The Secrets of Pimsim Cove - 7. Chapter 7

Waking up to the soft sounds of the ocean was lovely. I’d forgotten to close the window before falling asleep last night and the warm breeze rustled something behind my head. When my sleepy eyes looked up, I noticed that the space over the headboard was covered with tons of drawings.

They were breathtaking. Even as a kid, Dad had an amazing eye for details. How could I have missed this yesterday? I know that I was a little out of it after fainting, but I must have gone totally guck-brained yesterday to not notice this.

Sketches of the ocean, Grandma and Grandpa’s little house and even that mysterious forest were all tacked to the wall with little red push-pins, but the most amazing piece of artwork was the huge span in the center.

Dad must have taped five sheets of paper together to draw this panoramic view of an amazing fairytale Kingdom. I stood up on the bed to get a closer view of the magical Palace and cautiously traced my finger over the indentation marks of Dad’s pencil.

I missed him so much.

“I am not going to cry!” I warned myself before I quickly stepped off the bed and dug out some fresh clothes for the day.

The sun hadn’t quiet reached the horizon yet, but the sky looked big and clear, so I decided on a pink tank-top and my favorite pair of jean shorts. They weren’t baggy or hanging down to mid-calf like the ones that the boys wear. My shorts were cute and made me look like I had some girly curves, even if it was mostly just an optical illusion.

I made a mental note to ask Grandma if I could use her washing machine later. I hated the thought of having to burn my khaki pants, but if they weren’t washed in steaming hot soapy water then sadly there wouldn’t be any other fate for them.

With my journal in one hand and my cell phone in the other, I rushed off to face another day in Pimsim Cove.

***

Since the house was still quiet in the pre-dawn hours, I silently tiptoed down the hard wood stairs so I wouldn’t make any noise that would wake anyone up. I didn’t think Rosy would mind if I helped myself to some breakfast, so I padded off to the kitchen to see what I could find.

Before entering the kitchen, I detoured through the front sitting room. I wanted to take a look at those pictures of Dad and Rook that I noticed before my spectacular passing-out-act yesterday. I gently traced my fingers over the delicate assortment of wood and metal picture frames.

Family photo’s covered nearly every inch of every wall. There weren’t just pictures of Dad and Rook on the walls, but there were several pictures of Michael and Sean and even a few of Rosy and Stonebrook.

What a beautiful happy family. I smiled to myself as I turned to go find some breakfast in the kitchen. Suddenly, something on the far shelf caught my eye…it was a familiar face.

It was a picture of Jimmy! His freckled face beamed in his baseball uniform. Then I noticed a collage of my school pictures from over the years and our family photo that we sent out for our Holiday cards this past Christmas.

All of this time, I thought that Dad had no contact with the McLoughlin’s. Seeing our lives splayed with their cherished photos made me feel more loved and accepted by them. I wondered why Dad would have ever left here? This place was perfect.

My stomach suddenly growled, loudly reminding me that it wanted food, so I headed off to the kitchen to find something. Some of those big fluffy rolls were leftover from dinner last night, so I wrapped up one in a napkin and poured a glass of Rosy’s super-yummy camu and stepped out onto the back porch. Instead of plopping down into a rocker, my feet were drawn towards the stone walkway and steps that led down to the long wooden dock.

My eyes blinked, looking at the huge wooden planks that stretched out overtop of the ocean. From a distance, it didn’t look overwhelming, but up close, I could see just how massive the dock really was.

Okay to say that it was a mile long was an exaggeration, but really; it went way, way, way far out over the water.

Concrete pylons jutted up from the ocean floor. They held the sun bleached planks high up in their strong grip. I shuffled down the stairs, but stopped just before stepping a barefoot onto the satiny white wood. Every twenty feet or so, another set of the pylons penetrated the dock and extended a few feet higher than the top planks.

They were the perfect height for sitting on and I imagined them as big toadstools and giggled. Cautiously stepping out onto the dock, a ripple of relief flooded through me when I felt the solid, sturdy construction under my bare feet.

It was silly of me to be so worried. It’s not like I don’t know how to swim. If I fell in the water right here, I could easily swim back to shore, but my heart still started to pick up tempo as I continued to walk further down the dock.

Strolling along I found myself counting softly under my breath. I’m not sure why, but I felt this incredible need to know how many steps it would take me to get to the other end of the dock or maybe it was so I’d know how far I’d have to run, to get back to land. Walking down towards the end, I noticed that every pylon had a set of boat bumper guards tied around it with thick, gray hemp rope.

