Find Me (Immersed Book 1)

by Francesca Riley

They remained in each other’s arms, their light and dark hair blending together in the current. Skye was weakening, becoming faint, dizzy. But still she held him. With each passing moment he returned to her. But gradually a different darkness to that of the ocean dimmed her vision. Her hold on him slackened, her arms falling uselessly away.

  She was unaware of Hunter moving, rising with her from the sea bed. At some point she became conscious of the strange pressure of water she couldn’t really feel moving over her, Hunter’s arms holding her carefully away from his body. He was safe. Nothing else mattered.

  She became aware of light through her closed lids. Half-opening them she saw the glistening surface above them draw closer.

  And without warning, as if she’d stepped through time, she began to flail, thrashing against him, desperate to be free. And just like when she was seven, the arms holding her didn’t let her go.

  She remembered everything.

  37. Answers

  Their heads broke the surface, and Skye felt weightless air against her face, sound returning like a shock. Instinctively she inhaled deeply, and felt air moving in her lungs, her chest rising and falling once more. Hunter floated to a halt and her feet touched the seabed of Ciarlan Cove in waist-deep water she could barely feel.

  “I know what happened,” she choked out. “It was here. I was here.”

  The subdued tide lapped the beach nearby. The sky was streaked with sunset as the last of the bad weather moved beyond the hills.

  Looking into Hunter’s face at last, Skye saw tender sorrow there. Stepping away from him she stared back across the bay, seeing not the wash of colour on the distant village houses, but the inside of their old family cottage on that long-ago day.

  “Mum had been different all day. Distracted. Withdrawn. I was in a weird mood too. Maybe because of the storm brewing. Morgan was going to stay over but we’d quarrelled and she’d gone home.” Skye clutched her arms around herself.

  “I tried to get Mum to play with me but she wouldn’t. Wouldn’t read any of the stories she’d written for me. I tried reading to myself but it wasn’t the same. I felt...odd. Like I was waiting for something I didn’t want to come. Or did. Dad was out somewhere with Uncle Mike. I ended up having a tantrum and Mum put me to bed early, but it was like she didn’t really care. Like she was going through the motions, listening to something else. I cried for a while, but I couldn’t sleep.”

  She looked at Hunter’s solemn face, and guessed she was telling him a story he already knew the ending of. “Through my open window, I heard the front door below. But no voices. So it wasn’t someone arriving.” She released her tight grip on herself, laying her impervious palms flat against the low-swelling water lapping them. “I looked out, down from my window. It was Mum, leaving. I ran downstairs, and followed her. I remember her dress was white.” Skye’s throat became too tight to speak for a moment. Then she went on.

  “I was too cross with her to call out, to let her know I was there. But I had to follow her. It can’t have been that late, but the sky was black clouds and the wind was blowing. I didn’t get scared until she went through the archway. I stubbed my toe, and started to cry. I called out then, but she didn’t hear me. When I got to the other side the tide was nearly to the archway. She’d walked straight into the waves without taking off her dress. A white glimmer on the water.”

  Skye looked down at her hands against the surface. Spreading her fingers, she slowly pressed them down into the water. “I was so scared. I tried to make it a game, to make it all right. She’d always carried me into the waves. So I ran after her, into the water. But it was rough. Every step forward meant three back. I remembered what to do against waves – go under and through, don’t try to go over. I got off the sand at last, and was pulled out fast, away from the shore. I was terrified. I screamed for Mum.

  “And suddenly she was there. I guess she’d heard me and came for me. I was so relieved. I remember clinging to her, shaking and shaking. But feeling safe. Sure that it was over. We’d go home, get dry, forget the awful day. But then she kind of...stopped. Jerked. Started forward again. Jerked, and stopped again. I looked into her face. She was crying. Really crying.” Skye felt hot tears on her own cheeks. “I’ve never seen anyone looked so anguished.” Her breath shuddered.

  “Then her face kind of smoothed. Like...surrender. She pulled my hands from around her neck. I didn’t even resist. She looked towards the shore, and I did too, and saw that my dad had followed us. She kissed my cheek and...and smiled. She looked – happy. She...” Skye’s voice broke. She pressed her wet knuckles against her mouth for a minute.

