At the Far Waters of Forever

by Stephanie Schaffer

  Marley listened to Xoc. Despite her attempt to remain stone faced, a tear crept from her eye. He continued speaking though she could see his eyes track the tear and his mouth tightened as if he felt pain. She could see in Xoc’s face that he felt torn between love and duty and she knew the right thing to do even though she didn’t want to do it. She would though, because she loved Xoc. She could not tear him apart any further. She listened as long as she could, then tore up the stairs to the second story bedroom that had always been her bedroom and fell on the bed crying. Xoc was slow to follow and slower to touch.

  Hesitantly, he reached out and stroked her shoulder before he laid down quietly in the dark with her. Marley turned in his arms and held him. She was unable to sleep. Xoc sang to her.

  The next day she dutifully used the internet to start showing Xoc about the world of the land walkers and answered questions that seemed to flow from an inner deity that drove him to explore every aspect he could of the continents that made up the environment of the above water world. In watching him, Marley felt that he was almost the equivalent of the largest internet server ever made and beyond because he could store information and recited it in songs of his own making. The merfolk had an oral tradition and the Spell Singers were the epitome of that perfection.

  It only took a month and they rarely slept or touched, except for late at night for about five to six hours where she would seek out his embrace and he would hold her. They didn’t indulge in sexual intimacy again. He wouldn’t without her permission and she couldn’t bear the chance of raising his child alone. Also, she was ashamed to admit that she wondered if Xoc might not like her human form, forgetting that it was her this form he had first fallen in love with while watching after Eddike.

  There came a night when Xoc stood quietly at the door to the house and looked outside.

  Marley stood behind him, afraid to touch him. She somehow knew this was the night she would have to let him go.

  “Marley,” Xoc said quietly, “I will love you to the Far Waters of Forever.”

  Then he was gone from the threshold.

  Marley turned away from the sight of him walking away. Her heart pounded frantically as if it would shatter her bones and fall to pieces at her feet. She was unable to control herself though and suddenly ran out into the night after Xoc who had already disappeared into the waters of the Currituck Sound. “Xoc!” she screamed into the night. “Xoc!” Then one more time, in a quiet voice, “Xoc.”

  Marley turned and ran along the rising slope of the land as it became the promontory rock and stood at the forefront of the cliffs. She couldn’t see him, not that she had expected to, but she had hoped. She stood there until the sun broke over the horizon of the ocean and, as the sun came up, in her horribly cracked voice, she sang Poor Wayfaring Stranger to comfort herself ending on a whimper. Defeated, she slowly hobbled into the house on her bare, sore feet and fell asleep exhausted onto the couch.

  The next morning, Marley thought about what she wanted to do with her life. She knew from experience that her sea form, shaped as it was in the image of Xoc’s fervent desires, had no chance to keep pace with the swift swimming Spell Singer. With that in mind, she discarded almost immediately her desire to swim after the person she had come to love for his strength and his caring. Eddike had been right—those were traits that were desirable and defining of a mate. Marley hoped that Xoc thought of her that way and resolved not to sully whatever he saw in her worthy of love.

  She moved over to the computer and started researching. She grabbed a yellow ream of a legal pad and started to write down numbers and contacts for organizations like Greenpeace and others of similar bent, including sovereign nations inside the North American continent. Then she decided to call Beatrice and Dante for their help. If she never saw Xoc again, she hoped what she was about to do would qualify her in his regard as being what Leviathan had asked of her—a bridge of communication. At night, she comforted herself with the fact that Leviathan had called her one of his Children and hoped that it meant that maybe she would go to the Far Waters of Forever.

  Years later into Marley’s life, she would look back at her efforts, which were somewhat successful, and hoped that the steps she had accomplished would enable the merfolk to mesh peacefully with the land dwellers. The United States of America was the first nation that the merfolk chose to approach because that was where Marley lived. The first meeting took place near the Currituck Lighthouse with a televised broadcast between Greenpeace and the Conclave ran by Jack Tanner. The Corolla, North Carolina tourist industry boomed as it became the first city where one could meet a mermaid or a merman if one was so inclined.

  When Marley was 94 years old, her frail body took her out and down to Raccoon Bay where she shivered in the cold and slipped naked into the water. Her hair was sparse and white and her hands gnarled with arthritis. She had no children and left her estate in the care of the MacNatator family to use as a preserve, along with the coastal region, where merfolk convened with land dwellers on neutral ground.

  Several selkies settled in the area as well and joined the efforts and some quietly watched from the land or the water as she changed into a sea form. No one had seen this shape in the merfolk’s genetics for almost four centuries now. She slowly and painfully swam to the front of the promontory rock where she could see the Currituck Lighthouse’s beam cutting a swath through the fog of the night. She reached a rock where she clung to the abrading material and just stayed in one place and started to sing in a cracked, horrible voice made worse because of her age, Poor Wayfaring Stranger.

