CHAPTER 22
“I don’t know if the men stay with one person until death or not,” he said. “But they don’t stay by shore with the mom. Or…” He frowned. “Well, I don’t know. They could. Mine didn’t. I’ve seen groups before and they had men. Big groups. Like ten or twenty.”
He glanced off to the sea for a moment as if the memories were locked in its depths. “My mom and I were alone. No other family. I don’t know why. She never said.” He sighed. “I may not be best to tell you about mermaids.”
She laughed. “Who better than an actual mermaid?”
His own smile was sad. “My mom said mermaids belong in the deep. That’s where the better food is, but she was always afraid. Or I thought so. At least, I was afraid.”
He looked down and away, but whether it was in thought or sadness was hard to tell. “A good mermaid, she said, is like the…hmm.” He frowned. “The big gray ones that jump and play. They need air like us and stay with their babies too.”
“Dolphins?”
He shrugged, unable to tell her if that was right or not. “Okay, dolphins. Mermaids should move like dolphins. She also said it’s too dangerous to stay by one shore too long. Your kind…” His voice died off and her heart hammered.
“Please stay by this shore for a long time,” she said. “No one else is out here and I’ll never hurt you.”
He smiled. “Is that an invitation?”
“It’s more. A request.”
He laughed. “Good. I don’t want to go.”
Such a simple sentence made her heart beat quicker, and almost as if he wanted to torture her, he came closer, between her legs now, bridging that empty space between them until there were only inches.
“I want to be like the humans for this,” he said.
“Oh?”
“I want to stay forever. Like happily ever after.”