Smitten: Part I-Zerrin

  **********

  “Go away…” I moaned, my voice cracking as I forced the words out.

  I don’t know how long I’d been sitting on the bathroom floor, my legs cradled to my chest in an attempt to hide inside myself. My lids were heavy, sleep going and coming in patches as I sat there weighing out my options. Roman would want to come with me, and I already knew I didn’t want him to. I had a cousin in Florida I used to be close to. Her parents might take me in…

  “I said GO AWAY!” my voice raised now as another bump sounded against the bathroom door.

  “Alana…?” Jonas’s voice reached me, muffled and soft from the hallway.

  “Come in,” I sighed, moving my feet away from the door so that he could enter.

  I wasn’t ready to talk about it with anyone. Roman hadn’t come back in to check on me. I’d heard him leave with the twins over an hour ago, undoubtedly going to school, which is where I should have been, had my life not been turned upside down in the last week.

  “You didn’t come back, I got worried…” Jonas explained as he inched his way into the bathroom, using his hands to hold him upright.

  “Rough morning…” I muttered, fresh tears slipping down my cheeks as I lowered my head back between my legs.

  “I kind of heard… The Pernickle’s…your guardians…?”

  I nodded as he paused, confirming that he’d heard correctly.

  “They want to own me…” I explained in the simplest terms I thought he would understand. “They didn’t even tell me,” I sniffled now, fighting the sob that threatened to break free if I kept talking.

  “You don’t want to be here… For them to own you…”

  “No…I have to go…before they come back… I’ll never get away once it’s done…”

  “Salt…?” Jonas asked when I paused, a heavy sigh on my lips as I finally looked up at him.

  “You’re…gray!” I exclaimed as I took in his appearance, his skin a translucent hue of bluish gray.

  “Apparently the spell doesn’t last that long,” he smiled as he looked down at his legs, scales already starting to form in a thick layer over his feet, ankles and calves.

  “Get in the tub…” I instructed, pulling myself to a stand.

  I needed something to do that would take my mind off of the Pernickle’s and my parents.

  There were only a few more salt blocks left in the shed, and I had no money to buy any more. If I didn’t figure out a plan for Jonas before I left, he’d probably die trying to get back to the water. I left the bathroom to grab my coat for the trip to the shed, hoping that he would be undressed and in the tub by the time I returned.

  He was, and I was relieved to see that though most of his cuts had healed fully through the night, some of the deeper ones still emitted just enough of his essence to coat the water with a thin blue film, hiding most of his very human looking body from my sight.

  “That should do it…” I said as I let the salt block settle at the foot of the tub, watching as bubbles fizzed to the surface.

  “I’ve been practicing the spell,” Jonas commented, wiggling his toes as he began to chant a language I’d never heard before.

  I listened as he repeated the same phrase over and over again, moving his hands under the water until there were tiny waves washing back and forth in the tub. For a moment it seemed as if the scales thickened, hardening as they spread even wider. It didn’t occur to me that he was breaking them apart, separating the connection with his skin so that they fell away into the water. Smooth pinkened flesh was immediately visible underneath, slick and wet with his essence as if there had never been anything there at all.

  “You’ve got to teach me that trick…” I tried to joke, the humor in it not quite filtering into the words I spoke.

  I watched as Jonas smiled at me, his teeth flashing a brilliant white for a moment before his face turned serious again.

  “Tell me Alana, what is holding you here? Is it Roman…?” he asked, his voice low as he took my hand, pulling me so that I knelt at the edge of the tub.

  He had warned me not to look into his eyes, but I couldn’t help it, I was drawn to him, the pull stronger than anything I could resist physically. My gaze settled, holding his for what seemed like an eternity before I spoke, my words surprising me.

  “Nothing… not even Roman is holding me here. I just don’t have anywhere to go…” I admitted, shame seeping through me, even though I knew he knew it wasn’t my fault I’d ended up here.

  “There is always somewhere to go… Always a choice to be made…even if it isn’t the one you want…or the one you can see happening,” Jonas added, his words hesitant as his fingers smoothed over my injured hand, his essence seeping into the cuts on my knuckles.

  My mouth opened in surprise as my skin cooled instantly, my fingers growing numb and then warm again as they sealed themselves with his essence, only a fine trace of blue left behind.

  “How did you…?”

  “What if I told you that I could save you from all of this…just as you saved me,” Jonas whispered, his fingers squeezing mine gently as my brow knitted in confusion.

