Under the Surface (Song of the Siren Book 1)

by Sonya Blake

  Kaia appeared in the kitchen door some minutes later, pale, wiping her face with a dampened hand towel. “I swear, that was still the best spaghetti I ever ate,” she murmured.

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and filled with tears, but her lips twitched with a smile. He found himself standing and walking around the table. He stopped short before taking her in his arms, afraid of making any assumptions.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” he told her, weakly, wishing he could do more for her.

  “Well, shit,” Kaia said, laughing and crying at the same time.

  She threw her arms around his middle and buried her face in his chest.

  “I remember the day I found out.” He held her closer, cradling her to him. “Worst day of my life.”

  After a moment, Kaia drew away, looking up at him with her big, brilliant eyes. “Will you tell me about it? All of it?” she asked.

  Sam nodded. “What do you say we get a fire going first?”

  *

  “I thought I was going to die out there last night,” Kaia said. “When you and I fell in, the water was so cold. So cold I could barely move.”

  Sam grunted in agreement as he stuffed a ball of crumpled newspaper between pieces of kindling in the living room hearth.

  “And this one big wave came and pulled me under,” Kaia went on haltingly, “and I didn’t know which way was up. Eventually, you know, after so long, I had to breathe. And that’s when it happened.”

  Sam looked over his shoulder at her. She was pulling on one curl and staring out the window at the horizon.

  “It hurt worse than anything,” she murmured, “and then it was over, and I could swim.” Her eyes met his. “And I swam to you. I didn’t even know what had happened to me, didn’t care. It wasn’t till I got you on land that I looked at myself and”—she licked her lips and swallowed—“and I saw what I was.”

  Sam struck a match and turned to watch the flame take. Bending to blow on the flame to give it encouragement, he watched the fire burst into life.

  “And today?” he said. “What the hell were you doing out there?”

  “Had to see if I was crazy or not,” she whispered, eyes big as an owl’s.

  Sam stifled a smile as he sat on one of the big leather armchairs facing the couch. “And, crazy or not, you’re a siren?” he offered.

  “Guess so.” Kaia laughed and shook her head, drawing her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her shins. She went quiet for a moment, then asked, “What’s your story? I mean, I think I kinda know, but what is a selkie?”

  Sam let out a breath. He hadn’t talked openly of his nature in so long, it felt foreign to him now. But he remembered the story he’d read about the origin of selkies, and figured it wouldn’t hurt him to tell Kaia.

  “Well, they’re—we’re rare, for one thing,” he said. “More rare even than sirens. They say that the first selkies came from Scotland and Ireland, where people live in a close relationship with the sea. Legend goes that a lonely widow was walking the beach not long after she’d heard of her husband’s death, drowning at sea. She came upon a seal. And that seal seemed to know her, to want to speak with her. She believed it to be the spirit of her dead husband in a new form.”

  Kaia nodded, the firelight catching in her hair and turning it to burning embers. Sam steadied himself and went on.

  “The woman fell in love with this seal, and the seal with her. And they had a child. Don’t ask me exactly how that happened, a seal and a human. It just did. But instead of being born a human baby, it was a seal pup and he lived with his father. For a while.

  “Eventually, the seal-child began to change, to get restless and curious about land. And one day, unable to resist his curiosity any longer, he went to shore and shed his sealskin to find that he was a human. The young man hid his sealskin in a cave and walked until he came to some people in a little village, who gave him clothes and food and taught him how to live.

  “But he was never content. That feeling of restlessness, of curiosity, could never be satisfied. So he took his sealskin and moved on. Went to a bigger island, a bigger village. He watched the people there from the sea for a long time, debating whether or not to try his luck among them.

  “He was about to move on, when he heard something more beautiful than anything he’d ever heard before. He followed the sound, swimming around the island until he came to a cove, where there was a young woman collecting sea dulse and singing. The seal was drawn in by the sound of her voice and he came closer, wanting to see her face.

