I drew back, contemplating the unexpected lyricism of his given name, thinking of mythological beasts of many parts, wondering why his parents had named him so. Now he had a visceral voice, a form, a face, a paternal and maternal claim to recognition. A lion’s head and claws with the wings of a bird of prey. A hunter on land or in air but hating the water. A strange pirate. Yet his hand still made a vise around my ankle. He might eat me alive.
“If you continue to hold onto me and make bizarre claims, Mr. Randolph,” I whispered, “I’ll pull you back in the water and finish what the water began.”
The air stilled between us. His stark expression said he believed me but could not quite admit it. Neither could I after a moment of stunned thought. Never in my life had I uttered a death threat. I recalled Lilith’s sinister words to my aunt and the others in Riley and their fear. My blood chilled. I was learning very bad habits.
“I . . . only want you to release me—”
“You’re a Bonavendier, that’s for sure. Deadly.”
“Me? Please, I . . . ”
He continued to hold my ankle but pushed himself up to a sitting position. His shirt flayed open, streaming water. Droplets trailed down his chest, pooled in the awful puckers of his scars, tracked the flexing of extended muscle, the tendrils of coarse, masculine hair. He planted my foot on his knee, then placed a trembling, big-knuckled hand atop my toes. Slowly, he parted two of my toes, spreading them with his fingers. The webbing, iridescent and softly folded, fanned out for his inspection. He touched it with just his blunt fingertips, studied the butterfly shades of it with a look of fierce wonder, then raised his eyes to mine. “Lilith and her sisters have webbed feet. A family trait. Interesting deformity. My mother didn’t have it, but she was just a distant cousin. There are people around here who say the Bonavendiers aren’t quite human.” He nodded at my toes, and a rueful smile cut his lips.
“Don’t make fun of me.” My voice was low, pained.
His smile faded. “I just don’t know what you are, but I intend to find out. I have to.” He spread his hand and released me.
I pulled away, then scrambled to a stand, shaking. “I only want to be left alone, Mr. Randolph. That’s all I ask for. Privacy and respect. A very human desire.”
“Wait,” he began. I could see the apology in his eyes, but I pivoted toward the bay, flattened myself in a long, shallow dive, and arched into the dark sanctuary of the water. Determined to impress him, within a few seconds I found his cane. The feel of it told me it was old and important, possibly an heirloom. I pierced the surface with it clutched in both hands, and then I stared at the ornate silver handle. A mermaid of typical lore—finned tail and all—curved in sensuous splendor atop a cluster of silver shells. Etched distinctly on one of those shells was a small, perfect family crest of classic style and a Scottish surname, McEvers.
I frowned from the odd, beautiful cane to Griffin Randolph. He pushed himself to his knees, then with wretched, painful effort, employing extraordinary discipline, he got to his feet, balancing uneasily on his one good leg. I could tell how he suffered—cold, wet, an invalid who had strained aching bones and muscles. He took a step toward the water, then halted, staring at it fearfully. Yet he stood in the edge, determined. His valor made me plunge toward him, standing, wading, thrusting the cane at him, mermaid-end first.
“Don’t be afraid of the water,” I said with a certain smugness. “We web-footed fish freaks won’t harm you.” He took the cane from me, then sank the tip in the sand and leaned heavily on it, one big hand covering the silver mermaid entirely. He held out his free hand to me. “Don’t be afraid of the land,” he countered. “I won’t hurt you, either. I promise. And I’m sorry I frightened you.” He paused. “But you scared the hell out of me, too.”
I had never had a man threaten me with gentleness before. My breasts tightened against the sodden material of my bra and T-shirt, my womb opened, but my heart shrank in fear for us both. He was trying to lure me out of the water, and I was trying to lure him in. I shook my head and backed away.
As I stood there in the waist-deep water, some large creature swirled past me. I looked around with new fear. A tall, blue-gray fin crested and submerged. And then, nearby, another. And another. One by one, nearly a dozen dolphins joined in circling me. I looked up at Griffin Randolph for explanation, but his expression said he was stunned, too. “They used to come here,” he said, staring at me. “For my mother.”