“Hey! Where’s Stonebrook’s boat?” I suddenly realized the little boat that I had watched my grandparents sail away in, after chasing them through town, was now gone.

Maybe Stonebrook had a job and had already left for work. There were no vehicles parked in front of the cottage so maybe the boat was their only transportation.

I gave my head a mental shake before returning to counting my paces...I was at seventy four and I didn’t want to start all over, so I pushed the missing boat out of my head and continued walking down the wide wooden dock.

“Two hundred and twenty-five, two hundred and twenty-six, at last two hundred and twenty-seven step!” Turning around and looking back at the shore, I gasped at how extremely far out I was.

“Oh my goodness! If the ocean suddenly decided to surge, I would be swept away so fast that nobody would ever know that I was gone.” Giving the ocean an awkward glance, I let out a nervous giggle.

I felt silly talking to a big body of saltwater, but I tried to sooth any bad feelings that I might have created. “Pimsim Cove is the most beautiful water that I’ve ever seen! Your blue ocean is so calm and mystical. I really love it here!” Now I might be losing my mind but when I praised the ocean, I actually felt her sigh, how weird was that?

Carefully sitting down at the end of the planks, I situated my tall glass of camu on one side of me, my fluffy roll on the other side. I dug my cell phone out of my back pocket and my journal from where I had tucked it into the waistband of my shorts. Flipping the book open, I looked over the entries that I made yesterday and then laid it down on my lap.

“Talbot…Pimsim…Search.” I typed into my cell phone. Crap! Nothing popped up.

“Talbot…Ring...Pimsim Cove…Search.” Grunting my frustration, I hit the back button and debated what else to plug into the search engine. I heard Rosy and Rook calling him ‘King Talbot,’ but maybe that’s part of his name and not an actual title...or maybe he was the head of some sort of Irish drug family?

“Drug Cartel…Irish Mafia...Talbot...Search.” Just as I pressed enter, I had that eerie feeling that I was being watched again. When my head snapped over to the empty wooden planks on my right, I felt a bit silly for overreacting until a warm breath spoke against my left ear.

“What about Talbot?” Sean asked.

I screamed and jumped up to my feet. My journal tumbled off my lap and landed on the dock with a THUD! My sudden movement knocked over my drink as I teetered on the edge of the planks.

With my arms whirling about, franticly trying to regain my balance, Sean’s strong hand quickly shot out and grabbed my arms. He easily pulled me back from the dangerous edge of the dock.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone if you’re afraid of the water.” His gray eyes were suddenly cold and hard.

“I’m not scared of the water and I’m not scared of you! You should know better than to sneak up on someone. They should put a bell around your smurfing neck.” That made him smile which only made me madder. “Oh yeah, real funny, I’ll show you funny! If I would have dropped my phone into the water, your butt would be driving me to the mall so I could replace it!”

Now his black eyebrows creased in confusion and he quickly changed the subject. Oh, I like that, modern-teenage-gadget-chic = one and backwoods-primitive-jock = zipo. Take that!

“What were you saying about Talbot?” He asked in an uber-serious tone.

I rolled my eyes at him and told him I wasn’t talking about Talbot…I was Googling him. His gray eyes widened in fear. “Oh dear lord, Anna! You don’t know how dangerous Talbot can be and you did what to him?”

I know that it’s so unattractive, but I actually snorted when I laughed.

Okay, primitive might be too advanced for this guy. Spelling out each letter, “G-O-O-G-L-E...you know as in WWW… the World Wide Web? Hello? Haven’t you heard of the internet? ”

Sean’s shocked stare grew from annoyed to angry as a seagull flapped his feathery wings overhead distracting me from the tension rising between us.

“Childish tricks are not going to find your father, Anna. Instead, they are going to get you killed!” When he stepped closer to me, I could feel his sweet breath on my face and was suddenly aware of how much bigger than me, he really was.

His black wife beater matched his black hair, but his cutoff jean shorts were pale, faded and well worn. It looked like the rips in the knees had continued to grow until they had consumed the entire lower parts of his pants altogether.

I was suddenly afraid to look up into his icy eyes. While staring down at the planks of the dock, I noticed that we were both barefoot.

“Look,” Sean said in a slightly less annoyed tone. “I’m sorry that I yelled at you, but Talbot is a very dangerous man and your family wanted me to...uh, warn you about him.”

