by ReGi McClain
The breeze caught her windbreaker and blew her toward the edge of the roof. She gasped, then zipped up and started down the ladder. Her foot landed on something soft.
“Ouch!”
Startled, she looked down to see Kaito climbing up. She lifted her foot off his hand. “Sorry.”
He jumped back and gave her time to descend. “Sorry to bug you, Ms. Mooreland ”
“Then don’t.”
“I have to.”
She folded her arms for warmth. “I told you before, I paid the captain and his crew in advance and your money is in your account. I’ll add more tonight, to take care of that.” She pointed at his eye.
“Thanks, but that’s not what I came to talk to you about.”
She raised her brows. “No?”
“The thing is, I want you to be a mermaid, ’cuz then I’ll have a contact, but I think your friends would really miss you. Especially Zeeb. I think he loves you.”
“He’s one of my best friends. Of course he loves me. Why else would he be here?”
“Not like that. Loves -loves. Like grow-old-together loves.”
Harsha hunched her shoulders to ward off both the wind and the bittersweet thrill Kaito’s words caused. “What makes you think that?”
“This shiner.” He pointed to his eye. “My granddad would’ve done the same if someone talked dirty about my grandmom. Sorry about that, by the way. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I looked it up. Anyway, Granddad is the same way about Grandmom, and they’ve been married fifty years.”
“I’m not sure I see what that has to do with Zeeb and me.”
“No? Well, just think about it, okay?”
She took hold of her walker and shuffled away without replying, glad Kaito stayed behind. He hadn’t said, “love of a lifetime,” or, “never find another like him,” but she understood what he meant. As a mermaid, she’d have two hundred years to find love. Besides, Zeeb wanted her to go, and Maura believed she needed to. Her decision was made.
She stayed on the deck all night, sometimes using her walker to shuffle up and down, sometimes sitting in a deckchair and staring at the moon she might not ever see again. Maura found her first, before the sun rose. She put a hand in Harsha’s and kept close to her, watching the waves with eyes as deep and full of sorrow as the ocean is filled with salt.
Seraph found them when the sun cast its light across the waves. “Have you been up all night?”
Harsha nodded.
“Did you find Zeeb?”
“He told me to stay with the merfolk.”
Seraph took a deep, quivering breath and blew it out with a whoosh. “I’ll help you get ready. Time to go comes soonest on days like these.”
Kaito was waiting in the water by the time she returned to the workstation. Harsha wrapped Maura and Seraph in a tight hug until Kaito called her. “General will be here soon. You better hurry.”
Reluctant to let go, she tore herself away, and looked around the deck. Her heart plummeted. Zeeb was nowhere in sight.
“Boss!”
Stomach churning, she scanned the area and started pulling herself toward the stairs. “One minute.”
“You don’t have a minute.”
She looked around one last time. When Zeeb walked away last night, he must have meant it as goodbye . She swallowed hard to keep from wasting her tears, hugged Seraph and Maura again, and climbed down the ladder.
Chapter 36
General arrived moments after she and Kaito settled into the sub. In too short a time, she found herself looking around at the doctor, General, Nelly, a half dozen merfolk nurses and scientists, and Kaito, all of whom stared back at her, waiting for an answer.
The doctor looked at his tablet, sighed, and looked back at her.
General cleared his throat. “Other patients are waiting.”
She nodded and swallowed hard. Her arms and legs trembled with exhaustion and fear. “I need to ask one last question.”
The doctor inclined his head and waited.
“If I choose one, can I ever go back to the other?”
The doctor raised both eyebrows and looked over at General. General’s brows furrowed. Nelly took her father’s arm and spoke in squeaks and clicks, her words flowing in rapid procession. General’s face softened as she spoke, his brows drifting back to their normal position. He spoke a few words, to which Nelly responded with squeaks. A tiny smile tilted General’s lips. Nelly squeaked to the doctor.
The doctor nodded and tapped his tablet, studying its surface. When he looked up, he spoke to General, who translated. “If you become one of us, you will stay one of us. You may be able to visit friends, if you are careful, but you will have no faerie or human left in you.”
