To Catch a Mermaid Read online

  “This be prime bluefin tuna,” the captain told him. “You can’t buy one of these for less than ten dollars.”

  Just as Boom had expected. That darn universe again. Halvor would be steaming mad. Viking descendants have notoriously short tempers.

  “But I need some fresh fish,” Boom explained, repositioning the backpack. “All I got is three dollars.”

  The captain stopped scooping for a moment. He took off his hat and wiped his sweaty forehead with his upper arm. “Well, lad, you can have whatever you want from that bucket.” He pointed to the end of the dock. “That there be the reject seafood that found its way into me net. Watch your fingers. There’s some nasty critters in there.”

  Reject seafood? That didn’t sound very tasty. A cold wind stung Boom’s face as he walked down the dock to where a white bucket rocked back and forth. Some clicking crabs clung to the bucket’s edge. A few had already escaped and were scuttling across the planks. Boom peered into the bucket. Green sea grass floated at the surface, and something moved beneath. The bucket rocked again, and a shiny blue-green tail emerged. It flapped about, then disappeared beneath the grass. It looked like a thick, meaty tail that Halvor could chop to his heart’s content. He wouldn’t have to know it came from the reject bucket.

  Something that’s still alive is about as fresh as it gets.

  Boom pushed up his jacket sleeve and stuck a hand into the cold water. The tail felt slimy and it slipped from his grip. Water splashed onto Boom’s face.

  Stupid fish.

  He took off his backpack and tried again, this time with both hands. The fish struggled as Boom grasped the tail’s tip. The fish’s body was so big it was wedged tight. With a deep breath, Boom pulled with all his might and the fish came free. Tangled in a mess of sea grass, it fought desperately, but Boom managed to shove it into his backpack, right on top of Mertyle’s homework.

  Her own fault, he thought, as he closed the zipper.

  The backpack started flip-flopping down the dock. “Hey!” Boom called, chasing after it. He managed to reach it just before it fell off the edge. He picked up the pack and slipped his wet arms through the straps. Now the pack was uncomfortably heavy. He shook a crab off his shoe, then walked back to the boat.

  “Here’s my three dollars,” Boom said, holding out the bills.

  “That be quite a fish,” the captain said with amusement as the backpack lunged side to side. “You sure you want it?”

  “I’m not the one who wants it,” Boom grumbled. “I’m sick of fish.” He kicked a clamshell. It soared over the boat and landed in the water.

  The captain folded his arms and stared at Boom, long and hard. “I can tell when a man’s had a bad day,” he said. “You keep your money, lad. You be needing it for antacid if you eat that fish.”

  Boom put the money back into his jacket pocket. “Thanks,” he said. “Hey, what kind of fish is it anyway?”

  “Beats me,” the captain replied. “I’ve never seen the likes of it in all me years of fishing. Fought like the devil to get free. I give you fair warning, lad — a fish like that comes from the darkest part of the ocean, where we men aren’t meant to go. You be either brave or stupid to try to eat a fish like that.”

  Chapter Six:

  Fish for Dinner

  Yuck!” Mertyle exclaimed, when Boom dumped the contents of the backpack onto the kitchen table. She picked up one of the textbooks. Fish juice dripped from its pages. “Great,” she said sarcastically. She picked up a soggy division sheet. A few pieces of seaweed clung to the homework’s edge. “And how am I supposed to write on this?”

  “With a pencil and you’re welcome,” Boom snapped. It might have been nice to come home to just a little bit of sympathy. But neither Halvor nor Mertyle understood the importance of KBAW tournaments. Mr. Broom, on the other hand, was a huge fan of kicking. Or used to be, before he locked himself away. More than anything, Boom wanted to run up the two flights of stairs and tell his father about Principal Prunewallop’s unjust ruling. His father would call the school and demand that rematch. His father would stand up for him. His father would . . .

  Boom sighed. His father had enough to worry about. Boom would have to fight his own battles.

  “My goodness,” Halvor said, looking at the madly flapping pile of green sea grass. The tail reached out and overturned the salt and pepper shakers and a jar of dandelions. “What kind of fish is it?”

  Boom shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

  “Just keep that fish from bouncing off the table while I sharpen my knife,” Halvor ordered, opening a drawer. Fluffy, Halvor’s cat, jumped up onto the table and hissed as the fish flopped close to the edge. Mertyle pushed the soggy textbook aside.

