Each Step Like Knives

  "Careless split-tails." This time, Krall's hands fluttered in laughter that echoed the noise issuing from his throat. "Don't they know any better?"

  "Why tell me your tale now, oh, my brother?" Jeenai pulled his tail up so he could grip it with both hands and lean against the wall.

  "Because you are my favorite of all my brothers, Jeenai. And I hate to see you wasting away for something that could be yours."

  Jeenai watched his older brother stretched out lazily on his back. "You're talking about the sea hag."

  Krall rolled his eyes toward Jeenai. "Who other? She can give you what you want, oh, my brother. Legs instead of a tail. The ability to breathe air, not water. She can make you into a split-tail. But at what price, oh, my brother? That's what I ask you."

  Jeenai thought of the human woman. She'd felt right in his arms. His heart and his cock leapt at the thought of her in his arms again. "I will pay the price, Krall."

  "I know it sounds crazy, Frannie, but it happened." Helena turned off the burner when the kettle began to whistle, then fixed herself a mug of Earl Grey. Extra sugar. Cream. Her eyes and nose still burned today from the saltwater, but she felt curiously energized, otherwise.

  "You almost drowned last night and you make it sound like something out a fairy tale." Francine's voice was disapproving even through the long-distance connection. "This is reality, Helena. You could've died last night, if what you're telling me is true and not some dream."

  Helena blew on the tea. "It wasn't a dream."

  "You really want me to believe some gorgeous lifeguard pulled you out of the water--"

  "Threw me out."

  "Threw you out of the water, then just disappeared?"

  Helena sipped the hot drink and sighed with pleasure at the taste of real cream. "That's what happened."

  Silence. Francine sighed. "Are you really all right?"

  "I'm really all right!" Helena turned and looked out the kitchen window to the glimpse of beach beyond. "Fran, it was really amazing. He was amazing."

  "A guy who can breathe underwater and is strong enough to throw you to shore would count as amazing."

  "When you put it that way," Helena said, "it does sound nuts. I know."

  "Maybe you had an out-of-body experience."

  "I don't think so." Helena's nipples peaked beneath the cotton T-shirt she wore. The memory of her mystery man's lips caressing hers had just shot a bolt of pure desire straight through her. "I was definitely in my body."

  "Don't go swimming at night by yourself any more! Promise? Not even if it is to meet hunky men. Okay?"

  "Okay. Yes. I promise." Helena laughed. "I'm sorry I worried you."

  Francine snorted, and Helena could imagine her friend rolling her eyes. "I'm still worried."

  "Don't be. I'm fine," Helena said for what felt like the hundredth time. "I have to go."

  They wished each other good-bye. "I'll call you in a couple days," Francine said.

  Helena didn't have the heart to tell her friend not to call so often. "Okay. Talk to you then."

  Helena looked out to the beach again. The pale blue glimmer of sky she'd seen earlier had gone a dark and foreboding gray. It looked like it was going to storm. Even as she watched, a fork of lightning split the gray. A moment later, the sound of thunder came to her ears.

  Helena left her tea on the counter and pushed through the screen door to stand on the porch. She shaded her eyes to stare out at the roiling ocean. The beach, which earlier had boasted several umbrellas and a few families, was now deserted. Even the sand looked gray beneath the storm clouds.

  She could see something moving on the surface further out. What was it? A tornado on the water?

  Her feet moved of their own will. She left the kitchen and went to the beach to see what was dancing on the water. She'd heard of water funnels, but had never seen one before. The swirling silver tunnel danced on top of the water, bending and dipping like an old-fashioned lady in a ball dress bowing to her partner. Helena's nipples tingled again at the sight. Her pulse beat rapidly in her clit. She shook her head. What on earth was happening to her?

  Waves crashed and pounded the sand. The funnel grew closer. It looked to Helena like the neck of some ancient beast, some sort of dinosaur. A sea monster.

  The hag lived deep. Jeenai swam to the outskirts of her territory and paused. The sand here shifted subtly from brown to gray and then to black. The vegetation hung limp and pallid, with twisted branches and sagging, ugly flowers. She'd built a wall of bones--animal, human, even some of the Carrageenai. A fish hung, flopping, from the ribcage of a split-tail sailor who wore a garland of phosphorescent moss around its neck.

  The water was colder here and Jeenai shivered. The Carrageenai could adjust their body temperatures rapidly to accommodate the changes in the sea depths, but he wasn't a fish. The cold water still affected him and made him slow.

