Mermaid Spring (Mermaid Series Book 2)

by Dan Glover

Even though Nate was his grandfather a wave of jealousy rose up in his heart just knowing she'd be with another man. He wondered what was wrong with him... how he could feel so close to Ena and yet so remote at the same time. One moment he loved her like no other and the next he detested the sight of her.

  Growing up at Orchardton Hall he had reveled in the rare times when the Ladies began telling stories of the old days... he often thought how either Lauren or Lily should write them down. But that was his human side... when you were an immortal there was no purpose in putting down history in a book. It was far more simple and expedient to tell stories.

  Ena was looking at him the way she did when she wanted him to say something nice to her... to tell her how beautiful she was and how much he wanted her. He didn’t understand why but that look brought out the worst in him instead of the best. His mouth would move and he would hear words coming out of it—hateful and cruel—before his good sense kicked in.

  When it happened he didn’t know how to tell her he was sorry. Instead he allowed her to believe those words were true and straight from his heart instead of from some pit deep inside of him that he would rather did not exist and yet there was no denying it.

  "Why are you going back to that beach, Ena?"

  "I felt someone watching me after you ran into the ocean, Alpin."

  There it was again... the snide little snicker cloaked in innocence. Ena was a master at the subterfuge of playing him for the fool. He often wondered if she even knew she was doing it.

  He knew she saw things he would never be aware of. Her world was a rich tapestry of emotions that he could scarce imagine. He sensed it even when she was but a baby, the way those dark eyes of hers looked about with a knowing all their own.

  Ena saw things. Not the way things were, but the way they could be. She denied it, of course, but often times he would catch her saying something just before it happened, like it was preordained.

  Alpin wanted to believe that the future unfolded in such a chaotic way that no one could foretell it yet he knew beyond a doubt that Ena was a witness not only to the present and the past but the future as well. It was as if she lived in a timeless realm where all that could happen, had happened, and she knew it.

  It sometimes irritated him that she wouldn’t admit it. She liked to play coy, as if she merely guessed what can to pass. He knew better. It wasn’t that he desired anything from her, but it seemed a pity to him that she would willingly waste such a grand ability.

  To talk to her about it was useless. She would only profess that she knew nothing of the sort, as of saying it made it so. He wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her but he also knew who was the stronger of them and it wasn’t him.

  Perhaps she frightened him though he refused to acknowledge it to anyone but himself and then only in passing. He wondered if he would have anything at all to do with her if he acknowledged the power she held in her hands like so many soda crackers.

  "It was probably just a wild animal. I shouldn’t have left you there alone, Ena. I thought you'd follow me."

  "I didn’t feel as if I was in danger. I sensed intelligence like ours, only older, somehow denser than any I ever felt before. That's why Nate wants me to show him that beach again. He's going to search the area to see if there really is someone hiding there."

  "Who could it be though? The Ladies say all the humans apart from the People are dead."

  "Whoever or whatever it is, he isn’t human."

  "How do you know it’s a he, Ena?"

  "Our minds touched; or rather I touched his with mine."

  "I don’t understand."

  "I do it all the time, Alpin. You never feel me touching you like that?"

  "No I never do... is it like mind reading?"

  "Sort of... I listen to thoughts."

  So what am I thinking now?

  "You're wondering if I know what you're thinking now."

  "How come I can't do it?"

  "You know that, Alpin. We're not related. I'm far different than you or anyone else here."

  "You're pregnant."

  "How do you know that?"

  "The thought popped into my head just now. Do you mean I'm right?"

  "That's why I didn’t run after you that day when you wanted to race back to Scotland. I knew I was pregnant the moment we conceived. I put the thought into your head to see if you could hear it."

  "Is it my baby?"

  Ena slapped him on the shoulder, got up without a word, and stalked off into the night. Alpin realized he had put his foot into his mouth once again. He hurried after her.

  "I'm sorry, Ena. I'm so stupid sometimes."

