Syreena would have a lot of catching up to do, an adjustment period she couldn’t even begin to imagine.
What would they have in common in the real world? If anything?
Dylan shook his head. “I’m just frustrated with the raft,” he said.
He could tell by the hurt look in her eyes that she didn’t believe him.
He ran his fingers through his hair. It was the longest it had been since college. “It’s more than the raft.” He sat down in the sand and gestured for her to sit beside him. “It’s about what’s going to happen when we get off this island and return to civilization.” Dylan picked up a shell and tossed it back and forth between his open palms.
“What is going to happen?”
“I’ll get you home and we’ll go our separate ways.”
She flinched. “But why? I thought we, well, I thought we meant something to each other.”
He heard the tears in her voice. “This has been wonderful, amazing. Like something out of a dream but it won’t work in the real world.”
Syreena’s eyes were large and bluish green. “Why?”
He didn’t know how to explain it. “We’re just from different worlds.”
“But the spell,” she said. “I can’t break it if—” She placed her hands over her eyes.
“We leave tomorrow night,” Dylan said. He heard the coldness in his voice and hated himself for it.
*****
At first, when she’d saved Dylan from the sharks, she’d decided that he was the one. No matter what. Whether he was cruel or stupid. Hateful or silly. He was going to be the man who helped her break the spell.
She was going to force him into the role of protector. Equal.
It hadn’t happened according to plan.
Syreena had accidentally fallen in love.
And now Dylan wanted nothing to do with her once he got her back to Saint-Domingue.
For the first time since The Change, she wished for her fins. She’d spent more than two hundred years praying for full-time legs, and now, when she really needed a swim, she had legs that didn’t want to morph into a mermaid tail.
A good swim would’ve cleared her head, helped her to rein in her emotions but that option wasn’t open to her. She settled for a walk along the shoreline. Looking for things that might have washed up in the surf might take her mind of Dylan.
She was still tired from the desperate swim to the beach. She walked slowly and tried to concentrate on the beauty of the island, the way the sunset turned the sand the color of a ripe peach. Anything and everything but Dylan.
She’d been a fool to believe his feelings for her were anything more than convenient. He hadn’t been alone for centuries. His life wasn’t that far removed from the now. He had a family, friends, and shipmates. But now, with her ability to swim fading, getting back to civilization was more important than ever. Without being able to dive, she’d starve quickly. There wasn’t much more than a few breadfruit trees on the island and she couldn’t stomach the thought of eating small lizards and frogs.
The warm Caribbean water lapped at her toes. The water was calm and after an hour of walking, she’d found nothing more than a handful of interesting shells. It would be dark soon so she turned and walked back toward the shelter.
Her last night on the island.
With any luck, in less than forty-eight hours, she’d be on her way back to Saint-Domingue. She had no idea what she’d do when she got there. Once she tossed the amulet into the ocean, there was nothing more on her list. Simple mathematics told her that no one she’d known at Belle Emilie would still be alive. Her name, and her father’s name, would’ve been long lost to the ravages of time.
Alone. She’d spent two hundred and twenty-four years in the ocean. The only person who had the ability to see her, in all that time, had been Dylan and he was bowing out.
What if she was destined to spend the rest of her life alone?
Tears welled in her eyes at the thought. She was so weary. When Dylan had fallen into her arms, she’d thought the loneliness was over, but now, being in love with someone who didn’t reciprocate the feeling, was an even deeper kind of loneliness.
She was nearly back to their part of the island when she stepped on something.
It was dry beneath the sole of her foot but it didn’t feel like sand. It felt ropy, muscular. She looked down and screamed in terror.
*****
The scream was so loud Dylan ran toward it before giving it a second thought. It was high-pitched and primal. His spine tingled and he felt a rush of adrenaline. It still wasn’t easy to run on his injured leg but he reached Syreena in good time.
She’d stopped screaming.
Dylan quickly saw why. Wrapped around her left leg and making its way up her body was a large snake. It looked like the Boa Constrictor his college roommate had in a terrarium in the dorm. But Dylan was no expert. The Coast Guard didn’t spend a lot of time on snake training.
He hoped like hell it wasn’t venomous but it didn’t change his plan of action. The snake was scaring Syreena and he didn’t like it. The sight of the brown and black undulating pattern running down the reptile’s back activated some caveman buried deep within him. No harm would come to Syreena. Not on his watch.
“Be still,” he said in the lowest voice he could manage. “And be quiet.”
Syreena barely nodded, the terror clear in her tight expression.
He crept towards her slowly, keeping his movements tight and controlled. He remembered his roommate always instructed him to remain relaxed around the snake. The snake slithered slowly up the side of her body.
All he had to do was grab the head of the snake. Quickly. Decisively.
“I’m going to grab him,” he said when he was nearly beside her. “Stay calm.”
The pulse point in her neck throbbed.
