Waterfell

by Amalie Howard

  My bones strengthen, cracking into place under skin that’s transforming into something hard and brilliant. The shape of my face twists outward, my limbs bending inward as my hide pulls and tightens over sleek muscle, shimmering into scaly, impervious existence.

  I no longer resemble anything human.

  9

  TRUE FORMS

  “Holy shit!” Jenna mutters, her eyes wide, stepping back until she’s pressed up against the sliding glass doors leading out of my room to the patio. “You go big.”

  Taking up half the pool, my metamorphosed bulk is five times as large as a standard human male...the size of a small whale. Only I’m no whale. I glimpse my reflection in the mirrored glass that Jenna is pressed against.

  A creature with an elegantly curved neck cresting above a torso covered in burnished golden scales, each the size of a silver dollar, stares back at me. Its eyes are glowing multicolored orbs, the pupil barely a black fang slicing through the middle. In the mirrored glass, the creature is so bright that it appears to be glowing.

  I tilt my neck, stretching upward, and the reflection follows.

  My body is muscular but slender, with a thin iridescent purple-finned membrane that is interspersed with spines extending along the entire ridge of my back to a fanlike tail. Two wide, lustrous fins extend on either side of my upper torso, bearing down into clawed forearms. The shorter spines along my back lengthen on my head and curve backward in a circular fan, while shorter ones dot my pointed nose with frill-like tendrils on either side of my snout. A ridge of sharp, corallike thorns crowns my brow...the mark of an Aquarathi heir.

  Jenna still hasn’t moved but I keep my jaws tightly closed—no need to frighten her more than necessary. I want to encourage her to come closer, but my mouth won’t allow me to form any human words so I click for Soren. She appears immediately, glancing from me to Jenna. Her eyes are guarded but, unlike Speio, she knows her place with respect to my decisions. I speak again directly to Soren, and although I know Jenna can’t understand our language, I see her frowning, trying to separate the sounds.

  “She says to tell you not to be afraid,” Soren says, making Jenna jump. “And to come closer when you are ready. She won’t hurt you.”

  “I know she won’t,” Jenna says bravely, but I can still hear the nearly inaudible waver in her throat. She’s terrified.

  And rightly so—after all, I’m what most humans would call a sea monster. I’m the sea serpent that historians have written about for years, the fiend that has capsized whole ships and devoured sailors by the mouthful.

  Well, not me, but certainly others like myself.

  Like any existing species, we have our rogues and our rebels, the ones who blatantly go against the orders of the High Court. It’s the only thing that Ehmora and my father had agreed on—the rogues had to be controlled. There haven’t been any recent attacks, but still, human history has enough accounts and sightings for us not to disappear into oblivion.

  Some of us can’t help it—by the very nature of what we are, we draw the unsuspecting to us. Fish, animals, even humans. Any invertebrates. We are predators and they are prey. And if humans see us, they have to be dealt with.

  But not Jenna, she’s different.

  I wait, watching her carefully even though I’m starting to get a little claustrophobic. In my true form, I don’t enjoy being confined in a four-walled pool. I needed to be in the open ocean, unconstrained. I flex my fins, making the line of multicolored membrane ripple along my back like a cat arching. Jenna jumps and flees backward about three feet.

  I shoot her what I think is an apologetic look but her eyes widen to the size of saucers and she edges back even more. Turns out my look of apology has more of an effect like “you look delicious” instead of “I’m sorry.” I sigh and click to Soren.

  “Come,” Soren tells Jenna gently, leading her to the side of the pool. Never a coward, Jenna steps forward despite her fear, her eyes on mine the entire time. This time I remain perfectly still and don’t attempt any human expressions.

  “Your eyes were beautiful in human form, but now they’re like giant jewels,” Jenna murmurs, standing close. “Does everyone like you have eyes that color?”

  I respond to Soren, who translates. “She says no. You must put your hand against her hide,” Soren says. “She can speak to you directly with a physical connection between you.”

