Chapter 10
Iris
“Morning, Willow,” Iris called.
She crouched down to overturn one of the garden stones in the courtyard behind their apartment building. A full-body shiver racked her system at the scurry of a dozen little pill bugs. They left one in their wake, curled up on its side, long dead.
Iris gagged as she reached down toward it.
“I think, at this point, if the bug boards aren’t working yet, they’re not going to,” Willow said. She walked over to her tree, lovingly stroking the hanging leaves.
“He looks pale each time he has to pass them by. It might be wearing him down.”
“How many are there now?”
“Four. It nearly takes up the whole hallway. Mostly spiders. There’s an almost alarming number of dead spiders around the building.”
“Something to bring up at the next tenants’ meeting,” Willow said, walking over toward the parlor palm she’d rescued from the lobby, where it had been dying a slow and preventable death. “Are you feeling better?” she asked it as she poured water from a pot of rainwater she’d collected.
“Do all the plants talk back?” Iris asked. She dropped the dead bug into a container she carried around in her bag for just that purpose. But, yeah, she was starting to agree with Willow; the bugs and teeth didn’t seem to be working.
The medical devices weren’t doing much either. Though Finn had had a visceral reaction when she’d held up a speculum and spread it while telling him what it did.
She was seriously debating starting the creepy doll collection. She’d only been putting it off because she also found them almost unbearably unnerving.
“Some are chattier than others,” Willow told her. “And it’s always the ones with far too many opinions on me that never shut up. I used to dance in the moonlight with all the willows. Now, I get unsolicited dating advice from a ficus in the dentist’s waiting room.”
“Is that one happy you saved it?”
“It was pretty fond of that guy who lives in 8D. And since he never comes back here, it’s a little salty about its new—much healthier—home.
I’ve told you time and time again that I will bring you back into the lobby when the appropriate lights and misters arrive,” she told the plant.
“Anyway, how goes the engagement sabotage?”
Yeah, while she probably shouldn’t have told Selene about the plan, she definitely shouldn’t have told someone living in the same building, who was also fond of Finn.
The beauty of Willow, though, was how well-grounded she was. It was in her nature to stay steady and neutral, no matter what chaos erupted around her.
Besides, after the third time she caught Iris looking sick as she collected dead bugs, she almost had to give the dryad an explanation.
“Finn hasn’t been home much this week,” Iris confessed.
She went ahead and ignored the little sloshing sensation in her stomach as she said that.
Surely, the thought of Finn simply made her sick to her stomach.
Nothing else made any sense. “He and Henry have been holed up researching and practicing.”
“Oh, right. He has that big debate coming up.”
He did.
And he looked unusually stressed about it. She was so used to the man being nearly unflappable that seeing him, well, flapped, was interesting.
It gave her a small glance into the man himself, not the facade.
“Where’s Monty?” Willow asked as she dropped down onto the ground by her tree.
“Oh, well, he is off to brunch with a guy whose girlfriend is cousins with someone who is married to some big-time reality TV producer.”
I am on my way, Iris! On my way, I tell you. I can practic-ally taste the sweet, flaky flavor of success and calculated flattery.
“I, for one, can’t wait to see him get his first coming attractions poster.”
“Right? He will be insufferably smug,” Iris agreed.
“But no one could say he didn’t bust his feathered butt to get to the top.”
That was very true.
As much as he claimed to be both her emotional support pelican and her Head of Surface Affairs, he’d been about as MIA as Finn had been the past week.
To be fair, he always invited her on his little outings. Then lectured her about her preference to stay home to read and swim.
Her old friend was starting to slip away from her, little by little.
She took for granted how much she’d had him to herself for most of her life.
Her constant, caring companion. She selfishly never stopped to consider that he might have his own dreams and goals, that his connection to her—and her steadfast determination to remain in the sea—had been holding him back.
As much as she missed his nearly ever-present figure in her world (especially in this new world), she knew she had to let him go.
She had to be happy for him and his new adventures. Even if she felt a pang at his absence.
“I have a yoga class today, if you want to come,” Willow said, unfolding from her spot under her tree. Iris could swear her skin looked more glowing and her hair more green just from being near the tree.