  “The young woman saw him and walked to the edge of land, singing the whole time. The seal swam to shore, wanting to be near her. They stayed on a rock for hours, just looking at each other.

  “He returned the next day, and the next. And eventually, he pulled off his sealskin and revealed himself to the woman he had fallen in love with. The two decided to be married, and the seal gave her his sealskin for safekeeping.

  “They were happy for a while, of course, but eventually his old restlessness kicked in. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his wife, or that he hated being a fisherman—he was good at it and made more money than anybody else on the island—but there was this primal urge, pulling him always back to the sea. At least, that’s how I imagine he felt,” Sam added.

  “Then what happened?” Kaia asked.

  “Well, he began looking for his sealskin. His wife told him she’d hidden it away, somewhere he’d never find it because she knew, deep down, that once he did, he’d be gone.”

  “Let me guess—he found it?”

  Sam nodded. “She’d hidden it under the roof thatch. And, one night, he pulled it out and went back to the sea.”

  Kaia’s eyes went wide. “And that’s it? That’s the end of the story?”

  Sam chuckled. “Yeah, as I know it. That’s it.”

  Kaia was quiet, her eyes drifting to the fire. Then she asked, “How’d you end up here?”

  “I was born as a seal,” he began, pausing for a deep breath. “Then, one day, I became a human.”

  Chapter Eight

  Cold. Bright. The rocks had never felt so hard before. The seal felt too weak to fight. He would be safer in the water. He lifted his head and tried to heave himself into motion so he could slide into the water, but his body was too rigid and frail. Coagulated slime coated his eyes, blinding him.

  A shadow appeared, a long upright figure moving over the stones. The seal tried harder to move, to get away, to save himself, but he was helpless. He couldn’t drag his body anywhere.

  As the tall creature approached, the seal turned and nipped at the heavy thing weighing him down. He found it to be his own brindled pelt. The pelt was attached to him still, but sloughing off, sliding over his skinless body. The seal screamed, but the approaching creature wasn’t intimidated. It cooed as it teetered toward him.

  Needing to clear his vision, the seal struggled to clear the slime from his eyes by rubbing his face on a rock, and succeeded in part, though the barnacles scraped his now-furless skin. He tried to bark as the creature came closer, extending its strange slender limbs. Sunlight caught an object in the creature’s hand, and flashed.

  The seal smelled the scent of the roses that grew riotous and wild along the coastline, only the scent was stronger than ever before. He thought he’d been wrong about the long creatures: they weren’t animals but plants—and this one was a rose. The rose moved closer and uttered meaningless noises. The seal knew his body was destroyed already, so he lowered his head and shut his eyes, hoping his flesh would at least keep this strange rose living for a long time yet.

  Then a bolt of pain stabbed his back, slicing along his spine, ripping skin from muscle. He cried out and didn’t recognize the sound of his own voice.

  The rose ran off with his pelt, hopping nimbly on the boulders between the sea strand and the forest.

  The metallic reek of his own blood penetrated his nostrils as the laceration oozed on his back. Knowing he’d go to scavengers
and be re-embraced by the infinite, the seal shut his eyes and prepared to go home.

  But he woke again when another one of the long, upright creatures pounced on him. This one growled in a low voice and smelled of seawater and fish, quite like a seal itself. The seal lifted his head and cried at this creature, who lifted him fully into the air and then sloshed into the waves. The seal, at first devastated to still be alive within his ruined body, then felt a surge of gratitude for this creature bringing him back to the water, where he might at least die in dignity and return the borrowed form of his body to the sea where it belonged.

  Unlike the rose, this creature did not make much noise. It transported the seal into the water, and then, just when it seemed that liquid sanctuary was close, it put the seal into a small boat and brought him to a larger boat that stank of fish blood and gasoline.

