by May Sage
She listened, but the thing with fays was that they talked out of their asses nine time out of ten. Nature had denied them the ability to lie so, instead, they'd learnt to expertly weave their ways around the truth.
“How can I get it back?” she asked, unwilling to give him too much leeway.
“You tell me; it will have to be something you aren't likely to do everyday, though, or there wouldn't be any point to it.”
She reflected upon the question, until the answer hit her in the face.
She hadn't thought of technicalities at the time, so she only had herself to blame. The thing was, ninety nine percent of the Alenian she encountered didn't have any knowledge of the sign language.
At first, it had been easy; she'd use her phone and typed out everything she'd meant to say, but the Lover’s Den – the creepy little creek mermaids used when they felt like picking up a human guy or two – marked the end of her journey above ground.
She was headed to Silvia's Rock.
She wasn't named after it – it had been named after her. The island, secluded and completely invisible to any intruder, had been the last gift her mother had bestowed upon her.
She'd been born in those waters and she didn't feel completely healthy unless she returned there from time to time.
The issue was, several miles away from the Denkerian coast, her island was technically in Atlantian waters. While the land belonged to her, the waters around it were the property of Morgan and his flapping subjects.
She knew without the shadow of a doubt that he would be aware of her presence the moment she swam past his borders – he had wards designed for that very purpose. Anything that wasn't mer triggered it.
She was confident she could make it – her island was only a few feet into the enemy territory – and once she reached it, she would be safe. Merfolks would swim right under it without so much as seeing a shadow.
Problem, though: once she went in, there would be eyes and ears in the area for days – or weeks – to try to catch her when she made her way out.
She expected that, after a while, she would need extra supplies; her phone wouldn't survive the way in, so how was she to communicate when she came back?
Silvia thought it out for a minute, before deciding to hide it here.
There was a cave at the back of the creek, a damp hole reeking of dead sea life; the stench guaranteed that no mercreature was likely to explore it.
She fetched a parka from her backpack and wrapped it around the device, before stuffing it in a deep crack on the surface of the wall. There was a very good chance that the phone would die on her, but it was worth the risk.
Then, she removed her trousers, her knickers and changed. Her tentacles were useless on land, so she had to crawl to the surface of the waters.
There. There was her home.
She swam the Denkerian waters leisurely, rediscovering their colorful inhabitants. She needn't seek them out: they came to her, drawn to her presence. Anything from sharks to octopuses converged towards her, following her shadow and she wondered how she'd let herself be convinced to go without this for three years.
Acceptance. There was nothing like it.
•
The long faces would have suggested that they were attending a funeral when, in fact, it was the exact opposite. Erik had announced his betrothal to the people and the evening had been intended for celebration.
He wondered at the general animosity towards Vanessa; was it because of her appearance? People generally were uncomfortable with excessive beauty.
It could have something to do with her expression; he hadn't seen it before, but when addressing commoners, she seemed indisposed, as thought someone was holding a shit under her nose.
He hadn't expected it – after all, she was still one of them! – and it would be a problem. She needed to be cured of those airs she gave herself, and soon. Half of the reason behind choosing her was the fact that his subject should have been happy about it – just like the Alenian loved their new Queen, the heiress who had been a bartender to pay her way through school.
The other half was Sebastian, who should have benefited from the presence of a mother figure, but the child wasn't warming up. Not one bit.
Erik had chosen to hold the festivities at the harbor, Seb's favorite place in the whole of the Tower City, and it had been an epic fail.
Sebastian spent the entire afternoon at the docks, feet in the water, completely ignoring anything and everything around him. He looked helpless.
For the seven millionth time – or something close to it – Erik wondered if he'd made the right choice. Yes, they both needed to move on, from Ariena and from the stranger who had stolen both of their hearts by showing them a kindness, but hanging on to the first woman he'd tried might not have been the wisest decision.
Vanessa detached herself from the baker's wife as quickly as humanly possible and returned to him, planting her claws around his arm.
She followed his gaze to Seb's back and said:
“He doesn't like me much.”
No one did, save for seven out of his nine advisors. Not even him.
The realization had taken a while, but here it was: he didn't like his fiancée. He may desire and admire her, but beyond that, there was nothing he could talk about in her presence without boring either of them to death.
Fuck. What was he supposed to do about it now? There was a ring on her finger and letters had been sent to most – if not all – of their neighbors. Taken by the “I must take a wife” thing, he'd failed to stop and wondered what she would be like.
A bloody nightmare – and an expensive one at that.
How did he get himself into these sorts of situations? Thinking with his dick, that’s how.
The thing was, he'd gone to a unisex school and at home, there hadn't been girls of his age to fool around with. He'd never learnt how relationship worked – at twenty, one fuck had resulted in a child he'd raised on his own. The fact that his first actual girlfriend had been willing to stay was the only thing that had mattered in his mind; now he reflected on it, he saw it was a whole new level of messed up.
