18. Pippi
“You won’t let me drown, right?” Those words gurgled out of my throat as water danced over my toes. I’d climbed down the cliff, shed my shoes, rolled my jeans up to my knees, and had been prepared to step into the water, but now I had a major case of cold feet— literally .
Because the waves seethed and snarled at the intrusion to their space. The air thickened and the salt from the sea clogged my nose, making it hard to breathe. Even when a treacly breeze wandered through, my blouse and jeans were plastered to my skin, like slimy armor, guarding me from the cool air.
Why, why, why was I doing this?
“ Never,” Alistair said.
“Never what?”
“I’ll never let you drown. I’m right here. You’re safe.”
This said as another wave munched up the rock face, shooting a fizzing slosh of water over my feet and horking up a bit of sea gunk for good measure.
I made a noise halfway between a cry and a gag.
“Are you alright?” Alistair asked.
No.
I wasn’t sure if the sludgy stuff hugging my toes was seaweed, the guts of a dead fish, or something else entirely. And I didn’t want to know.
So I verified, “You’re still here, right?”
“Yes. Beneath you,” Alistair responded. “You’ll step off the rock and onto my head.” When I didn’t move, he added, “I like wearing you as a hat, it’s…fesh…fash… fashionable. ”
A surprised laugh bubbled out of my stomach, expelling some of the fear and doubt with it. “Well”—I licked my lips as the next wave receded—“this hat is decorated quite nicely for you tonight.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yup.” My foot plinked into the water, sinking down, down, almost to my knee before it connected with something coarse, and warm.
His head. “I’ve got my Levi’s on—and a vintage blouse.
” My second foot went in, scraping down next to the first. “I found it in a thrift store. It’s the real deal—still had tags on it and everything.
A Ralph Lauren, circa the early ‘90s. So, yeah. I’m always proud when I find stuff like this. I’m a bit of a thrifter nerd.”
“It looks… lovely. It’s almost the same as your hair. The color. R-r-run…” A soft jet of water plumed when he sighed.
“Red?” I supplied.
“Yes! Red. Like your hair. Both are lovely.”
The way he complimented me was quite lovely. Goodness. With that accent, and the way the words rolled off his tongue…er…well, would’ve rolled off, if he was speaking.
Lovely.
That was a dangerous sort of voice. With its deep timbre dropping almost to a purr, and the words spoken with such reverence—like I was truly the loveliest thing he’d seen in his life.
That was a voice that got girls in trouble.
“You’re a bit of a flirt, huh?” I asked.
“Flirt. Flirt? Flirt,” he chanted the word. “I’ve been called that before.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Is it a good thing? Or bad?”
“I guess we’re both gonna find out.” That sounded way more coy than I’d intended.
I was almost thankful when a wave blasted my knees, reminding me that I was standing in the ocean, on a sea beast’s head, and should not have been flirting.
“You’re safe, Pippi,” Alistair soothed.
I exhaled, trying to convince my brain of that, even as my heart leapt into my throat when the next wave leered at me. It was bigger than the others, and it looked mean, with the way it panted and steamrolled. Like the big bad wolf, storming over to huff and puff and blow the pig’s houses down.
“Can you take hold of my horn?” Alistair asked.
“Your—” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth when the wave rampaged closer.
“My horn,” Alistair repeated. “It should be beside you.”
My eyes fell to the right, where the tip of his horn curved out of the water, rising almost to my hip. I scooted over and grasped it for dear life, even as it made the scrape on my hand burn.
The wave, thankfully, huffed and puffed too much and winded itself by the time it hit the rocks. It made a great hiss as it splashed ice water up to my waist, but it was too weak to make a proper grab at my legs.
“Goodness, that’s cold.” My back tightened around a shiver. I swore the water temperature had dropped at least ten degrees since last night.
Or maybe my fevered skin just made it seem colder.
“I’m sorry,” Alistair said. And a punch of something went through my gut. A strange, flavored emotion that was a bit like sadness, joy, regret, disgust, and hope being sautéed in a big skillet.
I almost bent down to stroke the top of his head, to offer what little comfort I could. But I looked back at the cliffs first, to make sure my shoes had stayed out of the wave’s teeth, and I blanched.
Because the cliffs were several feet away.
Alistair had started swimming. So smoothly, I didn’t even feel the movement. But he was quick. Within seconds, the dark fog swallowed the cliffs.
I dug my fingers into the hard, almost fingernail-like texture of Alistair’s horn. “It’s easier for you to swim underwater.” It wasn’t a question, just me thinking out loud.
