KRMcGovern

Story Statement: Lorelei must dispel the legend of the Murphy Mermaids so her family will be accepted by the community, and she can live as her real self in the only place that’s ever felt like home. Sketch Antagonist/Antagonistic Force: Generation after generation of Murphy women have had the genetic mutation that causes them to turn into mermaids every neap tide. But on an island—like Ocracoke— where people have made their livelihoods on the sea since the 18th century, mermaids who’re believed to embody the destructive nature of the water, lure sailors to their deaths and serve as an omen for storms, unruly seas, and disaster, are considered nothing less than treacherous. This lore/belief becomes an antagonistic force for the protagonist, Lorelei through: Behavior ranging from mistrust, to scorn, accusations to violence from the community— the islanders of Ocracoke. The rumor/entrenched belief that all men who love a Murphy mermaid will die at her hands. o This is embodied in Jackson Sparks—a boy who pretends to be in love with Lorelei but tricks and humiliates her for sport. When a freak storm whips up directly after the humiliation, Lorelei actually saves Jackson (and the friends he brought to witness the humiliation) but he lies, saying he barely survived her wrath. This causes Lorelei to leave the island she loves and stay away for ten years. When she returns, Jackson continues to be an antagonistic force. Murphy mermaids don’t make for great mothers. The rumor/belief/truth? that the men who love them die at their hands, makes it nearly impossible to live on the island, and each Murphy mermaid has disappeared not long after their lover dies. This had caused generational abandonment issues. o This antagonistic force is embodied in Perri (Lorelei’s mother) who left the island—but took her daughter with her. Perri – staggeringly beautiful—has since trotted the globe with Lorelei in tow as she flits from wealthy man to wealthy man. Perri is loving, but selfish. She’s kept her condition of being a mermaid a secret from her daughter. She’s kept her implication in Lorelei’s father’s death a secret. She refused to return to the island but sends Lorelei back just before her 15th birthday (when the mermaid gene kicks in) so “the aunts” can deal with Lorelei’s impending mermaid-ism. Titles: The Last Mermaid of Ocracoke The Complicated Ocean Water Magic Comp titles (women’s fiction/magical realism) Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus Logline/Hook Line: A disenchanted mermaid is forced to return to the remote island in the Outer Banks of North Carolina where she was born to dispel a murderous legend that’s become her family’s curse. Primary conflict: Lorelei rejecting who she is at depth - her inheritance/her DNA/her family’s history as mermaids. Secrets and shame bookended the three years Lorelei spent on Ocracoke. Secrets: Before she arrived on the island, she had no idea that she’d inherited the DNA mutation that caused the Murphy women to become mermaids every neap tide. Her mother, Perri, kept her own mermaid-ism a secret. She also didn’t tell her daughter the reason she’d kept them away from the island – the Ocracokers’ communal assertion that Perri had killed Lorelei’s father – just like every Murphy mermaid had done to the men who loved them. Years later and without explanation Perri finally “allowed” Lorelei to spend the summer she would turn 15 on Ocracoke, staying with Perri’s sister Calypso (Ypso) and her sister’s partner Esme. They were the ones who told her everything, her inheritance, the legend that had become a family curse and why her mother took her from the island. They saw her through the first terrifying, but almost transcendent experience of changing into a mermaid and helped her navigate her new “normal.” When the summer was over she stayed with the aunts and quietly thrived in her new life. She and the aunts were the only people who knew that every two weeks, with each new neap tide, she would transform into a mermaid for 24 hours and 50 minutes. Until the summer of Lorelei’s 18th birthday when she fell in love for the first and only time. Shame: After months of flirting, weeks of kissing and a moonlit night on the beach when she’d given him her virginity, she confided in Jackson Sparks, a first son from one of the island’s prominent families, telling him the truth about what she was. He seemed enchanted. Promised to keep her secret. He even wanted to watch her transform when the tide changed. They set a date for the next neap tide. She waited for him in their cove, but when his sailboat rounded the bend, he wasn’t alone. He’d come with six of his friends, to “watch the freak he screwed change into a sea creature.” Lorelei was crushed by his betrayal. But she couldn’t stop nature. She changed there, in the cove, with six pairs of eyes watching. She was humiliated and furious. A sudden storm whipped up, creating a tornadic waterspout that nearly capsized the sailboat. Lorelei pulled the