“Do not color your thoughts with the old ways,” Haseya said, her calm, patient gaze remaining on Rafi until he met her eyes. “You are in a new battle. You must choose how to fight and why. This is as much about your changes as Pirro’s.”
Rafi’s gaze flicked to Zayn, who shook his head the tiniest bit. “I know, Brother,” Zayn laughed. “She sees everything. I’m growing used to it, but,” Zayn’s gaze was steady, “I would change nothing. I am broken free and in a Pause to Clarify, a needed step of the Djinn.”
Rafi turned to Sylvia. “Why fix the Chiles now? Why not later once Pirro lies vanquished?”
Sylvia drew in a deep breath, a weird shakiness taking over. “That seems sensible, but Rafi, inside me there is a hard push to do this. Last night, when we all got here, I lay in your arms and held my mind open. This was the message I got.”
“We do this,” she continued, looking from face to face, “because Pirro needs this lesson.”
“Are you saying this is divinely inspired?” Theo’s effort on his poker face took everything he had. My sister the scientist has a direct line to divinity?
“No, nothing so, um, grand. It’s more about balance, the way I felt when I sat in the basin, sensing the water. The water wants to return to the basin. Does that sound insane?”
She swallowed, forging ahead. “The water had a purpose in the basin, it was creating life and balance for this piece of the planet. The act of conservation honored the water. Pirro maligned that purpose, and the upending now seeks restoration. Oh, I know I sound crazy, but I’m not.”
“You are not crazy,” Haseya smiled. “This harmonious balance dwells throughout the earth and in all the creatures.”
Theo looked at Haseya, their eyes locked for a moment. She travels through the earth, is kinetic with all life.
Theo cleared his throat. “There is no magical person I respect more than you, Haseya. If this is a thing, then it’s a thing.” He turned back to Sylvia. “OK, Kid. If we’re doing this, we’ll need a plan.” And a bunch of luck.
TINA WOKE, STARED AT the familiar ceiling then rolled over, coming nose to nose with MP.
“Mama?”
“Down here, Honey Cup.”
“I guess the drive exhausted me, I don’t remember getting here or falling asleep!”
“You were pretty beat. Waffle?”
“Oh, my Go...” Tina trailed off, looking at her mother’s arched brow. “...odness, yes! Please and thank you, Mama.”
“After breakfast, I’d like to go for a ride in that fancy car of yours. I’m so proud of how you are making a success of your life, Tina.”
Her mother’s kiss a benediction, Tina dug into her waffle. I’m not sure how I lost twenty-four hours and ended up here with Sly’s dog, but none of it matters. I’ll spend a few days and drive back from Miami for court on Monday.
“It’s perfect you could come. I have a procedure scheduled for tomorrow, and you can be my sidekick,” her mother said, settling in with her coffee.
“What kind of procedure?” Tina’s inner twelve-year-old made a sudden appearance as the bottom dropped out of her gut.
“A biopsy. Let’s stay positive, OK? I didn’t want you to worry. Just knowing you showed up out of the blue feeds my heart.”
Oh, crap. Tina looked at her mother, pushing up a smile. “OK, Mama. Positive in all the ways for all the days.”
“And double on Sundays!” they chorused, laughing.
I am where I’m supposed to be.
IN THE GROVE BY THE Chiles, Sylvia looked at Theo, her eyes a flow of purpose.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Haseya twirled, dumping Sylvia in the basin before disappearing. She rolled to a stop at the edge of the jagged hole; the water surging to her. The relief, the wild desire to return, it’s all over everything down here. She gazed down, shock overtaking her as the water surged into the basin, her skin turning blue at the water’s touch, iridescent scales lapping down her arms and legs. Holy crap! I, is, what...? Is that a tail?
Water roared up from the basin floor, lifting and covering her as she struggled to concentrate, to pull it to her, create a flow from chaos. Instead, she tumbled, no longer sure of the surface, rolling in the exploding pressure of billions of gallons’ determined return.
I’m not running out of air.
Her rising panic ceased. Suspended, she touched the sides of her neck, touching the gills in amazement. I can be complete in this suspension. I am at home here.
