Salt & Stone: A Water Elemental Novel & Mermaid Fantasy (The Siren's Curse Book 1)

by A. L. Knorr

  The water closed over her, and she was gone.

  I stood there on the beach, hugging myself, tears pouring down my face. My knees finally did give out, or perhaps it was just the will to hold myself upright. I collapsed on the sand and wept in earnest.

  I must have made it back to the manor at some point, as daylight found me waking in damp sheets and with my face pressed to a wet pillow. I might have laughed at what a nuisance siren tears could be, but I felt too hollow and too sad inside. Mom was gone and I didn’t know when, or even if, I’d ever see her again. As I thought about it, my tears began to well up again, blurring my vision and threatening to dehydrate my body further.

  I threw the blankets off angrily. I grabbed up the glass of water on my bedside table, opened my throat, and swallowed it in one big gulp. Clacking the cup down on the wood, I tore the sheets off my bed to let the mattress dry out. Dumping the wet linens onto the floor, I changed from my damp pajamas into jeans and a red zip-up hoody. Moving a little too fast and with a little too much vigor, I jammed my feet into a pair of boots, grabbed all the laundry, and left my suite.

  After reaching the laundry chute, I crammed the bedding and clothes into the rectangular hole and sent them tumbling into the laundry room three stories below. I took a shuddering breath as thoughts of my mother’s face disappearing under the waves invaded my mind like a floodlight. Slamming the laundry chute door, I turned away and almost ran smack into Antoni’s chest.

  “Good morning. I came to find you when you weren’t waiting for me in the dining room. I thought we’d agreed to meet for breakfast.” His expression told me he’d been watching me long enough to notice that something wasn’t okay.

  His voice rolled over me like a hug and I didn’t back up, or apologize, only pressed my face into his cotton shirt and closed my eyes. His gorgeous, comforting scent filled my nose and my frayed nerves relaxed a little. The desperate urge to sob in his arms like a little kid passed. My hands crept around his waist and I bunched his shirt up in my palms, squeezing the fabric and him, feeling the solidity of his body underneath.

  His arms wrapped around me and he held me and kissed the top of my head. “I’m sorry?”

  I gave a strangled chuckle and sniffed. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “That’s a relief.” When I didn’t volunteer any information, he prodded, “But, something is wrong.”

  Yes and no. She is free, and that is right. But will this vacant space in me ever feel warm and full again?

  “Yes.”

  His arms tightened and he waited. When more moments ticked by and I didn’t explain, he said, “You’ll tell me if I should be scared, right? Or if I need to have someone…” he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “killed.”

  Thankful that the tears had not begun to fall again, and feeling more in control, I pulled back and smiled. “No one needs to die.”

  We turned and walked down the stairs together, headed for the dining room and breakfast. I remembered that I’d asked him to join me for breakfast because he was going to Germany for work and would be away the rest of the week.

  Antoni waited, watching me, hand in mine. He didn’t even pull away when a member of the household staff walked by.

  “My mom left for Canada early this morning.”

  Antoni’s face expanded with surprise. “Is she going to look at a job, or something?”

  I shook my head. “She’s taken the partnership with The Bluejackets.” The lies were coming smoothly off my tongue, but I hated lying to Antoni; it made me want to send a fist through the wall. Antoni was my family now, even though we weren’t even engaged yet. My girlfriends were living their own lives, and though I knew we’d always be there for each other, they weren’t in my daily life anymore. Antoni was. He was my home now.

  So why was I lying to him?

  I knew why. Fear. Plain and simple. Fear, and the promises I had made since I was old enough to remember making promises. Fear, and the ironclad siren’s credo to keep her identity secret—it had been instilled in me since the very first time I had ever seen my mother’s beautiful tail.

  But Antoni had stopped on the step, and I had continued on until I realized he was no longer beside me. I paused, too, and looked up and back at him. He was staring at me, unblinking.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You must be joking with me. Tell me you’re joking.” He cracked a crooked smile in anticipation of me admitting that I’d been having him on.

