Rosie
Running away from home may not have been the best idea, but I had to.
My parents don’t understand what’s coming.
I’ve tried to prepare them, but they are too wrapped up in each other to care, not that I blame them.
It must be glorious to be mated for life, never having to worry if your partner loves you.
It’s inherently ingrained that they do. Come hell or high water, they always will.
I left because he needs me. The man who’s not a man needs me.
I still don’t know who he is after all these years, but I know that he needs me.
He grows more and more restless each day, but he doesn’t know I am coming for him.
How could he? The box in which he’s kept is so deep in the ocean, I am not even sure I’ll survive finding him, but I have to try—my blood hums at the thought of dying for him like it’d be a privilege.
I am pretty sure I’ve dreamt of him every night of my life, but I didn’t start remembering the dreams until I was seven when my Aunt Sally married Tridenton, the new king of the Vanne tribe of which I am a member.
The dreams became more vivid, eventually sexual, as I got older.
Being half human-half mermaid has its advantages, but I have never felt more hindered by age in all my life.
At eighteen, I am not yet a woman in any way that matters, but I have felt like one for years now.
I’ve seen things that haven’t come to pass that would give most people gray hair.
Flying from London to New Zealand shouldn’t have been this hard, but after twenty-three hours and forty minutes on a plane with a brief layover in Singapore, I am standing in Auckland looking for a way to get to Great Barrier Island.
All the signs in my dreams point me to that particular island.
He’s under it. I don’t know how he’s under it, but he’s under it.
A ferry, leaving in ten minutes, is my best bet.
I purchase a ticket and settle in for the damn near five hours I’ll be on the boat.
I seek out my hotel as soon as I get off the boat at Port Fitzroy.
After a small nap, I am refreshed and ready to find him.
Given my genealogy, I can breathe underwater for hours before my human side wins out and needs oxygen.
Leaving everything behind in the hotel room, I throw on a tankini and walk over to the beach.
I say a little prayer to Amphitrite, the long-suffering wife of Poseidon and goddess of the sea, for her help before wading into the balmy, undulating, merciless, blue-green depths of my home away from home.
As weird as it sounds, each time I step into the salty, wild wonder that is the sea, it feels different.
It feels like what I imagine the caress of a lover will feel like, and I don’t know what that says about me.
Without wasting another second, I dive down and wait a few seconds before I am pulled in the right direction.
Frantically, I swim and swim down deeper and deeper until I think that I am about to explode, but then I find it—the bottom of the ocean.
I stopped seeing fish about two thousand feet ago, but I’ve found him.
I wasn’t expecting an actual box, but I pull back when I touch the solid metal of it.
It sizzles. In the freezing, swirling darkness of the deep, the box is somehow hot.
Frantically, I swim around the box, looking for the opening.
The bottom is firmly planted to the ground, so much so that seaweed and other aquatic plant life are growing up the structure. The sides are smooth.
I swim up to the top and find what I can only describe as a hatch.
My fingers grip the handle, but it won’t budge.
Pulling harder, I feel it start to give, so I pull it even harder.
It finally opens. The magic surrounding this place must be great because the water doesn’t fill the opening.
Leaving the hatch open, I drop down into the room.
It’s warm and dry like the heat is on. The oxygen in the room fills my lungs and feels so good.
This place appears to be bigger on the inside, which makes me giggle and think of a TV show my aunt and I used to watch about an alien time traveler, but that’s not what’s important right now.
I check room by room until I find a man sitting in a chair by a large fire. I’ve given up wondering how physics knows no bounds in this cube.
“Excuse me, sir?” I say, causing the man to jump. MATE! MATE! MATE! My brain screams at me over and over. I already knew that he had to be, I wouldn’t have been able to find him otherwise, but now my brain has caught up with my heart, I feel like I can’t breathe.
“You?” he asks, looking up from the book in his hands. His accent is hard to place, Old, old Scotland maybe, but I am entranced by whatever it is. “How did you get in here? Fuck, I am dreaming again.” He closes his eyes, frowning.
“You’re not dreaming, I promise. I found you.”
“Who are you?” he asks, standing from his chair. He moves closer to me until he is about an inch away from me. He’s large. Too large. He looks like an American football player but somehow even larger. He has to be at least seven feet tall, maybe taller, but muscular, big, brawny. Mine.
“Rosalie Beal. You?”
“Orrin, Protector of the Skies and Sea, at your service, my mate,” he says, bowing to me. My core clenches and wakes the fuck up for the first time ever.
“Orrin,” I repeat, the name rolling off of my tongue like a prayer. Before I know what hits me, his lips are on mine, and I forget everything.
Sometime later, I couldn’t tell you how long; I come back to my senses.
He hasn’t claimed me yet, but he will. Knowing what’s coming makes me want to seal us in this cube, but it’s not meant to be.
With my next breath, it suddenly becomes clear to me.
Everything I've been gleaning toward all these years. ..
Dracneus, goddess of pain, will know that I’ve let him out of his nautical prison, and we must be ready.