28. Pippi
We didn’t talk much as Alistair cut through the sea. Carrying me on his head, even though I had offered to boot myself to his back.
He’d scoffed a gentle, “You’re my favorite hat, Pippi.”
So I’d taken my customary place atop his brow, holding on to his horn—or trying to, anyway. I shook so hard, my hands kept jittering off it.
He’ll worry himself sick when he comes back and finds the cottage empty.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
A soft rumble echoed through Alistair—almost like a purr. Not necessarily one of contentment. More an offer of comfort—a reminder that he was there.
I dug my nails into the coarse texture of his horn.
I’m a terrible person.
Once we left the inlet, and the magic forcing Alistair beneath the surface lifted, he raised his head above the water. But we still didn’t talk.
The rabid waves hissed and snarled, trying to stop our progression, and Alistair plowed right through them, while the fog bore down, thickening to a gummy mist.
Eventually, the waves conceded defeat and flattened themselves into sporadic lumps, but the fog refused to relinquish its hold. It snuffed out my sight and oozed into my lungs like molasses—I couldn’t see anything beyond the dark, scaly slope of Alistair’s head.
There was only sound out here, like the whoosh-sploshing of the water against Alistair’s bulk. His breathing, rhythmic and steady, mixed with my labored wheezing.
His movements slowed and another of those comforting purrs pulsated through him as he said, “Look up, Pippi. Can you see?”
I angled my chin back, expecting to find more warbling curtains of fog.
Instead…
“Oh!” The ragged gasp ripped from my lungs. Because stars glittered overhead.
Dull stars, of course. Ribbons of smog wove between the twinkling lights and snaked around the waning moon, diminishing most of their brilliance.
But, in that moment, after days of not being able to see the sky, the sight of those distant, twinkling lights had a big, slithering ball of emotion clogging the back of my throat.
I had never seen a starry sky that looked as gorgeous and as awe-inspiring as this one.
“This is the only place to see the lights,” Alistair said. “Sometimes even here they’re hidden. But this is a good night. And the orb…the moon is out.”
“It’s gorgeous , Alistair!”
“It is,” he murmured. “ Lovely. ”
Oh goodness.
He had to use that word, huh?
Heat scorched my cheeks.
And, well, I’d been fixing to ask this.
“Can you…” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, and I had to work to pry it free. “Can you… peep people’s dreams? Or… ” Gosh, this wasn’t coming out right. “ Give them dreams?”
“No?” Confusion wrinkled Alistair’s voice.
“It’s just…I had a dream last night…about the stars…and you ?—”
“And me?”
“—and then tonight you surprise me with this. Which, it’s a great surprise.
I love it. Truly. I’ve been really missing the sky.
And I’ve always enjoyed sitting under the stars on a nice night.
Jackson usually doesn’t, but…that’s not the point.
I’m so very grateful you’ve brought me here.
But it made me wonder about the dream. Y’know? ”
If the poor guy wasn’t confused before, he certainly was now.
“I think so,” Alistair said slowly.
“I’m sorry. Babbling.” I ran a hand through my hair, wincing when my sweaty palm stuck to the curls. “It’s what I’m good at.”
He quieted for a heartbeat. Two.
Some very loud heartbeats. My organ had a motor on it that would put a monster truck to shame.
“I…You dreamed of me ?”
He said this kindly, but with a flirtatious lilt.
“Yes.” I had to smile. “I dreamed of you .”
He made an interested whuffle. “I hope I wasn’t being…na…n-n-n-n- naughty.”
How did his brain go right to that?
How?
Was I that obvious?
“No comment,” I muttered.
He laughed. “Oh dear, I was n-naughty!”
“I didn’t say that!”
“But you didn’t not speak it.”
“I…We…you know … Do you? Did you… make me dream that?” An uncomfortable, viscid heat seeped under my armpits. Please no. This would be…the invasion of privacy…
A soft, pacifying emotion fluttered in my chest.
“No, Pippi.” Alistair’s voice lost all its playful sparkle. It was earnest now. “I don’t…I can’t …make you s-see dreams. Even if I can… could , I wouldn’t. Your dreams are safe.”
I exhaled, blowing some of the tension out. “Okay. Good. I didn’t think you did. But…thank you.”
He hummed, and said, in a voice nearly as hesitant as mine had been, “I also dreamed, though.”
“You did?”
“Yes.”
“Of me?”
“Yes.”
“Goodness. And you’re sure you didn’t?—”
“No. I p-p-promise, Pippi. I wouldn’t.”
