CHAPTER 29
She twisted the gears for the lighthouse as the sun played near the horizon, and then, putting back on her sea-soaked clothes from the morning—which had dried but still had rippling lines of white salt on them—she headed back toward the rocks.
She didn’t see him at first, and the sadness that crashed over her heart was unreal. She didn’t blame Mr. Wilson; there was no way for the man to know she had had a special day planned with a mermaid that he had then ruined, but she felt robbed all the same.
She sat on the rock and dangled her feet in the water, hoping he’d come.
It was only a minute before a white head popped up some fifty feet away, and her smile was instantaneous. “Kallias!” she beamed, jumping to her feet and waving.
The corner of his lip twitched into a smile, but then his head dipped back under the water and he glided toward her with speed and grace she could only envy. He popped up beside her and she smiled.
“You look really good swimming,” she said. “Like really, really good.”
His smile was reserved. “Is he gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone.”
“You don’t usually have visitors,” he said, almost factually as if he knew.
“No,” she agreed. “Not normally. He’s a carpenter. That means he works with wood. My boat sunk that night so….Wait, now I can actually ask you. It was you who saved me, wasn’t it?”
He nodded.
“And you were trying to save the captain?”
“I was, but I think he was already dead. I thought maybe if I got him to the surface…” He frowned. “You humans don’t last very long underwater, do you?”
“No, maybe a few minutes at the very most, but if we’re surprised when we fall in, we might inhale and die right away.”
“I don’t like that,” he said, his face so overwhelmingly clearly miserable. “You…you should…” He stopped himself.
“What were you about to say? Stay away from the water?”
He nodded, looking down the whole time.
“Even if we ignore wanting to see you, I love the sea far too much to stay away,” she said, wishing he’d get closer so she could touch his cheek. He looked so sad. She put out her hand anyway and he seemed to gravitate toward it.
“I still don’t like it.”
“Do you need air or do you breathe like a fish?” she wondered.
“I need air,” he said, “but not like you.”
“Clearly.” She let out a rueful chuckle. “So how long can you go without needing it?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know time. You said it was about three hours between when you have to turn the light? Maybe a fourth of that?”
Wow, that was a big difference. But didn’t that mean he could still drown? “Wait, but if you need air, what happens if you don’t get it? Will you drown?”
“Drown?” he repeated. “That’s when humans die in water?”
“Yeah, it’s when we need to breathe but we inhale water instead.”
“I don’t know,” he said with a little half shrug. “I guess mermaids can drown. But something has to be keeping us down then—either when someone is too sick or weak to swim anymore or if they can’t swim anymore from a shark attack or something…or another mermaid.”
“Another mermaid?”
Darkness fell across his features so fierce that she could not pretend to ignore it. No, if she had to guess, with the intensity of that gaze, he had seen it.
But he had said he had never known his father and that he and his mother had traveled alone. So how? Unless it was his mom. She froze. Remembering his mother being attacked would make that expression make sense.
“Oh Kallias,” she murmured, reaching again for his face, but he backed up and instead caught her arm.
“You don’t need to look at me like that, Daria,” he said in a resigned way that she didn’t like.
“Was it…your mom?” she said anyway.
It was like he was wilting before her with every passing second. She had never seen him with misery before and it looked so out of place on his perfect face.
“I…I don’t know what happened. She told me they loved each other, but he was with a group of other women when we found him. It was our first time in the deeper ocean. I was weaned, but everyone said I was too young to be there.”
“I…you’re talking about your father?”
He looked so profoundly miserable she wished he would come closer so she could take more than his hand, but he held hers with a vengeance, as if even now he needed someone to hold on to.
“I wish he wasn’t.” His voice was so bitter it shocked her. “But I look just like him, down to the eyes.” He touched his own cheek with curved hands, as if at one time he had wished to claw them out.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted, hating to do so.
“No. I don’t either,” he said. “I didn’t know why she wanted to see him so badly.
She told me to stay far off so I didn’t hear what she begged him for.
I knew one of the other women seemed to say something—she had red hair and nails like claws—and she was laughing as he choked her.
That, I remember quite well. I don’t know why he did; all I know is that I raced to him but couldn’t get him to stop.
It was like hitting this.” He touched the rock beneath her.
“And then she was gone. Ironically, looking like him probably saved me that day, but I didn’t want to be saved. ”
“Oh Kallias,” she murmured.
“But now I’m glad I lived,” he continued, giving her the saddest smile she’d ever seen. It broke her heart in two.
“Can I hold you?” she asked.
“Are you really going to get as wet as me—” he started but she was already upon him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and dropping into the pitch-black sea. The water was cold but she didn’t care. She had to be with him.
He curled into her, his hands tightening around her back like he truly could never let go, and he nuzzled his face into the base of her neck.
“I swam away,” he mumbled into her. “I’ve never been back to the deep since. I…” She just held him as his breathing turned more ragged. “I’m such a failure.”
“No,” she instantly shushed. “You did the best you could. He’s the one at fault here. Not you.”
There was something wet on her shoulder but she didn’t mention it and instead just held him tighter.