First Knight

by Ines Johnson

  She kicked out again and made contact. But all her attempt at defense earned her was the loss of one of her precious shoes.

  Vivi slumped in the beast’s grip and shut her eyes. She’d come so far on her own. And now she would be eaten by this terrible monster. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  She was out of the water. She was defenseless. She was as useless as her father had accused her of being before he’d tossed her in the waters to meet her death. And this time she was going to die.

  “Hello,” said the monster.

  The deep, melodic tone of his voice was like a shockwave inside Vivi. It rolled up her lifeless toes, shook her limp knees, warmed the spot at the crest of her thighs, and punched her in the gut until she was forced to open her eyes and look at him. His eyes were the color of sea waves before they crashed into the shore. She felt caught in them like she’d been pulled under and was now drowning in earnest.

  “Bonjour?” he said and another wave hit her, pulling her down deeper. “Ciao? Ola? Can you speak at all?”

  “Of course I can speak,” Vivi said. “I speak a number of languages, you beast. I don’t appreciate being trifled with. Get it over with and I hope you choke on my bones.”

  His sea-bright eyes widened and he flashed his teeth again. Vivi struggled, trying to turn away before he bit her. Instead, she stared at his beauty in avid fascination. She wondered if he was the type to play with his food.

  “Eat you?” he said. “I’m not going to eat you.”

  But the way he glanced down her captive body, the way his nostrils flared, and his sharp, gleaming incisors sank into his lush bottom lip, Vivi was certain he told a lie.

  “I was only trying to help,” he said when his gaze rose back to her. “I was being a gentleman.”

  “No gentleman I know touches a lady without her permission,” she said. “Put me down.”

  She didn’t expect it, but he obeyed. He turned his body away from the receding tide and set her down gently on the sand. Vivi breathed a sigh of relief the moment her toes touched the ground. Only one foot was shoed. So, the moment the monster let her go, she fell to her knees.

  But she didn’t impact the ground as hard as she expected. His arms were around her once more, bringing her up. This time he held her to his big body instead of in the air. The toe of her one shoe tapped the ground. The other, the one that was bare, rested on the top of the beast’s foot.

  “It doesn’t appear you can stand on your own,” he said.

  “I can, too.” Vivi frowned up at him, feeling like a guppy arguing with a whale. “I just need my shoe.”

  The beast peered down at her fallen shoe, then back to her. He crouched with her still in his arms, until he sat her bottom gently on the ground. He took a seat beside her and then he reached for the lone shoe.

  Vivi flinched when he reached for her leg next. She whimpered when he flashed his teeth at her again. When his fingertips wrapped around the back of her knee she shuddered, the fear of being eaten momentarily fleeing her body.

  “Who are you?” he asked in that deep brogue. “What are you?”

  “I am Viviane of the Lake. Well, actually, it’s just Viviane now. But my friends call me Vivi.”

  He should know that she had friends. People who would notice if she was gone too long. Or eaten by a sea monster with dark skin, thick locks of hair, and deep, blue eyes.

  “May I?” the blue-eyed monster asked. “May I call you Vivi?’

  Vivi’s breath caught at the request. His blue eyes implored her even as his wide, shark-like grin promised to devour her. “Do you promise not to eat me?”

  He broke into a smile again. This time he didn’t flash his teeth. His lips stretched across his face as he gazed at her. The look heated her from the center outward, touching her pale cheeks.

  She felt his thumb rub at her skin, settling on the moisture there. Then he frowned, and Vivi was sorry to see his hungry smile go. He looked down at her knee and she followed his gaze. The skin there had torn from her fall and a trickle of blood flowed.

  The monster reached out to the water. It came to him without him even standing in it. The water swirled in his hand and he placed it on her knee. Vivi gasped as a warm tingle arrested her leg. His touch felt like diving deep in a hot spring, like surfacing from beneath a waterfall on a summer’s day.

  “My name’s Poseidon. My friends call me Psi. I’d like it if you called me Psi, Vivi.”