Harsha ignored the part of her mind trying to wrestle with the impossibility of rewriting her DNA to that degree and nodded her acknowledgment of the information. It didn’t help as much as she’d hoped.
General waited a moment, then added, “We will expect you to share your knowledge and skills in payment for the procedure. If you stay as you are, we expect you to return each year, to allow us to study you.”
Harsha tensed and sucked in a breath.
“Within reason, of course. Blood tests, stool and urine samples, spit, nothing like SoPHE.”
“But can I come back? Can I become a mermaid after being a human for a little longer?”
General spoke to the doctor, who shrugged, spoke a few words, and turned to Harsha with a smile she thought he meant to be warm, but which made her fingers and toes cold.
“Who knows?” General answered. “If you survive the initial procedure, it will be interesting to watch your progress and see the effects of repeated treatments.”
Tests and experiments. If she chose to remain human, she became a lab rat for the merfolk, a specimen to poke and prod and entertain their scientists while she lived and to pick apart when she died. If she survived the procedure at all.
Sweat broke out on her forehead and ran down the back of her neck. Ashley Rice and SoPHE invaded her thoughts and squeezed her throat. She needed freedom from the nightmares, freedom from the constant battle against her own body. Maura knew it and Zeeb wanted it. She swallowed hard to give her voice room to come out and opened her mouth, ready to choose the magic and live out her life as an ordinary mermaid.
Kaito put a hand on her shoulder. “Remember what I said last night? About Zeeb?”
“Yes.” She wanted to yell at him to shut up. She’d made her decision. She’d made it and it was the right one. Maura was sure, Zeeb was sure, and she was sure. The last thing she needed in this moment was doubt. She reached into her pocket to fetch a fortifying rosemary candy.
She found the wolf carving.
She pulled it out and studied it. The carved ridges of fur looked windblown and soft. She ran her thumb over it and remembered the way Zeeb’s fur felt under her hands and the way the moonlight glinted off it. The eyes of the carved wolf seemed to challenge her, to dare her to stand her ground or surrender. She remembered that look. The first time she held it, the paradigm of her life had shifted.
It shifted again.
“I want the transfusion.”
The doctor’s fingers flew over his tablet. “We must work fast.”
“Back in your sub,” General ordered Kaito. “We need to fill the room so the doctor and his helpers can move.”
Kaito tossed an oxygen tank and mask out of the sub before he locked himself in. Water rushed into the room. Harsha hurried to put on her mask. A mermaid swam in before the water had risen to Harsha’s neck. She squeaked and clicked and pressed a bulbous, green sphere to Harsha’s wrist.
“She says it will make you sleepy,” General translated.
The sphere bit into Harsha. Her fingers went numb as liquid flowed into her body, leaving behind a clear, gelatinous bulb like the ones the doctor used to withdraw blood. Webbed hands grabbed her arms and legs to drag her under. She gasped instinctively before she remembered h
er mask.
Two mermen strapped her to the floor of the room. Empty blobs as large as her head latched to her ankles and wrists. She felt her blood rushing out of her, saw the greedy blobs sucking it away. Her heart quivered, trying to pound, but too weak to resist the terrible vacuum pulling her life away.
Her vision wavered. She closed her eyes to ward off the dizziness. When she opened them, Ashley Rice stood over her, scalpel in hand, leering in triumph. “Let’s humanize that pretty face for you.”
Harsha tried to scream. She tried to break free from the restraints holding her. Her strength failed her. Ashley’s face twisted, distorted by Harsha’s failing vision. With one last sigh, Harsha closed her eyes and let her life ebb away.
“Boss? Harsha?”
Harsha lifted one eyelid. Light stabbed through her cornea to pierce the back of her skull. She let the eyelid fall shut. She lacked the energy to groan.
“I guess you’re still pretty worn out, huh? You look awful.”
Kaito’s voice reverberated between her ears. She wanted him to go away and let her sleep.