He detached his arm from Vanessa’s and went to Sebastian. Shit. What a great example he was.
“There is something in the water,” the child announced.
His expression was completely different to the sad, frustrated scowl he'd caught a few instants ago. He seemed curious, excited.
Erik conveniently forgot his son was a sea creature on a regular basis, but when his eyes twinkled with that wild spark as he looked at the ocean, there was no denying it.
“What kind of thing?”
“Dunno. Something big, though. And... good. Everyone down there is happy about it.”
It was in times such as these that he genuinely hated Ariena. She might not have wanted him beyond a little rump in a cave, but she should have been there for Seb, dammit!
That being said, he didn't need her. He might not be able to turn into a half fish, but he had the next best thing: a diving equipment.
“You wanna get out of there?”
There was no living animal on the entire eastern coast. Not one. They'd gone to their usual diving spots and, when they'd failed to catch the sight of one mollusk, one little fish, they'd tried three other places well known for their active sea life.
Nothing.
While Erik was baffled, Sebastian seemed elated.
He prided himself in knowing his son pretty well, but there was no telling what was happening under the red curls today.
“Can we go to the creek?” he asked on their way back.
The answer to that was no son, it's too late, we need to go back home, but Seb deserved a break. Actually, never mind the kid; Erik deserved one, and the creek was the perfect place for it.
Given what had happened after his first visit there, one would think that he'd hated the place, but on the contrary: it had been their haven for close to eight years.
He’d tak
en him there as soon as the child had been up for a long trip. Despite being a little chubby thing at the time, there had been no stopping Seb from getting into the water and Erik consequently had seen his son changing into a shark for the first time.
That was inaccurate: he'd stayed the same fat baby from the waist up, but his legs had changed to a shark's tail.
To say that Eric had freaked out was a slight euphemism. He'd screamed and dropped the poor kid; thankfully, it turned out Seb instinctively was quite a good swimmer.
He should have anticipated it, but until that point, he'd only seen Sebastian, the child he’d named after his granddad and who could very well have been his clone: saved for the shade of his hair and eyes, he really was a mini Erik.
Turned out, he'd inherited his fair share of genes from the mother side, too.
The creek was different; it wasn't only that he hadn't visited it at night since his encounters with Ariena. There was...
“Nothing,” Seb said, echoing his thoughts.
That place, as far north as any lands of Europa went, miles away from the rest of the coast, was only sporadically visited by humans, therefore it had generally been full of life – yet it was empty today.
“Someone was here,” Erik said, following a trail from the sandy beach to a cave under the cover of a waterfall.
There were footprints going in, and handprints heading out. That, he could get; the creek was notorious for being visited by mers. What baffled him was what he found on the floor.
What the hell? There were jeans and a pair of black knickers there. Not the demure kind, either, by the look of it. Before Seb got a look at the clothes, he grabbed the undergarments and stuffed them in his pocket.
There was nothing pervert about this, he told himself, ignoring the little voice saying otherwise.
It was strange though. Mermaids didn't wear clothes here; they avoided swimming long distances while carrying anything with them. Besides, the fabric was dry.
“Here!”
Sebastian's hands where deep inside a dark whole before Erik had had a second to stop him; they came out intact, but wrapped around a bundled of pink plasticky material.
Erik had no idea why his heart was beating quite so hard; he didn't know what had him so apprehensive, excited and hopeful.
There was a phone inside and the thing had been charged recently: it came to life as soon as he switched it on.
The picture appearing on the screen didn't surprise him. He'd realized long ago that fate had written something along the line of "sucks at timing" under his name.
He'd just promised his hand to an opportunist harpy, so of course he was finding his first clue leading to The Woman.
Chapter 5: Ladies and Whores.
Three days. She'd lasted three days outside of civilization.
She'd allowed herself the occasional outing home over the last two decades, but the half days here and there had failed to convey just how much she needed central heating, a boiler, an electric oven and the internet.
She wanted to try living at Silvia’s Rock, which meant that it needed work. A lot of it. However she thought of it, it translated to leading a shipful of human to her refuge.
Damn. Once they were shown the way, they would be able to find it again – and bring whomever they pleased with them.
Not good. Money could buy silence, to an extent, but the Atlantians had considerably more of it than she did.
She was going to have to stay in town for a while and consider her options before picking a trustworthy contractor.
Silvia headed for the creek at high speed, without a care for the sentinels roaming around her territory: there were three mermen against a siren guarded by seven sharks. Somehow, she wouldn't put her money on the other guys.
Her luck ran out once she made it there, though: she found her little hide-whole empty. Damn. She hadn't really expected the phone to still work after three nights in the damp, dark, cold cave – it was a pretty, fashionable phone, not exactly die-hard stuff – but she'd been hopeful. Basic communication was going to be an absolute nightmare.
