He looked back at me.“Yes, Brett? Is there something else you require?”
Once again, I gestured to the hut.“Where’s the door?”
“Door?”His brow creased in confusion.
Oh, of course, no doors here.“How do you, uhm, get in?”
One eyebrow raised, he slipped one hand between the blades of kelp and pulled it aside, making an opening. Removing his hand, the gap closed once more.“You enter through the kelp.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
“You are welcome. I will see you before long. Now, unless you are in need of something else…?”
I shook my head. With that, he turned, swam to a hut several spaces down, and disappeared inside. As I watched his retreating form, my fingers absentmindedly caressing the kelp at my back, I guessed that this introduction to the mers went better than the last time. At least from the puffer’s perspective. However, not only did I once more feel like a sexual deviant, but also a dim-witted moron. How else did I think someone would get into a seaweed tepee?
Slipping my hand between the blades of kelp, I started to make an opening big enough to slip through. Suddenly, I felt more alone than I had since walking away from Finn. I glanced at the huts that were scattered around my own. Inside were mers. A village of mermaids. A tribe, or whatever. Mermaids! Again, the surreal nature of the situation struck me. Mermaids that were, at least in part, family. And each one of them cut off from me, hidden in their private little homes. Hidden away from the monster at their door.
One of the huts had to belong to Therin. I wished I’d taken notice of which one he’d gone into when he fled my presence. It was best that I didn’t know. I’d probably do something stupid, like swim over to him, burst in, and start screaming at him. Erupting into flames, taking the meadow of kelp tepees with me. Or, worse yet, cry or some shit.
Turning away, I peered into the darkness of my newly erected home. If I went in there, I might as well be entering my own tomb. Welcome to solitary confinement.
Fuck that.
Letting the kelp slide back together, sealing the entrance once more, I angled away from the hut and simultaneously shoved my feet off the sand, rocketing myself upward. Thoughts fled in merciful oblivion as I closed the nearly hundred feet to the surface with crazed strokes. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe, the weight of the water crushing me as surely as if I were in the deepest trench at the bottom of the ocean six miles down.
A few yards from the surface, I darted through a huge school of silverfish, their density nearly obliterating the sun. In a panic, I exited their mass and burst out of the water, gasping in a deep inhale of air. I’d risen with such propulsion that I shot straight into the world above, then fell back under the surface, momentarily reuniting with the swarming fish.
This time, I hesitated a few inches beneath the surface, unexpectedly apprehensive. Tentatively, I stretched out my hand, testing the bottom of the gentle waves, as if they might have transformed into a sheet of glass. The water dipped, and my fingers broke through. Pausing for a final glance below, I gave a kick and my head, shoulders, and chest were in the world of man once more.
I took a second breath, this one intentional. Deep and delicious. It was several more before my brain began to function again. The caressing pass of the breeze did more than anything else to cause my sudden burst of panic to ebb.
There was water as far as I could see, in all directions, though I thought I was able to make out a small strip of land on the east horizon. Above me, the sky was a vibrant blue filled with brilliant white clouds, streams of golden sunlight cascading through their edges.
Peering down through the surface of the water, I could make out the strands of kelp that pooled over the surface a few yards away. Just kelp. Just ocean. Nothing I hadn’t been in countless times over the years. No mermaids. The past four months simply a dream.
Time to go home. Swim toward the stretch of land and go home. No more mers. No more tribes, antigay edicts, or fickle fathers. Go home.
Home. To a dead best friend who was probably tearing her way through every suburb in San Diego, drinking every person she came across. That home?
Maybe to the warlock ex-lover I’d abandoned. If Finn didn’t cast some killing spell the minute he saw me, Caitlin certainly would.
How about the home of my grandmother, where every room was filled with memories of my grandfather, each screaming of my excommunication from the family?
How about I just grow the fuck up and build my own damned home, my own life? Stop depending on my family, Sonia, or Finn. Quit whining and complaining and agonizing over everything that hasn’t worked out. Start over somewhere new. Somewhere where there wasn’t a father who couldn’t even look at me because of my shameful ways.
I glanced over at the kelp once more, almost expecting to see Therin’s head emerge from the bulbous green tangles.
A movement caught my attention, pulling my focus from the imaginary form of my father. The strip of land was bigger than it had been moments before. Something on it glinted silver in the sunlight. A lighthouse maybe.
Even as I inspected it, it continued to grow. At some imperceptible motion, the flash of metallic light reflected over the distance and blinded me.
A ship.
At the realization, I nearly dove beneath the waves, afraid it would spot me.
What if it did? Worst-case scenario, I could tell them I’d been in a shipwreck or something and get a quicker ride back to shore.
Even as I watched it, the ship began to take form, and from the speed, it must be flying over the water. Though it had to be at least a couple of miles away, it was clearly some sort of yacht, its swooping angles of steel glinting diamonds in the sun.