  Light brown hair covered the head and face of this creature, and its eyes were the color of the sky on a clear summer day. It wrapped the seal in a warm, furless pelt and wiped the seal’s face, pulling pebbles and bits of weed from his eyes and mouth. Then it held out a container of water.

  The creature advanced and shoved the container into the seal’s mouth, forcing him to drink. It wasn’t normal water. The seal choked on the saltless substance, but it went down easily and tasted good.

  When the seal finished drinking, the creature stepped back from him and bent down to a bucket to pull out a small fish. The seal barked eagerly, and the creature took out a utensil and used it to peel away bits of fish meat.

  The seal lay on the floor of the boat and ate the fish as the creature returned to its work, turning the great big wheel this way and that as they rode over the waves, instead of under them. Eventually, they came to a halt and the creature once again approached the seal; only this time it did not lift him into its arms, but tried instead to bring him to an upright stance the same as its own. The creature hauled him on end and dragged him onto an island and into a cabin.

  There the creature took care of the seal, gave him more water and fresh fish, and then tended to the wound on his back. It made few noises—quiet, angry growls—and kept silent most of the time.

  When night fell, the seal waited until he thought the creature slept. He had made it halfway into the water at the edge of the island when the creature came running out of its dwelling, screaming. It dragged the seal away from the water and pulled him back into the cabin, then did a terrible thing. It tied the seal up, tethering him near the fire, which frightened the seal. He had never seen flame so close up before. But more frightening than the flame was that the line of rope holding him was tied around the ends of two thin, foreign limbs sprouting from his own body, ending in the same splaying digits that the long creature had. He screamed until his throat was raw and he could no longer see straight, and then he fell asleep, blanketed by the warmth of the fire.

  Chapter Nine

  Kaia looked at Sam leaning with his elbows on his thighs, folding his hands over and over within each other as he stared into the fire. He had told his story without bitterness or resentment, without much emotion at all.

  “And that man?” she asked.

  Sam drew in a long breath and met her gaze. “That’s my dad,” he said. “He took me in, taught me how to be a human—or tried to, anyway. I think I’m a slow learner on the subject.”

  “And what happened to the sealskin?”

  “I don’t know who has it now, but I think maybe it was a woman who took it,” he said with a pensive look as he brushed his fingers over his dark mustache and beard. “It’s a curse, you know. Whoever has it can use it to hurt me, if they want to. Stab it and I’ll bleed. Touch a match to it and I’ll burn.”

  The room grew cool as the sun began to set. Seeing that the fire was getting low, Kaia got up to add more wood to it. Sam joined her on the hearth rug, kneeling to poke at the smoldering embers.

  “I’ve never told anyone the whole story before,” Sam said as an afterthought.

  Kaia was aware of his knee touching hers as she watched his thick, strong hands nudging the fire back to life. She put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she said. “It does make me feel better knowing there are… others.”

  He dipped his head shyly and nodded. “Before this, you really had no clue you were a siren?”

  “No.”

  She had already racked her brain and had only come up with that time her mother had told her to use the word siren instead of mermaid. She’d been too young at the time to take much notice of the circumstances surrounding those memories.

  Sam added one more log to the fire, then returned to his chair. Kaia missed his closeness. In all honesty, after everything she’d been through, she badly wanted to be held. She sat looking at him for a moment, thinking how good it’d feel to climb into his lap and curl herself into his arms. She thought maybe he was looking at her like he wanted that too, but she couldn’t be sure.

  He turned and glanced out the window over his shoulder, where white snowflakes danced in the gray. “Damn, these days are short,” he said. “I should go before it gets dark.”

  Kaia sat back on her heels. Her heart picked up its pace. She was scared, she had to admit—scared to be on her own. But she wouldn’t ask him to stay. She didn’t need a man to make her feel safe, she told herself.

  “All right,” she said, making her voice light as she stood and dusted the wood shavings off her knees, pulling the stretched-out collar of her sweatshirt tighter around her throat.