  "I can't believe you would say something like that. Who else's would the baby be? I just told you we conceived on the beach that day. We, Alpin... not me and no I haven't been with anyone else but you."

  The fire blazing in her eyes kept him from going after her again that night. Ena was an enigma to him with her moods much like the sea shifting and tilting with the tides, forever moving, and when he thought he had her all figured out, she would prove to him how wrong he was.

  He wanted to be angry with her willfulness and yet that was the part of her that he most loved. Still, he knew they could never be together for long. Something inside of her frightened him. It wasn’t a physical feeling so much as a premonition of sorts, a lullaby that she hummed unawares, as if she was softening him up for the kill.

  He was older than her in years and yet Alpin sensed Ena was enormously wiser than he was now or he would ever become and she had just begun to realize it. Perhaps it was the baby that brought it out in her... a hormonal response to the creating of a new life, one that was a mixture of both old blood and new.

  Each night he waited for her, hoping she would appear out of the deepening sea mist that gathered thick around the green stones that formed the storm wall at the base of Orchardton Hall keeping the raging surf at bay even in the most rugged of weather and each night he was disappointed.

  Ena had a hard side to her, one that could cut him to pieces with only a look from those eyes full of fury. He had no way of dealing with that other than to leave her to her solitude until the rage dissolved of its own accord. She had always been like that, even as a baby. If she had been someone else, anyone else, he would have hated her. But she was Ena and that was how she was.

  Finally she returned to him and like always it was as if they'd never parted. Tonight they were back on the beach behind Orchardton Hall—but not the same beach for like Ena it renewed itself each day—yet alone again, watching the campfire die away and the full moon casting her silver light over a sea smooth like glass. Alpin sensed her anger had cooled so he tested the waters with a timid voice.

  "Do you know if it is a boy or a girl?"

  "He's a boy. I know it."

  "Have you been to see Dr. Karen?"

  "No, but I talked to Lady Lauren. She knew I was pregnant just by looking at me."

  "Speaking of Lady Lauren... have you seen her since we brought Kāne back home with us from that beach in old France?"

  "He is her son. I dined with them last night and we talked. They've been spending time getting reacquainted. He doesn’t remember much from the past."

  "I didn’t know Lady Lauren had a son."

  "Neither did I. He told me that he's been lost for centuries. Lady Lauren believed he was dead. Long ago, they lived under Lake Baikal in a castle like this one. The human beings living upon the shore began polluting the waters. The filth drove the Lake monsters up from the deep. One of them seized Kāne in its jaws and dragged him down.

  "Everyone thought he was dead. But he managed to escape. In doing so, however, he must have been badly injured. When he surfaced he lost all memory of his previous life and instead of going back into the Lake, he began wandering on the land."

  "Where has he been?"

  "When I touched his mind I got visions of high mountain paths and valleys cut off from all civilization. I don’t think he ha
s socialized with another intelligent being in ages."

  "You two seem to have quite a connection, Ena."

  "Are you jealous, Alpin?"

  "Maybe a little... I can't help it. The way you two looked at each other that day sort of gave me the creeps. And when he tried to touch you I was ready to hit him."

  "Don't think like that, Alpin. He's my Father, silly. Well, one of my fathers. Dr. Karen told me how I have four parents, not two like you and most of the People."

  "Kāne is your father? How is that possible?"

  "Dr. Karen and Amanda isolated cells from Lady Lauren's blood... Kāne's cells were still in her body after his birth. She used them to partially fertilize an egg before implanting it into our mother."

  "Who is your other father?"

  "He's a human being who lived over a hundred years ago. His name was Lance Adams. He was a friend of Lady Lily's."

  "I don't understand any of this. Is Dr. Karen a magician or is she some kind of witch?"

  "No, my darling... she is just a woman who has honed her exceptional skills over the last century. Most of the People do nothing to better themselves. You see it too, I'm sure. They're lazy. Dr. Karen and Amanda are different. They work at not only bettering themselves but at making everyone's life more pleasant."