  “She put me on a rock sticking out above the water. Her eyes were kind of...far away, and her face was blank. Then she turned and began to swim away from me. I didn’t know what to think. Maybe it was a game? Maybe Dad was part of it? That’s what I wondered anyway. What else could it possibly have been?” A sob caught in Skye’s throat. She swallowed. “So I tried to follow her again.” She came to a halting stop, and flinched when Hunter spoke.

  “Your father had followed you, too late. He was in the water, shouting, searching for you both. You couldn’t answer, if you could hear him at all.”

  Her heartbeat slowed and images filled her mind: endless grey breakers roaring, chilling dark water pressing her down with irresistible weight. “I did hear him,” she murmured. “I followed Mum again. I’d almost caught her. I thought I saw others. Mermaids, or sea angels. Then I went under. All I could hear was water roaring, swallowing me up. Swallowing Mum. I was trying to find her in the dark. I screamed for Dad to help us...and then an angel found me in the darkness, and took me up, away from her.”

  Her eyes opened and she gazed into Hunter’s charcoal eyes. “It was...you... Hunter – you were the angel.” Of course he was, although she’d never made out her angel’s face in her dreams. Her nightmares. Memories.

  “Yes.” He lightly touched her cheek for an instant. “You fought to stay, you wanted to find her. You were breathing. I had to keep it that way. I brought you as close to shore as I could, and stayed below you, holding your head above the waves until your father saw you, and carried you to shore. He never knew I was there.”

  “She’s... Mum’s really dead, isn’t she?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied gently. “But I thought you knew that?”

  “I did. I mean, I did. But then I hoped...” She looked away. “From something someone – Liam – said, and even the village stories. I’d wondered if...if maybe she was one of you, Hunter. Nemaro. That she’d met my dad and found a way to leave the water. And that maybe she’d returned to the sea.” Ellie has left me...to be with him. “That maybe I’d see her again.” She squeezed her eyes closed to stop more tears.

  She felt Hunter’s cold lips against her forehead. “I’m so sorry, Skye.” His cool breath fluttered against her skin. “I can see why you might think that, and why you would hope it. But the boundary of our immortality, the prison that holds us trapped, is the edge of the sea.” They both glanced at the shore. “No Nemaro can leave the sea without perishing.”

  Skye nodded, aware of his hands on her arms. Nothing in her could forget that fact. “I found drawings she did. Of...of you. Of – Jarrod. And of another guy I’ve never seen.”

  Hunter searched her face, as if determining her strength, and then spoke softly. “You were almost right about your mother – who she was to us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The face you didn’t recognise in her drawings? I can guess who it was. Tobias, one of my clan.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat. “When one of us mesmerises one of you, we…a portion of ourselves, inhabits you. We sustain your life...from within. The invitation –” he broke off.

  “Invitation? Oh. Come with me.”

  “Yes. The possession alters the possessed – how can it not? Our oneness with the sea passes fleetingly to the mesmerised. When accompanied by a token, a shell imbued with the
life-force that sustains us, it is more lasting. It provides the means to survive this element,” he passed his hand through the water, “suspending mortality even when away from the giver. But only while the giver remains engaged.”

  An echo of her mother’s words returned, “And they always grew bored.” The revelation she’d had on discovering the drawings hit her again, the jolt almost visceral: victim, not perpetrator. Her poor mother. The clash of their two worlds bit deeply, the realities of the horror of Hunter’s kind sinking into her belly again. She couldn’t find enough air. She pushed away from him and stumbled towards the shore.

  But even with her head and stomach reeling, she came to a halt. The option of running screaming from him was well and truly history, if it had ever really existed. Slowly she turned to face him once more.

  His face was dark with emotion. “You’re right to run. I told you to stay away. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you every reason why. Because...I couldn’t bear to see that look in your eyes. But I’m glad it’s there now. It means you understand at last. You should keep away.” His voice failed on the last word.