  As she finished the last verse, her voice started to die out and her body started to sunder beneath the call of death’s song. She started to fall when strong arms reached up from the water and caught her. She was cradled close to a long bodied merman with aged skin and form. A strong clear voice started to soar above the waves, the crescendo of notes sweetly rising and falling and singing the song to the aged woman whose heart slowly stopped beating. The singer echoed Marley’s song and fell silent only when dawn broke its light over the horizon and revealed the Spell Singer as he held only the dissolved sea foam that all of Leviathan’s Children became upon death.

  Without expression, the Spell Singer watched as his own body began to dissolve as well and he started to sing a new song, one he had composed and sang many nights when he was lonely and thinking of the form and face of his lover. He called is I Will Meet You at the Far Waters of Forever.

  Epilogue

  Many years later, the great granddaughter of Dr. Atera Falis MacNatator of Dante MacNatator and Dr. Beatrice Langley, took a selkie for a husband. They had a child who ended up marrying a descendant of Jack Tanner and Eddike. Their child wed a land walker and ignored her watery heritage. The result of that union was a daughter they called Marley. It was a family name and an honored one at that being that it once belonged to the sister of Jack Tanner and the one who bridged the land dwellers to the sea folk. Her full name was Marley Atera MacNatator Tanner, though the merfolk didn’t have last names. It was her selkie blooded mother and land walking father who gave her the memory of her lineage.

  Marley was not a linguist nor was she a biologist or a sheriff. Unlike her forbearers, she didn’t really like the ocean and did not like swimming. It gave her feelings of resentment and, for some unknown reason, she felt sadness in association with the ocean even though this Marley seemed to have developed a fondness for music and loved songs with soaring crescendos.

  What she did not love was the lingering sadness and strain that terminal illness brought to her mother who had survived the death of Marley’s father. When her mother finally found peace and died—the last of her family really as their numbers had dwindled due to the fact that Marley’s family was incredibly picky about choosing worthy mates—Marley had walked on the beach by the Currituck Sound and cried seven tears for her mother. It was likely she had cried many more, but approximately seven tears fell into the ocean and unbeknownst to
her, she called a selkie to her side who swam in the ocean and watched her with his dark eyed, whiskered countenance.

  In her grief, Marley slipped on the rocks and fell into the roiling waters of the ocean. It was the first time she’d ever immersed herself in seawater where she gasped and floundered, trying to stay afloat and not doing very well in her efforts. In fact, she breathed in water on her attempts to gasp for breath and found that her long silky chestnut hair, which she took such pride in, hindered her sight and tangled about her limbs.

  A burning, wrenching sensation melted through her body and she found herself in possession of a tail she had only seen on merfolk in the newscasts. Not knowing how to move in such a body, she started to drown until a large, sleek furred form thrust itself beneath her torso and carried her to the gentler waters of the beach and the shallow dunes of gray sand.

  Marley fell asleep next to the warm bulk of her savior. In the morning, she woke up, once again in a two-legged form with a rich brown pelt wrapped around her. She pushed the tangled skein of her hair aside and stared, gape mouthed, at the naked man with the long body who stood nearby. His body was muscled with the form of a swimmer and he stood facing the sea.

  She lay her head back down on the ground and peeked from beneath her lashes at this wonderful specimen of a male. She noticed when he turned his head with a possessive eye over where she lay that his narrowed eyes were green with just a hint of silver. He also had a fine head of sleek brown hair, like an otter pelt, which appeared to her as being slightly wrong compared to the way she thought he should look.

  She heard his fine voice break out in a slow start to a sweet song with the crescendos and dips of the soaring music associated with Poor Wayfaring Stranger and fell in love first with his voice. When he reached the refrain of I’m coming home, he turned to her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  After he finished the song, Marley fingered the pelt and snuggled into the fur. Quietly, with the wind breaking over the lower half of her legs and chilling her body, she asked, “Do you know the song, I Will Meet You at the Far Waters of Forever?”

  The selkie, for that is what Marley thought him to be, bestowed upon her a brilliant smile full of love even though she had never met him before in her lifetime, all of her twenty-eight years, and opened his mouth to sing to her the requested song. She watched him with shining eyes and said, “I feel as if I have known you forever though you look funny.”

  He arched one eyebrow and said in a rich, tenor voice, “I look funny? I find that funny indeed, as I think that you look like everything I have ever desired in a mate even though I do not know you or your personality in the present. However, I have trust in my deity and Leviathan told me I would find my heart’s desire on this very beach on this morning. And I said to my god, Is this the desire I have felt since achieving manhood? and Leviathan replied, No, this is the desire you have felt for 90 years and which I promised you long ago, Spell Singer. And I listened to the dictates of my God because he has never steered me wrong before.”

  And Marley felt again the resentment she felt toward the ocean and a fear of loss. She swallowed hard and said, “Are you a true Spell Singer to your people, the selkie and the merfolk of the sea?”

  “I am.” The selkie watched her steadily, hunger in his gaze. “However, I have not been called to duty and bear no promises to Leviathan or the folk that constrain my ability to love, or so Leviathan told me to promise you, for this lifetime. You see, I do know one thing about you that even you don’t know. I sang your soul to the Far Waters of Forever and I sang it back. And Leviathan came and scooped my soul and your soul up like krill in the ocean and spit out our souls again for rebirth. As I speak now to you, knowledge comes forth. I will share.”