A bottle-nosed head emerged from the water, and I found myself looking down at a dolphin. It uttered a soft series of clicks and whistles. A wave of warm friendship slid through me, a translated communication. “Hello, ma’am,” I said in wonder. She whistled at my greeting. All the others then raised their heads from the water to chatter at me, too, and I, quite naturally, began to sing silently to them. This sent them diving and swirling around me, grazing my legs like cats, and the next thing I knew, I sank my hands in the water and stroked them as they flew past. I began to cry with joy and confusion, then beseeched Griffin Randolph with one more look and discovered we both wore tears. At that moment I would have come out if he had asked me, and he would have come in if I had called.
I had to get away from this seductive border between the water and the shore. “You stay there,” I yelled hoarsely. “And I have to stay here. Please.”
Upset, operating on foolish pride and not a shred of common sense, I plunged deep into the bay. The coterie of dolphins formed an escort around me. I surfaced a long time later—two miles away, at least—in the very real shadow of Sainte’s Point, within yards of the island’s wooded banks. I squinted back across the bay, trembling. I could see Griffin Randolph, still standing on his own shore.
Watching after me but remaining in his own world.
For now.
12
A notable percentage of the world’s popular singers and operatic stars are Water People. Good manners and common sense prevent me, of course, from naming celebrity names.
—Lilith
The villagers of Bellemeade sent word to Lilith excitedly. Alice Riley, identified by her name on boxes she’d left at Water Lilies, had arrived. A group had gathered to watch her walk to Randolph Cottage. Though Alice’s precise whereabouts eluded Lilith, she assumed Alice was now waiting at that cottage under Griffin’s care, and she had a deep feeling that whatever had happened between the two of them was meant to be. But Lilith questioned why so much else about her half-sister remained hidden, unreachable by song.
“In due time she’ll be one of us, completely open, at home and at heart,” Lilith promised aloud as she hurried into a very private sunroom in the mansion at Sainte’s Point. Anatole, the cockatiel, preened his white feathers from a brass perch hung below Tiffany windows a dozen feet tall. Remnants of the day’s sunlight poured through their stained glass, shading the aviary’s palms and orchids in pale gold and green hues. Lilith brushed a wisp of Anatole’s pinfeathers off a small marble pediment, then went along the other tables and shelves, touching a fingertip to the blooms of the rare orchids. She re-arranged crystal and silver servings on a tall English cabinet of brass and teak, once bound for WindsorCastle. At the center of the room, a pair of miniature pagodas held up a thick glass tabletop in exotic wood and gold, gifts from some passing trade ship a hundred years before Lilith’s birth. Lilith fluffed a blooming bromeliad in a marble planter on the table’s center.
This was her favorite room in the mansion, filled with tropical plants, private family albums, discreet portraits, Anatole’s feathers, and the pale-green aura of transmuted daylight, the color of the ocean. She stood for a moment, gazing at a closed set of white velvet drapes that covered a portrait on one wall. “You wanted us to find her, I know,” Lilith whispered.
She swept out of the room in a filmy swath of pale silks, her bare feet adorned in anklets and delicate twines of sapphires and pearls, inventively fastened. Alice would be greeted in warm Bonavendier style at the docks on the mainland and not be
overwhelmed again.
“Come, my dear sisters, “ Lilith called as she went down the broad main hall, straightening perfect vases of flowers, smoothing invisible dust motes from side tables and lamp sconces, nodding to a shrine-like procession of Bonavendier ancestors in elaborate portraiture. She halted in an alcove before a portrait of her own parents and gazed up at them quietly.
Her father, Orion, looked not outward but inward at her mother, Helice, an English beauty who had been lured from her own waters by him in the dark-haired charm of his prime. They had been acknowledged like royalty among a very exclusive private society that encompassed the waters of the world. Lilith remembered fabulous yachts filling the harbor and fabulous, often barefooted peoples filling the mansion. It had seemed in her childhood that the island was home to a special kind of magic.
“Mother, I am welcoming Father’s fourth daughter to this house today,” Lilith said to the portrait. “This is no shame to your memory. It was his grief for you that made him love again, and even if he chose an ordinary young woman to love, she was very special in her own way.” She paused. “Father, the Halfling you created out of loneliness will never live in loneliness again. I promise you.”
