Page 13 of Finding Love at the Magical Curiosity Shop
There’s an unconscious man on my beach. Both of these things are my fault – the fact he’s unconscious and the fact he’s on my beach.
I thought he was dead at first, but he’s not. He struggled as I pulled him from the water, and now, I see his chest moving. The ship he was on is lost to the waves, there is no trace that it ever existed, and the other shipmate is also missing. I couldn’t save him. The current was too strong as it pulled the ship beneath it. The other man was still on board, but this one was thrown clear. He was slipping under the water. I probably should have let the evidence of my crime die with him, but I could not watch a human life ending when I was able to stop it.
If anyone asks, they will know it’s my fault. They will hunt me down, like they do with all of my kind.
‘My kind…’ I echo, glancing between Ren and Ava. ‘What odd wording.’
His leg is broken. It lies at the wrong angle on the sand. I have seen doctors treating broken legs before. I know it must be set, but I have no equipment here and no knowledge of how to use it. There is wood from the shipwreck and there is rope. I will do it now, while he is still unconscious. His arm is bleeding too. There is so much blood. But I don’t know if I can make it up the beach. My fins don’t manage well on land.
‘Fins?’
‘Oh, you have got to be kidding me,’ Ren mutters. ‘Come on, seriously?’
‘This sounds like it’s being written by a…’ I glance around the shop like it’s too ludicrous a notion to speak aloud. ‘It couldn’t be, could it?’
‘A mermaid?’ Ava says, looking like she’s expecting us to laugh at the suggestion.
‘Or some other kind of sea creature? A selkie, maybe? Or a?—’
‘Great white shark, perhaps?’ Ren mutters sarcastically. ‘Well-renowned for their ability to hold pens and jot down intimate thoughts.’
‘Read more.’ Ava nudges me excitedly, ignoring his cynicism.
The wind is still howling and the rain is lashing down. I crawled up the beach. I caressed the broken leg, wishing I had legs just like his. Maybe I would be normal if I could walk like a human can? I pushed a plank of wood from the ship against it and tied it with rope, but it wasn’t tight enough, so I used my teeth to tear strips from his wet shirt and fastened the wood against his leg.
He doesn’t wake up, but he cries out in his sleep. His teeth grind together. He thrashes against the sand. Does he dream like sea creatures do? Is he dreaming to take himself away from the pain, as I do?
I stroke his hair away from his face. I murmur words but, as usual, no sound comes out. I cannot speak, I don’t know why I thought this night would be any different.
I’ve never been alone with a human like this before. Not one so handsome, anyway. He is… delightful. The way his hair falls across his forehead, covering some of the marks and cuts that I caused. There is blood dripping onto the sand. I make a compress out of seaweed and hold it to the worst wound. There are the black marks of bruises rising on his arms. They are my fault too.
I want to stay, but I know he will be in pain. He will be angry and scared. And I cannot soothe him. I will do nothing but make him angrier, or scare him further. He will not be accustomed to seeing a creature such as I.
I had no warning about his ship coming. It came from nowhere, as did the storm that came across the Atlantic, and now it moves onwards to the east, battering the mainland as it hits the edge of the British Isles, passing across my island like it was never there.
The sun will be up soon. Will he awaken with the sunrise? But then… he will see me. He will know what I am. He will know I am the creature who lured him to his doom. I must go. I must not come back.
‘You’re not seriously suggesting…’ Ren says as the diary entry ends.
‘I don’t know what else to make of it,’ I say slowly. ‘I mean, obviously shecouldn’tbe… could she?’
‘What if she is?’ Ava looks at me hopefully.
I feel a little flutter in my chest as my heart fights against my head. Obviously thisisn’tthe diary of a real mermaid. Mermaids don’t exist, that we know of. But maybe… What if wedon’tknow? What if this is somehow proof that they really do exist or at least, they did in 1899?
Ren recognises the war playing out behind my eyes. ‘Mermaids aren’t real.’
‘You don’t know that. There’s a big ocean out there, with vast depths that have never been explored. Maybe they did exist in 1899 and people didn’t have the technology to find them back then. No one knows what could be out there.’
‘I’d venture it’s not bloody mermaids. And this is way too much of a coincidence. A mermaid-themed shop, run by someone who loves mermaids, and we find this in a seashell-covered mermaid’s chest…’
‘Maybe it was meant to end up here?’ Ava suggests.
‘Yes! Exactly that! That’s the whole point of my shop – people find things they were meant to find. Who better to find this than us?’ I glance at Ava. Me and her, maybe, but probably not him. He doesn’t seem like the type for believing in mermaids – he doesn’t seem like the type for believing inanything.
He rolls his eyes, but still keeps reading upside down across the counter as we read the next entry.
17 January 1899