boat to safety. But Jackson was tossed overboard the rocking deck. She swam out, found the floundering boy, and pulled him safely to shore. He opened his eyes, knowing that she’d saved him, but instead of thanks there was only derision. The story went through the island like wildfire – Jackson had just narrowly escaped another Murphy mermaid’s treachery. Days later, on her 18th birthday, Lorelei left the island. She wouldn’t return for ten years. Secondary Conflict (Social Environment) One secondary conflict will involve the social environment on Ocracoke (Lorelei will also have a secondary conflict with her mother.) When Ypso calls to tell Lorelei that Esme is hurt and they need her help, Lorelei returns to the island for the first time in more than a decade. When she steps off the ferry, she’s assailed by the same harsh whispers and sly glances that were thrown her way before she left. But as Lorelei runs the aunts’ store, reconnects with the island, and meets a ridiculously good looking geologist who’s there studying erosion patterns, it almost feels like life could actually be normal. That is until a severe storm hits the island and sudden erosion reveals a hidden cave, holding the remains of two local men who disappeared in 1942, one of whom was rumored to been having an affair with Lorelei’s great grandmother, another Murphy mermaid. Suddenly her family’s legend/curse is front-and-center and the island’s suspicions fall squarely back on the Murphy mermaids. Setting: Ocracoke Island : A remote barrier island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. No more than 13 miles long, the Pamlico Sound on one side, the Atlantic Ocean on the other, no bridges connect the island to the mainland. The only way to get there is by ferry or private boat. With a historical and mysterious past—the island was a haven for pirates, including Blackbeard who lived and died in Ocracoke’s waters—the place is full of families who’ve lived there since the first pilot house was built in 1715. So remote that it didn’t have electricity until 1936, the secrets of Ocracoke— its Land Magic and Water Magic, the identity of those who practice them—have been easily kept. Ocracoke has always taken care of its own. Unless there was reason not to. Sub-settings: The Jaundiced Pelican: From the outside, the cottage that holds Ypso and Esme’s confectionery and shop looks like a silly wedding cake. Happy, yellow boxes stacked on top of one another. Slanted roofs with teak-wood shakes and shingles make it seem like the house was baked in a crooked oven. Inside, it’s clever and charming. Orange and pink walls are filled with local art –brass stools with fuchsia faux-fur cushions, a rough-edged black marble counter and orange and hot pink flamingo wallpaper behind a state of the art espresso machine. Cases hold cakes and candies—Fig Fancies (a tourist favorite that has lines around the block) made from Esme’s recipe that holds secrets of its own. Behind an ornate wooden door at the back of the shop, a workshop that houses the Carolinian Grimoire of Land Magic, where Ypso and Esme practice the craft for locals and tourists in the know. The Apartment above the shop that leads to the Widow’s Walk: Where Esme lived before she moved into the Murphy’s Victorian with Ypso. Where Lorelei will live when she returns. Quirky, but comfortable, the apartment, high up in the trees affords views of the ocean, the sound and much of the village. A winding staircase leads to the Widows Walk – a room made up almost entirely of windows. Another stairway leads outside to a railed deck with an open tower and hexagonal cupola, decorated with a copper weathervane in the shape of a quite noble, if slightly ridiculous, pelican. The Widow’s Walk houses the history of the Murphy mermaids and the Carolinian Grimoire of Water Magic. The Murphy Family’s old Victorian: On the oceanside of the island, the old lavender house is where Ypso raised Perri after their mother, another notorious mermaid left on the heels of the death of Ypso and Perri’s father. Pokey rooms and a fireplace that smokes hold the comfort of home. Lush gardens surround the back of the property, growing what the aunts use in their land magic spells. The front lawn ends at a dock that’s never held a boat. Most of the Murphy women have never needed watercraft to make their way through the waves. Springer’s Reserve: Now a nature preserve where off-island scientists come to study, this beautifully raw landscape full of myrtles and oaks bent from centuries of wind, used to be Blackbeard’s home—the place where he was rumored to have hidden his spoils. When a major storm blows through the island, erosion reveals a cave – not holding buried treasure, but rather bodies of islanders missing since 1942. The Waters of Ocracoke: Where pirates roamed and German U-boats blew up cargo ships—causing a secreted frontline of WW II. Where the Murphy mermaids have swum, transformed, loved, and lost. Where traces of Water Magic can be seen everywhere.