A memory swam to her mind’s surface, of being underwater with Nixelle, laughing and playing. Gills. Nixelle had gills. We played under the water for hours. I had them too! The memory, buried, is only coming back up now, while in this water. Oh, Mama.
Yanking her mind back, Sylvia concentrated; the water responded, pulling into a single sphere of connected droplets, lying in the basin of her mind. With gentle strength, the humongous globule of water remained intact and rose away from her as she lay on the bed of the reservoir.
Haseya flashed in, dumping Theo, in dragon form, into the space between the floating globe of water and the basin floor, and vanished once more. Sylvia watched the glow of Theo’s fire through the water, seeing the flow catch and play with his light as he mended the ugly scar of Pirro and Rafi’s work. As if through a dream, the dragon looked to her, wavering within the water’s motion, and nodded.
Haseya had Theo again. Sylvia watched them twirl to nothing. She lowered her hands, covering her body once more in the healing water, sensing it seeping into every bit of the basin, testing the new seal and settling into the restored preserve. The water filled with sediment, disturbed by the new currents and Sylvia watched, swimming in a slow circle, reveling in the water’s balanced contentment.
A thick patch of floating sediment coalesced, and from nothing, Pirro’s face emerged. It was over in a blink; he seized her, wrapping her in a ball of clear smoke, like a bubble rising to the surface. Mirrored, he shot skyward with Sylvia’s bubble in tow, unseen from the ground.
They slung across the sky, Rafi in pursuit, following the trail of water vapor. He sensed Zayn behind him as they tore across the Gulf of Mexico toward the Mexican desert.
“IT OCCURRED TO ME,” Pirro smashed his face into Sylvia’s, hands crushing the scales on her arms, “that whatever spell you’re under might not let you change back. Nice tail, by the way,” he said, kicking it as he flung her away, watching her flop and bounce across the broiling Sonoran desert. He floated after her. “You’ll have fun walking out of here with that.”
“Not,” he continued, laughing, “that I think you can get far. You’re in the high desert. Low humidity, no water. You can’t survive here, and because some stupid witch tried to protect you, you’re stuck; you can’t shift back.”
Pirro’s eyes were back-lit with hateful glee. “This is the best revenge for the traitorous Rafi and your stupid brother. You’ll dry up like a fish dropped by an unlucky bird. These puny clueless humans will find your bones, go on their televisions, and create another crazy program about merpeople. You’ll be famous and derided, in simulcast. It’s fitting, since you are neither magic nor human, to be a joke to both.”
Sylvia looked in horror as her scales caught the sand, air creeping under them, the sense of drying excruciating. My body is dying. The realization caught her. He knew this would kill me. He waited for me to get in the water, to see if I would change, so he could kill me this way, drying and dying in a slow, painful burning.
“I didn’t do this to attack you, Pirro. The water called to return. I restored the balance, Pirro. I had to.”
“Called by whom, you waste of scales? God does not speak to you, only to the Djinn and the Angels. You act like you have authority. You are nothing.”
“I answered the call of the water, Pirro. Could you not hear it when you swirled within it, the waves of joy, the tidal sense of returning to center?”
“The creation does not speak, fool. Only the Creator. Fare
well, little water bitch. Feed the desert well.”
Pirro dissolved, his mocking face the last part to disappear, etched in Sylvia’s pain as the heat contorted her body, intent of stealing her water and her life.
Chapter Eighteen
“This is my fight, my love, my time to stand.”
Rafi’s words screamed across the sky. Understanding, Zayn decelerated as Rafi’s smoke stretched thin, a wire of fury hurtling earthward, twisting into a death funnel. His layers of enraged filament squeezed Pirro’s smoke into the center of his turmoil. The twister bounded, sucking dust, bones, and rocks, skittering away from where Sylvia lay, agony overwhelming her mind.
If I can’t figure out what it takes to shift back, I will die. How? She struggled to focus, swamped by her body’s pain, every nerve and cell screaming for water. Is there an initiation point? If I can find an opening, flip one piece, it might start a chain reaction.