  “It’s no joke. What’s the big deal?”

  “She didn’t even say goodbye.” He joined me on the step where I’d stopped, then took another step down, bringing our eyes level with one another.

  “Simon had an urgent job, she had to leave immediately.” I shrugged, hating myself even more for the cavalier gesture. “Why stick around?”

  Antoni blustered. “Maybe to tell us all to our faces that she was leaving? Maybe to get some help packing, have dinner with us all once last time.”

  “Us all?” I cocked an eyebrow.

  “Well, my family at least, and the staff would liked to have seen her off. She’s part of the Novak clan now, and that’s how they feel about her.”

  “There wasn’t time.” I took his hand, my voice had gone soothing and he relaxed a fraction, but he still was not happy.

  “She couldn’t even stay for your birthday,” he grumped.

  “Hey.” I touched his cheek. “You of all people should understand commitment to work. She’s passionate about what she does, she missed it. I told you that. You knew it was a possibility.”

  Antoni didn’t believe this, and it was written all over his face. “There was nothing in the world more important to her than you, Targa. Nothing and no one. I don’t believe for a second that this job was more important than you, than being there when you turn eighteen.”

  I tugged on his hand and he reluctantly continued down the steps beside me. “We’ll see. Maybe she can come back. I’m sure she’ll do everything she can.”

  I said this knowing full well that she wouldn’t be here for my birthday, but I wanted to soothe him for now and deal with the reality of the situation later, when the sharp pangs of loss had eased to blunt ones.

  Antoni continued to protest my mother’s decision to leave, and I continued to defend and make excuses for her. By the time we were sitting down to breakfast, I had lost my appetite.

  It wasn’t right, not being able to share this huge development in my life with Antoni. Lying to him tasted like acid on my tongue, and the worst of it was that he was slowly coming to believe me, to accept it. That made me feel like a total heel.

  I forced the eggs and toast down because Antoni would definitely have been worried if he saw that my huge appetite had dwindled to nothing, but it tasted like chalk.

  By the time we were clearing our plates from the table, Antoni believed me, but he was not impressed with my mom. He made a few comments that he never would have suspected she’d make such a decision, he was shocked, and maybe he didn’t know her as well as he thought he had.

  Really, he didn’t know her at all.

  And he didn’t know me, and that sat on my chest like a bag of cement.

  The rear pathway to the beach had become my favorite escape route. During the day, I had classes and the business sessions with Hanna and Marian, and I was grateful for the distraction. I found the company’s history interesting and though the shipping industry was not one I’d ever be passionate about, it was interesting enough to keep my mind engaged while Antoni was working.

  In the evenings, if I wasn’t with Antoni, I would dress for the weather and walk along the beach until I reached a rocky promontory, which was really a man-made break. Huge black boulders clustered at the water’s edge kept the sea from eroding the tender earth on the other side. I liked to climb these rocks and step along their tops, watching the glittering pools of black water reflect the stars. At the very end, one could lean forward and almost not see any of the lights
of civilization in their periphery. The floating twinkles of lit barges and passing ships moved quietly in the distance, dwarfed by a black sky scattered with stars.

  I loved the night sounds of the Baltic, the sweet sway of the waves and the crashing of the larger ones over the stones, the hollow sounds of water pouring over the spaces between the rocks only to drain back into the sea.

  Mom was ever on my mind. I wondered where she was. How far had she gotten in the days since she had left? Was she happier? Of course, she was happier. She was free. She was living how she had been craving to live ever since I had been born. What was she doing? Did she think of me, or was she now so far away and so accustomed to the salt water that I was a distant memory? Would she forget me entirely? Would I one day be a sealed envelope from her past, locked away from even her?