  “What a strange tail,” she said, cleaning her magnifying glass with a napkin. “Such bright colors. This looks like a tropical fish.”

  What was she talking about? Tropical fish didn’t live in the cold ocean that surrounded Fairweather Island. Boom shook his backpack over the sink, clearing out sand and kelp.

  The fish kept moving about. Mertyle grabbed a wire basket from the counter, dumped out the dried heels of rye bread that Halvor saved for the squirrels, then set the basket over the fish, trapping it. She took up the magnifying glass and peered through the wires. “Wow. You’ve got to see these scales,” she said. “Each one is a perfect triangle. Some of them have weird markings.”

  “Out of the way,” Halvor barked, fish-killing knife in hand. He plucked off the basket. The fish began to flop again, upsetting the cat and a jar of sugar. “Watch out,” Halvor warned as his big knife swooshed through the air, missing the fish by a mere inch. “That’s a quick fish,” he complained, trying to free the blade from the table’s surface. “I’ve never seen such a fish. I need a special Viking artifact from the garage.”

  As Halvor went out the kitchen’s side door, the fish slipped off the table’s edge. Boom caught it in midair. Just as he placed it back on the table, it bit him.

  “Ouch,” he cried, holding up a bleeding pinkie. “It’s a shark.”

  The fish growled.

  Mertyle and Boom jumped back. The cat, truly freaked out, retreated to the corner with its back arched and its hair sticking straight up like Boom’s.

  “I didn’t know sharks could growl,” Boom said.

  “They can’t.” Mertyle slowly approached the table. “They had an entire Jeopardy! category on sharks last week. Sharks can’t growl and they don’t have scales, either. Something’s fishy here. I need another look. Hold it still with the basket.”

  Boom didn’t want to get bit again, so he put on a pair of Halvor’s oven mitts. Then he ran around the table trying to catch the mass of writhing seaweed. After some effort, he slammed the wire basket over their evening meal. Mertyle climbed onto the table and picked up the magnifying glass again. “I can see the teeth. Wow! They’re supersharp, two full rows of them. But that seaweed is in the way. I can’t see anything else.”

  The fish started to chomp on the metal basket until it made a big hole. Boom poked the end of the sugar spoon through the hole and tried to push aside the strands of sea grass. “Nice fishy, fishy,” he cooed. A softer growl sounded as Boom untangled the grass. “Nice fishy, fishy.” The strands parted.

  Both Boom and Mertyle gasped with the force of a vacuum cleaner hose. Beneath the hole in the basket peered a little green face. It turned a pair of violet watery eyes up at them and blinked long black lashes. Out reached two little arms. Human arms with little human hands.

  Boom thought his heart would stop beating.

  The garage door slammed. Boom and Mertyle ran to the kitchen window. Halvor carried an enormous axe over his shoulder as he approached. “Oh no,” Boom said, recalling the stories that Halvor often told them. “That’s the axe that Erik the Red used to fell trees in a single swoop.”

  “No,” Mertyle corrected. “That’s the axe Erik the Red used to cut off the head of the fire-breathing sea monster.”

  Cut o
ff the head?

  Boom and Mertyle looked at each other and, without speaking, knew exactly what needed to be done.

  Chapter Seven:

  The Thing on the Bed

  Boom dumped the thrashing creature onto Mertyle’s bed, then ran back downstairs to deal with Halvor. The cat bounded past, almost tripping Boom on the stairs.

  A coat of green slime covered the kitchen table. “Where’s the fish?” Halvor asked, holding the axe over his shoulder.

  Think fast, think fast. “Cat took it.”

  “What do you mean the cat took it?” Halvor asked.

  “Mertyle and I turned our backs, just for an instant, and Fluffy dragged it off.” Boom thought he sounded very convincing. He kept his voice steady, which was really hard to do, considering he had just seen a fish with arms.

  “How can a little kitty drag off such a big fish?” Halvor challenged.

  Good point. Come on, come on, think of something.

  “The domestic cat is a direct descendant of the lion,” Boom stated. If there was one thing Halvor understood above anything else, it was the importance of being a direct descendant. “Never underestimate the power of direct descendancy.”