  After a long pause, she moved slowly through the water to stand before him. “Tell me,” she said. “About my mother.”

  At last Hunter began the story he’d kept from her. “Tobias found Elise drowning. She’d fallen from a ship, far out in the ocean. He – thought to ease her passage…and brought her under his sway.”

  Skye didn’t challenge the euphemism, he wasn’t to blame for the faults of his clan.

  “He saw something in her: great beauty of spirit as well as beauty of form and face. He decided to save her. It was a vast journey to return her to shore. He began that journey…and fell in love with her. She was with him for many years. So, in that sense, she was one of us.”

  “Many years?” she repeated weakly. “How many?”

  “More than a hundred years passed while your mother was with Tobias.”

  “A hundred years…” Skye felt that her breath had been knocked out of her. Her legs trembled weakly. “How is that even possible?”

  “Mortality is suspended under Mesmer.” He hesitated. “For Elise, it was made almost permanent with Tobias’ shell. To avoid the usual outcome if he...lost interest, and to protect her from the usual limited suspension the tokens give, he did something never attempted before. And only once since... He imbued a token, a shell, with the life-force that sustains us, but added a measure of his own spirit to it. He gave it to her, and took her below to be with him. Rightly or wrongly, he saved Elise’s life, Skye.”

  “For himself.”

  “In essence, yes. And so she joined him, mortality suspended, until the day he released her and she left the sea. That day, she met Daniel, and her mortal life began again.”

  “She used to say her life began when she met Dad.” It had been almost literally true.

  “But...Tobias never truly let her go. Only humans have the capacity to long for the sea. It’s deep inside, buried for many. It can be a fatal attraction. Tobias found your mother’s, already so keen, and magnified it to keep her within reach. And perhaps part of him remained with her. I think it’s what prevented her from forgetting us. I believe that her enhanced sea-longing passed to you at birth, perhaps along with an echo of him. I think it’s why you see us.”

  Skye thought of the poignant yearning for the sea, so constant all her life. A legacy from Tobias.

  “Even though my people can’t be too far from me, the distance is still considerable, and it had been years since we had actually seen Tobias and Elise. When we joined them again, Tobias had already given her up. Elise was fully mortal, with a new life, and a child – you.”

  Skye felt a pang, as distant almost-memories, vague images erased years ago slipped further away, less than a whisper.

  “We had no way of knowing how long she had been with Daniel. That’s why Jarrod thought you were Tobias’ child. Or perhaps hoped would be a better word. Although an impossibility, the thought of a partially human Nemaro joining us blinded him.” Dark anger flared on his face for an instant. Then he continued.

  “The sea-longing, Elise’s love of the ocean, her connection to us, made the sea irresistible to her. She would join us, just to swim. Elise always had you with her – maybe partly as a guarantee that she would never forget her new life with you and your father and leave with us. At first she could only see us imperfectly, like ghosts she said. But once you joined her in the water, somehow you made us present. You became a link between her past life and her new life.”

  Skye’s happy memories, of dancing in her mother’s arms through the rolling waves, took on new significance.

  “We lingered here. Which led to...problems. Some of the clan decided they wanted what Tobias had had. Instead of finding humans at risk, they began to simply take them. It always ended badly. No one could do what Tobias had done, surrendering part of himself. I knew we had to go.

  “It was my fault in a way, what came next. I left, and they began to follow. All except Tobias. At the last, he couldn’t bear to leave her behind. So he tried to take her with him. I felt something was terribly wrong. I sped back to find tragedy. Tobias had called Elise, believing she still had safe passage.”

  “Her necklace,” Skye breathed, seeing again her mother’s bare throat.

  “Yes. He summoned her with everything he had. When she reached him, he realised too late that she was drowning. He tried to bring her under his sway, to keep her alive, but his power had lost the ability to reside in her. In seconds she had drowned in his arms.”

  Skye turned away to hide her pain. Hunter, behind her, put his arms around her. Turning to him she pressed her face against his cold chest.

  He spoke softly. “This is where it ended for them both. When he realised what he’d done, he walked out of the sea with Elise in his arms. Barely a few steps.”

