Hunter suddenly leaned in, brushing a feather-light kiss on her lips that set her stomach somersaulting. “Sorry, couldn’t resist,” his mouth turned up in the half smile she loved. He leaned back quickly. “It won’t happen again.”
“That better not be true,” Skye murmured breathlessly.
Hunter’s smile faded. “It might have to be,” his voice was low. Skye tensed. There was nothing that would make that okay. “We’ll rest a while longer, then I’ll take you back.” He sounded distant and it chilled her.
“Actually, I have all day. I’ve got snacks and water in my bag back on the rock.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. What if…”
“Hey, I think we can manage to talk without destroying one another, don’t you? We’ve managed pretty well up until now. We just have to…”
“Maintain a safe distance?” he finished dryly.
“I guess. Not too safe though. Where would be the fun in that?” She was pleased to see genuine amusement in his answering smile. “We can do this. Just – don’t leave, okay?”
“Okay,” he whispered.
Hunter held her as loosely and as far from him as possible on their return to Lithus Rock. It hurt Skye to see how he avoided her eyes. By the time they reached the rocky mound where her bag waited, her stomach was an anxious knot, certain he would leave at once. But he didn’t. He climbed up to sit with her, watching with interest while she ate and drank from the provisions she’d brought.
At first his posture was stiff, as if he didn’t trust himself to move an inch. But gradually they both relaxed. Another line crossed, and they were both still in one piece.
“Are you sure you won’t have some?” she offered again.
“I...don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Eat.”
“You don’t eat?!” She thought of her growling stomach after a day by the sea.
He shrugged at her shocked expression “No. If we needed any confirmation about merely existing, it was that. We can eat, but cold and raw isn’t very appetising. And we don’t need it. We simply exist. Of water.”
She made her expression neutral and focused on her food, determined not to make anything of their differences. As she ate, an idea of how to keep him with her for the rest of the afternoon occurred to her. Her sketchbook, crammed into her bag with her towel.
“Hey, would you mind if I sketch for a bit? I’ve barely touched a pencil since I got here. It’s good to keep in practice.”
His face lit with interest. “You can draw?”
She handed the book to him, delighted at his response, and dug around in her bag for a pencil. Fascinated, he turned the full pages, studying the drawings she’d made, asking about each – where she’d been, what she’d thought about when she drew each image, whether she thought it had gone well, and why. As he studied the book, she studied him: the most fascinating subject possible. Her fingers tightened around her pencil.
When he handed it to her at last, she began with a quick sketch of the Bay.
“So,” she asked tentatively, as she sketched, “Another instalment of that naive git?”
Hunter’s eyes were warm, but he shook his head. “No. I want to hear about you.”
“Me?” She was disappointed. She could never hear enough about him. And she didn’t want to waste precious time talking about herself.
“Yes, you. Tell me about your life. Please?”
She shrugged, feeling the usual dull sinking sensation when she considered her life at home. “My life? It’s...quiet.”
“That’s it? ‘It’s quiet’?” His eyebrows rose.
And then they were both laughing, so hard that tears welled up in Skye’s eyes. “I guess, yep. Pretty much,” she gasped, clutching her aching stomach.
“There has got to be more to your life than the volume,” he insisted.
“Okay. But – tell you, like – what?”
“Where you live. Describe it. Describe where you sleep. And what you do when you’re not sleeping. You live with your father? Show me your world. Your world, Skye. With you in it.”
And then she understood. Her words were the closest he would ever come to sharing her life. Sitting on the porch steps. Lying on her bed. Choosing something from her bookshelf, or watching her paint. A rush of sadness for him made her lungs ache. She hid it with a teasing tone. “How about this: I talk about my quiet life, and you let me draw you.”
His eyebrows rose. “Another condition?” he murmured, but she could tell he was intrigued. At once she abandoned the drawing of the Bay, and delightedly indulged her longing to stare at him.
“Don’t blink,” she murmured. His smile curved his cheeks, and so she began with that. Her pencil scratched softly across the cartridge paper, as she tried to tell him of her life, a life that seemed more distant every minute she spent with him.
The white wooden letter box on the rickety fence, overgrown with long grass and un-pruned roses. The cracked concrete path leading to the white two-storied bungalow, with its faded blue porch and front door. The dim interior and the bay window with the rolled armchair where she loved to read. What she ate. The kind of music she liked. Everything, with Hunter’s fascinating eyes fixed on her face, or staring distantly at word-pictures she painted for him. Sometimes he nodded as if recognising something familiar.
Eventually her voice grew hoarse. She set the sketchbook aside. Hunter was silent, and she guessed he was still in the quiet bungalow, walking through her rooms, or reading with her in the sunny armchair.
Then he nodded to the sketchbook. “Can I...see?”
She felt bashful as she handed it to him. His eyes widened. “Is that...” He stared at the small likenesses, “That’s – me…”
“I’m not that great at portraits. My mum was better at them – but, yeah.” She secretly thought that with more work, they could be the best drawings she’d ever done.
“I’ve seen my reflection in rock pools. When I’ve tried to remind myself of who I am. Who I was. You have an amazing gift, Skye. Thank you.” But when he met her eyes his expression disturbed her.