  He didn’t flash his teeth this time when he smiled at her. Still, something in his eyes told her that she would not be safe with this man. She didn’t believe that he meant her any physical harm. But she knew that her world would never be the same if she took the offer to call him by his name.

  “All right,” she said. “Psi.”

  Chapter Three

  Vivi.

  Psi liked the way her name sounded in his mouth. His two front teeth pressed into the center of his lower lip to start the V sound. Then they had to bounce and catch quickly to let the sound burst forth, much like she’d just burst through the waters.

  Vivi.

  The vibrations that came from making the sound fluttered over his tongue. They shivered down his throat exciting his vocal chords. They ignited a path in his chest, landing in his heart like a pulsar that burned out the cobwebs that had collected there over centuries, over millennia.

  “Vivi.”

  He said it out loud this time. After his teeth made the double bounce on his lower lip, he flashed them at the nymph. She recoiled from him, turning her body from him as though preparing for a blow.

  Psi couldn’t fathom why she’d do that sitting beside him. He would never hurt her. He wanted to pull her to him. He wanted to taste her skin. To run his tongue and teeth over the moisture that had collected on her knee at the spot where he’d healed her. And then he remembered what she’d said.

  Are you going to eat me?

  She thought he was actually going to eat her. It made sense if she came from the waters. That’s how amphibian predators advanced on their prey; flashing their teeth was a sign of aggression.

  Psi smiled again, flashing his teeth bright and wide. Oh, he wanted to eat her, all right. But not in the way she thought.

  “You have my word, Vivi, that nothing will harm you while you’re in my care.” And Psi intended to keep her in his care.

  “You’re Poseidon, you say?”

  “Greek God of the Sea, at your service.”

  The moment the words left his lips he regretted it. Psi scrubbed his hand over his face, which turned the huge grin he’d been wearing into a wary frown. His throat constricted and his heartbeat dulled. The blanket of moroseness resettled over his shoulders as he waited.

  He watched Vivi as she rolled the information around in that oddly shaped little head of hers. It wasn’t quite a circle. But it wasn’t overly long either. It was shaped like a heart. She had a broad expanse of forehead that would take long moments to lay down kisses from one ear to the other. Her face narrowed after the sharp lines of her cheekbones, ending at a pointed little chin that he was certain would fit perfectly between his two top and two bottom front teeth.

  It no longer mattered now that he’d revealed himself. He wouldn’t want to kiss or bite this woman after she began making her requests of him and his power. Very soon, she’d treat him like all the other illicit idolaters, the deceptive devoted, and the fake friends.

  He’d had a fleeting moment of anonymity with a creature who had seemed so out of the ordinary that it had warmed his cold-blooded heart. And he’d blown it in the worst way possible. By telling her the truth.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vivi weighing his name and title. Belatedly, he wondered what value she’d put to it? What would she ask of him? And then he realized, that whatever she asked, he was going to give it to her.

  Interestingly enough, her eyes didn’t look entirely calculating. No, they didn’t look at all like she was scheming or concocting a plan of entrap
ment. She was frowning at him. Now she was shaking that pretty little head of hers from left to right. And wait? Did she just tsk him?

  “I’m sorry to tell you, God of the Sea, but this particular sea is in an awful state,” she said. “It’s filled with human refuse from the trash on the sea bed to the chemicals in the water, to the crowding of the vessels on the surface. And your sea creatures are quite uncivilized.”

  Psi’s mouth fell open, but he didn’t flash his teeth. His lips parted, but he didn’t smile. His chest, which had gone from burning to dull, now deflated as he turned from Vivi to look out at the state of his waters.

  There were magical creatures in the Mediterranean. However, there were no such things as mermaids, half human-half fish. Most of the creatures living in the depths were gruesome looking vertebrates with sharp teeth and tentacled monsters from the deep. He shuddered to think that Vivi had come in contact with those beasts.