  Her guards seized him before he'd made it halfway to her door. Jeenai didn't fight them, since his reactions were not at their usual speed and because it would be considered an affront to the hag if he killed her guards before asking her to grant him a favor. Instead, he hung in the tentacles of her trained squid and tried to ignore the clacking of their sharp beaks in his face as they threatened him.

  "Put him down." She gestured and gave a low, trilling noise from deep in her throat.

  The squid released Jeenai and retreated. He rubbed his arms where their suckers had abraded his skin.

  "My pets have left their kisses on you, I see." She gestured for him to swim closer. "You want something from me." She added a leer and a tail flip that changed the subtext of the phrase to something sexual.

  "I want to become a--" He almost said split-tail. "Human."

  The hag lifted her chin and pondered him. "You can't be human. You want to walk on land and breathe air. You want to have sexplay with a human woman. But you can't ever be human, yourself."

  "If I have all those things, if I can do those things, that will be enough."

  "Will it?" The hag laughed. Her hands made fluttering shadows on the wall. "I'm not so sure, mal."

  Anger rose in his chest. "It's not for you to decide."

  Again, she laughed and tossed her hair. Her skin was smooth and unlined and her breasts high with puckered nipples. Her gaze bore into his as she fingered the reddening circles. He caught the scent of her arousal.

  "If that's what you want, then you shall have it." The hag smiled. "But nothing I grant comes for free."

  "I know that."

  "And even if I could give this to you without charge, I can't change the truth of what's going to happen." The hag swam closer to him and entwined herself around him. Her tail stroked his as her hands found his belly and stroked upward. "I can take away your tail and give you legs. But I can't give you what you want from her, which is that human emotion they call...love. I can't make her love you."

  He stayed upright beneath her wandering hands. His penis slid from its slit, though he felt little desire to engage in sexplay with the hag. She reached for it, clasped it, then squeezed.

  "Do you want to know my price, mal?"

  "Of course I do."

  The hag laughed until her hair swirled around her body. "I think you can guess."

  Her red nipples told him that answer. "You want the fuck from me?"

  She looked around. "From who else? You're the only mal here."

  Jeena looked at her smooth skin, the tail as black as ink next to her pale upper torso. Her hair, too, was white streaked with black. She had very unusual coloring, and she would have been immensely appealing to him...before he'd lost his heart to the human woman.

  "If all you require is the fuck, I will pay that price, madame."

  The hag narrowed her eyes at him. "Not only the fuck, my fine mal. I also desire a child of you. I want your seed."

  This was a more complicated issue. "Then I would have responsibility to you and to the child."

  "You'll be living above the surface
." The hag's hands pointed upward then made the sign for split-tail. "I will raise our child here. Do you think I'm incapable of doing it alone? I live my life alone, mal, shunned by polite society for the skills all wish to use, but none wish to acknowledge. I would have a child to keep me company. Perhaps I, too, seek love."

  It seemed a small price to pay for so great a reward. "All right."

  "One other thing." The hag moved closer until her eyes bore into his. "I would have some of your blood."

  "For what?"

  "For my work. You are different from the others, mal. I would have some of that essence."

  Again, he nodded his assent. "You may take some, if you wish."

  The hag grinned. "Let's get started."

  He'd never finished the fuck so swiftly or with so little finesse. The hag seemed unconcerned about her own pleasure or his. He gave her his seed, and she closed herself afterward with a satisfied smile. Then she motioned for him to join her in another room.

  He followed her toward a bowl of carved shell. She held his arm over the bowl and sliced it deeply until the blood flowed, thick like sludge, into the container. Not one drop of it was lost to the water, and Jeenai shook his head in wonder at her power. She ran her finger along the wound, and it closed up.

  She gestured for him to wait while she uncapped many bottles and dispensed many vile substances into the bowl. She mixed it with a sharpened bone, then offered it to him. He took it, but didn't drink.

  "You understand you won't be able to talk to her. Our bodies aren't made for their sort of communication, and she won't understand our language."

  "I'll make her understand." The shell bowl had grown warm in his hands.

  The hag rolled her eyes. "Your gill slits will close. You'll have to breathe air, the way they do, through your nose or your mouth. Fresh water will do you no harm, but enter the sea, or let even a drop of the sea water touch you, and you'll turn back into what you were when you came into this place. Do you understand?"

  He lifted his hands from his waist to his chest. It was hard to speak with the bowl in his grip, but she understood his answer. "Yes."

