Eventually I brought her to Manitou Island. As the water grew more shallow, she let go of me and stood up to walk to shore. She turned back with a questioning glance. I hovered in deeper waters, watching, wishing.
“Are you going to get out of the water, Calder?”
“Probably not.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have any clothes stashed on this island.”
Her eyebrows shot up toward her hairline. “Oh, I hadn’t thought about that. I could stay out on the water with you.”
“No, that’s okay. Go collect some kindling and then sit on that driftwood log. I’ll just go over there a ways. Then—if you don’t mind—I’ll come from behind you and sit on the other side of that bush. We can talk then. I promise.”
Lily walked up the beach, looking over her shoulder at me again, probably afraid I was going to swim off and leave her there. For a second I considered it. It wasn’t a terrible idea. She’d be out of the way. Maris wouldn’t be looking for her here. In a couple months, there’d be plenty of wild blackberries to eat.… That was about when the idea fizzled.
I swam up the shore, and when I was sure she could no longer see me, I floated into the shallows, willing myself to change. I took a deep breath of air and tensed my muscles, gritting my teeth as the tightening started. A spasm rippled through me, and then the ripping started. I doubled over and wrapped my arms around my middle. I strangled the yell in my throat and sat gasping in the shallows as my tail gave way to two legs still in the throes of the seizure. The agitated water around me slowly calmed as I stood up, letting the water run off my body. Then I staggered into the brambles, kicking up sand.
When I came up behind her, Lily was sitting on the log as I’d instructed, staring out across the lake, with a small pile of sticks in front of her. The wake of a passing Boston Whaler pushed waves up on the shore with a gentle pulsing. Her body shook uncontrollably as the wind sucked the water off her skin.
I was quiet. I walked slowly. I knew Lily would jump whether I made a loud noise or not. Her posture was rigid. She probably thought she was dreaming. Another hallucination—and here she was, sitting on an uninhabited island, wondering how in the hell she got here.
“Lily,” I said quietly.
Her arms were wrapped around her knees, and her shoulders flinched infinitesimally at the sound of her name. Her pink skin showed through the wet linen.
“I thought maybe you lied to me, that you left,” she said.
“No. I wouldn’t leave you.” The words—now out there, hovering in the air between us—were more true than I realized. “Besides, I promised you I’d be back. Merpeople may be great liars, but we can’t break our promises.”
She winced and whispered, “Where are you?”
“Right behind you.” I rubbed my hands together to build up friction, then ignited a small piece of driftwood with a spark from my palm. I handed it to her over her shoulder, and she lit the campfire. “Is it okay if we talk like this? Just keep your eyes straight ahead.”
“It’s okay.” The pink glow from her body was fading into lavender. I recognized the sign: the excitement of adventure. The same color as my kayaker, the same color sailors put off before smashing their ships on the rocks. Purple Prows, the ancients called them.
Her hair was now pulled up in a ponytail, and it curled as a single unit into a spiral. The back of her neck was nearly translucent. I reached out and ran my finger along the bumps of her vertebrae. She shivered and turned her head.
“Eyes straight ahead, please.” I secretly enjoyed doing this to her. Wasn’t it what she had been doing to me for the last week? Unconsciously, maybe, but I still owed her.
I wrapped her ponytail around my hand and then released it, letting it snake around my palm.
“You’re teasing me,” she said. Goose bumps rose on her arms.
“Maybe.”
“That’s mean,” she said, sighing.
“I’m a monster, remember?” I let my fingers trail down her arms, making the situation worse, no doubt, and enjoying every second of it.
“Calder, how come nobody knows who you are?”
“Who says nobody knows me?”
“The Pettits had never heard of you, and they’ve lived here all their lives.”
I rubbed my palms up and down her arms, warming her up as best I could. “First of all, I’m only here during the summer. Second, until I met you, I didn’t have much reason to be on land.”
“Are you and your sisters in Maine the rest of the year?”
I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me. “I know you’re really caught up in that whole Passamaquoddy legend thing Jack told you about, but that’s not me. That was a long, long time ago. Maybe some ancestral connection, but that’s it.”
“You mean you’re not immortal?”
“No,” I said laughing. “Why would you think that?”
“You’re mythical.”
“I’m not mythical. I’m sitting right behind you. And other than the fact I turn into an enormous fish, there’s not that much special about me.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“My body is just as fragile as yours. I bleed. And I will die. Maybe not as quickly as a human. I age more … slowly, about one year to every three human ones.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“I mean, when were you born?”
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to face her question. “I know where you’re going with this, Lily. But my birth year is just a date on the calendar. Think of it like dog years, but in reverse. When it comes to aging, I’m eighteen. How many times I’ve seen the ball drop in Times Square … that’s inconsequential. I’ll get old—just like you—”
“Not just like me.”
“Well, yeah, but we all get old and die. Eventually.”
“Your mother died, didn’t she? That’s why I haven’t met her.”
My throat constricted. “Yes, my mother died.”
“Was she as beautiful as your sisters?”