She almost heard the fay's voice whispering a little singsong "I told you so," but she wasn't regretting it; not yet.
The main reason why she was confident while swimming through Morgan’s territory, was the knowledge that she didn't have anything to lose.
Her wet backpack on her shoulders, a long skirt on her ass, as her clothes had also vanished, she took the deserted road leading to the village of Tenahan by foot.
Halfway through, a van stopped to offer a lift and, surprisingly, the driver could sign. He was heading to the capital, the Tower City, and was more than happy to let her tag along; she offered money, but one would have thought that she'd just confessed to murdering kittens in her spare time.
The rest of the continent worked motivated by monetary gain; what she'd forgotten about Denker was that they were attached to the old ways – perhaps thanks to their constant altercations with marine creatures who didn't give a damn about the size of their wallets.
What mattered, confronted to a pissed off Kelpie was whether you could outrun it. When they were under attack, everyone joined hands – those who knew how to drive the creatures away pushed aside all differences to team up and do just that, those who couldn't run were carried.
It was nice; unnatural, strange, to an Alenian, but nice all the same.
The Tower City was nothing like a capital, as far as she was concerned. Yes, there was the huge palace perched on a cliff, right off the harbor, but save for that, it wasn't more than an overgrown village.
People raised their hats and called each others by name in the street. Instead of silver skyscrapers, they had high, long and colorful stone buildings, old fashioned and full of charms.
The driver, Gerry, left her at the town square as darkness set on the horizon.
It was perhaps the very best time to visit the elegant pastel city, because although she'd seen numerous picture of it over the years, she completely fell in love with it there and then.
She also indulged in something she never did anymore, something she deemed unhealthy. She thought of them, the child and the father.
They were Denkerian, the lower, slower accent rolling around their tongues had betrayed that fact, but beyond that, and the child’s name, she knew nothing of them; yet over the last three years, she’d thought of them so many times.
At first, it had been a daily occurrence; when she’d recognized that they both were growing to be quite the obsession, she’d found distractions from either, firstly, by offering her services as a babysitter to various member of the palace staff here and there, and secondly, by actually forcing herself to accept the occasional date.
Needless to say, neither attempt had worked. She hadn’t minded the babysitting, but it had missed the point: contrarily to what she’d believed, she wasn’t actually broody, she just would have liked to know how that particular little bugger was.
The dates had ranked in varying degrees of boring, but she’d occasionally enjoyed herself, even managed the odd orgasm here and there; however, whenever a dick went anywhere near her, she never failed to imagine golden skin and smothering dark amber eyes instead of whatever partner she was entertaining.
Now she was in their lands, thinking of them came as no surprised, but she curbed the compulsion by forcing her attention back on her surroundings.
A clock was indicating something close to dinner time, because her stomach grumbled, so loud it should have been embarrassing.
“You've gotta fed these skinny bones, lass. Stay at the Tanners and let 'em know old Gerry sent you; they'll get your words there.”
Or, more accurately, lack of thereof.
She profusely thanked the stranger, who chose to ignore it, simply looking away after she'd signed something resembling "thanks."
“No matter! You were going my way, I ain't lost nothing. Giving a hand there cost nothing, doesn't it? I reckon you help folks when you ca
n, lassie.”
Did she?
There had been occasions when she'd gone out of her way to help, without expecting anything in return... But it had happened exactly twice in her lifetime.
The most recent had been with Dane and his Cinder, and the previous occurrence dated over three years ago. She doubted Gerry lasted all of three days without finding a way to make himself useful to someone.
Food for thought.
As soon as humanly possible, she followed her nose to a restaurant; the place was busy, but after hearing the ungodly lamentations her stomach produced, the server set a place at the bar and came back with a loaf of a delicious seaweed blackbread.
While he didn't sign, he conquered that barrier by helpfully handing her a notepad. Duh. Why the heck hadn't she thought of it before? Was she that spoiled that she actually wasn’t able to think about anything else than solutions given by the latest technologies? Apparently so.
The White Shark specialized in seafood. While she had no problem eating an actual fish, she generally avoided anything mentioning “seafood” without specifications – more often than not, there were tentacles involved. When she asked for hers to be removed, chefs were pissed off by her pickiness and left one of two to get a rise out of her.
Dane used to tease her about it, but when she asked how he would feel if she served him a baby’s toe, he shut it and banned octopus from the palace's dishes.
Starving as she was, she went against her rule and ordered their Blast Bowl, careful to specify that she really could do without the squid.
As well as the delicious food, they delivered directions to the Tanners, a seaside bed and breakfast; armed with the notepad the server wouldn't take back, she could have checked in anywhere, but if the place was run by friends of Gerry’s, she would go; she owed him that, at least.
