We Both Go Down Together Read online

  “You didn’t tell them where we were going, did you?” Jonathan’s tone was suddenly tight, like he was afraid of her answer.

  Fran shook her head. “I figure it’s better if they didn’t know.”

  “Yes. It is, at that.” He came around the car, collecting their bags and loading them into the trunk before opening the passenger side door for her. Fran got in, looking at him anxiously. Jonathan closed the door, walked back around the car, and got into the driver’s seat. The smell of biscuits filled the cab.

  Fran held her silence until they were out of Portland and on the road, heading up the coast toward Canada. Then, finally, she asked, “What’s the big deal about this Gentling place, anyway? I figured you’d get around to telling me eventually, but I’m getting a little tired of waiting, and we’re getting a little close to our destination.”

  Jonathan glanced at her, startled. “You mean I still haven’t explained?”

  “Nope,” she said, amiably enough. “You usually do the whole ‘blah blah science and ecology and protecting the unnatural world’ thing on the train, but this time, between the peeing and the puking and the yelling at you for suggesting that I catch the next train back to Michigan, I guess I never got around to asking, and you never got around to telling me what the heck was going on.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Jonathan returned his attention to the road. The sun was starting to rise, and the Maine coastline was coming to life around them. The growing light revealed wildflowers clinging to the rocky shoulder to their right, while pines and ash trees climbed the mountains to their left, turning the whole world green and glorious. “Gentling was founded sometime in the 1700s, by a man named Howard Gentling. He wanted his daughters to grow up—as much as they could—without facing the judgment and prejudice he’d seen his wife endure while they were living in the city of Portland. He wasn’t the only one. The settlement grew relatively quickly, and by the early 1800s, they even had people moving there who were unaware of the town’s...unique...origins.”

  “What kind of prejudice?” Fran asked. “There’s a whole laundry list of things can get somebody looked at funny, especially back then. Did he marry a harpy or something?”

  “Close,” said Jonathan. “He married a mermaid.”

  Fran blinked. Fran removed a biscuit from her bag, taking a thoughtful bite and chewing slowly before she swallowed. And finally, Fran asked the question that Jonathan had been waiting for ever since she said that she was going to accompany him to Gentling, Maine: “How’n the hell do you fuck a mermaid? Fish ain’t got vaginas, last time I checked.”

  “There are quite a few types of mermaid, as it turns out,” said Jonathan. “At least a dozen different species have been recorded worldwide.”

  “Not answering the question,” said Fran.

  “Getting there,” said Jonathan. “Mr. Gentling’s wife was from a species of merfolk called ‘the finfolk.’ Our earliest recorded sightings have them originating in the waters near Scotland, which explains why they’ve done so well here in Maine—they like cold oceans, and rough seas. They’re metamorphs, going through three distinct life cycles. Mammalian when young, amphibian in middle age, and fully aquatic in their final years. Mrs. Gentling probably looked as human as you or I when she was younger. The scales and the gills would have come later, after they’d been married for several years.”

  “Well, that seems a little deceitful,” said Fran dubiously. “You expect gray hair and wrinkles, not ‘honey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we’re gonna need a bigger bathtub.’ And what kind of name is ‘finfolk’? That’s like calling a bird a ‘flap-thing.’”

  “Aren’t you the one who named the frickens?” asked Jonathan, sounding amused.

  “Details.” Fran flapped a hand dismissively. “Not answering the question again. Is this going to be a habit with you now? Not answering my questions? Because I have no compunctions about being a self-made widow if you annoy me enough.”

  “What’s worst is that my parents would probably forgive you,” said Jonathan. “Yes, calling a race of sea-going hominids ‘finfolk’ is exactly like calling a bird a ‘flap-thing,’ but that doesn’t make it any less their name. And how is it worse than ‘mermaid,’ exactly? It just sounds worse because you’re not used to hearing it yet. You will be soon.”

  “Why? Are Mr. Gentling’s descendants still living in town?”

  “You remember I said that he wasn’t the only one whose children had a finfolk parent?” Jonathan waited for Fran’s nod before he continued: “Those children had children, and their children had children, and while the entire town of Gentling is not finfolk, I would say that one in three are. It’s their largest settlement, and it’s possible only because they have the numbers that they do.”

  Fran frowned, eating another biscuit while she puzzled through the implications of this statement. Jonathan held his tongue, letting her come to her conclusion in her own time. They’d been together long enough that he understood the way her mind worked: if she thought things through before she spoke, she’d have an easier time understanding how they fit together.

  “They have real short lifespans?” she asked finally.

  “In a sense, yes,” he said. “The more aquatic the finfolk become, the less they remember their lives on land. By the time they return fully to the sea, they aren’t really thinking creatures anymore. Ancient finfolk look like enormous predatory fish, and are about as intelligent.”

  Fran shuddered. “What a horrible thing to have happen to you. To know that was coming, and to not be able to stop it.”

  “The younger finfolk try to stave off the change for as long as they possibly can, but it’s inevitable for them: they all eventually return to the sea.” Jonathan traced the line of the road ahead with his eyes, marking off the curves and bends that would take them into Gentling. “Most will begin to change in their late teens. Some postpone it until well into their twenties. Most marry young, of course. They prefer to have their children on land when possible.”

