Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near Page A

grab for in panic.
    James was a great surfer. His board had a crooked fin and jagged marks on the nose that he claimed was proof of a deadly past encounter with sharks. Isola was pretty sure he’d had a spectacular wipe-out on the rocks that he didn’t want to admit to.
    She, on the other hand, was not very good. Mostly she paddled around the wave break, lying on her belly on his old board as she caught the smaller waves back to shore. Without a wetsuit, her cold skin grew waxy. Her fingertips bubbled.
    This was where she liked to be best.
    She threw her board on the shore, paddled back out and floated, belly-up and eyes closed, devolving back to the ice statue, then the iceberg. Her ear canals flooded with salt and brine, suspending her brain in foreign fluid, and if she listened hard enough she heard the screams and panicked splashes of S. S. Titanic escapees; frenzies preserved forever in bubbles, like leaf fossils in rock.
    Isola had missed the water. Alejandro had locked her bedroom window to ward off another visit from the dead girl, and Isola longed for the smell of oncoming rain spells, the wet rustle of fallen leaves sticking like gum to the sides of the house.
    The dead girl hadn’t appeared again. The window stayed locked.
    Isola closed her eyes and a surprise wave tumbled her. She surfaced with a cough, eyes stinging with saltwater. Whale-song vibrations travelled up her skull and static-leaped to the tips of her hair. She thought of giant squids, never seen alive, and mermaids, never seen dead. She thought of Christobelle, a tempest given shape. Isola had met her at this same beach.
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    Isola, six years old. Father, picking grains of sand from the cracked spine of his crime-thriller novel. Mother, knee-deep in the green, gently coaxing Isola into the ocean.
    Isola remembered the salt glinting on the fine golden hairs of Mother’s arms, the imprint of bikini straps sunburned on her shoulders. She remembered the head rising from the water’s depths as the Wildes explored the rock pools at low tide. A tangle of psycho-red seaweed. Isola leaned closer – it wasn’t seaweed but hair. The single eye beneath the coarse swirls fixed on her.
    â€˜Hello, sea child,’ murmured Christobelle, bubbles popping on her tongue, saltwater trickling from her mouth.
    Isola wasn’t a naturally strong swimmer like Grape or a good surfer like James, but Christobelle had taught her how to linger at the bottom, collecting clams, stalking fish schools as the watery sun passed overhead. When Christobelle held her hand Isola could stay under as long as she liked – air bubbles seemed to pulse from the mermaid’s perpetually cold skin, keeping Isola’s lungs from going tight. Underwater, Christobelle’s thick hair seemed sentient – in fact, Isola was certain it lived, the way it twisted, curled around shells on the sea floor and lifted them to the mermaid’s eyes, even tapped Isola’s shoulder when Christobelle wanted her attention.
    Isola kicked her legs to mimic her tail, and she wished her skin would glitter with golden scales too, and that one day she’d have hair to use as a weapon, and perfect breasts like Christobelle’s she could pour into seashell bras.
    When Christobelle joined the ranks of the brother -princes, Isola was surprised to learn she and Ruslana were already acquainted.
    â€˜Oh, it was a lifetime ago,’ Christobelle had sighed in the evening bath they’d shared. Isola had sat with her knees drawn up to her chest; the mermaid had taken up most of the space and her scales had been quite cold to the touch under the bubbles. ‘Well, Ruslana had come to investigate the disappearance of a handsome young sailor. She can tell when a woman’s involved in these sorts of things. Fantastic detective, she is. You know the first thing she said when she found me in that cave?’
    â€˜What?’
    Christobelle had shown her pearly teeth.