Mara spoke sadly behind her. “Can you promise us that Father’s bastard isn’t meant to doom us all with her useless, ordinary problems?”
“Oh, Mara,” Pearl rebuked but sounded worried.
Lilith turned to find her younger sisters staring at her. They were adorned like solemn dancers in some antique Grecian tableaux—robed in whispers of sheer aquamarines and mauves and golds, their je ne sais quoi attitude saying it was no surprise that others of their kind were some of the world’s leading fashion designers. Their bare feet gleamed with exquisite gemstones. Pearl’s flame hair and Mara’s mahogany cascaded in waves down their backs, decorated with tiny, interwoven diamonds here and there. Pearl wore a little gold angel on a gold chain around her throat, having decreed that an angel would be the emblem of Alice’s mother from now on. Lilith’s younger sisters had decorated themselves ceremoniously, if not spiritually, to greet Alice. Lilith sniffed at their melodramatic concern. “I have never felt more right about a decision.”
“Oh?” Mara bobbed her head, sending waves of dark locks past her eyes and a tiny diamond bouncing in its nest above one eye. She shoved her hair back impatiently. “You’ve lost track of Alice. Please, admit it. You don’t know where she is right now. That’s significant, Sister. Has there ever been a time when you couldn’t say where one of us was?”
Lilith stiffened. “Why, she’s at Randolph Cottage. Waiting for us to fetch her. Perhaps because her mother was not our kind, my connection to her is not quite strong enough to be more specific.”
“Or, perhaps, deep in your heart, you know she doesn’t belong here. Sister, please reconsider. What say we take her in, give her money, find her a home elsewhere, then send her away? She’ll be happier with her own people—ordinary land-lovers.”
“She’s not a pet to be placed with a good family of strangers, Mara. She’s our sister.”
“Half-sister. Oh, Lilith, I have intuitions, too. I feel you’re not telling us all your motives, and there’s going to be trouble. There’s always trouble when we’re careless about the outsiders we trust. Plus, you’re cultivating Griffin, and you know that’s not right either. I don’t care if he’s one of us . . . he doesn’t know it, wouldn’t accept it, and you know what could happen—”
“I never recall you suggesting that his mother should be avoided, even after she married a Randolph and pretended to be ordinary for him.”
“Sweet Undiline was one of us sincerely, at heart,” Pearl moaned. “Poor, dear Undiline.” She cried. Even after more than thirty years, the name of their Scottish cousin —as close as a sister—was spoken in whispers and tears.
Mara paled. “Yes, and look how badly Undiline’s life turned out because she tried to belong to both our world and the ordinary one. Because she loved a Randolph. Look at what we’ve been forced to hide from her son. And don’t forget our own forays into the world of dry land-lovers. Isn’t all that testimony enough? We have to keep to ourselves. Our own kind.”
The distant sound of the dock’s bell broke through the tense moment. “We are going across to the mainland now,” Lilith ordered softly. “And we will welcome Alice. And we will come to understand all her mysteries, as she will understand ours. And I will believe that Griffin’s homecoming is a sign that he is meant to be among us, too. Do not speak to me of degrees of rightness. I know our kind. Our kind consists of those whose love carries beyond any tide. What point is there in our existence, otherwise? Are we to be the remnants of worlds long forgotten and nothing else?”
She left the mansion angrily with her subdued sisters following her. They went out into the bright blue late-winter day, down the pathway that led from the great house, past the statuary and tables and winter gardens and draping, massive oaks. Barret waited on the main dock, beside the Lorelei with its handsome cabin containing fine and sumptuous accommodations.
Standing with him, dwarfed by the aged German’s height and heft, two cherubic, silky blond men and a woman waved their hands in concern. The middle-aged Tanglewoods—brothers and sister— were plump and asexual, all dressed in pale, baggy trousers and cashmere sweaters dyed various shades of delicate gold and white. Like overgrown Renaissance angels, the employees hurried up the path, invisibly winged and gentle and alarmed. Loyal Tanglewoods had fluttered around Bonavendiers for two centuries.
