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| Would you take a boat out into the water if you couldn't return? |
Dinah picked up her fishing pole and tackle box and headed out to the dock. Moving carefully, she stepped into her family's canoe and untied it from the dock. Even if she didn't catch anything, Dinah loved being out on the open water and the sense of peace she had out there.
She paddled until the dock looked small in the distance. No one else fished around this spot, although Dinah wasn't sure why. Probably because there weren't that many fish. Still, that made it even more peaceful. Dinah let go of the oars and started baiting her hook. It was such a beautiful day that Dinah found herself singing. She started with some of the pop songs she loved, but she inevitably found herself singing some folk songs her grandpa had taught her.
A man's head broke the surface of the water near her.
Dinah jumped and had to take a moment to steady her canoe and stop it from tipping over. "Where did you come from?" she asked.
"I was out swimming and I heard your voice. You're a beautiful singer," the man replied.
Dinah felt her face get hot at the compliment. The man didn't look familiar. He must be a tourist. Especially if he was swimming out here. "Thank you," she replied.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Fishing," Dinah replied. "I'm trying to catch dinner for us tonight."
The man looked at her for a moment. "So you want to eat fish?"
"Yes," Dinah answered. He must be a vegetarian or something.
"Oh." The man seemed at a loss. "Goodbye." Then he vanished beneath the water.
Dinah stared at the spot where he had been. "What a strange person," she mumbled to herself. She looked around to see where he had come up, but she didn't see anyone. She looked around again, about as far as she figured he could swim underwater, but she still didn't see anyone surface. What if he was drowning?
Dinah tried to tell herself that he must have a snorkel or something, but she still kicked off her shoes and pulled her phone out of her pocket and dropped it in the bottom of the boat. It wasn't easy to get out of the canoe without tipping it over, but she managed. Dinah took a deep breath and let herself drop underwater.
She opened her eyes and looked around. There was no one. Could she have imagined the man? No. She had talked to someone. He had just disappeared. Dinah surfaced, took a breath, and dove under the water again, just to be sure she didn't miss him. She couldn't see anyone around. She surfaced again, still confused. It was going to be even harder to get back in her canoe and she had done all of this for nothing.
Rolling her eyes, Dinah grabbed onto the side of her canoe and started trying to get herself inside.
"What are you doing out here?"
Dinah looked around. It didn't sound like that man's voice, but maybe he had come back. She looked down in the water next to her and saw a lobster. She jumped and swam away from it. Who ever heard of a lobster coming up to a human in the ocean? Dinah resolved to go straight back to shore once she got in her canoe.
"Didn't you hear me? I asked what you were doing out here."
"Who's asking?" Dinah asked, turning in a circle to try to find the source of the voice.
The voice sighed. "I guess you've never had a lobster talk to you before."
This had to be a prank. Dinah swam around to the other side of the canoe. The best thing to do would probably be to ignore the voice. Besides, she was starting to get tired.
The lobster grabbed onto the edge of Dinah's shirt. "What are you doing out here?"
Dinah freaked out and tried to smack the lobster away, but it had a firm grip on her shirt. She considered taking her shirt off, but she wasn't sure she could do that without the lobster grabbing onto her hands.
"Answer my question!"
"Fishing!" Dinah yelled. Maybe she could grab something from the boat and smack the lobster away.
"I see." The lobster let go of her shirt.
Dinah sighed and heaved herself up into the boat. However, before she could pull her legs in after her, the lobster grabbed her ankle and yanked her back out and into the water.
"We can't have more of you humans killing our fish. I've sworn an oath to protect them."
"Let go!" Dinah yelled, trying to shake the lobster off and kicking it with her other foot. This was beyond a prank. Lobsters never acted this way and it shouldn't be able to hold onto her so tightly without clamping into her leg, but there was no blood in the water.
"I'm afraid not," the lobster said, then it pulled her under the water.