Above, Zayn watched Rafi’s assault on Pirro, sliding across the sky as the twister thundered over the desert below him, covering miles of dry, rocky wasteland. Haseya is right. They must find a balance between them. I respect the battle, even if Pirro is winning, but his denouncement stands in opposition to all Djinn. His actions are a defilement of our existence.
The keening screech of the Djinn ricocheted over the high desert, the sound bouncing at odd angles; the din reverberating and chilling the blood. Within the death song, Zayn heard Pirro’s lament, the song of rejection and rage, a knife to the soul, and Rafi’s response, a requiem of protection and preservation. The balance between them shifted as the twister roared back and forth, horror washing the dusts of annihilation and time.
Baking in the heat, Sylvia drifted, dreaming of water. Her mind turned each sensation over, seeking the piece that might save her body from the cooking sands and sun. Here and there, a scale would release, showing a small patch of skin. It’s not enough I can’t get the change to cascade, to change all of me. Where is my dragon within? That might save me, but I don’t know how to call it forth. Oh, Mama, Daddy, help me understand. Show me what to do.
A wrenching shriek filled the air as Pirro broke free from Rafi, spinning on his own.
His voice boomed across the desert. “Brother, this is wrong! Spare me and yourself. Stop now, you won’t cheat death again.”
“No, Pirro. You cannot continue this path. You do not honor the Djinn. The only way is to sever our fortunes forever. Your death is the price of your choices, not mine.”
Pirro’s war cry churned over the sand as he chased Rafi down, relentless in wrath. “Love is your weakness, Rafi. Because of it, you will die, no different from the humans who place such a value on its fantasy.”
Their whirling winds smashed together, growing and shrinking from the violence within them. Pirro drove them towards Sylvia, intending to twist her to nothing. Rafi countered, driving back, forcing Pirro away, then bending him towards the earth in caterwauling viciousness. The ground shook beneath Sylvia, their din shaking the earth, bouncing her across the scorching sand. This rage, it consumes Rafi. The wrath spills everywhere. Will he lose his perspective? Return to what he was? Oh, Rafi, fight the good fight, my love. Stay in your new light, even as mine is fading.
The twisters split apart once more, whirling while circling one another, growing larger as the dust flew and the earth trembled. Pirro moved, flying towards Rafi in a roar of destruction. Rafi stretched thin, corkscrewing around Pirro and pulling tight, squeezing him to the point of breaking his velocity. Above the storms, lightning cracked in eerie counterpoint as the twisters separated once more.
It will be soon, their energies grow weaker. Zayn witnessed the careening in growing sorrow.
Bearing down on Pirro, Rafi’s twister dropped, becoming a flat spinning disc on the surface of the sand, sliding under the tip of Pirro’s whirlwind, then rocketing skyward, encapsulating it in a vicious twist to compress the raging Pirro in a death grip.
Zayn bowed his head. I know this place of loss, the inevitable damnation ahead.
Sylvia blinked in the haze of the dusty sun and touched her gills, filling with hot grit, shriveling against her neck. I can’t move my body anymore. Punishing sand blew against her inert form, flowing against the sides of her body, covering the tip of her tail. I’m dying. The earth buries me while alive. Within me, the release is tugging. It feels... easy.
The unbearable noise escalated to a crescendo as the twister squeezed. Each revolution, the spirals narrowed in the accelerating, relentless spin. Pirro’s death wail ceased. Rafi ejected Pirro’s twisted body with a fierce crack, sending it sailing into the sky. Zayn shot across the lightning-pierced blue, wrapping Pirro’s body in his plume and vanishing into the interdimensional plane. The silence, absolute, settled across the death and heat.
Sand flying, Rafi landed in a skid next to Sylvia, pulling her limp, unresponsive body into his and shooting to the west, the Gulf of California, and water.
He plunged with her, all hope lost, into the sea.
“I CANNOT SAVE HIM, my husband,” Haseya said, her voice gentle. “He wants to go and I will honor that. All must cross when it is their time.”