Kasen, the eldest and leader, drawled breathlessly, “Oh, here now, we’ve filled the boat with vodka and flowers and gifts, yeah, Lady Lilith, but look, look, something’s happenin’; look out in the cove.”
Even the unflappable Barret was frowning at the cove, his hands shoved in his trousers, his thick fur coat pushed back behind them. Dignified and Teutonic, he had once been as handsome as a young Schwarzenegger and even now conveyed gentle brute strength, though his back was twisted and he walked with a shuffling limp. He turned to watch Pearl with adoring concern as she, Lilith, and Mara walked out onto the dock. “The dolphins are singing to you, my ladies.”
The dolphins crisscrossed the small cove in exuberant flashes of blue-gray choreography, churning the water. When Lilith reached the edge of the dock, their matriarch thrust her head from the water. She and Lilith regarded each other in singing silence. Lilith gasped lightly, raised a hand to her throat, and gazed out at the edge of the cove, where the surf broke on the cove’s narrow mouth. “Alice,” she said.
There, indeed, was Alice, looking back at all of them from the water. Steam misted around her boyish hair and large-eyed face. She seemed uncertain, nervous, a little lost. Yet she’d just managed two miles of unfamiliar water littered with small sharks, jellyfish, and treacherous currents. And Lilith had never heard her coming.
Remarkable. Troublesome.
“Alice!” Pearl echoed. And then to her eldest sister, with bewildered alarm, “Lilith, how did she swim the bay without any of us suspecting it?”
“She’s a show-off,” Mara said loudly. “And a sneak.”
“Ock! I would have fetched her in style,” Barret complained. “She doesn’t even trust us for transportation?”
“The Alice!” all three Tanglewoods chorused, using one of several peculiar titles their family had assigned to Bonavendiers over many generations of spellbound service. “She is a most forward person, isn’t she, Lady Lilith?” one drawled worriedly. “To appear out there, just appear, without tellin’ you.”
Lilith raised a hand for silence. Alice’s misery reached her like a ripple. She was distraught, tired, embarrassed. Lilith held out her arms and called loudly. “Welcome home, Alice. What an extraordinary entrance you’re making. One for the Bonavendier history books.”
Pearl began to cry and applaud. Mara sulked. The Tanglewoods cheered. Alice swam toward them slowly, clearly none too eager to believe it was all right to show up this way. The dolphins swept aro
und her like joyous heralds, with pristine gulls dipping and screeching above and the slanted sunlight raising diamonds like unreal promises on the harboring cove of Sainte’s Point.
Lilith stripped off the silks she wore and dived in naked to greet her father’s lost daughter. Pearl followed enthusiastically, and Mara, reluctantly. Alice gasped, then plunged out of sight. Lilith feared she had deserted them out of modesty, then felt her movement in the water. As Lilith and her sisters frowned and treaded in place, Alice circled their bare lower bodies. Her hands darted out, examining their naked thighs, their knees, their feet, even prodding their buttocks. Pearl yipped. Mara kicked at her. Lilith was compliant. This strange affront continued for several minutes.
When Alice surfaced, Mara gave her a furious look. “How rude.”
Alice said nothing but heaved a sound that might be relief, disappointment, or both.
Lilith heard the explanation in that breath and said gently, “Don’t confuse fantasy with the glorious mysteries of the truth, my dear. And don’t assume we’re lunatics because you didn’t discover the type of proof you expected. Realize that subtle facts are far more precious than fairy-tale theatrics.” She gently touched Alice’s bristly auburn hair. “Become your own proud self. That is the transformation you should expect now that you’re here, where you belong.”
Alice bowed her head, blushing, acknowledging the ludicrous idea she’d needed to set aside right away.
In the water, no one had grown a mermaid’s tail.
During the darkness of that eventful March night, Griffin poured his liquor into the drains of the cottage sinks and flushed pain pills down aged toilets gurgling below porcelain water tanks high on the cottage’s ornate plaster walls. At the last moment, he looked hard at a row of soda bottles, opened them, and poured them out, too.