21. Helsa
HELSA
I t came out of the water slowly.
Like it had all the time in the world.
The first thing was the color. Mottled grey-green, the exact shade of tidal rock, so close to the platform surface that for a half-second my eyes didn't know what they were looking at.
Then it moved and I saw it fully. My brain caught up and I wished it hadn't.
Medium height — what passed for medium height on a place like this, at least — Solid all the way through, the kind of mass that doesn't need speed because it has never needed to rely on it.
Its lower body was built for climbing, for crossing wet rock, for endurance over distance.
Water ran off the gill slits along its neck as they opened and closed, adjusting to the air.
It kept rising out of the water.
It shook itself. One full-body shudder. The spray caught the light.
It straightened to full height and stood there on the platform's edge, chest moving with slow steady breath, gill slits flexing. It was looking at me with the patient unhurried certainty. It did not share my surprise.
My legs had stopped working.
My brain, unhelpfully, was still going fine.
It saw me.
The head swung in my direction. Slow. Unhurried.
The eyes were pale, almost colorless. They found me the way a hunter's eyes latch onto their prey. Not searching, just arriving, like they already knew where to look.
Then it smiled.
I had seen bad smiles. I had dated a bad smile once, three years, and I had thought at the time that was the worst kind there was.
I was wrong.
This one started at the teeth and the teeth were the problem. Rows of them. Inward-curving, yellowed at the root, packed in so tight there was no space between, no gap, no mercy. The smile kept stretching further until it almost split his face open.
My eyes dropped.
I wish they hadn't.
The loincloth — the scrap of dark material at its hips — had a problem. Visible. Unmistakable. Hard and throbbing, removing any uncertainty about what it wanted.
It had found me.
The gill slits along its neck flared once, slow and deliberate.
Then it opened its mouth.
The voice was low and wet.
"Finally," it said. “We meet.”
The words were a starting pistol.
My legs began moving.
The scream came out before I decided to scream and I was already moving. The bone reef formations blurred past me.
I ran and ran and ran and hit the far edge of the hill and stopped. I had no other choice.
Water.
I spun left.
Water.
Right.
Water.
The tide had come in while I was sitting with my feelings and having my emotional breakthrough. The bone reef hill was an island now, a shrinking one, submerged on every side.
"Okay," I said out loud. To nobody. To myself. To the universe, which had a lot to answer for. "Okay."
I looked at the water.
Back at the creature already closing on me.
Looked at the water again.
The gill slits on its neck opened and closed.
It was smiling that disgusting grin again.
I backed up until my heel found the platform's edge and stopped. The water was right there. Something moved beneath the surface, long and dark, and I stepped forward again fast.
I had told Rhaek to leave.
I had told him I didn't care about the males.
I had said — out loud, with my whole chest — that I wanted to be alone.
What a fool I had been.
The creature took a slow step toward me.
I had nowhere to go.