  Skye looked up at him through blurry eyes. “You mean... He’s dead?”

  “Yes. He became mist. His life force in the necklace, its power, dissolved with him.” He looked at her so sadly she took a step back.

  “Skye...when Tobias dissolved into mist...so did Elise.”

  She stared at him, horror-struck. “How is that possible?” she asked thickly. “Did she love Tobias?”

  “I don’t know. She made her choice when she left the sea. I don’t think she ever intended to leave you and your father.”

  “Then why did she?”

  “Tobias had changed his mind. He was Nemaro, Skye.” Hunter hesitated. “I think the temptation to rejoin Tobias was always there for Elise. Their history kept her susceptible. Part of him resided in the token he gave her. And perhaps in her too. The sea-longing kept her within his reach. And so...on that day he reached out and took her back.”

  Hunter’s eyes were full of pity. And shame. His face twisted angrily. “It’s such a waste. I don’t know why he couldn’t bring her under his sway. At least that way they’d both be here.”

  Skye recalled Jarrod’s attempts to subdue her to his Mesmer when she was drowning. It hadn’t worked. Her mind and her heart had been filled with Hunter. Her eyes widened. “She loved my dad. It left no room...” she bit down on her lip. Even love hadn’t saved her mother.

  “So, she didn’t love Tobias.” Hunter gazed bleakly at Ciarlan Cove. “And yet she dissolved with him, joining him in death,” he shook his head, perplexed.

  Skye followed his gaze to the beach that had been her mother’s addiction. She recalled the fine drawings of Tobias, created with care. And her mother’s attachment to her necklace, her passport back to Tobias. Could you love two people at once, heart divided? “I think she loved them both,” she said slowly. “I think Tobias had part of her heart. Enough for her to leave this world with him.”

  Hunter’s face was brooding. “Maybe. But not enough to live.”

  Skye nodded, her heart aching. “I think Dad hid Mum’s necklace. I found it just before I came back here.”

  Hu
nter stared at her. Then he released a sorrowful sigh. “So, Jarrod was right...”

  “Dad did kill her.” Skye finished his thought. A pained sob tried to escape.

  “I didn’t think he believed we existed.” Hunter said quietly. “I know she told him what she could of herself, her past. She probably sounded insane to him. It’s a measure of his love that he accepted her as she was. I don’t believe he had ever seen us, even with you making us present. We’d always choose stormy days for exactly that reason, hiding in the waves.”

  “Mermaid weather,” Skye whispered, her throat tight.

  “If he did hide the token, perhaps he believed her enough to feel it posed a risk to her...or to him? The only thing he was really guilty of was fear.”

  “And selfishness.” Anger pounded through her. “If he even half-believed Mum, he must have realised she couldn’t survive without it!”

  “But how could he understand the power of the call?” Hunter disagreed, “especially on one who’d been under Mesmer for so long. He would assume that if her stories were real and she was ever tempted, not having the means to return would be enough to stop her.”

  “That’s not love.”

  “Perhaps he believed he was protecting her, and you, by preventing her leaving. He was wrong. But so was Tobias. I think...they both loved her. But ultimately, between them they destroyed her. And nearly destroyed you.” He met her eyes sadly. “I should have told you all of this before. I was torn, wanting you to know what happened to Elise, but sure that if you knew, you would hate me.”

  She shook her head. “Never. I don’t blame you. I don’t think I can blame anyone. Except love. I can blame love.” They were silent a moment. Then Skye asked, not because she wanted to know, but because she had to, “Did you make me forget that day? That last day, with Mum?”

  “No. I didn’t take those memories. Perhaps that’s why they revisit you in your dreams. I’m truly sorry. Grief seems to be what my presence in your life brings.”

  “Don’t say that.” His sad words made her realise that nothing had changed. He would still believe he was a risk to her, and that the only way to protect her would be to leave. The idea of being parted from him, and so soon, was excruciating. She fought the tears he blamed himself for, and wrapped her arms around his neck, butting her forehead against his cold skin.