I can’t leave her. I can’t live without her. What do I do?
“Moby?” Darla whispers, her cool fingertips stroking down the side of my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to get you back to the resort before…” I swallow a fist sized lump. “I don’t want you driving back in the dark alone.”
“Alone?” She sits up in my lap, her supple body kissed by the pink sunset, making her glow like a fallen angel. The ethereal sight of her only worsens my condition. As does the tears creating a sheen in her eyes. “Oh…y-you decided to shift back into a whale?”
I shake my head. “As if I could everdecideto leave you, little human.”
“Then I don’t understand why you’re leaving.” She turns in my lap, wrapping her legs around my hips, her arms squeezing my neck. Clinging. “Don’t go.”
“Darla,” I say thickly, the pain in my chest intensifying. “I wasn’t totally honest about the terms of my curse. It’s true that I only have twenty-four hours, but…it’s not up to me whether or not I stay a human.”
“Whose decision is it?”
“No one,” I lie, a sour taste flooding my mouth. Better to lie than make her responsible for sending me back to the ocean forever, right? If I ask her to confess that she loves me, and she doesn’t, she will have to shoulder the blame of my departure. Lord, I don’t want that. “I am going to shift soon.”
“No,” she sobs, her tears dripping onto my neck. “Don’t leave, Moby.”
I’ve never felt closer to dying. “Listen to me. I am going to find the sea witch and beg to return. I will agree to whatever terms she gives me. Iwillmake it back to you.”
“A sea witch who doles out curses doesn’t seem very reasonable to me,” she whispers in a rush. “I’m scared.”
A trapped bellow makes the insides of my throat ache.
My little human is scared and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Agony is dismantling me, limb by limb.
“I need to get you back to the resort,” I say, standing up with Darla tight to my chest. “I need to make sure you’re safe.”
She nods, reluctantly, taking a deep, if shaky, breath.
“That’s my brave girl,” I choke, stumbling for the jet ski.Don’t think about the separation to come. Not yet. Get her to the safety of the resort. Afterward, I will figure out my next move. The fates can’t keep me from my love, now that I’ve found her, right?
I’m going to tell Darla that I love her, before I leave.
I won’t explain that a returned declaration will break the curse. I won’t force her into saying something she doesn’t mean yet. But she needs to know my feelings run endlessly deep. She needs to know I will do anything and everything to return to her side.
Go.
Move.
As soon as I deposit Darla on the jet ski and she sets about retying her bikini top, I start to feel funny. Oh no. Not yet. I can’t leave her in this dark cove. She faced her fear of the jet ski today, but not alone. And not in the dark.
“Darla,” I say, my words followed by a faint echo. As if I’m already under water.
My right arm begins to burn like it has been set on fire.
It blasts into a fin. My fin.
I’m now a human with one, giant fin weighing down the right side of my body.
“Moby!” Darla cries, panicked.
“I thought I had more time,” I manage, winded, because the rest of me is beginning to burn and that’s a sign. I’m shifting. I’m going to be back in my whale form within minutes.
Frantically, I hit buttons on the jet ski with my human arm, remembering what the instructor said about lights. Sure enough, I find the right switch and two spotlights shine from the front of the machine. “There,” I pant, my chest starting to ripple and stretch. “Keep the lights on as you drive. I will swim beside you until you’re safe.”