  Then he looked back to her and realized. “You swam all the way here from Britain?”

  “Most of the way,” she nodded. “I took a ley line.”

  Ley lines were pockets of energy that witches and knights used to travel around the world. So, she was a witch. A water witch? He’d never heard of such a thing.

  “Well,” said the water witch. “It was a pleasure to meet you, God of the Sea.”

  She bowed her head in deference. She said the words matter-of-factly. Psi didn’t believe they were truthful.

  “But I must be off,” she continued. “I have a very important quest to complete.”

  Vivi came to her knees. She gingerly put one foot under herself. It was as though she were new to walking, like a toddler who was still negotiating the mechanics of the task after months of crawling. Perhaps she was new to the skill if she’d spent most of her life in the waters.

  She made it to standing without any assistance and then she began to teeter in her heels. It was slow going as she headed up the pier. Psi rose and came to her side in just a couple of strides. One of his steps easily ate up three of hers.

  Vivi gave him a sidelong glance. Psi got the feeling that his company was unwelcome. It was a new feeling for him and it amused him.

  “We’re going the same way,” he insisted earnestly. Because he was serious, he was not about to let this extraordinary creature go anytime soon.

  “You’re going to the Nicotera store for the unveiling of this season’s shoe collection?”

  The name of the store sounded familiar, but Psi never paid much attention to shopping. He left that to his sister Demeter who treated spending money and acquiring goods like a contact sport. Psi had no clue where the store was, but that wasn’t going to stop him from getting closer to Vivi.

  “Of course,” he said. “I love shoes.”

  Vivi’s eyes lit up. Then her mouth opened and she chattered on for a quarter hour about the history of Nicotera and his innovative designs in footwear. And that’s how Lord Poseidon of Olympia, second son of Cronus, God of the Sea, found himself having a conversation about shoes with a woman.

  Chapter Four

  “I didn’t care so much about shoes when I was younger,” said Vivi. “Medieval footwear for women wasn’t so interesting because dresses covered the entire leg down to the foot.”

  Vivi teetered over the wooden planks of the pier. She had only practiced walking on smooth surfaces back in Camelot. Lady Gwin and Dame Loren had held her hand for a time as she’d taken her first few steps across the metallic drawbridge of Tintagel Castle.

  The god, Poseidon—Psi—strolled beside her. His casual steps swallowed up the wooden slats beneath them as though they were picks to clean his teeth. He didn’t flash his teeth at her anymore, but he did stretch his lips wide as he looked down at her. He also continued to watch her with what looked like hunger in his eyes.

  “Men’s shoes were much more fascinating,” Vivi continued. “They had elongated toes like a needlenose garfish, raised heels, and feathers. Did you know that the laws once proclaimed the length of the toe of a man’s shoes had to be proportionate to his income and social standing?”

  “Sounds like something an insecure man would do,” he said.

  “How do you mean?”

  He flashed her with those teeth and Vivi tripped. Her left heel caught between two of the planks of the pier.

  Psi’s hands reached out and grabbed her hands. Vivi gasped at the contact. His hands were much larger than Gwin’s or Loren’s. His palms swallowed her fingers up in their center as his long digits wrapped around her wrists.

  Vivi felt caught. Trapped. And then she was airborne again.

  Psi lifted her up into the air, freeing her heel from the plank. He didn’t put her down. He carried her off the pier and set her back down on solid ground.

  Vivi tilted her head up to look at the god before her. She had to look oh so far up since he towered over her. She felt like she would teeter backward, instead of forward. She did stumble when he let her go.

  She felt entirely disoriented with his tenterhooks no longer pressing into her skin. Her hands floated limply to her sides. She watched him turn to the side and stick out his elbow.

  Vivi stared at his protracted arm, uncertain what to do with it. Was he offering her escort like the knights would offer the ladies of Camelot? He was the strangest predator she’d ever encountered.

  She took a deep breath. Then she lifted her hand and rested it in the crook of his elbow. The next few steps she took were effortless with him as her anchor.