Zayn looked at Pirro’s mangled body with sadness. He will never be more than hating, not see beyond the madness caused by God’s rejection.
“Brother, there is more to Djinn than what you embrace. I call you to heal, to take the next step of this journey. There is more, and you are close. I will stay here with you. This ending can, if you choose, be your beginning.”
Pirro’s eyes cracked open, seeing the fire, hearing the voices, fading to black.
RAFI HELD SYLVIA’S body, grey and unmoving, as the whales circled, their immensity breathtaking. More whales joined the widening circle, singing the sea’s requiem. The water carried the song in every molecule, passing through and landing against her body, the vibrations knocking the sand from between her scales and out of her gills.
Turning nose to tail, the whales continued to sing, circling Sylvia and Rafi, whose face, broken with pain, gazed at her stillness. He held her close, overwhelmed and weeping. I am drowning in her loss. This is love, for the heart to die over another’s death is the balance. God was right. Love is greater than anything else created.
The force of the gigantic bodies circling moved the water, buffeting them, cleaning her of the ravages of the desert. Small fish, pulled up by the velocity of the circle, nibbled at her scales, cleaning her tail fin, while the tiny ones darted in and out of her gills, pulling the killing earth away.
Please come back, my love, or we float here, forever suspended in sorrow, for I will not leave you. I cannot leave you. You are my one, my destiny, my catalyst to become more. If this is our ending, I am content, for knowing your love was everything.
Turning as one, displacing the water in a surging underwater wave, the whales changed direction. As the wave, pushing into the circle met in the middle, the force of the water slammed into Sylvia, flooding her gills with the water’s air of life. Head snapping back, eyes flying open, Rafi watched them change from the grey acquiescence of death to burgeoning shades of blue until they blazed into his, the mother of seas, his love, restored.
Her body, scale by scale, recovered, changing from dried dull grey, to liquid silver, to the silvery blue sheen of health. From the roots, her hair faded from silver to gold, moving through the water in restoration. The song of the whales changed, their chorus of celebration and joy reverberated around the pair as Sylvia’s colors deepened, her body mending within and without.
She pulled away from Rafi, swimming and touching every whale in gratitude, looking into the eye of each one, speaking soul to soul. The fish danced and darted, their joy apparent. They surrounded her like a colorful coat, undulating in euphoria.
Rafi watched her transformation, washed in gratitude that the water she loved had saved her. Her eyes turned to his, and she swam into his arms, catching him into a slow, revolving kiss, drifting within the sea’s multitudes.
She looked into his eyes, running her hands down his naked body, and he understood. Willing himself to shift to match her, seeing a strong green tail form, as green and copper scales layered over his body.
Sylvia laughed, a cloud of dancing bubbles, and darted away, glancing over her shoulder. Rafi began the chase, flowing through the sea’s density, knowing he could catch her, but playing, grateful this game could be. After a twisting romp around the stones and boulders that covered the gulf’s bottom, Rafi, with several strong thrusts of his tail, came up on top of her back, cupping her breasts and kissing her shoulders through her flowing curls. He filled in this form, moving his cock against her as she opened for him. Her joy within the water in her Nixe form, and being with him, gripped Rafi’s heart, shattering the last bits of his former self. Clean, loving and loved, they finished together, turning to kiss, connected in a lazy float to the surface, and whatever came next.
Chapter Nineteen
“Zayn brought him here?” Rafi’s voice, incredulous, filled the hut.
“It is the way,” Haseya’s voice cut over, calm but sure. “His injuries were vast. I am a healer.”
Rafi looked around the crowded hut. On one end, the broken Pirro lay, suffering, as Rafi had suffered, to untwist his bones and organs. On the other side, a massive tank held Sylvia, who remained stuck in her water form. Zayn played Djinn peek-a-boo with the baby on the sleeping pallets in the hut’s rear, shifting to various forms to the peals of the baby’s laughter. Haseya steeped herbs for Pirro, continuing to try for as long as he was willing. The air was full of peace, joy, suffering, and patience.
“How human it is,” Rafi muttered under his breath. His eyes slid to Pirro. “I should finish the job,”
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