    “ But you weren’t… I mean, it can’t
possibly… ” I sputtered, completely flabbergasted. It had only
been a few weeks since Ethan and I had returned a pregnant Nerissa
to the sea, and then she was nowhere near ready to deliver. This
child looked to be at least a full year old.
    “ What? ” Lorelei looked at me oddly, no
doubt confused by the time calculations she could hear me rapidly
doing in my mind.
    “ Where did she come from? ” I
asked.
    Lorelei sighed dreamily, “ Nerissa brought
her forth… she’s so lucky… ”
    “ Lucky? ” I was aghast.
    “ Of course! None have been blessed with a
little one for many, many moons. ” I could see images in her
mind of mermaid babies she’d seen in the past, realizing with a
start that these memories could go back hundreds or even thousands
of years.
    “ Blessed? ” I repeated, “ How’s
that? ”
    She looked at me like I was hopelessly
ignorant, “ The moon sent us a new sister… and Nerissa was the
chosen one .”
    My God, I thought, they had no idea where
babies came from. I sure hoped they couldn’t read my thoughts about that . I looked at the little mermaid with her chubby arms
wrapped around Lorelei’s neck, “ She sure is cute… What did you
call her? Nixie?”
    “ Yes ,” said Nerissa, scooping her up
and swimming her to me. The little mermaid squirmed in her arms and
ducked down in the water so only her seaweed green eyes were
visible.
    “ Why Nixie? What does that mean? ”
    “ The council chooses in the naming
ceremony ,” Nerissa said, lifting the child out of the water.
“ It’s alright Nixie, Marina will come to swim with us
someday.”
    I chose to ignore Nerissa’s prediction, and
smiled at Nixie, “ Naming ceremony? What’s that? ”
    “ It’s part of a council meeting , Adria was going to have one too… She came to show us that she
was blessed like Nerissa... but she never came back from the big
place .”
    “ You saw my mother when she was
pregnant? ” I was stunned, “ Big place? ”
    “ Mother? ” Nerissa cocked her head like
a dog.
    “ Pregnant? ” Lorelei chimed in.
    I groped for the words, trying to come to
grips with the last bit of information at the same time,
“ Adria ,” I told Nerissa, turning to Lorelei,
“ Blessed .”
    Nixie wriggled out of Nerissa’s arms and swam
closer to inspect my legs.
    “ Where was the place she never came back
from? ” I asked, pretty sure I knew what happened after
that.
    “ You saw ,” she laughed, “ Where that
big thing goes over the water. ”
    “ You mean the Golden Gate Bridge? ”
    “ The big thing is not golden, ” Nerissa
said seriously, “ It’s more like starfish color. ”
    “ It’s like Nixie’s hair! ” Lorelei
cried in delight, making Nerissa laugh. Nixie joined in and started
laughing too, looking between the two of them as if to try and find
out why.
    “ She swam with me …” I said slowly,
“ She transformed when she was pregnant... I mean,
blessed.”
    They all stared at me blankly.
    I pantomimed a belly, “ You know, like
this …”
    “ Yes! Adria was so happy she came out to
swim all the time! ” Nerissa shook her head in disapproval,
“ But she kept going back to