  Halvor stroked his beard as he mulled it over. “Yah, come to think of it, she does like to torture cockroaches. Which way did she go?”

  Boom pointed to the cat door that provided access to the side yard. Fluffy used the side yard as a litter box. Halvor stomped out of the kitchen, calling, “Here, Fluffy, Fluffy, Fluffy.”

  Boom ran back upstairs. As he rushed into the bedroom, Fluffy leapt onto Mertyle’s dresser, her eyes glued to the thing that flipped and flopped on the carnation pink comforter. The thing started growling again, not like a frightened dog or an angry bear, but the kind of gurgling growl, Boom guessed, that might come from a frightened dog or angry bear if it swam underwater.

  Boom locked the bedroom door. His heart beat so fast he feared it might burst through his jacket.

  The blue-green tail arched, then smashed Mertyle’s box of Ry-Krisp that she snacked on while watching game shows. It arched again and thwacked the wall, leaving a trail of green slime.

  What was that thing?

  “Here, Fluffy, Fluffy, Fluffy,” Halvor called from the side yard. “Let the big fishy go. Give the big fishy back to Halvor.”

  A green hand reached out and felt along the bedding until it found a piece of a Ry-Krisp. The cracker disappeared into the mass of sea grass, and an unmistakable chomping sound filled the room, followed by a little underwater burp.

  It was hungry.

  The cat sat frozen on the dresser, like a stuffed animal. Boom felt frozen too, like his feet were made of cement. But Mertyle, who was afraid of facing reality, courageously approached the bed.

  Mertyle handed the wiggling fingers another cracker, and sure enough, the little hand greedily accepted it. Crumbs flew, accompanied by more chomping, then another burp. After three more crackers, the tail stretched out and the creature quieted. A full two minutes passed before Boom edged forward. The thing seemed to have fallen asleep. Its breathing came slow and raspy, like waves rolling onto shore. The sound made Boom feel sleepy as well.

  Mertyle clutched the magnifying glass and gave the creature a closer look. “Each strand of sea grass springs from its head,” she whispered. She took a hair ribbon from her desk and carefully gathered the grass, strand by slimy strand, into a high ponytail, exposing the wide face. Its eyes were closed and it had stuck a thumb into its mouth. The face was human, mostly, except for the extra-flat nose. And the fact that it was green and had sea grass for hair. And killer teeth.

  Neither Boom nor Mertyle said anything for a long time. Words seemed so insignificant. Words could not begin to describe the amazement that flooded Boom’s veins. If ordered to write an essay, at that very moment, about how he was feeling, Boom simply would have written the word “wow” over and over and over. Could he really be seeing what he thought he was seeing?

  He scratched his head, setting a couple of dandelion seeds free. “I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “It can’t be.” Fluffy leapt onto the headboard to get a closer look.

  “It is,” Mertyle said with confidence. “The tail is made of scales while the upper half is covered in skin. It has nipples, a belly button, and ten fingers. It’s a baby mermaid.”

  “I just can’t believe it.” He really couldn’t. This wasn’t possible. Yet the impossible slept on Mertyle’s bed.

  Mertyle peered through the magnifying glass at the tail. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure if it’s a mermaid or a merboy.”

  “Huh?” Boom looked at the tail. Obviously he knew how to tell the difference between a boy person and a girl person, but he didn’t know how to tell a boy fish from a girl fish. It just looked like a tail.

  “Let’s just call it a baby for now,” Mertyle decided. “A merbaby.”

  A merbaby? Boom Broom didn’t walk around in a fantasy world, like the rest of his family, believing that a dead parent could return or that it’s possible to avoid danger by staying inside. No, Boom Broom had his feet, both the big one and the regular one, planted firmly on the ground. There had to be a better explanation. “Maybe it’s some kind of mutant from nuclear waste that got dumped in the ocean or some toxic chemicals that leaked from a barge. Two-headed fish pop up all the time. I’ve seen photos of them in the International Inquirer newspaper. This is probably just a freak of nature.”

  “It’s a merbaby.”

  “See if it’s got a zipper,” Boom said. “In case it’s a costume.” Someone might be playing a trick on them. Maybe this was one of those hidden-camera shows.

  Mertyle lifted the tail, continuing her inspection. A little squirt of yellow landed on the comforter.

  “It’s a real tail,” she said, plugging her nose. “And that’s real merbaby poop.”

