Chapter Two Mercer
It’s the worst day.
Well, no, it isn’t, it’s just... An annoying day.
The beach is full of couples and families. Love is in the air. That whole “come for the harmony, stay for the happy ending” thing the town talks about is really starting to make sense, but I’m not sure I’ll be sticking around for it.
Even though that’s what my cousin told me I should try to do.
“Sir! Sir, can you get your son away from the water? Thanks!” I call to one of the human dads on the beach, who is so busy ogling his partner’s bikini-clad body that he’d almost let their little guy abandon his sandcastle in favor of attempting to swim.
Humans. So frustrating.
I know, I know, the Great Revelation has made human and monster relations smooth for the most part. A lot of monsters rejoice over the fact that we’re largely accepted, even though there are still pockets of prejudice in the world, just like there are against literally every other group of people.
But humans frustrate me so much when they have these blessings, these beautiful families, these healthy kids—and they’re so casual about it.
They take it for granted.
Don’t treasure it and protect it. I’m not even talking about letting your kid wander off near the water’s edge (although that’s enough to give me an ulcer), I’m talking about how some men and women just tear through partners like they’re on a personal quest to see how many hearts they can break.
I need to calm down.
“Samantha? Mind if I take my lunch break?” I ask Samantha, my human colleague, a college freshman home for the summer.
She looks up from her phone for a second with puffy red eyes. “Huh?”
Poseidon give me strength.
Actually, no. Not him. Modern krakens typically try not to mention our ancient Greek deity bloodlines, or the centuries we spent wrecking ships (or being blamed for shipwrecks we never caused) and philandering, and let’s not even talk about the whole tentacle thing.
“Samantha, you’re not the primary guard at the moment, but you’re still supposed to be actively scanning if you’re in the chair or near the water’s edge.
No phones. No scrolling,” I snap. If she wants to make herself cry by watching those videos of kids getting surprised with kittens and puppies, she needs to do it when she’s not in charge of people’s lives.
Samantha looks up at me, looks down at her screen, and makes a wet, squeaky sound, and points helplessly at her phone before she bursts into tears.
Was I harsh? Living alone for the last decade hasn’t made me exactly.
.. sociable. “Samantha, I know how touching it is when a child receives a pet. Why, when I was three, my mother gave me my first sea otter. Spark, I named him. But I wouldn’t watch moving videos of otters at play or kittens springing out of Christmas boxes while on duty,” I say, forcing myself to sound compassionate.
I think. At least, I was trying to sound compassionate.
Samantha’s scrunched-up face leaves me with doubts that I’ve succeeded.
“It’s Bradley!” she wails.
“Your dog?”
“That’s Barney! Bradley is my boyfriend. Was my boyfriend. We promised we’d stay together even though he went home to Pennsylvania to work at his parents’ vineyard over the summer!”
I blink and try to think about what I know of Pennsylvania, the state just south of us. “They have vineyards there?” I ask.
Samantha just wails louder. Heads are turning.
“Um. Well. Pennsylvania isn’t so very far. A long drive or a short flight,” I attempt to soothe.
“We didn’t even make it two weeks before he sent me a text about long distance not working out, and he thinks we should see other people. He’s not even sure he’s coming back to school in the fall!” Samantha swings her phone wildly in my direction as if eager to show me proof of the terrible texts.
“Um. Uh.” My cautious noises turn to alarm as Samantha walks closer and closer, and then she’s sobbing on my chest. “ Oh... Oh, dear. Okay.” I pat her back with the tips of my fingers and tell my tentacles to behave as they start inching near her ankles, intent on dragging Samantha off of me.
“He’s such a jerk.”
“I see that.”
“I hate him. I love him.”
“That seems confusing.” I was trained to deal with shock, near-drowning, hypothermia, sunburn, even jellyfish stings...
Hysterical teenage co-workers are not in the Harmony Glen Lifeguard Manual. Break-ups are not in the manual, and they really should be, because krakens avoid them. Seriously.
Samantha blows her nose on my shirt and then goes, “Hey. You’re kind of hot for an old guy with too many legs. Do you work out?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Any of that.” Old guy? Too many legs! You wouldn’t like it if I said humans have way too few!