“Exceptionally beautiful. She looked most like Tallulah, maybe even a little like you.”
“She was Ariel.”
“No. She wasn’t. She was a real mermaid. Underneath.”
“Right,” Lily said, and I could tell she was smiling. “Monster. So if you’re not the ones from the legend, where did your family come from?”
“They were born here, which is why the family comes back every spring. I’m tethered to them through our mother. I have to come back whether I want to or not. I bet if someone tied me to a chair and locked me in a room on the South Pole, I’d still manage to get back here.” I remembered my last day in the Bahamas, Maris’s annoying phone calls. If I’d known Lily was at the end of that path, I would have been back even sooner.
“I go to the Caribbean during the winter. There’s a beach in the Abacos I like to hang around.”
“Lots of girls there, I bet.”
I paused. She was facing away from me, so I couldn’t read her expression. There was something in her tone, however, that had my attention. It was sharp. Bitter. Mermaid jealousy I knew; I was weaned on it. If that was the emotion I was hearing in her voice, the human version was different. I could taste it on the air, like wine turned to vinegar. As I took the time to experience it, I failed to notice her anxiety growing.
“How many girls?” She started to turn around and I pushed her back.
“What?”
“Did you ever kiss any of them?”
I didn’t know what to say. My mouth hung open like an idiot’s.
“Because I’ve noticed that you’ve never kissed me,” she said.
“What are you talking about? What have we been doing for the last hour?”
“Not the same thing. That was for survival.”
My heart rate quickened as I realized what she was after. I could already see the excitement on her skin. I knew from experience what a kiss would do. T
he emotion would rise, then spill over the edges, light flooding over us like a tide pool. I’d never been able to resist that before, but I’d come this far; it was worth the risk.
Turning backward, I pulled up alongside her until my right shoulder aligned with her right, and we faced in opposite directions. I leaned in and pressed my lips to her collarbone and let my mouth slide down her shoulder. She lifted my chin with her finger and kissed me back, her lips warm and soft and absolutely bitable. I kept my eyes closed, tasting her excitement on my tongue but resisting the urge to take more than she offered.
She pulled away, touching my mouth with her finger. “Your lips are glowing.”
“That’s you. Your emotion left behind.”
“And Jack was right. You do smell like incense,” she murmured. “Patchouli, I think.”
I chuckled softly. “We’re supposed to be able to entrance our prey once we’re close enough. I don’t think smelling like a fish would help. Like I said, evolution has been good to us.”
“Is that what you did to me? Entranced me?” She drew her finger across my lips one more time.
I laughed again, this time louder. “Believe me, I tried hypnosis on you. Truly gave it my best effort. You were amazingly resistant.”
“No,” she said. “That was acting.”
“Survival of the fittest,” I murmured.
She leaned against my shoulder and recited more Tennyson:
“I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair …”
I shook my head. She was picking out the parts she liked. “Listen to what I’ve been telling you, Lily. It’s not all pretty like that. You forget this part: ‘Till that great sea-snake under the sea / From his coiled sleeps in the central deeps / Would slowly trail himself sevenfold / Round the hall where I sate.’ Don’t ever forget that part. It’s the only part that’s true. Slithering stalkers. That’s what we are.”
Lily humphed and wrapped her arms around herself. The wind had evaporated the last of the water off her skin, and she shivered.
The small fire was doing little to warm her, so I resumed my original spot and rubbed her back, trying to create some heat. Besides, I couldn’t face her, knowing what I had to do next. No matter how much I cared about her, I was still tied to old family loyalties. No matter how much Lily told me I wasn’t a murderer, I knew it was true in only a limited sense. I would never hurt her, but Maris would collect on the debt. I couldn’t explain that to Lily. I couldn’t even try. I was shackled to my sisters and my part in their plan—no matter how much it sickened me. Lily lay back against me, and the feel of her breathing filled me to the point of overflowing.
“Remember what you asked me before about my human family? Whether I ever thought about them?”
She nodded.
“What I should have said is that I didn’t think about them, the actual people. They were strangers almost immediately after I changed. But I did miss the idea of them. After Mother died anyway. The idea of a normal family. Yeah, I missed that part. I still miss that.”
Then I closed my eyes and said what I was compelled to say. “Your dad invited me and my parents over for dinner sometime.” Each word was barbed, tearing my throat and tongue.
“Mmm-hmm. That would be fun.” She reached up and behind her, cupping the back of my neck in her hand.
“Of course, you know I don’t have any parents who would actually come.”
“That’s fine, too.” She leaned heavily against me. I wondered if she was falling asleep.
“So should I come over again?”
“Sophie would like that.”
I smiled despite myself. “And you would like that?”
“I would like that.”
I could feel the stinging welling up behind my eyes as I led her down this path. In my head I could rationalize everything. I could be happy. I could even love her. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t kill her father. And what would that do to her? I pushed the thought away. I could not fail in this. Satisfying Maris’s condition, securing her revenge on Jason Hancock, was my only sure means of freedom. I could not give up on the dream, no matter what the cost.