Suddenly remembering Stonebrook’s missing boat, a glimmer of hope flashed through my eyes. “Do they know where Dad is? Is that why the boat is gone? Did they go to get him? Are they bringing him back home, right now?” I rambled on without letting him answer any of my frantic questions.

Sean’s closed his eyes and took a deep breath, what could he be waiting for? Jeez, spit it out, already. I wanted to shake him and scream, ‘tell me!’

“Yes Anna, the McLoughlin’s know where your father is. Talbot is holding Windsong in his dungeon, but it’s way too risky to even get inside of there, let alone to try to break someone out! Pimsim City, the Palace and his entire Kingdom is very heavily guarded--”

“Wait!” I shouted at him as my anger suddenly boiled over. “What kind of bullcrap is that? A dungeon, kingdoms and palaces? This isn’t some sort of joke and I’m not laughing! My dad is missing!” I finished with a heartbreaking sob.

Sean grabbed me by my arm and whirled me around to face the scary edge of the dock where it dropped off into the deep water. He pointed a long slender finger at the blue water towards the middle of the ocean. “He’s down there, Anna...your father is being held prisoner down there! It’s a secret city. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Talbot is the King of Pimsim City, which is a huge Kingdom far below the sea--”

I had finally had enough. With a hard jerk of my hand, I wrenched my wrist free from Sean’s tight grip. Tears flooded my eyes and were streaming down my freckled cheeks.

How could he make fun of my heartache? Did he enjoy laughing over my father being kidnapped? It probably wouldn’t do any good, but I shoved him away from me with all my strength, but he was too strong and quickly regained his balance after barely a step backwards.

“Does Uncle Rook know that you’re a smurfing fraggle-head?” I shouted at him and shoved at his hard muscled chest again, but this time, instead of stumbling backwards, he took a slight step back followed by another, and then Sean smiled at me.

His lopsided grin was gorgeous…too bad he was such an immature jerk.

“I don’t know how to tell you the truth, Anna, so maybe I’ll just have to show you!”

Before I could push him again, he pulled his black tank top over his head and tossed it onto the dock. Three huge angry red scars slashed across his naked chest, but I didn’t have time to ask what had marred his otherwise perfect body.

His boyish grin curled across his face and I wanted to hit him as hard as I could, but instead of giving me the opportunity, he turned and gracefully leapt off the edge of the dock. Realizing too late that he was going to jump, I gasped and rushed forward, just in time to see his perfect dive close the twenty foot span between the wooden dock and the cool ocean water.

Sean sliced through the top of the gently sloshing water with hardly a splash. My eyes franticly searched the spot where he had went into the water and waited for him to come up for air.

Seconds ticked into minutes. Oh my goodness, what if he hit his head on something? He was obviously insane, but the guy really needed treatment and not death by stupidity.

The water abruptly parted as Sean sprang from beneath the water in an exquisite show of strength. Water glistened off his marred chest and the morning sun shimmered off the sparkly pale blue scales that encased the lower half of his body. From head to tailfins, he had to be over ten feet long. His beautiful gray eyes blazed with satisfaction.

I crumpled to the dock and trembled in fear at the sight of him.

His smirk immediately disappeared. Before I could push myself to my feet and run away, he flicked his muscular tail and propelled himself forward and leaped out of the salty water.

Sean landed on top of the dock in a loud wet splash, but when I rolled out of his way I saw that his fins and scales were now gone! His legs had returned to hard muscular skin.

I fought to breathe in short panicked gasps.

“Anna, please don’t be scared of me. I swear I’m not going to hurt you. You don’t need to be afraid.” Sean whispered, but my mind was still trying to process what I just saw.

“How...how did you do that?” I asked him while still trembling on my scraped and splintered knees.

“All of us here can--”

“All of you...are you trying to tell me that you and everyone here in Pimsim Cove are Mermaids?”

He shook his dark wet head and his sarcastic laugh made me cower. “No! We hate that word. That’s a term that the Humans came up with to try to describe us. They needed to try and explain what we are, but we are not ‘Mermaids’!” He spit out the word.

Standing there with his arms spread open and water dripping off his beautiful body, he looked Human, but I had just watched him spring from the ocean with scales and a tail! Sean saw my fear and his face suddenly softened as he extended his warm hands and tried to help me up onto my shaky legs.

“We are Tritons and in many ways our people are very similar--”

Sparkly lights began to flash in front of my eyes. Oh crap! I fought back the darkness that ebbed in, because now was not a very convenient time to pass out again.