“What?”
He didn’t answer at once. At last he said, “Today, being with you... I’ve never felt more myself. And I’ve never been more aware of what I’ve lost,” he searched her eyes, “and what I can’t have.”
Before Skye could respond, Hunter smiled his half smile, his mood seeming to vanish.
“And now you?” she suggested, although she sensed their time together today was ending.
“No, it’s best I go. The tideline is drawing near. Besides...I’d like to keep what you’ve told me untouched by anything else for a while.” He pointed off to the side just beyond where they sat. “Follow this path around to the side. It will take you close enough to the sand to jump down without entering the water again.”
She peered down the steep incline. It looked as though she could climb down that way without too much trouble, at least close enough to jump onto the sand as he’d suggested, if she jumped wide enough to avoid the perpetual moat.
She turned back to him, and threw self-conscious caution to the wind, and her arms around him in a hug. He hesitated the briefest moment before hugging her back, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “See you soon,” he whispered.
Skye turned away before he could see her eyes, and took the route he’d suggested. Once she had jumped down onto the beach, she walked around the rock to the water’s edge. He was gone, but it didn’t feel like it had before. The expectation of ‘soon’ hummed inside her.
31. Darker Details
The week that followed was the happiest Skye could remember experiencing. And the most bittersweet. Each time she waded into the tide to meet him, her heart raced at his shape taking form through the water, and beat unevenly at the happiness in his eyes, at his beautiful smile as he stood.
When she was with him she felt real, alive, like she’d come home to her true self. He had
multiplied her world, expanded it, filling with rippling light. Even away from him it sang beneath her skin like a promise. How could she ever let this go?
Hunter’s joy seemed to be a fluid thing. Light breaking through clouds onto a grey sea, turning it to sparkling sapphires, then closing in again, reminding her of the darkness he believed was part of him. He would sometimes scan the water’s surface, his face grim, before dismissing whatever had held his attention and smiling once more.
Bascath Beach was increasingly less populated, with summer visitors leaving daily, returning to their everyday lives. Hunter seemed bolder, lingering in the water with Skye, careless of scattered swimmers. She noticed occasional curious glances from others, and guessed they saw a girl bathing alone. She didn’t care. Hunter didn’t seem to either. The recollection of Amber claiming to have seen him nudged at her, but she was too happy to give it much thought.
Most often she and Hunter sat together on the ocean side of Lithus Rock. Its reputation as best avoided stood them in good stead. Only once were they disturbed, by a couple in their twenties, dripping from a short swim out to the rock. She and Hunter had been so caught up in their conversation that neither of them had heard the couple approach.
Skye looked up mid-sentence. The young woman gave her an oddly knowing smile, and turned away, retracing her steps, tugging her boyfriend after her. Skye looked at Hunter, guessing it had looked as if she was talking to herself. They both laughed as quietly as they could, and Skye didn’t resume speaking until she was sure they were alone.
Her sketchbook had been a stroke of genius. As they talked, she drew, when she could drag her eyes away from his, filling the pages with the beach: rocks, shells, sea birds. And with him, as best she could.
His long limbs, his broad shoulders and body toned from constant movement through water, although he moved effortlessly through it when he chose, as if he and the water were one. She tried to catch the way the light played over his fascinating face, accentuating its curves and plains. His eyebrows that winged above his charcoal eyes with their sea opal glints. His lips, so perfectly shaped. Waiting for them to smile, remembering the feel of them on hers.
The things she couldn’t capture with pencil, she wrote on her heart. The way he’d fling his wet hair back in an arc of glittering droplets. The way it dried to shades of driftwood and umber seaweed, falling forward when he dropped his head, making a secret of his eyes. The way those eyes crinkled when he smiled. The way they studied hers as if he was memorising her, just as she was him.
Each day he asked more about her: her art, school, holidays with the Lauders. Anything and everything that let him share her life. And in turn he told her of ocean wonders that he’d seen, until she longed to throw herself into the waves and swim with him forever. But she didn’t suggest it, even as an idle wish. Drawing attention to the things they couldn’t share hurt. Perhaps he felt the same. The closest she got to his hearing about his world now were his stories of the ocean.
About a week after the near-disastrous kiss that still bewildered her, she put the sketchbook aside and took Hunter’s cold hand. She had resisted asking him about that day, avoiding what might hurt him. No one was better at sidestepping pain than she was. But she felt ready to share his.
“Hunter? What happened that day we kissed?” she asked tentatively. “You said you nearly killed me. If you did, how am I okay now? And why were you so...not okay after?”
At the reminder, he withdrew his hand from hers. “That’s a good question.” He studied her face, weighing something. “I said I wanted you to know everything about me,” he said quietly. “That’s not strictly true. If you knew everything, you wouldn’t be here with me. And that would be the right thing.”
“Try me.”
“This is the running and screaming bit,” he warned. Skye shrugged, hoping he couldn’t sense the apprehension coiling within her.
He took a deep breath, unconsciously copying her shrug. “You remember, through me the Seers wiped out countless lives, of men, women and children. Like us, the people were gone, but not destroyed.”