“No, no! I could send Bradley a picture of us cuddled up on the beach, and that’d really piss him off.”
“Go. Home. Go home, Samantha. Take a few days off. You need time to process. Grieve.” Yes, that would be ideal. Ideally, far from my now sob-stained shirt and comments about my tentacles, which are just magnificent, thank you very much.
Samantha hesitates, twirling her long brown ponytail in a nervous gesture.“But there are always supposed to be two—”
“I’ll make an exception. This is an emergency,” I say, pushing her away with a firm but gentle smile, before turning in the other direction and whispering, “And you’re out of your mind.”
It’s not until eight, when the darkness has almost completely taken over the sky, that I get the break I wanted. The public beach area is “closed,” and lifeguards are off duty. Water beings and their friends might still be active in the lake, but that’s a matter of “swim at your own risk.”
I have a cave under the water that I call home—at least for now, and a locker in the guards’ changing area where I keep my more “human” belongings, like my cell phone and non-perishable groceries.
The beach has a few stragglers, couples holding hands, teenagers giggling and eating popcorn...
It’s a wonderful scene—if you’re part of it. I sit in the changing area, lean my head against the wall, and look at my phone for several long minutes. With a deep breath, I dial, not sure if it’s going to help.
Calder picks up on the second buzz.
“Cousin!”
“Hi, Calder.”
“Janet, it’s Mercer!”
Janet. His human wife.
“Hi, Mercer!” she calls from a distance.
“Excuse her for not coming over. She’s got the babies in the pool.”
Babies. My nephews (technically little cousins, but I’m pleased to accept the honorific of uncle), little hybrid kraken-humans who (according to the onslaught of photos I receive every week) have tentacles and legs, breathe oxygen through lungs or gills interchangeably, and are utterly adorable.
They’re baby miracles in delicate shades of grayish blue like their dad, with their mother’s warm brown eyes.
“That’s fine,” I finally say, realizing my thoughts obstructed my mouth again. They do that quite often, especially since I’ve had years with relatively little conversation in the open ocean.
“Are you okay? How do you like Harmony Glen? How are you settling in?”
“It’s lovely. It’s peaceful. I’m settling in nicely, as well as I can in two weeks, anyway.
The people are incredibly accepting.” I turn my head when I hear a low, enraptured moan, and I catch a glimpse of a wolf-like creature rustling the bushes at the edge of the beach, disappearing into the darkness with his human mate.
“A little too accepting,” I mutter, mostly to myself.
“You sound like you’ve got the blues. No pun intended.”
I roll my eyes and push one teal blue hand back through my dark locks. “Humans are so difficult,” I hiss.
“But worth it. And let’s face it, we’re no picnic. We need a pool or some body of water every day, we’re hell to fit for pants, and holding down a nine-to-five in most offices would just be murder.”
“Ha. Ha. No, I understand that a human and a kraken would have to work hard to make a life together. I’m just having a hard time remembering why I allowed you to talk me into leaving the ocean for a landlubber civilization.”
“It’s because you said you were almost forty and still hadn’t found a mate, and you were bragging about our particular clan—you know, how we’re the best kind of krakens, able to adjust to salt or fresh water, able to withstand a wide range of temperatures, able to live on land for the most part, or able to live entirely in the water. ”
“Calder—”
My cousin continues, flippancy in his voice. “You were basically saying that in terms of kraken males, you were a totally baddie. A whole snack.”
“I never said I was bad. I’m not bad. I’m striving to save lives!”
“It means you’re a desirable mate and you were moaning like a bitch because you hadn’t met a female that wanted you in the whole damn Atlantic, Arctic, or even the Gulf of Mexico!” Janet hollers back. “You were considering swimming around Gibraltar to check out the chicks in the Pacific, remember?”
“She didn’t have to call me a bitch,” I mumble. I also don’t point out that in the last two decades, I’ve been in literally every ocean—and still no luck. “What about the babies? Should they hear such profanity?”
“They’re only eight months old, Mercer. They won’t repeat it, and Janet’s doing good for someone with chronic pain and an army background. We only made one mortgage payment with the swear jar this year. Last year, we paid for the entire nursery.”
