Page 14 of Mermaid on Heels
Wait.
Was it just her or… Did they have a secret transforming power?
Liriya’s eyes widened at her discovery, because this proved nothing but that.
Could this be the reason why they were never permitted to go to the surface? Why all those horrid stories were made?
“I think I know what this means,” Liriya spoke slowly. Her sisters’ heads snapped towards her. “We have transformation power.”
“What?” Sessa’s hands shot up to cover her mouth. Ella stared in disbelief.
“Do you not see?” Liriya asked. “We can turn into humans when we are out of the water, and turn back to ourselves when we get backintothe water.”
Liriya instantly swam up to the surface. She plucked up the courage to rise herself to the solid shore, and sat on it as Ella had. Sessa and Ella rose to the surface and watched her, their eyes wide. Liriya took a deep breath, ignored the rapid race of her heart, and lifted her tail.
It began glowing, and there was it; the human legs in the place of her magnificent tail. Liriya glanced at her sisters with a smile and saw that Sessa was on the brink of screaming her lungs out, fists pressed into her mouth.
“Calm down, angelfishes, I am all right.”
“Come back into the water please,” Sessa pleaded, her voice almost squeaking. “You look frighteningly hideous.”
Liriya laughed and jumped back into the water. And just as she had calculated, the legs came together and her tail was back.
“See?” Liriya looked up at Sessa from her tail, grinning ear to ear.
Fear drained from Sessa’s face. Excitement replaced her frightened facial expression, and it was hard to tell that she was horrified only a moment ago. “Me next!”
Liriya helped her up to the shore before she too sat on her other side. She raised an eyebrow at Ella who remained in the water, silently asking her if she was joining. Ella didn’t seem to share Sessa’s enthusiasm but joined them anyway, pushing herself up on the other side of Sessa.
“Together—on the count of three,” Sessa said, stopping Liriya who was about to lift her tail. “One, two, three!”
Liriya lifted her tail together with her sisters. There was no glow on hers and Ella’s tails this time, and Liriya assumed it happened only at the first of transformations, watching Sessa’s tail glowing.
She swayed around and placed her new pair of limbs carefully and delicately on the solid ground, as though she feared they might break. Then she ran her fingers along her legs in awe, their skin extremely smooth, pale, and glowing like the rest of herself.
An unusual hush fell over them as they sat in awe. Liriya realized that the next thing they needed to figure out washowthey worked.
From the stories Mama had told them, humanswalkedon the land—that was what it was called. Liriya remembered asking her how exactly this walking was done, and Mama used her two fingers to represent a pair of human legs. She had made their tips touch a solid place and said it was calledstanding, and then showed how walking was done.
“But how do you know all this, Mama?” Liriya remembered asking her mother. She had thought then thatlegsandwalkingwere the weirdest things she had ever heard of.
“My mother told me this like I am telling you now,” Mama had answered with a beautiful smile. “And I believe, she was told by her mother, and her mother, and her mother… It goes like that.”
Remembering Mama awoke the twinge of pain in Liriya’s heart. She shook her head to clear her thoughts and decided to focus on the current situation.
“How do you suppose this works, Liriya?” Sessa asked, comparing her hands to her feet. “Do you not think these look identical, with five fingers in each? Do you suppose this comes here, touching the ground and moving like this…”
Sessa went on with her ridiculous guesses. Liriya focused on setting her feet firm against the ground, a little apart from each, recalling Mama’s representation of walking. After making sure they were firm, she slowly pulled herself up into standing position.
“What are you doing?” her sisters asked from behind, panic lacing their words.
Pausing for balance, moment from moment as she rose slowly, when Liriya finally managed to stand, she looked down at herself and smiled victoriously. However, before she got the chance to congratulate herself, her knees trembled and she fell off into the water.
Ella bit her lip and giggled, but Sessa burst out with laughter. Liriya rose back to the surface—back as a mermaid—and joined the laughter.
“I think there is more to learn about walking before we could go about the land.”
“Oh, we are going to the land?” Sessa leaned forward with eager eyes.