for @displacerghost
Megamind/Roxanne, T rating.
vintage mermaid AU.
chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4
Roxanne is a small town librarian who dreams of being a reporter. When she comes into the possession of something that appears to be directions to the hidden treasure of Great Lakes pirate Dan Seavey, she entertains wild hopes of finding enough money to fund her own newspaper. What she actually finds is a blue merperson. And trouble. A lot of trouble.
When Roxanne left, disappearing through the cave opening, taking the sketch he’d made with her, the creature known as Syx lay curled up on the edge of the carpet for several minutes, gazing into the darkness.
Then, at last, a shiver ran through his body, from the frill on his neck to the bottom of his tail, and he turned away and moved, with sinuous grace, down to the lake again. He slipped into the water, and disappeared, with hardly a ripple beneath the surface of it.
Down into the dark water he dove, moving with easy, powerful flicks of his tail.
The lake was very deep, and he did not stop until he reached to bottom of it, where the great, hulking forms of rock formations thrust upwards from the silt of the lakebed.
Everything at the bottom, here, was covered in a layer of phosphorescent algae which glowed faintly blue.
Syx’s eyes, though, searching the rock formations, picked out an opening in one particular rock which glowed more than the others—a greenish color, rather than blue.
He halted in front of this rock formation, fins waving gently with the motion of the currents.
Minyon, he called, the sound clicking and echoing through the water like the noise of whale-song. Come out, Minyon, please.
The greenish glow pulsed for a moment within the rocks, and then a fish emerged, a fish with sharp teeth and intelligent eyes, and luminescent tendrils. It fixed Syx with an accusing stare.
Please don’t be angry, Minyon, Syx said.
Why must you be so foolish, tekel? Minyon said, crest and fins moving agitatedly in the shape which indicated apprehension of danger.
I had to talk to her, Minyon, Syx said, hands moving as he spoke, making the gesture shapes that indicated apology and conciliation.
You did not! Minyon said. You wished to speak to her! You should have hidden beneath the water!
She saw the sitting room, Minyon, Syx said. She already knew someone was here. I had to speak to her.
And did you have to let her go as well? Minyon said, with a sharp gesture of negation.
I didn’t want to hurt her, Syx said, neck frill raised defensively.
Then you should have led her down to the water and let me do it, tekel! Minyon said.
I don’t want you to hurt her, either! Syx said, emphatically making the negation gesture. You’re not to hurt her when she comes back!
And when she attacks you?
She won’t! Syx’s hands fluttered in the negation gesture again.
She will. She’ll want to take your skin.
She won’t! She’s going to come again with news of Father!
Minyon made a rather rude gesture to indicate his disbelief.
Syx’s tail and neck frill moved agitatedly.
I don’t know what else to do, Minyon! You said yourself that you haven’t been able to find him anywhere around the lake! What if he’s injured? What if he needs help? I could try leaving again; I—
No.
Minyon’s gesture of negation was forceful and final.
But I—
No. Minyon made the gesture again. You have to stay here, tekel. Where it’s safe. Relatively safe, he added, narrowing his eyes at Syx. Not so very safe now that you let the skinthief go.
She’s not like that, Minyon, Syx said, hands moving in the gestures of admiration and wonder. She’s different.
Minyon gave him a disbelieving look.
You shouldn’t have told her so much, tekel, he said.
But I didn’t! Syx’s eyes flew wide, his neck frill fluttering. I didn’t tell her my name, or about the M’ega, or about you! I didn’t tell her anything!
You told her that you can’t leave, Minyon said. That was very unwise, tekel.
Well, perhaps you and the warden should let me leave, then, Syx said sulkily. At least let me try! I could try! I might be able to make it through if I took off—
No, tekel, Minyon said.
But—
No, Minyon said, and made the gesture of negation. You remember what happened before. You could have died. Never again.
Syx bared his teeth, neck frill bristling, and then, with an angry flick of his tail, he turned and swam away.
Minyon, alone by the rock formation, made a gesture of frustration, although there was no one there to see.
The sun, Roxanne thought, squinting upwards at it as she unlocked the library doors the next day, seemed especially harsh today—a coldly bright, heartless kind of light. It hurt her eyes, and didn’t make her feel any warmer.
Of course, she admitted to herself, any sun, seen on the wrong side of a sleepless night, was bound to look rather more unpleasant than usual.
Really, though; could anyone be expected to be able to sleep after having discovered a mermaid living in a secret cave? Roxanne certainly hadn’t been able to—although, to be fair, she hadn’t actually tried.