  The waves slipped past the break, gathering speed and seeming to softly call to me, its voice lifting to a crescendo before descending again. Its sound was haunting, melancholy, somber. I had never known the ocean, or any body of water, to sound this way. It possessed me, and for some unknown amount of time, I stood there no longer thinking, only listening to that eerie, mournful song.

  When I came to myself, my face and the collar on my coat were wet. I took a shuddering breath and sent loving thoughts to Mom, wherever she was, whatever she was doing.

  The sound of a foot scraping on stone made me turn.

  The silhouettes of two people stood like black cutouts against the lights of the shoreline, still and slender.

  My body tensed, but the tension dissolved when one of the people sniffed and a hand journeyed to her face with a white thing I realized was a tissue.

  I moved closer and their faces became a little clearer. I started when I realized it was Adalbert and Sera.

  “That was the most beautiful thing,” Sera said, “that I’ve ever heard.”

  I realized then that she was crying.

  Adalbert wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “Please don’t be angry, we’ve just been worried about you since Mira left. When we saw you out here while we were walking, we followed.” He hesitated. “We didn’t mean to intrude on your private time. That was some…singing.”

  Singing?

  I opened my mouth to protest when it came over me like a tsunami. The swelling feeling in my throat had just begun to fade. I hadn’t realized that I’d been singing…singing in my siren’s voice.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve never heard anything like that,” Sera said, and Adalbert was nodding. “Truly, you have a gift. You should be on a stage. You could move a statue to tears. I thought while I was listening to it that I was never going to be happy again.”

  Adalbert nodded again. “It was remarkable, but I hope you don’t mind that I was relieved when you stopped. I felt like I couldn’t move until you finished, like your voice was holding me captive.”

  Finally, I just said, “I’m sorry. I thought I was alone.”

  Sera shook her head. “Never apologize for having such a talent.”

  I allowed them to escort me back to the manor, but I was too lost in my own thoughts to converse with them. I had been singing without even realizing it? Was this just a symptom of my grief, or was something else going on? Another thin layer of mystery fell away from my siren identity. When I was very, very sad, I sang to myself, or to the ocean. I didn’t know to which because I didn’t know I was doing it. I hoped these two weren’t adversely affected by it, but I didn’t think they would be. I’d said no words, given no orders, erased no memories. Surely the singing was harmless, and simply part of the grieving process. I wondered if my mom ever sang to the ocean after my dad died.

  Thinking of my mom made my throat swell, and I swallowed hard, grateful Adalbert and Sera weren’t making conversation either.

  Remarkable. I would have loved to share this discovery with my mother. Even more remarkable, I found that I actually felt a little better than I had before I had left the manor for my walk along the break.

  10

  Adam navigated the Novak limousine to the opening of the museum exhibition. The evening was drizzly, the sky was an angry boil of dark clouds. The occasional flash of lightning over the Baltic lit the seams in the heavens to a bright white, illuminating the churning waters in the distance.

  “I hope this weather isn’t a sign that something disastrous is going to happen with the exhibition,” Antoni said, putting a hand on my knee on top of my wool dress-coat.

  “I love this kind of weather,” I replied, gazing out the car’s windows as the lights of the city slid closer and lightning flashed over the beyond. “It’s passionate, melancholy, romantic.”

  “And freezing.” Antoni pulled his scarf up around his jawline and tugged his collar up as though wishing it could cover his ears. He sent me a sideways glance. “You know what I’ve noticed about you now that we’ve been able to spend an extended period of time together?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You never complain about the cold.” He shuddered and rubbed his gloved hands together. “It doesn’t bother you? Our damp Baltic winter?”

  I laughed. “You haven’t lived through winter in Atlantic Canada. The Baltic is a pussycat by comparison.” Shrugging, I added, “Sometimes I feel the cold, but I guess I have a pretty good internal furnace.”

  Antoni snuggled closer, turning his face toward me. “I can’t say I’ve ever noticed your body producing an excessive amount of heat.”

