Chapter 14 #2
But Luna continued to watch him, her dark eyes solemn, her mouth just a few inches above the water into which she had sunk. She chewed her lip thoughtfully, her arms making little waves where she floated.
Then, in a very soft voice, she murmured, “I think you’re more nurturing than you realize.”
Something happened then which, in retrospect, Nigel never could fully explain.
It was as though a veil descended over his vision—a gauzy haze through which the world was suddenly indistinct, and all the sounds came echoing from far away. He heard giggles, manic screams of laughter, and saw the flickering shadows of children running, scampering, splashing.
One voice shrieked so close to his ear, he actually flinched: “Daddy, I found a turtle, and Alfie says he’s gonna et it!”
This was followed by another voice, also sweet and young, but a little deeper than the first. “No, I didn’t! I said maybe a crocodile was gonna et it!”
Nigel turned his head sharply, trying to make sense of this strange reality.
He caught a glimpse of the sunbathing platform opposite him, only now there seemed to be a lawn chair there, where there certainly wasn’t one a moment ago.
The phantom-like image of a woman lounged in the sunlight.
He couldn’t see her clearly—she was more vapor than anything.
But he could tell that she cradled a little blonde tot in her arms, and her figure was exquisitely plump and maternal, and her dark curls were pinned up off her neck.
The next moment, a small body struck him in the shoulder. Nigel whipped his head about, but still couldn’t see more than an impression of movement, a pulsating lifeforce, very real, but strangely distant and removed. Something was plunked into his hands, and he thought he felt dampness. And scales.
“Daddy, look at my turtle!” a lisping voice demanded. “What’s her name?”
And Nigel heard a voice which sounded something like his own and which seemed to emerge from his own lips. Only it was so very far away. “I’m not sure, Loni. Mummy’s better at naming things.”
“Oh, go on, Handsome.” The woman on the sunbathing platform tilted her sunglasses, but the glare of unreality blocked her face from his view. He heard her voice clearly enough, however. A voice he knew so very well. “Give it your best shot!”
“All right.” Nigel turned the object in his hands, which he still could not see. But he felt tiny claws pressed against the edge of his palm. And beside him, the radiant force of two, large, trusting eyes filled his awareness. “Is it a boy turtle or a girl turtle?”
“Girl!” the lisping voice answered at once.
“How do you know?” the second, deeper child’s voice protested, and Nigel distinctly heard splashing and felt the approach of another phantom he could not quite see. “Looks like a boy to me.”
“Nu uh!”
“Nu huh!”
“Nu uh!”
“Nu huh!”
“I think your sister’s right, Alfie,” Nigel’s own voice interjected quickly. “It’s definitely a girl. You can tell by the, erm, eyelashes.”
“Where?” Two ghostly presences crowded in. The second voice protested, “I don’t see any eyelashes!”
“I do, Daddy,” the lisping voice declared loyally. He felt the pressure of a little body leaning against his arm. “What’s her name? What’s her name?”
“Well, I don’t think there can be any doubt in the matter. This is the Grand Royal Dutchess, Turtlina Von Turtlesburg.”
“Tur-Turtle-eena?”
“Von Turtlesburg.”
The little phantom face upturned to his.
He couldn’t see it, but felt the beaming smile like a blast of sunlight warming his very soul.
“Gank you, Daddy! I’m going to call her Turtley for short.
” The crawling, scaly thing was removed from his grasp the next moment, and Nigel listened to the sounds of splashing, and those little voices retreating into the haze.
“Come on, Alfie! Let’s play mermaids, and Turtley is our baby! ”
“Wait up, Loni!”
Nigel cast a last look across the pool to where the beautiful woman watched him, grinning from behind her sunglasses. The impression of her had already faded to almost nothing. In another blink, she was gone.
Dragging in a sharp breath, Nigel closed his eyes, turned his head to one side, then gave it a firm shake.
The sounds and sensations of the vision faded fast, echoing away into some strange, half-glimpsed, parallel reality, which he knew could never possibly come to pass.
Not in this reality. Not in a world where he’d made the choices he’d made, where he’d committed one too many unforgivable sins.
It was nothing more than a foolish fancy. And not a very convincing one at that.
But then, he never did have any gift for scrying.
Luna was still watching him. Waiting for a reply to her remark.
That flashing image had taken no more than a second or two, though the experience had felt longer.
Nigel exhaled slowly, flicked his gaze to meet hers, and took care to keep any improper emotion out of his voice when he answered, “Nurturers are not exactly celebrated in the circles in which I run.”
She shrugged, her shoulders emerging from the water in a flash of skin that made his blood boil. “Maybe you’ve been running in the wrong circles, Mr. Grimm.”
He absolutely, one hundred percent, beyond any shadow of a doubt, had been running in the wrong circles. And now he ran in no circles. There was just him. And Garden and Debbie and the flowers. No circle to be had, certainly none worth mentioning.
He looked down at the water lily in front of him again and plucked a bit of debris from its pad. “And what about you, Miss Talbot?” he asked, keen to redirect the focus of this conversation. “Do you see yourself as a mother one day?”
Now it was her turn to be strangely silent.
Nigel turned to look at her, found her gazing away from him, back out to the trio of waterfalls.
Her expression was infinitely sad. So sad, it made his heart jolt.
The impulse was strong to glide over to her, to put his arm around her and draw her to him, saying, “What is it? What’s wrong?
Tell me why that question hurts you so?” But he shouldn’t have asked her such a personal question in the first place.
And she certainly owed him no answers. He rolled his jaw, trying to think of some way to take it back.
Suddenly, Luna’s expression shifted. Her brow lowered, her jaw set, and a look of determination gleamed in her eye. “That looks to me like a waterslide,” she said.
“What?”
“I know it’s supposed to look like a series of natural cascades. But doesn’t it look to you as though they run from one to the next? Like, if you start at the top there, you could ride it all the way down to that deep pool at the bottom?”
“Perhaps,” Nigel admitted, lifting his gaze to the topmost crest of the highest fall. He shuddered. “Fabian and I never—Wait. Where are you going?”
For Luna was swimming again, leaving the water lily pool behind and making her way back toward the falls. “I’m going to try it,” she called.
Nigel’s eyes widened. “It could be dangerous!”
“Yes.” She tossed a look back over her shoulder. “Or it could be glorious! Don’t you want to find out?”
Nigel cursed softly, his hands knotting into fists underwater. But what was he going to do? Sit here among the water lilies while she cast herself over that edge into certain doom? No. If she was determined to break her neck, he might as well break his along with her.
Muttering more curses, he waded after her, neither so swift nor so smooth in the water as she.
Luna led the way back to the final, deepest pool, where the roar of the waterfall was too loud for speech.
There she turned back to him and pointed to where the stones seemed to form a sort of natural staircase.
Before Nigel could make any move of protest, she scrambled up onto the shoreline and stood there, dripping.
Nigel’s eyes nearly popped from his skull. The way her slip clung to her . . . Oh gods. He nearly sank into the water and drowned right then and there.
Luna turned back to him, pointing first at the stairs and then gesturing for him to follow.
Dual desires sprang to life and took up war in Nigel’s breast. First was the tremendous urge to heave himself out onto the shore and positively chase her down.
The other, however, was to stay exactly where he was and never move again.