  "You'll have legs." She spat toward the sand floor. "Nasty, ugly things. You'll have them, and they'll work, but every step will be as though you walked on knives. Do you understand that, mal?"

  "I do."

  "You are willing to live in near-constant agony for this split-tail?"

  "I am." He shifted the bowl.

  "Because you...love her?" The hag sounded curious, as though she could not understand such a thing.

  Jeenai didn't understand it himself. "From what I know of love, yes. I want to be with her. To touch her. To hear her speak my name."

  "She won't do that, you fool." The hag gestured at the bowl. "Just remember, you'll look human, and you can learn to act human, but human you will never be! Her mouth can't form your name any more than you'll be able to speak hers aloud. You can have the fuck with her, I've no doubt, for your cock will remain unchanged, just no longer protected as it is for us.

  "One more thing, foolish mal. If you decide you do not love her after all, all you need do is return to the sea. But if she does not love you as you do her, if she chooses another over you, all of this will vanish. You will become nothing more than foam on the waves. You won't even be able to live out the rest of your natural life here below. You will die."

  He nodded. "I understand."

  The hag released him. "Go on. Drink your brew. And one more thing, stupid mal."

  "Yes?"

  She gave him a leer so wicked it made his eyes burn. "Don't forget to take a deep breath. You're going to need it."

  The brew burned his gut as it went down. Agony doubled him over. His tail thrashed, sending him upward, and he gulped the breath the hag told him to take. In moments, another searing pain ripped through him, this time centered in his tail. He pushed with it, trying to reach the surface before he changed completely.

  He didn't make it. His lungs were bursting, but his gill slits were no longer working. His legs pushed with little effect against the water. He looked down into the depths, but his eyes no longer could see in the dark. They burned and stung.

  The hag swam up below him. She gestured and twirled. The water swirled around her hands then rose up toward him. It captured him, cradled him, and lifted him upward in its spout until it pushed him above the surface.

  He still couldn't breathe. He could barely move. He was caught in the maelstrom that rode the waves toward the shore. Pain engulfed him. He couldn't think.

  Then, just when he thought even turning to foam would be better than the agony tearing him apart, he saw her. The woman he had fallen in love with. She reached for him, her face a mask of wonder and terror, and somewhere inside himself, Jeenai found the strength to reach back.

  There was a dark speck inside the silver. Something with arms and legs, moving, and horror filled her as Helena realized what it was.

  A man.

  The wind whipped her hair against her cheeks as she ran toward the water. Helena gaped at the silver funnel, now so close she could see the naked form inside. It was a man. A naked man, trapped inside the water. Surely he had to be dead. Didn't he?

  Helena shielded her eyes, trying to see if there was any form of life inside the churning tunnel of water. The man's body moved limply. His head hung down, hiding his face.

  Helena looked for help, but the beach was still deserted. Everyone else had been smart and headed home before this storm broke. Another flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by the crack of thunder, made her jump. Now the rain came. It slashed at her face and arms. It tasted of salt and made her cough.

  Incredibly, the funnel was continuing closer to the shore. Helena waded out to where the water hit her thigh-high, but then she stopped, remembering her near-drowning the night before. She was afraid to enter the wildly whipping waters, but she couldn't just leave the man there to drown.

  The funnel came just to the edge of where the waves were breaking. It swirled and tossed the man inside as though to break him. It was so close to her Helena thought she might just be able to reach out and touch it. Touch him.

  And then, he opened his eyes and reached for her.

  The funnel spat the man out like a baby rejecting its first taste of solid food. His hand caught hers as he flew over her head. Their fingers entwined, and her arm was nearly ripped from its socket as the force of his flight pulled Helena backward.

  They hit the sand at close to the same time, and the waves covered them before retreating. Helena came up spluttering and splashing, her hair hanging in her face and her skin rubbed raw from the salt and sand. She staggered to her feet, went down again to her knees, then forced herself upright again.

  In the back of her mind she noted the funnel had disappeared, though the storm still raged. She cried out at the sight of the man in the surf in front of her.

  He lay face down, up to his ears in swirling water. Helena turned him over then dragged him up onto the sand as far as she could. His skin was cold, his lips blue. His eyes had closed. He didn't seem to be breathing.

  She pulled him higher, out of the reach of the waves. Seaweed had tangled in his shoulder-length dark hair. She put her hands to his chest, but felt no rise and fall. He really wasn't breathing.