  Gamely, Jenna stretches out a hand to touch the glistening scales of my side, barely grazing my purple-and-gold-striped underbelly. Her fingers splay against my scales.

  “You’re so warm!” she blurts out. “I expected you to be cold with the scales and everything.”

  “We run to hot temperatures,” Soren offers. “That’s why we choose to be so close to the planet’s core, where it’s the hottest. We like heat.”

  “Oh.”

  I push the water in my body toward Jenna’s fingers, feeling the water in hers pulsing against her fingertips. Her eyes widen as her fingers seal like magnets to my skin. She moves to pull away but Soren stalls her with a gentle palm placed atop her own.

  “It’s only a water connection,” she says to Jenna. “It won’t hurt you. It’s so she can speak to you.”

  Can you hear me?

  “Yes,” Jenna breathes, her voice full of wonder. “It’s like hearing you underwater. Sort of muffled but I can still hear you. Weird. How do you do that?”

  I cock my head at her. Sound comes from vibration. In Aquarathi form, I just manipulate it via the water in my body to your body.

  “Wow, I didn’t know you could do that.”

  Well, humans couldn’t but water responds to us differently...and to me in particular.

  “Because you’re a queen?” she says.

  Yes.

  Jenna slides her hand slowly against my side and the sensation is oddly comforting, like a human hug. I’ve never let a human touch me while in Aquarathi form before, and as soothing as it is, it makes me uncomfortable. The darker, alien part of me views any human touch on my Aquarathi skin as threatening. Without thinking, I make a hurried flutter of clicks and pulses in Soren’s direction.

  But before Soren can react to my commands, Jenna’s eyes bug out of her skull as she tears her hand away from my side to cover her ears and falls to her knees clutching her head. With a sound like a snapping rubber band, I transform deftly back into human form and climb out of the pool soaking wet to crouch beside Jenna. She’s staring at her palm that’s smeared with red. A thin stream of pale red liquid is trickling from one of her ears.

  My voice is a shriek as I reach for a nearby towel to cover myself. “Soren! What’s wrong?” I glance at Soren, who is dabbing at Jenna’s affected ear with a piece of tissue. The fluid is watery and has already stopped trickling but my voice grows even more shrill. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’ll be fine. Her eardrum couldn’t take the vibration of our language. I think it’s only a rupture that will heal on its own in a few weeks, but I’ll get her something for the pain.” Soren looks at me gently. “You couldn’t have known, my lady.”

  Soren’s wrong. I should have known and I should have been more careful. I chew on my lower lip, biting hard so that blood fills my mouth. “Jenna, are you okay?” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize the connection would amplify the sounds of our language. I thought the frequencies were different.”

  Stricken, I fold my best friend into a hug. Jenna hugs me back even more tightly. “I like you better human,” she says against my hair. Her voice is strong but quiet. “I mean, you’re beautiful the other way, too, but I like you this way. I’m fine, Riss. Don’t worry. Not much worse than getting clocked in the ear with a hockey stick.”

  “You sure?” I ask, pulling away to look at her face, doubtful. “Are you really okay?”

  �
�I’ll be fine. It was weird, like a popping sensation, but the pain isn’t so bad anymore. I have sensitive ears, anyway. Plus, I’ve had worse scuba diving. Riss, it’s okay. Trust me! Anyway, I really want to talk about you.” Now Jenna is trying hard to comfort me, which only makes me chew my lip harder. But I take her words as they’re meant.

  My smile is tiny. I blink. “You probably won’t be able to dive for a few weeks.”

  “All for a good cause,” she says with a shaky grin. “Your eyes are back. I like your real ones but they’re a bit freaky. Psychedelic!” Jenna runs her fingers down my arm. “Your skin even feels like skin. I mean, it’s so weird seeing you like this and knowing that you’re not really human. Do you have blood like we do?”

  “Not really,” I say. “Aquarathi blood is an oily fluid, far thicker than blood. It’s the reason my skin is so glowy sometimes, especially if I’m happy. You know like when I get too much sun, and you always ask whether I put on bronzer? That’s the real reason for it.”