“Okay. I believe you. But…huh. Interesting. Maybe there was something in the air last night? With all the magic in this place…I dunno. Can magic scramble dreams like that?”
“Perhaps,” Alistair said, in a tone that suggested he had no flipping clue but was trying to reassure me all the same.
“Hmmm, okay. Now I have to ask, were you naughty in your dream?”
“No.” A shudder ripped through him. “But you were.”
And those three little words? Spoken in that husky accent? And the shudder he’d spoken them around?
Stars. Above.
Small, but persistent, tendrils of arousal tugged at my belly, nearly making me squirm.
A terrible human being.
That was what I was.
Jackson, my boyfriend , would worry his brains out when he found me missing, and I was getting all hot and bothered imagining what naughty things I did in Alistair’s dream.
Guilt took a big, bloody chaw out of my heart. As I hemorrhaged, lightheadedness rushed over me. My knees buckled.
“Pippi?” Alistair called when I plopped on my bum.
“I’m okay,” I said.
But I wasn’t.
Not really.
I tucked my knees up to my chest, trying to physically hold myself together.
“Would you like to speak… talk ?” Alistair asked.
“In a minute.” Right now, I had to fight to keep my guts in place.
“Okay.”
I pressed my forehead to my knees.
Alistair made low, thrumming noises. Reminding me, again, that he was there. But he otherwise let silence fall over us.
And the motions of his body, as he bobbed his head in time with the waves, combined with his gentle noises were comforting. Like being rocked to sleep, smooshed safely in the arms of someone you loved, while they murmured reassurances in your ear.
Which was a thought that set me crying. Again.
Because it made me realize I’d never had that kind of loving security with Jackson. Or anyone, really. I’d had to go halfway across the world and perch on the head of a sea beast to find those kinds of feelings.
How pathetic.
“Pippi?” Alistair whispered.
“I’m sorry.” I wiped a hand over my face. “I’m lousy company tonight, aren’t I?”
“You could never be lou-lousy,” Alistair said. “I only wish I could help.”
“This helps, actually. Being here. With you. It’s helped.
Even though it doesn’t look it.” I scrubbed more tears away and laughed.
Bitterly. “My mom used to say tears were how our souls shed their scars. I guess I’ve got a lot of scars.
And they’re not even…I mean…” I sighed. Chewed on my lip, rolling it between my teeth until the pinprick of pain plugged the worst of the flood.
“I said I wanted to make tonight about knowing each other. But I’m not always good at.
..” I waved my arm over myself, remembered he couldn’t see me since I was above his eyes, and amended, “I’m not good at talking about me.
So, this is gonna be different. I guess.
A story. Maybe if I make it all a little less personal, it won’t be so weird. Y’know?”
“I think I do,” Alistair said.
I sighed. Got my nerves in a big ole snarl, trying to figure out where to start. But then I felt Alistair. His calm. And I grasped on to it, suckling at his emotions, leeching off them, until my own stilled.
And then I knew where I had to begin.
“There was this girl once,” I said. “She had young parents. Her mom’d only been seventeen and her dad two months past his eighteenth birthday when she was born.
They’d loved each other then, when they were young and idealistic.
But as the years passed, they drifted apart.
And they fought. Constantly. Stewing in their own bitterness.
And they pulled the girl into the pot to stew along with them.
Because she could feel their emotions, and to be constantly boiling in anger and hate and disappointment—it wore on her.
She did anything she could think of to turn the burner off.
Singing, dancing, making her parents cards and drawings, acting out scenes from her mom’s favorite shows—even though the girl hated those shows—because her mom used to put them on to drown out the sounds of fighting.
The girl tried everything . And she had some success, at first. When her parents focused on her, they calmed.
But eventually it stopped working, and nothing the girl did helped anymore. ”
It was easier talking like this. Pretending I was talking about a fictional girl in a fictional drama.
It was easier to pretend this wasn’t my life.
“The girl’s parents finally went their separate ways.
But they’d inflicted wounds upon each other that would never heal.
Her once fanciful mom turned bitter and sad.
Her father decided he’d rather pretend he’d never had a daughter.
But the girl kept trying to please them both.
Because that was all she knew how to do.
“She went through high school and worked her tush off to get straight A’s, and started looking at colleges, even though she didn’t want to.
She had other dreams. To explore the world.
Write a book. Live a life for herself for the first time.
But her mother, who’d been so bitter for so long, was proud and boastful of her daughter going to college.
And the girl liked when the people around her were happy.
So she forsook her dreams and went to school. ”