  “Why? I’d think the water’d make it easier, what with being mostly weightless and all.”

  “A variety of reasons. The infants can’t breathe water, which can be a problem if the mother is too aquatic to remember that air is important. Having children while still land-bound means that they can see them settled with a good family, if necessary, before their minds become too clouded. And there are the elder finfolk to be considered.”

  “They don’t like babies?”

  “Oh, they adore them,” said Jonathan grimly. “They think they’re quite delicious.”

  Fran blanched and ate another biscuit. Finally, almost timidly, she said, “There’s something I don’t understand.”

  “If there’s just one thing you don’t understand, you’re doing better than I did when I first heard about Gentling,” said Jonathan. “What is it?”

  “If Mr. Gentling was a human man, how’d he have babies with a mermaid in the first place? Anything that turns into a fish when it grows all the way up ain’t human, and last I checked, you couldn’t get a pony pregnant without another pony.”

  Jonathan chuckled. “As always, your way with words remains unparalleled in the natural world. The finfolk are distinctly not human, and we’re not entirely sure that they’re mammals at any stage of their life. Even the immature form, when they look like human beings, may be biologically very different. We’re not sure how they manage to reproduce with their human mates, but we know that the children of encounters between female finfolk and male humans are always entirely finfolk. None of them have ever managed to remain on land.”

  “What about the other way around?” asked Fran.

  “The offspring of male finfolk and human women may demonstrate traits from either parent. Most of them seem to stay human, although they are very likely to become senile in early middle age. It’s a pity. Most of the mayors of Gentling have been the sons of human women and finfolk men.”

  “Just the sons?” as
ked Fran.

  “Not only the sons, but mostly, yes. It is coastal Maine, darling,” said Jonathan. “They’re progressive enough to accept mermaids as neighbors. I think the folks in Gentling haven’t wanted to push it.”

  Fran rolled her eyes and reached for another biscuit as Jonathan, laughing, drove on.

  The town of Gentling, Maine appeared in front of them shortly before noon. There was nothing magical about the town’s sudden visibility: the road had curved the coastline in such a way that even the church spire was simply obscured by the landscape until suddenly, the car rounded the last curve and there it was, waiting in all its New England splendor to receive them.

  Like many of Maine’s small coastal towns, Gentling didn’t appear to have been planned so much as it had grown out of the soil, spreading out long tendrils of road and unspooling leafy avenues as it sought to cling to the land. The road deposited them on what must have served as the main street, a two-lane thoroughfare that was mostly deserted, save for a few parked cars and some anxious-looking pedestrians in clothing that was easily twenty years out of date. Fran twisted in her seat as much as her swollen stomach would allow, straining to see everything at once.

  “Don’t stare at the locals dear, it tends to upset them, and I’d rather we not get run out of town on a rail before I find out why we’ve been called here.”

  Fran twisted back around to blink at Jonathan. “What do you mean, ‘why we’ve been called here’? Don’t you know why we’re here?”

  “Not as such,” he said, turning off onto a narrower street. “We receive a postcard from Gentling once every few months. Father files them all. If the postcard is blank, we assume all is well, and that no assistance is needed. The postcard he received three days before we left had writing on it.”

  “Well, what did it say?”

  “It said ‘wish you were here.’” Jonathan somehow made the standard postcard platitude sound ominous. “That’s their way of summoning us. I don’t know what they want, or whether whatever it is will be something that we can accomplish. But we promised the people of Gentling decades ago that if they ever called us, we would come. They called. Now here we are.”

  Fran paused, studying the set of his jaw for a moment before she guessed, “This is one of those ‘we did bad things while we were with the Covenant of St. George’ promises, isn’t it?”

  Jonathan sighed deeply, turning onto a still narrower street. This one was barely more than a glorified horse trail, and large-eyed children watched them from the shadows in front of the nearby houses as they went bumping past. “There was a settlement in Scotland, years ago. Almost as large as Gentling, and far more well-established. The finfolk had been there for centuries. I won’t say that they never interfered with human women who preferred to be left alone, but for the most part, they were excellent neighbors. They came on land to marry and have children, and in exchange, the village enjoyed excellent fishing. No one there ever went hungry.”

  “But the Covenant found out,” Fran guessed.

  “One of my ancestors, James Healy, led the mission against the town. They wiped out every man, woman, and child suspected of having finfolk heritage. They burned them. Alive. That was how the Covenant dealt with people who had congress with demons. They burned them.” His eyes were distant, and dark with a guilt that wasn’t his to bear. “Finfolk can be dangerous, but it’s almost always by accident; they forget that humans can’t breathe water. They generally don’t marry people who don’t know what they are, and they’re some of the sweetest, most generous souls you’ll ever know. It’s not their fault that they’re called to go back to the sea. They didn’t deserve what the Covenant did to them. What we did to them.”

  “Johnny, it isn’t your fault. You weren’t there.”