  I captured his lips in a kiss, cradling the back of his neck with my hand. His lips were soft, and melted against mine like butter.

  When I drew back, he had a little smile on his mouth as he gazed at me through hooded eyes.

  “I take that back.” He tucked a small box into the palm of my hand. “Happy birthday, Targa.”

  I gave a soft gasp at the surprise and looked down to see a teal box with a matching ribbon. “Aw, thank you. You didn’t have to get me anything.”

  “Don’t be silly, of course I did.”

  “Should I open it now?”

  He gestured impatiently and comically to get on with it.

  Untying the bow and lifting the lid revealed a little fabric sack. Upending the sack into my palm, a gold bangle tumbled into my hand. Holding it up in the light of the streetlamps going by I noticed an engraving. It was simple, our initials stamped into the gold with a heart in between.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Very much,” I replied, smiling. I slipped it onto my wrist and tucked the box into my clutch. Leaning forward again, I gave him a lingering kiss. “Thank you.”

  His eyes flicked toward the tinted glass which hid us from Adam in the front seat.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I teased. “You’re an open book.”

  He chuckled. “Come now, I’m your date tonight, aren’t I? That’s progress, right?”

  “I’ll be forever grateful.” I fluttered my eyelashes at him in an expression of satiric appreciation.

  He shook his head. “You’ve got a lot of your mother in you, you know.”

  I looked out the window as the buildings of the old city in central Gdansk passed by. “I hope so.”

  “Such a shame she couldn’t be here for your birthday, and the exhibition,” Antoni muttered, still sour at her. “You’d think she could take a few days off to enjoy the fruits of her labor. Everything in the exhibition is now hers, people will think it’s very odd that she’s not here.”

  “They’ll have to be satisfied with me,” I said, my voice sounding more clipped than I meant it to.

  The car slowed as we approached the front doors of the museum. Antoni leaned over me as we peered out my window.

  “Look at the crowd,” he said. “Wow. They did a good job with the publicity. Looks like half the city came out.”

  This was an exaggeration of course, but there was quite a crowd of elegant looking guests in dark dress jackets and sophisticated updos clustered under a temporary awn
ing which had been constructed to cover the sidewalk. Stanchions had been erected to guide the crowd to the open double doors where tickets were being scanned.

  “A red carpet?” I blinked at Antoni in surprise. “They put down a red carpet?”

  Adam snugged the car close to the taillights of the vehicle in front of us, where a beautifully dressed older couple stepped out onto the carpet. A valet in coattails held their door open and welcomed them.

  “Who are they?”

  “That’s Pawel Adamowicz, the city mayor and his wife. Did Mrs. Krulikoski not tell you who’d be coming?”

  “No, she did,” I answered absently, touching up my lipstick and watching the elegant woman with short silver hair wave to the crowd standing on the other side of the stanchions. “I just saw the list of names, not their photos.”

  “We’re next. You ready?”

  I dropped my lipstick into my clutch and nodded as the car inched forward and the valet reached for my door handle.

  “Still not fair that I haven’t gotten to see you in that dress before anyone else,” Antoni whispered, and planted a kiss behind my ear.

  I smiled over my shoulder at him. “That’s what happens when you don’t live with your date. Just sayin’. Benefits, you know?”

  “Very funny.” He grinned.

  The valet opened the door and I stepped out of the vehicle, clutching my long coat and dress so they didn’t land in the gutter. A few people called my name from the other side of the stanchions and I looked up, surprised. Smiling faces greeted me, hands waving. I waved back, smiled, and tried to look like I belonged here.

  “They know my name,” I muttered so only Antoni could hear as he got out and followed me up the red carpet.

  Flashes of light from a small group of journalists went off.

  “Of course they do. The Novaks are as much a part of the fabric of Gdansk as the canals. Most of these people didn’t come to see some rotting artifacts, they came to see Targa Novak in the flesh. Martinius Novak’s long lost heiress.”