Concentrating on my breathing, I was sure that I missed something important in Sean’s speech about the similarities between Tritons and Humans, but right now I was too busy trying to keep from fainting.

“Anna?” I didn’t respond.

My eyelids suddenly felt thick and heavy and fluttered closed for a brief second. Sean grabbed my face between his large hands to inspect my eyes.

“Anna?” He took the pads of his thumbs and gently pulled under my eyes to get a better view of my dilating pupils. “Can you hear me? Anna?” When he gently shook my shoulders, my cell phone tumbled out of my hand. I was glad that he didn’t resort to a brutal slap across my face, like they always do in the movies when some ditzy girl goes into shock.

My lips felt rubbery when I tried to speak, yet I had to shake the fog from my head, because I needed answers. I had to push the blackness away and force myself to focus. “If Dad is a Triton and my Mom is a Human...then what does that make me?”

His worry vanished and a cute lopsided smile returned to his handsome face. “That makes you very, very special.”

***

Okay, I know that I should be totally freaking out right about now, but this was sooooo incredibly super-duper cool!

“Am I the first of my kind?” I expected him to tell me yes, but was stunned when he shook his head, no. “I’m afraid you’re not the first, but it’s still very rare amongst our people. There have been two other unions which produced hybrid offspring.”

He talked about us as if he was explaining about an uber-freaky science experiment. “The first union ended tragically. They had two children, a boy and a girl and despite trying for many years they couldn’t seem to find their place in either the Human world or the Tritons world. Unfortunately, the young girl was so distraught that she finally took her own life. That sent her brother spiraling out of control. He was so devastated at losing her that he chose a life of seclusion over living among anyone...Tritons or Human.”

I gasped at how sad that must have been for the poor guy. “But that was only one case, and you said there were two families. What about the other family? What happened to them?”

“This second union, it produced three hybrid children, just like you and your family.” His eyes suddenly looked guarded. “I’ve heard that they are all quite happy and very successful in the Human world.”

“So they chose to live among Humans, like Dad, instead of returning to the ocean?”

Sean contemplated how much to say, but decided that the truth would be the best. “The second family didn’t really have a choice. You see, the children have no Triton features although the Phelps children are amazing swimmers. They used their talent as athletes in the Human world--”

“They’re swimmers? Wouldn’t that give these Phelps kids an unfair advantage-- Oh my, goodness! I always knew there was something fishy about him! Are you talking about Michael Phelps the American Olympic swimmer? He’s a Mermaid?”

Sean growled. “I told you, we’re Tritons...not Mermaids!”

Wow! This was suddenly so much to absorb. It’s not every day that you find out that your parents are two different species and that makes you something entirely new. I’m a hybrid, but a hybrid of what?

“So, I can change too, right? I mean, you told me that the one family, the kids could change like the other Tritons. You said that they only had trouble fitting in. So come on, tell me how to do it...how do I do the changy thingy?” I flung my arms open and motioned to the water all around us. “How does this work? Should I just jump in?”

Sean caught my arm as I neared the edge of the dock. Before I could dive into the water, he swung me around to face him. “It might not be that simple, Anna.”

That’s when I realized what he was trying to tell me and I felt like I had just been punched in the stomach. He was trying to tell me that I might not be able to change at all and suddenly my eyes welled up with hot tears.

That was so unfair! I looked up at their stone cottage at the top of the hill. “Why didn’t Rosy or Stonebrook tell me themselves? Huh? Are they afraid that I can’t be a Triton like them? That I won’t be able to help get Dad back?” I finished with a sob. “If I can’t change, will they just send me away?”

Sean’s strong arms were suddenly around me, soothing away my fears as I stood there letting him comfort me. “Sssssh!” He said and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “No, Anna, the McLoughlin’s would never send you away, no matter what. They’re not cold uncaring people.”

His sincere face chased away my fears. He was gorgeous. Any red blooded female would be crazy to not want to be standing right where Iwas at this very moment.

I closed my eyes, resting my head on his chest, listening to the sound of his beating heart. I never wanted him to let me go, but he did. He stepped back and looked down at me with a mischievous grin.

“So…do you really want to know how to be a Triton?” Sean asked with a wink.

I nodded, since I was afraid that my voice would betray me and squeak. He took my hand and led me down to the end of the wooden deck and told me to take a deep breath. Thank goodness I did, because he wrapped his strong arms around me and leaped out into the ocean.