“I watched the procedure. I think they replaced all the blood in your body. You want me to get Zeeb to help me bring you up? Or do you want me to leave you in the sub until you feel stronger?”
In response, she squeezed her eyes tighter.
“Leave you here, I guess.”
She heard him climb out and nothing more until Seraph’s voice broke through. “Harsha? Are you awake?”
Harsha wanted to keep sleeping, but she felt her friends deserved reassurance. “Uuuuugh…”
She blinked her eyes open. To her great relief, the sun no longer shone. The stars seemed brighter than usual, though. She squinted in the light. She sat in a deckchair with her friends kneeling around her.
Seraph, with little puffs of steam wafting off her face, pulled Harsha into a gentle hug. “You are the stupidest, craziest, most wonderful woman.”
Maura wrapped herself around Harsha’s arm and kissed her on the cheek, leaving behind her salty tears. “The sea gave you back, Mother; the sea gave you back.”
Too weak to offer better comfort, Harsha nuzzled Seraph and rested her head against Maura’s head. Zeeb hung back. His gaze traveled over her as if he doubted her presence. Harsha let her eyes wander over him, taking in every detail: the crinkled brow, the lips parted in disbelief, the heaving chest. The question in his eyes.
When relief replaced the disbelief in his expression, he stepped forward and folded her hand in both of his. “I thought you were going to stay with the merfolk.”
He quivered. Not much, but she felt his intensity. Her breath quickened, matching his. “I want to stay here.”
“Come on, Maura.” Seraph released Harsha and took hold of Maura’s hand. “Let’s go…”
“Cook fish? To make a party?” Maura asked, her expression bright.
“Works for me. Let’s go.”
Harsha kept her eyes on Zeeb, drinking in the love she saw in him. He waited until Seraph and Maura’s footsteps receded down the deck before he moved to sit on the edge of the deckchair, facing her. His hip pressed against her leg, sharing heat and nervous energy with her. In the darkness, his eyes looked silver, shining with all the radiance of the moon. Harsha gazed into them and imagined herself bathed in liquid moonlight.
He swept a loose hair out of her face, his trembling, calloused fingers leaving warmth where they touched her skin. “Harsha?”
A rush of panic snatched her breath away. Memories of her mother crumpling under the loss of her father, and her own despair when her fiancé left, crowded her. She shoved them aside. If his love faded, if he broke her heart, if she’d squandered her last chance at a long, happy life for his sake, she’d made her decision. And she chose him, but she needed time.
She had time.
She looked away, afraid she might falter if she looked at him. “Please don’t. Not yet. This last year, so much happened so fast. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
He placed a hand on her cheek, luring her eyes back to his. They drew her in, the cool light in them as familiar and welcoming as the sea. “Then I’ll wait for you to be ready, as long as it takes. Wolves mate for life, Harsha. We don’t leave, and we don’t change our minds.”
Breaking the gaze, he lifted his left hand to rub his pinky. For the first time, she noticed a small gold band glimmering between the knuckles. Her heart skipped a beat. He pulled it off and turned it in his hand, watching the starlight dance across its surface.
“It belonged to my grandmother.” He lifted it, his eyes inviting her to share his world of moonlight. “The search is over for me, Harsha. You are my first love, and you will be my last. My heart belongs to you, and it’s yours to keep, whether you accept it or not.”
Droplets of light splashed off the simple band. She thought of his willingness to do whatever it took to help her, to sacrifice himself for her, to let her go, though it cost him more than she had imagined. He loved her with terrifying completeness. She was willing to give up her fear for him. She held out her left hand.
He kissed it, brushing his lips over her skin, and slid the ring onto her finger. He stretched out next to her on the chair, his eyes never leaving hers, and pulled her into his arms. She filled her lungs with his scent and laid her head on his chest. She closed her eyes and listened to the thump of his heart, letting the rhythm soothe away her doubts. Warm and comfortable in his arms, she grew restful and the events of the day began to pull her toward sleep.
“I think I better go to bed,” she whispered, without making any move to part from him.