He grabbed the snake’s head and used his other hand to unwind it from her leg. It was easily five feet long and all muscle. It quickly wrapped itself around his forearm. Looking at it more closely, he breathed a sigh of relief. He was sure it was a Boa Constrictor just like the one in college. They were placid snakes. Non-venomous.
“Are you okay?” he asked Syreena.
She nodded. “I was afraid it was going to bite me.”
Dylan shook his head. “I would never let that happen.”
“I’ve never seen a snake except in pictures, paintings.” She shivered. The snake seemed perfectly content to stay on Dylan’s arm. He released his grip on his head and let the snake flicker its tongue to test the air. “They terrify me.”
“This one isn’t venomous. He kills his prey by strangling them. A bite from him would only feel like a pin prick.”
“How do you know it’s a monsieur?”
Dylan laughed. “I don’t. I also don’t know what he was doing this close to the water.”
“What do you mean?” Syreena arched an eyebrow.
“My roommate in college used to have a pet snake just like this one. I’m no expert but I remember that he ate mostly mice. They aren’t sea snakes.”
“A pet snake?”
“The world is quite different from the one you left in 1791.”
As if a lightbulb had gone off in her head, Syreena’s eyes widened. “It’s a sign,” she whispered. She took a couple of steps toward Dylan and bent at the waist to get a closer look at the snake. “It’s a sign from Mami Wata.”
Oh, no. She hadn’t mention voodoo in several days and Dylan liked it that way.
“The snake was probably just thirsty.”
She shook her head. “Snakes probably like fresh water like everything else.”
Syreena had point.
“Mami Wata sent Danballa to help us.”
He knew better than to ask but he did anyway. “Who is Danballa?”
She looked at him as if he were totally ignorant. “He’s the serpent god who created the ocean when he shed his skin. He protects the young and the helpless. We are c
ertainly helpless,” she said.
“And you think Mami Wata sent him?”
“Of course she did.”
“But I thought you were a Catholic.”
She shrugged. “I am but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in Mami Wata and Danballa. That would be foolish. Mami has kept me alive and safe all these years. She’s as real as Jesus.”
The mixture of Catholicism and Haitian Voodoo was interesting and while would have loved to discuss the finer points over a meal and a bottle of wine, at the moment, he had a five foot long snake on his arm and a two hundred and fifty year old used-to-be mermaid standing in front of him.
“I’m going to put him on a tree closer to the center of the island. I’ll be back.”
“Do it quickly. It’s almost dark.”
Dylan didn’t know what was scarier. The interior of the island after dark or the fact that he’d jumped in to protect her only an hour after he’d convinced himself she wasn’t the girl for him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Syreena wanted to be asleep before he returned. Even though he’d come to her aid and removed the snake, things were still different. There was a tension between them that had never existed before the discussion of what would happen after they reached Saint-Domingue.
He didn’t want to be with her.
Her heart was sore from the hurt. These days and nights on the island with him had been magical to her, as magical as any fairy tale and yet they seemed to mean nothing to him. In just a few short hours, she’d lost her fins and the man she thought was the one for her. The one Mami Wata had sent to be her companion, the one who could save her from the loneliness.
She took one last look around the cay and tried to memorize all the details. If Dylan’s raft worked and she somehow made it back to the beaches of Belle Emilie, where this whole thing began, she had no idea what might happen next. She might never see this place again and in a way, that made her sad. This small cay, probably not even a speck on any map, had been her home. It had also been the place where she’d fallen in love.
It would always hold a special place in her heart.
But it would be so nice to see Belle Emilie again. She wondered if anything looked the same, if the house was still there, if any one related to the people she’d known was still on the property.
When, if, she got back to the place where it all began, should she throw the amulet in the water even though she knew she hadn’t completed one of the requirements?
What if nothing happened? What if she threw the amulet into the water and she was neither mermaid nor woman? What if not abiding by the terms of the spell landed in her some sort of unoccupied territory?
Syreena lay down on the sand beneath the makeshift shelter and tried to force her mind to stop racing. Sleep. She’d think about the rest tomorrow.
*****
Dylan sat outside the shelter and studied the stars. He was taking a big chance. A cobbled together raft, no real map except the sky. A woman who couldn’t swim. A Coast Guard Officer who was terrified of the water.
What choice did he have?
They had to get off the island.
After watching the stars move around Polaris, he felt a little more confident about his navigational calculations. By this time tomorrow, they’d be on the raft, in the dark Caribbean trying to find their way home.
Dylan and Syreena spent the next day making sure the raft was ready. They didn’t talk much. It felt like there was nothing left to say.
Dylan was terrified. No matter how many times he’d tried to ease himself back into the water, his fear didn’t diminish at all. He spent most of the morning talking himself into the trip on the raft.
Around midday, Syreena asked, “Are you sure we have to travel at night? Wouldn’t there be a better change of someone spotting us during the day?”
“If they spot us, you’ll never get back to Haiti. We have to start out at night.”
“How long will it take us to get there?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’s about eighty miles east southeast. Depending on the winds and the currents, it should take two or three days at most.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”
He’d just broken her heart and she was being kind. “Thank you.”