  Jenna laughs, shaking her head. “You’re unreal. I mean, it’s all unreal. You look just like us, but underneath, you’re...something else.”

  I smile wryly. “Like the aliens from V, right? What were they again? Reptiles under human skin?”

  “But you’re not a reptile. Right?”

  I shrug. “Depends on your definition of reptile. We’re not cold-blooded.”

  “Isn’t that an oxymoron? A warm-blooded reptile?” Jenna says with that look on her face as if she’s searching through her Rolodex of a brain for the answer. Sure enough, her eyes light up. “Wait a sec! I think I do remember reading in National Geographic a couple years ago that some extinct marine reptiles were warm-blooded.” She frowns. “Mosasaurs, I think. Serpentine prehistoric creatures.”

  “Honestly, you’re like a walking encyclopedia, Jenna.” I roll my eyes.

  “That makes sense,” she continues, more to herself than to me. “I mean, based on what you were saying about branches of evolution earlier, maybe your species evolved differently in your solar system. Unlike the mosasaurs, you didn’t go extinct where you came from—instead, you evolved to the intelligent and transformative state you’re in now.” She studies me with new eyes. “Just amazing,” she breathes.

  “Okay, Einstein, slow down,” I say, glancing over my shoulder to see if any of the others are in hearing distance. “Hence the reason no one can know about us. We’ll be hunted to the point of extinction here if humans find out we exist. You can’t say anything to anyone, Jenna, I mean it.”

  “I know, Riss.”

  She holds a tendril of my hair in between her fingertips. “Now that I know what you really look like, I see that your hair is the same color as your—” She breaks off awkwardly.

  “It’s okay, you can say it...scales,” I say. “It’s our identifying marks. See how Speio’s hair is white-gold? His body is that color with emerald-green fins. Like his eyes.”

  “Wow, that’s cool.” She glances inside the house, thinking for a second. “So Echlios would be dark brown with silver fins?”

  “Close, his body is actually a flame red, but that color hair would be too attention drawing. His hair is dyed brown. Soren is a lighter gold than I am, with green fins like Speio’s.”

  Jenna grins widely. “So I guess if I were Aquarathi like you, I’d have a dark red body and light blue fins? That just sounds pretty!” She stares at me for a second. “Do they have the same eyes like you do? With the film thing?”

  “Yes. Our eye color is too bright, too jewel-toned with the weird irises. Plus, we need the extra layer of protection from your sun’s light.” At her look, I clarify my statement. “Down in the trench, it’s pretty dark, which is why I was able to see you in the darkness before. But in the underwater caves where we make our home, the cave walls are lined with different minerals that glow off our bodies so there’s plenty of light to see. But still, it’s not like being exposed to direct sunlight.”

  “Like your room!” she says brightly, and then her voice turns wistful. “It sounds beautiful.”

  “It’s home,” I say simply.

  “I noticed when you changed back into human form that you were kind of glowing a little bit.”

  I grin. “You mean like this?” Stretching out my hand, I make the bluish-green fireworks burst along my forearm under my skin, and watch Jenna’s eyes go wide until she, too, is grinning as widely as I am.

  “That’s wicked cool,” she says. “What is that?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” I tease her. “The technical term for it is bioluminescence. Nearly all deep-sea marine creatures can make some kind of neural light, and it’s no different with us. You know that blue-green glow you see in the water at night sometimes?” Jenna nods, completely entranced by my showy display. “Well, that’s us sometimes. Other bioluminescent microorganisms in the water switch on in response to us like electricity. Pretty cool, right?”

  “Are you kidding me? It’s more than just cool, it’s freaking awesome!”

  Jenna’s voice is as animated as her face, and now I know for sure that the worst has passed. She’s more interested in functional capabilities, which means she has accepted the fact that she’s in a house full of migratory aliens from another galaxy who are living on her planet and pretending to be human. And that makes me incredibly relieved, because if she hadn’t been able to accept my secret, she would have had to die.