  Jonathan pulled the car to a stop in front of a sprawling monstrosity of a house, one that was large enough to have been considered the center of an estate if it hadn’t been surrounded so closely by other, smaller homes. It had at least three wings, all of slightly different architectural origin, and towered above the rest of the street, standing four stories high if it was a floor. The whole thing was painted a solid, unrelenting shade of gray. Jonathan set the brake and twisted to face his wife, seizing one of her hands in both of his.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, because family is everything, Fran—family is all that we have in this world, and that means that family’s sins are ours to carry, just as surely as family’s blessings are ours to enjoy. My family killed these people in cold blood for the crime of being different, and I will repay our debt to them before our son is born. He deserves a world with less blood on its hands.”

  “All right, Johnny,” said Fran, reaching out with her free hand to stroke his cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t understand.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I should have told you what you were marrying.” He dropped her hand and got out of the car before she could reply, slamming the door behind himself.

  Fran stayed where she was, watching him walk around the car to get her door. She smiled a little, sadly. “That’s the thing, city boy,” she said, to no one in particular. “You did.”

  A brass plate next to the door identified the house as the original residence of Howard and Abigail Gentling. Jonathan put down the suitcases—his and Fran’s, which he had insisted on carrying—and rang the doorbell, which produced a horrendous clanging noise. Fran winced.

  “Sometimes it has to call people in from the beach, depending on where they are in their life cycle,” Jonathan explained. “This has always been the mayor’s house. The position is technically elected—they hold elections, anyway—but everyone knows it’s really hereditary. Gentling’s descendants have been the mayors here ever since the town was founded.”

  “That’s nice,” said Fran noncommittally.

  The sound of running footsteps became audible through the closed door, which was wrenched open to reveal a tall girl in a blue summer shift. She was barefoot, and the blue-gray scales that peppered her feet and ankles matched the color of her dress surprisingly well. A clip held her long blonde hair back from her face. She blinked at the pair of them, her gaze going from Jonathan to the vastly pregnant Fran and back again before she appeared to make up her mind. A bright, clearly artificial smile blossomed on her face like a flower.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but Mayor Gentling is unwell, and not receiving visitors at this time,” she said. “If you were looking for the bed and breakfast, it closed down at the start of the year. There was a death in the family. If you head another ten miles or so up the road, you’ll come to West Cove. They have a really lovely inn there, absolutely top notch for families. Thanks so much for stopping by.” She started to swing the door closed.

  “You know, I barely recognized you,” said Jonathan, with a sudden smile. “Hello, Lynn. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  The girl stopped mid-swing, smile fading as she looked more closely at Jonathan. Then her eyes widened, and she asked, “Johnny?”

  “In the flesh,” he said, and spread his arms. “Come here, you.”

  “Johnny!” It wasn’t a question this time: it was a joyous declaration, a confirmation that maybe, somehow, things were going to be all right after all. Lynn launched herself out of the house and into Jonathan’s arms, impacting with a force that knocked the air out of him. He still laughed somehow, returning her embrace.

  Fran rolled her eyes. “First all the gorgon girlies know him when we’re trying to have a perfectly normal honeymoon, then he takes me to meet dinosaurs, and now he’s gettin’ hugs from the fish-girls. No wonder he was single when we met. He didn’t know what a human girl even looked like before I came along.”

  Still laughing, Jonathan pushed Lynn out to arm’s length and said, “No, darling, I was just waiting for you to come along. Lynn, may I introduce you to my wife, the lovely Frances Healy?”

  “Howdy,” said Fran, smiling blithely at Lynn. “I kn
ow you were probably giving us your townie spiel before, and I respect that, but I gotta ask, you have a bathroom in this place? Preferably one that’s on the inside of the house?”

  “We had indoor plumbing installed two years ago,” said Lynn. “We even have a plumber living in town now. It’s nice to meet you. We’ve all been wondering about the girl who got Johnny to settle down. When are you due?”

  “A month,” said Fran. “Bathroom?”

  “Follow me.” Lynn stepped back into the house with Fran close on her heels. Jonathan paused long enough to pick up the suitcases and followed them both into the plush, well-appointed foyer.

  Abigail Gentling had been a woman of both taste and means, thanks to her marriage to Howard, and between the two of them, they had built a home that would be comfortable for themselves and their descendants in perpetuity. The floors were polished hardwood, sealed against the water that would inevitably be tracked in by finfolk who were far enough along in their change to spend most of their time submerged, and the walls were papered in blue damask, patterned with subtle loops and swirls that would obscure any creeping mold or water damage. All the bookshelves were glass-fronted, and all the visible metal was covered with a thin scrim of verdigris.

  Fran goggled without reservation or attempt to hide it. Lynn smiled a little, although the worried cast never left her eyes. “If you’ll follow me, I can take you to the water closet. Johnny, we’ve got the main guest room set up for you. Is that all right?”

  “That will be perfect,” he said. “Is your mother still the mayor?”

  The worry in Lynn’s eyes deepened briefly into sadness. She shook her head. “My older brother. Mother has returned to the waves.”

  “I see,” he said. “I am sorry for your loss.”