Raea just rolled her eyes at that one. “What do you think they’d do with a request like that? No way I could fake enough paperwork to get the approval for extra Fairy Dust to cover such a thing.”
“Maybe a partial change for one of them?” Kyne offered.
“But how does that solve things?” Devin asked. “Won’t we end up exactly where we are now?”
Raea pursed her lips and considered things. “Not exactly. It’s all in how the wish is worded, of course.”
But Devin didn’t seem encouraged. “Either you can make her human or you can’t. What difference does wording make?”
Raea shrugged again. “Bureaucracy and all that. Surely humans have such things? Now give me a moment and let me think on this. I’ve granted some, er, creative wishes before. I’m sure we can figure something out now.”
Kyne snorted. He wondered just how creative those wishes had been. For certain, Raea toyed with boundaries and rules whenever she could. He tried not to think of other things he’d love for her to toy with.
“So that’s what you do?” Devin asked. “You go around granting wishes? It doesn’t make sense. I get the impression you fairies aren’t especially fond of humans in the first place.”
Kyne had to let out another snort at that understatement.
“We do it for the Forbidden Realm, of course,” Raea said. “We have to keep you silly humans preoccupied with your lives so you don’t start getting involved in ours.”
“Only sometimes Raea gets confused on what exactly that means,” Kyne added.
She sneered at him. “Shut up, Kyne, and let me get to work.”
“But how can we work it?” Aliya asked. “What do I wish for, Raea? To be human for how long? I don’t even know when the child will be born—no one’s done this before.”
“We don’t want to be too specific,” Raea explained. “Wishes tend to get hung up on extraneous detail.”
“My child is not an extraneous detail,” Aliya declared. “I have to be there for him, whatever his needs turn out to be. Oh, if only we knew what the season for birthing a half-human child was.”
Her words hung in the air. This was not merely about granting a wish, it was about sustaining a life. A life no one had seen before or could even guess at its needs. How long before the child would be born? As she had said, who knew the season for birthing this rare individual?
The season. Kyne shot a glance at Raea the very moment her eyes had gone wide and she looked up at him. Could she have realized what this meant? She must. She gave him a smile. By the Skies, she really did need him to help fix this.
“The season for birthing, Kyne,” she said softly.
“A season is never specific,” he replied.
“Then she should wish for a season, shouldn’t she?” Raea asked. “Can you help us with that?”
He patted the pouch at his side. He carried Nurturing Dust, Sustaining Dust, Growth and Maturity Dust…all the things needed to maintain living things through the season, however vague that might be.
But Devin was still confused. “What are you saying? Do you know what to do?”
“I think so,” Raea said, but chewed on her lip as she considered. “If Kyne and I work together on this, we might just be able to do it.”
“So will I be a mermaid, or will she be a human?” the man asked.
“But we just don’t know,” Aliya protested. “Which would be best for the child? What will he need as he grows? What if this body can’t carry a half-human child?”
“Or vice versa?” Devin said. “How can we even guess what sort of wish we should make?”
“That’s why you should wish for a season,” Raea explained. “Aliya should wish for what’s needed for the season of the child.”
Devin didn’t seem quite convinced, but Aliya nodded her head. She seemed to understand. Raea grasped her pale hands. Kyne was already rummaging through his pouch, selecting the—hopefully right—measures of dust.
“You understand what this means?” Raea asked her worried friend.
Aliya nodded again. “I do.”
“Well, I don’t,” Devin said. “What the hell are you going to do to us?”
“We don’t really know,” Raea said, turning to him. “We’ll combine Aliya’s wish with Kyne’s Seasonal Dust. The wish will be granted, but we can’t really know what it will look like.”
“You can’t really know? What kind of magical people are you if you can’t know about this? Honestly, Aliya, we can’t do this without knowing how—”
“We have to, Devin,” the mermaid said. “We don’t have a choice. Our child is at stake here.”