“May I kiss you?”
Suddenly, her weariness fled and she felt giddy, like a little girl who’d stepped outside to find her prince charming waiting with his golden carriage. “Yes.”
His kiss met her lips, shy, uncertain. His whiskers, softer than she expected, pressed into her skin and added tantalizing details and interesting possibilities to the kiss. She twined her fingers through his dreadlocks and leaned into it, giving him permission to lose himself in the moment. With a low moan, he drew her tight against him.
“Ahem!” It was Seraph.
Zeeb broke the kiss. In the meager light, Harsha caught the deep blush on his cheeks.
“Maura’s party is ready. We’re all waiting.”
Zeeb cleared his throat. “We’ll come in a minute.”
“Uh huh. Yeah. It’s pheromone city out here. I’ll be back to check on you in two minutes. Exactly two minutes.”
Zeeb watched Seraph leave before looking back at Harsha. “She’s right.”
Heat flushed Harsha’s cheeks. She ran her fingers through his beard. “Aww, let her sniff.”
He laughed and stood. The deckchair tilted. He scooped her up before she hit the deck. “Let’s go to the party. Tomorrow we go home?”
“Yes.” She snuggled a little closer. “Tomorrow we go home.”
Epilogue
One year to the day after setting foot in Alaska for the first time, Harsha returned to stay. With the time it took to work with child services to get custody of Kel, prepare for the wedding, and move into the Lowells’ house, Harsha had found it difficult to spare time for Zeeb. When she did have a few minutes, he always seemed to be busy with tours or preparing the small outdoor theater for their wedding. They’d spent no time alone since his proposal.
The sacrifice had been worth it, though, Harsha thought as she peeked out from her hiding place among the trees. The clearing Zeeb had worked so hard to create let in light to bathe the ceremony in a golden glow. Under the surrounding trees, bits of dust sparkled like glitter whenever they caught the sun. There were three rows of two split log benches for their few guests and a shallow platform for the minister. At each end of the benches and platform, flames danced in small braziers, warding of the chill of the Alaskan spring day. Ralph had split cured spruce for the braziers and Ylva had scattered Louise Odier roses here and there to augment the natural earthy s
cent of the woods.
Their guests wore casual clothing, but Zeeb wore a classic black suit. He’d pulled his dreadlocks into a ponytail, trimmed his beard, and traded his spiked dog collar for a forest green tie. He looked so handsome. Harsha bit her lip and hoped he wouldn’t be disappointed with the simplicity of her look. She wore a basic princess cut dress in palest pink, with long sleeves to keep her warm and a hem that stopped at her ankles so it wouldn’t drag in the dirt. Practical, but pretty, she hoped. Instead of a veil, she wore a rose covered headband, and she had skipped makeup as a way of celebrating the lack of bruises to cover up, but now she wondered if she ought to have put in the effort.
Seraph looked directly at Harsha’s hiding place from her place on the platform as best man cum maid of honor and gave a thumbs up, the signal to start. Harsha gulped, straightened her posture, put on her brightest smile, and gripped her bouquet to hide the shaking of her hands. Birdsong accompanied her as she emerged from the dense wood and walked the aisle. Zeeb flushed and beamed when he saw her, and she caught the sparkle of unshed tears in his eyes. She took measured steps, as she had practiced all morning, but all she could think of was how much she wanted to fly into his arms.
When she finally reached him, she handed her bouquet to Seraph and slipped her hands into Zeeb’s. Suddenly, the loneliness she’d been trying to ignore most of her life rushed in on her, reminding her who wasn’t there to see this moment, and she blinked away tears for her lost family. Seeming to understand, Zeeb brushed the backs of her hands with his thumbs, and the emptiness lifted. In front of a small gathering of family and friends, they spoke their wedding vows.
The minister closed his Bible. “You may kiss the bride.”
To pattering applause and a drawn out, “Ew!” from Kel, they shared their first kiss as husband and wife. Laughing and talking, they all walked back to the Lowells’ house, where a reception awaited the attendees.