Dinah hadn't had time to get a deep breath of air and as the lobster pulled her further and further down, she felt her lungs burning. As they moved, Dinah felt a splitting pain on the sides of her neck. She wasn't sure which was worse. She was also clenching her jaw shut to keep from inhaling water. The last of the air left Dinah's lungs and she instinctively breathed in. It took her a moment to realize that she hadn't breathed through her mouth and that she wasn't drowning. By this point, she'd taken several more breaths.
"What did you do to me?!" Dinah would have been surprised that she could talk underwater if she wasn't so panicked.
"I'm turning you into a mermaid," the lobster replied. "You wanted to eat fish so badly, now you can become one."
"What?" Dinah tried to kick him off again, but it didn't do any good.
Eventually, the lobster slowed down and let go of Dinah's ankle. Before she could gather herself to swim away, he grabbed her wrist instead. "Now be polite," he hissed at her. He pulled her toward a cave that had plants undulating over the opening.
Dinah tried to grab a rock to beat the lobster with, but he jerked her away so she couldn't reach one.
"Abner, are you home?"
"Yes?" The man Dinah had seen before slid out from the opening. Except she hadn't seen his tail before.
"You're a merman?" Dinah yelled.
"And I thought you were a human," Abner replied, confused.
"She was," the lobster replied. "She was fishing in the forbidden area. You were looking for a wife from the shore, so here she is."
"Wait. I was fishing so you're turning me into something else and making me marry someone?" Dinah was done with this whole thing. "Look, there's got to be a way out of this. I didn't even catch any fish there, anyway."
"But you were trying," the lobster replied, "and that is a crime. Those waters are not to be fished."
Dinah wished her grandpa were here, but he had been dead for years. "Can I apologize? Can I make it up to you somehow?"
"This is how you're making it up to us," the lobster replied. He turned back to Abner. "Would you like her, or should I find somewhere else to put her?"
"I'll take her," Abner replied.
"Excellent." The lobster let Dinah go. "This may be painful," he cautioned.
"What?" she asked. Suddenly, her legs were burning. It felt like her skin was being split open and bones were bending and moving in ways they shouldn't. Dimly, Dinah realized Abner was pulling her into the cave and that there was nothing she could do to stop him. Once he got her inside, he left her alone to her pain.
Eventually, the pain stopped and Dinah lay panting above the cave floor. Gingerly, she reached her hand down to her legs. And felt scales. Trying not to move too fast, Dinah leaned forward to look at her legs.
For a moment, it didn't register that her legs were gone and there was now a tail attached to her. She kicked her legs, and the tail jerked upward, trailing a big fin behind. Dinah poked the tail and realized it was hers. She screamed.
Abner came rushing over. "It's all right."
"How can it be all right? My legs are gone! How can I go home like this?" Dinah's mind raced between a wheelchair and a fish bowl and strange combinations of the two.
"You can't go home," Abner replied quietly.
"What?!"
"I'm sorry, but the Lobster's word is final."
"The lobster? What is he? A king?"
"More like a god," Abner replied. "You saw what he can do."
Dinah had to admit he had a point. "That doesn't mean he's right just because he's powerful."
"Even if he's wrong, no one else can change you back."
Dinah stared at him. Then she began to cry.
"Please don't cry. I'll be a good husband."
"Then get me changed back," Dinah sobbed.
"I can't," Abner replied, sadly. "I'm sorry. This is who you are now."
*
When Dinah didn't come home that night, her dad called all of her friends and, eventually, the police. They found her canoe, floating far out to sea with her cell phone and her shoes inside, with a fishing pole and tackle box. There was nothing for it but to assume that she had left the canoe, for some reason, and not returned. She had probably drowned. Dinah's father was inconsolable and her mother and siblings weren't much better.
Dinah's father blamed himself for teaching her how to fish. The town started to whisper that his grief was affecting his mind. When he started talking about seeing Dinah floating out in the sea, or sitting on a rock, people began to wonder if something had happened to Dinah and she was still alive. However, if you asked Dinah's father about these sightings, he would start talking about her mermaid tail, and soon enough no one believed him at all. "Tragic," they would say. "He's unhinged." Dinah's father learned to keep his stories to himself, but you could see him looking out at the ocean at night, looking for a glimpse of his daughter.
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