“But what if…what if you end up back in the lake and I’m stuck here?”
“If that’s what our child needs, then that’s how the wish will go. Perhaps it will take a mermaid to birth him, but a human to raise him.”
“Then we’ll be apart!”
Aliya found moisture for tears again. “I know. But for our child, Devin…”
“Yes. I know. Of course we’ll do that,” he said, then gave a long, heartrending sigh. “All right. Let’s make the wish then, before you cry yourself dry again.”
Kyne had to give the human credit. It could not be easy to walk into this wish, knowing the outcome could be so far from what he wanted. But obviously this human—this man—was a creature of decent character. He was ready to give up the thing he wanted most for an uncertain future, all for the sake of his lover and unborn child. A child who would be, to everyone else, a mistake.
Aliya nodded, and sat up very primly, concentrating on her thoughts and emotions.
“Make your wish carefully,” Raea advised. “It can only be one wish, not two or three lumped together. It must be clear, but not confining. Let it be full of love for your child and hope for the future.”
“It will be,” Aliya assured them, but she sounded a bit doubtful.
Devin came to her side and sat next to her. He held her hands firmly, caressing them and smiling.
“Don’t worry. I love you, Aliya. However this turns out, we’ll make it work. For us and for our child.”
She smiled at him and leaned into his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her for support. It appeared that she needed it.
“I love you, too, Devin. I’ll wish very hard.”
She cleared her dry throat and took a deep breath. The room was quiet. Everyone waited. At last she spoke carefully.
“I wish my child to have the parent he needs for the season he needs it.”
Raea looked up at Kyne. He gave her as confident a smile as he could muster. It was a good wish, he could tell. Raea would be able to grant it. His input would help. They’d simply have to wait to see how it turned out.
With practiced skill, Raea pulled out her delicate pouch of Wish Dust and measured a small amount into the palm of her hand. Kyne already had his dust in his hand. She turned to him, palm up, so he added his dust to hers. Their fingers touched and he felt the tingle, the ache, the longing that always came with his nearness to Raea. She lowered her lashes and turned away.
Giving her attention back to Aliya, she held out the handful of dust. Pink lips together, Raea leaned over her hand and blew on the dust. It erupted into the air, then scattered over Aliya, raining down in a glimmering shower of magic. Dramatic, indeed. Raea certainly had her own flair. Her lips remained puckered even as the dust began to settle. Kyne watched her, forgetting all about Aliya’s wish and making up a couple of his own.
The fading light through the window caught on the floating dust, filling the air with sparks of energy and magic. Aliya’s eyes followed the glittering particles as they circulated around her in gentle currents, then slowly absorbed into her skin and disappeared. No one spoke. Devin sat beside his enchanted lover, surrounded by dust, and watched with wide eyes, desperately clinging to her. They each held their breath.
How would it go? Would she become human again? Some kind of hybrid, perhaps, like her child? The waves outs
ide lapped against the boat and a gull cried somewhere off in the distance. The glow from the dust was gone now and the wish had been granted.
But nothing had happened.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Kyne watched Aliya’s face fall. With all of Raea’s theatrics, they’d no doubt expected something brilliant to happen. Had it? Or had the wish failed? It was a risky sort of wish, at best. Had Raea known it might not work?
“I didn’t change!” Aliya said at last.
“I don’t understand,” Raea said. “I granted your wish. You saw the dust settle in. I don’t know why nothing happened.”
“Oh God,” Devin began. “Maybe it did. Maybe this is what the child needs.”
Aliya seemed horrified at the thought. “Oh no! Devin, I’m so sorry. I really thought we would end up together. I thought that’s what the child would need—both of us, together.”
“Apparently not,” Kyne said. “It must need to be born in the water, and then raised on the land.”
He had to admit he was somewhat disappointed for them. As earthly and as human as it was, he’d been hoping for a happy ending, one where Aliya and her human were happy. Together.