  "So what will we name our baby boy?"

  "I'm not sure... I thought I might talk to his father about that."

  Chapter 20—Mother and Child

  She didn’t want to know him.

  Lily felt rather than heard a tender presence at the door, as if someone might wish to enter yet did not want to disturb her. At first she thought it may be the cat playing with something on the stoop. Marlboro arrived at Orchardton Hall during the last winter when Lauren came in from her garden holding a small bundle close to her bosom as if warming a baby. She showed Lily a tiny reddish colored kitten, soaking wet and shivering with cold.

  The kitten took up residence in the castle becoming the unofficial mouse chaser. Marlboro earned his name by making a game out of stealing packages of Marlboro cigarettes out of Kirk's room making a hoard of them in a little-used closet on the sixth floor. The stores of cigarettes had long since given out but Lily hadn’t the heart to inform upon Marlboro and see his cache taken away.

  The presence at the door insinuated itself into her psyche a little louder this time.

  Lily hurried for the door wondering who on earth would be there. No one ever hesitated to enter Orchardton Hall. There was no need. The door was shut but never locked. Shocked to see a stranger standing on the front porch—clearly a male of her species—when her eyes adjust to the lines on his face she realized he was not a stranger at all. She knew this man intimately.

  Hello. I'm Kāne.

  The voice resonated inside her head the way she recalled communicating with her loved ones in ages past while living beneath the surface of Lake Baikal. The man seemed startling familiar yet the name did not go with the image in her mind. A doubt surfaced.

  "How did you get here?"

  She spoke aloud. It had been so long since she communicated in the old ways that she felt like a stranger in her own body. She wondered if he could read the disorder in her mind as clearly as her thoughts.

  "Boat."

  His voice was lyrical like the water and his coal black eyes were kind. From his halting speech it was clear this man had been alone a long time with no one to talk to. Lily realized that she was being inhospitable.

  "Please, come inside. Where is Nate? Was it his boat that brought you here?"

  About that time, Nate, Maon, and Ena came rushing up the path to the front door.

  "Oh there you are! We thought we lost you!"

  Ena took Kāne by the arm leading him into the enormous living room where she seated him at the head of the hand-carved table big enough to seat fifty.

  "Now wait right there and I'll bring you something to eat and to drink."

  Lily looked at Nate with questions in her eyes. He nodded his chin toward the door so she stepped outdoors with him.

  "Who is he, darling Nate? Where did you find him?"

  "He found us, or rather Ena. Remember how she said how she made the swim to old France with Alpin? And how she claimed someone was watching her there? I know we were supposed to go together but they were so anxious. So we took the Nautilus across the Channel to have a look. He was waiting on the shore for us, like he knew we were coming."

  "It's Lauren's son, Bilbla."

  "He calls himself Kāne."

  "Yes, I got that part too, sweet Nate. But I'm certain it's Bilbla. I've got to run and find her."

  She knew Lauren like to nap around this time of the day and though she rarely disturbed her lover's slumbers Lily felt confident she would want to hear this news as soon as possible. The door to their suite of rooms was shut. Lily opened it noiselessly going to their bed and crawled in alongside sleeping Lauren. She tenderly kissed her awake.

  "Oh, what a wonderful surprise... hello my sweet Lily!"

  Anyone else might have been a bit cross at being wakened out of gentle slumbers but during all the years they have been together Lily couldn't remember a cross word issuing from Lauren's lips.

  Still, there was something lurking under the surface... a kind of Verlust, like a leakage from a heart wounded too deeply to ever mend and yet determined to go on as if nothing else much mattered.

  Natalia, on the other hand, was like an open book. Her love was written upon her flesh for all to read. When she was sad, which was a rare thing and so all the more beautiful, she cried. Lily wondered if the close call with death had graven its image upon Natalia's heart and even with the passage of ten thousand years it might still linger there.

