Fathom by L. Standage (spanish books to read .TXT) 📕

Dealt with? I stopped walking.

“What, are you guys going to kill us now?”

Eamon laughed. “Heavens, no! Why on earth would you think that?”

“You just said we needed to be ‘dealt with.’ I’ve seen enough movies to know what that means.”

Eamon chuckled again. “No, lass. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what? If I saw what I think I saw...”

“You’ve only witnessed one of the most powerful secrets in the history of our planet,” Eamon replied. “You saw them yourselves. You can’t deny it.”

“I can if you tell me I was dreaming,” said Sam.

“I wish it were that easy. Think about all that has happened. Think about the dangerous people you’ve come into contact with. What would someone be willing to kill for?”

I thought of Delfina, of the gun held to my head, the bullet wound in my shoulder, and the knife at my throat. As I looked back on everything, it all made sense: the vessel and everything that emerged from it, the mystery, the murder, the out-and-out obsession coming from Linnaeus, and the things written in his file.

“As hard as it is for us normal folk to even imagine such a thing to actually exist”—he moved his gaze right into my eyes, then Samantha’s—“the only answer I have for you is—”

“They’re real,” I whispered, my voice barely louder than the crashing waves. This wasn’t possible. This just couldn’t be possible. How was it happening here, here in this world full of normalcy, of reality, of pure, total ordinary? I looked toward the vastness of the ocean, swallowing with difficulty and tasting the salt in the sea air on the back of my throat.

“I can’t believe it,” said Samantha, staring at the ocean as though expecting more of them to emerge. “I saw them and I still can’t believe it.”

“Linnaeus and his men,” I continued, remembering what Samantha said last night. “They thought I was one of them. One of the men who kidnapped me that night, he looked at my neck before he told the others I wasn’t...what they thought.” I still couldn’t bring myself to say the word out loud.

“Did he?” Eamon raised his eyebrows. “Interesting. He must have been looking for gills.”

“Gills?”

“Yes, gills. How else would they breathe?”

“Haven’t thought much about it,” said Sam with a huff.

“How could Linnaeus make a mistake like that?” I asked. “I mean, my picture was in a tabloid. It was full of fake stories. Why did everyone take the picture so seriously? Even you guys.”

“It’s not hard to convince someone who already knows they exist. The average human would brush it off as a hoax.”

“The red-headed lady saw the picture too,” said Sam. “At the grocery store. She heard us talking about it.”

“Yes, Delfina confided in me about the picture,” said Eamon. “She expressed her concerns about merworld security. I assured her that the photographs in that magazine would never be taken seriously by the greater part of humanity. But she wouldn’t let it go. You aren’t the first to end up in a magazine, Olivia, just the first to convince a real mermaid.”

“Still…how could she think that someone like me could be someone like her?”

“Well, it isn’t too difficult to imagine, if you know enough about them,” Eamon said, casual again, as though we discussed manatees instead of—of...but I wasn’t ready for casualness yet. The shock was still too fresh, like a cut I didn’t know I had smarting in salt water. “Consider the mistake a compliment. Merpeople are beautiful creatures.”

Merpeople.

I shuddered as the word hit me like a bucket of ice in the face. Merpeople!

“W-what are they like?” I whispered. “I mean, beyond first impressions.”

“Well, I’ve only met a small number of them myself. Most aren’t too friendly, especially to humans.”

“Ya think?” said Sam with a sneer.

“They have much to be defensive about,” Eamon continued. “With the exploration of the oceans becoming all the more technologically advanced, we’ve made them more secluded. I’ll reckon there’re no more than a dozen or so humans on this planet who know they exist. Consider yourselves extremely lucky.”

“But why the big secret?” I asked. “Wouldn’t people be happy to know about it?”

“Many reasons, most of which are difficult to explain,” said Eamon. “The simplest: power. They are powerful creatures, but they know humans are powerful as well. They’ve been dismissed as mythical for so long, to expose them to the world would be catastrophic to their culture, even their lives. It’s best to keep the worlds separate.”

Separate worlds. It felt like the world, the Earth I had known all my life was no longer real, but a dream slipping away like sand in my fingers. Could I ever go back to a normal life? I reached up and felt my wounded, miraculously healed shoulder.

“I have another question,” I said.

“Fire away.”

“You guys seemed to be in the right place at the right time when I got sh—hurt.” I couldn’t bring myself to say shot. “How did that happen?”

“Calder said he saw you along the shore with Samantha last week. He was with Delfina. Do you remember?”

I nodded.

“I’ll try to make an already long story short,” said Eamon. “She’s the one who told us about you. A couple weeks ago, someone stole the vessel from their sacred cache. Delfina’s mission was to get it back. She contacted us after she came to the surface, though reluctantly. We came here to help her. She thought you were one of her people. You see, merpeople can visit land pretty much whenever they wish, if they have the means and permission—especially those that have just come of age. In some marine cultures, there are young merpeople who will live on land for a period of time as a test of courage. She figured you were just such a one, though a novice at transformation. Her assumption, and ours, was that you came and happened to befriend Samantha.” He paused and his grin faded as he continued. “Delfina had gone on her own to try to get