“You two... Are awesome.” They are. They are truly what I wish I could have.
I want someone I can love in spite of all of her flaws, and someone who would love me in spite of all of mine.
I never boasted that I was perfect, no matter what Calder hints.
I was only saying I would be compatible with so many different types of krakens, because there are so many slight variations among us over the centuries.
But Calder and I can live in oceans or lakes, we understand most human customs and can live among them, and yet we are still capable of living in the ocean and surviving with hunting and our wits. ..
I could fit with almost any female kraken, in almost any clan the world over.
But that hasn’t helped me find a mate.
“Look, man, what I said still goes. If she’s not in the water—maybe she’s on land. And you can’t find a better, more open place than Harmony Glen to spend time with humans and see if you’d like living with them. If you’d like living with one human in particular.”
I can practically hear Calder’s eyebrows waggling with suggestiveness.
“Anyway, if it doesn’t work, what’s one summer?”
“Nothing much, I suppose.” I drop my voice, secretly worried Janet will overhear. “Is it something about me? I know a lot of krakens these days stay with clans, or come into the human cities, and I just kept to myself after Mom died—”
“No, Merc, I don’t think it’s anything to do with that. You were never chatty. You and Aunt Maris spoke when you needed to speak. You showed love in a lot of different ways. Mostly non-wordy ways.”
“Hey! I talk!”
“I know, I know. Look, I know if I ever need anything, you’ll be there.
There’s nothing about you that’s ‘wrong,’ Merc.
You have your friends. You have me. If you haven’t met the right woman, it’s not because you’re a taciturn loner who doesn’t know how to communicate with people. Or something like that.”
“You might be making things worse,” I sigh. “You might be making things better. I can’t tell. Also—taciturn, Mr. Dictionary? You show off.”
“I was going to say grumpy-ass, but—”
“Ah! Put a dollar in the jar, Calder. And come and get your boys. I’m pooped,” Janet calls.
“I’m not grumpy!”
“That’s why I didn’t say it. That, and not wanting to get busted for cursing. You’re not grumpy. That would imply you’re in a bad mood. You’re not, are you?”
Not all the time. I’m just not... happy.
“It’s hard to be cheerful when you keep wanting something and every time you look around, you see someone else who has it.
Half the time, they have it, and they take it for granted.
This girl that I work with... Admittedly, she’s young, but her boyfriend broke up with her. Over a text message.”
“Ow.”
“Yes! And one minute she was bawling on my chest, saying she loved him and she hated him, and the next, she wanted us to pose for pictures to send to him, to make him jealous.” I rub my forehead. “Human relationships...”
“Ah ah ah. Krakens have a sordid love’em and leave ‘em history, and you know that. That whole descendants of the gods who couldn’t keep it in their togas.”
“I have a millennium of strikes against me, and humans have the same.”
“And despite literally thousands of strikes in our collective pasts, we find love. We find the one who makes it all work. You won’t make those selfish, stupid mistakes, Mercer. Okay? Have a little faith in yourself.”
“I’m trying,” I sigh. “Thank you for the pep talk.”
“Anytime—except this minute. I have to go. Your nephews are outmaneuvering their mama. Dad to the rescue!”
I smile. Dad to the rescue.
I could be the one coming to the rescue all the time, but it won’t be as a father, or a husband, or even a lover. Just a lifeguard. It’s noble work, but I don’t think it’s enough to satisfy the empty spot in my heart.
“Night, Calder. Hug the boys and Janet for me.”
I hang up and put the phone and my other belongings back in the locker before sliding across the beach and down to the water, tentacles leaving curving tracks in the sand.
Well. At least tomorrow will be better, I tell myself. Samantha won’t sob on me. Or call me an ‘old guy.’
Stupid teenage breakups. Not mature enough for a lifetime of love. Why, in our clan’s tradition, we could be separated by miles of ocean, by continents, even, and we’d never, ever...
I stop ranting in my head and shake myself as I glide deep into the water, heading towards the little lair I’ve made.
Man. I really am a grumpy-ass.