“I’m so sorry,” Raea said to them, her pink wings drooping. “It was a good wish. Apparently this is simply the way it needs to be. For the child.”
“It’s all right,” Devin said, sitting beside Aliya on the bed and caressing her hand. “We can still be together. I’ve got a boat. I’ll spend every minute I can out here. We’ll pick a meeting spot and you’ll find me, won’t you, Aliya?”
“Of course I will, Devin. And you can swim with me. At times. We’ll make this work, won’t we?”
Devin didn’t even hesitate. His voice was reassuring and calm when he answered. “Of course we will.”
The two lovers were clinging to each other. How could they not turn on Raea, beg her to do more? Clearly they had both fully expected some other outcome, some solution that would keep them together rather than pull them apart. How could they be so calm?
Kyne glanced over at Raea. Her forehead was furrowed, her eyes full of anguish. She’d obviously wanted to see things work out differently, too. She’d done her job well—there was nothing more she could have done for them. Apparently this was the way things would have to be.
The human slowly caressed his sad little mermaid. Kyne stared at them, captivated. Despite the sorrow that radiated from the mermaid by telepathy, Kyne felt something more circle in the air around him. Even as they grieved what they had both wanted so badly, there was hope emanating from them. It didn’t make sense, but Kyne could feel it as surely as he could breathe air.
It seemed even without the ability to ever fulfill carnal lust, these two beings still had reason to hope. They still looked forward to their future. It was beyond comprehension. Maybe humans were not all the base, selfish creatures Kyne had always believed.
By the Skies, maybe that meant there was hope for him, after all.
* * *
Devin stroked Aliya’s beautiful, fair hair. God, but he loved this woman. The last thing he wanted was to ever be separated from her, but he needed to get her back into the water. Now.
“I’ll be there whenever you need me,” he assured her. “In any way that I can, and…”
He stopped himself. Whoa. He was suddenly dizzy. It was hard to catch his breath and his voice sounded strange. The room shifted around him and for just a moment he thought he would be sick.
The warriorlike fairy took a stride in his direction, but Devin held up his hand to stop him. Something was happening. His skin felt prickly and strange. He tried to swallow but there was a tightness in his throat. What in the hell…? He slowly put his hand to his neck, then jerked it away quickly.
“Oh my God!” he cried. “Look at this!”
Aliya blinked nervous eyes and sat up, straining to look at him. Suddenly she put her hands up to her face and gave a squeal.
“Devin, you’ve got gills!”
It was insane. Just at the side of his neck, right below his ears, Devin had indeed developed three little slits that felt exactly like gills. He touched them gingerly, holding back the crazy impulse to sneeze. What on earth was happening here? Aliya didn’t have gills, at least not gills like this that Devin had ever noticed on her. She seemed to have some kind of auxiliary lung system inside, which must have been how she breathed and had breathed for him. How in the hell had he suddenly sprouted gills?
He held up his hands in front of him and Aliya gasped at them. Thin membranes had grown between his fingers. How odd! Mermaids didn’t have that either.
“What’s happening to me?” he asked, glaring up at Raea.
“Looks like you’re developing whatever features you might need to spend time underwater,” she replied.
He had to admit, it appeared she was right. He still had his legs—and everything else down there, a quick check told him—but he’d be damned if he wasn’t evolving into some kind of hybrid water creature. Apparently this is what their child truly needed. The wish had worked, after all. He stared at his newly webbed hands and laughed.
“Well, Aliya, looks like I’ll definitely be able to swim with you.”
Aliya, however, was a little more careful with her excitement. “But…you said you needed to stay at your job. Can you still do that like this? Will the other humans allow it?”
His first instinct was to say to hell with his career and any other humans, but he realized Aliya was just being practical. How would he support his new family? Running his company was the only thing that he knew. Would it be best to walk away from that, or would it be better to try to continue?