“After falling on my face the last time? No, thank you. Outside of the water, I fully respect gravity and the hold it has on this form,” Iris said, waving down at herself. “I think I’m heading to the bookstore today.”
“Oh, fun. Have a good time.”
She technically still had one book from the first trip to read. She was telling herself that she was being proactive, going to get more before she ran out. But the fact of the matter was, she was almost soul-crushingly lonely.
As vast as the ocean was, she had never been truly alone. There were the other merfolk, sure, but also millions and millions of other creatures.
In her steel, cement, and glass surface prison, with Finn gone with Henry, and Monty rubbing shoulders with the latest Who’s Who, it was just Iris and Checkers in the apartment all day and most of the night.
Well, Iris, Checkers, and all the dead bugs.
And as much as she adored the cat—and his innate ability to sense her tide-touched moods, coming to purr on her lap or make biscuits on her—he wasn’t someone she could talk to. Or, at least, expect a response from.
It wasn’t just the silence that unsettled her. It was the stillness. The ocean always moved. Even when she was alone, the current would tug at her, would whisper reminders that she belonged to something fast, real, and alive.
Here, the air didn’t speak. It just sat. Thick and quiet.
And there were only so many books she could read before her thoughts turned inward. Before she started wondering what would happen if she never managed to go back.
She was just about to make her way back inside the building when a loud caw sounded from above.
“Go away,” she grumbled at the seagull. She was not in the mood for her mother’s spies.
“What do you want?” she snapped when he just kept squawking at her.
Glancing up, she noticed a small box hanging from his beak.
“A present?” She stood up and reached to take the package from the bird.
“Thanks,” she called, but the bird was already flying off.
She wasn’t sure if she was excited or nervous. Coming from her mother, there was no way to tell if it would be something thoughtful or some sort of warning.
When she reached inside the box, though, it was Shelly’s swirly handwriting on the note:
I stole two of Mother’s shellphones. Give me a call. I need to hear everything.
Shellphones weren’t common in the ocean. The magic that created them was incredibly rare, so most mermaids accepted that only the very influential would be able to make calls to one another from across the ocean.
Even though her mother used shellphones almost daily, Iris had never been allowed to even touch them.
This particular shellphone was a giant pink conch shell.
Iris pulled it close, taking a long sniff of it, smelling salt and seaweed and home. Tears pricked her eyes and it took her a long moment to blink them back before she finally pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hello? Shelly?”
“Iris!” Her sister’s voice shrieked in her ear, making Iris yank the shell away from her ear.
“You are going to be in so much trouble for this.”
“Only if I get caught. Mother was just gifted a new shellphone from one of the sirens. It’s a worn snail shell.
Very sleek. It’s hideous. Mother loves it, though.
She won’t notice these two are missing. And now we can talk.
So, spill. What is the city like? Have you met a vampire yet?
Are they as beautiful as everyone claims?
What’s your favorite food? Favorite place to visit?
Tell me everything. I’m drowning in a sea of sameness.
I’m living vicariously through you right now. ”
Iris’s lips curved up even as her heart ached.
She was so homesick it was hard to breathe.
“I’ve seen vampires from afar. And, yes, stunning.
Hot pretzels are basically the best food ever invented.
But pizza is a close second. Oh, and pasta.
There are so many ways the humans have learned to make pasta.
You have to come visit sometime and we will taste-test them all. ”
“I’m worried Mother will never let me come. But maybe if we can put it under the guise of some sort of human wedding tradition. So, what have you been exploring?”
“Um, well, I really like the bookstore.”
“The bookstore? You have this big, sprawling city full of untold marvels—both human and otherwise—and you’ve been spending your time in a stuffy old bookstore?”
Shelly had never understood her sister’s love of the written word. There was something oddly comforting about the fact that it hadn’t changed.
“Well, if it helps, the bookstore is run by a witch. She’s hilarious.”
“I’m not at all jealous,” Shelly said. There was a dramatic sigh on the other end of the shellphone. “So, tell me about Finn.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Oh, come on. You are living with him. A human. A human man.”
“I think you’re imagining it to be a lot more interesting than it is.”