“Are they – did they go into the sea too?”
He looked sick. “In a way.” He took a deep breath. “Their souls were summoned right out of them – into me.”
She thought she wasn’t hearing him right.
“I felt them, like blunt arrows piercing me, compelled into me. I am...Keeper.” His voice was hushed. “I didn’t know what had happened, then. I collapsed and my father attributed my unconsciousness simply to a power overload.” He stared out at sea for a moment.
“When they realised they’d triggered the curse, he and the other Seers did what they thought would keep us safe for that moment in time by making us one with the water. Only, it wasn’t just for that moment. It was for life. For all those stolen lives to live out, multiplied by the power in me. Power I can’t control.” Skye had to lean close to hear him.
“I feel them, you know?” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “When our ownership of their lives stops. When they pass over. That’s how I know our unforgivable crime. In that moment, I get a sense of who they were. They get a final glimpse of this world as they leave it...as they leave me.” His eyes closed tightly for an instant. “I feel their confusion, their delight, their sorrow as they go.” He looked at her again, “Each life spent merely so we can exist like this. I am Keeper of their souls. I can never forget what we are.”
“Keeper of Souls,” she whispered.
“That sounds better than murderer. Than thief.” His face twisted, and they fell silent.
“Do you all feel it? Their passing?” she ventured after a while.
“No, that’s just me. Some of us try to make amends, but...”
“Amends. That’s good, isn’t it?” Skye’s brain was in overdrive, looking for solutions.
“...But not all of us help.” he finished.
“What do you mean?”
“Humans lost at sea, in mortal peril – not all of us help if they fall within our reach.”
Skye stared at him. Suddenly the distant happy sounds from the beach behind Lithus Rock sounded wrong.
“We’re drawn to warmth,” he explained. “Imagine you’ve been cold, separated from your humanity so long that you barely remember what it is to be human. What if you came upon human warmth, memories, and experiences, there for you to taste, to feel?”
An eerie feeling crept through her.
“And what if when you reached the source of that warmth,” he continued, “of that humanity, you were seen, and responded to? You, who’ve been invisible, bereft of human contact, suddenly the recipient of uninhibited humanity, willingly offered?”
“But how – why would that ever happen? Like when that sick girl was dying?”
He took a careful breath, his eyes on hers. “Under Mesmer mortals are open to us.”
Coldness seeped through her chest.
“Under Mesmer we can read a person’s life. To an existence bereft of normal human experiences, to taste that once more can be irresistible. Imagine that this most intimate intrusion was...welcomed. We can sense someone’s deepest desires…summon what’s already there, and…share it. Seducing the willing I suppose is how best to describe it. A beckoning, an invitation... It’s hard to explain.”
Images filled her head; a swaying figure, flooded with passion, a puppet surrounded by beautiful faces.
“There are certain benefits to the fleeting encounters between human and Nemaro.”
Skye’s face heated as she considered what those benefits might be.
“If humans put themselves into our element in such a way that they can’t survive, some might think – why not? Why not ease their passing, let their last moments be...pleasurable, or even delay the inevitable...for a time.”
The words were strangely familiar. Her eyes closed, and she pictured bodies sinking into darkness, passion and life both spent, abandoned to the natural consequence of water meeting lungs desi
gned for air. She shuddered with revulsion, shaking her head, and opened her eyes to see Hunter tensed, watching her. Bracing for her screaming and running, she guessed. She felt like doing both.
“Why don’t you just…save them? Just save them? What’s the point of giving them their jollies, getting your own, just to let them drown?” Her voice was sharp with disgust, a bitter edge she couldn’t hide.
“Jollies?” he repeated half-heartedly. She cast her eyes up disgustedly and started to stand.
He grabbed her arm. “Skye, please – don’t leave until I’ve explained.”
“Explain – that that’s the way of your people – abduction?”
He looked sickened. “Abduction. I never really thought of it that way before.” His voice was bitter. “I guess that’s pretty much what it is.”
Regret stabbed sharply at her. She looked away. She’d asked him who he was. There was raw trust in him telling her. The wrong word could cut beyond repair, severing whatever was between them. After a long silence she looked back at him, trying to keep from showing the repulsion his words stirred. This was his world he was describing, and she wanted to try not to judge, although she felt sick to her stomach.
“Kind of illegal where I come from, but each to his own I guess,” she said breathlessly, flippantly masking her feelings.
“No Skye, not each to his own. We aren’t all like that. When our two worlds meet,” he explained “it can bring death to us, even when we’re trying to help. It’s been so since we woke, learnt the hard way. If we were revealed, humans would hunt us down, use or destroy us.”
He said this matter-of-factly, and it chilled Skye to hear humanity spoken of so damningly.
He continued in the same level tone. “It is death to us if we’re taken from the water. As you’ve seen in my little demonstration.” He held up his hand. Skye bit her lip and nodded. “And if…if an attempt is made to join your world with ours, it never works out. It always ends in death.” Hunter was looking oddly at Skye
“Okay, so…death,” she murmured. “Good reason not to help.”
Find Me (Immersed Book 1) Page 27