  Seeing the man at her door had sparked something inside of Lily, a tremulous touch she had nearly forgotten that first day she spent with Natalia riding the Trans Siberian Railroad back to her long lost home in Lake Baikal.

  She had never seen a human being so ill. Though she was alive, Natalia looked dead, her skin drawn tightly over her skull like a grotesque mask that could not be removed. The girl's eyes were dull with pain and her hands trembled not with anticipation but with the knowing she would soon be no more.

  They had drank deeply of one another's loss, Natalia sharing with her the remorse she felt at never having lived and Lily sharing with Natalia the pain of being something no one should be forced to be. They were a balm to each other's illness and the healing that ensued never ceased to amaze Lily.

  It troubled her that Lauren did not feel the need to share such sorrows. Lily sometimes got the distinct impression that her lover was made of stone under the flesh that she adored touching and it would take but a single slight to turn the feelings of tenderness they had so carefully cultivated into a raging fire that would burn them both to ashes.

  "To what do I owe such a pleasant awakening, my precious Lily?"

  "You know you are the love of my life, my darling Lauren. That alone is enough... but I have news. You must get dressed to come downstairs this instant."

  "Can we not linger here just a short while, precious Lily?"

  "Someone is here. Someone I think you might know and love."

  Lauren sat up blinking her eyes like an owl as if testing whether or not she was still asleep and perhaps dreaming. The gesture was a common one with Lauren and never failed to endure her all the more to Lily.

  "Just now I had the strangest vision, my lovely Lily. When you kissed me awake I was under the waters of the Lake in the Grand Hall where all our kind used to gather. My son Bilbla was addressing us all, informing us how the end of our way of life was upon us. When he finished his speech he came to me. He planted a kiss upon my cheek just as you did."

  "He's here, my wonderful Lauren. I know it's him. He calls himself by a different name but I know him. I caught something in his thoughts that told me he's forgotten much of his past. He's been alone for centuries but he is finally home. Come... get dressed. We must go downstairs so
you can see for yourself."

  Lily felt her lover trembling as she helped her dress before taking her by a slender hand to lead her down the stairs and both back into the past and forward to the future.

  Chapter 21—Regrets

  Nate had long begun to believe the long trips to Lake Baikal were a misuse of time.

  Though hopes were high that the old airport in Ulan-Ude would be functional it was soon apparent that major renovations would be required before he could hope to land a plane on the ruined runways, especially a jet.

  Kirk impressed him, however, and if nothing else at least he knew he could rely upon the man to be a productive member of the People in ways he hadn’t lived up to in the past. Nate was sure the girl Delilah had a great deal to do with Kirk's new-found sense of responsibility. Seeing the two together reminded him that he might be neglecting Lily of late, forcing her into doing things his way rather than listening to her words of wisdom.

  Guilt invaded his conscience.

  He promised to take Lily and Lauren along on the trip to old France but a sudden longing came over him after he flew the plane over the beach with Ena as his passenger. She again sensed a presence. Had there been a place to land he would have set down that day.

  Instead, he returned to Scotland to prepare the Nautilus for the trip. Alpin and Ena agreed to be his deckhands. It was only after they were underway that he remembered his promise to the Ladies.

  Returning to Scotland with Kāne filled him with remorse. He knew it should be a happy time and of course neither Lily nor Lauren reproached him for leaving them behind yet he saw something shining in their eyes he had never seen before: a lack of faith, a lost trust that he knew he could never recover.

  He told himself that he was not a jealous man. He understood Lily's infatuation with Lauren and Natalia. Long ago he came to terms with her infidelities in the arms of her old lovers. But now a nagging suspicion was haunting both his waking and dreaming life.

  "Lily, were you ever in love with Kāne in the past?"

  "What a strange question, my shining Nate."

  "I see the way he looks at you. You two seem to share much more than just a platonic history."