When she’d gotten home the previous night, she’d locked the library doors, gone upstairs to her attic apartment and changed out of her heavy clothes, hidden Dan Seavey’s list in her stocking drawer again—and then she’d gone down to the library again, and begun to research mermaids.
She’d laid waste to the folklore section of the library, pulling every book which referenced water spirits from the shelves. She brought the books back to her desk, where she went through them.
Most of the books were general folklore volumes, and had only short entries on water spirits; Roxanne, wanting to see everything in front of her, copied out the relevant information from the books onto notecards, taking care to note the book and page, and then set the books aside to be returned to the shelves.
Two volumes were entirely about water spirits, though one had been written in the most arch and infuriating tone possible, and contained, Roxanne decided, very little information that might be considered useful. She gleaned what few facts she could find from the book and set it aside, too.
Roxanne’s lips, at that thought, twisted into a frustrated grimace. Facts. That was just the problem. They weren’t facts, were they? Not proper, real, concrete ones. Did she believe that the author of that aggravating, simpering book had done any kind of legitimate research on their subject? No. No, she did not.
By the time had to get up and unlock the library doors, there was only one book left; she’d saved it for last because it seemed most promising. Like the slim volume, it was not a general folklore book, but had mermaids alone as its subject. A Study of Water Spirits was the title—a surprisingly no-nonsense title for a book about such a fantastic subject.
Though she did not allow her expectations to rise too high; the publisher’s mark was of a company Roxanne recognized as one willing to publish a small run of any book—as long as the author was willing to pay.
That didn’t necessarily mean the book was rubbish, though; a really devoted hobbyist, passionately interested in the subject, might be just what she was looking for in this case.
Roxanne sat down again at her desk, opened the book, and began to read. By the time she reached the third page, she was grimacing.
The author, Roxanne thought, had to have have been interested in the subject matter; the information laid out in this book was very comprehensive indeed. But she could not find any evidence of any kind of passion in the text.
Indeed, she was almost grateful when the library patrons began to trickle in, as their infrequent requests for her assistance gave her an excuse to take a rest from reading the book.
It was incredibly dull—and not just dull, but also really quite nasty. The author seemed not only to think their audience rather stupid, but to actively dislike them, and to like scoring off of them.
The writer, Roxanne thought, must be one of those people who enjoyed telling people things not really because they were passionate about their subject, but more because the act of telling gave them a sense of superiority.
She struggled grimly through the book, though, and found her perseverance unexpectedly rewarded when she reached the final chapter.
Local Legends of the Great Lakes
Any person with a modicum of observational skills and average powers of memory may congratulate themselves on their perception in realizing that there are bound to be plenty of reported sightings of semi-human, lake-dwelling creatures in the area around the Great Lakes.
Native legends reference these creatures, and although these might be dismissed as mere primitive superstition, they are lent credence by the later accounts of white settlers, who reported seeing lake monsters described variously as snakelike, fishlike, and with an upper body resembling that of a human.
Early during settlement, such creatures were frequently seen throughout the Great Lakes, but gradually these sightings tapered off in frequency, becoming slowly concentrated into a gradually shrinking area.
Eventually, during the time period of approximately 1870 to 1908, the frequency of these sightings spiked, peaking in 1908.
Most interestingly, the sightings during this period, save for a very few exceptions, occurred only in a small area around the area of the lakeside town of Metro City.
In 1908, there was an abrupt and dramatic drop in the frequency of the sightings, and after 1908 there were no reported sightings in the Metro City area, save for a very dubious alleged sighting by a group of schoolchildren in 1915, which, of course, considering the age of the supposed witnesses, can only be of interest to the very credulous, and must be dismissed by any person of real intelligence.
Roxanne made a face of distaste and snapped the book close, then pushed it across to the other side of the desk.
What an unpleasant person this—she looked at the spine of the book, where the author’s name was printed—Bernard Jenkins—what an unpleasant person this Bernard Jenkins must be. That nasty tone of bored superiority, his words about ‘primitive superstition’, and his automatic dismissal of the 1915 sighting simply because the witnesses had been children.
Roxanne picked up her fountain pen and tapped it against the desk top, frowning down at her neat stack of notecards. Then she put down her pen, picked up the notecards, and began to arrange them on the desk, organizing them, putting things that seemed most important at the center, placing things that seemed related to each other together.
Different types of water spirits.
Shapeshifting kelpies that could look like men.
Mermaids with fish tails.
Naga with the tails of snakes.