  The baby scrunched up its face and squirted out another little blob. “Disgusting,” Boom groaned. The stuff smelled like Halvor’s hot fish nectar. Boom opened the window to get rid of the stench. A blast of winter air quickly deodorized the room.

  The bedroom window looked out onto Prosperity Street and the Mumps’ house across the way. The Mumps’ minivan pulled into their driveway. Daisy Mump, Hurley’s little sister, leapt out, as did three other girls. They carried sleeping bags and overnight cases and giggled when they pointed at the Brooms’ house, a run-down shack compared to the Mumps’ stone mansion. But before the girls caught sight of Boom at the window, Halvor stormed into the front yard, still holding Erik the Red’s axe. The polished silver blade reflected the cloudy sky.

  “You girls seen a big fish flopping about?” he hollered over the broken picket fence. The girls screamed and ran into the Mumps’ house.

  “Put that thing away!” Mrs. Mump scolded, pointing at the axe. Her coat stretched across her chest like she had torpedoes under it. “You’re going to hurt someone.”

  “I’ll do as I please in my own yard,” Halvor cried, shaking the axe.

  “Well, that’s not really your yard,” Mrs. Mump yelled, grabbing her purse. “You’re just a servant and you aren’t doing your job because that yard is an eyesore. It’s the ugliest yard on Fairweather Island. Look at all those horrid weeds. Why don’t you do something about them?”

  “Mind your own business!” Halvor hollered. “For sure!”

  Mrs. Mump stomped her high heel. “How dare you speak to me like that. If I see you swinging an axe anywhere near my daughter again, I’ll call the police.” She stormed into her house, slamming the door.

  Feeling the sting of Mrs. Mump’s rude words, Boom closed the window. The commotion had awoken the baby. It opened its fang-filled mouth and began to whine — a sound like wind seeping through a crack under the door. Boom stepped toward it and the whine turned into a growl. He took another step — another growl. But it didn’t growl when Mertyle sat down on the bed and scooped it up. It peered at her with its watery eyes and made a little bubble.


  “Why does it growl at me?” Boom asked. “I’m the one who saved it from the reject seafood bucket.” He stepped forward again and the baby whipped its head around and gnashed its teeth at him.

  Mertyle smiled. She actually smiled. To Boom’s knowledge, Mertyle hadn’t smiled since the twister. “I’m going to keep it,” she said with a giggle. “It’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.”

  Cute? It smelled like mud and left green slime on the walls and yellow puddles on the bed.

  “But we can’t tell Halvor,” she added. Boom knew exactly what she meant.

  Halvor hated merfolk. During the past year, as he had worked as their cook, he had shared many stories with the Broom children — stories of Viking raids and great battles, of Viking journeys across the unknown sea, and of encounters with strange creatures. To the Vikings, the most feared sea creatures were the merfolk, who stirred up gales and lured sailors to their deaths with an eerie song.

  “On a night as black as coal,” Halvor had told them, “a pair of green hands pulled Erik the Red’s beautiful wife, Matilda, overboard and drowned her. All that remained was a shred of her dress hanging on the rail and a conch shell, the mark of the merfolk. Sick with grief, Erik the Red declared that merfolk would be Viking enemies until the end of time and that all Vikings, and their direct descendants, were obligated to kill them on sight.”

  Boom swallowed hard, imagining the axe slicing through green baby flesh. Even though it had bit him, it didn’t -deserve to have its head chopped off. “You’re right. We can’t tell Halvor.”

  “We can’t tell anyone about it,” Mertyle said, her eyes widening.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the scientists will come and poke the baby with equipment, just like in E.T., and the government will try to put it in a cage, just like in King Kong. Then the circus will stick it into a tank and people will point fingers at it.” She tightened her arms around the baby. It began to chew on a strand of Mertyle’s hair.

  Boom sat down on his bed to think this out. How could they possibly hide this thing from Halvor and the rest of the world? If this creature was truly a merbaby, wouldn’t that be the most amazing discovery of the twenty-first century? Having discovered it, wouldn’t he become the most famous kid in the entire world? And wouldn’t that make Hurley crazy with envy? Sure, being Kick the Ball Against the Wall champion was a big deal, but discovering a creature that no one believed actually existed was as big as stepping on the moon. Bigger!