  And that’s one thing that I wouldn’t have been able to circumvent, not even for her sake.

  “So what other awesome things can you do?” she asks, suspending the dark turn of my thoughts.

  “Not much else,” I say with a modest smile. “I’m not allowed to be on the swim team for obvious reasons. Let’s just say I can beat the world record twice over.” Jenna laughs out loud, her eyes bright. “Same goes for surfing. So recreation only.”

  “You are such a charlatan,” she squeaks. “I totally believed you when you said you were allergic to chlorine.”

  “That wasn’t entirely a lie,” I say, waving over Speio, who has been watching us from the living room at the far side of the pool, hovering with a tense expression on his face. I need him to be comfortable with the fact that Jenna knows about our family—about who I am—and not consider her a risk or, worse, a threat. “We don’t mix well with chlorine. With extended exposure, it can actually choke us, just like fish. Irritates their gills.”

  “So wait, do you guys have gills?” Jenna asks, glancing from me to Speio, who has reluctantly joined us at my silent command, and peers at our necks. “I mean, I didn’t see any before when you were...the other thing.”

  I nod. “You can’t see them with your eyes but they’re there.”

  “Far out.” Jenna leans back on her haunches, her eyes assessing. Speio remains silent but I’ve already warned him to restrain himself. I know he doesn’t agree with what I’ve done, but he is not the regent. I am. At least Echlios and Soren are staying out of it, and unlike their son, they’re keeping their opinions of my actions to themselves. “So, Speio, is that why you aren’t on the surf team, either?” Jenna asks.

  “Yeah,” he mumbles, and falls mute. I glare at him until he shifts uncomfortably and stuffs his hands in his pockets. He sighs and sits next to us once more, answering Jenna’s question. “We’re so in tune with the water that I would command the wave without knowing it. So Riss figured it would kind of be cheating.” He glances at me, his face relaxing.

  “It is cheating,” I say to him.

  “I disagree, of course, but what our fearless leader says, goes.” To this, I punch him playfully in the arm and shake my head. The truth is, being perfect at anything draws attention. And worse, using any Aquarathi power, even unintentionally, out in the open ocean is a risk that we can’t take. I can see the headlines now—Rogue Sharks Gone Wild During Local Surf Meet. U
m, no thanks.

  “So what do you mean, you command the wave?” Jenna says, banishing the gruesome image in my brain. Speio looks at me first for approval before he answers Jenna. This one is a little sensitive but I’d rather be honest with Jenna after everything. We’re all in now. And she’s probably going to need to protect herself from us if word ever did get out about what she knows. I dip my head slightly.

  “Water responds to us,” Speio says. “Most Aquarathi can command the water around us and inside of us to a limited degree. So in terms of surfing, I can manipulate the wave to crest perfectly, which is why Riss thinks it’s cheating even if it would be completely invisible to anyone else.” Speio snorts. “I call it technical advantage.”

  I snort back. “Don’t think Sawyer would see it that way. Part of the beauty of surfing is the unpredictability of the wave. If we manipulate that, it’s wrong.” It feels good to talk about something as mundane as surfing rules and etiquette, and I run with it gratefully. “Right, Jenna? I mean what’s the point?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” she says dubiously, staring from me to Speio. “But I agree with Speio, too. I mean, if any human had a talent, they’d make use of it, especially in competition. So why shouldn’t you?”

  “Um, because it’s an alien talent as opposed to a normal human one, and that totally changes the playing field,” I say. “Honestly, Jenna. I thought you were a stickler for the rules. And now you’re bending them because some cute alien boy has put the ridiculous notion into your head.” I make a tsk-tsking noise and shake my head.

  But my choice of words is poor. Jenna has gone all deer-in-headlights again. Her face is panicked, her eyes widening into terrified orbs as she stares at Speio, who for his part has an indescribable expression on his face. Jenna’s voice is a squeak. “What do you mean put something in my head? Is he mind-controlling me?”