  “The truck’s for you,” Sam said as he stood and stretched his long, lean body. “I thought you could use it until yours is out of the shop.”

  “Oh,” Kaia said, surprised.

  “You can drop me off down the wharf and keep it till whenever,” he said.

  *

  Along the way to the wharf, Sam pointed out the real-estate agency where she could list the house, Penfeld’s Market, the post office, the gas station, and his favorite coffee shop, The Better Bean. Kaia left him at the parking lot outside the Hook and Anchor and was going to make her way to Penfeld’s to buy some groceries before heading home, but she wasn’t exactly eager to get back to Foley’s Point just yet. It gave her a chill just thinking that she’d be alone in the house all night, twitching at every creak, wondering if the white-haired voyeur would return.

  As she scanned for ways to kill time, an old-style apothecary on Main Street caught her eye. She parked Sam’s pickup along the street and crossed to the apothecary just as a woman was pushing out a baby stroller. Kaia held the door open for her and smiled down at the tiny bundle in the stroller as the herbaceous scent from inside the apothecary wafted around her.

  “Hi there,” said a soft, smoky voice when Kaia entered, her eyes still trailing the mother and her tiny baby.

  A slender young woman was rearranging a jar of flowers on the counter. She tucked a strand of shiny black hair behind one ear as she smiled at Kaia.

  “You still open?” Kaia asked.

  “For you, sure.” She smiled broadly, her lips perfectly glossed in a petal-soft nude color. “Want to try my lavender and meadowsweet hand salve? I’ve got a sample going right here.”

  “Sure,” Kaia said, and paused to dip her fingers in the little glass pot the women held out to her. “Smells great,” she volunteered.

  The woman smiled again as she asked, “How long will you be visiting Quolobit?”

  Kaia laughed. “Guess you can tell I’m not from around here.”

  “Small town.” The woman shrugged. “We don’t get many strangers in winter.”

  “I see,” Kaia said. There was something she didn’t particularly like about the way the woman called her a stranger. “I’m staying a few days, maybe a week.” She remembered her defunct car and felt her shoulders sink. “Could be longer.”

  The woman’s green eyes narrowed, evaluating Kaia’s face. Kaia’s skin flashed hot and cold with panic as she suddenly worried that the woman could see through her, i
nto her. She was afraid the woman knew that under the image of a normal human there was something else. She was about to turn and begin walking—or running—away, when the woman leaned across the counter and took one of her hands.

  “Would you be interested in modeling for me, if you’re in town long enough? I’ve got a line of beauty products and I want to put images on my website.” She touched Kaia’s hair. “You’ve got just the look I’ve been searching for. I’ve had the worst time finding the right lady.” Her smile took on a soft sweetness to it that was almost childlike. Kaia felt guilty for her suspicions. “I’d pay you, of course,” the woman added.

  Kaia laughed and felt color rising to her cheeks. She had never been singled out for her looks before other than to be teased for her mop of red hair, her plague of freckles. “You want me to model for you?”

  “Yes. You’re perfect as a wildflower. Here, take my card and check out my website. See what you think.”

  Kaia slipped the card into her back pocket.

  “And here, take this lip tint as a gift. It’s a new formula I created, colored with beet and alkanet root in a coconut oil base. Good for lips, and cheeks, too.”

  “Thanks, that’s very kind of you,” Kaia said, taking the small tin. “And I appreciate the offer to model, but I really don’t know if I’ll be around. It kind of depends on this real-estate agency. They were closed when I drove by before.”

  The woman gave a glance out the door to Sam’s truck parked across the street, and she clasped a hand around an antique-looking skeleton key hanging from a cord around her neck.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” Kaia asked.

  The woman continued staring out the window, not answering.

  “With the realtor?” Kaia clarified.

  “Winter in Maine.” The woman shrugged. She began taping up a small cardboard box for shipment. “Maybe try calling them.”

  “Oh! Speaking of calls, do you know where I might be able to buy a cell phone?”