Then there was nothing more to say.
By sunset, they were ready to cast off.
Dylan looked at the water, the seemingly endless stretch of it spreading to the horizon in every direction. His heart raced. Despite the breeze, of sweat popped out on his forehead. He could almost hear the blood rushing through his veins.
It was now or never.
Without him, Syreena couldn’t navigate. She needed him and he needed to get over his irrational fear of water.
What kind of sailor was scared of the sea?
A cowardly one. He summoned up all the courage he could find and said, “It’s time.”
Syreena stepped onto the raft carrying only her box and a handful of breadfruit for the trip. There would be no way to fish from the raft and since The Change was nearly impossible now, they both wanted to make sure they had enough to last a couple of days. Dylan had stashed a dozen or so extra water bottles full of fresh water near the back of the raft.
On the raft, with a paddle in his hand, his fear went into overdrive. More than anything, he wanted to jump off and race back to the cay but he couldn’t. He had to make this happen.
There was no other way.
Syreena held onto her box and Dylan used the paddle he’d crafted from a piece of wood washed onto the beach to navigate through the coral reef and into deeper water. The water was yellow and orange, the soft crests shining like jewels.
“Once the sun sets and we can see the stars, I’ll feel better about navigating.” He tried to take deep breaths, reassure himself that everything was fine. He wasn’t going into the drink. He wasn’t going to drown.
The raft was small. He’d kept his fear from Syreena the whole time they’d been on the island. He had to keep it to himself for a few more days.
Syreena kept her eyes on the water. “I can’t wait to see what it looks like now, after all these years.”
Dylan didn’t want her to be disappointed but he feared she would be. He had no idea what it looked like when she left, but years of political and economic strife had taken its toll. Two hundred and twenty four years was a long time.
What would she do once she got back?
His heart squeezed. He couldn’t just leave her there. Not in a dangerous place like Haiti, especially when she was totally unfamiliar with everything. He wasn’t that kind of guy.
He would never be that kind of guy.
******
The stars looked like a magical blanket. Thousands of them, like tiny pinpricks, twinkled down on the raft.
“There it is,” Dylan placed his paddle on the raft and pointed at the sky. “See the Little Dipper?”
Syreena looked up but she wasn’t sure what a dipper was supposed to look like. “I don’t know one star from the other.”
“Come here,” he said.
She didn’t want to stand close to him. The hurt was still too raw. Over the past few weeks, she’d become so familiar with his body, his smell. Being too close to him would just reopen the wound. “It’s okay.”
“Syreena,” he said.
Even the way he said her name made her sad.
She shook her head.
“I was wrong,” he said.
“About what?”
“There’s no way I’m going to leave you alone, to fend for yourself in an unfamiliar world.”
“I don’t need your pity,” she said with a little more bitterness than she intended. “I’ll figure out a way. It’s no different than the way everything was new after The Change.”
“It is different,” he said, picking up the makeshift oar. “You might not be safe.”
“I wasn’t safe after The Change.”
Dylan
sighed. Even in the pitch black dark, she knew he was biting his lower lip. He always did that when he was nervous or upset. “I won’t leave you.”
Syreena felt her face flush. “I won’t let you stay. Not if you don’t love me. I’d rather be alone than be pitied.”
As much as she loved Dylan, that was the truth.
“It’s not pity,” he said through gritted teeth.
The sound of the water lapping against the boat was soothing and Syreena felt herself being lulled to sleep.
She might have slept all the way to Belle Emilie if she hadn’t felt something crawling up her leg.
At first she thought it was a dream.
It wasn’t.
*****
Syreena had been asleep for a couple of hours when she bolted upright and screamed. Her sudden movement rocked the raft and Dylan struggled to keep his balance. The raft tossed from side to side and before he could adjust, he was in the drink. Again.
The paddle went with him. He lost his grip and it sank like a stone.
Dylan sputtered and pushed himself to the top. Everything was dark. With only a quarter moon, even out here without any ambient light, he couldn’t see the raft.
Thankfully, he heard Syreena.
“Dylan? DYLAN?” she yelled. He heard the desperation in her voice and even though he was freaking out, his heart hammering in his chest, he had to answer her. “The snake. The snake is on the raft.”
“I’m here. Keep talking. I’ll swim toward your voice.”
His pulse pounded. He was absolutely terrified he was going to drown. He had to get back to the raft, back to Syreena. She needed him.
“Dylan, over here. Over here.” Her voice was his only lifeline. He wasn’t going to worry about the lost paddle until he got back to the raft. Couldn’t worry about it.
The snake. It couldn’t be the same one. That was impossible.
Syreena kept calling until he felt the reassuring pontoons brush against his fingers. He only had to hoist himself up and he’d be safe. Safe.
If you considered being on a raft with a hysterical woman and a snake without a paddle in the middle of a dark ocean safe.
Falling in Deep Collection Box Set Page 76