He frowned at the confusing notion, trying to picture how he’d hide all this from his employees and everyone he knew. As he pondered, though, another change happened. Right before his eyes, his hands went back to normal. He felt the gills merge back into skin. After just a few seconds of transformation, he seemed perfectly human again.
He could feel everyone’s eyes on him.
“Oh, shit. I think I just made that all happen,” he said.
“You made yourself human again?” Aliya asked.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about how I was going to have to show up in a turtleneck and gloves for my next Monday morning board meeting, and it all just went away. No gills, no webbing…it’s all perfectly normal again.”
“Can you make it come back? I mean…can you control the changes?”
He shrugged. What the hell, maybe he could. Wouldn’t that be a fun party trick? He shut his eyes and concentrated on whatever he figured a person might concentrate on if they were trying to turn into a fish. Amazingly, his skin started itching and tingling and all of a sudden he felt the prick of air rushing over his gills. They were back. The finger webbing, too. He stared at his hands and laughed.
“What do you know? I can control this. I thought about needing those gills if I was ever going swimming with you, Aliya, and here they are again. It’s the damnedest thing.”
Now Raea spoke up behind him. “By the Air and the Skies, the wish did work! You see? It was a wish for the seasons of need.”
“You mean, it worked on Devin instead of me?” Aliya asked.
“Exactly,” the fairy said, her airy wings fluttering excitedly and making the curtains rustle from the breeze. “As Devin contemplates what is needed to provide for his family, his body takes on those attributes.”
Now Aliya was smiling and nodding as if it made perfect sense to her. “So our child needs his father to be sometimes in the water and sometimes on land. Devin can do that?”
“It seems that way,” Raea said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s perfect!” Devin exclaimed, pulling Aliya closer to him. “Come on, let’s get you into the water right now. I can join you.”
But Aliya didn’t seem quite as excited about that as he thought she might be. Instead of throwing herself into his arms and letting him carry her out to the wat
er, she stared at him, batting her huge, questioning eyes. He could feel that her thoughts were conflicted.
“But Devin,” she protested. “I’m still a mermaid. I’m sorry, but you cannot join me like that. I can’t do that for you anymore.”
Ah, so that was her worry. Devin reached out for her, touching her gently.
“Aliya, any way I can be near you will be good enough for me,” he said and brushed her face in a way he hoped expressed the depth of his love.
She smiled sadly, but then suddenly she gasped. All at once she was squirming against the bedding that still covered her body. Something was wrong; she was in pain! Damn, but she’d been out of the water too long. She needed his help! Devin lunged forward and pulled back the covers. Instead of a writhing, dry mermaid, he found a woman. She had legs once more where moments ago she’d had fins.
“I’m human again!” she exclaimed.
Devin could hardly believe it. She was human again? How did that happen? He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight.
“I guess it works for me, too!” she said, pressing herself against him. “I thought about how I needed to be human so that we could be happy, and suddenly my legs came back.”
“Transitioning Dust,” the pink fairy said quietly, turning to her companion. “You used Transitioning Dust, didn’t you?”
The male fairy nodded. “Seasons are all about transition. Of course it’s a primary ingredient in everything I do. But I didn’t imagine that…by the Skies, Raea, did you plan for this?”
She shook her head, bouncing with excitement. “No, I honestly didn’t know it would work out this way. But look at them, how happy they are!”
Devin had to admit she was right. The wish had worked out even better than expected. He was happy, and he could feel nothing but joy coming from Aliya.
The male fairy—Kyne, or whatever the hell his name was—didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic in his approval.
“I thought the wish was for the needs of the child. So far it seems these changes are more for the benefit of the parents.”
Aliya had the perfect answer for that. “This is for the needs of the child. He needs us to be together. Don’t you see, Kyne? Devin and I will have more love for him if we share love for each other…emotional love and physical love.”
Kissed by the Wave: A Forbidden Realm Novel Page 19