“So, what do you think?” I asked.
“I’ll tell them I’ve invited you for tomorrow night.”
I nodded and then froze. Something else had my attention. They were only small dots on the horizon, invisible to the human eye. Maybe someone would think they were loons, or the tips of sunken timbers, but there were three of them, and I knew.
“Stay here!”
I got up, dropped two fistfuls of sand onto the tiny campfire, and ran into the brush, following my path back to the lake, fifty yards up the shoreline from where Lily sat. Sharp sticks and thorny plants cut my ankles and stabbed at the soles of my bare feet. I splashed into the water, running, my knees high, before diving in. It was my fastest transformation to date. When I came up again, directly in front of Lily, I was in full panic mode and bristling with electricity.
She was pacing in the shallows. “Calder, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I took a deep breath and subdued the electric charge as much as I could before beckoning her to me. “Get in. Come out to me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“They’re looking for me, and they can’t find you with me. Not like this, anyway. They wouldn’t want you to know, and it won’t be good if they find out.”
“Why? I wouldn’t hurt them.”
“For the love of God, Lily. I’m not talking about you hurting them. Would you please get it into your head that this is not a movie? Forget everything you think you know about merpeople. Forget that freaking Ariel; think Silence of the Lambs, think Friday the Thirteenth. Haven’t you heard anything I said to you today? They. Will. Kill. You.” The irony wasn’t lost on me that I’d considered killing her myself just a few hours earlier.
Lily’s face paled. “How do they know where you are? I thought you said you had to be in the water for them to hear you.”
“They don’t know. They’re only looking. But it won’t take them long. Please hurry.”
She ran into the water and dove. She took three strokes, and I was there, slinging her onto my back like a duffel bag.
“I’ll have to keep my head above water as much as I can.” My voice came out high and thin. By the way her fingers tightened on my shoulders, she was finally understanding me. “That way they won’t hear me and you can breathe. I won’t be able to go as fast as before, but it’s the only way.” She ducked her head into my neck, and we were gone.
I plowed toward Bayfield, slogging across the rough chop, my shoulders pushing through the water as if it were mud. I didn’t look behind me to see if they were following. Knowing couldn’t make me go faster. I was halfway back when I saw a way out of this mess. Not that it was an attractive option, just the lesser of two evils. Jack Pettit’s boat was crossing our path.
“Lily, it’s Jack.”
“Dive! You can’t let him see you.”
“I can get you onto his boat.”
“No!”
Calculating our two paths and the point of intersection, I crushed the waves with newfound strength and stole up alongside the boat, smacking the port side with my tail. Jack jerked around from the wheel and killed the engine.
“What the—”
“Take her,” I said.
Lily whimpered, “No,” and tightened her grip on my neck.
“You,” Jack said, pulling Lily from my back and dragging her up over the swim deck. “I knew it.”
“Just get her home safe.”
“Jack, please don’t tell,” begged Lily.
“Ugh. As if telling people’s ever got me anywhere.” Then his face twisted into a pained look. “Listen. I’ll keep your secret, just tell Pavati I’ve been looking for her. Tell her I need to see her.”
“I promise, but I really don’t think it’s in your best
interest.”
“All I need is your promise, and you can keep your opinions to yourself; by the looks of it, you’ve got a double standard on that point anyway.”
Lily reached for me, not wanting to say goodbye, keeping her wide eyes on mine.
“You’ll be okay?” she asked. She was always worried about the wrong thing.
“Go home. Don’t worry about me.”
“You’re still coming over tomorrow?”
“Just go.”
Jack turned the key, and the propeller churned the water mere inches from my tail. I recoiled and glared at the unlikely rescuer. Jack gunned the engine and bent the boat into a sharp turn, exposing its hull, spraying a rooster tail of water in his wake.
All I could do was wonder if Jack was as good for his promises as I was.
29
FACING MUSIC
Basswood Island was quiet. Nothing disturbed the water; nothing rustled in the thick understory; no squirrels bickered in the tree branches. I waited alone for a long time. The lights from the Hancock house shone across the lake and, as the sun set and the sky darkened, went out one by one. Lily’s bedroom light went out last. She flipped it off-on-off-on-off before leaving the whole house in darkness. I took that as her “good night, good luck” wish to me. What else could it be?
The day’s clouds dissipated and the stars came out. I lay on my back and traced Orion in the sky. The Hunter. That was what we were, but somehow the nobility of Orion had escaped our lot. I worried that my sisters were hunting. They weren’t anywhere near the Hancock place. I knew that much. But I couldn’t find them in the water. A few times I waded in, submerging myself so I could listen for their voices. But it was quiet. They must have gone a long way.
It was midnight before three dark spots grew into long, thin figures emerging from the lake. None of them greeted me. Pavati and Tallulah walked past me in search of firewood. Maris scooped up her dress, which lay on the edge of the beach, and pulled it over her head, letting it fall over her angular body. She came to stand directly in front of me. She didn’t sit, so I had to look up at her.