  “Save me…but how…we haven’t even figured out how we’re going to save you…”

  “Zerrin is dead… But I’m the only one that knows that. What if you could help me get home, and come with me…? Would you give up your humanity to have a different life…?”

  “A different life…as in…” I trailed off, my fingers fluttering in his as I mimicked the waves he’d just made. “…As in a …”

  “Mermaid…yes…but not just any mermaid… I can’t go back without Zerrin…” Jonas explained, his voice so low that I almost had to strain to hear him.

  “I could make you look just like her…sound like her…feel…like her,” he whispered, his hands now trembling as he reached to brush a stray hair from my face.

  “But I wouldn’t be me anymore… I wouldn’t even be human anymore…”

  “No…you wouldn’t…and it won’t be easy. I would have to train you…if they sense anything wrong…any kind of magic at all…”

  “We could be killed…!”

  “Maybe…” Jonas nodded, his electric blue eyes dulling at the shock on my face. “I can’t say that I would be able to protect you… They most likely won’t let me near you at first… But if it works, I would be named a hero…and you… You would be royalty. A whole new life…”

  “A whole new world…” I whispered, my own hand catching my throat as I let the idea play through my thoughts. “Impossible…isn’t it…?”

  “Not so much… I still have these…” Jonas smiled as he opened his hand so that it lay flat in front of my face.

  I watched as he inched his index finger along the bottom of his palm until a flap of skin became visible, folding over as if it had never been attached at all. Five tiny light green stones glittered in the crevice of his palm, the light of the bathroom catching their rough edges, projecting a rainbow across the water.

  “Gladial stones,” he explained, moving them apart with his thumb. “Hard to find, and even harder to use in Altonia without being caught.”

  “What do they do…?” I asked, nervousness evident in my voice, despite my efforts to hide it.

  “They do many things... But in your case, I could use them to seal a spell…a rebirth spell…”

  “Rebirth spell…?” I repeated after him dumbly, fear gripping my chest at what I thought he would say next.

  “It would be you on the inside…but the outside would be…”

  “Zerrin…”

  “Yes…you would look just like Zerrin. I would teach you how to be her… There would be no more Alana Cassidy… You would lose…everything here…”

  “My parents…”

  “Are dead…”

  “But their graves…”

  “Are empty…” Jonas finished gently, his hands cupping my face so that I had no other choice but to look into his eyes.

  ??
?Let me show you what it’s like to be completely free with only the sea to determine your destiny… Let me use you Alana…”

  It made sense. His words seeped into my thoughts and took hold, the idea becoming the answer before I’d tried to think it through clearly. I went with the pull, my body lifting and sliding over the edge of the tub until my arms were completely submerged, wrapping around him so that his essence vibrated through me.

  “How…how could you change me…how could you….”

  “A merman’s tear and a simple bite…here” he paused, never breaking his stare as his fingers trailed from behind my ear to the dip in my collarbone.

  I shuddered at his touch, my body willing it to happen before I nodded slowly, somehow understanding what he was offering.

  “The change would take a few days… It could be painful… You would have to want it…”

  “I do…” I whispered, my hands cupping his face as the fog closed in, his eyes the only thing I could concentrate on.

  There were waves pooled there, electric blue and stormy, their color steadily changing as they crested and then fell, drawing me further in.

  “You’re smitten… Taken by the call of the sea… You should think about this carefully…”

  “I don’t need to think about it,” I interrupted him with a shake of my head, the rest of my body sliding into the tub on top of him so that I was fully submerged.

  His essence was the purest thing I’d ever experienced, my body absorbing the shock of being fully immersed in its call. He was right… There was nothing to keep me here; not even Roman could save me from living the rest of my life as a Pernickle. My parents wouldn’t have wanted that for me…I didn’t want that for me. I was hopelessly smitten, and there was no denying the pull that had claimed me. Somewhere in his eyes, I saw her, far away, but calling to me still the same.

  “Make me Zerrin…”

  From the Author:

  Thank you for taking the time to read part I of Zerrin. I truly hope you plan on sticking around to find out what happens in part II: Bitten. This project was only supposed to be a short story, and it ended up blossoming into something way bigger than I’d intended! That’s usually how it goes with this crazy wild imagination that I have, so I really appreciate you sticking around for the ride.

  Please visit my website for news, updates, contest, giveaways and more!

  https://patriadunn.moonlitdreams.org

  Patria L. Dunn (Author of The Gifts Trilogy)