  “In my experience,” he said, “most cultures cover the female foot differently than they do the man’s foot.”

  “Too true,” Vivi nodded with confidence, now that they were back on her favorite subject. “As ladies’ gowns inched upwards so too did the heels of their shoes.”

  Beside her, she felt Psi’s body rumble with—was that laughter?

  “The English heel was low and thick, much more suited to boots,” she continued. “The French heel was mid-height and curvaceous.”

  “Hmm, just like the French.”

  “The Italian heel, the stiletto, those were tall and spikey works of art.”

  “Hmm, just like the female form,” said Psi. “I see your point. The female foot has been revered as a powerful sexual stimulus throughout time.”

  “Sexual? Why? You can’t put a foot anywhere inside the body. I know men like to put their appendages inside others’ bodies.”

  Psi stopped walking abruptly, causing Vivi to bump into him. He looked down at her with those wide eyes that were the crystal blue of the open seas. Then the rumbling went through him again. Because she was standing so near to him she felt his laughter like the waves thrashing the side of a boat in a storm.

  “Did I say something funny?” She wondered what it might be? Humor was tricky with her since fish and most other animals didn’t have what humans called a funny bone.

  “I find your candor wholly refreshing, Vivi of the Lake.”

  Oh. He liked her openness. Well, it was no great secret about males trying to get inside women’s bodies. They weren’t the only creatures to exhibit such behaviors.

  “I find the desire to enter another’s cavity very strange,” she candidly continued. “Except if its sand inside of a clam because then you get a pearl. Otherwise, it’s entirely parasitic. Take the pearlfish for example. They climb inside the anus of sea cucumbers and devour the animal’s gonads within.”

  Another rumbling of laughter erupted from Psi. He laughed so hard he doubled over. When he straightened there were tears in his eyes.

  “Oh no, I’ve made you cry. Is it because I spoke about anuses and gonads? I suppose that’s not proper or lady-like talk.”

  Vivi felt her face flushing. That reddening sign of embarrassment had been happening more regularly now that she was able to walk on land and speak with more humans. She was always saying the wrong things because she didn’t have enough practice at being proper.

  Psi reached out and tilted her chin up. H
e rubbed his thumb over the warm spot on her cheek. His fingers were cold, the same temperature as she was, but she still felt warmth fluttering inside of her. She’d seen men do this to the women they courted, hold their faces in their hand. Was she being courted by the God of the Sea?

  No. That was ridiculous.

  He was likely checking the fat content of her body in case he changed his mind later and decided to eat her. He’d be disappointed. She was very lean due to her life submerged in waters and her diet of fish and sea vegetables.

  Vivi had never had a man touch her. She’d never even stood this close to a man before. Psi smelled of the sea, like home. He made her feel warm. He made her heart flutter. She was perspiring and her breath came quickly.

  Such a strange reaction. He may have been a wizard and casting a spell on her right now. Best to get away from him.

  “Well, thank you for your assistance, my lord.” She bowed her head, freeing his hand from her face. “I’ve troubled you enough. Best to be on my way.”

  She stepped away from him, keeping her eyes locked on the ground as she took careful steps. She didn’t hear him follow. She decided that that was a good turn. The only interest he could’ve possibly had in her was for dinner and she’d be damned if she ended up on a god’s plate without at least getting her shoes first.

  All too quickly, solid ground changed to green grass and green grass changed to black asphalt. The increased solidity of the surface allowed Vivi to move quicker.

  Not a moment later, an awful noise filled the air. There was the sound of honking like a gull being strangled. Then there was the sound of high-pitched screeching, like crows fighting over fresh meat.

  Vivi looked up in time to see flashing lights that hurt her eyes. Angry shouts met her ears. As she stood stunned on the black asphalt, fast-moving boats on wheels careened towards her from opposite sides. She was too disoriented by the lights and the sounds to move out of harm’s way. She stood frozen as the boats prepared to crash into her.