But he humored me with an answer. “It’s quicker. Although I don’t find it d-difficult to swim above the surface. It’s different.”
“I guess it would be. Yeah. Like someone doing freestyle versus a backstroke.”
He hummed, as if agreeing.
Wet, salty air walloped my cheeks as he glided through the inlet.
Stars above, this had to be a sight. With me zipping over the choppy current like Aladdin flying out of the Cave of Wonders on his magic carpet.
A deep and nervous, but highly amused, bray exploded out of me.
Alistair blanched. And then erupted in a trumpeting chuckle that shook his entire body, made the waves jiggle, and probably had the cliffs shuddering.
I clung to his horn but somehow, miraculously, didn’t feel frightened of the gyrating ocean. I was too busy fighting off my random giggle attack.
“Was that”—Alistair’s body vibrated again—“a laugh ?”
“No.” But another great, hiccupping guffaw rolled up my throat. “Okay, yes. But I could ask you the same question, Mr. Sonic Boom. How many fish did you send into hiding with that sound bomb?”
“A few.”
“I’ll bet.”
“How many humans do you f-frighten with that laugh?” he asked.
“None.”
“D-doubtful.”
I choked on the next chortle. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve heard a sound like that before,” he said. “When a w-w -whale was dying.”
And, well, since he liked my braying guffaw so much, I decided to give him an encore.
And he answered with another of his sonic booms.
“I’m sorry,” he added as I leaned against his horn, clutching at my aching stomach. “That was r-rude of me to speak of your laugh that way.”
“Are you kidding?” I wheezed. “That was…I haven’t laughed like that in”—I exhaled and gave my screaming stomach muscles a rub—“years. Probably. So thank you for that.”
“I wasn’t the reason you started laughing.”
“You sort of were. Because I was thinking about how ridiculou s I’d look right now if someone managed to peep me through their window. If they could see me through the fog, that is.”
Alistair paused. Then laughed again, softly this time. “It would be a s-sight, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, yes. I’d probably be the talk of everyone’s vacation. But then you’d be in trouble because you’d have the whole isle lining up for a ride.”
Alistair made a gushing sound, as though he’d chuckled around a mouthful of water. “So I should make sure to r-return you before daylight?”
“Yes. I guess so. When the clock runs out, the magic runs out, just like a proper fairy tale. Well, I mean…the magic isn’t going to run out. And this isn’t a fairy tale. But you get what I mean. I hope? Or…I’m probably talking gibberish.”
“Fairrrrryyyy tale. Fairy tale.” He harrumphed, then asked, “Like Cinderella?”
And I dang near slipped off his head when the shock shook me. “Yes! Like Cinderella. Exactly. Which…Goodness. I’m a little bamboozled that you know what Cinderella is.”
“I know most of it,” Alistair said. “It’s a l-l-love story. She has to return by…it wasn’t daylight… midnight. She has to return by midnight. And she loses a shhh-suh-shoe.”
“Yup, that covers all the bases. But… Oh !” I squealed when Alistair’s head lifted out of the water. It was a gentle movement, done in a way that wouldn’t jostle me, but the surprise of suddenly being several feet above the sea twisted my insides. “I guess we’ve arrived?”
He made an affirmative chuff and lowered his head, touching the edge of his snoot against a big flat ledge that wrapped around the grey-stoned cliffs like a balcony.
“Thank you. For the ride,” I said as I gingerly strolled down the length of his nose—trying to be mindful of where I placed my feet. Both so I didn’t impale my soles on the spikes framing his face, and so I didn’t accidentally smoosh a sensitive part of his nasal bone that would set him sneezing.
After hearing his laugh, I didn’t think the sea or the residents on the isle would survive an Alistair sneezing fit.
“It was my pleasure,” Alistair said. He drew away once I was securely on the ledge. And turning around to face him—seeing the way he towered, with his neck scaling halfway up the cliff walls, even when a big chunk of his body remained submerged beneath the water…
My heart faltered. He was certainly a formidable sight. And I saw more of him now, from this angle, than I had last night.
A thick blanket of dark green scales swaddled the top portions of his body, while lighter ones peppered the underside of his neck.
The translucent webbed dorsal curving along his back likely acted as a sail, lending him speed.
And his head, despite being twice the size of my entire body, was delicate looking, with its long, narrow-snooted shape.
Snakelike. A head capable of whipping quickly through the water to snatch its prey.
My mouth went bone dry. “I somehow forgot how big you are.”
He blinked.