  “I have never heard the like before,” Marley claimed, eyes flashing.

  “No, you wouldn’t. My name is Xoc and I am the reason that you resented the ocean and feared what the ocean would take from you. And I am also the reason you have taken pains never to befriend or explore the merfolk though your very mother was a selkie. When Leviathan promised it was time for our souls to leave the Far Waters of Forever for this lifetime, he gave me a form that would enable me to reach your side again without rejection. I couldn’t give up the sea, for it was ever a part of me, but I couldn’t give up my Marley either, for she was a part of me, too. So this time Leviathan gave me a form that could easily go from ocean to land and back again. And I came to you yesterday night because Leviathan told me to do so and to save you from your fall into an ocean you feared. But this morning, I have stayed with you to remind you of whom you are and who we were together. I have done my duty and you have done yours. Now I want my reward…and so do you.”

  Xoc’s voice started out forceful and ringing and, but ended quietly with just a trace of pity and apology. He stepped forward to rip the buffer of his pelt from her naked shivering form and he began to sing a song she had never heard before, which tore at her soul and battered her mind and her heart. Marley started to remember.

  “Stop! Stop!” Marley begged him, tears falling from her eyes as her resentment and the hurt she felt deep in her soul rose to the forefront of her being. However, he would not stop and for a moment, she hated this man who brought her pain and tore that pain from her soul and made her cry. She was so upset and crying so hard that she never noticed when he stopped singing to take her into his arms and kiss her. At first she resisted because she couldn’t meekly accept this pain and then fought because it wasn’t fair that she should hurt and he didn’t or wouldn’t or couldn’t.

  He dragged her into the ocean she hated and embraced her, twining as much as a human form was able around her suddenly tailed sea form and crooned to her as she finished crying. Her tears weren’t finished when he claimed her mouth, bore her to the sand and fiercely claimed her body. There were no teasing touches, only hunger that seemed familiar. For his part, Xoc acted as if he was famished.

  The interlude ended as she cried out to the sky. With trembling arms, she wrapped herself around his form. Finally, he went still and relaxed in her arms. With his thumbs and his strong hands, he wiped the tears from her face and traced her beloved countenance. She remembered everything from this life and that one left behind. “You were there with me at the end,” Marley said wonderingly.

  “Yes.”

  “You are a stronger person then I could ever be,” she said a little bit sadly.

  “Not so strong as you think. If I had once looked back, I would have been broken.” Xoc promised, “I won’t ever walk away from you again and Leviathan has promised not to ask me to do so. I was promised in return for my past services that I would have a long life and the love of my life who would live as long as I do. The happiness I have been promised will measure what we gave up.”

  “You are saying I’m still the love of your life and you want to spend it together.”

  “Oh yes. That is what I want. That and to have the children with you that I could not have with you prior,” Xoc said with a shudder of longing. “What is it you do in this lifetime?”

  “I’m the financial advisor and executor of the MacNatator and Tanner Preserve and Estates. I live in the house that the Tanner family resided in on the promontory cliff surrounded by the ocean on three sides,” Marley confessed. “And you?”

  “I’m a singer,” Xoc replied, looking slightly embarrassed, “though I don’t use Xoc as my stage name, which is Merrvyn Roon. Can we retire to your house? There’s so much we need to catch up on…and if you don’t mind, I would love to start on practicing to build our family.”

  He stood up easily and pulled Marley to her feet. She had changed shape again some time ago, but had not really noticed. Xoc draped his rich pelt over her and she snuggled into it. He pulled her close as they walked back to her home in the quietness of the new morning. As they stepped into the house, she said, “Hey, I’ve heard of Merrvyn Roon…isn’t your first album the one that is popular internationally and composed of selkie and m
erfolk folk songs?”

  “Yes.” His voice was amused and indulgent.

  “But that was dedicated to Marley Tanner.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s me!”

  “Yes.” Followed by his loving laughter.

  “And it’s called—” Marley started. They ended up speaking the album’s name in harmony.

  “At the Far Waters of Forever.”

  About the Author

  Imagination and creation are my calling and story weaving my hobby; though I love paranormal stories best. Intricate plots and well written romantic relationships are my favorite, and I don’t mean sex, I mean that feeling of emotion where unconditional acceptance of another individual(s) leads one to sacrifice willingly all that they are for the one(s) that they love. And even if it’s not realistic, most of all, I like to see that aforementioned willingness to sacrifice all for love triumph over adversity, even at cost. A good story is deepened by the development of the character and in that, I mean changes in personality, life, behavior, and love. Of course, I like a little erotic spice thrown in as well, just to add a bit of heat to the story, but that’s secondary to the story. If you like all the aforementioned elements in your story, you’re welcome to view my finished tapestries where I’ve drawn the threads of a story together with finality any time. I hope to whet my reader’s appetites for dreaming.