Selkies that could shift between human and seal form by taking off or putting on their fur coats.
Sirens, who, it was said, lured sailors with beautiful music to be shipwrecked— the myths concerning sirens were exceptionally frustrating; some sources claimed they were water-dwelling creatures, while other sources claimed they were winged, birdlike creatures.
Lorelei, who also caused shipwrecks, but possibly unintentionally.
Limnads, lake nymphs who lured travelers to be drowned by singing or by screaming as if in distress.
The rusalki, which seemed to share some of the confusing double nature of the sirens—a rusalka lived sometimes in the water and sometimes in the trees, and drowned the unwary.
Roxanne placed the last notecard down on the desktop and looked down at the web of her research.
—had she learned anything useful?
A lot of cautionary tales about the danger of mermaids, but she was sure, still, that Syx did not intend to hurt her.
The selkie stories—Roxanne couldn’t blame Syx for his distrust of humans, considering the selkie stories. All those human who stole selkies’ coats and hid them to capture the selkie.
All that research, but everything had been so very vague; she still didn’t feel as if she were really well-informed on the subject, in spite of all the time she’d devoted to reading about it.
That last book, though, regardless of how unpleasant it had been, had contained some important information.
All of the sightings of what, Roxanne was sure, had to be more of Syx’s people—he’d said that there were no more like him, that he was sure that there were no more like him, which did seem to fit in with the sudden drop of sightings in 1908.
1908. Roxanne had been born in 1907. Born here, in Metro City; she’d been born just barely in the time of the mermaid sightings. And Roxanne had still been here in 1915; they had moved to Wisconsin to live with her mother’s family in 1919.
How on earth could she have missed the news of a group of other children supposedly seeing a mermaid? Surely it should have been in at least one newspaper, a dismissive, humorous entry if nothing else. And yet she was sure there had been nothing; she would have noticed. She’d always been fascinated with newspapers, and a mermaid sighting would have been just the sort of thing to catch the imagination of her child self.
1908—how old was Syx? He looked around Roxanne’s own age, and it was difficult to judge based on his demeanor—he had an air of innocence that made him seem young, but the formality of his manners made him seem older…
That sighting in 1915; that hadn’t been so very long ago, and it meant that it was possible that there was someone else like Syx, living out in the lake.
How, Roxanne wondered, could all this be connected with Dan Seavey? For it must be connected with him in some way. It had been Dan Seavey’s secret paper, hidden in that copy of Treasure Island Roxanne had sold to Lady Scott, which had led her to the cave, and to Syx. Roxanne had found Dan Seavey’s initials in the tunnels leading to Syx’s cave. And that secret paper—that secret paper which had spoken of pearls, and feathers, and chimera…
Dan Seavey—something danced at the edges of her mind, something about Dan Seavey, the memory of Great Aunt Rachel holding forth on the subject of the lake pirate.
Accused lake pirate, Roxanne heard Great Aunt Rachel’s voice say sharply. Only accused! They might have arrested him, young lady, but he was never found guilty!
Arrested him…arrested him—something about that—something about that, about Dan Seavey being arrested. Something about that was significant, Roxanne thought; she was almost sure of it. But what—?
“Miss Ritchi.”
Roxanne, engrossed in her thoughts, jumped and looked up guiltily at the sound of the sweet, musical voice.
“—Lady Scott,” Roxanne said.
Lady Scott stood in front of Roxanne’s desk. She was beautifully and impeccably attired—chic hat, fashionable shoes, white gloves. She smiled at Roxanne, her lips curving gently.
“How may I assist you, Lady Scott?” Roxanne asked.
“Oh!” Lady Scott gave a demure laugh. “Thank you, Miss Ritchi, yes. I’m looking for a book.” She gave another laugh. “How silly I must sound, of course I’m looking for a book!”
Roxanne laughed politely, as if she hadn’t heard that particular witticism at least a hundred times before, from various library patrons.
“Any book in particular?” Roxanne asked. “Or would you like me to make a suggestion—?”
“Oh, no!” Lady Scott said. “No, I know just what book I’m looking for, thank you. Robert Louis Stevenson.” She smiled at Roxanne quite sweetly. “Treasure Island.”
…to be continued.
Minyon calls Syx ‘tekel’, which is an term roughly similar to a genderless form of canon Minion’s ‘sir’ in the M’ega language. Although the actual translation of ‘tekel’ is something like ‘overlord’, the Mnyn fish use it for their bonded M’ega more as an expression of affection, rather than veneration.
setepenre-set 